Salt Lotus/Twilight-3

By MunificentPerception Back to: /Zenith-3

That evening...

An unsettled air about hung over the riverside teahouse that Leda had chosen. Not that her stuck-up imperial highness had bothered to ask my opinion on the matter. She had picked this establishment based on tactical considerations rather than looking for a place of harmony or delight. The Plum House was to be Sesus Bera’s battlefield headquarters for the evening. Arrangements had been made, the hunt would shortly be underway, and the wood-aspected Dragon-Blood would covertly manipulate his pawns and pieces while being entertained in Scavenger Lands style.

After five hours of sleep, a day of being assigned to Leda as a native guide had been a grinding bore. At first I had wondered if Lord Sesus had paired us to encourage amity between his daughter and myself. If so, it had proved a miserable failure in practice. Then I had begun to ponder his offer of friendship to me. It had seemed genuine, but I had begun to suspect that it had been made not so much to me but to the posterity of Berdi Taut. Just how did the long-lived Dragon-Blooded see mortals? Did they think in terms of individuals, or were they accustomed to seeing virtues, vices and utility in family lines?

At any rate, accompanying Leda had been far less edifying than my previous evening with Bera. After the Dragon-Blooded Lord’s revelation about the existence of my brother, I had followed him in a state of shock to the Wisteria House, and watched as he renewed his acquaintance with the former thief Silen. Words had been exchanged and jade coins had changed hands, giving Sesus Bera a small army of rented eyes and ears with which to observe the city during the following night. That he had done so personally was something of a small revelation. I had been taught that the Dynasts never soiled their hands with money. Instead they relied on servants to perform actual transactions. Yet Bera had shown no obvious aversions to either carrying coin or personally doling out the lucre. The towering, green-haired man seemed capable of swimming in the opulent sea that was his native culture, and then pulling himself ashore to navigate the tangled thickets of edict and norms that are the Scavenger Lands’ social terrain. There was a lesson in this. I wondered if I could go so far as he in setting aside my native assumptions of how the world ought to be, but at the same time I still nearly choked whenever I thought of my father and his wife. Perhaps certain acts should be seen as wrong by every culture, or maybe this was just me being small minded.

After Sesus’ meeting with Silen, we retired to a smaller, quieter establishment on the edge of the city’s riverside teahouse district, outside the municipal walls. The choice of venue had been his, and it quickly became obvious that, despite his earlier statement, he was at least somewhat acquainted with the city’s leisure spots. Lean men with calloused hands and the rangy looks of riders had been waiting for him. One by one they had bowed their heads or touched their brows and reported to him. Routes were being monitored, and only a small group in one of the outlying freeholder villages had failed to send a messenger.

Hours later, when I was home and lying in my own bed, I had tried to plot. My tired eyes had fluttered shut, though; then a servant was shaking my shoulder and announcing that Sesus Leda would be ready to depart in a matter of minutes. Now, late into the afternoon of a day spent being dragged across the city, I followed her onto the causeway that led to the Plum House. We arrived, trailing a small contingent of House Sesus servants and the soldiers who acted as Bera’s personal guard while aboard in the Scavenger Lands. In deference to local sensibilities they had left their Dynastic house uniforms behind, but the soldier’s alertness and well-maintained weapons were enough to inform even casual observers of their professionalism.

The Plum House was situated just off the shore of the Rolling River in the placid shallows. This establishment and a handful of others built along the banks formed small, but opulent teahouse district on the southern side of the city’s piers. Where most of the dockside houses catered to sailors with obvious prostitutes, the Flowering Houses – as the five were collectively called — employed skilled performers to amuse ships captains and wealthy passengers. The Plumb House itself was in actuality an interlinked collection of tea huts and platform gardens built on stilts above the slow flowing waters. The three-story, pagoda-roofed central house offered baths in its lower levels and excellent views of the city skyline from its upper balconies. Its entrance was a calligraphy-decorated passageway that led to a lacquered wooden central chamber, three stories in height. Preparations were still underway at this late afternoon hour, so it was an irregular collection of masseuses, servants and a few apprentice courtesans who answered the house mistress’ clanging of the gong to bow in greeting.

Sesus Leda, clad in her jade plate and bearing her Dire Lance, came to a halt in the middle of the room, with only the most perfunctory of nods to acknowledge the courtesy paid to her. The house mistress, an aging blond-haired beauty in a strawberry-colored robe, came shuffling up and dipped her head deeply.

“Lady Sesus, I was unaware that it was your Exalted self we will be entertaining this evening.”

“No, it is my father whom you will amuse. I am here to see to the preliminary arrangements and the disposition of the guards.”

The house mistress licked her lips carefully.

“You are certain, Lady, that you’re father wishes to have the entire teahouse for himself and his retinue. Even knowing the costs-“

“Yes, I am, and you will be adequately compensated before we begin. If necessary I am willing to buy this establishment. Now, I would like a bath while there is time.”

With that, we were taken downstairs. Having been swept along by the will of the Dragon-Blooded all day, I needed a quiet moment to put my thoughts into order and devise a stratagem for extricating myself and the unknown Solar from the trap that was closing around her. Only there was to be no private time. Sesus Leda’s request was for a single bath in an open room. The rest of us were expected to busy ourselves waiting on her

While her father was making the journey through the Scavenger Lands with two masseuses, his personal astrologer, a physician, majordomo, the majordomo’s scribes, a chef and five assistants, and twenty-five household guardsmen, along with all of the oxen, drivers and laborers needed to support the accompanying trains, Sesus Leda had only her three maidservants. They were of an age with Leda herself, and I had gathered from earlier conversations that that they had been given as gifts during her childhood. Their hair was streaked with airy blue in imitation of their mistress’, and they removed her armor and body suit there before the rest of us. Leda stepped to the side of the copper tube in the middle of the room, and glanced back over a bare shoulder at me, clearly intending to catch me in a moment of profound embarrassment. While I was made mildly uncomfortable by the situation, I was hardly mortified. I had grown up in a city known to many by the appellation Decadence, and was accustomed to public baths in which members of both genders often swam together unclothed. I met Leda’s eyes with careful disinterest, and she looked away with irritation, stepping and settling herself in the steaming water.

One of the maids began to pour water over her hair, pausing only when two guardsmen approached to seek clarification about Leda’s scheme for the placement of sentries. Then, before the maid servant could begin to shampoo her mistress’ hair, the young Dragon-Blooded turned my way again.

“Perhaps Passic would enjoy performing this task?” she asked in her High Realm-accented Riverspeak, and a false smile settled on her lips. Her three maid servants tittered, sharing their mistress’ petty malevolence.

“Perhaps I would not,” I said, not addressing her directly, nor speaking of myself in the third person, as she was used to by custom.

Now she pulled herself up against the side of the copper tube so that I could see the wet tops of her breasts and her glistening arms. Her blue-streaked hair was plastered to her neck and shoulders, and the smell of blossoming lilacs filled the room. I looked way, feeling the first stirrings of lust and embarrassment. It is not easy to cleave to the careful compromises of one’s native culture if the other party feels little need to reciprocate — especially as a man of 17 confronted by naked female. Leda laughed, enjoying the effect she was having on me. The maids snickered and the rest of the household slaves looked carefully unconcerned.

Servants of the teahouse entered the room carrying trays of fruit, decanters of wine and pillows for us to sit on. A small brazier was lit to warm water for barley tea.

“Should I ask for a courtesan to entertain you while you wait for me to finish?” Sesus Leda asked. “Perhaps you would like a full massage lying unclothed on the pillows. Maybe you can sing. A pretty boy like you could do much to enliven the atmosphere of this room.”

I looked Leda in the eye and tried to speak calmly, but the words came out sharper than intended. “I spent today acting as an advisor on the city of Great Forks out of gratitude for your father’s friendship, and I know that he did not mean for me to spend that time amusing his petulant daughter.”

Leda’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and each servant in the room paused, holding his or her breath.

From the entrance, a dulcet voice distracted us with fluid power. The stunning, golden-skinned courtesan’s words struck with a soothing impact that was disproportionate to the mundane meaning of her welcome, and she dipped in a curtsy with such grace and posture that Leda responded with a sigh of admiration rather than envy. The performer wore a pale-green kimono that matched her cobalt hair and eyes with swimming schools of jeweled lapis fish and a silk sapphire water serpent woven into the river-bottom scene skillfully depicted on her garment. Behind her stood two younger courtesans and an apprentice who carried their musical instruments.

“Would the Chosen of Mela care for singing or music?”

Four soldiers and the chef of the restaurant that would provide food for the evening arrived, all of them obviously bearing questions. Leda ignored them.

“Can you dance for us? A dance of the River Province?” Leda asked.

“I am best known for my talents at singing. However, the instructors of the city’s Western School have perhaps unwisely granted me a certificate of competency in the seasonal dances at the 3rd level.

“Dance then,” Leda said and leaned back into the embrace of the water’s heat. The instruments were set up, the two courtesans and the apprentice seated themselves, and the blue-haired entertainer took a place, directly across from Leda. She unfolded two performance fans — larger than the ones that a lady or gentleman might use to cool themselves — and took up a pose, left foot flat, and her right foot elevated on its forward pivot point, so that her heel was off the floor and her right leg slightly arched. The apprentice courtesan brought her hand and pick down the strings of her instrument and the room flowed into motion. The song was of summer on the mighty Yellow River, and the dancer held her fans flat, recreating the skimming of fisherman’s boats and messenger skiffs. As she pivoted gracefully from side to side, we felt the busy pulse of river traffic, and the fans, held vertically like screens, mimed the passage of sails on junks seeking for the distant Inland Sea. Her hands told the story of people and their instruments of travel, and her body was the river itself — its gods, legends and eternal motion from east to west. When she finished, there were genuine smiles of small delight at having seen something beautiful, and Leda seemed pleased.

“We will expect more of such when my father arrives,” the Dragon-Blooded said, sounding polite for the first time since I had met her. She then gestured for the waiting soldiers and the chef to step forward. “If you would be so kind, keep young Passic entertained, and light music would be appreciated.”

As the negotiations began, the courtesan approached and bowed to me. She took a seat on a cushion to my right, though forward so that I could observe her profile. Tea and wine were offered, though I declined the wine, wanting my wits clear for the evening.

“There was something mentioned earlier about a massage,” she said. Then she leaned towards me and whispered disarmingly, “I’m Fia, and I humbly recommend something more discreet than Lady Sesus’s suggestion of a massage without clothing.”

“Passic Taut. And yes, something that would leave me with a little dignity, please,” I replied.

She smiled as if my response had been clever, then moved and seated herself behind me.

Her fingers bit deep into my shoulder muscles through my top’s cotton weave, and they were every bit as skillful as her dancing had been. For all her talent, though, I could sense that her heart was not fully committed to the task at hand. It occurred to me that her that by taking up a position behind me, she could clearly observe Sesus Leda and her dealings from over my shoulder. Before I could formulate suspicions about Fia’s motives, the shards of the Unconquered Sun’s power within us cried out to each other. A deep current of Solar-aspected Essence passed invisibly between us. Fia froze, and my sight washed out in an inner flare of bright sunlight and golden recognition.

I knew this woman: councilor, adviser, sorcerer and an ambassador of the Deliberative. A mother to golden children, an ally, an enemy and savage foe. She had been golden skinned even then, but so had we all — for we Solar Exalted had lived to such years with the Sun’s power that pale skins became as platinum and black turned to ebony gold.

When my vision returned, Sesus Leda was looking at us, her brow furrowed in irritation.

“You must be fantastically skilled at your art to provoke such a reaction,” she said to Fia. “Though maybe it’s a trick that’s entirely too easy to perform on a boy of so few years. He looks like he finished before you had even really begun.”

We both began to blurt out explanations and stopped as our words clashed. This amused Leda, and it was with satisfaction that she turned her attention back to the ordering of the guard force.

Fia and I sat in silence, she kneading my shoulder muscles and neither of us sure which action to take.

“Is there a place where can I relieve myself?” I quietly asked.

“Follow me.”

With that we stood, and she led me out of the room and into a narrow wooden hallway that ran to the back of the teahouse. The music of the younger courtesans and the apprentice followed us down the passageway to the deck, which overlooked the harbor. Waves lapped below us, and the smell of the toilets was muted by incense and scented woods.

“I know little of escapes,” Fia whispered.

“I have some experience with intrigues,” I replied quietly. It could be said that I was lying, but I like to think that this was not a complete falsehood. I had participated in and, well, instigated several small schemes in the House of Learning. I and some of my fellows had on occasion stolen into our masters’ bed chambers to rearrange their possessions in ways that would sow confusion. We had succeeded in turning a one-ton statue backwards and bargained our way at midnight past a library guardian spirit to copy from a thaumaturological tome that had been placed off limits to us. I had even taken a handful of my companions to the Wisteria House, and Silen had entertained us as though we were visiting scavenger lords rather than students of limited means. A scavenger lord is part scholar and part thief, and not only did minor larcenies suit my nature, I had decided that even more hands-on training was in order.

Weighing those petty exploits against the dangers of the present, I decided to ditch intrigues and scheming. Directness would be best.

“Is there a boat here, something that we might use to depart now?” I asked.

“Yes, under the kitchen.”

I opened my mouth to continue and stopped. Something was wrong. I turned as Sesus Bera stepped noiselessly out onto the deck. He was dressed in dark-green leather, which was partially concealed by a silk robe patterned in a weave of artful birch leaves over a background of dark pine needles. His protective carapace contained cunningly worked pouches that held solid plates. The wood-aspected Dragon-Blooded came to halt facing Fia, and he was suddenly much too still. It was the motionlessness of a trained martial artist, relaxed, poised and ready to launch a bone crushing blow that would smash stones and lay low an Exalt.

“It would be best if you did not say anything from here on,” he told Fia in River Tongue. “We have all heard the stories about how deadly the voice of Essence can be when wielded by one of The Deceivers,” he said, using the Immaculate Order’s term for the Eclipse Caste. “Stay silent and you will live a while longer.”

Fia nodded.

A woman stood behind Sesus Bera at his shoulder. She had been so quiet that I had overlooked her presence until now. She had an ageless face, violet hair and ancient dark-purple eyes. She was utterly forgettable in spite of her distinguished appearance, and it took some seconds to recall that she was Bera’s household astrologer. Pale points of white flecked her eyes like constellations in the sky.

“I told you that there would be at least two,” she said in Old Realm to Lord Sesus. Her fluid speech was far beyond my level of accomplishment, and her accent could very well have come from the Heavenly City itself, for all I knew.

“She could be of such use as the Realm moves towards civil war,” Bera replied, his eyes still locked on Fia. His Old Realm was rougher.

“She dies tonight, once she has served to lure out the other,” the astrologer said evenly.

Bera nodded and gestured for Fia to precede him back into the hallway. He kept a wary distance as she swept by. Then he and the astrologer followed, paying me not the slightest heed. Soon after sunset, the first violence of the night was underway.

Only feet away...

In the calm waters below the teahouse, the demon Malwia waited. She swam noiselessly as her preternatural senses allowed her to track her charge through the rooms and hallways above her. She trailed along as the Twilight Caste scholar followed the Dragon-Blooded lord and the captive Eclipse Caste Solar across a short bridge and into the largest of the tea huts — a structure located at the rear of the assemblage of small buildings and large enough to accommodate a party of 25 with space to spare.

The demon was tempted to simply grab the scholar and make good an escape, but the risk was too great. She cared not at all that the other Solar would surely die, but the compulsion that had been laid upon her forbid her from taking needless chances with her ward. And so she bided her time, listening to the thumps of motion and the whispers of plots that reached her from inside the hut.

Next: /Night-3 Back to: /Zenith-3

Back to: Salt Lotus

This is a work of fan fiction set in White Wolf’s Exalted fantasy setting and is no way meant to challenge White Wolf’s copy rights or trademarks. The characters Joyous Gift, Mirror Flag, Ribbons of Sorrow, Shield of a Different Day, Spinner of Glorious Tales and Weaver of Dreams of Victory, as well as the city Great Forks are trademarked White Wolf Property.