“I can’t leave!” Bixei objected. “What if Stipes needs me while we are gone?”

“Go!” Stipes raised a foot and gave Bixei a not-so-gentle push on the behind. “The worst that can happen is that I bump into a post, and you have a duty.”

Bixei lingered anxiously for a minute, then joined Llesho and Master Den with an embarrassed flush creeping over his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to fuss,” he confessed.

“I know.” Den smiled at him. “Where are your companions?”

“Lling and Hmishi went off to find out where Kaydu had set up our camp. We were going to bring Stipes back there to recover.”

“Stipes will have to recover among the healers for a little while longer,” Master Den informed him. “But for the moment you have a reprieve. Wait until your companions return, and fetch them to the laundry wagon. Tell them we are going calling.”

Bixei looked to Llesho for an explanation. Llesho said nothing, just made a sour face at the teacher and pointed west. “The wagons are that way.”

So Master Den wasn’t the only one being difficult. Bixei sank to the canvas floor beside Stipes’ pallet and added Master Den to his list of things to worry about. Llesho was already on it.

“And now to dress you.” Master Den drew Llesho away to the laundry wagon, piled on one side with trunks of cloths for repairing tents and for bandages, and on the other with chests Llesho had noticed only in passing. Master Den fussed with the chests until the four companions joined them. Bixei had found Kaydu in her human form, and had brought her along as well.

From one of the chests, Master Den drew Thebin breeches and embroidered shirts and caps.

“Where did you get this?” Lling squealed with delight as she put on the proper uniform of a past age, when the people of the high plateau had been ruthless warriors, before the goddess had come down from heaven to favor the Thebin kings. Hmishi was just as pleased with his uniform, but showed it only with a quick duck of his head to hide his smile. None of them expected an answer. Kaydu wore the uniform of her father’s army. Bixei considered his companions thoughtfully, and then asked, “Do you have a uniform like Master Jaks‘? I know I can never be as good as he was, but he should be represented, don’t you think?” Master Den smiled. “Yes, he should. And it would not surprise me if someday the student surpasses the teacher.” With that he brought out leathers and the beaten brass wrist guards, the match of those Master Jaks used to wear. When he added a cloak, Llesho experienced a little shiver of recognition. In his features Bixei looked more like Master Markko than he did the dead weaponsmaster. In the dress of the mercenary assassin, however, he took on the watchful carriage of the guards who had died for him when he was a child and he would have snatched the cloak away as a bad omen. But Master Den looked at Bixei with pride, and Llesho knew he had to do the same. This was the truth of Bixei, as the embroidered shirts had become the truth of Lling and Hmishi. These three existed to protect him. He could only serve them by making their sacrifices worthwhile.

While Llesho was admiring his companions, Master Den had unearthed a chest covered in leather and bound with brass. From the silk-lined interior he drew a shirt and breeches like his Thebin guards wore, but of a finer fabric. Llesho stripped off the trainee’s uniform he had been given in the governor’s compound at Farshore; he felt as though he were shedding a false skin with it, reclaiming Thebin with the fine woolen shirt and breeches. Next Master Den pulled out a pair of soft boots encrusted at heel and toe with gold filigree that gleamed with a polished sheen in the sunlight, and a sleeveless Thebin coat embroidered in gold-and-crimson thread crossed with blue silk. Llesho pulled on the boots and slipped his arms through the slashed openings at each side of the coat, settling the shoulders with a familiar shrug.

“Now you look like a fine young prince of the High Mountains,” Den assured him with a pleased look. The last item, a heavy leather belt, he wrapped around Llesho’s waist with a satisfied nod. They were far from Thebin, however, and Llesho could think of no way that Master Den would have acquired the court dress of a prince of just Llesho’s size on Pearl Island.

“Where did you get these?”

Master Den shook his head. “All in good time.” He led them back through the line of tents, Lling at the left side of the prince and Hmishi at his right, with Kaydu and Bixei following behind.

Soldiers who had paid them no notice when they had passed on their way back to the launderer’s wagon now stopped their mending or their gossip as they passed. Llesho tilted his chin up, refusing to show the nerves that were twisting his gut. A suit of clothes might convince the soldiers of the line, but alone it was not likely to impress the emperor’s representative. He’d have to act like a prince as well.

Llesho didn’t remember much from the part of his life he’d lived in his father’s court. He did know, however, that before state appearances, the Master of Protocol had always taken him aside and explained what was expected of him. And his brothers, whichever of them was home at the time, would watch him to make certain he did not shame himself or the court. Yet here he was heading into the most important appearance of his young life—based on this meeting, he might gain the help of the emperor for his cause, or find himself clapped in chains and sold again in the marketplace—and there was no protocol officer in sight.

“What is it, boy?”

Llesho took a deep breath and let it go in a long, expressive sigh. Was his terror so obvious that his teacher could read it in his face without a word spoken? He didn’t know what Master Den could do, but Llesho took the question as an invitation to unburden himself of some of his fears. “I don’t know what to do.” He did not add, “I don’t know why you are doing this, or what Habiba—or her ladyship—hopes to gain by espousing the cause of a long deposed prince.”

Master Den clapped him on the shoulder with a snort of laughter. “You forget, Llesho, I’ve seen you when you feel threatened. You are more haughty at those times than the emperor himself. Even dressed in rags you carry yourself like a prince. So be the prince you are. Beyond that, speak as little as you can; let them wonder. You can manage that, can’t you?”

“I. Yes.” Head up. Meet the challenge with a level gaze that judged everything and apologized for nothing. And trust no one.

It was Den’s turn to sigh now. He dropped a heavy hand on Llesho’s shoulder. “Your father would be proud of you.”

“Thank you, Master.” Llesho bowed his head, hiding the shine of tears in his eyes. His father was gone, and he didn’t know how Master Den could have known him, or how the teacher could choose the one compliment that could bow him low with his grief while at the same time instilling a greater determination to do justice to his father and the line of Thebin kings. For Thebin, Llesho knew, he could do much.

They had reached the command tent; Habiba’s guards came to attention when they announced Llesho and his party. Habiba waited for them inside the tent. The maps had been stowed, the dishes of food taken away. A simple wooden box now sat alone on the table.

“Prince Llesho. I have something that belongs to you. Her ladyship bid me return it to you, should the opportunity present itself.” Habiba stroked the wood of the box on the camp table. The witch had never called Llesho by his title before, and he did so now with no hint of a smile.

Once you bought me fresh from the arena, a shopworn prince for small change in that marketplace, Llesho thought, but did not say aloud. He did, however, returned the solemn bow.

Habiba opened the box. From it he drew a silver coronet, which he offered to the prince between outstretched palms.

“Where did you get that?” Llesho asked, surprised at how much it hurt to look at the slender circle of precious metal. Not quite a crown, nevertheless it signaled to any who saw it that the wearer was of royal blood. He’d worn one like it on his small head during the most solemn court occasions before the Harn had come. It was too big to have been his own as that child; it must have belonged to one of his brothers.

“Her ladyship obtained it from a Harn trader,” Habiba answered. “I did not ask her why, or question her decision to return it to one who had the right to wear it.”

She had always known, from that first day in the weapons room at Pearl Island. She had suspected even earlier, though Llesho didn’t know how long he had lain in bondage while the governor of Farshore and his lady knew him for a wronged prince. He could not decide whether he was grateful that they hadn’t murdered him as a gift to the conquerors, or angry because they had left him to suffer under Markko’s hand for so long.

“If I may?” Habiba lifted the coronet over his head, and Llesho bowed his acceptance. Habiba lowered his hands and set the coronet on Llesho’s head. The weight of it settled over Llesho like a benediction, and he felt his fate shift beneath his feet. The sensation struck with such force that it made him dizzy, and he might have fallen had Lling not reached out a hand to steady him.

“Are you all right, my prince?” she asked.

He nodded, and realized that Master Den had the right of it. He was a prince, and Llesho had only to be himself to prove it. He found himself whispering a prayer to the goddess, that she might find him worthy in her eyes.

“To horse, Your Highness?” Habiba urged them all. “Ambassador Huang awaits.”

“It’s time,” Llesho agreed. He had much to fear from the coming meeting, but none of it would be what he expected. Whatever happened, however, he would greet it with the dignity of a prince.

PART FOUR

C HAPTER T WENTY-NINE

HABIBA’S sergeant at arms would have put Llesho on a war steed taller at the shoulder than Llesho’s head, but he refused, choosing instead the short and sturdy horse, so like the beasts native to Thebin, that had carried him from Farshore. His guard had likewise rejected the more impressive mounts for their old companions of the trail. Like warriors stepping through a crack in time, they stood at the right hand of the magician, Habiba.

Master Den complained about mounting any horse at all, but was finally persuaded onto the back of a fat and complacent mare who took his weight with a single snort of indignation before sidling up to Habiba’s left. The honor guard, twenty of Habiba’s soldiers in the livery of her ladyship and Farshore Province, fell in behind the leaders.

“An auspicious number to honor a visiting prince,” Habiba explained to Llesho, “but not so many that Ambassador Huang HoLun might consider our purpose a threat.”

That was certainly true. Habiba’s scouts had reported that the emperor’s guard, a force in excess of five thousand, guarded the great city itself.

A SINGLE PARAGRAPH IS MISSING HERE. SORRY. I WILL TRY AND FIX THIS IN THE FUTURE - JASC

A li distant, camped in a wheat field left fallow for the season. The witch had accepted the information with a little shrug. “We are seeking the Celestial Emperor’s help, not contesting his rule in his own province. If he decides against her ladyship’s petition, we have lost before we have begun.”

The thought did little to comfort Llesho.

The party of petitioners crossed the field on which their own army camped. Too soon, the forest that marked the boundary between Thousand Lakes and Shan Province was before them. Two by two, the party entered the wood, following a narrow but well-marked path that wound between tall trees whose thick branches blotted out the sun. Llesho shivered as his horse stepped into the shadows. The forest was too still, and he wondered what had startled the birds and crickets into silence. Perhaps the emperor’s ambassador had decided to resolve the puzzle of a deposed prince with an anonymous arrow from behind a tree or from hiding in the brush that crowded close against the path.

Kaydu rode ahead with Bixei to scout the way, and Habiba followed, riding at Llesho’s side, offering themselves unprotected at the head of the party as a sign of trust and good will. Llesho recognized the message his own place in the order of march sent the ambassador waiting up ahead. Habiba recognized Llesho’s rank as superior to his own and equal to the lady’s in whose name he traveled. Her ladyship’s witch did not speak, but watched the forest to right and to left with dark and vigilant eyes. Llesho found himself darting quick glances to either side as well, wondering whether Markko had survived the recent battle unscathed, and where he had gone to regroup his forces. Master Den rode after them, alone, with Lling and Hmishi behind. The twenty men of Habiba’s guard followed last.

Llesho held himself a little straighter. The short spear her ladyship had returned to him remained hidden in his pack, but he displayed his Thebin sword in its saddle scabbard near his knee. Habiba had said nothing about the knife he carried beneath his shirt. To Llesho, the Thebin knife even more than the coronet signaled his rank. So he reached under his collar for the cord around his neck and removed it, clasping the scabbard to the belt that wrapped his Thebin coat. Now he felt like a prince of the House of Thebin, beloved of the goddess and successor to his father’s throne. Without giving it any thought, his head came up, and the hesitation cleared from his eyes.

“Your Highness,” Habiba addressed him with a smile. “I am happy to see that you have joined us at last.”

Llesho responded with a level, almost threatening stare. “I know what they think of us in Shan. To them, we are barbarians, seduced by the riches of the West and brought to our downfall because we grew weaker than our savage neighbors.”

Habiba looked surprised at Llesho’s description of how imperial eyes must see Thebin. He was about to be more surprised.

“They’re wrong,” Llesho finished. “We are barbarians, perhaps, but captivity has made us stronger.”

    “Thebin was once known for its cunning.” Habiba seemed to approve.

“I know nothing of that,” Llesho answered with a sardonic twist to the words.

“I’m sure you don’t.”

They had reached the edge of the forest, and Habiba gave his attention to the open field before them. Llesho did the same. Waves of low grasses filled in the faint reminders of plowed rows. Now, however, the fallow ground sprouted silk pavilions like bright yellow mushrooms in the sunshine. Three men on horseback waited for them at the side of the forest trail. The central figure, dressed in the heavy coat of an imperial marshal at arms, moved forward to greet them. His two attendants, in the uniforms of the imperial horse battalion, waited with their hands on the hilts of their swords.

“Huang HoLun, Ambassador of the Celestial Emperor the Great God of Shan, sends his greetings to Habiba, servant of her ladyship of Farshore Province,” the marshal pronounced, “and bids him come forward to offer tribute and receive the blessings of the emperor’s house upon him.” He said nothing of Llesho, but his eyes did not leave the Thebin prince until Habiba drew his sword in the ritual of allegiance.

First Habiba kissed the blade. Then, reversing his hold on the weapon, he extended the hilt to the emperor’s marshal. “Her ladyship extends her worshipful prayer that the emperor’s ambassador will accept her humble servant as his own, and lend an ear to her piteous plea. The emperor’s governor of Farshore Province lies murdered, his state and all his holdings seized by enemies who press even now to lay waste to her father’s realm.”

“Ambassador Huang will speak to you on these and other matters,” the marshal agreed. He did not add any kind wishes of the ambassador’s that might have assured them of a favorable hearing, but turned his horse and, with a last backward glance at Llesho, headed for the largest of the bright yellow tents waiting for them on a small rise in the field.

“He knows who I am, but he didn’t say anything about me being here,” Llesho frowned after the departing marshal, wondering what he was to make of the greeting that ignored him officially while giving him all the attention of the man’s stare.

“He knows who you say you are, surely,” Habiba corrected him. He kicked his horse into motion, setting his small party to follow the marshal before adding, “Your dress and your bearing have made that clear. And he showed great interest in you, but no surprise.”

“You’re not the only one with spies,” Llesho suggested.

“No, I’m not.” Habiba narrowed his eyes, as if he could see through the yellow silk and into the heart of the delegate. He hadn’t expected so guarded a reception, and Llesho didn’t like the idea that something had taken the witch by surprise. After a moment of tense thought, Habiba shifted into a waiting mode with a little shrug. “We will know soon enough what the ambassador makes of us.”

There was something brewing beneath Habiba’s impassive exterior. Llesho couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but he figured that, if the witch was suspicious, he was well advised to stay on the defensive. He let his hand drift to the hilt of his knife.

“Five thousand to our twenty.” Habiba did not turn to look at him, but offered the reminder as if to the wind. Llesho took the hint—a dead prince was no use to his people—and let his hand drop once again to the reins. It was as well that he did so, for they had arrived in front of the yellow silk tent, and soldiers poured out on every side to surround them. Llesho slid from his saddle, leaving his sword where it lay. When one of the imperial guard would have taken his knife, however, he reached it faster, not unsheathing it, but holding it tight to his side with the flat of his open hand.

“It is a symbol of rank,” Habiba explained, and the soldiers backed off, letting one of authority among them come forward.

“No one may approach the emperor’s ambassador while armed,” the sergeant of the guard instructed.

Habiba waved a careless hand. “He is but a boy, the knife a mere trinket, but important as a symbol. You understand?” he lied.

The sergeant turned to examine the Thebin prince, who looked younger than he was because of his short stature. Llesho smiled back at the sergeant with his most vacuous grin. I’m harmless, he thought at the man.

Quick as a striking snake, the sergeant made a grab for Llesho’s throat. Just as quickly, Llesho had the knife out. If the sergeant had not anticipated the move, he would have been dead, but he clasped Llesho’s wrist in both of his hands and managed to stop the knife with just the tip bloodied. The wounded soldier exerted pressure on the nerves that ran close to the surface of Llesho’s knobby wristbone, but the knife did not fall. “Give.” the soldier said. “Give!”

They stayed like that, frozen for an endless second, until Llesho’s eyes cleared, and he realized that he was standing in the center of a shocked and silent circle, his hand still wrapped around his knife, while a bleeding soldier clung to his wrist as if his life depended on it. Slowly, Llesho realized that it probably did.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, horrified at what he had done. But he did not drop the knife, even now that he was aware of the painful pressure the sergeant was exerting on the nerves in his wrist.

“Please let me go!” he cried. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The sergeant snorted indignantly. “Let go of the knife first, then we’ll see.”

Llesho stared with growing horror from the knife in his frozen hand to the sergeant. “I can’t,” he said.

The soldier frowned, and glanced away to call for aid from the men who surrounded them. Habiba stepped forward, however, with both hands out to show that he carried no weapon.

Moving slowly so that he startled neither Llesho nor the tense guards who awaited only the command of their sergeant to cut down the Thebin prince, he slipped one hand over that of the soldier holding Llesho’s wrist. “Let go, very slowly.” He pinned the man with a hypnotic stare, and the soldier’s hand relaxed. Llesho pulled away, but he could not escape Habiba’s hold, which had replaced that of the damaged soldier.

“Now, give me the knife, Llesho. You can trust me . . .” Gradually, Llesho felt the soft, low words lulling him into a warm sense of security. Relieved, he turned his bloodied palm up, offering the knife. With no outward show of urgency Habiba took it.

“I hope that whatever you learned was worth the cost,” he said to the sergeant, holding the knife out to him. The sergeant looked from the witch to Llesho and back again, his face set in hard lines. He didn’t have to say anything. It was obvious to everyone who had seen it that the man had learned exactly what he wanted to know from the exercise, and that he treated that knowledge with deadly seriousness.

“I truly am sorry.” Llesho sighed, certain that they had just lost something more important than his Thebin knife, but not sure what it could be. They wanted the ambassador to believe that Llesho was a true prince of Thebin. If the sergeant knew enough about the raising of young princes on the high plateau to test him with the knife, he had only learned what they wanted the emperor to know anyway.

Whatever it was, Habiba had his “making the best of a plan gone awry” face on when he held out a cloth to the bleeding sergeant. “Bind that up; you are dripping on your uniform,” he said when the sergeant had thrust Llesho’s knife into his own belt. “And watch that blade—it’s sharp.”

The sergeant gave him a dark look, but accepted the cloth. When he had wrapped it around the wound in his arm, he directed his soldiers to surround Habiba’s party.

“Hold their guards here.” he ordered the greater number of his men, and marked out half a dozen to accompany Llesho and Habiba. “These two, come with me.”

“These three.” Master Den gave the sergeant a respectful bow marred only by the quirk of an eyebrow.

The sergeant laughed. “Master Den! Ill met as always! I should have realized you would be a part of this!”

“Not by choice, my lad, not by choice.” Master Den shook his head mournfully, but he was smiling as he did so. “I’ll keep an eye on things for you.”

“Go,” the sergeant concluded. “Before I change my mind and have you clapped in chains for the last time we met.”

“A man shouldn’t wager what he can’t afford to lose,” Den suggested with another deep rumble of a laugh. He fell in next to Llesho before the sergeant could respond.

When the imperial guard had the party sorted out, the sergeant held aside the tent flap and announced their arrival to the house guards standing at attention just inside. The first gave a deep bow and scurried away. He quickly returned, and gave the newcomers low and humble bows before gesturing for them to come forward.

The ambassador was a tall man, so old that his thin gray mustache hung down almost to his belt, and so slender that one could almost count the bones in his upraised hand. He had a mean and narrow face that gave him the look of a miser in spite of the sumptuous robes of rustling silk he wore. Llesho felt his heart sink as he took in the measure of Huang HoLun. He will not help us, he thought. This Ambassador Huang will send us away with our story unheard, and the emperor will learn nothing of our plight.

If his first examination of the ambassador sank his hopes in his chest, he soon had greater cause for fear.

“That is the boy. He belongs to Farshore Province

And Farshore belongs to me.“ Master Markko stepped out from behind the ambassador’s chair and rested a triumphant smile first on Habiba and then on Llesho. He did not seem to look at Master Den at all, but his next words proved that he had recognized the third man: ”As for this one, I did not know that it was customary for the emperor’s ambassador to meet with washermen, but I can save you the trouble with this one. He belongs to Pearl Island which, as we all know, belongs to me by right of Lord Yueh’s last wishes.“

“I see no washerman,” Ambassador Huang answered in a high, testy voice. “These two are unknown to me, although you do not contest that they are who they say they are—”

“I contest not who, but what they are, Master,” Markko pointed out the fine shading of difference between his own position and that of the ambassador.

“Yes, yes, but you have accused neither of washing laundry, I presume?”

Llesho would have volunteered that he had, in fact, washed laundry, but held his tongue. Master Markko seemed unhappy with the direction of the ambassador’s discussion, which suited Llesho just fine.

“Then you can only mean Master Den,” the delegate continued. “And Master Den is well known to me as the general who led the house guards of our present emperor’s father. Master Den’s strategy for the defense of Shan’s borders against the Harn have protected the emperor and his people lo these many years, even as the Harn prey upon our trade routes to the south.”

“You have been duped,” Master Markko insisted, “by this man, who, until Lord Chin-shi’s recent demise, washed the linen for Pearl Island‘s stable of gladiators, of which the boy here was a member in training. Both belong, by right, to me!” his black eyes glittered when he said it, “but I believe I am correct about Master Den. I am not likely to have forgotten my old teacher, even after so many years.”

“But . . . But . . .” Markko spluttered. “He cannot be the same man, he is too young!”

Ambassador Huang turned a bland stare on the traitor. “I am convinced that, having made a mistake in respect to the identity of one of my guests, you may have made equally serious errors about the others. By no deliberate fault of your own, of course, Master Markko. As it is, I find myself at a loss to make a judgment that will so profoundly affect so many who consider themselves under the protection of the Celestial Emperor.”

Llesho flinched at the loathing in Markko’s eyes. The old ambassador seemed not at all aware of the seething hatred directed at him. “Disagreements are so tiring!” Ambassador Huang complained petulantly. “I believe I must take a nap.”

Master Den beamed complacently at the yawning delegate, looking as doltish as Huang HoLun himself. “I think we could all use a nap,” he agreed cheerfully.

Shocked at his teacher’s apparent loss of sanity, Llesho nevertheless succumbed to his mentor’s suggestion. Try as he might, he could not stifle the gaping yawn that almost unhinged his jaw.

Ambassador Huang’s black eyes twinkled at him. The old man might not be the doddering fool that he wished to appear, but Llesho did not let himself forget the cold-eyed calculation that had greeted them. Huang played his stones with apparent carelessness, but strategy informed every move.

“We should all rest now.” The ambassador rose from his chair while pronouncing his plan. “This evening, we shall all of us return to Shan together. By sedan-post, we may arrive before midnight on the sec-ond day of travel, and then we may leave the matter in the hands of the emperor and his advisers.”

Markko accepted Master Huang’s decision with a bowed head, but Llesho saw that the magician’s eyes burned with frustration before he lidded them to hide his anger.

“And now, Master Den, come. See me to my bed. We have much to talk about, many lifetimes to catch up on!”

The ambassador spoke as if in jest, and Master Den laughed as he offered his arm to the old man. But Llesho could not help thinking that the joke was on the rest of them. He wondered, not for the first time, exactly who Master Den was.

C HAPTER T HIRTY

LESHO trusted his horse not to drop him, but put no equal faith in the arms and running feet of men like himself. He had never journeyed by litter, and the thought of doing so made him uneasy. The litters were designed for the comfort and reassurance of the travelers who made use of them, but on Llesho they had the opposite effect. Polished wood suitable for the finest furniture made up the pallet base, with low rails on all sides to protect the passengers from falling out onto the road. Brightly colored silk curtains hung from a sturdy frame suspended above graceful carved posts at each corner, preserving the privacy of the travelers within. On both sides, long carrying poles extended several paces beyond the front and back of the wooden floor. Llesho figured that, with the furnishings, it had to weigh more than his horse.

A dozen bearers stood in position next to the carrying poles of each litter while the ambassador’s protocol officer sorted out their company. The ambassador entered the largest and most sumptuous litter. He insisted that Master Den accompany him so that they could catch up on court gossip, which sent his protocol officer into scandalized fits of temper. As the emissary of her ladyship and her father, both of whom had rights of provincial governorship by appointment and marriage, Habiba had precedence over Master Markko, who petitioned the emperor in his own right as regent for the dead usurper, Lord Yueh. If he wished to offer his protection on the road to Llesho, howevei, Habiba must cede his right by protocol, and accept the lesser station afforded the pretender to the Thebin throne. Llesho would be situated last in the order of travel to signify that the emperor had not yet acknowledged Llesho’s status.

Finally, all parties agreed upon the order of march: Master Markko would follow the ambassador’s litter in solitary dignity, and Llesho would bring up the rear, with Habiba as his traveling companion. Imperial foot soldiers would accompany them. Like the litter bearers, they would pass off their duty to fresh soldiers waiting at the relay points. The party’s own guards would come after them on horseback.

“It’s not safe,” Bixei had insisted when he heard that they would be left to follow at a slower pace. They had gathered in the tent set aside for them by the ambassador.

“I can’t believe you would go anywhere with Markko, let alone that you would leave your own guard behind when you did it. How do you know you can trust this Huang fellow?”

“He’s the emperor’s ambassador,” Kaydu reminded them, but Lling shared Bixei’s fear.

“The emperor did nothing when the Harn came,” she reminded them. “For all we know, he may be in league with the raiders and wants only to see you dead!”

“My father would never let that happen!” Kaydu looked ready to strike.

Llesho stopped them with an upraised hand. “For good or ill, we are now in Shan Province, the very heart of the empire. If the emperor wishes us dead.

he doesn’t have to drag us all the way to the imperial city to kill us—he could have me murdered by any one of five thousand of his soldiers in this camp while I stand here talking to you. You might be able to avenge yourself on a soldier loyal to his duty before his comrades killed you all, but we’d still be dead. And the emperor would still be on his throne in his palace.“

“So we leave you in the hands of strangers and hope for the best?” Bixei asked, not believing what he heard.

“I think,” Llesho said, and paused, because he was puzzling it through as he spoke. “I think that her ladyship and Master Den—Master Jaks, too—wanted this all along, and Markko wanted us not to reach the emperor at all. I have to figure that those who want me here will keep me alive, at least until I find out why they thought it was so important.”

“I think you’re right,” Kaydu agreed. “For whatever reasons, my father is determined to see you safely into the hands of the emperor. And he’ll be sharing your litter. No one would dare to attack you while you are under his protection.”

“Master Markko already has.”

“We were not in the emperor’s own province then,” Llesho reminded the young gladiator, “and the emperor had not turned his head in our direction. We are now on imperial time.”

Bixei muttered a grudging agreement, but added, “If you do run into trouble, we will be right behind you.”

“I know it.” Llesho gave each a handclasp to seal their friendship. They said nothing more, but accompanied him to his litter in silence, and stood by while he pushed his head past the silk curtains that swathed his litter.

There he stopped, frozen in amazement. “It will never get off the ground,” he swore. The inside of the litter was even richer than the outside! Thick down cushions covered in patterned silk lay scattered in heaps over the wooden flooring. In one corner a fat stand held a tall pipe bound about with brass and silver. Perfumed water already bubbled in its base, and the sweet grasses in its bowl sparked red before releasing fragrant smoke into the air. A basket of dainty tidbits for the road rested in the center of the litter, between two mounds of cushions for the riders.

“Of course it will.” Habiba’s voice behind him reminded Llesho that they had no time for gawking. Feeling inadequate to the luxury around him, he clambered inside. Habiba followed.

“Very nice,” the witch approved, and began arranging his pillows into an impromptu nest.

Llesho did the same, and had barely settled himself before the litter began to pitch and rise. Llesho grabbed for the closest rail and held on tightly until the poles supporting the litter settled on the shoulders of the bearers. Habiba seemed untroubled by the jostling. He began to pick at the basket between them.

“Have something to eat,” he said. “Even by post relay it will be a long trip.”

Llesho considered the basket in front of him and shook his head, far too nervous to eat anything. “I’m not hungry.”

When he’d started on his journey from the pearl beds, the empire was just another obstacle between himself and his goal: a map upon which he would find his brothers widely scattered but alive. In secret he would gather them around him, and in secret they would return to Thebin and somehow take their home back from the Harn. He hadn’t considered how he would do that without an army or claim to his own name, and he certainly hadn’t counted on setting the great empire of Shan on its ear as he passed through it. But sitting in imperial luxury, approaching the imperial city, with allies and enemies at either hand, it was all becoming too real.

As it often did when his quest began to overwhelm him, Lleck’s pearl throbbed in his mouth like a bad tooth. On his road to Thebin Llesho had acquired gifts as well as allies—gifts that were supposed to mean something to him. The pearl, the spear, the cup all gave him feelings he should have been able to identify but which remained stubbornly out of reach. His knife, though, he could understand. And he didn’t like what he knew. He was a trained killer, had killed even as a child. No wonder the goddess had not come to him! He thought, perhaps, he could not succeed without Her help, and would have wept for his captive country, with only an abandoned boy to care about the misery of his people.

Habiba frowned thoughtfully at Llesho as he chewed on a bit of fruit. Perhaps he knew what desperate thoughts passed through his head, but chose instead to remark upon the more obvious cause of Llesho’s distress with a conclusion that seemed to amuse him.

“Thebin has a reputation for the riches its trade routes with the West brought. Surely you were accustomed to greater luxuries than this in the palace at Kungol.” He waved a hand with a half-eaten peach in it to signify their surroundings.

“Not really.” Llesho considered the silk appointments of the litter with the eyes of his younger self. By Thebin standards, it was overdone: too much surface glamour, but the richness of the cushions did little to muffle the jolt of the runners’ feet. The motion passed up through the poles and bounced the litter like a skiff in a stormy sea. Llesho realized that in spite of the luxury that cradled him, the motion was making him sick.

Talking distracted him from his growing nausea, however, so he let his mind wander back to his early home.

“Kungol lies just below the snow line,” he explained. “Just below the point on the mountains where the snow never melts. It is cool all the time, and it can sometimes snow during the night even at high summer. Thick woolen rugs hang on the walls of the palace, and in winter rugs even cover the windows, to hold in the warmth. I had a goose down comforter covered in Shan silk when I was small, but everything else in my room was wool or leather.” He shrugged. “The things that seemed most precious and rare in Thebin—wood is so scarce that we only use it for decoration and a few bits of furniture—are common to Shan. The things of their own country that Thebins value, like jade and amber, copper and bronze, we trade very little, and so they have the value of rarity in your world but lack the meaning they hold in mine. And I have heard what lowlanders think of Thebin dress—” He looked down at his own gaudy coat with a weary smile, knowing and sad. “Our cloth is too rough, our embroidery too garish, the cut of our garments barbaric.”

“I take it that means no, you are not acquainted with such luxurious surroundings.” Habiba grinned at him, a slash of sharp white teeth cutting through his whiskers like a secret spoken in the dark.

Llesho grinned back, aware of the lesson he had just taught himself. “It means that to a Thebin, this is not luxury at all,” he answered. It wasn’t true, exactly. All of the silk traded in the West passed through Kungol, and the Thebin people were certainly familiar with its worth. But they didn’t covet such overnice luxuries as others did.

“Remember that when you meet with the emperor,” Habiba said, and this time Llesho couldn’t tell where his amusement was directed. He was about to ask when the bearers slowed their naw T l^chr. ho^rA

MISSING PARAGRAPH.

tramping feet coming toward them—attack! His conversation with Habiba suddenly forgotten, he cursed himself for, having left his bow and arrows in the camp. Ambassador Huang’s guards had returned his knife for the journey, however; Llesho reached for it under his coat.

Habiba did not appear distressed. The witch finished his peach and threw the pit onto the road, and then took hold of the low railing that ran around the sides of the litter.

“We are about to change bearers; make sure you are secure.”

Llesho gave him a wary look, but followed his example and reached for the railing instead of his knife. He did so just in time.

The newcomers had lined themselves up parallel with the Utter and were beginning to match the slowed pace of the bearers. Suddenly, the litter pitched and tilted, bounced and jolted. “What are they doing!” Llesho wanted to know.

“We have reached the first relay station,” Habiba explained. “The bearers we came with are trading places with the bearers who have been waiting at this outpost.” The witch rolled with the uneven motion. He didn’t look sick; he didn’t even look uncomfortable. Llesho wished he could say the same.

“As we approach the city of Shan, the relay posts come closer together, so we should make very good time in our journey,” Habiba finished his explanation and reached for a pear.

“How much farther do we have to go?” Llesho asked. At the moment, the length of their journey was the most urgent thing he could think about—that and the rolling pitch of the litter that carried them. He felt the color drain from his face.

“I’m going to be sick,” he whispered.

Habiba threw down the pear. He reached for the water pipe and tossed it out onto the road as he had the peach pit, and then tucked the bucket-shaped base under Llesho’s chin.

“Master Huang has shown you a great honor by putting the post relay system at our disposal,” he chided while holding the bucket. “Only the most important officials on the most urgent business of the empire may command such-travel. Is this any way to repay his kindness?”

“I would gladly decline the honor and ride to Shan on horseback,” Llesho offered. His gut swung queasily in its own direction, completely at odds with the beat of the running feet that jolted the litter.

“But Master Huang could not ride so far, nor could Master Den,” Habiba reminded him. “And we would have to leave our horses on the road in trade for fresh ones that we did not know as well, just as we have done with the bearers.”

All true, Llesho supposed. But they had only a few li behind them. If Habiba were correct, most of the journey remained ahead, and already Llesho wished himself dead. He leaned over the bucket and was thoroughly sick.

When he had finished, Habiba handed him a silk handkerchief with a smile. “It is the simplest I have about me,” he offered in a mild joke about the riches of empire. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Nooooo,” Llesho moaned, and was violently ill once again. When he was through, he fell back on his cushions with a woeful sigh. “What is the point of all this haste if I wish I were dead already?”

Habiba shook his head. “The point? Why, putting you in front of the emperor as a live supplicant rather than as a dead pretender, I suppose. Or did you look forward to Markko plotting your demise at his leisure?”

“Do you think he’d kill me now if I asked nicely?” Llesho perked up. The possibility almost gave him hope.

Habiba gave him an exasperated sigh. With a finger tucked under Llesho’s chin, the witch lifted the prince’s head out of his bucket.

“How long have you felt sick?” Habiba asked him.

“Since we started out.” Llesho wanted to ask how the witch managed to cope with the motion, but to think the words was to remind himself of how he felt, and that only made it worse.

Habiba frowned at him. “I could probably make you up a potion if we had an hour or two, and a fire.” He considered Llesho for a long moment. “But we cannot spare the time.

“Look at me, Llesho.”

Llesho looked, and flinched at the change that came over the witch. Habiba’s eyes were wide and fixed; the irises almost vanished while the pupils grew to fill all the space with darkness. He closed his own eyes, but that only made the sickness worse.

Habiba gave him a sharp tap on the chin with one finger.

“You are not a prince yet, my fine young gladiator,” Habiba snapped with more humor in his voice than the words merited. “Now do as you are told.”

“What are you going to do?” Llesho asked in a whisper.

“Nothing to hurt you. Not after all the trouble I’ve had getting you this far! Now look at me!”

Llesho looked.

“It is night, very dark, and you are in your own bed in the palace at Kungol. There are no raiders; your guard stands watch at your door to keep you safe. Your bed is warm, the breeze through the open window brings the scent of snow off the mountains, and below, in the city, the bleat of camels and the bark of dogs fill the night with their music.”

Llesho knew that none of it was real, but in spite of himself he felt his shoulders relaxing, his head growing heavier, his eyes closing . . .

“You are safe, you are comfortable, and you are so sleepy. You cannot stay awake any longer . . .”

When Llesho awoke, the litter had come to a halt, and beyond the tent curtains he heard the harsh calls of servants sorting themselves and locating their charges, From the hollow echo and the clack of wooden-soled sandals against paving tiles, he guessed they stood in a walled courtyard somewhere, but he didn’t know how far they had come or why they had stopped.

“Where are we?” he asked groggily, but Habiba was not there.

“Come, come!” One of the servants pushed his head between the curtains and gestured for Llesho to follow.

Llesho shook his head. “Where are we?” he asked again.

The servant disappeared, muttering something about crazy Thebins, but he was soon replaced by Master Den.

“What are you still doing in there, boy? You can’t see the emperor looking like that!”

Llesho paled in dismay, but climbed out of his litter as Den demanded. “Has the emperor come to meet us on the road?”

“We’re not on the road, Llesho. This is the inner courtyard of the Celestial Palace at Shan.”

“It can’t be!”

It certainly didn’t look regal. They had come to rest in a large walled courtyard with a cobbled square and plastered walls that rose well above Den’s head. It was dark, with not even a moon to brighten the square. The few torches carried by servants did little to light the space beyond the circle of the three official litters, but from what Llesho could see, the courtyard was empty except for themselves. There were no plants on the edges of the wall and Llesho could see no trees bending their branches over it as might be the fashion in Farshore Province. Of course, with no trees or vines to climb, a spy or saboteur would have a difficult time getting over the wall. Kungol Palace, he remembered, hadn’t had a wall at all. Who, after all, would invade the privacy of the goddess’ own beloved family? Llesho found himself looking at the courtyard wall in a friendlier light.

A stranger—no, not a stranger, but General Shou; Habiba had introduced him after the recent battle with Master Markko—interrupted his thoughts with a slap on the back. “Indeed, you’ve been on the road for two days,” General Shou confirmed. “Did Habiba put you to sleep? He’s a sly one. You have to watch him every minute!”

He figured the general meant it as a joke, because the man laughed and slapped him on the back again, but Llesho decided to take it as a real warning. After all, he had lost two days to the witch’s spell. What if they’d been attacked? He could have died without a chance to defend himself.

“As for meeting the emperor in your present state, I wouldn’t worry,” General Shou added, “even emperors have to sleep.

“If you have time during your visit, I’d like a chance to talk with you about Thebin.”

That was more seriously said, and Llesho’s curiosity perked up. “Do you know Thebin?” he asked.

“I visited it once, long ago, with a caravan to the West,” the general confirmed. “That was before my duties kept me closer to home.”

Spying, no doubt, Llesho figured, and whatever he’d seen hadn’t persuaded the Shan Empire to step in when the Harn raiders attacked. He found it a little more difficult to be polite after that, but fortunately, General Shou turned his attention to the others in the party.

“I am very glad to see you again, Master Den.” He slapped the master on the arm—something Llesho had never expected to see. “Very glad indeed.” He left them with instructions to have a comfortable night, and entered the palace by a small door from which a steady stream of guards and visitors in various degrees of official dress seemed to enter and depart.

“Come on, boy,” Master Den called to Llesho, and together they followed the servants through a more imposing public entrance. Habiba, Llesho noted, had disappeared, as had Ambassador Huang. Markko strode before them like a conquering hero; Llesho wished he had his bow and arrow handy, or barring that, a snowball. But it was not yet winter, and a servant led Markko away before Llesho could devise a more pertinent attack.

C HAPTER T HIRTY-ONE

Den nudging him with a strong hand between his shoulder blades, Llesho followed a servant into a vaulted entry hall bigger than the audience chamber at Kungol. In front of them a broad stairway of inlaid marquetry rose halfway to the carved and painted ceiling, where it opened into a gallery that ran the length of the entry hall. The staircase resumed at either end of the gallery, disappearing into passageways at opposite ends of the hall.

The servant stopped on the first landing and wordlessly directed them past a sliding panel into a long corridor, dark except for a few scattered lamps set into the smooth plastered walls. When it looked like they could go no farther without bumping into a blank wall at the end of the passage, the servant turned right and disappeared.

Llesho followed and found himself in a narrower, darker passage that curved in a long arc, so that he could not see more than a few feet ahead of him. He stopped, unwilling to follow any farther until he knew where they were going, and Master Den bumped into him.

“What if it’s a trap?” Llesho whispered urgently.

“It’s the back way to the private bedrooms,” Master Den assured him, and added tartly, “Some of us didn’t sleep the entire journey away and are anxious to get to our beds.”

Llesho began moving again, but he wasn’t much comforted. “Where are Habiba and Master Markko?” He figured that the ambassador had his own home to go to, but he didn’t want to bump into Markko in a dark corridor.

“They’ve been taken to official guest quarters in another wing of the palace,” Master Den informed him. “They don’t know where the guards have taken us, and they don’t have access to the private quarters from their own rooms.”

Master Den clearly had some connection to the royal household that would merit a personal invitation, but Llesho wondered why he hadn’t been sent off with the others. The washerman who, if one were to believe the ambassador, had once been an imperial general, seemed to read his mind. “Official quarters are for those who have an official claim upon the empire. Until the emperor decides what claim he is willing to acknowledge toward you, it is better that you remain a guest in an unofficial capacity.”

“You will be watched, of course.” Master Den laughed under his breath. “And keeping you close like this is bound to make Markko nervous.”

Llesho wasn’t certain he wanted the overseer nervous— Master Markko was bad enough when he thought he had the upper hand—but he said nothing. The narrow passageway ended in a door which the servant opened with a big iron key that groaned in the lock. He threw the door wide and ushered them into a lavishly decorated hall lit at every point by lanterns with soft gold shutters. Creamy light gleaming off of gilt carvings dazzled Llesho’s eyes, and he blinked away tears until his vision had adjusted to the glow.

Master Den followed him out of the passage and the servant closed the heavy red-lacquered door after them with another impatient gesture to hurry. He led them just a little way down the elegant hall to a recessed alcove flanked by stiff-backed Imperial Guards. Elaborate panels carved with fantastic animals lined the alcove. The servant pressed on the head of a carved dragon, and a gilt panel slid aside, revealing a bedroom larger than Lord Chin-shi’s room on Pearl Island, and decorated with more riches as well.

Again, the servant gestured without words that Llesho should enter. Leaving him to his own devices with a brief bow, the servant slid the panel shut after him. Llesho heard two sets of footsteps move down the hall, then another door slid on its runner. Master Den was nearby at least.

Alone, Llesho had a choice of only two occupations: he could think, or he could explore. His bladder made that decision for him: explore. Quickly. He passed over the lacquered cabinets and the tall standing chest, and ignored the bed big enough to hold his entire squad without crowding them. The room was lavishly draped with silken wall hangings covering greased-paper windows, paneled walls almost as sumptuous as the hangings that covered them. Some of those panels had to be doors: he’d come through one which had blended back into the decorative gilt and carving so that he could no more find his way out again than he could find the other doors that must be present in the room. When he had begun to despair of ever finding what he needed, however, he discovered the secret of the moving panels, and behind them, the door leading to the correct chamber.

More comfortable after a brief visit to the personal room, he explored more systematically. Besides the panel by which he’d entered and the door he had just used, Llesho found only one other functioning exit, and that was locked and bolted from the other side. He noted that the mysterious door had no locking mechanism on his side, and the absence of his personal guards suddenly took on a more ominous meaning. Assassins could come through that door any time they wanted to kill him in his sleep. Good thing he wasn’t tired.

On a second round of exploring his bedchamber, Llesho opened the chest and the cabinets, noted items of Thebin apparel and others in the style of the Shan Empire, all in his size. Laid out among the elegant decoration of the palace chamber, the contents of his pack rested on the shelves of the standing chest. Displayed lovingly, like the votive objects of a shrine, he found the ancient spear that her ladyship had given him and the jade cup. Touching them sent a chill down his spine. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make him comfortable, had even recognized the value of the objects in his pack as relics rather than the tools of a soldier. The care they had taken hardly seemed necessary if they planned to have him killed immediately. He decided to take that as a good sign.

Even in daylight he wouldn’t be able to see through the greased paper windows, but he stopped for a moment in his explorations of his bedchamber, struck by the silence. He could hear nothing of the life of the empire’s largest and most powerful city, and the contrast with his father’s palace struck him like a dagger in the heart.

Even in the darkest hours of night Kungol had hummed with life—groaning camels and bleating lambs, drunken caravan drovers brawling in the street—like the pulse of a living creature whose health a king might measure by the beat of it as he slept. How could an emperor know his empire when he could not even hear the cries of his city? Why did Habiba and Master Den think that such an Emperor would stoop to help the deposed prince of a conquered land a thousand li to the west, when he gave so little notice to the life just paces from his celestial throne? He would receive no help here; Llesho threw himself on the bed, determined to make his own way at dawn.

But the bed was comfortable, and he had been on the march for a long time. Despite his determination, he fell asleep and awoke only when the smell of breakfast pulled him out of his dreams. A bustling servant poured out his tea and opened the lacquered chest with a thoughtful frown. When Llesho returned from relieving himself, he found that the servant had laid out a set of ornate robes suitable to an imperial official. Llesho glared at the clothing, which looked too complicated for him to manage on his own and too uncomfortable for him to want to manage. The servant had already gone, so he ignored the clothing and focused on his breakfast.

While he was still nibbling a cake full of cinnamon, nuts, and honey, a man he identified from his medallion of office as a protocol officer knocked on his door and entered without an invitation. After a minimal bow, to show Llesho how little respect he was owed, the protocol officer stiffly recited his message: “The emperor is otherwise engaged. You may petition for an audience, but he is very busy. If he finds the time to see you, you will have two or three minutes to state your case in a public audience, and none at all alone. Be prepared with an inscribed memorial laying out your case and the outcome for which you petition: the Celestial Emperor does not suffer fools to live.”

Llesho was tempted to comment that the continued existence of the protocol officer proved otherwise, but he kept his mouth shut. Don’t attract attention, he warned himself. When the official had gone, Llesho wiped his hands on the silk napkin and prepared to dress. He ignored the Shannish robes laid out for him, and dug in the chest for something less noticeable to wear. The Thebin day wear tempted him, but it would draw far too much attention here on the eastern edge of the trade routes. Instead, he pulled on a pair of plain breeches and a silk shirt with a minimum of decoration, and found a pair of shoes more suited to walking than either his Thebin boots or the fragile slippers the servant had chosen.

When he was dressed, he left his room. The guards at his door did not surprise him, but neither did they follow when he turned down the hall, nor did they stop him when he tried to slide open the panel to the next room down the corridor. He was disappointed but not surprised when it didn’t open. About thirty paces farther on he came to a staircase more modest than the one he’d taken the night before. Descending cautiously, he found himself in a small, octagonal chamber with a doorway in each wall. Two imperial soldiers stood guard at rigid attention, but they made no move to stop Llesho when he opened the first door. “Just exploring,” he explained. The soldiers said nothing, so he peeked inside and found a small room with a few scattered chairs bearing no decoration, and a table with a large urn of hot water, a teapot, and a scattering of cups on it. Two of the chairs were occupied by soldiers, apparently waiting for their turn at guard duty or coming off the shift before and warming themselves with some tea before moving on. They stared at him, and Llesho smiled uncomfortably.

“As you were,” he said, and closed the door again.

The next door opened into another small room, this one more carefully furnished, but still with none of the richness one expected of an imperial palace. Llesho guessed that the officers of the guard might take their rest or give their orders here.

The third door led into a long dark passageway that plunged deep into the palace. At the far end, Llesho could just make out by the light of a single lamp an iron staircase spiraling up to the level from which he

MISSING PARAGRAPH

an underground passage or chamber. The passage left him with the vague impression of dried and crusted blood, though he had seen nothing to support the terror that he felt just thinking about it. He stored the location for later, but closed the door on the passage with as much speed as he could muster with any kind of dignity.

When he opened the fourth door, he actually smiled. Here was another passageway, but one with natural light filtering in from slots cut high overhead. The passage followed the line of the palace wall, and Llesho guessed that there might be a hidden exit at the end of it. The soldiers did not stop him, so he entered the passage and closed the door behind him, leaving it ajar just enough so it would not latch and lock him in if he did not find another way out.

He needn’t have worried. The passage led him through what must have been the palace’s east wall, because the morning sun fell like bars of gold across his path. After he had gone more than two hundred paces, the passage opened out into a rough chamber that ended in a tunnel cutting into the ground beneath the palace wall. From this tunnel Llesho felt no air of death or decay, and he followed it. He was surprised to discover lighted torches all along the way—for all its apparent secrecy, it must be a well used route, a shortcut of some kind. The tunnel branched. Llesho considered for a moment, before taking the path with fewer torches burning down its length.

He didn’t know what he was looking for, but it didn’t take him long to find it: a door with a large iron lock with the key still left in it. Clearly an invitation, but to what? Llesho turned the key and pushed open the door. Nothing he had ever seen before had prepared him for the scale and the magnificence of his surroundings. He was outside the palace, the pink sandstone wall at his back rising to more than twice his height. On his left, the wall joined to a temple of many levels with seven curved roofs ascending like a ladder to heaven. The marks of the seven gods the temple served appeared in red paint above the heavy lintel.

Of course, the Emperor was himself a god, so his palace must be the greatest temple in the imperial city. The practical nature of the Shan people was well known, however, and Llesho had heard jokes even on Pearl Island that in the imperial city money itself was worshiped as a god. He didn’t quite believe it, but looking up at the symbols of the deities worshiped here in the shadow of the palace, he was shocked to discover how many of the beloved gods of Shan were bureaucrats and money counters. The goddess, he thought, would not bend her gaze upon such a city. But one might buy the freedom of a brother here, where even the gods were worshiped for pay.

On his right stretched a massive building also made of pink sandstone. The building bore no marking to indicate its purpose, but the wide stone steps in front of it were filled with the bustle of official looking men and women in robes of state with elaborate buttons of office on their hats. The buildings, together with the palace wall, formed three sides of a square in which the paving stones had been arranged according to the zodiac, with many signs of good luck and blessings worked into their surfaces. Llesho thought that ten thousand soldiers might fit into that square with room to hold a corps of drummers as well.

He stood in the shadows under the wall, trying to decide what to do. The city was alien to him, oppressive and cold and large beyond the scale men could comprehend. The few people in the square seemed busy and important—more likely to call out the guard than assist him if he asked for directions. Llesho hesitated to step out into the sunlight at all for fear that someone would notice he didn’t belong there and sound a warning.

Although there were far fewer people around the temple than gathered on the steps of the offices of state, they seemed more varied both in dress and in their looks; a Thebin might not seem so out of place on those steps. Staying in the shadows, he worked his way around the palace wall and across the front of the temple, not stepping into the light until he had ascended the temple steps. From there he allowed himself to survey the city, which faded into a jumble of roofs around a square of green. A garden. Llesho turned toward that spot of comfort with purpose in his stride.

The Imperial Water Garden was very beautiful, restful and green with just the occasional hint of weathered cedar where little bridges arched over ponds and man-made streams. A few scattered willows drew the eye upward, but most of the water-loving plants huddled closer to the ground. Cattails and swamp grasses, water lilies and lotus, gave texture to the garden but drew the eye earthward to contemplate the stillness of a pond here, the gentle ripple of a stream moving over artfully placed stones in then-path. At the center of the garden, a natural spring fed a waterwheel that spilled over a tumble of rocks to create a splashing waterfall which, in turn, sped the streamlets through the park. Under the waterfall sat a small stone altar with the symbol of ChiChu, the god of laughter and tears marked on its side.

Llesho considered offering a petition to the god, but thought better of it. Of the seven mortal gods, only ChiChu had used trickery to gain a place in heaven. When the six had demanded their unworthy brother be cast out, the goddess had chastised them for pride, and set the trickster among them as a reminder of their humanity. ChiChu often granted the requests that came to him, but he was likely to do so in ways both unlooked for and unwelcome to the supplicant. Llesho found a bench nearby and sat. The park was peaceful, and it was easy to forget his worries when the gentle breeze shifted the grasses in hypnotic patterns. He found it difficult to reconcile this refuge with the trading of cash-filled envelopes for heavenly favors on the temple steps. What was this city, where human lives and the favors of tax collector gods might be bought and sold, where tiny altars to the Seven might be hidden among the reeds of a public garden? Who were these people, who worshiped an emperor, yet turned their backs when the favored of the goddess fell to the invading Ham?

A shadow falling over him shattered his reverie. Almost as if it had a will of its own, Llesho’s hand reached for the knife hidden under his shirt.

“I thought I might find you here.” General Shou moved around the bench so that Llesho could see him. He wore robes of brilliant blue beneath a red silk coat. A crane embroidered in gold thread on each sleeve and a cap with a button of office completed his dress. The sleeves of his coat gave fleeting glimpses of copper wrist guards on each arm, the only clue that Shou was more than the merchant he appeared to be. The general’s face settled into the petulant lines of a harried trader. If he had not spoken before he showed himself, Llesho wasn’t sure he would have recognized him at all.

“I didn’t know you were looking for me.”

“You promised to tell me about Thebin.” “Oh. Yes.” Llesho didn’t add that he’d dismissed the request as diplomatic small talk. Or that the general’s real interest made Llesho more wary than the pretend kind. What did Shou want?

“This is my favorite place in the city.” Shou put a small offering on the tiny altar and sat down, letting the conversation fade as he contemplated the waterfall. It could have been strategy, let his prey grow comfortable with his presence before pouncing again, but Llesho thouehr not Th* —•

artifice, and quiet joy seemed to radiate from some hidden center that Shou did not often reveal. That made him all the more dangerous, Llesho figured. Apt that a general who traveled about the city in the garb of a merchant should honor the trickster god; Llesho took that as a warning.

“It reminds me of the governor’s compound at Far-shore Province,” Llesho commented with a gesture to indicate the garden. Idle chat. He would stay clear of his own concerns.

General Shou nodded agreement. “Her ladyship did not want to leave her home, and so her husband, the governor, promised that she could take a part of Thousand Lakes Province with her. He built the compound to remind her of her home among the lakes. This park, too, is a piece of Thousand Lakes Province.”

“I thought you were from Shan Province,” Llesho prodded.

The general shrugged. “I was born here in the capital city. But I was fostered for many years at Thousand Lakes.”

“Then it’s a lucky coincidence that the city has a park you can visit to remember in.”

“Not luck, really,” General Shou corrected him. “As the center of the empire, Shan must love all her children equally, and so there are many parks, each in the style of one of her provinces.”

“And what province do you represent with the slave pens?” Llesho watched the emotion freeze on the general’s face, and wondered what he showed in his own eyes. He was terrified again, shaking with it, so small and thin that he thought he must surely be culled before the market opened, spoiled goods that no one would buy. The trader had wanted to slit his throat to save himself the few coppers it cost to feed him. He remembered listening while the overseer of the pens and the trader argued his fate—he was too sickly to sell to the perverts, and too old to sell to the beggars’ guild, though his size might give him a few years of good begging before he was turned out there. If he survived the exposure and the abuse.

Almost crippled by the lingering echo of past terror, Llesho crumpled in on himself, clutching his gut. Hopeless children with empty bellies still passed through the slave pens of Shan. Llesho had been luckier than most. If Lord Chin-shi hadn’t wanted Thebin children to train as divers, the trader would have killed him and fed him to the pigs. If he’d been prettier, or younger, he wouldn’t have lived out the year.

He didn’t cry—not with the sensations hitting him like hammer blows—but he couldn’t breathe either. And he didn’t know how he was going to find his brothers if the thought of the slave pens alone dropped him to his knees.

“Are you sick?” General Shou asked him, setting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Do you need a healer?”

Llesho shook his head, wishing the general would leave him in peace to regain his composure, or at least move his hand, which was making it hard not to scream between his clenched teeth.

Shou did not move.

“None of us are brave all the time.” He seemed to be offering comfort, but when Llesho looked at him, he realized that the general didn’t remember he was there at all. Shou stared into the waterfall, lines of suffering etching themselves into his cheeks.

“We do well enough at the moment,” he said to the trickling water. “It’s easier, really, to do what we must than to decide even on a cowardly course of our own. But later, when it is all over, even hardened soldiers cry at night.”

Llesho stared up at him in amazement. He was a general, vigorous and energetic and a respected leader in battle. Surely he did not . . .

General Shou gave him a wry smile. “Even the emperor sometimes must take the room with the thickest walls at night, so that he doesn’t disturb the sleep of those with quieter dreams.”

Llesho doubted that, but he thought it was kind of the general to say it. And he thought perhaps the general might understand his problem.

“I don’t know how all this happened, you know? I was a pearl diver for nine years and never received so much as an extra banana at dinner. Then ”Lleck died, and he made me promise that I would find my brothers and take back our home.“ He didn’t mention that Lleck had been a spirit at the time—didn’t think it would do much for his credibility, and it didn’t matter to the story anyway.

“I thought, if I became a gladiator, I could travel, maybe win enough money to buy my freedom. I could look for news of my brothers in the cities we would visit for the games and return for them when I was free. We would travel secretly across the Harn lands and take back Thebin.

“I didn’t know what plots and counterplots I was walking into. Since then, I’ve become a stone in a game that makes no sense and has nothing to do with taking Thebin back from the Harn. I can only assume Master Markko has gone mad. He seems to think I have some great magical power, and if he can’t enslave it for himself, he wants me dead so that I cannot use it against him. The problem is, I don’t have any magic, so I’m of no use to either of us in the way Markko thinks. Does that make sense to you?”

“Not on the face of it, no,” General Shou admitted. “But you were young when you left Thebin. Perhaps Master Markko knows something about your heritage as a prince that you would have learned if your life had not so abruptly changed for the worse.”

“ ‘Would have’ isn’t the same as ‘did,’ ” Llesho pointed out. “My life did change, and whatever I would have learned or received as a prince, I did not learn as a pearl diver.

“As for her ladyship and Master Den, I don’t know what they think they have to gain by sending me to the emperor. Thebin is a thousand li from here, and all that space is filled with Harn. If the emperor wanted to help Thebin, he would first have to conquer Harn, war band by war band, and he could never trust that those he left behind him in a conquered state would not rise up at his back or attack Shan in his absence.”

“You’ll make a good general someday, Llesho. I couldn’t have explained the situation between Harn and Shan any better after years on the border.”

“It’s not that hard to figure out when you’ve made the Long March.”

Shou didn’t deserve sarcasm from him, but it was the only defense Llesho had. The emperor would certainly listen to his general, and Llesho had hoped that Shou would come up with a flaw in his argument and prove to him that her ladyship had been right all along. Instead, the general had just agreed that it was pointless to support Llesho’s fight for Thebin. Praise was a poor substitute for hope.

“If you will direct me to the slave market, I’ll be on my way.”

“I love Shan, but I wouldn’t trust her slavers to resist a Thebin boy on the streets alone.” General Shou stood up and stretched out kinked muscles. “I’ll take you there, and see that you get back safely.”

“Thank you.”

Llesho stood as well, and followed Shou out of the park. It seemed strange that someone with the responsibilities of a general would have the freedom and the inclination to humor the stubborn goals of a slave. If Shou felt inconvenienced, however, he didn’t show it.

“You should realize I am only humoring you in this, Llesho.” General Shou led them down a narrow twisted street with ramshackle buildings stacked helter-skelter one on top of the other and leaning into the cartway on both sides. The general walked with a casual air, as if he had no particular place to go and no set time to be there. In spite of his apparent nonchalance, he kept a cautious eye out, and directed them around a pile of garbage heaped on the paving stones. Llesho copied the general’s next action when he stepped out into the cartway to avoid walking under the narrow balcony overhead. He was glad he had done so when a pail of refuse cascaded over the landing they would have been passing just as it fell.

“It’s been nine summers since Thebin fell, and almost as long since anyone from the highlands but ignorant farmers have come to market,” General Shou pointed out, ignoring both the obstacles he avoided and the begging children to whom he absently threw coins without breaking stride. Harn traders walked among the passersby with hard, sharp eyes and a hand to their money belts. Llesho shuddered when those eyes glanced over him with silver in their evaluation and leering smirks for the general. He knew what they thought the man used him for, but their scorn was better than his fate if they found him alone.

I don’t expect to find my brothers in the pens,“ Llesho said, ”but there must be records.“

“Maybe. But you can be sure they have been falsified to hide the identities of any slaves who might have the power to attract a following.”

“One would almost think you disapprove that we were not killed out of hand.”

The general shrugged. “I wouldn’t have attacked Thebin in the first place, obviously, since I didn’t attack her. But you’re right: if I had, I would have killed her rulers and all their kin before I ever sat on her throne. It is bad policy to turn your back on someone with a grudge.”

“Then I guess Thebin was lucky that it was Harn

^h³¹!? ^DOtShaD“ ^Nota ”Stable conto be having in the heart of Shan’s capital

“No doubt.” General Shou did not seem to take t°u^f ^ ^ifhC ** ^{hC h3dhisreven}8^e *•» hey turned the next corner. “Here we are,” he said.

Uesho hadn’t needed the words to tell him. He recognized the place even before he saw it, by its stench.

C HAPTER T HIRTY-TWO

FORMALLY titled the “Labor Exchange,” the slave pens took the more common name from the maze of stockades and livestock runs that ended at the slave block in the market square. The place reeked of misery: rotting food and feces and the sweat of too many human beings, tainted with unendurable horror and despair and crammed together like cattle. Senses on overload, Llesho’s memories assailed him like blows to the gut. He grabbed for the top railing of the nearest stockade, and rested his head on his hands; absorbing the blood-drenched horror opened old wounds in his soul.

“Prince Llesho of Thebin died here,” he said. The slave market had obliterated the prince, if not the flesh he wore, had stripped him to the bone and rebuilt him as another person entirely. So many terrified children had passed down these chutes, and yet no one had raised a hand in protest when the innocent were sold like animals to be used and bred and slaughtered at the whim of whoever had the money to buy them.

A keening wail of mourning fought him for control of his throat. “My people,” he moaned softly. “Oh, Goddess, what have you done to my people?”

In stark images of crumbling horror, the slave pens reminded him that he was alone in this world. He’d known it since Lleck had died, of course, but sometimes the knowledge crashed in on him with the force of his need for allies, or friends. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He knew it was General Shou’s, but memory of rough hands in the market made him flinch. What comfort could Shou offer him now, anyway?

“An empire with the rot of the slave pens festering at its heart cannot help itself,” Llesho told him bleakly. “It certainly has nothing to offer Thebin.”

“The old emperor is dead.” General Shou withdrew his hand and rested his forearms on the top rail, next to Llesho. “His son now rules. Things will be different for Shan, but change takes time.”

Change. Llesho stared at the holding facility leaning over its rotted foundation. The slave traders had called it the dormitory even though it had no beds—just an unswept dirt floor to lie upon. It had never been meant to shelter the wretched slaves, Llesho realized, but served to hide their exhaustion and hopelessness from potential buyers. They’d put men and women together. He’d thought at the time, with the mind of a small boy, they’d done it out of kindness, so that families might have one last night together. Later, when he’d come to understand what those anguished cries in the night had been about, he realized it was because the traders didn’t care. If the females turned up pregnant in the morning, well, the buyer had made a bargain: two for the price of one. No. He couldn’t expect help from Shan.

“It takes more than a day to change a world, Llesho. It needs a cause to raise the will of the people to change. Can you do this?”

General Shou’s voice soothed the ache in his heart and the prickling unease that clenched his flesh. So many meanings in the question: “Can you offer Shan a cause to throw off the unclean trade in human lives? Can you walk back into that hell to save your brother?”

Llesho nodded. The last, at least, he could do. He just needed a minute to remember how to breathe. “The pens are empty.”

“The next slave caravan is due tomorrow; the traders should be around somewhere getting things ready for the new arrivals and the sale to follow.”

Llesho shot him a piercing glance and pushed away from the corral. “You seem to know a lot about the slave trade.” Far more than Llesho found comforting.

Shou twitched a shoulder, not quite shrugging. “I keep my eyes open for the odd Thebin prince on the resale market. It’s easier than fighting for them, or stealing them.”

“Is that what you did?” Llesho asked him, thinking back to the battle with Master Markko, and Jaks lying dead. “You fought for me?”

“Not to own you,” Shou clarified his statement. “But to see you succeed.

“Strategy, Llesho. When Markko attacked the governor’s compound at Farshore, why didn’t you stay and fight him there?”

General Shou used a tone of voice that Llesho knew well from his sessions with Lleck, and even the rare discussion with Habiba. No point in bristling at the suggestion of cowardice. The general was trying to teach him something, so he needed to answer the question as stated, not as pride interpreted.

“The governor ordered us to flee,” he said, but Llesho knew that wasn’t the answer Shou was looking for. “Farshore isn’t my war. Thebin is.”

That won him a slight nod. “And to save Thebin, you have to stay alive, and you have to stay free.”

It was Llesho’s turn to nod.

General Shou followed his first question with a second. “What do you think would happen if the emperor tried to shut down the slave market?”

“The slave trade would end,” Llesho answered immediately.

‘JAnd the slavers?“

“Would be unhappy, but would have to find something else to trade.”

“The Harn have a habit of turning their displeasure on the one who displeases them.”

The Harn. Who stole or traded for human flesh to sell for money in Shan’s marketplace. Who had laid waste to Thebin.

“The Harn control the high passes and, through them, all the trade that moves between Shan and the West. They hardly need to trade in human lives anymore.”

“For the Harn, the trade value of the slaves they sell has always been secondary.”

Llesho frowned. That didn’t make sense. Oh. Yes, it did. The enemies of the Harn feared not only death in battle, but the public humiliation of the slave block and lives spent in misery. Better to be dead.

The Harn would not give up the trade peacefully, but that did not leave Shan free of responsibility. “If there were no market, there would be no slaves,” Llesho insisted. “If Shan is willing to sell its soul for peace, the Harn have no need for battle. They have already won.”

General Shou met his gaze briefly, then dropped his eyes again. “You shame me,” he said.

“Shan shames you,” Llesho corrected him. “I only point out what is already true.”

“I know. But we cannot resolve the issue today. Did you have a plan for rescuing the prince, your brother?”

“I will need the price of a bid,” Llesho pointed out.

“That is not a problem. I have more money than I have a use for.”

Llesho shook his head. “I didn’t come all this way to trade one master for another, for myself or for Adar.”

“What do you suggest?” General Shou made it clear in his tone that Llesho could offer no other solution. “You have won no purses in the arena, and wouldn’t have the price of your own freedom if her ladyship demanded it.”

“I have this.” Llesho reached into his mouth and plucked out the pearl that Lleck had pressed into the space of his lost tooth. As he drew it out between his fingers, the black pearl returned to its original size, and he had to open his mouth wider to extract it. When he held it out to General Shou, the pearl almost filled the palm of his hand. “Will the slave traders accept the pearl itself as payment, or must I exchange it for money before I approach them?”

“Where did you get that?” General Shou’s voice shook, and his face paled so quickly that Llesho thought the man would faint dead away in the gutter. Shou reached out to touch the gleaming black surface, but pulled back as if it had burned his fingers.

“Lleck gave it to me,” Llesho said. “He was dead at the time. I was in the bay, and he put the pearl in my mouth to hide it, then told me to find my brothers. If it will pay for Adar’s freedom, I consider it well spent.”

“I think not,” the general whispered. He closed Llesho’s own fingers around his treasure, and slowly, as if he acted against his own will, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head over the fist Llesho clasped around the pearl.

“Adar shall be my gift to the goddess,” he said. Rising from his obeisance, he asked, “Does anyone know that you have this?”

Llesho shook his head.

“I am sure Master Markko suspects,” the general muttered. “It would explain his interest in you.” Shou could not pull his gaze from the hand that held the pearl, and Llesho saw the troubled longing in that gaze, and the moment when that soul-deep inner conflict came to rest.

“Tell Master Den,” the general advised him. “Explain how you came by it, and stand by his counsel. As for Habiba, Master Den will know what is best. Say nothing to anyone until you have conferred with Master Den.”

Llesho hesitated. He hadn’t wanted to share this secret with anyone, but Shou had caught him off-balance. He didn’t know how he would buy his brother’s freedom without the pearl.

“First, we must see to Adar,” Llesho insisted. “And if we are not going to trade the pearl for his freedom, I am left without a plan.”

“Fortunately, you have a general in your retinue, my prince. As I said, I have the price, and your brother shall be my gift to the goddess. More important, I have a plan for acquiring the prince without arousing suspicion. You will not like it, however.”

“Strategy, General? I thought you honored a trickster god.”

“If winning doesn’t matter to you, we can return to the palace now,” the general shot back. “I know very little about honor, perhaps, but a great deal about winning.”

“So, what is this master plan?” Shou looked away, and Llesho followed his gaze to the counting house, more solidly built than the dormitory. Llesho would have bet that the roof didn’t leak either.

“The traders and the money counters will be preparing for tomorrow’s shipment. They know me as a merchant and a slave owner. If I demonstrate an interest in Thebins, and ask about a Thebin healer, they may be inclined to open their records for the privilege of brokering the sale.”

“I assume you have a role for me in this charade?” He wasn’t stupid; he’d figured out his part in the game as soon as the general had spoken. It didn’t even surprise him. But he wanted Shou to say it out loud.

The general threw down the challenge with a little smile. He didn’t seem to regret a thing. “You will play my slave, of course. My dear slave. They won’t find you on their books, but haven’t I made much of the urchin once purchased in the market at Wuchow?”

General Shou’s whole posture shifted; his expression grew soft and lost the keen edge that intelligence gave it. He stroked Llesho’s face with a feather-touch of the backs of his fingers, and Llesho flinched like he’d been struck. But he resisted the urge to move away from the touch and even managed to drop his lashes provocatively.

Shou laughed. “I think that should do. Just try not to kill me before we’ve found your brother.”

Kill him, no. But he had questions for this master of disguise—like why a general would need such skills. Answers would have to wait. Llesho didn’t like it, but he couldn’t afford to anger his only chance to secure Adar’s freedom.

When he had last been to the slave market, Llesho had known only the dormitory and the holding pens, and the block in the market square. Unlike the parts of it he had seen, the countinghouse had a sturdy air. Inside, dark and solid wood gave weight to the entry hall. There were no chairs, but a gong on a small table invited the visitor to announce his presence. General Shou, playing the part of a merchant and slave connoisseur, struck the gong with its muffled hammer. A small woman with greased-back hair and a voluminous coat quickly answered the call, sliding open a panel to the inner chambers with a low bow.

“Your wish, good sir?” she asked, peering up at General Shou with a simper. She had the sharp, carved features of the Harn; Llesho’s flesh crawled at

Shou took a moment to pet Llesho with a fatuous grin on his face before addressing the trader.

“I have developed a partiality for Thebins,” he smirked. “And I am in the market to buy.”

The woman gave Llesho a knowing leer, but schooled her features to a thoughtful frown before answering Shou’s question.

“It may be difficult to serve the master if he wishes a match for the boy. The age is in demand across types, and one must make a profit where one can, you understand. Our entire stock, except for special orders, must go to the block. I could get you a good price for this one, though, and we can place an order for a set, if you’d like: two boys, or a girl and a boy if you prefer. Special orders, for which we must charge a premium, you understand, take at least six months to fill, but I am sure we could make an arrangement for resale of this one after the replacements arrive. Subject to the usual, of course. Contract is void if property is destroyed or damaged in a manner that negatively effects market value.”

By the time the old flesh peddler had run down, Llesho was trembling under General Shou’s hand. The general gave his shoulder a warning squeeze, but he needn’t have worried. Llesho’s rage and terror seemed to please the woman.

“He still has spunk. That’s unusual. Some would pay extra for that, if he isn’t broken before they take possession.”

“I did not come to sell,” Shou reminded her. “And I am not looking for another young one. The upkeep, you know. Eating all the time at this age, and far too much energy for an old man like me.”

He smiled sweetly, and the trader replied with a flattering comment on the gentleman’s youth, but quickly deferred to his taste. “Of course. What would you prefer, then, good sir?”

“I have several Thebins in my retinue, and would like to purchase a healer of their kind to tend to their needs, and perhaps offer my house the novelty of his advice,” Shou answered. “Medicine is an especial passion of mine.”

“And Thebin healers are reputed to have a special knowledge of herbs that ease the mind,” she added conspiratorially. “Of course, healers are likewise rare—even rarer than boys! Frankly, I don’t expect to see one in tomorrow’s selection. I could be wrong, though. Would you like me to send a note to your dwelling with the particulars about likely merchandise in the morning?”

“No need,” General Shou answered. “I will send a servant for your list myself. In the meantime, perhaps if you have record of Thebin healers in the area, a current owner might be interested in a brokered sale?”

The trader considered him for a moment. “I have been a part of this market for more than ten summers,” she said, “and can remember only two Thebin healers to cross our block. Three if you count a woman herbalist with a reputation for poisons.”

“I would be interested in either of the two reputable healers,” Shou agreed, and added, “I have an expert in poisons on my staff already, and would not trust such a sensitive task to a Thebin anyway.”

“Wise, sir.” She considered him thoughtfully, watching the glitter of jewels on the fingers of the hand absently toying with Llesho’s hair. “If sir is not concerned about the price, perhaps we can be of service.”

“I am very rich,” General Shou flirted with his wealth. “And I can indulge my whims.”

The trader led them down a hall so luxuriously appointed that even the clink of coins from the strong room whispered in subdued tones. Finally, she slid aside a screen and led them into an elegant room lined with shelves on which scrolls were piled.

“Have a seat,” she invited him. General Shou took the proffered chair and glared at Llesho when he would have taken another. Llesho bit off the comment that had almost leaped from his lips, and stood behind the general. Steeling himself to the intimate gesture, he rested his hand on the general’s shoulder, which won him a sweet smile. The general placed a hand over Llesho’s, holding it steady, and gave the Harn trader his attention once again.

“Here we have it.” She ran a finger quickly down a list, explaining, “We keep a record of the special ones by skill and by origin. Crossing the two lists, I can locate your preferred merchandise. And here, two, like I said.”

She lifted a scroll from a high dusty shelf and another from a shelf lower down, on which no dust had settled. “No,” she corrected herself. “Not two Thebin healers, but one, a slave with the name Adar, traded some nine summers ago. The same came to block again about three summers ago, when the original buyer lost his property to debauchery. Had a reputation for being headstrong, as I recall, but that had been beaten out of him by the time he came to market again. Yeesss. That’s the one. About thirty-five summers, so he is too old to pair with your boy for a pretty set, but we can work on that in a separate order for you.”

Llesho shuddered for his brother. For much of the period of his bondage Llesho’s treatment had been harsh and debasing, but until Markko he had never been singled out for personal humiliation by his owner. He had hoped that Adar had fared better. Now he hoped only to see his brother alive through whatever damage slavery had done him. The general’s pressure on his hand warned him against voicing some protest.

“I am sure you will strike a fair bargain for me, Mistress Trader.” Shou rose from his chair and bowed.

“Fair for rare.” She reminded him that the price would be high.

Shou returned her a casual shrug. “I will not barter the boy, but your owner may state his price in gold or silver. You will, of course, add your percentage to the price.”

“As you will, Master.” She wrote out a note to confirm the commission and handed it to the general, then wrote another and called for a servant, who attended her at once.

“I will see you tomorrow, then, good sir?” She led the way to the front of the countinghouse, and opened the sliding panel into the entry room again.

“Tomorrow,” General Shou promised, and with a last bow, he waited until Llesho had opened the door for him, and they departed.

“You did that very smoothly,” Llesho commented when they were well away from the countinghouse.

“Is that a compliment on my skills as an actor, or an accusation that I own slaves.

“You tell me.”

The general huffed an exhalation—whether of guilt or frustration, Llesho could not tell. Shou kept his face clear of all expression.

“If you are asking, do I own slaves, the answer is ‘yes,’ though I believe I have always behaved honorably toward them.”

They had entered the market square. Llesho noted the noise and bustle at the edges of his awareness, but his senses had tunneled down to one focus: the slave block at the market’s center leaked blood around the edges of his vision. “I don’t see how you can use the words ‘slave’ and ‘honor’ in the same statement,” he objected.

“Old customs are hard to break.” It seemed that Shou was trying to justify his actions, but his next words were a surprise: “Lately, though, I have come to believe you may be right. For the most part, however, it was acting.”

“I think that worries me more.” Llesho didn’t look at the general. He would see only the face Shou wanted him to, so looking for clues in the man’s eyes or the depth of the lines above his brow seemed pointless. “I don’t know what to trust of your motives. Have you lied to me as easily as you lied to the slave trader?”

“Not as easily or as well as I would have liked, obviously, or you would trust me more.” The general laughed. “Are you hungry?”

For a moment Llesho wondered if General Shou had simply lost his mind. But he was hungry. Very. The smells coming from the food stalls on his left reminded him that he’d had breakfast a long time ago, and he’d eaten nothing since. The general gave him a shove in the direction of those wonderful smells, and suddenly Llesho’s awareness of his surroundings opened up.

The market square was huge. He had thought so looking out on it from the slave block as a child, and his impression of its size hadn’t changed much. Now, however, he was conscious of the excitement buzzing in the colors and the noise and the smells. This, much more than the square in front of the palace, seemed to be the center of Shan. They passed a booth where bits of meat were roasting on skewers over an open flame, but the general didn’t stop.

“He has no butcher’s bill, and his shop is remarkably free of rats,” General Shou explained.

He went farther, toward a stall surrounded by customers pressing their demands for service. He waved a hand with two fingers raised at the fat old woman behind the counter, on which a variety of fillings sat beside a stack of flatbreads. The woman smiled her recognition, and had their order ready by the time they had cut through the crowd to reach her.

“Little Shou!” she hailed him. “I do not see you for a full summer, and you appear at my stall hungry as ever and with an outlander at your heels! What have you been up to this time?”

“I’ve traveled the wide world ‘round looking for the equal to your flatbread, Dark, and found only a friend to share your treasure with.”

“I can believe it,” she answered him with a laugh, handing Llesho a flatbread covered with a combination of hot and cold fillings that made his mouth water. “He’s nothing but a stick—buy him two, before he fades away to a shadow.”

“That wouldn’t do at all,” Shou agreed, pressing a few copper coins into her hand. He bit into his own flatbread and motioned for Llesho to take the extra that she had wrapped in paper for him.

She wished them enjoyment of the market and added, “Take him to see the performers over by the Temple to The Seven. The puppets have a play that reenacts the ascension of the new emperor, and a woman with a performing bear has drawn favorable audiences enough to annoy the cloth merchants.”

“Why don’t the cloth merchants like the bear dancer?” Llesho asked her around a mouthful of flat-bread and meat.

“Her audiences block their entrances, so their business suffers when her bear dances. He is a very droll bear, however.”

Llesho wasn’t in the mood for watching bears dancing. He’d lost Mara to the dragon and Lleck first to death and later to the rapid current of Golden Dragon River, and the memory of his lost friends still hurt. That was all before he’d met General Shou, of course. The general couldn’t know about Llesho’s harrowing escape at the river, or his anguish at watching the healer give her life for his safety. So Shou headed straight for the knot of laughing people at the steps of a low, shabby temple.

Pushing his way through the crowd which had al-ready begun to disperse, Llesho followed. When they reached the steps of the temple where the performers worked, the bear dancer had already gone. Shou stopped to chat companionably with a temple priest in threadbare garments who gathered up the offerings of the day from the worn wooden steps. No thick packets of cash changed hands here, but a flower, a bowl of rice, and one of vegetables fresh from a supplicant’s garden. The priest interrupted his conversation to give thanks for each as he gathered it into his basket.

Llesho gave the area a quick scan—the bear dancer could not have disappeared so quickly—and caught a glimpse of her turning a corner between two vast warehouses almost before he recognized her.

“Mara!” He followed and discovered a short alley leading away from the market square. The alley had collected a few people on their way home, but Llesho saw nothing of the woman or the bear, who must be Lleck if he had seen the bear dancer aright.

“Llesho!” General Shou caught up with him and grabbed his arm, and he couldn’t be a good enough spy to fake the near panic in his eyes. “By ChiChu, boy, don’t disappear like that.”

“I am not the trickster here,” Llesho answered tartly, but he knew he owed the man a sensible answer. Unfortunately, he didn’t have one to give. “I know her. The bear dancer. I saw her die.”

He didn’t add, And if it is she, her bear used to be my teacher. He had already given the man more wonder tales to believe than one afternoon could support, and didn’t want to add any more fuel to that fire.

Shou peered down the alley as if he could see those few short minutes into the past and discover where the woman and her bear had gone, but his answer addressed the present. “Either you know her and she didn’t die after all, or your friend is truly dead, and memory plays tricks on you.”

“I saw her die at Golden Dragon River,” Llesho repeated, “and I saw her slip into this alley just now.”

“If your dead are walking the streets of Shan,” the general said with a colder, harder tone than Llesho had heard him use before, “we had better find out why.”

“How?” Llesho asked him.

The general’s expression had closed around his thought. “Your companions from the road should have reached the palace by now,” he said. “Perhaps they can shed some light on the question.”

Llesho didn’t know how his friends could help him. They hadn’t seen the Dragon swallow Mara whole, and hadn’t seen her in the marketplace either, but they had known Mara, and Lleck, too. They could at least confirm he was not mad when he told Shou about the reincarnation of his teacher into the form of a bear. Habiba had seen the dragon eat Mara in payment for their passage across the river, however, and he had seemed sure that Llesho would see the healer again.

“We need Habiba.” General Shou winced.

“I thought he was your friend.” Habiba had introduced him to the general, and Llesho left the question hanging: What lie is about to catch up with you now? “We are allies.” Shou scrunched up his face in a very unmilitary show of mixed feelings. “Habiba often does not agree with my methods.”

Llesho set aside that objection with a tart reply. “That makes two of us.”

The general laughed. “Don’t tell Habiba that when you see him.” He led Llesho through the alley rather than back the way they had come, winding around the marketplace rather than through it. They met fewer passersby away from the square, though once a sharp-eyed Harn shoved by them with a sneer for Shou in his disguise as a merchant. The general gave no indica-tion he had noticed the slight, but he uttered a single, sharp word when Llesho’s hand wandered to his throat. Killing a single Harn trader wouldn’t gain the prince anything but a moment’s satisfaction, but it could cost him everything.

A wide boulevard emptied into the market square above the slave block. Crossing, Llesho did not let his gaze linger on the source of his nightmares, except as a reminder of his purpose here. He had a general at his side and tomorrow he would find his most beloved brother, Prince Adar. All he had to do was stand by and let it happen when General Shou bought Adar as a slave. He hoped he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life. Habiba, and even Mara, could wait.

C HAPTER T HIRTY-THREE

OHOU’S winding path returned them to a secluded spot where a cluster of low bushes obscured the bottom half of the palace wall. Pulling away some branches, the general revealed a wayside shrine, carved in relief into the pink stone wall.

“Turn around,” the general instructed Llesho absently, while he studied the carvings intently. “I haven’t used this passageway for years; it may take a few minutes to remember the sequence.”

Llesho did as he was told, but after a moment Shou gave a thoughtful grunt. With the grinding of stone shifting upon stone, the shrine swung inward to reveal a dark tunnel. The palace walls seemed so riddled with the things that Llesho wondered why they hadn’t fallen in on themselves already, but he followed General Shou inside, took up a torch when it was handed to him, and helped to push the massive door back into place. When they were in pitch darkness, Llesho heard the snap of a match firing, saw the tiny flame, and watched it take hold on the fuel-soaked end of Shou’s torch. The general waited until his torch burned steadily, then fired the one Llesho carried.

They walked some hundred paces down the straight passage, until they came to a dead end at a blank wall. Shou found a latch in what seemed to Llesho to be a flaw in the pointing of the rough stone, and another hidden door swung open.

“I used to sneak out of the palace by this route when I was about your age.” Shou laughed softly as he led the way up a narrow stairway of age-worn stone. “Good to see it hasn’t been discovered since then.”

“You lived in the palace?” Llesho asked sharply. Of course, only a high-ranking nobleman could aspire to become a general of the Imperial Guard, but the idea suddenly made him nervous. Shou was also a spy, and when the general had come upon him in the park, Llesho had been too free with his opinions about the emperor. And he’d shown the man Lleck’s pearl. Being a spy didn’t make him a thief, but he’d clearly known more about the nacreous gem than he was telling.

However, General Shou was nodding. “I was raised here. Had anyone asked what title I wanted attached to my life, I would have told them explorer. Of course, that was not an option even then.”

Llesho thought that the general had too much excitement in his life as it was. “All I ever wanted was Thebin,” he answered. Not quite a reprimand, or a complaint about the unfairness of the world, it nevertheless made him uncomfortable to have said it out loud.

Fortunately, General Shou did not take the comment as a slight. “Then we will have to win Thebin back for you, won’t we?” he promised, and led the prince down another turning.

They came out of the tunnel into a chamber shrouded in richly decorated banners hanging from ceiling to floor. Low couches had been pushed to the edges of the room, and a meeting table and chairs sat in the center. Lling lay in a restless sleep on one of the couches, her color flushed and sweat beading her temples. Hmishi sat next to her, occasionally stroking the hair from her forehead. They both still wore their Thebin uniforms, now stained with the dust and grime of the road—only the bandage on Lling’s arm was clean and fresh. In the chairs, an equally travel-worn Bixei and Kaydu had draped themselves in poses of exhaustion and disappointment. Little Brother, Kay-du’s monkey companion, sat in the middle of the table, peeling a banana, while Habiba paced nervously back and forth by the door.

Little Brother was the first to notice that Llesho and General Shou had entered through the secret passage. He dropped his banana and began to hop up and down and screech the alarm. Suddenly, the companions were on their feet, reaching for weapons they did not have. Even Lling roused from her sleep and half rose from her couch.

“Lord General!” Habiba bowed low when Shou stepped from behind a long, floating banner. “Or should I say, Lord Merchant?”

When Llesho followed, his guards shouted his name—“Llesho!”—together. All but Lling ran to greet him, and she grinned smugly from her couch.

“So you found him,” Habiba remarked. “Did retrieving him cost you much?”

“Not yet, but I expect it will cost me a tael or two before we are done,” the general confirmed with a sigh. He took a chair and waited while the companions reassured themselves that Llesho was indeed safe and sound.

“Where were you?” Kaydu demanded, and Bixei exclaimed angrily, “We have been looking for you since noonday! We thought you’d been kidnapped.”

Hmishi just shook his head. “He wandered off. I told you he wandered off.”

“And I told you he would turn up in his own time,” Lling reminded them.

Hmishi pressed her to lie down again, but she resisted. “Habiba says you need rest,” he scolded.

“What’s the matter with Lling?” Llesho interrupted the welcome with his own question, directed at Habiba. He sat down in the chair between Bixei and Kaydu and tugged on Kaydu’s tunic, urging her to sit back down as well.

Lling answered the question tartly for herself. “Lling’s wound became infected. It is now well on its way to healing and no cause for alarm.”

The look that passed between Hmishi and the witch told a different tale. Habiba shrugged. “She needs to keep the wound clean and the arm still, or she risks losing it.”

“Have you alerted the emperor’s physician?” Shou asked.

“I don’t want a fuss made over a stupid cut on my arm!” Lling snapped. The skin above and below the bandage was pink. Llesho guessed it was hot to the touch, but it was not unduly swollen. He looked for the telltale red streaks that would indicate the infection had invaded her blood, and was relieved to find none.

Habiba graced her with a sour grimace. “That won’t be necessary, Lord General. But if you could recommend a good locksmith? I am beginning to fear that nothing short of restraints will ensure the cure is taken.”

Llesho smothered his laughter. Lling glared at him, but she did permit Hmishi to help her lie down again on the couch.

“Tell me about your trip,” Llesho asked his companions when the greetings were over. “Did you run into any trouble on the road?”

“Since Markko traveled with you,” Kaydu pointed out, “we didn’t expect much trouble for ourselves.”

“We tried to catch up with you.” Lling spoke up from her couch. “But you were traveling too fast for the horses to follow, and we didn’t want to leave them behind.”

Llesho winced. It was his fault she was in danger from her wound, because she had neglected her own care to protect him.

Kaydu nodded, glaring at him. Well he should wince, she seemed to say

“Our troubles began when we arrived at the palace,” Bixei said, “and found that the emperor was away, our charge had disappeared, Master Markko had likewise vanished, and no one could find General Shou. Oh, and Master Den had gone out to see if he could find any one of the missing people.”

“We thought that Markko must have taken you,” Kaydu added. “We were trying to figure out where he might have gone when the general materialized through a solid wall with you in tow. He has our thanks, but I’d still like to know where you were.”

“I’d like to know that myself.” Master Den, with his usual good timing, chose that moment to open their door. He glowered at them all with a sweeping flash of his eyes. Once he made sure the door was securely closed behind him, he settled the disfavor of his frown on Llesho.

“Markko takes his ease in an unpleasant eating establishment in the city,” he said. “The place has a bad reputation for serving the Harnish slavers who frequent the market, and Markko does not dine alone. The traders who attend him have a Harnish look about them, and they seem to be on familiar terms.

“I expect he will be returning soon, and some of us should be in our rooms on the other side of the palace when he does. Before we go our separate ways, however, we’d all like to know what Llesho has been up to.”

Llesho stared down at the table, as if the grain of the wood had mesmerized him. Now that it came to telling them, he hesitated, as if speaking about it aloud could somehow put him back in the slave pens. But it had to be done. “We went to the slave market.” Three of his companions went very still. Kaydu, who had been born free in Thousand Lakes Province, had never seen the slave block or the pens, but she had seen the products of them and she respected the silence of her friends. Little Brother, with the sensitivity of his monkey kind, edged closer to Llesho. The monkey chittered softly, and reached to touch Llesho’s hair in a gesture of comfort. Llesho took the monkey’s hand and smiled at the distraction. “I think we have found Adar, my brother,” he said. “You ‘think’?” Habiba pressed him. “You do not know him?”

Llesho stared at the witch, trembling suddenly; the afternoon became confused in his mind with his experience as a child on the slave block, and he could not speak.

General Shou watched him with concern while offering an explanation in his place. “Llesho posed as a slave, and I as a merchant with a taste for Thebins and a wish for a Thebin healer to tend my small collection.” His smile was thin and dangerous. “They have such a one on their books, and have agreed to broker a sale with the current owner for me.”

Kaydu looked from Llesho to her father, balancing the need for secrecy with Llesho’s need for reassurance, but her father gave her no signal on which to base a judgment. Finally, she decided that Llesho ought to know. “We brought five hundred soldiers with us in case we had to fight to get you out of here, but we left them outside the city wall until we had scouted out the situation.”

“And how long have you told them to wait until they are to attack the palace and rescue you?” General Shou asked. His voice was harder than Llesho had ever heard it, and the man’s piercing gaze made him quail.

“Until midnight, tonight,” Kaydu answered. She sounded sure of herself, but her eyes grew dark and calculating. She didn’t breathe while she waited to hear the general’s response.

“Then perhaps you should send them a message.” General Shou spoke very softly, but the steel of a blade rang in his voice.

Kaydu nodded. “Of course. The question is, what message to send. Will we need them tomorrow to secure Llesho’s brother?”

“I think a few bits of gold will work better than a foreign army,” General Shou answered her. “As an officer in the Imperial Guard, I can tell you that if your soldiers enter the city, the emperor will have no choice but to consider it an invasion by a hostile force. Why set friend against friend when I have gold enough to spare and a willing broker for the bargaining?”

“You have a plan, I see.” Master Den took a couch by the wall nearest where General Shou and Llesho had entered. Llesho figured that was no coincidence; he wondered how much Den knew about the palace. Did his teacher know the emperor himself?

“Part of one,” Shou admitted. “I should be able to buy Adar with little trouble, and there are officials enough in the palace to prepare the manumission papers. But there is the problem of Master Markko.”

“He may be working with the emperor against us,” Bixei suggested.

General Shou shook his head. “The emperor is not so easily fooled or frightened as Master Markko may believe.”

“But Llesho must still petition the emperor for help to cross the Ham lands and free Thebin,” Kaydu insisted.

She hadn’t included herself in that goal, and Llesho wondered if, beyond Shan, he would be traveling alone. Well, not alone if they succeeded tomorrow. Adar would be with him.

“I believe the emperor may sympathize with Llesho’s petition,” the general confirmed, only to dash their hopes again: “It may not be in the best interest of the Shan Empire—or Thebin—to announce an alliance, however.”

“Then what was the point of our mad dash to the capital?” Llesho demanded, frustrated.

General Shou looked at him as if he’d gone quite mad, and even Habiba had the grace to look embarrassed for him.

“A hypothetical problem in strategy, Llesho,” the general explained as if to a particularly dim child. “In the name of the governor of Thousand Lakes Province, for the honor of his daughter, the widow of the murdered governor of Farshore Province, a witch marches at the head of his master’s troops. In his train he bears a boy whom all know to be the exiled son of the murdered King Khorgan of Thebin.

“In pursuit come the armies of Farshore Province, led by the magician who has murdered that province’s governor in the name of Lord Yueh, the usurper. This murderer proclaims himself regent of a child who may or may not be born to the usurper’s widow. If the child exists at all, it may be the usurper’s own child, born out of the union of husband and wife and blessed by the goddess, or it may be the murderer’s child, forced upon the grieving widow. Or it may be the product of a secret union plotted by the widow and her magician lover, to replace her husband with his murderer.

“Regardless, the magician who has murdered three lords of the empire finds himself within the city of Shan, as does the witch who serves the widow of a fourth lord, also dead.”

“Her ladyship fled Farshore in defense of her honor, to escape Master Markko,” Llesho pointed out. “When you lay out all these murders in a row, keep in mind that she is sinned upon and injured no one.”

General Shou nodded in agreement. “Which may be a ruse, but is likely not to be, or she would not have entrusted her father’s troops to her dead husband’s chief steward and witch. Unless—” he gave Habiba a thin smile,“—that witch is himself the widow’s lover.”

Habiba bowed in acknowledgment of the point, but his eyes held a dangerous glint. “I would not have the lady’s honor doubted, even in the name of a lesson,” he answered mildly.

“To do so, one must assume that all the ladies in the East have fallen under the sway of the overseers to their respective husbands’ properties, since Lady Yueh and Lady Chin-shi likewise find themselves widowed.” Master Den harrumphed, as if he found the game they played too tedious for words. “And, like her ladyship, they now find their husbands’ lands and possessions in the hands of Master Markko.”

“Why, then, does Master Habiba march on Shan?” General Shou asked. “And why carrying the heir to a vanquished kingship in his train? And why fight a bloody battle in the shadow of the emperor’s throne and bring his troops to the very walls of the empire’s chief city? An emperor must suspect that such a one wishes, perhaps, to seize the throne for himself, or for the foreign princeling he dangles on a string.”

“Perhaps,” Llesho said, taking his time to formulate his answer.

His companions waited, watching him intently. They were all familiar with lessons, and realized that more hung in the balance with this examination than a cuff on the ear for inattention.

“Perhaps,” Llesho began again, “her ladyship’s father, the appointed governor of Thousand Lakes Province, wished his emperor to know of the terrible destruction that has overtaken his neighbors and threatens his own province, and the very empire itself. With such danger all around him, he could not risk a simple messenger, but must send a delegation of sufficient stature to persuade Shan of the threat all the provinces of the empire now face.”

Habiba gave Llesho a bow, and an ironic smile. “Perhaps,” the witch began, matching the diffidence of Llesho’s own answer, “her ladyship concluded that she could not protect a young prince, beset as she was by the enemies of her husband, enemies who wished to acquire the boy for their own mysterious ends. She might then choose to deliver the boy to the emperor, who might, in his wisdom, have a better idea of what to do with a young and propertyless king.”

“None of it makes any sense.” Llesho threw himself back into his chair. “Even if Markko could somehow put me on the throne of Thebin, he must know I would never act as his figurehead. He can kill me, but he cannot make me obey.”

“He wants your power,” Habiba insisted, “the divine power that is your gift from the goddess—”

“I have no such power!” Llesho insisted, and blushed that he had raised his voice. “Excuse me, I did not mean disrespect. But if that’s what Markko wanted, he should have waited until after I had completed the vigil of my sixteenth summer.”

“Your power as a symbol of kingship will do if that is all he can reach,” Habiba conceded, “though her ladyship has conveyed to me her certainty that your vigil did, in fact, succeed in wooing the goddess.”

“Then she is more in the confidence of the goddess than the professed bridegroom. But what does any of this have to do with the emperor’s decision not to grant us an audience or accept our petition?”

“If the emperor had any doubts about you at all, Llesho, you would be quartered here with your friends and enemies alike, and not in the private quarters where you pose a threat to the emperor himself,” General Shou pointed out practically. “But if he acknowledges the validity of your claim, he must at the same time reject Master Markko’s opposing petition that you belong to him by right of property in Farshore.”

“And?” Llesho bristled. He’d thought that, at least, he could gain from his mad dash across Shan Province.

“Markko doesn’t work alone, boy,” Master Den said. “That was clear at his dinner table, if we did not know it before. His connections to Harn likely run much deeper than a chance encounter at an inn.”

Llesho closed his eyes and let his head drop against the straight back of his chair. Hundreds had fallen in battle. Stipes had lost an eye and would never march at Bixei’s side again. Master Jaks lay buried in a soldiers’ field with no mark upon his grave to proclaim his bravery or his honor.

“I have thrown away the lives of those who trusted me to placate a hallucination,” he said. “I should have drowned in the bay before I ever set out on this fool’s mission.”

“Don’t let self-pity spoil your judgment,” General Shou chided him. “You have performed a great service for the empire: Shan is forwarned of the danger within its own borders, from whichever direction it may come.” He glared at Habiba to show that he hadn’t let the witch off his hook yet. “And you have already achieved the first part of your quest. Tomorrow, you will have Prince Adar at your side. And you are in the imperial city, which is more than the capital of the empire.”

“The head of the trade route to the West,” Kaydu muttered, and the general smiled.

“The trade caravans must pass through Kungol, regardless of which power rules there,” Hmishi supplied, with an answering grin.

General Shou gave a little shrug, his smile only half-hidden. “If a future general could travel the length of the trade route by caravan, and explore the city of Kungol unnoticed, so, too, can a future king.”

“It will be dangerous,” Habiba warned.

Llesho looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Ask Lord Chin-shi how safe it is to do nothing.”

Habiba bowed in acknowledgment. “It had to be said, though I had no doubt about your answer.”

“Speaking of danger,” Bixei reminded them, “what is to be done with Markko? We can’t very well hire ourselves onto a caravan crossing Harn lands with him following, especially if he is working with the Harn.”

Markko’s power was subtle and strong, and evil to its very center. Llesho had lost so much to the deadly master already that he could not be certain he had the strength to overcome the magician, even if he were willing to die in the attempt. But he had not lost all, yet.

“I saw Mara in the square today,” he whispered.

“I thought you saw her die,” Hmishi said, while the rest of the companions held their breath.

“The Golden Dragon swallowed her,” Llesho confirmed. “Nevertheless, I saw her today, in the square. A vendor said she has a bear with her, and that the creature dances for coins.”

“Do you think the bear is Lleck?” Lling asked.

“What else can it be?” Llesho asked.

“It may be a trap, set to snare a prince,” Habiba warned him.

Kaydu picked up Little Brother from the table, cradling him in her arms with a sly smile. “But tame bears are not the only performing animals in Shan. While Llesho and the general are buying the freedom of Prince Adar, Little Brother and I will find a likely spot on the square and see what we can find out.”

Master Den nodded his agreement. “If Habiba and I take up the charge of keeping Master Markko away from the various subterfuges of our young soldiers, our plan is set.“

Habiba signaled the end of their meeting with a bow to the general. “I will see to standing down the alert among our guard.”

When he had gone, Llesho followed General Shou toward the banner behind which they had entered. Kaydu caught him, however, and laid a hand upon his sleeve before he could make good his escape. “You are not going anywhere without your guards, Llesho. It’s not that I don’t trust your security, General Shou,” she bowed politely to the waiting general, “but Prince Llesho is our responsibility.”

Hmishi tried to pull himself away, but he could not seem to let go of Lling’s hand. “I can carry her.”

General Shou shook his head. “No one is coming with us. I’m taking risk enough bringing Llesho through the tunnels. I won’t hazard the palace or its secrets any further.”

“Then Llesho can stay here,” Lling insisted.

“And Master Markko?” Shou asked. Markko had rooms in the guest quarters just as they did.

Master Den had lied, or not known about the tunnels, when he said there was no access to the private sleeping rooms of the palace. But what Master Den had figured out, Master Markko might also.

“Rest easy,” Master Den assured the companions. “Between us, the general and I can keep even Llesho alive.”

With a last reassuring smile, Master Den nudged Llesho toward the secret door behind the wall hanging. General Shou led the way, and the three were back in the tunnels, following a twisting course that Llesho could not recall from one turn to the next. Master Den, he noticed, did not hesitate or require confirming directions.

Finally, they stopped at another blank wall which opened to the general’s cautious probing, and Llesho tumbled out into the locked room that adjoined his own, a study lined with books and strange artifacts from many distant lands.

Master Den followed him with more dignity. “Sleep well, my prince.” He gave Llesho a deep bow, and left the general alone with Llesho in the study.

“You played a difficult part, and did it well today.” The general pulled back the bolts and opened the door for Llesho to pass into his own room. “Ring for the servants to fetch you a meal, so that you can be officially accounted for. No need for explanations; the servants are discreet, and none will ever know save Master Den and your confederates that you were absent for much of the day. As for the trinket you would trade for your brother’s freedom, the fewer who know that you have it, the safer will be both the bauble and its bearer.

“Now get some rest. I’ll leave word for you in the morning.”

With that he closed the door. The walls were thick, so Llesho could not hear the general’s departing footsteps, but when he tried the door, he found it unlocked, and when he opened it, the room beyond was empty.

C HAPTER T HIRTY-FOUR

IN the morning, Llesho found a folded note sitting on a suit of clothes laid out for him to wear. The note said only, “The garden. One hour.”

He had a good idea who had put it there, and the garden must mean the altar of ChiChu at the Imperial Water Garden. But he didn’t know how long the note had been waiting for him to wake up. With a groan, he decided he didn’t have time for breakfast. Instead, he hurriedly pulled on the white quilted breeches and embroidered red silk jacket that General Shou meant him to wear. The black pearl he had received from Lleck was still where he had hidden it; he put it in the inside pocket of the jacket. Then, slipping his feet into a pair of woven sandals, he headed for the secret tunnels that would lead him to the palace square and the garden beyond.

As they had the day before, the guards he passed showed no interest in where he was going. The sun was well up when he slipped into the square, but few people were yet about their business or worship, and he made his way with few eyes to notice his departure. He soon found himself standing alone in front of the waterfall at the center of the Imperial Water Garden that represented Thousand Lakes Province in the city of Shan. General Shou was not there as Llesho had expected, nor was anyone else about who might have left him the note. For a moment he felt the prickle of danger raise the hair on his neck. Then he heard Bixei, talking to someone as he drew closer to Llesho’s position.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Bixei said, and Llesho heard a soft murmur in reply. Then the two came into sight. General Shou was dressed in robes of even more outrageous richness than the day before, and Bixei wore a suit of clothes almost identical to Llesho’s, except that his embroidered jacket was of blue silk rather than red.

“Is what a good idea?” Llesho asked. He didn’t have to stand up because he hadn’t bothered to sit while he waited; didn’t want to cover the seat of his white pants with dust before they’d even got started. “Kaydu went to the market square this morning to find out about the dancing bear,” Bixei answered. “Hmishi is tending Lling, who is well enough this morning to insist upon rising, but not sufficiently improved to actually get out of bed. Habiba and Master Den have both gone out of the city to check on the troops waiting there, which has left no one watching Master Markko.”

“That is not entirely correct.” General Shou did not explain what he meant by that. He studied Llesho carefully, and instructed, “Tuck in your chin. You must at least try to look like you are afraid of me, Llesho, or I will never be able to hold my head up in the slave markets again.”

“How can you carry yourself with pride while buying and selling human beings?” Llesho snapped at the general, but raised his right hand in a gesture of surrender. “Uncalled for, I know. I owe you this chance to find Adar. It is not my place to speak as your

“No, it isn’t,” Shou replied, and his tone was so distant, and so regal that Llesho had to look at him twice to find the general he knew inside the noble stranger who had briefly taken his place. Truly a disciple of the trickster god, with so many layers to him, Llesho wondered if he’d met the real man at their center even yet.

Without another word, Shou began walking. Llesho fell in step behind him, with Bixei at his side. They headed in the direction opposite from the one they had taken the day before, and Llesho realized they were going to enter the market square across from the slave block, nearer to the temple of The Seven. As they moved into the open, he saw Kaydu, clad in an extravagantly shiny set of clashing clothes, capering about while Little Brother, in the garb of the Imperial Guard, begged for coins with his tasseled cap in his paw. The crowd laughed as Kaydu performed some skit in which the “Imperial Guardsman” chittered at her in monkey language and danced on her head.

General Shou, Llesho noticed, was trying to suppress a smile, but his good humor vanished as they approached the Labor Exchange. The pens were full this morning; Llesho tried not to look at them, but still he felt the blood leave his face. The auction had already begun. People from more races than he had known existed, and dressed more strangely than he could have imagined, crowded the Shan market.

“Here’s a fine specimen, trained in the crafts of cabinetmaker and coffiner,” the auctioneer wheedled while with one hand he gestured at the auction block. A naked man with his hands chained behind his back shivered there in all his desolation. “Presentable enough for household use, strong enough for heavy labor.”

The crowd of potential buyers surged forward to inspect the bitter captive displayed for their examina-

Bixei looked about the market square, his eyes wide as teacups. He had been born into slavery and had come to Pearl Island by private purchase, so he had no memories of the market or the slave block to haunt him. Still, he turned his head so that he did not have to look at the man on the block. “They sound like cattle, moaning in their pens,” he observed softly.

“Oh, Goddess.” Llesho shivered, his teeth chattering, as he repeated, again, “Oh, Goddess, I can’t do this, Oh, Goddess. I can’t.”

Bixei stopped. He reached out to grab Llesho’s arm, but Llesho pulled away, screaming, “Don’t touch me!” as he retreated further into the agony of his past. Bixei stared at the ongoing auction and then at his companion, but he refused to imagine what it had been like to stand on the slave block.

“I think he is sick!” he informed General Shou between clenched teeth.

“Llesho!” General Shou wrapped a hand around his arm and shook him, hard, when he tried to pull away, until his eyes focused on the general’s face.

A woman came next to the block, trying with no success to hold her torn dress together over her breasts. Her weeping drew his gaze, but General Shou took Llesho’s chin in his fingers and held him so that he could not look to the block.

“That’s right,” Shou insisted. “No one is going to hurt you today. Just keep your eyes on me. A little pale is attractive, but we don’t want the trader to think you are diseased.”

Llesho nodded that he understood, and managed to walk between the slave pens at the general’s side, though he flinched. Each groan of misery struck him like a blow. Almost, he envied his sister, who had died in Kungol and had been spared the terror and the misery of the slave auction.

The countinghouse looked very different on trading day. The sliding panels that had separated the trading offices from the entry hall had been pushed aside to make one large room. Now the offices acted as privacy alcoves for conducting business. The room was crowded with Harnish traders and brokers shouting sums at one another and waving slips of paper and purses of coins. Llesho could not figure how they sorted out who had bought and who had sold and what the money changing hands had purchased.

Gradually, however, he realized that the desk on the right served a line of buyers awaited the completion of their transactions. At the desk on the left, sellers received their payment, calculated their commissions and taxes, and departed. The shouters seemed to be trying to strike private bargains with buyers and sellers both. The line of sellers seemed to be mostly Harnish, and Llesho backed away, ducking behind General Shou as if the traders would recognize him and kill him as the raiders had murdered his parents and his sister.

No one noticed them at all, however, until the general raised his voice. “Where is my lady trader?” he insisted with a nasal twang so high and petulant that Llesho did not recognize him. “She promises me a set of fine, plump boys, and a healer to doctor them!”

A few of the traders looked up from their record books and their accounts to give the general’s party a scornful examination before returning to their work, but no one seemed to care about the dandy prancing about with his mismatched boys.

Their trader of the day before, however, heard the demand for her attention, and scuttled over. “My lord!” she tucked her hands into her sleeves and bowed deeply before General Shou, a grin pasted on her painted lips. She narrowed her eyes when she caught sight of Bixei, and grabbed his jaw in her hand to count his teeth. “Hmmm,” she said, taking his measure with one cold glance.

“Pretty. He’s a bit too tall, and shows some wear—”

The latter she said with a well-chosen combination of sly admiration and motherly rebuke. “Some like sweeter flesh, but I can get you a good price. This one, too,” she pointed to Llesho and explained, “Thebin stock. He will look like an untried youth well past twenty summers.”

“I told you yesterday, old woman. I want to buy, not sell. If you don’t have what I want, I will find it elsewhere.”

Llesho gave the general a sharp glance, but the woman assured him with much hand-waving that he would have what he wanted. “This way,” she said, stopping in her tracks to look at Bixei again. “I can sell you a close match,” she bargained. “Female, if you like that sort. The height and skin tones are close enough. Brown hair; a bit of bleach would make a perfect match, but perhaps you’d rather color the girl.”

Bixei sniffed indignantly at her, but Shou petted him and gave the trader a simpering smile. “Perhaps next time; I’m looking for Thebins today.”

The trader’s shoulders sagged a bit as the prospect of a second sale to the rich but foolish customer faded. Llesho wondered if she would try again, but the trader opened a door at the very back of the countinghouse, and led them into a room empty but for two men standing at a small table. The taller, slimmer man with the tanned, chiseled features in the simply cut jacket and breeches of a gentleman farmer came forward to greet them. His shorter, darker companion in the robe of a healer remained out of the light, a little behind his master.

Llesho had schooled his expression to remain neutral when he saw his brother. He said nothing when the tall man approached General Shou and bowed formally, but Llesho noted the flare around the nostrils, the sudden whitening around his lips. Adar recognized him, and was keeping his own counsel as well.

“I understand you wish to purchase a Thebin healer,” Adar said, and Llesho stared at him in confusion.

“I am in need of such a one in my household, yes,” Shou answered, a proprietary hand on Llesho’s shoulder.

The tall man’s eyes narrowed, but he shrugged in a show of indifference. “I am not selling,” he said.

“You said you were interested in the offer,” the trader huffed, and Adar, masquerading as a farmer, quieted her with a gesture. “I am interested,” he said. “I have a mind to purchase the boy.”

“Then perhaps it is time to show our bids.” Shou pulled a coin purse from his belt and took out three gold coins, which he set on the table between the bidders.

Adar held out a hand to his attendant. When the second man moved out of his shadow to put a stack of coins on Adar’s outstretched palm, Llesho gasped.

“Shokar,” he said, and the tears he had been holding back spilled down his face. “Shokar.”

Llesho pushed his way passed the general. Bixei reached to stop him, but he slipped by him, and lunged for the short, stocky stranger, burying his face in the man’s shoulder.

“Llesho?” the man whispered, and the other, Adar, stepped in front of the two so that he could hide their embrace at almost the same moment that Llesho realized the danger they were in.

“Sell!” he whispered to his older brother, and released Shokar with a blush and an apology.

“It has been so long since I have seen someone new from my own lands,” he explained, bowing as deeply as he could to the general. “I did not mean to distress your lordship.”

“The exuberance of youth!” The general waved a hand. “Show such enthusiasm when we return home, and it will not go ill for you.” Shou placed the gold coins in the hand of the trader with a smile. “For your trouble,” he told her. “We will continue this negotiation over wine, I think.”

Adar said nothing for a moment, and Llesho urged him silently to agree. Finally, the healer nodded.

“I have rooms nearby.” The general bowed as he offered his hospitality. “And the wine is excellent. If we can come to no permanent agreement, perhaps you will do me the favor of having your man look at my boy.”

Adar who wore the clothing of the master rather than the slave, seemed little inclined to trust the offer. Taking advantage of the cover Adar gave him, Llesho reached out and pressed his fingers against his brother’s hand, signaling reassurance, he hoped. Adar finally bowed his agreement.

The trader narrowed her eyes, but General Shou, in his disguise as a merchant, returned her suspicion with a guileless smile. He took another coin out of the purse and handed it over. “For your efforts on my behalf, and so that you will remember me if you see something to my taste cross your block,” he said.

Llesho was amazed at how stupid the general looked at that moment, but it seemed to disarm the trader, who bit into the coin with her cracked teeth and pronounced herself happy to be of service to his lordship. With much bowing, they made their way back through the press of commerce at the front of the countinghouse, and found themselves once again in the market square.

“The boys must be hungry,” Shou announced, still in the guise of the foolish merchant. He made his way across the square toward Darit’s booth, and waved four fingers in the air to order four of her wonderful breads. When they drew close enough to reach their food, she gave General Shou a crinkling smile. “You’ve collected another one, I see.” She handed Bixei and Llesho two each of the delicacies, and then held out a fifth, wrapped in paper, to Shou himself. “I have a new filling I thought you might like to try.”

She gave a loud laugh which did not startle her customers at all, who were used to her manner, but her eyes were serious. Llesho thought he read a warning in their depths. General Shou’s smile likewise did not move beyond the mechanical flexing of his mouth, which caused Llesho to wonder what Darit was to the general, besides a source of delicious food.

Shou did not say anything, however, but tucked the packet into his coat. “Do you still want to see the dancing bear?” he asked. Shokar tensed, and Adar placed a comforting hand on Llesho’s shoulder. Both men were surprised when Llesho answered around a mouthful of food: “Yes! I hope we are able to see the monkey as well!”

“Your master seems very kind,” Adar ventured in low tones as their party skirted the shops of the cloth merchants, which were again blocked by the laughing crowds.

“He’s an unusual man,” Llesho agreed. He had picked up on the general’s guarded study of the crowds in the marketplace, and it had heightened his own alertness. He wondered what the general saw that he did not know enough to recognize.

Shou led them around the crowd, and up the steps of the impoverished Temple of The Seven Gods on the far side of the crowd.

Adar gave him a strange look, but held his tongue when Llesho frowned, darting quick glances over the heads of the crowds.

“Soldiers,” Llesho muttered, and Shokar communicated his surprise and his question with a raised eyebrow. Llesho shrugged, trying to put “later” in the gesture. The troops were not wearing the uniforms of guard or militia, but soldiers going into battle carried themselves as no one else in Llesho’s experience. And if that were true, there were too many of them in the market square. And far too many wore the garb of Harnish traders.

At the center of the laughing crowd, a monkey in the uniform of an Imperial Guard did backflips on the shoulders of a brown bear. Kaydu carried a basket which she stuck under the noses of the audience, many of whom had a coarse word or joke about the uniform the monkey wore. A slim young woman in a long, flowing gown sat on the steps, smiling at the antics of the bear, but watching the crowd with careful, attentive eyes. She looked like Mara, except that she was too young, too straight and slim to be the old healer woman. But she had Mara’s face and Mara’s eyes. She caught Llesho’s glance and rose from her perch, skipping down the steps with light dance moves.

“Come back later!” she called to the crowd as she took the bear’s paw in her hand and danced him once around the little open circle. Kaydu finished her collection with a flourishing bow, and gathered Little Brother to her as the bear and its leader danced their way around the corner of the temple.

General Shou waited only until the market performers were out of sight before ducking into the temple. Bixei followed, and Llesho came after with Adar and Shokar.

“That didn’t go quite as I’d planned it,” Shou remarked. “What exactly were you doing, Llesho?”

The two newcomers stepped between Llesho and the man they took to be a merchant, but Llesho responded to the familiar commanding tone with a quick snap to attention.

“May I present my brothers,” he said, stepping between them and bowing to the general. “Adar, the healer of whom I have often spoken—” he smiled and gestured at the taller man, “—and Shokar, whom I had thought lost to us.”

Shou made a bow to the brothers, and would have spoken, except that a priest of the temple approached.

a frown creasing his forehead. “As always, you come to us with trouble close behind,” the priest said.

“Master Markko’s people?” Shou skinned out of his merchant’s robe. Under it he wore his uniform and had a sword strapped to his side.

“He does seem to be in the thick of it.” The priest took the merchant’s robe and handed Shou his helmet. “And he seems to command not just the remnant of the force he brought from Farshore Province, but Har-nish raiders as well, scattered among the honest tradesmen in the marketplace.”

“A man would have to be mad to trust the Harn as allies,” Adar swore heatedly.

“Mad he may be,” Llesho agreed, “but no less dangerous for it.”

His brothers stared at him, surprised at the force and confidence of his words. Their surprise turned to astonishment when Kaydu skidded into the temple. She had shed her fool’s costume, and wore the uniform of Thousand Lakes Province. Little Brother sat on her shoulder, his paws clinging around her neck, and the bear from the marketplace scampered at her heels. The bear’s companion from the marketplace followed at a more sedate pace.

“Mara?” Llesho asked Kaydu.

The stranger answered, with a smile. “I’m Carina, Mara’s daughter. But my companion is an old friend of yours.”

“Lleck?” Llesho whispered. The cub nuzzled his hand and moaned, “Lleeee-shooooo!”

“Lleck?” Shokar choked on the name. “You have named a dancing bear after our father’s chief adviser?”

Llesho shrugged with a rueful smile. “Not exactly.”

“Shoooooo-karrrrrr?” the bear sniffed at his hand. “Shoookarrrrr!”

Shokar gasped. “That bear said my name!”

“It is Lleck,” Llesho explained, “our father’s ad-viser. He has taken the form of a bear as protector until Thebin is regained.”

Adar looked shaken and seemed about to speak, but General Shou was addressing Kaydu, and Llesho turned to listen.

“Are the emperor’s troops holding?” Shou asked her.

“They are outnumbered,” she gasped. “My father is bringing his reinforcements from outside the city.”

“We need time,” the general muttered. “We have to hold Markko to the square.”

A second priest joined them, and Llesho grinned when he saw the bundles he carried. “Is that my sword?” he asked. The bundle was wrapped in his Thebin coat and he unbound the pack and put on his coat first. His sword belt and sheath followed; Llesho drew the sword and loosened his wrist by twirling the weapon in small circles pointed at the floor.

Shokar was still confused, but one thing seemed clear. “I take it you are not the pampered pleasure slave of a stupid Shannish merchant, then?” he asked dryly.

“No, brother.” Llesho flashed a predatory grin that was new to him since the battle with Master Markko on the border of Shan Province. He drew his Thebin knife and tossed it in the air, catching it again by the hilt and casting about with it to measure the balance of it in his hand. Bixei was testing the heft of his spear, and Kaydu had drawn her sword and taken up a trident with it.

“Are you certain of what you are doing?” Shokar asked his brother. “You’re just a boy. This temple would surely protect you if there is to be fighting.”

“I’m a soldier,” Llesho answered with a shrug. “And it is my battle as much as Shan Province’s. Master Markko followed me here. If he now conspires with the Harn, all of Shan may soon fall under the same yoke as Thebin.”

Shokar pulled off his healer’s robe and handed it to Adar. Beneath the robe, he wore his own sword belted to his waist, and he loosened it in its scabbard. “Would you mind if I joined you, then?” he asked, with a bow to General Shou.

“Be my guest,” the general invited him with a tight smile.

They had begun to move, following the priest to the back of the temple, when the first priest returned bearing a slim burden in his hands.

“This was delivered for you, young master.” The priest bowed and unwrapped the oiled cloths that protected the short spear contained within.

Llesho shuddered.

“Is that what I think it is?” Adar asked, his voice grown husky with awe.

“I don’t know what it is, except that her ladyship has bid me carry it, and that I feel my own death clinging to it like a cobra waiting to strike.” He thrust the weapon into his brother’s hands.

Pain crossed Adar’s face, but he did not let the spear fall, even when it blistered his palm.

“Why is it doing that?” Horrified, Llesho snatched it back, too late to save his brother from the hurt that bubbled on his hand.

“Because it belongs to you.” Adar smiled, though his hand must still hurt.

Llesho didn’t want to understand, but they had run out of time, and Carina was leading his brother away with words soothing as the burble of a dove: “My mother has taught me much of her herb lore, and the tending of wounds.”

Torn between protecting his brother and his own duty to the battle’s wounded soon to come, Adar hesitated.

“Go,” Llesho said. “If we win, there will be time to talk later. If we lose, we already know what we needed to say.”

“Go with the goddess,” Adar whispered his farewell like a prayer.

Still as stone, General Shou waited until Carina had taken the wounded healer away.

“It’s time,” he said, and led their small force out of the temple.

C HAPTER T HIRTY-FIVE

IN the market square Harnish raiders had drawn their short, thick swords. The soldiers who had marched from Farshore with Master Markko brandished the more familiar weapons they had kept hidden under their disguises until the signal ordered them into action. Llesho figured they had expected only the weak opposition of shopkeepers and their customers in the square.

But General Shou had laid his plans carefully, and the invaders found themselves confronting grim-faced Imperial Guardsmen who threw off their own disguises and fought to defend their homes and their families. The very auction block at the center of the marketplace served as a reminder of Harn’s treatment of its conquests, and civilians fought alongside the emperor’s guards with any implement they could find.

Stalls overturned in the fray spilled food and trinkets and pots and pans onto the square. Wares scattered underfoot as raiders hacked at the proprietors with their swords. Llesho saw the food vendor Darit hit a Harnish raider over the head with a heavy copper platter and then swing her makeshift weapon in the face of another soldier.

Finally she whirled it like a discus at a Harnishman who directed the action of his raiders from the auction block. He went down, spilling blood from a deep gash in his brow and Darit was over her counter, with a chopping knife in one hand and a bone cleaver in the other. He lost sight of her when Markko’s troops rushed his own position on the steps of the temple.

“Can you fight?” he asked Shokar, who stood at his shoulder.

“For you, I can fight,” Shokar answered, and drew his own Thebin knife. He took the two-handed defensive stance of the Thebin fighter, sword raised, knife extended, and soon proved his worth. A band of soldiers in the uniform of Lord Yueh’s guards rushed their position, laying about them with bloodied swords. From the determined savagery of their attack, Llesho knew they had but one objective: to bring down Master Markko’s chosen prey at all costs.

Llesho slashed with his knife, jumped out of range of a swinging sword, and jabbed with his own long blade. He heard his brother grunt with the exertion of wielding his weapons. Shokar did not move with Llesho’s practiced ease, but he had not forgotten all he had learned as a young man in Thebin.

Bixei fought at his right side, his battle cry a low growl in his throat. Kaydu screeched like the spirits of the thirsty dead as she cleared the steps on his right. Llesho whipped around to take on the next assault, and discovered that for the moment they had driven back their attackers.

Trying to catch his breath and his senses at the same time, Llesho looked about him in dismay. General Shou had placed cadres of Imperial Guardsmen in disguise throughout the square, but they were seriously outnumbered. Though the emperor’s men strove valiantly to contain the attack, the Harnish raiders pressed outward, unstoppable in their attempt to escape the square and join up with reinforcements flooding into the square from the streets of the city.

Already two of the Harnish bands had drawn off from the fighting, making for the eastern corner of the square, from which a tangle of paths and roads led to the palace. In the chaos of the fighting, he had no intelligence about how many Harnish reinforcements lurked in the city, or if they waged their battle against the palace as well as in the market square. It must have been like this on the streets of Kungol, he thought, except that the Thebin palace had no high walls to protect it, nor a standing army to defend it.

Even in Shan, however, too much lay vulnerable to attack. The thought of the Imperial Water Garden trampled in battle burned in his chest. His own imagination would have paralyzed him then, but General Shou shook him out of his thoughts. “Hold fast, if you can,” Shou directed Llesho’s little band. “Don’t let the Harn join their forces in the city.” Then he disappeared into the fray.

Llesho took a quick survey of their position. The temple stood at one corner of the market square. They had themselves come out a side door and down a small alley, which the priests had cluttered after them with baskets and old cooking pots to delay the enemy. A wide avenue on the far side of the building would be much harder to secure, however. With the point of his sword, he directed Bixei and Kaydu to the more open position. He would have sent Shokar with them, but his brother read his mind and gave him a baleful glare.

“Harry them and fall back,” he told his two guards. “We cannot hope to hold for long, but we can make them pay in blood for every step they win.”

General Shou had gathered to himself a small troop of Imperial Guards, still dressed as peasant farmers come to sell their wares. These farmers, however, wielded swords instead of plowshares, and they followed the general, defending the roads that led to the palace. If the city fell, Llesho knew, all of the Shan Empire fell with it, and all hope that they might free Thebin as well. Though his arm had grown heavy, he raised his sword in fighting position again, his Thebin knife held poised for the next attack. He would stop Master Markko and his allies or die in the attempt.

Although the Thebin princes were badly outnumbered, no enemy could touch them. Pressed on all sides, Llesho moved without thought, one with his blades and the rhythm of his deadly dance. Blood slicked the paving stones and he slipped, righted himself before he fell, and plunged his knife to the hilt into the throat of a soldier. The man opened his mouth to scream, but only blood spewed forth, and a death rattle as he strove to draw breath while drowning in his own blood.

The knife had caught on bone, and Llesho could not pull it free. For an almost fatal second he held on, while the falling man dragged Llesho’s arm down with it, leaving the heart in his breast an open target. A spear came toward him out of the melee, was knocked away by his brother’s sword but not before the tip had drawn blood. Shocked at how close he had come to losing his life, Llesho abandoned the knife along with the body of the Harnish raider and turned to the next attacker, then the next, until he and Shokar were surrounded by a ring of wary soldiers held at bay by the swords of their prey.

For a moment the battle seemed to pause, as if the world held its breath, and Llesho became aware of the bodies, and the gore, and his own hands, slick with blood up to the elbow, gripping the hilt of his sword between them. On one knee, his brother gasped for breath, and Llesho felt his own blood trickle down his cheek, though he did not remember the strike that had cut him. Stealing a glance toward his companions who struggled to hold the wide boulevard, he raised his head, a triumphant grimace turning his blood-smeared face into a death mask Hnhiha’c tiwrwie k»<i

arrived, orderly columns of them passing into the square from the main road at each of the four corners. “Surrender!” Llesho demanded. His attackers followed Llesho’s gloating stare, and struck again with a fervor fueled by their desperation. It was now or never, he realized. Of the two choices that confronted them, most of the enemy soldiers would rather face death at Llesho’s hand than the slow, lingering torment they would suffer from Master Markko if they failed.

Shokar struggled to his feet, but his sword dragged heavily at an arm leaden with fatigue. Llesho shifted closer to his brother. He didn’t have to win, he told himself, he needed only to hold off the attack until Habiba’s men had secured the road. He would have reinforcements, if he could just keep his brother alive for a few minutes more. A sword slipped past his guard and cut him under the arm, but he rallied and knocked it away before it could do more than scratch the skin. He heard Kaydu’s voice urging him to hold, but her words were cut off by the sudden cry of a great bird.

The creature swooped from the sky with talons stretched; Master Markko’s own men dropped to their faces in terror as the beast flew at his prey. Llesho raised his sword over his head to stop the beast, which opened its beak to cry its scorn and defiance. With one powerful foot it swept aside Llesho’s sword, and with the other it tore past his shoulder, talons gouging deep gashes from Llesho’s throat to his hip.

Llesho grunted and fell, at the mercy of the bird, his sight blurring as the curved beak drew closer.

/ will tear out your heart, and eat it in the market square.

Though the bird could not speak, Llesho heard the words in his mind. So this is dying, he answered, and heard again Master Markko’s answer in his mind: Among cowards and weaklings, yes; this is dying.

He felt the piercing pain as the beak cut into the flesh over his heart, and then he heard a growl behind him.

“Lleeee-shhhoooo!”

Lleck! The bear raised up on his hind legs and howled over his fallen charge, the spittle flying from his long, sharp fangs. With his claws extended like curved knives, he swatted at the bird, raking long streaks of blood across its feathered breast. It seemed then that he was cradling the bird, for both huge arms wrapped about its wings, pressing it down, until the full weight of bird and bear crashed to the paving stones at Llesho’s feet.

The bird redirected its attack, raking Lleck’s thick pelt with claw and beak. Lleck cried out and lowered his head over the neck of the magician, who changed himself into smoke as the bear’s teeth clamped together. Taking solid form again, the invincible bird of prey that Master Markko had become transformed again, growing the head of a lion and the long, spiked tail of a serpent held aloft by the feathered wings of the bird. The creature fell upon the bear and locked its teeth into the back of his head.

The lion jaws tightened. Bone crunched. Lleck bellowed one last anguished cry and the light went out of his eyes.

“No!” Llesho cried, while Markko’s insane laughter filled his head.

He had lost his sword and a good deal of blood. Llesho stood and faced the creature of his nightmares with no hope of victory, only a determination to take the evil creature before him into hell. As his bloody end drew near, however, Llesho saw a woman standing just above him on the temple steps. Carina, the young healer, defied the monster with calm, sure eyes. Unarmed, she raised both hands above her head, chanting some prayer of supplication. Although he knew she must follow him quickly into death, he was unaccountably comforted by the sight of her.

In that moment of peace, the short spear from her ladyship pressed a reminder against his side. He drew it. “Die!” He screamed, “Die! You twisted demon out of hell. Die!”

He plunged the spear into the side of the monster, and it screamed, dripping gouts of blood that steamed and blackened the paving stones where it fell. Enraged, the creature writhed away from the weapon and rose into the sky, still shrieking in pain and fury.

Suddenly an answering roar filled the sky and made the very temple shake. A horde of dragons filled the sky, the Golden River Dragon in the lead, a smaller silver queen following with three younger dragons behind her. The dragons separated at the market square, the younger ones fanning out into city, while the silver queen descended upon the battle being waged before the palace.

The Golden River Dragon, vastly larger and more terrible than the magical apparition that Master Mar-kko had created, fell in a steep dive aimed right at the magician. The dragon’s roar spat fire into the marketplace, and Shannish citizens as well as Harnish raiders fell to the ground, cowering with their hands over their heads. Markko’s beast roared an answering challenge.

The two unearthly creatures met, the long and sinuous body of the dragon tangling with the lashing tail of the beast in the air above the market square. As they tore at each other, the patched-together beast of Master Markko’s creation struggled frantically for the advantage. The larger and more powerful Golden Dragon thrashed its tail in anger. Up, up, they flew, until they were just glittering specks in a sharp blue sky. Then a path of flame reached out, and the fiercely struggling monsters were falling, growing larger and larger. A scream rose to shatter the sky, and the beast that was Master Markko vanished.

With a last trumpeting bellow of victory, the Golden Dragon circled lightly on a thermal created by his own fiery breath. Lazily he floated to a soft landing in the square, and lowered his head at the feet of Carina, the young healer, on the temple steps.

“Father.” She kissed him between his smoking nostrils, and tapped him sharply where she had placed the kiss. “Time to let Mother go.”

The dragon’s eyes sparkled in the sun, a deeper glint than his golden scales. He opened his huge mouth as wide as the temple doors, and belched. From his throat a querulous voice drifted.

“Wretched beast. I don’t know what I ever saw in you. Put me down.” Mara, but as they had never seen her before, walked out of the dragon’s gorge and stood on his tongue, arms folded over her singed and smoking garments, while he gently put her down. She looked taller than she had in the forest, her back straight and her hair black instead of gray. She did not look young, but neither did she look old. In fact, traveling in the belly of a dragon seemed to agree with her.

“Thank you, Father.” Carina hugged her mother and patted the giant head of the Golden River Dragon.

“Where is your sister dragon, old husband?” Mara asked the dragon.

Llesho did not find out if the dragon could in fact answer the question, because at that moment the silver queen descended lightly at the foot of the temple steps. His vision blurred, and Llesho wiped his eyes, leaving a bloody streak across his forehead. “Am I hallucinating?” he wondered. No silver dragon stood beside the golden monster, but Kwan-ti, the healer he had thought lost at Pearl Island.

“Llesho. You look awful.” She brushed his hair out of his eyes and pursed her lips in displeasure. “Three healers standing about whiJe the young prince bleeds unattended.”

“You were dead—” He resisted her urging toward the door. “This is some kind of trick!”

“Never dead,” she answered with an enigmatic smile. “A trick, yes, but the same trick it was when you knew me as Kwan-ti.”

“You saved my life.” Llesho remembered the sea dragon that had come to him when he had tried to die in the bay. It was not a moment he wished to relive, and Kwan-ti acknowledged it with a bow of her head, but did not intrude the memory upon him further.

“The children have returned to Golden River, brother,” she addressed the Golden Dragon with a sad droop to her shoulders. “The sea around Pearl Island still reeks of death. You will take care of them until it is safe for them to come home?”

The dragon nodded his head in an affirmative. With an affectionate snort of curling smoke, he hauled his body into the open square, picking his way carefully among the fallen, too many dead for Llesho to count in his dazed condition. Survivors helped their more severely wounded brethren out of the dragon’s path, more frightened of their terrible ally than they had been of the battle.

When the Golden River Dragon lifted on his powerful wings, the wind he created in his passing nearly knocked Llesho to his knees. Falling down seemed like a good idea, but while he could stand, he needed to find his companions. Shokar sat at the head of the bear who had saved Llesho’s life, stroking the fur between Lleck’s ears. The prince did not seem to have any physical wounds on him. Shokar was no soldier, however; the horrors of battle had almost broken him.

Slowly, the living converged on the temple. Stupid with the shock, Llesho watched them ascend the wide steps and enter the sanctuary. Though weary and bleak, Kaydu and Bixei seemed unhurt as well.

“You must come inside,” Mara reminded him. “Those wounds need tending.” “Soon.”

Carina and Kwan-ti had already entered the temple, following the wounded who would need their care, but Mara waited at Llesho’s side as Kaydu drew up before them to report.

“Did the general make it?”

“I don’t know.” Kaydu shrugged, not indifferent, but helpless to offer greater assurances. “Maybe he’s already inside.”

Bixei took Shokar by the arm and drew him away from their dead companion. Together the four entered the temple, where the wounded were laid out in rows on the floor. Llesho scanned the rows, seeking Adar as he had with scrapes and minor hurts when he was a child.

“Llesho, you’ve been hurt.” Adar came to them, and touched his arm.

“The brother. Good.” Mara nodded with satisfaction and left them to offer aid among the injured groaning on their mats.

The tension in the pit of Llesho’s stomach relaxed. “When you have time.” He waved a careless hand and dropped it to his side again, suddenly realizing that he was brandishing the short spear in his bloody fist. “I just need to sleep.”

Adar used his hold on Llesho’s arm to guide him deeper into the temple. “Now,” Adar said. “Before you bleed out on the priest’s nice floor.”

Llesho hadn’t realized he was still bleeding, but he accepted Adar’s word, and followed him to the bandaging station. “I’m glad you’re alive,” Adar told him, and Llesho let his head drop on the curve of his brother’s shoulder.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Llesho agreed. And then he fainted.

C HAPTER T HIRTY-SIX

SHADOWS moved through the darkness, broken only by the dim glow of scattered lamps and the weak moans of the wounded. At Llesho’s head, a heavier darkness sat, solid and reassuring. Shokar snored lightly. Tomorrow, the healers said, Llesho could leave the makeshift infirmary set up in the Temple of The Seven Mortal Gods. He would be taking with him his brother, who refused to leave his side, and his guards, who refused to accept any defense of his sleep but their own. Bixei had assumed guard duty at the front entrance to the temple and Kaydu had watched over the secret entrance into the side alley. Torn between his duty and Lling who had joined them after the battle at the palace, Hmishi had spent days pacing the length of the long hall from her bedside to the entrance onto the square and back again. When the companions paused in their vigilance to meet the new princes and tell their stories, Shokar had listened with avid horror. Alternately, he’d berated Llesho for the chances he had taken and scolded Adar to check Llesho’s wounds for proper healing and signs of lingering damage. Llesho forgave the healers their unseemly relief at his recovery; his protectors were starting to get on his nerves as well. And, much as he loved his brother, Sho-kar’s worry was driving him mad. These few moments of contemplative silence while his brother slept nearby were precious. Not as dear as the opportunity to speak with Adar, however. The healer sank to the floor beside him with a wry smile mellowed by the lamplight.

“He just wants you to be safe.” Adar gave the sleeping prince an indulgent smile.

“I love him, too.” Llesho sighed. “But there is no safety anywhere for us. And I am not a child he can protect from the truth.”

Adar laughed softly. “Convincing Shokar that you are no longer a seedling of seven summers will take stronger magic than either of us possess.

“As for the danger,” the healer shook his head, sorrow creasing his features, “Shokar has always blamed himself that he was not in Kungol when the Harn attacked.”

“The raiders would have killed him.” Shokar could have rallied the Thebin people to his cause; the Harn would never have let him live.

“He’s not a coward,” Adar said, as if that needed explaining, “but he is a man of peace. A farmer. And when he saw you in the countinghouse, he truly believed the goddess had given him a second chance at redemption. If you died, it would surely destroy him.”

“I do understand.” Llesho closed his eyes, weary and achy, and unwilling to think about it anymore. “But I can’t stay.”

Adar patted his shoulder. “Sleep,” he said.

Llesho decided it was just too much work to open his eyes. In the distance he heard the soft voices of the priests, and a name—ChiChu, god of laughter and tears—called. And it seemed that the god answered in Master Den’s voice. But that must be a dream, and then it was a dream.

And then it was morning, and Master Den was standing at the foot of Llesho’s pallet, roaring for him to get up, no time to waste on sleeping. He dropped a stack of linen beside him, and Llesho noted that the clothes were day wear of her ladyship’s household, neither the uniform he had fought in nor the house pet disguise he had worn on the day of the battle. And he did not know where Lleck’s pearl had gone. Llesho moved stiffly, and the sharp pain when he lifted his arms to slip into his shirt was explanation enough of his pallor. General Shou had advised him to confide in Master Den, but he could hardly do so while surrounded by his well-meaning companions. But if he could discover the whereabouts of his other possessions, perhaps he would find the pearl there as well.

“My weapons?” he asked. “And the gifts her ladyship returned to me?”

Den had not been there when her ladyship had given Llesho the short spear and the jadeite cup, but he knew of them nevertheless. “In your room at the palace,” he said, “with whatever other valuables you may have acquired on your journey.”

That sounded like Master Den knew more than he was telling, but he couldn’t ask about it here.

“General Shou?” he said, one thought turning on another, “Was he hurt? Has anyone seen him since the battle?”

Kaydu shifted Little Brother in her arms and shook her head. “The last time I saw him, he was exhorting us to hold the square.”

“I saw him in the palace before I joined you here,” Lling added. “He seemed unhurt, and was directing the Imperial Guard in a street-by-street search to rout out the last of the Harnish spies.”

Llesho had known the fighting wasn’t over with the first battle, and he felt foolish for feeling let down that the man hadn’t come to see him.

“And Mara is well?” He still had trouble believing that the healer had lived through what had seemed like certain death on the Golden Dragon River.

“Mara will say nothing about her travels in the belly of the Golden Dragon,” Lling offered, “but she smiles rather more than seems appropriate for someone who has met a horrible fate at the hands of a monster.”

Llesho laughed, whether at Lling’s indignation or Mara’s satisfaction with her travel arrangements he wasn’t sure. He’d thought laughing would hurt his chest more than it did, but apparently he really was getting better. If he could erase the memory of the terrible beak digging at his chest to tear his heart out, he would consider himself well served.

As it was, he wished with all the heart that remained to him that he could talk to Master Den. The washerman sensed something that Llesho was thinking. “Let’s get you back home,” he said, and dropped a hand on Llesho’s shoulder. Llesho wondered what home he meant, but decided he would settle for his room at the palace.

The market square was bright with morning sunshine and the sound of clashing cymbals and ringing bells. A crowd had gathered, and Llesho craned his neck from his place on the temple steps to see what was passing. Carina stood on the step just below his, a shawl held tightly at her throat. She looked a lot like her mother, cloaked in the same strength and dignity, but it was softer in the younger woman. Everything about Carina was softer, even her hair, which she wore in a long braid wrapped around her head. Llesho realized he wanted to touch the shining braid, but he restrained himself with some horror at how improper such longing must be in a young prince.

“The emperor is passing,” she told him with a bright smile that did funny things to his insides that Lling’s voice had never done, even when he considered being to her what Hmishi had become.

It took an effort of will, but he turned his eyes away from her face, and looked out into the square, where troops of Imperial Guards were passing in review. At their head, in a gold-encrusted chariot, rode the emperor, his robes so richly decorated that Llesho wondered if the man inside of them could move at all, or whether he just stood like the center support of some elaborate statue. The royal headdress of the Shan Empire was no simple crown, but an ancient helmet that covered the sides of the face and the chin, and flared at the shoulders and over the forehead to protect the wearer’s face. The helmet was black, with gold and jewels worked into it. So dazzling was the display of wealth and power that Llesho almost didn’t recognize the man under it.

“General Shou?” Llesho muttered.

Kaydu had followed him out of the temple, and she’d come to her own conclusions: “He looks like General Shou. They could be brothers.” She gave Llesho a measuring frown. “They look more like brothers than you and Adar, at any rate.”

“He said once that he was a member of the nobility,” Llesho offered her the weak explanation, but inside, he knew. General Shou was the Emperor of Shan and for some reason, he had kept that knowledge from Llesho and his party while he roamed the city with them. He’d even fought in Habiba’s war under a false identity. Llesho wanted an explanation. First, however, he wanted his pearl back, and the few other possessions that were supposed to be waiting for him in the palace.

He did not immediately get his wish. After the emperor’s procession had passed, his own party made their way to the palace and, for a change, presented themselves at the Ministry of Government for entrance. The clerk who guarded the gate assured them that they were expected within. Unfortunately, he determined that, as they represented no recognized government, neither Llesho nor his brothers carried any standing sufficient to gain entrance to the palace. Master Den, as a former general and adviser to the emperor’s army had had the necessary rank at one time, but unless he carried a present rank in that army, he could not be admitted either.

As the daughter of the representative of Thousand Lakes Province and Farshore Province, Kaydu, however, had the necessary position for admittance. With a sweep of her hand, Kaydu declared the rest of their party, princes and general and soldiers alike, her personal servants. They had no sooner entered the palace as a group than they were separated again, Llesho’s guard to a wide hallway with gilt panels, and Llesho down a darker, more forbidding passage, into a room that the prince knew from his first explorations of the palace. He had thought the room a private one for the questioning of Shou’s spies. It had a few chairs and a small table, but nothing more to see or hold the attention. Shokar trembled with fine tremors of terror but refused to be separated from his brother.

Llesho knew the way to his room in the palace from here. He tried the panel to the outer hall, but the two guards that waited there with swords drawn would not let him pass this time. The recent battle had left them all, on both sides of the door, too ready to fight. Llesho shook his head and withdrew.

He didn’t have to wait long, however. A panel opened in the opposite wall, and Shou walked through, wearing comfortable robes that suited neither the general nor the emperor, but ably fit the man. Shokar bowed deeply to the emperor, but Llesho didn’t move. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought Lleck taught you better than that,” the emperor chided him. He sat in one of the stiff wooden armchairs, threw one booted leg over the arm, and tossed a peach into the air, absently catching it with no thought to regal dignity, but exuding a lethal menace without even trying.

In spite of his apparent informality, this face of the man scared Llesho more than any of the others he had seen, because he had a sick feeling that this was the real thing. He blushed, feeling foolish for having asked the question. He knew the answer, really. “I suppose you wanted to see for yourself if I was who Habiba said I was, or if it was some sort of plot. But you could not trust to official appearances.”

“Part of it, yes.” The emperor waited. “You wanted to know if I was worth taking a stand for.”

“Not that.” The emperor was laughing softly, but with no humor. “Shan could not afford to acknowledge your claim under any circumstances, however true and worthy that claim might be.”

“It didn’t matter, then? That my claims for Thebin are true.” The reminder of that truth was carved over Llesho’s heart, and he laid a protective hand over the bandages that covered his chest.

“Oh, yes, it did matter.” Shou wasn’t laughing now. His face was hard and his eyes looked past Llesho, into some time or place that was closed to his questioner. “We have won a small skirmish, but the war remains to be fought. And while the Harn press at our borders, we cannot give the Prince of Thebin what he wants.”

“And what is that?”

“Thebin, of course.” Shou—it was hard not to think of him that way—let go of an exasperated sigh and swung his leg off the chair. “But privately, as a man who speaks to a man, and not as an emperor who speaks to a deposed prince, we can acknowledge mutual interest in the downfall of our shared enemy.” “How does that help either of us?”

“It has already helped Shan.” General Shou—the emperor—stood with a predatory grin that showed all his teeth and led them to the panel that had been denied them earlier. “Master Markko has failed in his attempt to throw down the empire. The Harn have failed to garner the spoils of their puppet’s campaign, and must return to their plotting. Thebin isn’t the problem of Shan’s emperor.”

“Then how am I to go home?”

“The way you had planned to do it originally, but with a bit more help than I should be giving you,” Shou admitted. He frowned at Llesho and sighed. When he slid the panel open, the guard entered with sword drawn. Llesho swallowed around the dry lump in his throat, but the emperor dismissed the man with a careless wave.

“I had planned to offer my services to the guard detail of a trade caravan leaving for the West,” Llesho explained as he followed the emperor down a hall that looked far too shabby and unused to be a part of the formal palace. It looked more like they were wandering through more of those hidden passageways that riddled the place like an abandoned beehive.

“And so you will.” Shou stopped in front of a sturdy looking door and pressed the release. “Actually, the Harn raiders fell right into our hands with their little raid. The traders who organize the caravans have already approached the palace for protection along the route.”

Inside the room behind the door, three women waited at a table on which were spread all of Llesho’s missing belongings: his knife and sword and his bow and arrows, the jadeite cup and the short spear from her ladyship, and inside the cup, Lleck’s black pearl. Llesho first took inventory of his possessions, not because he cared about their material value, but because he knew they were somehow vital to his quest. But he did not touch them, looking instead to the women who waited for his acknowledgment.

“Your ladyship.” He bowed to the woman who had tested him on Pearl Island, and who had taught him archery. She wore clothes of white and green and blue, diaphanous layers that blended into the murky water colors of the Imperial Water Garden.

“SienMa.” She received his bow with a tilt of her head, and set another pearl, the match to the one he had received from Lleck’s ghost in Pearl Bay, into the cup.

SienMa. One of the Seven Mortal Gods, the goddess of war. Llesho shivered.

“Kwan-ti.” Trembling, he bowed again, this time to the middle woman, dressed in silver, and with sparks of liquid silver in her hair. Kwan-ti had already shown herself as a dragon queen; but was she a goddess as well?

“Pearl Bay Dragon,” she revealed her true name with a nod, and a rueful smile. “You already have my gift, I am afraid. Your wily ghost stole it while my attention was elsewhere.”

Lleck’s pearl. Llesho blushed. The third woman, dressed in gold, he had lately seen walking from the mouth of the Golden River Dragon. Was no one who they seemed? “Mara.”

“And Mara I am,” she said, “a seeker. Aspiring to be the eighth.” She, too, set a black pearl, the match of the others, into the jadeite cup. “Since the coming of the Harn to Thebin, the gates of heaven are sealed to us. We cannot return to serve the goddess as is our duty, and the goddess can reach us only in dreams.”

SeinMa, her ladyship, stretched out a hand to the pearls. “This is all that we could rescue of the goddess’ most treasured adornment, the necklace called ”string of midnights.“ The goddess weeps for her necklace day and day, for night has fled from heaven.”

“The seas weep,” Pearl Bay Dragon said. “The goddess does not come. Open the gates. Return the balance to heaven and earth.”

The gates of heaven, high above Kungol in the mountains of Thebin. “You have my oath,” Llesho vowed, and Mara smiled at him like a mother.

“And you have my daughter. Carina will travel with you.”

Llesho wondered if they could see the heat rising in his face, but he didn’t say anything. The emperor rescued him with more mundane details.

“You and your companions will be fitted with uniforms as soon as you are ready to travel. Now get some sleep. The guards will take you back to your old room, and orders have been given to billet your companions nearby.”

Llesho still had one question, however, and the presence of Master Den in their party told him more than anything how vital it was that he have an answer before they traveled any farther. He did not have to ask it, however. Den found in his hand a slip of paper that Llesho recognized from his first meeting with General Shou in the Imperial Water Garden.

“An unusual request to make of a trickster god.” He handed the offering back to the emperor.

“The gates of heaven are closed to all of us, Master ChiChu,” he said, “and not just to us mortals.”

“You were always a clever boy,” the god of the laundry, he of tears and laughter, smiled benignly on the emperor. “I will do what I can to keep this one safe. But even a god cannot know the future.”

The emperor bowed to the trickster god and then to the ladies, who preceded him from the room.

“Well, Llesho, what do you think?” the trickster god asked him.

Llesho answered as he always had, as student to teacher, with a bow and a smile. “The journey is begun. We are going home.”

Shokar, at his back, said nothing.