by Matt Weber
Datang and Lin Yongten turned to Netten, who was massaging his upper arm in evident pain. “It is all right,” he said. “She has done no lasting harm, and I am blessed with a resilient constitution. A night’s rest will cure it.” He rubbed his eyes with the fingers of his left hand. “Perhaps I should have followed her.”
“I think we are well rid of her,” said Lin Yongten. “Her attack on the Ape’s Left Hand was a gesture of passion, not a tactical maneuver, if she is to be believed.” He waited a moment for Netten’s reaction, but the black-clad boxer showed no inclination to gainsay him. “She’ll not come back to finish the work.”
The questioning intonation at the end of the swordsman’s sentence did not escape Datang—he seemed to be asking Netten’s opinion. But Netten did not supply it. “I shall keep watch,” he said instead. “Eager Edge, will you relieve me in three hours?” Lin Yongten nodded and went over to where the barn had been to fetch the saddlebags.
Datang had been awake too long and drunk too much, but the thrill of sorcery and battle was still on her, and the coldness and hardness of the ground were no soporific either. So it was that she was only nearly asleep when she heard the massed percussion of horseshoes and the jovial voice of Lin Gyat announcing, “The Lotus, they run fast enough, but I have known girls in diapers with greater stamina!”
I pray he does not mean that the way it sounds, thought Datang, and consciousness departed.
The King’s mandala
he throne room was composed with a fine eye that has all but disappeared today, when the goal of image has become the kindling of unreflective excitement or else has been discarded entirely in favor of such shallow desiderata as “function” and “efficiency.” The King’s Demon Guards were arrayed in parallel rows, their faces masked with the scowling visages of their namesakes, the stocks of their bayoneted rifles enameled in red, blue, and gold with no less detail and care than the elaborate plates of their much more ancient armor. Those compelled to wait at the entrance would inevitably notice the much larger demons carved into the chamber’s otherwise featureless stone walls.
The throne itself was flanked by men no less resplendent than the Demon Guards. General Gyaltsen held the Cerulean Sword, of which testament enough has already been written, straight out in front of him, point resting on the floor, both hands gripping the hilt; it moaned and vibrated and threw off small breezes, and its naked tip had already dug a quarter-inch notch into the granite tile. When the General flanked the King at meetings of peace, the Cerulean Sword was held sheathed in its tooled and gemmed horse-leather scabbard, which quieted its stirrings, and he was not girt, as he was that day, in the feather-light Sky Armor, fashioned less to protect its wearer (for the sword’s winds would suffice for that) than to mark him as its bearer.
Where the resplendence of the General was built upon the history of his talisman, the talismans of the King’s Lama bore a history only of rumors, and the red and gold fire of his vestments seemed to make his relation to those humble tokens yet more inexplicable: A heavy, broad necklace of dull, flawed beads; grisly charms tied together with twine and looped over his ears—a bird’s claw and a hook-beaked skull on one side, a monkey’s hand and a leathery brown ear on the other; various rings and bracelets fashioned from leather and wood and bone. The man who sat between them, straight-backed and perfectly at ease on that broad, angular throne, was unadorned—or almost, for his plain white waistcoat was in fact embroidered with near-invisible mandalas in white cotton thread, just slightly duller than the silk of the coat. But the coat was new; the pants and supple boots and close-fitting white cap were new; even the mandalas on the coat were new, composed specifically for the King on his twelfth birthday, when a man’s spiritual maturation was widely assumed to have completed. All sense of history that emanated from the King did so, and by design, from the person of the King.
It would be unfair to say that Chief-Marshal Kandro quailed at the sight, but the Thousand Arm Testament goes too far in stating that he was “still as a pond after first frost,” for his back did stiffen and his face set like a boy’s at his first cub-duel over a girl. Some of his entourage—one for each Demon Guard, the General, and the King’s Lama, plus one more, as was held to befit treaty with an honored enemy—did quail; but it seems bootless to dishonor their descendants by listing their names, as the Thousand Arm Deity has in any case already done. Kandro himself was outfitted in the martial style always fashionable among dictators—his uniform was clean, his boots luminous, his badges of rank meticulously placed. But his face had the scars and leather finish of a man who had done his share of hot work on the line, and the Thousand Arm Testament is apt when it describes the quality of inevitability inherent in his motions. He was younger than the King but looked older, except for his beard, unimpressive even in a land of unimpressive beards.
There was a long silence in the throne room. Kandro broke it.
“It is an honor to meet you, cousin.”
“Approach the throne, Chief-Marshal,” said King Tenshing. “It is not well to speak across such distance.”
Kandro and his entourage tramped up to the throne, seeming desirous to fill the vast chamber with as great a clangor as they could raise. The Chief-Marshal was flanked by a warrior of high office (by his elaborate badge, different from the others, and armed with sword and pistol rather than rifle) and a plain-garbed monk; his warriors wore the device of a lion’s head silhouette high on either arm. “My voice carries well enough, I think,” said Kandro when he reached the dais, “but we must both be heard, of course. Shall I state my claim?”
“Do so,” said the King.
“I think you already know it.”
“Perhaps some detail has been elided in summary.”
Kandro nodded. “I claim that our great-grandfather, King Tenshing Panchama, got my great-grandmother with child when he adventured into the Therku Colony, now Therku Province, in what would be the twilight of his years. She was delivered of the boy Ogyal, by rights Tenshing Sastha, the name taken by your grandfather in ignorance of his elder. Ogyal rose to become magistrate of Therku, bringing much of the order needed to forge a province out of rocks and rough forest, and endeared himself to three wives, who bore him four daughters and eight sons. The eighth was named Derka, by rights Tenshing Saptama, who inherited nothing but an heirloom sword; with it he led a company to exterminate the smugglers and bandits who preyed on Therku, which cleared the way for your father to finish the job for the whole province and expand its borders well out into the hinterlands. Derka founded a farmstead and had five sons and a daughter, only to lose his wife and all but one son to plague. He started a new life and remarried, siring three more daughters and three more sons, of whom his eighth, rightfully Tenshing Astama, stands before you now.”
Kandro delivered the last word of his speech as though he expected it to be allowed to echo for a while, but Tenshing began speaking almost before he was finished. “If all is as you say,” the King said, “then your father and grandfather had claims to the throne as well. Why did they not advance them?”
“My grandfather saw a lawless land and brought it order,” said Kandro. “My father saw a vicious land and brought it peace—”
“Do not think I have missed the parallels you draw between your ancestors and mine,” said Tenshing. “They do not compel me. If my ancestors were false Kings, why act so similarly to the true ones?”
“I have thought on this,” said Kandro. “There are three reasons. First, our land could not stand the shock of civil war after the rough rule of Tenshing Panchama, and war under Tenshing Sastha’s reign would have weakened our grip on provinces already weakly held, including my own, such that the descendants of Ogyal might not have grown up citizens of this kingdom at all. Second, given that my ancestors could not claim the throne that was theirs by right, the gods saw fit to guide the false Kings to resemble, as much as possible, their true counterparts.”
General Gyaltsen scowled at this, and the
King’s Lama ostentatiously whispered a prayer for forgiveness of blasphemy, and the Cerulean Sword shrieked briefly and sent tiny whirlwinds spiraling throughout the chamber—but Tenshing retained his equanimity. Kandro continued.
“And third, cousin, my grandfather’s bastardy was not discovered until after I was born.”
King Tenshing made no gesture, merely raised his brows and opened his expression to indicate that Kandro should continue.
“My great-grandmother was long-lived,” said Kandro, “and it was widely known that she could not read a word, nor write except to draw the characters of her name. And yet, when she did die, a scroll was found upon her body, written in that same crabbed hand. It spoke in most explicit terms of the liberties taken with her by our great-grandfather, cousin, not two weeks before she was to be married, and it ended with his portrait.” Kandro held a hand out to his right and his priest produced a scroll with a goblin-like flourish.
“Has this not gone on long enough?” barked Gyaltsen, with an answering moan from the Cerulean Sword. “A memoir proves nothing—as well call it a folktale. A picture proves nothing—the King’s countenance is widely known.”
“King Tenshing Panchama was found unconscious in a farmhouse not ten miles from what was then Therku Colony,” said the King’s Lama, “after the sack of the Summer Palace. King Tenshing Sastha was born a year later.”
That declaration did silence the chamber for a time. Gyaltsen slowly turned his head to stare across the throne at the King’s Lama. “You’ve been studying.”
“My order is deeply invested in the correct resolution of this dispute,” the King’s Lama said most mildly.
Gyaltsen turned back to Kandro. “Irrelevant in any case. The Lineage of Kings is no harder to come by than the King’s portrait. And the pup himself admits his great-grandmother was married two weeks later. How can you prove paternity?”
“My great-grandmother’s husband never got her with another child,” said Kandro. “Nor anyone else, despite his reputation for philandery. He beat her all his life for that, from their wedding day until he froze to death drunk in the woods. If you doubt these legends live on in the provinces, there are a thousand examples to prove you wrong.”
The keening of the Cerulean Sword was high enough to rattle the teeth of all present, except perhaps for Gyaltsen’s, which were bared and shone albescent through his beard. The riflemen of Kandro’s retinue began to fidget with their weapons; the Demon Guards did not fidget, but at some unseen signal, they silently turned their bayonets five degrees toward the horizontal. Tenshing began to rise, hoping to prevent war from breaking out there in the throne room, but something caught his eye. It was a small enough thing that he could not pick it out in the room at first, a glimmer of familiarity from the scroll in the Pretender’s gauntleted hand. Without the Eye of Ten Thousand Apprehensions, he never would have seen that glimmer, nor yet been able to see the minuscule design that had evoked it.
“Look how he ties the scroll,” Tenshing murmured.
It was wrapped in a sheet of unadorned, soft sheepskin, wrapped with a leather thong whose brilliant blue had barely faded over the years. Alone of his line, King Tenshing Panchama had insisted on growing his hair out, and it had been his custom to wear it tied back. On the end of the thong was a square of gold, tilted so the thong passed through a diagonal, and finely engraved with a mandala of breathtaking complexity. A King’s private mandala, too intricate to copy except from a likeness, death to copy except as token for a King.
Gyaltsen’s keen eyes grasped it instantly; the King’s Lama had to squint to see, but when he did, his entire face lengthened in surprise.
“Pick up your jaw, monk,” Gyaltsen growled.
“It is genuine,” murmured the lama, with a shake of his head that rattled the fetishes dangling from his headdress.
“Property can be stolen, pictures drawn, stories crafted, men and women bribed,” said Gyaltsen. “That you stipulate its sanctity changes nothing. Rally behind your King, monk, or I will vacate your footprints for a better man.”
“May I examine it?” said the priest.
Kandro looked to Tenshing, his jaw set as though spoiling for a brawl. “May I approach the throne?” At the King’s nod, he closed the distance to the throne in a few brisk steps, then mounted the dais. He was close enough for Tenshing to smell the sweat ground into his leathers, close enough to touch the arm of the throne if he leaned in to reach it. Tenshing felt absurd looking up at the Chief-Marshal; the urge to stand nagged at him. But he would not leave the throne with Kandro so close; not yet.
The King’s Lama ran the pad of his thumb across the golden ornament, breathed on it and rubbed it again to polish it, then wrapped the thong around his wrist, closed his eyes, and uttered a brief prayer. “Genuine,” he said to Tenshing. “Fitted to your unforgettable great-grandfather’s soul as closely as any of his regalia in the archive.” He handed the thong back to Kandro. “You need not take my word for it, though. We have procedures for attesting items of consequence.”
Kandro laughed roughly. “We have ‘procedures’ as well. Look outside your wall and you will see evidence of them.”
Tenshing met Gyaltsen’s eyes with a glance that said, Desist, then turned his gaze to Kandro. “We must confirm your claims. A group of emissaries will need to be allowed into Therku.”
“I do not lie,” said Kandro.
“Your habits are immaterial. You owe your subjects the same certainty of your claim’s legitimacy that you harbor yourself. Deny them that, and they will find more power in themselves than even a great general can muster, and they will use it in anger.”
“I am not so sure,” said Kandro. “I have read the histories of other nations, cousin. My deeds are stronger bulwarks for my claim than some lawyer’s certainty. The people will see this.”
“I have read those histories as well, Chief-Marshal, and I have found that pages of genealogies and troop movements often drown small but telling sentences. ‘Sadly, the peasantry was wracked by famine.’ ‘Of course, it would take much longer for the riots to die down.’ Besides,” Tenshing continued, “your deeds do not yet include mastery of all eight Rigors—or am I misinformed?”
Kandro pressed his lips together and nodded. “Very well. One of my men accompanies your emissaries. No interference in their mission, but when they make a determination, we find out at the same time.”
“Good,” said Tenshing. “In any case, if we cannot substantiate your claim, we will treat again before hostilities resume.”
“My men need food,” said Kandro.
“You may purchase it from the outlying farms on credit,” said Tenshing. “Make sure your men negotiate a good price—it may be your kingdom that needs to pay those debts. If you do not have a treasurer, Chief-Marshal, now would be the time to appoint one. Make sure someone you trust attests all draughts on the kingdom’s coffers.”
“And if you find my claim legitimate, cousin—what then? What will you do?” Kandro’s hardness seemed to fall away at this question, as though he genuinely feared for the fate of the man he purposed to displace.
“I will stay close by,” said Tenshing. “You have a lifetime’s training to catch up on, and very little time.”
An interview
he four confrères’ progress to Therku was little impeded (or, for that matter, assisted) by the supernatural after the incident with the Copper Rat and the disappearing farmstead. The four feared the Pretender’s patrols, and rightly so, but the mass of troops was behind them; it would have been more dangerous to return to Rassha than to proceed with their mission. There was some discussion of this danger among the four, but Lin Gyat and Lin Yongten were persuaded that the worst possible outcome was a valiant death in the face of overwhelming odds, a consummation hardly to be scorned. Their heightened language did not entirely persuade Datang, but she allowed that it might not be such a bad outcome, should circumstances force their hand; Netten agreed.
The King
’s post was well supplied through Gyachun and into the little inlet of Shrastaka through which the most direct path to Therku traveled. The days were consumed with riding, the nights with idle conversation, leavened with much fascinating rumormongering by the proprietors of the undistinguished public houses to which they gave patronage. Unfortunately, little in the way of real news was capable of leaving the Great South Plain, save word from the occasional carrier pigeon. There was one regrettable incident with a barman’s son that ended with Lin Yongten locked in the basement, furiously eating through the tavern’s winter supply of cured meats and knocking the bungs from casks of Degyen grog—but of that we need say no more.
The post service thinned out badly across the Therku border, and indeed the post-husbandsmen seemed unwholesomely pleased to exchange their own horses for animals from Shrastaka, no matter how hard used. It was not difficult to see why—Therku’s post horses were ill-fed and ill-tempered, disposed to maintain a useful speed only when bolting, which they did for reasons not even Lin Gyat’s keen nature-senses could detect. Still, they made adequate time.
It was not entirely clear to Datang where on the northern border they should travel, and when she asked, Lin Gyat and Lin Yongten had neither of them any idea; they followed Netten’s lead, and Netten was not disposed to furnish details on the matter. It was thus with some incomprehension, but also without what one could call surprise, that they turned at an ornately carved and painted sign declaring a dirt road barely distinguishable from simple dirt to be the “Naga-Gyo Kingsroad.”
“The Red and White,” said Lin Gyat, “if this is the Kingsroad, I quail to see the King.”
“As well you should,” said Netten, not without sharpness. “It is named for your King, who is master of the Rigors Martial and suffers no usurpers.”
“He suffers one,” said Lin Gyat, “whether he likes it or not. But if he gave his name to this road, then, very well: I shall do my best to revere it.”