Kuni climbed onto the balcony of a nearby house and surveyed the throng in the streets.
“You are the Cocru army!” he shouted. “Do you see how much power you have when you act without fear? Even if Cocru lives on only in the heart of one man, he will still overthrow Xana!”
Platitude or not, the crowd erupted into applause, and by acclamation, Kuni Garu became the Duke of Zudi. A few pointed out that titles of nobility really couldn’t be handed out in such a democratic fashion, but these killjoys were ignored.
It was now the end of the eleventh month, three months after Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin first saw the prophecy in the fish.
CHAPTER NINE. EMPEROR ERISHI
PAN: THE ELEVENTH MONTH IN THE THIRD YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.
In Pan, wine never stopped flowing. Fountains in the floor of the Grand Audience Hall of the palace sprayed and splashed wine of all colors into jade-lined pools. Ditches and ducts connected the pools so that the wines mixed together, frothing and intoxicating the air as those who approached the emperor gingerly picked their way around them.
Chatelain Goran Pira suggested to the young emperor that perhaps the pools could be shaped so that they represented the seas, and the parts of the floor that remained dry could be used to represent the Islands of Dara.
Wouldn’t it be fun, he humbly offered, for the emperor to be able to survey his realm from his throne? Just by looking down, he would see the literally wine-dark seas and enjoy the sight of his ministers and generals island-hopping as they tried to walk up to present their reports and counsel.
The young emperor clapped his hands together in delight. Chatelain Pira — really Chief Augur Pira, but he was so humble that he retained his old title, which he said made him feel closer to the emperor — always had such wonderful ideas! Emperor Erishi devoted many hours to drawing diagrams and directing the workmen as they dug up the golden bricks that tiled the floor of the Grand Audience Hall to put in sculpted models of the most important geographical features of the Islands: red coral for the cinder cone that was Mount Kana; white coral for the glacier-capped Mount Rapa; mother-of-pearl for the smooth sides of Mount Kiji, with a giant inlaid sapphire for Lake Arisuso and an emerald for Lake Dako;… culminating in a miniature garden of carefully cultivated bonsai trees that stood in for the towering oaks of old Rima. It was much too fun for the little emperor to pretend to be a giant striding across the land, dealing out life and death in this shrunken version of his realm.
When ministers and generals came up to him with reports of troubling rebels in remote corners of the empire, he impatiently brushed them away. Go talk to the regent! Couldn’t they see he was too busy playing with Chatelain Pira, a wonderful friend who always warned him not to work too hard and not to neglect having fun while he was young? That was the whole point of being emperor, wasn’t it?
“Rénga,” Pira said, “what do you think about a maze made of fine fish and tasty meats? We could hang all manner of delicious treats from the ceiling, and you could wear a blindfold and try to make a path through the maze by taste alone.”
Now that was another brilliant suggestion. Emperor Erishi immediately set about planning for such a diversion.
If someone had informed him that men were dying every day in the Islands for lack of a cup of rice, he would have been surprised. “Why do they insist on eating rice? Meat is so much better!”
CHAPTER TEN. THE REGENT
PAN: THE ELEVENTH MONTH IN THE THIRD YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.
Regent Crupo did not enjoy his job.
Chatelain Pira was the one who had explained to the emperor that the best way to honor his father was to build the Great Mausoleum, a house for his eternal afterlife that would be even more splendid than the palace in Pan. Since the emperor’s mother had died long ago after displeasing Mapidéré, his father was really the only parent he could celebrate. Didn’t Kon Fiji, the Great Ano Sage, teach that a child with filial piety always honored his parents to the best of his ability?
But it was up to Lügo Crupo to make that dream real. He had to turn the emperor’s childish drawings into real plans, draft the men to make the plans come to life, and order the soldiers to drive the lazy laborers to do their duty.
“Why do you fill the emperor’s head with such foolish ideas?” asked Crupo.
“Regent, remember how we got to where we are today. Do you not feel the ghost of Emperor Mapidéré watching over us?”
Crupo felt a chill going up his spine. But he was a rational man, and he did not believe in ghosts. “What’s done is done.”
“Then feel the eyes of the world watching, scrutinizing us for signs of devotion. As you said, it can sometimes be difficult for servants to express their loyalty clearly. Think of the monument to Emperor Mapidéré as a complicated way for us to earn tranquility of mind and certainty in our places.”
Crupo had nodded at the wisdom of Pira’s words. He made thousands of men into slaves to the memory of the dead emperor and ignored their protests. Sacrifices were necessary in the pursuit of legitimacy.
That early exchange with Pira also established the pattern that would hold between them. He was the regent, holder of the Seal of Xana and the doer of deeds. Pira was the emperor’s playmate, the voice that distracted the emperor. Together, they pulled the strings that moved the puppet that was Emperor Erishi. It had seemed like a good deal, one in which he got the better end of the bargain. But lately, he wasn’t so sure.
He had craved power, yes, lots of it, and when Pira had come to him with that audacious plan, he had seized the chance. But actually exercising the power that came from the Throne of Xana was not nearly as enjoyable as he had imagined. Yes, it had been fun to watch the other ministers and generals cower before him and pay him obeisance, but so much of the work of being regent consisted of mere tedium! He did not want to hear about harvest numbers, petitions from starving peasants, reports of corvée desertions, and this latest plague, garrison commanders complaining about rebellions. Why couldn’t they take care of the bandits in the areas they were responsible for? They were the soldiers, and that was their job.
Delegate, delegate. He delegated everything he could, and still, they came to him for decisions.
Lügo Crupo was a scholar, a man of letters, and he was sick of being bogged down by such petty concerns. He wanted to be the architect of grand visions, of new systems of laws, and new philosophies that would dazzle the ages. Who had time to philosophize, though, when people knocked on your door every quarter of an hour?
Crupo had been born in Cocru, back when it was still the strongest among the incessantly warring Tiro states. His parents, propertyless bakers in a small town, died during one of these border skirmishes. He was captured by bandits and taken to Haan, the most learned of the Tiro states, to be sold as a bonded servant, but in Ginpen, the Haan capital, the constables raided the bandits and freed Crupo into the streets.
Boys in Crupo’s situation generally did not have much of a future. But he was lucky that as he begged for food in the streets of Ginpen as a refugee, the great scholar Gi Anji, famed lawgiver and adviser to many kings, passed by.
Gi Anji was a busy man and, like many who lived in Ginpen, had learned to harden his heart and ignore the many street urchins and beggars who shouted tales of woe — it was impossible to determine which were telling the truth. But on that day, he saw something in little Lügo Crupo’s dark-brown eyes that moved him, a spark of yearning for something greater, not just hunger for food. He stopped and beckoned the boy to come closer.