by Edward Nile
Aldren took the folded, plastic-covered paper she'd pushed on him, equal parts amused and disappointed. Unfolding the paper, he found it was a map of Xang, the same as the one he had.
Except it wasn't. "Huh," Aldren intoned, poring over the unfamiliar lines representing roads he'd never seen or heard of.
There were entire routes from the port to the mountains he was positive weren't on his own map.
"Yours is different, isn't it," Mayla stated.
Aldren thought carefully about his answer. Maps changed, depending on what areas were considered a priority or not. It wasn't as if every Arkenian map displayed all country roads and footpaths equally.
He shrugged. "Looks the same to me."
"You're a decent liar." Mayla tossed another map at him. "But you're out of your league."
Aldren knew this one was his even before he got a look at his pencil marks. "We're going to have to have a talk about respecting a man's privacy," he said with a heave.
"You just saw me topless, I think we’ll this even. So, what do you think?"
“I think with hips like those I could get you some dancing gigs back home.”
Mayla gave him a flat look.
“Fine. What I think is that I got an outdated map,” Aldren said. “Or that these roads were too insignificant too bother with. I mean, Xang's not a big country, but it's still a country. There's no way we'd be able to see all of it in just a few weeks."
"True," Mayla conceded. "Still, I'd be asking why we're on this route, one the man you're replacing has already gone most of the way over, instead of taking the paths he skipped."
"Because those paths don't have anything important? Because the roads need maintenance? Take your pick, there are a thousand possible reasons."
Mayla sniffed. "Grab some of that firewood." She nodded to a pile leaned against the wall to Aldren's right.
With the crackle of a small fire competing with the drumming rain, they sat in the warm circle of the flame’s glow. Mayla passed Aldren a strip of dried meat, tearing into another for herself. While she chewed, she laid both maps side by side on the dirt floor.
"This is the route the last auditor took." She traced a line on Aldren's map. "More or less the same way we're going, with a few minor deviations. Following me so far?"
"Use small words, teach, I bumped my head on the swing set."
She rolled her eyes. "He got 'sick' here," she said, making air quotes with one hand. "Just a few miles away from the Tonkar mountain range. They were swinging around from the western coastline when the trip had to be cut short so the poor bastard could be sailed home for treatment."
"Okay…" Aldren was waiting for Mayla to get to her point. "This supposed to mean anything?"
"You're right," she said. "There is a whole country to explore here. Searching every square mile for weapons manufacturing was never in the cards... The best route was chosen, that would cross off the most obvious suspects from Arkenia's list of possible build sites. If we're going to make a judgment on what the Dao's administration is or isn't doing, we need to be creative. And, as luck would have it, your predecessor's illness gives us the perfect opportunity to cross-reference our results."
She tapped her finger against several forks in the printed roads to the north. "Depending on what deviations we take, we could end up along the outer edge of Tonkar or cutting straight through the mountains along a narrow road. Hardly an ideal path to transport large military machinery through. And here it is, marked bold on your map. But here." Mayla pointed to a particular bend in the road on her map, then to the corresponding area on Aldren's. "See?" she said. "The most likely supply road, and it's barely a smudge. Funny, isn't it?"
Aldren scratched an itch on his neck. "What's funny is how serious you are about this," he said. "I've seen some wild conjecture in my time, but your conspiracy has to be the most half-baked."
"Really." Mayla drew out the word. "And how do you figure that?"
"There's no law saying I have to stick to the marked roads," Aldren replied. "My orders and the letters written on my behalf give me free reign to go where I want. So, just to satisfy your suspicious little mind, I'm taking us along the shore. What's on the other side of the mountains, anyway?"
"A few fishing villages," said Mayla. "Last I heard, at least."
"Exciting stuff, no wonder they're trying to keep us away." The rain was dying down outside. Aldren scooped his shirt from where he'd laid it on a log to dry. "Can't wait to see it. I'm going to get some sleep now."
"Sargent." Mayla stood.
"Let's quit with the title. You know my name."
"Alright, Aldren. I know you want all this to be over with. Mutton and the president want the same. But you have to try looking past what it is you want, what it is you hope for."
"Yeah? Do the same, and you'll have a deal. Way I see it, the difference between you and I is you have every reason to want the war to go on. I've got no doubt you'll pounce on any excuse to tell Mutton things aren't on the level, to try to pull us back into a fight with your country's enemy. But frankly, toots, I don't give a flying fuck about Quar and I don't care about you. I just want to go home."
"Even if that home is a Lytan colony, in all but name? Disarmed, cowed, weak?"
"Barking up the wrong bush if you're after a patriot. Whatever rag on a stick waves around doesn't matter to people like me. If there's one good thing about living on the bottom, it's that it's consistent." Aldren lifted the beam from its brackets and pushed his way out into the rain. When he turned to close the barn door, Mayla was already back to poring over the maps, her still damp hair highlighted in the firelight.
What a shame, Aldren thought, slamming the door shut. He always managed to meet the crazy ones.
*
White-gloved servants opened Samuel's car door when he pulled up to the Clemens villa. The sun shone over wide fields, untouched by snow so far south, yet still a long way from harvest. A few field hands worked at the dirt with rakes and picks.
A fresh breeze blew through, rustling Samuel's mustache as he ascended the steps to the main house, a massive, multi-winged alabaster mansion.
Mr. and Mrs. Clemens greeted him at the door, all smiles.
"Senator, an honor and a delight to receive you." Mr. Clemens shook Samuel's hand. "My wife, Natalie." He gestured to the well-attired madame next to him.
Samuel kissed her hand. "The honor is all mine. If I have it right, you two have been campaigning on my behalf around these parts."
"The least we can do for the man who ended the war. Frightful business that, for all of us."
"Yes, frightful. Your daughter has a story or two herself about those days, am I correct?"
Husband and wife shared a nervous glance. "Yes..." Mrs. Clemens said. "Though we'd all just as soon forget about that."
"Understandable," Samuel replied with a nod. "But before things can be truly put behind us, I'll need to speak with her. To put it bluntly, I need your daughter's help."
"Help? Whatever with?"
"Catching a fugitive."
Annabelle Clemens fidgeted in her armchair across from Samuel.
Technically, her name was still Anabelle Gunther, until the paperwork went through proving her to have been falsely married to a dead man.
The young woman reached for her tea, paused, then returned her hands to her lap, eyes darting anxiously as she bit her lip.
"There's no need to be nervous, Annabelle,” Samuel said. "You're not in any trouble."
She turned her lip in a listless smile. "That's hard to believe."
"You're young. Young people make mistakes, passions flare. It's not you I'm concerned about, but who I hope you'll help me find."
"I already told those soldiers where Ben... where James went."
"Gorrad, right?" Samuel consulted a small map he'd placed on the polished coffee table. "Long way for him to go, and hard to imagine what he'd have done once he got there. The city's been buttoned up tight since the war.
Lots of military presence, lots of eyes watching for an Industrialist resurgence. You see, Annabelle, if I were James Edstein, and wanted to escape when discovered, one of the large cities would be the last place I'd want to be."
Annabelle picked up her tea and blew away some steam before taking a tentative sip. "Well, you aren't him," she said.
"Your coffee, Mister Mutton," a servant placed a cup of steaming liquid before Samuel and bowed his way out.
Samuel didn't take his eyes off the girl. "You're right, I'm not James Edstein," he said. "But I understand men like him, albeit on the opposite ideological side." He stirred some cream into his coffee and drank before continuing. It was, as he expected, excellent. "We had a chance to talk, him and I, on many occasions while he was my… well, while he was a guest at the Senate House in Edinville. All the while, I kept remarking how the boy reminded me of myself at his age and, more to the point, of his father. He'd have fit right in with us during the Revolution.
"But alas, that war is over. All our wars are over. It's a fact old soldiers like me have to make peace with. Problems arise, Annabelle, when men don't understand that fact, and try to run away from the consequences of their actions. Edstein killed men on the field who thought they were protected under the War Codes."
"Protected?" Annabelle looked up then, tilting her head. "Did those codes say you couldn’t kill your enemies in battle?"
"No. They said a soldier had a right to expect fair combat. A right your lover denied many a good man. He will be discovered again, Annabelle. You can only make things worse for him by letting this drag on. If more young soldiers die because James Edstein was too stubborn to admit defeat, and you could have done something to stop it and save his life, will you be able to live with yourself? You, who harbored him here under your parents' noses and helped him evade justice to begin with?"
Annabelle drew herself up in her seat and met Samuel's gaze directly for the first time. "That depends on how I'd define 'justice,' Senator Mutton."
She reminded Samuel of Leanne, just then. All cool defiance. The girl was a sheltered little dove, but that didn't make her as weak-willed as Samuel had first assumed. Some of the Ironshield's mettle had rubbed off on this one.
"Senator!"
Samuel stopped on his way out the door. Mrs. Clemens trotted over.
"My daughter can be as stubborn as a mule," she said. "I blame my husband, honestly. But here, I hope this helps." She handed Samuel a letter.
He cocked an eyebrow. "What's this?"
"Caught 'Belle trying to have that delivered. Silly girl still thinks she's in love." Mrs. Clemens shook her head. "Damn scoundrel. In our own barn, with our little angel." Her fists clenched. "Do what you must to the boy. The sooner, the better."
Samuel looked at the address on the envelope. Helmsburg, a backwater manufacturing town that had served as a minor Northern outpost during the war.
"Justice will find him, Mrs. Clemens," he assured the woman. "You can count on that."
Chapter 25
“Well, if they’re thinking of shooting us with rice, you might be on to something after all,” Aldren remarked as the motorcar rolled past yet another rice field where men and women in rolled-up pants and conical straw hats bent down to harvest.
“In ancient times, warriors would wait under the paddies, breathing through bamboo reeds,” Mayla said. “Don’t be so quick to judge things by sight.”
“Your fear mongering knows no limits, does it?” Genlu snapped from the driver’s seat. “Now even our farmers are suspect! Do you have a personal grudge against them, too?”
Mayla didn’t answer him, instead catching Aldren’s eye with a pointed glance. He knew what she was thinking. The maps, the different routes.
Uncertainty gnawed at Aldren every time he thought about them. His rationalization was sound, far more so than Mayla’s suspicions. But sometimes when he repeated his own excuses to himself, they rang hollow. Especially when he recalled his brief time in Feng.
What’s that saying of Ma’s? Folk always hide their worst, but never well? If that’s how this government deals with its own in the middle of a busy street, just imagine what they’d be willing to do behind closed doors.
Although, as far as the president and Mutton were concerned, the Xangese could do whatever they wanted on their own soil, so long as they didn't amass enough firepower to attack Arkenia again. The question Aldren had to ask himself was how did he feel about that? Xang could commit wholesale slaughter on their citizens with rifle and bayonet, or on Quar, for that matter, just so long as they didn't have war machines to do it with, and that was supposed to be okay?
Aldren looked to the mountains, looming ever closer with each passing day, piercing the white mist that enshrouded the northeastern sky. Those same grassy peaks the last Arkenian emissary had failed to make it through. Whether Mayla was right or wrong all depended on what happened when they reached that fork in the road.
"Stop the car," he said.
"There's nothing here but peasants and rice, Sargent Mal," Genlu protested.
"Then we'll talk to peasants and eat rice." Aldren flashed Mayla a grin. "It's about time we had a bit of fun on this trip."
Mayla returned the grin, though her eyes bore into the back of Genlu's head.
Their driver muttered something in Xangese - Aldren caught the word 'gaji' again- and pulled the car over.
Climbing out, they were immediately greeted with warm smiles, the adult villagers rushing over to babble and shake hands while the children gawked at the automobile.
“Guess they don’t get many tourists, eh?” Aldren said, ruffling a boy’s hair with a laugh.
Mayla wasn’t paying attention. Some of the farmers had crawled out of a hole they were digging, what looked to Aldren like the beginnings of a well. She stared at it, her eyes glazing over.
“Mayla?” Aldren shook her by the arm. “Everything alright?”
She surfaced from whatever stupor held her and slapped Aldren’s hand away. “Let’s get right to it.”
Aldren cocked an eyebrow. “And just what ‘it’ do you have in mind?”
“These people grow rice, Sargent,” she replied. “And do you know what that means?”
Aldren wiped sweat from his brow with an equally slick arm. The result was a lot of slippery wetness and no relief. The island's natural heat and a cramped hut filled with excited farmers was a bad combination. If Aldren had thought the smell at the docks was overbearing, he didn't know what to say about the air here.
If there was one thing Aldren would have never guessed could be made from rice, it was booze. But here he was drinking the stuff.
A skinny farmer named Lang drummed his hands over a covered basket as dozens of drunken throats counted down in Xangese. On three, Lang lifted the lid to reveal a tangle of dark, slithering forms, their scaled skin glistening by the light of a great fire in the center of the room. The wormlike mass was given definition when a black-eyed serpent snapped at the air, twin fangs jutting from a red mouth.
"What are they doing?" Aldren whispered to Mayla as Duli, a wiry one-armed farmer with no shirt, held up a brown rat by its tail. The creature squeaked, curling upward to try grabbing hold of its captor's finger with tiny pink hands.
"What? They don't gamble where you're from?" Mayla had her arm around a pretty young Xangese woman. Aldren had caught her whispering in her ear a few times. Whatever his travelling companion said, it had the other woman blushing more than once.
A burly man whose name Aldren couldn't be bothered to remember -assuming he'd been introduced at all- knelt by the basket of snakes, his teeth bared in a savage grin.
Duli held the struggling rat above the basket, and a new countdown started. Muscles, as Aldren opted to call the thick-armed man steeling himself for whatever this was, put his hands out, veins pulsing along corded forearms.
All around the smoky hut, men passed coins back and forth.
Genlu sat glowering in a dark corner, smokin
g his pipe and drinking rice wine. Aldren didn't miss the furtive glances some of the locals shot Genlu's way. The man made them nervous.
No, Aldren amended. Not nervous. Afraid.
Duli dropped the rat on the end of the count. Muscle's hands shot out to catch the rodent. So did the hungry, snapping jaws of two vipers.
There was a muffled squeal, followed by an audible crunch, and the rat's head was engulfed in the expanded jaws of a reptile. So was about half of Muscle's hand.
The other snake latched onto his arm, only letting go when men blew smoke into its face.
Muscles fell back, screaming as he pried the victorious vipers off him, leaving neat punctures that bled freely. Snakes and rat both fell back into the basket. The bed of serpents burst into snapping, frenzied motion, converging on their triumphant kin in a mad bid for the unfortunate mammal.
Muscles sucked on his bleeding wounds, spitting venom-laced saliva to the dirt floor. His face was beaded with sweat, his breath labored. Aldren was pretty sure Muscle's face was paler than it had been a minute ago.