"It is all arranged," Nan Ho answered quietly. "The Lord Pei has taken on the matter as his personal responsibility. Your maids will have the very best of husbands."
"Good." Li Yuan straightened up in his saddle, then clapped his hands, delighted that Pearl Heart and Sweet Rose would finally have their reward. "Good. Then let us go and escort the Lady Fei, neh, Master Nan?"
Li Yuan galloped ahead, meeting the palanquin at the edge of the long meadow. "Stop!" he called. "Set the palanquin down. We shall wait for the bearers to come." As the chair was lowered there was the soft rustle of silk from inside as Fei Yen stirred. "Yuan?" she called sleepily. "Yuan, what's happening?"
He signaled to one of the men to lift back the heavy silk at the front of the palanquin, then stepped forward, helping Fei Yen raise herself into a sitting position. Then he stepped back again, pointing out across the meadow. "See what Master Nan has arranged for us, my love."
She laughed softly, delighted. The darkness of the great meadow seemed suddenly enchanted, the soft glow of the lanterns like giant fireflies floating at the end of their tall poles. Beyond them on the far side of the meadow, the walls of the great palace of Tongjiang were a burnished gold in the sun's last rays, the red, steeply tiled roofs like flames.
"It's beautiful," she said. "Like something from a fairy tale." He laughed, seeing how the lamplight seemed to float in the liquid darkness of her eyes. "Yes. And you the fairy princess, my love. But come, let me sit with you. One should share such magic, neh?"
He climbed up next to his wife, then turned, easing himself into the great cushioned seat next to her.
"All right, Master Nan. We're ready."
Nan Ho bowed, then set about arranging things, lining the lantern bearers up on either side of the palanquin, then assigning six of the guards to double up as carriers. He looked about him. Without being told the two grooms had taken charge of the Arab and were petting her gently.
Good, thought Nan Ho, signaling for the remaining guards to form up behind the palanquin. But his satisfaction was tainted. He looked at his master and at his wife and felt sick at heart. How beautiful it all looked in the light of the lanterns, how perfect, and yet. . .
He looked down, remembering what he had done, what he had seen that day, and felt a bitter anger. Things should be as they seem, he thought. No, he corrected himself; things should seem as they truly are.
He raised his hand. At the signal the carriers lifted the palanquin with a low grunt. Then, as he moved out ahead of them, the procession began, making its slow way across the great meadow, the darkness gathering all about them.
"Well, how did it go?"
Lehmann threw the pouch down on the desk in front of DeVore. "There was a slight hitch, but all the circuits are in place. I had to kill a man. A Security guard. But your man there, Hanssen, is seeing to that."
DeVore studied Lehmann a moment. "And nobody else saw you?"
"Only the guards at the barriers."
"Good." DeVore looked down, fingering the pouch, knowing that it contained all the communication circuits they had replaced, then pushed it aside. "Then we're all set, neh? Five days from now we can strike. There was no problem with Mach, I assume?"
Lehmann shook his head. "No. He seems as keen as we are to get at them."
DeVore smiled. As he ought to be. "Okay. Get showered and changed. I'll see you at supper for debriefing."
When Lehmann was gone he got up and went across the room, looking at the detailed diagram of Security Central that he'd pinned up on the wall. Bremen was the very heart of City Europe's Security forces; their "invulnerable" fortress. But it was that very assumption of invulnerability that made them weak. In five days' time they would find that out. Would taste the bitter fruit of their arrogance.
He laughed and went back to his desk, then reached across, drawing the folder toward him. He had been studying it all afternoon, ever since the messenger had brought it. It was a complete file of all the boy's work; a copy of the file Marshal Tolonen had taken with him to Tongjiang that very morning; a copy made in Tolonen's own office by Tolonen's own equerry, a young man DeVore had recruited to his cause five years earlier, when the boy was still a cadet.
He smiled, remembering how he had initiated the boy, how he had made him swear the secret oath. It was so easy. They were all so keen; so young and fresh and ripe for some new ideology—for some new thing they could believe in. And he, DeVore, was that new thing. He was the man whose time would come. That was what he told them, and they believed him. He could see it in their eyes; that urgency to serve some new and better cause—something finer and more abstract than this tedious world of levels. He called them his brotherhood and they responded with a fierceness born of hunger. The hunger to be free of this world ruled by the Han. To be free men again, self-governing and self-sustaining. And he fed that hunger in them, giving them a reason for their existence—to see a better world. However long it took.
He opened the file, flicking through the papers, stopping here and there to admire the beauty of a design, the simple elegance of a formula. He had underestimated the boy. Had thought him simply clever. Super-clever, perhaps, but nothing more. This file, however, proved him wrong. The boy was unique. A genius of the first order. What he had accomplished with these simple prototypes was astonishing. Why, there was enough here to keep several Companies busy for years. He smiled. As it was he would send them off to Mars, to his contacts there, and see what they could make of them.
He leaned back in his chair, stretching out his arms. It would be time, soon, to take the boy and use him. For now, however, other schemes prevailed. Bremen and the Plantations, they were his immediate targets—the first shots in this new stage of the War. And afterward?
DeVore laughed, then leaned forward, closing the file. The wise man chose his plays carefully. As in wei chi, it did not do to plan too rigidly. The master player kept a dozen subtle plays in his head at once, prepared to use whichever best suited the circumstances. And he had more than enough schemes to keep the Seven busy.
But first Bremen. First he would hit them where it hurt the most. Where they least expected him to strike.
Only then would he consider his next move. Only then would he know where to place the next stone on the board.