Chasing the Phoenix (26 page)

“The Infallible Physician.”

“That is the same thing. Everybody wants to meet her because she is rich and heals people. But I said I was your wife and so she saw me right away. Because she was curious about me. We had a nice long chat. She talks about her money a lot, but it seems to me that she is very tight.”

“Well, she was poor for many years.”

“That explains it then,” Fire Orchid said. “I do not think we will get any money out of this one. So let's not try. Oh, and Little Spider has found that by putting rouge on her cheeks and acting the way she did when she was sick, she can pass for a joyous one. She is so cute.”

“That might prove useful in the future,” Surplus observed.

“I think so, too. Also, I want you to make Vicious Brute a hero.”

“Why on earth would you want that?”

“It is always useful to have a hero in the family.”

“You have me,” Surplus reminded her.

“An ordinary hero. You are special. But make certain Vicious Brute is not put in danger. My little brother is actually very delicate and does not like to be shot at. Now tell me what you have been doing all this time.”

Surplus did not deem it wise to tell Fire Orchid about Darger's plans, the Hidden Emperor's obsession with the Phoenix Bride, or the fact that the device was close to being operable. Instead, he told her of the Infallible Physician's unhappy desire to please her senile father, of White Squall's hopeless yearning to marry Prince First-Born Splendor and continue her career as a cao, of Powerful Locomotive's unexpected demand that they make White Squall love him, and of Prince First-Born Splendor's unlikely obsession of returning to Southern Gate with White Squall as his mistress. At the conclusion of his narration, he sighed and said, “Love is a terrible thing.”

Fire Orchid patted his cheek. “Lucky for you, you don't need to worry about love at all. Because you have a wife.”

 

12.

A rumor went around that the Perfect Strategist had taken a ghost for a wife. He was never seen in the company of a physical woman, and yet he did not bear himself as a man deprived of female attention does. Hearing the rumor, Ceo Powerful Locomotive made a joking remark that the love of a ghost was superior to that of a living woman for she could cause him no troubles or concerns. Glumly, the Perfect Strategist replied, “If you think that, then you know nothing of women, living or dead.”

—
THE
BOOK OF THE
TWO
ROGUES

FIRST CAME
the scouts.

The thick, iron-banded outer doors of Harmonious Intercourse Gate had been thrown open and the matching inner doors were flung wide. Inside, banners flapped in the breeze, paving stones gleamed, and bright flowers bloomed before every window. Cautiously, four intrepid men entered Free Trade Square. They were mounted on sturdy though nondescript horses, and they all looked a little spooked to be greeted by a silent and unpeopled city.

Unpeopled save for one man. For Darger sat, clad as always in his modest scholar's robes and with incense burning at his feet, on a balcony central to the House of Joyous Governance, high above them. He was playing the
guqin
. Otherwise, he was absolutely motionless. The melancholy notes of his seven-stringed instrument floated over the square, adding emphasis to the silence.

He gave not the least indication that he had seen the newcomers.

The scouts consulted with one another and then two of them, spurring their horses to a canter, went down the main avenues to either side of the House of Joyous Governance. Hooves clattering on stone, they disappeared around the back of the building.

Silence.

The two remaining scouts waited. And waited. And waited yet more. But their comrades did not return.

When it became clear that the missing scouts would never reappear, the survivors wheeled their horses about and fled.

Darger lifted his hands from his instrument and waited.

*   *   *

TIME ENOUGH
passed for the scouts to report their findings to their commanders and for a long argument to ensue. Then the assembled Three Gorges army stirred, bulged, and gave birth to a lesser body of men. With neither hurry nor delay, a force of perhaps two hundred soldiers advanced upon the city, led by a stocky woman and a dozen or so officers.

The woman was doubtless Shrewd Fox, and the officers the highest-ranking of her staff. No career officer with enough clout to insist upon accompanying her would pass by the opportunity to be a part of what they were sure would be a famous victory.

On their approach, Darger began to play again. He had taken a pedagogical draft that gave him the skill to play the
guqin,
but, being unpracticed, his technique was shaky. Still, he was not looking to gain the enemy's admiration. He was presenting them with a story they would think they understood.

In disciplined array, the contingent of soldiers passed into Free Trade Square, its best warriors first, its officers next, and all the rest following.

They filled the square, and the command staff formed a line below the balcony. Darger continued to play, as if nothing had happened. The officers looked at one another.

Then Ceo Shrewd Fox stood in her stirrups. “Perfect Strategist!” she shouted. “If that is indeed your name. You set a false trap for me, expecting I would flee with my tail between my legs. But I am too canny a fox to fall for such obvious tricks.” Several of her subordinates grinned at one another. “I know that your army has been stricken by the plague and that you have not enough vital men to hold the city. Your game has been played, and it is over. I call upon you to surrender.”

Darger ceased playing his
guqin
.

The last note faded into silence.

As if this were a signal—which it was—the inner walls of Harmonious Intercourse Gate collapsed in a cloud of flour-dough mortar and a tumble of painted wooden bricks. Soldiers hidden behind the false walls, led by Vicious Brute, emerged to seize the outer doors, swing them shut, and bolt them with an enormous beam of wood. The inner doors followed suit. Meanwhile, cavalry came pouring from behind all the buildings fronting on the square, and archers and riflemen swarmed onto every rooftop and balcony, popped up on the city wall, and appeared in every window, all of them facing inward and pointing their weapons at Shrewd Fox's soldiers.

By the time any of those soldiers could react, it was too late.

Darger stood. In a loud, clear voice, he said, “You are surrounded, outnumbered, and imprisoned, Ceo Shrewd Fox. If you try to fight, you and all your subordinates will die. But if you surrender, I give you my word as a gentleman that your people will be treated leniently.”

Shrewd Fox looked stunned.

“The choice is yours,” Darger said with just a touch of complacency.

*   *   *

WHEN THE
square had been cleared, soldiers in the uniforms of Three Gorges troops opened the gatehouse doors again, raised Three Gorges flags, and waved the waiting troops into the city. Because all their first-rate officers had already been captured and only mediocrities remained in command, the enemy did not hesitate to do so. Once in Free Trade Square, they were divided into small troops and sent down the side streets to be surrounded, disarmed, and escorted to temporary processing facilities. There, the joyous ones swiftly and efficiently integrated the losing army into the Hidden Emperor's Immortals.

Darger was kept busy overseeing the seizure of the Three Gorges river fleet, the decommissioning and recommissioning of officers, the tallying and assessment of seized weapons, the distribution of new uniforms (which every tailor and seamstress in the city had been working on since the plan was first devised), the swearing of oaths, the debriefing of spies from both sides, and a hundred related chores as well.

It took the rest of the day, but by sundown all that remained of the Three Gorges army was a scattering of deserters, fleeing in all directions and carrying with them the news of Shrewd Fox's astonishingly sudden reversal of fortune.

Darger, however, was left with a nagging suspicion that something important had been left undone.

“What am I forgetting?” he said aloud.

A joyous one standing nearby said, “Many things, undoubtedly, noble sir. But if you are asking which previously scheduled task you have not yet performed, it is your interview with Ceo Shrewd Fox.”

At his direction, the joyous one lead Darger to a conference room. There, as soon as the door closed behind him, he said, “You are dismissed.”

All the joyous ones present of course left immediately. Not so the guards. “That is not possible, sir,” one protested. “This is a dangerous woman!”

“It is true that had her actions been performed as a civilian, Shrewd Fox would rightly be regarded as a criminal and a sociopath,” Darger admitted. “However, as they were done in the course of her duty as an officer, she is a virtuous woman and worthy to be treated as such. Depart at once or you will experience the usual punishments visited upon soldiers who disobey a direct order.” As they left, Darger could not help reflecting that the day when he could not handle a virtuous opponent would be the day he turned to an honest line of work.

The famed Ceo Shrewd Fox turned out to be a little woman with a hard, pinched face and eyes like two black buttons. She stood rigid and proud. “I have fought honorably,” she said, “and I am entitled to an honorable death.”

“Nobody wishes you to die,” Darger said. “Least of all me. Please, sit. I am exhausted, and to sit while you remain standing would be the soul of rudeness. Thank you.” Throwing himself into a chair, he resumed his line of thought. “It is the Hidden Emperor's decision that you should take command of those armies of the province (for it is no longer a state) of Three Gorges remaining in the field and in his name use them to reclaim the nations to the south as part of his empire. With your military prowess and their relative weakness, I have no doubt you will make short work of them.”

Startled, Shrewd Fox said, “If I left Three Gorges unprotected, it would be overrun by armies from Twin Cities and the Republic of Central Plains.” Then, controlling herself, “But of course that is no longer any responsibility of mine.”

“If I was able to catch Shrewd Fox with a stratagem that was old ages before the rise of Utopia,” Darger said gently, “can you doubt that I can handle your enemies with equal ease? Not that they will be enemies for long. A new age is come to China—or perhaps I should say that an old one has returned. When the southern nations are subdued, you will come back to Crossroads to find it as you left it in all ways but one—it will be part of a nation at peace with itself and the world. Now. Will you accept the emperor's offer?”

“I … for the second time today, I am caught by surprise. This must be what it is like to be of ordinary intelligence. I cannot say that I like it much.”

“It is hardly your fault that you were defeated, for you had only your own native genius to rely upon while I had the infallible mathematical science of psychopolemology. I applied a derivative hyperinversion to the set of all possible outcomes, mapped the result onto a swallowtail catastrophe algorithm, and then, once I had equaled out the Boolean constants, the solution was obvious.”

“I am not familiar with your terminology,” Shrewd Fox said, “but I see what you did clearly enough. Magicians do much the same thing when they alter an illusion. If the audience is confident that an ace of spades will be pulled from a deck of cards, the conjurer turns the entire deck to aces of spades. Or causes the card to catch fire. Or throws the cards into the air, where they turn into ravens and fly away. You knew I believed you to be a blowhard and a fraud and so confronted me with a trick that only a fool would think I'd fall for. Thinking I knew your thinking, I let myself be trapped in my own trap. Had I shown a proper respect for your cunning, I assure you that this day would have gone differently.”

“You have an exceptional mind, Shrewd Fox, and I am glad not to have to face you on the field of battle again. Tell me. As one strategist to another—what do you think of my chances against my next set of enemies?”

The smallest of grins appeared and disappeared on the ceo's face. “It is almost too easy, this one. You have the one great advantage that, try though I might, I was never quite able to arrange.”

“Which is?”

“Twin Cities and the Republic of Central Plains must now fear you even more than they fear each other. Your forces swept out of a backwater land to conquer nation after nation in a matter of months. The renowned strategist Shrewd Fox had you cornered, yet you effortlessly turned the tables on her. Now your dread gaze moves northward. They will have no choice but to unite against you.”

“And how, if you were in my position, would you handle them?”

She told him.

For the space of one long breath, Darger said nothing. Then he flung up his hands in astonishment. “What an—”

Shrewd Fox held up both hands. “Stop. You were going to say, ‘What an extraordinary coincidence!' or some such thing, when it is nothing of the sort. You needed a new strategy, and you plucked it from my brain. That is all. There is no need for you to pretend otherwise.”

“I assure you, madam…” Darger began. Then, “Oh, bugger it. You see through me, Shrewd Fox. I am dazzled and I am charmed. Indeed, if I admired you any more than I do at this moment, it would be necessary for me to immediately propose marriage to you.”

“I would not dream of marrying a man as clever as myself,” Shrewd Fox said. “I could never be certain what he was thinking.”

*   *   *

SEVERAL DAYS
later, the Hidden Emperor called a meeting to plan the next phase of the campaign. As they were standing in the first-floor anteroom of Yellow Crane Tower, waiting to be blindfolded and led up stairs and down, White Squall said to Darger, “Will Shrewd Fox work with us?”