Authors: John Hornor Jacobs
‘My greetings. I am sorry I cannot be there myself to conduct this meeting. As Emperor, it is often my duty to look unpleasant realities in the face, to accept the hard truths of rule.
‘The hard truth in this situation between Kithai and Rume is that there is no foundation upon which a structure of trust can be built. Regarding the Shang Tzu incident, mistakes were made by Rume. Possibly mistakes were made by Tchinee and its emissaries. Right now, trust is what we need between our two nations so that an accord can be reached.
‘So, it is my thought that I bind myself to you and bind you to me. My son and heir Marcus Aurelius will take to wife a Tchinee woman of noble birth, chosen by you with the input of Sun Huáng, who knows me. He will sire children upon her so to join my family with yours. Furthermore, I hereby declare that I have formally adopted Secundus, Livia, and Carnelia Cornelius. From this moment forward they are my heirs – in addition to Marcus Aurelius, who retains primacy – and are in direct line of succession to the throne after my first-born son. Of the women, choose between them. The younger is unattached, and the elder is obviously fertile. All previous bonds of marriage are hereby dissolved and dismissed.’
Secundus paused. I felt as though I had been shot. My stomach cramped. There was a stunned silence. Secundus remained quiet. The parchment shook in his hand. He did not look away, but a great struggle warred within him.
‘This is my offer, and I hope it falls on reasonable ears. Everything I do, I do for the continued safety and prosperity of Rume and her citizens. Sincerely—’
Secundus dropped the parchment, letting it fall toward Min and Tsing without finishing it.
‘I did not know,’ Tenebrae said, opening his hands, helplessly. ‘I was instructed to only open the box in the presence of the August Ones. How could I have known?’
‘Then why did your hand shake?’ Secundus asked.
‘Because I had reason to fear.’
Secundus turned away from him. Carnelia stood, looked about the room, sat down again. I was silent for a long while.
Tsing Huáng watched us avidly, an oily smile on his face. Sun Huáng looked uncomfortable.
I focused on my breath, in and out. In and out. Fiscelion shifted and kicked inside me. I felt my mind going away, unable to focus on any one thing for too long.
‘Wine,’ Sun Huáng said, and then he repeated it in his own language. Servants bustled forward, bringing ceramic bottles of the pale rice wine.
After a long while, Tsing Huáng broke the silence. ‘Your Emperor doesn’t understand the situation here. While his offer is very kind, we must consider it very closely.’ He bowed to us. ‘Shall we continue? Sun Huáng said you had issue with the figures for the two ships?’
Secundus seemed to shake himself out of his reverie. In the course of a single letter, he’d become second in succession to rule the Ruman Empire. And, my love, Fiscelion swelling in my stomach, is also in that line of succession.
Know this, love: we are wed, our blood is joined by the wound we both bear, and no force on this earth can put us asunder. I am, and will remain, your wife. As will become clear.
Tsing Huáng had sense enough not to push us Cornelians – though the smirk on his face made him even more unctuous and greasy than usual. He was the snake in the garden grass, already triumphant.
‘Let us discuss figures and your somewhat … specious … valuation of the two ships,’ Secundus said, setting his shoulders. His ability to set it all aside awed me, the turmoil within me was so great. His face, still smooth with the softness of youth – he is just twenty-four – seemed a mask, hiding a greater confusion and anger.
Picking up the scroll with the figures Tsing Huáng had presented us with the day before, he ran down the list. ‘Item one – you have valued an unspecified cargo at 10,000 yín, which converts to something around 3,500 denarius. What was this cargo?’
Tsing Huáng’s eyes narrowed and he clapped loudly for his secretary, who rushed forward. Secundus, Tsing, Min, and the secretary put their heads together and began discussing money in quiet tones.
Carnelia looked at me, tears welling in her eyes. I moved down the table from where I sat to join my sister, ignoring Tenebrae.
‘Oh, sissy,’ she sobbed, putting her head on my breast. ‘How could he?’
‘Tamberlaine?’ I asked. ‘Very easily.’
She sniffled for a bit. ‘That terrible, terrible man. How could he just dissolve your marriage like that? You are pregnant!’
The fury that had been building in me rose some. ‘Father plays us as pawns. Tamberlaine plays our whole family.’
Carnelia’s eyes widened in realization. ‘Tata is childless now.’
‘Nonsense. He has us.’
‘But we’ve been “adopted”.’
‘Against our will. I refuse to believe we’re powerless in this situation.’
‘So, if this man—’ She waved her hand at Tsing Huáng. ‘If he decides to take you as a bride, you’ll fight?’
‘I will make that decision when I must. As will you,’ I said, brushing back her hair. ‘Tamberlaine offered this without knowing the situation here with the Autumn Lords and the real rulers, these August Ones.’ I shrugged. ‘They call us “foreign devils”, sissy. I doubt they’re jumping to wed and bed you and I.’ Looking about, I noticed something. ‘Where is the boy?’
Carnelia sat up. ‘Fantasma? I saw him twiddling about near that tapestry a while ago.’ A thick wooden door, carved as two carp wheeling underwater, stood open.
I stood. ‘I will fetch him,’ I said.
‘I will come with you,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, waving her back. ‘I need to clear my head.’
I walked around the table and approached Min, asking if there was a water-closet behind the carp door. She nodded, giving me directions. I went through the open doorway, entering a long arched hallway, stone-floored with a red runner carpet that gave the impression of a tongue dashing away down a long gullet. Each wall was replete with images of dragons, birds, insects, flowers, flora, fauna, dogs, cats, men and women, and other more hideous creatures,
daemonic
faces leering with tongues caught between gnashing teeth and avaricious eyes. Faded tapestries hung limply, stirred by no breeze, their colour leeched away. After passing a stone bust of who I could only assume was another of the August Ones Who Speak for the Autumn Lords (this one notable because it was a woman, and lovely) I found the door with a moth and moon motif carved into it and with great effort wrenched it open and performed my ablutions in the lavish, candlelit silken washroom.
Afterwards, I was puzzled. I hadn’t seen Fantasma, and worried he’d wandered off in one of his dreamlike states, staring into lantern light or tracing frescoes with his index finger. I turned away from the room of negotiations and walked deeper into the building within a palace.
Following the throat-like hall, I found it curved to the left and into the deep guts of the building. My feet were silent on the carpeted stone, and a hushed expectancy filled me. It was as if I were internally performing one of the Eight Silken Movements, or the whole world was, drawing in a great breath and pausing before the moment of exhalation. The release. The silence drew out with each step forward. I put my hands on my stomach.
Eventually, I came to a crossing of passages in the throat of the building, and there, thirty paces to my right, stood the boy, Fantasma.
He stood above a pair of the Tchinee guards crumpled on the floor. His face was smeared with blood, and the rich red stuff dripped from his lower jaw as if he’d been buried deep in gore. In bloody hands he held a
jian
, obviously pilfered from his victims.
My heart sank. I’d been a blind fool. I had wanted to believe that the boy was an innocent and the village women superstitious fools. But I was the fool instead. The boy was every bit of what the women in Uxi had believed.
Seeing me, the thing in the shape of a boy raised his head and his glittering gaze fixed upon me. His mouth spread apart in a grin, showing two rows of sharp teeth.
As I dug frantically at my leg to retrieve my sawn-off, Fantasma turned and raced down the hallway, holding the pilfered
jian
off to the side, angled away from his body. He moved like an arrow, a lance, a striking bird. His movement was almost too fast for my bewildered eye to follow. In a blink, he was out of sight. I chased him, running as fast as my thickened body would allow, my gun in hand.
My mind raced. Why would Fantasma lurk in our midst, docile and only now show his true face? Why kill now? I thought of how we found him. Monkey-boys. I thought of Sun Wukong, and how Fantasma had followed his order. How they had watched us. Sun Wukong.
The passage made a hard left and narrowed. The ceiling pressed in more tightly and the walls possessed less ornamentation and frillwork. The buttery
daemonlight
lanterns stood farther apart, lit at fewer intervals. This area, lined in doorways, seemed a more functional area – there were scents of herbs and spices, and behind one door I could hear two women chattering excitedly and the clatter of wood and straw on flooring. I imagined brooms being swept across stone.
I could run no more. I walked as fast as I was able down the corridor, until I found one door standing suspiciously open. Looking inside, I could see a very narrow passage, the width of a single person and devoid of
daemonlight
lanterns. Yet the passage was illuminated dimly by what seemed to be openings along its right side. I entered, holding the sawn-off in front of me.
Twenty paces in, I came to the first opening. It was a rectangular inset, vertically aligned, and too small for a person to pass through. Leaning in, I put my face to the opening.
A massive hall hundreds of feet across was bathed in buttery
daemonlight
below, full of golden statuary and carmine wall hangings. I was somewhere high up near the vaulted ceiling. Countless
zhuìlì
hung in the air, caught in languid rotation as if trapped in a sluggish eddy. On a raised dais stood ten thrones, each one tremendously tall, and upon each of the ten thrones sat long, bony figures –
tall figures! –
clad in flowing silken robes and absolutely motionless. From my great vantage, it was hard to make out details of their features. Below them, acrobats wheeled and turned somersaults and the faint strains of music from a clutch of players reached my ears, faint yet unmistakeable. Some of the throned figures had their faces tilted upwards, toward the floating lanterns, and others watched the acrobats vacantly, unmoving.
Abandoning the window, I moved as quickly as I could down the tight passage. It curved to my right as if hugging the arc of the vaulted ceiling. I came to another inset window and peered through it. Closer now, the Autumn Lords were easier to make out. One of them seemed to be staring directly at me, but surely that was only a coincidence. And where was the thing we had called Fantasma?
I was about to pull away from the opening and go on in search of the creature when suddenly, below, one of the throned figures surged into movement, hopping from its seat and falling upon one of the acrobats, mid somersault, amid cries of ‘
Chiang-shih! Chiang-shih!’
As the Lord flew through the air, I was reminded of the attack on the Chambers of Waiting Dawn gallery the night before. He landed squarely on the acrobat, bearing the poor girl squealing to the floor, and bit at her neck with what I could see now were sharp teeth. And his size! Only with the Autumn Lord on top of the Tchinee performer did I realize how much larger he was.
The Autumn Lords were
vaettir
.
My stomach sank such that I felt as though my descent to hell had begun, my love. Worse than the firing of swivel guns on the
Malphas
. The whole centrepoint of the world had moved.
Guards rushed in as acrobats and musicians scattered. There was a great chatter as they surrounded the silken Lord that feasted on the acrobat’s blood. The girl’s screams died and the guards, bearing crescent-bladed poleaxes, surrounded the
vaettir
and waited. The other Autumn Lords remained still – watching
zhuìlì
bob on the arteries of air, bemused. They were stuporous, in a languor. I realized these creatures were old, ancient, and tired of the world. The most innocent of things could attract and fix their interest. Hence the elaborate and colourful ornamentation, the paper lanterns and fireworks, the barred windows and doors. The people of Kithai worship the Autumn Lords as gods made flesh, but they fear them too. And well they should.
After a long while, the
vaettir
lord unfurled itself from the acrobat girl and slowly staggered back to its seat, blood dripping from its open mouth. It sat back down on its throne and tilted its head back, staring at the brightly lit ceiling and
zhuìlì
, and stilled. Two guards picked up the body of the girl. The others backed away from the dais, calling out for the acrobats to resume their gyrations. They did so, tentatively at first and then regaining vigour as if spurred on by desperation or fear. Most likely both.
Horrified by what I saw, my mind turned back to the boy. I turned and, holding my gun in front of me, followed where the passage led, passing more windows and coming to a small opening large enough for a man to pass through that led to some sort of suspended scaffolding alongside the vaulted ceiling’s circumference, for maintenance and replacement of the hanging
daemonlight
fixtures. There was a small wooden door there, standing open, as obvious as an arrow.
I took a step out on the scaffolding, suddenly vertiginous. At least a hundred feet above the floor, my heart froze and I found myself immobile. I could not move forward, only back out. There was a boom from outside the room and more yelling. Looking around, I spotted the thing that we called Fantasma, crouched not far from me, looking down at the scene below, the
jian
held loosely in its hands. Sensing I was there, it turned its face to me slowly, still grinning. The blood on its jaw had dried and its visage struck me as pure malevolence and mirth. It was the mirth that truly frightened me.