The Eighth King (The White Umbrella Testament Book 1) Read online

  Had it been Kunsang and not Datang who had set out for Rassha, he would have brought a letter from his father, resupplied at the depot, and refreshed his mount at the post. He would have done the same in Tanggang City, and then in Dhaka, finally reaching the Great South Plain in a mere handful of days, where he would have been killed instantly by the armies of the Pretender, who had not yet reconciled themselves to siegecraft and were spoiling for war. Datang’s journey was less gallant, but it served her for all that. She had no letter from her father, but the men at the depot and the post knew her, and it was no great effort for her to persuade them to part with a fresh horse and enough provisions to take her to her uncle’s estate two towns over, near what was then the mining colony of Akthom. The men of the depot refused, of course, to hear of her going alone, and so she acceded to the company of a sedulous young man of minor skill at the halberd, whom she plied with a skin of plum wine stolen from the vineyard until he could no longer ignore the call of nature, at which point she went her own way. Since Datang’s uncle’s estate was to the north, and Rassha to the east, it was unlikely enough that she would be followed; and, if followed, even less likely that she would be caught, as she had loosed her escort’s horse for added assurance.

  Thereafter Datang’s path was not so smooth, for the provisions that would have seen her comfortably to Akthom could not realistically be stretched even so far as Tanggang City, to say nothing of Dhaka, and still less Rassha. And so it was that she came, drawn and penniless, to an establishment whose name is best translated as the Inn of the Typical Moniker, an ill-favored public house on one of the lesser roads from Tanggang City to Rassha. An inn with such a name affords one of two inferences about the proprietor: He or she might, on the one hand, possess the playfulness and agility of mind for which a person of civilization always hopes in an interlocutor—that is to say, the necessary though of course insufficient conditions for fine conversation, which would in turn attract a clientele disposed toward the same; or he or she might equally be a lazy-minded individual with no appreciation for the intriguingly self-referential nature of the name, which would most likely have emerged from a conversation with an equally unimaginative associate as to what one ought to call an inn. We regret to say that the latter was the case, and that, as like attracts like, the inn was frequented by patrons who lacked not only appreciation but in fact any understanding of the name, and habitually referred to it as “the Monocle.” In any case, Datang found herself and her horse starved and exhausted on the Road of Bulls twenty minutes’ canter outside Tanggang City, and the Inn of the Typical Moniker found itself open for business at the same time and place, and thus their confluence was inevitable, or at any rate unalterable; and thus she entered.

  Business was no better than usual that night: a few laborers of various extraction, mostly the mix of Uä’n and Gardener, common near the Garden’s border, that is called the “Verdant Peak”; a few road-smirched merchants accompanied by a half-dozen Fireflower Dragoons; a few men ill at ease in ill-fitting monk’s vestments, casting hungry looks at the other diners’ noodles and supplementing their bowls of broth with something from a hidden bottle. Datang inquired of the serving maid how much room and board would cost, and knew without consulting her purse directly that her assets would not cover so much as a bowl of dried-out rice and a cold corner in the common room. After a short bout of consideration, she looked carefully for an empty seat, then kicked the chair at that place aside and leapt with conspicuous ease to land lightly on the table.

  This maneuver had not, as Datang had hoped, silenced the musicians, which in turn would have brought the common room’s attention as the lead goose’s turn turns the flock; accordingly, she leapt again and landed hard, bringing one foot down and then the other—hard enough to rattle plates but not, she hoped, to spill a bowl of wine. The resulting clamor did bring silence, though the stares that came with it were less than civil. “Patrons of the Typical Moniker,” she intoned, “if there is any among you of the gallant fraternity, I beg you to help a sister-in-arms. I have no money to pay for food, but my heart is loyal and my hand is sure. To have me in your debt is to invest in your own prosperity. Whose hand and mind are open enough to seize this opportunity?”

  The derision, it must be said, was general. “Come back when you know what inn you’re at, slut!” cried one of the Verdant Peak men, to the snickers and congratulations of his comrades.

  “Speak again, brother-in-arms,” called Datang. “Some purblind carter has run over a three-legged, flea-bitten dog lying in some muddy rut, and when you spoke, all I heard was its flatulent death-cry—unless in truth it was a death-fart, forced through its puckered sphincter by the collapse of its gangrenous intestines.”

  This time the Verdant Peak man’s comrades were just as loud as before, but their catcalls were directed at their friend, not at Datang. He rose, his face ugly with rage, and slapped both fists down on the table. “You may eat and drink on me,” he said, “but, because I value hygiene, only after you have wiped off the mask of rotten guts and bones some incontinent vulture seems to have shat upon your face.”

  Datang looked at the Verdant Peak man, this time with only scorn. “I asked for assistance from the gallant fraternity,” she said. “Mooching from jaundiced beggars is beneath me.”

  That was enough to send the Verdant Peak man over the table. “That was your last mistake,” he cried, “for I am of the gallant fraternity, and my style is Jinzen the Golden Bat!”

  It is a shame to cut off Golden Bat’s monologue here, after he has barely so much as introduced himself, and there is no doubt that he would have said much more, given the opportunity. But we must cut him off, for in truth he said no more, sailing instead through the space where Datang had been like the very creature that was his namesake, with all the undivertible velocity of the dense and ductile metal from which it was said (according to his style) to be fashioned. Golden Bat hit the wall—but he was on his feet quick as a flash, and Datang had barely landed before he was coming for her again.

  His attacks were unsophisticated, mixing the Ape and Dragon forms in the way of men who have not taken the time to understand the Bull and seek to implement its subtler techniques by shortcut. But, for all that, Golden Bat was strong and canny, and Datang, too used to the over-formal, Dragon-heavy style of her brother Kunsang, soon found herself hard pressed. She began to feel the weight of the straight sword at her side—not because it dragged at her, for her training had accounted at least for that, but because it begged to be used. With it in hand, there was no question of failing to slice Golden Bat to ribbons. But that was no way to court the favor of the gallant fraternity—if, indeed, such men there were in that rundown inn on the Road of Bulls.

  Golden Bat landed one blow, then another—glancing blows, it is true, but strong for all that, and on the last, his knuckle split the skin over her eye. She mummed a blindsided stagger for a few steps, until he took the bait, then dodged him easily and wiped her own blood into a spray across his eyes. This occasioned a raucous foul cry from the Verdant Peak men, and Datang was instantly beset. Golden Bat shouted something in return about “stealing his kill,” making a good show of it, as three of the Verdant Peak men backed her into a corner. Two had steel in their hands.

  “Do you not hear your friend berating you?” said Datang. “He wishes to face me alone.”

  “Oh, rest assured he wishes no such thing,” said one of the knife-fighters. “He merely represents it to save face. He has not won a duel in some time, although I think you might have been the first. But why take risks?”

  “That is a good question,” said Datang, and she drew her sword.

  The knife-fighters grimaced at this and pulled back; but the unarmed man merely held out an open hand, and some obliging soul threw a glaive, which he seized mid-haft. “Here,” said the formerly unarmed man, now a glaive-man, “you seem to have argued yourself into a corner.”

  “I was here already,” said Datang, “but now
I have a somewhat stronger syllogism.”

  “That may be,” said the glaive-man. “And yet I now have a weapon that can reach high into the air, which invalidates certain rhetorical strategies. On balance, I think you will find it difficult to make your case.”

  “Well, I was taught that argument about argument is a bootless pursuit,” said Datang.

  “We agree,” said the Verdant Peak man; and all three came for her.

  There is no profit in denying that our history came dangerously close to truncation at this point. What saved it was an intercession on Datang’s behalf. The intercessor was a boxer with long burly arms and rather stumpy legs, dark enough to be a Riverman but pure Uä’n by his features. He did not come from behind the three attackers but seemed rather to appear beside Datang; and his motions were unusual, flowing from Ape to Bull to Owl to Dragon styles with utter fluency, though Datang’s perceived a subtle discomfort on her ally’s part, as though, for all his proficiency, he were out of his element.

  He isolated the glaive-man readily and kept him at arm’s length—which, in light of the length of his arms, was nearly close enough to safety. The two knife-fighters took a short time to realize that the greatest threat to Datang was diverted, and pressed harder than they should; instead of retreating, Datang drew into Clearing the Spider’s Web, trading a cut on her left bicep for a fanning strike that tore her rightmost enemy from hip to shoulder. “Come now, Bat,” she called as that unfortunate fell, “your lane is no longer obstructed!”

  “I will not join the attack to outnumber a woman,” said Golden Bat, as Datang contemptuously parried the remaining knife-fighter’s halfhearted slash. “Besides, I have no sword.”

  “Your squeakings contradict themselves.” Datang moved smoothly into Baiting Termites; she discovered that she did not much want to kill this timid knife-fighter, who now faced such different odds than he had bargained on, and let him block the thrust. “Are you weaker than me, or stronger?”

  The knife-fighter, rattled by Datang’s near miss, drew back a step. She locked eyes with him, took his measure, and jerked her head toward the door as if to say, “I dismiss you.” He scuttled off as obligingly as if a duke or deity had uttered those very words. Datang’s ally had drawn the glaive-man off to the other side of the tavern and along the way acquired a hatchet, with which he was amusing himself by hewing away at the haft of the glaive. She turned to face Golden Bat square on. “The Lotus, Golden Bat, I ache for the completion of our colloquy!” She tossed her sword in the air and caught it by the flat of the blade. “Or must I donate you a syllogism before I may take satisfaction?”

  It did not take a fencer’s eye to see Golden Bat quail. “Sheathe your sword and I will satisfy you.”

  Datang smirked. “It was your men who propounded the steel polemic. Take my blade or find your own.”

  A general jeer rose in the Typical Moniker. A hatchet, kin to the one with which Datang’s ally still shaved the glaive-man’s haft, landed on the floor in front of Golden Bat. Two knives followed from different directions, one striking Golden Bat’s shoulder with its butt.

  Soon the cascade of weapons was as general as the jeer, admixed with food, dishes, and furniture. Golden Bat yelled something, but it was inaudible over the clangor of falling objects, and he soon scurried from the Typical Moniker with bleeding forearms covering his face.

  Datang’s long-armed ally, meanwhile, had not only separated the top half of his opponent’s glaive from the bottom but confiscated it as well, and now menaced him idly with both half-glaive and hatchet, while the ex-glaive-man laid about frantically with a single length of fraying wood no longer than Datang’s straight sword. When he saw her approaching, blooded and bleeding, he took the weapon in both hands and made the Abasement of Surrender, kneeling and holding it above his bowed head in both offertory and a caricature of defense. The long-armed man sneered and raised the hatchet.

  “Stop!” called Datang. “I owe you my life. Do not poison it by making me debtor to a murderer.”

  The patrons of the Typical Moniker were hushed now, less a few who had lost interest in the drama and were demanding refreshment of their meat and drink. Datang’s ally looked around in disgust. In a flash both hatchet and half-glaive were buried in the inn’s wall, and the long-armed man had kicked the half-haft from the erstwhile glaive-man’s hands. “Live your life in celebration of the long-dead honor to which this young fencer has reminded me I once played host,” he said with curled lip. “Better yet, come for me in the dark, from behind, and see what you can do.”

  The Verdant Peak man made himself scarce; the long-armed boxer turned to Datang. “You. Buy me wine.”

  Datang pressed her lips together in some mortification. “I would—only, perhaps you recall…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, the impetus for the contretemps.”

  “Rococo speech is no salve for wine-welshing,” the long-armed man said with a dark look.

  “Be that as it may—the dispute arose consequent to my petition for charity. I am purse-hollow.”

  The long-armed man stumped over to a table, all his fighter’s grace evaporated. He sat down and banged twice. “Two bowls of wine,” he said, then turned to Datang. “Sit and drink. You’ll owe me.”

  “I am already too much in your debt.”

  “Then another bowl of wine on the ledger will make no difference.”

  Datang could not dispute the justice of this observation, and wasted no more time in joining her ally, at which point the wine had arrived as well. It was weak and acrid, but the long-armed man drank it with gusto.

  “My name is Chojor,” he said, “but I am known in the gallant fraternity as the Glib Ape. Have the brothers granted you a style?”

  “I do not,” said Datang, “for I have but recently left my father’s house, but I am confident that all will soon know me as Whirlwind of Tigers.” She had chosen the name in honor of the family’s winery, naturally enough. “I am afraid I have not been in the world long enough to recognize the styles either of enemy or ally.”

  “There is no shame in that,” said the Glib Ape. “The Golden Bat may be the only boxer more obscure than I.”

  “With all respect, Ape,” said Datang, “your skill makes that implausible.”

  “There is more to fame than skill,” said the Glib Ape. “Professional obligations have barred me from the steel polemic in recent years. And you are more skilled than Golden Bat, yet would have lost to him in a contest of fame or boxing. It was wise of you not to meet him fist to fist again.”

  Datang felt herself grow hot. “I should have defeated him with the sword.”

  “I do not doubt it; but, barehanded, you would not. His style is too raw, his arm too strong. You have not had many partners, I think.”

  “Sparring partners,” Datang felt the need to clarify.

  The Glib Ape issued a raw laugh. “Have you had many of another kind?”

  Datang took a sip of wine to cover her wrong-footing. “You are fortunate to be in my debt,” she said.

  “Did you have a means of discharging it in mind?”

  “If I must restrain myself from responding to any more such remarks, I will consider it discharged,” she said, unable to hide her flush.

  “Well, that is right,” said the Glib Ape. “So, wishing to retain your debt, I will make no further remarks.” But his eyes seized hers and glittered like volcanic glass over his bowl of wine. Dishes of meat, vegetables, and noodles came to the table. “And where do you go, Whirlwind of Tigers?”

  “To Rassha, to join the King’s guard.”

  The Glib Ape ladled meat and vegetables over a bowl of noodles and pushed it to Datang. “You are, of course, aware of the small obstacle that intervenes between this estimable establishment and the Wind Horse Gate.”

  “You refer to the Pretender’s army?”

  “I would not refer to him thus. But it is an army of which I speak, and one that seeks to crown an uncrowned man.” />
  “Is he a man?”

  “Come,” said the Glib Ape, “he has trained in the Green Morning. Let us not question his valor without cause.”

  “It was not a question of valor,” said Datang. “A woman can be valorous. Likewise an ape.”

  “Many women can attest to an ape’s valor,” said the long-armed man, “and an ape knows many valorous women.”

  “I thought we had agreed to leave off lewd remarks.” But Datang could not suppress a small, pleased smile.

  “The Crescent,” said the Ape, “lewd? Why must you be the first woman of martial valor that this ape has known?”

  Datang nodded in acknowledgement of the point. “A touch.” She slurped down a bite of noodles. “I grant it.”

  “A touch? Do not tempt an ape.”

  Datang rolled her eyes heavenward. “Let me rephrase, then—a cut.”

  The Glib Ape’s mouth was full of noodles, but he waggled his eyebrows in such an unsettling way that Datang was forced to blush. “Apes are given to exotic interpretations of common phrases,” she said.

  “Apes are given mainly to flinging nightsoil and displaying their hindquarters to attractive conspecifics. It is difficult to transcend one’s ancestry.”