by JY Yang
They conjured an image of what Mokoya might look like as a woman, silk-draped and pigment-smeared, hair wrapped into unnatural shapes. This woman, this stranger, laughed with painted lips and clung to the arm of the tall, handsome man who smiled approvingly down at her. She made trite jokes and used the feminine version of “I.” Akeha tried to imagine themselves in the same role: an alien form, making alien gestures. Their chest liquefied into molten ore.
“So,” they said to their twin’s silhouette, “is that why you want to be confirmed? So you can go around flirting with boys?”
Mokoya turned around, eyes as round as dumplings. “What?”
Akeha knew it was a bad idea, but continued talking anyway. “Come on. You saw the way he looked at you, didn’t you?”
“What is wrong with you?” Mokoya hissed. They stormed a furious clutch of paces ahead, then slowed for Akeha to catch up. “You can be angry with me, but leave him out of it. He’s got nothing to do with . . . whatever your problem is.”
“He likes you.”
“And you don’t like him.”
Akeha shrugged. “I don’t have to. He’s going to be the Head Abbot, not my new best friend.” They snorted. “Unless I have to contend with him as a future brother-in-law?”
Mokoya’s impenetrable silence only deepened as they turned away and continued walking. Furious. “You’re going to the circus tonight, aren’t you?” Akeha asked.
Their twin squared their shoulders, squared their jaw. “Fine. I am. I like him. I think he’s important. You,” they added acidly, “don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
Chapter Eight
OF COURSE AKEHA WENT to the circus.
This time it was Mokoya who found the way out. A sympathetic gardener, an easily scalable wall, and a judicious use of slackcraft brought them to the city’s ground level without being caught. After the fuss thrown about their morning escapades, it was almost too easy, Akeha thought. But they weren’t about to complain.
The circus opened in the moon-half of the first night-cycle, and stretched into the sun-half of the second one. The audience numbered about a dozen, handfuls of Kuanjin and Gauri working class, chattering in their dialects, chewing through sweetmeats, greasing their fingers on fried dough sticks. Mokoya found seats in the front row, but Akeha chose to stand in the back, with a vantage over audience and performers both.
“Fine,” Mokoya said. “Suit yourself.”
The first act was a comedy duo, the usual bamboo-pole-soup-dumpling combination given a twist by comprising two middle-aged women in saris making jokes about sex and money, instead of two middle-aged men in robes making jokes about sex and money. Akeha scanned the crowd, the wings, the background. Thennjay was nowhere to be seen.
The comedy act was followed by an acrobatic troupe, earnest children who juggled heavy pots and flipped each other over a variety of stools and tables. Still no Thennjay. Akeha was used to being patient and staying very still, but irritated prickles flushed up their spine and raced across the skin of their neck. They pressed their teeth together.
Something odd caught their attention: in one of the back rows, a round-bellied man sat on the edge of the bench. He jiggled one leg relentlessly, bouncing his knee up and down, fingers drumming against his thigh. As Akeha watched, a tearful girl ran up: it was Anjal, the suspicious child from this morning. She grabbed the man’s arm, bobbing up and down on her feet, and Akeha didn’t need to know lip-reading or her language to understand that she was pleading for something.
The man wagged his head and shook her off. The girl hesitated, then ran off the way she came, still crying, clearly unsatisfied.
Strange. Where was her younger brother?
The lamps around the circus extinguished, plunging them into darkness. Akeha went rigid involuntarily and expanded their mindeye. The topography of living bodies lit up the Slack: audience, performers, constellations scattered around the tents of the living compound. These were the bright, simple stars of the common citizenry, borders whole and complete with few threads lashing them to the Slack—probably simple tricks they’d learned, mechanical spells to manipulate water-nature to help them with their work.
Then there was Mokoya, a comforting, blazing nova thick with embroidered filaments of light, solid cords of fibrous belonging stretching between them and Akeha. Through those connections Akeha sent a warning: Be careful. Something’s wrong.
What is it?
I’m not sure. Just be careful. Keep your mindeye open.
Mokoya’s star quivered with faint annoyance, but their presence sharpened into focus as they too opened their mindeye, shifting into the same plane of awareness as Akeha.
Then a third and unexpected presence appeared in the Slack.
The interloper glowed gently, his tapestry of Slack-connections not as complex as that of a fully trained Tensor, but still thick and thriving. Akeha recognized the intricate, furred edges into forest-nature that they often saw extending from the Tensorate’s masters of biology.
Cheebye. They swore silently. How had they not realized? Thennjay was no simple healer, dispensing prayers and compressed mixtures of medicine. They called him a doctor.
He was a Tensor, or had been taught by one.
As Thennjay pulled at metal-nature, the lights came up around them: sun-strips, taped around the periphery of the circus, on the tent awnings, under the benches, wrapped around Thennjay’s clothes. Akeha opened their eyes as the audience sighed in wonder. Thennjay held a tray of glowing spheres the size of ripe peaches, presumably part of his performance.
Akeha froze. The round-bellied man was gone. Empty space yawned on the bench where he had been. Where was he?
They spotted the man making his jittery way down the central aisle, toward Thennjay and Mokoya.
“Wait,” Akeha said, straightening up from their slouch.
The man started walking faster. People stared. Akeha broke into a jog after him as Mokoya, in the front row, stood in confusion. “Stop!”
The man turned to face Akeha. Sweat picked out the terrified expression on his face, and then—
He detonated.
Akeha barely had time to throw up half a barrier, a shoddy one. It stopped the fire, but not the force of the explosion. Their spine met the ground with a sharp snap.
They scrambled to their feet, ignoring the pain that shot up their back. “Moko!” The air filled with screams, crackled with sulfuric fumes. Akeha’s throat closed up, and their lungs heaved.
They smelled burning flesh. Akeha reached out and found Mokoya in the Slack, still luminous and steady. Thank fortune. They tensed through water-nature, dispersing black smoke so that they could see.
The man lay on the dirt, still alive, still groaning, meat crusted black and red. Clear fluid seeped through the cracks. Everything was blown in a perfect circle around him. Thennjay hovered over his doomed body, whispering urgently in their home language, holding the man’s flesh and soul together through the Slack.
Mokoya ran to Thennjay’s side, equal parts fear and anger. “What was that? What happened?”
Thennjay looked up at them, his splendid features hardened in anger. “Your mother,” he said.
* * *
They weren’t allowed into the tent with Thennjay and the dying man. Left outside, Mokoya smeared circular tracks into the packed dirt. As the sun rose into the second night-cycle, Akeha asked, “You didn’t realize he was a Tensor either, did you?”
Mokoya glared at them, and continued pacing.
“You were distracted. He was so charming—”
“Shut up.”
Akeha folded their arms and continued watching.
Mokoya made sixty-four more silent circuits before Thennjay stepped through the heavy canvas of the tent door. Sweat had collected on the front of his shirt, and blood stained his hands and clothes like cooking grease. He sighed with the weight of a thousand stones cast into water. “He’s gone.”
“That’s a pity,” Akeha
said. The man might have been saved at a proper Tensor house of healing. The doctors, the masters of forest-nature, would have been able to reknit the shattered bones, rebuild the seared flesh. But Thennjay had said no. The community had said no. Akeha couldn’t blame them for their distrust.
“You lied to me,” Mokoya spat.
“I didn’t,” Thennjay said. “I said nothing. There’s a difference. You never asked how much slackcraft I knew.”
“You should have said you were a Tensor.”
“I’m not.” He kept his voice gentle. “The Tensorate and the Grand Monastery aren’t the only ones who know slackcraft. My father had books. Scrolls. He hid them. After we lost him, my mother taught me as much as she could.”
Mokoya’s anger hissed between their teeth, in and out. “I trusted you.”
Thennjay looked apologetic. “I didn’t trust you.” As Mokoya froze, the shock of this revelation wrestling across their face, he said, “I wanted to, I promise. But I couldn’t. You’re still the prophet. The Protector’s child. And I’m just some troublemaking Gauri boy.”
The anger went out of Mokoya: not a dissipation, but a deflation. Akeha almost felt sorry for their twin. The boy was charismatic, after all. Easy to fall for.
Akeha said, self-satisfied, “I never trusted you.”
Thennjay spared them a glance, and in it was compassion, sadness, and a dozen other things Akeha couldn’t parse. “That was the smart thing to do. After all that’s happened this past week? I wouldn’t trust me, either.”
“You must think me a fool,” Mokoya said softly, staring at the tracks they’d left in the ground.
“No.” Thennjay lifted Mokoya’s face by the chin, as something in Akeha’s chest twisted. “You have a good heart. And that’s a rare thing in these times. A beautiful thing.”
Mokoya stepped away from him. “You smell of blood.”
Thennjay quieted and then a muscle worked in his jaw. “They have Kirpa,” he said. “Your Protectorate.”
“What?” Mokoya looked at Akeha in alarm, then back at Thennjay. “Why?”
“The man in there. Jawal. He was their cousin, their guardian. Men snatched Kirpa from his sister’s arms this afternoon. Then someone from the Protectorate came and told Jawal that if he wanted Kirpa returned unharmed, he had to do exactly what they said.”
“To blow himself up?” Akeha frowned. “They asked him to sacrifice himself?”
“They told him, if you do this, all your children will be looked after. He’s been struggling to feed them for so long. They knew how to convince him.”
Ice and fire battled in Akeha’s belly. A swathe of images clawed at them: shy Kirpa clinging to his older sister; Anjal’s ferocity as she shielded him from strangers; the girl’s tearstained face at the circus this evening. She was six years old. She had no business fearing for her little brother’s life like that.
The twins must have been followed that morning, when they first found the circus. How could they not have realized? This was Mother at her best, brutal and efficient.
“Why would Mother do this?” Mokoya blurted. “She killed a man; she could have hurt us. Why?”
Thennjay shrugged, the movement like an earthquake. “She wanted you to be hurt, I think. Imagine how it would look. The Protector’s children, maimed or killed after accepting an invitation from me? Even if she can’t change the prophecy, that would destroy my reputation. I would have no power as a Head Abbot. There might even be war.”
Mokoya seemed torn between incandescent rage and helpless tears. “It’s awful,” they gasped.
“It’s Mother,” Akeha rejoined.
Thennjay had already decided which side of fear or anger he fell on. “You know,” he said softly, “I questioned your prophecy at first. I didn’t know what role I could play in your monastery. But now your mother is trying to scare me. And I don’t scare easily.” He looked directly at Mokoya. “Take me to see her. We have some things to discuss.”
Chapter Nine
“HOW PRESUMPTUOUS OF YOU,” the Protector said, “to think you can come to me with demands, as though we were equals. The audacity of it all. These are not the actions of someone fit for the abbothood.”
The audience chamber of the Great High Palace had the quiet chill of a mausoleum and the emptiness of a mountain steppe. Slate and granite replaced the silk and wood the Protector preferred in her sanctuary, with massive gray columns holding the peaked roof high overhead. The three of them were mere pinpricks as they stood in the vastness in front of the Protector’s dais, flanked by the stone-faced guards lining either side of the chamber. Thennjay was in front, Mokoya beside him, and behind them Akeha stood as an afterthought. They felt less unwelcome than ill-fitting, like a square of tile that was the wrong color.
“It seems that the fortunes have already weighed in on my fitness for the role,” Thennjay said, his voice rolling with the depth of an avalanche. “Unless you wish to contest the prophecy?”
In contrast to their smallness, Mother lorded over everything on her high dais, magnified by the bright yellow of her robes. Her headdress glittered with the light of a hundred jewels, and sunballs suspended over the throne highlighted the sharpness of her cheekbones, the alpine slant of her mouth. Sonami stood behind her, calm and immovable as the stone pillars around them.
“I am aware of the prophecy,” the Protector said. Her voice echoed off the floor and ceiling of the chamber. “I am also aware of its regrettable immutability.”
She gazed unkindly down at the trio. “It leaves me no choice but to address the fact that a malcontent Gauri child born in an unnamed gutter has found an easy opportunity to latch on to power.” She gestured with an operatic sweep. “Already your machinations have begun. I see how you have seduced my children to your side, even after the outrageous events last night.” A predatory tilt of the head. “Know this, boy: I have no obligation to confirm your appointment to the Grand Monastery. My approval will come only with changes to the way the monastery operates. It has had far too much independence, for far too long.”
Unfazed, Thennjay said, “You speak confidently for someone carrying so much sin. Your agents kidnapped an innocent child from my community. You blackmailed their guardian into carrying out a heinous attack that could have killed your own children. These are terrible things to have done. And it would be terrible if they came to light.”
“What wild ideas you have.” The Protector blinked lazily, like a satisfied predator. “Listen to you, trying to blame the reprobate nature of your people on me.” Her teeth showed. “It seems the Gauri are good for nothing save violence and the spreading of falsehoods. I was very accommodating with your community over the matter of the factory fire. Perhaps I should reconsider that leniency.”
“That’s a lie,” Mokoya exclaimed, their righteousness bursting forth at last. “He didn’t do anything, and you know it. How can you command respect if—”
“Silence! How dare you speak to me of respect. After your disgraceful conduct yesterday, sneaking out of the palace like a thief, running around like some common criminal. Now you think to lecture me on how to command respect, when you can’t even earn it for yourself?”
Mokoya stood silent, trembling, hands compressed into bloodless fists.
When Thennjay spoke, it was with the prickling, laden weight of air before a thunderstorm. “The philosopher Sadhya, a wise man, said that the powerful can make the truth dance to their song. That is why I brought my own recording.”
The boy reached into the generous fold of his clothes. His hand emerged curled around a shiny black sphere the size of a plum, embroidered with blue lines of Slack charge. A tug through metal-nature set it humming. The hum turned into a voice: rasping and faltering, the last words of a man speaking a language Akeha did not understand.
“I spoke to your man Jawal before he died. His story contradicts everything you’ve said. It would be quite scandalous if people were to hear of it.” He paused to let the implications s
ink in, like dye in a vat of water. When the Protector’s expression was sufficiently dismayed, he said, “I want Kirpa returned to us unharmed. Reparations must be made to the family. After that, we can discuss the terms of my ascension to the Grand Monastery.”
“Very bold,” Mother said. She tilted her head. “Do you really think you can threaten me with one insignificant recording?”
“Are you willing to risk it? You know how restless we Gauri are. The last riots you had were years ago, and your soldiers were overwhelmed. You had to beg the Grand Monastery’s pugilists for help. Can you bear more children for them? Or will it be grandchildren this time?”
Well done, Akeha thought. Thennjay had pushed Mother in ways they could only dream of. As a surge of genuine pride rose in them, they laughed into the ensuing, echoing silence.
Mokoya turned and fixed them with an acid glare.
Blood cooled in Akeha’s belly. That single gesture outlined, in a dizzy rush, what they should have realized a long time ago: That in this, as with all things, they were expected to remain in the background, quiet and passive.
In defeat, Mother’s face was a mask of deepest ice, pale and solid, betraying no trace of emotion whatsoever.
A clack of wood-on-tile echoed through the chamber. A familiar, rasping voice spoke up from the back: “Is this not something I should have a say in?”
Leaning heavily on a cane, Head Abbot Sung came shuffling up the interminable length of the chamber. He was a trembling, liver-spotted husk of the man Akeha remembered, but there was still enough pride and dignity left in him to face the Protector with bright eyes. Age had yet to diminish his mind.
“Master Sung,” the Protector said, pleasantly enough. Was it Akeha’s imagination, or was Sonami smiling behind her?
“Lady Sanao Hekate.” The Head Abbot was old enough, bold enough to address Mother by her name. “If the boy’s fitness for office is in doubt, the monastery has protocols, our ancient rituals, that can put them all to rest.”
