Speaking Bones, page 112
The cashima shook her head. “Secretary Kidosu is most learned, but I’m afraid that I cannot condone her teaching methods. She doesn’t make her students memorize the Ano Classics, and she encourages them to write in the vernacular and even in Lyucu in zyndari letters—how are they supposed to master their logograms with their attention so divided?…”
Rati thought the cashima’s objection too shortsighted. It was true that Empress Shizona had put Réza Müi in charge of the committee to reform the next session of the Imperial examinations, and she was well known as a proponent of using only Classical Ano at the examinations to ensure standardization and a level playing field for scholars of diverse backgrounds. But Réza had also always shown a radical streak in her, and now with Empress Shizona pushing forward all sorts of reforms, who knew what Réza was going to do?
The cashima went on. “… I’ve even heard that she takes them on random balloon trips to places like Crescent Island and Écofi, filling their heads with useless knowledge about animals and plants. No, no, the One True Sage remains the only suitable subject for a scholar of ambition. If you really want your daughter to do well in the examinations, I can recommend some of my friends’ academies.”
“Much obliged,” said Égi, clearly not very impressed by the offer. “As I was saying, once we get to Dasu, I intend to make a fortune. Everyone knows there is a lot of empty land in Ukyu-taasa, uh…” He stopped, realizing that he had unwittingly broached a sensitive topic.
Everyone fell silent. The deserted land plots in Dasu and Rui, as well as Dyana’s interest in filling them with more people, were the legacy of the mass graves that dotted the landscape of Ukyu-taasa. They were as much scars in the terrain as in the psyche of the people.
Égi shook off the awkwardness and pressed on. “I’ll use the stipend and my savings to buy a big tract. I figured I could set up a long-haired cattle ranch. That’s a big business now and likely to grow bigger.”
“That’s not an easy business to get into,” said Widi, his tone stiff and a bit cold. “The long-haired cattle are very different from the cattle in Faça, and you’ll need someone who knows what they’re doing to help you.”
“I know it,” said Égi. “Ideally, I’d like to partner with a Lyucu naro-votan. I’ll put up the money, and they’ll put in the skills. I hear that the Lyucu like to work with veterans because they think we’re more honest and trustworthy than the average civilian, on account of their experience with Emperor Monadétu. Once I get the ranch set up, though, I’ve got other business ideas I want to explore.”
“Such as?” asked Widi.
“You know how Lyucu thanes like to collect antiques and calligraphy scrolls to be more cultured? Well, when I was in Pan, I noticed that the lords and ladies like to wear acid-etched bones and shells to be more cosmopolitan. I bet I can figure out a way to sell Lyucu handicraft in the core islands for their weight in gold. I’ve also seen these very intricate toys that the Lyucu make for their children out of articulated pieces of bone…. Anyway, can’t let all my secrets out. I’ve been learning Lyucu in preparation for all these schemes, though it’s hard to learn without a partner.”
“I’ll practice with you,” said the cashima.
“You’re learning Lyucu too?” Though Égi hadn’t exactly clicked with the cashima so far, this offer piqued his interest. “But I thought you were just going to teach the kids the Ano Classics?”
“How can I explain the full intricacy of the Ano Classics without some knowledge of the native tongue of my students?” said the cashima. “I’ve also found that trying to translate the Ano Classics into Lyucu gives one new insights. Besides, I’m interested in collecting more Lyucu folklore and myth. The mythology collection published by Empress Shizona and Consort Kinri is very popular.”
“My daughter read some of those stories to me!”
“Oh, which story is your favorite?”
“I’d have to say Merciful Toryoana of Healing Hands….”
Rati smiled to herself. Though she was still not very proficient with logograms, she was proud of the book-mirror, the joint invention of her and her student Kinri. The book-mirrors had flooded the market with cheap, high-quality books. Any scholar now could own a complete set of Ra Oji’s epigrams and Kon Fiji’s treatises without paying much more than half a year’s rent. It was a luxury generations in the past could only dream of.
“You never explained what sort of machines you two work with,” said the cashima, looking at Widi and Rati.
Fara had told Widi that Princess Dyana was plagued by a thorny problem in Ukyu-taasa: Land ownership in the two islands was a tangled mess. After the tumultuous changes wrought by the Lyucu conquest and the mass resettlement plans post-liberation, almost every plot of land, empty or occupied, was subject to overlapping and conflicting claims by displaced original inhabitants, resettled Lyucu and natives, distant heirs of the massacred, collaborators, squatters, speculators, and even the government itself. No matter how thorough the bureaucrats’ investigations or how impartial the magistrates’ adjudications, justice that satisfied everyone was impossible. There would be years of legal wrangling, and in such fights, those with interests more aligned with the state’s desire for stability usually won.
There were also other problems beyond the horizon. To secure a lasting peace, the empress had pardoned all the Lyucu, leaving many thanes and naros-votan, as well as their native collaborators, in positions of wealth and power. For the foreseeable future, it was unlikely that claims for reparations by the victims and survivors would receive much attention from either the Throne or the pékyu-governor. But that legacy of pain and suffering would last for generations; the demands for justice could not be silenced forever.
Widi was going to Ukyu-taasa to train paid litigators, especially those willing to take up the cases of the destitute, the powerless, the unheard. Stability was important, even more so in the aftermath of the horrors that the people of Ukyu-taasa had gone through. Without it, nothing else, no reforms, no improvements, no progress, could be advanced at all. Yet stability couldn’t be its own end. It needed the dynamism of purposeful agitation to seek a new equilibrium. Sometimes the best way to endow the organs of collective decision-making with more intelligence was to stir up trouble, to destabilize, to give those without weapons or voices a way to fight.
But Widi didn’t want to openly discuss his thoughts for tinkering with the machinery of government from the outside; he looked to Rati for help.
“Well, I’ve been working on making the lives of farmers easier,” Rati said, falling into a lecture. She always did have a professorial side. “As you know, a lot of the land in Dasu and Rui was ruined by erosion and overgrazing, and to make the land productive again requires building retaining walls, irrigation, regrading, fertilizing, seeding… a lot of labor. And there aren’t enough people in Ukyu-taasa to do the work. So I’ve been thinking of building machines that could be taught to do some of this work—”
“You know how to work with instructible machines?” asked the cashima, eyes wide. Instructible machinery was the most advanced form of engineering, and Imperial Consort Kinri Rito had been put in charge of advancing the art. Not just anyone got to work with such engines. “You must be famous!”
“Err…” Rati realized that she had said too much. “I… I’m really just a beginner. Oh, look down there! Is that one of those new ships driven by steam? How wondrous! I was fortunate enough to learn a bit about their engineering principles….”
While spinning dyran fins drove Soaring Kunikin northward toward a land of not only anguished memories and traumatized bodies, but also of long-flowing hope and infinite potentials, the audience listened, rapt, to Rati sketching for them visions of fantastical machines and clever inventions, as magical as anything in the tales of wandering bards.
PART FIVE FALLING LEAVES
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT THE GATHERING OF LIFE
TATEN-RYO-RUNA (“GATHERING OF LIFE,” ONCE KNOWN AS TATEN-RYO-ALVOVO, CITY OF GHOSTS): MANY, MANY WINTERS LATER.
Garinafin riders wearing skull helmets stained the hue of viridian barley arrived in every corner of Ukyu-Gondé.
Each messenger brought a tightly wound scroll of garinafin stomach lining. The scroll was inserted into the arucuro tocua chanter and pulled across to the empty axle. The shaman gently brought the wing-tip needle down so that it just touched the groove etched into the smoky surface. Then, as the shaman kept time with heartbeat and lungbreath, they began to crank the chanter.
The voice of Pékyu Rokiri, aged but strong, commanding but tinged with sorrow, emerged from the chanter’s polished trumpet, a blooming bone-flower.
Pékyu-votan Théra Garu Aragoz, the Breath of the Scrublands, Interpreter of the Dead, Re-Rememberer of the Future, was gravely ill.
* * *
They came.
They came from the north, where hunters pursued toddling auks across ice floes and warriors proved their mettle by facing off against star-snout bears. Southbound dogsleds sped over Nalyufin’s Pasture, laden with fermented ice-shark flesh, marinated star-snout bear liver, auk eggs with double yolks… the best and most potent medicines of the people of the ice tribes.
They came from the long western shore, where fisherfolk speared silver gulpers from coracles and coastal villages hauled icebergs from the sea with towering arucuro tocua cranes every spring to irrigate their viridian barley fields and marrow tuber patches. Eastbound cattle teams brought dried seaweed cakes, etched turtle shells, arucuro sana made from bone as well as corals and pearls… the best and most pious offerings to the gods.
They came from the east, where Lyucu and Agon settlements dotted the misty valleys in the foothills of the World’s Edge Mountains. There, tribes that had decided to take up farming cultivated a mixture of crops that had been domesticated in the time of Afir and Kikisavo as well as new seeds from Dara. The settlements sent westbound delegations laden with sweet tubers, barley-sorghum bread, varieties of tolyusa bred to bring about dreams dedicated to particular gods… the best and most precious fruits of the reinvigorated land.
They came from the south, where the oases in Lurodia Tanta were no longer the province of exiled, defeated tribes, but communities of pioneers who had decided to explore a new way of life suited to the desert. They farmed drought-resistant varieties of dates and sorghum, and tended to gash cactus fields. The brave went on long journeys to the south by garinafin in search of new oases. Slowly but steadily, the descendants of Afir and Kikisavo had begun to explore lands unknown to their ancestors. Now, to the north, garinafins carried sun-bleached skulls of animals unknown in the scrublands, cactus spices, sky iron chunks… the best and most prized discoveries of a new frontier.
They also came from all over the scrublands, where Lyucu and Agon tribes continued to live in the ancient ways, herding and migrating, advancing and retreating with the seasonal tides of the grass sea. Sometimes, the tribes raided one another, especially when times were lean—but far more often they traded with those who had settled down to farm. A pastoral family might one day decide to join one of the settlements, and a farming family might one day decide to uproot themselves and follow the herds again. Ukyu-Gondé was big enough to support a multitude of ways of life, each adapted to its locale. Even without the stained bounties of conquest, babies didn’t have to be left behind because the grass sea retreated too fast one summer, nor grandparents be asked to walk into the eternal storm in a particularly harsh winter. To the Barrows, the pastoral tribes sent skins of kyoffir, polished bones suited for arucuro tocua, pure white fat cattle, sheep with horns rolled in perfect triple-spiral knobs… the best and most proper gifts of the scrublands.
Even the wandering tanto-lyu-naro came, bearing no gifts save dance-stories and songs of gods and heroes.
* * *
Though Pékyu Rokiri exacted no tribute, demanded no allegiance, led no conquests, the people came to Taten-ryo-runa, the Gathering of Life, where they deposited their presents in heaps as grand as the monumental constructions at the end of the Fifth Age.
Here, fresh water again flowed through the ancient irrigation channels, centuries-fallow fields and orchards again were tilled and tended, and tunnels and caves in long-abandoned barrows were once again filled with song and laughter. Gigantic arucuro tocua structures bowed and straightened, swiveled and dipped, maintaining the old barrows and constructing new ones. At night, shamans congregated on platforms atop the mounds to gaze at the stars and to record their positions in voice paintings.
Here, re-rememberers debated and teased out the meanings of old stories and chanted new ones. Scrolls of garinafin stomach lining were cut apart and pieced back together into a living transcript of the arguments, the elaborations, the compromises. On the Winter Festival and other sacred occasions, the scrolls would be played for days so that everyone would remember that the past, present, and future form not one long monologue of ambition and power, but a living debate of many voices, of cacophonous thinking-breath, to be carried on across the generations.
The epic of Afir and Kikisavo was not over. So long as there were human beings, there would be struggles against the gods and pacts with nature. The Lyucu-Agon would change and resist change, as stubborn as their own hearts and as adaptable as their children.
The people of the scrublands gathered at Taten-ryo-runa prayed for the health of Pékyu-votan Théra, the woman who had united the tribes of the scrublands not into one empire, but one story.
* * *
Théra, lying on her side, could hear the prayers of her people in the distance.
It was late autumn; scapula-tree leaves fell from branches framed in the opening of the tent. They made a thick carpet on the ground: vermillion, crimson, ruby, bright red. The fallen leaves would rot into the earth, and then they’d nourish the roots of the trees so that next spring, the new buds would be even greener.
Rokiri, along with the pékyus-taasa, his own children and the children of his brother, were out there thanking the delegates. She would like to join them, but her body, after decades of gradual decline, no longer obeyed her will.
Her glance fell to the pile of bones and clay blocks in the corner of the tent. Her great-grandchildren sometimes played with them. Théra loved to see the youngsters experimenting with arucuro sana as well as the old Ano logogram blocks. They would never know these clay blocks the way she did: poetry tied to the nostalgia of childhood, repositories of the wisdom of a whole people, machines for engineering a whole way of thinking. To them, the clay blocks were no more than curious artifacts, half-understood traces of an exotic and foreign land.
It’s all right, she thought. Such is the fate of all mortals: The life of the parent, no matter how glorious and vivid in their prime, is destined to fade, to fall, to disappear into the soil of memory of the child.
I should try to record some stories of Dara for them.
She’d have to do it in the language of the scrublands, the only language the children knew, and with which she was now more comfortable than with Dara. It would be difficult; there were still so many things where the perfect word only existed in Dara: the way a student bowed to a teacher, the way a daughter looked up to her father, the stance of a general as she was about to unleash hell. She would have to use awkward paraphrases, inadequate translations, shades of color achingly off from the vivid hues of her memories from that other land.
Even if the children don’t care about them now, they might like to have the stories someday, to re-remember the war between the House of Chrysanthemum and the House of Dandelion, to learn about wily Kuni Garu and indomitable Mata Zyndu, to know something about the courage of Gin Mazoti, the steadfastness of Cogo Yelu, the brilliance of Luan Zyaji, the silly escapades of their great-grandmother as a little girl, her schemes and adventures with Timu, Phyro, and Fara….
Sataari—no, she’s gone; I’m thinking of her and Razutana’s daughter, Leksa. Leksa is going to come soon to take my spirit portrait. Her heart convulsed as she thought of the web of names and loves and regrets and hopes that made up her life. It has been a good one.
One name in particular surfaced in her mind like a breaching cruben, a soaring dyran, a diving garinafin; a name that still brought as much longing and soul-ache as that of her cloud-garinafin-riding husband. One was her breath, the other her heartbeat.
She focused her eyes on the bare branches in the opening of the tent, all their leaves gone.
A withered branch still remembers the caress of the wind; the salty main still recounts the dance of departed fins.
Her vision blurred, and the murmured prayers of the people grew until they sounded like the howling of the wind across the emptiness of Ukyu-Gondé, a vast land covered by a vaster sky.
The spiraling, falling leaves turned into storms careening across a grander-than-life stage, dancing-telling stories of gods and heroes.
The air was heavy like water; lightning bolts crisscrossed the heavens; she was adrift in a sea of the numinous.
She allowed her mind to open, to receive, to fall into the fear and trust of the gods.
No, I don’t know if the peace will last beyond my death. I don’t know if another Tenryo Roatan will emerge in the future, reviving the cult for conquest and death. A people bound by a story of change is both stronger and weaker than an empire held together with blood and bone.
