Dazu’s youngest son, thirteen-year-old Phin, evaded capture for days by hiding in the maze of lightless storage rooms and tunnels in the basement of the Zyndu family castle. But in the end, Tonyeti’s soldiers caught him when he tried to sneak into the kitchen for a drink of water. The soldiers dragged the young man before the great general.
Tonyeti looked at the kneeling boy before him, trembling and sniveling with fear, and laughed.
“It would be too shameful to kill you,” he said in his booming voice. “Hiding like a rabbit instead of fighting like a wolf, how will you face your father and brother in the afterlife after this? You have not even a tenth of the courage of your sister. I will treat you just like your brother’s baby because you behave the same.”
Against Mapidéré’s orders, Tonyeti had spared Shiru’s newborn son from slaughter. “Nobles have to behave better than peasants,” he had said, “even in war.”
So Tonyeti’s soldiers released Phin, and the shamed boy stumbled out of the family castle with only his dead brother’s infant son, Mata, in his arms. Bereft of title, home, and clan, his life of ease and wealth stripped away like a dream, what was the boy going to do?
At the outer gate of the castle, Phin picked up a fallen red flag: singed, dirty, but still showing the embroidered gold chrysanthemum, emblem of the Zyndu Clan. He wrapped Mata in it, scant protection against the winter air, and uncovered the baby’s face by lifting up a corner of the cloth.
Baby Mata blinked and stared, two pupils in each black eye. A faint light glowed from the pupils.
Phin sucked in his breath. Among the ancient Ano, it was said that those with double pupils had the special attention of the gods. Most such children were blind from birth. Barely more than a child himself, Phin had never paid much attention to the wailing bundle that was his newborn nephew. This was the first time he had realized Mata’s condition.
Phin moved his hand in front of the baby, uncertain if he was blind. Mata’s eyes did not move, but then the baby turned and focused his eyes on Phin’s.
Among the double-pupiled, a rare few had the sight of an eagle, and it was said that they were destined for greatness.
Relieved, Phin held the baby against his chest, against his thundering heart, and after a moment, a teardrop, hot as blood, fell from Phin’s eyes onto Mata’s face. The baby began to cry.
Phin bent down and touched his forehead to the baby’s. The gesture calmed the child. Phin whispered, “We have only each other now. Don’t let what has been done to our family pass into oblivion. Do not forget.”
The baby seemed to understand. He struggled to free his tiny arms from the flag wrapped around him, raised them toward Phin, and clenched his fists.
Phin lifted his face to the sky and laughed into the falling snow. He carefully covered the baby’s face with the flag again and walked away from the castle.
Mata’s frown reminded Phin of Dazu Zyndu’s serious mien while deep in thought. Mata’s smile was a replica of the smile of Soto, Phin’s dead sister, when she ran around the garden as a child. Mata’s sleeping face had the same serenity as Phin’s older brother, Shiru, who had always told Phin to be more patient.
Gazing at Mata, Phin understood why he had been spared. The little boy was the last and brightest chrysanthemum blossom at the tip of the noble tree formed by generations of the Zyndu Clan. Phin vowed to Kana and Rapa, the twin goddesses of Cocru, that he would do everything in his power to nurture and protect Mata.
And he would make his heart cold and his blood hot, like icy Rapa and fiery Kana. For the sake of Mata, he would learn to become hard and sharp instead of pampered and soft. In vengeance, even a rabbit can learn to become a wolf.
Phin had to rely on occasional handouts from loyalist families who sympathized with the plight of the Zyndu Clan until he killed two thieves sleeping in a field and took their loot, which he then invested in a little farm outside Farun. There, he taught Mata to fish, to hunt, and to fight with a sword, after learning those skills himself under the severe tutelage of trial-and-error: The first time he shot a deer, he vomited at the sight of blood; the first time he swung a sword, he almost cut off his own foot. He cursed himself again and again for how he had luxuriated in his former life of ease and learned nothing of use.
The weight of the responsibility he undertook had turned his hair gray by the time he was twenty-five. Often, he sat alone at night outside their shack, after his little nephew had fallen asleep. Haunted by the memory of his weakness years ago, he brooded over whether he was doing enough, was even capable of doing enough, to set Mata on the right path, to pass on the courage and strength, and especially the yearning for glory, that was the boy’s birthright.
Dazu and Shiru had not wanted the delicate Phin to follow the path of war. They had indulged Phin’s love of literature and art, and look where that had gotten him. In a moment when the family needed him, Phin had been powerless, had been a coward who brought shame to the family name.
So he locked away memories of the kind words of Shiru and the gentleness of Dazu. Instead, he gave Mata a childhood that he thought they would have wanted. Whenever Mata hurt himself as all children did, Phin forced himself to refuse the boy any comfort until Mata learned that crying was useless. Whenever Mata fought with another boy from the town, Phin insisted that he press on until he emerged victorious. Phin never tolerated signs of weakness in the child and taught Mata to welcome every conflict as a chance to prove himself.
Over the years, Phin’s naturally kind heart became so wrapped and concealed in the roles he assigned himself that he could no longer tell where family legend ended and his own life began.
But once, when five-year-old Mata was gripped by an illness that threatened to take away his life, the boy saw through a crack in his uncle’s hard shell.
Mata had awoken from a feverish slumber and saw his uncle crying. The boy had never seen such a sight and thought he was still dreaming. Phin hugged Mata tightly — another gesture foreign to the child — and muttered many thanks to Kana and Rapa. “You’re a Zyndu,” he said, as he did so often. “You’re stronger than anyone.” But then he added in a voice that was gentle and strange, “You are all that I have.”
Mata had no memory of his real father, and Phin was his father, his hero. From Phin, he learned that the Zyndu name was sacred. Theirs was a family born of noble blood rich with glory, blood blessed by the gods, blood spilled by the emperor, blood that had to be avenged.
Phin and Mata sold their produce and pelts from hunted animals in town. Phin sought out surviving scholars, family friends, and acquaintances. A few of them surreptitiously kept a cache of ancient books, written in the old logograms unique to Cocru and forbidden by the emperor, and Phin borrowed or traded for them and taught Mata to read and write.
From these books and from his memory, Phin told Mata stories and legends of Cocru’s martial past and of the Zyndu Clan’s glorious history. Mata dreamed of emulating his grandfather, to carry on the legacy of his prowess. He ate only meat and bathed only in cold water. Having no living calf to carry, he volunteered to help the fishermen at the wharf unload their catch each day (and earned a few coppers doing so). He filled small sacks with rocks and tied them around his wrists and ankles so that each step required more strength. If there were two paths to a destination, he picked the longer and more arduous one. If there were two ways to do something, he chose the harder and more strenuous method. By the time he was twelve, he could lift the giant cauldron in front of the temple in Farun over his head.