Chapter Text
Note: This story is a sequel to the Lady Kana Affair
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“Here comes another one,” Leto said.
Double wasn't sure if he meant the skimmers or the cloud ninja.
Cloud ninja! And this far east in the Skimsands. Those maniacs usually stuck to their poisonous sand dunes in the Black Desert, doing whatever they did inside those factories of theirs, making a life among jets of toxic gas, yet here were three of them, leaping about and planting kicks into the sides of the enormous skimmer insects, themselves bursting from the sand and rushing the ninja on long spindly legs.
Double shrugged his backpack off his shoulder, knelt in the sand and fished through it.
Leto said, “Five skimmers now.”
By the time Double looked up, there were six, antennae waving through a blast of sand as it burst through the dune. A cloud ninja went into an airborne spin-kick and one of the insects folded in half.
“Oh, so they're badasses,” said Leto, approvingly.
The skeleton wasn't necessarily looking in the direction of the melee, his sideways-cylinder of a head pointing at nothing in particular. But skeletons didn't have to see anything to be aware of it.
Double found what he was looking for. A piece of dried meat, salty. He tore into it, chewing quickly, looking south, to where the Eye stretched before them and, beyond that, the monochromatic sands of the Grey Desert. Somewhere to the northwest was the silhouette of Tengu's Vault.
He shouldered his pack and caught himself rubbing the horn on the left side of his forehead. He gave his skeleton companion a long appraising glance. “I think this is your last chance, brother.”
“Captain?”
“Stoat is still less than a day's walk. Any further and you're stuck with me.”
The skeleton gave out a mechanical bray of laughter. “That seems to be where I find myself this cycle.”
Double found himself grinning but soon sobered. It was only a short day's walk through the Eye. By dusk they would reach the Grey Desert and by sunset they would be safe within the walls of the very Tech Hunter waystation they had found themselves days earlier, the location of his humiliation, of Lady Kana's humiliation and the reason why he and Leto found themselves now in the middle of nowhere, bereft of the steel armour that was theirs by right as elite samurai of the Traders Guild.
Then again, they were elite samurai no longer. Double caught himself rubbing his horn again and swore at himself.
“I think I recognize that patch of rock,” he said. “I think we came this very way.”
“It's plausible.”
It was plausible. This was the straightest, shortest path between the waystation and Stoat, Stoat being the nearest imperial-controlled settlement.
After their defeat at the waystation at the hands of a single Scorchlander rebel and her nick-of-time ronin mercenaries, Double's squads of samurai heavies and conscripts had been stripped of their armour and weapons and sent off naked, trudging through the desert in a humiliation march, the sun roasting them in a desert oven, Lady Kana clinging to his back. A rebel sniper had put a long-ranged bolt through her side, and so Double had carried her for most of the trek, even with his injured arm. Her blood had trickled down his back and her cheek had been pressed against his, her chin resting on his shoulder to avoid his horns. The endless brown sands of the Eye had ploddingly transformed into the endless yellow of the Skimsands. Then the skimmers came, drilling up through the sand in bursts of legs and antennae and squealing and that awful smell. It did not make Double's short-list of best days.
It was not possible to force-march his wounded and unarmed men, and carry an injured, complaining noble, all the way through the orange heat to Lady Kana's home of Port North, so, luckily, there was Stoat, the compact little trading town waiting for them on the southern border of the Great Desert.
Lord Inaba, of course, welcomed Lady Kana and her entourage into the sun-baked little imperial town with great puffing exclamations of pride and pleasure and horror at the noblewoman's wounds and sunburn. He clothed her in silk, whisked her away for medical attention and lotions and care in his noble's house. Double's men were taken to the police headquarters to care for their own. Double found his lieutenant a repair kit, saw about getting his men bandaged and rested, saw to his own arm. The arm would be saved, he was sure. The rebel's bandages were good, high-quality, well-applied.
Then Lord Inaba's men came for him.
It was in Inaba's noble home that Double was brought before Lady Kana and made to kneel before her. Sated in a bamboo chair in a dark room on the second floor, she watched Inaba's guards strip him bare and force him down before her on a bolt of oil-rubbed, waterproofed garru skin, put down to protect the wooden floor..
There had once been carpets here. Double could see them, rolled up, leaning against the walls. There was also Lord Inaba, watching from the shadows.
Inaba had once been an inspiring figure for Double. A Shek warlord risen to the highest echelons of the empire, the very inner circle of the United Cities nobles. Double had been a very young man then, the dust of the Shek Kingdom still on his horns. Then, on a march from Sho-Battai to Stoat, he had witnessed the noble in action.
It would have been one thing if Lord Inaba had embraced dishonour and picked fights with helpless wretches with no chance of defending themselves. The Shek Kingdom was full of such bullies and they were frowned upon. This was not what Lord Inaba did.
Instead, preening his flowing floral robes, popping into his mouth imported grape tomatoes, he would watch with glittering eyes as his hooded bodyguards kicked in the ribs of merchants' sons and broke open the heads of shop slaves. This had been Double's introduction to the topsy-turvy world of the United Cities. He had once been eager to meet Lord Inaba. After that day, he knew the last thing he'd want would be to have those bright eyes fall on him.
And now, Lord Inaba stood by the garru skin in robes of an astonishingly lurid teal, watching with interest.
“Captain,” said Lady Kana.
She spoke to him from the depths of the bamboo chair, eyes like flames. She sipped at something in a long-stemmed glass. Behind her, a single shaft of sunlight cleaved through the closed window slats, silhouetting her.
“My lady,” said Double.
“I'm taking them,” she said.
Movement, creaking over the wooden floorboards, one of Inaba's hooded guards, coming into Double's view, the white sunlight catching what was in his hands. Three of Inaba's hooded guards grabbed hold of him and forced him down, a hand on the back of his neck pushing his head forward. He heard Lord Inaba murmur, under his breath, “Goodness.”
The bone-saw tapped at one of his horns on the left side of his forehead.
“I'm taking your horns, Captain,” said Lady Kana. “You will be shorn, disgraced. What do you have to say to that?”
Double clenched his jaw and said nothing. At a signal from Lady Kana, the guard brought the saw forward and Double felt it come into contact, felt it bite into his horn. He squeezed shut his eyes.
Lady Kana made a sound. The bone-saw was gone. He fell against the garru skin.
“Everybody,” she said, “get out.”
Her Greenlander guard and her slaves left for the stairs at once. Double heard stomping around him, saw Inaba's samurai disappearing down the stairs with the others. Lady Kana gave Lord Inaba a look and, with a huff, the huge Shek noble grumbled after his men, leaving Double alone in the dark room on his knees. Shaking, he reached up, touching his horn, which was still intact. His finger slid along the groove of a single mark left by the saw.
Kana came over to him, to where he was kneeling. Crouching, she leaned forward to touch her forehead to his. Reaching up, she slowly pulled her wig from her head. Grasping his hand, she placed it on her scalp, the close-cropped hair rough against his palm. She pulled his fingers along her scalp, over the curve of her forehead, down her nose, pausing to brush the tips against her mouth. Her eyes were open, staring at him, as though trying to burrow into his eyes with her own. She kissed his left eyebrow, moved lower—their mouths nearly brushed together, and then she was gone, he alone on his knees and she again in her chair, wig in place, legs crossed.
She was inspecting her nails. “Think they've gone south?”
“They—” His voice was shaking, just a little. “Yes. They'll go through Venge, likely at night, skirting along the north. Take them to Shem. From there, they can get to the Stenn Desert through the Border Zone.”
“Inaba thinks they'll go to the Swamps.”
“The—the Swamps?”
“Of course, no one goes to the Swamps. But Inaba found something. One of his goons did, rather.” She fixed him with an expectant smile. “Well, Captain. I suppose you know what I want.”
He got to his knees shakily, then stood at attention. “I think so, my lady.”
“Kana.”
He met her eyes. “Kana.”
She smiled at him, nodding, and then began to speak. Since he clearly did not care for the protection of his expensive, heavy, uncomfortable samurai armour, he could go without. And since he clearly did not care for following orders, and therefore did not care about his career in the Traders Guild, he could go without his rank as well.
“I'm suspending,” she purred, “your commission.”
Double took that in. “But if they reach the Stenn, I'll need two squads to bring them in. At least.”
“I don't need all of them. I just want one. I'm sure you know who I mean.”
His hand went to his arm, where a thick scar now lay, from where a leafblade had nearly severed it. He stared straight ahead, heart quickening. “At once, my lady.”
“Lady?”
He met her eyes again. “Kana.”
“Captain. You'll come back with her in tow or you don’t come back at all. Do you understand?”
He bowed low.
In a sing-song voice, she said, “You're dismissed.”
He moved, shakily but only a little, off the garru skin, walking barefoot and naked along the cool wooden floor to the stairs.
“Oh and Double?”
She was staring at him with an undefinable emotion in her eyes. A girlish smile crossed her features, almost coquettish. “I do want you to come back.”
Stripped of his armour, dressed in civvies, he stopped by the station, both to inform his men of the change and to check in on them. Some of them were in bad shape. Hiro seemed to be recovering, the way a bug smashed with a rock could be said to be recovering. He gave Double a tentative thumbs up and what might have been a smile. Hard to tell.
Leto, his second-in-command and lieutenant, was nowhere to be found. Instead, he found the sergeant and informed him of the situation. In a polite voice hiding many other questions behind it, the sergeant said, “When will you be back, sir?”
“If I'm back. By Kral, I may find my perfect death on this fool mission.”
“What shall I tell the lads?”
“Tell them to stay out of my locker. Took me a long time to collect those rum jugs.”
“Good luck, Captain."
“Sergeant, I'm a civilian now."
"Then get the hell out of the station, drifter.”
"That's the spirit, Sergeant."
"Thank you, Captain."
He stepped out into the hot clay-baked streets of Stoat and found the skeleton waiting for him, a rucksack over his shoulders, dressed, like him, in a light shirt and nomad-style trousers. "Lieutenant. Where's your armour?"
“Turned it in," said the skeleton. “I've resigned.”
“You can't throw your career away, Leto. I won't accept it, you know.”
“I guess we'll see what happens when you're captain again.”
Double glared at his lieutenant. He growled and clasped the skeleton on the shoulder, then burst out into laughter.
One of the cloud ninja delivered a killing blow to the last skimmer. Dead, its enormous skittering body shot into the air, as though suddenly weightless, a leaf on the wind, only to land on the dunes beyond. The other two ninja healed their injured brethren and then the three of them continued sprinting east.
"Never see cloud ninja this far east," Leto murmured to himself. Then, to Double: “But why the Swamps? No one goes to the Swamps. Why not Flats?"
Double was staring the opposite direction, back the way they had came, watching the horizon, as though waiting for something. “We left them in the Grey Desert," he said, idly scratching his chin. "What's east of there?"
“More Traders Guild territory. Slavers for them to attack."
“And Gut.”
“No one goes to Gut. Too many Gutters.”
“Right. So what's west?”
“Deadlands.”
"They talk about a city out there in the acid rain. A city for skeletons."
"Black Desert City."
"Ever been there?"
"Long story yes. Short story no."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I don't remember."
"But it's possible?"
“Oh, it's almost certain, but—” The skeleton shrugged.
“South is Venge.”
"Venge is not so bad at night."
"But tough when you're pushing injured soldiers. Especially with thralls roaming about. Dangerous out there, even without the—” He gestured at the sky.
"The active one.”
“So you say.”
Leto nodded. “They could try to go south through Venge. Push to Flats."
"Be nice they went to Flats. We could do that. Head south, become lagoon bums. Imagine that life."
“I also imagine Kral would not approve.”
“No, he would not.”
“And you don't think that's where they're going, do you?”
"Tell me, what's west and east of Flats?"
"Crownsteady area. Catun. Slave camps. Gutters."
"Fishmen."
"I don't believe in fishmen."
"Neither do I but..."
"The Southern Hive. Not much else"
"And their base of operations is north-west, in the Stenn Desert. There's a passage at the southern-most tip of the Deadlands, right at the border of Venge. If you want to skirt around the, you know—” He gestured to the sky again.
“The active one.”
“You can wend through there into Shem."
"Nothing much in Shem except bandits and gutters."
“And a straight shot into?”
Leto nodded. "The Swamps, sure. But wouldn’t they go through the Border Zone?”
“Who wants to go to the Border Zone?”
The skeleton was silent. Then: “Any day. Any day the Border Zone if it meant no Swamps.”
“I think I’d agree. But we’re playing a hunch.”
“A hunch?”
“Hrm.” Double extended his hand toward the skeleton. “May I again?”
The skeleton reached into his pack and withdrew a small spyglass. This he handed over. Double extended it and peered through it back the way they came.
“Still following us?”
“Three of them," said Double.
Even through the spyglass, they were only black figures on the horizon, difficult to identify.
“We'll keep moving," he said. "See if they try to gain."
The Grey Desert. The waystation. The sand-pitted blades of the wind generators creaking overhead. Double breathed in the dry air. "Where it all went down."
"Yes,” said Leto.
"We nearly met our end."
"Yes, I was there."
“Exciting to be back.”
“So you say, Captain.”
Dressed as drifters, they were merely travellers like the others, heading through the gates and into the bar, finding a table and ordering cactus rum, listening to the braggarts and the tech hunters tell their hogwash tall tails.
“The Swamps,” Leto said, to no one in particular, to himself.
"No one goes to the swamps," grumbled an elderly Shek from a nearby seat.
"Hear, hear, old timer,” said Double, staring after the old horned gentleman. An elderly Shek was a rare sight.
At the table next to them sat a group of heavily armed warriors in black and white armour. They were boisterous, laughing, slapping each other on the backs, shouting orders for more rounds. Good, hard men, maybe mercenaries. Double could use good, hard men on this suicide mission. The problem with mercs, of course, is that once you paid them all that money for a few day's service, one of them takes a swing at a drunk or a guard and then the whole town is fighting them and then you're on the run without the mercs or the money.
“But why the Swamps?” said Leto. “Why not the Border Zone?”
“Inaba,” said Double. “His men caught merchants selling hash sold to them by the Nameless, who'd come into Stoat in disguise, carrying a bull packed to the butt with hash bricks.” He reached into his pack to find something small and flat. “The bricks were wrapped in these.”
He laid out a brown bamboo parchment marked with the image of an animal, a ferocious maw, opened and snarling, highly stylized.
“I don't recognize the mark,” said Leto.
“The Hounds.”
“Ah. Ah. Hm. I see. Fine. Then I'm with you, as always, Captain. But may I ask a hypothetical question?”
“I value your input, Lieutenant.”
“Why don’t we go to Flats? The pay’s not bad. Climate’s nice.”
“Is this a serious hypothetical question?”
“Perhaps we should look at the idea seriously. Maybe it's better than carrying out a suicide mission in the Swamps.”
“That’s just the thing, Lieutenant. I want this.”
“To get your commission back?”
“Steyerfast. I want the rebel leader. I want a rematch.” He set his drink down and clasped the skeleton on the arm, then looked to the door. “Hrm. They should be here by now.”
The door opened. There were three of them.
Each wore black desert tunics and tengai-style basket-hats, their faces concealed under the bulbous straw headgear. Only one wore a black cloak around their shoulders but all three carried swords at their sides, short ninja-style blades that looked, to Double's eyes, extremely expensive. They moved as one, in formation, the cloaked one in the centre, the others at their side, and drifters and tech hunters got out of their way as they went to a table and sat down with their backs straight, turning this way and that, peering out through the eye-slits in the baskets.
They refused drinks from the server with a quick shake of the tengai baskets. The tables nearest them quietly vacated.
“Well, well,” said Double quietly. “They sent the ninja guard.”
“Imperial assassins,” said Leto. “Surely not for us. And sent by who? Lady Kana?”
“Maybe they’re heading to Flats Lagoon.”
“Like we should be.”
“Is this Kana's doing? To send me on my way and then pull tight the noose?”
“Lady.”
“Hm?”
“Lady Kana.”
“Isn't that what I said? ” He looked back at the assassins sitting stock-straight in their chairs. “What are they thinking? That we’ll let ourselves be butchered in our sleep? Maybe they think they'll follow us into Venge and try it out there. Why not right here? Why not a brawl in this bar right now?”
“Maybe you should sit down, Captain.”
But Double was already heading to their table, with a grin and a hand on the hilt of his sword. The basket-hats turned as one and silently waited as he approached. He opened his mouth to show his teeth, opened it to say—
“Ah, kin, ya won' believe what my mate see!”
The outburst came from the elderly Shek, so abrupt and so clearly directed at Double that he could only stand there, dumb as a garru.
Around the table, the old Shek's drinking companions snickered, but the old Shek himself was deadly serious. “What is it coming to, kin? What's it coming to?”
“By Kral, I cannot say, kin,” said Double, trying not to laugh. “What did your mate see?”
“Holy Nation in Shem,” cried the old Shek. “Holy Nation in Venge, Holy Nation marchin' through Skinner’s Roam, crossin’ Venge. Closer every day. Hoy for the Emperor! Hoy for the Golem!”
“For the Golem!” cried a few of the Shek mercenaries at the other table, whose short-shorn horns marked them as disgraced and exile.
“Paladins?” Double said. “In Venge?”
“His mate seen ‘em,” said one of the old Shek’s drinking buddies.
“His mate seen 'em,” repeated another.
“In Venge,” said Double. “Does Okran command them to flash-fry? Why not march through the Skimsands?”
“Ah, you don’ know.” The old Shek waved him away. “Agh. By Kral.” Back into his cups. Then, roaring back to life: “Only place without Okranites,” he cried, “is the Swamps.”
“No one goes to the Swamps,” agreed his drinking buddy.
Double nodded to them, looked back to the three assassins. The three baskets watched him silently. “No one goes to the Swamps,” he said to them.
They said nothing. He turned on his heels and came back to Leto, who waited patiently for Double to speak. Instead, Double nodded to the skeleton and then to the ceiling. Leto nodded in return.
Together, they walked to the stairs. Behind them, the three basket-hats followed.
The second floor of the bar was a dorm-style flop room, beds set around a central table at which sat men and women in tattered clothes playing odds and evens. Double and Leto reached the top of the stairs, stepped to either side and unsheathed their long nodachi swords.
The assassins were already drawing their blades as they reached the landing. Leto flung one of them across the room and over the table, crashing the game, and then he and Double were on the other two, the room filling with the blinding cuts and thrusts of their blades. All hell broke loose, drifters and tech hunters scrambling to get clear, shouting, pressing themselves against the walls.
They had been right: these were no mere sellswords but indeed the imperial ninja guard, fighting like professionals. The bouncer popped his head up, saw the level of swordplay happening, went right back down again.
Double went up onto the table and Leto jumped with him, fighting back to back. Double kicked a chair out at one of his attackers, who jumped it masterfully, but it was enough of an opening for him to leap over the head of the other, to land behind them, forcing them to whirl about and retreat under his renewed assault, this time with nowhere to go except against the edge of the table.
Instead, the assassin held out a hand. “Hold, Captain,” came a stern voice from within the basket. “There has been a misunderstanding.”
With their free hand, the assassin pulled the basket from their head, revealing a hard-looking flatskin woman. “We are not here to fight you.”
Some of the drifters pressed against the wall protested at this but it was enough for the other two assassins to break off the fight, sheathing their swords, even as Leto still stood on the table, his blade at the ready.
‘Hrm,” said Double. “I no longer carry that rank, sir.”
The assassin nodded. “As you say, Captain. Our orders were to follow you as far as Venge and see you safely off.”
“To be sure we didn't make a run for it, that it?”
“If you say so, Captain. And to give you this. Lady Kana wanted you to have it.”
Leto leapt off the table and sheathed his blade. “Apologies about the game, gentlemen,” he said to the drifters glaring at him. He then went over to see what the assassin was holding out to Double, who was standing there, not moving.
“What is it?” Leto asked.
“It’s a lock—” said the assassin.
“—of her hair,” finished Double.
“She also has a message for you, Captain.”
“Does she.”
“She says come back.”
“What does that mean?” Leto asked. “Is she calling this off?”
Double touched the lock of hair to his forehead, his teeth showing. After a moment, he gave Leto a quick smile and then, very seriously, tugged his pack off his shoulder and began to go through it. “We better re-up and get going then. We’ll make Venge by sunset.”
Leto co*cked his metal cylinder head to the side but the cloaked ninja assassin seemed to approve of this, because she replaced her basket-hat, and, with a gesture, sent the other two assassins back downstairs. She herself lingered at the stairs.
“Captain,” she said.
Double looked up from his pack.
“You weren't bad,” she said, “But if you fight like that in the Swamps, you won’t last a day.”
Double stared after her, at the flap of her black cloak as she disappeared down into the bar.
