by Matt Weber
Netten smiled and sipped. “My life’s work has been in government. I have had no confrontation worthy of a style.”
Lin Gyat pointed a thick finger at Datang. “You see? This Netten is every bit the warrior you are, yet he has no style. You should be grateful.”
“Netten himself says he has not had a confrontation worthy of a style,” snapped Datang. “Well, I have. I will be the first to toast his achievement when he collects one, for I love him and wish him the pinnacle of success. But until that time, our martial stature is not equivalent.”
Lin Gyat sighed and drank. “The moon is cruel.”
“The moon will land on your skull in due course if you do not leaven your brutish efflux with a sprinkling of hominid mentation,” said Datang. “Do not forget her loyalties.”
“How could I?” Lin Gyat clicked his bowl. Another composed young man appeared to note his purchase and refill his drink. Lin Gyat’s eyes followed him. “What kind of wineshop is this where all the tapstresses are men?”
“Ah, Envied of Snakes,” said Netten. “You must open yourself to possibility. Uä is what it is, but even women may rule, and even men may serve.”
“Well, it puts me off my ease.” Lin Gyat surveyed the room; it was a big enough place, but crowded, smelling of burned meat, cheap incense, and spilled wine, decorated with carvings and sculptures of goats in eclectic styles; the door was manned by a tumescent goat rendered in fine white marble. “Our friend has taken a long time in his relief.”
“The Eager Edge takes his time in all pursuits save the steel polemic,” said Netten.
“I think the Eager Edge has found a woman and made off with her,” said Lin Gyat, “because I have a hankering to do the same, but that the only one I can find is moon-taken.” He continued his survey of the room. “Ah,” he said, “my prey.” Datang and Netten followed his gaze to a willowy shape dressed in a plum-blossom qipao, with fine, long hair piled on her head and held in place with chopsticks. Lin Gyat turned to Datang. “Forgive me, if you can, but a need has built up in me.”
Datang waved her hand. “I assure you, Envied of Snakes, I take no offense. And if you were to find true love—well, it would be hard on both of us at first, but the moon’s will cannot be thwarted.”
“Bah,” said Lin Gyat. “True love is out of the question, Left Hand; we have discussed this. But even a torpid python must take his exercise.”
“We would not dream of disputing it,” said Netten. “Please. Show the cream of Rassha the wonder that is the python of Degyen.”
“I will do so,” said Lin Gyat. “Do not wait for me; I have been known to take just as long in my relief as the Eager Edge does in his, for the python has many scales, and each one must have its due.”
Datang’s face sank into her hands. There was blessed silence at the table for ten seconds; the general clamor of dispute and conversation continued, to be sure, and the scents were as oppressive as ever, but in Datang’s immediate sphere, all was peaceful.
“Envied of Snakes may not find what he expected under that plum-blossom qipao,” Netten said after a while.
Datang lifted her head. She noticed that her wine bowl had been refilled. “Two plums and a blossom, I should imagine, and I thank the White that they are hers and not mine.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “yet I suspect that, when he goes looking for the blossom, he may find the plums.”
Datang took a sip of wine and contemplated this kōanic speculation. When she apprehended its meaning, she sprayed the table.
Netten smiled. “There are certain strictures to country life that the sophisticates of Rassha do not observe.”
Datang looked at the object of Lin Gyat’s affection, who gave all evidence of a favorable disposition toward the gigantic boxer’s attentions. “I think I would have granted that in the abstract,” she said, “but it is another thing again to see the proof in particular.” She spent a few moments more in examination. Lin Gyat felt her stare and smiled smugly; his companion put a polite turn on rosebud lips, then pointedly resumed their conversation.
Lin Yongten returned to the table, with one of the waitstaff. There was a feverish brightness in his eyes, and a sheen on his forehead that betokened recent exertion; the waiter looked much the same. “Netten, Ape’s Left Hand, this is Jargey, a recent acquaintance of mine.” Jargey nodded affably. “By day, he is a dancer for the Patient Players, who perform tributes to the Deity Who Waits. Jargey, Netten, and the Ape’s Left Hand are my housemates and colleagues in the Cerulean Guard.”
“Ah!” said Jargey. “You serve the King’s Lama, then.”
Lin Yongten and Netten retained their equanimity. Datang shot the actor a black look and drank. “No,” explained Lin Yongten. “The Versicolor Guard serve under the King’s Lama. We are vassals of General Gyaltsen.” Netten raised his bowl in tribute; Datang did the same, but more slowly, conscious that her arm was not steady enough to manipulate the bowl quickly without sloshing.
“Forgive me,” said Jargey. “General Gyaltsen is an estimable man as well, or so I have heard.”
Lin Yongten looked over to Lin Gyat. “I see Envied of Snakes has met Mme Winter. Is that your doing, Netten?”
Netten raised his hands in disavowal. “He found her himself. I would not risk the wrath of such a man.”
“Oh, come now,” said Lin Yongten, “he would cause you no trouble.”
“Perhaps not,” said Netten, “but what a waste of horseflesh! And besides, he is a crack shot, and there is real speed in his hands. Why incite such talent to spend itself in unnecessary rhetoric?”
The conversation continued, but Datang remembered little of it; the wine stole her consciousness as gently as an excellent grifter might part one from one’s money. When she awoke—or rather, regained her memory, for it appeared she had not been asleep—she was stumbling along the Street of Dogs, her left arm over Lin Yongten’s neck and her right over Netten’s. Lin Gyat was ambling a bit ahead.
“What news of your friend?” Datang asked Netten.
“Hush, Left Hand,” said Netten. “The good people of Rassha slumber; let us not disturb them. Our friend did not appear. Doubtless we shall hear from him tomorrow.” Yet, under the snarled plume of hair, his face was troubled.
“How did the python of Degyen find the plums of winter?” Datang whispered.
Lin Gyat turned around. “Winter fruit is sweet,” he said, “as any serpent in the city will tell you. Yet there was something awkward in the…” He searched for the word. “Proceedings.”
Datang looked into Netten’s face, then Lin Yongten’s, half confused, half pleading. Lin Yongten shrugged. “Mme Winter gave every evidence of satisfaction. If the ‘proceedings’ were pleasing to all, why lose sleep?”
“And your own pursuit of relief?” said Datang thickly.
“Adequate,” said Lin Yongten. “I find these artists rather too prone to fixating on peripheral matters. My own proclivities are straightforward and intolerant to ornamentation.”
“That is well,” said Datang. “Forgive me, but I believe I shall have to keep my mouth closed, lest I carelessly emit something more palpable and noxious than the pleasantries I would otherwise derive great pleasure from exchanging.”
“We understand your constraints, mademoiselle,” said Netten, “and what is more, we respect them.”
Ultimately, Datang did not succeed in stemming that particular tide; but her housemates were kind about it, and even Lin Gyat said it smelled much less foul than he had expected.
Datang had resolved to use the morning shift to gather information, but no opportunity presented itself; the palace was abuzz with news of a murder on the Resting Place Between Heaven and Earth Pavilion. Her heart sank at the thought of some mysterious Magistrate’s gruesome death—but the palace mandarins were all accounted for. The dead man was a brother of the Green Morning, his name and style unknown to any of her confrères. All anyone knew was that he had been slain by a single great cut over the he
art, as one often sees (or so claimed the footmen of the Cerulean Guard) in broadsword duels after the Archipelago fashion. Since the body had been found on palace grounds, the jurisdiction for the murder lay with the guard rather than the police, but Datang spent most of the shift at attention at one or another obscure entrance to the Orchid Palace, during which time she had cause to bar entry to none.
She met Netten at the close of that shift in the early afternoon, taking a late lunch in the Crimson Grove, a carefully managed stand of crimson maples in the southeast corner of the Resting Place Between Heaven and Earth Pavilion, opposite the scene of the killing. (The Thousand Arm Testament goes on at some length about the history and beauty of the Grove, neglecting that our story unfolds in the spring, when even the most crimson of maples is dull green with young leaves.) They unwrapped bamboo leaves stuffed with rice, red beans, and vegetables, and Netten had brought a stoppered jug of butter tea and two flimsy paper cups, which they soon discarded in favor of sips straight from the jug. “Do you know aught of this butchered boxer?” she asked after she had blunted the edge of her hunger. “I assume we will hear his name soon enough.”
“The Cold Water Salmon,” Netten said.
“Ha! It seems the killing blade landed too high, then, for he was not gutted.”
“He was the friend the Eager Edge and I hoped to meet last night,” Netten said quietly.
The blood drained from Datang’s face; for a succession of long moments, she could not speak. “I am mortified,” she said at last.
“That’s well enough,” said Netten. “Now the jape is forgiven; now it is forgotten. The Salmon is dead in all events.”
“Had he business here?” Datang asked. “Before your rendezvous?”
Netten licked his lips, not looking at Datang, and took a sip of butter tea. “He had business here. But after our rendezvous.”
“Well, palace business is no small obligation,” said Datang. “Perhaps he wished to discharge his business, the better to take his pleasure.”
Netten cast a quick glance off to where the Cold Water Salmon had met his doom, then to Datang, then released an audible sigh through his nose. “So it would appear. Yet—” He waved a hand. “Ah, it is nothing. He had a great fondness, Left Hand, for the good gold wine with which your father and his like bless Rassha; and I never dreamed fate would so nimbly steal our last bowl together. But why should he not have done as you say, and died for it? Fate does not smile on fighting-men. It is an easy thing to forget, when one works too long in government.”
Datang examined Netten carefully. The tangle-haired boxer was miserable enough, to be sure, and to be sure he was as surprised as he claimed to be. Yet he was concealing something, and Datang knew it—not because of any prodigious ability to read men, but simply from the fact that Netten himself was averse and unaccustomed to concealment, and did it badly. “I have a brother,” said Datang.
“Ah,” said Netten, evidently eager to change the subject. “Elder or younger? I am the youngest of many.”
“Both,” said Datang, “but it is the youngest of whom I speak. A fine fencer. We practiced together a great deal, as you might infer; but there was a period of time when we stopped, at his behest. He did not stop practicing, only with me. His technique suffered, and mine too, but he would not tell me why he did not want to spar. It took hours and more of following him, needling him, to get an answer. Do you know what it was?”
“What?”
“I had outstripped him in the Crane’s Migration Step. He, who had tutors conversant in the Rigors Martial, was without talent; I had discovered how to channel rlung untaught. Do you know what it was like, listening to him, once the dam was breached?”
Netten shook his head, emitting another sigh through his nostrils. “I know a bit about the jealousy of elder brothers. I can only imagine my own experience amplified. We do not teach our boys that girls may surpass them, and they do not know what to make of it when it happens.”
“Perhaps that is true,” said Datang. “Yet my observation is rather plainer. The thought is silly, of course—that he should be entitled to outstrip me in merit. Yet, if the thought is allowed to echo in the head, without proving on the unforgiving air, it can seem grave, and even ineluctable.”
Netten allowed a small smile to creep across his lips. “Remind me never to fence with you. My mind is not equal to these long, slow stalkings, nor yet the assaults in which they culminate. Very well, here is the thought, for air-proving. The Cold Water Salmon was no friend.” Netten caught her eye. “Or not principally a friend, though I would have shared that bowl of Khavang wine with him if I could. Eager introduced us not long after the coronation. Do you know the origin of his style?”
“I have eaten salmon.”
“But you have not seen them spawn. The Salmon was a skilled enough boxer, but his fame was in his ability to swim upriver, barely surfacing, for hours—which is how he evaded capture by the Iron Eunuch’s forces. He was credited with great skill in the Infinitesimal Breath, though he always demurred from demonstration. This skill made him an invaluable asset to the Border-Magistrates, who could rely on him to travel undetected with news from the edges of our kingdom.” Netten gave Datang a half-sheepish, half-proud smile, in the manner of a boy who has done something forbidden but ingenious. “But he and I forged an agreement some months ago, whereby he would inform me first.”
Datang replied with a spate of harsh coughs, having become lost in thought and aspirated a drop of butter tea. When she had recovered and washed her throat, her first word to Netten was, “The Border-Magistrates?”
Netten gave Datang a long look and nodded. “Now you have guessed all that I know. I did not think much of your story in the Hall of Bats and Orchids; meaning no offense to you personally, you have seen firsthand that the recruitment of guardsmen is as yet…”
“Unsystematic,” said Datang.
“The very word. So, you see how, though I would expect no such thuggery of you—”
“Leave off, Netten; I am not offended. The Thousand Arms know that business on the Street of Dogs was none too salubrious. But where was this Salmon of yours last stationed?”
“The northern border,” said Netten. “Therku.”
“So,” said Datang. “There is news of Therku, and the King’s Lama does not want it known. Hence the slaying of the Cold Water Salmon, and the intimidation by the Versicolor Guard of the peacock-encrusted man I now infer is the Magistrate of the Northern Border.”
“Indeed,” said Netten, “it is he.”
“Ah, Netten,” said Datang. “I brim with questions. How could the King’s Lama learn news of Therku before the Cold Water Salmon had the chance to bring it here? For surely, if he were so capable a seer, we would employ his clairvoyance in preference to hiring spies.”
Netten spread his hands. “Such malign agency should not be lightly ascribed to a man of the Lama’s spiritual attainments. But, Lama or not, the question remains a riddle.”
“Next: What could the news possibly be?”
“A threat on the border,” said Netten. “A natural disaster. An illness in the royal family. Perhaps a third uprising! Anything is possible in that frozen hinterland.”
“The Green, Netten, you are mingy with your answers!”
“I told you, you have guessed all I know.”
“Not all. How come you to know that the good gold wine of Khavang barony is vinted by my family?”
Netten’s eyebrows rose in fair mimicry of innocence. “Why, everyone talks of how your father’s daughter now stomps on the Guard. His wines are distinguished; the whole country knows of them.”
“I thank you,” said Datang, “but it does not, and I think you know it. Shrastaka prefers its wines light and dry, not like the ice-aged slush you Westerners like to call wine. But there were a few at court who gave us custom.” She felt somehow that she should aim her eyes as carefully as she aimed the next phrase. “I seem to recall filling orders from some haberdashe
r—Clothier of the Sixty-Four Virtues, or some such grandiosity.”
“Old Lhatsen.” Netten’s eyes somehow sparkled. “A voluble man.”
“He hoarded words like jade, Netten.”
Netten gestured at his blacks. “Why dress in burglar’s gear if not to steal jade?”
“This indirection ill becomes a friend.”
Netten’s face at last relinquished its expression of faintly superior amusement. “I apologize, Left Hand. I cannot be too free with my associations in the Orchid Court. A woman’s good name is at stake, and a great man’s face. That is the truth, though not the whole truth. Do you credit it?”
Datang examined Netten a moment, then crooked her finger at him. “Step closer.”
“What do you intend?”
“I intend to corroborate your claim. Step closer.”
“This mislikes me.”
“The Colors, Netten, I plan you no harm, nor dishonor either. Come here.”
Netten took two steps closer, and Datang put her hands on his shoulders and leaned into him. As her head approached, she saw with amusement that he was moving his head subtly, as though to ease the contact between his face and hers; but she only put her nose near one side of his neck, behind his ear, and then the other side, sniffing each time. A scent lingered, faint but clear: rosemary and jasmine. Datang drew back to arm’s length and let him go. “Well, Netten,” she said, “if nothing else, I believe a woman’s good name is at stake.”
Netten laughed, audibly uncomfortable. There was a moment of silence. Their only contact had been innocent, yet the air between them seemed thick and prickly; Datang could not deny the temptation to plunge through it and put her hands back on Netten’s body, her face near it. He was a convenient height, compact and powerful, with regular and even attractive features under the nest of hair. She did not know whether he grappled with the same urge. All she could perceive in his black eyes was a keen examination, an appraisal.