The Veiled Throne, page 97
There were no special pensions or honors given to sailors, marines, soldiers, and aviators who had fought in the Battle of Zathin Gulf. Being a soldier, a warrior who fought for the survival of Dara, was treated as a career unworthy of recognition. Veterans who wanted to return to civilian life retired with nothing more than their wages and the promise of a plot of land in remote corners of Dara. Many veterans sold their land and turned the money into drink or gambled it away, too disappointed with the coldness with which the empress regarded their service.
He could live with the guilt of having survived, with the shame of not being able to live up to the ideals of his own heroes. But what he could not bear was the thought that his comrades had died in vain, that the name of Captain Atamu would be forgotten, that Marshal Mazoti would be thought of as a traitor who had barely redeemed herself. He could not tolerate the idea that the Lyucu were allowed to put their roots down in Rui and Dasu, to enslave and slaughter while growing fat from tribute from the rest of Dara.
Empress Jia was a tyrant, Mota realized. Her distrust of men and women who took up arms to defend the homeland was based on her love of power.
“Come,” said Arona. “I’m hungry. You may be strong enough to skip meals whenever you please, but I become short-tempered when I’m hungry. We have a lot of plotting and thinking to do for the final round of the competition, and Rati, Widi, and I haven’t forgotten what you want. We may just have a way to win the competition and go there.”
“Thank you, Rona,” Mota said. Only he could call her by the diminutive, just like how only she could touch the scars on his back.
Mota squeezed his arm around her gratefully, affectionately. She kept him anchored to the present, to hope for the future. He was sorry that he could not devote himself wholly to her, to the life that she wanted.
O Gods of Dara, aid me in my task.
He might not be a hero, but he was going to make sure that true heroes would not be forgotten.
And then, perhaps, he would finally be at peace, would finally be able to be the man Arona deserved.
* * *
Since great restaurants in Dara were often chosen for official banquets and gatherings of the notable—victory celebrations for triumphant admirals returning after cleansing the sea of pirates, receptions for circuit intendants, poetry contests, logogram riddle competitions, debates between philosophers, the introduction of a prominent singer or artist, and so on—they were expected not only to provide great service and cook delicious food, but also to supply suitable entertainment when called on to do so.
In addition, because prominent restaurants were city institutions, the public expected them to sponsor shows at big holidays like New Year and the Lantern Festival. Tiphan Huto’s proposed contest was focused on this last aspect of restaurateurship. The Treasure Chest and the Splendid Urn were each going to put on a production for the judges, one that would live up to the title of Best Restaurant in Ginpen.
“Why can’t we just do the same thing we do for New Year?” asked Widow Wasu. “The fireworks display is always a hit.”
“You can’t just repeat what you’ve always done,” said Dandelion. “People are expecting something new, something spectacular.”
“Like what?”
“I can come up with lots of ideas,” said Dandelion. “But unlike food and service, entertainment is a much more open arena, with limitless potential. It may be hard to beat them without knowing their plan.”
“It won’t be hard.”
Everyone paused. The speaker was Mota, who so rarely talked that sometimes Dandelion and Kinri forgot about him. Indeed, Dandelion looked a bit stunned at Mota’s contradiction.
“Everyone tends to rely on their strength,” said Mota. “Even when it fails them. The Lyucu were so proud of their garinafins that even after they received hints that Marshal Mazoti was working on weapons that could counter them, they didn’t adopt any new fighting techniques.”
Kinri’s face burned at this, but he forced himself to focus on the matter at hand. “How does that help us here?”
Dandelion broke in. “Are you saying that Tiphan Huto will also stick with his strength, even if it didn’t bring him victory in the past?”
Mota nodded.
“It’s like a story about yourself that you can’t escape,” mused Dandelion. “Even when you don’t like the story, you can’t stop retelling it.”
Now it was Mota’s turn to look a bit stunned.
“So what do we think is the strength of Tiphan Huto?” asked Kinri.
A cacophony of voices. “Deviousness.” “Lack of morals.” “Cheating!” “Not playing fair!”
“No, no,” said Dandelion. “I don’t think that’s what Mota meant at all. We might think all these terrible things about Tiphan, but that’s not how he sees himself. We’re never the villains in our own stories.”
Mota nodded. He held up a hand and made the gesture of lifting something heavy in his palm.
“Gold?” asked Widow Wasu.
“Right,” said Dandelion. “Though he would probably phrase it as ‘power,’ ‘command of resources,’ ‘generosity,’ or something like that.”
“That makes sense to me,” said Mati. “During the first round, he used the most expensive ingredients and prepared them in the most lavish ways.”
“And during the second round, he devoted his resources to decorations, lamps, and picking and flying in staff from all over the Islands,” said Lodan.
“He’s impressed by things that you can buy if you have a lot of money,” said Widow Wasu, catching on. “So he thinks everyone else will be impressed the same way. And since for this round, we’re allowed to use outside contractors during the performance, he’s going to pay the performers most impressive to him.”
“That’s the story he keeps on telling,” said Kinri. “But since we know his story, we can craft our own story to counter it.” He and Dandelion shared a smile.
Mota fell silent again, thinking over Dandelion’s words.
It’s like a story about yourself that you can’t escape.
* * *
Kinri came upon Dandelion painting in the kitchen yard.
The place was bustling. Many members of the restaurant staff had returned to work after victory in the second round, confident that the supposed curse on the Splendid Urn was nonsense. As the cooks and their helpers rushed about the bread kilns and curved-mirror sun stoves, carrying water and firewood, plucking chickens and cleaning fish, retrieving ingredients from the cellar, setting out custards on racks for flame-tongues, Dandelion stood behind her easel in the middle of the hubbub, examining the commotion around her with deep concentration. Once in a while, she made a few decisive strokes on the paper.
He approached her quietly from behind, unwilling to disturb her, thinking that he would just catch a quick peek of her work before resuming his duties. Lodan and Mati were running a busy dinner service and needed every pair of hands.
The painting she was working on was not large, about four feet square. It was no recognizable portrait of the scene before her. Dandelion had used only black ink, and the sheet was dominated by irregularly shaped splotches of various sizes, interspersed with wispy strokes that curved and swirled between them. Occasionally, she dipped her brush into the inkwell at her feet, stood back, and flung the brush at the paper from a distance so that tiny dots of ink splattered across the sheet. She was working so energetically that her dress was covered in splattered ink, and even her face had a few stray brushstrokes.
Kinri stood before the painting, slack-jawed. He had seen plenty of Dara-style paintings, both in Ukyu-taasa and here in Ginpen’s markets, but never had he seen anything like this. All at once, it resembled the wild strokes and irregular logograms of wind-script calligraphy, footprints of terns on a beach at low tide, gossamer dew-bedecked spiderwebs at dawn, ropy strands of frozen lava in frost-bearded winter.
What it most reminded him of, he realized, were the voice paintings of the Lyucu.
Abruptly, Dandelion stepped back, brush reared over her shoulder as she prepared for another flick. Kinri, mesmerized, couldn’t get out of her way in time, and the ink-drenched brush stabbed him directly in the nose.
Yelps and mutual apologies later, the two stood looking at each other. Dandelion giggled at the black splotch covering the entirety of Kinri’s nose and much of the rest of his face.
“I suppose this is one way to become part of my painting,” said Dandelion. “But in general, my advice to my subjects is to sit in front of me, not sneak up behind me.”
Kinri chuckled and rubbed his nose. “I think that painting is beautiful.”
Dandelion was used to boys praising her painting (well, except for that loathsome Gimoto). She knew that most of the time, they weren’t really commenting on the painting at all, much like the boys who held tea-tasting parties in indigo houses would write poetry about the fragrance of the beverage while keeping their eyes on the girls doing the brewing. She resented this sort of false praise, and was disappointed to hear it from Kinri. So, mischievously, she cocked her head. “Do you really think so?”
“I… I do,” he stammered. He was rather intimidated by the way she looked at him, and didn’t dare to meet her gaze.
“Tell me then,” she said, biting the end of the handle of her brush and pointing at a bread kiln, “where is that kiln in my painting?”
Kinri furrowed his brows. “It’s in the painting and also not in the painting.”
“Oh? How do you mean?”
Kinri walked closer to the painting. “This blob right here has the weight of the kiln; that swirl over there has the lightness of the smoke; these wisps capture the gooey dough that goes inside; those long strokes evoke the energy of the baker as she runs into the kitchen with the hot bread; and the dots on top… I can taste the way the crust crumbles in my mouth as I look at them…. Yet there’s nothing that looks like a kiln in the painting at all. You’ve painted the spirit of the kiln but not its body; I’ve never seen anyone do that, at least not in Ginpen—” He stopped when he saw Dandelion’s expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I know nothing about art.”
Dandelion blinked away the tears that welled in her eyes. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong…. I just… no one has ever understood my painting, not even my brother.”
“It’s… very beautiful,” said Kinri awkwardly. “It looks like the trails left by snails on banana leaves… just before the sun goes down, you know, with glowing arcs in the grooves like little golden rainbows; they tell you how hard the snail worked for every inch and make you wonder what the snail was thinking….” He swallowed and added nervously, “Don’t get mad because I’m comparing your painting to snail slime… I don’t really have the words.”
“I’m not going to get mad,” she said softly. “You’re speaking from the heart, and anything true is beautiful and should be treasured.”
Is that true? he wondered. Can I tell you the truth about me and still have you think it beautiful?
“You mentioned that you’ve never seen anyone paint like this in Ginpen,” Dandelion said. “Does that mean you’ve seen it elsewhere?”
He shook his head. “No, not in brush painting, but it reminds me of the voice paintings back home.”
So he told her about storytelling dances and cactus drums, and the way shamans painted with their voice and music. “A voice painting captures the spirit of the story, not the word-scars,” he said, unconsciously falling back to a translated version of the Lyucu kenning. As he spoke, his eyes misted over from the longing ache for home, while Dandelion listened intently, trying to imagine the scene.
When he was finished, she said, “I wish I could see such a voice painting being made one day…. Even if the shaman is Lyucu and I am Dara, I’m sure we can talk about our art….”
Kinri’s heart clenched at the impossibility of that vision.
“Do a lot of servants get to go to the storytelling dances?” asked Dandelion.
Kinri shook his head. “No. The storytelling dances are sacred”—only too late did he realize that he was supposed to be a native servant himself—“most… most of the time,” he finished feebly.
Luckily, Dandelion didn’t seem to notice. “Do you remember any of the stories they painted at the storytelling dances?”
Glad to have the change of topic, Kinri told her the story of Afir and Kikisavo. Dandelion was delighted and hung on every word. In the end, she said, “It’s too bad that they couldn’t remain friends after all they went through. Reminds me of the way Emperor Ragin and the Hegemon fell out after everything they went through together.”
It was odd for Kinri to hear the great heroes of the people of the scrublands being compared to two cruel tyrants of Dara, but after having lived in Dara for so long, the stories of the court-appointed tutors no longer felt like the absolute truth.
“How did you come up with this way of painting?” he asked Dandelion.
“I was inspired by Lady Mira, my favorite hero,” she said.
“Lady Mira? The Hegemon’s consort?” Kinri was startled. He couldn’t think of anything that was heroic about the Hegemon’s lover.
Dandelion nodded. “Everyone knows about her killing herself for the Hegemon, but she was also a great artist. She embroidered portraits of the Hegemon composed from geometric figures and simple, bold dashes. I think they’re better than all the portraits of him by classically trained court painters.”
Kinri, uninterested in the history of art, had no knowledge of these portraits. Dandelion pulled the painting off the easel and re-created for Kinri sketches of the embroidered portraits on a fresh sheet of paper.
“But how is she heroic?”
“While everyone cowered before the Hegemon, she stood up to him and told him the truth. While everyone else fled from the Hegemon, she dared to love him and saw him the way he wanted to be seen, not the way others expected him to be. She was the only one who ever understood him.”
Kinri was silent. While everyone cowered… she dared to love him.
“My sister didn’t think much of Mira. ‘She devoted her life to someone else, and her greatest accomplishment was to have loved a man!’ As if somehow dying for romance was worse than dying for a king, as if prizing love was less than prizing some other ideal!
“But I think Mira was misjudged. Just as she was the only one who ever understood the Hegemon, the Hegemon was the only one who ever understood her. No one at the time comprehended her embroideries, except him. He prized her work more than gold and jewels, more than legendary swords and the seals of the Tiro kings. She was the last person he shed tears for before he died, and from his body, they recovered nothing except a handkerchief embroidered by Mira. In those bold lines and the defiant refusal to represent, he recognized her grand spirit. He cherished the way she glimpsed and grasped the world, made it hers.
“For an artist, the work, the way she sees the world, is more precious than the self. She saw him the way he wanted to be seen, but he saw her vision the way she wanted her vision to be seen.
“Kon Fiji said that men should be willing to die for great lords who recognize their talent. But I think the word usually rendered as ‘talent’ has been mistranslated from the original Classical Ano. A better word would be ‘nature,’ or capacity, tendency, quality of spirit. The Hegemon recognized Mira’s nature; he was the mirror of her soul. That was why she died, no less heroically than Ratho Miro or Mün Çakri.”
Kinri was stunned. He couldn’t help but think that there was something more to Dandelion’s speech than a lesson on art. They looked into each other’s eyes.
Can we see each other the way we want to be seen? Can we recognize our souls in each other’s vision? Should I—
“Kinri! Where’s that block of ice?” Mati shouted from the door of the kitchen.
Kinri made his excuses and rushed away, but the words and painting of Dandelion lingered long in his mind.
* * *
“Welcome, welcome to the final and decisive round of the battle between the Treasure Chest and the Splendid Urn!” said Séca.
“I have a feeling we’re all going to witness something spectacular today,” said Lolo. “This is it: one last bout, and winner takes all! Will the Splendid Urn defend their crown? Or will the Treasure Chest unseat the champion? After today, I think even the next New Year’s is going to be a bit of a letdown.”
The two were speaking again from on top of a stage constructed in Temple Square, with a panel of judges sitting behind a low table. The judges for this round had also been picked from the notable ranks of Ginpen society, but with special emphasis on theater and indigo-house managers, playwrights and critics, leaders of performing troupes, actors and actresses, firework designers, and other experts on entertainment and spectacle.
For weeks now, the contest between the two restaurants had dominated all conversation in the city. Storytellers in teahouses and in market squares served up vivid descriptions of Mozo Mu’s culinary creations and the Urn’s animal-driven serving carts, with liberal helpings of exaggeration, and the listeners who hadn’t been able to witness these rounds of the competition sighed with regret and vowed to make it to the final round.
Meanwhile, the secondary competition to be selected as one of the judges, seen as the most desirable prize in Ginpen high society at the moment, was so intense that numerous plots were hatched and many friendships sundered. In the end, Lolo and Séca literally had to pick logograms out of a jar to establish the final panel.
A huge crowd, many times the one that had shown up for the first round, filled the square. So many had come out to watch the shows put on by the two restaurants that vendors were doing a lively business serving the crowd ice water, chilled sour plum soup, and even imitation Rapa’s Feast.
Séca and Lolo glanced at Widow Wasu and Manager Giphi, seated on opposite ends of the stage. Tiphan Huto claimed that he had too much work to do for the show itself and had sent the loyal Giphi in his stead.
