three

Li Ton had seen cities in ferment, and cities in torment; he had seen cities in ruin. More than once, he had been the instrument of that ruin. Fire and sword, the walls broken and the fields sown with salt. He was used to marching with the stink of smoke at his back, the wail of women in his ears, the wet chafing weight of fresh blood on his clothes.

He had never quite seen anything like Santung as it was now, twice defeated, under occupation by a hollow sour army that would shatter at a blow if anyone could land one. Soldiers and civilians both looked to the sky with dread, and found it empty, and saw no comfort in that. All they knew to do was wait, it seemed, until it would not be empty any longer. In the meantime, they had no idea how to live, day to day or with one another.

THE FISHERMAN had been strange last night when he came back from the temple, was strange still this morning, silent and distracted and somehow not afraid of the right things, of Li Ton or this walk into the city, nor of the dragon in the air. Something had scared him for sure, but it wasn’t guessable.

Nevertheless, Li Ton wasn’t leaving him behind, with the boy and the boat. It was Li Ton’s boat now, and he meant to keep it.

The boy was properly frightened of Li Ton, and would do what he was told: rowing the rest of them to land and then returning to the boat to scrub decks and mend sail until they hailed him ashore again. Something might come that he could not deal with—men with boats or intrepid swimmers, a tidal surge, a dragon—but Li Ton was a practical man, and only ever demanded what was possible.

He might have left the doctor, who was no kind of sailor. If he met trouble anywhere between here and Tunghai Wang, though, it was likely to be with the remnants of Tunghai’s army. His own face, his own name would mean little or nothing, whereas the doctor had been well known on the long march here. Soldiers were sentimental about anyone who took care of them in their need; healers or whores were equally cherished. The doctor might see him safely through to the generalissimo if his own resources failed.

He might have left the girl, but he didn’t trust her with the boat. She wanted to get back to her own boy, to Han on the island; she might persuade Pao that the two of them could sail it well enough together. He didn’t think they’d get as far as the Forge, and he was utterly certain that they would lose the boat and themselves on the rocks there if they did, but the young were often idiots. It would be a shame to let them throw their lives away when they might yet be useful to him; it would be folly to lose the boat like that, to a girl’s sentiment and a boy’s susceptibility.

So he took the girl and the doctor and the fisherman too, to the beach and the road and the city.

THEY MET peasants and farmers on the road, if there were any actual difference between the two. Li Ton had never been sure. To a soldier they were all alike, mud-grubbers whose food would keep an army marching, though it had to be taken at the blade’s edge. To a ruined man, to a beggar much the same, except that the food had to be wheedled or stolen from them, when he had no blade. And to a pirate the same again, land-bound, as vegetable as rice and roots. Whether they owned the land or only worked it, whether they were owned themselves, paddy by paddy: no difference.

Certainly there was no distinguishing them on that road, that day. They were all afraid of him. And with reason. There were soldiers on the road too, coming and going, with wagons that were mostly empty. Supplies must be running low and pickings would be few, on land that had been picked and picked already. One lesson that abided, from Li Ton’s time as a general: an army should keep moving, whatever the cost. Once it stalled, for winter or weather or bad country, for any reason at all, that was when trouble came. Not hunger alone, but hunger usually first. He’d always hated sieges; a siege could be as hard on the soldiers outside the wall as it was on the citizens within.

This, now, this would be worse. A siege of sorts, yes, only with water in lieu of a wall: unbridgeable water, a surging sea that had already swallowed one fleet of men.

A surging sea with a dragon to guard it.

Tunghai Wang’s men would likely be hungry by now. There had been too many of them before the dragon, and they had been here too long. No wonder the peasants were afraid.

Even so, hunger was likely the least of Tunghai’s troubles. The generalissimo had ridden this far, all across the empire on a chasing wave; stalled at the last, his men lost and his armada too, what should he do now? Creep back to the capital in defeat, and try to claim a missing throne in an empty city? He would never survive the journey. One of his allies would slay him, the others would challenge for his place, and the whole rebel army would splinter and scatter. Lucky if it didn’t destroy itself entirely, the men all fighting one another, this regiment against that, one general against another until perhaps there was only one survivor, a new generalissimo and no army left to lead.

No wonder then if even the troops were edgy, passing strangers on the road. Li Ton could never look like a peasant; no more could his companions. And Tien was a girl, young and pretty. To a squad of soldiers, any squad of soldiers Li Ton had ever known, that could be enough. It disturbed him, almost, that it was not: that the soldiers looked, touched hands to hilts, muttered among themselves and hurried on by. Under orders, perhaps—no more rape, no more killing, we need the people now; who else will feed us, who else will build more boats?—but even so it worried at him like a needle in the flesh. An occupying army should be prouder: swift to challenge, hard to pass. He was still a soldier in his heart, and he would have had these men flogged, their captains executed for showing their own doubts and fears so openly.

Which would not have helped the army, he understood that. It was too late for discipline, which meant it was too late altogether. This was an army broken, and he was quite surprised that Tunghai Wang still had charge of it, still breathed.

IF HE did, of course. If he did. The common soldiers would speak to Li Ton no more than the peasants would, those few times he tried to stop them on the road. Perhaps he should have held back and sent one of the other men. Or the girl. There must be news, and these people would know it; gossip ran like rain in a gutter, through any city with an army in it. Filtering truth from terror was an art, but he had a lifetime’s practice at it. If someone would only speak to him …

Apparently not, but a voice did hail his little group at last, or one of them at least:

“Doctor!”

Tien’s uncle had been bewildered all day and perhaps for days on end, still not caught up with his change of status. Not a doctor at the moment, not allowed to be—barely more than a hostage, indeed, a creature of some use to someone else—he still reacted to that title.

Came to a startled halt and turned around; gazed a little blankly at the soldier staring back; waited.

The soldier said—quite rightly—“You won’t remember me, doctor. But I was sick on the march, months ago, and you gave me a tea that broke the fever. Blackwater fever, all my troop was down with it but I was the lucky one, I came to you …”

And now the doctor clearly did remember, as they all do, the disease if not the patient; he smiled behind his beard and his sheltering hand, said, “More wise than lucky, perhaps. Asking help when it is needed is the prerogative of wisdom.”

Li Ton thought it was a survival instinct, and didn’t say so.

The soldier said, “I made sure my friends all came to you, after.” All those that lived was understood. “But why are you here, doctor? We missed you, from your tent; word said you had gone with the fleet to Taishu, and were lost …”

Are you a ghost? his eyes said, though they were trying hard not to believe it; and to be sure he looked not at all ghostly to Li Ton’s eyes, only tired and dirty and afraid.

“I went to Taishu,” the doctor said, “and am back.”

Which was as good as to say I am a ghost, and he knew it, and didn’t apparently care; or else he did it deliberately. Perhaps just to assert his own mystery, perhaps just to frustrate Li Ton. For sure it did that, because the soldier paled to a sickly color and hurried away before he could say anything useful, anything at all.

Still, even his departing back left one thing unsaid but apparent, that the doctor was remembered among the troops, that his face could still be useful.

AND HERE at last was the city. No wall, no gate: a town built on wealth alone, buying good relations with its neighbors and ultimately protected by the emperor’s own word, his jade-port, where the stone came in from Taishu. As a pirate, Li Ton had been drawn in; as a soldier, he despised the complacency and felt small pity for the ruin that it was.

Over the ridge of the river valley, and here was where the army camp had ringed the city, where the doctor and the girl and himself had all found one another. All through Han, who was stranded now, with his dragon for company. If the dragon hadn’t eaten him already, or carried him off. Li Ton hadn’t forgotten Han; he still hoped the boy might make a useful piece in this game, for later play. He was another reason to hold on to the fisherman.

The camp was empty now, abandoned, a mess of poles and fabric flapping in the breeze, cold firepits and foul latrines and rotting heaps of trash. A city of flies and rats, that had so recently been a busy city of men encircling a city of the dead.

“Where are they all?” Tien murmured.

Dead, but he didn’t say so.

“Let’s find out,” he said instead, and led the way down into the tangle of lanes and broader ways that made the city proper.

THEY WEREN’T all dead, of course. Tunghai Wang could never have built or assembled enough boats to take his entire army, in the short time he’d had. He must have meant to ferry back and forth.

Perhaps he did still mean to. Certainly there were men still busy on every beach, building another fleet. Perhaps there were even the soldiers to man it, or would be by next year, when it might be ready. Some of those squads on the road had raw recruits with them, who must be local conscripts. As local as they could be, when Tunghai Wang had ordered the slaughter of every man and boy in Santung …

The city itself had a population again, but never a natural one. There were men, soldiers, everywhere: doing nothing, as soldiers will, only idling in gangs at street corners, tossing coins and knives and words around as though none of them mattered, as though nothing ever could.

And there were women: the soldiers’ own and the city’s survivors, those who had lacked the sense or the luck to flee. They were busy, busy, always in a hurry, if only to be out from under the eyes of the men. They scurried from door to door, traded briskly in murmurs, vanished into shadow. Or they went slowly, struggling under burdens—a sack of charcoal, a rope of kindling—to show how weak the hungry are. Or how desperate, some of them, who crept out to beg from the soldiers, knowing already what that would cost them.

Men, women, everyone watched the sky in glimpses, all the time. Down at the docks or the beaches, Li Ton guessed everyone would be watching the water too. Not going too close, not willingly taking a punt across the harbor.

The same must be true too on the other side of the strait; he wondered how Taishu would feed itself when no one dared take a boat out to fish. Freeing the dragon might have saved the island and doomed it, both at once. Which meant, of course, saving the emperor and dooming him too. Not that the boy would starve, but he would truly be an emperor without an empire. Let him style himself as he chose, it was over; Tunghai Wang could forget him and go home. So could Li Ton.

If he had a home to go to. If he was allowed to leave. The generalissimo didn’t worry him unduly, but he needed to get that far.

He’d have asked for directions or escort at the gate, but there was none: no gate and no guard on the road, no apparent watch. That wasn’t Tunghai’s discipline, that was the heedlessness of a broken force, men whose officers cared no more than they did.

Officers whose men were let rabble in alleys or linger on street corners, coldly eyeing every passer-by who was not one of themselves. And here came Li Ton with the fisherman in his train and the doctor too, and of course Tien. Of course they attracted stares and interest. He had hoped to do no more than that, but he hadn’t anticipated the slack despair that overhung the city. He’d left an army in good heart under a strict master; what he’d come back to was—well, not that. Not an army at all, by any definition he was used to. Just too many soldiers, in fear of something they couldn’t fight. Wanting something they couldn’t express, something else, not this.

And here came people who didn’t belong among them, and none of the men was young, and the girl was pretty; why in the world would they not call out, not follow? When they had nothing else to do, when there was nothing in the world to prevent them, when there was a dragon in the strait and everything else was just waiting?

“OHÉ. FREEBOOTER.”

Did he look so much like a pirate, that they could read that at a glance? Was it burned into his bones now?

Maybe it was in his walk, a seaman come ashore. What did they know of the sea, these men who had walked ten thousand dry and dusty miles to reach it? It blocked them from journey’s end, the battle they had come for; it spewed dragons, and ate their fellows. That was all they’d had the chance to learn. Maybe they thought all sailors were pirates.

Maybe they were right.

Freebooter was an insult none the less. Li Ton didn’t care, except that it meant they hadn’t recognized his face: hadn’t tagged him as one who knew the generalissimo, an important man, not to be mocked. He wouldn’t care about that either, mockery could hurt him nowhere that mattered; but if they didn’t know him, there was small chance they would help him to Tunghai Wang.

Even so, he turned around at the call. There were five of them: peeling themselves away from the wall now, spreading out as they came toward him. Li Ton’s own companions pressed more closely together at his back. That said it all: confidence on the one side, fear on the other.

Rightly so, on both sides. Old men and girls should fear such as these, who had every reason, every reason in the world to be utterly confident, to swagger as they walked, to press forward as though a crowd parted before them.

Every reason but one, perhaps. Even now, trying to be impressive, they couldn’t help watching the sky. They had their own fear, these men, but that only made them more dangerous.

It would be deadly to run, which was why Li Ton had stopped. It would be deadly also to wait, to let them set the rules; which was why he stopped them with a question.

“Where can I find Tunghai Wang? Can you conduct me there?”

A moment’s stillness, a sudden bark of laughter, and, “Perhaps. What, do you have a ship to bring him, pirate? He would be glad of that, he would welcome you for that. He has lost all his own.”

They had found drink somewhere, these men. They were not quite drunk, not yet; but still, they had been drinking. Enough to loosen words on their tongues, to slacken discipline, to make them more dangerous still.

He said, “I have a boat under my command, yes. And have served him before, and he will be looking for me to do so again. Indeed, he will be waiting to hear from me now. Where in the city—?”

“Ah, there’s no hurry, captain. Captain pirate. He’s good at waiting, the generalissimo. It’s all he has to do now, with his men so very dead. Did you see them, from your ship? All the dead men? Some of them come to shore, you know. Those the dragon didn’t eat. They come floating in on the surf, and we get to pick them up and try to guess who they were before the little things started to eat them. Will you sell us your girl, pirate captain, sir?”

“No,” he said calmly, keeping his voice easy and his hands a long way from his weapons. “No, I won’t do that. Will you take me to the generalissimo? He knows me well, and will be grateful if you do.”

And will be angry if you don’t, if you delay, if you cause me trouble. He still had hopes that they would understand that and be appropriate, but those hopes were ice in sunlight, chill and slippery and vanishing.

“Give us the girl, then. She is our price.” The spokesman said that proudly, almost, a herald before the court. Dictating terms, looking for surrender.

“No, then.”

He bowed and turned, and made to usher the others down the street, walk, don’t run, but walk swiftly; and heard the scrape of steel leaving a sheath, heard a low grunt, found his own sword already in his hand as he kept on turning, all the way around to face them again.

Walk, don’t run. Walk swiftly. He set the pace by walking backward, as swiftly as a man may. They came at him, all five of these men, blades in their hands and a grimness born of this city and their own desperation. Their own captains, their own general couldn’t halt them now.

Li Ton had seen this before, in men either terrified or frenzied, after bloody battles either lost or won. Each time he’d stopped it with swift deaths and slow executions, first to stall and then to crush the spirit that drove it, before it could infect the entire army.

Each time before, he’d had squads of men at his back, if not a regiment. And the emperor’s authority, that too. Here he was one man alone, and he thought the entire army was likely infected already.

He cursed Tunghai Wang silently for letting his soldiers come to this, sordid fighting in a ruined city. Aloud, he cried, “My name is General Chu Lin,” just in case it was still remembered.

One laughed, one spat. Not one of them hesitated. They really did mean this.

Pity: he would have liked to see how matters fell out, with Han and the dragon. He would have liked to see the end of the emperor too, this boy whose father had ruined him: the boy’s head on a pole, yes, he had worked for that a little and would have liked to see it. Even if it meant Tunghai Wang on the Jade Throne. It wouldn’t last, if the man couldn’t hold one small army together in the face of catastrophe, but he didn’t care about that.

Logically, he should simply hand over the girl. Why not? She was nothing to him. Except that Han wanted her, and that could still prove useful.

Except that if he died here, nothing that he’d hoarded could prove useful anymore.

It was too late now, to listen to that voice of sense. If he gave her over, they would shove her into a doorway for later and still come on to kill him and the other men. They had that death-look about them, fixed and slightly vacant; they reminded him of his crew, on a hundred brutal adventures.

He wouldn’t have backed himself against any five of his crew, either.

One on one, yes, against any of them; that was why they followed him, why they were his crew, because no one of them would ever dare fight him alone.

Li Ton stepped back, and the men came on.

He stepped back, and the men came on.

He stepped back and stumbled, and one of them rushed him.

And died noisily, messily skewered on Li Ton’s tao as he came rising up from one knee. He had gone down explicitly to draw one to him, because they did so much remind him of his crew: mean, yes, and vicious with it, killers to the core but really not too smart.

Four to one. If those four had all rushed him, right then, he might perhaps have killed another but would certainly have died himself.

They hesitated, though, glanced from one to another—and he rushed them.

Rushed one of them, at least. The way they’d spread themselves out across the street, the others were too slow again. He had time to reach the startled soldier and bully through his hasty defenses, give him no time and no chance at all, leave him sprawled and bleeding and audibly choking on his own blood, not quite dead yet but surely dying.

Three to one, and it wouldn’t get any easier than this. They were drawing together now, covering one another. Giving Li Ton time enough to get back to his companions, and he’d counted on that too, but it would do him little good. Or them. They were a hindrance, nothing more; he’d sacrifice any of them, all of them, to save himself.

Three to one, and those three alert now, angry now but coldly so, three ready blades glinting in sunlight and he still didn’t like the odds, wouldn’t back himself.

Backed away, then, with the others behind him; watched the blades and the men who held them, watched them advance; waited for the rush that must be coming.

WHEN IT CAME, it was behind those three.

A whole other group of men, who must have heard the clash of steel and come running; they boiled out of an alley-mouth and saw the bodies in the road, saw their comrades, saw how one man faced them down. Tried to face them down, at least, with blood on his tao.

Saw the girl too, perhaps.

And understood the fight, entirely what kind of fight this was; and came joyfully running down the road to join in.

Nine to one.

No chance. Li Ton wasn’t sure how much the original three welcomed this new company, but for sure they wouldn’t fight among themselves. Not until he was dead, at least, and the other men with him, and the girl available for fighting over.

He gave one desperate glance up into the sky, in hopes of making them pause one moment longer, for fear of a dragon; at the same time, he made a sign behind his back, which any of his pirate crew would have understood immediately.

These people? A fisherman, a doctor and a girl?

Nothing.

He had to turn his head to scowl at them, to shout “Run!”

At nine to one, it couldn’t make things worse than they were already. If it only bought a minute, well, who knew? Maybe the dragon might really come.

NO DRAGON.

What came instead was a rush of feet and a curdling cry, that guttural noise that men make to urge themselves on, not to hold back under the eyes of their brothers.

Li Ton sighed, and turned again. Perhaps he could stall the rush a little, buy time for the civilians to get a little ahead, if all nine of those blades were greedy enough for a fight …

NOT EVEN that: the gods he failed to believe in wouldn’t grant him even that much grace, to do a good thing before everyone in his story died.

Some of the men came at him, and there were screams and hurtling blades and he was screaming too as he blocked them and battered back, screaming with a mix of battle-rage and fury. If they had sides at all, they were on the same side, these men and he. He was just as keen to see the emperor dead, and he was just as afraid of the dragon. He had come to Santung to help, perhaps. And they would kill him now because he had a girl with him and they wanted her. She had traveled with them for months, helping her uncle the doctor, but apparently that didn’t matter now, or it simply wasn’t remembered.

Men were running past him as he fought, chasing those behind. This was a fight, but that would be a slaughter.

War broke old bonds, but tended to forge new ones. Under the dragon’s shadow, he supposed, all bonds shriveled to nothing.

Stamp, block, swing. Scream. What else to do?

Kill this man with a backhand slash that takes his throat out. Barely fetch it back in time to block that thrust; there would have been sparks, perhaps, if his tao hadn’t been so gory-wet already. There was blood running down the handle, making it hard to grip, even between sharkskin and calluses …

He gripped it two-handed, clenched his fists tighter than he liked, swung and hacked in a frenzy—and then turned and sprinted after his companions, because there might just be something after all that he could do.

IF IT WASN’T too late already. They’d made it farther than he’d expected, to the steps of a temple, but no god was stepping down to help them; and that was the doctor that lay sprawled and broken on the steps there, while his niece and the fisherman stood above him with knives in their hands, trying to hold four soldiers at bay.

Four soldiers who were laughing at them, teasing them with little thrusts that never quite followed through.

The doctor wasn’t dead yet, but he would be soon enough. Li Ton could see how much of his blood had spilled out over the white steps.

One of the soldiers was too slow to hear Li Ton coming. The tao took him in the side, cut him half and half, bought Li Ton time enough to scoop his free arm under the doctor’s shoulder and drag him higher.

The doctor screamed, thin and breathless. There was more blood, coming from his belly.

The soldiers gathered in a group, at the foot of the steps. No temple sanctity, no god’s anger was going to hold them back.

Li Ton tried to lift the doctor bodily, but the man flailed and fell back boneless, his mouth guttering air as his belly gouted blood. Not dead, not quite, but he couldn’t live.

Living, he couldn’t save them if he couldn’t stand.

Li Ton made his choice, and swung his tao.

AND CAUGHT the head by the hair, even as Tien shrieked beside him; and held it up high in one hand and bellowed, “What, does none of you know this man? Does no one recognize the doctor who kept you all healthy on the long march, all this way?”

There was a stillness, a shock that gripped them all, that gave them pause enough to look.

One man grunted; another said, “Aye, that’s him. That’s the doctor. He mended my arm, when it was broke so bad …”

“It is,” Li Ton confirmed, “it’s the generalissimo’s own medic who never scorned to treat any of you or your women, anyone who came. He might have taught us how to resist the dragon. His niece here knows his secrets; she owns his tent and his medicines now. I don’t know if she will consent to stay. Perhaps you should pray that she will, unless you prefer to pray to the dragon.”

He gave them a moment, during which none offered to come up the steps and kill him; then he went on, “If one of you will run to Tunghai Wang and tell him that I am here, Chu Lin who was general under the last emperor and a friend to Tunghai on the battlefield and in the court, that man, I may ask the generalissimo to spare that man’s head. That one man. Go.”

Another frozen moment, where they were so hot and frantic in their thinking that they couldn’t move at all; and then, inevitably, they all turned and ran together, racing one another. It might even come to blades between them. Li Ton didn’t care. He turned his back and marched up the last of the steps to the temple door and found a priestess waiting for him, waiting to welcome them all inside.

AND REALIZED that he was still carrying the doctor’s head, and that the girl was staring at him, at it, at him again as though she could barely tell the difference, they were both so dreadful.

She did, somehow, manage to speak; she said what was most obvious, “You, you killed him …”

Li Ton shook his own head wearily, even as he dropped the other. “No, girl. He was dead already. I used that, to save you.”

Which wasn’t entirely true, but close enough. He didn’t imagine that any of them was actually saved, was safe; there was no bar on the temple door, and the building had clearly been ransacked once at least already. The men had run off at his word, but they could always think better of it and come back, slaughter everyone here, rather than face the generalissimo with their confession. He would.

Wherever he looked, there were nuns at work in the temple: scrubbing, painting, scraping at charred pillars until they were whittled back to clean bright wood. Men were hard to find, he supposed, but they seemed to be doing well enough without. They worked to the accompanying drone of a prayer, lofted by incense and intercut with strokes on a gong; even that voice was an octave too high for any priest.

If the soldiers did come back, they could enjoy their slaughter. Here were victims enough, and no one to stop them. Li Ton was done. Not tired, but weary to the bone; he’d done enough, too much, and nothing worked. He never came close to anything that he could value. Even his revenge would be a cheat if he took it now, acted out against the wrong emperor.

Which would not stop him if the chance arose, but the taste of it was sour in his mouth already, in anticipation.

The public area of the temple was a wooden gallery around a central courtyard. There were idols of many gods scattered through the gallery, but one great statue sat apart, facing the courtyard with the chanting nun at her feet, wreathed in smoke. He didn’t recognize the goddess. He could ask the fisherman, if that man hadn’t gone ahead to drop to his knees and burn joss before the statue.

He could ask the shaven-headed woman at his side, who had offered that unequivocal welcome at the door, who had not blanched even at the head that he had carried within. More usefully he could ask her to take care of Tien, who had no apparent idea what to do with herself: who stood deliberately alone, separate from himself, and stared down at where her uncle’s head had rolled half into a corner, where it lay in the shadows staring out.

Li Ton was the last person who should talk to her, the last she would allow. Leave her to the nuns; he shouldn’t need to ask.

He stepped down into the courtyard, thinking that perhaps he might light a stick or two of joss himself, he might kneel beside the fisherman he cared so little about in order to thank this goddess he didn’t know for the protection he did not believe that she had offered him—

—AND HIS way took him past another nun who was cradling a child in her lap. It looked sickly, or at least as though it had been sick; but it opened its eyes as he passed and spoke, spoke to him, in no voice that any child should ever own.

“Speak to the fisherman,” it said, and that voice—oh, that voice!—was all rocks and tidal suck, tongued with those weeds that drag pirates all down to a dreadful death in the sea they’re all afraid of, “be sure that he tells the dragon, she is not welcome in my waters.”