Tong Lashing

by Peter David

  “Oh, very well,” she said, rolling her eyes, and then she called out, “This is all your fault! I didn’t want to come back here! But no, you insisted we had to come! Let it be on your scaly head, then!”

  I, of course, was the only person in the place who knew whom she was addressing.

  Then she looked at me and noticed I was making eye contact with her. “You realize I could have you executed on the spot for gazing upon my godly countenance.”

  “It’s a bit late in the game for that. I’ve been staring at it for quite some time,” I pointed out.

  She shrugged. “Yes. You’re probably right. Fine, then,” she said with a dismissive wave. “You have enough trouble walking anyway, without having to concern yourself about not being able to watch where you’re going.”

  “You’re too considerate, ‘Divinity,’ ” I said.

  “Yes, I know,” she replied, oblivious of the sarcasm. I found that annoying. Generally my sarcasm was more obvious than that. I might well have been losing my edge. “Get your horse. Let’s go to the palace.”

  “Us?” inquired the largest soldier. He looked up, but in my direction rather than hers. “You would bring this… individual… to the palace?”

  “This individual brought me safely back to the city and fought to protect me from assassins,” she replied. “He is deserving of the highest honors we can provide him. He comes with us, and his person is to be considered sacrosanct.”

  “Divinity, I…”

  “Sacro. Sanct. Do you all understand?”

  “Yes, Divinity!” they chorused as one.

  Her comments caught me off guard, and she looked at me with a raised eyebrow and an imperious manner that seemed to say, See? It would serve you better to be my friend than my enemy. “Go get your horse and let’s go. We might as well get this over with. I’m sure my father just cannot wait to see me.”

  Then she took a couple of delicate steps toward the dead soldier, said disdainfully, “Idiot,” and strode over him.

  When I’d been a younger man, I’d spent an inordinate amount of time with a borderline insane princess named Entipy.

  The princess Mitsu clearly could have given her a run for her money. The best thing I could say about her was that she hadn’t tried to set fire to anything.

  Then again, the day was young.

  Chapter 2

  Royal Pain

  As insane as Princess Entipy had been, her father, King Runcible, had been a fairly harmless individual. His main sins were those of omission rather than commission… unless, of course, one counted his throwing me in a dungeon. Then again, considering that doing so had been a mercy, as compared with the endeavors to kill me that so many others had undertaken, Runcible’s actions were positively benign.

  I was hoping that the Imperior would fall into that same category.

  That hope lasted for exactly as long as it took to meet him.

  The soldiers were apparently members of some sort of warrior caste collectively called the “Hamunri.” They had been around for a few hundred years, rising up from an elite group of seven and becoming one of the single most powerful classes in all of Chinpan. After a series of civil wars that had threatened to shred the entire class structure, the Hamunri had wound up swearing fealty to the Imperior, and so it had been for five generations.

  All this was imparted to me by Mitsu in a very offhanded way as we strolled side by side to the palace. As we walked, the people of Chinpan would automatically flatten themselves and avert their eyes lest they look upon Mitsu and… well, I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen to them if they did. Probably they’d have to kill themselves the same way that poor bastard back in the fish market had.

  There were more Hamunri standing guard upon the elegant curved bridge that led to the palace. They began to reach for their swords as we approached, and then saw me, and then the princess, and they didn’t know whether to bow or stare. They settled for looking down while casting quick, sidelong glances as we walked past.

  Nowhere did I see Mordant, but I very much suspected that he was following somewhere. I could have strangled the little bastard. Here I had made the observation that Mitsu had the attitude of a princess, but then I’d asked if Mitsu—whom I naturally assumed to be a male—was a prince. “No, not a prince,” Mordant had said in his damned smirking manner. He could have bloody well told me at that point, but no, he had to play his little games. Granted, his well-timed shout out had resulted in my winding up very much not dead, but even so, I reserved the right to be exceedingly annoyed with him.

  Once we got over the bridge, the first thing we were confronted with was stairs. I wasn’t ecstatic about that; stairs were, and are, a problem for me. But there wasn’t anything else for it, really. They were incredibly wide, wide enough to accommodate fifty men walking side by side. Nevertheless, they were too angled for me to remain on horseback, so I dismounted and made my slow way up what seemed to be a hundred steps to the main courtyard.

  Mitsu, to her credit, made no effort to get ahead of me, even though I knew she could easily sprint to the top of the stairs with no difficulty. Perhaps she was being polite. Or it could have been that she wasn’t in any hurry to get there.

  Once we passed through the main gate, we walked upon dragons etched in bold relief in pavement blocks of carved marble. The palace was not simply a single building, but rather a series of buildings of varying sizes, contained within a walled-in area. With the Hamunri keeping a wary eye upon us, as if afraid the princess might suddenly snap her fingers and vanish into thin air, we passed through the main court area and into a smaller court on the farther side. There was perfectly trimmed vegetation everywhere—ornate trees carefully sculpted, and other trees with delicate fruits dangling from the branches.

  The interior of the palace, the main hall, was breathtaking, and as different from Runcible’s castle as the sun from the moon. In addition to the marbled floor, the ceilings were deeply paneled and there were vast, elaborate carvings on everything. First and foremost in all the ornamental designs were images of dragons. Winged, unwinged, legs and no legs. Mordant would have been worshipped there as a god if he’d chosen to show himself. I couldn’t quite understand his reluctance.

  There were incense urns and figures of bronze, gorgeous tapestries, statues of great warriors from throughout the history of Chinpan. And there were courtiers beginning to emerge, bowing and scraping to the princess and obviously being bewildered over my presence. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing there, either.

  Several of the courtiers came forward and extended their hands for my horse’s reins. “Don’t worry,” said Mitsu. “Your animal will be well groomed and attended to.”

  Reluctantly—reluctant because I didn’t want to deprive myself of the option of a fast getaway—I handed the reins over to the closest courtier, and they led the horse away.

  Ahead of us was a vast archway, and Mitsu glanced at me in a manner that could almost be described as impish. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “I somehow doubt it,” I said. I turned to face her, and heard a few stray gasps from onlookers. I flinched slightly, partly concerned that some outraged Hamunri would charge forward and behead me for my forwardness. “What am I doing here, Mitsu?”

  “Not ‘Divinity’?” she inquired with a faintly mocking tone. “Not ‘Princess’?”

  “Titles mean very little to me. I tend to judge the person by his or her qualities as an individual, rather than the pretentiousness of a designation.”

  “And who are you to judge?” There was a challenge to her tone.

  “No one and nothing, which makes me the ideal judge.”

  She actually laughed at that. She had a nice laugh.

  At which point I nearly pulled out my sword and ran myself through with it. The absolute last thing I needed was to become enamored with another princess.

  “Come then,” she said and, with an inclination of her head, walked in through the archway. I followed
her.

  The room we entered was as ornate as any of the others we’d been through, but there was a large throne positioned at the far end of it. The armrests of the throne were dragons carved from what appeared to be gold and silver intertwined. It was accessed by three small steps that led up to it, and seated upon the throne was an old man with a long, wispy, white beard.

  Slowly the man—whom I took to be the fabled Imperior—rose from his dragon throne. He was clothed in elaborate robes of red and purple, which seemed to envelop and even dwarf his body. He did not have enough hair on his head for a standard topknot, but instead his silvery hair hung short at the sides.

  “Down. Now,” Mitsu said softly, and I realized that proper respect was going to have to be shown, presuming I wanted to continue breathing. I noticed interwoven mats upon the floor directly in front of the throne, and immediately knelt on the closest one. Mitsu’s description of her father’s reactions to anything unknown weighed heavily upon me, but I had to hope that she wouldn’t have brought me here if she didn’t have some sort of plan to make certain I wasn’t going to be killed.

  Then I remembered how casual she had been over the demise of that one idiot guard, and had to face the possibility that my confidence might have been misplaced.

  The Imperior stood at the top of the stairs for what seemed an eternity. Then he spoke, in a voice that was thin and reedy, but filled with strength. “So.”

  “So,” said Mitsu.

  “You have returned.”

  She nodded.

  “You departed the Forbidding City without my permission,” and his voice became louder. There was no anger to it. It sounded almost singsong. “Against my wishes, in fact.”

  “Yes.” She nodded again.

  “If they are my wishes, they are the wishes of the gods. Do you defy the gods?”

  “It was not my desire to defy anyone,” Mitsu told him, “but simply to live my life. The life you would deny me.”

  “The life it is my right to deny you.” He sounded rather reasonable about it, even though his words were daunting. “Do you deny that?”

  Mitsu looked as if she was about to say something far more defiant, but then changed her mind. Instead she simply stared resolutely ahead.

  “You have acted in a manner that is disgraceful. That brings dishonor to your name, and to the dragon throne. Honor must be restored.”

  I felt a chill gripping my spine. I didn’t know where this was going, but I couldn’t say I liked the drift of it.

  The Imperior clapped his hands briskly three times. In a moment, three young women dressed in silk kimonos ran in quickly. They moved lightly, almost as if they were dancing upon their toes. With their hair done up identically and the same sort of makeup, they were almost impossible to distinguish one from the other.

  “Your handmaids. They have missed you,” said the Imperior.

  “Choose one.”

  “Choose…?”

  “One. To die in your stead and so preserve your honor.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was madness. Madness. Certainly she would say something to intercede, come up with some way to save the life of an innocent young woman who had done nothing to deserve…

  Mitsu pointed at the one in the middle. “That one,” she said carelessly, as if she were randomly picking out a frock to wear.

  But… surely the handmaiden would protest. Cry. Plead for her life. Put forward her sense of betrayal, or…

  The handmaiden promptly dropped to her knees, pulled out a small dagger, and plunged it into her perfect breast. “It is an honor,” she said, and then fell forward so softly I never even heard her hit the floor.

  At which point I knew I was definitely in an asylum that had been taken over by madmen.

  I had gone through my life encountering people who had no sense of honor, or else possessed honor in a way that was personally convenient. Here in Chinpan, honor had been taken to the opposite degree. It had been elevated to a point where it superseded compassion or wisdom or even basic humanity. Life itself had no meaning other than to lay it down at the most capricious of whims.

  The Imperior didn’t even glance at the handmaiden who had taken her own life on behalf of his daughter. Instead, to my gnawing horror, he turned his attention to me. “And this?”

  I waited for her to provide an explanation for me. To come up with some way of finessing a way around the obvious fact that I was like nothing her father had ever seen… which would inherently be fatal.

  Silence.

  “Well?” he prompted.

  More silence. I risked a glance in her direction, surreptitiously under one of my arms. Her lips were thinned, her face impassive.

  She wasn’t going to say a damned thing.

  My mouth was suddenly very dry as I realized I was about a sentence or two away from death. Fortunately enough, it was when I was at my most desperate that I was usually at my best.

  Keeping my eyes resolutely upon the floor, I ventured, “She does not answer, O Divine One, because she is aware that you already know the answer.”

  There was a pause during which—not for the first time—my life flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t say I was any prouder of it this go-around than before.

  “Indeed,” he said.

  “Well… of course. How could you not?” Gaining confidence, however misplaced it might have been, I said, “After all, you are the…”

  Blood from the fallen handmaiden was trickling toward me. I moved my feet carefully, trying not to be ill. “You are the chosen of the gods,” I continued, my voice not shaking only through great effort. “Naturally it would be unthinkable that you would not know who I am and from where I hail.”

  “Yes. It would be unthinkable.” He paused. “So tell me… what you think I know.”

  “I… think you know that my name is Po. That I am an ambassador from the state of Isteria, from the ruler known as Runcible.”

  “And you have, of course, brought me an offering from your king.”

  I froze for a moment, but then reached into the hidden compartment on my staff and extracted several Isterian coins. “These are exceptionally valuable. Very limited in number. He wanted you to have them.” Without looking up at him, I extended the coins. It was just a couple of sovs, nothing special. But they had the king’s features imprinted upon them.

  The Imperior took them and studied them thoughtfully. “Very generous,” he said. “And, of course… you are able to guess how your king knew of our land.”

  My brain froze. I cursed myself for a fool. That simple notion had not occurred to me. I didn’t have the slightest inkling how King Runcible—or, in point of fact, any monarch I might have served back in my homeland—could possibly have come to have knowledge of the land of Chinpan.

  But then I calmed as I realized I didn’t have to know. The whole point of this wasn’t to cover my knowledge; it was to cover the Imperior’s lack of same.

  “I could not guess that, Imperior,” I told him with a carefully manufactured hint of embarrassment, and a generous helping of subservience to boot. “I am but a humble messenger. When I am told to go, I go. It is not for me to question my ruler, or to ask how he came by certain knowledge. Certainly it is enough that he know, you know, and the gods know. What matter if a humble creature such as I am aware of the truth of the matter? As long as those whom I obey know the true nature of things, that is more than sufficient.”

  “As it should be,” said the Imperior judiciously. “Rise. Rise, messenger Po.”

  I was afraid to relax as I did so. For all I knew, I was being asked to stand up in order to make a simpler target for a large man with a large sword.

  “My understanding,” said the Imperior, his hands folded within the sleeves of his garment, “is that you were in the fish market with my daughter. That you were attacked.”

  “That is right, Imperior.”

  “By members of the Skang Kei family… they themselves allies of the Forked Tong
.”

  “That is correct again, Imperior,” I assured him. I sounded utterly subservient, and was perfectly comfortable doing so. He seemed to prefer it that way, and if it was going to enable me to keep myself alive, I was happy to do it.

  Slowly the Imperior shook his head, his long white beard waggling from side to side, making him look like a human-shaped goat. “It is obvious why they were there,” he said. “They sought to attack my daughter. To take her from me and make her a prisoner in hopes that I would bow to their will.”

  “Bastards,” I whispered in indignation.

  “Indeed,” agreed the Imperior, his whiskered eyebrows furrowing. “Indeed they are.”

  I wasn’t about to correct him, of course. The fact was that the Forked Tong or Skang Kei family didn’t have the slightest clue about Mitsu being there with me. Which is not to say they wouldn’t have acted upon it if they had known. But they hadn’t. In fact, when Mitsu ran off, they ignored her utterly and continued assailing me.

  Which meant that they wanted something from me, not her.

  Except I wasn’t about to tell the Imperior that. Because he was reputed to be all-knowing, and one simply didn’t correct all-knowing people, particularly when such corrections could cost you your life.

  “Something,” he continued, “must be done.”

  Speaking very delicately, for one never wanted to be too aggressive when dealing with a homicidal loon, I said, “Well… perhaps I was misinformed, your illustriousness, but I have heard tell that you have issued a reward for any who are able to help bring an end to the Forked Tong and their associates… including the Anaïs Ninjas. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. Yes, you have heard truly,” said the Imperior. He stepped down from his throne, and I was amused to see that he came up barely to shoulder level on me. Since I was hardly a giant of a man, it certainly cut down on his regalness, at least for me. He looked me up and down. “I am an excellent judge of character, Po. And I…” He glanced down. “What is this doing here?”