Chapter 12
The eight-day journey to Deyun was almost a vacation. The weather was good, the roads were straight, level, dry, and easy to ride on, the accommodations along the way surprisingly comfortable. The scenery mixed green fields of young grain, villages with pale yellow thatched roofs, and long stretches of dark forest.
Nothing whatever happened during those eight days. The miles vanished one by one under the hooves of the horses and the sandals of the men on foot. On the seventh day they came in sight of the sea. In the afternoon they moved north along the coast road, passing carts and porters carrying seaweed, a dozen kinds of dried fish, and gear for the ships and boats whose red and brown sails dotted the sea. The crash of the waves on gravel beaches and the smell of salt water were around them. They camped that night in a thick grove of trees that looked like birches but smelled to Blade more like pines. Blade and Yezjaro sat around a campfire long after everyone except the assigned guards had gone to sleep, drinking quietly and thinking out loud about what tomorrow might bring.
«If it brings anything,» said Yezjaro. «I suspect the Hongshu and his chancellors will do nothing small against us. They will wait until we thrust our own heads upon the block before they bring the sword down. Meanwhile they will take considerable pleasure in watching us walk with our hands at our sword hilts, waiting for the enemy to strike, fearing that each moment will be our last.»
«Perhaps,» said Blade.
«You hope that perhaps we have been concerned to no purpose?»
«Yes.»
Yezjaro laughed. «So do I, and without shame. I too hope to die in my bed with my concubines and servants lamenting my passing, if it can be done without dishonor. But I think we are hoping for what cannot be. We will be welcomed with open arms-but they will be open only to strike us down.»
The «open arms» were very much on display when they rode into Deyun the next morning.
Two magnificently armored horsemen with the badge of the Hongshu on their shields met the party at the edge of the city. They led the way through Deyun's miles of winding streets, uphill, downhill, across large canals and small rivers. The route took them past every sort of shop and booth imaginable, past garbage dumps that made Blade wrinkle up his nose in disgust, past parks with every blade of grass and leaf practically manicured into a perfect pattern. Blade guessed that Deyun might easily hold more than a million people.
At the base of a hill they passed one entire quarter that was enclosed by a high stone wall painted glossy yellow. An entrance was marked by a gate twenty feet high, flanked on either side by masses of carved wooden reliefs extending for a hundred feet. Blade was about to ask Yezjaro what this quarter was, when he got a better look at the reliefs. After that, he didn't need to ask.
The reliefs were the most magnificent erotic sculpture Blade had ever seen. They were not stylized either, unlike much of the art Blade had seen in Gaikon. They were totally explicit and remarkably comprehensive. Blade made a mental resolution to come back to the gates some time before he left Deyun and get a better look at the reliefs-if only to see if they left out anything that a man and a woman could possibly do with each other.
He very much wished he had a good camera and a few rolls of color film.
Yezjaro noticed where Blade's attention was wandering, and grinned. «Ah yes, the warm gates. They are famous throughout Gaikon. A city within a city, it is said, whose ladies are so powerful that they may pass through tunnels barred to all others to do their work even within the Hongshu's palace itself! But remember what I said about your strong appetites and what you must do about them.»
«Oh, I will remember, Yezjaro,» said Blade. «You do the same. Nothing I have seen or heard of you suggests that you are a weak man in such matters.»
Eventually they reached the wall around the Hongshu's palace. It made the wall of the warm gates quarter look like a barrier of toothpicks and sugar cubes. It rose forty feet high and was twenty feet thick, crowned with towers rising another thirty feet. From every slit in the railings and every window and balcony of the towers armed men peered out and down. The gates were thirty feet high and contained enough iron and timber to build a fair-sized ship. Nothing short of starvation-or home dimension heavy artillery-could bring down the Hongshu's fortress.
«The official name for this area is the Jeshun Doi,» said Yezjaro.
«That means-?» said Blade.
«The House of the Mighty Warlike Power,» replied Yezjaro.
«The Hongshus don't mince words; do they?»
«Not unless it serves their purpose. Which it-wait, here comes our welcoming committee.» Blade heard the sound of trumpets from within the gates, then the gates themselves began to open with a rumble and a squeal.
Just inside the palace wall was a level field, completely surrounded by more walls, towers, and the roofs of houses, but offering room enough to fight a good-sized battle. For a moment Blade thought they were going to have to do just that. A cordon of armed men-spearmen, archers, and dabuni with drawn swords-stretched across the field in front of them. Then he noticed a tall, thin, elderly man on a ridiculously small horse riding out toward them.
«Lord Geron, the Hongshu's second chancellor,» whispered Yezjaro. «In theory it does us great honor, sending him out to greet us. But it is no secret that Geron's head is more full of schemes and plots than all the other five chancellors put together. They call him the Hongshu's pet wolf.»
The pet wolf exchanged bows and all the appropriate phrases with Lord Tsekuin. Then he signaled to his guards. They ran forward, herding the servants of the party away from their horses and baggage toward the gate. Behind the guards came a horde of palace servants, as silent and efficient as well-oiled machinery, scooping up the fallen baggage and leading off the pack animals. When they were gone, Lord Geron turned his horse and led Lord Tsekuin's party toward the inner gate.
Beyond that gate were the main stables, where they dismounted and emptied their saddlebags. Then Lord Geron and a dozen tough-looking dabuni led the way into the heart of the palace. The paths, corridors, and alleys within it seemed laid out to no plan or purpose.
«Except that of confusing anybody who doesn't know his way around?» Blade asked Yezjaro.
«Precisely,» said the instructor. «It is a maze that will drive any stranger without a guide mad. Assuming he lives that long, between the guards and the traps.»
«The servants must know their way around.»
«They do. But they are also sworn never to leave the palace and to die before revealing any of its secrets. Those who try to escape die by torture. No, the Hongshu's servants usually live and die within these walls. Many of them are the children of other servants, so they truly know nothing but this maze from birth to death.»
Blade nodded. The Hongshu was obviously grimly determined to be as unassailable as possible. There would be no easy way of striking at him here, at the heart of his power. Unless those tunnels from the warm gates quarter could be made passages for something less welcome than courtesans? Perhaps, but it was not something to worry about now.
The palace covered as much ground as a fair-sized city, but their wanderings nonetheless eventually came to an end. More silent attendants led the various dabuni of the party to the tiny cubicles reserved for them. Blade sat down on the mats that covered the floor with a sigh of relief. He was not particularly tired. But it was good to be out of that gloomy, bristling maze, and in a place with solid walls around him.