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

  Lin Yongten shrugged, staring off into the branches of a nearby cypress. “I have been near privilege and power longer than you; I think you underestimate the potency of their corrosions. But perhaps I underestimate the strength of our friend. It is bootless to speculate in any case, I suppose.”

  Datang could think of no rejoinder, and so the pair stood in silence, hands bothering the pommels of their blades much as one finds oneself tonguing a sore in the mouth. Eventually, the motes of white began to fall, carried and released by thin, wandering high-sky winds: moths the size of Gardener lychees, frond-headed and pure white, whose wings rubbed off a sandy powder on the fingertips.

  Spring, the Year of the Shining Carp

  There was nothing strange about the writing desk—though, to be sure, it was a study in subtle opulence, assembled from heavy parts that made no economies and covered with finely graven scenes visible only in close proximity to that dark, heavy wood. The man at the desk, now, that was another matter. He was broad-bodied but withered, and a contemporary observer would have recognized his robes as reminiscent of, but noticeably different from, those of a mandarin; his sideburns and moustaches were long and wispy but night-black, and his hat sat in stark contrast to the crane-woven silk that draped his body, an ugly black thing with two round protuberances that stuck out to make the whole thing form a squat, inverted “T.” He wrote busily, in the urgent but careless manner of a right-handed man who has had long practice, but still no real fluency, with his left. To the right of the desk was a circular stand made of the same dark wood. In it, blade down, stood three glaives with seven-foot hafts, on each of which the blade erupted from the mouth of a different animal: a bull, a bat, and a blue-maned horse.

  “Attend,” he said to the woman who had just entered the chamber. “I am absorbed in a tricky refutation of the Dawnberry Precedent.” His writing had stopped, though, as he thought. “This Pasang Zapa is wonderfully subtle, even if his opinions are an abomination to basic decency and reason. It’s a shame he has to die. Perhaps you could get him defrocked?” The woman stood mute. “Well, his name is Justice Pasang Zapa Rempok of Gyachun. Do what you can. I know you and Jhan are busy.”

  The woman—fit and tan, in fighter’s greens, with a tiny mouse-shaped birthmark an inch back from the hinge of her jaw—stood stock-still, though as the old man’s work stretched from tens of minutes into hundreds, she began fingering the laces of a rectangular satchel at her side. She stood, and the judge wrote, for hours, neither one acceding to the wants and weaknesses of flesh that would afflict most mortals in such an ordeal, nor even showing any particular evidence of them. At last the old man set down his pen. “There, now. At least the bones will not escape me. Sit. Speak.”

  The woman sat on the very cave floor where she had stood, coming no closer to the old man. “A complication has arisen, Your Honor, but I do not think it consequential.”

  “Let me be the judge.”

  The woman nodded as though to say, How could it be otherwise? “Jhan’s usurpation was preceded by another.”

  The old man snorted. “Well. Did the King prevail, or has this other stooge done our work for us?”

  “Neither, Your Honor. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the Pretender’s claim was fair. The man who had been King stepped down. I tried to induce him to defend his claim, but his attachment to the Orchid Throne was too weak. It now cools the hindquarters of a Therku lumberjack. That is he who faces the Iron Eunuch. The old King—the Regent, as they call him—let me call him by the name he has taken.”

  “Do so.”

  “The Regent, Netten, has departed the Great South Plain with a party of three, two Green Morning brothers and a vintner’s daughter from the Plums. I made the escort on Jhan’s request. He did not deign to explain his reasoning to me, but I know he is infatuated with the woman. I think he did not want her to be in Rassha when his stroke descended.”

  “Ah,” said the old man, whom we will call the Judge. “And how do you weigh the puissance of these two Kings, the old one and the new?”

  “The old has seven of the Rigors, like your last opponent,” said the woman, whom we will call by the name you reading know her, which is Lin Tong. “His talent is as great as White Tenshing’s, his preparation greater, and he is free to move. Those are his assets. But his understanding of his enemy is less than White Tenshing’s; and his habits of thought more independent, despite the lamas’ efforts; and we will not fall for White Tenshing’s trick again. Netten may not come at all—and if he does, it will surely be with uncertainty, and perhaps with diffidence.” She looked down at herself. “And there is me. Though we did not part on good terms.”

  “I sense a story in that remark.”

  “Not one of any moment,” said Tong. “As to the new King, his talent in the Rigors is unsurpassed, even by Netten. The masters have tested him; he shows potential in all eight—but he is untrained. His Eye is variable, his Breath short, his Palm weak, and his mind…” She searched a moment for the word. “Turgid. And the Pretender hems him in the Great South Plain.”

  “What are the new King’s prospects for siege-breaking?”

  “His prospects are excellent, but it will take time,” said Tong. “The first usurpation depleted the countryside’s resources and its goodwill, and Jhan’s forces are reduced and weakened by the winter. He cannot repulse Gyaltsen in the field. Gyaltsen has delayed crushing him only because he is stingy with his men’s lives and chary of a trap. But the First Blight will change all that, of course.”

  “Then what is the Ratter’s plan?”

  “He described it in impressionistic terms,” Tong said, with a perceptible aridity. “The only unifying concept in the speech was ‘counterstroke.”‘

  “That seems agreeable enough,” said the Judge. “I would prefer more detail, but my odds seem good regardless of whom I confront or where.” His gaze wandered a moment, lost in contemplation. “Uncertainty remains regarding the ancestry of the new King? The lumberjack?”

  “I fear it is unavoidable, Your Honor.”

  “Of course.” The Judge rose. He took a step over to the weapon stand and brushed his fingers over the haft of the horse-headed glaive. “Only, I would prefer to know which weapon I should practice for my contretemps with this new Kinglet. I would dearly love to feel the fine balance of the Wind Horse Guillotine; it has been too long since I was called to dispose of a royal defendant. But it would not do to exalt an undeserving foe.” He turned back to Tong and shrugged. “Well, it does not matter. I will know the instrument when I pass sentence. And I know Netten is for the Bat.” A frown flickered on his face as though a thought had leapt to mind; he looked closely at Tong. “Your affections have been hard used by this labor, have they not? First Jhan, now this Netten—”

  “I have always known the danger to Netten,” said Tong, “and lost no sleep to it. I must profess incomprehension of your reference to Jhan.”

  The Judge’s eyes wandered her face, from eye to mouth to cheekbone. “I suppose you must at that. Well, I think I see it all now. Not as pellucidly as I might like, but clearly enough.” He turned his fingertips to the haft of the bat-headed glaive, and then the bull. “Eight generations underground for one misstep, Unerring, and yet I cannot begrudge the sentence. Oh, the stink of the world’s turpitude seeps in even here, but one adapts; and the labor of the mind flows so naturally when one is freed of the burden of constant janitorial work. I shall look into a regular sabbatical when I return to Heaven, I think. Do you, as a general matter, sleep?”

  “Not since you retained my services, Your Honor.”

  “Ah, Unerring. Have you ever desired a position in the Court Celestial?”

  “It would not suit me, Your Honor. My linguistic evasions would best serve the defense, but centuries of habit leave me with the disposition of a prosecutor.”

  “I infer, then, that you would prefer to advance by betraying me at an opportune moment rather than accepting my patronage?”


  “It is a long-standing and respectable tradition, is it not?” This last with a small, subtle smile, nearly—but not entirely—disavowing the question.

  “Just so, just so. Well, then, let us not witter. I have missed your services, and much work looms. I have not yet tried the Gong of Moths today. Sound it if you can, then roust the Louts to stoke the forge and replenish the wood. Educate them on the hot-burning woods, if you please; I have read them the list you left me until it is seared in my memory as angrily as the Celestial Code for Contracts, but they claim those woods can no longer be found and imagine I can be placated with elm and white birch.”

  “The area is defoliated, Your Honor; a town has sprung up here.”

  “Here?”

  “You will recall the skirmish that preceded your unlucky contretemps. There grew a great lamasery here, devoted to reverse-engineering deific secrets from the debris of that skirmish; and, later, a small university of secular engineers who pretend they are not doing the same.”

  “A lamasery.” The Judge seemed enraptured at the thought. “Ah, Unerring, sometimes the world is good. My orders have changed, then: Arrange with the Violent Lout that he will try the Gong of Moths at some agreed-upon hour, preferably an hour of prayer, not too far in the future. At that hour, position yourself in the lamasery’s hall of meditation with your finest charcoal and sketching paper. There, should the First Blight begin, you are to capture every terror-sick expression on every face you can, retaining every detail of line and color for a painting later. This takes precedence over all other duties, and should be considered a recurring assignment until such time as the Gong is successfully sounded and the Blight in progress. The priests may have whatever portents the law requires—but the Crescent part my spine if I’ll forgo the pleasure of their terror.”

  “As you say, so it shall be.”

  “And resume your own aspect, if you please. I cannot be constantly distracted at the sight of some stranger with a sword walking in and out of my chambers, and you look absurd in these slovenly fencer’s greens.”

  Pain came and went, bright and black, on the face that would soon no longer be Lin Tong’s. There was no question that the Judge perceived it, and she knew it, and he knew she knew. In a fraction of time that was to a second as a second is to a century, Lin Tong and her fencer’s greens disappeared, replaced by a tall, ageless beauty in a faintly unfashionable qipao.

  The Judge’s eyes flickered to her waist. “You have retained the sword.” It was true—though a mortal observer would have been surprised to hear it, not because the sword was unobtrusive, but because its line and decoration harmonized so well with the scribe’s mien, form, and dress that it was almost impossible to think of her as armed.

  “But now I am not a stranger.”

  “I never knew an Unerring Jangmu who bore a sword.”

  “But you know me, do you not? With or without it? So, my comings and goings will not disturb you.”

  “Not your comings, no, nor your goings.” The Judge seemed as though he wished to say more, but demurred. “I will forge you a new sword, if you like, when there is time.”

  “Nothing could please me more, Your Honor.”

  “That is a pleasant lie. Come back to me when you need more to do. I will spend a while at the forge, I think.” Something occurred to the Judge. “And belay the defrocking of Pasang Zapa. There will be a vacancy on the Thousand Clouds Circuit in a dozen years or so; best to have his spirit well in hand before it happens. Otherwise the Son of Heaven will reappoint the Garroting Magistrate, and I will be forced into a millennium without sabbatical.”

  Unerring Jangmu who had been Lin Tong made the abasement from a supramortal to a demigod and departed without a sound. The Judge was alone in his cave. He licked his lips once, then turned from his desk and hobbled to the rear of the cave, which housed an immense oven full of embers yet hot enough to warm the huge stone chamber—hot enough to make a mortal pour sweat, if truth were known, though neither Jangmu nor the Judge had deigned to perspire. The floor around the forge was littered with glaive-blades—all, it should be noted, in what the Judge had ultimately determined was inferior steel; all useful material was either hung on the wall as proof of concept or returned to the forge. The Judge eyed the blades for a long while, then took down a symmetric one with two forked lobes as prototype for the day’s efforts. The spindled-hulking form of the Hungry Lout had brought some proper wood and stoked the forge during the Judge’s deliberations; there were three flat blades already in the fire, yellow-hot. The Judge rolled back the sleeves of his robes, picked up hammer and tongs, transferred the rightmost blade to the anvil, and began to beat. “Forked blade for a forked tongue,” he chanted with the hammerblows, “punishment for crime.”

  He was not quite satisfied with the result, but quenched it anyway. When it was cool, he fitted it to the haft he had chosen for his new glaive: a length of yellow pearwood, carved in the texture of repeated scales in red, yellow, black, and white, culminating in the gaping head of a snake.

  A Freeman of Disordered Lineage

  The Crane’s Eye Chamber

  he Undersecretary for Social Harmony in the Precincts of the Great South Plain?” said General Gyaltsen.

  The mandarin, outfitted in green and gold with mallard drakes proudly embroidered over every inch, made no direct response to the skepticism in Gyaltsen’s tone, merely executing the abasement toward an esteemed colleague and saying, not without perceptible pride, “I have that honor.”

  Here—and we apologize for stilting the progress of the dialogue between General and Undersecretary, justifying ourselves only in the observation that the physical context in general enriches understanding of the words exchanged—and in this case, we submit, more than most—it is perhaps worthwhile to note that the Undersecretary for Social Harmony in the Precincts of the Great South Plain partook of a certain arboreal character, by which we mean simply that he possessed many of the features of trees. Among those features were a great girth and height (recapitulated from his body overall in his individual limbs, whose immense musculature bulged out even the loose mandarin’s robe), towering over General Gyaltsen’s admittedly modest stature by some three hands, as well as a rough, deep brown skin tone not often observed in the mandarins of the Orchid Palace, and a texture to his palms and fingers that can only be described as barklike. In addition, like trees, the Undersecretary was missing teeth.

  “An honor commensurate to your rank, I see,” said Gyaltsen, noting the ducks, “though you would display it better if your cap were not on backwards.”

  “Ah, but worn forward, the cap does not bestow my interlocutors with the opportunity to admire this duck’s fine hindquarters,” said the Undersecretary, pointing to the duck in question. “I find that thus focusing attention on the duck increases respect for my rank—which, though you have observed it, others often ignore, perhaps because I am newly promoted to it.”

  “I congratulate you,” said Gyaltsen. “In what fields were your examinations?”

  “Do you know,” said the Undersecretary, “you are not the first to ask me that?”

  “Well, you need not suffer tedium to indulge my curiosity.”

  “No, General, it is no trouble. I attained the ninth rank in dendrology, zymurgy, and gender studies.”

  “You are a married lumberjack and beer-brewer?”

  “Married?” laughed the mandarin. “One can hardly cultivate a ninth-rank understanding of the fair sex under such proscriptions.”

  “I stand corrected,” said Gyaltsen. “Only—forgive me, Undersecretary, but I had expected the King’s presence, and the War Secretary’s.”

  “Well, how not?” said the Undersecretary for Social Harmony in the Precincts of the Great South Plain. “You were told they would be here at this time.”

  “You summarize my perplexity precisely.”

  “I understand it precisely. And, furthermore, I understand that it is amplified by the absence of the entire civilia
n chain of command, which includes the Ministers of Logistics and Procuration, the Magistrate of Rassha, the Master of the Royal Forge, the Master of Horse, and the Secretaries for Development, Engineering, and Public Health, all mandarins of no lower than the fifth rank with distinction in military history or tactics—”

  “Hence my curiosity about the field of your examinations.”

  “Naturally.”

  “And can you apprise me of the reason for their absence?”

  The Undersecretary pointed to the rear end of the duck on the back of his cap. “General,” he said, “who would vouchsafe such information to a mere ninth-rank mandarin?”

  “Not I, to be sure,” said General Gyaltsen.

  “Nor I. But, should you have information that can be trusted to such a person, and wish it communicated to the King—”

  “I shall give it you without delay,” said Gyaltsen.

  “Excellent,” said the Undersecretary. “In that case, I believe our business is concluded.”

  “Nearly,” said Gyaltsen. “Only, it would be ungentlemanly to delay informing you—”

  “Yes?”

  “A small thing. When the Pretender’s bid is put down, I should like to engage you in debate.”

  The immense mandarin laughed. “I am a disputatious soul. Why not now?”

  “Well, Undersecretary, because one of us must lose. And I begin to surmise that the King deems social harmony in the precincts of the Great South Plain every bit as important as the end of the Pretender’s siege.”

  “I would not presume to anticipate the King’s priorities.”

  “That is well.” Gyaltsen turned to the huge table that dominated the center of the Crane’s Eye Chamber. “You may go.”

  He did not watch the Undersecretary for Social Harmony in the Precincts of the Great South Plain leave; the door to the Crane’s Eye Chamber closed with a bare, solicitous whisper of bolt on mortise.