Ah, so that was it—some more cheap heat. Sullen was about ready to let the Immaculate have it when Keun-ju amended himself, perhaps sensing the wrath he was on the verge of incurring.
“In this case, I mean; virtue might be universal, but you are correct, on the Isles it means something very specific.” For the first time since they’d set out, the boy sounded in his element, confident and patient instead of snotty or twitchy. “Immaculate children born out of wedlock are of course every bit as legitimate as those born to married families. Yes?”
“Uh huh,” said Sullen, though he already felt a little out of his depth. “No shame in being a bastard where you come from, sure.”
“Considering there are over a thousand noble families in the Isles, each with hundreds of years of history, marriages are more complicated than they might be in less civilized lands. Because a child brings together two families, if not more, the older generations seek to guide the course of their individual houses by carefully brokering strategic arrangements—Ji-hyeon, for example, was betrothed to Prince Byeong-gu, and had their marriage gone forward and had they borne a child together or through an appropriate surrogate, that child would bind the Bongs of Hwabun to the Ryukis of Othean.”
“And that’s good for Ji-hyeon’s family, ’cause the Empress of the Isles is a Ryuki?” said Sullen, hoping he hadn’t lost the thread already. Outlander politics always made his head spin—even the nomenclature was impenetrable. Like, why did the Crimson Empire have a queen instead of an empress, while the Immaculate Isles had an empress despite being some sort of federation of island monarchies, near as he could tell?
“Assuming Ji-hyeon bore Prince Byeong-gu an heir, it would be very good. But if, for example, she had carried on a secret affair with another noble of another Isle, one out of favor with the court of Othean, and if she had given them a child, then Hwabun would be linked to this other family. And then the royal family would be displeased to have a long-agreed-upon alliance undercut—even if the marriage were to proceed, Othean would be tying itself not just to Hwabun, but also to this disreputable family who Ji-hyeon carried on with, for she would bring into the marriage a child with the blood of another Isle.”
“Complicated,” said Sullen.
“Not really,” said Keun-ju airily.
“So you keep Ji-hyeon from fooling around with anyone except the person her parents pick, and you call that guarding her virtue?” As soon as he said it Sullen felt bad for stooping to the man’s level, but Keun-ju didn’t seem to realize he’d been called out.
“Nothing of the sort. As a Virtue Guard my role is to guide my ward into leading a virtuous life, which entails many things. Grooming and etiquette are important, as are dressmaking, and the arts, and yes, the proper expression of romantic desires is also my province. My duty is not to stifle Ji-hyeon in any regard, but simply to see that she comports herself responsibly… which is to say, with virtue.”
“And that’s why you’re so into swords and fighting?” Sullen asked. “To beat back any illicit suitors?”
“I have my own interests for I am my own person,” said Keun-ju, “and the martial tradition is chief among them. It is true, though, that my position requires me to be every bit as skilled in combat as Honor Guards or Spirit Guards, for while they may be obliged to help Ji-hyeon fend off attacks on her person, I may be called upon to put myself between the princess and the most dangerous foe of all.”
“And who’s that?”
“Herself, of course,” said Keun-ju, and again there was that hint of mischief in his voice that set Sullen’s heart to bouncing around with doubt; if the boy didn’t know for sure that Sullen and Ji-hyeon maybe sort-of had a thing going on, he definitely suspected. “A Virtue Guard must be willing to stand between their charge and any temptation.”
“Yeah?” Sullen had a lot of things he could have said right then, about where this particular Virtue Guard might put himself in relation to his mistress… but betraying Ji-hyeon’s confidence just to get a dig in on a rival was too low to contemplate for more than a moment, so he let it go. “Must be a hard job.”
“Sometimes,” Keun-ju squeaked, and glancing over at him Sullen saw that without even trying he’d made the boy’s rose-mallow cheeks bloom as pink as cherry blossoms. Sullen had to smile at that; he knew all too well what it was like to feel a burn that probably didn’t even exist outside your own conscience.
“Come on,” Sullen said, clapping Keun-ju good-naturedly on the shoulder. “See that tent over—”
“Dead fucking gods!” Keun-ju bellowed, wrenching himself away from Sullen’s touch and doubling over. Before he could even wonder at the boy being so weak he realized he’d slapped the Virtue Guard on one of the many wounds he’d acquired the day before. A smear of crimson shone through the heavy cotton robes on Keun-ju’s shoulder, and Sullen upbraided himself for being such a dunce. The boy had been walking so easily Sullen had totally forgotten he’d been on the threshold of Old Black’s fucking Meadhall but the day before.
“Sorry, shit, sorry!” Sullen cried, planting his spear in the ground and taking a step forward to help Keun-ju when the boy’s blazing eyes warned him off. “Keun-ju, I swear it was an accident, I swear it on my grandfather’s name, I do!”
And just like that some of the flames died down in Keun-ju’s glare and he tried to shrug it off, only to grimace at the movement.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, though it didn’t fucking sound like it. Then he straightened up to look Sullen dead center, took a step toward him, and said, “And of course it was an accident. I don’t know you so well as others might, Master Sullen, but I know you well enough to believe that if you wanted to hurt me you’d charge me straight on, instead of coming in from behind.”
Which bit Sullen about as bad as that slap to Keun-ju’s wound must have, but it was a fair blow, and so he sucked it up and nodded, and held up his fist for the boy to knock. Even if Keun-ju snubbed him it was best to make an effort… and then the Virtue Guard cocked his veil to the side a little and bumped knuckles with Sullen. The weird thing was a part of him wished Keun-ju had left him hanging; it would’ve made it easier to carry on thinking down about the man, but now that he knew the Immaculate just the tiniest bit better than he had before, Sullen felt even lower for continuing to chase Ji-hyeon.
What would Grandfather do in a situation like this? Sullen wished he knew, because then he could be sure of doing the opposite. Where Ji-hyeon was concerned, that seemed the safest play. Without any wisdom forthcoming from the back of his heart where his grandfather would dwell for as long as Sullen lived, he forced a smile at Keun-ju and set off toward the smith’s makeshift hut. It might have been his imagination, but he thought that under the snow-salted black veil Keun-ju smiled back.
They crunched through the snow and ducked under the overhang of the browning pine-bough roof, the support posts dangling baskets of horseshoes and chainmail scraps. The smith had his broad, apron-strapped back to them on the far side of a cluttered table, sparks erupting from the anvil as he whaled upon it with an enormous mallet. After Keun-ju tried in vain to politely catch the fellow’s attention, Sullen barked at him so loudly he startled himself. The blacksmith turned from his work, revealing Gate-black eyes with no whites at all and fleshy whiskers that bore more resemblance to a catfish’s barbels than a pureborn’s mustache.
Dealing with this second smith proved a good deal harder than the first one due to the language barrier, and Sullen’s reluctance to bring Keun-ju into his confidence. He didn’t have a lot of options, though, as the tendril-faced fat man scowling at them in the orange glow of the forge didn’t seem to speak a lick of Immaculate or Flintlander. Sullen’s Crimson had improved since he’d joined up with the Cobalts, but not nearly enough to get the point across without a fair bit of pantomiming. Given the subject matter, he was more comfortable asking Keun-ju to translate than acting out his request and risking something getting lost in the translation.
; Keun-ju’s eyes got bigger and bigger as Sullen told him what he wanted done with his grandfather’s remains; he’d had the Virtue Guard wait outside the first smith’s tent while he’d conferred with the Immaculate-speaking woman in private. Sullen was about to tell Keun-ju to forget the whole thing, seeing how shocked the boy was by the proposal, but then his veil fluttered in a long exhalation, and Keun-ju nodded sharply. Turning to the already-irritated smith, Keun-ju rattled off Crimson words like he was born to the crude tongue. By the time the lad was finished the smith was smiling, and through the sheer lace of his veil Sullen was sure he saw Keun-ju’s teeth, too. The two exchanged a few more guttural phrases, and the Virtue Guard turned back to Sullen. Even with the veil his expression was unmistakably enthusiastic.
“He’s heard of the technique—he calls it sainted steel,” said Keun-ju, and just as welcome as the news was the barely accented Flintlander rolling off Keun-ju’s tongue. The Immaculate boy had never given any hint of knowing even the simple greeting of the Noreast trading tongue, but here he was speaking it like a spice merchant straight out of Reh. “And I’ve read about it, so while he’s never crafted one himself he thinks we can do it together.”
“Yeah?” Sullen looked back and forth between the beaming, sweaty blacksmith and the eager Virtue Guard. The smith raised his stub-handled maul and grunted another chain of Crimson.
“From certain qualities of the metal he believes that hammer he holds was forged thusly, and came to him but yesterday, just before the battle,” Keun-ju translated. “It belonged to a Chainite war nun who died here in the camp. A guard brought him the weapon, among others, and recognizing its quality he cut the haft to make it a tool, and has only just now completed it. He sees our coming as a good omen, that a relic of the church was delivered to his hand, and the very next day we come here begging his service to forge a similar weapon—one that will be turned against the Chain.”
“Huh,” said Sullen, not sure how he felt about all this. “So that hammer he’s holding has an ancestor in it, but not his? Ain’t that bad luck or something?”
Another staccato exchange, the smith waving the hammer around all the while, and Keun-ju explained, “He believes once the dead enter the steel, they serve whoever wields it.”
“All right, then,” said Sullen, smiling along with these two unlikely allies now that he knew it could be done, that it was an everyday kind of magic and not just some long song of Grandfather’s. “I’ll bring him down here, then, and we can get to work. If it takes me paying him something extra to see that it’s ready by the morn after next I’ll see if I can’t scrounge some coins together.”
“Day after next?” Keun-ju said in a tone like he was the native speaker and Sullen was an ignorant foreigner who’d said one thing when he meant another. “I’ll ask him about it, if you insist, but I’d bet my ink pot such a blade will take weeks to craft. At the shortest.”
“Hmmmm,” said Sullen, considering what it would mean to give Uncle Craven any more of a start than he already had. “Ask him, then, for I need this as fast as mortally possible. Please.”
More blather, and the few Crimson words Sullen recognized didn’t bode well: Insane. Foolish. Impossible. That these were the terms Sullen had learned over the course of his journey across the Empire spoke to Grandfather’s character, and the impression the old man had made on strangers.
“He says it will take more time than that,” Keun-ju said when the smith was finished and, while Sullen waited for the little man to deliver the rest of the fish-whiskered smith’s harsh proclamations, nothing was forthcoming, save a mild, “Quite a bit more time, probably.”
“Hmmmm,” said Sullen, unwilling to linger in camp a moment longer than necessary. In his wrath over Uncle Craven’s desertion Sullen had thoughtlessly sworn an oath to remain in camp for but three days before hunting the coward, and voiced the pledge in front of Hoartrap to boot, otherwise he would have already left… but he was also reluctant to deny Grandfather’s remains the noble fate this shaman-blooded blacksmith promised, now that he knew such an internment was indeed attainable. Then he thought of the empty slot in Ji-hyeon’s double-holed scabbard, the sword she had lost along with two of her fingers during the epic battle. “I have to leave before it will be finished. What about instead of a spear point or a sun-knife, then, can he make a sword? One identical to Ji-hyeon’s?”
Keun-ju sucked through his teeth, and too late Sullen remembered who was doing the translating here. Nothing for it now. Keun-ju bandied some more Crimson, and when the Virtue Guard looked back at Sullen there was a certain vulnerability there that confounded Sullen—what stake did Keun-ju have in Grandfather’s funerary rites?
“He has made Immaculate-style blades before…” Keun-ju spoke cautiously. “And with Ji-hyeon still possessing the lost weapon’s twin, it will be easier to craft a replacement. But… but he is your grandfather, so why not do as you first asked, and make a spear or knife, so that when you return he has become a weapon you can use?”
“’Cause I might not come back,” said Sullen glumly, and lest this kid get his hopes up, he added, “I’m planning on a comeback, mind, but plans have a way of getting twisted, yeah? And if they do and I don’t return, well, I wouldn’t want no one lifting him in death who wouldn’t put up with him in life, so that means he goes into steel that Ji-hyeon can use. Ever since we left the Savannahs, she was the first person who treated him serious-like, instead of looking down her nose at him on account of his being a crabby old savage. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” said the Virtue Guard in a wistful voice, when Sullen would’ve expected him to have a laugh at the whole venture. This Keun-ju kid was weird as hell, no doubt. “And if you do return from wherever you go, Sullen, what then? Your grandfather will be laid to rest in a steel blade that you cannot use with any skill.”
“Ain’t too worried ’bout that—I’m a fast learner, especially where killing tools are concerned,” said Sullen, and if this hadn’t been Keun-ju the pretty boy he was looking at, Sullen might have thought there was a little gleam of respect in those deep brown eyes. And seeing as how the tale had already spun way the hells out to the side from where he’d first seen it going, Sullen decided on the fly to offer another fist for this foreign fool to knock or ignore as he saw fit. “Everybody got to get on with their day, I expect, so I’ll head up there now and bring Fa back down so we can get started… I know the way myself and I know you’re busy, but if you were able and inclined I wouldn’t say no to the company while I fetch him.”
And not for the first time that day Sullen’s one true rival for his one true love surprised him, because instead of Keun-ju jumping at the excuse to be shy of him, his eyes shimmered, just before his gaze dropped to the snowmelt inching its way under the canopy of the smithy. In a voice that was every bit as solemn as the occasion demanded, Keun-ju said, “It would be my honor, Master Sullen, to see your grandfather Ruthless delivered to this place.”
“Shit, son, I ain’t master of much, so let’s just leave it at Sullen,” said he, trying a little bluster of his own to overcome the unforeseen emotion that tightened his chest. He almost slapped Keun-ju’s arm again before remembering himself. From the way the smith roared with laughter at their emotional exchange, Sullen wondered if the fat bastard spoke Flintlander after all. Well, let him laugh—this world was dim enough without begrudging a man whatever light he could pry free from the darkness.
CHAPTER
13
Darkness would have been preferable, but the cold afternoon sun found Zosia even through the sheltering snow. Typical—it had been a long time since she’d received anything but the opposite of what she wanted. If she preferred water she’d find ryefire in her mug, and if it was ryefire she needed the bowl was sure to hold wine. Maybe if she’d prayed for death and destruction to descend on Kypck everyone she cared about would still be alive, and she’d just be a spiteful old broad looking out over a happy village with a hunger in her heart that was better not
fed… Maybe many things, in the songs of mortals, but at the end of the ballad all you were left with were the choices you’d made and the luck you’d had, for better or worse.
Today, as with so many others, the shittiness of Zosia’s luck was surpassed only by the foolishness of her decisions. At least she hadn’t broken her hand on Kang-ho’s brat, and the old sawbones who had tended her after she’d been brought back to camp didn’t think the bite Ji-hyeon had given her was too serious. The grizzled barber had ground some itchy paste into her shoulder and given the guards leave to dump her in the stockade, which didn’t sound like much, sure, but Zosia was relieved to have something burny rubbed into her wounds; be it girl or beast, an untended bite could cause all kinds of trouble. Considering Ji-hyeon’s reckless temperament, rabies didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility.
So that was it, then: the most that could be said for Cobalt Zosia, veteran of a thousand battles, was that her wounds probably wouldn’t have a chance to fester before she met some equally rotten end. The hundreds of other occupants of the stockade certainly didn’t look inclined to pour her a cuppa or rub some liniment into her bruises. No, the only thing that seemed to be keeping the mob of Imperial captives from stampeding over the newest prisoner was a disagreement over who got first dibs on kicking in the Stricken Queen’s face. She’d kept her head down and moved straight to the back of the repurposed corral, flopping down on the frozen ground with her back to one of the palisades that formed the southern wall, but word of her identity had evidently spread.
“Zit true?” a big man with distractingly small teeth called, separating himself from the nearest pack and strutting purposefully toward her. “You her?”
“Your mom? ’Fraid not,” said Zosia, staying where she sat sprawled out in the icy muck. “But I did meet her one time, at a Geminidean stock show. She won the red ribbon for Ugliest Cow in the Empire.”
A Blade of Black Steel Page 14