The Paladin Part 39

Yi shook his head. "We're trapped here. Myself not the only one. They've confiscated our horses, they give me a paper they swear will make it good-but we can't move these wagons without our horses."

"Terrible mess."

"I want to see my wives, m'lord,all of them, that's all we think about now, just how we're going to get out of here and home again, d.a.m.n this trip! I don't want to be involved any further! Don't ask me anything!"

"Captain."

"Captain, m'-" Yi choked it off. "Pleasedon't ask me anything."

"Just pa.s.s the word among your men: tell them what I've told you. We're here in force. You can tell that to anyone else you think is reliable. The fighting's coming in the next few days. And you'd be wisest to get to the west end of the waterside and stay there when it starts. Don't worry about the outcome.We have help."

"Yes, m'-Captain."

"Word is back from the north," Shoka said lazily, taking another sweetmeat, "the army is coming home.

Onour side. You can pa.s.s that word too. It's just as well people know it. And just as well the mercenaries hear it the same as the people do. You understand." He picked out another couple of sweetmeats. "Have you a paper? My wife would love these. You don't mind, do you?"

"No. -No, of course not." Yi s.n.a.t.c.hed up a cloth napkin and gave it to him, frowning. "Have all you like."

"She's delighted with such little things." Shoka dumped the bowl into the napkin, looked up into Yi's eyes and saw the cold fear. "Really. You'd think otherwise. I know I wasn't sure what-well, I wasn't sure I could keep her, you know,satisfied ." He cleared his throat and wrapped up the candies, devoting his attention to that. "Came up to me at dusk, she did. G.o.ds! d.a.m.n near killed me. Seems she'd been watching me, in the mountains. Seems she had this personal grudge with Gitu of Angen, and I was the way she picked to get here."

Master Yi's eyes were absolutely round, his under lip caught in his teeth.

"I wasn't sure," Shoka said, "I'd survive the honor. But she's a d.a.m.n good wife in a lot of ways.

Cheerful. Stubborn as h.e.l.l, terrible temper-butd.a.m.n good in bed. You could guess." Master Yi plainly did.

"There's a certain-difference making love with her. Especially in thunderstorms." Shoka gave a twitch of his shoulders. "But she's a good ally in a thing like this. d.a.m.n good. And I wouldn't be in Gitu's place right now. Would you?"

"No," master Yi breathed.

"Limb from limb," Shoka said. "You don't cross her kind."

"What did he do to-?"

Shoka shrugged. "Had to do with some pigs."

"P-".

Shoka lifted a brow. "She's rural, you know. I've got a bargain with her. She helps out on this and she and I-you know. I think she's halfway in love with me. And I don't mind. She's d.a.m.n good in bed and I've gotten used to her-little peculiarities."

Master Yi stared.

"Ah, well," Shoka said. "I explain that because you've met her, and you know-certain facts. Iwouldn't be standing in her way-when things break loose. In case you should be in that position."

"No," master Yi said. "No, m'lord."

"You spread that word, master Yi. She's d.a.m.n hard to control. Sometimes she doesn't understand where to stop. That's why only our enemies should be in the streets. They may see things-you understand."

"Yes, m'lord."

"Shutters barred. That's safest. Just stay inside and don't look outside." He tucked the napkin into his belts. "Shewill like this. I'll tell her who it's from."

"A walk around the block!" Taizu cried, with Chun and the others in theFelicity's upper hall. "My G.o.ds, where have youbeen? "

So much for Taizu's reserve in front of the men, who, with mutiny begun, gave him dour, worried looks.

"I told you not to worry." He dropped the napkin into Taizu's hand. "Have a sweet."

"You said-"

"Wife, -"

Taizu glared above the bandages, opened the napkin and popped a sweetmeat into her mouth, possibly to restrain herself, as Chun opened the door to the room the men shared. "Settle," he said. "I'll tell you what I've learned."

The men and Taizu sat. The napkinful of sweetmeats went the round, man to man. And by afternoon, in theFelicity's commonroom, Jian, lounging there in ordinary clothes, had picked up a collection of rumors.

One, Ghita had been killed by, variously, shape-s.h.i.+fting demons who had slaughtered from ten to fifty of the Guard; or by twenty to thirty a.s.sa.s.sins led by or ordered by Saukendar; or by a conspiracy among the Imperial Guard officers, who were, variously, dead, in hiding, secretly in power, secretly negotiating with the rebel lords southward-who were, variously, ten to a hundred leagues south of the river, allied with, variously, one to fifty demons, the bandits of Hoisan, a.s.sorted mercenaries, and one to three dragons which were variously, the soul of the Old Emperor, the guardians of the Hoi and the Chaighin and the Hisei, or a mountain dragon which had been stirred up by the demons Saukendar had been consorting with for ten years.

Two, Ghita was alive and Saukendar had been killed in the attack, or had escaped, or was presently on his way to the capital, or had been captured and was presently held prisoner by the Regent, or was loose in the city with from twenty to two hundred rebels and a number of shapes.h.i.+fting demons.

Three, some priests had declared the dragon auspicious for the Regent; but certain others had been heard to say it was an omen of calamity.

Four, the whole rebel army had crossed the bridge disguised as mercenaries and peasants and tradesmen, and was waiting some signal, when it would launch an attack on the camp and on the headquarters.

"One could wish," Shoka said, chin on fist, listening to the report from downstairs. "But not likely. I had a look. They're d.a.m.n careful who pa.s.ses."

"I could," Taizu said, lifting a brow, more cheerful, having glowered through the reports about demons and dragons. He knew how she would do it, by that look, remembering the basket. Probably the men had more fantastical notions.

"We'll manage without that," he said. "We'll know when we need to." They were careful naming names and details even here, in guarded privacy-because bad habits, he had told the men, otherwise encouraged deadly slips in public. "I'm going up to the bridge tonight."

"Us," Taizu said.

"You're too d.a.m.ned obvious."

Taizu held a lock of hair across her upper lip. He scowled at her.

"A boy can't grow a mustache like that."

She dropped the hair. "Basket," she said.

"The h.e.l.l."

"Well, I'm not staying here!" She had gotten all too easy with the men. She sat now sulking, he could tell it past the bandages, the all too conspicuous bandages.

"You're too easy to describe, wife. You want to see all of our heads on Lungan gate?"

She said nothing. She just looked at him. And then he worried, seeing her trekking right along the street behind him.

"We'll think of something," he said. In fact the thought of her across town and alone worried him-Taizu with her fear of cities, her inexperience in such simple things as walking through traffic.

None of which would stop her once she made her mind up. Nothing ever had.

"Someone's in the hall," Jian said. A board had creaked on the stairs, and there were quick footsteps.

"Eidi," Chun said as Jian sprang up to get the door: Eidi was the one of them on watch.

A thump at the door, a low voice: Jian unlatched the door and let Eidi in.

"Captain," Eidi panted, with a bow. "They're saying the Regent's going to give a speech, in the camp, to prove he's alive. That everybody's supposed to report in. That we're-that therebels are in sight the other side of the river. That the Emperor's come in and he's going to be in the camp with the Regent."

That last was the bit that surprised him-that Beijun was alive. That the Regent made the move he did- "Ghita's making his move," he muttered, and rubbed his neck, under a greasy fall of hair. "And our friends could be here a day early; or scouts could've spotted their camp; or engaged them; or Ghita knows d.a.m.n well where they are and he's hoping to getus to move on a fake report and commit ourselves too early."

Worried looks surrounded him. "What do we do?" Taizu asked.

"I'm thinking," he said. He was, desperately-sat there with arms on knees, staring at the age-grayed boards of the floor, and figuring how to establish reliable contact with Reidi.

Dry, age-grayed boards.

"It's our turn," he said smugly-he could not help it. Things had gone amazingly well, considering he had improvised continually.And gotten the targets out into the open.

Maybe, he thought, considering it was Chiyaden at stake, the complacent G.o.ds were waking up.

Or maybe a certain old monk was praying them out of bed.

In his younger, more pious days he would have worried about a thought like that.

It looked like a parade, the general flow of soldiers toward the camp this late afternoon, all carrying their gear and their bedrolls; groups on foot and groups on horseback-but for a parade, Shoka thought, it had a scarcity of cheering onlookers. What citizens were on the streets or looked on from windows or shopfronts, just stared glumly at the forces that were, ostensibly, their own. They had the remaining bow-Chun carried it and the quiver wrapped in the sole sleeping mat that had covered it on the way from thePeony to theFelicity.

Only blankets otherwise: everything else was still at thePeony. They were a poor-looking company that trekked up the street in the tail of the afternoon.

A gong crashed in the distance. All up and down the street soldiers looked up from their conversations and their preoccupations, and the heads of townsfolk turned, everything in the city attentive to that one sound.

"Must be Ghita," Shoka said, and after a moment more of walking: "Bringing the Emperor into camp.

Where a.s.sa.s.sins can get at him. Orwe can. It's a trap. Both ways it's a trap-to draw us out early and to draw us into Ghita's reach."

A few more paces.

"So what will we do?" Taizu asked.

The summons to the camp. The Emperor for bait.

h.e.l.l.

Chapter Twenty-one.

A narrow lane cut in on the street near the market, like any of a score such alleys, except its clutter of refuse and broken shutters. It went in the general direction of the camp and some of the drift of soldiers toward the summons might take that darker, winding shortcut behind the riverfront buildings. Shoka took a glance back down the street, saw that a few bands still followed them, but the traffic was thinning.

So they took that way. And there was no one behind them yet to notice, he made sure of that, when they took a lane back north again, a twisting gut of a street that cut farther south, in the long run, just about the time it got to the vicinity of the camp.

The men were doubtless impressed. Himself, he only knew the lay of the town, a memory of maps-years ago-that the streets here tended to a diagonal, that the Old Emperor in his youth had seized a row of warehouses fronting the harbor and bricked up its windows and its harborside doors, as cheaper than building a thirty-foot wall.

And any street in this quarter that did not go through, ran up against that barrier, the northern wall of the square riverside enclosure that was the market in peacetime and the gate-garrison in anxious times, and that wall was the sealed face of old warehouses and brothels.

But the tenants had moved back in again-at least the warehouses. The brothels and the taverns sought more trafficked places. The city's poor nestled in the decay of the neighborhood's wh.o.r.ehouses.

"There's the wall," Shoka said, nodding up toward the thirty-foot face of buff stone that sealed off the end of the street between two leaning ramshackle apartments, past a tangle of hanging laundry and illicit built-ons before it became again the back wall of those buildings. As the hammer of drums and the sound of trumpets announced an imperial arrival on the other side, and the poor folk on this side looked with fright at a motley group of soldiers where no soldiers would tend to come, and scuttled out to grab children and get doors and shutters between themselves and trouble.

"Get that door," Shoka said, as a girl, baby in arms, ran for a door a woman held. Chun and Wengadi vaulted the porch railing and bashed the door out of the woman's hands as Shoka came up the steps.

"Please," he said, in the northern accent, and bowed with utmost politeness to the terrified woman.

"We're after the loan of your upstairs. Please."

Eyes widened. The terror was still there. But there was a different look to it.

"Ye're with Saukendar. . . ." As if that was no bad thing.

"Here." Taizu closed her fist around a gold amulet she wore, part of the mercenary's gaud, and took it off over her head. "Get! You can get killed around us! Go! Get clear! Get everyone out of here!"

"Come on, dammit!" Shoka followed Chun and Wengadi up the narrow stairs, past wobbly balconies, past graffiti'ed erotic frescoes, and up and up to the topmost level, where a weak door gave on a dark little hole, someone's apartment, a stinking lot of clutter, a low ceiling with birds nesting in the rafters and a scant light coming through the roof tiles.

d.a.m.n mess. Some dirt poor grandmother made party to what could get her killed, if the soldiers came searching.

Reidi, for G.o.ds' sakes, look alive over there!

"Up," he said, and Jian and Wengadi scrambled to grab a plank that had served as a table, and braced it against the brickwork and climbed up to knock roof-tiles aside, letting a blinding light in from overhead.

Jian and Wengadi swung down from the low rafters. Then came the anxious part. "I'll do it!" Taizu said.

"I don't weigh so much!"

"You don't know what you're aiming at," Shoka said. He slipped his sword, his kit and his blanket roll off, tossed the enc.u.mbrance out of the way, and with a deep breath and a rush, ran the slanted board to grab hold of the dusty rafters. From there he edged over to climb higher on the beams, and put his head out into the fading daylight, chest-level with the tiled roof.

"Those tiles are old!" Chun's voice came up to him. "Be careful!"

But he was looking out beyond the immediate prospect of the untidy camp spread out at the foot of the wall this roof sheltered-was looking beyond the camp's further, riverside wall, across the Hisei, where the bridge was, the distance-dimmed hills where Reidi ought to be... if Reidi was there at all.