“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.”