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

  The Giant of the Grass looked at Datang as though she had said she was raised on the moon. “Every termite in every join of every Rafter of the World boasts such compendious knowledge of Netten. He sat a throne for two decades and more; such men can never scrape the blood from under their fingernails, or between their teeth. Do you know what he did to his brother, before either had a solitary hair between his legs?”

  “I am not wholly ignorant of it,” said Datang.

  “That is well.” The Giant of the Grass stopped. “We have reached your quarters. You will be sharing them, I fear; it is not so often we must detain women. But the room is spacious and its occupant taciturn enough. You should be more or less at peace. I have but one capstone on my sanctimony, and then I shall leave you to your ablutions. I have told you that your friends are killers; this cannot have surprised you. I do not slight your own victories, mind, nor your savagery. But if I asked eight people who of you four was more likely to betray, and who to be betrayed, what would they answer? And would that answer redound to your advantage?”

  “This all seems kindly meant,” said Datang. “Which itself makes me curious; for all you talk of ruthlessness and advantage and prerogative, you have said much that you need not have said to a captive adversary, simply because we share a sex. Well, I am all for solidarity among women, but even I know that warriors often find themselves in opposition to other warriors, and even I know that opposition trumps solidarity eight times out of eight. Had our positions been reversed, I would not have been half so voluble. Where is your vaunted ruthlessness with me, your enemy?”

  The Giant smiled without much humor. “It is in my arms,” she said, “ready to flow through my staff and thence your brain-pan, should I require it. But I have an answer for you, and it is easy to comprehend.”

  “Then, by all means, do not delay in aiding my comprehension.”

  “It is merely this: The right favor to the right enemy can be immensely powerful. Your friends do not need to be told to pursue their own advantage. But you do; and if you do it, and you profit from it, then I will come in for a cut. I consider it an investment in my future.”

  Datang’s smile was nearly sorrowful. “Before I wore my style, I once begged for small change in a shabby common room in the name of an investment in my future. I received not a clipped coin for my trouble. I wonder which encounter left me richer, that or this?”

  “It well befits young warriors to reflect on kōans,” said the Giant of the Grass. “But no warrior can be young forever. Doff your clothes and take a robe; a servant will take you to the baths in five minutes, and I shall knock in forty.”

  “In forty minutes, I shall answer,” said Datang; and, sketching the Abasement to an Honored Adversary, she opened the door to her suite.

  The rooms were spare but spacious, the basic amenities of evident quality. The hallway door entered on a sitting room, adjoined on one side by a grand bedroom and the other by a small one, likely for a handmaid—or, judging by the tight stacks of bunks, a fleet of them. The door to the grand bedroom was cracked; Datang caught a trace of several smells that mingled oddly, jasmine and rosemary and a faintly mephitic scent. She knocked. “Forgive my intrusion,” she said. “I only wished to inform you of my presence and introduce myself. My name is Datang of Shrastaka jiao Ape’s Left Hand, though I do not insist that civilians use my style. Apparently, I will be bathing soon, followed shortly by a reception with the Duke, so we will not see much of one another. Unless, of course, you plan to attend that reception.”

  “Datang of Shrastaka, styled the Ape’s Left Hand?” the voice came from within. “The name does not sound familiar, but there are not too many women granted styles by the gallant fraternity.”

  The voice on its own might not have engaged Datang’s recollection; but in combination with the smell, it sparked her memory. “Queen Pema?”

  No sooner had the name left her lips than the door opened, and Datang abased herself with all due celerity. Her knee had barely hit the ground when Mother-of-Daughters began to protest. “Come now, Datang freeman2 , enough of this.”

  Datang, having completed her abasement, stood straight. “I apologize if it discomfits you, Your Grace, but our detention does not obviate the need for protocol.”

  “It does, Datang freeman, and even if it does not, you exceed protocol.”

  Datang, who had never thought herself punctilious with protocol, looked Mother-of-Daughters in the eye with an expression of frank confusion. “How, Your Grace? Are you not a queen?”

  “I have abdicated.”

  Datang blinked. “Is a queen empowered to abdicate?”

  “The husband of my heart did it,” said Mother-of-Daughters. “I would have followed him then, but the barristers of the Orchid Palace ruled that a queen marries the crown, not the man. Very well; but if the man may set aside the crown, so may the queen—and she has.”

  Datang laughed out loud. “Did the barristers of the Orchid Palace concur with your ruling?”

  “No doubt they are penning their dissents as we speak.”

  “For fear of a plague of abdications?”

  Mother-of-Daughters laughed. “Against that plague, at least, my co-queens are inoculated. They gained their queenships at a more customarily callow age, and my heart’s husband has no taste for callowness.” She allowed herself a small smirk, as though to claim responsibility for that quiddity of taste. “No, my presence in the palace is desired by the River and the Orchid Throne alike. The River prizes its own mingling with the royal line of Uä; the Orchid Throne, for its part, the ability to ransom a scion of the River, should something go amiss on the border.” The smirk faded into a grim, distant gaze.

  Something jogged Datang’s mind into observation. Mother-of-Daughters did not wear the finely embroidered silks of the Uä’n court but a well-designed but plain qipao of stormcloud grey, no doubt spun from the copious local vegetation. The qipao was well fitted to her chest and shoulders, but the tightness at the stomach was unmistakable. Tin chimes shimmered somewhere in the distance; Datang thought back to a towering presence, a dew-wet midnight.

  Mother-of-Daughters tracked her gaze and assessed its import gracefully enough. “You will have known me as Mother-of-Daughters. Some habits are difficult to break.”

  “The fabric market,” said Datang.

  “Ah,” said Mother-of-Daughters. “Now I remember how we met. Whatever became of your enormous companion?”

  “He is in the men’s wing, bathing. With another Green Morning brother and an abdicated King.”

  Mother-of-Daughters’ eyes flashed with sudden hope. “He knows where Sonam went?”

  “The princess Sonam?”

  “Only the King’s daughters may be called ‘princess.’”

  “Where has she gone?”

  “To the University of Heavenly Ordnance, in the south of this province, near a landmark you and I would have been wise enough not to approach in days like these.” She looked again, appraising, at Datang. “Or so I would have thought. What brings you and my heart’s husband through the Earthen Sky?”

  It was impossible for Datang to summon the words for Netten’s motivation. How did one tell a newly pregnant wife that her husband went in search of certain death in the far-off hope of saving a few clerics for another handful of generations? It seemed her face said all that was necessary; Mother-of-Daughters’ hand drifted to her belly, and her face grew grave.

  There came a knock. “I must go, Lady,” said Datang. “Unless you would care to join me in the baths.”

  “Another time,” said Mother-of-Daughters. “When we are not prisoners of a grass-addled maniac; when I have talked my heart’s husband out of making me a widow.”

  A gaze of weighing-up boring into her spine and tin chimes whining in her ears, Datang turned to go.

  Damming the river of rlung

  here were two methods by which a mandarin of Uä might alter a royal appointment to a military post. The slow, sure way was thr
ough well-directed pressure on the functionaries in charge of the appointment; some combination of threats and bribes would generally bring the alteration through, if that combination could be discerned and executed by the mandarin in question. The swifter method was through the expedient of Rassha’s courteous and professional assassins’ union. This was expensive and, in the case of more martially skilled targets, unreliable. In the case of certain targets, it was also complicated by the assassin’s feelings on the prospect of the Cerulean Sword destroying its immediate surroundings, in which eventuality the assassin would almost certainly lose his own life. The exact extent of the Cerulean Sword’s power was, of course, a topic of some dispute; many assassins prided themselves on their hard-nosed skepticism, but the great majority of those found any bet pitting their lives against the sword’s potency too rich for their naturally risk-averse blood. In consequence, almost all the bids against Gyaltsen’s life following his speech to the Iron Army had been made by bunglers from apocalypse-cults of recent vintage, impelled toward heedlessness of life and limb by the weird miracles of the First and Second Blights.

  None of them had made it far enough to feed the Cerulean Sword. Gyaltsen retained top-quality help these days—from the Cerulean Guard, to be sure, but also from the assassins’ union, among whom there were many who did believe in the sword’s potency, and were not keen to let its wrath loose on Rassha. The Master of Horse had begun to make a habit of stopping by the General’s chamber in the mornings, just to see the results of the previous night’s work. His mounting frustration had been evident, the first few times, but eventually he grew resigned to Gyaltsen’s continued respiration, whereupon their conversations had become quite pleasant.

  “He served under me in a cavalry unit once, as it eventuated,” Gyaltsen explained to the man from the assassins’ union, a man who claimed no style or membership in the Green Morning but went nonetheless by the name Lin Jinpa. “Over in the Grass, against some beak-nosed tribe that had come in from the west. To think what I could have done with this thing.” He patted the Sword, which mewled in response. “But I was only a banner commander then, and our guns did well enough in any case.”

  Lin Jinpa nodded from his spot behind the curtain, where he was invisible from both the door and the window. Gyaltsen did not look at him when they spoke; it paid to be careful. The man was amazingly still—Gyaltsen could not detect the slightest rise or fall of his chest. The General laid a companionable hand on the Cerulean Sword again; the weapon purred. “Lin Jinpa, do you know why we are here?”

  “I know you feared assassination on this night more than any other,” said Jinpa. “As I will be well compensated regardless of any attempt on your life, I did not inquire too deeply into the matter.”

  “That is true,” said Gyaltsen. “I do fear assassination now more than ever, though perhaps it will not be tonight. I am about to give an order, Lin Jinpa. I know the Master of Horse knows it, for it involves the cavalry; I know the ministers for acquisitions know it, for it involves great quantities of oil, rags, and arrows. The Master of Horse does not like the plan.”

  “Does he not trust your discernment? Heaven has not been mingy with your victories.”

  “Ah, Lin Jinpa,” said Gyaltsen, “you say you were never in the Green Morning, but you think like a man of the gallant fraternity. I think he knows the merits of the attack well enough. The question is whether it serves the purposes of his office and career.”

  “He is the Master of Horse, is he not?” The assassin seemed genuinely curious. “How can the good use of horses run counter to his purposes?”

  Gyaltsen absently stroked the pommel of the Cerulean Sword again, eliciting another purr. “It is not such a complex calculation,” he said. “You know of my misstep with the Iron Army.”

  “An unforeseeable circumstance.”

  Gyaltsen waved off the consolation. “Here is the order I will give. It has been used successfully in siege-breaks here before. A mile or so downstream of the city, I will order a poison released into the Silver Dragon. It is lighter than water, so floats on top, and potent in small doses. Men are already headed out to the farms with the antivenin, or with sorceries to purify the water.”

  “And yet,” murmured Lin Jinpa, “I was under the impression that your misstep had committed you to peace.”

  “The towers are vacant,” said Gyaltsen, “the army withdrawn. I made no representations concerning the river. If the Iron Eunuch returns to claim the crown, he shall have it; but the Crescent part my spine if I will let his swarm of hungry lumberjacks lurk another night outside my city.”

  “The elegance of your subterfuge,” said Lin Jinpa, “is equaled only by the nobility of its animating sentiment.” This phrase, well-ordered though it was, lacked that certain sonority that separates the deeply felt word from the shibboleth—a defect Gyaltsen readily perceived. “But, General, have not the Iron Eunuch’s sorcerers countered your every attempt to poison their supplies?”

  “Yes,” said Gyaltsen. “But they will not do so when I give the order.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Because it will come only when the Third Blight has begun.”

  That drew a look of mild interest from Lin Jinpa. “And what will the Third Blight be?”

  “I believe the scholars refer to it as ‘the damming of the river of rlung.’ The spirit-breath that animates the supernatural will be rendered inert for a time. The poison is sufficiently slow-acting that it should take the Iron Army some time to figure out what has happened, at which point they will have two choices: Pretend ignorance about what has happened and lose all their men, or acknowledge it and initiate hostilities.”

  Lin Jinpa nodded. “And you are prepared for their hostilities.”

  “Or for them to hunker down and lose their men. I made the mistake before of underestimating the Glib Ape. I will not make it again. But I surmise he will attack the city.”

  Gyaltsen reached out to stroke the Cerulean Sword again. The blade was silent.

  Lin Jinpa stared at it for a long time. Gyaltsen could see the thoughts racing behind his eyes. He badly wanted to say something, but let the assassin work through his deductions.

  At last Lin Jinpa raised his eyes to meet Gyaltsen’s. “The Master of Horse may be misinformed about your understanding of the Third Blight.”

  “He may be.”

  “Did you encourage that misinformation?”

  “It would not be the first time the Master of Horse has misjudged my grasp of a situation.”

  “Because,” said Lin Jinpa, “had he known you knew about the damming of the river of rlung—”

  “He might have laid a more careful plan to kill me without leveling the city. For a man who does not believe in the supernatural, he seems to understand its workings well enough.”

  “But as it is—”

  “I have secured protection more reliable than you.”

  Lin Jinpa looked around. “It is well concealed.”

  “Consummately.”

  “And yet I live.”

  “You will not serve me again, that is for certain,” said Gyaltsen. “But you might be of some use to our city as of yet, Lin Jinpa. You have talents. I can spare you, if you let me.”

  Lin Jinpa mulled the prospect over for some time. “We will forgo a great donation if I leave you breathing.”

  “My breath is not the topic under negotiation, Lin Jinpa. Yours is.”

  Lin Jinpa smiled thinly. “You were right, General. I was in the Green Morning. Can you guess my style?”

  “I do not guess it was the Churchman,” said Gyaltsen, “nor yet the Faithful Husband.”

  “I knew them both,” said Lin Jinpa, “and they were better men than I, as you perceive. They called me the Dog with a Snake for a Tail.”

  “Now they will call you the Dog with a Snake with a Lamb’s Head for a Tail, if you do what is right.”

  Lin Jinpa was silent for a moment, unraveling this notional new style. A pou
nding on the door put paid to his cogitations. Gyaltsen gave Lin Jinpa a steady stare. After a moment, he began walking over to the door. “Who knocks?” he called.

  “Zigsa, your retainer.”

  Gyaltsen reached out to unlock the door. Zigsa entered, wild-eyed. “The Lotus, man,” said Gyaltsen, affecting nonchalance about the assassin behind him, “what has happened?”

  “The Glib Ape has unleashed his troops. The farms are burning.”

  “Which farms?”

  “All of them.”

  Gyaltsen stared at Zigsa, inviting elaboration.

  “Every one whose location we know,” said Zigsa. “Word has got back from the towers. The attack is comprehensive.”

  “There are dozens of farms on the Great South Plain.”

  “Hundreds.”

  “Has the Pretender some spell of marvelous travel?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” said Zigsa. “He has merely split up his troops. The family farms are attacked by perhaps a dozen soldiers each; the great farmsteads, a hundred or two.”

  “What are we waiting for, man?” said Gyaltsen. “Mop them up!”

  “That operation is begun,” said Zigsa. “At the great farms—that much was at the major-generals’ discretion. Shall we broaden its scope?”

  Gyaltsen turned to Lin Jinpa. “Have we concluded our business here?”

  “Here, perhaps,” said the assassin. “But my order stands, and I may execute it elsewhere.”

  “Wilt not execute it after the Third Blight is over?”

  “I am no suicide—not like these cultists and doom-prophets they send for your blood, nor do I wish to flatten my brothers under the gale of the Cerulean Sword.”

  “What a chore.” Gyaltsen turned to Zigsa. “My good man, please disembowel this assassin.”

  There hung a moment in which both Zigsa and Lin Jinpa stared at Gyaltsen, then at each other, weighing the seriousness of the order. In that moment, the flat of the Cerulean Sword connected with Lin Jinpa’s temple, sending him sprawling like a ragdoll. Without waiting for Zigsa’s aid, Gyaltsen swiftly divested the assassin of his belt, which he tied around the man’s ankle. He dragged Lin Jinpa over to the office window, quickly secured the belt to the curtain-hook sunk into the wall, then hung the assassin out in the Dawn Courtyard. Without a word, he entered the corridor and set off for the war room, where he knew a hundred messages would be waiting. Zigsa scurried to follow.