Dragonwall (21 page)

Stomach knotted with sorrow and his heart pounding with rage, Ju-Hai decided he would not allow the traitor to deliver her message. He considered calling his bodyguard, then realized that so near Ting’s house, they were sure to be outnumbered by the traitor’s men. The Minister of State could not take the tube by force.

Still unaware of Ju-Hai’s presence, Ting glanced up at the drizzle, then slipped the ebony tube inside her samfu. She turned away and started down the alley.

“Did someone tell you I was coming?” Ju-Hai called, his tone forcibly jocular.

Ting spun around, squinting into the darkness. “Who’s there?” Her face was pale with shock.

Ju-Hai did not respond. Instead, he simply took another echoing step forward.

“Answer!” Ting commanded, drawing her dagger.

“It’s just an old friend,” Ju-Hai responded, stepping into the light of her gate lamp. “Why so frightened?”

“Minister!” Ting sighed, pulling the scarf off her face. “What are you doing here on a night like this?”

“Coming to see you. Where are you going on a night like this, dressed like that?” he asked, pointing at her samfu.

Ting glanced at her dark clothing, then frowned at Ju-Hai. She seemed at a loss for words and clenched her dagger hilt so tightly that her knuckles went white. For a moment, Ju-Hai feared she would attack him. Finally, she sheathed her weapon. “To a rendezvous,” she said. “With whom is none of your business.”

Ju-Hai tapped the tube beneath her shirt. “I’d give a thousand silver coins to know what present you’re taking him.”

Ting shifted the tube out of his reach. “Is there something you want?”

“Yes,” Ju-Hai said. He did not elaborate, for he had intended to call on Ting under the pretext of a social visit. Having caught her as she was leaving, he needed a better excuse to detain her. He had not yet thought of one.

“What is it? I’m late as it is.”

Ju-Hai glanced down the alley, hoping that Wu was somewhere in the dark watching the exchange. “Unless your rendezvous is with the emperor, this is more important. We’d better go inside.”

Ting’s irritation disappeared instantly. “Of course, if it’s as serious as you say,” she said, opening the gate.

“It is, I assure you.” Ju-Hai stepped through the entrance into a small kiosk. To the Minister of State’s surprise, it was empty. “No guard?” he asked.

“I had him sent away for a few minutes,” Ting responded.

“Discretion begins at home.”

She led Ju-Hai through the black, winding paths of her park. Though he knew Ting kept a man to care for her garden, it seemed overgrown and ominous in the darkness. All sorts of mosses and vines dangled from tree limbs overhanging the paths, and the shrubbery was feral and imposing in both size and shape. Ju-Hai felt as though a band of murderous thieves might leap from the brush at any moment. It was just the sort of place he imagined Ting would find enjoyable.

A few moments later, they reached the main hall. Ting showed Ju-Hai to a couch and summoned a servant to pour tea, then excused herself to change. A few minutes later, she returned wearing a white robe brocaded with the pattern of the mythical phoenix. Though the loosely fastened robe reached clear to the floor, it was cut to make the most of Ting’s enticing form. It also revealed that she no longer had the ebony tube with her.

She sat on the couch opposite Ju-Hai and crossed one sculpted leg over the other. “So, Minister, what is more important than the diversion I had planned?”

Ju-Hai glanced at the servant uncomfortably, as if reluctant to speak. He was buying time. Though he had developed several excuses for calling Ting away from her rendezvous, none seemed particularly convincing.

The seductive mandarin dismissed the servant, then turned back to Ju-Hai. Her expression was openly curious. “Well?”

Ju-Hai looked away and sipped his tea. “I don’t know how to begin,” he said.

Ting raised an eyebrow. “Begin at the beginning, Minister.”

Ju-Hai hesitated, asking himself if enough time had passed for Wu to find the ebony tube. Next, he wondered whether or not the nobleman’s daughter had been in the alley and knew what to look for. Finally, he began to worry that he had misjudged her. It would not be unlikely that her concern for her children would prevent her from risking the emperor’s wrath, even to expose a spy.

The minister forced the last thought from his mind. It would do him no good to doubt his plan now. His only course was to proceed as if Wu had followed him and was even now searching Ting’s house. The more time he bought, the better would be Wu’s chance of success.

“This isn’t easy for me,” Ju-Hai began, setting his tea cup aside and glancing at Ting’s willowy legs.

An expression of comprehension crossed the Minister of State Security’s face. “Say no more,” she said. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“I think so.”

Ting rose and stepped around the table. She took Ju-Hai by the wrists and pulled him to his feet, guiding his hands inside her robe. “Even if my rendezvous had been with the emperor,” she said, “I wouldn’t have missed this.”

Ju-Hai kissed her. It was a cold, dispassionate kiss, the kind to which he imagined the seductress was accustomed.

Ting returned the kiss with a warmth and vigor that surprised the Minister of State, then turned to lead the way into her sleeping hall.

Two hours later, Ju-Hai was exhausted. Ting pulled him toward her yet again, but he slipped out of the bed and said, “Enough! I’m an old man. I must conserve my energy.”

“Nonsense!” she replied, pulling him back. “Let me rejuv—”

A wall panel slid open, interrupting Ting. The sergeant of her guard rushed into the room. “Minister, there’s been an intruder.”

The sergeant noticed Ju-Hai’s naked form, then flushed with embarrassment and bowed.

Ting leaped out of bed and grabbed her robe. “Intruder?” she repeated, immodestly dressing right before the guard’s eyes. “Where?”

“The alley entrance,” the sergeant reported.

Ting immediately started for the door. Ju-Hai quickly donned his own clothes and followed, catching up to Ting in the garden. She was firing questions at the sergeant, who could tell her only that the sentry posted at the gate had been found dead.

At the kiosk, several guards holding lamps stood around their fallen companion. As Ting and Ju-Hai approached, they backed away. The dead sentry lay sprawled on his back, his chiang-chun at his side. The polearm’s blade was bloody.

“This is how we found him,” the sergeant reported.

Ting kneeled and examined the body. When she found no wounds on the chest or head, she angrily rolled the corpse over and examined its back.

“There are no wounds on this body,” she snapped, returning to her feet.

“Then this is the intruder’s blood,” the sergeant concluded, picking up the dead man’s chiang-chun.

“Yes,” Ting replied, taking the polearm and examining the red blade. “Tomorrow, we shall find the intruder and finish the job.”

She glanced at Ju-Hai, then asked, “I wonder why he picked tonight to come?”

“It is a moonless night,” Ju-Hai answered. He focused his eyes upon the dead guard, but was thinking of Wu. If she were wounded, she would need help and, come morning, protection. He had to leave Ting’s house and assign a contingent of the emperor’s guard to protect the Batu household. He stepped toward the gate. “I should return home,” he said. “My presence here tonight will generate quite a scandal.”

Ting signaled her guards to block the gate. “I won’t hear of it,” she said, eyeing Ju-Hai with an emotionless, calculating gaze. “Whoever killed this guard is still free, and for all we know he was after you. You aren’t leaving the safety of my house.”

“I really must return—”

Ting lifted her hand. “I insist,” she said. Holding her jaw set firmly, she studied her mentor with narrow, menacing eyes. “You will go nowhere until I find the intruder.”

On the Shengti River, as in the summer palace, the night was humid and black. Despite the warm drizzle, the General of the Northern Marches remained on deck with his ship’s first mate. The wiry riverman hung over the gunwale with a lamp in his hand, watching the dark waters for any hint of trouble. The man’s shirtless torso glistened with what might have been rainwater, but was more likely a nervous sweat. Periodically, he called out an instruction that another boatman promptly relayed to the helmsman.

The hull bumped something pulpy, and Batu inhaled sharply. “What is it?”

When the mate did not answer promptly, Batu feared they had hit a sandbar. The summer flood season had ended two weeks ago, and the river had since returned to normal, exposing hazards that had not previously troubled the general’s fleet. Already tonight, a dozen ships had run aground. Batu was beginning to regret his decision to continue upriver in darkness.

“What did we hit?” Batu repeated, laying a hand on the mate’s bare back.

The man did not look up. “I don’t know, General, but there’s no cause for worry. If it was anything dangerous, it would have slowed us down.”

The mate’s reassurance did little to make Batu breathe easier. The moonless night was stifling and ominous, silencing even the owls that lived along the riverbanks. Only the sloshing of the fleet’s oars disturbed the quiet.

Behind his own junk, Batu could see another dozen bow lights twinkling in the drizzle. An additional four hundred and seventy boats followed the twelve he could see, but the weather was so close that it obscured the rest of the fleet completely. Had the other ships not been behind him at dusk, the general would have found it difficult to believe that they were there now.

Two more pulpy thumps sounded at the ship’s waterline. Swearing at the river dragon, the mate pulled himself back onto deck. His eyes were opened wide, and his face was as pale as ivory.

Another soft bump sounded against the hull.

“What?” Batu demanded. “Is something wrong?”

The mate pointed at the river. “Spirits. They’re blocking the way.”

Batu took the man’s lamp and peered over the gunwale. The smell of rancid meat assaulted his nose. He retched and nearly dropped the lamp. A bloated white form with stiff arms and puffy legs drifted into view. It bumped the hull and slipped away into the darkness as suddenly as it had appeared. Though he had glimpsed the figure for only a moment, the general had seen and smelled too much death to mistake it for anything but a decaying corpse.

Another half-dressed cadaver came into view, bringing with it the renewed stench of rotten flesh. Batu steeled himself against the awful odor and examined this body more closely. It had once been a woman, but the flesh was so gruesome and pallid that he could not say of what age or appearance. She lay tethered in a bed of dark weeds.

The vegetation alarmed Batu more than the dead woman. Pulling the mate back to the gunwale, he said, “Weeds! It’s getting shallow.”

The wiry man peered over the side, but remained unconcerned. “The plants are nothing, General,” he said. “This close to Yenching, the river is slow and broad. There are many weed beds, but they won’t stop our junks.”

The boat pushed past the woman’s corpse, but another came into view immediately. The mate tapped the gunwale like a drum, a gesture that supposedly attracted the attention of the thunder god Lei Kung, whose duty it was to escort reluctant spirits to the Law Courts of the Dead. “It’s the river spirits we must worry about,” the riverman said.

“Those aren’t spirits,” Batu replied, waving a hand at the river. “They’re nothing but corpses.”

The shirtless man looked doubtful. “Where’d they come from?” he demanded.

“Do you have relatives in Yenching?” Batu asked.

The mate raised an eyebrow. “My father’s brother lives there with all his children.”

“Then you don’t want me to answer your question, especially if we are as close to the city as you believe.”

The man fell silent, considering the meaning of the general’s words. Finally, he frowned and firmly clasped Batu’s shoulder. “If I say we are near Yenching, General, we are near Yenching. I just pray you remember these bodies when you catch the barbarians.”

Batu did not object to the mate’s familiarity. Like the rest of the boatmen crewing the fleet, the man was a merchant sailor and lacked military discipline. Fortunately, the mate and his fellows made up in expertise for what they lacked in discipline. Counting the twelve junks that had run aground that night, the fleet had lost only seventeen ships and a handful of men.

Considering the circumstances and the pace of the last six weeks, Batu was more than pleased with his hired boatmen. For much of the journey up the Shengti, they had struggled against the heavy runoff waters from the distant mountains. To make matters worse, in order to hide the fleet from onlookers and spies, the wu jens from the High Ministry of Magic had kept it buried in a cloak of bad weather. Even with these precautions, the ships had often dropped anchor while the cavalry masqueraded as Tuigan scouts and drove riverside villagers from their homes.

Despite the hardships and delays, the rivermen had maintained a steady pace. Working in shifts and aided by Batu’s soldiers, they had kept their boats moving twenty-four hours a day. Thanks to their skill and tireless effort, the general was arriving at Yenching nearly a week ahead of schedule. When he returned to the summer palace, Batu decided, he would recommend to the Divine One that he consider recruiting commercial boatmen as officers in the imperial navy.

The merchant rivermen were far more superstitious than their military counterparts. The first mate still had not returned to his post. Instead, he was casting frightened glances over the side and tracing mystic symbols in the air.

“The bodies in the river are just corpses,” Batu repeated. “They’re not going to hurt you. On the other hand, if we hit a sandbar or rock …” The general touched his sword hilt meaningfully.

The gesture reminded the riverman of his duty. “Forgive me,” he said, resuming his position as guide. Batu stood nearby, eyeing the weed bed with as much suspicion as the mate eyed the corpses.