Shallows of Night - 02 (15 page)

She laughed as the man reopened the pouch.

“The Seercus,” she whispered.

The hairless man took the coins. He pulled again on his pipe. There was a cloud of smoke. They got up and left.

The man with the russet hair ran a shaking hand over his face, reached for the small flagon of wine on his table. Drops beaded the wood as he poured.

Two men came in and sat down at Ronin’s table. The proprietor wandered over and they ordered steamed fish and wine; Ronin asked for another flagon of wine.

“And how were the fields, now that you’ve seen them firsthand?” asked one.

“The poppies are not good.” This one had a large nose, red-veined and wide-nostriled.

“Ah, the Reds again. This time we must enlist the Greens to—”

“Not the Reds.” He was still brushing the silt of travel from his gray cloak.

“Eh?” He looked suspiciously at the other. “This is not another of your tricks, is it? You know I agree that what the Greens ask is enormous, but we stand to lose much more if the harvest is ruined. I should well think that you would understand that by now.”

“No, I tell the truth.”

“Well, what then?”

The proprietor came over with a tray laden with food and wine and they remained silent until he had served them and drifted away.

The man with the large nose sighed and poured himself wine. “I wish I knew. Truly.” The fish looked at them from the center of the table. He picked one up with his sticks, bit into the head. “The Reds in the north have, I believe, split apart.”

The other laughed uneasily, pouring wine. “I hardly think that is possible.”

“Still, that is what I have heard.” He began to shovel rice into his mouth with his lips close to the rim of the bowl. “Every day, more kubaru disappear and the crops themselves are not producing as they should.”

“Well, if they are not being properly attended—”

“I am afraid that is only part of it.” He took a gulp of wine, perhaps to steady his nerves. “It is as if the land itself has changed, become less fertile—” He began to cough thickly.

“Are you ill?”

“No, a chill only. The weather is much colder than it should be at this time of year.”

At first Ronin had been listening peripherally. He wanted to understand this complex city. To do so he had to understand its inhabitants better. Listening in on conversations seemed as good a way as any to start. It was another reason why he had chosen to go to a tavern instead of visiting one of the many street stalls selling an infinite variety of foods. But his rather casual eavesdropping became more intent the further on this conversation went. Perhaps this was the beginning; perhaps he had less time than he had thought. If so, it was more imperative than ever for him to gain admittance to the Council of Sha’angh’sei; to find someone who could decipher the scroll of dor-Sefrith.

Now the merchants talked of other matters, prices and the fluctuating market. Ronin paid for his meal and left. In the Nanking, he asked a boy for the way to Okan Road and had to pay for the information.

She was not there and so he waited.

It was already late. He asked for rice wine and it was brought to him by the tiny girl in the pink quilted jacket. He remembered her.

“How old are you?” he asked as he savored the spices.

She lowered her painted eyelids.

“Eleven, sir.” So low he had to strain to hear her.

He opened his mouth again and she ran off.

He tried to relax, opening his ears to the soft sounds of silk brushing satin thighs, liquid pouring, low talking that was almost like the murmuring swell of the sea. The tawny light. He closed his eyes to slits, hearing in his mind a horn sounding, far off and alone. A gentle laugh intruded. A giggle, stifled. Perfumes drifting upon the languid air. A hint of sweet smoke from somewhere and he thought of the poppy fields. “There is much fear in the north,” the merchant with the large nose had said. Why?

“Ronin.”

He opened his eyes.

It was Matsu. Skin white as bone; eyes like olives. Her body small and supple.

“She will be very late.” Black hair drifting over one eye. “Please let me take you upstairs.”

She offered him her hand. Firm and warm. He stood up, rubbed her palm with his fingers. He towered over her as they went up the broad polished wood staircase to the second story. Yet he felt her support, strong and comforting. One arm was around her slender shoulders. He stroked her cheek as they rose. The yellow light grew brighter as they ascended toward the great crystal lamp. The tiny flames shivered, sparking pinpoints of light across their faces. He peered down, drunk with wine and fatigue, at the grand, deserted room with its golden couches and low lacquered tables. Even the serving girls had gone to bed by now. The room was spotlessly clean, not a stained teacup lay about, not a spill of wine, not an ash-laden pipe remained.

The tawny light streamed down endlessly, it seemed, until Matsu shut the door of the room. She did not light the small lamp on the black lacquered table next to the wide bed. The room had a high domed ceiling and across the patterned walls flowers were tossed and dripping in a summer rainfall. The curtains had not yet been drawn and through the window he could see that the moon was up, pale and ghostly but perfectly clear in the night sky.

He sat on the bed and stared out the window at the pulsing carpet of pinpoints, blue-white like rare gems and startlingly close. Matsu knelt and pulled off his boots. A part of the sky was lighter, as if a translucent scarf had been laid over the blackness of the night; a bridge of light formed by the closeness of the stars within its width. She removed his clothes and he donned the dragon robe which she held out for him.

She put him under the covers and then came into the bed, her naked body trembling from the cool of the night sweeping in from the open window, her soft skin raised in goose-flesh, and he put her head in the hollow of his shoulder, stroking her hair, his thoughts over the hills and far away.

She smoked a little, the sweet smell engulfing them as she inhaled deeply with a quiet hiss. Sounds drifted up to them from the city that never slept. A dog barked, far off, and rhythmic singing wafted up from along the waterfront. Something metallic clattered on the cobbles close by and feet pounded briefly. A hoarse shout. The rattle of a cart and someone whistling tunelessly. Matsu’s eyes glazed and the cold pipe fell from her open fingers spread like the petals of a small white flower on the dark covers.

She was asleep against him, close and warm now, her shallow rhythmic breathing a soporific. At last he relaxed. Carefully, he put the pipe away. The moon was huge in the black glittering square of the window, flat and thin as rice paper. Then a cloud rode across its face and his eyes closed. He dreamed of a field of poppies shivering in a chill wind.

It was still dark when she woke him.

“She will not come tonight.”

The moon was down but the sky had not yet begun to lighten.

“It is all right.”

“Do you want me to stay?” Her voice was tiny, like a child’s.

He watched her at the side of the bed, the light silk robe clinging to her firm slender body.

“Yes,” he said. “Stay with me.”

A sinuous rustle as the robe slithered off her and she climbed into bed. Black and white.

There was silence for a time and he listened to the leaves trembling in the trees on Okan Road. Footsteps and muffled voices briefly heard. Matsu pulled the covers closer around them.

“Cold.”

Ronin felt her lithe body against him and held her close.

After a time, she spoke again. “Do you know Tuolin well?”

Ronin turned his head to look at her.

“Not well, no.”

She shrugged. “It does not matter. He will die at Kamado.”

He lifted himself on one elbow and stared at her.

“What are you saying?”

“He told Sa many things in the shallows of night. I have heard many others. Tales of evil.”

“What,” he asked, “have you heard?”

“The rikkagin’s armies no longer fight the Reds in the north. I have heard that they fight side by side now: the lawless and the law.”

“Against whom?” But he already knew.

“Others,” she said, giving the word a strange overtone, as if that were not the word she wished to use. “Creatures. Men who are not men.”

“Who told you this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Perhaps very much.”

“My friend’s husband is a soldier with Rikkagin Hsien-Do. So is his son. They spent much time in the north, near Kamado. They returned three days ago.” She clutched at him and he felt the shivers in her frame, thought of the green leaves on the trees outside. “My friend’s husband is blind now. They had to carry the son back to Sha’angh’sei. His back is broken.” Her voice came in little gusts now. “They did not fight the Reds; they did not fight bandits. They fought—something else.” Another shudder went through her frame. “Even the Greens are talking among themselves about the situation in the north.”

There was a thin line of the faintest gray now, visible only if he looked away because at night vision is better around the periphery. He held onto the shaking body and, from the corner of his eye, watched the line of gray widen with agonizing slowness, bringing the burden of another day.

She was still sobbing so he said, “Who are the Greens?” Because he wanted to stop her; and because he wanted to know.

“The Greens.” She sniffed. “You must have seen some of them.”

Two men in black in the tavern’s doorway, axes at their sides, demanding payment.

“I am not sure.”

“They are,” she said, “the law.”

He was surprised. “I had assumed that the rikkagin were the law.”

She shook her head, her hair fanning his cheek, and the last of the tears fell from her cheeks onto the darkness of his arm as it lay along the covers.

“No,” she said quietly, calmer now. “You must understand that the rikkagin are not native to Sha’angh’se or this land. Oh, they are the reason that it has grown and become—the way it is. But many are from far away. They brought their legions here to fight for the wealth of the land, the poppy fields, the silk farms, the silver, and more. They twisted the land and its people to their own ends.” She sighed a little as if she were not used to speaking so much. She moved her head against his chest; he inhaled her fragrance, clean and sweet. Her feet twined with his, their soles rubbing together. Friction warmth.

“But this is a most ancient land,” she said. “Here there are still many who have not forgotten the ways of their ancestors, handed down carefully from father to son and daughter. A legacy more precious to us than land or silver, even after the coming of the rikkagin, the turning of the hongs.”

Her hand sought his, lightly, a feathery touch, yet it conveyed to him an intimacy most singular. “The Greens and the Reds have been at war for all time, or so it is told; from the moment of their births there was enmity. Now each seeks to gain each other’s territory.”

“What is the nature of the enmity?” he asked.

“I cannot tell you.”

“You mean you will not?”

Her eyes flicked at his face, surprised. “No. I do not know. I doubt if they do themselves now.”

On the Okan Road, the sky was pearling the rooftops of Sha’angh’sei. A fine rain began to fall, sighing among the trees, misting through the window, blown on a gentle morning breeze. A sea horn sounded in the distance, muffled and melancholy.

She kissed his broad chest as she opened his robe, the dragons writhing. “They are,” she whispered, “the terrorists of tradition.” And she offered up her mouth, moist and panting.

It was the angle that made it so dreadful.

Matsu choked and turned her head away and he held her as her body convulsed.

There was nothing there and that was why the head was at such an inhuman angle; he could imagine her shock. She seemed steadier now and she turned, needing to look once more, to help dispel the shock. The head remained attached to the shoulders only by a sheet of skin glinting redly in the dismal light.

The scream had burst in on them like a thief in the night and he had unsheathed his sword and was out the door before it had entirely died away, the gilt dragons fluttering in his wake. There was noise on the wide landing from behind myriad closed doors; movement as the sleepers awoke. The scream tried to force itself out again, like a caged animal, but it was choked off and he heard instead a liquid gurgling.

He raced down the hall, toward the head of the staircase. A dull thud, leaden with finality, and he knew he had just passed the door. Matsu was coming after him, tying the sash of her robe, closing the gap now because he had stopped. Raising his sword, he opened the door, slamming it wide with his shoulder, and leaped into the room.

He saw the window first because it was directly in his line of sight and because he knew it was the room’s only other egress. It was open to its fullest extent. On one side, the curtains were completely gone, on the other, the tatters fluttered uselessly. There was an increasing clatter from the hall but he ignored it. He inhaled the stench.

She was on the bed, her head at an impossible angle because everything had been torn out: throat, larynx, neck musculature. Just the frayed skin and a great pool of blood. He looked at last at her face. Sa.

He took Matsu outside into the hall, though he had to force her, because there was nothing either of them could do. He closed the door behind them.

“I have never,” said Matsu, “seen such a death.”

The hall was crowded now, mainly with women; the men preferred their anonymity.

“Has anyone seen Kiri?” Ronin asked them. No one had.

He took Matsu back to the room of dancing, crying flowers and once there began to dress. She pulled her robe tighter about her; peach marsh with pale green ferns.

“The Greens?” he asked because he wanted to be absolutely certain.

She shook her head, hair like a thick mist, fanning out. “No, the Greens use axes and”—she shuddered—“not that.”

He buckled on his belt and went to her, drawing her up to him. Her pale hands were like ice.