Uudam’s eyes had rolled up into his skull. An idle part of Tian’s brain wondered where, exactly, the line was drawn between asphyxiation and shortness of breath. He suspected Uudam knew, even if he couldn’t explain it with words.
“He is worth a city to you. This city.”
“No. But to the cause of the Yuu? Yes.”
Tian thought about it, then shook his head. Yalau glared at him, and ground out “He is Great King Wuusan’s uncle, and his second son from his first wife is married to the eldest daughter of Wuusan’s first wife. His tribe merged into the Boruski before anyone else did, and many of them are key generals. And the favor of the Great Wolf Spirit is… significant. Losing it for a single city is not worth it.”
“That and the Great Wolf Spirit is standing over your shoulder, in throat-ripping range of the Great Horse Spirit.” Tian’s voice was sardonic. His hands didn’t shift from around Uudam’s neck, however. He had one hand compressing the windpipe, and it was a bit finicky, but he was just able to restrict blood flow through the carotid artery without cutting it off entirely. Yalau didn’t respond.
“How can you guarantee your offer?” Tian asked. “For that matter, can your words bind Wuusan? I understand the relation between shamans and kings is…” Tian’s voice trailed off.
“I’m here by his command. He doesn’t speak the language of the kingdom, and would not meet with a sorcerer regardless. The Great King is legendary for keeping every promise he has ever made. What’s more, we will provide you with a hostage. I know you will take perfect care of him.”
It was quite true about Wuusan. In a quirk of almost cosmic irony, the butcher of the steppes had a better reputation for keeping bargains than most merchant houses. Of course, you may not have wanted to bargain with him in the first place, nor wanted what he offered, but he did have a remarkable knack for making saying “No” seem infinitely worse than saying “Yes.”
Yalau wasn’t making threats. Not really. She didn’t mention the prisoners at all. Tian’s eyes went half-hooded. He wanted to kill Uudam. Wanted to kill him for all the times the old bastard had nearly killed him. Wanted to kill him because of the screams of the captives forced to rush the walls again and again. For everyone executed in the cells. For the hypocrisy of selling your people into slavery, then blaming the buyers. Not because the buyers were without blame, but because it absolved you of your own sin.
And Tian had enough of his own sin. So did the Kingdom. Uudam was an asset to the Yuu. A significant one. Was the potential damage to the Yuu invasion worth losing Burning Flag City, and possibly his own life? He didn’t, couldn’t know. He knew that it wasn’t the important question anyway. “Will killing Uudam silence the screams in my memory, or will the new screams be even worse?” Or, perhaps, “Do I give a damn about the strategic situation, or am I really trying to do what will make me feel good.” That was a good one to think about too. The fact he could even consider it suggested the answer.
“You put it in writing. You release all the captives you have taken that belong to the kingdom, with enough grain to last them until they reach Red Reed Crossing. No more mutilations. No more abuses. And it will depend on the quality of the hostage, too.” He didn’t relax his hands. Every second of restricted blood and airflow counted. There was a lesson he learned way back in the West Town Outer Court, and swiftly proved the truth of in the Wastes.
“They are the property-” Tian smiled at Yalau. Her voice trailed off. “Very well.”
Tian felt something stirring, beyond the edges of his vision. Yalau shouted. “Drop him at once! You think you can fool the spirits?! Drop him at once, or the deal is off and we will not rest until every living thing south of the river is tortured to death! You hear me? They will all serve him in the afterlife as the most degraded slaves and objects of suffering, and we shall pay any price to ensure both of you accompany them!”
Tian smiled a little more deeply, and dropped Uudam. “A little late, even if it’s sooner than I would prefer. Don’t say you wouldn’t do the same, because we both know you would do far worse. I will suspend my vengeance, not renounce it. Him, I do not forgive, and will not forget. But I won’t pursue my vendetta so long as you keep your agreement and this piece of shit never comes within five hundred miles of any city in the Kingdom. And I will know. I have left my mark on him.”
Tian had, too, burned with qi onto Uudam’s vertebrae, though he had no particular way to track it. But the Yuu didn’t know that.
Yalau opened her mouth, then closed it with a snort. She had a scribe brought over. To Tian’s mild surprise, it was a tribesman. He half expected some captured merchant or civil servant. The agreement was drafted, verified, signed by both parties, with copies sent to the City Lord and Wuusan, with Yalau and Tian keeping the originals. Liren hadn’t said a word the whole time, just looking around speculatively.
“Where is the hostage?” Tian asked.
“He will be delivered after we… aid you… with your enemies.” Yalau had her own nasty smile, now.
“And how will you do that?”
She didn’t answer until Uudam was carried away, then slung on a stretcher between two horses and carefully transported deeper into the steppe. The rest of the Yuu retreated with him. The camps had packed up already, the great host retreating like a tide. Tian spotted the ruined remains of the siege engines they were building, left smoldering in the grass. At least part of his plan had worked. Two parts had worked, in fact, and better than expected. But the key elements were still missing. He had lost the moment. In a way, the plan had been a failure.
In the space of an hour, Tian and Liren were alone with Yalau and the great spirits, barely a mile from the city walls. “Now then, sorcerer. I will fulfill the first part of our bargain. You wanted to know how we will assist you against your enemies? We shall deliver them to you, as we delivered you to them. Both of them. Quite delicious, selling you twice and each of them once, I must say.”
Yalau laughed, merry and cruel, as the echoes of a whinny tore across the empty sky. Spells burst apart, and the skies soon were filled. From the south floated five heretics, some on giant insects, others in rugs or flames or upon stranger things. North of them was a sky barge, not the giant Summer Torrent, but still large enough for a warehouse and the half dozen cultivators standing on it. All of whom, Tian noticed, wore the blue and white robes of the Inner Court.
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“They were here for days, just waiting for you to look vulnerable. I don’t think either knew about the other. Either outnumbered you more than two to one, but they still wanted you to exhaust all your means before launching an ambush. Your immortality brings you neither creativity nor courage. Such a pity!” She sneered, then turned her horse and raced for the horizon. Tian’s eyes widened sharply. With the exception of Starsieve’s flying board, he had never seen anything move as fast as Yalau on the back of her spirit horse.
The two sides in the sky quickly caught sight of each other. They didn’t shout, but you could feel their glares crackling the air. They were very plainly searching for the next unpleasant surprise; if they had been revealed, then surely there was another ambush to come.
“I can’t even pretend to work with heretics against the Long Clan. How do you feel about teaming up with the Long Clan against the heretics?” Tian messaged Liren.
“I’d sooner die.”
“You just might.”
She turned and met his eyes, a little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. They had said it all before. Now, there was only the killing left to do. Should it come to it, they would walk the road to Hell together. One last journey, one last great adventure, before being born again.
Tian looked up to the sky, and cupped his hands. “Alright, I have all the loot from Fort Askarmand, including Deadheart’s personal stash of unspeakably awful things, as well as the loot from the Long Clan warehouse, minus the human incubators for the gu. Those have all been destroyed. I also took the liberty of wrapping the storage rings in explosive talismans, which I linked to my heart. Sis’ did the same. So whoever kills us, blows up the loot. On the other hand, we only need one bunch to sell the loot to for safe passage. We’re going to start killing until only one side remains!”
“Insect, you dare steal the great lord’s things?!” A sorcerer rose from amongst the heretics, flying on a cloud of golden-red flames.
“Not one word about Deadheart, huh? Well, I suppose heretics don’t have much expectations of loyalty.” Liren muttered. Naturally, all the Heavenly people could hear her.
“I might say the same, martial niece.” An austere figure floated out on a flying sword from the Sky Barge, accompanied by someone who was plainly his brother. “Though I am surprised that you weren’t whisked away to the Mountain like the rest of the Outer Court.”
“Oh, I was.” Liren’s voice was indifferent. Tian had to conceal a smile. The floating seniors were anything but indifferent. “The mountain is only sealed from one direction, really. There are those inside who can open it, if they want to. Did you all think… what? That it would be closed up forever? That no one was keeping an eye on things? Hilarious. No, everyone is just settling in. Growing stronger, breaking through, learning new things. Renewing our fellowship. Biding our time. Watching our inferiors consume each other and delude themselves that they are growing strong. We’re just out here to take care of a little business before heading back in. Running errands. Settling debts.”
Amazing. She wasn’t saying anything particularly insulting or cruel, but the Inner Court members were looking worse and worse. Threadcutter and the heretics were looking a bit sick too. Tian concealed a sigh. He truly had so much to learn. Not that he would ever tell Liren, of course.
“Business like theft?” The elder Long brother managed to hang on to his calm voice, though Tian could see the red rising on his neck.
“Like killing. Threadcutter is the job. You? You are personal.”
“You can’t possibly be this petty about a bunch of mortals, your blood or not. Even your grandma was smart enough to let it go.” The younger Long brother rolled his eyes. There was dead silence. It took him a few seconds to realize that everyone, heretics included, was staring at him. “Oh fuck you, it was only the one parent, not even both of them. And some male concubines and other irrelevant people. Are you all really going to act like it was some kind of big deal? It’s just business, and if you are worried about getting scuffed, go meditate in a cave!”
“I entirely agree.” A heretic with golden eyes standing on what appeared to be a rug made of human skins, fanned himself with a banana leaf. “Mortals, by definition, do not last. Gold is eternal. Discarding the illusion for what is real, I can only say ‘Well done!’”
“Quite right, Merchant Zhi. What are mortals for, if not to gather resources for their masters? Doesn’t the orthodoxy preach about the virtues of social order and hierarchy? In this, the matter is proven. Mortals gathered, were harvested, and their masters prospered. Now, new mortals grow and gather in the place where her family once was. Truly, the cycle of the dao is a wondrous thing, how joyous to be in harmony with it.” This from a vague shape inside a cloud of buzzing insects.
“And yet, for all your sniping, you scheme and struggle and slaughter one another, all for what the orthodoxy provides to its most ordinary members. Less than that, in fact. I sleep quite well, in both perfect safety and comfort. Not that I need to sleep, I just enjoy the luxury. When did you last sleep well, Rot-Tooth Sui? Or you, Merchant Zhi? When did you last feel safe?” The elder Long didn’t hold back. He even waved a lazy hand at the daoists behind him, all in the blue and white of the Monastery. “I feel very safe with my brothers and sisters. Doubtless you will find someone you can trust your back to. Someday.”
“They aren’t all real Inner Court members. I can tell.” Liren messaged Tian. “This is usually where I would say they are borrowing the skin of a tiger, but frankly, I’m not in the mood to bicker.” Tian didn’t reply. He’d known they were fake. There was a certain hunger to them that the genuine article lacked. They had the eyes of people who felt they were owed. More than that, the Longs and the mercenary cultivators, to say nothing of most of the heretics, had an indefinable hollowness to them. As though they were- His mind groped for a reasonable comparison. They weren’t dead, nor soulless (technically), nor were they possessed (depending on how you defined “posessed.”)
“I dare turn my back to my fellow daoists. Tell me, Threadcutter, do you?” The elder didn’t bother with a false smile, opting to glare at a drab man standing on a wooden shuttle, as though he were borrowing it from some celestial loom.
“Certainly not. If I did, they would think I was setting them up.” His voice was mild as a spring afternoon. “And they would be right.” There was a solidity to Threadcutter that the others lacked, though why that was so, Tian couldn’t say. What was filling him that the others lacked?
Tian controlled the urge to rub his head. His eyes felt weird, and he was seeing things, feeling things he couldn’t explain at all. It was all a bit too much.
“Hey Sis? Why are we listening to this nonsense?”
“What?”
“The polite thing to say is ‘Pardon?’ Tsk. Father was right, the Convent cannot train a proper young lady.” Tian’s thoughts were more in sorrow than in anger. Bravely, he pressed on. “Ever since we first went into the wastes, I knew that I couldn’t learn anything good from heretics, and I have yet to see a single thing to change my mind. I don’t even hear the words, now, just the buzzing of insects. You kill the heretics humiliating our blue and white robes, I’ll kill the rest. When we get mixed up with them and they are all in a tangle, we’ll swap if we can. Try to make ‘em tangle up with each other. That’s all. They are just gu. Let’s jar ‘em up, then crush whichever emerges as ‘king.’”
She blinked at Tian, then, in the middle of the standoff, the air crackling with tension, she smiled at him. Warmly, affectionately. She patted him on the shoulder and looked around. “I have truly raised this child well. Ah, me.” She chuckled, then planted the but of her spear on the ground, fixing her eyes on the Long Clan. She opened her mouth to say something, then just closed it with a snort. Without a betraying move, she attacked!