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Chapter Type: Social

Narrator: Pharmacist Hwa Song

“Well,” Lady Kismet said, “I’m not sure I should even report if things are already that bad.”

“He has been very depressed.” I explained.

“Because?” she asked.

Lord Xho stirred his tea, and said, “Because three of the four people who could have guaranteed the loyalty of the remaining quartermaster personnel are dead.”

“The remaining...” she said. “Where is Chi Specialist Wa?”

I took my lord’s silence as permission to explain. “She is looking into the possibility that the weevils found in the midsection farms might have been bred inside the walls.”

.....

“That seems likely. What do you know about the weevil life cycle?”

“I shall rephrase.” I said. “She is looking into the three insect farms that might have bred the weevils. In the meantime, we have spent two day healing, and waiting for news. Two of the nine are hiding from us.”

“Fine.” she said, placing a piece of paper onto the table. “The woman who bought two bird cages matching the description of our owl was wearing a signet ring with that insignia.”

Lord Xho glanced at it. “We must investigate house Gong’s presence and interests in the outer region.”

I failed to stifle a choking noise. “Begging my lord’s forgiveness, but is that not the sigil of the Hwang Merchant Combine?”

“Well done, Pharmacist Hwa.” My lord said. “And what other entity stands to gain if we mistakenly investigate Hwang?”

I blinked. “How does House Gong gain if we investigate the Hwang Combine?”

“Debts.” said Lady Kismet.

“Not just of the Gong, but they are the ones most in debt to the Hwang. The others are... oh...”

Lady Kismet did that thing where she wrinkled her nose and her ears twitched in sync.

“Who?” I asked.

“Tsien.” he said. “Military house Tsien, as in Tsien Rai. As in the survivor of the slaughter at the Quartermaster General. There are a number of things tying together, for the four thousand people we have inside the walls.”

“I thought it was four thousand, with a few hundred toward five.” said Lady Kismet.

I looked down. “The war is... not without casualties. The official numbers are not released for fear of affecting morale, but roughly three in twenty soldiers have died.”

“Died?” asked Gun Nong. “That seems unlikely.”

Lord Xho exhaled. “There are a number of diseases making their rounds through the medical units. I have some ideas about how that is being done, but again it is something that must be done carefully, or else we may do more damage than the Nine themselves would do.”

Hoo Long clacked his teeth. “That sounds like... No, let us do this in a civil manner. There must be something we can do. Seven of the Nine are presumably still unknown at this point.”

“It is all but certain they are not here in this third of the outer zone. Our survival with so many of us wounded is all but proof of that.”

“You weren’t all that badly wounded.” said Gun Nong. “Serious injuries are serious.”

“Speaking of serious injuries, Rhishi should be up to about half health by now.” Lady Kismet said. “Any chance we could get him back on the team? His senses are on par with my own.”

“So sorry.” Lord Xho said, “Due to his magical nature, he has been assigned to assist Du Jing. She is a well known worker of Earth magics, and has a number of titles people of good character simply do not acquire.”

“Pity that she cannot be one of the Nine.” Hoo Long said.

“By what evidence?” I asked.

Lord Xho took a casual backhand at me, but missed. “Idiot. She is one of four people we know don’t want the walls to fail. If she were a traitor, she would have simply shut the wards down in a way that they could not be brought up again.”

“They would crush the walls and defeat us with sheer numbers.” Gun Nong said. “It wouldn’t even take them a month.”

“You have become very grumpy and depressing with your serious injury.” Hoo Long told him. “You need to get well and quickly.”

“Xinyi Shi is no more.” Gun Nong replied. “My injury is nothing compared to that. He was a heroic level warrior; his loss is more crippling to the rebels than all the casualties he inflicted.”

“Still.” Lord Xho said, “Had they brought all of their attacks at once, rather than one at a time, they might have made a serious attempt at the walls.”

“And they’d have nothing left for the middle or inner wall, let alone the citadel.” Lady Kismet said. “That’s presuming they win. If they throw everything at us and lose? Then they just lose, and we the stalwart defenders can go on the attack, and they’ve got nothing to stop us with. Or, if they rally, they have to push us back through territory they currently hold, wondering if we have our own version of the Nine to raise troops behind their front lines.”

“Behind their front lines.” Lord Xho said, his eyes unfocusing for a moment. “Lady Kismet, you have unraveled a thread of their plot that I had laid aside.”

She hesitated a moment and then said. “Of course I have. I’m awesome that way.”

Lord Xho smiled at her. “Then please explain, so the others may understand.”

“Okay, we’ve been thinking the Nine have to be stationed here, in the three partitions of the outer zone. But there’s twice as much room in the middle section, and maybe a third of that in the inner section. Then there’s the walled town, in two small pieces, and the citadel. All these efforts up here aren’t to actually take the wall, although it’s a nice bonus for them if they manage it. Their main goal...”

“...can be nothing other than to distract us while their true plot proceeds, deeper inside our defenses.” finished Lord Xho. “A queen of many minions and a messenger. Where are the other seven? It’s not a matter of them being good at hiding. The issue is that we aren’t looking in the right places.”

“You think they mean to slay the admiral?” Hoo Long asked.

Lord Xho let out a pained sigh. “The admiral is much too well defended. We can dismiss him as their ultimate goal. But what... is?”

Kismet shrugged. “A lot of the city is crowded on top of each other. If it were wood, I’d say lighting the Farmer’s and Merchant’s section on fire would take out a lot of our ability to repair armor and weapons. But instead it’s...”

She blinked, and took a seat.

“It’s brick and stone and pottery.” I said. “They’ll have a hard time setting fire to that.”

Lord Xho smacked his lips. “Someone tell me that there is a report about the slaying of the earth elementals.”

“Oh.” I said. The reports had said that the elementals had been asked to inspect the bedrock underneath the walls. Anywhere within the walls. That we were not to attack any of them that came to the surface. “At least we know from not having heard of such a disaster that they are truly not part of the plot on the inner...”

“Fool!” Lord Xho rebuked me. “We have NO EVIDENCE of that. To speak such words without proof is the height of stupidity.”

I thought at first that I was just hearing things, a fiction of the mind so that I would not need to hear my lord’s words. It was distant at first, soft. Like a child who has found a piece of colored rock, dragging it across a chalkboard. But that child rose to the size of sixty or so feet. And then double that, to cover the sounds of screaming. Even the wards of the wall didn’t muffle it completely. If thunder could strike not just briefly, but for long enough for you to wonder what could make such a noise, it might have made such a sound.

If the earth itself could scream in pain, it might make such a sound, scraping and cracking and crashing all at once, on such a scale as mankind experienced perhaps once a generation. The tremors reached us then, shaking dust from the rafters, and splitting apart floorboards. Cups and plates and unlit candles bounced from tables, and people panicked.

Not us, but you know, normal people. Some cried out prayers, and some fled, and some remained seated, as though afraid to move at all. I saw two grown men, hugging each other under a table, tears rolling freely from their eyes.

Lord Xho, furious, grabbed my shoulder and forced my ear to his mouth. “Being right does not excuse your mental sloppiness. I expect better from you in the future, Pharmacist Hwa.”

“Of course, my lord.” I said.

I looked upon the outer wall, shaking slightly, but not falling. If not the wall, what else could make such a noise?

Seeing the wall standing firm should have reassured me. Instead, I felt a growing sense of dread.

What WAS making that noise?