“Which way should we go?” Lee-Nin asked, pointing to the crossing of roads ahead of them.
“Straight,” Sha-Kutan said. “Past the town. There is a forest where we can hide.”
“No.”
Lee-Nin stopped. Sha-Kutan halted as well. Both of them looked at Sao-Tauna.
“That way.” Sao-Tauna spoke for the first time since that afternoon on the balcony. The words felt strange on her tongue — a tart fruit stinging her mouth. She pointed along the road leading toward the west and the bright new star in the cloud-crossed night sky and forced herself to speak again. “Like the dreams.”
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THE THRONE
TIN-TSU
“I BIND myself to you now and for always, Ni-Kam-Djen, Great Father, Guardian of the Innocent, Slayer of the Wicked, Ruler of All.”
Tin-Tsu still prayed, hours after his first recitation, standing at the edge of the balcony, rocking gently with the rhythm of his words, the passion of his intent filling his voice as he whispered the ancient petition to The True God. As he took a breath to fill his lungs, preparing for the next iteration of the prayer, he heard something behind him.
Turning, Tin-Tsu looked into the shadows of his bedchamber. Someone had entered his private rooms. A servant? No, he counted the footsteps of four. Four men in soft-heeled boots. Four men who stepped toward the canopied bed in the corner of the room, their sword blades glinting in the pale moonlight that cascaded through the balcony door. The men would find the bed empty any moment. Then they would turn their attention to searching out the room’s occupant. They would see Tin-Tsu, his sapphire-tinted silk robe shimmering in the luminescence of the moons, calling their sharp blades to the terrace.
He understood the uselessness of crying out for the sentinels. The men in his room were dressed as palace sentinels. A jump from the balcony would lead to death or a leg-snapping fall. Only one path could be forged through the forest of potential hazards cast before him.
Tin-Tsu raised his voice and called out, “Great Father, protect me all my day and through my night…”
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INTERLUDE
FOG-DAMP LEAVES bend branches down around two hooded figures standing beneath a tree in the palace gardens of the Tanshen capital city. A rakthor male and a human male stare at one another in the dim moonlight.
The rakthor extends a scaly hand holding a silk pouch, the jingle of coins ringing faintly in the darkened mist.
The human has proved unexpectedly useful, the rakthor thinks to himself.
Those snake eyes make me nervous, the human thinks. Hand me my money so I can be gone.
The rakthor drops the coin purse in the human’s hand.
Pale fingers close around silk and metal.
“If you come across such information in the future, do not hesitate to contact me.”
The human opens the coin purse. Smiles.
“As long as you pay this well, I won’t.”
The human nods to the rakthor and then turns and walks into the fog-shrouded garden paths.
The rakthor watches the human disappear into the vaporous night.
If what he has given me proves accurate, I will gladly pay for further confirmation.
The rakthor looks down at his hand, a slim stack of papers held between folded fingers.
Can it be confirmed? There is one of my people, formerly of my profession, who could help ascertain the truthfulness of the text. Ambassadors turned philosophers are rare. However, I have no knowledge of where she is and no means to contact her.
The rakthor slides the papers into a large inner pocket of his jacket.
There is another who can assist me. Of another people and another realm now residing in a different human dominion. Far to travel, but worth the distance if she can illuminate the authenticity of the text.
The rakthor turns and walks into the fog, swirls of fine water mist following in sinuous waves behind him.
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EPISODE TWO
THE THRONE
TONKEN-WU
WOODEN HEELS clacked against marble, ringing and echoing along the stone halls, tapping out a constant cadence, keeping time with a peculiar pulse heard only in the warden’s head — his own slow, strong heartbeat.
Sub-commander Tonken-Wu turned the corner of the palace hall and continued his determined, patient, solitary march. The floors he stalked did not sit empty, even at the late mid-moons hour. Servants sporadically ran along the hall, dashing from one room to another, working through the evening hours to prepare the palace for the coronation of the new zhan. Soldiers of the dominion and palace wardens walked quickly in single or, sometimes, double hands, going about their own preparations for the crowning of the newly returned high tahn. Occasionally, women slipped from sleeping chambers and hurried down the hall to the stairs leading to the lower levels. Tonken-Wu ignored them, pretending they did not exist, as though they were ghosts briefly wandering among the living. Better to pretend they were phantasms of the night rather than acknowledge that so many disreputable women walked the palace halls after dark indulging the weaknesses of so many of the lesser tahns, councilmembers, and statesmen come from around the dominion to witness the raising of the new zhan to the ascendancy.
Tonken-Wu turned another corner and frowned. A lone guard stood outside the high tahn’s bedchambers. He had specifically given instructions that two sentinels should be with the high tahn at all times. He clenched his fists in anger at the failure of the sentinels. Their incompetence reflected his deficiency in supervision. A commander whose men did not follow orders had only himself to blame. Either he had not been clear in his instructions, or worse, he had failed in his duty by allowing derelict men to stand in the roster. He did not doubt that his commands had been coherent. At least one sentinel would be demoted to guardian before morning.
Tonken-Wu quickened his pace as he drew near the door of the tahn’s chamber, his footsteps turning the eyes of the man he approached.
“Where is your fellow sentinel?” Tonken-Wu asked as he stopped.
The sentinel, an older man than he expected, looked to him with sullen eyes.
“He fell ill,” the sentinel mumbled.
“Is he sending a replacement?” Tonken-Wu did not recognize the man, but there had been an influx of guards from other provinces in the last weeks leading up to the coronation. Possibly, he had flipped a name and put a less experienced man on the tahn’s watch. Another mistake for which he bore responsibility.
“Yes,” the sentinel said, looking both ways along the hall.
Tonken-Wu ground his teeth. Only one option presented itself, even if it left him standing beneath his station.
“I will stand guard with you until the replacement arrives.” Tonken-Wu tugged the hem of his warden’s jacket to straighten the lines of the cloth across his shoulders. A warden needed to present the best face of the palace when on duty.
“That is unnecessary,” the sentinel said between thin lips.
“It is prescribed by regulation.” Tonken-Wu met the new sentinel’s blank stare. “Perhaps you should spend more time reviewing the codex of palace protocol.”
An unnamable thrill charged the air, not unlike the unseen vibrations that accompanied the buildup before a thunderstorm. A man of lesser training and skill might have missed it, might not have noticed the shift in the sentinel’s weight, the sudden angle of the man’s shoulders, the lean of his torso, the fire in his eyes.
Tonken-Wu blocked the man’s knife blade by slamming his own curved wrist into the oncoming forearm, using his free hand to strike the man in the throat with bent knuckles. The man tried to stab again, but Tonken-Wu countered, using the man�
��s energy to twist his wrist and dislodge the blade, clasping the hilt and thrusting it into the man’s neck under his chin. Eyes wide in shock, the man slid down along the wall, his head bouncing on the marble floor, blood gurgling from his lips as he died.
Tonken-Wu pulled his sword free from the scabbard at his waist, kicked open the door, and stepped inside the high tahn’s bedchamber. His eyes adjusted quickly to the moonlit room. Four men in sentinel uniforms turned as he entered, blades drawn. The high tahn stood in the doorway to the balcony, loudly intoning something Tonken-Wu recognized as a prayer but had no time to identify. One of the armed men pivoted and charged him while the other three rushed the defenseless tahn in his silken robes.
As Tonken-Wu closed in to engage the murderous impostor sentinel, he realized he had forgotten the most essential element of protocol for such an event — he had not called out to raise the alarm.
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THE THRONE
UNKNOWN PERSON
THE SHADOWS of the room hid the man’s face as he stepped near the window, moonlight unveiling his form but not his features. The window sat exactly opposite the high tahn’s bedchamber across the palace garden courtyard. The man raised the tube of a near-glass to his right eye and adjusted the barrel to bring the terrace into focus.
The high tahn stood on the balcony, head bowed, lips moving as though speaking to another. Was someone else in the room? Had the high tahn invited one of the comfort-women into his bed? That seemed unlikely. The high tahn presented nothing but the face of piety. Unless that face concealed another behind it. No, the high tahn spoke to himself. No. He prayed. Yes. That made sense. And it would be appropriate.
The high tahn turned, seeming to hear something from within his chambers. The man adjusted the near-glass, his hands trembling slightly as he took a breath and straightened himself. Fools. Could they not move silently? He glimpsed the glint of steel reflecting in the moonlight through the circular aperture of the device in his hands. Four blades pointed at the balcony.
The high tahn stepped forward to stand in the doorway, blocking the man’s view. That was odd. The man had expected the high tahn to cower on the balcony. Possibly to call out for help. One of the blades broke off from the others, and the tahn stepped through the doorway, disappearing into the darkness within the chamber.
Why would the high tahn step into the room? Why could only three blades be seen? The man brought his other hand up to steady the near-glass as he watched the glinting hints of those three blades dancing in the shadows of the high tahn’s room. It would not take long. Seconds.
The moments dragged on. Darkness swallowed the blades as the men within moved deeper into the confines of the bedchamber. They returned shortly. The three blades continued to move. Then, an unexpected motion. A body fell near the threshold of the doorway. Not the high tahn’s. The man at the window recognized the face on the dead body. He had hired the now-dead man. More seconds passed. Two blades flashed in the dim light. Then one.
The man held his breath, leaning against the side of the window to better hold the near-glass in place.
A man dressed in the uniform of the palace wardens stepped into the doorframe, a bloodied sword in his hands. The man at the window knew the warden. Sub-commander Tonken-Wu of the palace guards. The bloodstained warden reached out and pulled the heavy curtains closed, ending the view of the events across the gardens.
Did the high tahn still live?
The presence of the palace warden implied as much.
The man stepped back from the window and collapsed the near-glass, gripping it tightly in his hands. The plan had failed. Five men to kill a high tahn and all were dead, or if not, he would make certain they were before they could be questioned by the palace wardens. The man sighed, an old Daeshen proverb coming to mind.
The corpses of catastrophe are strewed along the path to victory.
It did not matter how many corpses he must leave behind; he would kill the high tahn. The future of the Daeshen Dominion depended upon it.
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THE THRONE
KAO-RHEE
SILK SLIPPERS slammed against marble as they ran, followed by two pairs of leather boots, hard heels cracking against mottled stone. Kao-Rhee, prime councilor to the Daeshen ascendancy, ran along the hall toward the high tahn’s bedchamber, two young guardians close behind him.
Kao-Rhee brushed a hand through his thinning and disheveled hair. The guardians trailing him had woken him from sleep moments before, each babbling over the other about an attempted murder of the high tahn, of pools of blood, and night-slayers dressed as sentinels. He had asked if the tahn lived, and they had only nodded.
Kao-Rhee would have rushed after them in his nightclothes had not his ever-thoughtful wife handed him a robe. He tightened the silken belt around his waist as he approached the four sentinels standing watch outside the high tahn’s bedchamber. Where had these men been when needed? How had night-slayers been able to enter the high tahn’s chambers? How had the palace guard not prevented this? He would determine the answers to his questions and hold those responsible to account.
He saw a body near the door to the high tahn’s room, a puddle of blood from the wound in the dead man’s throat staining the marble floor. The hilt of a dagger still protruded from the man’s neck. Kao-Rhee grimaced and braced for what he expected to see beyond the threshold.
The sentinels standing guard parted and opened the door to the bedchamber as he approached. A bright haze of light assaulted his vision and arrested his motion. The infrequent glow of the lanterns lining the palace halls had not prepared his eyes for the blazing light of the seven oil lamps lit around the sleeping chamber’s perimeter. A wall of odor stabbed at his nostrils, and he raised his palm to cover his nose against the scent of blood and urine and feces. In all, four dead bodies littered the floor of the room, their bowels released with the untethering of their inner spark. Liquid continents of red-black blood congealed along the floor around the bodies, a strange map of death, inked in an intermittent hand.
Four living men occupied the room among the dead. The high tahn, Tin-Tsu, sat at the edge of his canopied bed. Blood soaked his gown where he held his abdomen. Cuts marked his forearms and hands. He looked weary, but very much alive. The tall and always worried-looking High Commander Nedag-Tong of the palace guards stood beside the bed. His sub-commander, Tonken-Wu, stood a respectful distance behind him. Blood caked the sub-commander’s uniform, a still oozing cut slicing down his right cheek. To the other side of the bed stood Tigan Rhog-Kan, his arms crossed over his bearlike chest.
“Are you wounded, my tahn?” Kao-Rhee bent briefly at the waist, executing the customary bow as he spoke.
“A cut in my side, some scratches to my arms. Nothing serious.” The high tahn gave a wan smile.
“Has the palace physician been sent for?” Kao-Rhee turned to the high commander.
“Yes,” the high commander replied. “A runner has been dispatched.”
“I inspected the wounds myself,” Tigan Rhog-Kan added. “The high tahn is in no danger.”
“What happened here?” Kao-Rhee cautiously stepped around a puddle of blood, directing his query to the warden commander.
“I was just explaining to the tigan what seems to have transpired.” High Commander Nedag-Tong clasped his hands behind his back.
Kao-Rhee noted the phrasing of the response. Nedag-Tong always couched his replies in ambiguity.
“Sub-commander Tonken-Wu saved my life.” high Tahn Tin-Tsu nodded toward the sub-commander.
Kao-Rhee examined the warden. The youngest ever promoted to sub-commander, if he remembered correctly. Efficient, if somewhat unimaginative. Kao-Rhee appraised the man as honest, possibly too much so.
“What happened?”
Sub-commander Tonken-Wu co
ughed quickly into his fist before speaking. He appeared nervous, likely at the prospect of explaining himself before his commander, the prime councilor, the tigan, and the high tahn.
“I was walking the halls, double-checking the duty postings, when I noticed only one sentinel outside the high tahn’s rooms. I questioned the man, and he attacked me. After killing him, I entered the bedchamber to find four more men with swords drawn.”
“I had been praying to Ni-Kam-Djen for protection, and the God of All sent me Sub-commander Tonken-Wu.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu reached out a hand to steady himself on the bedpost as he stood. The other men in the room reflexively bowed their heads.
“He bravely placed himself between me and the men come to murder me and killed them all.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu smiled approvingly at Tonken-Wu. “He is a most impressive swordsman.”
“Luck.” The sub-commander bowed his head again.
Kao-Rhee surveyed the room once more. Four dead night-slayers, all armed, and one more dead outside the door. Sub-commander Tonken-Wu had a reputation as an excellent swordsman, and this would extend it to legend. Were anyone to ever hear of it.
“The events of this night must remain with those of us in this room.” Kao-Rhee turned from the sub-commander to the high tahn. “Until we can uncover what vile forces put these murderous men in your chambers, my tahn, we must hold all knowledge of it tightly. Our adversaries will take advantage even from the merest hint of a near successful regicide on the eve of your coronation.”
“The work of the heretic Tanshen usurper, no doubt.” Tigan Rhog-Kan scowled. “We should prepare a retaliation for the inevitable verdict against his treachery.”
The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1) Page 10