“I haven’t thought through the next steps,” Kuni admitted. “I just took the path that seemed open to me at the time. At least this way, I can keep you out of the hands of the Imperials.”
“I’m not complaining, you know, but you certainly could have chosen a better time to do something interesting.” Jia smiled and pulled Kuni’s head down to whisper in his ear.
“Really?” Kuni said. He laughed and kissed Jia deeply. “Now that is good news.” He looked down at her belly. “You’ll have to stay in camp and not go anywhere.”
“Right, I really need you to tell me what to do, just like you’ve done all these years.” Jia rolled her eyes, but she stroked his arm affectionately. “Did you like that courage herb I gave you?”
“What are you talking about?”
Jia smiled mischievously. “Remember that pouch of calming herbs I gave you? I slipped in a plug for courage. You’ve always wanted to do the most interesting thing, right?”
Kuni thought back to that day on the trail up the mountain, and his strange behavior before the white python. “You have no idea how fortuitously things have worked out.”
Jia kissed him on the cheek. “What you see as luck, I see as being prepared.”
“So, if Otho was lost, how did you find me?”
She told Kuni about the dream of the rainbow. “It’s a sign from the gods, surely.”
More prophecies, Kuni thought. Sometimes you can’t plan things better than the gods — whoever they are — plan for you.
The legend of Kuni Garu grew.
About a month later, two of Kuni’s followers brought a burly man with his hands tied behind him into the camp.
“I’m telling you,” the man shouted, “I’m a friend of your big boss! Treating me like this is a mistake.”
“Or you could be a spy,” his guards retorted.
The man had struggled the whole way and was out of breath. Kuni tried to not laugh when he saw the man’s sweaty face, splotchy with exertion. He had a full, bushy black beard, and beads of sweat hung from the tips of the strands like dew from blades of grass in the morning. He was well muscled, and the guards had lashed the ropes about his arms very tight.
“As I live and breathe. Mün Çakri!” he said. “Are things so bad in Zudi that you’ve come to join me? I’ll make you a captain here.” He directed the guards to loosen the ropes.
Mün Çakri was a butcher who had often drunk with Kuni and caroused about the streets of Zudi with him before he got his job as a jailer.
“Tight ship you run around here,” Çakri said, stretching his arms to get the circulation back into them. “You’ve become notorious as the ‘White Snake Bandit’ for miles around. But when I asked about you, everyone on this mountain pretended to know nothing.”
“It could be that you frightened them with those fists the size of copper pots and that beard — I really think you look more like a bandit than I do!”
Çakri ignored Kuni. “I guess I was asking too many questions, so a couple of woodsmen jumped me and brought me to your lackeys.”
A boy brought out tea, but Çakri refused to touch his cup. Kuni laughed and then asked for two mugs of ale instead.
“I come here on official business,” Çakri said. “From the mayor.”
“Listen,” Kuni said, “the only thing the mayor could want with me is to put me in jail, and I’m definitely not interested in that.”
“Actually, the mayor is tempted by Krima and Shigin’s call for Xana officials to defect. He thinks he might be able to get a title out of it if he presents Zudi to the rebels. And he wants you to advise him, since you’re the closest thing to a bona fide rebel he knows. Because he knew I was your friend, he sent me to come and get you.”
“What’s wrong?” Jia asked. “Isn’t this the opportunity you’ve been waiting for?”
“But all these stories people tell about me,” Kuni said, “aren’t really true. They’re just exaggerations.”
He thought about the deaths of Hupé and the others.
“Am I cut out to be a rebel? The real world is very different from adventures in stories.”
“A little self-doubt is a good thing,” said Jia, “but not excessive doubt. Sometimes we live up to the stories other tell about us. Look around you: Hundreds follow you and believe in you. They want you to save their families; you can only do that if you take Zudi.”
Kuni thought about Muru and his son, about the old Xana mother in the marketplace trying to protect her son, about the widows whose husbands and sons would never return, about all the men and women whose lives the empire had destroyed without a thought.
“A bandit could still pray for a slim chance of being pardoned if enough money is paid,” said Kuni. “But if I become a rebel, there’s no way out.”
“It’s always scary to do the interesting thing,” said Jia. “Ask your heart if it’s also the right thing.”
I believe in the dream I had about you. Remember that.
By the time Mün Çakri, Kuni Garu, and Kuni’s gang arrived at Zudi, it was dusk. The gates of the city were closed.
“Open up!” Çakri shouted. “It’s Kuni Garu, the mayor’s honored guest.”
“Kuni Garu is a criminal,” the soldier atop the wall shouted. “The mayor has ordered the gates sealed.”
“I guess he got cold feet,” Kuni said. “Rebellion seemed good in theory, but when it came time to take the plunge, the mayor just couldn’t do it.”
His theory was confirmed as Than Carucono and Cogo Yelu emerged from the bushes by the side of the road to join them.
“The mayor has kicked us out of town because he knows we’re your friends,” Cogo said. “Yesterday he heard that the rebels were winning, and he invited us to dinner to discuss plans for his defection. Today he heard that the emperor was finally taking the rebellion seriously and would send the Imperial army shortly, and so he did this. That man is like a leaf dancing in the wind.”
Kuni smiled. “I think it’s too late for him to change his mind now.”
He asked one of the men for a bow. He took a silk scroll from his sleeve and tied it around an arrow. Then he nocked it and shot it high into the sky. The men watched as the arrow traced out a high arc over the walls and fell into Zudi.
“Now we wait.”
Anticipating that the vacillating mayor might change his mind, Kuni had sent a few men ahead earlier that day to sneak into Zudi before the gates were closed. They spent the rest of the afternoon spreading rumors that the hero Kuni Garu was leading a rebel army to liberate Zudi from Xana and return the city to the revived Cocru.
“No more taxes,” they whispered. “No more corvées. No more killing whole families for one man’s crimes.”
Kuni’s letter to the city asked for the citizens to rise up and topple the mayor. “You will be supported by Cocru’s army of liberation,” the letter promised. If one considered a band of bandits an “army,” and if one ignored the fact that the King of Cocru had no idea who Kuni Garu was, the letter could be considered to sort of tell the truth.
But the citizens did as Kuni asked. Chaos erupted in the streets, and the people of the city, long resentful of the heavy hand of Xana rule, made quick work of the mayor and his staff. The heavy gates swung open, and citizens watched in amazement as Kuni Garu and his tiny band of bandits strode in.
“Where’s the Cocru army?” one of the riot leaders asked.