The Hand of the Sun King

by J. T. Greathouse

  I spent the next several days packing, while my father’s friends and business associates slowly filled our estate near to bursting. Not a single room went empty, and my father boasted that the common house in the nearby village of Ashen Clearing had been all but commandeered by those guests who arrived too late to claim space within our home. The day before I was to return to Eastern Fortress and begin my apprenticeship, our servants--with help from a few young Nayeni girls hired in from the village--laid out long tables in the garden, with seats and place settings for five dozen guests. My father emptied his cellar of its casks and dusty bottles and hired women from the village to weave a wreath of wildflowers, with its centerpiece my name in yellow chrysanthemums as brilliant as gold.

  At noon, our guests took their seats, filling our quiet estate with clamor and conversation. My father seated me at a table, alone, atop a dais beside the garden pavilion. He roved through the crowd, leading the guests one at a time to the pavilion, where each one smiled, dipped their heads, and marveled at the silver lines on my palm while my father said, “I would like you to meet my son, Hand Alder!”

  The faces and names of these strangers slipped from my mind as soon as my father led them away, toward a table piled high with sugar-dusted cakes shaped like hands and stamped with the imperial tetragram. I searched the crowded tables for Koro Ha--or even Mister Yat, who I knew, at least, though we were not friendly. I saw neither. Abstractly, I recognized the incredible expense my father had gone to in celebrating me as an outpouring of his affection, but I felt alone, and used. Not celebrated but displayed, like a jewel in my father’s treasury.

  Perhaps if I perceived my achievement as he did--as valuable in itself, a first step in our family's restoration--I would not have been disgusted by being so displayed. Yet I saw becoming Hand of the Emperor only as a means to the end of magic. One that, as Hand Usher had warned me, shackled me with its own expectations and constraints. Things I could endure a while longer, now that the promise of magic was nearer than it had ever been before. Once I had mastered it, however, I had no intention of dedicating myself to the furthering of my father's ambitions, nor to the advancement of the Empire, nor my grandmother's rebellion.

  While I accepted deferential bows and congratulations and pressed the hands of strangers--putting on a gracious mask over my simmering frustration--I felt a renewal of resolve. As soon as I had mastered magic well enough to do so, I would grasp the freedom it offered and use it to shape a third path.

  Dusk had settled over the garden by the time the last introductions were made. Bottles and casks were breached in the light of a hundred hanging lanterns, each decorated with the imperial tetragram in golden ink. My father had quizzed me on the dishes served at the reception for successful examinees so that he could serve the same menu. Of course, our kitchens paled in comparison to Voice Golden-Finch’s, and I flushed with embarrassment as I put aside a plate of undercooked eel. I tried to drown my misery in drink, which only made me more miserable. A cycle which left me thoroughly drunk when my father, all pride and grandiose gesticulations, presented me with a lacquer panel inscribed with our family pedigree, with my name added at the end in bold, eye-catching lines.

  I smiled, and bobbed my head, trying to cast my mind back to the first time I had studied those names with Koro Ha. There was Wen Broad-Oak, my exemplar, who first seeded my mind with the notion that I might one day wield magic. That seven-year-old boy would have been thrilled to see his name so proudly displayed alongside those venerable ancestors. And I did feel a twinge of pride, but more I wanted this night to be over so that I might return to Hand Usher and begin my apprenticeship.

  There were other small rituals meant to celebrate me, but which only deepened my embarrassment. I was made to stand and recite quotations from the sages from memory. My father brought out transcriptions of my examination essays and bade me read them--which I did, until I glanced up and saw that those of our guests who were not engaged in quiet conversation were staring at me, glassy-eyed, bored and uncomprehending.

  These were not the literati I had dined with in Eastern Fortress. These were my father’s friends. Merchants and local landowners--wealthy, but of least importance to the health of the Empire, by Traveler-on-the-Narrow-Way’s reckoning--hailing from this backwoods region of Nayen where my father had put down roots only because he could cheaply build an impressive estate. I looked for my father, and saw him seated with some other merchant, their heads bent close, speaking over me while I read.

  My embarrassment curdled to disgust. I stopped reading in the middle of a sentence. My father roused the crowd into half-hearted applause before returning to his conversation. I sat there on the dais and finished my drink, then stood and retreated to my rooms without a word.

  On the way, I found Koro Ha at last. He stood on the bank of our garden’s shallow pond, a tobacco pipe in one hand and a wine cup in the other. The cacophony of the party reached us as a muted echo, and the pond was lit only by moonlight. Koro Ha had not seen me, yet. He gazed out over the pond, sipped his wine, breathed slowly through the stem of his pipe and blew a ring of smoke. He had never smoked before. Or had he, and only kept it secret from his student?

  At last, he turned, and started at the sight of me.

  “Alder!” He coughed and covered his mouth. When he had recovered, he palmed the bowl of his pipe and held it low, perhaps hoping I had not yet seen it. “Your father has gone to all this expense and trouble for you. You should be there.”

  “Not for me,” I said. “I’m only his excuse to show off. He’s been making the rounds, tying up business connections while I’ve been reading my examination essays.”

  I reached for the pipe. Koro Ha raised his eyebrows. Before, he would never have condoned my indulgence in such a vice. Now, he could hardly refuse me, Hand of the Emperor that I was.

  “You find that insulting,” Koro Ha said, matter-of-factly, and handed over the pipe.

  “I do,” I said. “But perhaps I shouldn’t. My father isn’t well educated. None of those men are.”

  I put the pipe stem to my lips, breathed, and sputtered at the acrid taste and burning pain of the smoke in my lungs. Koro Ha covered his mouth and hid his laughter by clearing his throat. I coughed, spat, and thrust the pipe back into Koro Ha’s hand.

  “Educated or no, he is still your father,” Koro Ha said. “You know the first aphorisms. You know what you owe him.”

  “My rank has changed things,” I said. “I am Hand of the Emperor. What does that make me, if not his elder brother in the great hierarchy of Empire?”

  Koro Ha sighed and offered me the wine cup. I drank. It was mild and mixed with water, and it soothed the burning in my throat.

  “You are ambitious, Alder, and have made good on your ambition,” Koro Ha said. “But try to enjoy your successes as they come. The eye trained always on the next bend in the path never sees the beauty of the forest.”

  “Which sage was that?”

  He smiled. “Koro Ha.”

  I laughed and returned his cup. “Sound wisdom, then, from a reliable source.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Koro Ha said. “I am only a tutor, and you are Hand of the Emperor, soon to be schooled in secret knowledge and sorcerous arts.”

  “Yet I have you to thank for my successes,” I said. “Without your guidance, I would be little more than the foolish son of a simple merchant.”

  “Not at all,” Koro Ha said. “An artisan’s work is only as good as the raw material. As Traveler-on-the-Narrow-Way put it, ‘A great carving is equal only to the quality of the jade.’”

  His words filled my chest and sank into my stomach. All my life I had struggled to meet Koro Ha’s standard. He had pushed me to do better, disciplined me for my mistakes, chastised me for my foolishness. Never had he given me such a compliment.

  Here, at the end of our time together, as I was about to lose a man to whom I was closer than my own father, I longed to knit our minds and hearts t
ogether. I wanted to be sure he would understand all that he had meant to me, my frustrations as well as my gratitude, before I went on to my apprenticeship and he to his next student. Yet I still felt the rift I had hewn between us in my drunken stupidity.

  Already I had cut myself off forever from one pillar of my childhood. My grandmother had abandoned me first, but what had Koro Ha done to me, that I should treat him as I had? Whatever harshness he had shown me, it had been motivated by genuine concern, and genuine belief that success in the imperial examinations would be my best chance for a good, prosperous life in the Empire. Yes, he had been paid to educate me. But he might have done so callously, and less carefully. The tale of the Pollical Cat would have been little more than nonsense, after all, if not for his effort to prepare me for the suspicion the tint of my skin and curl of my hair would bring.

  These thoughts swirled with the fine wines of my father's celebration, rose to the base of my skull where a strange, painful pressure built and built, seeking some eloquent means of release. A means that proved elusive while we stood in an awkward, straining silence.

  Bleed it. I would not let a lack of eloquence rob me of this last chance to apologize. Not when he had treated me with more dignity and kindness than anyone I knew.

  “I'm sorry,” I blurted.

  He paused, the wine cup at his lips, and furrowed his brow. When he said nothing, I pressed on.

  “I treated you badly at the governor's banquet,” I said, letting the words tumble out one after the other, afraid that if I hesitated I might lose my nerve. “You were right. I was drunk, and I did foolish things that nearly cost us both everything. I shouldn't have dismissed your advice, and certainly not just because I placed more highly than you in the examinations.”

  Uncomfortable silence settled between us. Koro Ha studied me, his expression slowly softening.

  “It's alright, Alder,” he said. “I was young and foolish once, too.”

  “It isn't,” I said. “You are my teacher. You saw the best in me. And in return I treated you like a lowly servant and flouted your advice.”

  “You did, and I forgive you,” He smiled and put the stem of his pipe to his mouth. “You will have other teachers, Alder. I know they will see what I have seen. Now, have another drink with me. There's yet more of your father's party to endure.”

  Part Two

  Apprentice

  Chapter Eight

  First Lessons

  I moved into the guest house in the eastern region of Voice Golden-Finch’s garden, which had been given to Hand Usher for the duration of his posting in Nayen. Our rooms overlooked an artificial lake where kingfishers nested in a tall porous stone and often dove to pluck minnows from the water. To the south were the bamboo groves and artificial cliffs which had been the backdrop of the imperial examinations. Grassy fields modeled after the Girzan Steppe sprawled to the north, where the governor’s sons Oriole and Pinion took daily riding lessons. The western part of the garden was the smallest; a flat expanse of sand dotted with standing stones, where the Voice went to rake meditative patterns. At the garden’s heart was the expansive house of the governor and his family, closed even to Hand Usher and I without invitation.

  Hand Usher wasted no time in beginning my lessons. He bade me study maps till I could trace the borders of every province and identify their value to the Empire. Nayen, a mountainous island shield to protect the Empire’s eastern coast. Toa Alon, with gold-rich jungles that crawled over the marble foothills of the Pillars of the Gods, the mountains that were the southern edge of the world. To the north, vast plains for horse and cattle, stretching on and on into tundra where Girzan tribes still roamed. And in the west, the Batir Waste and the oasis-city of An-Zabat, the bridge between Sien and distant lands, source of foreign luxuries but troubled by the incorrigible windcallers. And the heartland, full of forested hills rich with sulfur and rolling plains of wheat and millet.

  When I had mastered the maps, Hand Usher presented me with economic puzzles. As Koro Ha had trained my mind in the structures of classical allusion and sophisticated language, Hand Usher taught me the logic and tactics of trade: how to manipulate lines of credit, to sell surplus that overflowed the storehouses, to balance tax and tariff to encourage desired trade and discourage the superfluous.

  “You have a head for this,” Hand Usher said one day, reviewing my work. “I will put in a good word for you with the Bureau of Economy. Perhaps, when you finish your apprenticeship, you might cut your teeth as a Minister of Trade in some far-flung city.”

  I failed to mask my disappointment. The ghostly smile he so often wore appeared on his lips. “You don’t like that idea?”

  “It isn’t my place to comment,” I said.

  Hand Usher dismissed that thought with a wave of his hand. “Alder, you’re Hand of the Emperor. There are less than a thousand people in Sien who outrank you.”

  “But you are my superior,” I said. “Whatever you think is best, I will do.”

  “Well, I think it best that you tell me how you feel about becoming a Minister of Trade.”

  This was new. Neither my father, my grandmother, nor Koro Ha had ever asked me how I felt about their designs for my life. The slight smile on Hand Usher’s lips did not touch his eyes and made his expression quite impossible to read.

  “I thought my responsibilities as Hand of the Emperor would be…” I sought the right word. “More unique.”

  “Unique in what sense?” Was that a hint of laughter in his voice?

  For two months I had struggled to ignore the tetragram on my palm and the depths of new power it had opened to me. I had trusted that Hand Usher would begin to teach me sorcery when the time was right. Now he taunted me with the mundane. Had I been too careful? How was a person supposed to react when given power for the first time?

  “We alone among the Emperor’s servants wield sorcery,” I said. “I had thought to use it, not hold some bureaucratic office that any successful candidate could fill.”

  “There it is!” Hand Usher said, then stood from the table in our shared common room. “Come, Alder. I want to show you something.”

  Baffled, but not about to protest when I seemed, at last, to be making progress toward the knowledge I desired, I followed Hand Usher without a word. He led me along the curving path that ran the edge of the artificial lake. The smells of hay, manure, and horse sweat met us as we rounded the pine-shrouded hill on the northern shore. The governor’s sons were there with their horsemanship instructor, putting a young stallion through its paces.

  Hand Usher gestured toward the horse. “I present, for your consideration, the world.”

  Oriole, the elder of the two boys, goaded the horse from a trot into a canter, and I looked at Hand Usher skeptically.

  “Not literally,” Hand Usher said. “But, like that young stallion, the world is full of energy. It lunges about, this way and that, never standing still. Left to its own devices, it will bolt, all that pent-up energy culminating in naught but chaos and destruction.”

  The stallion whickered and reared. Oriole twisted his body and pulled on the reins, bringing the horse back under his power.

  “Whoever holds the reins can give that energy focus and direction,” Hand Usher said. “Of course, the world is a many-headed beast with many sets of reins. Military might. Trade and economy. Culture. Social structure. Magic. And there are many pairs of hands reaching for those many reins. So many that the world does not know which way to run, and we are left with just as much chaos as if the beast were to rule itself.

  “History is the story of many kings and many gods, all grasping for the reins of the world, pulling it this way and that, and letting the weak be trampled beneath the chaos wrought by their contest. The promise of the Empire is the promise of order. One king. One god. One Emperor. And we, his many Hands, grasping the reins on his behalf.”

  “And that is why I must learn economics?” I said.

  “Among many other things.” The playfu
lness returned to Hand Usher’s voice. “For example, horseback riding.”

  Without waiting for me to react, he set off across the field, dragging the hem of his robe through muddy grass. I rushed after him, biting back my frustration.

  Though Oriole was of an age with me, I had not spent much time with him in my first months as Hand Usher’s apprentice. While I had buried my face in books of geography and economics, Oriole practiced archery, swordsmanship, and wrestling with the men of his father’s household guard--when he was not on horseback. What few books I had seen him reading were biographies of great generals, treatises on leadership and tactics, and, most frequently, romantic accounts of Sien’s mythic age of heroes.

  When he saw Hand Usher and I crossing the field, Oriole brought his stallion to a walk beside me.

  “Ah, our esteemed guest has stepped out into the sunlight,” he said. “How can we serve you, young Hand of the Emperor?”

  There was mockery in his voice, but I was unsure whether to take it as good-natured ribbing or a genuine insult.

  “Greetings, Young Master Oriole,” Hand Usher said. “I was wondering if you might help me with something. Hand Alder, you see, has never ridden a horse--something which must be rectified.”

  “Father rides when he leads his soldiers,” Oriole said ponderously, “but I thought most Hands were carried to battle in palanquins and fought in silken robes.”

  Hand Usher laughed, but I felt a stab of offense.

  “We are more than scholars,” I said. “As Hand Usher and I were just discussing.”

  “Indeed. We must be whatever the Emperor needs, scholar or soldier,” Hand Usher said sagely. He was still smiling, which only deepened my annoyance.

  Oriole studied me up and down. “Well, you’re no horseman. Not yet, anyway. I’ll start you on a pony.”

  With that Hand Usher bid us a good afternoon, and Oriole took my education in horsemanship in hand. He did indeed start me out on a pony--a gray-maned gelding called Wheat. The old horse stood placidly while Oriole showed me how to brush him down, but when the time came to put on the saddle and tack, the beast snorted and wriggled. I jumped at such sudden motion from a creature easily five times my size, and Oriole laughed.