The Veiled Throne, page 85
“War is love corrupted?”
Dandelion nodded. “That’s how I see it. War comes from hatred, but hatred is always based on a selfish love, a love that seeks to confine rather than to expand—love of home can turn into hatred of strangers; love of country can turn into arrogance toward other states; love of fellow travelers can turn into a desire to suppress anyone with a different opinion.”
“Why did Suda Mu put his skill in the service of tyrants in Xana?”
“Also out of love. Suda was a great artist who needed resources to complete his vision. He allowed his love of beauty, of his art, to be corrupted by that need. Perhaps he thought he could wield the power of the Xana kings to serve his own purposes, but in the end, his art was co-opted by his patrons. He regretted it, which was why he retired to the mountains and kept his recipes from the world. That extravagance, that naked need to display to an abstract multitude, was what appealed to grand lords like King Dézan and Emperor Mapidéré, and continues to appeal to men like Tiphan Huto. When you eat these dishes, you sense power, ambition, opulence, strength. But there is no love. No intimacy of the chef’s heart.”
“And that is what we have,” said Mati. “I cooked everything with love.”
Lodan reached out and held her hand, and the two looked warmly into each other’s eyes. To the side, Arona smiled at Mota, who smiled back.
“That’s right,” said Dandelion solemnly. “After I understood the story told by Mozo Mu’s dishes, I went to observe Chef Mati and the staff at the Splendid Urn. From these observations, I discovered the perfect counter-story. The abstract should be countered by the concrete, the multitudes with the one, and war with love. Chef Mati’s dishes were plain and homely, but suffused with the love of a woman cooking for her children, a man cooking for his dying parents, a couple sharing their first meal together in their new home, a child waking up to make breakfast for the whole family before a day of labor in the fields.”
“A return to the basics,” whispered Mati.
Dandelion nodded. “You and your staff told the story of love each time you gave a scholar away from home a taste of her mother’s kitchen, each time you ladled an extra dumpling into the bowl of a hungry laborer, each time you put a smile on a child’s face with crushed ice flavored in fruit juices, each time you made something special for a refugee from distant shores. The story told by the Splendid Urn today is the story of Mati and Lodan and your staff, laid out on a plate. All the Blossoms and I had to do was to elevate the food with a performance that told the story, that allowed the judges to see the ordinary in a new light.”
“You did far more than that,” chided Widow Wasu, her tone affectionate.
“True. We also had to connect your story to the story of the audience, to make them see how your personal story is also the story of a people. We turned Mati’s food into a morality play about Haan’s past, when the Zyas led the people to resist Xana aggression; about Haan’s present, when scholars flock to Ginpen for knowledge and advancement; and about Haan’s future, where the endless search for knowledge and understanding of the world means that we can learn even from our enemies.
“But all of it was tethered to the basics, to the love that can be held in a single heart. A great lady once taught me that there’s nothing abstract about love: It requires the specific and the quotidian.
“The four great pleasures in life, she said, are sitting by a cozy fire in winter while snow falls outside the window; climbing onto a high place after a spring rain to admire a revitalized world; eating crabs with freshly brewed tea next to the fall tides; and dipping your feet into a cool lotus-covered lake in the middle of summer. Moreover, each is better with a friend, with love that makes hearts vibrate in sympathy. The rarest ingredient of all is love, and it elevates the feast of life, whether you must cook with duck eggs or deep-sea jade crab.
“Mati cooks not only to make a living, but because cooking is how she expresses her love. The Zyas fought not because they hated Xana, but because they loved the people of Haan, with all their ordinary flaws and quotidian virtues. The best scholars spend so much time studying the Classics that they forget to eat not because they wish to exercise power as high officials, but because they love the smell of writing knife carving into hot wax and the mind-pleasure of debating the wisdom of the sages with a friend. The tinkerers and wanderers who invent and create do so not to pursue profit, but because they love the freedom they experience when they make a thing: something imperfect, silly, perhaps even useless, but theirs and wholly new.”
Members of the Blossom Gang nodded at this, their eyes moist.
“But couldn’t it also be said that you simply flattered the people of Ginpen?” asked Widi.
“That’s the Skeptics’ view, yes,” acknowledged Dandelion. “But the Splendid Urn is part of the fabric of Ginpen, and your story is connected to the city’s story. The stories we love the most aren’t stories about who we are, but who we could become. That was why I ended our story with a hope for turning the weapons of war into sweetness and light.
“You can say they are stories about our self-love—and perhaps that is what the judges responded to—yet, what’s wrong with that? We’re never as good as we’d like to think we are, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to be closer to the realm of the gods. That is the point of stories, and the point of fine cuisine and all art.”
Widow Wasu sighed. “You’re every bit as good a talker as your father. In fact, I think your stories are more interesting.”
Dandelion laughed softly. “Thank you, Granny. I didn’t know him well, and it’s always wonderful to speak to someone who knew him… as an ordinary person. I’d love to hear more stories about him as a young man.”
“I promise to tell you every—”
A timid, childish voice interrupted from outside the covered wagon. “Grand Mistress Wasu, may I speak with you?”
“Maybe Séca and Lolo are ready to announce the winner!” said Arona.
Widow Wasu nodded at Lodan, who went to the flap of the covered wagon. “Ah!” She let out a cry of surprise.
A moment later, Mozo Mu entered. Still wearing her kitchen apron, she showed the strain of a struggle to maintain composure in her face. The child walked to the middle of the tent, faced Widow Wasu, and knelt down, placing her forehead against the floor.
“What is this?” asked a surprised Widow Wasu. “Please, sit up. Please!”
Mozo Mu refused to budge. “Grand Mistress,” she said, her voice trembling with barely suppressed sobs, “please save my family.”
* * *
With many pauses to collect herself and to wipe away tears, Mozo Mu finally managed to tell her story.
For years, the Mu clan lived in their hermitage in the Damu Mountains, secluded from the world. Suda Mu’s directions to his children had been clear: The art he had devised would be reserved for the pleasure of the gods, not mankind. Any of his descendants could choose to remain and study his secrets or leave the hermitage with nothing, not even the Mu name. Both choices would be permanent. Those who wanted to learn to cook his recipes swore never to leave the mountain compound.
From time to time, women and men escaping trouble at home and seeking a life away from the world came to the hermitage. The Mu family gave them shelter and food, but kept them away from the inner compound, where Suda Mu’s recipes were kept and studied, much like the holy scriptures of various temples. Some of these outsiders became servants of the family and ran errands for them; some even married into the family. But even so, they were kept away from Suda Mu’s recipes.
From a very young age, Mozo showed unusual talent. Barely a few months old, she pointed at and reached for the kitchen from her nanny’s arms. Before she had learned to talk, she was already wrapping perfect dumplings. Before she had learned to walk, she could already pull noodles from dough. At age five, she successfully made “Moon Over Lake Dako,” a technically challenging dish that even skilled chefs feared to attempt. In fact, since Mozo was too young to know how to read more than a few logograms, she had managed her feat entirely by looking at drawings in the recipe book and by observing her teenaged older brother try and fail multiple times.
By the time she was ten, she had mastered all eighty-one dishes in Suda Mu’s magnum opus, A Gourmet’s Atlas of Dara. This was a collection of the old master’s proudest inventions over his illustrious career, and some of the dishes were so difficult to make that no one in the family could even remember what they tasted like. The elders considered Mozo the answer to their prayers, a seventh-generation descendant of Suda who had the potential to take the Mu family legacy to new heights.
The wealthy and the powerful, hearing rumors of the young culinary prodigy, came with platters of rare pearls and chests filled with gold, trying to entice her to come and cook for them—even if it was just one meal. Always, these messengers were politely but firmly turned away.
“Let not desire for fame or riches corrupt your art” was Suda Mu’s final instruction to his family as he lay dying, and these words were carved into the wall of the ancestral hall.
But then, one night, while the whole family was asleep, the compound was surrounded by a group of men wielding torches and fearful weapons. They pounded on the gates and woke everyone up. When the gates were opened, they rushed in like a pack of wolves and bound everyone inside with thick ropes.
Seeing their tattered clothes—many wore fur—and mismatched weaponry—some were even fashioned out of animal bones—the Mu matriarch thought they were desperate bandits seeking treasure. She told them to take whatever of value they found in the compound.
But the bandits laughed in her face. They demanded to be taken to the secret recipe books of Suda Mu.
The matriarch, Mozo Mu’s great-grandmother, refused to yield. They killed her in front of the whole family.
Mozo Mu’s father then offered to lead the bandits to the books. But he managed to evade the bandits escorting him, entered the secret storage cellar, barred the doors, and then set fire to the old scrolls. By the time the bandits broke down the cellar doors, all the recipe books had been burned to ashes, and the man himself was severely burned.
“There’s nothing for you to take now,” said Mozo’s father.
“Don’t think you can get out of this that easily,” said the leader of the bandits, a burly man with a nasty smile. “The dead books may be gone, but there are still living ones.”
The young Mozo Mu was pulled in front of the man and told that she could either agree to cook for the bandits’ master or watch her family be executed in front of her, one each hour.
Mozo agreed.
The bandits, as it turned out, were working for Tiphan Huto. Some took the rest of the Mu family away as hostages, while the rest took Mozo to Ginpen, where she was told to prepare for a cooking competition. Victory was the only outcome allowed if she wanted to see her family alive.
* * *
“Please,” said a weeping Mozo Mu, “save my family.”
Everyone in the tent stared at the young girl, dumbfounded by this sudden turn of events.
Lodan stepped forward. “Grand Mistress, there’s no proof that what she’s saying is true. This could be a trick to get us to concede. There’s nothing Tiphan wouldn’t resort to.”
Mozo looked at Widow Wasu, tears streaming down her face. “I know that you have bested me on this day. And as the vanquished, I have no claim on your sympathy. But my family… I have nothing to bargain with, but I will pray for Lady Kana to shorten my life and give the extra years to you; I will teach you all the secret sauces passed down in my family, including the essence of vegetable youth and the crystals of seaweed extract—”
Widow Wasu sighed, shuffled forward, and held the young girl by her arms. “Child, stand up.”
“Not unless you agree to save my family.”
“Of course I’ll concede,” said Widow Wasu. “And you don’t need to give me anything.”
Kinri and Dandelion looked at each other.
“Grand Mistress,” said Kinri. “If we concede this round, we’ll be competing the rest of the way from a position of weakness. Even if she’s telling the truth, we can’t let them blackmail us into submission.”
“Why don’t we report this to the magistrate?” said Dandelion. “Surely the officials will be able to rescue her family?”
“No!” cried out Mozo. “The bandits took my family away on ships. Tiphan said that he’ll keep them in the Silkworm Eggs. If you tell the magistrate here, Tiphan will surely send word by messenger pigeon. My family will be dead by the time rescuers get there, and the bandits will be gone!”
Widow Wasu patted her arm in comfort. “Don’t worry. We won’t do anything to endanger your family.” Then she turned to the rest of the team. “I know that you don’t feel we should concede, but the truth is, I don’t think we’re winning this the right way. Mati, without the benefit of Dandelion’s stories and the performances of the heroes of the Blossom Gang, you know her food tastes better than yours.”
Mati nodded as tears spilled from her eyes. Lodan hugged her.
Widow Wasu continued. “Besides, the rules say that we can’t rely on the help of anyone who’s not already a member of the Splendid Urn’s staff.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Dandelion.
Everyone’s heart sank. Widow Wasu was right. In their eagerness to help, they had forgotten about this part of the rules.
“You can hire us right now!” cried Widi.
Widow Wasu shook her head. “It’s too late. Tiphan will say that you had to be on staff at the time the competition was first announced—”
“I think that’s arguable—”
Widow Wasu held up a hand. “Litigator, this isn’t a court. I felt uneasy earlier when I accepted your help, but I tried to convince myself that the pig wasn’t already dead. But now I know: To win this way isn’t fair.”
“How can it possibly be unfair when Tiphan is playing all kinds of dirty tricks?” cried Kinri. “Taking Mozo’s family hostage, buying up all the ingredients—”
“We can’t sink to his level,” said Widow Wasu calmly. “There was a time, when I was younger, when I didn’t care about such scruples. But the gods are always watching, and deceit and lies never yield true victory. You spoke of good stories, Dandelion. Well, I built the Splendid Urn out of love of good food and good company, but love has no place for lies.”
After a moment, Dandelion bowed. “Granny, your grandness of spirit humbles me. You’re right. Love has no place for lies.”
For some reason, both Kinri and Dandelion chose that moment to look at each other. As if struck by lightning, they both instantly looked away.
The rest of the team hung their heads in dejection. To have victory come so close, only to have it snatched away, felt worse than losing outright.
Widow Wasu hugged Mozo. “You are a brave girl to have done what you did. I’ll go to the judges now.”
The young girl knelt down again and touched her forehead to the floor. “Grand Mistress, I’m in your debt forever.”
“You may call me Granny if you wish,” said Widow Wasu. “It is I who should thank you for showing me and everyone here just what is possible with food. You’re a real artist, Mozo. I only wish that in the future you’ll create your own dishes instead of replicating the creations of your ancestor. You have a talent, and you deserve to wield it to tell your own story.”
* * *
When Lolo and Séca announced the Splendid Urn’s concession, the crowd and the judges alike were shocked. Competing rumors offering outrageous explanations began to fly around Ginpen before the kitchen stages in Temple Square had even been dismantled. Some claimed that the Urn had tried to cheat and was caught; others said that they saw the Urn’s chef break down in tears when she tasted the amazing food cooked by the Chest’s prodigy.
Inside his covered wagon, Tiphan handed a few local wastrels small bags of coins. “Thank you, good sirs and madams. Keep those lips flapping.”
Back at the Splendid Urn, Widow Wasu seemed to have aged in just a few hours. Her back was even more bent, and her steps had lost their spring.
“The one thing I can do to remedy my mistake is to add you to the staff of the Splendid Urn,” said Widow Wasu to Dandelion and the Blossom Gang. “If you’re still willing to help me for the next round.”
Everyone nodded.
“What’s the next contest?” asked Dandelion.
“Since we’re the loser, we get to pick,” said Widow Wasu. “I proposed a competition on service.”
“When?” asked Lodan.
“They’ll need a few weeks—apparently the Treasure Chest has to do some reconstruction to be compliant with Imperial building code. But no matter how much money they have, there’s no way they can compete against our service. Even when the Urn was just a simple pub, we always made every guest feel at home and made sure they left with satisfied bellies and glad hearts.”
* * *
- Little sister, were you the great lady who taught Fara all about love?
- I only planted a seed, Rufizo. She has cultivated it into a magnificent flower. And what’s more: I was aiming for her sister, not her.
- That’s the thing about mortals. They always surprise us.
- Sometimes I think the greatest pleasure of being a god is to learn something new from a favorite mortal.
CHAPTER FORTY LETTERS
DIMUSHI: THE SIXTH MONTH IN THE NINTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM (TWENTY-THREE MONTHS UNTIL THE REOPENING OF THE WALL OF STORMS).
To Her Most August Imperial Majesty,
Following my last dispatch, Princess Aya has launched another expedition against the pirates operating in Amu Strait. A full evaluation of the results of the expedition will follow in a more detailed account, but heeding your command to highlight the most salient points of lengthy reports, I shall offer a description of one engagement here to give a flavor of the expedition as a whole.
