A Secret Man of Blood

Chapter Nine

A bell's hoarse, iron tongue rings midnight and Mazer focusses his full attention on the moon-sharpened tower. Commander of a Tiger Force strike team, Mazer has fought every type of battle available to a Scrovengi special forces soldier, always answering the call with loyal zeal. This is the plan: infiltrate the Emperor's Tower using gliders, capture the Boy Emperor and use him to negotiate the surrender of the Jade Empire.

The hundreds of metres between his team and the destination balcony are a wilderness of potential dangers; Mazer measures their progress by the city's magic lights below and is amazed as they extinguish when he passes overhead, then switch on again in a wave as his magic-dampening amulet passes beyond range. How powerful is this thing, that it can reach out across so many hundreds of metres to touch all those individual lights?

The team hasn't been shot out of the sky by mage fire, which is a good sign by any standard, so the dampener is also working against the magical defences. With a practised air, all forty gliders land gently on the upper floors of the tower. Iskra leads her fighters to the stairway and there's the soft, delicate sound of a slit throat in the dark beyond the balcony.

Mazer heads up a narrow staircase and twenty-six other dark-clad Tiger Force commandos follow in perfect order like soft, black, concentric waves. Voices scuttle from a room ahead and, though this isn't the target area, Mazer can't allow these reinforcements to hit them from behind. He puts his palm on the door handle, signals to the others what he wants and flings the door open.

The room is flooded with light, illuminating a circular table strewn with cards and occupied by eight human guards of the Jade Empire: anxiety freezes into something horrible and solemn on their faces. Knives fly through the air, wrecking the guards like a cavalry charge without moving a single card on the table. There is no noise and no survivors, their lives disappearing like the thoughtless and abundant stars. Mazer looks down at the humans: a few lie face down like fallen nests, another has fallen on his back, a knife through his face, arms flung wide as if asking why; so many lives will disappear like those thoughtless and abundant stars, victims of terrible sorcery or simply good old-fashioned manpower.

They're near the top when fighting breaks out on the floor below, but Mazer knows Iskra will hold until her dying breath. Ahead, several figures dressed in red robes of Dragon School sorcerers appear and, considering the powerful reputation of the Boy Emperor's royal guard, Mazer hopes the amulet around his neck dampens their magic. As he rushes them Mazer is amazed to not be struck down, and the mages are surprised too as the massive Scrovengi slashes and scissors his way through them.

When they're all dead, Mazer is about to turn back to his fighters when a door ahead opens and a tiny figure with black hair steps out. The Boy Emperor rubs his eyes, confused and looking like a normal six-year-old. It's impossible to tell he's a conduit for the memories of countless generations of his people, holder of The Mandate of Heaven – the Jiangese believe their ancestors, culture and loved ones live on in the soul of this boy, that he governs in perfect harmony of the past with the present; not reincarnation of one individual but of an entire people within an individual, each generation adding to the whole, representing the love and toil of a whole nation, a living constitution.

Perhaps Mazer imagines it, but for a moment he does see something profound in the boy's stare. His face is loaded with memories, buried and mighty. He looks like he's about to say something but doesn't, a flame blazing silently from his eyes.

A large, dark figure emerges from nowhere and Mazer can tell it's a Scrovengi behind the mask from the distinctive horns jutting out of his head. Some kind of barbed wire is wrapped around the top of the mask, surrounding the horns, and nine blades dance protectively in the air around the figure, either independently or controlled by his will.