“I’ve come up with an idea that will help you, but you have to trust me. Can you sit over here, hold on to the vines, and give me your leg?”
Zomi looked at him suspiciously. She did not like it when people paid attention to her weak leg, much less when another person touch it.
“Are you scared?” Luan said, a teasing smile at the corners of his mouth as he held up the strange contraption he had built.
That settled it. Zomi crawled near him, wrapped the vines around her own arms, and held out her left leg with some effort so that it rested in Luan’s lap. “I’m afraid of nothing.”
“Of course not,” said Luan, and he wrapped the framework around Zomi’s leg. Once the branches were braced around her calf, he tightened the ox sinew so that the branches dug into Zomi’s skin.
“Ouch!” Zomi cried out. But then she immediately bit her lip to stifle the cries.
Luan slowed down so that his movements were more deliberate and gentler. Zomi closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as he flexed and bent her leg in ways that caused her skin and nerves to tingle as though a thousand ants were crawling up her leg.
“While your body is getting used to this, I might as well teach you about the third and fourth schools of philosophy, Fluxism and Moralism.”
“You can’t even let a single idle moment slide by?” Though her tone was petulant, Zomi was grateful for the distraction.
“Life is short, but knowledge grows ever more abundant. The founding sage of the Fluxists is Ra Oji, the ancient Ano epigrammatist. ‘Dothathiloro ma dinca ça noco phia ki inganoa lothu ingroa wi igiéré néfithu miro né othu, pigin wi copofidalo,’ he once said, or ‘A Moralist is someone who can tell you how everyone ought to behave except himself.’ ”
Zomi laughed. “I like him.”
Luan took off Zomi’s left shoe, placed another set of branches right under Zomi’s foot, going from the ball to the heel, and wrapped lengths of sinew around her ankle and foot to hold them in place. He tightened the sinew by twisting another short branch and locked it into the framework wrapped around Zomi’s calf.
“Yes, Ra Oji was quite a character. We don’t know much about his life except that he was about a generation younger than Kon Fiji. He must have come from a very learned family, as his knowledge of ancient Ano traditions from before their coming to the Islands of Dara was extensive. Many Ano books lost during the Diaspora Wars are known to us now only as fragments that have survived in his poems and parables, and he wrote a lively, moving biography of Aruano, the great lawgiver who created the Tiro states.
“But those accomplishments came later. As a young man, Ra Oji made his name by debating Kon Fiji.”
“He debated the One True Sage? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Oh, I think the Moralists don’t like to be reminded of how their great teacher could also be challenged.”
Luan bent the branches in the brace this way and that, notching some of them with a knife. Then he started to carve two thicker branches, peeling off the bark to reveal the smooth wood below.
“What was the debate about?”
“Kon Fiji came to the court of the King of Cocru to advocate a return to the funeral rites of the ancient past, as practiced on the sunken continent in the west that was the ancestral homeland for the Ano. The rites were rigidly defined for different classes, and involved lengthy mourning periods for the deceased. For instance, a king’s death mandated mourning by all subjects in the realm for three years; a duke, one year; a count or marquess, six months; an earl, three months; a viscount, a month; and a baron, fifteen days. The commoners had a different set of rules based on their professions—merchants were at the bottom, and farmers were at the top because Kon Fiji viewed merchants as exploiters who produced nothing. There were also rules about the sizes of the mausoleums, the types of clothing to be worn at the funerals, the number of pallbearers, and so on and so forth.”
“These sound about as useful as his rules for how many eating sticks should be used to eat noodles.”
“I can tell you’ll get along fabulously with the Moralists at the emperor’s court.”
“Let me guess, Kon Fiji probably also had different rules for men and women.”
“Ah, you’re thinking like a Patternist—and you’d be right.”
“It figures.”
Luan fitted the two longer, thicker sticks into the notches in the branches sticking out beyond Zomi’s heel, and then connected the other ends to the brace around her calf with strong hoops of sinew.
“The King of Cocru was as skeptical as you. Kon Fiji argued that the rites were important because they enacted and embodied the respect due to each rank. Ranks are made real—the technical term in Moralism is reified—through practice. Abstract principles are given life through performance. Just as applying the same rules to friends and foes alike gives meaning to honor, giving away possessions supplies content to charity, and reducing punishments and taxes provides significance to mercy, the adherence to seemingly arbitrary codes of behavior can reify a structure for society that leads to stability.”
Zomi pondered this. “But there is no soul to such performances. All that everyone would be doing is acting out roles dictated by Kon Fiji. It wouldn’t be real honor or mercy or charity if all the king is doing is following rules.”
“The One True Sage would say that just as intent drives action, action can also drive intent. By acting morally, one becomes moral.”
“This all sounds terribly stiff and inflexible.”
“That is why the element of the Moralists is the earth, the stable foundation for statecraft.”
“What did Ra Oji say?”
“Well, he began his debate by saying nothing.”
“What?”
“You have to realize that Ra Oji was a very striking young man, and it was said that when he came into the court of the King of Cocru on that day, all the men and women just gawked.”
“Because he was very handsome?” asked Zomi, slightly disappointed. She had been thinking of this Ra Oji, who debated the stuffy old Kon Fiji, as a hero of sorts. That he was handsome seemed to… detract from the vision. “Wait, there were women at the court too?”
“Ah, this was in the early days of the Tiro states, when noblewomen were often in formal court to give their opinions. It wasn’t until later that the scholars convinced most of the kings that women shouldn’t meddle in politics. But to answer your first question: No, it was because he came in riding on the back of a water buffalo.”
“A… buffalo?”
“That’s right, a water buffalo that you’d find wallowing in the rice paddies of a Cocru peasant next to the Liru. In fact, its legs were still caked with mud. Ra Oji sat on its back in géüpa, happy as you please.”
Zomi laughed out loud at this, wholly forgetting the Moralist prescription to cover her mouth. Luan smiled and did not correct her. He continued to make adjustments to the harness around her leg, and Zomi was growing so used to it that she no longer paid much attention to it.
“The King of Cocru asked in consternation, ‘How can you come into the palace on the back of a muddy water buffalo, Ra Oji? Have you no respect for your king?’
“ ‘I am not in control of the buffalo, Your Majesty,’ said Ra Oji. ‘When our ancestors came to these islands, they let the flow of the ocean’s currents carry them wherever the ocean pleased, and likewise, I let the buffalo wander wherever he will. Life is much more enjoyable when I ride the Flow instead of worrying about how many times to brush the ground with my sleeves or how deeply to bow.’