by E. M. Hardy
He didn’t care.
His seniors awaited him and would welcome his soul after conducting the Shogun’s vengeance. He hoped that he would have the fortune to serve Inagaki once more, that the cycle would grant him this boon in exchange for his loyalty.
He only prayed that his fellow sleeper agents would take advantage of his sacrifice, work to rebuild the Order of Rats and restore the True Shogunate to its rightful place.
He met Jiku’s soft eyes, a sad smile forming on her face. They had only been together for two short years, but her company helped keep him sane and safe throughout his ordeals. She touched his face in solemn farewell and winked away into the Invisible World to join her kind, await the call of a new bonded partner.
Saikawa stalked over to the crystalline pillar as he gathered his resolve. He set his pack down, piled the crystals beside one another, took out a small hammer, inhaled deeply, and struck the breaking point of a crystal under the base of the shining structure.
***
“What the hell?” Martin exclaimed with shock.
“Hmm?” Cui Dai replied, biting at her meat bun before sipping on some tea. “What’s going on?”
“A Rat managed to sneak into the pyramid in the Qleb Sierra,” he replied, voice tinged with both disbelief and amazement.
“That’s what, the fifth now?” huffed the Balancer disguised as a Historian, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Yeah. He’s the fifth Rat to make an attempt, the second one to infiltrate the deepest reaches of the pyramid, and the first to actually detonate a crystal bomb inside the core chamber. This one was really good at hiding his presence. Couldn’t spot him even when reading through auras.”
“Must have had a jinni helping him,” commented Shen Feng as he thumped his leg. “Blasted Rats. I thought for sure we cleaned up the last of those annoying parasites.”
“Eh,” Martin shrugged with his walker. “They’re helping me upgrade my security measures. At least now I know what to look out for next time.”
“Mmmf,” Hobogetur agreed, stuffing his mouth with the buns. “Iph ith wib heb…”
“Hobogetur, come on. That’s just disgusting,” grumbled Ishida, frowning at the Great Khan.
“Ogh, gob onmn…” Venkati attempted to swallow his food, thumped his massive chest once, and swallowed the remnants completely.
“Oh, come on, Ishida. Live a little. You’re supposed to gorge on buns, not nibble at them like in one of your fancy tea ceremonies.”
The Shogun of the Taiyo Sovereignty shook his head and deepened his grimace. Hobogetur ignored the exchange, stuffing yet another bun into his face for good measure.
“Ugh. Uncultured swine,” mumbled Shen Feng, biting into his bun before widening his eyes in surprise. “Huh. You were right, esteemed historian. These are good buns.”
“Right?” Cui Dai responded with a grin. “Best meat buns I’ve had so far.”
“My compliments to you, Missus Yao,” the General of the White Tiger exclaimed as he turned around.
The proprietor of the establishment, Yao Xiu’s mother, twisted and fidgeted as she shifted her gaze between the people sitting in her humble bakery, wringing her apron all the while. “It… it is nothing, honored general, esteemed guests. Your wo… words honor us.”
Yao Xiu came out of the bakery’s kitchen, carrying a tray of steaming buns and bowing slightly to her mother before laying the small tray before her guests. “Honored guests, this one thanks you once again for gracing our humble establishment. Business will surely pick up once we hang a placard stating the compliments of esteemed guests such as yourselves.”
“Oh, think nothing of it, girl.” The good general looked Yao Xiu up and down before nodding to himself in satisfaction. “My apologies. You are no longer a girl, but a young woman now—and an excellent historian, according to Cui Dai here.”
“Your praise humbles this undeserving servant,” replied Yao Xiu with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
Cui Dai allowed herself a smirk, ignoring the awestruck gazes of the passersby and the shopkeepers as they tried to mask their curious glances at her party. Their reverence was not reserved for her since none of them knew who she really was.
No, they directed their awe toward the General of the White Tiger, the General of the Vermillion Bird, the Great Khan of the Grass Peoples, the Maharaja of the Sahaasi Dominion, and the Shogun-Elect of the Taiyo Sovereignty—every one of them dressed in casual attire, gobbling away at meat buns while bantering with the baker’s daughter.
Their personal guards stood at attention just outside the premises of the humble Yao Bakery, with Martin’s walkers and eyeballs keeping a careful watch from further away. This helped draw even more attention to the humble bakery of Five Gorges.
Cui Dai always knew that her apprentice was a brazen little thing despite that veneer of humility, but teasing the General of the White Tiger this way while serving him tea and meat buns? Audacity at its highest… but not really, when she observed their interactions.
He would never admit it openly, but the good general was absolutely smitten by the young girl, who in turn was annoyingly oblivious to his attention.
As for her… she would never pass up on an opportunity for free meat buns from the Yao Bakery, courtesy of the general’s pocket.
“So, Martin,” Cui Dai said after Yao Xiu’s mother had to scurry back into the kitchen, giving their small party some privacy. “I take it that you learned something important from today’s attempted infiltration?”
The walker nodded quietly, its blank face dipping just a little bit low. “Yeah. I don’t really need to worry about some random saboteur blowing me up anymore.”
“Indeed? I’m curious though. You never mentioned the details of your little experiment. Now that I think about it, you never shared how you managed to return from the land of the dead, or how you managed to brush off a second death this time around.”
The walker considered her for a moment, its hand rubbing its chin. “Yeah. I didn’t.”
Silence. Cui Dai and the walker just stared at each other for a few more moments. The others around them listened in to the conversation, glancing between the two as the awkward silence stretched out.
Cui Dai sighed, picking up another meat bun and taking a small bite out of the breaded corner. Martin spoke cheerily, continued to play the role of amiable dolt whenever it suited him.
This time, however, he was quite aggressively shutting her down. He always shut down whenever she pressed him for details about his revival, either by changing the topic or outright refusing to speak about it.
This mysteriousness disturbed her more than she cared to admit.
She saw for herself the swarm of constructs that Martin fielded in the Wastes, stretching as far as the eye could see. She personally inspected the new pyramids he was setting up all over the continent, holding key points and claiming resource deposits for himself.
He was now the supreme, undisputed power throughout the lands, even if he didn’t directly meddle with the affairs of the various nations within it. He could still crush them all if he wanted to, send his swarms to take control and replace his losses in a matter of days.
Martin was thus vassal to the Empire only in name, paying token respect to the Empress while working on his own agenda.
And yet… and yet she couldn’t quite blame him for his distrust.
His openness, his trust were exploited by the Rats. His willingness to share so many details about himself, to openly allow people to develop new skills under his obelisks, paved the way for his demise—short-lived as that demise was.
He had somehow revived himself, brought himself back to life, but the experience changed him. He came face to face with his mortality, realized that he too could die, and he now felt the same fear that every human faced.
He finally accepted her advice to be a little bit more guarded, a little bit more cynical… and it saddened her mo
re than she cared to admit.
Cui Dai just sighed, ignoring Martin’s silence as she picked up a new meat bun and took a huge bite out of it. “Very well then. Keep your secrets. It’s not as if we’ve been busy helping you as much as we could, going so far as to hunt down the Rats. Even paid you a visit when you were gone, left you a shiny little gift as a token of my appreciation.”
“Hah. Really? Didn’t know you liked me that much and… that… you…” The walker whipped its head, startling everyone at the table with the suddenness of its actions. “Wait a second… a shiny little gift? What, exactly, did you mean by that?”
Cui Dai narrowed her eyes as she studied the walker from head to toe. Did her quip reveal something of importance? Did the small shard she leave in Martin’s pyramid hold some significance… perhaps connected to his revival?
She pretended to ignore the way the walker shifted itself, turned to face her more fully. She glanced upward, noting the way that three eyeballs focused their eyes upon her.
She chewed her food slowly, swallowed, and faced the walker. She used the time to consider her options, wondered if she should give Martin the information he wanted. She did not know if the information she held was of great importance, and she sorely wished that she could pass this up the chain of command so that someone else would tell her what to do.
She almost blurted out a demand, a tit-for-tat exchange of information. Then she remembered the Empress’ words, about riling Martin up to learn more about his true nature.
She reflected upon Martin’s actions ever since she first knew him, of how he never showed any ill will or attempt to manipulate anyone for his own personal benefit. He came to the rescue of the allied army the very minute he returned from the dead, regained control over his constructs.
Would she want to throw all that away by withholding this information from him, widen the growing rift forming between them?
Or could she somehow win some goodwill by telling him what he wanted to know—about the tiny crystalline shard she infused with her power and accidentally empowered with a little bit of her own blood?
She chose the latter… and would forever change the balance between life and death in the world of Copsis.