Crown of the Starry Sky: Book 11 of Painting the Mists

by Patrick Laplante

  It was an impressive sight, even to one such as he. Xing Men, a lowly captain of the Kingfisher Guard’s Crimson Division, sat comfortably in a chair. He was leaning back in the chair with his feet atop a large wooden desk, knowing full well that at any moment, he could lose his balance and fall backward onto the floor.

  On the desk sat an orb, a small device that was connected to a wire he’d snuck onto his newest minion. It could render everything within the nearest fifty feet of him in detail. It could also transmit to him every word uttered, including mental messages and any messages he received on his communication device. Such measures were, of course, unfair. He had access to far more wealth than the boy could imagine. But… such was life.

  It was a boring meeting. A few reports were received. There weren’t many arguments, and a few orders were given. Yet the moment this informal meeting ended, pieces began to move. Something began to change. It was intangible to all but those who could see the fates and how they played.

  At first, it took the form of a light wind. A small tingling in the back of his mind. It was nothing that could be seen with the naked eye, yet every creature in existence reacted to it. Slowly but surely, a massive net that only the most skilled individuals in the city could see began to move. It creaked like a gear that, though rusty and grimy, was still part of a fully functional piece of machinery.

  Fate was a funny thing. It didn’t move for many people, and never any one thing. Things were inanimate and couldn’t move the web of fate. It had been a long time since their last intervention in the Burning Lake Prefecture, the most recent of which had led to a shift in leadership and the near destruction of a demon lineage.

  This time, one conversation took place, and ten people moved. The web moved with them. It protested, for until this moment, everyone had been reacting. Everyone had been gathering, crafting, plotting, and scheming according to their habits. These things were well and good. It was stupid to move without a plan. But no plan could substitute for what truly mattered: action.

  A small group of silver-ranked Kingfisher Guardsmen moved, and the movement in the pattern was unmistakable. Such movements wouldn’t have been possible without one—no, two—of the members on the team. Two tugs, and an entire tangle moved. A tangle that was decades in the making.

  “About time,” Captain Xing muttered. “How many do you think will die this time?” He looked over to a man who was sitting at a much smaller table, glaring at him.

  “Normally, I’d make a guess,” the man said. “But I don’t appreciate you loitering around my office with your dirty feet on my desk.

  “Relax, old man,” Captain Xing said. “I won’t be here for long.”

  “If you didn’t outrank me, I’d spank you like a bronze rank and throw you straight out the window,” the older man, the guard captain of the Burning Lake Guard Station, said. “I came here for a peaceful retirement, not to hold back prefecture lords and protect a bunch of children.”

  Captain Xing shrugged. “It is what it is.” He then took his feet off the desk and walked over to the man’s smaller one. He looked at the sheet of paper the man had been absently flicking. “What’s this?”

  “Damage control,” the guard captain said.

  “Sounds reasonable,” Captain Xing said. “I’d like you to cancel it.”

  “What?” the captain said. “But you said—”

  “Forget what I said,” Captain Xing said. “I want to see what happens. What’s the point in using karmic anomalies if they can’t get into trouble?”

  “He could die,” the guard captain warned.

  “You’d be surprised,” the younger man said. “Leave it be, and we’ll see what happens. He’s gotten complacent. He needs to learn to watch his back.”

  “He could die,” the guard captain repeated.

  “I don’t care,” Captain Xing said coldly. “I’m here to change fate itself. I’m not here to babysit.”

  The guard captain nodded slowly. He crumpled the order into a ball and threw it up in the air. It burnt to ashes within seconds of leaving his hands. “There. Happy?”

  “Very,” said Captain Xing. He walked back to his desk and put his feet up. He stared at the sphere, which had gone blank. Apparently, the boy had found his wire again. Damn it. He’d have to do a better job placing it next time. Oh well.

  “Good luck, kid. I hope you make it.” He hated this part of his job, but that was why he was here. He needed to decide what was straight-up overwhelming for the boy and what was inside the realm of possibility. The threshold was much higher than the other watch captain in the room could even imagine.

  Captain Xing sat back and closed his eyes. He opened his mind’s eye and took in the karmic net that spanned the entire prefecture. Then, all at once, it began to shift. A total of four karmic anomalies were now in play, pulling at the massive tapestry.

  Chapter 23: Confrontation

  Noisy shopkeepers and rowdy crowds greeted Cha Ming in the Copper Disc District. He walked through the crowded streets past tiny stalls and blankets on the road holding goods.

  “Fresh fish!” a man yelled.

  “The freshest leafy greens in the city!” another woman screamed, but her voice was drowned out by haggling customers and the crushing weight of pedestrians.

  Despite the shorter buildings, there seemed to be more people in this rundown part of the city. Perhaps it was due to the density of mortals or the smaller apartments. By Cha Ming’s estimation, it was due to the lack of flight-capable transportation, meaning that everything either went by road or the generous sidewalks in this neighborhood.

  Cha Ming traveled on foot here. He wore simple clothing and kept his staff stowed. This was not a place to show off one’s wealth. Nearby, a beggar rested against a wall. He was balding, one armed, and thinner than a growing teenager. In his eyes, Cha Ming saw only emptiness. The man knew that whatever he got, most of it would be taken away.

  Not much farther, a thick-armed thug kept an eye on a gang of street urchins. Cha Ming caught one of them out of the corner of his eye. The boy, clearly underfed, used practiced fingers to relieve an unsuspecting man of his belt pouch. He’d have gotten away with it if not for the shopkeeper’s assistant, who cracked him upside the head with a small club. Concussed, the youngster scampered off to lick his wounds. The one who’d beaten him didn’t give chase—he knew better than to antagonize the boy’s supporters.

  This was a place where the poor congregated. It was desperate. Aggressive. Chaotic. Yet beneath the surface lay something else. There was grit here. A willingness to fight on, despite the odds. A hardiness one might find in only the most unfortunate of farmers. A tiny spark of hope where all other light had faded.

  Through several walls, Cha Ming saw a mother fretting over her ungrateful children. They didn’t want to go to school. They wanted to stay home and play in the streets. She choked back tears at their insults as she did her best to provide them a better future.

  Three doors down, another family had been hard at work since dawn. They were street vendors—the type that sold small trinkets on large blankets. They had a plan, hand-carved figurines, and a whole day ahead of them. Success would mean food and maybe a chip or two for their life savings. Would it be enough to survive the inevitable waves that disrupted their lives on a daily basis? Who knew?

  “Watch it,” a man said as he bumped into Cha Ming. He was a large man with bullish shoulders twice as wide as his own. The man was a demon. There were many of those around here. While they only occupied a small percentage of the people in the city, here, they were just as common as anyone else. They coexisted with the poor and the criminals under the watchful yet corrupt eyes of the city watch.

  Remind me not to pick a fight around here, Cha Ming sent to Sun Wukong.

  Even brave men fear an underhanded death, Sun Wukong agreed.

  As for you, he said to the Clockwork Ancestor, you’d better not pull anything funny. And if she jumps me, I won’t spare her again.
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  You’ll do as instructed, human, the Clockwork Ancestor said haughtily. You owe me.

  Cha Ming sighed. There were many possible outcomes to this meeting, but fighting was one of the likeliest. He just hoped he wasn’t walking into a trap.

  He received more than a few suspicious looks as he headed down a back alley. It was mostly demons who lived on this street. Poverty might have brought everyone together in the same district, but a rift still existed between species.

  As he made his way through the sorry excuse for a street, he passed piles of refuse. An old man with golden avian eyes sat on a broken armchair near bags of uncollected trash. He stared at Cha Ming like a predator would prey. A group of demon children hissed and threw stones at him before running away.

  “Nothing but the finest,” Cha Ming muttered, arriving at a broken-down door. He pried it open and entered a poorly maintained apartment building. It was an old-fashioned place made of cracked and faded concrete. The building was old, but Cha Ming realized it hadn’t always been a place for dregs and miscreants. Remnants of scratched-off wallpaper hinted at the traditional patterns that had once graced a wonderful place to live. A filthy rag of a carpet clung tentatively to the floor, though it was clear that it, like the wallpaper, had once been beautiful and expensive. It was no wonder the slum lord who owned this place had hesitated to peel it away.

  Cha Ming reviewed Shneraz’s instructions before making his way to the fifth floor. He stopped at the first door from the stairwell. The best door to make a quick exit. Then, taking a deep breath, he knocked. A half minute passed before a bolt slid open and the door opened a crack, revealing a woman with dark eyes, ashen hair, and pale skin.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I believe we’ve met,” Cha Ming said. “Might you be the Pale Lady?” She snorted and shut the door in his face. “I’d prefer if we could speak in a friendly way,” Cha Ming continued. “I’d hate to force my way in. Not so much for your sake, but for the sake of the other tenants.” He heard her pause, sigh, then open the door again.

  “You’re threatening to destroy my building?” the woman asked flatly.

  “I could probably get away with it,” Cha Ming said. “Then you’d need to find a new place to rent. It would be a pain. For the both of us.”

  “Have it your way,” the woman said. She walked away from the door, letting Cha Ming see himself in.

  As he closed the door behind him, he noticed it was a large apartment and wondered how she might be able afford the place—that is, until he saw its state of disrepair and recalled their general location. The walls were cracked and peeling. The flooring was scratched and even warped in some places. There were a few cheap artifacts in the room, but most were broken, cracked, or corroded. Not a single one of them functioned.

  “Sit anywhere you like,” the woman said. “I won’t be getting you anything.”

  The mighty Pale Lady wasn’t at all what Cha Ming had expected. Her clothes were worn, and she looked thin and sickly. Then again, Silver Fish had reported she wasn’t well. She was skilled yet underpowered for a Golden Dragon. Indeed, whatever scales she sported were pale and white with the barest hint of gold. Her lips were cracked and broken.

  “You’re here on Guard business,” she said, coldly eyeing the pin on his robes as she leaned against a wall with crossed arms. “Crimson badge. Never seen one of those. They hard to get?”

  “I’ve been told they’re difficult to come by,” Cha Ming said.

  “Go on, then,” she said. “Say your thing and get the hell out of my apartment.”

  Cha Ming looked around. “I would have thought you’d be better off, given all the work you’ve been doing.”

  “It’s a hard world out there,” she said. “I manage. Even without the adventurer’s guild, the mercenary guild, and the Kingfisher Guard.” Her situation was uncommon. She’d once belonged to all three of these organizations. She’d somehow gotten banned, despite the lack of bounties or explanations from any of them. “Are you here to look around, or are you going to ask me questions? I have better things to do than waste time entertaining a stuck-up brat.”

  “Like attacking travelers on the road and abducting innocent demons?” Cha Ming asked.

  “It’s a thankless job I do, but I wouldn’t expect a human to understand,” she said. “Even one marked by a clan.”

  “I’ve heard stories about you,” Cha Ming said.

  “None of which I’ll discuss,” she said. “Ask your questions. Or we could fight, though in all honesty, this building is shoddy, and we’d probably bring it down. Then again, the city government would probably thank you for it.”

  “Why did you attack the caravan?” Cha Ming asked.

  She shrugged. “It was a job. Nothing illegal, and I’m sure you know that.”

  He did, and it frustrated him.

  “Who hired you?” Cha Ming asked.

  She laughed. “I’m not sure what you expected to gain by asking that question, but my reputation precedes me. I don’t rat on employers. I’d be out of work if I did.”

  “I’m sure it has nothing to do with a surprise they left on you in case you did talk,” Cha Ming said. “The ones we captured—they burst into flame, you know.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not standard practice in the industry, but some employers require seals. You can only trust hired help so far, don’t you agree?”

  “And you’re not going too far by talking about this?” Cha Ming asked.

  “It’s a well-known thing,” she said, shrugging. “You could have found that out by asking around outside for an hour. I’d rather save you the time and get you out of both our scales an hour sooner. Quite nice of me, I’d say.”

  “I’ve noticed there’s a lot of organized crime around here,” Cha Ming said. “But I heard you’re an independent. A friend of mine happens to have had many encounters with you.”

  “Ah, yes. The Black Fish,” she said. “A man after my own heart. Securing precious slaves for the humans to bring back to their cities. What did he tell you?”

  “That he’s seen you on many missions. That you seem specialize in ‘recovery’ missions,” Cha Ming said. “You kidnap demons. Especially children.”

  She laughed. “Yes, they would say that, wouldn’t they? The adventurers. The mercenaries. The upper strata of society that feasts while everything falls apart around them. My clan was the same.”

  “So you’re saying I’m the bad one?” Cha Ming asked.

  “Good. Bad. What does it matter?” the woman said. “Everyone picks their side and calls their side right and the other one wrong. They scream bloody murder while their own hands are stained with blood. All for profit. Reputation. Power.” She glanced at her dump of an apartment. “Tell me. Do I look rich to you?”

  “You don’t,” Cha Ming said. “That’s why I’m confused. Can you blame me for asking you questions, for wanting to know why you do this?”

  “I can’t, just as you can’t blame me for wanting you gone,” she said. “But I suppose we can’t all have what we want.” She seemed convinced. She believed she was doing nothing wrong, which was a discouraging thought given what Cha Ming knew of her exploits. Based on what Silver Fish had dug up, she’d killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds of children. But then again, maybe… He frowned as he inspected her karmic aura. Mostly neutral instead of borderline devilish as he’d expected. Something wasn’t quite right with this situation.

  As for the woman herself, she was a mystery. She was a prideful woman and assumed a confident posture, despite being surrounded by ruin and filth. Yet her health was lacking, and her face was gaunt and pale. Her arms with thin and sickly. Mere streaks of black were the only remnants of color in her ashen hair.

  There was hatred in her eyes. Yes. Burning hatred. But she also wasn’t evil. She had very little sin about her despite her attested acts. Her aura should be bordering on ochre, but her karma disagreed. If anything, her karmic balance might even be sl
ightly positive.

  “You look underfed,” Cha Ming said, changing topics. “Or are you ill?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Are you truly ignorant, or are you just trying to be offensive? Did you not speak to Shneraz about me? Isn’t that how you found me?” He frowned, and she laughed again. “Ah. My righteous clan. My wonderfully prideful clan. They speak some truths, yet they hide others. They told you I was an exile. They told you of the harm I’d done. Yet they did not tell you the root of the problem and hoarded their information.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cha Ming said.

  “And I don’t care if you do,” she said. “You’re here. In my apartment. I’ve done nothing illegal. Nothing wrong. I’m one of the casualties of this rotten city, a victim of the clans that claim to protect it, yet here you stand, accusing me like I’m some kind of monster.”

  “I came here to find out what’s going on,” Cha Ming said. “I’d love nothing more than to know this truth you speak of, but you refuse to give me anything more than vague hints.”

  “What did you expect?” she said. “You came here and asked silly and ignorant questions. You came here and insulted me. You pried into my health and stuck your nose in all the wrong places. You forget that you’re in my home. Would you not be obtuse if someone entered your personal space and threw accusations in your face?”

  They were the words of one wronged by the world. He’d imagined her attacking him, ridiculing him, or misleading him. He hadn’t expected an airing of vague grievances. She was a criminal, was she not? Yet the longer he stayed, the less sure he was. It worried him, but at the same time, it reassured him.

  Cha Ming wouldn’t get anywhere by talking to her. Not here. Perhaps not ever. He needed to change tack. He nodded, then to her surprise, stood up and headed for the door. He tossed something at her on his way out. She caught the glowing blue object and looked at it curiously.

  “You have quite the history,” Cha Ming explained. “Much of it unofficial. You hide yourself well. I had the Black Fish compile information about your encounters, including the ones he retreated from. The ones you got to first. I admit that the results of my investigation were disturbing, to say the least.”