Chasing the Phoenix, page 30
“Is the deed done?” he asked.
Surplus nodded.
“Whatever happened to you?” Darger asked.
“I hardly know myself. I was standing here, holding the door open the merest crack and peering out at the street, when I heard a noise behind me. Before I could turn, I was seized and slammed into the wall. That was just seconds ago. My assailant ran out the door.”
All three conspirators stared out at the empty street. “He’s gone now,” Surplus observed.
“Let him go,” Darger said. “He did us a good turn, whether by design or not, and I feel no need to avenge a monarch we had every intention of killing ourselves. Give us a hand, noble prince. We dare not leave this body here.”
When they were several streets away from the death scene, Prince First-Born Splendor said, “What about all the other bodies?”
“In the morning, Capable Servant will be here, robed and masked, in the Hidden Emperor’s persona. When he orders that the corpses of his servants be cleared away and new servitors provided him, nobody will ask questions,” Surplus said.
“That is one of the advantages of being known to be completely off your chump,” Darger added.
Together, they three carried the body down the lightless and deserted streets to the stone bridge by the knackery. There, they entrusted their bundle to the nameless creek that flowed into the White River. It fell in with a splash, tumbled over twice, and then was swept under the surface and away into darkness by the swiftly flowing water, to be found or not somewhere downriver, as the fates decreed.
18.
The ancient sage Builder of Pyramids borrowed money at very high interest and paid it all back promptly with money lent by other investors. Those in turn he repaid with money from yet newer lenders, at each step increasing the number who wished to invest in his enterprise. In this way he became incalculably wealthy. For a time.
—THE SAYINGS OF THE PERFECT STRATEGIST
THE NEXT morning dawned like any other. The death of an emperor (or empress), it seemed, made very little difference to the world. The air smelled as sweet. Food tasted as good. By day’s end, Darger had the happy conviction that his fortunes had turned a corner at last and that there was nothing before him that could not be faced with equanimity.
But first …
A carefully prepared and rehearsed Capable Servant was dressed in the emperor’s clothes and ensconced in the emperor’s bed. As predicted, the discovery that all of his servants had been murdered caused a great deal of alarm—until the Hidden Emperor declared that it was a matter of no great import, thus implying that whatever had happened had been done at his whim. At which point, the corpses were whisked away for cremation, the floors were mopped clean, and a new staff was swiftly procured.
By noon, the incident was as good as forgotten.
“It is very convenient to be thought crazy,” Capable Servant confided to Darger when they were alone. “The standards for behavior are very easy to live up to.”
“Confine your madness to small matters that hurt no one and this insight will serve you well.”
Capable Servant plucked at an imaginary bit of fluff on his robe. “Nevertheless, I am glad that I must wear a mask to pull off this deception. It will hide my nervousness. I hardly know what to do. Should I call my advisors together?”
“It would look suspicious if you did not. But wait until the Canal Army has arrived, so that Shrewd Fox and her subordinate ceos may be present. There will be a great deal of speech, much disguised boasting, a certain amount of braggadocio. Be careful to listen more than you speak, imply more than you say, and fly into a fit of fury if anyone points out any contradictions in your proclamations. I have faith in your ability to improvise. Should you find yourself at a loss, simply call upon me and be guided by my advice.”
“Sir, what should I do about the phoenix device?”
“The Dog Warrior and I have given that serious thought,” Darger said. Their debate, in sober fact, had been long and heated. But eventually they had decided that since White Squall would not detonate the device without a direct order from the Hidden Emperor—which order was now unlikely to come—and since ordering it deactivated might raise the irrationally loyal cao’s suspicions, matters could simply be left as they were for the nonce. “When the cao asks for your orders, tell her that you have decided to postpone the marriage until you’ve conquered North and put your new empire in order. She will secretly greet that as welcome news. I, meanwhile, have someone to consult with before we decide upon the device’s ultimate disposition.”
“The ceo, you mean? Shrewd Fox?”
Darger glanced out the window at the darkening sky. “No, I am thinking of someone far more dangerous than her.”
* * *
THE DAY’S other great event—the reunion of the Hidden Emperor’s armies—was an occasion of tremendous joy for all involved. Indeed, it took on aspects of a carnival. First the Sea Army advanced to the flatlands before the city of North, there to pitch camp and await the Canal Army coming from the south. The first sails appeared while it was still morning, and the first outriders arrived at full gallop when the sun was at its highest. Military bands greeted the main forces as they came marching in, and off-duty soldiers ate fire and waved banners while walking on stilts. By twilight, an immense tent city had been erected that was the very shadow and other of the stone city of North.
The foe might well have emerged from North to attack them at this, their moment of greatest confusion. But no troops came forth from the city gates. This, the army’s leadership (who had not been as unprepared for such a sally as they had made it appear) agreed when they made their reports to the Hidden Emperor, was an encouraging sign. As were the gathering thunderheads piling up behind North. The Immortals’ confidence in their own invincibility had spread to the newly integrated units, and all agreed that the coming storm would smash down the opposition, cleanse the city of the foe, and wash the blood of the coming battle from the streets into the gutters and then the streams that emptied into the White River and, from thence, all the way to the Yellow Sea.
While Ceo Shrewd Fox was preparing for the emperor’s conference, Darger, with a glib word here and an evasion there, slipped past her guards and into her tent. He found her talking quietly with General Powerful Locomotive.
“How did you get past my people?” Shrewd Fox asked.
“I told them that you had summoned me and looked dramatically reluctant to be led into your presence.”
“So my best schemes to rid myself of you failed, and you and I have come full circle and are back where we began.”
“Oh, it is far worse than that,” Darger said. “I move from triumph to triumph. I am currently so firmly set in the Hidden Emperor’s favor that there is absolutely no hope of your dislodging me from it. So why try? I have no ambition to supplant you. Why not take advantage of my talents and friendship?”
He extended his hand in a bluff, manly fashion.
Shrewd Fox ignored it. “All I have, all I have suffered, all I have learned, I got without you. I am confident that this lifelong streak of fortune will continue. Right now I am putting the finishing touches on my plans for the conquest of North. When I have placed the Hidden Emperor on the Dragon Throne, he will grant me whatever I wish as a reward. Give me one convincing reason why I should not, among other things, ask for your exile.”
“You would regret it,” Darger said simply.
“Show this gentleman out,” Ceo Shrewd Fox told her second-in-command. “Make it clear to him what will happen if he attempts to speak to me again.”
General Powerful Locomotive opened his mouth. At a warning glance from Shrewd Fox, however, he shut it again.
When Powerful Locomotive had escorted Darger far enough from the ceo’s tent to avoid being overheard, the general said, “You mustn’t be bothered by the ceo’s curt ways, Perfect Strategist. She is a great woman and, like all such, prone to focus only on her own vision of what should be. No personal rancor was involved.”
“You sound taken by her, my friend.”
“Well … I … you see…”
“You are in love with Ceo Shrewd Fox!” Darger cried, in what he trusted was a convincing counterfeit of astonishment.
Powerful Locomotive flushed. “No! Well, perhaps. Shrewd Fox is not like other women. She does not…” His great hands opened and closed, trying to grapple the words out of nothing. “I feel like myself in her presence. I feel that we could accomplish great things together.”
“And White Squall?” Darger asked. “Should I stop working to win her for you? I swear to you, on my word as a gentleman, that I am at this very moment as close as close can be to making her yours.”
“I hardly know. When I am with her, White Squall fills my thoughts completely, and I can imagine loving no one else. But in the presence of Shrewd Fox, I feel quite the other way.”
“I understand completely,” Darger said soothingly.
“I must get back to the ceo’s side.” General Powerful Locomotive started away. Then he stopped and jabbed a finger at Darger. “Don’t meddle with my private life anymore until I figure out what I want. Understand?”
Gazing after him, Darger murmured to himself, “It will be a pleasure.”
* * *
“I CANNOT find Prince First-Born Splendor!” White Squall said through her tears. Mere minutes had passed since Darger had left Powerful Locomotive’s presence.
“That is hardly my concern.” Darger did not slacken his pace.
“We had an argument yesterday, and he disappeared. I haven’t seen him since. But I’ve spoken to the Hidden Emperor, and he has postponed his wedding to the Phoenix Bride, which was the cause of our rupture. So it’s important that I see First-Born Splendor as soon as possible.”
“Madam. You multiply obligations upon me daily and without recompense, as yesterday you had the grace to acknowledge, and on your behalf I have done my utmost. But I draw the line at being your social secretary and your would-be paramour’s minder.” Darger came to his tent, paused at the door flap, and said, “You misplaced him and therefore you must find him yourself.” He went inside.
Inevitably, White Squall followed him. So they both saw Prince First-Born Splendor at the same time. He was sprawled on a camp stool with his eyes closed and his head thrown back.
He had obviously been drinking.
“Oh, bloody hell!” Darger exclaimed.
Tentatively, White Squall said, “Perhaps I can…”
“No!” Grabbing her arm, Darger turned the cao away from her beloved and hustled her outside again before the prince could look up and see her. “You do not wish him to know that you have seen him at his lowest and most vile. Men are as self-conscious as cats, and he would hold it against you forever.” It was an argument that few women would have fallen for. But then White Squall was no ordinary woman. “Go back to your tent. I will plumb the causes of the prince’s dissipation and send him to you when I have sobered him up.”
Inside again, Darger found that First-Born Splendor had roused himself from his torpor and was peering vaguely about. “I thought I heard…” the prince said.
Darger put his hands on his hips. “I am hardly a Jacobin, sir, but in your present state I must say that you present a strong case against hereditary royalty.”
Prince First-Born Splendor clutched his head and moaned. “I am a regicide. An assassin! I, who was born to greatness and raised to be the glory of my line, have fallen as low as it is possible to go.”
“You killed no one. Save for the poor fellows who fell before you on the field of battle, of course.”
One royal hand went weakly up in the air to make a small, dismissive wave. “They knew their chances. As did I. The game went to the better man, that’s all. As for my culpability in the emperor’s death, my ethics instructors taught me that, morally, there is no distinction to be made between the intent and the deed.”
“There is every distinction to be made. I myself have from youth intended to be unspeakably wealthy—and yet I am not. Were things as easy as you make them out to be, every peasant would be a king and we’d all die for want of anybody to provide us with food.”
“I … I don’t think I can follow your logic.”
“Come with me.” Darger hauled the prince to his feet and automatically looked about for Capable Servant. Then, remembering, he dug through his kit himself until he came up with a purple bottle, half-filled with a heavy liquid. “You’re making a trip to the jakes.”
The latrine was not far. Outside its door, Darger gave Prince First-Born Splendor the bottle. “Drink a good slug of this. It’s an anti-intoxicant. You’re not going to enjoy the results, I fear. It will open the sluice gates at both ends. But I can’t talk to you when you’re in this beastly condition.”
Some ten minutes of spectacular noises later, the latrine door opened. Prince First-Born Splendor emerged, pale and sober.
Darger clapped him on the shoulder. “Feeling more sensible now? That’s a good chap. Let’s go to my tent and talk.”
Over glasses of pear nectar, they conversed. The prince once again gave extravagant speech to his guilt. Darger heard him out and said, “An emperor is but a man, whose life is worth no more than yours or mine.”
“This one was a girl.”
“A woman, then. My point remains. The Hidden Emperor’s life was shortened by exactly one day, remember. Meanwhile, we live. That in itself is a net gain. But so do every soldier under your command, plus the Immortals, including the Yellow Sea Alliance divisions, and every man, woman, and child in North, who would otherwise have died in a madwoman’s holocaust. So does the woman you love. The woman who also loves you, I should add, inexplicable though that fact now seems.”
Prince First-Born Splendor buried his head in his hands. “If only she were here.”
“No woman wants to nurse a man through the darkest moment of his life,” Darger lied. He then compounded the untruth by adding, “She wants a man she can look up to for moral guidance, one she can rely on to always tell her what to do.”
“So I was always told by the teachers in my father’s court,” Prince First-Born Splendor said. “Yet there were times when White Squall and I were particularly close, and it did not seem to me then that she was looking for anything of the sort.”
“That is a matter you must settle with the lady herself. Square your shoulders, sir. Take a deep breath. Now go to her. Put on a brave face. Speak not a word about last night’s deeds. Say only that you were distraught at the prospect of losing her. Do you understand? Good. Off you go.”
Prince First-Born Splendor left, looking as if he might burst into tears at the mere fact of seeing White Squall again. Which, Darger reflected, might well be the best thing in the world for the both of them.
He flung himself down on the camp stool and rummaged through his kit again looking for his pocket flask but could not find it. Then he heard a rustling noise, and Little Spider crawled under the canvas into his tent.
“Prince First-Born Splendor drank all your alcohol,” she said.
More amused than offended, Darger said, “What are you doing here, you imp?”
“I was spying on the prince. For practice. Why did you tell him all that nonsense about what women want?”
“Because, dear urchin, it is my policy, in the absence of any reason to do otherwise, to always tell the mark whatever he wants to hear. I reassured the prince that the world was as he expected it to be, and that gave him the courage to seek out White Squall. Perhaps now that their defenses are down, they can work out an understanding between them.”
“What if they don’t?”
“In that case, it successfully got him out of my tent. So I am still ahead of the game.”
* * *
AT THE Council of the Three Ceos, as history would later call it, the new Hidden Emperor’s first act was to hear out Shrewd Fox’s plans for the assault on North and to assure himself that his stenographers were writing down her every word.
“We have just enough of Cao White Squall’s machines remaining operative,” the ceo said, “to create a breach of the city walls. By carefully choosing the location”—she touched the model at a spot their spies reported to be poorly defended, though a major avenue ran by it, allowing ingress to the center of the city—“we can have our soldiers inside before North can properly respond. The loss of men I estimate at a few hundred, most from a frontal assault on the Gate of Eternal Stability to distract the defenders. Acceptable. Once inside, our forces will have three main objectives: to control that section of the wall so that further troops may enter, to attack and seize the armory, and to project arsonists into the poorest and most crowded parts of the city. This will not only create confusion but…”
She went on for a great while. Then the Hidden Emperor called for questions. There were quite a few of these, and the stenographers copied them down along with all of Shrewd Fox’s cogent replies.
“Do you have a backup plan if the wall cannot be breached?” Ceo Laughing Raven asked.
“Will there be sufficient medical facilities for the wounded?” Ceo Nurturing Clouds wanted to know.
“The Dog Pack will guard the portable bridge, of course,” Surplus threw in.
To this last, Shrewd Fox said simply, “No.” Of the medical facilities, she replied that their field clinics would be sufficient for the day and that the hospitals of North would be available on the morrow and beyond. But to the first question, she offered six different backup plans contingent upon ways the original plan might fail, with each plan branching into several contingencies of its own should further difficulties arise. It was a dazzling presentation, and when it was finally done, every advisor in the room, Darger alone excepted (but he nodded approvingly), broke into spontaneous applause.
Then the pretend emperor moved on to his second objective, which was to send Shrewd Fox and Powerful Locomotive packing. This he achieved by exclaiming, “Excellent! Perfect! None better! You and General Powerful Locomotive are to be most highly commended. You may, in the morning, take command of your most trusted subordinates, a hundred of my finest soldiers, and as many boats as needed. Go directly back to Three Gorges and organize the armies remaining there.”
