by JC Kang
The twenty-four wooden crates contained legitimate trade goods, for sure. However, Marcus Larruso also trafficked in the local girls, sending them to the South, where their fair complexions and blonde hair would fetch a handsome price. Perhaps he deserved death.
Tian’s goals weren’t particularly noble, either. As much as he wanted to, he wasn’t here to rescue impoverished girls from a short and miserable life of exploitation, far away from home.
Larruso reached the last of the two crates, while one of the heavily-armed bodyguards stepped onto the spot where he would die.
The power of life and death, in Tian’s hands. Perhaps that burden was a form of punishment, one which widened the gulf between his carefree youth and the ruthless spy he had become.
He flashed the hand signal from his vantage point.
Six Moquan Black Fist spies fell upon the three unsuspecting smugglers in clinical silence.
Old Tong, the most experienced of them, darted from between the last two crates. He covered Larruso’s mouth and slashed his throat with a black-lacquered knife.
At the same time, Pockmarked Zu dropped from the rafters. He stomped through the largest man’s knee and applied an unremitting chokehold. His victim’s frantic clawing only hastened his demise.
The most recent arrival to their embassy in Iksuvius, Cheng, burst out of the shadows and hacked at the third henchman’s neck with his curved sword. Blood sprayed, and the man let out a choked screech before falling dead.
“Clear.” Six voices echoed the word in quick succession. Lives, so easily snuffed out.
Pockmarked Zu eased the body to the hard-packed dirt floor. “Brilliant plan, worthy of the Architect.”
“And executed with the precision of the Surgeon and the Beauty.” Young Cheng’s eyes crinkled as he opened one of the many crates.
Tian snorted. His plan had not been much more than picking a hiding place, and choosing the right timing against overmatched thugs.
“Now which one of you is the Beauty?” Old Tong looked from Young Cheng to Pockmarked Zu before shaking his head. He was old enough to have known the three legendary masters, all struck down in their youth a generation ago. Under clan orders, he never spoke their names, though he animatedly recounted their exploits when given a chance. “Neither, you’re both too ugly.”
Like the rest of his comrades, Tian held the deceased masters in awe. Nonetheless, he silenced the men with a scowl. “Cheng. Use a more effective technique. He made a sound. Others could have heard.”
The boy hung his head. “But you timed it so the rest of them—”
“It’s all right. Just learn from your mistakes.” Tian swept his gaze around the warehouse. “Now. Where’s our primary target?”
Old Tong motioned him over. “Here.”
Larruso lay dead, his curly brown hair matted in a pool of blood. The Pirate Queen’s agent in the frigid Northwest, Larruso was a known associate of Tian’s former friend and current fugitive, Peng Kai-Long.
Tian sighed. Three more murdered, bringing the total he’d arranged to eighteen, on top of thirty-two he’d killed with his own hands. All necessary to protect the homeland. He gestured towards Young Cheng. “What’s in this shipment?”
“Just fine glassware.” The boy shrugged.
“And wool,” Pockmarked Zu added, looking up from another crate.
Tian tapped his chin. They’d tracked Larruso for weeks after receiving word of increased weapons orders. With a Hua trade ship coming into port later today, it would be the perfect opportunity to smuggle his cache. “No weapons?”
Old Tong looked up from a table and waved a blood-smeared sheet of paper. “Here is a diagram for repeating crossbows.”
Tian nodded. Without access to firepowder for muskets, Peng would need Hua’s other great invention. Or innovation rather, since the Repeater design had originally come from the Eldaeri people of the Northeast.
“Here are the parts,” Shun said from the far corner. “Uncrated.”
Uncrated. So they weren’t being shipped home to Hua, to arm the dwindling insurgency. At least not yet.
Tian took the diagram from Old Tong and scanned it. He then traced the cocking mechanism with his finger. “This is an Eldaeri crossbow. Not one of ours.” Just like the ones he’d seen two years ago when the Eldaeri attended the wedding of Second Prince Kai-Wu.
“You’re right.” Shun tossed over the trigger component.
Tian swept it out of the air. “Dockworkers will arrive later. Shun, impersonate a merchant. Make sure the crates get loaded. The rest of you. Dispose of the bodies. The locals won’t miss this criminal. Then regroup in my office.”
“As you command,” his men responded in unison.
Three knocks rapped on the skylight, the prearranged signal from their lookout that someone was coming in.
The Moquan melted back into shadows, dragging the bodies with them. The door opened, revealing a young man with a repeating crossbow.
He took a tentative step in. “Master Larruso?” A thick local accent weighed down his Arkothi.
Tian raised a fist, ordering his men to stand down. No point killing a hapless servant who had the bad luck of walking in at the wrong time. He stepped out into the light. “Master Larruso is indisposed.”
The man looked at him, his eyes intermittently glancing to the space behind him. “Who are you?”
“Feng. Trade officer. From the Cathayi embassy.” Tian motioned to the crates behind him. “I am here to make sure everything is in order. This shipment is going out tonight.”
The man licked his lips. “By yourself? That’s not like him.”
“Oh yes. Lord Larruso had another matter to attend to. He told me to make arrangements.” Tian covered the bloodstain on the cargo manifest as he held it up. “Wait here. If you want. Or I can pass your message to him.”
The man presented the crossbow. “I can’t read. I just wanted to make sure I assembled this correctly.”
Tian flipped it over in his hands. Hua had improved upon the inefficient magazine and unwieldy cocking mechanism a century ago. To think the most advanced weapon in the North was almost obsolete back home.
He looked back at the man and held the weapon as if it were a venomous snake. “I’m only a clerk. I don’t know weapons. But I will leave this...thing...on his table. How about I write a note for you?”
The man nodded enthusiastically. “Just let him know the workers are confused and need directions.”
“I will do that.” Tian flashed him a warm smile as he walked the man to the door. As the fellow walked out, Tian flashed a signal to Tong. Follow.
Old Tong zipped through, and Tian closed the door and let out a long sigh.
“Why’d you let him go?” Young Cheng emerged, shaking his head.
Tian held the boy’s gaze. “Shun, was he an immediate threat?”
“No, the crossbow was uncocked,” Shun said.
Tian nodded. “Zu, was he close to Larruso?”
“No, Larruso’s lieutenants are all literate and wear their wealth,” Pockmarked Zu said. “He was just a local peasant, looking for work.”
Cheng cocked his head. “But shouldn’t we tie up loose ends? He didn’t matter.”
“What did you make of his bracelet?”
“Crudely weaved, with faded colors,” Cheng said. “Fraying in spots.”
Tian nodded. “Very good. What does that tell you?”
Cheng’s forehead furrowed.
“The poorest cannot afford rings. When they exchange wedding vows. Unlike Larruso, he would be missed.”
The young Moquan shrugged. “What is one life worth?”
“A dragonfly. Now, clean up here. Then meet back in my office.”
With a last glance, Tian slipped out the door and into the bright afternoon sunlight. He blinked a few times to let his eyes adjust, and then set off for the embassy, just on the other side of Iksuvius’ western marketplace.
Guilt pricked at him, even more so
than the marketplace’s scent of oily foods, fresh vegetables, and salted fish. Had they needlessly killed those men? He’d lost his innocence many times over since his banishment from the capital. What would his ten-year-old self think of who he had become? Princess Kaiya would be disappointed.
Her again. He’d last seen her from afar on the battlements of Wailian Castle, eight hundred seventy-eight days ago. She’d rarely visited his thoughts in the last four thousand and twelve days; maybe only on the several occasions when he’d had to kill an enemy of the state. Otherwise, there was no use wondering about someone he’d never see again. Or who’d undoubtedly forgotten about him. His chest squeezed. There were more pressing matters.
Tian started to pick his way through the crowded market. After two years, he’d grown accustomed to being surrounded by the large, light-skinned, fair-haired Nothori folk. Even so, their sweat stank of raw onions and goat’s milk. He weaved through them with careless grace, loath to brush up against their hairy bodies.
Along the way, he cut the purse of a brothel owner, and later slid a copper Iksuvi kroon into the pocket of a destitute boy. When asked by his spies about this peculiar habit, he always shrugged it off as an exercise to keep his skills sharp. And if a child happened to notice his handiwork—or even tried to pick his pockets—he or she might be recruited as another set of eyes and ears for Tian’s information network.
A network whose information he’d misinterpreted. The weapons weren’t meant to arm the insurgency back home. A pit formed in the bottom of a stomach. He’d ordered an unnecessary murder.
What had he missed? Tian stood before the spongewood board that took up the entire northern wall of his second-floor office. The setting sun peeked in from the windows, splashing the middle of the room with gentle light. It left the walls cloaked in shadows, concealing his Black Lotus brothers.
A cool breeze wafted in, bringing with it a breath of salt water off of Cold Harbor. It dislodged the crossbow diagram from one of the strings crisscrossing the room, and sent it fluttering. Tian plucked the page out of the air as it drifted by, without looking at it or creating a whisper of sound.
He snaked through the organized tangle of zigzagging lines like a contortionist, and tacked the diagram to a new spot on the southern wall board. Satisfied, he stepped back and pondered. The carelessly scribbled notes, objects, and twine connections formed a chaotic net of interrelations between events, people, and evidence.
The embassy staff referred to his office as the Cobweb. If the embassy as a whole presented the face of his homeland’s commerce with its northern neighbors, this room was the brain. Here, twelve Moquan gathered information on potential enemies who otherwise masqueraded as trading partners.
The systematized mess of data mirrored the rest of the room, from the cluttered wooden desk to the random positioning of the chairs, bookshelves, and even the richly-colored wool rugs on the dark wood floors. In the middle of it stood Tian, his mind the calm eye in the storm of facts and figures, bringing logical order to the chaos.
He pointed out a single strand of curly red hair, which Old Tong had retrieved from the crossbow workshop, dangling on one of the threads.
“There,” he said, keeping his voice just loud enough to carry over the din of the late afternoon bustle in the western marketplace. “Only Northerners have red hair. This strand is coarse. It probably belongs to an Eldaeri. There was a huge order for Eldaeri crossbows. Not from the rebel Peng. Maybe the Eldaeri are planning to disrupt the summit.”
Gliding untouched through the web of strings, he traced that particular thread back towards the northern wall board, to a note labeled Northwest Summit.
“An assassination attempt?” queried a voice from the dark corner of the room.
Tian tapped his chin. He’d been wrong about Larruso. He spoke slowly, making sure not to trip over the words. “Maybe. It would be their best chance. The Teleri Empire’s First Consul will be here. With less protection. They can split the Northwestern alliance. Between the Teleri and the Nothori Kingdoms. And we would benefit. Stay on the lookout for the Eldaeri. If they are here, we will make contact. To help them.”
“Understood,” answered a chorus of voices from the shadows.
He waved his hand, dismissing them. The sounds of their breaths disappeared, indicating they had melted away.
Tian smiled to himself. His spies might now consider him the second coming of the Architect, but when he had first been posted here, as a young man who couldn’t speak in complete sentences, they probably thought it was because of his family connections. As if any aristocrat would choose to work in these barbaric lands. He returned to the tendril of hair, rubbing it between his fingers.
An unfamiliar young man appeared at the door, guided by the Mistress of Chambers.
“I have just arrived on the Wild Orchid,” he said, “and have been instructed to bring you to the docks.”
“Me?” Tian snorted. The cargo that would fatten Hua’s coffers mattered little to him. “You’re looking for Trade Minister Zhang.”
“I was explicitly ordered to summon you.” The messenger reached into his robes and drew forth a thin jade plaque. Carved in the likeness of a five-clawed dragon, it symbolized the Tianzi, ruler of Hua.
As protocol demanded, Tian sank to his right knee, head bowed, right fist to the floor. It was strange to see a plaque here. “Please. Take me to the ship.”
The two descended through the main residence, a three-story mansion of wood and immaculate white stone with sloping eaves of blue tile, which stood at the center of the embassy compound. Situated on a low hill and encircled by a twelve-foot-high stone wall, the spacious grounds overlooked the only deep-water harbor in the Northwest of the continent.
With the arrival of a cargo ship, the embassy buzzed with activity. On his way through the courtyard to the main gates, Tian weaved around trade officers, guards, and porters, who all hurried between the two-story trade office building, the stables, the barracks, and a warehouse.
Monks’ chants and the cloying smell of burning incense emanated from the East Light Temple in the southeast corner of the compound. Dedicated to Hua’s patron god Yang-Di, the wooden temple rose to the height of six men and boasted sharply pitched, yellow-tiled eaves. Sailors from the Wild Orchid already streamed in to thank the Lord of the Sun for the ship’s safe arrival after a week at sea.
Tian paused at the wrought iron gates and looked back to see the messenger still near the residence, stutter-stepping through the crowd. There was no need to wait; they both knew where to go. He continued out of the embassy, and maintained a brisk pace through the bustling streets. Near the docks at the far end of the marketplace, now shrouded in the long shadows of late afternoon, a crowd of locals gathered to witness the arrival of a Hua trading ship.
They jostled each other to catch a glimpse of the black-haired, honey-toned Hua people, whom they referred to as Cathayi. Many gawked at the giant ship, and fought to get first pick of the gadgets and wares imported from all over the continent. In this, they would be disappointed. With lords and kings visiting for the quinquennial Northwest Summit, this particular shipment contained luxury items far beyond commoners’ means.
When Tian reached the head of the quay, a stocky Hua sailor nodded and waved him past the cordon. As Tian waited for the less dexterous messenger to catch up, he studied the dark planks of eldarwood that made up the Wild Orchid’s hull.
It was eldarwood that made the otherwise small, mountainous nation of Hua so rich. The straight-trunked evergreen was the only tree thriving on the west coast which could be made into ocean-going ships, and it grew in abundance in Hua. Hua’s navy and trading fleet dominated the western seas, making it the envy of its neighbors.
The messenger arrived a moment later, interrupting his musings. Tian followed him up the gangplank to the main deck, where the bright light of the setting sun caused him to squint. Here, their roles reversed—the messenger’s sea legs allowed him to jaunt across the de
ck towards the aft cabin, while Tian lurched after him.
The man stopped at the door, placed the imperial plaque in Tian’s hands, and then gestured for him to enter.
The door closed behind him, plunging him into darkness. He instinctively reached into a secret pocket in his vest, withdrawing a twelve-pointed, razor-sharp biao throwing star. A year spent blindfolded prevented Tian from panicking. His other senses kicked in.
Incense had recently been snuffed out. A man breathed at the far end of the cabin, near a closed porthole.
“Young Lord Zheng, thank you for coming.” The man’s sonorous voice carried a certain tone of command bred into the royalty of Hua. It belonged to Crown Prince Kai-Guo, the first son of the Tianzi, whose voice Tian had heard only once, a decade ago.
Tian sunk to his right knee, right fist to the floor, head bowed. Yet suspicions tugged at his mind: why would the Crown Prince be here? Unannounced? In the dark? Why the secrecy? There had been no imperial guards on the ship. “Your servant obeys,” he answered nonetheless.
“You are being recalled to Hua, to inherit your father’s place on the Tai-Ming Council.”
Tian’s mind swam at the implications. Something had happened to his father and his brothers. Dead? Branded traitors? He took a deep breath to settle his grief.
The scent of incense had faded, and a different smell, a more flowery fragrance, percolated in. The Crown Prince’s breathing changed in depth.
Tian whipped the biao toward the voice. Metal clanged, the tone of the reverberation suggesting a small knife had deflected his throwing star. He bounced up onto his feet and into a half-hearted defensive stance. There was no real threat.
“Hey! That was dangerous.” Gone was the prince’s deep, commanding tone, replaced by a familiar high-pitched, girlish voice, with a hint of laughter wrapped around the complaint.
Tian snorted. “My aim isn’t so bad. It would’ve missed you.”