Part 14

Lian took Quan and their two horses and headed further south towards the base of the mountain. As the land rose up to meet the mountain, she spotted the distant figures of a group of horses, grazing. It was only about three or four miles away, but there was a small hedge of forest along the base of the mountain through which they'd be able to approach unspotted.

But the last bandit and their horses were secondary. First they had to meet Puotong. It was early evening when they got to the forest of the designated mountain, and Puotong was not there.

"He'll be here," Lian reassured her son.

He arrived almost an hour later with a group of twenty-five soldiers in full armor marching behind him. They looked tired and had obviously been marching all day, but none of them looked as unhappy as Puotong, even though he'd ridden horseback the entire way.

"Zhao," he stopped his horse a dozen yards away, his voice completely without mirth. "I should have my men kill you right now."

"It's good to see you Puotong. Old friend."

"Are we friends Zhao? Because what you wrote in that second letter…"

"Was true," Lian stated flatly.

Puotong clucked his tongue and eyed the woman warily. Sweat was dripping off his helmet and falling into his eyes. He wiped his forehead but kept his eyes on Lian. "Let's go talk," he set his horse off to go into the forest. Lian gave a quick glance to Quan, indicating he should flee if the troops attacked suddenly, but followed Puotong into the woods.

Once they were safely out of earshot Puotong hopped off his horse and let out a long sigh as he stretched his riding legs and back. Lian also dismounted and followed the commander next to a tall, thin fir.

"I can't ride like this too much more," he complained, seemingly to no one in particular. "My ass feels like I took a twenty-minute shit on the top of the Shuddering Peaks."

Lian hesitated a moment, uncertain she was actually being addressed. "Um, you mean, it's numb."

"Zhao my whole bottom half is going to be on pins and needles in a minute."

"…Is this what you wanted to talk about? Or…"

Puotong turned to look at her, his face in a grimace. "Zhao, I was hurt. Do you really think so little of me that you had to resort to blackmail to get me here?"

"I asked you politely in the first letter. I explained it all there."

"But you knew I couldn't possibly say yes. You know this isn't my territory or responsibility. They have a word for soldiers who leave their post to go deal with another soldier's business. Here's a hint, it rhymes with raider."

Lian had to think a second. "Oh… traitor. Yeah I got it."

"I could lose my commission, my career. My life. If Daming finds out I'm here doing this for you, that's it. As it was I had to tell my second in command I was taking the men out for a training drill. Everyone in that fort knows I don't do training drills. The chances that I get all twenty-five of these men back and have none of them talk is zero. I can deny as much as I want, but if three or more of them are willing to testify, that's all it takes to start a court martial. And then I'm completely fucked."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because you blackmailed me."

"Then you probably shouldn't be pocketing all those tariffs all these years."

"That's another thing," Puotong rose up, furious, and took two steps towards Lian. Then he repulsed in agony. He let out another long, pained sigh and looked at her. "Pins and needles," he explained, shaking out his legs and breathing through his teeth.

"Listen Puotong, these people are going to lose everything. Their lives too."

"What about my people Zhao? You think I've been stealing from the Zhosian tariffs too much? Think again. I got a silver commendation for my tax collection duties last year. Straight from the Governor. I sent more tax in to the collector than any other border post in the eastern half of the Empire. Which includes all the border posts with Thaan and Huenen, which each do about ten times more trade with the Empire in a month compared to what Zhosian does in a year. And for all my honesty my soldiers and I get nothing. My men haven't been paid in five months, Zhao. Five months. After the first month they were going to mutiny, so I started paying them half their salaries out of my own money. And I'm running out. My wife sold the house in Daming two months ago. She's living with my daughter and her mother in a tiny little apartment on the lowside while my son's waiting for his placement in the bureaucracy. And I don't know what I'm going to do next month when all the money's gone. I can try paying them out of the stuff you brought, but if I send nothing in next month I will get a visit I don't want from the Governor's office."

"…I didn't know it was that bad," Lian admitted. "How can you not get paid for five months?"

"A question I ask every week by letter. And so far nothing from my superiors, from the Governor, even the local Prefects aren't writing back."

"Well if you weren't scared by the threat of me going to the authorities about you skimping taxes, why did you come?"

"Your other threat."

Lian thought. She hadn't made any other threats. "What threat?"

"…The Keeper."

"What about him?"

Puotong laughed. "Good one Zhao, good one. As if allowing a Zhosian Keeper through the border wasn't enough to get me executed without a trial. If word reaches the Governor or an agent of the King, I'll be dead a lot faster than next month."

"…I'm going to be honest with you Puotong, I have no idea what you're talking about."

Puotong looked at her, then rolled his whole body in exasperation, mentally kicking himself for falling for a trap she hadn't set. "Are you serious? You haven't heard about the King? He's terrified of Keepers. Convinced one of them almost killed him last year. He's been hunting them down in every prefect. Rounding up a lot of innocent Tiendu Shu believers in the process apparently. And then there's little old me who let a Zhosian one slip into the country and set up a petty kingdom without so much as a warning."

Lian hadn't actually mentioned the Keeper who'd attacked her was Zhosian, because she wasn't sure he was. She had assumed he was because it was illegal to train Keepers in the Central Empire. Their powers didn't require the kind of modifications to the body that Shuli Go and Shei Chaste were forced to endure, and without a defined point at which the Empire could regulate how many people became Keepers, Tiendu Shu were banned from training them. Which didn't stop them from being trained anyway, secretly or openly as the tolerance for their existence varied between regions.

"Well," Lian considered the situation, "if he hates them so much, there must be some kind of reward for capturing a Keeper. Or even killing one."

"Yes. There is. But I won't be in a position to collect when my superiors learn I disobeyed my orders and came here to hunt him down."

"You might not be, but I would be."

"That doesn't help me."

"It could help your money situation for a while at least."

Puotong considered it, then nodded. "Fine. A deal. Last I heard it was one gold for a Keeper. That would get my men almost another month."

Lian walked up to him and extended her arm. He grasped her forearm and they shook. "Agreed," she said.

"Fine, what's the plan then. Do you know where this Keeper is?"

"No, but I know where he's going to be. We took their camp this morning."

Puotong leaned back in surprise. "We? You and your son?"

"I rounded up some of the villagers who were being harassed too. They're waiting back at the camp."

Puotong couldn't help grinning. "I'm impressed. Most of these villagers couldn't fight a snake."

"Well they haven't done much fighting yet. And I'm hoping they don't have to do much tomorrow either. We're going to set a trap that should take most of the fighting out of their hands."

"Then let's get to it. The sun will be down soon."

"First we have to pick up a straggler."

Lian and Puotong exited the woods. Lian told Quan to guide the soldiers back to the bandit camp and wait there until she and Puotong returned. Commander Puotong instructed his sergeant to follow the Zhosian boy and not do anything stupid until they met the commander again. After the group split off, Lian guided Puotong into the thin forest and they started their skirting around the pasture land so they could catch the last bandit by surprise. Which they did.

The last bandit was a short, waddling woman who didn't look up once as Puotong and Lian trotted their horses out of the woods and into the midst of the ten other animals that she was leading into a ramshackle stable on the edge of the woods. She trundled her way back and forth between the horses nudging and prodding them, but otherwise remained completely oblivious of her surroundings. It wasn't until she went to pat Puotong's horse on the nose – covered as it was by Imperial armor – that she even looked up.

"Oh. Hello there," she said, only mildly surprised.

"Hello," Puotong replied. "You're under arrest."

The woman looked at Puotong, then Lian, then the other horses, then back to Puotong. Then she threw up her arms and sighed deeply. "Finally!"

Lian and Puotong exchanged a look of surprised confusion, but the woman wouldn't let them have it.

"You know how long I've been out here, watering and feeding and herding these sons of bitches? Months! That Kalsang's been promising me adventure and riches and all sorts of shit for months, but all I'm doing is the same shit I was doing before! Except I don't get the breaks I used to, and my bed is a fucking floor mat under the fucking trees. Last night I had to run into this here shit of a paddock for protection from a fucking mountain leopard. Guess what? I didn't have that fucking problem at my last job. And the food…"

This speech continued completely unabated for the entire ride back to the bandit's hideout. Lian ensured the animals left behind would have enough food and water available for a day, then loaded the bandit on a horse and the three of them set out. Lian tried interrogating the woman for a while, but her responses inevitably came back around to the same winding narrative of how poorly she'd been treated. She revealed little valuable information except that her name was Shi, the Keeper was named Kalsang – confirming a Zhosian background – and that Shi and Kalsang did not see eye to eye on the management practices of either horses or humans.

"That idiot's been taking almost the entire group out on these stupid raids, hardly brings much back at all, leaves our base completely open – how did he think this was going to work out? I swear the man's a complete moron. I kept telling anyone who would listen that he was gonna get us caught. And now look! A Shuli Go and the Imperial army right on his doorstep. He deserves whatever you give him I swear. And those poor dumb bastards back there" – meaning the horses – "getting run ragged every day, and we don't have hardly any hay or a decent place for them to stay in the winter. Everything about this screams that the man doesn't have a plan or even half a brain. I swear the next time I see him…"

Puotong more than once threatened to hit her to shut her up, but even when he did strike her it only worked for a few minutes before she was right back at it. Her flow of complaints continued unabated right up until they reached the bandit camp, as the sun was finally beginning its long descent over the horizon.

"Well shit," Shi said, dismounting her horse and walking towards the group of villagers, one of whom rose up at the sight of her and started to approach. "If that isn't my cousin Niu, I haven't seen her in—"

Cousin Niu, the same woman who had had the courage to confront Lian about their chances for success the previous day, walked right up to Shi and slapped her hard across the face. Everyone fell silent and all eyes – bandit prisoners, villagers, soldiers, Shuli Go – watched.

"How could you?" Niu seethed, venom in her voice and eyes. "You disgraced our entire family when you ran away. And for what? This?"

"Niu, please," Shi started again, her voice already completely broken into a shadow of its former self. What a dozen slaps from Puotong had failed to do, a single one from her family had achieved with ease. "I, I was scared—"

Another slap. Then another. Shi started to cry, but Niu just starting shouting at her louder and louder.

"You fucking whore! Trading your family for a few more horses! They killed Aunt Shufen! Did you know that? Huh? Did you?" Another slap.

When Shi spoke again, she was on her knees, begging forgiveness, her words cluttered under a mass of tears and sobs. Niu was having none of it though. She continued striking and shouting at her cousin, ejecting insults and listing all the damage done to their family. When she started kicking Shi hard in the ribs, as the former bandit lay curled on the ground in tears, Lian finally stepped in and pulled Niu away, almost struggling despite the other woman's small, poorly nourished peasant stature: such was her fury that she could almost overpower a Shuli Go.

A group of the villagers took Niu and tried to calm her down, while Puotong's soldiers dragged Shi away, coughing blood. Lian walked over to where Fen and Li Jie had sat, watching, and crumpled into a cross-legged pose next to them.

"Is that what it's going to be like for all of them?" Li Jie asked. "When they get back, I mean."

"Yeah that's pretty normal," Lian informed him. "For the ones who make it back."

Li Jie shook his head.

"Let's eat," Lian said, "then I'm going to tell everyone my plan. So that we can all make it back."