Chasing the Phoenix (15 page)

First-Born Splendor started to speak. But White Squall leaped up beside him and clapped a hand over his mouth. By force, she pulled him back down into his seat. Ashen-faced, she shook her head.

At which instant, with the gathering tension at a peak, Darger laughed merrily. When all had turned to look at him, he said, “Nobody has asked White Squall what she needs to fetch the Phoenix Bride. It is entirely possible that not all of the Hidden Emperor's amassed resources are required.”

“Tell us,” the emperor said to White Squall.

Cao White Squall closed her eyes. For several seconds she was silent. Then she said, “I don't require much. Thirty soldiers would suffice.” She opened her eyes. “Let me take that many of my best people, with mountain horses, a strong wagon, a brace of dwarf mammoths to pull it, a good wagoner, whatever equipment I deem necessary, enough money to bring us there and back again, a little more for bribes. Also, the Perfect Strategist for an advisor. While you fight your way eastward, I will seek out the Phoenix Bride and bring her to you.”

“Done,” said the Hidden Emperor.

“Great Monarch, I must object,” Darger said. “I am needed here by your side to advise you.”

“You have proved yourself worthy,” the emperor said, “but not indispensable. Therefore, you will go.”

Surplus stood and, addressing the cao, said, “You neglected to include me and my rangers in your plans. I am sure that was unintentional. To deprive the Perfect Strategist of our support would be like enlisting Napoleon as an advisor but depriving him of his armies.”

“It was quite intentional,” White Squall said. “Any military leader worth her salt would value Napoleon's strategic advice. But she'd be a fool to allow him to bring along soldiers more loyal to him than to her.”

“This bickering grows tedious,” the Hidden Emperor said. “All shall be as White Squall has said. She will fetch the Phoenix Bride from Fragrant Tree while my armies march down the Long River. I shall thus have all that I desire. Is there anyone here who doubts that? Speak up, if you do.”

No one spoke.

“I will ascend the Dragon Throne with the Phoenix Bride at my side and we shall consummate our love in Beijing. White Squall, you may leave in the morning.”

*   *   *

“HAD I
seen this coming, I might have arranged for matters to turn out differently,” Darger told Fire Orchid. “But he who rides the wind must go where it takes him. Particularly when that wind is a warlord with thousands of experienced soldiers and countless hell weapons at his disposal.

“In any case, I must go and Surplus must stay.”

Fire Orchid extended a hand. “It is important that all the army sees that the wife of your strong right arm is shown the utmost respect. Therefore, you must kiss the back of my hand, with courteous refinement. Otherwise, my uncontrollably violent little brother will have one of his fits and tear you to pieces.”

Vicious Brute blushed and squirmed with embarrassment. But Darger, with proper solemnity, did as he was told. “Fire Orchid,” he said, “you are one in a million.”

“You think that is a compliment, so I will forgive you for saying so,” Fire Orchid replied haughtily. “But in all the world, there is only one me.”

“I will do my best to keep that in mind.”

*   *   *

ON WHICH
note began what in practice turned out to be, for Darger, a weeks-long vacation from the war. White Squall's company rode back through the Abundant Kingdom and then across the desert tracts to the south and hence up into the mountains. On the winding roads that led to the Expansive Country, the company told stories and played word games and sang songs and gambled small amounts on impromptu feats of marksmanship. Only White Squall remained aloof. To avoid drawing attention to themselves, they wore civilian clothing and told customs officials that they were a trade embassy from Brocade and innkeepers that they were a troupe of actors bound for Fragrant Tree. When challenged to prove their credentials as thespians, they drank to excess, broke furniture, and left without paying. In this way they avoided arousing any suspicions.

Darger was careful to drink in moderation and to remark upon only that which was praiseworthy in his companions. Occasionally he told a joke, but never one that was in any way risqué or ever the cleverest of any extended exchange. He flirted with the women so gravely that none took him seriously, and he privately let each man know that the Perfect Strategist thought of him—and only him—as if he were a son.

By the time they reached their destination, Darger was close friends with everyone save White Squall herself.

Fragrant Tree was a low and sprawling river city punctuated by occasional mountains. These steep-sided and tree-covered karst uprisings had from time immemorial been one of the natural wonders of China. Countless paintings had been made of them and distributed so widely that in all corners of the world people doubted that such things actually existed. Yet they did, and when the morning mists gathered at their feet they seemed to be the very mountains of heaven, afloat in the clouds. At twilight, however, the city came into its own. By local custom, all the beams and eaves were decorated with bioluminescent paint so that as the mountains faded into darkness, the buildings took on an ethereal beauty, glowing with a hundred hues of pastel light.

“We have made no plans,” Darger said when they had found lodgings in the city.

“No plans are necessary,” White Squall replied. “My people have done this sort of thing before. We shall simply do it again.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You shall see.”

The next morning, they made their way through the swarming carts and pedestrians of the city to a mountain in the center of town that was covered with osmanthus trees and surrounded by slums. Up close, there were many paths and stairways chopped into the mountainside leading up to caverns and grottos, some natural and others laboriously cut into the karst. The buildings were the usual mixture of overcrowded dwellings and obscure businesses whose purpose or products were not obvious from without and that, as often as not, turned out to be unlicensed drinking establishments.

“The mountains of Fragrant Tree are all hollow,” White Squall said, “and used for every imaginable purpose: as places of worship, as hideaways for lovers, as tunnels for smugglers, as breweries, and even as brothels. None of which concerns us today but one: as armories.”

“This is the last place I would expect a responsible government to hide dangerous weapons,” Darger said dubiously.

“Exactly,” White Squall said. “It was cunning of them to do so.”

Their journey ended at a nondescript building badly in need of paint. It had no windows and a sign over the door read:
VAST PROSPERITY IMPORT-EXPORT.

“This house,” one of the archaeologists said.

“You're sure?” White Squall asked her.

“Positive.”

White Squall dismounted and, followed closely by Darger, headed for the door. “This is the part I dislike,” she commented. “Haggling over how much we should pay for the privilege of access. I will start out offering two gold coins, which is a treasure to one living in such squalor, and then waste an hour being argued up to six.”

Darger held up a hand. “Allow me. I understand the avaricious mind.”

The two dwarf mammoths blocking the narrow road to traffic would by themselves have brought out all the neighborhood to gawk, much less the small army of strangers accompanying them. So they had no lack of witnesses when Darger knocked.

The door opened and a squat troll of a woman with the jaw of a turtle said, “What do you want? Not interested! Go away.”

“Money is involved,” Darger said. This stopped the woman from closing the door entirely. “For you.” That caused her to step out into the roadway.

“What's the pitch?” the turtle-woman said.

“We have come to recover something that was left here for us some time ago. Your house, as you know, abuts the mountain. In fact, it backs onto a metal door so sturdy that nobody has ever been able to breach it in all the centuries since it was last closed. We have come to open that door and claim our property. We will pay you for the inconvenience this will cause.” One of White Squall's sappers held up a cash box, and from it Darger removed eight gold coins. They lay in a gleaming heap on his open palm. “I am willing to be extremely generous.”

The squint of cunning that came over the woman's face was so obvious as to be laughable. “Not enough, ugly sir! You must make me a better offer.”

“Very well.” Darger dropped four of the coins back into the cash box:
Clink
.
Clink
.
Clink
. A pause.
Clink
. “I'll offer you half of what I did originally. That's still very generous.”

“What!” the woman cried. “How is that a better offer? You are cheating me. I should call the police to arrest you.”

“Dear lady, I am not cheating you—you cheat yourself. Will you accept my offer, or must it be reduced to the merely generous?”

Screwing up her little round face so that she looked particularly pink and piggish, the homeowner stubbornly shook her head.
Clink
. A fifth coin disappeared back into the cash box.
Clink
. A sixth. The neighbors moaned.

“Stop!” the woman cried. “I will take your woefully inadequate offer!”

“You strike a shrewd bargain,” Darger said, handing over the remaining two gold coins. “The last person I negotiated with would not come to terms until he had argued me down to seven coppers.” He turned to White Squall. “You may proceed.”

Swiftly and efficiently, White Squall's crew began removing the furnishings of the house and stacking them up in the street outside. When the turtle-woman began to squeak and scold, two of them lifted her up and placed her atop a pile of her own possessions, too high for her to dare jump down, much to the amusement of her neighbors. “Do not worry, little grandmother,” one said. “We will keep a guard posted to make sure nobody steals your things.”

“Or you,” said the other, making the neighbors roar.

Darger followed White Squall into the dark building, past multiple charcoal stoves where vats of cow hoofs were being boiled down—which surely meant that its owner was preparing the medium for drug-producing molds, though whether pharmaceutical or recreational, he had no way of knowing—and so, through dim and twisty corridors, to the rear of the building. There sappers were already removing sections of the first-floor ceiling while archaeologists dug with trowels at the foundations of a vast metal slab and brushed dust away from its edges. It was a door, and wide enough that, open, eight men could have marched through it abreast.

“Believe it or not, this is only a secondary access. The main entrance was far too effectively armored for us to hope to breach it.”

The metal looked like nothing Darger had ever seen. “You will not find this an easy nut to crack,” he observed.

“Stand back and watch.”

A pair of sappers applied explosives to two corners of the door, inserted fuses, lit them, and then scurried to the far side of the room. Darger, perforce, hurried after them.

Whoomp.
Smoke puffed up and the door opened on its hinges.

“It's simple when you know how,” White Squall said.

*   *   *

IT SEEMED
to be Darger's fate to have unpleasant adventures underground. “I don't suppose there's any chance of your coming to your senses at the last minute?” he said to White Squall as her team formed up in the anteroom of the subterranean armory.

“Break the oath I swore to my liege lord, give up all hope of wealth and glory, and spend a lifetime fleeting the Hidden Emperor's assassins, you mean? No.”

“This is a more perilous enterprise than you realize.”

“I have dealt with demons before,” White Squall reminded Darger. “Though honesty compels me to admit that normally we disable all electrical cables before opening a site where demons are likely to be. That will not be possible here.” Lifting her voice, she said, “You may light the torches now.”

Up and down the line, sugar was poured into glass alembics containing water laced with metal salts. Hyperactive bacteria began feeding, and in the process releasing hydrogen gas. Friction lighters were touched to the spouts, and flares of yellow light sprang to life. The alembics, hung from poles, were hoisted into the air.

“Who's got the map?” White Squall asked. “Exquisite Calculus? Talk us through.”

“We are at the opening of a transport garage,” Exquisite Calculus said. “Those shadowy shapes were once trucks. Of no interest to us today. There should be a set of stairs not far from here.”

Eight soldiers had been left behind to secure the entrance against their return. Those proceeding into the depths of the ancient armory were now about evenly divided between sappers and combat-hardened archaeologists. First went two light bearers, followed by the map reader, White Squall, and Darger. Then ten soldiers carrying a litter on which rested an HJ-73 Red Arrow antitank guided missile, another pair of light bearers, and the remaining personnel trailing behind them. It had been Darger's idea to decorate the missile with varicolored ribbons and paper flowers in such profusion that it looked like a piñata, and, once the foreign word had been explained to her, White Squall had readily taken him up on the suggestion.

“The mad intelligences and posthuman minds of the Internet don't really understand us,” Darger had said then. “Oh, in theory they know everything there is to know about human beings: what we fear, and what motivates us. But our logical processes are as opaque to them as theirs are to us. A visual reminder of this fact will cause them unease and uncertainty.”