The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (17 page)

The Cloud and Soil Society was in a restless mood. Life had been trying under Five Finger Chang, but it had been fun too. There had been laughter and song and drunkenness and storytelling and all the pleasures that a criminal life in the countryside ought to entail. Chang frequently reminded them all of the inherent duplicity of Imperial authority, and how honorable bandits were the necessary counterpoint. They would not have the blessing of the One-Shoed Immortal otherwise. They were not robbing the rich so much as lightening a corrupting load of unearned goods. They were not intimidating villagers so much as protecting them from mendacious tax collectors and debased marauders who lacked regular readings of
Romance of the Outlaw Kingdoms
to fortify their morals.

Exceedingly Accurate Wu would have none of that. They were
bandits
, she said, not heroes. They were not loved but feared. The outlaws of legend were lovable precisely because they were safely inside books, not at your doorstep shaking you down. No romances would be written about the Cloud and Soil Society. The Empire was as honest, and dishonest, as it had ever been. This was not an especially corrupt time, and it was useless to blame banditry on the government. There were big lies in life but the bandits who embraced the world of the Rivers-and-Lakes needed to be clear-eyed and cold-eyed.

“We are evil,” Exceedingly Accurate Wu said on the evening of Lightning Bug’s attack, yet another night of edifying speeches and small-group discussions, with no hope of song or alcohol or sex until the owls were hooting. “Do not be shocked. Evil is simply the flip side of good, and together the two sides are the coin of the world. Purity is all well and good, but it belongs to heaven. Man cannot live on virtue alone, for virtue is as a crusty bread. Evil is spice. Evil is meat. We evil folk are necessary. And not necessary because of some tiresome illusion of outlaw gallantry, no! Because we are part of the natural order. We toughen the society on which we prey. We make it better. And some day we may claim all of it as our own—evil bringing forth good.”

A hand went up. “What do you mean? We’re going to take over?”

“That is the natural trajectory of things. Did not the Second Emperor emerge from banditry? But if we are to claim a realm for ourselves we must be worthy of it. We’re going to protect the ordinary people and improve their minds. If the peasantry of Qiangguo were to rise up, the rulership would crumple like a paper tiger. We must be patient as we arrange this, one village at a time.”

Another hand. “Um, you want to be an emperor, ma’am?”

“I do not want to replace an old foolishness with a new one. You may speak of me as the Chair. I do not represent a change in dynasty, but a new power that expresses the will of the people. We will become a land that is Exceedingly Accurate. Those who cling to error will be isolated—or eliminated. Many monsters will be destroyed. Old superstitions will pass away.”

A third voice. “Can we still be gallant? Just a little?”

“A certain style is expected,” Wu conceded. “It is not what I would term ‘gallantry.’ ‘Eliteness’ perhaps. You are the elite. The vanguard.”

A fourth voice. “Can we still have a good time?”

“Rewards are due the vanguard. But with rewards come responsibilities. You are an army now. You may not desert. Even if you are not currently having a ‘good time.’ Deserters will be punished.”

There was a whistle from the sentries, and guards dragged someone in, and a whisper moved through the crowd, “Flybait! We’ve got Flybait!”

The boy was thrown at Wu’s feet. Wu said, “The winds of history have blown you to me, boy. Why did you return? Where is your lover?”

“What?”

“The girl, you cretin. It is obvious you and she are a couple.”

“. . . Really?”

Wu planted her cane beside Flybait’s gut. “You are due many beatings. Gather your wits, and I may leave your brains inside your skull.”

“As you are exceedingly accurate, I have no doubt of your threat.” Flybait sat up. “I am here with an offer of amnesty from the magistrate of Abundant Bamboo. If any bandit should appear to him, prostrate and weaponless, before the next full moon, that one shall be given pardon.”

“If pardon means ‘a quick death,’” Wu snorted.

“He is sincere. Look how weaponless and prostrate I am! I did not learn this bowing and scraping all at once, but practiced it in his office.”

“Where then is Next-One-A-Boy,” Wu scoffed. “Let us see
her
bow and scrape!”

“Alas!” wailed Flybait, hiding his face in his hands. “She would not! And the magistrate laughed and said she would regret her foolishness, for he had special friends.”

Wu leaned on her staff, scowling. “Friends? That sniveling mouse?”

“He said his friends included a god with one shoe.”

A hush fell upon the Cloud and Soil Society, and a murmuring.

But Exceedingly Accurate Wu said, “This young fool and the magistrate seek to frighten us! There is no such god, for there are no gods. Even those beings that seem magical are but the manifestation of congealed chi.”

Flybait said, “Indeed, Next-One-A-Boy once spoke as you, for she confronted just such an entity, which had taken the form of the Nian! But when she scoffed at the magistrate, where he lectured us in the village, a shoe did drop.”

And now the hubbub rose indeed. For there had by now reached the Cloud and Soil Society the word of a gigantic thunderclap in the magistrate’s office, and word of deaths in its wake.

“Here is what remains of my dear friend!” howled Flybait, and he held up a strip of the bland grey cloth Next-One-A-Boy had been known to wear. A red smear soaked the fabric.

“Give me that!” said Exceedingly Accurate Wu, and she snatched the scrap away. She sniffed and licked. “Why, this is not human blood, but pig’s blood. Do you think I am an amateur?”

But her words were drowned out by a thundering crash against the exterior of the hill. The bandits ran to and fro in fear. A sentry leapt down into the cave. “Mistress!” he shouted. “It is a shoe! A giant shoe!”

Not far away, in a secluded glade, Next One and Eshe of the Fallen Swan labored to reload the catapult which Eshe had constructed from a Kpalamaa design. This time the payload was a bee’s hive, gathered with great care by Lightning Bug and wrapped in a cloth bundle secured with Imago Bone’s ur-glue.

“Now!” yelled Lightning Bug from a treetop far above.

Next One swung a sword so heavy it made her arms feel ready to pop from their sockets. Once, twice . . . on the third cleave the rope split and the beehive took flight.

“Excellent!” called Lightning Bug. “It has landed in the midst of the sentries. Now the fire-buckets!”

Next One loaded a bucket of tar, while Eshe cranked. The strange Kpalamaa woman and her machine were a wonder to Next One, though Eshe assured her that catapults were well known to the generals of Qiangguo. She marveled at a woman who had learned so much and seemed, like Lightning Bug, to have acquired only an average measure of bitterness. She wondered if she too might be able to travel to Kpalamaa someday, or Swanisle, or any other place where women knew grace and light.

“Where will you go,” Next One called, “when you are finished here? To Kpalamaa? To the court of the wise and terrible Ghana? We could come with you!”

Eshe laughed at some joke known only to herself. “No. To the capital of your land. You may indeed come. We have a more immediate task, however.”

She grabbed tongs and lifted a burning piece of coal from a nearby bucket. The pitch blazed in a satisfying way.

“Now!” called Lightning Bug. Next One swung. Fire ascended and plunged.

“Continue in this manner!” called Lightning Bug. “I must take the path of treetops and meet Imago Bone. Persimmon Gaunt asked me to watch over him. Around a pregnant woman, even a wulin warrior must tread carefully!”

“Good luck!” answered Eshe.

Next One watched open-mouthed as Lightning Bug kicked off from atop her tree and arced gently to the next, and then the next, as easily as a girl leaping along a garden wall.

Eshe laughed. “You are amazed at my catapult? Qiangguo has machines even my folk do not . . . and as you see, its people are the most wondrous of all.”

“How does she do it? Dance among the trees?”

“She has spoken of the ‘ability of lightness,’ in which the vital breath of her body is expanded, lofting the rest like a spark climbing the air. In truth, we of Kpalamaa are a materialistic bunch, and I do not really understand it. It is enough to marvel.”

“To think . . . one such as she might have had her feet bound.”

“Remember that,” Eshe said, “when the rain falls cold and you are lonely and footsore and chewing on tasteless roots. Remember that at least you live free. Now—we have our own sparks to send high!”

The last time Imago Bone remembered challenging such odds as the Cloud and Soil Society, he’d been chased by maddened cannibals and quasi-sapient bears. That he and Gaunt had not been rent and devoured on that occasion he attributed more to luck than skill. Thus, as he slipped among the shadows of the karst cave, ears alert to the sounds of sentries near at hand and of commotion farther above, he took great care not to be seen. Fortunately the cave’s topography was his friend. Stalactites and stalagmites made regular obstacles to his enemies’ sight, and the underground river and waterfall made his movements a hush. Indeed, such was the range of concealment options that Bone thought the bandits somewhat cheeky for choosing this site. But then, they had reckoned on Imperial troops, not the greatest second-story man of the Spiral Sea.

Creeping close to the waterfall, he removed a pouch of chemicals supplied by Lightning Bug. Evidently she had contacts who knew alchemy. This “essence of the cinnabar heart” was supposed to have a sanguinary effect upon water. Bone shredded the pouch and poured the powdery contents into the waterfall’s foam.

At once the underground stream flowed red. He listened as the already-nervous guards called out, “Blood! The waters flow red with blood! It is the war god indeed!” With a vast commotion the guards fled the lower section, the camp followers and hangers-on fleeing with them. Bone took the opportunity to take a dagger and stone and pound holes in the handful of riverboats the bandits maintained.

Now there remained only the bulk of the bandits proper.

Only!

Bone smirked, crept up a ladder, and listened to what had to be Exceedingly Accurate Wu, rallying her frightened force.

He understood enough of the Tongue of the Tortoise Shell to catch her gist. “It is only bees, you fools! Only fire! We are attacked by men only!”

“It is the Lord of Lost Causes! We saw the shoe!”

As Bone peeked out, Wu removed her own shoe and beat a bandit with it. “We are being tricked. Let us scare our foes for a change! Kill Flybait, and toss his body down the burning hill!”

“Um,” said Flybait as he was held down by a man at each limb. “Aren’t you guys my friends?”

“You gave up friendship when you betrayed us,” Wu scoffed. “Such is never done. You are an outlaw among outlaws.”

“Sorry, Flybait,” said a big man with an axe.

“Hey, don’t worry, Feng,” said Flybait. “Mind if I scream and raise a fuss?”