Part One

Saito Ren sat on the upper balcony of the waterfront restaurant, sipping his third glass of sugarcane liquor and looking out across the ocean. While the sun had shone it had been a hot, muggy day, made worse by the crowded, stifling streets of Marajo’s cavernous mercantile district, but with the sun having set and the winds blowing in off the waters, it was temperate, almost pleasant.

The bones of his meal sat on the table before him, his rice and beans all but untouched, his bowl of beef-and-manioc stew nearly full. He drained the last of the liquor from his glass and sat sucking on a chunk of ice that tasted of sugar and lime.

From the speakers mounted on the wall overhead, a young Nipponese woman sang about lost love in heavily accented Tukano, the music flavored with African rhythms and the hum of a Persian setar. The singer, Miekei, was just the latest newcomer to take advantage of the recent mania in Fusang for all things Nipponese, but hearing her mangled pronunciation, Saito doubted that she understood a word of the Tukano lyrics she sang.

A Nipponese singer popular in Fusang–there’d been a time when Saito wouldn’t have been able to imagine such a thing.

The first Nipponese in Fusang had come as traders and merchants, not long after the Treasure Fleet of the Middle Kingdom had come and gone. The Han had left behind a name for the region that the natives had simply called the “land,” or the “world,” or “this place,” but they had also left behind diseases–smallpox, influenza, and others–that had ravaged the native populations, pandemics which reduced the river polises to shadows of their former selves, and threatened to destroy the ring villages of the savanna altogether. The Nipponese traders had brought still other diseases, unknowingly, that reduced the numbers even further. Later generations had been born with greater levels of resistance, though, and with the gradual introductions first of inoculations and later of vaccines, the diseases that once threatened to completely unpeople the western hemisphere had been reduced to mere irritants. But just as those in Europa remembered the Black Death, the people of Fusang never forgot that the sons of the Rising Sun, like the Han before them, had come with death in their wake.

Later, as Imperial Nippon saw her fortunes eclipsed by the growing dominance of the Dragon Throne, the Nipponese emperor attempted to expand his influence overseas. Political envoys were sent, diplomats and advisers dispatched, embassies and trade commissions established. In the years it took for the Nipponese to establish a toehold in Fusang, though, the Middle Kingdom annexed Nippon herself, taking the island by force and setting up a puppet monarch, a direct vassal to the Dragon Throne. The Nipponese living overseas, in Fusang and elsewhere, did their best to integrate, seeing little point in returning home. But while the Fusang-born Nipponese managed eventually to integrate into Fusang culture, holding positions of respect and authority–primarily in the industries of trade and manufacture–when Saito was young there had still been few in the Fusang ruling classes who would allow a son of Nippon to marry into their family.

As Saito remembered all too well.

Miekei’s song ended abruptly, cut off in mid-verse, and silence hissed from the speakers. Saito looked up to see a waitress standing by his elbow, hands folded demurely at her sternum, a slightly worried look on her face.

She thought he was drunk, he could tell. As she told him that they were closing for the night, he could see her glance darting to the empty glass in his hands, and she addressed him with the overly precise, overly polite manner of one who expected trouble.

Saito smiled, setting the glass back on the table. He wasn’t drunk. A man in his position couldn’t afford to lose control. But on this night, of all nights, he had allowed himself a few extra libations. It seemed the only way to face the unknown that lay ahead.

He glanced at the chronometer on his wrist, and nodded. With the moon’s rise, the old year had ended.

Saito’s year of calamity had begun.

#

The Republic of Fusang had adopted the Mexic calendar years before, after the Hegemon had been ousted and the new Mexic-style representative government founded. By the Mexic calendar, it was still the year 13-House.

By the calendar of the Middle Kingdom, though, which had been instituted by the Yellow Emperor thousands of years before, the rising moon had marked the first day of the year Water-Ox, the sixth year of the Shangsheng emperor, and the beginning of Saito Ren’s forty-second year of life.

In the traditions of Saito’s Nipponese ancestors, a man’s forty-second year was yakudoshi, a “year of calamity.” The superstitions of Nippon held that three times in a man’s life he would experience particularly inauspicious years, and of these three the forty-second year, honyaku or “great calamity,” was the worst.

Like all such superstitions, its origins were opaque, lost to the pages of history. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that in the language of Nippon “forty-two” sounded very much like the words “to death.” Saito didn’t know for certain. What he did know was that if he were in Nippon, he would observe the day by going to a Shinto shrine to seek yakubarai, the rites of purification, which would not eliminate the dangers the year would hold, but might hold some of them at bay, at least in part. But there were no Shinto shrines in the capital polis of Marajo, or anywhere else in the Republic of Fusang. There were precious few Nipponese at all, either Fusang-born like Saito, or foreign-born newcomers like the singer Miekei. Most had been driven out before the revolution, or had died in the difficult early days of the republic.

Saito had been spared those days, living abroad in the Middle Kingdom, and had returned to the land of his birth only later in life. But it did not escape his notice that he had first set his foot on the path that would lead to his return when he was in his twenty-fifth year, his first yakudoshi.

A man’s third and final yakudoshi came in his sixty-first year. There were times when Saito despaired that he would ever live to see it.

#

Saito made his gradual way through the streets of Marajo to his home. His path was carefully planned to seem aimless, a meticulously mapped trajectory that posed as an idle wander.

Even at this late hour, the capital of Fusang was awake and active. As the restaurants closed, the music halls and taverns flung wide their doors, and the streets were crowded with men and women in no particular hurry to get anywhere, dodging in and out of traffic as the lumbering petroleum-powered cars and buses inched their way down the street, here and there an antique steam-powered vehicle obstinately chugging along in defiance of progress.

Saito paused to look at a Persian rug on display in a street-vendor’s stall. He rubbed his chin, inspecting the handiwork.

“Would the gentleman care to take a closer look? Other patterns are available, as well, if this design does not suit.”

Saito turned to the Tukano who had appeared at his side, and shook his head with a smile. “Not this evening, I think.” He paused, and then added, “But will you be here tomorrow, in case I change my mind?”

The vendor nodded, eagerness and avarice barely concealed by his mild expression. Saito knew that the vendor had taken in the quality of his suit, the workmanship of his shoes, the jade plug in Saito’s left earlobe, and had sized him up at once as a spendthrift.

“Certainly,” the vendor said. “I shall wait in expectation of the gentleman’s return.”

Saito exchanged an abbreviated bow with the vendor, and continued up the street.

A successful financier, Saito had developed something of a name as an art collector, and had earned a reputation for extravagant purchases. It was a reputation he had worked hard to established, and one which it was important to maintain. It was an essential aspect of his identity in Marajo, and one he could scarcely afford to lose.

Saito reached a corner, and paused near a rubbish bin to bend down and refasten the laces on his shoes. When he straightened, he leaned on the bin for balance, his fingers grazing the inside of the bin’s outer rim for the briefest moment.

His fingers came away empty. No report from Taubate today.

Continuing on, he turned the corner onto a broad avenue dedicated to the brave heroes of the revolution. The crowds were thinner here, the traffic lighter. At the avenue’s end was a park, the trees lit up like a fairy forest by electric lights strung from trunk to trunk. Saito ambled across the street to the park’s entrance, which was dominated by a bust of the man in whose honor the park had been named–Eumage Tanaka.

Tanaka had been a Fusang-born Nipponese writer who died while Saito’s father had still been a boy, and who might have been forgotten to history had it not been for his treatise, On the Inheritance of Power. Though it had received little notice in the Hegemon’s Fusang, the slim volume of Tanaka’s thoughts on the vicissitudes and shortcomings of inherited authority had received considerable attention elsewhere. Tanaka had argued that any culture governed by hereditary rulers failed to make the best use of its societal resources, and that only a culture which selected the best amongst all its people to rule would thrive. The Middle Kingdom, a scholarly meritocracy, still earned Tanaka’s criticism by its choice of a monarch with absolute power whose throne passed from father to son. The classical Mexic structure of government, Tanaka argued, in which individuals proved their societal worth through martial power, and in which the Great Speaker was selected from among the elected representatives of the various population centers, was a more robust model. And though the Great Speaker had exercised absolute authority over the state, the military, and the church, he could be removed at any time by a vote of no confidence by the council of representatives, which supplied pressure to keep the ruler honest and effective.

The Mexic isthmus had been at the time ruled by a governor-general handpicked by the Dragon Throne, a vassal state of the Middle Kingdom. But though they had been subject to imperial rule for more than a generation, there were those in Mexica who rankled at foreign rule, and who agitated for a return to former glory. In Tanaka’s treatise they found inspiration, and when the forces of the Middle Kingdom were finally ousted from the Mexic isthmus, the representational republic that was established drew heavily on Tanaka’s ideals.

The Mexic Dominion had been founded two years before Saito was born, and by the time he was five years old their example had already inspired revolutionaries in the neighboring nation of Tawantinsuya to drive the ruling Inka from Qosqo, and to establish a representational government of their own.

With Fusang’s two nearest neighbors poisoned by the egalitarian notions espoused in On the Inheritance of Power, the fear that a similar uprising might attempt to dethrone the Fusang Hegemon led many to look at other Fusang-born Nipponese with distrust and suspicion, tarred with the same brush that had made the name of Tanaka a curse. Many in the Fusang nobility suspected their Nipponese neighbors of being sympathizers with the Mexic Dominion and the Tawantinsuya Union, if not outright foreign agents. When Saito was still a boy, many Fusang-born Nipponese began to emigrate, some to the land of their ancestors in Nippon, but still more to the Middle Kingdom itself.

Saito himself had fled to the Middle Kingdom, still little more than a boy. But it had not been the suspicions of his neighbors that had driven him, not the hard stares or the broken business agreements or closed doors. It had been his own guilt, the crime he had committed which no act of attrition would ever make right.

He had caused the death of the only woman he ever loved, as surely as if he had killed her with his own two hands, and there was nowhere he could run to hide from the shame of it.

#

It took almost an hour for Saito’s meandering route to finally reach his home on the north side of Marajo. Along the way he checked several more dead drops, searching for small scraps of paper or tiny envelopes hidden from view.

Saito rarely saw the agents who used the dead drops, the operatives of his extended intelligence network, and rarer still were the occasions on which he exchanged even a single word with them. But through the reports they delivered he was able to track their movements in minute detail, culling the most meaningful bits of intelligence to compile, synthesize, and then forward on to the spymasters of the Eastern Depot.

It was early morning when he finally reached the house he’d called home for the last ten years, with dawn still hours away.

The door unlocked, Saito stood at the threshold, about to shuck his shoes and enter barefoot when he heard an unexpected noise from the darkness within. A faint cough, a gurgling sound.

Switching on the light, he saw a man laying on his side in the forecourt, blood pooled beneath him. So pale and wan were the man’s features that it took Saito a moment to recognize Zenojane, one of his most able operatives. They had not spoken face to face in nearly five years.

Numb with shock and mounting fear, Saito rushed to the man’s side.

“Zenojane!” he said in a harsh whisper. He took hold of the man’s shoulder, and looked into his dark eyes.

All life had fled. The sound that he’d heard might well have been Zenojane’s final death rattle, the breath of life leaving his body for all time.

Fighting to retain his composure, Saito searched the man’s body, but found only the obsidian-bladed dagger buried in his back, and a scrap of paper clutched in the man’s lifeless fingers, on which was inscribed a single Nahuatl glyph: Tlatlauhquitezcatl.

It had been too long since Saito was anything like proficient in the Mexic tongue, and he struggled to puzzle out the glyph’s meaning. Something about a mirror? And fire?

His concentration was disrupted by the sound of shouting voices from outside. Gruff voices, saying that the house was surrounded. Saito rushed to the nearest window, and saw a trio of Fusang constables approaching, weapons drawn.

The dead man had been followed, it seemed, the trail leading right to Saito’s door. But if Zenojane had been followed, why were the constables only now arriving, when he’d had time to leak so much blood on the tile of Saito’s forecourt?

There was no time to worry about the timing of it all. What was clear was that Saito’s carefully established and closely guarded cover identity was blown, or would be as soon as the constables found him with the dead operative in his house. There wasn’t an instant to spare.

As quickly and quietly as possible, Saito slipped to the rear of the house, to the back entrance that he’d carefully concealed behind a vine-laced trestle nearly ten years before, completely hidden from the street. With any luck, the constables wouldn’t have noticed the rear entrance yet, and he could use it to elude capture.

Every passing moment brought him closer to capture, but years of training in the Eastern Depot still controlled his actions, and so before slipping out into the space hidden behind the trestle, Saito paused for an instant to open the bureau which contained all of his intelligence reports. Dousing the papers within with a vial of inflammable accelerant, he set the whole thing ablaze with a match. By the time he slipped out into the darkness, the heavy tread of the constables’ steps echoing through the empty house, years worth of intelligence reports were reduced to nothing but crumbling ash.

Crumbling to ash, just like the life he’d lived, the man he’d pretended to be these past ten years.

There was no question about it now. Saito’s year of great calamity had begun.

Part Two

As the sun rose, Saito crouched in the foliage at a park’s edge, across the boulevard from the home of Chasca Huaco, one of his most trusted operatives. He watched the house, resisting the impulse to run up and bang on the door, calling for Huaco to let him in, to give him shelter. But if he did, he felt sure that the shade of Instructor Xiao would return from beyond the grave and punish him for forgetting an Embroidered Guard’s most basic lessons about operating in deep cover.

Of course, by the logic of Instructor Xiao’s lessons, Saito had already reached the point of no return. All of the safeguards and countermeasures which Saito had spent years implementing had failed them, it seemed. He had already tried to reach two of the safehouses he’d established in Marajo, both the one near the seaside docks to the east and the manufacturing district in the south, but in both cases he’d arrived to find constables already there. If not for Xiao’s training, Saito might not have noticed the constables in their hiding places, waiting for someone to approach the safehouses’ doors, and he might have blundered right into their clutches. As it was, he was barely able to slip away without being noticed himself.

Though it meant breaking protocol, Saito saw little option but to make contact with one of his operatives. He would warn her of the danger they faced, and perhaps together they would find some way out of Marajo, if not out of Fusang altogether.

The widow Chasca was a handsome woman, and Saito couldn’t help musing that if circumstances were different–if he were another man, free from the guilt he carried, and they lived in another city, another country, where they could be who they would be–then he might have harbored romantics notions about her. He’d occasionally glimpsed her from across the room at society gatherings, these last few years, though they had not spoken with one another in ages, and each time he’d found himself admiring the curve of her neck, the delicate movements of her hands. An émigré from Tawantinsuya, Chasca was a well-known fixture of the Marajo social scene, a gadfly and gossip. Few who trusted her with their most intimate secrets, though, suspected that she was not the daughter of a stolid republican family at all, but was rather the niece of the last Inka emperor, a princess spy in the employ of the Embroidered Guard.

Saito could wait no longer. He was about to step out from behind the concealing foliage and approach the house when he saw the front door open, and a strange figure crept outside.

It was not Chasca, and for the briefest instant Saito felt a pang of jealousy as he imagined this was one of the widow’s romantic conquests. But the man who slipped out the door into the golden light of dawn seemed hardly the type for a late-night assignation. His unfashionable suit of clothes was dyed a shade of red so dark it was almost black, and he appeared to have some sort of hood or mask over his face.

It wasn’t until the man turned that Saito got a momentary glimpse of his face in three-quarters profile, and realized that the mask the man wore appeared actually to be the flayed skin of a human face.

Gasping, Saito stumbled back, falling flat on the moist soil behind the shrubbery. His heart in his throat, he dared to peer out from between the branches, expecting to see the gruesome mask turned his way. But to his relief he saw the man turn at the corner and continue out of sight, pulling the horrid mask from his head as he went.

#

Saito didn’t want to enter the house, but he knew that he must. Even coming here violated all protocol, Instructor Xiao’s every lesson, but having come this far, he couldn’t leave without going inside. He owed Chasca that much.

He found her inside, laying on a rug in the sitting room. Absurdly, Saito couldn’t help but notice the similarity of the pattern to that of the Persian rug he’d stop to admire at the vendor’s stall, just a few short hours before, and found himself wondering where Chasca might have bought it.

Saito shook his head. It was as though his cover identity was forcing itself into his thoughts, concentrating on art and prices and décor so that his real identity, that of an Embroidered Guard of the Eastern Depot, would not have to focus on the horrible images before him.

Chasca lay spread eagle on her back, cloth balled in her mouth, eyes wide and sightless, the rictus of terror and pain of her features now frozen in death. Her chest had been burst open and her heart removed, in which Saito could only imagine was some kind of ritual sacrifice.

It was the Mexica, then. There could be little doubt of it now.

His bile rising, Saito did a quick inspection of the room, looking for anything that might suggest how Chasca had come to the killer’s attention, or what the killer hoped to gain in murdering her. Then, careful not to leave any trace of himself, he slipped back out the front door.

He had taken only a few steps up the walk when he heard a voice calling out. He resisted the urge to turn, but kept walking. The voices called again, and as he turned a corner he glimpsed from the corner of his eye two constables approaching Chasca’s house from the opposite direction. As soon as he turned the corner he took to his heels, running as fast as he could. With any luck he’d be able to lose them down a side street.

There was nothing left for him but to run. Where he was running to, though, Saito wasn’t at all sure.

#

The cargo ship was late leaving port, and with the days short this time of year, the sun was already setting by the time it set off up the River Sorimo, heading into the interior of Fusang. For the next week or more, the ship would make its slow, steady way up the Sorimo, the longest and largest river in the world. Along the way it would stop at many of the river polises, unloading goods shipped inland from the coast, and loading inland goods and produce to carry back the other way. So while now on its deck were cases of fish packed in ice, bales of textiles, and machine parts from the manufactories based in Marajo, on the return voyage there would be beans, maize, and rice from the southern savannas, manioc, pineapples, and the orange-red fruit of the peach palm from the expansive orchards along the riverbanks, even alpaca wool and llama meat brought down from the mountains of Tawantinsuya to the west. The Sorimo was the thread that bound the disparate parts of Fusang into a single nation. From the wide ocean and Marajo on one end, to the port city of Ikito more than three thousand kilometers upstream, it was the main thoroughfare and trade route of the republic. Ground transport ferried back and forth on roadways running north and south, and airships plied the winds overhead, but the bulk of all traffic–human and material–in the nation went by way of river.

Saito crouched between two textile bales, hidden from the crewmen’s view. He tried not to dwell on the fact that he was heading ever deeper inland, every moment carrying him farther away from the coast, and the promise of leaving Fusang behind forever. But he’d known that he’d have no chance to reach the seaports or the airfields, and so traveling inland had seemed the only likely alternative. If he’d remained in the capital much longer, he’d have been captured by the constables on the one hand, or found himself under the masked assassin’s knife on the other.

It was clear that the movements of himself and his operatives had not been nearly so secretive and clandestine as he’d always hoped, and that someone had been keeping close tabs on some, if not all, of them. If the masked assassin was, as Saito assumed, an agent of the Mexic Dominion, ritualistically slaying Saito’s operatives one at a time, then was he also informing the Fusang authorities about his actions?

It seemed that Zenojane had been able to escape the assassin–though not the assassin’s blade–long enough to break protocol and risk all their lives in order to bring Saito a message. A single Mexic glyph scribbled on a scrap of paper, which if Saito’s long disused Nahuatl was correct translated to something like “mirror of fiery brightness.”

What did the word mean? And why was it worth the lives of so many?

Saito wasn’t sure where to begin looking for an answer, but he knew that his only chance of living long enough to begin the search was to get out of Marajo. He would go to ground, and find the space and time to think things through.

There was only one place he could go. Ikito, his childhood home, at the far end of the River Sorimo. Saito hadn’t seen Ikito since he was eighteen years old, and fled, never to return.

Of all the people he had known in childhood, all of those who were important to him–friends, family, teachers–only one still lived. Dyuema Axse, who had been Saito’s closest friend and fiercest rival throughout childhood, was now a respected member of the Republic of Fusang’s national council, the duly elected representative from the polis of Ikito. The chairman of the Committee on National Defense, Axse’s face was often seen in the pages of the political newspapers, his views on matters of security widely quoted. With the national council in recess, Axse would be home in Ikito, or so Saito hoped.

If Saito were able to reach Ikito undetected, and then find Axse’s home, there was the chance, however slim, that his old friend might overlook whatever differences now separated them, and in the memory of their shared childhood offer Saito sanctuary.

If he did not, then Saito had nowhere else to run.

#

Saito Ren had never wanted to be a spy. Like so much in his life, it had simply been the result of forces beyond his control, and he lacked the will or the strength to resist.

When he’d first arrived in the Middle Kingdom, he’d had a vague idea that he might use his education to find some gainful employment. But as the son of an artisan, at school Saito had studied the theory and history of art, and there were surprisingly few job opportunities in Northern Capital for a budding critic or art historian. Undeterred, he thought to put his literacy and facility with language to some good use, but here, too, he was to be disappointed. Nearly all of the available positions were with the government bureaucracy, and as he had not taken any of the scholarly examines required to qualify for imperial service, his skills were not even considered.

He had settled in the East City District of Northern Capital, not far from the emperor’s Forbidden City. There were a fair number of Fusang-born Nipponese then living in that district, and failing to find employment in the arts, he was able to eke out a rough existence doing manual labor and odd jobs for other Fusang émigrés. And in time, the Fusang population in the East City District was to grow even larger.

Shortly after Saito had left Fusang, the Hegemon’s government had fallen, and while the various revolutionary factions still jostled for position, it was clear that whatever form of government came to power in Fusang, it would be one with clear ties of allegiance to the Mexic Dominion. In the months and years following the revolution, other Fusang émigrés arrived in Northern Capital, many of them the same nobles whose unfounded suspicions and distrust had driven out the Fusang-born Nipponese before them. Now, Fusang nobles and Nipponese were neighbors once more in their diaspora to the far side of the world.

Many of the Fusang newcomers were cousins and distant relations to the Hegemon himself, and styled themselves the Fusang court in exile. In his encounters with them, Saito could not help but be reminded of the imperial mummies of the Inka district in the Ikito of his youth, observing ancient and outdating ritual, clinging to unearned privilege, corpses that had yet to realize that all life and vitality had fled.

Saito had been in his twenty-fifth year when he came to the attention of a recruitment officer of the Embroidered Guard, the Emperor’s secret police, based in the Eastern Depot near the Forbidden City. The Embroidered Guard acted as the intelligence agency for the Middle Kingdom, and were eager to know what transpired in the nation of Fusang, and in the Mexic Dominion as well. They saw the recent revolution, and presence of so many Fusang émigrés in the East City District, as a rare opportunity. Recruiting these émigrés as agents, they could then send them back to Fusang, undercover, to gather intelligence for the Eastern Depot.

In the Embroidered Guard, Saito found a home. His natural aptitudes were well suited to the role of intelligence analyst, and he excelled in those aspects of his training. And while his performance in the more physically tasking aspects of intelligence work, from hand-to-hand combat to weapons proficiencies, were perhaps less than stellar, his eagerness to please his masters made up for it. In the end, it was decided that Saito might not be a good candidate for field service, after all, but would better serve the emperor in a support capacity, within the walls of the Eastern Depot.

But while Saito would have been happier remaining in the Eastern Depot, analyzing reports and writing position papers, a few years after he completed training, years in which he analyzed reports and wrote position papers and little more, a directive was handed down from the Director of the Eastern Depot that even more operatives were needed in the Republic of Fusang, and that any and all agents of the Embroidered Guard with first-hand experience of Fusang would be reassigned there, to collect intelligence in the field, with no exceptions.

And with that, Saito’s comfortable existence, brief lived as it was, came to an end. He was posted to the capital polis of Marajo, on the eastern coast of Fusang, made subordinate to a political operative who ordered him to assist in propaganda efforts, and no matter that Saito’s orders from the Eastern Depot were to act in a strictly observer capacity, posing as a banker and art collector. Like this decision, though, many of the political operative’s other choices were ill-advised, to say nothing of contrary to the instructions of his own superiors, and in the end he was discovered and eventually killed while trying to evade arrest, his body mutilated by a mob.

In the confusion following the political operative’s death, Saito stepped forward, finding hidden reserves of courage within himself. He took charge of the tattered remains of the Marajo intelligence network, managing to keep from having his cover blown, and protecting the integrity of the other operatives.

When his quick thinking and decisive action came to the attention of the spymasters of the Eastern Depot, Saito received a commendation and was made bureau chief, responsible for collecting the reports of all of the field agents in the region, and then processing and transmitting them back to the Eastern Depot.

Saito, though, had always known that his momentary clarity and decisiveness in the tumultuous aftermath of the political operative’s death had been a fluke, a momentary aberration, akin to the unexpected reserves of strength and speed tapped into by someone facing imminent death. It was blind panic, more than any kind of strength of character, that had led him to survive. He was unsuited for any kind of leadership position, he knew, and he could not help feeling like a fraud. He was no man of adventure, no warrior. He was a man better suited to be a clerk, or a librarian. He’d risen in the ranks simply by dint of not having died or having been discovered, and any subsequent successes that were laid at the feet of his intelligence network were due to his operatives, not to him.

Now he was alone, and possibly the only surviving member of his intelligence network. It seemed likely that he was still being hunted by an assassin who wore a flayed human face for a mask, and who ripped the still beating hearts from his victims, for the glory of inhuman and blood-hungry gods. Saito was alone, but had little chance of seeing another year end and begin, all because he agreed to join the Embroidered Guard during his previous year of calamity.

Saito longed for a Shinto temple. He doubted that the rites of purification could wash way all of his ills, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try.

#

By the time the cargo ship pulled into its last port of call at Ikito, Saito’d had his fill of raw fish. He’d managed to stave off dehydration by sucking on melting pieces of ice, and used a folding knife to cut edible hunks from the snapper he pulled from the cases behind which he’d hidden himself throughout the voyage. It was hardly the sashimi he’d grown to love in Northern Capital’s East City District, but it was an acceptable alternative to starvation.

Having narrowly avoided being discovered en route, he was almost caught slipping off the ship as the remaining cargo was being unloaded, but luck was with him and he managed to get ashore unseen.

The port of Ikito was at the extreme north of the polis. It was the early hours of the morning when Saito went ashore, but already the market that adjoined the docks was bustling, mongers selling the newly-caught fish that would be loaded on the cargo ship and taken back to Marajo, freshwater fish sent downstream in exchange for the saltwater fish that had been sent up. Other merchants peddled palm beetle larvae to those suffering from bronchitis, or fresh-picked manioc, or even a few handcrafted items of questionable quality to appeal to any travelers with more money than sense.

Water taxis plied the shore back and forth between the port and Ikito proper, just south along the curve of the river, darting in and out of the shipping lanes like pilot fish alongside sharks. On dry land for the first time in a week, Saito had no interest in going back out on the waters, struggling to regain his landlegs, his muscles cramped and aching from infrequent use. Instead, he struck inland, heading south and west, towards the home of Dyuema Axse.

#

The official residence of the national council representative, which before the revolution had been the home of the polis governor, was located some two kilometers west of the polis center, not far from the white sandy beaches of the Moronacocha Lagoon. In the dry season, the lagoon bed dried up, thousands of square meters of land temporarily available for use. Saito well remembered playing ringball there in makeshift courts with Dyeuma when they’d been children.

But the dry season was months away, and the lagoon was full. With the sun shining overhead, approaching midday, the waters were dotted here and there with pleasure craft, powered by sails, motors, or oars.

Saito did his best to look like any unremarkable visitor to the polis, as he strode up to the front entrance of the house, but suspected it was a vain attempt. He knew his clothing was in a state, stained with grease and sweat and dirt, his hair unwashed and unkempt, and he was sure that he smelled even worse. More than likely anyone who caught sight of him would take him at a glance for a vagrant or vagabond, a wanderer without coin or prospect, searching for whatever charity he could find.

It was clear that the steward who answered the door, at least, saw Saito as nothing more than a charity case.

“I seek to address Dyuema Axse,” Saito said, his voice hoarse and croaking, inclining his head in a minute bow. “On a matter of some personal urgency.”

The steward was about to dismiss Saito summarily, but a voice called from within, interrupting him.

“Steward, is that the parcel I’ve been expecting?” Behind the steward, a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into view around a corner. When his gaze fell on Saito, his face screwed up in distaste.

The steward began to explain that he’d been in the process of dismissing the unwanted vagrant, when Saito stepped forward, reaching out to the man. “Dyuema Axse, do you not know me?”

Axse, already in the act of turning away, paused, a glimmer of recognition lighting in his eye.

Saito raised his left arm, pulling back his sleeve to reveal a small scar along the elbow. “I got this falling from the roof of your uncle’s house. You were unscathed, but had to fetch help for me, and in the end you were confined to your rooms for a week.”

Axse mouth opened slightly, a look of disbelief on his face.

Saito took a step forward, pushing past the steward. “We played ringball out on the dried lagoon, but you always cheated, especially if there was a wager involved.”

Eyes narrowing, Axse looked close at the man on his front step. “Ren?” he said, disbelievingly. “Saito Ren?”

Saito held his hands out to either side in an imploring gesture. “My oldest friend, I am in dire need of help, and have nowhere else to turn.”

Part Three

Later that afternoon, washed, fed, and dressed in a borrowed suit of clothes, Saito sat by the hearth at Axse’s side, each of them holding a jar of octli. The fermented maguey juice warmed Saito from within as much as the hearth fire warmed him from without, and he began to feel some small measure of security, and to entertain faint glimmers of hope.

“You can stay as long as you require, Saito,” Axse said. “Cura–my wife–is with our children in Qosqo, visiting her family.”

Saito shook his head, musing with a faint smile. “I’ll admit that I’m surprised to learn that you married a Tawantinsuya, Dyuema.”

Axse chuckled, somewhat ruefully. “When we were children, throwing fruit at the imperial mummies in the Inka district to topple them over, did you ever imagine that I might marry a girl from across the mountains?”

When they’d been little more than babes in arms, the Inka who had survived Mexic-backed purge of Tawantinsuyu had fled east across the mountains, settling in Ikito. Among the Inka refugees were the royal courts of nearly two dozen mummified emperors, who on special occasions were paraded through the streets on their gilded litters, attended by the descendants of their wives and retainers, who tended to the deceased immortals as though they still lived, flicking the flies that gathered on their desiccated forms. The so-called Inka court in exile was based in a district not far from the Saito family home, centered around a former granary which was consecrated by the Tawantinsuyu refugees to the worship of Wiraqocha, the fanged, staff-bearing creator god of the Inka.

Of course, the Inka were all gone now, the makeshift temple of Wiraqocha burned in the revolution, along with most of the imperial mummies. Saito didn’t know what had become of the courtiers and retainers who had carried the litters and used flywhisks to tend the desiccated emperors. Most likely they had died in the dark days of the revolution, as had Saito’s own parents.

Saito had left only weeks before the revolution began, and had been spared the horrors himself, but he had heard reports from the refugees who followed him to Northern Capital, and could imagine the scenes as through he’d witnessed them first hand.

Axse leaned forward, eyes on Saito’s face, studying his old friend intently. Since allowing Saito within the house that morning, Axse had asked no questions, made no demands or requests. But now that they sat in the comfort of the hearth-fire’s glow, Axse finally gave voice to the questions that Saito had seen hidden behind his expression all day.

“Tell me, Ren. Where have you been, all this time? And why did you leave, all those years ago?” Axse shook his head. “I have never understood it.”

Saito took a deep breath, and closed his eyelids in a slow blink. “Kaure,” he said at last. “It was because of Kaure.”

Dyuema sat back, thoughtful, and took a long pull from his jar of octli.

“It was so long ago,” Saito went on, “but I can remember it as though it were only yesterday…”

#

Throughout Saito Ren’s childhood, and increasingly as he grew older, he experienced prejudice and unfounded fear as a person of Nipponese descent. The specter of republicanism and the memory of Eumage Tanaka were never far from the minds of Fusang, and Fusang-born Nipponese in places like Ikito and Marajo served as convenient targets for mounting fears and resentments.

If the Fusang nobles and other conservative elements targeted the Nipponese, though, those segments of the populace with republican-sympathies found a more highly placed target for their own dissatisfactions. The hereditary ruler of Fusang in those days, the Hegemon who was supreme ruler of the nation but merely a vassal to the emperor on the Dragon Throne, was a callow, corrupt individual, more interested in sating his own decadent lusts and appetites than in governing his people. His loyalty to the Dragon Throne, though, and his staunch opposition to any hint of Mexic-style republicanism, ensured the support of the Middle Kingdom.

As Saito entered his teenaged years, civil unrest in Fusang was on the mount, as increasing numbers of Nipponese fled the country, and disparate radical groups in the population began to agitate for change.

Saito, of course, noticed none of this. His attentions were solely on Kaure Muhipu.

The daughter of a prominent merchant family in Ikito, Kaure had been the focus of Saito’s attentions and affections since they were children. That his closest friend Dyuema Axse also had eyes for Kaure deterred him not at all, especially when it became clear that Kaure returned Saito’s affections, and not those of Axse.

Throughout the lingering years of their post-adolescence Saito and Kaure were inseparable, and by the time he ended his eighteenth year and became an adult, Saito had already announced his intention to marry Kaure and start a family with her.

However, it was not to be. Kaure’s family, like Axse’s, was Tukano, but unlike the more modest Axse family, the Muhipu clan was part of the Fusang nobility, long established and with close ties to the Hegemon himself. On receiving Saito’s petition to marry his daughter, Kaure’s father announced in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances would any child of the Muhipu be allowed to marry a Nipponese.

While Saito’s ears were still stinging from the scorn of the elder Mahipu’s rebuke, Kaure’s family maneuvered openly for a wedding contract with the Axse family, seeking to betroth their daughter to Dyuema.

Though he had been in love with Kaure almost as long as Saito had, in solidarity Dyuema Axse professed that he had no intention of entertaining the notion–though anyone could see that Axse was secretly thrilled by the prospect.

For days, Saito could scarcely eat or sleep, troubled by the thought of a life without Kaure at his side, driven by the kind of mad passion only the young can experience. Finally, deep in a sleepless night, he hatched a plan.

#

“I asked Kaure to meet me on the outskirts of Ikito at midnight,” Saito said, his octli untouched, “on the elevated roadway east of the Zungarococha district, heading south to the alluvial plains.”

“Out towards the airfield?” Axse said.

Saito nodded. “Exactly. Under a moonless sky, I asked her to come away with me. I showed her the tickets I’d booked for the airship east, the itinerary for the liner that would carry us across the ocean to the Middle Kingdom. We could start a new life together, far away from this polis and its prejudices and fears, far from her father and his restrictions and refusals.

“She was tempted to go, I could tell at once. But little by little I saw stealing across her face the dawning realization that, if we left, she would likely never see her family again. And for all that she loved me, she loved her family as well. Better, she argued, to stay in Ikito, and to try to change her father’s mind.”

Saito paused, peering into the flickering flames of the hearth.

“I became enraged,” he went on. “There is no excuse for it. In the years since, I have often wondered just what led to that unexpected burst of temper. I can only imagine that at that young age I lacked the skill and experience to process the complex emotions that surged through me. I was like some enraged animal.

“I never struck her. You must believe that. But I stopped just short of it. I railed at Kaure, accusing her of never loving me, of choosing her father’s love over mine…even of preferring you, Dyuema, to me, and of having every intention of go ahead with the wedding contract that her parents had arranged with yours.

“Kaure was shocked at my reaction. I will never forget the fear in her eyes as she looked on me.

“She backed away from me, hands up and warding, eyes wide. I shouted at her, screamed at her, to go back to her family…back to you…if that was what she truly wanted. I told her that I would go out into the world without her, alone, and that she and the rest of Ikito could be damned for all I cared.

“And then she was gone.

“Retreating from my rage in the dim light, she had stumbled, falling off the edge of the elevated roadway. I watched in sick horror as she tumbled downwards, her body striking the sheer walls of the roadway, first once, then again, and again, until finally she landed on the ground below with a sickening thud.

“I could scarcely breathe. In the dim light, I watched for any motion from below, but Kaure lay still and lifeless on the ground, her arms and neck bent at strange angles. I knew then that I killed her. I loved her, and I had killed her.

“I knew I couldn’t face life in the polis without her, couldn’t face our families for the shame of it. Had I been a stronger man I would have leapt to my death, our bodies side-by-side in the darkness. But I was a coward, and feared death, and could not work up the courage to jump.

“I still had in my hands the tickets for airship and oceanliner, that were to have carried us to our new life. Without Kaure at my side, it would be no kind of life at all. But a kind of inertia carried me forward. I stumbled down the road to the airfield, boarded the airship, and left Ikito forever, or so I thought.

“By the time the liner reached port in the Middle Kingdom, far across the world, the revolution had broken out in Fusang, and like Kaure before them, the Hegemon, and my own parents, were dead.”

#

Saito left off talking, looking to his old friend, expectantly.

Dyuema Axse sat with his head in his hands, silent and still. After a moment, his shoulders began to shake, gently at first and then more vigorously. As Axse began to make snuffling, sobbing noises, Saito blanched, ashamed at having reduced his friend to tears, burning with the guilt of it all.

Then Axse threw back his head, and laughed like a barking seal at the rafters overhead. His shoulders still shook, not with stifled sobs but with barely restrained mirth. “Oh, Ren, you poor, romantic fool!”

Saito bristled. “You laugh at me, sir?”

Axse wiped tears from his eyes, trying to keep his laughter under control. “You would laugh, too, Ren, were you me.”

Saito leapt to his feet, incensed. “I am so pleased that my unburdened guilt and the shameful death of the girl we both loved has brought such merriment into your heart.”

“Ren,” Axse answered, shaking his head ruefully. “That’s just what I mean. You see, Kaure isn’t dead.”

All of the blood rushed from Saito’s face, and he collapsed back into the chair. “W-What?!”

Axse leaned forward, sobering. “She broke an arm and an ankle falling from the roadway, no worse than that. She was patched up and fine in a matter of weeks.”

“W-weeks…?” Saito repeated, senselessly.

Axse nodded, studying Saito’s expression.

Saito felt numb, hollow. It was only through sheer force of will that he was able to form his thoughts into words, his words into a question. “Wh-what…what became of her? Is…Is she still here?”

His friend paused for a moment, and leaned back, as though considering his response. “No,” he said at last, shaking his head. “She left Ikito years ago. After the revolution, ‘advisers’ were sent from the Mexic Dominion to Fusang, to aid in the transition to our new, republican society. Kaure became involved with one of the advisers sent to Ikito. When it came time for him to return home, a year or so later, she went with him.”

Saito’s eyes widened. “To the Mexic Dominion?”

Axse chuckled, ruefully. “Kaure’s family was none too pleased, I can assure you, to have a daughter of theirs marry a blood-worshipper, and I gather that the adviser’s people weren’t pleased that he had taken up with a daughter of the Tukano nobility, but they were in love, and the concerns on both sides mattered to them not at all.” He paused, sighing. “I’d have given up anything for her to stay here with me, but she didn’t love me, and never had.” He glanced around the room, as though taking inventory of the life he’d built. “In time, I found Cura, and knew love again, and settled down. It is not the life I’d imagined for myself, as a younger man, but I am well content with it.”

As Saito’s thoughts circled in his head, trying to grasp all he’d been told. Axse narrowed his gaze.

“So Kaure’s accident accounts for your unannounced departure,” Axse went on. “But just where have you been all these years, and why do you return now? Have you been in the Middle Kingdom all this time?”

Saito shook his head. “I have been back in Fusang for some ten years now. I…I have ties to the Middle Kingdom, even now, but my work is here.” Saito saw the suspicion in his old friend’s eyes, and raised his hand. “I have never caused anyone harm or injury, and I firmly believe that my work here is for the greater good of the people of Fusang…if perhaps not always for those who rule them.”

Axse’s expression became guarded. “Go on.”

“There are others who, like me, have ties to the Dragon Throne, and who do much the same work as I. Or rather, there were others like me, up to a week ago. Someone, I suspect an agent of the Place of the Cactus, killed them all, one by one. Had I not fled, I would have been next.”

“Why do you suspect the Mexica?”

Saito suppressed a shudder, remembering the state in which he’d found Chasca. “Because they were killed with an obsidian blade, and at least one had her heart removed from her chest.”

Axse nodded, gravely. “The House of Darkness, then.”

“So I had surmised,” Saito answered.

Opposite numbers to the Embroidered Guard, the House of Darkness served the Great Speaker of the Mexic Dominion not only as secret police and intelligencers, but also as torturers, assassins, and ritual executioners. Those they killed weren’t simply enemies of the Mexica, but served as sacrificed to the Mexic flayed god, Xipe Totec. However, firearms were said to spoil a sacrifice, rendering the victim unfit to be accepted by the Flayed One, and so the agents of the House of Darkness employed blades exclusively.

“But what reason would the Mexic have to hunt you down? Has your…work…taken you there, as well?”

Saito shook his head. “I haven’t left Fusang since my return, ten years ago. All I know is that it seems to involve something named”–he paused, the Nahuatl word somewhat unfamiliar on his tongue–“Tlatlauhquitezcatl.”

Axse’s eyebrows raised, and he stiffened in his chair, though his carefully guarded expression remained neutral. “What did you say?”

“My Nahuatl is poor, but I believe it means ‘Mirror of Fiery Brightness.’”

Axse made a strange sound deep in his throat, somewhere between a cough and a sigh. After a moment’s pause, he relaxed, waving his hand dismissively. “Not a word I’ve ever heard, I’m sorry to say.”

#

Later that night, Saito lay on a child’s bed, his legs and feet dangling off the end. Overhead circled model airplanes on wires, miniature Eagle Knights and Spirits of the Upper Air in perpetual dogfights. On a bedside table was a tower stack of cheap novels, on their covers lurid paintings of samurai warriors or brave Jaguar Knights. And on the wall above his head was a glossy poster of Miekei, the Nipponese singing sensation.

Axse’s son, now in the Tawantinsuya Union with his mother and sister visiting family, was about the age that Saito and Axse had been when they’d played ringball in the dried lagoon bed, or had first taken notice of the girls in the polis, like Kaure Muhipu. Lying in the bed, Saito couldn’t help thinking of the strange course his life had taken since he was that age, and wondering where life might yet take Axse’s son.

He could not sleep. As he lay in the dimly lit room, again and again he replayed in his thoughts the events of the evening, and of his discussion with Axse. There had been a shift in his friend’s demeanor that, no matter how well Axse tried to conceal it, and signaled a change in Axse’s attitudes. It seemed that the change happened not when Saito hinted that he was in league with foreign powers, but rather when he first mentioned the Nahuatl word for “Mirror of Fiery Brightness.”

Did Axse know more about the word, and its portent, than he let on?

The conclusion seemed inescapable. But Saito had to know for certain.

Climbing out of bed, he slipped through the door into the hallway beyond, and as silently as he was able crept downstairs through the darkened home. When Axse had welcomed him into the home, Saito had caught a glimpse of the private study, lined with shelves and located just off of the main room downstairs.

To his relief, Saito found the door to Axse’s study unlocked. He slipped inside, and by the low light of a desk lamp and the moonlight poring through a picture window, he made a quick search of the room. He hadn’t gone far until he found something that stopped his heart beating in his chest.

On Axse’s desk was a classified report to the Committee of National defense, attached to a sheaf of papers covered with closely spaced Nahuatl glyphs, slightly smudged, the edges of the pages well-traveled and worn. At the head of each page was imprinted a glyph that had becoming sickeningly familiar to Saito, though no less mysterious: Tlatlauhquitezcatl.

Saito paged through the report, written in Tukano, which seemed to be about some sort of test or demonstration being carried out in the Mexic Dominion. The details about the matter were somewhat vague, but in addition to a date and time there was an address listed, in the Place of the Coyotes district of the Mexic capital.

Clearly, there was no question now that Axse knew more about this “Mirror of Fiery Brightness” than he let on. But just how much, and what that meant for Saito and his hopes for sanctuary, remained to be seen.

Saito continued his search, rifling the cabinets and drawers, combing through the shelves. The only items of any interest he found were a stack of blank travel visas, which Axse apparently used when dispatching functionaries across the borders of Fusang into the Mexic Dominion or the Tawantinsuya Union, and a miniature Tukano-Nahuatl dictionary. These went into Saito’s pockets. He wasn’t sure yet where he was going, but a plan was beginning to formulate at the back of his thoughts.

Saito had returned to the desk, checking to see if he’d missed anything, when he heard the sound of the front door of the house opening, and of low voices talking in the forecourt. Creeping to the study door, he peered through the crack, and was just able to see Axse talking to a pair of men who stood on the threshold. He’d assumed that Axse was asleep upstairs, and only now realized how closely he’d avoided being discovered breaking into the study.

Axse and the newcomers were speaking in voices barely above whispers, and Sait could hear little of what went between them, but as he watched, the three men took a few steps deeper into the house, giving him a better view. One of the newcomers was wearing the uniform of an officer in the Fusang Republican Guard, while the other was a Mexica in a foreign-cut red suit.

Even though the Mexica wasn’t wearing a mask, Saito knew him at a glance. And as Axse and the Republican Guard exchanged a few brief Tukano phrases, the Mexica raised his arm to feel along the top edge of the door. When his arm raised, a shoulder-holster beneath his arm was exposed, in it a knife whose handle was a twin to that which Saito had found buried in Zenojane’s back, days before. If this was not the same man he’d glimpsed outside Chasca’s house in Marajo, he was clearly a brother-in-arms.

The three men drifted further into the house, and Saito could see them looking up the stairs leading to the second floor.

“He is asleep upstairs,” Saito heard Axse say quietly. “He won’t give you any trouble.”

The Republican Guard nodded, then took Axse’s hand in a hearty clasp, before turning to the open door and hissing an order to someone who waited beyond. In the next moment, a half-dozen Fusang soldiers clomped inside, weapons drawn and at the ready.

Saito could see the distrust and fear with which Axse looked upon the Mexic assassin, but also could not fail to notice that Axse didn’t show any outward signs of remorse at turning the military loose on his childhood friend, either.

Saito heard the heavy tread of feet upstairs, as the soldiers made their way from the landing to the room of Axse’s son. It would be only a matter of moments before they learned he wasn’t there, and then they’d search the rest of the house and grounds looking for him. There wasn’t any time to lose.

Hurrying back to the desk, Saito snatched up the Committee report and the Nahuatl file, and shoved them both into his pocket along with the blank travel visas and the dictionary. Then, as quietly and quickly as he was able, he swung wide the large picture window, and slipped over the sill and onto the ground outside.

He’d gone just a few steps when he ran smack into the Republican Guard, who was rounding the back of the house, perhaps to give instructions to other soldiers stationed on the house’s far side.

If the Republican Guard hadn’t been walking alone, Saito would never have had a chance. As it was, he only barely escaped being shot in the throat. The Republican Guard has tugged a pistol from his holster, while Saito gaped in shock, but when the Guard raised the pistol to fire, the years of training Saito had received at the Eastern Depot took hold, and he reacted purely by instinct. A sweeping kick knocked the gun from the Guard’s hand, and a strike with the heel of Saito’s palm to the man’s throat dropped him to the ground, red-faced and sputtering.

Saito’s first thought was to flee, but here again training and instinct took hold. Silencing the Guard with another chop to his neck, Saito dragged the motionless form away from the house, into the sheltering shadow of an outbuilding behind Axse’s residence. Once they were shielded from view, Saito went to work, removing the man’s uniform as quickly as he was able.

#

The guard at the border checkpoint was a low-ranking warrior, who had not yet captured enough enemies in combat to be inducted into one of the warrior orders–the Jaguar Knights, the Eagle Knights, the Shorn Ones–and so his armor was plain and unadorned. But though he lacked in ornamentation, the obsidian-edged club that hung from his wrist or the carbine that was slung over his back were none the less deadly.

He studied the travel visa for the third time, then peered close at Saito’s face. He asked a question in Nahuatl, his delivery rapid-fire and difficult to follow, in the manner of border guards everywhere.

“My apologies, sir,” Saito answered in heavily accented Nahuatl, flapping the Nahuatl-Tukana dictionary from one cover like a bird with a broken wing. “My Nahuatl…not very good.”

The guard signed, and then repeated, in thickly accented Tukano, “You are military, visa says?”

Saito gave an abbreviated bow, by way of answer. “Officer of the Republic of Fusang Republican Guard, seconded to the Committee on National Defense and dispatched on a diplomatic errand.”

The guard glanced at the visa one last time, and then with an uninterested air handed it back to Saito. Waving Saito on, the guard motioned for the next person in line to move forward.

Walking at a slow, easy pace, keeping his expression as calm and relaxed as possible, Saito headed across the border, into the Mexic Dominion.

Part Four

Though he was moving through enemy territory, surrounded by blood-hungry fanatics who sacrificed innocent lives simply to keep the machinery of their society running, Saito found it difficult to see the men, women, and children around him as enemies, much less as fanatical murderers. Riding a four-wheeled passenger coach north from the border towards Place of the Cactus, he was surrounded by merchants, artisans, scholars, soldiers, and students, and except for the bright, dazzling colors that they wore, the unusual styling of their hair, or the strange strains of Nahuatl they spoke, they might have been travelers on a public conveyance in Fusang, the Middle Kingdom, or anywhere else in the world.

Saito studied the file, using the Nahuatl-Tukana dictionary when he encountered glyphs with which he was unfamiliar. The day and time listed on the report was still a few days away, and with a bit of luck he’d reach the address in time to see what went on.

As near as he was able to determine, the glyph Tlatlauhquitezcatl was a codeword for a secret Mexic research project, which was being carried out with the assistance of the best minds of the Dominion’s allies in Fusang and Tawantinsuya. The participation of the Republic’s artificers accounted for the report sent to Dyuema Axse, who was responsible for the appropriations which funded Fusang’s participation, and as such the report’s contents were geared more for the layman-level understanding of a politican like Axse, only hinting at the scientific details of the program. But from what little was touched upon in the report, Saito had been able to deduce that the Mirror of Fiery Brightness involved some sort of rocket.

When Saito had been just eight years old, the Middle Kingdom had launched a man into orbit. In the years since, the taikonauts of the Middle Kingdom had carried the banner of the Dragon Throne as far as the surface of the moon, and construction on an orbital elevator on the island of Fragrant Harbor had been ongoing for years. It was rumored that the Mexica had tried to mount their own space program in those early days, but the word that Saito had heard as a young agent in the Eastern Depot was that the Mexic efforts had been “discouraged” by the timely intervention of Embroidered Guards, who had ensured that the rockets of the Mexica would never reach orbit.

The military forces of the Mexic Dominion were large, well-trained, and well-equipped–formidable on the ground, on the waves, and even in the air. However, with the Middle Kingdom the only country to hold functional launch and orbital technology, the Dominion could not hope to compete with the Middle Kingdom out in space. So what use to them would be a rocket?

#

As the coach trundled over the mountains which bounded the valley, Saito got his first glimpse of Place of the Cactus, capital of the Mexic Dominion.

One of the largest cities in the world, it was a metropolis of canals and islands in the middle of a great lake. Causeways linked the mainland to the island which was the heart of the city, around which boats flitted like butterflies, ferrying passengers and cargo here and there. Wide streets ran between the brightly colored, ornately carved buildings, past botanical gardens, ringball courts, and markets filled with goods from all over the Dominion and from neighboring states.

People were everywhere, dressed in a million hues. Commoners with their mantles hemmed above the knee, armored warriors wearing helmets styled like the heads of jaguars or eagles, bureaucrats with elaborate embroidery on their cloaks, and slaves in their simple garb. There were men with their heads shaved, punishment for public drunkenness, and others who had only a single braid worn over their ear, signifying membership in the warrior order of the Shorn Ones. Unmarried women wore their hair long and loose, married women braided their hair into two plaits coiled around their heads, and courtesans, who would not marry at all, wore their hair cut short and dyed a purplish-black. And everywhere there were children, their hair worn in long queues at the back of their heads, not having yet earned the right to wear a warrior’s-lock.

In many ways, the city seemed not so different from Marajo, or Northern Capital, a city in which people laughed, cried, and lived, married and grew old, raised children and died. But everywhere there were reminders of the deep, fundamental ways in which the Mexic capital differed from any other cities that Saito had known. The skyline of Place of the Cactus was dominated by huge step pyramids, temples dedicated to the gods of the Mexica, their tops stained rust-red with the blood of countless sacrifices.

Saito did not know what flaw it was in the collective psyche of the Mexica that drove them to murder innocents in the name of distant, unresponsive gods. But the fact remained that, except for the brief span in which the Dragon Throne ruled over the Mexic isthmus, the people of the Dominion had spilled innocent blood for centuries, and would continue to do so, to all appearances.

As the coach drew to a stop at the depot, Saito found it difficult to breathe, imagining what would befall him if he were to be caught, his flimsy cover identity broken. Would he end up beneath the sacrificial blade of the Dominion’s ritual executioners, the House of Darkness? If he were found out, perhaps a quick death while trying to escape would come as a kind of mercy.

#

It took the better part of a day for Saito to find the address mentioned in the Mirror of Fiery Brightness file. Place of the Coyotes had been, in ancient times, a neighboring city on the shores of the mountain lake, but as Place of the Cactus expanded over time it had grown to encompass its former neighbors, and now Place of the Coyotes was simply one district of dozens in the capital metropolis.

The building appeared to be some sort of government facility, and could as easily have been a temple or a school, for all that Saito understood Mexic architecture and designs. A broad avenue ran east and west in front of the building, and as Saito approached he saw dozens of men and women spilling out of a fleet of cars and couches near the main entrance. A pair of guards in the armor of Jaguar Knights were stationed at the entrance, and as the arrivals approached in groups of twos and threes, their names were checked against the lists the guards held.

Most of the arrivals were Mexica, whether warriors or bureaucrats, but mixed in amongst them were clusters of men and women who by their dress and coloration appeared to be from Fusang and Tawantinsuya. Saito even glimpsed Commandant-General Paxkero, the head of the Fusang Republican Guard, walking at the head of a sizeable entourage of Fusang military officers.

Saito hung back, in the shadows of a nearby building, until all of the cars and coaches had emptied, and the guards had waved nearly all of the arrivals through. Then, when then the last arrival’s name was checked against the list, Saito rounded the corner and rushed towards the entrance, flushed and out of breath.

The Jaguar Knights fell into defensive positions, one raising an obsidian-edged club, the other a carbine. They barked at Saito in Nahuatl to halt and identify himself.

“I am in entourage of Commandant-General Paxkero,” Saito said in poor Nahuatl. The guards continued to glare at him. Saito paused, and with a helpless manner added, “Do you speak Tukano?”

One of the guards nodded. “Your business. State it.”

Saito mimed breathing a sigh of relief, and held up his forged travel visa and a page from the Fusang Committee of National Defense file, moving them too quickly for either guard to get a good look at it. “I’m in Paxkero’s entourage,” he restated in Tukano, “and if I’m late catching up with him my life will be worthless.”

The guards exchanged glances, then looked back at him.

“My career is on the line, brothers,” Saito entreated. “Please, let me pass.”

Saito could see something like sympathy flitting across the face of one of the guards. After all, the Mexica lived in a society where poor performance might well result in one being reduced to the level of a slave, at best, and tapped as a sacrificial victim, at worst. Saito calculated that playing on their sympathies for a fellow soldier, if not a countryman, might be his best chance of getting inside.

“Go,” the Tukano-speaking guard finally said, stepping aside and motioning Saito in. “But do not be late again.”

Saito muttered his thanks, and stuffing his visa and document back into his pocket hurried through the entrance.

#

Saito found the men and women he’d seen enter the facility gathered in a large atrium. An older Mexic man on a dais was already addressing the crowd, wearing the mantle and hairstyle of a high-ranking bureaucrat.

“I welcome you in the name of the Great Speaker,” the man was saying in Nahuatl. “Allow me to welcome our host for the evening, hero of Place of the Maguey and the Chief of the House of Arrows, Nine Serpent.”

There was a smattering of applause from around the room as a man a few years Saito’s senior approached the dais. He was wearing the uniform of a high-ranking Mexic officer, with the shaved head and side-lock of a Shorn One, from whose ranks the commander of the Mexic army was always drawn. Nine Serpent was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a strong-jaw and fierce, bright eyes. He looked for all the world like he’d stepped from the pages of one of the novels that Dyuema Axse’s son read, a man of adventure, a true warrior.

“You are welcome, friends and allies,” Nine Serpent began, addressing the crowd, his voice low and husky. “In my years as Chief of the House of Arrows, it has been my solemn duty and honor to oversee the development of the Mirror of Fiery Brightness, which when fully operational will ensure the security of the Mexic Dominion and her allies, and mean the end of the interference of the decadent hereditary empires who oppose us. In just a moment, everyone in this room will know about the destructive potential of the Mirror of Fiery Brightness”–he motioned to a film projector which was being set up near the far wall–“but soon the whole world will know the awesome power hidden at the heart of the…”

Saito was desperate to hear more, to have the mystery of this Mirror of Fiery Brightness at last revealed, but just as the Chief of the House of Arrows began to explain, Saito’s attention was diverted by a heavy hand falling on his shoulder.

He turned to find a Fusang officer studying his face intently.

“No,” the officer said, turning to the Jaguar Knights who waited behind him, the same who had just let Saito in through the front entrance. “I have never seen this man in my life.”

“There must be some mistake,” Saito said in Nahuatl, and again in Tukano as the two guards took hold of his arms and began to drag him from the room. “Let me explain!”

Saito’s shouted entreaties interrupted Nine Serpent’s presentation, and as the guards dragged him from the atrium Saito looked up to see all eyes in the crowd on him. But only one pair of eyes caught Saito’s attention.

It was a woman with Tukano features and coloration, wearing an elegant dress of Mexic design, who looked at Saito with an expression commingling horror, pity, and surprise.

It was Kaure Muhipu, the only woman Saito had ever loved.

#

How long Saito was kept in the darkness, he could not say. Nor did he know whether he was awaiting interrogation, torture, or worse. He could only assume that, having found on his person the files he’d stolen from the desk of Dyuema Axse, that the Mexica and their allies would want to know just what Saito had uncovered, and whether he’d communicated that information to anyone else. For all Saito knew they had already deduced that he was an agent of the Eastern Depot, and were hoping to use him to uncover any deep-cover Embroidered Guard operatives their assassins might not yet have located.

Saito was ashamed by the truth of his situation, which was that he’d understood virtually nothing of what he’d discovered, and that he hadn’t had the opportunity to communicate a single word of it back to his superiors in Northern Capital.

He was all alone, a prisoner in an enemy state, and it was quite likely that the spy masters of the Eastern Depot had already written him off as dead. There would be no rescue, no reprieve.

Footsteps approached, from beyond the cold steel door of his darkened cell, and Saito did his best to marshal his reserves of strength and courage. If it was to be a beating, or torture, or the sacrificial altar, he would do his level best to face his fate head-on.

The door swung open on rusty hinges, and a figure stood framed in the light from beyond. But this was no torturer, no assassin or executioner.

“Hello, Ren,” Kaure Muhipu said, a little sadly. “It’s been a long time.”

Of course, Saito really had no idea what sort of person Kaure had become, all these years later. Might she be an assassin, or torturer? He considered the possibility, and then she smiled at him, and he rejected the thought out of hand. Kaure, a killer? Never.

“H-how…How did you…?” Saito, shackled by his wrists to a ring in the floor, looked behind Kaure, but saw no one else with her.

Kaure smiled, and spun a ring of iron keys around her finger. “Being the wife of the Chief of the House of Arrows allows a woman a great deal of privilege. I’ve rarely used it to intimidate detention facility guards into letting me speak to one of their prisoners, but I knew it wouldn’t be terribly difficult.”

Saito gaped.

“It really has been a long time, Ren. Since that night out on the roadway, all those years ago?”

“Oh, Kaure…I never…I didn’t mean to…Oh, Kaure, I thought that you were dead!”

Kaure stepped into the cell, and laid a gentle hand on Saito’s head, the hair matted beneath her fingers. “I know, Ren. Dyuema contacted me, after you fled his home. I…” She shook her head, a pained expression on her face. “That you have carried the guilt for my…for my ‘death’ all these years…”

“If only I’d known,” Saito said. “I could have stayed, and we could have been together, and…”

Kaure pulled back her hand, as though she’d been burned. “I’m not sorry I didn’t go with you, Ren. Oh, for those first months, I wished that I had, while my broken bones had not yet knit, but then I met Nine Serpent, and my world changed. I love my husband, and my children, and I am happy with my life. I am only sorry that you have ended up here, like this.” She paused, and then studied Saito’s face. “How is that you are a spy, Ren? And what possessed you to infiltrate this city, of all places?”

Saito, eyes stinging, struggled to hold his emotions in check. “Kaure, you must tell me. What do you know about this Mirror of Fiery Brightness?”

She turned her gaze away, as though she’d just been slapped, biting her lower lip. “I know more about it than I’d care to know, Ren, but I can’t tell you anything. I won’t do anything to betray my husband’s love and trust.”

“What is it? Some kind of weapon? A missile of some kind?”

Kaure looked at him with pity. “Ren, you have no idea. It is a…a power that no nation should wield, were the choice mine to make. Neither Mexica, nor Fusang, nor the Middle Kingdom or any other.”

Saito surged up, straining at the length of his shackles. “Kaure, you must help me. Please!”

Kaure shook her head. “I’ve already done more than I should have, coming here to see you.” She knelt down, bringing her face on a level with his, then reached out and took his hands in hers. “I’m sorry for the life you must have lived, shadowed by that guilt. If I could have spared you that pain, I would have.”

Then she rose and, without another word, hurried from the cell, leaving the door open.

Saito felt something cold in his hands. He looked down, and found that Kaure had slipped him one of the iron keys from the ring, around which was wound a slip of paper. As he jiggled the key into the locks on his shackles, working the manacles open, he read the Tukano phrase written on the paper in a wavering hand.

Go home, my lost love, and never return.

Part Five

Saito held the key in his fist, to give his punch greater force, should he encounter any resistance. Slipping out of his cell through the open door into the hallway beyond, he could hear Kaure’s voice echoing from the right, talking in raised tones with someone. Perhaps she encountered a guard on his rounds, and was attempting to delay him? There wasn’t time to worry about it.

Turning to the left, Saito hurried the opposite direction from the voices. He’d seen precious little of the detention facility when the guards had brought him in, but he’d noticed that the hallways were circular, with cells doors and external exits dotted around its circumference. Whichever way he went he was likely to reach an exit sooner or later. All that remained was to discover whether he ran into a guard before he did.

As it happened, the exit was in sight before Saito spotted a guard. The man was dressed in simple, unadorned armor, unlike the decorated Jaguar Knights who had stood watch over the government facility in Place of the Coyotes. This was a warrior who’d taken no more than one or two captives in battle. However, as a tested Mexic warrior he’d doubtless seen more combat than Saito ever had, and was armed with pistol and club, while Saito had only his key-weighted fist with which to defend himself.

Fortunate for Saito, then, that the guard was facing the opposite direction, and hadn’t yet noticed him. Any moment now the guard would turn and see him approaching, and that would be that. Should Saito turn and flee, back towards the guards approaching from the other direction? Or stand and fight?

With the exit so tantalizingly close, Saito knew there was only one option.

As silently as he was able, he crept up behind the guard and, calling on all of Instructor Xiao’s lessons about pressure points and angles of attack, he drove the fist holding the iron key into the guard’s occipital ridge, striking the area where the skull met the spine.

The guard crumpled to the floor, hardly making a sound. Saito’s hand ached from the force of the blow, but the punch had done the trick.

Saito snatched the pistol from the unconscious man’s holster, and then picked up the obsidian-edged club. Then, snapping the ring of keys from the guard’s belt, he opened a nearby cell door and, finding it empty, dragged the insensate guard within. After shackling the guard to the floor and then securing the door, Saito rushed to the exit, opening the door a crack and peering outside.

Night had fallen, and the stars shone over the city on the lake. Tightening his grip on the obsidian-edged club, Saito slipped out into the darkness.

He wasn’t going home, no matter what Kaure had said. Too much blood had been spilled to walk away now. He would discover the secret of the Mirror of Fiery Brightness, even if it meant his life to do so.

#

The moon shone high overhead when Saito reached the research facility in Place of the Coyotes. Keeping away from high traffic areas, he’d managed to avoid detection, but when sunrise came he was sure to be discovered. He still had the keys he’d pilfered from the fallen guard, and was gratified to find one of them was nearly the shape to suit his purpose. Using the obsidian edge of the club he was able to file away the few teeth of the key that didn’t fit the profile, and when he was done he had a workable bump key. Instructor Xiao, years before, had shared with the students at the Eastern Depot the limitations of the spring-loaded stacks employed in Mexic locks, and the way in which a key of a certain shape–a bump key–could be used to open virtually any such locks.

When he’d opened the door, Saito waited for the inevitable alarms to sound, but when only silence followed, he moved inside. Either there were no alarms, in which case there was no reason not to proceed, or the alarms were silent or off-site, in which case he had no time to lose.

In the darkened atrium in which–had it been the day before?–the Chief of the House of Arrows had addressed the crowd, Saito found the film projector still set up and loaded. After fumbling with the controls for a few moments, puzzling over the Nahuatl labels, he was able to set the film to playing.

On the wall before Saito was projected a color image. It was a desert, perhaps somewhere in the northwest of the Mexic Dominion, with trees dotted here and there, and a row of mountains off on the horizon. In the foreground were a series of buildings of various types, one of wood, one of steel, one of stone.

Saito couldn’t help but be reminded of a Europan children’s rhyme he’d once heard, about a family of pig brothers who constructed just such a series of houses, all but one of which failed to keep at bay a wolf with the ability to breathe massive winds.

Suddenly, a bright light flashed in the middle of the scene, and the structures in the foreground were shaken, then demolished, by massive winds that blew across the desert, while an enormous cloud in the shape of a mushroom billowed up into the sky.

There was no sound but the clatter of the film projector, but Saito could almost feel the sound of the explosion that could have caused such a shockwave.

The scene suddenly changed, the image of the buildings replaced by shots from other angles, as trees were uprooted, armored vehicles knocked down and stripped bare, rock blasted to dust.

Then the scene changed again, and men in bulky environmental suits moved across the ruined landscape, taking readings with instruments of some kind, inspecting the damage first hand. They seemed like lost children, buried beneath the bulky suits, wandering along a beach looking for seashells. One of the men paused and picked up what appeared to be a piece of glass from the sands underfoot, like a child with his prize.

Then the scene shifted again, displaying a group of men and women chained to posts driven into the ground. From the trees in the background and the state of the ground underfoot, this was evidently from before the shockwave had passed. Then the scene changed again, and the effects of the shockwave on the living subjects was displayed in a series of graphic moving images.

The image of the ruined bodies was replaced by a man in the mantle of a Mexic bureaucrat speaking directly into the camera, and for the first time Saito realized that the film had an audio component. A little experimentation with the controls produced a few squawks, and then the voice of the speaker. The man, speaking in Nahautl, appeared to be a high-ranking artificer, and was explaining how, in collaboration with their allies from the Republic of Fusang and the Tawantinsuya Union, the Mexic Dominion had succeeded in splitting the atom, and unleashing the power locked within.

Feeling hollow and sick, Saito toggled the controls to rerun the film from the beginning with the narration, but just as it was restarting, he heard a noise from behind him.

Saito wheeled around, heart in his throat, with the club in one hand and the pistol in the other.

There, on the far side of the room, stood a man in a red suit, features hidden behind the flayed-skin mask of a dead man. He stood calmly, arms at his side, with an obsidian dagger in one hand, his other hand empty.

“Saito Ren,” the assassin said. “I have long looked forward to this moment.”

#

Though Saito’s hand trembled, the barrel of the pistol remained trained on the flayed-skin mask of the assassin. “Who are you? Tell me!”

The man held his hands out to either side, and included his head. “I am simply a humble servant of the House of Darkness, and acolyte to Our Lord the Flayed One.”

Saito’s suspicions were confirmed. That explained why the man was armed only with a blade.

His heart still pounding in his chest, Saito tried to maintain his composure, and to make the most of the advantage his pistol gave him.

“So you know what this is?” Saito jerked his head towards the image of the mushroom cloud erupting on the wall behind him. “What this secret is that you are protecting?”

The man in the flayed-skin mask was silent, impassive.

“Answer me,” Saito raged, gesturing with the pistol. “I’ll shoot if you don’t!”

The assassin didn’t speak, but simply flicked his seemingly empty hand, as though he were shooing away a fly, and a small object hurled through the air, driving into the back of Saito’s hand. As the pistol clattered to the floor, Saito looked in shock at the tiny sliver of obsidian buried between his knuckles.

“I do not care for guns,” the masked man said, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

Cradling his pierced hand to his chest, Saito fought back the tears of rage and horror that welled in his eyes. “Why, do they offend your precious code of murder? Your god will only accept the victims of the personal touch? Well, what do you suppose he’ll make of that?!”

Saito waved the obsidian-edged club at the image of the men and women being buffeted by the shockwave and the heat of the explosion.

“What will Xipe Totec think of millions of victims cooked alive in their own skin, their faces burnt to ash?”

The assassin turned his eyes to the image projected on the wall, unspeaking.

From what little of his expression Saito could see behind the mask, it appeared that the agent of the House of Darkness was seeing the effects of the Mirror of Fiery Brightness for the first time. The assassin’s eyes widened, and his mouth hung open.

“My god,” the assassin whispered, muttering a Mexic-prayer, “I shall be content if first I ripen…”

Saito took a step forward, blood spilling freely from his wounded hand. “I can’t let this continue,” he gasped. “I’ll send word back to the Middle Kingdom. They’ll find a way to stop this horror.”

The assassin paused, thoughtfully. When he finally spoke, there was an odd undercurrent to his words. “Everyone who knows the secret of the Mirror of Fiery Brightness stood in this room yesterday.”

Saito opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak, before he could ask the masked man what he’d meant, the assassin rushed across the room at him as fast as lightning, and then Saito felt the whisper of pain as the black-glass knife slid across his throat.

As Saito fell to the ground, unable to breathe, unable to speak, the assassin looked down on him, something like pity showing in the eyes behind the mask.

“It shouldn’t be difficult to track all of them down,” the assassin said.

And then the world closed around Saito, and darkness overtook him.

#

In the home of the Chief of the House of Arrows, at the heart of Place of the Cactus, the wife of Nine Serpent put the children to bed, one by one, before finally going to the bedchamber to join her husband. Kaure Muhipu was worried about her husband.

It had been some days since she had helped her childhood friend Saito Ren escape from the detention center. The following morning Nine Serpent had received word of the prisoner’s escape, followed shortly by the discovery that the research facility in Place of the Coyotes had burned to the ground, taking with it all of the written documentation of the Mirror of Fiery Brightness and the existing prototypes. It was believed that the charred body found in the ruins was that of the escaped prisoner, who was suspected to be the cause of the fire.

Kaure hadn’t believed that Saito was capable of such a sacrifice, but reflected that she had known the boy that he had been, not the man he had become. If she had grown to accept the need for blood sacrifice to the gods of the Mexica, she had to accept that Saito might have embraced other philosophies, as well.

She knew that the loss of the Mirror of Fiery Brightness materials had come as a blow to her husband, who had championed the project since its inception, but Nine Serpent appeared confident that the work could be recreated, given enough time. With the disappearance of key team members in recent days, though, the attempt to recreate the weapon was being delayed, which was adding even more stress for the Chief of the House of Arrows.

As she made her way to the house’s second floor, she heard a noise from the bedchamber, which surprised her, since she had assumed her husband had already fallen asleep.

“Husband? Is there anything the matter?”

Kaure reached the top of the stairs, and rounded the corner into their bedchamber. There she found her husband, commander of the Mexic military and second only to the Great Speaker in matters martial, lying face down on the floor, stripped naked, in a widening pool of his own blood.

Kaure’s hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide, but before she could scream a man stepped from the shadows, a knife in his hand.

“I am sorry,” the man said, advancing on her. As he stepped into the light, Kaure could see that he wore the flayed skin of a man’s face as a mask. The features on the mask, distorted and monstrous, were strangely familiar. “There are some secrets too terrible to be kept, even in a single mind.”

Kaure turned to flee, but the man moved forward, impossibly fast, and took hold of her arm. She looked back at him, and suddenly recognized the face behind which the assassin hid.

“Don’t worry, though,” the assassin said, pressing his obsidian knife to Kaure’s chest. “You don’t journey to the bosom of Our Lord the Flayed One alone, nor will you be the last.”

As the knife bit into her skin, and pierced bone, Kaure looked up at the flayed-skin mask. She had loved that face, once, when she was still a girl.

It somehow seemed fitting that it would be the last face she saw.