“He’s not back in three days, I hunt him. He comes back sooner, we settle it then. There’ll be no song swapping. No more of his treachery. Uncle Craven’s fled his last fight.”
CHAPTER
28
At the third or maybe fourth polite whisper from the guards stationed just outside, Ji-hyeon hauled herself upright, temples pounding. Another whisper, and she gingerly disentangled herself from Keun-ju’s bandaged limbs, taking stock of her tent. The kaldi warmer she had left burning revealed scattered clothes, busted armor, and dozens of stained dressings and washrags from where they’d changed one another’s wrappings before collapsing into bed that afternoon. The poultice on her disfigured hand needed changing already, and she got queasy just looking at where her fingers should be.
“General,” came the whisper again. Fennec. At last. “General! An emissary to see you!”
“Coming,” she answered, pulling on a grimy skirt and jacket and groaning as her throbbing tailbone and bitten hand protested the exertion. Either the bugs they had given her for the pain had worn off or she was in an even worse way than she’d thought. Stuffing her hair back in what was probably a lopsided bun, she took another survey of the room and decided she just didn’t care. If her visitor was the envoy who had announced his coming via owlbat while they’d been laid up in the barber’s tent, he could choke on his indignation for all she cared… But, pausing at the flap, she changed her mind. No matter the point it would make, and as few shits as she had left to give, it was just too damn embarrassing. Old habits and such. She stepped into her slippers, hurried over and blew out the kaldi warmer, then quietly slipped out of the tent, careful not to let the guard’s lantern light sneak in past her. It was after dark, but that was about all she could tell; it might have been anytime between sunset and dawn.
“Ah, General,” said Fennec, rubbing his gloved paws together. “If we could talk inside, it is a matter of—”
“We’ll walk and talk, gentlemen.” She used her snottiest tone to address Fennec and the Imperial emissary at his side, the guards behind them exchanging a bemused look. “I need to stretch my legs.”
Which was the truth; they felt like they’d been threshed by farmers with a personal vendetta against wheat, and hopefully a stroll would help.
“I think you can stretch later, Ji-hyeon,” said the envoy, raising the visor on his owlbat-shaped helm. “I need a sit and a smoke, and your tent—”
“It’s a little messy right now, Dad,” she said, and, mad as she was at him, it was good to see his face. She hugged him, the studs of his armor cold through her hanbok. “I wondered if your old gear would still fit you!”
“It’s possible I had it let out,” admitted her second father, stroking her hair. The obvious pride on his face softened her a bit toward his betrayal… but only a bit. “Damned if you don’t look the part. Fennec says that you’ve been a real handful, for him and the Imperials!”
“I bet he did,” said Ji-hyeon, not terribly miffed—they both knew Fennec’s biscuit was best buttered by whoever was closest to the plate. “You want to light your pipe before we get moving? There’s a lookout spot I’d like to show you.”
“You really aren’t going to let me sit down for five minutes?” Had she actually missed that peevish note in his voice? “I sent word earlier, so you’d be ready for me—didn’t you get it?”
“Oh, we got it,” said Ji-hyeon, waving her bandaged hand at him and blinking away tears from even that little motion. “I’ve just been too busy waging your fucking war to set out kaldi for you like a good little girl.”
“Oh, Ji,” he said softly, reaching for her hand but thinking better of it. “Fennec told me, but… but what the devils were you doing out there, anyway? I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times, a general leads from the rear, the rear! Fellwing’s protection isn’t some magical bubble you can step inside and then jump into a volcano! If you ever—”
Ji-hyeon jabbed his chest with her good hand, got right in his face, and said, “If you ever speak to me like that in front of my troops again, I’ll have you run out of camp and close all future negotiations. Is that clear, Kang-ho?”
“Really, this is too much,” he blustered, lifting her hand off his armor, when one of her guards took a step behind him, asked:
“General?”
“It’s all right, soldier, the emissary is from foreign lands and his ways are strange. We’ll acquaint him with Cobalt discipline soon enough.” Ji-hyeon beamed at her father’s gobsmacked expression. “Now, oh welcome ambassador, I am eager to hear the Empire’s terms. The vantage point is this way, if you would be so kind?”
“Here, Kang-ho, mine’s already packed,” said Fennec, ever the peacemaker. In his glove he held out the thick briar billiard he was so proud of, the one whose mix of straight grain and birdseye made it appear to have two many-branched trees on the side of the bowl. “I believe you and the general have much to discuss, so the sooner we stop debating the location the better.”
“Hmph,” said her father. “I see you’ve done a fine job of keeping her in check.”
“I live to serve my general,” said Fennec with a bow, and as Kang-ho snatched the pipe away Ji-hyeon caught Fennec winking at her. If he thought a little ass-kissing now would spare him a harsh reproof for his desertion of the general’s bodyguard during the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, the old fox was in for an even bigger surprise than her second father. Well, maybe not quite that big…
“I hope I didn’t keep you,” said Hoartrap, ever the gentleman as he flicked his fingers and the unlit lantern flared up, blinding Zosia after the dark of his tent. “If I’d known you wanted an audience, m’dear, I wouldn’t have tarried. Oh, and you’ve brought my favorite little doggie-woggie in all the Star!”
Zosia was pleased to see her pep talk had done some good, for Choplicker didn’t twitch, lying on the floor by her stool and watching the sorcerer as casually as he’d observe any other mortal. She puffed on the corncob pipe she’d bought off an old-timer earlier that evening, since she’d been fool enough to do the right thing and give Maroto back his briar. Someday she’d have to carve herself a real piece, but for now it was back to loaner pipes and cheap cobs.
“I’m in no hurry, Hoartrap, I’ve only got one more stop to make tonight.”
“And here I hoped that handsome outfit was for my benefit,” Hoartrap said wistfully, eyeing her dirndl. “Ah, but you’ve tied your apron wrong! If the knot’s in the back like that everyone will think you’re a mourning widow, Zosia. Let’s move it around to the front, so the suitors will know you’re available.”
“If I tied it in the front they’d think I was a virgin,” said Zosia, trying not to betray her annoyance with Hoartrap’s damnable perceptiveness. “It’s fine where it is.”
“Well, whatever your status, you still look good in a dress, old friend. Far better than I did at your age.”
“Oh, I’m sure your calves are as shapely now as they ever were,” said Zosia. “Now, unless you’ve got any more beauty tips for me, why don’t you pull up a seat, pack a bowl, and let’s have us that blather you proposed the other day. I want to talk devils and secrets.”
“I heard what happened with Diggelby’s pet and dear Tapai Purna—was that the first time you’ve actually seen one set loose?” Hoartrap had a hard time keeping his eyes off Choplicker whenever the devil was around, Zosia could see that now. “Not pretty, I’d expect, but then passage from one world to another never is; death, birth, other roads…”
“Not pretty, but effective. She’s good as new. More or less.”
“I’d say improved. More or less.” Hoartrap wasn’t sitting, which was good, too—she was making him nervous. “Considering your options for our mutual friend, now that you’ve seen the efficacy of a devil’s wish?”
“Hadn’t occurred to me,” said Zosia, and Choplicker drummed his tail on the dirt floor of the tent. “Not that he’d listen if I did.”
A bark f
rom the devil, and a chuckle from Hoartrap. “Yes, yes, I remember your difficulties in that regard. I’ve been pondering it, and I wonder if he isn’t a special sort of creature, just as I’ve always said.”
“A special wart on your vag is still a wart on your vag,” said Zosia, and pulled in a mouthful of hot ash. She never could get the hang of cob pipes.
“You know, there are other ways of getting what you want than ordering one about.” The pipe she’d made Hoartrap appeared in hand, already smoldering with the familiar aroma of cheap perfume and burning garbage. “Asking nicely. Begging. Offering something in trade beyond the usual terms.”
“And here I thought you just ate them,” said Zosia, and Choplicker growled at the laughing magician.
“I’ve never been lucky enough to catch one as fine as your specimen,” said Hoartrap, puffing his pipe back to life. “But I have been looking into the transfer of devils. Our beloved general and her father put me onto the topic. I think I may have found a way, if you were so inclined, to take that troublesome fiend off your hands, in exchange for a more obliging devil. Maybe even several.”
Choplicker’s cold nose urgently nuzzled Zosia’s dangling hand, and she rubbed his snout before wiping her damp palm on her checked apron. “You always were the helping kind, weren’t you?”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for a friend,” said Hoartrap, blowing a smoke ring at Choplicker. The devil snapped at it.
“And what would you do with him, I wonder? Some sort of a roast?”
“Zosia, Zosia, Zosia,” said Hoartrap. “I’d win the war, of course.”
“All to help Ji-hyeon gain the Crimson Throne? That altruistic streak is going to get you into trouble someday.”
“To help us all. The entire Star is in danger, or haven’t you noticed? The Burnished Chain is too strong, its ambitions too grand. Do you have any idea what they called down this morning, what their ritual accomplished? It’s too preposterous to even say aloud.”
“I’d wondered where Ji-hyeon picked up her disdain for the church,” said Zosia, her curiosity piqued despite her reluctance to be drawn into Hoartrap’s schemes. “Is that why you murdered the war nun before I could talk to her? Sparing me the danger of an audience with a bound weirdborn?”
“I knew it was eating you up, not knowing!” Hoartrap crowed. “You’ve finally mastered your temper, after all these years, but I knew you wanted to know!”
Zosia shrugged. “For all the good knowing has ever done me. But let’s hear it all the same.”
“Let’s just say she was dangerous, and you’re better off without her,” said Hoartrap. “But getting back to the far more interesting issue of the evening, I’ve had a peek beyond the veil and those mad Chainites have—”
“Choplicker,” Zosia said, heart pounding at what she was about to do. So much could go wrong… “Choplicker, I want Hoartrap to tell me the truth about why Sister Portolés came here, what she wanted me to know. I want it so bad that if he doesn’t tell me, now, of his own free will, I grant you your freedom to secure the facts by any means necessary.”
It went as quiet as the smoky valley in the tent, Hoartrap not doing a good job hiding his amazement… And then he chuckled, shaking his head. Zosia’s gambit had fallen flat, as all of them did, when they involved her worthless, disobedient devil, and from here until the end of the Star she’d never again be able to put the screws to Hoartrap with the threat of an unfettered Choplicker.
“Oh, Zosia, you do keep me interested!” said Hoartrap. “A clever ploy, but devils don’t work that way. I only wish that poor nun had told me something you’d find interesting, then—”
The lamp went out, its glass mantle exploding in the black tent, and the cacophony of a thousand bones splintering and snapping filled the air, the smell of lightning mingling with the scent of rich earth, and Zosia felt a wave of icy air brush past, her cheeks and shaking hands tickled by a thousand probing threads, and then—
“I’ll tell, I’ll tell,” squealed Hoartrap. “Just call him off!”
Then the tent was still once more, though Zosia continued to feel minute pricklings all across her skin. After a few shaky breaths, Hoartrap tried an incantation, but stumbled over the words a few times before he calmed down enough to say them properly. When he finally completed it, light returned to the tent in the form of what appeared to be a small phosphorescent jellyfish floating in the air between them. Hoartrap stared down in horror at Choplicker, and Zosia had a look, too; same dog as ever, but his lips were pulled back in an uncanny approximation of a human smile. Strands of dog hair floated through the charged air, settling on everything, and Zosia brushed them off her dress, trying to slow her racing heart.
“You were saying?” she said, but it came out as a croak. She couldn’t bear to look at Choplicker any longer, couldn’t stop her legs from shaking like she’d missed a toehold climbing up a cliff. She’d almost gone and loosed the devil.
“Yes, yes, I was. I will. I am,” whispered Hoartrap, still staring at her devil, and seeing Hoartrap so rattled was as thrilling as it was foreboding. What would have happened to the old sorcerer if he hadn’t elected to come clean before Choplicker forced him?
“Let’s hear it, then,” said Zosia. “Starting with Portolés and everything she told you, and ending with whatever fell deviltry happened out there on the battlefield. Tell me that, and we’ll call it a night.”
“As you wish,” said Hoartrap, finally taking a seat.
Kang-ho softened a bit when Ji-hyeon asked him about the family, and as they marched through the dark camp she felt an unexpected pang of homesickness. Come what may of the coming war, if every engagement resulted in such havoc as this one, Hwabun would remain apart from it all, safe from harm at the ends of the Immaculate Isles, and that gave her succor as they climbed the hill where she had parleyed with Fennec and Hoartrap but two nights before. Once the guards reached the crown of the hill and hung back out of earshot, though, her second father laid straight into her.
“All right, Ji-hyeon, you’ve had your fun,” he said, puffing furiously on his borrowed pipe. “Now, just what the devils is the meaning of all this! You were supposed to use my silver to hire a crew big enough to secure the attention of a regiment or two, not the whole Crimson Empire! And now this… this madness, provoking the Azgarothian regiment into open war? You’re lucky Hoartrap was here to help you, or you’d never have carried it.”
“Hoartrap didn’t have anything to do with it,” said Ji-hyeon, trying not to lose her temper; the louder she spoke, the worse her hand hurt. “We’re still trying to figure out what happened—seems like a ploy by the Imperials that blew up in their faces. I’ve ordered everyone to stay off the field until that smoke clears and we can see what happened out there; it went dead quiet, right in the middle of things, and I’ve heard reports from soldiers close to the action that the earth opened up and swallowed the whole damned regiment. None of the Azgarothians or Myurans we captured are talking, if they even know what it was, but I’ve got one of my best captains interrogating the Azgarothian colonel as we speak.”
“You took their colonel?” Her father sounded impressed in spite of his best efforts to the contrary. “How’d you manage that?”
“He was leading from the rear. When my people rode out to pillage the Imperial camp somebody found him hiding in a wagon on the far side of the vale.”
“Well,” said Kang-ho, trying to work up his ire again. “It still sounds like chance carried the day, such as it is, and by the look of things you gave up a lot more than you gained. How many heads did you lose?”
“Too many,” said Ji-hyeon quietly. “Far too many.”
“You’re lucky, daughter, very, very lucky I arrived in time, and luckier still that my old buddy Waits is leading the regiment out of Thao. She still thinks we can work something out.”
“She does, does she?” Ji-hyeon peered through the misty haze that still hadn’t cleared off the vale. She wondered if it eve
r would, or if she would be forced to send a scouting party in to discover the truth behind the smoke. “Well, then I suppose you’re both in for a disappointment, aren’t you? There’s been a change in plans, I’m afraid.”
That got him flushed, all right, and for a moment he just scowled at Fennec, who shrugged and said, “You were the one who always said she took after you.”
“Ji-hyeon…” her father began, but then a horn sounded from the direction of the command tent, two long blows to signal an arriving messenger. She sent Fennec to fetch the news, and as he left, her father tried again, his voice softer. “Ji-hyeon, listen to me. You’ve had your fun, but the reality is that you’ve gotten yourself in an awfully tight spot, and unless you want to have an unstoppable war on your hands by lunchtime, you need to get smart, and… and… oh no. No, no, no, Ji-hyeon, you’re smarter than this!”
Evidently she wasn’t doing as good a job of hiding her excitement as she’d thought. “It’s too late, Dad. You offered me one role, which I thank you for, but I’m taking a better one.”
“Ji-hyeon, I never would have let you go if I thought you’d be in real danger,” said her father, looking down at her missing fingers. “This isn’t a game anymore, this is—”
She socked him in the chin before she knew what she was doing. He stumbled back, more from surprise than the blow. She harried him, putting her face in his, and snarled:
“You and Fennec love saying that, but this was never a game! Never! People died, lots of people. Some of them I knew and some of them I didn’t, but there was never a way for your plan to work without hundreds, hells, thousands of people, innocent people, going to the grave. I’ve killed people, I’ve lost friends, and you lecture me about playing games? Fuck you, Kang-ho! Fuck you!”
He looked abashed. Nodded. Squatting down to pick up the pipe he’d dropped, he quietly said, “Please don’t call me that. I’m still your friend, I hope, but I’m also one of your fathers. Call me names if you must, so long as ‘Dad’ is always one of them.”
A Crown for Cold Silver Page 67