“I was agreeing with you.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. I know you don’t like Khine…”
“It has nothing to do with liking him or not. He’s a perfectly decent fellow.”
I pushed the now-empty bowl of porridge away. “I’m glad you think so, because I need him for what’s about to come.”
“And what’s that?”
I gave a quick glance around the eatery. There were no other customers that time of the day, but I dropped my voice low enough so that only he could hear. “Qun’s actively looking for us. I think it’s safe to say that Lahei’s meeting with Hizao is going to catch Qun’s attention while he’s here. We have to find our own way out.”
“Easier said than done.”
“You’ve seen Hizao’s reaction to Qun. It won’t take much for him to vilify the man. I’m thinking of a way we can both get rid of him and get the ship back at the same time.”
Agos’ frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to throw the embargo under question. We’re not going to have time to lift it entirely, but that’s not important—the part that matters is that we question the entire reason the ship was detained in the first place. And we’ll do that by casting doubt on the embargo and Qun himself.” I waved my hand at him. “You don’t have to worry about the details. Khine can help me figure them out.”
“I see,” Agos said, in the kind of voice that—coming from someone else—might’ve made me want to pursue the matter further. “He’s Zarojo, you know. And the way he is now, I’m not sure how much of a liability he will be. What does he have to gain from this? Why would he even help you?”
I had asked myself that question so often the last few months. Why wasn’t I asking them again now, with so much at stake and with Khine as he was? I didn’t have an answer for Agos, and it helped that I didn’t owe him one. I paid for the meal and we left through the beaded curtains of the entrance. Out on the street, we did a quick walk to make sure no one had followed us from the barracks, and then we made our way back to the harbour and the inn.
~~~
I wasn’t sure how I expected Khine to react after I told him the day’s events. But I had been so eager to relay them to him that I spilled them out as soon as I managed to catch him alone. He absorbed every detail of my story with that same deathly silence from the past few days, a frown underneath the sparse beard he was starting to grow. “What do you think?” I asked as soon as I had told him everything, including what I had planned.
He stirred. It was the first time I had ever really seen him respond to anything that wasn’t a request to eat or stand aside or follow somebody. “I think you’re crazy,” Khine said.
“At least you’re talking now,” I replied. “And you’ve always thought that. When has it ever stopped you?”
“That was before.” There was a chilling finality to his tone.
I struggled to set it aside. “Khine, if we wait around too long, Qun will be two steps ahead of us.”
“I don’t think I can do it.”
I started to place a hand on his shoulder and then hesitated, remembering my conversation with Agos. “You need to distract yourself.”
“Distract.” He chewed around the word as if it was the most insulting thing he had heard all day. “This is how you think I should deal with sorrow—with distraction.”
“Khine…”
“You’re asking for too much. I am not—how I was.” He sat down on the edge of the bed.
I cleared my throat. “Consider this an order, then. Not a request.”
“You don’t have that kind of authority over me.”
I stared at him, waiting. One moment, and then two. And then I said, “Please, Khine. I need your help. You know I have to do this so I can go home to my son.”
He licked his lips. “Fucking woman.”
“I’ll forgive you for that, only because I know you’re not yourself right now. But I have to use every advantage I have, Khine. I’m sorry.”
I thought he would be angrier with me after what I said. Instead, he cursed once more under his breath and ran his hands through his hair. “Bring me to Lo Bahn,” he finally said. “If you want this done right, we need everybody’s cooperation.” He got up. I grabbed his sleeve before he could take a step.
I could feel my heart beating in my throat as I spoke. “For the short amount of time I knew Mei, I…” I blinked back the sudden flood of tears. Khine stood silently while I attempted to compose myself.
“I do,” he finally whispered, “appreciate it. But this isn’t something you can fix in a day with a speech, Tali. This isn’t your court.” He pulled away.
Despite his words, Khine cornered Lo Bahn with very nearly the same efficiency he used to, and we spent the rest of the evening crafting a plan over mugs of rice wine. I couldn’t help but observe that Khine seemed at his brightest when he was working on something. The deeper we got into our talk, the more animated he became, the more like his old self all over again—though a thinner version, one with dark hollows under his eyes and whose humour was biting, without a shred of joy.
“Are you sure about this?” Lo Bahn asked, cornering me later that night after Khine had retired to his room.
“You agreed with all of it, didn’t you?” I retorted. “If it works, it’ll bring you one step closer to claiming back all you’ve lost because of Yuebek.”
“All I’ve lost because of you, you mean,” he said with a snort.
“Come now, Lo Bahn. We’ve been through this. Both our hands were forced.”
“Pah! Don’t I know this. You’re lucky I have my children to think of. I don’t know how long my steward will remain loyal without coin. Let’s just hope this Hizao is both as intelligent and as foolish as you’ve predicted.”
“We’ve got little else to work with, Han.”
Lo Bahn snorted. “I know that, too. Both on a knife’s edge, you and me. But that one—” He pointed in the direction of Khine’s room. “That one is past that edge. The whole bloody blade is up his throat. You really want to depend on him now?”
“You said you would cede his service to me.”
“That’s not the issue.”
“What is, then? You trusted him before.”
“Foolish woman. You’ve been in this business as long as I have, you start to learn that people have their limits. Haven’t you seen a broken man before? Ground to the dust with nothing to live for…if he gets himself killed, he won’t care. Gets us killed, what’s it to him? And yet you want to take him along.”
“Would you rather he stay on with you?”
“Before that whole debacle with his mother, I would’ve said yes, without question.” Lo Bahn scowled at me. “If the gods smile on us tomorrow and this whole thing works out, then great. Qun ends up in chains and I’m back home trying to get my business started again. Won’t even have to pay a witch to curse your pretty little face, either. I could use him then, especially without you to distract him from his duties. But look at him now. He’s like a half-empty wine barrel and everything inside is soured. And you’d take him with you? All the way to your nation? Whatever for?”
“Inzali asked me.”
He laughed. “Inzali asked you. Oh, I grant you, she can be persuasive if she puts her mind to it—frightening, even. But surely you can come up with a better excuse than that.”
“She did, though.”
“Listen, woman. Queen. Do you know how hard it is for me to remember who you are? What you are? I sometimes wonder for what I lost my entire fortune for, every time I look at you and the things you do. I know I betrayed you once already. I’d have handed you over to Qun again in a heartbeat, except you’ve shown a surprising better sense of obligation despite everything. I help him, he repays me by burning down my house and throwing me in prison. I betray you, and…nothing. You’re still here, talking to me like I’m still a human being.”
“Lord Han…”
&nbs
p; He held a hand out. “Listen to me, damn you. I may not get a chance to say this. I know Khine. I’ve known him since he was a whelp running around with Reng Hzi and his group of pissants with lofty ideals, freshly arrived in Shang Azi with not a penny to his name. That first day, my men found him sleeping on the street all torn up and bloody, his pockets picked clean by thieves. They took pity on the boy and took him back home, and I gave him shelter for two days.
“Two days, Queen Talyien. Pay attention. By the end of those two days, I learned that three bodies were found floating in the river. Known robbers, of course. Were they the same ones Lamang encountered? I don’t know, but he had packed his things that same evening and told me he had found lodging. There was a look in his eyes that was different from when he came in—something that told me this boy could be useful to me if I put him on the right track. I offered him work, but he refused. That whole physician thing, like it’s some sort of noble pursuit.” He frowned at the thought.
“You’re convinced he killed those men?”
“I don’t know if killed is the right word. He maintained that he had nothing to do with it. But I later heard that one of the bridges had fallen, and that was how those men fell into the river in the first place. And the bridge was tampered with. He used himself as bait. Risked his life for revenge. He was younger than Cho.”
“I think that shows courage.”
“Courage! Pah!” Lo Bahn gave a short chuckle. “You would think so. I suppose my warning is just going to fall on deaf ears, then. But I’ll give it, anyway. You take Lamang with you back to Jin-Sayeng the way he is now—who knows what he’ll do? He’s even more irresponsible than you are, hard as that may be to believe. Did he think he was doing me a favour by finally allowing himself to fall under my employ? I was doing him a favour. If you’d seen how he was when he lost both that woman of his and his beloved Reng Hzi’s approval…”
I had to pause to consider what he was trying to say. “I’m sorry, Lord Han, I’m not sure I heard right. You actually care about him? You?”
“Wipe that disbelief off your face, woman. I care about a lot of people in Shang Azi, Lamang included. Maybe even you,” Lo Bahn snorted. “Back there, all we had was each other. Maybe that’s hard to believe for a queen. You’ve seen how little respect the likes of Qun has for the people around me. Even Zheshan wasn’t without his faults. We made it our business to pay attention to people in the neighbourhood, including the more inconvenient ones.”
“Which Khine was, I suppose.”
“You have no idea. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who could cause as much trouble as he can—until I met you, that is.” He gave me a scrutinizing glare. “What piece do you think he’ll play in your little game of Hanza? He’s not a pawn, I can tell you that much. A soldier, then? Do you see him bowing to you out of loyalty? I can’t even ask him to open a door without at least a grumble and an argument.”
“What happened back then? With Jia? He never really told me.”
Lo Bahn gave a sigh. “I believe a child was involved, or what would’ve been a child had the woman’s pregnancy carried through. Reng Hzi and his pupil came at odds. The old doctor swore never to grace Shang Azi with his presence again. And the rest—shall I say—is history.”
“History best left in the dredges of time, Lo Bahn,” I heard Khine utter from the end of the hall.
Lo Bahn gave me a look before shuffling away slowly, like a bear who couldn’t be bothered to fight for his dinner.
Khine crossed his arms as he approached me. “Isn’t it too late to be sticking your nose into the issues of peasants, Queen Talyien?”
“Unfair,” I said. “I’m worried about you. And you’re one to talk.”
“I promised I would do my part and I will. Know that much about me, at least. Go to sleep, Tali. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
“Queen,” I repeated. He stared back at me. “Pick one. I’m either a friend, as you have once told me I was, and you will let me help you, or I’m a queen whose authority you do recognize—in which case I will not suffer insubordination. You have to decide one way or the other before we get to Jin-Sayeng.”
I expected him to argue, to tell me why he thought I was insane to assume he would follow me all the way back home. But he didn’t. Neither did he give me an answer to my question. He simply dropped his head in resignation and allowed me to head back to my room without another word.
~~~
We were greeted by yet another foggy morning, which I was told was not so unusual for summer in that part of the empire. Not that the weather was the topic of conversation at breakfast. Revealing our plan to Lahei was not met with as much enthusiasm as I had hoped. But she wasn’t confrontational about it, and I went over everything and what I expected her men to do, where I needed them to be by the time I gave the signal. I noticed her observing me while I spoke, with a thoughtful look that was odd for a girl her age. It bothered me more than it should; I strove to focus on the task at hand.
Surprisingly enough, the one person who seemed almost calm about everything was Han Lo Bahn. He ate the simple inn fare of fried bread and dried fish with more relish than I had seen him eat anything in days. When he caught me looking at him, he gave a one-sided smirk. “They’ll feed me worse in prison, I’m sure,” he said.
“They may not imprison you at all,” I reminded him.
He snorted. “Somehow, I doubt that. But it is preferable to having my head on a spike—not that it isn’t also a possibility with what you’ve asked me to do.”
I closed my eyes for a moment before nodding.
“You’re not going to say ‘You don’t have to do this,’ are you?”
“Lord Han…”
“Pah! Woman, I’m teasing. You should know me better by now.”
“I have to admit, I really can’t tell one way or another with you, Lord Han.”
He took a long drink of tea before getting up. “Well,” he said. “No sense putting it off. Either this happens, or it doesn’t. Lamang!”
Khine looked up from his table. Lo Bahn gestured, and we both followed him out onto the street. There, Lo Bahn squinted at the dark sky and grumbled, “The cicadas grow silent in the presence of a dead man.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry—what?”
“He’s quoting last century poetry,” Khine said. “They can’t kill you, Lo Bahn. They have to believe you for this to work.”
“Can’t is a very different word from shouldn’t. Striding up to Governor Hizao’s office and proclaiming that Governor Qun ordered me to kill Gon Zheshan is believable enough, I grant you,” Lo Bahn sniffed. “It’s what they’re going to want to do to me after that’s the question. How will Hizao treat a self-confessed murderer? And Qun won’t be happy, though I’m sure he’s going to have himself to worry about in the next little while. Ah, Gon, I would’ve throttled the life out of you myself if I knew it was going to come to this. Getting me into this mess because of his own ambitions…didn’t think he had it in him. The soft-headed fool should’ve asked me for help. I would’ve found a way.”
“I could ask one of Lahei’s men to shadow you,” I said. “If things go sideways, it’ll give you a chance to escape.”
Lo Bahn squinted at me. “I’m not like you, Queen Talyien. I’m not young anymore—I don’t have a stomach for these by-the-skin-of-your-teeth adventures of yours. Even a man like me knows his limits.” He rubbed his jaw. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that. I can deal with prison. A quick word to my wife, or business partners who have not yet given up on me, and I’ll be back on my feet in no time. As long as Qun is out of the way...”
“He will be. Hizao won’t let him get away with it—you should’ve heard him.”
“I don’t have to. I can believe it. Hizao and Qun’s families have always been at odds. But I won’t bore you with our oligarchies.” He straightened his sleeves and reached out to clasp Khine’s shoulder with one hand, squeezing it hard. “You.”
Khine looke
d up at him. “What about me?”
“Ten years I’ve watched you grow up.”
“The hell are you starting on, Lo Bahn?”
“Stop yapping for a moment and let me get a word in. Ten years I’ve watched you fawning over Reng Hzi and then that woman of yours. And now…” His eyes flicked from Khine and then back to me. “We both get out of this alive, you know where to find me. I know what you think about what I do for a living. I know you think it’s beneath you. But a man has to make something out of this life or else it consumes him.”
“Lo Bahn…”
“Yes, I know what it sounds like. I’ve been hanging around you too long. Pathetic. Maybe we do need time apart.” He slapped Khine’s shoulder away and turned to me. “And you…”
“Lord Han.” I bowed.
“You insult me and then you honour me. I don’t know what to think about you. I suppose given what I am and who you are, it doesn’t matter what I think.” He returned the bow awkwardly. “You’ve probably met your fair share of fine, well-spoken men, so I’m not going to try to embarrass myself. I hope this makes things even for us.”
I gave him a wolfish grin. “I hope so too, Lord Han.”
“Should’ve given me at least one night, though. I could’ve blown your mind.” He smirked. “Then again, perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with you.”
“Might’ve thrown out your back,” Khine mumbled.
“Best we just leave it to the imagination,” I agreed.
Lo Bahn chuckled and started walking away. “Even if they kill me, your little ruse might still work,” he called, waving as he strode down the path like a soldier bravely walking to a battle he was not hoping to win. “Good tidings, Queen Talyien!” He caught up to a crowd, and then just like that, he was gone.
~~~
We spent the rest of the morning shopping for clothes, which was not an activity I enjoyed while wondering what was transpiring over at the governor’s office. I resisted sending men to keep an eye on things—the last thing I wanted was the guards picking up Jinseins in case of a mass arrest. It would make our situation more difficult, make Lo Bahn’s claims less believable.
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