“That doesn’t sound very fair. You have to have money to go to school—”
“The point is: It’s possible to think of the laws as a complicated machine, and by adjusting the right levers and dials, you can make people do anything, just as dialing up the heat on the stove drives air out, causing the balloon to rise, and dialing down the flame creates a vacuum for the cold air to fill, causing the balloon to fall.”
“This philosophy sounds very… harsh.”
“It can be. The greatest Incentivist was actually Lügo Crupo, Emperor Mapidéré’s Imperial Scholar and later Emperor Erishi’s regent. He carried Gi Anji’s ideas to extremes and enacted harsh laws that finally led to the rebellion of the Scroll in the Fish.”
“Like a pot boiling over if you set the heat too high.”
“Exactly. But Incentivism is not, by itself, evil. It’s just a tool to understand the world. There’s a quote from Lügo Crupo, Mirotiro ma thiéfi ro üradi gicru ki giséfi ga gé caü féno, gothé ma péü né ma calu, goco philutoa rari ma ri wi rénroa ki cruéthu philutoa co crusé né othu, which means ‘Men are only motivated by profit and pain, but that is no sin, for all such desires are the shadow of the desire to transform earth into heaven.’ ”
While Luan Zya lectured on, Zomi noticed a seagull, who had been flying right in front of the balloon, suddenly drop off before catching itself by flapping its wings vigorously. A tiny smile crept onto her face as she braced herself against the wall of the gondola.
“…in fact, another of Gi Anji’s students, Tan Féüji, managed to extend Incentivism with Moralist—”
The balloon lurched as the crosswind that had blown the seagull off course struck, and Luan Zya stumbled and grabbed onto the side of the gondola, his lecture cut off.
“You should have seen your face!” Zomi’s laughter was as wild as the wind. “I saw a pattern, and I used it.”
Luan Zya shook his head, but Zomi’s joy was infectious. “You’ve been introduced to two schools of philosophy. Bored yet?”
“Are you kidding? This is fun! Teach me more philosophy about how to fly the balloon!”
“You see, you enjoyed my lectures on the Incentivists and the Patternists because I dressed them up as lessons on how to fly a balloon. A good idea is more easily absorbed if it is given the right expression, and that is why even when you have the right answers, you’ll convince more people when you present them with good handwriting and proper sentence construction.”
Zomi sighed. “Does this mean I need to practice more handwriting?”
“If you finish writing the Hundred Names fifty more times—to my satisfaction—we will look for more crubens.”
Zomi sat back down, picked up her slate, and eagerly began to write.
“Wait—” She stopped, looked up at the smirking Luan Zya, and stuck out her tongue. “I do not like it when you practice Incentivism!”
The banter between teacher and student was interrupted by laughter from time to time as the balloon continued to head for Crescent Island, the sun dappling the gentle waves below them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CRUBEN-WOLF
Instead of launching into an impassioned speech, Kita Thu turned around and clapped his hands together. “Quick! Go, go!”
And a group of servants who had been sitting behind the two rows of pana méji got up and started to unpack the trunks they had taken into the Grand Audience Hall. Swarming into the empty space between Kita Thu and the throne dais, they put on costumes, set out props, assembled elaborate paper-and-bamboo sculptures, put together intricate machines…
They were trying to put on a play for the emperor.
The Lords of Dara watched the proceeding with great interest while Kita Thu strode around, giving orders like a stage manager.
Since many of Kuni’s most trusted generals had been men of little learning, many of the pana méji had figured—correctly—that a flowery speech that recited the points made in their essays would be of little interest. Given that the emperor himself was said to have little patience for scholastic rhetoric, it was crucial that the Palace Examination presentations by the candidates take a more dynamic format.
And they had only had less than a month to prepare the presentations.
Once his servants had completed the preparations, Kita nodded and gave them the signal to begin.
The Lords of Dara and Emperor Ragin were then treated to a spectacle both amusing and horrifying.
Two servants stretched out a piece of shimmery blue water silk to represent the sea. As the waves parted, a monster rose out of the depths—portrayed by two players wearing a costume. The front half of the monster was a cruben, while the back half was a wolf. The monster lurched and struggled, as its legs could hardly propel the beast forward in the water. From time to time, the player in the front lifted the cruben-head out of the silk sea and sprayed fragrant rosewater into the air to simulate the gasping of the monster. The pleasing aroma gradually suffused the hall.
Titters could be heard around the hall and in the balconies. Even the empress and Consort Risana were charmed by the display.
Two more players came forward and placed a low platform laden with model mountains and valleys next to the silk sea to represent land. The cruben-wolf launched itself onto the platform, where the wolf legs finally found purchase. But now the heavy front half of the monster, no longer buoyed by the water, became a burden, and the monster still could not move effectively, as its fins flapped uselessly against the land and the wolf legs pushed the monster forward slowly, like an inchworm.
Kita whistled to indicate that a new scene should start. And the players rushed around to change costumes and props. The Lords of Dara were treated successively to the spectacle of a falcon-carp, a stag-worm, a turtle-elephant—the trunk and legs could not retract into the tiny shell—and most amusing of all, a mushroom-shark that floundered in the sea, unable to eat.
“Emperor Mapidéré had divided all the Islands of Dara into provinces and ruled them directly through a bureaucracy loyal only to himself. Before his conquest, the Tiro kings had relied on enfeoffed hereditary nobles to handle the duties of administration. You took a path different from both of those systems. Half of your lands have been given to the nobles, who maintain some measure of independence, and the other half you administer directly through your governors. In this way, you have gained the disadvantages of both, and the advantages of neither.”
As his servants cleaned up and packed everything back into trunks, Kita strode back and forth before the emperor, gesticulating passionately as he made his speech.
“If an Imperial edict announces a new tax, a governor must implement it while a neighboring duke or king might choose to ignore it. This leads to nonuniformity of laws and rewards the cleverly unscrupulous, who take advantage of such disparities to profit.
“You have created a monster that is neither fish nor fowl, and at home nowhere.”
“A most impressive—and, I might add, entertaining—presentation. I don’t fully agree, but do you have a solution?” asked Kuni. “Let the assembled Lords of Dara hear it.”
Kita Thu took a deep breath and spoke deliberately, making sure that his voice carried throughout the hall. “Rénga, I propose that you restore the Tiro system in full.”