by Daniel Fox
And will be angry if you don’t, if you delay, if you cause me trouble. He still had hopes that they would understand that and be appropriate, but those hopes were ice in sunlight, chill and slippery and vanishing.
“Give us the girl, then. She is our price.” The spokesman said that proudly, almost, a herald before the court. Dictating terms, looking for surrender.
“No, then.”
He bowed and turned, and made to usher the others down the street, walk, don’t run, but walk swiftly; and heard the scrape of steel leaving a sheath, heard a low grunt, found his own sword already in his hand as he kept on turning, all the way around to face them again.
Walk, don’t run. Walk swiftly. He set the pace by walking backward, as swiftly as a man may. They came at him, all five of these men, blades in their hands and a grimness born of this city and their own desperation. Their own captains, their own general couldn’t halt them now.
Li Ton had seen this before, in men either terrified or frenzied, after bloody battles either lost or won. Each time he’d stopped it with swift deaths and slow executions, first to stall and then to crush the spirit that drove it, before it could infect the entire army.
Each time before, he’d had squads of men at his back, if not a regiment. And the emperor’s authority, that too. Here he was one man alone, and he thought the entire army was likely infected already.
He cursed Tunghai Wang silently for letting his soldiers come to this, sordid fighting in a ruined city. Aloud, he cried, “My name is General Chu Lin,” just in case it was still remembered.
One laughed, one spat. Not one of them hesitated. They really did mean this.
Pity: he would have liked to see how matters fell out, with Han and the dragon. He would have liked to see the end of the emperor too, this boy whose father had ruined him: the boy’s head on a pole, yes, he had worked for that a little and would have liked to see it. Even if it meant Tunghai Wang on the Jade Throne. It wouldn’t last, if the man couldn’t hold one small army together in the face of catastrophe, but he didn’t care about that.
Logically, he should simply hand over the girl. Why not? She was nothing to him. Except that Han wanted her, and that could still prove useful.
Except that if he died here, nothing that he’d hoarded could prove useful anymore.
It was too late now, to listen to that voice of sense. If he gave her over, they would shove her into a doorway for later and still come on to kill him and the other men. They had that death-look about them, fixed and slightly vacant; they reminded him of his crew, on a hundred brutal adventures.
He wouldn’t have backed himself against any five of his crew, either.
One on one, yes, against any of them; that was why they followed him, why they were his crew, because no one of them would ever dare fight him alone.
Li Ton stepped back, and the men came on.
He stepped back, and the men came on.
He stepped back and stumbled, and one of them rushed him.
And died noisily, messily skewered on Li Ton’s tao as he came rising up from one knee. He had gone down explicitly to draw one to him, because they did so much remind him of his crew: mean, yes, and vicious with it, killers to the core but really not too smart.
Four to one. If those four had all rushed him, right then, he might perhaps have killed another but would certainly have died himself.
They hesitated, though, glanced from one to another—and he rushed them.
Rushed one of them, at least. The way they’d spread themselves out across the street, the others were too slow again. He had time to reach the startled soldier and bully through his hasty defenses, give him no time and no chance at all, leave him sprawled and bleeding and audibly choking on his own blood, not quite dead yet but surely dying.
Three to one, and it wouldn’t get any easier than this. They were drawing together now, covering one another. Giving Li Ton time enough to get back to his companions, and he’d counted on that too, but it would do him little good. Or them. They were a hindrance, nothing more; he’d sacrifice any of them, all of them, to save himself.
Three to one, and those three alert now, angry now but coldly so, three ready blades glinting in sunlight and he still didn’t like the odds, wouldn’t back himself.
Backed away, then, with the others behind him; watched the blades and the men who held them, watched them advance; waited for the rush that must be coming.
WHEN IT CAME, it was behind those three.
A whole other group of men, who must have heard the clash of steel and come running; they boiled out of an alley-mouth and saw the bodies in the road, saw their comrades, saw how one man faced them down. Tried to face them down, at least, with blood on his tao.
Saw the girl too, perhaps.
And understood the fight, entirely what kind of fight this was; and came joyfully running down the road to join in.
Nine to one.
No chance. Li Ton wasn’t sure how much the original three welcomed this new company, but for sure they wouldn’t fight among themselves. Not until he was dead, at least, and the other men with him, and the girl available for fighting over.
He gave one desperate glance up into the sky, in hopes of making them pause one moment longer, for fear of a dragon; at the same time, he made a sign behind his back, which any of his pirate crew would have understood immediately.
These people? A fisherman, a doctor and a girl?
Nothing.
He had to turn his head to scowl at them, to shout “Run!”
At nine to one, it couldn’t make things worse than they were already. If it only bought a minute, well, who knew? Maybe the dragon might really come.
NO DRAGON.
What came instead was a rush of feet and a curdling cry, that guttural noise that men make to urge themselves on, not to hold back under the eyes of their brothers.
Li Ton sighed, and turned again. Perhaps he could stall the rush a little, buy time for the civilians to get a little ahead, if all nine of those blades were greedy enough for a fight …
NOT EVEN that: the gods he failed to believe in wouldn’t grant him even that much grace, to do a good thing before everyone in his story died.
Some of the men came at him, and there were screams and hurtling blades and he was screaming too as he blocked them and battered back, screaming with a mix of battle-rage and fury. If they had sides at all, they were on the same side, these men and he. He was just as keen to see the emperor dead, and he was just as afraid of the dragon. He had come to Santung to help, perhaps. And they would kill him now because he had a girl with him and they wanted her. She had traveled with them for months, helping her uncle the doctor, but apparently that didn’t matter now, or it simply wasn’t remembered.
Men were running past him as he fought, chasing those behind. This was a fight, but that would be a slaughter.
War broke old bonds, but tended to forge new ones. Under the dragon’s shadow, he supposed, all bonds shriveled to nothing.
Stamp, block, swing. Scream. What else to do?
Kill this man with a backhand slash that takes his throat out. Barely fetch it back in time to block that thrust; there would have been sparks, perhaps, if his tao hadn’t been so gory-wet already. There was blood running down the handle, making it hard to grip, even between sharkskin and calluses …
He gripped it two-handed, clenched his fists tighter than he liked, swung and hacked in a frenzy—and then turned and sprinted after his companions, because there might just be something after all that he could do.
IF IT WASN’T too late already. They’d made it farther than he’d expected, to the steps of a temple, but no god was stepping down to help them; and that was the doctor that lay sprawled and broken on the steps there, while his niece and the fisherman stood above him with knives in their hands, trying to hold four soldiers at bay.
Four soldiers who were laughing at them, teasing them with little thrusts that never quite followed through.
The doctor
wasn’t dead yet, but he would be soon enough. Li Ton could see how much of his blood had spilled out over the white steps.
One of the soldiers was too slow to hear Li Ton coming. The tao took him in the side, cut him half and half, bought Li Ton time enough to scoop his free arm under the doctor’s shoulder and drag him higher.
The doctor screamed, thin and breathless. There was more blood, coming from his belly.
The soldiers gathered in a group, at the foot of the steps. No temple sanctity, no god’s anger was going to hold them back.
Li Ton tried to lift the doctor bodily, but the man flailed and fell back boneless, his mouth guttering air as his belly gouted blood. Not dead, not quite, but he couldn’t live.
Living, he couldn’t save them if he couldn’t stand.
Li Ton made his choice, and swung his tao.
AND CAUGHT the head by the hair, even as Tien shrieked beside him; and held it up high in one hand and bellowed, “What, does none of you know this man? Does no one recognize the doctor who kept you all healthy on the long march, all this way?”
There was a stillness, a shock that gripped them all, that gave them pause enough to look.
One man grunted; another said, “Aye, that’s him. That’s the doctor. He mended my arm, when it was broke so bad …”
“It is,” Li Ton confirmed, “it’s the generalissimo’s own medic who never scorned to treat any of you or your women, anyone who came. He might have taught us how to resist the dragon. His niece here knows his secrets; she owns his tent and his medicines now. I don’t know if she will consent to stay. Perhaps you should pray that she will, unless you prefer to pray to the dragon.”
He gave them a moment, during which none offered to come up the steps and kill him; then he went on, “If one of you will run to Tunghai Wang and tell him that I am here, Chu Lin who was general under the last emperor and a friend to Tunghai on the battlefield and in the court, that man, I may ask the generalissimo to spare that man’s head. That one man. Go.”
Another frozen moment, where they were so hot and frantic in their thinking that they couldn’t move at all; and then, inevitably, they all turned and ran together, racing one another. It might even come to blades between them. Li Ton didn’t care. He turned his back and marched up the last of the steps to the temple door and found a priestess waiting for him, waiting to welcome them all inside.
AND REALIZED that he was still carrying the doctor’s head, and that the girl was staring at him, at it, at him again as though she could barely tell the difference, they were both so dreadful.
She did, somehow, manage to speak; she said what was most obvious, “You, you killed him …”
Li Ton shook his own head wearily, even as he dropped the other. “No, girl. He was dead already. I used that, to save you.”
Which wasn’t entirely true, but close enough. He didn’t imagine that any of them was actually saved, was safe; there was no bar on the temple door, and the building had clearly been ransacked once at least already. The men had run off at his word, but they could always think better of it and come back, slaughter everyone here, rather than face the generalissimo with their confession. He would.
Wherever he looked, there were nuns at work in the temple: scrubbing, painting, scraping at charred pillars until they were whittled back to clean bright wood. Men were hard to find, he supposed, but they seemed to be doing well enough without. They worked to the accompanying drone of a prayer, lofted by incense and intercut with strokes on a gong; even that voice was an octave too high for any priest.
If the soldiers did come back, they could enjoy their slaughter. Here were victims enough, and no one to stop them. Li Ton was done. Not tired, but weary to the bone; he’d done enough, too much, and nothing worked. He never came close to anything that he could value. Even his revenge would be a cheat if he took it now, acted out against the wrong emperor.
Which would not stop him if the chance arose, but the taste of it was sour in his mouth already, in anticipation.
The public area of the temple was a wooden gallery around a central courtyard. There were idols of many gods scattered through the gallery, but one great statue sat apart, facing the courtyard with the chanting nun at her feet, wreathed in smoke. He didn’t recognize the goddess. He could ask the fisherman, if that man hadn’t gone ahead to drop to his knees and burn joss before the statue.
He could ask the shaven-headed woman at his side, who had offered that unequivocal welcome at the door, who had not blanched even at the head that he had carried within. More usefully he could ask her to take care of Tien, who had no apparent idea what to do with herself: who stood deliberately alone, separate from himself, and stared down at where her uncle’s head had rolled half into a corner, where it lay in the shadows staring out.
Li Ton was the last person who should talk to her, the last she would allow. Leave her to the nuns; he shouldn’t need to ask.
He stepped down into the courtyard, thinking that perhaps he might light a stick or two of joss himself, he might kneel beside the fisherman he cared so little about in order to thank this goddess he didn’t know for the protection he did not believe that she had offered him—
—AND HIS way took him past another nun who was cradling a child in her lap. It looked sickly, or at least as though it had been sick; but it opened its eyes as he passed and spoke, spoke to him, in no voice that any child should ever own.
“Speak to the fisherman,” it said, and that voice—oh, that voice!—was all rocks and tidal suck, tongued with those weeds that drag pirates all down to a dreadful death in the sea they’re all afraid of, “be sure that he tells the dragon, she is not welcome in my waters.”
four
Chien Hua?”
“Mei Feng.” He always knew she was serious when she used his name. Whether his solemn response was a sign that he took her just as seriously, or whether he was only teasing—that, she wasn’t always certain of.
“Do you think you could—well, not grin quite so broadly when you see Yu Shan with Siew Ren, or with Jiao?”
“Or with both,” he said, and he was grinning in the darkness, she could hear it in his voice. She wanted to thump him.
He was emperor of the world, and she did thump him.
“Ow,” he said, quite unconvincingly. And then, “Why should I not grin? I think it’s funny. I think it was you who taught me how funny it was. I know it was you who almost swallowed her tongue from trying not to laugh, the day Siew Ren showed up.”
“Yes, lord—but time passes, moods change, and I don’t think it’s funny anymore.”
“I do,” he said stubbornly. And, “Time passes, moods change, people come to an accommodation. It’s only funny because they keep resisting. How many women did my father keep? And Yu Shan stumbles over two, and cannot make them happy …”
Mei Feng wasn’t prepared to guess how many of his father’s women had actually been happy. She saw no need to pierce his smug self-content, so long as he remained content to keep just the one woman himself. When that changed—well. She hoped to deal with it better than her friends were.
“He doesn’t know how,” she said, still struggling to introduce him to the idea that not everyone saw the world from the peculiar perspective of a dynastic throne. “None of them was expecting this. Yu Shan’s torn down the middle, Siew Ren is still angry, and Jiao—”
Jiao was the one who worried her most: because she was twice their age, and seemed to hurt twice as much because of that. And she had perhaps been hurt twice over, though she’d never admit it. She was the only one of them not to have seen the jade tiger. Of course she saw that as an omen. They all did. Only, Jiao saw it as an omen against herself. Yu Shan had been alone with Siew Ren when they saw it: how could that not be significant?
Mei Feng had been alone with the emperor when they saw it, but she didn’t think its significance had anything to do with them.
Well. There was nothing she could do just now about Jiao, except try to st
op the emperor’s mocking. He didn’t see the harm, but it was one of his charms that he would listen so carefully and let her teach him. She was his tutor in the world, as he was hers in the palace.
And it wasn’t all lessons, explanations, worry. Sometimes they could just be quiet together. Or the other thing. He seemed to be thoroughly awake now; she thought they might be very noisy together, soon enough.
She did have another question for him, but later. Over breakfast, perhaps. He wasn’t a greedy boy—at least, as boys go, or emperors—but he did tend to linger over his breakfast.
“LORD?”
“Mei Feng. What have I done wrong now?”
“Nothing, lord,” with a swift reminiscent smile, “nothing at all. Except that I think you should eat more congee, and not so many eggs.”
“I like eggs. And I am emperor.”
“Yes, lord, and your farts are most imperial. But the ducks are not laying often at the moment, or else we are not finding them; and other people also like eggs, although they are not emperor. Also, congee is good for you.”
He smiled at her, in that sated way that suggested he might like to be sated again later, not too much later, if the opportunity arose. Ping Wen was waiting for them at the Autumn Palace site, and really, they ought to go today; but let someone else tell him that, or else she could tell him later. Not too much later, but just not immediately now.
Instead, “Lord, why did you ask Guangli to come here?”
“You know why. He is my jade carver. I am here, the jade is here, he should be here also.”
“Is that all?”
He frowned. “Isn’t it enough?”
Not for Jiao. Not to justify sending her away, making her miss the tiger, making her lose ground so far. She needs to feel it was important that she went, more than just your whimsy …
“Of course, lord. Never mind. When shall we go to see General Ping Wen?”
He made a face. “Tomorrow?”
“You said that yesterday.”
“I could say it again tomorrow?”