“I came with mercenaries. My caravan. Twenty-five years ago. I had four of them. Not a scrap of diplomacy between them. They didn’t last very long. Doesn’t play around here. They don’t waste their resources.”
He stared at them again. His stare was unnerving. Then abruptly he rattled off a string of Chinese.
William and Pero stared back at him blankly. William shrugged.
The Westerner grunted, his expression not quite a sneer. “No, I thought not. I’m Ballard. I don’t take you as learned men, so I don’t expect you to instantly warm to the light of my reputation. But my name, although faded in memory, was known from Antioch to Cumbria.” He looked at them with a hopeful, needy expression. “Ballard. You’ve not heard of me?”
William shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Ballard was silent, though his lips hardened into a thin line. Once again he extended a long-fingered hand and began to poke idly through their belongings.
“The beasts…” Pero said.
Ballard glanced up. “What of them?”
“What are they?”
Ballard’s lips peeled back in a skeletal grin. William watched him warily. The man looked amused, but also annoyed about something.
Suddenly he hissed at them, “You were supposed to be here six months ago! This was all supposed to be over by now.”
William blinked in surprise. It was clear that Pero too had no idea what the man was talking about.
Then Ballard, scowling, said, “Where is Bouchard?”
Pero’s mouth dropped open, which was how William felt too. Recovering more quickly than his companion, William said, “He’s dead.”
“Drowned,” added Pero before William could say anything more.
Ballard’s eyes danced between them, his expression giving nothing away. Then, tightly, as though biting off the words and spitting them out, he said, “They think I’m squirrely. You understand? I play the fool. But I am not a fool.”
William glanced at Pero, decided to take the gamble. “We came for black powder.”
Again Ballard’s thin lips curled into a ghastly, clench-toothed smile. “I bet you did. And Bouchard drowned, did he?” He regarded them thoughtfully, then abruptly changed the subject. “They’ll draw a bath for you. You saved the west turret. That was extremely diplomatic.”
William shook his head. “We weren’t being diplomatic. We were trying to stay alive.”
Ballard snorted. “You’re very handy, but you smell like animals. Clean yourselves up and they’ll feed you.”
Picking up his lantern, he slipped out of the door like a shadow without another word.
When he had gone, Pero looked at William with eagerness in his eyes. “He knows where the black powder is.”
“Then why is he still here?” William wondered.
“He needs help getting out?”
William pondered on this for a moment, and then nodded. “Right. We play our part, get the powder and go home.”
Pero sighed. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Which part?”
“Any of it. But mainly the monsters.”
William grunted and gave a wry smile. “There are a lot of them,” he said.
8
After her talk with General Shao, Lin Mae had finally managed to catch a few hours sleep. Or to be more precise, it was sleep that had caught her. She had gone back to her quarters to mull over the General’s words, but as soon as she had laid her head back on her thin mattress she had fallen into a place that was deep and black and without dreams.
Now she was in the Great Hall, eating breakfast with hundreds of other soldiers and officers. Not surprisingly the atmosphere was different this morning, oddly brittle. Some of those present were silent, staring into space, their faces still etched with the trauma of the previous day. Others seemed to be celebrating their survival with almost hysterical abandon, laughing and joking as if their lives depended on it. There was a sense of desperation about their glee, and Lin Mae felt her muscles tensing as their shrillness filled the room. Looking around she saw splints and bandages aplenty, faces marked with bruises and cuts. One of her own Crane Corps warriors had a dressing covering up one side of her face, where a Tao Tei talon had gouged a groove from her temple down to her upper lip. It was still uncertain whether the girl would regain the sight in her left eye. Even if she recovered fully she would be scarred for the rest of her life.
Finding a spare seat, Lin Mae began to work her way stolidly through her breakfast of sweet dumplings and rice porridge. She was not hungry, but she needed to fill her body with as much energy as possible—she might well be in need of it later. She had been eating for several minutes when she became aware that the chatter around her was beginning to dribble into silence. She looked up from her bowl to see that every head in the room was turning in the direction of the north-east entrance door. She looked in that direction too. Her eyes widened.
There were three figures standing by the door, having just entered the room. In the lead was Peng Yong, the young Bear Corps warrior who had mislaid the keys to the stockade before yesterday’s battle—a misdemeanor for which he was still to be punished. Behind him were the two foreign prisoners who had been intended for the stockade, and whose imprisonment would surely have resulted in the fall of the west turret, not to mention a great deal more bloodshed and death, possibly even her own. But the astonished silence that had befallen the room was not due simply to the arrival of the prisoners, but to their appearance. Bathed and shaved, and wearing clothes that had been cleaned and repaired, they had been utterly transformed. Now they no longer looked like beasts, but men. More than that, they looked like soldiers.
The two foreigners stood and looked around the room, bemused and disconcerted by their reception. The silence stretched on for several more seconds—and then General Shao stood up from his seat and slowly began to applaud. Immediately Lin Mae jumped up too and followed the General’s lead. Then Commanders Chen and Deng joined in, and soon chairs and benches were scraping back from long tables as every man and woman in the room stood and applauded the new arrivals.
The foreigners looked at first astonished, and then delighted. The bearded, darker-skinned man bowed while the other grinned, his eyes darting around the room.
Although her eyes were on the newcomers, Lin Mae suddenly felt different eyes on her and turned to see General Shao looking in her direction. His face was impassive, but his unblinking gaze spoke volumes: Remember what I told you. When he looked away she felt as though he’d left a sliver of ice behind, lodged in her heart. She tried not to let the discomfort it gave her show on her face as she continued to applaud.
William felt more relieved than anything when the applause eventually died down. Though Pero seemed to bask happily in the glory, William had never felt entirely comfortable being the center of attention.
Plus he was hungry. He wanted to eat. And the food arrayed along the long table on the far side of the room looked and smelled delicious.
But the formalities were not over yet. Once everyone had sat down, the blue-armored crane commander remained standing. When William looked across at her, she offered him a small (and, he thought, confidential) smile. Then she said, “General Shao welcomes you as honored guests of The Nameless Order and thanks you for your skill and courage.”
Pero looked at William, who blushed and stammered, “We… er… we’re honored to be honored.”