by Anthology
How could Johan not see this was a paradise? How could he possibly want to bring it down? If this was what Kato was building, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stop his wars. Maybe it was worth the price.
***
Johan felt Kato working down the hall in the tightness of the air. He didn’t know what the general was doing after he’d shattered the benefit of the blind analysis, but he doubted he would like it.
Kato was too much a military man. He would never understand the heart of Johan’s theories: that a nation born of atrocities, that would not acknowledge its crimes, would never rise above those origins. The corruption would only turn inward and fester.
A knock came on his door and one of the gangly office messengers handed him an envelope before rushing out again.
Johan broke the seal and pulled out a single sheet of paper, not signed. But there was nothing mysterious about this invitation. He read the lines again and his lips compressed.
Now he would see what all of this was about.
Johan tugged himself into his jacket. He paused by the mirror propped on one of his bookshelves to adjust the folds of lace at his throat. Satisfied and thus armed, Johan swept out.
He rapped on Kato’s door. “We are required in the minister’s office.”
Kato frowned, glanced at his book-stacked worktable, and then stepped into the hall. He closed the door before Johan could see more of what was inside.
When they arrived at the minister’s office, an aide ushered them inside. Sunlight streamed through tall windows, framing the minister behind his massive, vine-carved oak desk. The minister glanced up from his work and regarded them, pen poised in bloated fingers.
“Master Mercio. Master—Kato, is it?”
Kato nodded.
The minister motioned with his pen at two chairs in front of his desk. “Please, take a seat.”
“Is this about Master Mercio’s theories?” Kato asked. “I have written my own report that highlights the benefits of your Victorious War.”
Johan clenched his hands on his knees and did not look at Kato.
The minister paused. Johan watched mental gears so obviously scrape before the minister scowled again. He had been surprised by Kato’s comment.
Johan’s stomach churned.
“That is well, Master Kato,” the minister said, “but I do not believe your word is valid at this point, and much the pity.” He held out his hand. “May I see your travel permits, entrance documents, and permission to be in these offices?”
Kato stirred and handed over his portfolio. The minister studied it for a moment, and then sniffed.
“It is a good forgery,” he said, “but the High Minister’s office has no record of an application by a Marcus Kato.”
Kato went rigid.
“Minister,” Johan said, but then stopped. Was he going to defend Kato? Wasn’t the man working for the minister?
But the minister had been surprised by Kato’s siding against Johan.
Too many thoughts had tugged at Johan’s mind these last few days for him to continue to ignore them. Kato was—something else. He almost checked around him for the brightly colored robes of the monks.
“We do not begrudge visitors to our nation, or even advisors in our capitol,” the minister said in a tone of false amiability. “But you see, the proper procedures must be followed. If you are here from another nation, you must have permits for travel and residency in our lands. If you are here from another parallel, well, there are other protocols to be followed by the Accords of the Parallels.”
The muscles in Kato’s neck stood taut and corded, but Johan read confusion in his eyes. He didn’t know, did he, these specific laws in the Accords? He’d had secretaries for such legalities. He didn’t know that to cross parallels without documentation was to forfeit any and all rights, and be subject to the will of the nation he’d crossed into.
Johan stood. “Sir. Minister. I will see that this is sorted out.”
Kato and the minister stood as well, the minister with his too-wide smile.
“What is the name of your parallel, Kato? I will need that for the paperwork.”
Kato opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked to Johan. Then he looked past him, scanning the room.
The door banged and guards spilled in, helmets and breastplates gleaming ornate silver, long knives held ready.
Kato blurred and two of the guards fell before he rounded on a third.
Johan fumbled for his belt and a dagger, but he had not carried one since his boyhood days with his family’s caravans.
Johan rounded on the minister, who stood pale, his eyes catching glints from the guards’ knives.
“Stop this,” Johan hissed.
“You had it coming, Mercio,” the minister said in a smug voice. “I warned you—”
Johan punched the minister in the face. Cartilage gave with a satisfying crunch, and the minister toppled backwards.
Johan yelped and tried to shake out the pain in his hand.
A shout behind him made him turn, just in time to duck the knife swipe of a guard.
Kato jabbed his knife under the man’s chin. Johan watched as red bloomed there, the guard’s hands coming up and then spasming as he fell. Red sprayed across the front of the desk, painting the carved vines.
“Johan!” Kato yelled, and tossed him a knife. It nicked his sleeve and clattered on across the room.
Johan had seen so many battles in his mind. He had read so many reports, and he’d thought he’d understood the smell of blood, but it was nothing like this. Nothing like this tang that got in his mouth and throat, sharp and cool as iron.
There were four guards on the floor, and Kato’s sleeves bled red. Kato grappled with one guard, then spun him to use as a shield against another.
This wasn’t war. This was a group of ceremonial guards, and the minister wanted Kato and him to fight them. He wanted blood stacked against them. Kato was the means to silence Johan.
The corruption continued.
Johan shook his head sharply. “Kato, stop!” He turned to see another guard lunging for him and jumped back, stumbling into the chair. “I surrender! I surrender!”
The guard grabbed Johan and yanked his hands behind his back, clapping on the manacles.
The minister was just now getting to his feet. He held his red-soaked handkerchief to his nose. “Good man,” he said to Johan.
Johan’s whole face puckered in an effort not to spit at him. The guard shoved his head down.
Johan was jerked sideways, and then the guard cried out and let go. Kato crashed the guard into another chair, splintering the wood. Two more hustled in to take the first guard’s place.
Kato grunted and staggered as one scored a cut to his shoulder. The guards closed in, and Kato raised his knife.
“Kato, stop!” Johan yelled.
Kato wobbled back. It was enough for the guards to knock the knife from his hand and force him to the floor.
They thunked Johan down beside him, the plush wool rug pressing into his cheek. He met Kato’s eyes. They were bright with rage. And then the guards stepped between them. Pain exploded in Johan’s head and everything else faded to darkness.
***
Kato had only been in the cell a handful of minutes, almost long enough to bring some wits back into his ringing head, when the iron door grated open. The guards came back, half-dragging Johan.
Kato jerked against the chains bolting him to the floor, slurring every curse he could think of through puffing lips. The manacles bit into his wrists, and cuts that the surgeons had hastily sewn and bandaged after the prison guards had given him a thorough beating started seeping blood.
The guards fixed Johan’s manacles to the bolt in the floor, kicked Kato in the knee, and left.
Kato leaned his head back and waited for the dizziness to pass. Nausea crept up his throat and he breathed in deeply, gagging at the lungful of piss and shit.
He looked over at Johan. There were
no windows this far down in the prison, but some light filtered through the high barred opening in the door. A bandage wrapped Johan’s forehead, already half-soaked with blood. Two fingers were bent in the wrong direction, though nothing else seemed broken.
“Johan?”
He didn’t stir.
Kato rattled his chains. “Johan!”
Johan twitched, too long of a second after, and groaned.
“We’ll get out,” Kato said. “We’ll find a way out.”
Johan’s jaw worked a moment before words came. “They’re going to kill us.” Johan sniffed. His cheeks streamed with tears.
Bile flared back up Kato’s throat. He wanted to shout at Johan to pull himself together, but the rage died quickly and left him panting.
Surely Li Sha could see him here, in her viewing crystal. Surely she would get him out.
“I’m sorry,” Johan said. “My theories.”
Kato barked a laugh. Maybe Johan’s theories of Venton’s corruption had been the issue, but Kato knew that he had been the lever the minister had used.
“Alright, how did the minister do it?”
“Your papers,” Johan coughed. “You’re not from this parallel.”
Kato bared his teeth. He didn’t know the Accords as well as he should; they had never been relevant on the battlefield, and Li Sha knew that. She had watched him for years.
And she had sent him here.
If he died here in this parallel, his offensive would fall apart in months. Resistance in the nations he had already taken would broaden the chaos, and his king would be overthrown. The monks would bring in another man, someone who could, eventually, bring peace. Marcus Kato would never have to break his oaths.
“Damn,” Kato said softly.
***
In all of Johan’s work, he’d somehow never thought he’d end up in prison. He hurt everywhere, though in the hours he’d sat here, most of it had dulled to a steady throbbing. He tried not to think about his fingers and the crooked garlic sneer of the guard as he’d held Johan’s hand against the stone wall.
“Kato,” he croaked. He tried to swallow, but he hadn’t had a drink for hours.
“Uh?” Kato said.
He needed to think of something other than the fire in his throat, the cold in his bones, and how he would probably not leave here alive.
“Why did you come here? Did you somehow sneak through the Monastery?”
Kato barked a laugh. “No, but I would like to see someone try.”
“Then gods, man, what did you do to them? Did they want you to get caught?”
Kato grimaced, and then stared at the wall. Johan wanted to prompt him, but maybe in this place it was best to let the man have his peace. He shifted against the wall and tried to will himself to sleep.
“I am High Marshall of the armies of Naraken,” Kato said. “And the Monastery sent me to you to help stop my wars.”
And Johan learned how Kato, a son of his kingdom’s minor nobility, had risen quickly through the ranks. When he had helped turn the tide in a battle for another nation’s capital, his king had made him a general.
“He tasked me with planning his next campaign. He wanted more, more more more, and I gave it to him. I gave him a weapon, and the sharper it became, the more he wished to cut.”
He looked at Johan, and the pride on his face warred with shame.
What did Kato want from him? He knew who Kato was. Kato was himself, in another parallel. And Kato was everything he despised.
“They sent me here to die,” Kato said, “because it solves all problems. Except for getting you caught up in this.”
Johan should have never accepted that invitation to the palace reception.
“I want peace,” Kato said. “I am tired of the wars and all of the deaths.”
Did Kato want Johan to absolve him? Kato had tried to undermine his theories, and it had been Kato’s mess that had made the Monastery meddle in Johan’s affairs.
But Kato had fought for him in the minister’s office. And maybe Kato had thought he’d been helping Johan in writing that report, regardless of how wrong it was. Kato was a man of honor, in his own way. And Johan could feel a sameness there, like a cord thrumming to a matching note inside himself.
“Maybe the Monastery will come to claim you in a few days,” Johan said.
Kato snorted. “That I can hope for, but not bet my life on.”
***
The sentence, when it arrived, was death. Bolstered on either side by hulking guards, the messenger wheezed out the charges of espionage and treason in a flat, bored voice.
They took Kato first. Johan croaked his protest, but the guards shut him up with a casual, heavy slap.
They marched Kato up three stories and into a cramped room that smelled of damp and rotten meat. The guards locked his chains into a chair in the center, then left.
Kato waited. Every few handfuls of breaths, he heard footsteps in the corridor. Or occasionally a scream. He closed his eyes and willed his breathing to slow, to keep himself in focus. Waiting was part of the breaking.
Had the Monastery truly been silent, or had they told Venton to have their way with him? Was this their method of forcing atonement for his many sins?
The door opened and Kato hoped, in one ludicrous moment, to see the orange robes of Li Sha. But there were only the guards.
They shoved a sack over Kato’s head, thick with mildew. Panic clawed up his throat. He swallowed convulsively and nearly gagged.
They led him out again and, blind now, he listened. He counted steps. He felt for cross breezes in the corridors. He heard the clink of the guards’ armor and felt the solid, round muzzle of the flintlock pistol at his back. He calculated his chances of grabbing it.
Open air hit him, cold and dry. The guards levered him up into what felt like the back of a prison wagon, the rough wood catching at his clothes as they shoved him to sit. They locked his manacles to the floor and then packed in around him. The wagon jerked into motion.
A drone began to grow over the clattering of the wagon wheels on cobbles. It was soft waves at first, and then it gained rhythm and movement and voices. The wagon lurched in a turn and then backed itself up. The wall he leaned against thrummed with the roar of the crowd.
If there was any chance of his escape, it would be here. Any change of hands left openings, and a crowd brought anonymity. Kato waited.
The sack was yanked off his head and he gulped in cleaner air. But he read the meaning in the guards’ black stares—there would be no dignity in death for one who had killed some of their own. They would give him no hood to hide his death mask.
The back doors swung inward and Kato squinted hard against the sunlight. Then the guards finished unlocking his manacles from the ring bolts.
Kato dove out and into two guards, and they all went sprawling. His body hit wood. He was on a platform. He lurched to roll over, off the side and into the crowd—
He saw the men gathered at the far end of the platform. One man in particular stood tall in his blood-stained fussy shirt and trousers, his head covered in a sack.
Johan? Kato had thought he was back at the prison.
He looked at the crowd, the shouting and jeering faces. He could fall into them, it was his best and only chance of escape.
And then he looked back to Johan.
Two guards forced Johan to his knees and bent him over the block. The axe man raised his axe, the blade edging sunlight.
A guard grabbed Kato’s arm, but he ripped it free and launched himself upright, stumbling, but moving forward. What in the world was Johan doing here? Hadn’t Kato left him behind? In the prison cell?
The axe came down.
Pain stabbed like a sword through Kato’s chest and he staggered. His knees hit the platform. He looked down, but there was no blood, no wound. He had felt Johan die, the soul cord between them cut.
A crack split the air and punched his shoulder, shoving him down into the wood. The crowd
in front of the platform blurred, then cleared, then blurred again. He saw blues and grays and browns, and two vivid streaks of gold and orange.
The orange shape of the veiled monk moved toward him. Even here in this crowd, Li Sha commanded the space around her.
Kato levered himself up as she vaulted onto the platform.
“You,” he croaked. “Damn you.”
The boards shuddered beneath him and the fingers of the guards dug into his arms.
Li Sha raised her hands. “I claim this man for the Monastery!”
She had to shout it again, and again, until the crowd fell into a restless silence.
The guards holding Kato stilled, but they didn’t let go. He was glad of it, because he was about to add to his list of sins the killing of a monk.
“I claim this man,” Li Sha shouted again. “He is the business of the Monastery. Release him to my custody!”
Guards in the bright violet uniforms of the Monastery pushed their way onto the platform.
“No!” He would not go with them. He would have nothing to do with the Monastery.
His own guards pulled him back, and then the Monastery guards surrounded him.
He fought, but they were ready for that. The last thing he saw before they pulled the sack back over his head was Li Sha, regarding Johan’s body. And then she turned away.
***
When the sack came off, Kato was in the sitting room of his hotel lodgings. A fire crackled in the hearth. Two of the Monastery guards still held him, and he felt the presence of more behind him. A gold-robed monk lurked near the hearth chair, and to Kato’s left, by the table, stood Li Sha.
“Remove his shackles,” she said.
“That’s not a good idea,” Kato croaked.
Li Sha’s eyes creased in a frown, and she poured a glass from a pitcher on the table. “Here.”
One of the guards took the glass and pressed it to his lips, and despite himself, he drank. First one choking swallow, and then cool water coursed down his throat. He felt the manacle locks click and his arms come free, and then his feet.
Kato knocked the guard with the glass aside and rushed Li Sha.