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

  “I will never forget the rout at Temple Ford,” said Gyaltsen. “Nonetheless, the intelligence is more right than wrong, and more often useful than deceptive. A few years’ experience will teach you the value of partial information.”

  Kadzati put a finger on the tower she had almost knocked down and wiggled it so that it rotated on its base. “Is something going to happen to the city?”

  The question asked, the trouble in Kadzati’s eyes was unmistakable. “Nothing,” said Gyaltsen. “Why, child?”

  “Well, there is an army camped outside.”

  “I hope you do not think it bravado when I say I could smash it at any time, my lady. And if we have an advantage on the attack—”

  “You have it eight times on defense; I know.”

  “Then why the question?”

  “My lord father is gone,” said Kadzati. “My lady mother is gone. My sister is gone. The ‘King’—” Her scorn drowned the title, thick as butter tea—“cloisters himself with ministers and takes no petitions. And the King’s General stints to smash an army that cannot stand against him.”

  “Your family does not flee,” said Gyaltsen, “and if they did, they would bring you with them. They leave you here because Rassha is safe. As for my own tactics—lady, every rebel killed by winter is one who cannot kill a man of mine. But now the thaw is in the ground, and we must disencumber the farmsteads for the spring planting. We will not remain on siege footing much longer.”

  “Eloquent rejoinders.”

  Gyaltsen made the Abasement at Undeserved Praise from a Superior. “I am a fighting man, my lady.”

  “But I had another complaint.”

  “It is not my privilege to answer complaints concerning the King, my lady, any more than it is yours to make them.”

  Kadzati’s mouth quirked in dissatisfaction. “You did not always walk on eggshells around him.”

  “Foes have become allies since before the King and I were born, and will do so after we die,” said Gyaltsen. “The practiced debater selects his argument on principle; the winner, according to the situation.”

  “The martial fetish for the ‘situation’ has always struck me as supremely vacuous.” Kadzati straightened up on her perch. “A ‘situation’ is nothing more than an interaction of principles; to segregate it from the realm of reason is to abandon any hope of actual understanding.”

  “Geometers aspire to understanding,” said Gyaltsen, “and fighting men profit from their efforts. For our part, we aspire to right action, whether or not we understand its provenance. And I flatter myself that I have improved the lives of a geometer or two.”

  Kadzati’s eyes flickered over the map of the Great South Plain. “Take back Bearwatch.”

  “We can see nothing from Bearwatch that cannot be seen from the Bitter Tower,” said Gyaltsen.

  “Yes, but if he thinks you want it, he’ll try to take it again. You’ll let him, then take it back. Through the forest, you can make a sortie from the Bat Gate that they can’t see coming. Every time you do it, the Cerulean Sword can knock a few dozen men out of the tower for free. Time it right, and you’ll get at least one shot at a supply train, even if it’s a little one.”

  Gyaltsen stroked his beard. “A tidy plan. But I may not be able to spare the time for so many sorties.”

  Kadzati turned eyes of fury on him. “Of course, a general of the realm can hardly be expected to pursue military objectives—not when there are royal heels to be trotted after. Forgive a girl’s naïveté.”

  Gyaltsen abased himself as deeply as he could. “There is nothing to forgive, my lady.”

  Kadzati jumped down from the chair, letting it clatter to the floor as she dismounted. As she left the room, she turned around for a final cut. “If you want to save your soldiers’ lives, why not just give up the fight and throw open the city gates?”

  “Alas,” said Gyaltsen, “the storied Empty City gambit is not practicable here, and is thinly attested in any case—”

  Kadzati yanked at the huge door of the Crane’s Eye Chamber, but could not summon the strength to slam it. Gyaltsen walked over and gently helped her close it, flayed by her stare the while. When she was gone, he turned to the table and thought on her proposal for Bearwatch; but not for long, its merit being self-evident.

  Gyaltsen could not settle into the chair that the Magistrate of the Northern Border had used for the paperwork required of his office. He had been a fit man, slimmer than Gyaltsen and taller, but that was not, in truth, the issue; the truth was that the thing’s workmanship was evidently exquisite, and it was difficult enough to sit with a baldric on one’s back even when one was not worried about scratching the finish. So he stood, instead, behind Five Prosperities Benba’s desk, which was not much occupied of late, and tried not to pace. He knew he should keep his eye on the door, but the visitor was taking longer than he had expected, and his attention kept wandering to the various trophies that adorned the office: Benba’s citations for valor in battle, the attestations of his scholarly rank, the fetishes of peacocks that oppressed him more each time he noticed a new one. The Lotus, he marveled, how does a mandarin of such a rank have the time to lavish such enthusiasm on fowl?

  The knock came as he was locking eyes with a tiny ivory goat miniature that he had just discovered on the windowsill, not three feet from his hands. “Enter,” he said. The door opened on four members of the Cerulean Guard and a drawn, ragged man who looked like nothing so much as an Ogmin street thief. Two of the guardsmen abased themselves to Gyaltsen while the other two looked down the hall in either direction; then, like figures on a clockwork scenario, the inner guards switched places with the outer, who abased themselves as their partners kept watch.

  “Come in,” said Gyaltsen, “all of you. There’s room.”

  “You don’t wish a sentry?” asked the youngest guardsman, a fencing prodigy named Zigsa with more than one duel to his name.

  “The patrols in these corridors have instructions,” said Gyaltsen. “What I need from you is to get out of the hall.” The men complied with no further questions. One dragged a chair over from a corner for their dirty charge, who dropped onto it like a sack of rags, not obviously cognizant that he was the only one sitting. “What’s this about?” he asked. “Where’s Benba?”

  “Indisposed,” said Gyaltsen, “You report to him directly?”

  “Hard to say,” said the dirty man, “at the moment. But that was my understanding of the arrangement.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No.”

  The Cerulean Sword yowled. The dirty man went a shade paler under the filth.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your intelligence relevant to my duties?”

  “That’s hardly for me to say, General.”

  “Make your best guess.”

  The dirty man swallowed. “I would say yes, General.” He looked around at the guardsmen, who remained impassive, facing Gyaltsen. “Begging pardon, though, but—should you have heard aught from the Cold Water Salmon, you’ve heard all I have to say.”

  “Multiple perspectives on the same event often vouchsafe unheralded revelations,” Gyaltsen said smoothly. “Tell me what transpires on the Northern Border.”

  “The Gardeners, General.”

  “What are they promising now?”

  “You haven’t heard from the Cold Water Salmon.” The dirty man’s voice was flat, grim. “You wouldn’t ask that if you had.”

  “The Crescent, man,” said Gyaltsen, “have they invaded?”

  The dirty man’s face said all he needed to know.

  “The Crescent,” Gyaltsen repeated, squeezing his eyes closed and rubbing them with the fingers of his left hand. “Has the provincial authority done nothing?”

  “I ran into provincial forces from Therku and Shrastaka on my return here,” said the dirty man. “They had not yet given battle—they had barely left their barracks. The Gardener forces were consolidating their str
ength in a few of the villages nearest the border. I apprised them of all I knew, but I did not stay to see the attack, if indeed there was one.”

  “Is Naga-gyo safe?”

  “Naga-gyo is overrun.”

  Gyaltsen took a deep breath through his nose. He pushed a paper and pen toward the dirty man. “Write down all you know, as of when you know it—estimates of troops counts, what villages were seized and when, the fates of the House of Ogyal. Nothing is too small or uncertain to write down. Go until you can think of no more.”

  The dirty man began to write—haltingly, to Gyaltsen’s near-despair, and indistinctly; he was not well practiced with the pen. “Never mind,” he said. “Zigsa, fetch a scribe; we need more paper than this anyway. If anyone asks the purpose, tell him Gyaltsen has a captive who wishes to buy his life with information.” Zigsa nodded and ran from the room.

  The dirty man looked at the general. “Captive?”

  “Nothing of the kind. You will be free to go when this is over. In fact, I encourage you to. Somewhere safe, if you know and can reach such a place; otherwise, somewhere on the eastern side of the city. A communal living arrangement would be best. With friends or family, even better. But it is your affair.”

  The dirty man’s eyes nearly vibrated with calculation. “What happened to the Cold Water Salmon?”

  Gyaltsen saw no point in concealment any longer; he needed the grimy man’s goodwill now. “He was murdered before he could testify.”

  “Can you not protect me? Put me up in the palace?” He was scared, genuinely, and genuinely angry; yet there was still calculation behind it all. “I have given loyal service to the Magistrate and the King—”

  “We can lodge you in the palace,” said Gyaltsen. “But the Salmon was murdered in the palace. On the King’s Lama’s doorstep. Make no mistake—we would do our best to protect you. But it might be best if no one in the palace knew your location.”

  Zigsa returned with the scribe. Gyaltsen recognized him—a man who worked mainly for the mandarins, rarely for the lamas. Zigsa had chosen well. The dirty man looked at the scribe and his scroll as he might at a bear holding a serpent, then back at Gyaltsen. “Who killed the Salmon?”

  “We don’t know.” That was strictly true. Gyaltsen turned his attention to the four Cerulean guardsmen. “You’ll stay here until our man is done dictating. Then you’ll release him, unless he wishes to stay in the palace, in which case you’ll wait to escort him to a convenient chamber close to the major corridors. No one in a cerulean brassard leaves this room until the scribe has made two copies of our man’s testimony.” He leaned into the senior guards, a levelheaded man of middle years named Kromo. “Dismiss the scribe when he’s done. Take one copy of the testimony to my office and secrete one in the Cerulean barracks in a place where only you know. Roll the last one up in the Magistrate’s valedictory scroll for the meteorological examination and replace the scroll where it currently resides.”

  The senior guardsmen nodded. The dirty man started dictating. Gyaltsen had worked with enough men on the edge of death to know when they knew they were there, and all four knew it, though only Zigsa was stupid enough to mix excitement with the obligatory fear. “Keep your countercharms around your necks, men. Draw no attention, and relax not your own. This is no different to any other engagement; the watchwords are vigilance and precision. Between your work and mine, we shall get as many of us through it as we can.” With that, he slipped into the Hall of Bats and Orchids, which he exited as quickly as he could, before his presence in a vacant office could be noted.

  The Undersecretary for Social Harmony in the Precincts of the Great South Plain was waiting, flanked by four Demon Guards, outside the great carved rosewood doors that opened on the Orchid Throne. He made what passed for a sketch of the appropriate abasement, face smeared with a simper of mendacious mildness.

  Gyaltsen unlimbered the Cerulean Sword from its baldric. The hall rang with its howl—which, it must be granted, dwindled into an inquisitive, even confused hooting. The Undersecretary did not move his bulk to unblock the doors, but he shifted his weight minutely toward a knife-fighter’s stance, betraying the heavy daggers in wrist sheaths beneath the voluminous sleeves of his mandarin’s robe, and for a sweet moment Gyaltsen could see the whites all around his irises. The Demon Guards readied their rifles, but they did not aim. Gyaltsen met the eyes of one of them through his horror-faced helmet. The soldier’s brows moved, his head cocked, to speak with crystalline precision: We will not shoot you quickly enough to stop you killing this farce of a mandarin—but we will shoot you. That was an agreeable rate of exchange, it seemed to Gyaltsen in that moment; but he had conquered such seductions before, and would again unless there were no other choice.

  The Undersecretary gestured at the naked blade, rippling with an alien blue gleam along its edge. “To what do I owe the honor, General?”

  “There is no honor in being gutted by the Cerulean Sword,” said Gyaltsen. “Its thirsts are indiscriminate, and lower men than you have slaked them.”

  “And, in slaking, they were elevated,” said the Undersecretary. “But I do not think the Cerulean Sword will drink my blood this day.”

  “Not if you unblock these doors and admit me to the presence of the King.”

  “That is outside my power.”

  “I doubt that, but I am happy to argue the point.” The Cerulean Sword yipped and leapt in his hands.

  “The point cannot be argued.” The Undersecretary stepped aside and swept a bow, gesturing with one hand. “You may try the doors. I cannot open them, nor yet can I stop you from doing so with the power of your storied blade.” His small eyes went right and left to indicate the Demon Guards. “Nor yet, of course, can I prevent these worthy sentries from responding as they see fit to such an action.”

  “I can,” said Gyaltsen, and the Cerulean Sword keened in animal glee, and the wind’s fury blasted forth.

  The cracks of four rifle shots sounded, barely separated in time; all went as wild as their shooters, who with the Undersecretary blew down the hall like leaves in a gale, cracking bones and denting enameled armor and tearing hangings from the wall—but one tagged Gyaltsen’s left arm on the ricochet, somehow finding the gap between pauldron and rerebrace. Even Gyaltsen, in the lee of the gale, stumbled back from the force of the Cerulean Sword’s recoil. Its would-be obstructors discarded, the sword threw forth a cyclonic lash directly at the crevice where the doors met.

  The hinges gave before the bar; the still-connected doors planed parallel to the floor, hurtling like an axe blade toward the Orchid Throne.

  Gyaltsen’s stomach convulsed as he watched it fly, pulling him into a fetal curl for an eternal moment.

  When the moment passed, he stared, sick, at the Throne. It was unmarked, the door-bar bent like wire just at the height of the King’s neck.

  But the King was not there. The room was empty.

  Gyaltsen turned toward the Undersecretary, who was struggling to stand on a knee that would not consent to hold his weight. “Where is the King?” he roared.

  “Beyond your reach,” said the Undersecretary, levering himself up with an arm on the wall, “and mine.”

  The Cerulean Sword reached out, and a wind pummeled the Undersecretary in the back, forcing him toward Gyaltsen; the huge mandarin howled, running on his injured leg to keep up, then fell and let himself be pushed along like a crumpled scroll. He stopped just short of Gyaltsen’s feet, with the point of the gibbering sword just below his jaw. “Elaborate,” the general said.

  “The King,” said the Undersecretary, “is going to do his duty.”

  Gyaltsen’s eyes widened. “How?”

  “Over the mountains, of course. How else?” The Undersecretary laughed, then grimaced—he had hurt a rib, Gyaltsen acknowledged with some satisfaction.

  “The people will riot. They will think he is abandoning them.”

  “The people, like you, do not know,” said the Undersecretary. “And the King,
luckily for all of us, has no worries for his homeland to distract him from his preparations.”

  “I should be with him.”

  “Do you know,” said the Undersecretary, “His Holiness expected you would say that.”

  “His Holiness murdered the Cold Water Salmon.”

  The Undersecretary looked puzzled. “His Holiness eats no flesh.”

  “It is the style of a brother of the Green Morning.”

  “Ah, I heard about his death. Regrettable and strange.”

  “Sorcerous.”

  “General,” said the Undersecretary, “if you are expecting to elicit some sort of confession, on my behalf or anyone else’s, you will be a long time waiting.”

  “I should flay it out of you right now.”

  “General,” said the senior Demon Guard, who had risen on unsteady legs. His aim was true, though, Gyaltsen could tell; he was a stalwart man, picked for his precision in tight circumstances. “With respect, sir, you have arrogated yourself enough liberties for one day.”

  “Soldier, I begin to think I didn’t hit you hard enough. Maybe this time I should make it stick.” But Gyaltsen knew, making the threat, that he would not carry it through, and the soldier knew as well as he did. With a noise of disgust, he sheathed the Cerulean Sword. “See the Undersecretary to the hospital wing.” He gave the huge man his most venomous look. “Things have changed now, Undersecretary. I am apprised of the King’s disappearance. Try again to keep me from the King’s other ministers, and I will cut through you to reach them. This idiot charade has set the siege-break back weeks.”

  “A siege-break is only of use to living citizens,” said the Undersecretary. Two Demon Guards limped over to him and hauled him up with mailed elbows under his shoulders. “If the King fails to kill the Worm, the delay will hardly matter.”

  “If the King succeeds in killing the Worm, though, it may matter greatly.”

  The Undersecretary gave a great, ugly grin. “It may. But how to weigh the consequences—well, that is hardly in the jurisdiction of the King’s General, much less the Undersecretary for Social Harmony in the Precincts of the Great South Plain.”