“You don’t sound sad about it at all.”
“When we made the pact that we would only intervene in the lives of the mortals though guidance and teaching, we all knew this was the inevitable result: They will grow up.”
Tututika sighed. “And yet I cannot stop caring. I want them to do well.”
“Of course we can’t stop caring. It is the curse of parents and teachers everywhere, mortal or immortal.”
And the two gods watched the ghostly carp in the tank, as though seeking the future in the murky, dark sea.
CHAPTER NINE
PALACE EXAMINATION
The carriage bringing King Kado and Lady Tete to the Imperial palace was late.
“What’s the matter?” Tete stuck her head out and asked the driver.
“There’s a crowd of angry cashima blocking the road, Mistress.”
Indeed, about a hundred cashima milled about in the road, and passing carriages had to carefully thread their way between them. One of the cashima was standing on an upturned box for packing fruits and shouting at the crowd.
“Out of a hundred firoa, more than fifty come from Haan and only a single one comes from the old lands of Xana. How can that possibly be fair?”
“But the emperor himself began his rise in Dasu,” said one of the cashima in the crowd. “And King Kado is the emperor’s brother. Surely the judges would have taken that into account in scoring.”
“He might have become a king in Dasu, but the emperor listens to his advisers. You all know how much sway Luan Zya, a nobleman of Haan, has at the court.”
“Luan Zya hasn’t even been in court since the funeral for the emperor’s father!”
“All the better to whisper things into the emperor’s ear in secrecy. We should march to the palace and demand an investigation! Release all the essays and let all of us judge together if those deemed well-matched to the fate of Dara are deserving and if the emperor’s test administrators are worthy of his trust!”
The other cashima in the crowd shouted their approval.
Since the impassioned scholars were no longer talking about her husband, Tete ducked back into the carriage. “I think they’re complaining about the results of the Grand Examination.”
“Of course they are,” said Kado. “If you didn’t score high enough to place among the firoa so as to be guaranteed a plum position in the Imperial bureaucracy, complaining about the scoring is about all you can do.”
“Do you know if the judges were really fair?” asked Tete. “Did any examinees from Dasu place?”
“What do I know of what the emperor and his advisers do in private council?” Kado smiled bitterly. “You know as well as I do that Kuni gave me this title only because our father begged him to do something for me before his death. I’m hardly a Tiro king of old.”
Tete was embarrassed by this outburst—she knew what her husband said was true, but it was still hard to hear. Kuni still resented her and Kado for the way they’d treated him when he was a young man. Who could have guessed how things would turn out for Kado’s idle little brother, who’d strutted through the streets of Zudi like a common gangster?
“Is Kuni satisfied these days?” Tete cautiously asked.
She meant whether Kuni was happy with Kado, but Kado took it to be a question broader in scope. “I don’t know the details of what goes on at court, but it is said that Kuni’s delay in naming a crown prince has caused factions to rise. The generals and nobles prefer Phyro, while the ministers and the College of Advocates prefer Timu—and of course the empress and Consort Risana are involved. Both sides have done some ugly things.”
“Inheritance disputes plague everyone, from the smallest shopkeepers to the Emperor of Dara. Are you going to offer to mediate?”
Kado shook his head vigorously. “The smart thing for us to do is to take the allowance Kuni pays us and stay out of his sight. We’ll have our pleasures; let him run things the way he wants to. Ra Olu, my ‘regent’ in Dasu, is the real governor of the island, and he reports directly to Kuni. I know nothing, and I prefer it that way.”
“Then why are we even going to the palace?”
“Some occasions require my presence as a decorative sign,” said Kado, waving the sheaf of blank extra passes the regent of Dasu had sent him. “The people of the Harmonious City want to see the Imperial household enact harmony, and so we must play our bit parts. Let’s just turn these in and nod and smile at whatever Kuni decides during the Palace Examination.”
Although the top one hundred scoring examinees were given the rank of firoa and all could theoretically participate in the Palace Examination, only the top ten, honored with the designation of pana méji, were actually given the chance to do so. The rest would be assigned to a civil service pool where they would be matched with ministers and generals in need of junior staff, and these assignments would hopefully launch them into a glorious career in government service.
The pana méji now sat in two rows before the raised dais for the Imperial family at one end of the Grand Audience Hall; the emperor was about to question them directly.
On top of the eight-foot-tall dais, Emperor Ragin sat in his full court regalia: bright red Imperial robes adorned with hundreds of golden crubens playing with dandelions and exquisite embroidery depicting rearing waves and various lesser creatures of the sea; the flat-top crown with a curtain of seven strands of cowrie shells dangling from the front, obscuring his facial expressions from the viewer; and another curtain of seven strands of corals hanging in the back for balance. He knelt up in the formal position of mipa rari on the throne, a gilt ironwood sitting board overlaid with cushions stuffed with lavender, mint, and other mind-clearing spices formulated by the empress, the most well-known herbalist of the empire.
Speaking of whom—Empress Jia sat to the left of Kuni Garu, and Consort Risana sat to his right, both also dressed in formal court robes and crowns. Their robes were made of thick red silk because red was the color of Dasu, the island from which Kuni Garu had begun his journey to the Throne of Dara, though the robes of Jia and Risana were a shade lighter than the emperor’s. Jia’s robe was decorated with dandelion-mouthing dyrans, the rainbow-tailed flying fish that symbolized femininity, while Risana’s robe was decorated with carp-derived motifs in honor of her home island of Arulugi. At the foot of Risana’s cushioned seat was a small bronze censer topped by the figure of a leaping carp, and faint smoke issued from its open mouth. It was said that Consort Risana’s health required her to partake of the fumes of certain herbs, and such censers often accompanied her.
Below the dais and flanking the two rows of pana méji scholars, the most powerful lords of the empire arranged themselves in a pattern that was meant to echo their relative influences in decisions of the state. Since Emperor Ragin’s coronation years ago, it was rare for governors of the far-flung provinces and the enfeoffed nobles in their disparate fiefs to gather in the capital. This was a very special occasion, and the highest levels of courtly etiquette were on display.
Thus, to the Emperor’s left, on the west side of the audience hall, the civil ministers and provincial governors who were in the capital knelt in a long column arranged by rank facing the center in mipa rari. Their gray-blue ceremonial formal robes, made of heavy damask water silk, were decorated with figures either symbolic of the province the governor was from: shoals of icefish for Rui in the north, towering oaks for ring-wooded Rima, cloud-fleeced flocks for northern Faça, sheaves of ripening sorghum and clusters of chrysanthemum-swords for central Cocru, and so on—or the sphere of responsibility of each minister—thousands of stylized eyes for Farsight Secretary Rin Coda, scrolls and codices for the Imperial Archivist, a scale for the Chief Tax Collector, trumpets for the First Herald, writing knives for the head of the Imperial Scribes, and so forth.