The Hand of the Sun King

by J. T. Greathouse

  “It is good that you are so ambitious,” he said. “But it will take generations to rebuild our family. Your grandparents--may they rest with our greatest ancestors--began when they sold their pitiful farm to buy my first ship. I have done my part and seen you educated. Now do yours. All you need is a minor station. Enough to hire a truly excellent tutor for your sons. Perhaps one of them, or one of your grandsons, will reach such lofty heights.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But to quote the sage Traveler-on-the-Narrow-Way, ‘Is it not better to strive for the mountain top than to settle in the foothills?’”

  He grinned--to quote the sages was the sort of educated affection he liked to see in me--and led me to the garden pavilion. That night we drank wine together for the first time. I did not tell him that his goals and mine were no longer the same. I would never be satisfied as one paving stone on the road to our family’s restoration. I would press on till I reached the very top of the mountain, for only there did I have any hope of coming to understand the power I had wielded, and which had almost destroyed me.

  In the morning my father returned to his ships, while Koro Ha and I set out for the regional capital. Though my father traveled often in his mercantile endeavors, I had never left the small corner of the world where I was raised. I found the prospect of traveling to the city of Eastern Fortress exciting, but the journey proved far from pleasant.

  The Grand Highway that unites Nayen from north to south still bore scars of the Sienese invasion. All during the three days of our journey, our palanquin bearers navigated deep ruts and uneven cobbles. When I tried to read, the text bounced and shifted before my eyes. When Koro Ha practiced the verbal components of the examination my teeth clicked together on each bump in the road. Once I bit my tongue and tasted blood.

  Late on the third day, our palanquin slowed to a crawl, and I opened the window, expecting to find that we had arrived at our destination. We had passed through the city gates but had progressed little further into Eastern Fortress. Those carrying us now waded through an endless sea of young faces. Some peered from palanquin windows, others were caked in the dust of the road.

  Koro Ha sensed my anxiety. While our palanquin-bearers trudged through Eastern Fortress, he spun tales of the fine meals, opera performances, and tours of the city that would follow my examination. I had never seen opera, nor tasted the foreign delicacies from the distant corners of the Empire--which, he assured me, would be available at the governor’s banquet for successful examinees. His descriptions were a welcome distraction, but the gnawing in the pit of my stomach remained.

  My father had arranged for us to stay with a business associate of his. Mister Yat was the owner of a copper mine, and my father’s merchant fleet often carried his goods to the Sienese mainland. He greeted us, had a steward show us to our rooms, then to the household baths. When we were bathed and dressed Mister Yat sat down with us in his modest courtyard to a meal of seared salmon in oyster sauce, braised greens, jasmine rice, and carrots fried in red pepper oil.

  “I remember when Thistle, my second boy, sat the exams,” Mister Yat said, flashing a golden molar around a mouthful of fish. “This was nine years ago. I took him to Center Fortress myself to make sure he wouldn't shirk the bloody thing and waste his allowance on mainland luxuries. Poor boy nearly shat himself from nervousness, but he passed. Now he’s a scribe for some general in Toa Alon. Your father’s the craftiest bastard I ever dealt with. If you’ve got half his brains--even if the other half’s all muddled by Easterling blood--you’ll pass.”

  I chafed at the slur, but it would violate propriety to criticize my host. He poured plum wine for us that was sweet, mild, and a welcome distraction from my anxieties. I soon drained my cup. Mister Yat moved to refill it. Koro Ha turned his cup upside-down and eyed mine meaningfully.

  “You will need a clear head tomorrow,” he said.

  “Let the boy have a little fun,” Mister Yat said. He righted Koro Ha’s cup and filled it. “A relaxed mind is a nimble mind! I’m not sure which sage said that, but I’m sure one of them did.”

  Koro Ha pushed the cup away. “My apologies, Mister Yat. Thank you for your hospitality, but young Master Wen--muddled blood or no--will be more than a minor scribe to some far-flung general.”

  Koro Ha stood and bowed to our host. At the door to the guest wing he paused and studied me expectantly. The wine was already going to my head, but I knew better than to disobey my tutor when he wore that expression. Mister Yat mumbled about what a pleasure it was to help my father and wished me luck on my examinations, then poured himself another cup.

  As we entered the reception hall of the guest wing, Koro Ha paused, and I feared that he meant to put me through my exercises one last time. Instead he picked up the brush case that my mother had given me to commemorate my examination. It was beautiful, layered in black lacquer painted with alder branches. He held it out, and I took it, feeling the same momentous weight I felt when my grandmother named me.

  “You will do us proud, Wen Alder,” Koro Ha said. “I hope you sleep well.”

  I lay awake recalling and reviewing the hundreds of discourses and aphorisms, fretting over the dozens of possible essay prompts, and wondering if any of the proctors would recognize the scars on my right hand for what they were. The little sleep I managed was fraught with nightmares. Though I longed to forget the night when I had wielded magic without the witch-marks and veered into an abomination, my dreaming mind saw fit to dredge up forgotten moments of the long, tortured crawl along the overgrown path. In the nightmares I felt the stone eyes of the wolf gods, as though they followed me through the woods. Their whispered words drifted from the shadows at the forest edge.

  “This one?”

  “Unworthy.”

  “Failure.”

  I was into my fourth cup of deep black tea before Koro Ha woke. His gaze lingered on the bags under my eyes. What worse omen could he wake to see on the day of my examinations? I feared a reprimand--or, worse, some half-hearted reassurance.

  Instead, my tutor placed his hand on my shoulder and smiled. “I think we all sleep terribly the night before. But it couldn’t hurt to hope.”

  * * *

  The examinees gathered shoulder to shoulder on a marble plaza below the Grand Audience Hall of the governor’s palace. Banners fluttered from flag stands and fragrant smoke wafted from bronze incense burners arranged on the dais atop the stairway in front of us. Sweat soaked the silks of our robes and wilted the felt of our peaked caps.

  The governor strode out from between the twin pillars that framed the entrance to the audience hall, followed by his attendants. He had dressed for the occasion in the peaked cap and flowing robes of a scholar. Two golden wings had been stitched to his sleeves and to the front of his cap, marking him as one who had earned the highest rank in the imperial examinations. Below the rim of his cap, a symbol had been marked on his forehead with what appeared to be silver ink. I recognized it immediately, even from afar: the imperial tetragram, four logograms arranged in a square that together formed the Emperor’s never-changing name.

  The governor mounted the top of the stairwell. As his dark gaze swung over me, I felt it linger for a moment, as though he scrutinized me personally. Did he see in my face some shadow of my notorious uncle? Without thinking, I held my breath, and when his gaze drifted on I heard others around me do the same.

  “Young men of Nayen.” His voice echoed from the walls of the courtyard. “Today you face the greatest honor and trial known to man. For the first time, the brightest young minds of your province shall be elevated to the illustrious civil service of our Empire. And of those, one shall be raised to that highest station of all, the Emperor’s Hand.”

  He held out his right hand. The same tetragram that he wore on his forehead had been pressed into the skin of his palm. “What is done with this hand is done in the Emperor’s Never-Changing Name. Through a hand bearing this seal the Emperor performs his justice. Governors, generals, and s
cholars alone may bear it, and it is time for the people of this land, the Emperor’s youngest adopted son, to be raised to such a station. One of you will leave sealed. Know this, and let it inspire you to excellence.”

  The tetragram on his palm flashed silver. White fire curled around his fingertips. He closed his fist, and the fire flashed bright as lightning, and then was gone. The young men around me cheered, for we were all accustomed to such displays at New Year festivals, and the sight of sorcery brought on feelings of celebration and excitement. Only I remained silent. I had seen sorcery before, but never been close enough to feel it as I had felt my grandmother’s magic.

  When she had conjured flame, my skin flushed as with fever, and when she had veered every muscle in my body ached. The only commonalities to the governor’s sorcery were the phantom scent of burnt cinnamon and the sudden sharpness of my senses. His magic felt more abstract, but weightier, as though walls of stone had fallen from the sky to hem in the pattern of the world.

  A scribe called my name, and then again, drawing my thoughts back to the mundane. I and seven other examinees followed him. They chattered among themselves, while I mulled over the sensation of the governor’s sorcery.

  “What a sight!” said the young man nearest to me. He grinned, dimpling freckled cheeks. His hair hung in red-brown ringlets that rolled out from beneath his cap. “Soon enough one of us will have that power. What do you make of that, eh?”

  Before I could answer we arrived at a wide pavilion that overlooked a lotus pond. Eight writing desks had been arranged in an outward facing ring. The scribe called out names and pointed to desks until we had each been assigned a station. We settled in, arranging our ink stones and paper weights, and waited nervously for the proctors to arrive.

  My hands were shaking. I took a deep breath to steady them and set about arranging my brushes and wetting my inkstone. The rhythmic scrape of grinding ink set my teeth on edge, as did the crinkle of my paper as I smoothed my composition scroll beneath twin weights. I dipped the weasel hair tip of my brush and was relieved to see that my fingers had stopped trembling. Inevitable failure still loomed over my shoulder, tightening my chest and jumbling my thoughts.

  We were instructed to begin our examination by composing our pedigrees. For the next several hours I would kneel in that pavilion and write a description of my lineage in demure language, with special attention paid to those like Wen Broad-Oak who had passed the imperial examinations, a style meant to convey humility even as I boasted of my heritage.

  My hand betrayed me. A tremble stirred my fingers, ruining the brushwork on a minor article. The awkward squiggle taunted me. It in no way changed the meaning of what I had written, but the proctors would be grading our handwriting as well as our composition.

  I glanced around, mortified that I had so immediately stumbled over such an often practiced and simple feat. Surely this failure had already sealed my fate. To go through with the rest of the examination would be a futile exercise. One of these other young men--so much more capable than I, who had destroyed my future with a slip of my nervous fingers--would become Hand of the Emperor, earning the chance at freedom which would always be denied me.

  A strangled cry sounded from elsewhere in the pavilion. A proctor, face hard and sharp as an executioner's sword, swung his head toward the offending sound, then crossed the pavilion with all the destructive force of a typhoon.

  “What is the meaning of this outburst?” the proctor hissed.

  Carefully, I peered over my shoulder. The proctor loomed over an examinee who sat with his head bowed to his chest, his shoulders shaking with strangled weeping.

  “Explain yourself!” the proctor said. The gentle swish of calligraphy brushes fell silent as we all attended to the disruption.

  “I...I....” the pitiful examinee sobbed. Then, without another word, he sprang to his feet and darted from the pavilion, his brushes, ink, and future abandoned.

  The proctor swung his severe gaze around the room. “Surely the rest of you have the mental fortitude to return to your task. Or must I make note that so many eyes drifted away from their own work, perhaps seeking inspiration in the writing of a neighboring examinee?”

  I did as instructed, somewhat heartened by the fact that, at the very least, I had not bolted in my panic. I looked to the blank space beside that offending article. The only way through was forward.

  I shut my eyes and focused first on my fingertips. Then on the tendons and bones of my hands, then the veins of my wrists. Moving up the arms to the elbows, then the shoulders, then the ribs. Finally, the heart. I listened to its beat, felt it slow. A centering exercise performed before the gods of Nayen at the beginning of the Iron Dance.

  I thought only of the next word, the next sentence, the next page, and soon I was swept up in the act of writing.

  After a brief description of my father’s mercantile interests I cleaned my brush and returned it to its case, a signal for one of the proctors to collect my scroll. A calm settled over me as the swishing sounds of brushwork quieted and the other students finished their pedigrees. High overhead, somewhere above the garden, an eagle-hawk cried.

  * * *

  For the rest of that week I felt certain that I would fail, and I gradually abandoned the hope that I might be elevated to Hand of the Emperor and offered, for the first time, a chance to learn magic without secrecy and fear.

  On the first and second days I composed essays and commentaries with haste, always finishing before the other examinees near me, and always convinced that this was because I had neglected some key component of the prompt which had been obvious to everyone else. On the third and fourth days, during the verbal examinations, I paralyzed myself with second guessing. More than once I managed to spit out an answer only after the proctors had thrice repeated themselves.

  On the fifth and final day of the examination, we were taken one at a time to a small pavilion isolated from the rest of the garden by an arc of basalt columns to the north and a grove of bamboo to the south. Two proctors were waiting for me when I arrived. One of the two--a round-faced eunuch with the pinkish complexion of the southern Sienese--had officiated one of my verbal examinations. Beside him sat a man I did not recognize. The gold feathers embroidered on the hems of his sleeves marked him as having earned the first-placement in his own examinations. He smiled at me through his wispy beard and gestured for me to sit. When he did, I saw the glimmer of a tetragram branded on his palm.

  My right hand curled into a fist in the depth of my sleeve. It took every scrap of my self-control to lower myself into the offered seat instead of bolting from the garden to try my luck in the mountains. Surely this Hand of the Emperor could have no reason to pay special attention to me unless he knew about my uncle, or my grandmother, or the marks carved into my flesh.

  “Hello, Wen Alder,” the familiar proctor said. “Allow me to introduce Dow Usher, a Hand of the Emperor recently dispatched to this province. He has asked to observe your final oral examination.”

  I bowed deeply, nearly touching my forehead to the table.

  “It is an honor, Hand Usher. May you know one thousand peaceful years, and the Emperor ten thousand more.”

  The sorcerer dipped his head in acknowledgement, then leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. Though he leaned in his seat like a daydreaming student, his eyes were bright, alert, and unblinking.

  “You will do well, I’m sure,” he told me, off-hand, as though we were already close friends. He turned to the proctor. “Begin, if you would.”

  The proctor retrieved a scroll from his sleeve and began to unroll it. “Young Master Wen,” he said. “This portion of your examination concerns your command of literary analysis and imperial ideology. I will read a narrative, and you will be asked to evaluate it. First in its thematic meaning and literary merit, second in its value as literature to be disseminated throughout the Empire.”

  The proctor began to read, but all my attention was fixated on
the Hand. I knew the rubric that the proctor would use, but by what metrics would Hand Usher evaluate me? I was convinced that he suspected me of something--practicing forbidden magic, or perhaps sympathy with my unsavory relations--and that my answer would either confirm or refute his suspicions.

  The proctor’s story was a common didactic tale. A merchant, his wife, business interests far from home, long periods of separation, followed by affairs, scandal, and so on. The analogies were not difficult to unravel if one understood imperial doctrine.

  “Oof,” Hand Usher interjected, just as I had begun to form an answer. “Does anyone really care about the infidelity of merchant’s wives?” He leaned toward me with a glint in his eye and the ghost of a smile. “I’ve got a much better story in mind. One I’m sure you’ve never heard before. Master proctor, if you will indulge me?”

  “Of course, Hand Usher,” the proctor stammered. “If I have offended you--”

  “No offense at all,” Hand Usher assured him. “Only if I’m going to sit through this, I might as well enjoy myself. Are you ready, young Master Wen?”

  My mind reeled as I tried to anticipate what sort of story Hand Usher had in mind. I took a deep breath to compose myself.

  “I am ready,” I said.

  “Excellent!” Hand Usher said. He clapped his hands together and began his tale.

  * * *

  This is the tale Hand Usher told.

  Long ago, in a far-flung corner of the empire, there was born a pollical cat. This cat possessed a flexible dewclaw, which he could use like a thumb. He was the favored pet of the provincial magistrate and worked for his meals as a mouser.

  But the cat was canny, as many beasts were in those days, and unsatisfied by his menial task. For stimulation, he would listen to the lessons that the magistrate’s son took from his tutor. The boy was indolent, and the cat often arrived at correct answers first.