Marias knew she was breathing too fast, her heart beating like a hare’s. She stood in the dwindling shadow of the city gate while hawkers, guards and workers streamed by, all busy with their lives. Those who kept moving had a sort of immunity, she saw, as if their bustle protected them from notice. She sensed the attention of others flickering past and then returning to her: a butcher opening his shop, a schoolchild eating a steamed bun filled with red bean paste. Just standing still brought her to the notice of those who knew she had not been there before. Marias did not want to be challenged. Yet what choice did she have? Taeshin had vanished two days before. She had no way of claiming his income, if it was still being issued in his name. No house slave would be allowed to collect a man’s pay, even if she’d known which of the offices in the palace quarter was the right one. She bit her fingernails as she stood at the roadside, worrying at the tips until the skin was ragged and sore. Taeshin had not been a wealthy man, she knew that. He had paid late on occasion, using his status and name to make tradesmen wait. Yet he had not been seen since he’d collapsed in front of half a dozen noble families and the king himself. The news had spread as if it had wings. Those to whom Taeshin owed money had heard and come to bang on his door that very first evening. Warriors who became ill had no protections from such men. The obsequious manner she’d seen in them before had vanished, just as soon as they thought they had the upper hand. Marias had sat at the top of the stairs and hugged her knees to herself, watching angry shadows peer through glass.
They had not forced the door, at least. Some of Taeshin’s creditors had left boys to watch the house for his return, or perhaps to be first in line if the property was sold at auction. Marias would have starved or frozen if she’d stayed inside, without a single lamp to betray her presence. Instead, she’d climbed out of the small window in Taeshin’s bedroom and crept across the tiles.
That had felt like freedom, of a sort, above the heads of bustling men and women. They went about their lives below and, as far as she could see, hardly looked up at all. Certainly, she had not been spotted as she made her way out. No cry had begun, no chase summoned to recapture a running slave.
She clasped the good cloak close around her. Marias had never worn it before. She thought it had belonged once to Taeshin’s mother and it still smelled of a faint perfume. Yet it sheltered her from the glances of those passing. On impulse, she held out a hand to beg for coin. That made her even less visible to the merchants and traders coming into the city. Her face was smeared with dirt and her hands were filthy from climbing around on green tiles. It was either a disguise or her new reality. For the moment, she chose to believe it was a disguise.
Taeshin used to keep spare coins on a round plate by the door. It was bad luck there had been only a couple of renminbi there. She’d spent the last of the household wealth on bread and a handful of dried silkworm larvae, all the while listening to every conversation and asking questions like a gossip. She’d considered going back to Little Mung, but Marias was not that desperate, not on the first day. After another day and night with no sign of Taeshin, her certainties were slipping through her fingers and she was losing hope. She’d eaten the last of the food the previous evening and all she’d heard was the rumour that Taeshin had been taken in by the Lord of Trade. Marias imagined a kindly man, treating Taeshin’s illness with poultices and doctors. None of the street sellers would tell her where that lord had his home. When she pressed them, they sensed her need was dangerous. They looked again at the dirt on her and they clamped their lips tight and waved her away.
Marias was certainly hungry enough to consider stealing, but was all too aware of what happened to slaves who did. She had decided to die on her feet rather than be stripped and hanged in the nearest square. A wave of dizziness swept over her, so that she reached out to the gatepost, brushing against a soldier coming out. He eyed her warily at first, then with more confidence as he took in her visible poverty. Something unpleasant kindled in his eyes and Marias turned away from it, only to have him grip her arm.
‘You should come into the guardhouse, love, where it’s nice and warm. We’ve got food in there – and wine, if you want. Come on.’
Marias yanked her arm from his grasp. She knew very well what awaited her if she was fool enough to go with him, especially if they discovered her brand.
‘Get away!’ she snapped at him. Anger or perhaps hunger gave her the confidence. She was a free woman in that instant, gathering tattered dignity like the shawl around her.
The guard sneered, flushing. He was younger than she’d first thought and embarrassed by the glances coming his way. The butcher was watching the little scene, Marias saw. The guard didn’t reach out again, but there was spite in him too and a desire to hurt.
‘Go on, get away from this patch,’ he said, his voice coarse and too loud. ‘You’ll not beg here, bitch.’
Marias felt her own face flush under the dirt. It stung, even after so many years. Yet she was pleased just to be able to turn into the crowd once more. It was the only victory she could have against the man and all he was: strong and violent, trained and clean and free. She wished Taeshin could have been there, to put the man across his knee and beat him like a drum. The thought took some of the pain from the encounter. She began to push her way through the passers-by, ignoring the touch of hands that felt for some hidden purse under her cloak. She had nothing to steal, nothing even to prevent her stomach croaking like a marsh frog.
Further along the street, cheering began. Marias stood on her tiptoes to see, holding on to a short stone post to keep her balance as more and more people swept forward to see what was coming. She clung there like a limpet, refusing to be dislodged from a place that would allow her to see which of the king’s master swordsmen were riding through the gate. The city was alive with the rumour and she had convinced herself one of them would somehow be Taeshin. As mad as it was, she could not let them leave Shiang while she searched for her master, not without glimpsing their faces. The thought that she might have missed him in her weakness and hunger would torment her if she didn’t look. That much was certain.
It was a modest group compared to some she had seen. Military processions could march along those main streets for hours: thousands of men in perfect ranks, with the banners of noble houses fluttering overhead. In comparison, those four horsemen might have passed through Shiang almost without notice. Yet the crowds thickened by the moment and Marias felt breath catch in her throat.
In a city that revered the craft of the sword, those who could claim true mastery were considered national treasures. Even Marias knew the name of Hondo, first swordsman of Shiang. He looked younger than she had expected, riding a shining brown horse with his hands lightly on the pommel. No group of the best swordsmen could be assembled without him, she imagined. Though he had to be fifty, he had won tournaments for thirty years, against all comers.
She did not know the names of the three riding with Hondo, though the crowd around her obliged by calling them at the tops of their voices. The twins Hi and Je could not be told apart, of course. They were identical warriors and were said to have achieved their mastery by training together every day, stopping only to sleep and eat.
Marias blinked as she discovered she did actually recognise the last of the four. Bosin was a huge man who rode a horse more suited to pulling a plough than being ridden into battle. It was a beast that dwarfed even its master, who stood head and shoulders above the other three. God had given Bosin unusual gifts as a child, so that he was said to be able to lift any man above his head. Untrained, he would not have been a challenge for a Mazer swordsman. Yet he was as fast and deadly as any of the others – and far stronger. In normal times, he trailed admirers like a comet passing through the city. Marias had seen him twice over the years, both times when she’d glanced up to see who could possibly laugh so loudly. Bosin was a man of gold, far above the pettiness and frustrations of an ordinary life, at least as she imagined him.
Marias craned and peered for some sight of Taeshin amongst them. It surprised her to see such names travelling without servants or slaves to tend them. It was true their saddlebags were crammed full, but they would be lighting their own fires in the wilderness. Bosin’s animal seemed to be carrying twice his weight with all he had brought. Yet Taeshin was not there.
Marias let go of the post and her space was immediately filled by those who desired a glimpse of the Shiang masters. Almost without effort, she was pushed back and back, retreating from the press of elbowing humanity as her strength faded. She turned for home, then changed her mind and headed to the market once more. At the end of each day, the stallholders threw away the food that had turned. She had seen the sick and the poor gather for that harvest the evening before, holding out their hands. She had not been ready to fight them then, but she knew she would be too weak if she let another chance go. Marias was not yet ready to give up. She wondered what it would feel like when she was.
Taeshin had not experienced electrical pain before. Part of his training in the Mazer steps was simply being hit, both in sparring bouts and as a separate procedure, to force his bones to grow stronger. Nothing trained the body for battle as well as actually being struck. He had lived with bruises and cracked bones from the age of seven, when he’d been taken to the boys’ barracks for the first time. His bunkmates had welcomed him with a beating that had left him senseless and with two broken fingers.
None of that prepared him for the helplessness he felt in the long room. He had grown to fear the sound of the door opening as Lord Ran appeared and consulted his servants in quiet murmurs. The four men lying strapped to the tables no longer seemed to concern the nobleman as individuals. Lord Ran and his staff moved and prepared around them as if they did not stare and tremble. The blind man called for help, at intervals, as if the sound lay buried in him and bubbled to the surface. No one answered him.
They were offered water to drink. As the setting sun turned the windows to gold across the river, one of the servants even spooned a steaming mush of boiled vegetables into them, one by one. Taeshin was starving, but turned his head and refused even so, clamping his jaw shut. He had been hungry before. It felt like surrender to take charity from people who considered him just another ape tied to the bed.
When darkness came, Lord Ran’s servants lit tapers, touching them to tiny jets of gas behind glass, so that light bloomed again in the long room. Taeshin had known oil lamps, but never anything that suggested pipes and contraptions hidden in the walls. He wrinkled his nose as the thin and toothless drunk urinated where he lay. The man was weeping, Taeshin saw. He looked for some expression in the servants, but as soon as they saw what had happened, they whipped the sheets away and brought clean ones, dabbing the man with cloths as best they could. Taeshin wondered if they would release his bonds if he emptied his bowels. He was almost desperate enough to try it.
Great vats of sulphur acid and metals he did not know still bubbled on the tables, a line of white mist standing above each one like a rain cloud. Taeshin shuddered as he tried to make sense of what had happened. Lord Ran had turned a circular knob of some dark metal and the results had been like sour magic in him. First, his muscles had tensed on their own, without his control for the first time in his life. Taeshin had seen ridges stand up in his forearms, and he could still feel his jaw and neck ache from where they had been tensed for so long. Yet it seemed that Lord Ran had no particular accomplishment in mind when he worked the machine. It was as if he was still setting up and testing each part of his equipment. Taeshin had watched the men on the beds arch, one after the other, giving him a chance to see how he looked when the wires were attached. It was an ugly thing, he thought. The eyes of men could be made animal by pain. Taeshin felt himself twitch suddenly in the bed, though the wires had all been removed. That too brought a kind of fear, that they had taken some of his control away from him, a man who had worked hard to gain mastery of his flesh. It was one of the few things he owned and he sensed the machine could rip even that out of him.
No one had explained why he had been placed there, nor why the wires made his muscles tighten with an unseen hand. Lord Ran ignored questions as if he could not hear them, moving like a ghost as he checked every connection and read his notes aloud as he did, murmuring instructions to himself as much as his servants.
Lord Ran left the room occasionally, presumably to eat or rest. Taeshin still twitched and he thought he would not sleep, not in that place where every sense screamed to stay awake, to gnaw his way out if he had to. If he could have reached one of the wrist straps with his teeth, he would have tried it. All he could do was lean back and close his eyes.
‘Taeshin, wasn’t it?’ a voice said.
It was the big man across from him, the one whose leg was missing. The servants had not replaced the fellow’s blanket, so that Taeshin could still see pink ropes and bristles along the stump. He had stared at it when the man had leaned back and closed his eyes. It was a fascinating thing to a young man, especially one who knew anatomy. Swordmasters were trained in the structures of the body. It made them better able to cut a man apart.
Taeshin nodded.
‘Do you know what they’re doing with us?’
Taeshin looked up. The long room was quiet, as if the staff slept. He had no doubt one of the servants would come through in a moment, but they were alone, no matter how briefly.
‘I thought I might be healed. All these wires, though – I don’t like the look of them.’
‘Torture, I thought,’ the blind man said suddenly.
Both Taeshin and the soldier looked to him, wincing at the pink growth where eyes should have been. The man seemed to sense their scrutiny and he leaned as far forward as he could against his throat strap. The sinews in his neck stood out like wires under the skin.
‘Take a good look, boys. That’s what acid will do to you. I know that smell, I’ve known it before. We’ll not live through this, I’m telling you. I’d make your peace, if I were you. Never thought I’d get caught twice, but I couldn’t see them coming, could I?’
He began to laugh and Taeshin thought it a cold sound. He wrenched against his bonds then. The black lumps in his side flared their agony, but for a time he was almost mindless, yanking and tugging, throwing his whole strength against the straps. He was only dimly aware of the servants rushing in and holding him still with cool hands against his skin. They checked the straps and nodded to one another.
Little by little the long room came back to life. The peaceful gloom of the small hours was replaced by morning brightness as they turned down the jets of the lamps. Taeshin was exhausted and in pain. He spent a time wondering what would happen to Marias. She would not know where he had gone, he realised. No one would think to tell her. The thought of not being there to protect her was an oddly discomfiting emotion.
The servants lined up on either side, their mouths covered with clean cloths tied behind. They stood in silence for an age and the only sound was the weeping of the thin man and the whispered cursing of the soldier. The one with no eyes did not speak again and seemed to have retreated into his own personal hell. Taeshin spent the time looking back over his life and seeking forgiveness for every sin and moment of cruelty. That was all that mattered, his father had said. It would not concern God that he had killed a dozen willing opponents. They had chosen their fate and risked their lives to stand against him with a sword. All that mattered was when he had been cruel, when he had deliberately caused pain. Not carelessly, for he was not a saint – and not any of the times when he had apologised and made amends. By his count, it left only three occasions. Though he regretted them all, he considered it was not too high a tally for a man of the sword. Not in Shiang, at least.
As the sun rose, Lord Ran returned to the long room, looking refreshed. He was dabbing his mouth with a cloth and he had changed his clothes. Taeshin wondered if the man knew or cared that they had all emptied their bladders in the night and had sheets changed. It was a humiliation, but he sensed Lord Ran cared nothing for details of that sort.
The man smiled as dawn entered the room. He was clearly in a good mood.
‘Gentlemen!’ he said. ‘Thank you for your patience. It will not be much longer, I promise you. Turn the gaslights right down, would you? Yes, off, I think.’
He said the last to a servant, who went around the room and twisted tiny brass knobs, until only sunlight brightened the walls.
Taeshin grimaced in remembered pain as the king’s Lord of Trade attached wires once more to the backs of their hands. The enormous batteries were wheeled closer, so that Taeshin had to blink and breathe shallowly against the smell of acid biting at his throat.
‘Lord Ran, would you please let me go?’ Taeshin said firmly. He had promised himself he would, as soon as he saw the man. The soldier across from him perked up at the words and added his own voice.
‘Me too, my lord. I’d like to call it a day here.’
The drunk and the blind man said nothing, sagging in the straps and their own damp clothes.
Lord Ran shook his head.
‘I am sorry it has taken so long, gentlemen. You have no idea how delicate these arrangements are, how careful I must be. I have one chance to prove my assertion. If I waste it for lack of care, I will never forgive myself – indeed, I may never get another. Rest assured, my intention is to heal you. For some of you’ – he inclined his head to Taeshin – ‘I believe it is your only hope. Have faith then, gentlemen, in science and in magic. Have faith in me!’
‘Please, my lord. I would prefer not to risk it,’ the soldier said again.
Lord Ran ignored him, though his colour deepened and the good mood evaporated.
‘Put the stone in place,’ the lord called to his servants.
They brought in a box and removed a stone about the size of a man’s outstretched hand, or a little longer. It was a creamy white, flecked with gold that caught the sun streaming in through the windows. Taeshin could not look away from it. He saw a similar reverence in Lord Ran as he rested his hand on the surface.
‘Is it not beautiful?’ he murmured, though the question was not directed at the men on the beds. He smiled more gently then, his irritation eased by its presence.
‘It is a source of magic, gentlemen, if it can be tapped and used. My instruments suggest a vast reservoir of power in this white stone, but until recently, I could not find a way to draw it out.’ He gestured to the batteries with a sweep of his hand.
Taeshin began to struggle again, almost mindlessly. He could not stop them placing the stone in the tangle of wires, nor could he pull free the ones they stuck to his side, though tears of agony and terror rolled down his cheeks. The men on the beds were draped in thick braids of metal and cloth, made almost into machines themselves. Taeshin felt bile come into his throat and burn him as Lord Ran checked the entire assemblage once again.
‘Stand clear,’ he said to his servants. ‘Do not touch these men now, on pain of your lives.’
He stood with his hand on a dial and Taeshin could only stare. Lord Ran nodded to them all.
‘Ready yourselves, gentlemen. It is time.’
Taeshin saw the hand turn and he felt a jolt of strain enter him, then swell impossibly, so that he arched against the straps. Lord Ran was shouting something and the servants were scurrying around. The men on the beds twisted and writhed. Taeshin could see light burning in them, behind their teeth and in their eyes. The whole world seemed to flare into whiteness and he knew he walked with death.