Born a Monster

Narrator: Wa Fenya

“This is just inefficient.” I said.

“Please elaborate.” Lord Xho sighed.

“If every message comes here, then it seems that one messenger can carry a box of scrolls to a single destination.”

“What about urgent messages?” asked Pharmacist Hwa.

“They’re scrolls.” I explained. “Different priority messages, use different color wax seals, or different colored tassels. You could even seal them in scroll carriers with the word ‘urgent’ written on the outside.”

“Ridiculous.” Lord Xho said. “If the couriers become able to take low priority messages as well, how long is it before every pair of separated soldiers are sending poems or lewd jokes to each other? The system would collapse under the sheer volume of banal communications.”

“So, possibly we make a separate system just for banal messages?” suggested Pharmacist Wa. “Let that one collapse all it wants to; nothing important will be lost. And if it runs slower due to sheer bulk, who cares? It’s not as if those messages... sir?”

.....

Lord Xho tapped him on the head with his fan. “Do you wish to join house Wa? Serve them instead of house Xho?”

Pharmacist Wa blushed. Almost cute, I’m sure the more vapid among his wives simply adored it. “I... I am sorry, sir. I shall not speak against you in public again.”

“See that you do not.” Lord Xho said. “We want the Nine running in terror, not thinking that there are divisions among us that they can exploit.”

So, it was okay to create those divisions, as long as the enemy wasn’t aware of them? That’s not how my parents raised me. But then I was a Soldier, a different caste from the Nobles.

And, as my commanding officer, even temporary, it was my duty to obey him, and attempt to respect him in spite of his doltish ignorance and arrogance.

“Please continue, Miss Cai.” I said to our guide. “You had just said that all messages except the most urgent come through this warehouse, here.”

She looked up, nodding in a way that made her pigtails sweep forward and back like twin snakes. “Yes. Every message goes to the table marked for its destination. There, it is logged. Who sent it, and to whom, and what message number.”

“How do you avoid giving duplicate message numbers?” Pharmacist Wa asked.

“Oh, they do it all the time.” Cai Cha said. “Sometimes four, five times a day. It’s why the scroll container system was added. By logging the container number and time of day, we remove exactly that error.”

“I am still not understanding.” Pharmacist Wa said. “This is only for urgent messages, how can they afford the delay of being moved here and logged?”

“Don’t look at me.” Cai Cha said. “I’m a logistical genius, but I am only sixteen.”

I chuckled. “I can shed some light on that, if you don’t mind, Pharmacist.”

“Please do.” He said.

“Thank you. The matter is just one of knowing that the orders are delivered, but when. During a battle, a commander drove his force to take the top of a hill and held it, thus winning the battle for the Empire. But afterward, it turned out that an order had been dispatched telling him to withdraw. He claimed never to have seen it, but the general insisted that it had been delivered, and had him beheaded for insubordination.”

Pharmacist Hwa looked properly horrified; Lord Xho disinterested.

“However, after the battle, the messenger was found dead, an arrow in his throat, with his message undelivered. Instead of treason, the commander had shown great initiative. Instead of great shame, he had brought glory and honor to all, except the general who had him executed. In a futile attempt to preserve his own life, the general had the commander promoted and given posthumous honors. But the Masked Empress had already heard of this bungle, and sent a magistrate to bring the matter to trial.”

I sighed. “The series of executions left the unit’s morale shattered; they lost the next battle with the goblin horde, and they ravaged those provinces for three more years before they were put to rest. Much shame and misery spread, all because there was no tracking of messages. Having great reason to hate goblin-kind, the Mask Empress ordered that all formal traffic of the army should be tracked, and the delivery of messages verified. Further, she outlawed the relay of messages by voice alone; the messenger must always provide some token of proof.”

“But, and please forgive me if I am wrong,” Lord Xho said, “but did not exactly this happen? Voice messages delivered to both the Rice Gate and the Dusk Gate, commanding each to abandon their position because the other had betrayed the Admiral?”

“Yes, and messages delivered to General Hyun, with the proper stamps and sigils to convince him that Captain Feng and his Champion Force had betrayed him.” I confirmed.

“And thus, we have another clue!” Lord Xho exclaimed. “If they had forged the proper documents for the Rice Gate and Dusk Gate, then we would now be having this conversation inside the middle wall. Why would they not do so?”

Pharmacist Wa ground his sandal back and forth. “Forgive me, great one, but would that not require that they had compromised General Hyun himself?” He looked at me. “That IS the only person who has his seal, is that correct?”

“That should be correct.” I confirmed. “We will need to request confirmation of who sent those reports to General Hyun, that will tell us which two seals have been compromised.”

“A waste of our time. Surely, the military has already taken care of those seals.” Lord Xho declared.

“Would his lordship be offended if I checked anyway? Knowing whom they compromised and when may assist us in tracking them down.” I asked.

Lord Xho waved his hand dismissively. “Waste your own time, not mine. We need to get ahead of the Nine, not chase behind them.”

“Please continue, Miss Cai. You were telling us about the scroll case system?”

“Scroll container system.” She corrected me. “But yes, it saves us the errors officers make under duress. But part of the problem is that we do not have enough containers, and then there is the variance in the sizes of the scrolls themselves.”

“I would think that there would be one size of scroll, and therefore one standard size of container.” Lord Xho said.

“Oh, no. At any given time, there are six to eight different sizes of scroll in use. Part of this is because of the use of parchment, reed paper, rice paper, treated bark, and even vellum as scroll material.” Cai Cha said.

“That seems... inefficient.” Lord Xho squinted his eyes, looking either confused or constipated.

Cai Cha spread her hands, and waved them to indicate the presence of a storm. “Your lordship, please use your eyes. There is a great volume of written orders that must be moved every single day. We do not have the luxury of choosing a standard material, and especially not a single size. There are two other warehouses just like this one, one in the middle zone, and one in the inner zone. I cannot speak to what they do inside the citadel.”

“Specialist Wa?” Lord Xho asked.

“So sorry, I have never seen the citadel, let alone walked inside its walls. Should we dispatch a request to Lady Kismet? We do seem to be in a very active communications center.”

“No.” he decided, “I doubt that the corruption of the Nine has spread to encompass the Citadel. Let us for now focus our efforts on where we know they have been active. If they are expanding their abilities to falsify orders in a way that looks authentic, we need to close off that access as quickly as possible.”

One might not have noticed, because he kept his sleeves together and his hands inside them, but his hands were beginning to shake. Before long, he would need to indulge his cravings for his particular kind of smoke. I hoped he could put it off until after we had learned what we could about the messaging system.

“So sorry, Lord Xho,” Cai Cha said, “but that is likely taking place at the unit level. Each military unit keeps a few civilians employed for running messages originating there. While someone working here might recognize the sigils of various units, we do not have access to make our own seals.”

“What if the contents of an order need to be checked or verified? How would it be opened?”

“No!” Cai Cha insisted, “We ensure delivery of the messages, but the security we are entrusted with is never to be violated. Our integrity is enforced by death sentence; none of us would dare to OPEN a message. It is unthinkable!”

Lord Xho stroked his short beard. “I see. Please continue. Once a message is logged, how is it assigned to a courier?”

“Oh, that is fairly simple...” Cai Cha continued to explain the inner workings of her station, but I could see that Lord Xho’s eyes were unfocused.

I hoped that Pharmacist Hwa and I could ask the right questions.