camwyn | Sky Master Story Arc Conclusion

Here's the last chunk of that particular VicMage.Asia story. Have fun, and let me know what you think.

Wong could smell the sea from here. It was a long walk from the Palace of Auspicious Counsel down to the harbor, but the winds off the sea had picked up. The smells of fish and weed and ship-sealant carried a long way on a wind like that. Not just smells, either, but sounds - waves, mostly. The gongs of the fishermen, summoning the Maritime Inspectors to verify their catches. The cries of distant seagulls, flocking and wheeling in the newly empty sky. The whispered complaint of grass bending under someone's foot and the rustle of fabric -

"You will excuse me if I don't turn around," said the Sky Master evenly, "but this has been a trying time for me, and I have no desire to give inadvertent offense."

"Of course not. Premeditated offense is much more satisfying."

Wong did turn around at that, forcing himself to keep his expression neutral. "Your Lordship," he murmured, dropping the most graceful bow of apology he could manage.

The brilliantly-embroidered dragon robe the Lord Protector had been wearing when the Osprey had landed was gone; more time had passed in contemplating the wind than Wong had thought. He was back in his old uniform instead, the blue-black high-collared jacket and trousers of an Imperial Navy admiral. True, the piping and insignia were gold now instead of silver, and the phoenixes embroidered on his scabbard and cuffs had been replaced by five-clawed dragons worked in glittering copper thread. For all that, the weirdly pale-eyed man looked almost exactly as he had years ago, when Lu Büwei had introduced them to each other. Even the scar that ran from his cheekbone down to his jaw rippled in the same way as he spoke. "I'm sorry you didn't win," he said quietly.

Wong restrained the urge to snort and turn away. "It isn't worth talking about."

"On the contrary," said the other man as he came a step closer, "I rather think it is."

"What is there to talk about? The Seekers won, and I lost." Wong turned away from the Lord Protector's gaze, looking up to the far blue heavens. There was a fleck of grey overhead, wheeling, turning-

"You're a better loser than that, Feihung." The light voice lay the barest of emphasis on the personal name. "If that were all there was, you'd be up to the elbows in the Osprey's engine, ripping out parts and sending runners back to your wife with notes on what needed replacement before the rematch."

He started to turn at that. "Rematch? There's going to be a-"

"A figure of speech. I'm sorry."

Wong fell silent again. It looked like a petrel, from here, though he couldn't be sure.

After a while, the light voice spoke again. "Say it, Feihung. You know you want to."

"No, sir," Wong answered, not taking his eyes off the distant bird. "I will not."

"Why not?" The voice was barely two paces away. Wong squared his shoulders.

"Because, your Lordship," he said grimly, "there is nothing I want to say right now that will not cause some kind of trouble for someone. Mostly for me."

"That's never stopped you before."

"Your Lordship," said Wong, eyes locked on the petrel as it dove towards the distant harbor, "right now I am very close to doing something extremely foolish, even in comparison to every other foolish thing I have ever done. I have had less sleep in the past three days than at any time in the rest of my life, including my daughter's bout with the fire rash fever, and I have just learned that all that time and all that effort was for nothing. I lost the race. Please don't ask me to say any more than that. Someone would end up regretting it."

"Feihung-"

"Sir." Wong closed his eyes. "Please. Stop talking."

"I'm not going to do that," said the light voice very quietly, from just behind him. "Not unless you say it. I can't afford to lose you."

That drew the sound out of him, a harsh, angry bark of bitter laughter that sounded amazingly painful even to Wong's own ears. "You can't afford to lose me," he repeated, turning to face the uniformed man. "I'm supposed to be important, now. You expect me to believe that, your Lordship?"

Pale eyes blinked. "Of course."

"That's crap, sir, and you know it." He'd wanted the rainstorm; he'd get the hurricane. "When that challenge was laid down it was me against Yang Wei. The whole court heard it. Everyone knew. Just like everyone knew when you said they could substitute that-"

"Yang Wei was ill, Sky Master. He still is."

"Pretty hai convenient, sir. That hem ga tsan gets asked to prove he's got the tset to back up his big words, and suddenly gets into a batch of bad scallops? Pretty hai convenient." Wong's hands curled up tightly as he added, "And you let him get away with it."

The other man crossed his arms over his chest, staring at Wong. "Explain that remark, Sky Master-"

"You bastard!" Wong suddenly shouted. "You absolute, utter bastard! You knew they'd pull something like this, and you let them use that girl anyway! They sent in a ringer like they were betting on a horse race, and you still let them get away with it! You wanted me to lose, didn't you? You son of a bitch, is that how you repay my loyalty?"

The other man's expression hadn't changed a hair, which only stoked the flames further. "You set it up, you bastard," growled Wong. "I gave you the skysteeds and won you your battles, and now you cut me off at the knees. You got what you wanted from me, just like you did from the Council-"

"Sky Master-"

"Diu!" He'd dropped into a wary posture, as if his body expected the other man to take a swing at him. The back of his mind half-welcomed the possibility. "You betrayed me to them, pok gai! I would've won if it weren't for you! You think just because they tried to make you Emperor I can't see what you are?"

The pale eyes narrowed, and the other man's hand started to come up as he drew a breath. Whatever gesture he would've made, whatever word he would've spoken, Wong would never know; rage-fueled instinct only saw a threat, and sparked a reaction into life. His foot swung out sharply, connecting with the side of the other man's knee. It made a satisfying thunk! sound, and even as the other man started to crumple Wong leaped at him-

There was a second of blinding whiteness before the explosion of indescribable pain registered on Wong's conscious mind. He was only dimly aware of slamming into the ground back-first instead of striking his target; all the thought had been driven out of him, and it seemed there wasn't enough room left in him to breathe. All he wanted to do was curl into a point too small for the pain to find him, but the world refused to go away. One hand curled weakly around a tuft of mercifully harmless grass as he struggled to find his breath again.

"When you have come back to yourself," said the light, quiet voice of the Lord Protector, "we will continue the conversation. Take your time."

Whimpering? thought Wong dizzily. Is that what that noise I hear is? Concentrating on it seemed to still the urge to continue, and as his breath slowly evened out the tide of pain receded. There'd been three strikes, it felt like. The one to the groin, then the fist in the solar plexus, and the third to the side of his neck, which throbbed with every heartbeat… damn. Should've listened to his father and taken up drunken boxing after all. He made a mental note to breach the possibility to Tinghui, and struggled to pull himself to his feet. Dusting himself off wasn't an option - the blood only rushed to his head as he tried to bend over - but he managed a nod.

The dark-clad man was watching him from two paces away, face as still and unreadable as he'd ever seen it. It might've been the lingering pain talking, but Wong thought he heard a certain edge in his words as he spoke that hadn't been there before. "First of all," said the man, "that was stupid. Never, ever try that again. You aren't trained for it, and it shows." Wong closed his eyes, feeling the blood of embarrassment rising in his cheeks; the man's voice continued relentlessly. "Second, even if you were trained for it, there are twenty of the finest fighters in the Imperial Navy on the other side of the courtyard wall. One shout from me and the fight would've been over anyway."

Wong swallowed, hard. "Yes, sir," he muttered.

"You were right." A pause. "Someone does regret this. But what I regret-" Wong lifted his head, though he did not quite dare to open his eyes with the pain still pounding away at him. "-is that I never explained it all to you."

Wong's mouth twisted bitterly as he cracked his eyes open. It was hard to make out the other man's expression. He wasn't sure he wanted to.

"I am serious." The other man's hands fell to his sides. "I never intended that you lose. Only that your competition be a clean one."

"But they cheated," protested Wong weakly. His gut still ached too much to manage more volume than that.

The Lord Protector snorted. "And you didn't? Feihung, you sent them the only man in Changsha who really and truly believed that magic is nothing but lies!" Wong couldn't avoid a tiny smile at that. "You knew what that'd do to their rituals. There's a word for that, you know-"

"Sabotage," Wong murmured.

Nodding, the other man continued. "Exactly. You wanted to scuttle them. You didn't just want to win. I've known you too long, I saw it in your face at the Audience Hall. You didn't want to win. . . you wanted to win, and you wanted them to lose. Yang Wei could never have beaten you, and you knew it. You wanted to rub his nose in your victory and leave the Seekers of Heaven broken once and for all."

He wasn't ready to nod yet, but Wong had to admit, the words were true.

"Feihung…" The man rubbed tiredly at his face with one hand. "I cannot afford this. China cannot afford this. We… I have been your backer for the last six years. I had thought, before this, that I was your friend as well. You know me at least as well as I know you. Have I ever turned on those who were loyal to me? Ever?"

Wong's head dropped again. "No…" His cheeks were burning again, this time with the slow, painful burn of shame. The moment of silence after stretched out, a long, uncomfortable growth of wordless space he could only pray would end without his having to look the other man in the eye.

"All I did," the other man finally said, "was give them a chance. No more, no less. It was the same chance I gave you. They took it, and they won, and the whole Palace is talking about it. About-" Wong heard him hesitate. "About how you slapped the most powerful magicians this side of the Hermit Kingdom in the face, and lived to tell about it."

Wong's head came up sharply at that. "Excuse me?"

The other man smiled, his scar rippling along the lines of his face. "Oh, you heard me," he said. "Two thousand years of study, practice, and ritual, and they were still nearly beaten by one upstart alchemist in one of his mad devices. And they had to saddle you with a passenger named Gaping Jaws Zhuang, the heaviest man in the Old Quarter, and secretly poison their own candidate to pull it off."

"Poison their-"

"The Supreme Grand Scholar all but admitted as much." Still smiling, the Lord Protector tucked his hands behind his back. "The word is that Yang Wei's sister slipped a small amount of some agent, as yet undetermined, into his food that night so as to ensure that someone more. . . up to the task . . . would be the one to compete against you. As far as the Palace folk see it, the Seekers of Heaven were too frightened of you to risk an honorable contest."

Wong found he was tugging absently at the end of his braid, the way he often did when a particularly recalcitrant solution finally started to behave as the books said it should. "Go on," he murmured.

"Most of the ones I overheard seemed to think you were entirely justified in bringing that Jiang fellow to the competition. Self-defense against people like that. Mind you, the last I saw of him he was clutching his ankles and mumbling, 'I believe, I believe, oh Gods help my unbelief', but even so." He waved one hand, dismissing a trifle. "You came within moments - literally, mere moments - of overturning two thousand years of the most dedicated tradition of wizards in the civilized world. True, you didn't beat them, but in the eyes of the Palace folk you might just as well have done. What ears the gossip doesn't reach, the proclamation that they're working on now will. They'll know… everyone will know."

Wong's braid lay forgotten in his hand as he tried to decide whether or not to allow himself a grin. The Lord Protector's next words wiped the incipient smile from his face.

"Don't get a big head over this, Feihung. They're on their guard now. They can hear the stories just as well as I can, and they know how close they came to real defeat. Think about it - did you really want two thousand years of wizardry angry at you? Especially since the death of the last Emperor knocked their entire reason for being out from under them?"

"Well, when you put it that way…"

"It's not how I put it. It's the truth. The Seekers of Heaven split off from the Wu Lung during Qin Shihuangdi's time in order to devote their lives to finding future Emperors and interpreting the omens of Heaven. The Storm That No One Sees drowned the last emperor before he could even be crowned, and Heaven hasn't spoken one word or given so much as one sign since. They have nothing left to lose, nothing at all - and what have I always said about going to war with an enemy who's got nothing to lose?"

He didn't even have to think to come up with the answer. "Don't do it."

The Lord Protector nodded. "'A man with no way out fights with the strength of a hundred'," he quoted, "'and will keep on doing it until he dies, or until you do.' For the last three weeks the Seekers have had no purpose at all. They've been looking the future in the face, and for the first time in two thousand years, they haven't seen anything whatsoever looking back. No direction, no purpose, not even the slightest hint from the Gods… Men like that are dangerous. Despair makes them strong, and they take out everything around them with them. That can't happen, Feihung. I won't let it. They'd blow up at the first opportunity, and probably take all of China with them."

Wong let go of his braid, looking the pale-eyed man properly in the face. "So what happens now?" he asks.

"Now?" The other man shrugged. "Now I give them a purpose. Every emperor since Cao Cao has made the tour of the Sacred Mountains a priority of his early reign. The man on the Dragon Throne has asked them to assist him in his pilgrimage; will it matter to them whether he calls himself Son of Heaven, First Under Heaven, or Lord Protector? It's enough. The world is changing faster than spring weather around them for the first time in a thousand years. Heaven is silent now, but if it ever speaks again, they'll want to be able to tell the Gods that they served their ruler with honor … and if that means turning their arts to the service of all the people of the Ten Thousand Islands, not just the Imperial Court and its associates, then so be it. They'll do as they're told and they'll join in China's future, or they'll get out of the way, because they'll hear you behind them all the way."

"You really think so?"

"You'll be in their nightmares, Feihung."

The Sky Master grinned. "Promise?"