Beneath an Opal Moon (4 page)

“What I do not understand is what set it off.”

“That is one of the reasons for your hasty summons.”

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, then.”

“I am afraid that it is not a simple matter. Not simple at all.”

Moichi sat in a room on the second floor of the Seifu-ke. Through the large leaded-glass windows which were open now to catch any hint of a sea breeze, he saw the thick verdant trees lining Okan Road still as a painting above the nearby slanting rooftops.

Months before, after the ending of the Kai-feng, they had cleared away the old palace of the Empress, leveling its grandiose sleeping quarters and its vast work chambers, its cold marble columns and long echoing halls. Not because of any disrespect to the fallen Empress; the monument in Jihi Square was more than proof of that. The palace, like its hereditary occupant, simply belonged to another era. In its place had been constructed a three-story dwelling—smaller and more functional—of rough oxidized brick relieved by glossy platinum fillwork at the interstices and edges. This singular combination of the grittily stark and the softly sensual gave the new Regent's home a look of having been in the center of Sha'angh'sei's tumult forever. This was the Seifu-ke.

Across a dark, highly polished sandalwood table, rikkagin Aerent, the first Regent of Sha'angh'sei, sat in a high-backed chair of carved ebony. He was a tall, lean man with wide, powerful shoulders, thick graying hair and close-cropped beard. His face was the color of lightly cured leather, seamed beyond his years. It was dominated by a curving hawklike nose and dark eyes which could easily have been brooding but weren't. They were, instead, constantly full of light and life.

Just the opposite of his dead brother, Moichi thought, who had been doom-filled, tortured by his own inner nature. Looking into those eyes of Aerent's, one saw the rikkagin, the superb military leader, yes, but one saw much more. There was absolutely no opacity there; they were clear and so deep that they seemed to go on forever. And at the core, what did one see? More than a warrior; more than a commander of men. A man. It was Aerent's deep and abiding humanity which, in the end, made him so extraordinary, Moichi thought. And Tuolin, his brother? His only family. Moichi shrugged inwardly. War. It was such utter madness. Was it luck that had allowed him and Aerent to survive while Tuolin was slain? Or was there some great force, unknowable to man, which guided the ultimate outcome of events. He shrugged again.

“It was like a return to the old days, Aerent,” Moichi said. “The hate is there still, even though none of them could say why or how it all began.”

Aerent nodded. “Yes. Now it has begun again and it is as if the truce never happened. They have short memories for some things, the Ching Pang and the Hung Pang.”

“But how did it happen? Some skirmish between parties of the two?”

The Regent smiled ruefully. “If only it were that simple, there might be some hope at least. But as it is—” He shrugged. “What has happened,” he said deliberately, putting his hands flat on the table, “is that Du-Sing's youngest son was found murdered late last night.”

“Son of the tai-pan of the Greens!” Moichi whistled low in his throat.

“And that is not all.” Aerent's heavily muscled arms straightened as he put weight on them, into his hands, levering himself up. He stood weaving slightly for a moment until he was quite sure of his balance. Then he walked, stiff-legged, somewhat awkwardly for the first several steps, out from behind the barrier of the table, crossing the room.

Moichi would not be abysmally rude as to turn his gaze aside, yet perhaps the sight of his friend walking compelled him to say: “I am truly sorry, Aerent. About that young man—”

The Regent lifted a hand.

“You did more than could be expected, Moichi. He was a good lad.” He turned and smiled. “I thank the gods you are all right. I still think I should call a physician to take a look at that shoulder—”

Now it was the navigator's turn to raise his hand.

“At least use some of this ice,” the Regent said, pushing a bowl across the table. Moichi acquiesced. The cold would stop the swelling and it damped the ache, at least for the time being.

Moichi watched his friend as he made his careful way across the room to the window. He looks more like an enormous insect, Moichi thought. A praying mantis perhaps, locked within the peculiarly articulated mode of locomotion devised for him. At length, the Regent made the window and sat down on the wide sill, his long legs stretched out before him. He put a long hand out, feeling their gem hardness, saying: “It's gotten so I hate to hide them now.”

“I imagine it is not something one can easily get used to.”

“Indeed, no.” Aerent smiled thinly and thought, Still, luckier than some. Thank the gods I, at least, was spared the grief of soul which plagued Tuolin. Strange that only at the point of death should he find love. He was a warrior to the last. And, at the end, a true hero. Thus shall he be remembered. It is only just.

He sat straight as a ramrod, looking inward while Moichi waited without, patiently thinking his own thoughts. Aerent felt the soft wind that sprang up, drying the sweat on his back, which had caused his green silk shirt to cling clammily to his skin. Then the sun had dimmed behind him as the quick-forming summer thunderheads built up on the southwest quarter, racing hastily inland as if late for some important assignation. He sniffed once: the incipience of rain. It recalled to him, like a flash of lightning, that sleeting morning, racing across the battlefield before the yellow stone citadel of Kamado, his sleek stallion thundering under him with such coordinated power—and the fusillade he avoided by a mere hairsbreadth by rolling from his saddle. But the ground was treacherous, made slippery by the blood and gore of many, so that the earth itself was hidden by the grisly mattress of the piled bodies. His mount had stumbled and panicked and, as it had swerved hysterically, his booted foot caught the edge of the metal stirrup, twisted sideways, an inescapable trap. He had been dragged across the humped ground, over bodies and fallen weapons, a hideous and lethal gauntlet. Armor had protected most of his torso and arms; at the very end, something had sheared away half his helmet so that he had mercifully passed into unconsciousness.

But there was nothing any physician could do about his legs. The nerves were gone and in any case the damage to flesh and muscle was so extensive that they had had no choice. They had left it to Tuolin's physician to tell him.

Still, he did not despair for he had no room in his bright soul for that bleak, immobilizing emotion. There is something good in everything that happens, Aerent had thought, or, at the very least, something important to be learned. His body had been tested and he had come through. Now his mind was being put to the task. Here he would either survive or perish emotionally.

The physicians being useless to him once they had cut the dead flesh away, he called for the engineers, dismissing at once those who could not keep from smiling and who averted their eyes or who seemed bewildered by his summons, for those were invariably the ones who told him that nothing could be done.

Aerent did not believe this and, at length, he found a man who was both unafraid and who knew what would be required. “They should, I feel, be more than functional,” were the first words out of his mouth, and Aerent had been satisfied. “Do it,” he had said.

Money was no problem, of course. Aerent was a hero of the Kai-feng and already a ground-swell movement was forming for his appointment as first Regent of Sha'angh'sei. The city, in effect, had taken his legs from him; thus the city would restore them to him no matter the cost.

The engineer—he was the same man who had drawn up the plans for the Seifu-ke—had worked ceaselessly for a full season, abandoning all other projects, and, at last, he came to Aerent with a long thin package perhaps a meter long wrapped in dark cloth.

“It is done,” he said, laying open the contents.

They were fashioned after the human skeletal leg structure, the arcing bones carved from a ruby-like substance that had all the tensile strength of the gem but also had the required flexibility. The joints were masterpieces of construction, gimbals and sockets of onyx and solid brass brushed with a dry lubricant which also protected the metal from moisture and day-to-day wear.

It took half a day to fit the legs but, then, Aerent would never have to take them off. As he worked on the last adjustments, the engineer had said, “Of course we have many substances to mold over these ‘bones' so that the legs will seem almost real. But”—he tightened the last screw and stood up, admiring his handiwork—“to be quite frank I prefer them as they are. It is what I would do if I were wearing them.”

Aerent had gazed at them for a long time, searching perhaps for some emotion deep inside himself, some guide. “Yes,” he said at length. “I believe you are quite correct. Let us leave them as they are.” He put his hands on the ruby bones, his fingers feeling along their lengths. Then, with the aid of a chair back, he stood up for the first time and, strangely, the immediate sensation was one of enormous freedom. It was not until much later that he realized how much lighter his new legs were compared to the ones of flesh and real bone.

The rain had begun. Aerent's spine arched involuntarily as the first drops pattered against his back. The sky above Sha'angh'sei was dark and rippling like a great beast's underbelly. Thunder rolled distantly.

“It was all right then, after that,” the Regent said.

Moichi had to think for a moment. “Yes. I knew which streets to avoid.”

Aerent nodded. “Good. Those idiots!” He meant the Greens who had attacked Moichi and the messenger. “Omojiru, Du-Sing's son, was found in a room on the second floor of a tavern on Green Dolphin Street.”

“Which one?”

“
The Screaming Monkey
, I am told.”

“Not the most savory of inns. Have you been there yet?”

“No. I deemed it prudent to wait until morning. Nothing has been touched.”

“You've seen the body?”

“Yes. It was brought here. Du-Sing picked it up some time later.”

“How was the young man killed?”

“With great efficiency, I am afraid. It was no street brawl.”

“Hardly accidental, then.”

“No. The sword strokes were as brutal as they were efficacious. He was murdered by an expert.”

“Murdered?”

“His sword was still in his scabbard. I ascertained, subsequently, that it had not been used.”

“I see. But why does Du-Sing suspect the Reds?”

“It comes down, I think, to the places Omojiru frequented. It was rumored that he was the black sheep of the family but the old man ignored this as much as he was able. Still, it is fairly well known that the lad used the gambling houses in the Tejira Quarter.”

“Territory of the Hung Pang.”

The Regent nodded soberly. “And then there were the girls. It is said that Omojiru had a voracious appetite for girls. Four and five a night. None, they tell me, over the age of twelve.” His arms like corded steel and he was up again, springing lightly across the room far more quickly than any normal man could manage it, the mantis afoot. “Omojiru, it can be readily seen, was far from a source of pride to DuSing. Still, he was family and, of course, a Green. All other distinctions have been made irrelevant by death.”

Moichi looked into his friend's eyes. “I do not think that it matters to Du-Sing whether or not the Reds actually killed his son.”

“In that you are wrong, Moichi,” the Regent said. “But I see your point. The war between the Greens and the Reds is an inevitable course in Sha'angh'sei. I see that clearly now. No truce could hold for long. This city must find its own course. Not one man or one woman, nor even a group of people, can impose their ultimate will here. Even Kiri knew that, did not attempt to cross certain natural barriers, and she was a hereditary ruler, an extraordinary individual. I doubt that anyone else could have united the Greens and Reds for the Kai-feng.

“Well, I am here now and I am not Kiri. I do what I can, what I must to keep this city together. But Sha'angh'sei is an unstoppable entity and this is its intrinsic strength, I firmly believe. To tamper with it would be to risk the dissipating of its life-force and this I will not do.”

“You will not try to end the war?”

Aerent smiled. “I did not say that, my friend. I merely state what is. One must learn, in this capacity, in what ways one can be most effective. In Sha'angh'sei it is often said that the direct approach is not always the most successful. I talked quite briefly with Du-Sing when he came with his escort to take the body of his son. His mind is quite made up on this matter, I am afraid. Now I must try other means to attain a reconciliation.”

“How can I be of help?” Moichi said.

The Regent nodded. “There are two things, quite unrelated. First, come with me to
The Screaming Monkey
to aid in the investigation.”

“You mean you wish to prove that Omojiru was murdered by someone other than a Red.”

Aerent smiled. “I wish to get at the truth. Omojiru may indeed have been felled by a Red assassin. There is certainly enough motivation; his gambling debts had risen alarmingly recently.” He shrugged. “Perhaps he was expecting money from Du-Sing which was not forthcoming.” The Regent stood by the table now. It had been brought from his old barracks-house on Dawndragon Lane on his insistence. It had served him well and faithfully when he was a rikkagin, he had said, and it would do so again. He had wanted no part of the ornate silver-and-crystal desk which had initially been ordered by the contractors for this room. He leaned over it now, took a large-bowled pipe from a black wooden rack and made himself very busy for several moments filling it with a dark tobacco. Only after he had methodically tamped down the full bowl and got the thing going did he continue. His profile was to Moichi as he said, “Second, I have just received a message of state from Ama-no-mori. A fast clipper out of the southern out-islands brought it in early this morning.” Moichi sat up, certain that here was news of his friend, the Dai-San. “I am told—” he sucked at his pipe—“that the Kunshin's daughter will arrive on tomorrow morning's tide.” He swung around to face the navigator. “I wish you to keep her safe during her stay—”