The Descent of Monsters_The Tensorate Series by JY Yang

Author:JY Yang [Yang, JY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2018-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Part Two

THE FUGITIVE

Chapter Seventeen

[1162.07.22]

Good evening. The sun falls upon an empire stewing in its rot and corruption, upon a Protectorate where well-fed children play in manicured gardens while orphans starve in the gutter, upon mountains full of ugly secrets and cities determined to keep them buried. It sets upon the disgraced former Tensor Chuwan Sariman, an outlaw in word and deed and name. And if this is to be an outlaw’s diary, then I should treat it as such.

This is my truth, my record of everything that’s about to happen. The heavens know that the Protectorate will tell their version of my story, and it will be nothing but lies coated in horseshit. I can see it already: behold this brat, who benefited from the generosity of Kuanjin society but reverted to the barbarism of her Kebang roots anyway.

Well, fuck you all. You can’t control me anymore.

Let’s start where we last ended. I’d stolen the transcripts from the late Tensor Ngiau’s office. When I decided to keep them, I knew that I would never return to the Ministry of Justice. There was no way my crimes wouldn’t come to light, no way I wouldn’t get caught if I went back. I had thrown my lot in with the rebels.

I panicked. I panicked a lot. I thought about the life I’d scraped together. The small house I’d managed to buy in the city, where Kayan could always come for shelter. The job that let me feel like I was making a difference. I almost changed my mind.

And then I remembered that I made a difference by helping people. Doing the right thing. What I had on my hands was so much bigger than me, and worrying about my future was not just foolish but also selfish. I thought of Cai Yuan-ning and her anguish.

I got back to work.

Cut off from the resources I needed now that the investigation was over, I had one lead left: Cai Yuanfang’s sister. But it was more than enough for me. I waited for the dark of the first night-cycle, when the dew chills upon the nape of your neck, and stole into the Registry of Births and Deaths. Except that I got lost in the sprawling complex and nearly got caught twice, because I am not nearly as good as I like to tell myself. It was a ridiculous sort of good luck that allowed me to reach my objective in one piece, as though the Slack had obligingly bent itself around reality to serve me. (Which is a stupid thing to think . . . or is it?)

In any case, I made it. In a dusty, lightless hall filled with shelves of scrolls, using the barest of slackcraft to work a sunball and praying no one would detect anything, I found the records for Cai Yuanfang’s family. One sister, Cai Yuan-ning. The registry told me where she lived.

I knocked on her door in the second night-cycle. When nobody responded, I tried to push her window in, only to be confronted by the muzzle of a black-market gun.

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