by JC Kang
That would be nothing, balanced against the emotional scars the denizens of the Trench must have. Living in a wealthy country getting richer off trade, it was hard to believe there was still so much poverty. While there were certainly less-affluent neighborhoods within the city walls, they didn’t begin to compare with the ramshackle wood buildings here, and their cracking tile roofs. People in dirty, threadbare clothes roamed the hard-packed dirt streets. And the stench…
Then again, clan operatives stationed in the Nothori nations spoke of even more bitter conditions. Perhaps that’s why so many citizens of those countries had come here. She’d never seen so many fair-skinned people in one place, though it was admittedly hard to discern their skin tone underneath the layers of dust and dirt. Some even had light-colored hair.
Though it begged the question: if Faceless Chang had enough money, why would he stay in such a ghetto?
To think, if Yuna had remained here, she might’ve ended up as a Triad prostitute, used by a couple of dozen men a day. Instead she’d become a high-class courtesan in the Floating World. With her quick mind and lethal training, the clan was grooming her to eventually lead the cell there.
By comparison, despite perhaps being even smarter, Tian was untrained and clueless. Now he stood at her side, gawking at the foreigners. In that moment, he looked less like the banished son of a great lord and more like a country bumpkin. He tugged on her sleeve. “Why do so many Nothori live here? And why are they so poor?”
“It’s even poorer where they come from, thanks to civil wars and unrest,” she said. “Now, their countries pay huge sums to an empire—”
“The Teleri.” Tian’s tone sounded self-satisfied.
Jie nodded. That nation, ruled by a race of large, aggressive men, had subjugated the Nothori nations two decade ago, turning them into impoverished vassal states. “Yes. I assume many of these people came here looking for a better life, and they work for less, doing jobs our own people don’t want to do.”
He tapped his chin. “What kind of work?”
“In the mines and quarries for the men. For the women, servants and uh, the same kind of work as in the Floating World.” She looked over her shoulder.
Doing a poor job of trailing them was the large Fang from before. Even though he’d been whispering to his comrade before, her elf ears had picked up their conversation: find out where she and the others were staying, and then threaten the family into giving them up.
Well, the two goons would be sorely disappointed, since Jie didn’t plan on spending the night. She pulled Tian through a gaggle of burly Nothori men, who chattered in their unintelligible language, and turned into an alley between the dilapidated rowhouses. Shoulder searing from her pulled stitches, she peeked out.
Their tail’s head turned left and right as he pushed through the people. “Any of you Flukes seen two squirts? A girl and a boy?”
The men glared at him as he shoved them aside, but their expressions softened when their eyes fell on his black tunic and exposed tattoos. Several bowed.
“No see,” one said with a heavy accent.
Another pointed in the opposite direction. “That way.”
The man hurried off, and the foreigners shared a laugh. Clan reports out of the Trench had made only passing reference to foreigners, and had certainly not mentioned the tension with the local Hua that was playing out in front of them.
Still, the Nothori people leading the Fang astray had worked in their favor. Jie beckoned for Tian to follow.
They wound through the streets, where the lack of commerce was shocking. On the other side of the city walls—which were close enough to see soldiers patrolling along the battlements—stores lined every primary street, and most secondary streets. Here, there was nothing. However, the flow of women with baskets of vegetables hanging in the crooks of their elbows suggested there was a marketplace of some sort. Foreigners and locals alike deferred to passing Fangs.
Jie bowed to one of the Hua women. “Where’s the bridge over the trench?”
The woman turned to her companions, who all shared a laugh. She pointed back the way she’d come.
Why was a bridge so funny? Bowing again, Jie led Tian against the growing tide of people. The Nothori and Hua people walked on opposite sides of the street, leaving a space to squeeze between. The din of voices grew louder, and the stench of shit heavier. Before long, they came to a market square.
People shouted back and forth as they bartered over produce that didn’t look or smell fresh. While the apples and pears sold in the capital looked spherical, Jie couldn’t quite describe the shape of some of their counterparts here.
At her side, Tian’s lips pursed. “Nothing looks good.”
A nearby Hua woman snorted. “Farmers sell their best produce in the city. We get the leftovers.”
“And the Fangs sift a cut of the farmer’s sales,” added another.
As if on cue, one of the black-clad Fangs extorted a copper from the owner of a nearby vegetable cart, and another groped the rear of a young foreign woman. If the Nothori nations were really worse than this, Jie hoped she’d never have to go there.
They made their way to the bridge, and there was no wonder the women from before had laughed: maybe there’d been a real bridge in the past, but now it was just stone pilings with makeshift wooden planks spanning the twenty-foot gap. It lacked any kind of balustrade, but wasn’t short of Triads armed with broadswords and daggers. With arms and necks baring tattoos, it was the Fangs, marked by green-and-blue snakes on one side, Red Dragons inked with their namesakes on the other. Goons at both ends fleeced the very few people teetering across, after checking bags and packs.
She looked down. The stone-lined slope was manageable, descending at a forty-five degree angle to the sewage eight feet down. Going that way meant slogging ten feet through the slow-flowing muck, and it was impossible to tell how deep it went. Rich and poor people’s excrement looked and smelled the same, but while it ran underground within the city, here it was all out in the open.
“Are we going to cross here?” Tian looked up from the trench, his nose scrunched.
Crossing here meant getting checked. As if Triad hands roving over her wasn’t bad enough, they might find her many concealed weapons, which would lead to questions. She shook her head.
Tian pointed back toward the city walls. “What if we go through the city, and up and around?”
Given the distance between the gates… “It would take several hours, and we have”—she looked up to the Iridescent Moon—“less than three.”
Scanning the makeshift bridge, Tian tapped his chin. “The only people crossing are Hua. They are willing to pay a toll. Which means they must have a good reason to do so.”
The boy had a point, and it was his sharp eye and deductive reasoning that would one day make him an invaluable clan asset. Jie tracked one of the men who’d just crossed as he picked his way through the crowds. He dropped off a bag of leafy greens at one of the carts, and collected several bunches of carrots from another.
She looked to the other side, where another marketplace sat. There were plenty of greens, but no carrots. Where there was need, enterprising people would find a way to make a profit. Even in the Trench.
“I bet there are other places to cross.” Tian gestured upstream to down. “We can follow along.”
And they needed to cross soon, if they wanted to meet their informant at the local magistrate’s office.
✽ ✽ ✽
Tian gritted his teeth, and not because of the cut the Steel Orchid had drawn across his shoulder the day before. As if this place wasn’t already out of his worst nightmares, with the bad smell and rude people, there was also a murderer on the loose. It was like they’d stepped into a foreign country, especially with all the pale-skinned workers.
Of course, he’d seen important visitors like that at the imperial court, but never so many, and never so…ripe-smelling. Not only that, there appeared to be two distinct ty
pes: one group had heavier jowls, with the men sporting thick beards, while the other had finer features and thinner facial hair. Their style of clothing was similar, yet varied in button placement and necklines. Even the intonation and inflection of the words they exchanged in their harsh-sounding language fell into two different groups.
His curiosity was piqued; he had to know why. For now, though, he and Jie had to find a way to cross over to the other side. He wandered along the bank until he reached the edge of the marketplace. Here, hovels lined the trench, leaving only a narrow path formed by the stones of the spillway’s lip. How awful it would be to live in one of these homes, so close to the sewage.
He squinted into the afternoon shadows. Deeper in…
“Jie!” He pointed down to a wooden plank that cleared the baba line by a couple of feet.
“Let’s check it out.” She took the lead and followed along the bank.
One foot in front of the other, he tottered after her.
When they reached the right spot, she looked down. “There are wooden boards nailed into the mortar between the pavestones. It’s almost like stairs.”
Tian gave them a dubious look. Maybe if someone had small elf feet, they were like stairs. For anyone else, they were a quick plunge into the sludge.
She skimmed sideways down the slope to the plank, arms not even outstretched for balance. Gliding across the span with effortless grace, she looked back and beckoned. “It’s easy.”
Easy for her, maybe. He gulped and wedged a foot onto the wood board. It felt firm enough, so he crouched low and continued. One step, then two. It wasn’t that hard, it—
His foot slipped on the next rung. Hands flailing, he teetered the rest of the way down and onto the plank. Balance thrown off, he fell.
A hand clasped around his wrist, sending pain flaring in the stitches on his back and shoulder, but keeping him on the bridge. Heart thumping, he looked up to find Jie. She’d somehow run back across the plank and caught him.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” No. If the trench didn’t have a flat bottom, he might have sunk in over his head into the baba. Squeezing her hand, he followed her across.
When they got to the other side, he bent over and grabbed the rungs as if they were a ladder, and crawl-climbed. Three-quarters of the way up, he just about head-butted Jie’s rear.
She’d stopped, and now held both hands up.
He looked past to see three fair-skinned men in a third style of tunic at the top, pointing makeshift spears at them.
One barked something in their language, his inflection different from the other two versions in the marketplace.
Jie shook her head. “I don’t speak your language.”
“I think he said he wants money,” Tian said. At least, the man had spoken the word used when money changed hands in the marketplace.
“You have to pay the toll,” the man said in accented Hua.
One of his companions grinned. “Just a copper. Much less than the Fangs or Red Dragons charge.”
“We don’t have any money.” Jie motioned to the non-existent purse at her waist.
“Then you’ll have to keep sifting in the Fangs’ territory.” The third jabbed his spear in a threatening manner.
Tian flinched.
“I need to bring some medicine to my sick aunt,” Jie said. “Please, let us up.”
“I have a soft spot for sick aunts.” The second flashed a wolfish grin. “I’ll let you up if you suck my cock.”
The first leered. “Mine, too.”
“And mine!” The third laughed.
Scratching his head, Tian looked past them. There weren’t any roosters around, and why they’d want their chickens sucked on didn’t make much sense.
The second pointed at his crotch.
OH. Tian cringed and squeezed his knees together. Why would anyone want that? It sounded painful. And poor Jie, having to put her face so close to such a stinky place.
“All right.” Jie held out her hands. “Help me up.”
What? She was going to do it? Tian reached to stop her, but without even looking, she batted his hand away.
Grinning, the men lowered their spears. The second and third reached and took her hands.
And screamed. Their eyes went wide as Jie twisted their wrists. She released the second, then used both her hands to crank the third’s wrist. He flipped head over heels and tumbled down the slope into the sewage. The splash would’ve hit Tian had he not leaned to the side, and nearly thrown himself off balance in the process.
“Why you…” The first leveled his spear and stabbed.
Jie caught it and yanked, sending him flailing down the stones to join his companion in the muck. The third’s spear thrust out, but she turned her upper body out of the way, seized the shaft, and let him pull her back up. Spinning along the length of the haft, she caught hold of his hands, and leveraged the spear so that the butt end dug into his wrist.
He buckled to his knees, and with a shove, she sent him rolling down the slope.
She’d overcome three armed men, all larger than her, on uneven ground, in the blink of an eye. Tian could only gape as she lowered the butt end of the spear to him. “Take it.”
He grasped it, and she dug in and helped pull him up. Again, his wound, so lovingly stitched by Yuna, pulled.
“Shit sucker!” one of the men yelled.
Tian looked down.
The three stood there, shaking their fists. More importantly, they were waist-high in the baba, indicating a flat bottom to the trench, and a total depth of twelve feet. An image of all the angles appeared in his head of its own accord.
“Don’t let us catch you, we’ll send you downstream!” The second wiped his face, but only succeeded in smearing more baba on it.
“Come on.” Jie skipped up the path back toward the marketplace on this side.
As they got closer, the sound of shouting grew louder.
Tian squinted in the late afternoon sun that greeted them. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Nobody is speaking in Hua.” Her eyes locked on one of the entrances to the marketplace. “Wait, someone just said the Blue Reaper has reaped someone. Near the stocks.”
Tian’s heart squeezed. “That’s where we were. I remember the canque at the stocks. He targets girls, and Yuna might still be there.”
Jie started to turn back. Then her shoulders squared, and with a wince, she continued through the marketplace. “No, Yuna can take care of herself.”
Could she? In the last couple of days, she’d proven good at fighting; Jie and Wen had whispered among themselves about how she’d almost executed a No-Shadow Cut, whatever that was. But would she stand a chance against an adult killer?
Chapter 3
Standing at the corner of the alley near the stocks, knife and throwing star ready, Yuna listened.
The cloaked man’s footsteps grew fainter, nearly drowned out by his victim’s heaving breaths.
With a quick look to ensure the attacker had left, she turned into the alley and knelt by the yue addict. Blood flowed from several precise arterial stabs, pooling around him and matting his dark hair.
“Please,” he said in accented Hua, his frightened eyes meeting hers.
There was nothing short of divine intervention that could help this man. Still, even if he’d sold his own daughter like Mama had, nobody deserved to die alone. At the very least she could stay with him until he passed. It’s what she’d want, herself. She clasped his clammy hand. “You’ll be all right.”
“You speak our language…” His eyes widened before he winced again. “Well enough to lie.”
She buried a wry smile.
“Please. Find my wife and daughter.” His hand squeezed tight around hers. “Promise me.”
Yuna chewed on her lip. Jie and Tian were expecting her, and she was part of the distraction that would get Jie into the Red Dragons’ Tang and assassinate Faceless Chang. A foreign peasant’s murd
er wasn’t her responsibility. Still, a small part of her hoped that Mama worried about a lost daughter, and daughters everywhere should be protected. She gave a nod. “Where do they live?”
He gave a single nod. “Cherry Blossom Avenue, number two seven six.”
It was surprising they had actual street names and numbers here, considering the government left the area alone. No doubt she wouldn’t be finding any cherry blossoms, nor would the street count as an avenue. “All right.”
“Tell wife…” he said through labored pants. “Hide daughter.”
Hide? “Why?”
“She has a gift.” The light in his eyes winked out.
What kind of gift could this man’s daughter have that he’d have to hide her? Brushing the man’s lids closed, she rose and ran out of the alley.
“The Blue Reaper!” she screamed in both Hua and Nothori. She grabbed the arm of every person she passed, and pointed back to the alley. “Murder!”
Before long, she spotted the addict’s companion. She caught up to him and grabbed his hand. “Your friend, Andris Dukurs, was killed.”
He turned and looked down at her. “What?”
“A man in a cloak and hat stabbed him in that alley.” She gestured toward the crime scene.
His mouth rounded. “The Blue Reaper. I warned Andris to be careful.”
“The Blue Reaper?
“Yes, he’s been stalking the Trench for months, sending people downstream.”
Killing. “Doesn’t he only target girls?”
He shook his head. “He’s sending our people downstream.”
His people. The Nothori. The rumors out of the Trench had mentioned the Blue Reaper, and that he killed starting around dusk and through the night; yet they said nothing about the victims being foreigners. Perhaps that’s why the imperial court didn’t bother to send an investigator. It would explain why he’d killed Andris. “He told me he lives on Cherry Blossom Avenue. Where is it?”
The man pointed back the way she’d come. “Two streets over. Andris was taking a shortcut.”
This was taking even longer than expected, and Jie might already be scouting out the Red Dragons den or meeting with their informant. Still, Mama had always said to keep promises, and Yuna had made a promise to a dying man. She could always claim it had taken her longer to lose her tail. With a bob of her head, she took the next cross street over.