A droplet of blood trickled from my fist. I relaxed my hand. There could be no retreating to the past, no making other choices that might lead me into the mountains with my grandmother and my uncle. I would grit my teeth, press on, and hope to glean deeper truths through the fog of Hand Usher’s teaching.
* * *
The next day, we returned to the lakeside pavilion. Hand Usher brought along a basket of stones of varying shapes and sizes.
“That,” he said, pointing to the placid surface of the lake. “Is the pattern of the world, flowing according to its own laws and logic, undisturbed.”
He selected a stone and tossed it into the water, then gestured to the ripples that roiled out from where the stone had struck toward the cattails near the shore.
“The stone was a spell,” he said. “See how it disturbs the waters? The ripples are not the stone itself, but only the evidence of its passing. You are a cattail. See how the ripples move them?”
He threw more stones, of different shapes, then into different parts of the lake, and bade me note how some ripples were larger, others smaller, some close together and others far apart, and how the cattails bent and swayed differently depending on the ripples that reached them.
“Each spell leaves a different wake in the world,” he said. “Your tetragram--in addition to granting you the canon--gives you the ability to sense those wakes. When you become a master at reading them, you can know what magic an enemy wields, and how to react accordingly, even before the spell strikes you. By following them to their source, you can find the one who cast the spell.”
“So long as the stone falls near enough,” I said, and threw a small stone to the far side of the lake. Its ripples died well before they reached the cattails.
This, coupled with the sorcery of transmission, must have born the rumor with which Clear-River had threatened me. The Emperor could not see into the minds of his Hands, as he communed with his Voices, but he did convey the canon of sorcery to us. Perhaps he always felt the wake of the canon’s use, no matter how far away. I asked Hand Usher about this. He hefted another stone and held it out to me.
“You are the hand, he is the mind, and the Voices are the muscles and meridians that bind you together,” he said. “If I have decided not to throw this stone, but to give it to you, is it possible for my hand to disobey me?”
I stared at him, wondering if I would ever receive a clear answer to any of my questions.
“If it did, you might want to call a doctor,” I said.
“Ha! But the Empire is nothing if not healthy, and sorcery is its life blood. Now, let us turn to a practical lesson.” He handed me the stone, then set off toward the center of the garden. “Stay here until you feel the wake of my sorcery.”
“And then what?” I said.
He smiled that ghost of a smile. “Come and find me.”
Half an hour later, I felt the chill in my lungs and flush on my skin that told of battle-sorcery. It took me until long after dark to find him--sitting in a servant’s closet with a book and a candle, playing lightning across his fingertips. At first, I had little to go on but the strengthening of the sensation as I drew closer to him, or its weakening if I wandered in the wrong direction. But as we repeated the exercise again and again in the days to come I learned to read the ripples through the pattern of the world like a map.
Some mornings I would wake with a feverish flush and a cold wind in my chest, and he would already be gone, hiding somewhere in the estate, and later the city, holding a spell--more powerful the further he had ventured--and waiting for me to find him.
Once, after six months of such practice, I followed the wake of his spell beyond the city walls. At dusk I found him in an abandoned field, though at first sight I thought him a blazing star fallen from the sky. Arcs of lightning spilled from his chest, his back, his shoulders, burning furrows in the earth and leaving behind steaming streaks of glass. I came as close as I dared. Still, my body pulsed with heat, and my lungs felt like blocks of ice. It was the most brilliant and horrifying display I had witnessed since I watched my grandmother become an eagle-hawk.
He saw me and released the spell. The last bolt of lightning fizzled with a hiss and crack. The sensation of its wake faded and left me feeling both reassured and threatened. The canon of sorcery would not give me the knowledge and mastery to wield magic according to my own will, but I could no longer question the power I would wield as Hand. The same power that would be leveled against me, if the secrets carved into my right palm were discovered.
“Well done,” Hand Usher said, and strode past me, back toward Eastern Fortress. “You’re as sure-nosed as a huntsman’s hound, and ready for your next lesson.”
* * *
The more familiar I became with the canon of sorcery, the more I theorized about witchcraft, and about the deeper power I had felt that first night, before the witch-marks, when magic had seemed to fill the world around me, waiting only for the motion of my will. My growing understanding of the canon's limitations had helped me to see my grandmother in a new light. Her witch-marks had constrained my power, yes, but not nearly so rigidly as the canon. And it seemed that no one in the world--save perhaps the Emperor himself--wielded magic without some mediating limitation, whether an ancient pact or the designs of Empire.
I had begun to forgive her, for the witch-marks if not for her abandonment, and longed for the opportunity to delve into the magic of her people. To find its boundaries and search them as I had searched the structures of the canon for any remnant scrap of mastery. But I could not risk experimenting. Hand Usher lived in the room next to mine, and at that proximity would feel the wake of a conjured candle-flame.
Autumn was upon us when Hand Usher began to teach me the next sorcery in the canon. Lotus pods stripped of their petals jutted near the shore. Hand Usher held a songbird, its blue feathers bright against the yellow silk that swaddled it. It had been mauled by one of the cats that roamed the governor’s estate. It lay still, dosed with a drop of poppy oil, but breathed in quick, agitated gasps.
“Left alone, the bird will die,” Hand Usher said. “It has lost too much blood, and its body cannot recover quickly enough to survive. With the sorcery of healing, we can speed that process and save its life.”
He spread his hand over the bird and moved into the third channel. Familiar glassy flames burned from his tetragram, but the wake through the world that I felt was gentler than battle-sorcery. A wash of calm. A softening of colors and muting of sound. A feeling like a first sip of tea on a chill winter morning.
The bird’s wound knit itself. Its breathing eased. New feathers sprouted around its scar. Hand Usher placed it in one of the cages hanging from the eaves of the pavilion, where a teacup of sunflower seeds and millet waited. It set upon the food with quick jabs of its beak, as though it had not been on the edge of death just a moment ago.
“This sorcery only supplements the body’s capacity to heal,” Hand Usher said. “If the body is too weak--as in the old or very ill--the healing may strain it unto death. And though the danger of the wound has passed, the bird must eat to replenish its strength or else starve.”
Here, in the sorcery of healing, I saw the hint of an answer to one of my oldest questions--how had my grandmother undone my greatest mistake? I, too, had been left weak and on the edge of death. Only Doctor Sho’s medicines had restored my strength. Seeing the bird hale again, my curiosity overcame my self-control.
“I do not mean to offend, Hand Usher,” I said. “It is only…this sorcery seems miraculous. Battle-sorcery was easier to comprehend. But this…What are the limits? If I were to cut off one of the bird’s legs, could that leg be regrown through sorcery? Or perhaps a new leg grafted in place of the old? Could we deceive the body and graft on a second set of legs, or wings?”
I felt the scrutiny of Hand Usher’s gaze and knew that I had overstepped.
“Better, and more compassionate, to ask why we Hands do not dedicate ourselves to roam
ing the countryside mending wounds and reviving the sick,” Hand Usher said. “But the answer is the same; the Emperor has a purpose in mind for us, just as he has a purpose in mind for healing sorcery. Perhaps the barbarian gods and their worshippers could do the things you describe, but the limits of sorcery are bound by the Emperor’s will, and the Emperor does not will such abuses of nature.”
What of my lessons in horsemanship? What of my friendship with Oriole? Was I not meant to learn that there is a place for easing the reins, a need at times to step outside convention?
Perhaps Hand Usher had introduced the idea that boundaries might acceptably be stretched only to observe whether I would break them. Was I even now failing the most important of all his tests?
“I seek knowledge only that it might better my service to the Emperor,” I said.
“Your curiosity is an asset to you, Alder, but when an answer is given you must learn to accept it,” Hand Usher said. “Let that be your lesson for today. When you have learned it, we will return to sorcery.”
I felt my frustration with Hand Usher as a tension in my back and shoulders, a tightness in my stomach. I longed for my grandmother, or for Koro Ha--for a teacher who would say what he meant, and who had not begun our relationship with a threat.
As dusk settled over the estate, I sought out Oriole. We often took meals together, eating between rounds of stones or while I quizzed him on the Sienese classics. That night I had no appetite for scholarship or games, but if I went to sulk in my rooms my ill feelings would only fester.
“Ah, Alder!” Oriole said. “Good timing. I just finished this essay and could use some--”
“Tomorrow, I promise,” I said. His room had taken on a permanent reconfiguration to accommodate our friendship. The bed had been moved against one wall to make room for two chairs and a table always ready with the stones board, the bottle I had bought him for his help, and our mismatched pair of cups. I poured myself a drink.
Oriole put away his writing tools and joined me at the table. I handed him the bowl of black stones and made my first move. The click of stone against board set my teeth on edge.
“You look like a hornet flew up your robe,” Oriole said.
“Make your move,” I said, more harshly than I intended.
Oriole put up his hands as though I’d threatened to strike him. “If it’s none of my business, fine, but I’ve never seen you so agitated.”
How could I explain myself to Oriole? He knew something of my contorted home life, bounded by a rigorous education that left no time for games like stones, though I had said nothing of magic or my grandmother’s lessons.
Oriole placed his stone. “What is it, Alder? You're learning sorcery, aren't you? Or has Usher put some absurd new hurdle in your path?”
I placed my next stone, staring at the board. How much could I tell him? I knew his own frustrations with his father, and the examinations, and the structures of Sienese society. Could he hear mine, without seeing through them to those parts of my mind first cultivated by my grandmother?
“I’ll send for food,” he said, and stood, and I realized that I needed to speak my mind, to be heard and understood honestly by another. To feel a little less alone in a world where the boundaries of my bifurcated upbringing had left me isolated. Who in my life could I trust with such thoughts, if not Oriole?
“I’m beginning to think Hand Usher’s vagaries are not an intentional teaching style,” I said.
Oriole settled back into his chair, a meal forgotten for the time being.
“Pinion and I had a bet going on when you’d finally get fed up with him,” he said. “I won, of course. Pinion thought you’d snap a month ago.”
“I thought he wanted me to arrive at the correct conclusions on my own, rather than just giving them to me,” I said. “Now I think he’s just parroting the same circuitous nonsense he heard from his own teacher. Worse, it isn’t only an unwillingness to discuss sensitive questions, or ignorance. He seems totally incurious about the answers!”
I described my lesson in the sorcery of healing and Hand Usher’s recalcitrance, though I chose not to mention the memories the lesson had conjured up. Oriole was my friend, but he was still Sienese, and the son of a Voice. He would neither understand nor forgive certain of my secrets.
“Maybe sorcery just can’t do the things you described,” Oriole said. “It might be as simple as that.”
“Why wouldn’t it be able to?” I said. “Nothing I suggested seems to deviate from what he showed me, only apply it in different ways.”
“Maybe it’s possible, but the Emperor doesn’t give you those powers.”
“Well then, why doesn’t he?” I said, disappointed that Oriole didn’t seem to grasp my deeper frustration.
“You may as well ask why imperial doctrine exists,” Oriole said. “Or why the classics are featured on the imperial examinations, but not the mythic romances--much more interesting stories, by the way, and just as meaningful.”
“The examination can’t cover everything,” I said. “Else you’d need an entire lifetime to study for it.”
“Sorcery is the same, isn’t it?” Oriole said. “You have to learn how to use it before you can serve the Emperor as his Hand. Sorcery is just like everything else in Sien--curated. That which is best and most useful to the Empire is elevated over things like adventure stories or grafting extra wings onto birds or whatever.”
I felt the urge to push back on that point, using Oriole himself as an example. He had been left out of that curation when he failed the imperial examinations, after all. Did that mean he was not useful to the Empire? I swallowed those words, however. There was no need to hurt him simply to get my point across.
“This is bigger than books,” I said instead. “This is about the power to re-shape the world itself. Why would the Empire cut itself off from any benefit or use magic might possibly provide?”
Oriole paused and studied me. He placed a stone and leaned back in his chair.
“Maybe there are parts of the world the Empire doesn’t want re-shaped?” he said. “Or maybe it isn’t your place to re-shape them?”
His words dredged up the story of the pollical cat. Hand Usher’s first and most important lesson--if I wanted to survive in the service of the Empire, I needed to know what I was.
And what was I? The Emperor’s Hand. The agent of his will. Entitled to no knowledge or power beyond what the Emperor deigned to give me.
The next day--after I nursed my hangover with millet gruel, black tea, and fried dough--I returned to Hand Usher in the pavilion behind the porous stone. Mist curled between the songbird cages and caught the sunlight, filling the pavilion with a golden glow. Hand Usher looked up from the book he was reading. I did not take my seat beside him but knelt on the wooden floor.
“Are you ready to learn, Hand Alder?” he said.
“I have been a fool,” I said. “Are there any in the Empire whose place it is to know the things I have asked?”
The ghost of a smile drifted onto Hand Usher’s face. “The Emperor, of course, and his Voices.”
“Only them?” I said, dejected. I had been the first Hand of the Emperor from Nayen--what were the odds that I would be the first Voice as well?
“There are some in the Imperial Academy,” Hand Usher said, and hope welled within me. “Researchers who serve the Emperor by analyzing new magics recovered from conquered provinces.”
“Then I will do all I can to one day join them,” I said.
“A worthy goal,” Hand Usher said. “And one well suited to your temperament. But first, you must master the six sorceries. Let us return to your lessons.”
As the sun burned away the mist, I practiced the sorcery of healing, restoring a torn ginseng leaf still on the tree, then the broken foot of a captured mouse, then a cut that Hand Usher inflicted on his own finger.
I learned the sorcery of healing more slowly than I had mastered battle-sorcery. It was not as simple as it had first appea
red. Some wounds--cuts, bruises, hairline fractures--could be restored with a direct application of sorcery. More complex injuries and ailments required a defter hand and deeper knowledge of medicine and anatomy.
After a third songbird died in my care, Hand Usher bade me focus on mastering the natural sciences before we progressed any further. Months passed, and then a year, while I returned to that easiest and most comfortable task: devouring books. Meanwhile I continued to tutor Oriole, who improved notably from week to week and month to month, until I was certain he would pass the imperial examinations when he next sat for them.
Altogether I spent two years of my life in the garden of Voice Golden-Finch learning from Hand Usher and befriending Oriole. A time I recall with mingled fondness, heartbreak, and frustration. A time that came to an end when the rebellion simmering in the north of Nayen at last boiled over, and the governor sent me to war.
Chapter Eleven
Strategy and Tactics
In the early spring of my nineteenth year, word of an uprising in the north of Nayen reached Eastern Fortress. Nayeni bandits had come down from their mountain holdfasts to attack imperial patrols and raise their flags in the towns and villages that dotted the foothills. Shortly after this news reached us, Voice Golden-Finch sent a letter written in his calligraphy, sealed with his personal tetragram, and delivered by his steward to my rooms. It named me second-in-command of the punitive force that would be sent to drive the emboldened rebels back into hiding--or exterminate them, if possible. Along with the order came a summons to his audience hall that afternoon.
My mind reeled. I was being put in command? And of a force that would be fighting Nayeni, at that. Was this the same group of bandits--I wondered, with a pang of dread--led by my uncle? The rebellion my grandmother had gone to join?
That had been seven years ago. They might not even have been alive.
At any rate, I felt wildly unprepared to lead fighting men. I had read tactics--the Classic of Battle and the Treatise on Logistical Analysis were required for the imperial examination--but I had no military experience. The only martial training I had was the Nayeni Iron Dance--which I had not practiced in years--and my games of stones with Oriole, which at least fostered strategic thinking and taught a facsimile of battle tactics. Of course, he still won four of every five games we played.
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