“You are bored, Chay Sha?” Zelic asked, suddenly concerned. Caged, perhaps. Frustrated. Impotent, even, but bored? He laughed good-humouredly. “No, Captain Zelic. I am not bored. As I say, I keep myself busy, reading reports, watching your media channels, writing ...” Zelic, who had been looking down, now glanced up, a spark of genuine interest in his eyes. “Writing, Chay Sha?”
Li Yuan nodded. “I have begun a journal. A kind of... oh, what is the word for it?”
“A history?”
“Yes. But a history of myself. An autobiography. I find it soothes me.”
“I see.”
“I don’t think you do, Captain. But never mind. I suppose you barely remember the world as it was.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember it at all, Chay Sha. I am only twenty-six, you understand.”
“Ah ...”
Then Zelic had been bom two years after City America had fallen. Two years after the death of his cousin Wu Shih. Li Yuan sighed heavily. How could it all have gone so quickly? How could such power, such strength, dissolve so rapidly and fade to nothingness?
It was a mystery. A mystery he strove to answer in his writing.
Ahead of them the great fortress had grown to fill the sky. As they passed into
its shadow the monorail began to brake, the slightest judder in the viewing
carriage reminding Li Yuan of where he was physically. For a moment he had been
back
BLOOD AND IRON
there, standing beside Wu Shih and Tsu Ma in Rio more than thirty years before, when he’d been Regent, talking and laughing; he and Tsu Ma standing there studying a delicate lavender bowl and talking of ancient craftsmanship. “Ingenious,” he said softly as he took in the details of the approaching city, noting how the great glass exoskeleton curved outward from its foot for the first half li or so, until it stabilised and then curved inward. The tiny blisters of robot gun-emplacements studded that great upward sweep at regular intervals.
There were nine such fortresses, stretching from Laredo in the south, through San Antonio, San Angelo, Lubbock, Amar-illo, Las Vegas, Trinidad and Pueblo, up to Denver. Beyond those, to the south and west, was the unclaimed wilderness. It was his son-in-law Egan’s ambition to reclaim that territory and reunify the great North American continent, but things had not gone well for him these past few years. The strain of isolating DeVore was telling. Like most aspiring Emperors, young Egan had been forced to face the fact that the more land one conquered, the more difficult it was to keep. Now he faced enemies not merely in Europe and the North-West, but from the South and West also. Indeed, the emergent power of New California was only one of several potential challenges to Egan’s reign, and considering the strain on Egan’s forces, one might have thought it politic to come to some agreement - even, perhaps, a treaty - with the Calif ornians, but Egan’s response had been to escalate the conflict But so it was. So it had always beea War, endless war. As if mankind could not exist without it I am well out of it, he thought, watching as a great circle began to form in the solid glass wall directly ahead of them, dagger-like shards slowly folding inward, like the petals of some strange Antarctic plant. They swept in, following a steep curve around the inside of the city, great metallic stanchions flashing past them as they slowed to a halt “We are here, Chay Sha,” Zelic announced, somewhat superfluously.”Yes. And there’s our welcoming party.”
A small group of high-ranking soldiers and officials had gathered at the edge of an immense empty space that was more like a great hall than a platform. They waited uncomfortably, talking among themselves. Seeing them, Li Yuan knew without being told that his visit here was no occasion for popular celebration.
But then, who could really blame them? For more than two centuries his kind - the Han - had kept them down. Now that they ran things, why should they treat their once-oppressors any better than they themselves had once been treated? No. They would be polite because Egan had ordered them to be polite. Beyond that they would offer nothing.
“Well, Captain Zelic,” he said, steeling himself, reminding himself that, despite all, he was still a Son of Heaven, “let us go and meet our hosts. I would not wish to keep them waiting.”
“So what do you want?”
Harding sat forward, smiling. “I want to make a deal.”
Horton laughed. “You know I’m taping this?”
“It doesn’t matter. A time comes when a man has to take sides. That moment arrived this afternoon.”
“I don’t understand ...”
“We’ve lost the West”
Horton sat back, shocked by the news. “But I thought...” “You thought we were winning. Yes, and so did many. But that bastard Egan has pissed it all away. Three whole armies he’s lost” “And he blames you, neh?”
Harding blinked. “What have you heard?”
“Nothing. I’m just guessing. What did he do? Shout and scream at you?”
Harding looked down. “He stripped me of my rank.”
“So you’re no longer Chancellor?”
“No.”
“So who ...?”
“LiKueiJen.”BLOOD AND IRON
Horton laughed. “He wouldn’t dare! Why, half his court would abandon him!”
“I’m told he made the appointment immediately I left.” Horton’s face slowly changed. “Li Kuei Jen? That half-man!” Harding leaned forward, conspiratorially.
“Precisely. Now
about this deal...”
“Captain Zelic?”
The young officer got up smartly from his chair and turned to face Li Yuan, surprised to find the Pang there in his room in the heart of the soldiers’ quarters. “Chay Sha?”
“Are you busy, Captain?”
“Busy? No, I...”
Zelic glanced at the open journal on the table beside him. It was a large book with a thick, dark leather cover. Beside it, a quill pen rested in an ink pot From the dark, wet look of the handwriting on the left-hand page, he had interrupted Zelic in mid-flow. But what had he been writing? A report for his superiors? His personal thoughts on events? Or was Zelic, perhaps, of a literary turn of mind?
In another place and time he might have walked across the room and looked, but he knew better than to do so now. He was no longer in a position of power. Besides, he liked Zelic, and even if the man were reporting back his observations, that was his duty and he could not be blamed for it “You want something, Chay Sha?”
Li Yuan turned away, his golden eyes scanning the room, conscious of its spartan, military feel. “I hoped you might show me around the fortress. While we’ve time.”
“Of course.” Zelic gave a single nod, then, turning to close the journal, took his tunic from the back of his chair and slipped it on. “What would you like to see, Chay Sha? The trays?”
“We could begin there.”
Zelic paused, alerted by something in Li Yuan’s manner. “Chay Sha?’ “I thought we might go outside, perhaps, and visit one of the guard posts. See the frontier.”
“But Chay Sha, it would be most.. .”
“Irregular?’
Zelic nodded, then, in a much quieter voice, added, “Besides, I don’t think we would get permission.”
“And why is that?”
“They would say it was not safe, Chay Sha.”
“And the real reason?”
“Security.”
“Ah ...” Li Yuan smiled. So his guess had been right. Something was going on out here “The trays, then,” he said, standing back to let Zelic move past him.
Yin Han Ch’in was eating his evening meal when his half-brother called on him at his modest quarters in the south of the tity. Sending his wife and children into another room, Han rose from the table, then asked his Steward to send his brother in.