28

TIGAI

Market Square

Ghingwai

Three days.

Master Indra’s warning stuck in his head, as it had every sundown since he’d been given Mei’s hand amid the ruins of their destroyed temple. Three days until Mei suffered again for his failure, and two had already come and gone.

An Imperial crier pushed through the throng, calling the sunset as he used a long pole to light the lanterns draped from roof to roof. Few seemed to take notice of the hour, continuing their shouts and haggling over carpets, sugared figs, incense sticks, bed slaves, silks, and whatever else was on offer. Tigai stood at the center of it, the eye of a monsoon as it swirled around the heart of the square. He’d placed his back against the plinth of General An’s statue of horse and rider, proof against pickpockets, and a means to avoid being judged by the gold-lacquered eyes of the woman seated atop her cast-iron horse. An Ling was the daughter of an ancient general, who took up her father’s standard midway through a battle to save the Empire. He couldn’t help but see Mei in her face.

This was the third night. Anger had given way to fear and desperation hours ago. Indra’s promise of a second hand as the price of failure flashed in his thoughts as he scanned the crowd. Desperate. Three days wasn’t enough to forge the sort of connection that would let him hook himself to a man’s bedchamber. But it had to be tonight.

He saw Lin Qishan before he was meant to, he was sure. She made no especial attempt at subterfuge, but neither could she have expected to stand out among the crowd of merchants, buyers, and thieves. Soldiers and mercenaries flooded the streets in all three capacities; she blended in among them in her tunic and breeches, shambling through the press with a purpose, where most were content to consider some ware or another, or leer at whoever looked as though they wouldn’t put up a fight.

“Master Anji,” Lin said when she took a place beside the statue, affecting the air of a chance encounter with an old acquaintance. “A pleasure to find you here, in Ghingwai of all ports.”

His heart thumped in his chest. Three days, Indra had said. The third wasn’t finished. She couldn’t mean to deliver the news yet.

“You as well, Sergeant Hui,” he said. The need for false names was absurd, as far as he saw it. The name Yanjin Tigai meant nothing to the soldiers assembled here to buy salt pork and sex. But he’d call her the aryu of the west if it meant reprieve from the direst sort of news.

She leaned in to kiss his cheek, and her tone changed. “Tonight,” she said in a low voice, but sharp as the glass he knew she could summon at a whim. “Now. You’ve already dithered too long.”

They switched cheeks. “It isn’t like buying a ticket to a bloody circus,” he said, and she withdrew, cutting him short.

“Master Anji, I’m afraid any business would have to be discussed over tea, and time is short. Perhaps I will run into you again tomorrow, if the wind spirits are favorable.”

“I’d be inclined to take that tea tonight,” he said, but she was already pulling back, fixing him with a heavy look before she faded into the crowd.

He had half a mind to go after her. None of it made sense. Indra had anchored them to Ghingwai, only to find the city overrun with mercenaries. A reaction to his and Remarin’s attack on the Emperor’s palace, perhaps, only why would they mobilize here, and not the Imperial City? Indra had said something about a rebellion, led by someone called “Isaru Mattai” as though the name was meant to hold some significance. All it meant to him was a city on the brink of war, with enemies or with itself, and him tasked with shadowing one of its commanders.

On the opposite side of the square, where crimson-sashed soldiers formed a makeshift phalanx around a whore-seller, lay the object of Master Indra’s interest, and by extension, of his. Boisterous laughter rose from among their number. He’d been shadowing the inner circle of Priva Ambiyyat’s company for three days now, slowly letting strands fall away where they had no connections in common. Just as he’d done with his prisoners and their connections to the Emperor’s chambers, so Lin Qishan and Master Indra expected him to be able to do with Priva Ambiyyat. But it wasn’t so simple, with men who ate and drank and fought and fucked together. They had two dozen strands in common; he was as likely to hook himself to some distant battlefield as the inner sanctum of wherever their company kept the contracts Lin Qishan had charged him to steal.

Tonight. It had to be tonight.

He pushed off from the statue, angling around to make it look as though he were coming from the west. The whore-seller’s stall was broad enough to occupy the space for two lesser merchants, with as many bare-chested guardsmen as bare-chested women on display. Even so, Ambiyyat’s men outnumbered the guards, swarming around the stall to make clear the goods were reserved for men in crimson sashes. He ignored the implied warning, edging toward the stall as he pushed through the crowd, eyeing the girls with lust he wouldn’t have had to feign if not for the doom hanging over him, and his family.

“This one is a sweet brown, half-Bhakal and bred to please,” the whore-seller was saying, an Ihjani man done up in an exaggeration of his people’s traditional style, colorful silks and patterned turban wrapped tight around his head. “Pair her with a white-skinned Natarii from the north, and both will leave you drained as a fresh-molt snakeskin, I swear it on my mother’s heart.”

One of Ambiyyat’s men took note of his approach, gesturing to his fellows as they turned to block the way.

“Move along, friend,” the mercenary said to him. “These slaves are spoken for tonight.”

Tigai affected a humble posture as the whore-seller moved on to a different stall, this one featuring a Nikkon girl bound in chains around a post. “This one is fresh, but fierce,” the Ihjani man was saying. “Still unbroken, but you may find pleasure in the breaking, so long as you agree to waive any claims against me, should she do you or your men harm.”

“Come now,” Tigai said to the mercenaries. “You’ve had claim on these the last two nights already. Surely there are plenty to go round.”

“Move along,” the mercenary repeated. “Return tomorrow and you can have your pick of our leavings.”

“By tomorrow I’ll be half a day’s journey to Hagong. I’d saved enough qian for one of the Ihjani’s girls to see me off. All the men of my guild say they’re the best.”

The mercenary made a face between a leer and a grin. “You’ll have to spend your seed in the dirt along the road, tradesman. Or find some lesser whores.”

“The slave girls are only for men with your sashes?”

“Men of Ambiyyat’s company,” the mercenary said. “Fighting men.”

“Very well, then,” he said. “I’ll fight you for your sash.”

Laughter roared from the mercenary’s fellows, and the man who’d spoken gave him a second look, as though Tigai had already struck him across the eyes.

“What did you say, tradesman?”

“You heard me, my friend. I mean to wet my cock tonight. If that means trading blows with you before I get my hands on a girl, so be it.”

He knew at once he’d judged the situation aright. The man’s fellows wore skull-splitting grins, looking back and forth at him as though they couldn’t believe what they knew they’d heard. The mercenary had spoken truly enough; they were fighting men, tall and broad-chested where Jun lords were seldom renowned for their height or girth, and Tigai was no exception. But he’d been trained at arms by an Ujibari clan chief, hopefully enough to hold his own. It might end with his face in the dirt, but these men respected strength, so strength was the tool he had to employ. And the mercenary couldn’t refuse such a challenge, not and share a drink with any fellow of his company for weeks to come.

“You’re a gnat,” the mercenary said. “Fuck off before I swat you.”

Tigai replied by dropping into a fighting stance, setting his weight between both legs and relaxing into a half crouch, allowing his opponent the first attack.

The laughter turned to a buzz that passed through the crowd, their eyes turned from within the Ihjani’s stall and from within the press of the square. Space appeared around them, though anyone would have sworn the press was packed tight a moment before.

The mercenary gave him a look of equal parts confusion and scorn, and offered the same to his comrades. Tigai waited, lowering his eyes to watch all parts of his enemy’s body at once.

Weight shifted to the mercenary’s front leg, and gave away the strike before it came.

The mercenary grunted, lunging to throw a punch across his body with enough force to crack a stone. Tigai ducked, jabbing into the mercenary’s abdomen as a feint while he sent a kick to the side of the knee on the mercenary’s front leg. Simple. Remarin had drilled him on it a hundred times: Disrupt your enemy’s balance and he would fall, no matter the size advantage in your opponent’s favor. Only instead of falling, the mercenary staggered forward, carried by the force of his own swing.

Tigai tried to shift his weight and turn aside, but the mercenary caught hold of his shirt, wrenching them both into the street. Pain stung his forearm where he landed, scraped against the stones and dirt, and his breath burned as it left his lungs. The crowd roared, and the audience seemed to blur as the ground spun beneath him.

He kicked to free himself, landing a solid blow on something he hoped was the mercenary’s torso. Then the world shook and he tasted blood.

The mercenary hit him again. His head ached and his teeth hurt. Instinct hovered over the strands like the fibers on a weaver’s wheel. But no; leaving that way meant questions, and questions meant heightened alerts, knowing a magi had taken an interest in Priva Ambiyyat’s band. The mercenary wouldn’t strike to kill. They lay tangled on the street, and he flailed and kicked between the mercenary’s punches, landing a fist in the other man’s jaw, and another in his eye. The crowd roared, laughing and shouting until rough hands grabbed hold of his shoulders and dragged them apart.

He staggered to his feet, hefted by a Hagali man a full head and shoulders above him. Another who could be the Hagali’s twin held his opponent, and Priva Ambiyyat himself stood between them, a man attired tenfold as grandly as his soldiers, with a scabbarded shamshir blade tucked in the folds of his gold and crimson sash.

“What passes here?” Priva Ambiyyat said. “Almost I think I have taken a wrong street, and ended at the fighting pits, instead of the flesh market.”

“This man tried to fight me,” his opponent said. The man’s lip had split, his eye already turned a soft purple that promised to bloom before the night was out. Evidently Remarin’s training had counted for more than he’d thought, when instinct took over.

“This is true?” Ambiyyat said. “You have assaulted one of my company?”

“I challenged him for one of your sashes, and the right to bed one of these whores,” Tigai said, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head and the trail of blood running from his nose. “He accepted the challenge when he threw the first punch.”

“Summon the guards,” the Ihjani whore-seller said from behind a line of mercenaries. “This sort of disruption is intolerable, and around my delicate night-flowers, who know nothing of these cruelties.”

Ambiyyat grinned, looking between him and the mercenary he’d fought. “It seems to me you have earned yourself a night in a cell, my friend.”

“I wanted nothing more than the honor of having what you have already had, my lord,” he said. “They say Priva Ambiyyat’s company is generous in victory and honorable in defeat. Do they have the right of it?”

Desperation strained his voice. He could hear it as the words left his lips, as Mei’s face flashed in his memory. But the captain paused, looming between his Hagali bodyguards as though deciding what to have for supper.

“No man says that of my company, not in any port of call I have visited.”

“Perhaps they will start, when you grant me my whore.”

Ambiyyat laughed. “I have never seen a man so desperate for fucking. Yes. Let them go. For your zeal, and the unexpected entertainment. Did you have a particular slave in mind?”

Tigai suppressed the urge to exhale in relief.

“I am a humble man, my lord. Would it do you homage, if I chose whichever girl you had last night?”

This time the crowd laughed along with the captain, and he nodded agreement, clapping Tigai across the shoulder hard enough to rattle his teeth a second time.

Their tea service had been prepared in the Emperor’s kitchens, ferried to Ghingwai on the backs of sea turtles, then left to steep under moonlight for the length of an owl’s song. Or so it bloody felt.

Lin Qishan, still wearing the costume of a mercenary sergeant, insisted they keep decorum, which meant tea before business, no matter how late the hour. She reclined in an oak chair carved with dragons for armrests, looking for all the world as though her tea was the most important thing in the world. She lifted the cup, inhaling the steam, and he resisted the urge to knock it to the floor, to yell at her to read the fucking papers he’d delivered before they’d even entered the teahouse.

The slave girl he’d won the right of bedding had led him straight to Priva Ambiyyat’s tent. Her strands had been unmistakable, and thank the Gods the captain hadn’t shared her yet with his lieutenants. A look at her had made clear why: a beauty from the southern jungles, done up like a Jun court haremite, but with a boyish figure and a penis to match. She’d reacted with confusion when he spent more time with his eyes closed, sensing her connections to the starfield, than staring at her figure. Gods only knew what she’d thought of him excusing himself in haste once he’d made the connection.

“Do you not find your tea agreeable, Master Anji?” Lin Qishan asked.

He glared at her. The servants had poured him a cup, too, of course. He hadn’t looked at it. Lin Qishan seemed wholly intent on their useless charade, as though they were actors playing for the sake of an audience who’d paid to watch their every dalliance. Fine.

He took up the cup and downed its contents in a single gulp, regretting the decision quicker than he could lower it back to the table. Boiling water seared his throat, and he coughed, loud enough to turn heads and spoil the scene.

Lin Qishan only sipped her tea, ignoring his display.

“Very well,” she said after an eternity. “Let us see what business you’ve put before me.”

Priva Ambiyyat’s mercenary contracts. He’d read them through twice to be sure, and grabbed three extra sets of documents, governing the company’s employment history for their prior four campaigns. Ambiyyat’s company had been hired to garrison Ghingwai for the season, paid by the magistracy itself. Before that they’d been fighting striking workers on behalf of a mining company, doing patrols in the jungles of Honjin, been armed escorts for the wool merchants’ guild’s caravans, and fought Ihjani tribesmen for a Jun march lord in the far west. Lin thumbed through them all, seeming to pore over every word.

“It’s all there,” he said, straining through his scorched throat. “You must give me whatever token will suffice, to stop Master—”

She hissed before he could say the name. Oh for the koryu’s sake.

“… to stop our mutual acquaintance, then,” he finished.

“Yes,” Lin Qishan said. “In due course. First I will need you to murder the owner of these documents, then do the same for each of the other five mercenary captains in Ghingwai.”

He nearly coughed again. She insisted on the pretense of a masquerade, then spoke openly of murdering a half-dozen men? And not just any men, the very captains employed to defend the city?

“Of course,” he said. “Naturally you want them dead. Shall I deliver the Emperor’s wives to you as well? Then the heads of Zan House, the Jiyuns, and perhaps their firstborn daughters to keep you entertained while you wait?”

“No,” she said, as though he were perfectly serious. “Only these six, to send a message. Then you wait for the reply.”

“No. I won’t do anything of the kind. Not without assurances that Mei and—”

Once again she hissed to cut him short.

“You’ll have your assurances,” Lin said. “Our mutual acquaintance will not act without my word. Do this. Do it tonight.”

“What? I can’t—”

She slammed the table. “You can. You will.”

Patrons from across the house were eyeing them, and Lin seemed not to care.

He leaned forward, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. “You mean for me to walk into their camps, strike them down, and hook an anchor to the next tents? Half the city will be in an uproar, screaming about a magi gone mad.”

“Yes, yes they will.”

She was half-witted herself. No other explanation fit. Her and Master Indra and his apprentice and all of them. Even with Dao, Remarin, and Mei in their keeping. They were asking him to start a war, to declare that the Great and Noble Houses intended to interfere in politics again. He wasn’t even associated with the monks or their temples, and Lin Qishan was asking for the sort of incitement that would send half the Empire into a panic.

“Why don’t you do it yourself? Go throw glass at them until you stir the hornets into a frenzy.”

“I wouldn’t survive. You will. And it is imperative you do, so take no chances with the soldiers.”

“You’re asking me to weigh three lives against what, how many? A thousand? How many will die in the panic alone?”

She said nothing to that, giving him a cold look in place of argument. Mei’s face flashed again in his memory, and the terrible image of the hand in Master Indra’s sack. All his better judgment screamed to run, to write off his brother, Remarin, and Mei as casualties of whatever insanity prevailed among his captors. Instead he could feel the decision being made, and hated himself for knowing what it would be.