I went in. I laid the roses down on the stone altar among the rotted or dried-out relics of previous offerings. The Kandadal’s said to have approved gifts of flowers yet to prefer they not be placed in water to preserve their beauty a moment longer. If decay upsets me I should endeavor to learn why it upsets me, or accept the upset’s value, or offer him unfading blossoms of colored paper or silk. Or all three. So much I fail to comprehend—so much I am intended not to comprehend.
Walled on two sides with mortared brick, the still chamber was cool. Folding my legs, I settled on the earthen floor before the altar, looked into the Kandadal’s eyes. My idol is varnished wood, one of the jolly young Kandadals, grinning to show his strong, crooked teeth, his eyes crinkled to slits. In the dusk of the unwindowed, unlit chamber the brown glass inset within the slits did not glint. Like myself the Kandadal was a foreigner. Scholars say he never visited Haisn, his philosophies brought in the train of the Owe-ejan-akhar’s daughter centuries after the mortal Kandadal’s decease. The vale of Sfothem, his native place, is nearer Bhekai than to Sjolussa but the people who live there, I’m assured, resemble me more than they do natives of central and northern Haisn, having narrow high-bridged noses and round eyes, the men hirsute more often than not.
The Kandadal is not a god (at any rate he denied being a god) yet he is venerated as if he were. He suggested there are no gods at all, no purpose or design in the universe, yet encouraged his followers to revere the gods and beliefs of all peoples in every nation of all the world. My nation, the people to which I was born, recognizes no gods as such. What the Kandadal would make of our ancient beliefs and customs I can’t imagine. I respect the nameless, numberless virtues and excellences honored in my country but their authority has always been recognized to be parochial—they do not traveclass="underline" in Haisn they could not protect or aid me.
So much I will never make sense of. I gazed into my Kandadal’s eyes. He is a plump, merry, moon-faced Haisner, handsome and beautiful and, even now, very strange to me. “I want the envoy’s daughter to die,” I told him. Children are forever dying. The envoy could acquire a new one as easily as the last. “I want to kill her as she killed my dog.”
You want her to die, the Kandadal replied. (He did not reply.) You want to kill her.
“She is useless in the world, a monster. Evil.”
A useless, evil monster.
“I do not wish to meet her or her father again.”
Of course my savings were already sufficient, even without the addition of the envoy’s bribe, to buy passage back to Sjolussa. But I had little prospect of a position in that tightly wound city I hardly knew anymore, hardly cared to know—if I wished to leave Bhekai and Haisn. I did not. I wished the laws of the Celestial Realm allowed me to earn my living in some other manner than employment in the Sjolussene mission. But if Haisners—if the child Immortal in the Palace Invisible (may She forever prosper) and Her court and magistracy—if they trusted foreigners they would not be Haisners and I would doubtless not like them so well. They call us kè-torantin, automatons fashioned of ivory, and believe us not fully (if at all) human. It was likewise forbidden for me to work in the mission of another foreign nation than my own, if any would have me.
We argued, the Kandadal and I. (I argued with myself.) Time did not pass. The still chamber became dark, the air thick with the fragrances of roses, mold, and rot. Shàu tapped at the door frame. “Nen-kè. I have brought noodles from Old An’s.”
“Yes, thank you, Shàu,” I said without turning. “A moment longer.”
My servant retreated—I assumed he did—and I prostrated myself full length on the floor before the Kandadal’s altar. He did not like one to be rigid, invariable, to make irrevocable decisions or to find conclusions. Rising to my knees, I kissed the Kandadal’s cool brow, and then I withdrew from his presence.
The panels of the dining chamber’s window were folded open to the dusky garden. Flame guttered in an iron lamp by the window and danced on the wick of a smaller lamp on the low table. Near the lamp sat a porcelain bowl I did not recognize, glazed blue-black without, white within. It was not a bowl for noodles: filled nearly to the brim with clear water, it housed an elegant fish the length of my index finger, swimming in endless, listless circles. Its ancestors were doubtless gold but this variety’s scales and flowing fins were brocaded in splotches of scarlet, black, silver-blue, and white. I watched the enervated prisoner explore a cell that could provide no surprises and when Shàu brought my noodles I said, “She will not survive long in so small a bowl.”
“No, nen-kè,” he said, placing a smaller bowl before me. “I put the other in the great tub the previous tenants left in the garden. But I thought…”
“It was a kind thought, Shàu. She is very lovely.” Not as lovely as Ìsho, I did not say. Not a dog—not a friend, a companion, merely an ornament to admire. “Thank you. After we’ve eaten we’ll take her to join her sister.”
Watching the fish make its unceasing rounds, I ate fat noodles in savory broth with slivers of pork, onion, salt-dried cherry. Cross-legged in the corner, Shàu slurped from his own bowl. His noodles’ accompaniment would be different, for Shàu liked the incendiary cuisines of southeastern Haisn where the Celestial Realm’s uncertain borders bleed into Regions Heaven Does Not Acknowledge—the Sjolussene protectorates Aveng and U—and where the Immortal’s subjects speak languages She does not comprehend. Those heavily spiced dishes with their chilis and gingers and vinegars, subtleties difficult to discern under the burn, gave me indigestion so Shàu never served them unless I asked.
I continued holding my bowl after I finished, waiting for Shàu—he would interrupt his own meal if I set it down—watching the fish. I did not wish to be alone in my head all night, dreaming up vengeances and punishments for the envoy’s daughter. At length I said, “I will visit the yellow house this evening, Shàu.” I turned to look at the young man in the dim corner. “You may go to the red house if you like.” He understood I was granting permission to use household monies to ease his grief and ducked his head.
We took the brocade fish to join its fellow. The glazed ceramic barrel in a shaded corner of the garden was made to contain goldfish although I had not previously used it for the purpose. Shàu would have scoured it clean while I was with the Kandadal, carried bucket after bucket of fresh water from the well. The previous occupants of the house had also left an eccentric weathered stone eroded into fantastic spires and grottos for the fishes’ entertainment. When Shàu tipped the smaller bowl and water began to spill into the larger a glint of yellow-orange appeared in the depths as a perfectly ordinary goldfish nosed out of a cranny to investigate. I felt a pang of disappointment that Shàu had chosen the common, doubtless cheaper fish for himself—then reflected, admiringly, he must have pocketed the difference.
Poured into its new home, the brocade fish swam in startled circles near the surface while its new companion withdrew again into hiding. I touched Shàu’s shoulder in gratitude as he peered into the water, and then I withdrew myself.
On the barge forging upriver from Oesei I had endeavored to take the new envoy’s measure. He, it was clear, had already taken mine so far as he wished to take it. We sat under a waxed-silk awning, he upright and stiff on a subcontinental-style chair I had made sure would be aboard, I cross-legged on a rice-straw mat. He disdained my tea, drinking instead a tisane of dried flowers and herbs brought in his baggage from Sjolussa.