"And who," she inquired, "had drugged them?"

One of my rules of thumb when engaged in a series of lies was to keep matters simple. If one couldn't come up with a fabrication that would sound convincing, nothing was as easy to put across as ignorance.

"I do not know," I said.

"And why would they have administered this drug? To what end?"

"Again, I don't know."

"If it was an enemy intent on performing mischief, why didn't they commit it while my father and his people lay helpless?"

"Perhaps we are dealing with a disordered mind. We can ponder it from now until the end of existence and still find no comprehensible reason for any of the actions taken."

"That is very true," she said, much to my relief.

We were drawing nearer and nearer to the bridge. I wanted to shout a warning, to keep walking, to do anything except what I was doing. And yet I kept us moving forward. The day remained overcast, although the rain had stopped falling. I looked around and tried to figure out where the eyes of the Forked Tong were. Thanks to the weather, shadows seemed to crawl everywhere through the crowded buildings. At any moment, someone could come leaping out and grab Mitsu from my side.

"So what would you have me do now?" she asked.

"I'm not sure."

"Interesting, the position you find yourself in."

I laughed coa.r.s.ely. "I wouldn't exactly call this fiasco 'interesting.'"

"Oh, I would."

We were at the edge of the bridge. All I had to do was walk along and, presuming she followed, we would be at the midpoint within moments. At that point, I would have fulfilled my end of the bargain.

She saw my hesitation, and glanced at the bridge. "Do you wish to walk over to the fish market? I'd think you'd want to go nowhere near the place, considering the difficulties we've encountered there before."

One of the greatest strengths, the most consistent certainties in my life was that I was a superb liar. It had never presented a difficulty for me. Yet I sounded incredibly unconvincing to myself as I said, "What an opportunity, then, to explore it without people trying to kill us."

She'll never fall for that. Ever.

"By all means," said Mitsu.

I gulped deeply as we set foot on the bridge. I wanted to scream Run! Run now! Run quickly and as far as you can! Leave me to my miserable fate! And I did scream it. Screamed it so loud within my head that my brain was aching. Insane as it sounds, I was hoping that the shouting from within my skull would be heard by her. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work.

As we started across the bridge of no return, Mitsu said, "Remember, Apropos, when I willingly sacrificed my handmaiden in order to satisfy my father's sense of honor?"

"Of course I do."

"And you condemned me for it. Even when I explained it to you, you still never truly accepted it or appreciated my point of view."

"I appreciated it as best I could. I apologize if it was insufficient for you."

She looked at me thoughtfully. I tried to keep my gaze from wandering. My steps felt even more leaden than they usually did, my right leg so heavy I thought it was going to drag me right off the bridge, despite the high handrails. "What if I told you there was a way out of our current predicament?"

"What sort of way out?" "Well, let us say that I am able to convince my father of the truth of your story. That you were not responsible for the death of Go Nogo. Unfortunately it will do nothing to erase the stain of failure attached to your design for his other home. That mark still remains, and the scale would have to be balanced."

"Then... what would happen?"

"A life would have to be sacrificed. Fortunately, that could be solved without the loss of yours. All you need do is select a personal servant to lay down his or her life in order to redeem your honor. Then all will be well."

"But... but I didn't have any personal servants..."

"Have you forgotten?"

I stopped walking. We were about thirty feet shy of the middle of the bridge. "Forgotten...?"

"Timtup?"

Believe it or not, I blanked on the name at first. But then I remembered. "The... the bathing maiden..."

"Yes. You had s.e.x with her. She may not have been exclusively your servant, but being intimate with a palace servant would certainly qualify as 'personal' in matters of honor."

"Yes, I did have s.e.x with her," I said, thinking fast. "But... but it wasn't really personal. It was...

truthfully... it wasn't anything. It was... a diversion. A way to pa.s.s the time."

"Ahhh," she said. "I thought as much. You wanted... something else?"

That was absolutely true, yes. I wanted pa.s.sion, depth of emotion. The bathing maiden had been efficient, interested in pleasuring me... but beyond that, there had been no connection. And I was finding that I wanted, needed that connection. Otherwise all it did was reinforce the emptiness within me.

In short, I wanted the intensity of feeling that I hadn't even known I was missing... until I had encountered Veruh w.a.n.g Ho.

"Yes. Exactly," I said.

"I thought that might be the case. Still... the physical act was undertaken. That is sufficient for our needs."

My heart clenched. "You're... you're telling me that all I have to do to get into the Imperior's good graces is to ask an innocent young woman to lay down her life. To die simply because we had s.e.xual intercourse."

"It is slightly more complicated than that, but yes. That is essentially it."

"I... I can't... that would... that would..."

"That would make you as bad as me?" She said it with faint sarcasm, but she almost sounded genuinely interested. My thoughts were swimming. I moved away from her, needing distance, trying to find grounding.

Should I do that? Could I? Actually ask an innocent young woman to sacrifice her life for me? Was I that craven?

Or was it craven? If I kept in mind Mitsu's arguments over the past months, then to take her suggestion would simply be in keeping with the philosophies and the-- No.

Just that flatly, my inner voice rejected it. And when one considered that there was no greater advocate of my finding ways to live than my inner voice, then that had to be considered a thumpingly flat rejection.

There was only so far, and no further, that I would go to save my own miserable hide. This was, believe it or not, a bit of a revelation for me. I'd really thought there was nothing I would not stop at to keep breathing. But apparently that was not the case.

"No," I said, my tone flat. "No, I can't do that."

"Even if it provides a means of saving your life?"

"Even if. I have... other considerations," I said.

"Yet you would sacrifice me to prove your loyalty to the Forked Tong."

As much in disarray as my thoughts had been, that comment of hers suddenly penetrated the haze of confusion like an ice spear.

I turned to face her and realized we were standing right in the center of the bridge. Without even noticing it, since I had been so distracted by the torment and confusion in my mind, I had brought her to where I had promised.

My mouth was suddenly dry.

She was shaking her head, and there was a satisfied smirk playing upon her lips. "Ah, Apropos. Ever the contradiction. You would condemn me for sacrificing a handmaiden, and yet you think nothing of placing me in jeopardy when it suits your needs."

"Saying that I think nothing of it isn't remotely accurate. I've agonized over this more than any other decision I've made in my life, and how the h.e.l.l do you know that's what I was doing?"

Except she didn't really have to provide me the answer, because I already knew it. Even as she stepped toward me, placed her right fist into her left palm and mashed them against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s three times, it was clear to me.

"I knew it," I muttered. "I knew you were one of them. Were you there in the shrine? Standing there, watching me sweat?"

"No," she said. "I was at the palace. But I learned of it quickly enough. We have eyes and ears everywhere. And a quick spy who relayed information to me with unmatched alacrity." "Mordant," I said with growing comprehension. "I thought I saw something winged in the trees of the forest. It was he."

"Yes." She patted my face. Reflexively I drew back slightly. My thoughts were a strange mishmash of triumph that I had fulfilled my end of the bargain, thus "proving" my loyalty, and relief over the fact that Mitsu was in fact in no danger at all since she was already a part of this insanity. But I had not known that Mitsu was part of it when I'd willingly brought her to this place to put her at the mercy of the Forked Tong.

As if she could read my mind, she smiled and, keeping her hand on my cheek, said, "Don't be concerned, Apropos. I'm very pleased matters have worked out this way. Now you will never be able to feel morally superior to me. After all, my handmaidens willingly and knowingly make the sacrifices that are asked of them. You, on the other hand, were going to take an 'innocent' girl and sacrifice her for the purely self-serving purpose of showing your loyalty and desire to join our cause. So whose escutcheon is the more stained? Yours? Or mine?"

"I have no escutcheon," I replied. "I have nothing. And perhaps that's exactly what I deserve."

She drew my face to hers and kissed me lightly on the forehead. "Do not feel that way. You are about to embark on the most glorious adventure of your life. One that you richly deserve."

I hated it when people told me that.

"Well," I said, "at least you had nothing to do with the attack on my teacher."

She looked at me, amused. "You don't realize? I was the one who fought you that night. You served to delay me so that I wasn't in the hut when he..."

"You?" I couldn't believe it. "But... no... it..."

She nodded. "Yes. It was on my way back from that business that I came upon Mordant and recogniz--"

I wasn't listening. "I saw you naked!"

Mitsu blinked in confusion. "What?"

"I cut the woman I fought. Cut her badly! I would have seen a vicious, red wound on you..."

"Her, you mean?" she asked, touching her shoulder area. "A wound that might look like the tongue of a dragon?"

"Yes, just like..." I stopped, thunderstruck. "G.o.ds... your tattoo..."

"One of the sisters obliged me. I consider my body a work of art, Apropos. You defaced it. I had to restore it. A job well done, don't you think. Is my body not a piece of art once more?"

"Yes. I'm especially impressed by your brushwork."

She swatted me on the back of the head.

Chapter 8.

Divine Revelations

The sun had come out, but you couldn't have told that from where we were.

Following Mitsu had been like following a flickering shadow during a moonless night as we made our way to a section of town far removed from any we'd been to. The streets grew narrower and narrower to the point where it seemed almost impossible to keep moving through them, and yet we did. I had gone back to the inn and gotten my belongings, and we had headed out almost immediately. Now I was starting to wish I'd stayed where I was. I was constantly checking my person every time I came near any of the denizens of this pit to make sure that no one had relieved me of any valuables. "That's probably a very wise thing for you to do," Mitsu had a.s.sured me. As a.s.surances went, it wasn't very rea.s.suring.

Because the buildings were so close together, the roofs overlapped. As a result, no sun was filtering through. I felt as if we were swimming in gloom. Just to try and distract myself from the sense of foreboding, I tried to engage Mitsu in conversation as to how she had wound up being part of an organization dedicated to removing her father from office.

She was not especially forthcoming, unfortunately, which was a bit of a change from the young woman I'd known who was happy to talk about practically anything. Then again, it seemed ridiculous to think of her as the young woman I'd known considering, obviously, I hadn't really known a d.a.m.ned thing about her.

All she would say was "You've no idea what my father's done. No idea what he's like. If you knew, you'd understand."

"I can't know unless you tell me."

"Not yet. When it's time, you'll know."

"Wonderful," I said, rolling my eyes. "But I still don't understand. If you lived in the palace with him, and you want him out of power, why not just--"

She stopped, turned, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng. "Kill my father?"

"Well... yes. Except you make it sound so unpleasant when you say it that way."

Mitsu looked disappointed with me... which, considering the circ.u.mstances, was quite an achievement. "That is not an option. Eventually you will understand. But not now." And again she had said I wouldn't be able to understand. I wasn't sure if she was just being patronizing, or whether she was one of these people who believed that fate and the G.o.ds dictated the timing of certain things, and it wasn't for her to do anything to muck with that timing. The one thing I knew for certain, though, was I was starting to get well and truly annoyed.

"Where are we going? Will I understand that?" I asked.

"Yes. Once we get there."

"Wonderful."

Nothing more was said. Eventually we reached a section of town so impenetrable that we were the only people on the narrow street. I felt as if the buildings were alive, moving toward us to hem us in so we'd have no possible means of escape.

Suddenly I collided with something, and realized belatedly it was Mitsu's back. At least I thought it was. It had gotten so dark that I could barely see her face. If she'd been dressed in her Anais Ninja black, she would have literally been invisible.