by JC Kang
Kaiya fiddled with a lock of hair. What was the use of such a skill? But Doctor Wu had recommended it, so… “Very well. With the Tai-Ming Council and reception tomorrow, this lesson will have to wait for a few days.”
“Alas, I will be returning to Haikou before the reception,” Lord Xu said. “But, the fundamentals are quite simple, won’t you try now?”
Kaiya looked out of a south-facing window. The Iridescent Moon Caiyue waned to its Fourth Crescent. “The Crown Princess is expecting me in an hour…”
Lord Xu laughed. “More than enough time, then. Send your guards out.”
When Chen Xin and Ma Jun left the room and took up places outside of the doors as Kaiya commanded, she searched Lord Xu’s eyes.
What would she learn this time? His lesson on the castle wall two years before had opened her ears to the possibilities. She’d since surpassed all her teachers and was now considered one of the best musicians in Hua. No one else could evoke magic through sound.
And here Xu was again, suddenly interested in her development, after not so much as mentioning Dragon Songs since.
He opened his hand and spoke a melodious word of elf magic.
Kaiya gasped as a long musical instrument appeared in his hand. The sanxian was ancient by the look of it, perhaps magical. An unknown animal skin stretched over the round resonator. Three strings ran over the fretless wooden neck.
“This belonged to your ancestor,” he said with a wistful tone, “Queen Yuxiang, the consort of the founder of the Wang Dynasty, and later Regent.” His fingers danced over the strings, the short melody a flittering combination of short pentatonic notes, ending with a long note. “She adored the sound of it, brought it from her home on Jade Island. It is my gift to you.” He held it out.
Kaiya hesitated before reverently taking the priceless artifact in her hands. It was light, the resonator rough and the neck smooth. Unlike the Dragon Scale Lute or Yanyan’s pipa, it didn’t seem to pulse with a life of its own. “I do not know how to play this.”
“Which is exactly why I gave it to you. Now, pluck one of the strings and listen.”
Kaiya did as she was told and a deep, rich hum emanated from the instrument. It was hard to believe such an ancient sanxian could create such a crisp twang.
His hand swept over the room. “Do you hear how the sound fills the room? Play more and ponder how that compares with the acoustics of the Hall of Pure Melody.”
She thought back to all the performances there in the past two years, in the hall’s acoustically perfect room. And of course that time, with Hardeep. She plucked different strings, experimenting with the notes as she pressed on the neck.
He made a subtle gesture and a chair whispered across the floor of its own volition, stopping right in front of her. “Concentrate on how the sound wraps around the chair and reflects back.”
Tearing her attention away from the chair, which no one had touched, Kaiya obediently plucked the strings.
Her eyes widened. The quality of the sanxian’s sound had changed, albeit subtly, from the seat’s new position.
The elf nodded at her. “Your ears are keen. You understand. Now close your eyes and play long, slow notes.”
Strumming, she peeked through narrowed eyelids. Objects flew through the room: the desk, chairs, cushions, scrolls and wall hangings. In the corner of her vision, she saw Doctor Wu, yawning as if the orchestra of flying objects was no more than a street illusionist’s trick.
“Close your eyes!” Lord Xu barked from behind. “Focus on the sound.”
How had he seen her eyes? Kaiya acquiesced. The subtle changes in the sanxian’s vibrations became clear. Some objects seemed to create their own sounds while others reflected or absorbed the notes. After several minutes, the sounds leveled off. The suddenly steady modulation startled her into looking.
Xu had rearranged all the furnishings with the expertise of a Feng Shui geomancer.
“Do you understand?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Good. Today, I just wanted to open your ears to the possibilities. This somewhat resembles the way bats in the night sky and dolphins in the ocean depths can sense things around them.”
Such preposterous statements! Kaiya twirled a lock of her hair.
The elf turned to Doctor Wu. “Is my wager sufficiently fulfilled?”
The doctor flashed the same devilish grin as before. “No, you will teach her more.”
He laughed. “Very well, when I return to the capital before the New Year.”
Kaiya nodded politely to Lord Xu, and then bowed toward the doctor. “Thank you both for your lessons.”
Her sixteen-year old cousin Lin Ziqiu poked her head into the solarium, her face bright. “Hurry up, Kaiya! Lord Peng’s messenger is here with a letter for you!”
CHAPTER 4
Theoretical Conspiracies
Minister Hong Jianbin’s dark blue court robes absorbed the heat of the late winter sun, warming his old bones as he hobbled through a garden in Sun-Moon Castle. The carefree laughter of young ladies flitted out from beyond a grove of weeping plum trees. The emerging blossoms formed parasols of white fluff, blocking his view.
He followed the blissful chatter, which beckoned him through a wide terrace covered in red tiles. Beyond a white latticework guardrail of interlocking round and square patterns sat five of the realm’s most beautiful ladies.
They gathered around an hourglass-shaped pedestal of red porcelain, painted in a gold carp motif and topped with a glass disk. Four were settled on bloodwood chairs, whose gently twisting lines and thin struts belied structural resilience.
Crown Princess Xiulan stood, holding a calligraphy brush in her right hand, and the hanging sleeve of her gown with the left. She finished her work with a flourishing twist. The other ladies leaned back and clapped. A dozen handmaidens joined in the applause.
Ignoring the Crown Princess, Hong fixated on Princess Kaiya, the most stunning of the five. She covered her full lips with delicate fingers as she shifted in her seat and laughed with her friends. In the two years since he had last seen her, when he had taken the plain and gangly girl to meet the Ankiran delegation, she had blossomed. Gone were the blemishes, leaving her natural complexion as flawless as a pearl. Her curves filled out, borne with a nonchalant grace. Lustrous black locks rippled down to her waist.
Her gaze found his as he shuffled toward them, her dark brown eyes so large a doe would envy them.
Two imperial guards blocked his way. The magic etched into their breastplates’ five-clawed dragons radiated out. His legs wobbled beneath him and his hands trembled.
The ladies fell silent as their stares bore down on him.
“Minister Hong.” Princess Kaiya’s melodious voice stopped his heart, making him forget his dread.
She knew his name. His knees protested with a pair of hollow popping sounds as he sank down into a kneel. “Princesses. Forgive my intrusion. The Chief Minister summoned me here.”
“Rise.” Crown Princess Xiulan spoke as the highest ranking of the five.
The imperial guards parted. Hong clambered to his feet and hobbled toward them. He caught the Crown Princess’ withering glare from the corner of his eyes when he admired her calligraphy.
The script for spring, written in a brisk, wispy style tangibly whispered over him like a cool spring breeze. The calm stood in stark contrast to the time he saw her magical handwriting on the army’s banners. The character for fear had evoked an uncontrollable urge to cower.
The Crown Princess turned back to her writing, but Princess Kaiya beckoned him.
“Do you wish to join us while you wait?” She extended a hand with the refinement of a dancer, offering a paintbrush. Her red outer robe with gold embroidered borders flashed open with the motion, revealing a high-collared white inner gown held together with a broad pink sash.
How he longed to receive the brush and perhaps innocuously graze a finger against the smooth skin of her hand. He looked do
wn at his own dry and gnarled hands and thought the better of it.
The other noblewomen’s expressions proved less inviting, though none as hostile as sixteen-year old Lin Ziqiu, who regarded him with a disdainful glare. The imperial cousin’s scrunched up nose and curled lip marred an otherwise beautiful face, and proved even more of deterrence than the Crown Princess’ banners or the imperial guards’ breastplates.
He bowed. “Thank you for your kind consideration, but I must beg off your invitation.”
Lin Ziqiu blew out a long breath, and the weight of the princesses’ stares lifted.
“As you will.” Princess Kaiya flashed him a demure smile.
Hong’s heart hopped erratically like a tentative rabbit. Repeatedly bobbing his head, he shuffled backward off of the terrace and turned. He ambled toward one of the plum trees, congratulating himself for his lie. He had requested Chief Minister Tan to meet him there, knowing the princesses gathered in the adjacent garden, and hoping to catch a glimpse of Princess Kaiya.
He afforded himself this last look at her as a gorgeous young woman. The curve of her neck, the slender high nose, and those eyes. The next time he saw her, he would think of her as a mere tool for his plans.
“Hong, my friend, you asked me to meet you here, of all places?” Chief Minister Tan called from the garden path.
Hong bowed. “Yes. The Tianzi ordered me to vet another potential suitor for Princess Kaiya. I cannot join you in the Floating World tonight.”
The Chief Minister laughed. “Ah, old friend, had I known your promotion to Minister of Household Relations would eat so much into your time, I would have never recommended you!”
Hong bowed again. “Of course, I am grateful for—”
Tan waved a hand. “I jest, of course. We have come a long way together. I just feel sorry that Princess Kaiya is so…particular. I do not envy your duty of finding a suitor for her.”
“It is my honor. Again, I apologize about tonight.”
Tan clapped him on the back. “Always responsible. That is why I have always supported you. Well, I have another meeting to attend. Perhaps another time?”
“Yes, sometime soon.” Hong watched as Tan strolled back through the garden. He owed his title to the Chief Minister’s patronage over the years.
After five years of waiting and watching, he had the unenviable task of repaying kindness with betrayal. With all conditions aligned, Hong just needed Tan to start a cascade of events which would leave the Chief Minister position vacant.
Once Hong claimed the highest office a commoner could achieve, he might even dare to ask the Tianzi for Princess Kaiya’s hand. When their future son ascended to Tianzi, a fishmonger’s son could rule as regent.
Heavily cloaked to hide his identity, Tai-Ming lord Peng Kai-Long jaunted through the Guanshan Temple grounds with a confident gait. A particularly cold winter now gave way to unseasonable warmth, and his fur-lined coat was stifling. As if to punctuate the heat and the early start of spring, tianhua flowers burst free from the confines of their dark green sepals, carpeting the garden borders in cloying white fragrance.
It was the perfect setting for the exotic young woman there. Her features bore a slight roundness, unlike the more angular lines of typical Hua women. She wore an inner gown resembling the gray luminescence of the White Moon Renyue; and above that, an outer robe with long hanging sleeves. Its sapphire color was reminiscent of the Blue Moon Guanyin’s Eye, accentuating her cinnamon skin—the union of the honey-toned Hua and the walnut colored Ayuri people.
She knelt on a cushion by a knee-high marble table, across from Minister Hong Jianbin’s repugnant form. The servile old man sat, gnarled hands on knobby knees, as he contemplated a chess board. Sallow cheeks hung on a face which might have resembled a weasel had it not been so wrinkled. Wisps of white hair clung to his mottled scalp. Hong easily appeared two decades older than his fifty-some years. His presence sullied all the beauty of the meticulously landscaped garden.
Kai-Long lowered his hood and leveled his eyes at the repulsive man. “Minister Hong, I have come in secret at your request.”
Hong turned on his porcelain garden seat and bent his aged frame low. The beauty placed her hands in her lap and lowered her head, revealing the smooth curve of her nape.
Kai-Long’s attention lingered on her before a quick glance at the chessboard. A sad imitation of Hua’s own chess, the Northerner’s game was the latest fad gripping the aristocracy. He’d taken little interest—foreign barbarians had nothing to offer Hua’s great empire, beyond land to occupy and resources to control.
His focus settled on the old man. “Rise.”
Hong creaked out of his bow and met Kai-Long’s stare. He ran his hand through his thin white hair. “Lord Peng, I am honored you came. I trust you are enjoying this wondrous late winter evening?”
Peng Kai-Long had not become the youngest provincial ruler in their wealthy nation by wasting time on idle talk. He withdrew a metal-rimmed monocle with curved grills running through one half of it, and held it up toward the Iridescent Moon Zhuyue, floating inexorably in its reliable position to the south. “A new timepiece, dwarven make. The convex glass magnifies the image to accurately measure a fifth of a phase of Zhuyue. I grant you five minutes of audience and suggest you not waste it on useless pleasantries.”
Hong bowed again. “Forgive my disregard for your valuable time, my Lord. I understand why your fellow Tai-Ming respect you so. How long has it been now since you inherited Nanling Province?”
A better question would be, when would the fawning stop? Kai-Long fidgeted with his sword hilt. “It has been two years since the Madurans ambushed my father and brother on the docks of Jiangkou.”
The woman cast her gaze down, shoulders trembling.
Hong shook his head sympathetically. “Forgive Leina. She is from Ankira, her Ayuri mother left behind and slain when her Hua father fled the Maduran invasion.”
“Then we are kindred spirits.” Kai-Long leaned over and lifted the beauty’s chin. Rude in polite circles, for sure, but he was a high lord and she was just some half-breed bastard. In the corner of his eye, he saw Hong’s obsequious smile slip into a frown for a split-second. “With the Tianzi’s permission, I hope to one day lead my armies to liberate Ankira and avenge my father and your mother.”
Hong spoke, his flattery knowing no limits. “You are the Tianzi’s favorite nephew, the son of his beloved sister, and the most accomplished of the Tai-Ming. But even if the Tianzi tolerates your disregard for centuries’ old laws, I do not believe he would condone open conflict with Madura.”
Flatterers, like rats, tickle first, then bite, or so the old proverb claimed. Kai-Long continued with his demonization of Madura, his regular strategy for hiding his true goals. “We cannot stand idly by and continue to repel Madura’s incursions against us without retribution.”
Hong shook his head. “But you will not change the mind of the Tianzi. His thirty years of rule have been marked by policies of free trade and non-aggression, leading to unprecedented peace and prosperity.”
Kai-Long stifled a snort. Hong would hum to the tune of whoever was singing. These little men all wanted something, and sometimes it took the right song to draw it out. “Everyone,” Kai-Long said, “from the Tianzi and the Tai-Ming lords down to the commoners has grown fat on trade and gold, secure with our guns and the Great Wall. We have fallen into complacency. Hua stagnates while the Teleri in the North and Levastya in the South build their empires. It will only be a matter of time before one or the other appears on our doorstep.”
Hong nodded repeatedly. “The Royalists on the council are too strong, convincing the Tianzi his policies are right.”
Kai-Long regarded the minister, thinking back to his meeting with Chief Minister Tan two years before. Hong was Tan’s toady, who in turn was secretly invested in the Expansionist faction. “We are the only naval power in the West, and through trade, we have brought all of the best ideas to Hua and made them bet
ter. We have improved upon the repeating crossbows of the Eldaeri in the east. We forge steel as strong and sharp as the dwarves. We grow bumper crops on otherwise barren mountainsides.”
Leina scowled. “And you monopolize the secret of firepowder.”
“There is nothing keeping us back from expansion,” Hong said.
Kai-Long ignored the venom in Leina’s words, and instead feigned excitement as he held Hong’s gaze. “Yes! Old Hong, for the longest time, I had believed you to be just another one of the sycophants currying the Tianzi’s favor.”
Hong bent over. “I have only the best interests of the motherland at heart.”
All it took to get a nightingale to sing was a little seed. Kai-Long decided to reveal some of what he knew. “So these secret meetings with the Tai-Ming you have been holding… are they meant to garner support to petition the Tianzi?” He raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, how do we change the mind of my dear, but stubborn uncle?”
Minister Hong lowered his voice to a whisper. “To paraphrase the Five Classics, sometimes it is harder to change the mind of a Tianzi than to change a Tianzi altogether.”
There it was, the offer clearly stated. Or a trap.
Kai-Long placed a hand on his sword, just in case it was the latter. “What are you suggesting? It sounds like treason.”
Hong shook his head, his eyes wide and defensive. “Patriotism. You would make a stronger Tianzi than either of his sons.”
Kai-Long suppressed a smirk. He’d spent plenty of time in his youth with cousins Kai-Guo and Kai-Wu, and agreed with the minister’s assessment. Though the two princes were undoubtedly intelligent, the elder suffered from indecision and the younger displayed little interest in national affairs.
Kaiya was the proverbial mystery egg. The ugly duckling had transformed into a swan. Kai-Long couldn’t allow her to become a phoenix. He’d manipulated her fragile emotions with forged letters from a man she’d only met once; but with her imminent betrothal it was time to take more drastic measures. It might very well tie into what Minister Hong tacitly proposed. He shook his head, pretending to need convincing. “I do not aspire to such a lofty position.”