"Two streets north, captain," Eidi said. "Place called the Felicity."
A sharp lot, Reidi's men. A word passed while they were changing clothes and putting master Yi under guard, and everything had shifted, money had passed, Eidi had kited off quietly and arranged them another bolthole while they kept this one paid for as well. The Peony's owner did no bed-check on his tenants; and in this neighborhood, it was not likely he would dare double-rent the place or bother the horses, not dealing with clients of their sort.
"By twos and threes," Shoka said. "Down the alley. Just what you have to have. Afraid we can't take the mats, just the blankets. We don't want to be that conspicuous."
Heat landed on Shoka's back: he clenched his teeth and tensed his arms, face down on the floor, while Taizu fished rags out of the pot and applied them with, he was sure, a certain satisfaction for what he was suffering.
Thank gods the escape had been downhill.
Another rag. Breath hissed between his teeth.
"Hurt?" she asked.
"No."
"Sorry. That was the bottom of the pot."
They had the room with the small stove and the cooking-pot, the Felicity's one elegance. Chun and the lads had the other, a little crowded: not bad, captain, Chun had said.
If the landlord knew how the rooms split up, it needed no guesses what he thought.
"You've got a bad bruise back here," Taizu said.
"Lucky it's not worse than that." He knew the one she was talking about. "Damn bushes."
"What are we going to do?"
He started to draw a deep breath. It hurt too much. "Reconnoiter. Again. We moved. We'll need to know what Ghita's doing. I don't know what the Emperor's situation is, but you sure as hell don't bring your Emperor to a battlefield. He's changed. He's not well...."
"You can't feel sorry for him!"
Another breath. Nothing made sense. I tried to teach him. I don't know if I could have done better. Maybe if I'd had more patience....
Innocent people died for him. More will die, because of him. Damn, why did I stop? Why in the gods' name did I stop?
He saw Beijun's face, white, swollen, terrified—but not of him. Not of him, despite the sword. As if he saw him as a rescuer.
Taizu touched his back, rested her hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to be rid of Beijun's face, looked straight ahead at the brown boards, the dingy yellow brick of the wall, the post that held the roof off their heads.
"Ghita!" Taizu hissed. "That's what you said!"
"Damn right." He propped his chin on his fist. "The question is how much to tell around town—about the Emperor being here. There's a chance they'll kill him tonight."
"And blame you."
"If Ghita knows it was me, he'd be damn tempted. And once the word gets out I'm here—there's some danger. There are a few people in this town who've seen me up close. Ghita's surely not going to be surprised at anything I do, but I'll bet he's asking the Emperor some real close questions tonight. Real close."
"Like—the Emperor was in on it, with Reidi?"
"With Reidi and with me."
A silence. Then, quietly: "Damn."
He twisted around to see her face, saw the frown. "Damn what?"
"Damn Ghita and Gitu and the Emperor and everybody with them! They kill people and burn their houses and they get away with it, and you can feel sorry for them!"
"I've had two students. One was you."
"The other was the Emperor?"
"He thought I came to help him." Like he'd been waiting all these damn years. Like Meiya at the window, believing I'd come.
What did the young fool get himself into?
Did he run to Ghita?
Quiet morning. Very quiet—the way the conversation at the tables in the Felicity's common room fell away when mercenary soldiers came downstairs, the way soldiers gathered in knots on the street—talking together.
"What in hell's going on?" Shoka asked, of the small group a few doors down from the Felicity. Alone. Taizu was back in the room, a matter of no little argument, but things were getting close, he had reasoned, she had a fresh new bandage (a discreet, almost-healed kind of bloodstain he had contributed) and she was too brightly conspicuous for a morning when people were asking questions—like this one.
Which got raised eyebrows and an estimating look, before a Fittha said, in a low voice, "They broke in at headquarters last night."
"Rebels?"
The mercenary spat to the side, "Twenty dead. They're saying the Regent was asleep upstairs. Slept right through it."
The hell. Shoka put on a bewildered face. "How'd they get in?"
"Service gate."
"Had to have help," another man said.
"Shit," Shoka said, and walked off shaking his head.
To another group, outside the Peony, he said, gruffly, his best officer-voice: "Any of you heard anything about the Regent?"
"What?" an officer asked, regarding him cautiously.
Shoka nodded toward the side of the building, drew the officer that way. "One of my men picked up a rumor the Regent's dead. They say they're hiding it. They're afraid there'll be a riot."
"Who said?"
Shoka scratched under his stubbled chin. "Oghin. Over on Flower Street. You ain't picked up on it?"
"No."
"Hell. Just checking it out. Men're asking me. They're saying the rebels got somebody on-staff. Maybe real high up. That the whole thing was inside."
"Shit."
"Yeah. What have you heard?"
"Just it was up from the kitchens, got the gate open, got maybe twenty, thirty of 'em inside. But they're saying they ain't got that number of bodies. Ever' one of them was on staff."
"Hell. And how many of 'em stitt on staff, walking around searching for the assassins?"
"Ain't us. My money's on the Guard."
"Hell. We got out of Taiyi, cut to pieces. I got half my company dead. Sent us up here, said the line was here. I ain't seen a line, and the HQ can't even hold its own wall, what kind of shit is that?"
The Fittha scratched and held onto one of his amulets. "They pay."
"Yeah," Shoka said. "So far. I'm hoping he's alive. What've we got, if he ain't?"
The Fittha's face shadowed.
"Why in hell ain't they said?" Shoka asked. "That's what makes me nervous. You don't know what these damn pig-lovers are going to do. They better put out some patrols. ..."
And collaring a yellow-robed monk in an alley near the bakers' street: "You! You know an old man, a scoundrel named Jojin?"
There was dismay on the monk's face. "No." It was outright shock for a moment, amid the natural panic at being held by the throat against a wall.
"Tell him, if you see him—in Celestial Light monastery, if he's where he was—that the boy who took the plums is sorry, and he's in town. Remember that!"
"I'll remember it." The monk was about fifty, old enough to be a religious monk, not the sort who got their divine enlightenment around soldier-age. And he was curious enough to stare Shoka in the eyes.
"Do that," Shoka said.
Not hard at all to find a whole caravan in the market—in a town no one could freely leave. A lot of people in the market, not much buying but a great deal of talking in small groups, with a quick and anxious glance and a silence when a soldier walked by, or when a soldier came and fingered expensive things on a wagon's let-down counter.
Easy to get a merchant's attention then, in the little knot of men close by.
Easier yet when the merchant recognized him.