Chasing the Phoenix (23 page)

He waited.

“Majesty, China will be yours,” Darger said fervently, “and with it the city of North, and with the city of North the Dragon Throne, and with the Dragon Throne the Phoenix Bride. I say this in the names of—well, I cannot tell you our true names. The courts of heaven will not allow it. But this I can say: Destiny is on your side. It would be easier to stop the moon from rising or the tides from going out than to keep you from possessing China, North, the Dragon Throne, and the passionate, all-consuming embrace of the Phoenix Bride. Be patient, sire, and all that you desire will be yours.”

During his short speech, Darger had quietly risen to his feet. Now he joined hands together within the wide sleeves of his robes and bowed deeply. Surplus rose also from his chair and bowed as well.

The Hidden Emperor was breathing shallowly. But he only said, “You may don the ritual garments of purification once more and leave by the same way you entered. I am glad we had this little chat.”

*   *   *

WHITE SQUALL
knelt at the foot of the phoenix device's gleaming bronze shell, using needle-thin tools to perform some delicate operation on one of its components. Darger and Surplus pushed through her startled subordinates and crouched down to either side of her.

“We must speak,” Darger said, taking White Squall by the arm.

Surplus did the same with her other arm. “Outside,” he said.

They stood, hoisting White Squall up after them. Ignoring the sappers' alarmed questions, Darger and Surplus marched her from the room, through several sets of doors, and out into the street. Furiously, White Squall ripped off her face mask. “How dare you treat a superior officer so! I will have you both court-martialed and flogged.”

“Must I remind you of the extravagant promises you made in Fragrant Tree, madam? Should I describe the strawberry-moon birthmark directly below the dimple on your left buttock?” Darger spoke quietly, to avoid being overheard, but with great intensity. “Or do you intend to admit that your word is worthless and your faith nonexistent? Have you forgotten, then, all that you swore to do for me in exchange for Prince First-Born Splendor's love?”

Mastering herself with obvious effort, White Squall said, “You are right, and I apologize. But however will I explain what just happened to my people?”

“Explain nothing,” Darger said. “Life is full of mysteries. Your people will simply have to live with one more.”

“We cannot talk here,” Surplus added. When they had shed their smocks, socks, gloves, and masks, he led them toward the center of the city, through streets increasingly congested with carts and pedestrians, until suddenly he leaped forward and hauled one of the joyous ones out of the crowd, like a spear fisher triumphantly landing a salmon.

Smiling, the joyous one said, “If you do not release me, I will have you arrested, jailed, and tortured. I am on official business.”

“This is White Squall, the highest-ranking woman in all the empire to be,” Surplus retorted. “Only the Hidden Emperor can countermand her orders. Which he is unlikely to do, for she is his most loyal servant. And she desires that you take us immediately to someplace where we can converse in privacy.”

“The government maintains a private conversation garden for precisely such use,” the joyous one said. She took them there and over a short wooden bridge to a pavilion on a small island in a decorative pond. Brightly colored koi swam up at their approach, hoping to be fed.

“Can we be overheard here?” Surplus asked.

“Anything is possible, sir. But I cannot imagine how.”

“Have some tea sent to us—Dragon Well, finest quality—and then you may return to your previous business and forget you ever saw us.”

“No man is capable of forgetting such a command, sir. Quite the opposite, for the oddity of the request must surely fix the forbidden information in one's memory. But I shall speak to no one of seeing you and behave as though I had not.”

The pavilion was empty. Choosing a table, White Squall and Darger sat down. By the time Surplus had satisfied himself that there was nowhere for an eavesdropper to hide and adjusted the blinds to provide the proper balance between light and privacy, a young woman had arrived with a pot of tea and three glasses.

“Well?” White Squall said, when the servant was gone.

“The Hidden Emperor told us that you will have the phoenix device operational within the week,” Darger said.

“That is true, and I feel proud of the accomplishment. There is not another woman in all of China who could have done as much.”

“Were you aware that the Hidden Emperor was considering setting it off immediately upon completion?”

“So soon?” White Squall looked sad. “Well, I have done my duty and, thanks to you, known the love of a prince as well. I was able to exercise my talents to their fullest, and that matters a great deal. It has been a rich, full life.”

Surplus could not help making an exasperated noise. “One that would be coming to an end soon, had the Perfect Strategist not convinced the emperor that the plague would inevitably be brought to an end, his enemies overcome, and his armies led to the conquest of North,” he pointed out.

“I have known happiness. Death is a small price to pay for that.”

“For a mechanic of your genius, it would not be difficult to render the device inoperative,” Surplus said.

White Squall looked shocked. “I couldn't do that!”

Leaning forward to take both her hands in his, Darger said with all the persuasiveness he could muster, “You not only could, but must. Not for your own sake, not for ours, but for the sake of Prince First-Born Splendor. The path you are following ends with that splendid man, that admirable body, engulfed in flames. Dying in agony. Incinerated. Dead by your own doing, along with countless others. Is this truly what you want? I refuse to believe you can think of him and tell me it is.”

A single tear trickled down White Squall's cheek. Otherwise, she might have been carved of marble.

“I know you feel yourself bound by your oath of loyalty, but—”

“It's not that!” White Squall said with unexpected heat. She drew her hands out of Darger's. “It's not that at all. But—did you ever notice the white, star-shaped scar that the Hidden Emperor has on the knuckle of his left thumb?”

“I saw that it was there, of course,” Darger said. “But attached no particular significance to it.”

“He received that scar years ago, when I was new to his service and just beginning to unearth and restore ancient weapons of war for him. I was not so high in his confidences then, but was already rising fast. One day I was making a presentation to the emperor—he was still king then, of course—about the military uses of the newly recovered crushing wheel. It was an intimate meeting with just the Hidden King, myself, and my second-in-command, whose task was to hold up the diagrams and indicate specific statistics as I spoke. The king, who was very serious about such matters, was listening intently and at the same time absentmindedly playing with a small spotted kitten. An exquisite little creature, it goes without saying, a Bengal. That afternoon was the first time he removed the scarves in my presence, revealing his face, and I was very conscious of the honor being shown me.

“I was delineating what size and strength of walls would fall before the crushing wheel when something I said made the Hidden King slam a hand down on the table with pleasure. Unfortunately, the hand came down on the kitten's tail. It spun about and sank its teeth in his thumb.

“In a flash of rage, the Hidden King grabbed the kitten in one hand and crushed the life out of it. His face was like a demon's. I am convinced he didn't know what he was doing until it was over.

“It seems a small and insignificant death now, after so many, but it was shocking at the time because it was so unexpected. I remember that I gasped in horror.

“The Hidden King dropped the dead kitten on the table and said, ‘Say nothing of this.' Then he left.

“My second-in-command was a woman named Dutiful Chrysanthemum. Like me, she was of the laboring class. As a mechanic she was unsurpassed, even better than I was, though my imaginative powers were greater than hers. People assumed we were lovers because we spent so much time together working on machines and because people are idiots. We were not. But she was my most valued subordinate.

“Tragically, she was a gossip and a chatterer. That evening I went looking for Dutiful Chrysanthemum because I had discovered a flaw in some stress vector calculations she had made. I found her in the kitchen, with a plate of dumplings, regaling a scandalized scullery girl with the details of the kitten's death.

“How I scolded Dutiful Chrysanthemum! Her own mother could not have spoken so harshly to her. I told her she had not only disobeyed the king's direct order but brought shame onto me for trusting her and onto the Division of Sappers and Archaeologists for the mere fact that she was included in their number. She was crying long before I was done with her.

“I was angry, but I was also afraid. For the king's punishments were famously swift and merciless. I feared she would not live out the night.

“Nor did she. Less than an hour later, I was summoned to the presence of the Hidden King once again. This time, his face was completely covered, and there were a dozen of his highest-ranking officers with him.

“At his feet lay the body of Dutiful Chrysanthemum.

“‘She gossiped,' the Hidden King said. Then, before I could react, he added, ‘But you did not. Her shame therefore is not yours, nor that of the Division of Sappers and Archaeologists.'

“From that day, I have been most careful to obey the Hidden Emperor as scrupulously as I can.”

“It is a mildly distressing story,” Surplus said. “But absolute monarchs all tend to be ruthless, and we have seen worse since this war began.”

“You don't understand.
How did the king know?
Dutiful Chrysanthemum and I were alone. The kitchen girl fled immediately. Yet he knew all that had transpired, down to my exact words.”

“Perhaps there were listening tubes in the walls of the kitchen,” Darger said.

“Perhaps there were spies,” Surplus suggested.

“I would have noticed listening tubes—I am a mechanic, after all. Nor were there spies. There was only the kitchen girl, and since I never saw her again, I can only assume she met the same fate as Dutiful Chrysanthemum. Nor was that the only time the emperor displayed his uncanny way of knowing what no one but he could know.

“So, no, I will not betray him in the least way.”

Surplus raised a paw for silence. On the bridge outside, he heard three ascending and three descending notes. Timing his words to begin just as the young woman reappeared with a fresh pot of tea, he said, “Let us double and redouble our efforts. The Hidden Emperor says the phoenix device will be ready in five days—make it three! We have promised to end the joyous plague by the time our enemies are at the city gate—let us accomplish that a week earlier! Indeed, I myself—oh, thank you, young lady. Your timing was excellent, for I had just finished my glass.”

“Will you be wanting anything else, noble sir?”

“No, nothing. We are almost done here.” Turning away from the servitor, Surplus said, “I myself find the idleness imposed by the plague intolerable, and thus I propose a sixteen-point program for increasing the readiness of—” Six notes rose and fell as the young woman recrossed the bridge. “Where were we?”

“We were trying to forge a common understanding,” Darger said. “White Squall, I sense that something is being left unsaid. Otherwise, you would have put this conversation behind you and departed. What is it?”

The palest ghost of a smile flickered briefly on White Squall's lips. “I would not betray the Hidden Emperor for any amount of power or wealth or glory. The risk is simply too great. However…”

“I am listening.”

“The love I share with Prince First-Born Splendor is necessarily illicit and furtive, a wartime romance. He being a prince and I a mechanic's daughter, I can hope for no more. Yet I have seen you perform miracles. I want you to arrange for him to propose marriage to me. Further, I would have him renounce his dream of returning to Southern Gate and accept a position in the Hidden Emperor's court, so that I may continue my work.”

“You ask a great deal of me.”

“In return, I will agree to arrange for you to have at least one day's warning before the phoenix device is usable.”

“That is not much time.”

“A motivated man can travel a great distance in one day.”

Darger sighed heavily. “You are a ruthless woman, White Squall.”

“I am a woman in love, which is much the same thing. How soon do you think you can arrange this?”

“In my country,” Surplus said, “there is a saying: The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.”

Wonderingly, White Squall said, “You Westerners certainly use a lot of adages.”

“It is our way,” Darger said, standing.

White Squall stood also and, loudly addressing the general world, said, “I should mention that it is obvious to me that the Hidden Emperor will not rush into his union with the Phoenix Bride impulsively. Thus, in making this agreement, we are none of us in any way betraying him.” In a normal voice, she added, “Oh, and I'll take that component you slipped into your pocket when you were kneeling beside me.” Then, turning to Surplus, “Yours also, sir dog.”

*   *   *

DARGER AND
Surplus emerged from the pavilion to discover that it was evening and the Summer Moon Festival had begun. This was a feast of great antiquity, celebrating the ancient Chinese
taikonauts
who had walked upon that august body. There were fireworks in the western sky and, below them, street vendors selling sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves. Paper lanterns lined the streets. Music spilled from every tavern and teahouse.