While the imperial engineer Sheng Zhu-Shi began work on the southern fortifications, Bayan, Bangqiu, Sir Crowler, and Prince Slash took their rest in the nearby market town of Pasar.
The rest did not last long.
Bayan soon remembered that Pasar had once been a place known
to Beatriss. She had traveled there with Gwinch, a mysterious foreigner and Master of the Path, whom she had known since her days in Zipang. Bayan
suggested they look for him.
Bangqiu was eager for the visit as well. Pasar lay near his
childhood home, and he hoped to see how the town had changed since his youth.
They discovered very quickly that it had changed for the
worse.
The Black Flowers
Pasar had once been famous for its peace.
Travelers entering the town were required to surrender their
weapons at the gates — a custom dating back to when Pasar had been nothing more
than a fishing village where merchants could rest safely between long journeys.
But prosperity had brought problems.
Merchants had arrived with guards. Rival guilds had fought
one another in the streets. Eventually the Elders of Pasar allowed a single
company of mercenaries to carry weapons in order to preserve the peace.
They were called the Black Flowers, former imperial soldiers,
remnants of the armies of general Kawabi and Governor Goyat.
At first the Black Flowers had done their job.
But in the course of a few years they had become something
else entirely.
The Black Flowers now patrolled the market districts wearing
what was left of their old imperial armor. Each man bore a large circular badge
shaped like a black flower.
They took food from merchants without paying. They bullied
travelers. And everyone in Pasar seemed to fear them.
Sir Crowler and Prince Slash saw the injustice with their
own eyes when a group of Black Flowers overturned a fruit seller’s cart simply
because the old man asked for payment.
A Familiar Name
Meanwhile Bayan and Bangqiu reached the monastery where they thought they might find Gwinch. They didn't find him, but they found Sid, a young monk who knew him, and was willing to talk about what was happening in Pasar.
The monastery itself had fallen under the
control of the Black Flowers. Many of the monks were little more than servants
now, forced to obey the mercenaries who had once been allowed to shelter within
the monastery walls.
In time, Sid admitted that he knew where they could find Gwinch. He had been exiled from Pasar, by the Elders of Pasar. But now they had secretly invited Gwinch back. They hoped he could help restore the monastery and drive the Black Flowers out of the town.
Sid negotiated an introduction and the travelers, together with Gwinch and the Elders, forged a bold plan.
The Black Flowers were preparing for a secret meeting of their leaders beneath the town — a gathering that would include representatives of several powerful factions.
If those leaders could be captured, the Black Flowers’ power
might collapse overnight.
Sid knew the entrance to the tunnels beneath Pasar.
Gwinch would lead the strike.
A Diversion
There was one problem.
The tunnels ran directly beneath the monastery, which was
heavily guarded.
The strike team would need a diversion.
Sir Crowler and Prince Slash immediately volunteered.
Their plan was simple: cause as much chaos as possible in
the monastery courtyard and draw the Black Flowers’ attention away from
whatever might be happening underground.
No one doubted their enthusiasm.
Into the Tunnels
Before the expedition set out, Gwinch’s advisor Saisho
cast a powerful spell that rendered the entire strike force invisible.
Twelve unseen figures slipped through the streets of Pasar,
bumping occasionally into startled townsfolk but attracting little attention
from the Black Flower patrols.
Sid guided them into an abandoned hotel once favored by the
mercenaries. From an upper room they descended a ladder through a broken wall
into the tunnels below.
The journey through the underground passages proved long and
dangerous.
There were traps everywhere.
A strange metal guardian threatened to fill a chamber with
poison gas. Hidden pits opened beneath careless footsteps. A flamethrower trap
nearly killed Bayan and Sid before they managed to smother the nozzle with
their cloaks.
The party faced demonic hounds, a maze of deadly bolts, and
a monstrous bull-headed warrior that fell beneath the axe of the young fighter
called Beast.
Bangqiu’s magic and Gwinch’s discipline carried them
forward.
The Uprising
Above ground, Crowler and Slash had begun their diversion.
Standing before the monastery gates, Prince Slash loudly
denounced the Black Flowers and mocked their cowardice. Crowler challenged the
watching townspeople to ask themselves why such bullies ruled their town.
The crowd began to stir.
When the Black Flowers dragged Slash inside the courtyard to
punish him, Crowler and their ally Jasmine slipped in after him.
Fighting broke out.
The Slavelords of Pasar
The underground strikeforce found the slavelords’ council
chamber, was large and grand, lit by torches and lined with nine thrones.
Five of the thrones were occupied.
Neetla, captain of the Black Flowers, rose immediately to
meet them.
Beside him sat his allies: a green-robed sorcerer, a priest
of the Shining Path, a traitorous monk of the Two-Fold Path, and a cloaked
assassin of the One Law Mosque.
The battle that followed was chaotic and deadly.
Gwinch and Beast charged Neetla while Bangqiu darted behind
the mercenary captain and struck him with burning enchanted shuriken.
Bayan fought desperately when the cloaked assassin appeared
behind her with a dagger. Though wounded, she drove him off and pursued him
through the chamber even as he tried to vanish into invisibility.
The cost of the battle was heavy.
Sid and the jungle hunter Akinfenwa were both killed
by a fireball.
But the slavelords were defeated.
Neetla was captured alive.
Word spread throughout the monastery and to the courtyard where Crowler and Slash were fighting.
“Neetla is captured!”
At that moment the gates burst open.
An elephant thundered into the courtyard, followed by a stampede of livestock as townspeople surged forward. The remaining Black Flowers fled in panic.
Pasar had risen against them.
The Maps
When the fighting ended, the captured conspirators were
swiftly judged by the Elders.
Justice was harsh.
But it was the documents found in the throne chamber that
troubled Bayan most.
The slavelords of Pasar were not an isolated gang of
mercenaries.
They were part of a larger network.
Their letters and maps revealed strongholds scattered across
the region — including one in the mountains near Quitokai.
And another.
A monastery.
In Khanbaliq.
Not so long ago, when Bayan was attached to the imperial
harem, she had accompanied Beatriss on a reconnaissance mission, ordered by the
Emperor, to an abandoned monastery on the edge of the imperial capital. The Emperor
had sent them looking for a woman.
They had never finished that mission, barely started it.
Beatriss had been turned to stone.
Now it seemed that the place they had entered long ago might
have been only one part of something larger — a hidden network of monasteries,
mercenaries, and slavers operating across the Emperor’s domains.
Bayan said nothing of this to the others.
But the discovery left her uneasy.
Either her Emperor knew very little about what was happening
in the shadows of his empire.
Or he knew far more than he had said.
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