The Veiled Throne, page 64
Every year, as spring arrived in the far north, Nalyufin’s Pasture experienced something of a rebirth. As the ice sheet that covered the northern ocean during the winter cracked and retreated, stranding islands that had been of one piece with the ice during the winter, the few tribes that lived so far north (the “ice fleas”)—including more than a few displaced Agon—ventured into the ocean to hunt seacows and seadogs, beasts yielding especially nourishing meat and thick, waterproof hides.
Even farther north, where the ice remained in place year-round, icebergs calved. These floating chunks of ice were so big that some of them rivaled the islands in Nalyufin’s Pasture. Most of the icebergs drifted west, never to be seen again, but occasionally, perhaps once a decade, a lucky confluence of sea currents would seize one of them and carry it south, along the coast, until it drifted into Péa’s Sea.
Traditionally, such icebergs were seen as curiosities, evidence of the capriciousness of the gods, but nothing more. But for Cudyu, the iceberg presented a perfect opportunity.
On the dry scrublands, access to fresh water was something that weighed constantly on the minds of everyone. Pékyu Toluroru, Cudyu’s grandfather, had picked the shore of Aluro’s Basin to be the site of his Taten for precisely this reason—the lake was the largest stable source of fresh water in all Ukyu-Gondé. Even so, every season, Toluroru had moved Taten to another part of the lake to avoid wearing out the grazing or fouling the water.
After Tenryo defeated the visitors from Dara, he moved Taten to the coast of Péa’s Sea, where the city-ships were anchored, because these island-vessels now served as the most prominent symbols of his power. Taten stopped roaming.
However, there was a big problem with the new site: It lacked fresh water. Some shamans argued against the choice, claiming it wanted the favor of the gods; Tenryo, true to form, didn’t think much of these objections. Patricide was something the gods despised, yet hadn’t he achieved all his victories because he killed his father? The gods could only speak to the people through the shamans, and during his rise, he had found that the more power he possessed, the more the tales of the shamans changed to his liking.
Tenryo devised a system to have teams of Agon and Dara slaves haul water back to Taten from rivers and streams. And later, after most of the Dara slaves had died from overwork or the compelled combat sessions, their togaten children took up the task. Even so, it was impossible to keep large herds of long-haired cattle or sheep around, and Taten was forced to depend on a constant stream of tribute from all around Ukyu-Gondé.
The system, though functional, was always unstable. Though many of the shamans had muted their objections, there was an unceasing undercurrent of suspicion that the site of Taten wasn’t “natural,” that in overcoming their enemies, the corrupt Dara who didn’t follow the will of the land or roam with the herds but tried to settle in one place, the Lyucu had become more like them.
The rare iceberg gave Cudyu an idea for moving out of the shadow of his father’s legacy.
While groups of Lyucu warriors congregated on the shore to marvel at the floating island of ice and a few adventurous souls ventured forth on coracles to climb and play upon the slippery peaks, Cudyu gathered some of the shamans and garinafin-thanes he trusted the most in his personal tent. No one was allowed in for the rest of the day, and when the weary attendees finally emerged, they refused to tell anyone what had been discussed.
That night, a flotilla of coracles, apparently heavily laden, rowed to the iceberg. The warriors aboard belonged to the tribe of Tovo Tasaricu, Cudyu’s most trusted thane. When they returned a few hours later, the coracles floated much higher in the water. The few naros and culeks who woke up in the middle of the night and saw the returning coracles dismissed them as night pleasure cruises by youths with too much energy and time on their hands.
In a few days, rumors began to spread that Cudyu Roatan had been plagued by a persistent dream since the spring.
In this dream, the pékyu-taasa saw his father, Tenryo Roatan, riding on the back of a pure black garinafin, heading into a raging storm over the seas. Three goddesses acted as his slingshot scout, lookout, and spearwoman, forming a triangle of gold, white, and blue: Cudyufin, the Well of Sunlight; Nalyufin, the Pillar of Ice; and Aluro, the Lady of a Thousand Streams. Just before the garinafin carrying the crew of four disappeared into the roiling clouds, Tenryo turned around and cried out to his son: “A gift!”
Cudyu, unable to make sense of this dream, had grown increasingly worried about the fate of his beloved father, the pékyu. He had become so anxious that he had trouble eating or sleeping.
As the rumors spread and mutated, drawing sympathy for the pékyu-taasa’s predicament, three powerful shamans, representing the voices of the three goddesses in Cudyu’s dream—Cudyufin, Nalyufin, and Aluro—came forward to explain that the pékyu had failed to understand the message from the gods.
The pékyu was dead, the shamans explained. The washed-up wreckage was proof, but Cudyu’s refusal to accept the truth, though understandable from a loving son, was not helping the Lyucu people.
“It’s time for you to assume your station as the pékyu of the Lyucu, Cudyu,” urged the shamans, “and to honor the gods properly. They’ve delivered you a gift to reveal the fitting course of action, though you’ve been too consumed by filial care and anxiety to see it. That’s why the spirit of your father had to come to announce it.”
The iceberg came from Nalyufin’s Pasture in the far north, and was converted by the Eye of Cudyufin’s golden rays into the fresh, life-giving water of Aluro. The message from the three goddesses couldn’t be any clearer.
“How dare you curse my father’s fate in this manner?” shouted an angry Cudyu. “Do you imagine that I fear you, just because you claim to speak for the gods?”
He ordered the three shamans trussed up and carried by coracle to the floating iceberg. There, they were abandoned on the ice.
“If you truly speak the will of the gods, let them keep you alive,” announced Cudyu. “But if you lie, may you die in the most shameful way possible, despised by tribe, unacknowledged by kin, in full view of the Eye of Cudyufin. The ice will keep her glare on you even when you try to turn your faces away.”
The thanes and warriors watched as the three shamans were dragged away onto the mountain of ice. They whispered to one another how devoted the young pékyu-taasa was to his father, in clear contrast to the way Tenryo had treated his own father. This was a worthy pékyu-taasa to carry on the legacy of not just his father, but also his father’s father.
The three shamans stayed on that iceberg for a full thirty days. When Cudyu once again dispatched coracles to visit the iceberg, everyone was astounded to find the three shamans alive. In fact, they looked as hale and hearty as the day they had been left on the ice a month ago.
(By now, no one could even recall Thane Tovo Tasaricu’s heavily laden coracles, which had visited the iceberg to deposit hidden caches of food and warm clothing during the night before the start of this performance.)
“Forgive me, gods!” Cudyu fell onto the ice, prostrating himself. “I will listen to your message with humility and patience.”
“The pékyu is dead!” shouted Tovo Tasaricu. “Long live Pékyu Cudyu Roatan!”
The shamans joined Tovo, and soon, the other thanes and shamans did as well. Taten reverberated with the frenzied shouting of thousands of warriors proclaiming their love and fervor for the new pékyu.
And so, tearfully and reluctantly, Cudyu accepted the fact that his father really was dead and that the iceberg had been a gift from the goddesses. Despite the absence of a spirit portrait of Tenryo, no one challenged Cudyu’s claim to be the new pékyu.
Cudyu heaved a sigh of relief. But his journey to surpass his father had only begun.
* * *
“You’ve done well,” said Cudyu, breakfasting as he waved the pervasive smoke out of his eyes. He was chewing with relish, not at all bothered by the stench of charred human flesh all around him.
While Lyucu warriors walked about the battlefield, distributing a paste made from the segmented roots of cogon grass to help wounded comrades stanch their bleeding or tolyusa to dull the pain, shamans tended to the dead, praying to speed the journey of their souls to the cloud-garinafins.
Cudyu surveyed the carnage that was his handiwork with delight, tinged by a hint of boredom. He offered a piece of pemmican to the man genuflecting before him. “Hungry?”
“Thank you, Most Plenipotent Pékyu,” said the man. “It’s an honor to share a meal with you after the destruction of the faithless rebels.” He looked up and held out his hands to accept the pemmican.
It was Volyu Aragoz.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO THE PLAY
GINPEN: THE FOURTH MONTH IN THE NINTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM (TWENTY-FIVE MONTHS UNTIL THE REOPENING OF THE WALL OF STORMS).
The kitchen of the Splendid Urn, by consensus the best restaurant in all of Ginpen, was a long, one-story stone building separated from the restaurant itself to limit the risk of fire. The kitchen had its own yard that took up as much space as four ordinary residential plots, filled with smokehouses, bread kilns, open roasting pits, and other outdoor cooking stations. Serving guests who filled sixty-four tables spread across three stories took a lot of work.
Mati, the sous-chef, poked her head out of the back door of the kitchen and hollered, “Kinri! Come here!”
The young man she addressed was stacking firewood by the wall. He put down the bundle of logs in hand, wiped his sweaty face and neck with a towel draped over one shoulder, and rushed over.
“Look at this!” Mati held up a bunch of pipe scallions from a basket. Instead of standing up straight and proud like a pot of writing brushes, they dangled from her hand, limp and flat like seaweed. “I should have caught this earlier. We can’t serve this to our guests tonight. Can you be a dear and run to the market for a fresh supply? Here’s four coppers.”
The Grand Mistress, owner of the Splendid Urn, was visiting this particular branch of her restaurant chain this month. Everyone was working extra hard to impress the boss.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” said Kinri. He turned to leave.
“Wait!” called Mati. “Striped monkeyberries are in season. Go get some.” She handed him another two coppers.
“But that’s not on the menu,” said Kinri, puzzled.
“It’s not for the guests,” said Mati, smiling. “Didn’t you say a month ago you’ve never had cold monkeyberry soup? I’ll make you a pot.”
As Kinri left the kitchen yard, his eyes were moist.
* * *
After being shipwrecked, Savo Ryoto had drifted with the waves for days, clinging on to a spar and subsisting on the occasional fish that he managed to catch. He didn’t understand why he didn’t die, as the icy sea should have numbed his limbs within minutes and brought him to the deadly embrace of Nalyufin, the hate-hearted (or perhaps the palace of Tazu, as the natives would have it). But somehow, a strange warmth suffused his limbs, keeping him afloat.
Nonetheless, by the time fishermen lifted him out of the Zathin Gulf, he was half-dead and delirious.
Given the decorative knots in the young castaway’s clothing, the rescuers wondered if he might be from the old territories of Xana, up north. It was rare for lone refugees to make the hazardous journey, but not unheard of. By Imperial decree, refugees would have to be brought to the nearest intake center, where they could be interrogated to be sure that they weren’t Lyucu spies.
But just as the rescuers were about to bring the young man to the refugee camp near Ginpen, a doctor passed by on the beach. He was a lanky young man in a green cape, and his kind face instantly made you want to trust him.
The doctor gently pulled away the thick blanket wrapped around the half-frozen castaway, lying prone on the sand. He gazed into Savo’s eyes and whispered, “You’ve had a long journey.”
Savo nodded, unsure what to say. His teeth chattered, but it wasn’t just from the cold. The idea of being brought to a refugee camp terrified him. He had an instinctual terror of Dara officials, having heard many stories of the cruel tortures these Dara-raaki enforcers in the core islands inflicted on captured Lyucu. But he didn’t know how to escape such a horrific fate.
The doctor put his ear on Savo’s chest to listen to his breathing and heartbeat. Then he leaned over his face, shielding the young man from the view of onlookers. His hand reached inside Savo’s robe, pressing against his racing heart.
“Before the sea, all men are brothers,” the doctor whispered.
Then he pulled his hand out of Savo’s robe and held up a folded square of silk. He opened it to reveal the tiny wax logograms written in precise clerical script.
“Ah, his name is Kinri Rito,” announced the doctor. “This is an official passport issued by the authorities in Faça, giving him free passage all over Dara.”
The onlookers sighed in sympathy. Such bad luck for a young man to have survived the arduous journey from Lyucu-occupied Dara, to have secured permission to make a life in Dara, only to be tossed into the sea again.
“Do you have anywhere you want to go?” asked the doctor.
Savo shook his head, amazed. How could the doctor have found such a document on him? And how did he know his Dara name, given to him by Master Nazu Tei and only used by her?
“Welcome to Ginpen, Kinri,” said the doctor, smiling at him. “You have an auspicious name. May you find your own path.”
The doctor pulled the thick blanket back around him. He pronounced the castaway physically fit—and Savo did feel a familiar warm strength, like the warmth he had felt when he was clinging to the spar, flow back into his limbs—though the effects of dehydration, starvation, and exposure would take time to heal.
“I’m certain the good deed you’ve done will be remembered by Lord Rufizo, healer of the sick and way-finder for the lost,” the doctor said to the fishermen. He got up and strode down the beach without looking back, leaving Savo in the care of his rescuers.
The fishing boat that pulled Savo out of the sea turned out to belong to the Wasu clan, owner of the Splendid Urn. Grand Mistress Wasu—though many people still called her Widow Wasu out of her hearing—was a shrewd businesswoman who had managed, over the last thirty-some years, to grow a single tavern in the provincial Cocru city of Zudi into a vast business empire of restaurants, gambling parlors, and inns spread all over the Islands. Adding to the mystique, she was said to have been a friend and supporter of Emperor Ragin in his youth, back before anyone had foreseen his rise. The widow never confirmed the rumors, but only smiled and asked the curious questioners to enjoy themselves and order more wine.
At the time of Savo’s rescue in the heart of winter, the Splendid Urn was doing a booming business. The Grand Examination was going to be held in Pan during the second and third months of the new year, and students from across Dara were gathering in Ginpen for a chance to attend cram sessions with famous pana méji at the various academies to gain any edge they could. This, in turn, meant lots of banquets and poetry-and-tea parties.
The manager of the restaurant, Teson Wasu, one of Widow Wasu’s sons, took pity on the shipwrecked young man brought in by the fishing crew and allowed him to stay at the Urn, as he had nowhere to go. Once he felt better, Kinri explained that he was an orphan from Dasu who had made his way to the Big Island as a refugee. Since he had an official passport, Teson employed “Kinri” as a busboy, kitchen helper, and general errand runner in exchange for room and board plus a small salary.
* * *
The young man told no one the truth of his origins. Only late at night, when he was sure no one was listening, did he caress the turtle shell that he wore next to his skin and cry as he thought of his mother and wondered how she was doing. Since his fathers had all died early in battle, and they rarely paid any attention to him even when they were alive—he suspected it was in part because Goztan had never confirmed which of them had seeded her son—his mother was his only true parent, the person he felt closer to than anyone else.
The turtle shell had a map of Dara etched into the carapace, with a prominent dot on the shore of Dasu (perhaps marking the site where the turtle that once lived in this shell had been caught). The etching was done in the traditional Lyucu manner—with a native scorpion’s caustic secretions in place of the juice of the gash cactus, which didn’t exist in Dara. He knew that the map was a message from his mother, reminding him that Ukyu-taasa was his home, no matter how far he journeyed in Dara.
On the plastron was a portrait of five figures: a man, a woman, two younger men, and a baby in swaddling clothes decorated with the image of a tiny cat. All were dressed in native garb instead of Lyucu skins—a defiant hint of his mother’s accommodationist views. He supposed that the older man represented his father, whose identity among his mother’s five husbands remained a mystery. The two younger men were his mother’s naros, here to guard the family. The baby, of course, was him. And the woman, standing strong and confident, was his mother, Goztan Ryoto. In her hand she held a war club-flail, and a fish dangled from the nonlethal end. Goztan had always enjoyed taking him hunting and fishing, and she was good at stunning the fish in the shallows with a blow from her war club before plucking them from the water with her bare hands.
He caressed the face of the woman. As tears silently welled in his eyes, his heart was full of questions with no answers.
What did she mean that I could serve Ukyu-taasa outside of it?
* * *
Kinri—for that was the name everyone here knew him by—hurried through the streets of Ginpen. Despite having lived in this city for almost four months, everything still felt so new and wondrous. He people-watched as he ran along. Though the natives of Haan were the most numerous, people from all across Dara congregated in this capital of learning and craft. He wasn’t sure the great metropolis, many times the size and population of Kriphi, would ever exhaust his curiosity.
Even farther north, where the ice remained in place year-round, icebergs calved. These floating chunks of ice were so big that some of them rivaled the islands in Nalyufin’s Pasture. Most of the icebergs drifted west, never to be seen again, but occasionally, perhaps once a decade, a lucky confluence of sea currents would seize one of them and carry it south, along the coast, until it drifted into Péa’s Sea.
Traditionally, such icebergs were seen as curiosities, evidence of the capriciousness of the gods, but nothing more. But for Cudyu, the iceberg presented a perfect opportunity.
On the dry scrublands, access to fresh water was something that weighed constantly on the minds of everyone. Pékyu Toluroru, Cudyu’s grandfather, had picked the shore of Aluro’s Basin to be the site of his Taten for precisely this reason—the lake was the largest stable source of fresh water in all Ukyu-Gondé. Even so, every season, Toluroru had moved Taten to another part of the lake to avoid wearing out the grazing or fouling the water.
After Tenryo defeated the visitors from Dara, he moved Taten to the coast of Péa’s Sea, where the city-ships were anchored, because these island-vessels now served as the most prominent symbols of his power. Taten stopped roaming.
However, there was a big problem with the new site: It lacked fresh water. Some shamans argued against the choice, claiming it wanted the favor of the gods; Tenryo, true to form, didn’t think much of these objections. Patricide was something the gods despised, yet hadn’t he achieved all his victories because he killed his father? The gods could only speak to the people through the shamans, and during his rise, he had found that the more power he possessed, the more the tales of the shamans changed to his liking.
Tenryo devised a system to have teams of Agon and Dara slaves haul water back to Taten from rivers and streams. And later, after most of the Dara slaves had died from overwork or the compelled combat sessions, their togaten children took up the task. Even so, it was impossible to keep large herds of long-haired cattle or sheep around, and Taten was forced to depend on a constant stream of tribute from all around Ukyu-Gondé.
The system, though functional, was always unstable. Though many of the shamans had muted their objections, there was an unceasing undercurrent of suspicion that the site of Taten wasn’t “natural,” that in overcoming their enemies, the corrupt Dara who didn’t follow the will of the land or roam with the herds but tried to settle in one place, the Lyucu had become more like them.
The rare iceberg gave Cudyu an idea for moving out of the shadow of his father’s legacy.
While groups of Lyucu warriors congregated on the shore to marvel at the floating island of ice and a few adventurous souls ventured forth on coracles to climb and play upon the slippery peaks, Cudyu gathered some of the shamans and garinafin-thanes he trusted the most in his personal tent. No one was allowed in for the rest of the day, and when the weary attendees finally emerged, they refused to tell anyone what had been discussed.
That night, a flotilla of coracles, apparently heavily laden, rowed to the iceberg. The warriors aboard belonged to the tribe of Tovo Tasaricu, Cudyu’s most trusted thane. When they returned a few hours later, the coracles floated much higher in the water. The few naros and culeks who woke up in the middle of the night and saw the returning coracles dismissed them as night pleasure cruises by youths with too much energy and time on their hands.
In a few days, rumors began to spread that Cudyu Roatan had been plagued by a persistent dream since the spring.
In this dream, the pékyu-taasa saw his father, Tenryo Roatan, riding on the back of a pure black garinafin, heading into a raging storm over the seas. Three goddesses acted as his slingshot scout, lookout, and spearwoman, forming a triangle of gold, white, and blue: Cudyufin, the Well of Sunlight; Nalyufin, the Pillar of Ice; and Aluro, the Lady of a Thousand Streams. Just before the garinafin carrying the crew of four disappeared into the roiling clouds, Tenryo turned around and cried out to his son: “A gift!”
Cudyu, unable to make sense of this dream, had grown increasingly worried about the fate of his beloved father, the pékyu. He had become so anxious that he had trouble eating or sleeping.
As the rumors spread and mutated, drawing sympathy for the pékyu-taasa’s predicament, three powerful shamans, representing the voices of the three goddesses in Cudyu’s dream—Cudyufin, Nalyufin, and Aluro—came forward to explain that the pékyu had failed to understand the message from the gods.
The pékyu was dead, the shamans explained. The washed-up wreckage was proof, but Cudyu’s refusal to accept the truth, though understandable from a loving son, was not helping the Lyucu people.
“It’s time for you to assume your station as the pékyu of the Lyucu, Cudyu,” urged the shamans, “and to honor the gods properly. They’ve delivered you a gift to reveal the fitting course of action, though you’ve been too consumed by filial care and anxiety to see it. That’s why the spirit of your father had to come to announce it.”
The iceberg came from Nalyufin’s Pasture in the far north, and was converted by the Eye of Cudyufin’s golden rays into the fresh, life-giving water of Aluro. The message from the three goddesses couldn’t be any clearer.
“How dare you curse my father’s fate in this manner?” shouted an angry Cudyu. “Do you imagine that I fear you, just because you claim to speak for the gods?”
He ordered the three shamans trussed up and carried by coracle to the floating iceberg. There, they were abandoned on the ice.
“If you truly speak the will of the gods, let them keep you alive,” announced Cudyu. “But if you lie, may you die in the most shameful way possible, despised by tribe, unacknowledged by kin, in full view of the Eye of Cudyufin. The ice will keep her glare on you even when you try to turn your faces away.”
The thanes and warriors watched as the three shamans were dragged away onto the mountain of ice. They whispered to one another how devoted the young pékyu-taasa was to his father, in clear contrast to the way Tenryo had treated his own father. This was a worthy pékyu-taasa to carry on the legacy of not just his father, but also his father’s father.
The three shamans stayed on that iceberg for a full thirty days. When Cudyu once again dispatched coracles to visit the iceberg, everyone was astounded to find the three shamans alive. In fact, they looked as hale and hearty as the day they had been left on the ice a month ago.
(By now, no one could even recall Thane Tovo Tasaricu’s heavily laden coracles, which had visited the iceberg to deposit hidden caches of food and warm clothing during the night before the start of this performance.)
“Forgive me, gods!” Cudyu fell onto the ice, prostrating himself. “I will listen to your message with humility and patience.”
“The pékyu is dead!” shouted Tovo Tasaricu. “Long live Pékyu Cudyu Roatan!”
The shamans joined Tovo, and soon, the other thanes and shamans did as well. Taten reverberated with the frenzied shouting of thousands of warriors proclaiming their love and fervor for the new pékyu.
And so, tearfully and reluctantly, Cudyu accepted the fact that his father really was dead and that the iceberg had been a gift from the goddesses. Despite the absence of a spirit portrait of Tenryo, no one challenged Cudyu’s claim to be the new pékyu.
Cudyu heaved a sigh of relief. But his journey to surpass his father had only begun.
* * *
“You’ve done well,” said Cudyu, breakfasting as he waved the pervasive smoke out of his eyes. He was chewing with relish, not at all bothered by the stench of charred human flesh all around him.
While Lyucu warriors walked about the battlefield, distributing a paste made from the segmented roots of cogon grass to help wounded comrades stanch their bleeding or tolyusa to dull the pain, shamans tended to the dead, praying to speed the journey of their souls to the cloud-garinafins.
Cudyu surveyed the carnage that was his handiwork with delight, tinged by a hint of boredom. He offered a piece of pemmican to the man genuflecting before him. “Hungry?”
“Thank you, Most Plenipotent Pékyu,” said the man. “It’s an honor to share a meal with you after the destruction of the faithless rebels.” He looked up and held out his hands to accept the pemmican.
It was Volyu Aragoz.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO THE PLAY
GINPEN: THE FOURTH MONTH IN THE NINTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM (TWENTY-FIVE MONTHS UNTIL THE REOPENING OF THE WALL OF STORMS).
The kitchen of the Splendid Urn, by consensus the best restaurant in all of Ginpen, was a long, one-story stone building separated from the restaurant itself to limit the risk of fire. The kitchen had its own yard that took up as much space as four ordinary residential plots, filled with smokehouses, bread kilns, open roasting pits, and other outdoor cooking stations. Serving guests who filled sixty-four tables spread across three stories took a lot of work.
Mati, the sous-chef, poked her head out of the back door of the kitchen and hollered, “Kinri! Come here!”
The young man she addressed was stacking firewood by the wall. He put down the bundle of logs in hand, wiped his sweaty face and neck with a towel draped over one shoulder, and rushed over.
“Look at this!” Mati held up a bunch of pipe scallions from a basket. Instead of standing up straight and proud like a pot of writing brushes, they dangled from her hand, limp and flat like seaweed. “I should have caught this earlier. We can’t serve this to our guests tonight. Can you be a dear and run to the market for a fresh supply? Here’s four coppers.”
The Grand Mistress, owner of the Splendid Urn, was visiting this particular branch of her restaurant chain this month. Everyone was working extra hard to impress the boss.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” said Kinri. He turned to leave.
“Wait!” called Mati. “Striped monkeyberries are in season. Go get some.” She handed him another two coppers.
“But that’s not on the menu,” said Kinri, puzzled.
“It’s not for the guests,” said Mati, smiling. “Didn’t you say a month ago you’ve never had cold monkeyberry soup? I’ll make you a pot.”
As Kinri left the kitchen yard, his eyes were moist.
* * *
After being shipwrecked, Savo Ryoto had drifted with the waves for days, clinging on to a spar and subsisting on the occasional fish that he managed to catch. He didn’t understand why he didn’t die, as the icy sea should have numbed his limbs within minutes and brought him to the deadly embrace of Nalyufin, the hate-hearted (or perhaps the palace of Tazu, as the natives would have it). But somehow, a strange warmth suffused his limbs, keeping him afloat.
Nonetheless, by the time fishermen lifted him out of the Zathin Gulf, he was half-dead and delirious.
Given the decorative knots in the young castaway’s clothing, the rescuers wondered if he might be from the old territories of Xana, up north. It was rare for lone refugees to make the hazardous journey, but not unheard of. By Imperial decree, refugees would have to be brought to the nearest intake center, where they could be interrogated to be sure that they weren’t Lyucu spies.
But just as the rescuers were about to bring the young man to the refugee camp near Ginpen, a doctor passed by on the beach. He was a lanky young man in a green cape, and his kind face instantly made you want to trust him.
The doctor gently pulled away the thick blanket wrapped around the half-frozen castaway, lying prone on the sand. He gazed into Savo’s eyes and whispered, “You’ve had a long journey.”
Savo nodded, unsure what to say. His teeth chattered, but it wasn’t just from the cold. The idea of being brought to a refugee camp terrified him. He had an instinctual terror of Dara officials, having heard many stories of the cruel tortures these Dara-raaki enforcers in the core islands inflicted on captured Lyucu. But he didn’t know how to escape such a horrific fate.
The doctor put his ear on Savo’s chest to listen to his breathing and heartbeat. Then he leaned over his face, shielding the young man from the view of onlookers. His hand reached inside Savo’s robe, pressing against his racing heart.
“Before the sea, all men are brothers,” the doctor whispered.
Then he pulled his hand out of Savo’s robe and held up a folded square of silk. He opened it to reveal the tiny wax logograms written in precise clerical script.
“Ah, his name is Kinri Rito,” announced the doctor. “This is an official passport issued by the authorities in Faça, giving him free passage all over Dara.”
The onlookers sighed in sympathy. Such bad luck for a young man to have survived the arduous journey from Lyucu-occupied Dara, to have secured permission to make a life in Dara, only to be tossed into the sea again.
“Do you have anywhere you want to go?” asked the doctor.
Savo shook his head, amazed. How could the doctor have found such a document on him? And how did he know his Dara name, given to him by Master Nazu Tei and only used by her?
“Welcome to Ginpen, Kinri,” said the doctor, smiling at him. “You have an auspicious name. May you find your own path.”
The doctor pulled the thick blanket back around him. He pronounced the castaway physically fit—and Savo did feel a familiar warm strength, like the warmth he had felt when he was clinging to the spar, flow back into his limbs—though the effects of dehydration, starvation, and exposure would take time to heal.
“I’m certain the good deed you’ve done will be remembered by Lord Rufizo, healer of the sick and way-finder for the lost,” the doctor said to the fishermen. He got up and strode down the beach without looking back, leaving Savo in the care of his rescuers.
The fishing boat that pulled Savo out of the sea turned out to belong to the Wasu clan, owner of the Splendid Urn. Grand Mistress Wasu—though many people still called her Widow Wasu out of her hearing—was a shrewd businesswoman who had managed, over the last thirty-some years, to grow a single tavern in the provincial Cocru city of Zudi into a vast business empire of restaurants, gambling parlors, and inns spread all over the Islands. Adding to the mystique, she was said to have been a friend and supporter of Emperor Ragin in his youth, back before anyone had foreseen his rise. The widow never confirmed the rumors, but only smiled and asked the curious questioners to enjoy themselves and order more wine.
At the time of Savo’s rescue in the heart of winter, the Splendid Urn was doing a booming business. The Grand Examination was going to be held in Pan during the second and third months of the new year, and students from across Dara were gathering in Ginpen for a chance to attend cram sessions with famous pana méji at the various academies to gain any edge they could. This, in turn, meant lots of banquets and poetry-and-tea parties.
The manager of the restaurant, Teson Wasu, one of Widow Wasu’s sons, took pity on the shipwrecked young man brought in by the fishing crew and allowed him to stay at the Urn, as he had nowhere to go. Once he felt better, Kinri explained that he was an orphan from Dasu who had made his way to the Big Island as a refugee. Since he had an official passport, Teson employed “Kinri” as a busboy, kitchen helper, and general errand runner in exchange for room and board plus a small salary.
* * *
The young man told no one the truth of his origins. Only late at night, when he was sure no one was listening, did he caress the turtle shell that he wore next to his skin and cry as he thought of his mother and wondered how she was doing. Since his fathers had all died early in battle, and they rarely paid any attention to him even when they were alive—he suspected it was in part because Goztan had never confirmed which of them had seeded her son—his mother was his only true parent, the person he felt closer to than anyone else.
The turtle shell had a map of Dara etched into the carapace, with a prominent dot on the shore of Dasu (perhaps marking the site where the turtle that once lived in this shell had been caught). The etching was done in the traditional Lyucu manner—with a native scorpion’s caustic secretions in place of the juice of the gash cactus, which didn’t exist in Dara. He knew that the map was a message from his mother, reminding him that Ukyu-taasa was his home, no matter how far he journeyed in Dara.
On the plastron was a portrait of five figures: a man, a woman, two younger men, and a baby in swaddling clothes decorated with the image of a tiny cat. All were dressed in native garb instead of Lyucu skins—a defiant hint of his mother’s accommodationist views. He supposed that the older man represented his father, whose identity among his mother’s five husbands remained a mystery. The two younger men were his mother’s naros, here to guard the family. The baby, of course, was him. And the woman, standing strong and confident, was his mother, Goztan Ryoto. In her hand she held a war club-flail, and a fish dangled from the nonlethal end. Goztan had always enjoyed taking him hunting and fishing, and she was good at stunning the fish in the shallows with a blow from her war club before plucking them from the water with her bare hands.
He caressed the face of the woman. As tears silently welled in his eyes, his heart was full of questions with no answers.
What did she mean that I could serve Ukyu-taasa outside of it?
* * *
Kinri—for that was the name everyone here knew him by—hurried through the streets of Ginpen. Despite having lived in this city for almost four months, everything still felt so new and wondrous. He people-watched as he ran along. Though the natives of Haan were the most numerous, people from all across Dara congregated in this capital of learning and craft. He wasn’t sure the great metropolis, many times the size and population of Kriphi, would ever exhaust his curiosity.
