Chen sniffed, then shook his head.
Jyan leaned across the table again. "Don't you understand? We can be kings here! We can!" His voice dropped to a whisper. "You see, I know who hired us."
Chen met the other's eyes calmly. "So?"
Jyan laughed, incredulous. "You really don't see it, do you?"
Chen let his eyes fall. Of course he saw it. Saw at once what Jyan was getting at. Blackmail. Games of extreme risk. But he was interested, and he wanted Jyan to spell it out for him. Only when Jyan had finished did he look up, his face expressionless.
"You're greedy, Jyan. You know that?"
Jyan sat back, laughing, then waved a hand dismissively. "You weren't listening properly, Chen. The tape. It'll be my safeguard. If they try anything—anything at all—Security will get the tape."
Chen watched him a moment longer, then looked down, shrugging, knowing that nothing he said would stop Jyan from doing this.
"Partners, then?"
Jyan had extended his left hand. It lay on the table's surface beside the half-empty bottle; a small, almost effete hand, but clever. An artisan's hand. Chen looked at it, wondering not for the first time who Jyan's father might have been, then placed his own on top of it. "Partners," he said, meeting Jyan's eyes. But already he was making plans of his own. Safeguards.
"I'll arrange a meeting, then."
Chen smiled tightly. "Yes," he said. "You do that."
EDMUND WYATT stopped beneath the stand of white mulberry trees at the far end of the meadow and looked back at the pagoda. "I don't trust him, Soren. I've never trusted him." Berdichev looked sideways at him and shrugged. "I don't know why. He seems a good enough fellow."
"Seems!" Wyatt laughed ironically. "DeVore's a seeming fellow, all right. Part of his Security training, I guess. All clean and smart on the outside—but at core a pretty dirty sort, don't you think?"
Berdichev was quiet a moment. He walked on past Wyatt, then turned and leaned against one of the slender trunks, studying his friend. "I don't follow you, Edmund. He is what he is. Like all of us."
Wyatt bent down and picked up one of the broad, heart-shaped leaves, rubbing it between thumb and finger. "I mean ... He works for them. For the Seven. However friendly he seems, you've always got to remember that. They pay him. He does their work. And as the Han say—Chung ch'en pu shih erh chu—You can't serve two masters."
"I don't know. Do you really think it's that simple?" Wyatt nodded fiercely, staring away at the distant pagoda. "They own him. Own him absolutely."
He turned and saw that Berdichev was smiling. "What is it?" "Just that you let it worry you too much, Edmund." Wyatt smiled back at him. "Maybe. But I don't trust him- I'm sure he's up to something."
"Up to what?" Berdichev moved away from the tree and stood beside Wyatt, looking back across the meadow. "Look, I'll tell you why he's here. Lwo Kang was murdered. Last night. Just after eleventh bell."
Wyatt turned abruptly, shocked by the news. "Lwo Kang? Gods! Then it's a wonder we're not all in the cells!"
Berdichev looked away. "Maybe . . . and maybe not. After all, we're not unimportant men. It would not do to persecute us without clear proof of our guilt. It might. . . well, it might make us martyrs, eh?"
Wyatt narrowed his eyes. "Martyrs? I don't understand."
"Don't think the T'ang underestimates us. Nor the power of the Above. If he had all of us Dispersionists arrested, what then? What would the Above make of that? They'd say he was acting like a tyrant. He and all the Seven. It would make things very awkward, don't you see?"
"But Lwo Kang was a minister! One of Li Shai Tung's own appointees!"
"It makes no difference. The T'ang will act properly, or not at all. It is the way of the Seven. Their weakness, if you like."
"Weakness?" Wyatt frowned, then turned back, looking across at the pagoda again. "No wonder DeVore is here. I'd say he's come to find a scapegoat. Wouldn't you?"
Berdichev smiled then reached out, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder. "You really think so, Edmund?" He shrugged, then squeezed Wyatt's shoulder gently. "Whatever else you might think about him, DeVore's Hung Moo, like us. He may work for the Han, but that doesn't mean he thinks like them. In any case, why should he be interested in anything but the truth?"
Wyatt stared at the pagoda intently for a time, as if pondering some mighty problem, then he shivered and touched his tongue to his teeth in a curiously innocent, childlike gesture. He turned, looking back at Berdichev. "Maybe you're right, Soren. Maybe he is what you say. But my feelings tell me otherwise. I don't trust him. And if he's here, I'd wager he's up to something." He paused, then turned, looking back at the pagoda. "In fact, I'd stake my life on it."
"Yang Lai is dead, then?"
DeVore turned from the window and looked back into the room. "Yes. The Junior Minister is dead."
Lehmann was silent a moment, then nodded. "I see. And the lieutenant in charge of the Security post?"
DeVore hesitated, then, in a quieter voice. "Dead, too, I'm afraid. It was . . . unavoidable."
Lehmann met his eyes, understanding at once. "How?"
"By his own hand. The dishonor, you see. His family. It would have ruined them. Better to kill oneself and absolve them from the blame." He turned back to the window and looked out again, following the slow progress of the two men down below as they made their way back across the meadow to the pagoda.
"So we're clear."
DeVore gave a short laugh. "Not clear. Not yet." • "Then you think there's still a chance they'll find something?"
The Major's eyes met Lehmann's briefly, then looked away. "Remember how long this took us to plan, Pietr. WeVe been careful, and such care pays off. And anyway, we have the advantage of knowing all they do. There's not a move General Tolonen can make without me hearing of it."
He was quiet a moment, staring off across the meadow. It was true what he had said. He had spent years recruiting them; young men like himself who had come, not from First Level, from the privileged top deck of the City—the supernal, as they liked to term themselves—nor from the army families—the descendants of those North European mercenaries who had fought for the Seven against the tyrant Tsao Ch'un a century before—but ordinary young men without connection. Young men of ability, held back by a system modeled on the Manchu "banners"—an archaic and elitist organizational structure where connection counted for more than ability. Misfits and malcontents. Like himself.
Yes, he had become adept at spotting them; at recognizing that look, there at the back of the eyes. He would check out their backgrounds and discover all he could about them. Would find, invariably, that they were loners, ill at ease socially and seething inside that others had it so easy when army life for them was unmitigatedly hard. Then, when he knew for certain that it was so, he would approach them. And every time it was the same; that instant opening; that moment of recognition, like to like, so liberating that it bound them to him with ties of gratitude and common feeling.
"Like you, I am a self-made man," he would say to them. "What I am I owe to no one but myself. No relative has bought my post; no uncle put in a word with my commanding officer."
And as he said it, he'd think of all the insults, all the shit he'd had to put up with from his so-called superiors—men who weren't fit to polish his boots. He had suffered almost thirty years of that kind of crap to get where he was now, in a position of real power. He would tell his young men this and see in their eyes the reflection of his own dark indignation. And then he would ask them, "Join me. Be part of my secret brotherhood." And they would nod, or whisper yes. And they would be his: alone no longer.
So now he had his own organization; men loyal to him before all others; who would hesitate neither to betray their T'ang nor to lay down their lives if he asked it of them. Like the young officer who had been on duty the night of Lwo Kang's assassination. Like a hundred others, scattered about the City in key positions.