The Grace of Kings (4 page)

He had a grand total of two copper pieces in his pocket, not even enough for a string of sugar-coated crabapples.

“Well, I really should be watching my weight anyway,” he said to himself, and sadly patted his beer belly. He wasn't getting much exercise these days, what with all the partying and drinking.

He sighed and was just about to leave the market to find a quiet spot for a nap when a loud argument attracted his attention.

“Sir, please don't take him,” an old woman dressed in the traditional garb of the Xana peasant—full of knotted tassels and the color­ful, geometric patches that were supposed to be symbols for good luck and prosperity, though the only people who wore them had neither—begged an Imperial soldier. “He's only fifteen, and he's my youngest son. My eldest is already working at the Mausoleum. The laws say that the last child can stay with me.”

The complexion of the old woman and her son was paler than most of the people in Cocru, but this didn't mean much by itself. Though people from the various parts of Dara differed in their physical features, there had always been some steady migration and mixing of peoples, a process accelerated after the Unification. And the people of the various Tiro states had always cared much more about cultural and linguistic differences than mere appearance. Still, given the woman's Xana garb and accent, it was clear she was not a native of Cocru.

She was a long way from home, Kuni thought. Probably the widow of a Xana soldier stranded here after the Unification. Since the kite rider's assassination attempt seven years ago, Zudi had remained heavily garrisoned—the emperor's men never managed to find the rider, but they did imprison and execute many of Zudi's citizens on flimsy evidence and continued to rule Zudi with an extra level of harshness. At least the emperor's agents administered the laws without any favoritism. The poor from Xana were treated just like the poor of the conquered states.

“I've asked you for the birth certificates for the two boys, and you've produced nothing.” The soldier brushed away the woman's pleading fingers impatiently. His accent indicated that he was from Xana as well. The man was bloated and flabby, a bureaucrat more than a fighting man, and he stared at the youth standing next to the old woman with a cold smirk, daring the young man to do something rash.

Kuni knew his kind well. The man had probably dodged out of having to fight during the Unification Wars and then bribed his way into a commission in the Xana army as soon as peace had been declared so that he could get assigned to one of the conquered terri­tories as a corvée administrator. It was his job to raise up the local quota of able-bodied men to work on one of the emperor's grand infrastructure projects. It was a position with a little bit of power but a lot of room for abuse. It was also very lucrative: Families who didn't want to see their sons conscripted were willing to pay a high price.

“I know wily women like you,” the man went on. “I think this story about your ‘eldest' is a complete fabrication to get out of having to pay your fair share for the construction of a suitable palace for the afterlife of His Imperial Majesty, the Beloved Emperor Mapidéré. May he never leave us.”

“May he never leave us. But I'm telling you the truth, Sir.” The old woman tried flattery. “You are wise and brave, and I know you will take pity on me.”

“It's not pity you need,” the corvée administrator said. “If you can't produce the documents—”

“The documents are at the magistracy back home, in Rui—”

“Well, we aren't in Rui, now are we? And don't interrupt me. I've given you the choice to pay a Prosperity Tax so that we can forget this unpleasantness. But since you are unwilling, I'll have to—”

“I'm willing, Sir! I'm willing. But you have to give me time. Busi­ness has not been good. I need time—”

“I told you not to interrupt me!” The man lifted his hand and slapped the old woman across her face. The young man standing next to her lunged at him, but the old woman grabbed her son's arm and tried to position herself between the administrator and her son. “Please, please! Forgive my foolish son. You can hit me again for his faults.”

The administrator laughed and spat at her.

The old woman's face trembled with unspeakable sorrow. It brought to Kuni's mind the face of his own mother, Naré, and the times when she would berate him for not making more of his own life. The drunken stupor evaporated.

“How much is the Prosperity Tax?” Kuni sauntered up to the three of them. Other pedestrians gave them a wide berth. No one wanted to draw the attention of the corvée administrator.

The man eyed Kuni Garu—beer belly, ingratiating smile, face still red with drink, and unkempt, wrinkled clothes—and decided that he was no threat. “Twenty-five pieces of silver. And what's that to you? Are you volunteering to take the boy's place on the corvée?”

Kuni's father, Féso Garu, had paid off corvée administrator after corvée administrator, and he did have the documents to show that he was exempt. He also wasn't afraid of the man. Kuni was a pretty good street brawler and thought he would acquit himself well if they came to blows. But this was a situation that called for some finesse, not force.

“I'm Fin Crukédori,” he said. The Crukédoris owned Zudi's largest jewelry store, and Fin, the eldest son, had once tried to turn Kuni and his friends into the constabulary for disturbing the peace after Kuni humiliated him in a game of high-stakes dice. Fin's father was also known for being stingy and never spared a copper for any charity—but his son had a reputation as a spendthrift. “And I like nothing more than money.”

“Then you should hold on to it and stay out of other people's business.”

Kuni nodded like a chicken pecking in the dirt. “Sage advice, Sir!” Then he spread his hands helplessly. “But this old woman is a friend of my cook's mother-in-law's neighbor. And if she tells her friend, who tells her neighbor, who tells her daughter, who tells her husband, who might then not cook my favorite braised-eel-with-duck-eggs—”

The administrator's head spun as he tried to follow this story that was going nowhere. “Stop this senseless prattle! Are you going to pay for her or not?”

“Yes! Yes! Oh, Sir, you'll swear you have not had real food until you've tasted this braised eel. It is as smooth as a mouthful of jade. And the duck eggs? Oh my . . .”

As Kuni pattered on to the consternation of the Xana administrator, he gestured at a waitress at the restaurant by the side of the road. The waitress, who knew very well who Kuni really was, tried to keep from smiling as she handed him paper and brush.

“. . . now how much did you say it was? Twenty-five? How about a bit of a discount? After all, I introduced you to the wonders of the braised eel! Twenty? . . .”

Kuni wrote out a note that entitled the holder to redeem it at the Crukédori family's house office for twenty silver pieces. He signed the note with a flourish and admired his own forgery. Then he inked a seal that he carried just for such occasions—it was so old and decrepit that the impression came out in a jumble and you could read anything you wanted in its lines—and pressed the seal against the paper.

He sighed and handed the paper over reluctantly. “There you go. Just go over to my family and present it to the doorman when you have time. The servant will bring the money to you right away.”

“Why, Master Crukédori!” The administrator was all smiles and politeness when he saw the figure on the paper. A foolish and rich man like this Fin Crukédori was the best kind of local gentry to culti­vate. “I'm always glad to make a new friend. Why don't we go and have a drink together?”

“I thought you'd never ask,” Kuni said, and slapped the Imperial bureaucrat's shoulder happily. “I didn't bring any cash with me, though, since I'm just out to get some air. Next time I'll invite you home for the braised eel, but this time, maybe I can borrow some. . . .”

“No problem, no problem at all. What are friends for?”

As they walked away, Kuni stole a glance back at the old woman. She stood, mute and frozen, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Kuni thought she was probably too surprised and grateful to speak, and once more he was reminded of his mother. He blinked to clear his suddenly warm eyes, winked at her in reassurance, and turned around once more to joke with the corvée administrator.

The woman's son gently shook her by the shoulder. “Ma, let's get going. We should leave town before that pig changes his mind.”

The old woman seemed to waken from a dream.

“Young man,” she mumbled after the retreating figure of Kuni Garu, “you may act lazy and foolish, but I have seen your heart. A bright and tenacious flower will not bloom in obscurity.”

Kuni was too far away to hear her.

But a young woman, whose palanquin had stopped by the side of the road while the bearers went into the inn to fetch her a drink, heard the old woman's words. By lifting a corner of the curtain on the palanquin window, she had taken in the whole scene, including Kuni's final look back at the old woman and how his eyes had grown wet.

She thought about the old woman's words as a smile broke out on her pale white face. She played with a lock of her fiery red hair, and her slender eyes, shaped like the body of the graceful dyran, the rainbow-scaled, ribbon-tailed flying fish, stared into the distance. There was something about this young man who tried to do good without seeming to
be
too good. She wanted to know him better.

CHAPTER FOUR

JIA MATIZA

ZUDI: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE TWENTY-FIRST YEAR OF THE REIGN OF ONE BRIGHT HEAVEN.

A few days later, Kuni was back at the Splendid Urn to meet his closest friends—the band of young men had saved one another in bar brawls and gone to the indigo houses together.

“Kuni, when are you going to try to do something useful with your life?” Rin Coda asked. Still gangly and nervous, Rin made a living as a letter writer for the illiterate soldiers in the Xana garrison. “Every time I see your mother, she sighs and tells me to be a good friend and encourage you to get a job. Your father stopped me on the way here tonight and told me that you were a bad influence on me.”

His father's comment bothered Kuni more than he wanted to admit. He tried to bluster through it. “I
do
have ambition.”

“Ha! That's a good one,” Than Carucono said. Than was the mayor's stable master, and sometimes his friends teased him that he understood horses better than people. “Every time one of us offers to find you a real job, you come up with some ridiculous objection. You don't want to work with me because you think horses are scared of you—”

“They are!” Kuni protested. “Horses are skittish around men of unusual character and high mind—”

Than ignored him. “You don't want to help Cogo because you think civil service is boring—”

“I think you're misquoting me,” said Kuni. “I said I didn't think my creativity could be confined—”

“You don't want to go with Rin because you claim Master Loing would be ashamed to see you dropping allusions to the classics he taught you in soldiers' love letters. What
do
you want to do?”

In truth, Kuni thought he would have enjoyed peppering soldiers' love letters with Master Loing's pearls of wisdom, but he hadn't wanted to take away business from Rin, as he knew he was the better writer. But such reasons could never be spoken aloud.

He wanted to say that he yearned to accomplish something extra­ordinary, to be admired like a man riding at the head of a great procession. But every time he tried to come up with specific details, he drew a blank. From time to time, he wondered if his father and brother had been right about him: He was like a bit of floating duckweed, just drifting through life, good for nothing.

“I'm waiting—”

“—for the right opportunity,” Than and Rin finished for him in unison.

“You're improving,” said Rin. “You only say that once every other day now.”

Kuni gave them a wounded look.

“I think I understand,” Than said. “You are waiting for the mayor to come to you with a palanquin draped in silk, begging to present you to the emperor as the flower of Zudi.”

Everyone laughed.

“How can mere sparrows understand the thoughts of an eagle?” Kuni said, puffing up his chest and finishing his drink with a flourish.

“I agree. Eagles
would
gather around when they see you,” Rin said.

“Really?” Kuni brightened at this compliment.

“Of course. You look like a plucked chicken. You'd attract eagles and vultures from miles around.”

Kuni Garu halfheartedly punched his friend.

“Listen, Kuni,” Cogo Yelu said. “The mayor's throwing a party. Do you want to come? A lot of important people will be there, people you don't normally get to see. Who knows, you might meet your
opportunity
there.”

Cogo was older than Kuni by about ten years. A diligent and studious man, he had passed the Imperial civil service examinations with high marks. But as he was from an undistinguished family not tapped into the network of patronage in the bureaucracy, being a clerk of the third rank in the city government was probably as high as he would ever rise in the civil service.

However, he liked his job. The mayor, a Xana man who had bought this sinecure but had no real interest in administration, relied on Cogo's advice for most decisions. Cogo was fascinated by matters of local governance and had a knack for solving the mayor's problems.

Others might see Kuni as a lazy, idle young man destined for the poorhouse or a life of crime, but Cogo liked Kuni's easy manners and his flashes of brilliance. Kuni was original, and that was more than could be said for most people in Zudi. Having Kuni there to joke with would relieve the monotony of the party for him.

“Sure.” Kuni perked up. A party was something he was always interested in—free drinks and free food!

“The mayor's friend, a man by the name of Matiza, has just moved to Zudi. He's a wealthy rancher from up in old Faça who somehow got in trouble with the local magistrate. He's moving here to start over, but most of his assets are tied up in flocks and herds up there that can't be quickly converted to cash. The mayor is holding a welcoming party for him—”

“The real point of the party, of course, is to get the guests to bring lots of gifts for this Matiza in order to impress the mayor, and thus solve his cash flow problem,” said Than Carunoco.

“Maybe you can come to the party as a servant hired for the occasion,” Cogo suggested. “I'm in charge of the planning. I can get you a job as a waiter for the day. You'll get a chance to say a few words to the important guests as you deliver them their food.”

“Nah.” Kuni Garu waved the suggestion away. “Cogzy, I'm not going to bow and scrape for food and pay. I'll go as a guest.”

“But the mayor wrote on the invitation that the suggested gift amount for guests is at least a hundred silver pieces!”

Kuni lifted his eyebrows. “I've got my wit and good looks. Those are priceless.”

Everyone broke down in laughter as Cogo shook his head.

Bright-yellow lanterns hung in front of the mayor's house. Standing on both sides of the front door, young women dressed in traditional Cocru short gowns inhaled perfumed smoke sticks and blew soap bubbles at the arriving guests. The soap bubbles burst against them, releasing their fragrance: jasmine, osmanthus, rose, sandalwood.

Cogo Yelu acted as doorman and greeted the guests while recording their gifts in a ledger (“So that Master Matiza can properly write thank-you notes,” he explained). But everyone knew that the ledger would be read by the mayor later. How easy it would be for someone to get things done in Zudi in the future might well depend on the size of the figure next to his name.

Kuni arrived by himself. He had put on a clean undershirt and his least-patched robe, and washed his hair. He wasn't drunk. This counted as “dressing up” for him.

Cogo stopped him at the door.

“I'm serious, Kuni. I can't let you in unless you've brought a gift. Otherwise you have to join the beggars' table over there.” He pointed to a table set up against the outside wall of the estate, about fifty feet down from the gate. Even at this early hour, beggars and malnourished orphans were already fighting for seats around it. “They'll bring you the leftovers when the guests are done.”

Kuni Garu winked at Cogo, reached into the folds of his sleeves, and took out a crisp sheet of paper, folded into thirds. “You've surely mistaken me for someone else. I'm Fin Crukédori, and I've brought with me a thousand silver pieces. Here's a note, to be drawn on my account at the house office.”

Before Cogo could answer, a woman's voice interrupted. “Such an honor to see the famous Master Crukédori again!”

Cogo and Kuni turned their heads and saw, through the gate, a young woman barely in her twenties standing in the courtyard. She looked at Kuni with a mischievous smile. Her light complexion and curly, bright-red hair, common in Faça, stood out a little in Zudi, but Kuni was struck most by her eyes. Dyran-shaped, they seemed to be pools of dark-green wine. Any man who looked into them was doomed to lose his way.

“Miss,” Kuni said, and cleared his throat. “Is something amusing you?”

“
You
are,” the woman said. “Master Fin Crukédori came in not ten minutes ago with his father, and we chatted amiably while he paid me several compliments. Yet here you are again, outside, and looking so different.”

Kuni put on a serious face. “You must have me confused with my . . . cousin. He's Fin, but I'm
Phin
.” He pursed his lips, demonstrating the supposed difference in pronunciation. “You are probably not familiar with the Cocru dialect, which is subtle with such distinctions.”

“Oh, is that so? You must be confused with your cousin often, what with Xana officials in markets also not being familiar with such subtle distinctions.”

Kuni's face turned red momentarily, but he laughed. “Someone has been spying on me, it seems.”

“I'm Jia Matiza, daughter of the man you intend to cheat.”

“
Cheat
is such a strong word,” Kuni said without missing a beat. “I had heard that Master Matiza's daughter is a great beauty, as rare as the dyran among fish.” Jia rolled her eyes at this. “My hope was to have my friend Cogzy here”—he gestured in Cogo's direction, and Cogo shook his head in denial—“let me in under false pretenses so that I could have a chance to admire her. But now that I have accomplished my goal without having to go in, Cogo's honor and mine are intact. I shall take my leave.”

“You really have no shame,” Jia Matiza said. But her eyes were laughing and so the words did not sting. “You can come in as
my
guest. You are outrageous, but you are interesting.”

When she was twelve years old, Jia stole some of her teacher's dream herbs.

She dreamed of a man who wore a plain gray cotton tunic.

“What can you offer me?” she asked.

“Hardship, loneliness, long-flowing heartache,” he said.

She could not see his face, but she liked the sound of his voice: gentle and serious, but with a hint of laughter in it.

“That doesn't sound like a good match,” she said.

“Good matches are not the stuff of stories and songs,” he said. “For every pain we endure together, there will be a joy twice as great. They will still sing of us in a thousand years.”

She saw that he had changed into a yellow silk robe. And he kissed her, and he tasted of salt and wine.

And she knew he was the man she was destined to marry.

The party from a few days ago lingered in Jia's mind.

“I have never heard anyone claim that Lurusén's poem is about waking up in the middle of the night in an indigo house,” Jia said, laughing.

“It's true that the traditional interpretation is all about high-minded
politics and such,” Kuni said. “But listen to the lines: ‘The world is drunk; I alone am sober. The world is asleep, but I am awake.' This is clearly about the house watering down the liquor. I have research to back it up.”

“I'm sure you do. Did you present this interpretation to your teacher?”

“I did, but he was too set in his ways to recognize my brilliance.” Kuni grabbed two small plates off the tray of a passing waiter. “Did you know that you can dip pork dumplings in plum paste?”