Peasprout Chen--Battle of Champions
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“You can’t even complete a simple loyalty test!” Sensei Madame Yao spits back. “I’ll club her in the knee and we’ll see how loyal—”
Sensei Madame Liao snaps, “Enough! If you so much as touch that girl with a blade of grass, I swear by the Enlightened One that—”
Sensei Madame Chingu begins to whimper piteously. Sagacious Monk Goom says, “Be very nice! Chingu hates fighting. She is a lover of peace now.”
Sensei Madame Liao says, “I told you that this was a ludicrous idea. And I told you that we need no further assurance of loyalty from Chen Peasprout.”
The Chairman says, “That’s correct. No need for a test, because we already know that we can’t trust anything she says. The little bird always sings whatever song will get someone to open her cage door.”
“Is this a review hearing regarding my sanctuary status?” I demand. “I haven’t had a chance to compete in the Third Annexation yet.”
Sensei Master Ram says, “No, Chen Peasprout. We need your help in interpreting something. We received a letter orb from Zan Aki. He had it smuggled out of the Empress Dowager’s palace wrapped in the peel of an orange. Or so we are told by the merchant who delivered it to us. It could be a feint planted by the Empress Dowager herself. That’s why you need to confirm some things Zan Aki said in it.”
“Can’t the Chiologists tell if he was saying the words against his will?”
“The Chiologists listened to his tone and unanimously decided that he was not speaking against his will. But the Empress Dowager is cunning. That’s why we need your help. Because you’ve met her.”
“So have Yinmei and Hisashi. They spent a whole year in the palace.”
Sensei Madame Liao answers, “But we do not know them as we know you, Peasprout.”
I say to her, “So you want me to help you figure out the truth. Truth suddenly matters so much to you now?” Sensei Madame Liao returns my gaze with meaning.
“Truth is a luxury…” With a flick of a glance in the direction of the Chairman and Sensei Madame Yao, she adds, “… for those in power.”
What is she saying? That she was threatened into silence? That the Chairman and Sensei Madame Yao staged some sort of quiet overthrow of the powers at Pearl Famous?
“That’s never a good excuse,” I say. “I always found a way to tell the truth. And I’m only a fifteen-year-old girl.”
“You’re not only anything, Chen Peasprout,” she says softly. “You never were.”
My Chi pounds with emotion. So Sensei Madame Liao does appreciate me. She just wasn’t in a position to save me. She couldn’t be what I wanted her to be for me. But it’s not because she didn’t care. It’s not because she didn’t see me. I still want to be hurt and angry at her. But, ah, make me drink sand to death, I’m not.
“All right,” I say. “What do you need me to confirm?”
Sensei Master Ram says, “Zan Aki said in his letter orb that the Empress Dowager always sat behind a curtain when she appeared in public. Is he speaking in metaphor or was this actually so?”
“Yes. Every time.”
“Did you hear talk in the palace about this?”
“I was only there for a month during the Brightstar competition.”
“Please think. Did you hear any talk about why she hid behind a curtain?”
“Yes, but it was silly.”
“Please let us decide what is silly.”
“I heard rumors that the Empress Dowager had resorted to sorcery to unnaturally extend her life. She had been on the throne as dowager for eighty-eight years since the Emperor died. She was one hundred and six years old and yet still refused to name an heir. They said that the elixirs had extended her life but made her appearance monstrous. And that’s why she hid behind the curtain.”
“Who did you hear say this?”
“The other girls who were competing. A few servants, I think. And once, after a performance, I heard some conversation among the Great Council of Holy Men, who were speaking in classical Shinian and didn’t think that a girl from Shui Shan Province would understand them.”
The senseis all trade glances filled with import.
“What have I said?” I ask.
“What we needed to know. Thank you, Chen Peasprout.”
“May I ask why you asked me these things?”
Sensei Madame Yao says, “That girl is in no position to be—”
Sensei Master Ram cuts her off. “Oh, I think we’ve had enough words out of you today, Madame. And if we need any more, we still have the rest of this speech that you wrote for Supreme Sensei. What was that part you wrote about ‘our love for peace, which is as strong as Sensei Madame Yao’s magnificent physique’?”
All the senseis burst into laughter. Sensei Madame Yao’s head jerks around the room, like she’s looking for a gong to batter.
Sensei Master Ram continues, “You are entitled to an explanation, Chen Peasprout. We needed you to confirm how widespread these rumors about the Empress Dowager’s purported use of sorcery are within the palace. We are considering sending an expedition of exorcists disguised as diplomatic emissaries to the Empress Dowager’s court.”
“But sorcery isn’t real,” I say.
“No more real than dragons,” he answers.
I don’t make any reply to this, but watch him carefully. His skills of communication are so powerful and his control of his Chi so advanced, I can’t read anything from his tone. Could he be indicating that he knows that I know more than I’m supposed to know?
Before I can decide, he says, “It doesn’t matter what is and isn’t real. What matters is that there are already rumors of sorcery. We’re sending the exorcists to fan these embers.”
“For what purpose?”
“To encourage the Great Council of Holy Men to rise up, declare her a sorceress … and burn her.”
So here it is. I swallow thickly. I have again helped draw back the bow aimed at my enemy’s head. Have I sealed the Empress Dowager’s death decree?
May our arrow strike before hers does.
Sensei Master Ram continues, “You doubtless understand that many lives would be endangered if this information were shared.”
“Yes, of course,” I say.
“Thank you for your assistance in the effort to keep Pearl safe, Chen Peasprout. I know that you have involved yourself in our defense in ways that should be asked of no child. We would not have asked it of you if we did not know you to be equal to the burden. If it were up to me, I would say that you have already more than proven your loyalty and value to Pearl.”
I bow deeply and say, “Thank you, Sensei.”
“Oh, and, Peasprout,” he adds. “Blast them out of the water tomorrow at the Third Annexation.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
One winter in Shui Shan Province, when I was eight, while out early searching for winter nuts for Nun Hou, I encountered a bright sunrise during a snowfall. The sky was thick with clouds except for a layer on the horizon, where the wind had swept the cover away. The dawn tinted the snow around me orange like blessings from a goddess, and I shouted, “Do you see that?” But of course, there was no one to look at it with me. Because I was all alone.
This is what it’s like now, here in the Garden of Whispering Arches, with the afternoon sun of the Season of Drifts piercing through.
Except that the flakes around me are floating up, not down.
And they’re glowing with the gold of a sun heading toward setting, not rising.
And most important of all, I’m not alone.
Cricket, Doi, Hisashi, Yinmei.
My battleband.
It’s almost time for us to join the rest of the second-years in Divinity’s Lap for the Third Annexation. There are two hours left before sunset and the winds of the Western Belch pick up. But I wanted to gather them here. It’s not just that I want Nobody and the Fire-Chickens to enter together with style. It’s that I want to tell them how much they mean to me.
I turn to Doi and open my mouth, but pause when I notice that the second button on her academy jacket is undone. I begin to tell her to do her button, but then I notice that Hisashi’s second button is also undone.
I look closer. The second buttons aren’t undone.
They’re missing.
Doi and Hisashi each have a hand thrust in the pocket, each undoubtedly clutching a button. Cricket and Yinmei look at me, then look at the empty buttonholes I’m squinting at. They don’t understand the significance, but they see from my face that I do.
As stated in The Imperial Anthology of Exotic and Inscrutable Pearlian Customs and Behaviors, Pearlian students often remove the second button from their school uniforms and offer them to an object of adoration in order to propose formal status as a couple. They use the second button because it’s believed to be located closest to the heart.
It’s clear that after this Annexation is over, Yinmei and I are each going to be offered a button.
Yinmei watches me as a tumult of emotions fans through my Chi and probably my face as well: joy, tenderness, a desire to flee, an impulse to stand here for eternity, a sudden awareness that I didn’t clean my teeth after eating onions at midmeal. I don’t know if either of us is ready for this, but I know that whatever we decide, we decide it in safety with one another. I stuff the pages of my speech back into the pocket of my jacket.
I clear my throat and say simply, “You are all very, very important to me.”
There is warm silence. Then it’s punctuated by a choked hiccupping sound.
It comes out of Yinmei’s throat.
She purses her lips, trying to clamp the tremble from them.
She reins in her emotions and says, “I had no idea when I came here that this would be the happiest year of my life. Whatever destiny brings and whatever destiny takes, we will always have this year. Thank you for that. I had no idea. No idea.”
Yinmei takes Doi’s hand, and Doi’s eyes shimmer with tears.
We hear the orchid clarion at the Hall of Lilting Radiance sound. It’s time.
We turn our drumblades in unison toward Divinity’s Lap. We begin to beat on the drums as we drive slowly forth, singing together in chorus “The Pearlian Battlesong”:
“‘Sisters of the skate,
“‘Brothers of the blade,
“‘Come and lend your hands and stand up for your motherland.
“‘Answer the command,
“‘Come and join our band!’”
We bring our drumsticks down hard on the back set of drums, leaping over the moat onto Divinity’s Lap as all heads turn toward us. We pound furiously as we shout:
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘“Come and join our band!”’”
A great sequence of cracks resounds from the cannonskiffs, and everyone looks to the east.
Twenty yellowish balls as big as summer melons come slinging across the water at us. When they hit, they burst apart into soft chunks like pieces of firm tofu.
A sound that is something between a chord being strum and a scrape of metal blasts over us. We can actually see the sound’s flight across the campus by the ripples it makes through the floating drifts in the air and across the water. It slams into one of the skiffs, sending it flipping end over end.
We turn back to look at the source of the sound. Dappled Lion Dao blows the frosted bangs out of his eyes. He and the rest of the Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots stand next to giant Edaian shamisens taller than they are, glistening with magnetized metallic strings. Their instrument picks are the size of oars, large enough to scrape crusted creatures off the bottom of a whale.
Sensei Madame Yao’s voice booms from the orchid clarion of the Hall of Lilting Radiance. “One point to the Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots!”
The pearl beneath our drumblades shudders, and we turn to see Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess striding in bounding steps across the campus. She lifts one huge foot off the edge of the Principal Island and onto a raft in the water below, then the other foot. She slowly moves forward on the two rafts as if skating on the water, holding what looks like a giant Edaian origami blossom in her hands.
The twenty cannonskiffs crack, and cannonballs fly toward Radiant Thousand. She tugs apart two tabs on the folded paper flower, and it snaps out into a giant geometric parasol shield. The balls smash into bits against the shield, except for one ball, which rebounds and smashes into the water in front of a cannonskiff, capsizing it.
“One point to Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess!” announces Sensei Madame Yao.
“Let’s get some of these points,” I shout. “Crick, commence confounding strategy overture number three. Doi, throw it!”
Crick patters on his front-left drum and back-right drum to skid his drumblade in a half circle. With another pound of the back drums, he flies off toward the Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots to start his interfering maneuvers.
Doi flings the Repeller that she plucked off the pier this morning. It flies in a tumbling arc and spears into the sea with a crack, sending a storm of blue sparks scurrying around it.
Doi, Hisashi, Yinmei, and I continue to thunder on our drumblades harder and harder as we speed toward the edge of the Principal Island. As we approach the cliff overhanging the sea, our drumsticks beat out a trill that ends in a rumbling pop, and we leap off the edge and onto the sea.
We speed over the water and swerve around the legs of Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess. With the roar of our drums and the snap of our cloaks as we sweep across the ocean, we sing:
“‘Come to summon some
“‘Of what you would become.
“‘Come to understand the grandeur of the greater plan.
“‘Answer the command,
“‘“Come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘“Come and join our band!”’”
We approach the first cannonskiff. Its cannon turret swivels to track us.
“Separate!” I order. “Then execute plunging dolphin bob song!”
Doi and Yinmei veer off to the left, then split up, Hisashi and I peel off to the right, then divide.
The turret jerks back and forth as it tries to decide which of us to aim at.
We take lucky paths that weave around it. Then, as we approach it from all sides, we each execute a trill that sends the noses of our drumblades rising up. At the peak of the arc, we hammer down on the back drums, driving our drumblades plunging into the water.
Our metal blades repel off the sea’s magnetization with great force and we come popping out of the water under the cannonskiff, sending it flying into the sky and toppling over.
“One point to Nobody and the Fire-Chickens!” announces Sensei Madame Yao from across the water.
We regroup and, with rattles and beats, align like a team of raging mares toward the next cluster of cannonskiffs. There are three of them grouped tightly, side by side. We position ourselves so that only the one closest to us can get good aim.
The front cannon shoots ball after ball at us. We slam down on our drums to shift and dodge around them. The missiles hurtle past us harmlessly into the water, but they keep us from taking a clean shot at the cannonskiffs.
The third-year students finally figure out that they should realign their cannonskiffs to have b
etter access. They circle around to form a wall of cannons facing us.
As I see the cannons jerk back, I holler, “Rearing-mare fanfare!” We thunder down on our front drums, causing our blades to rise and fly forward with only the back tips trailing in the water. We present only blades to the line of cannonballs flying at us.
Our raised blades slice the cannonballs as they hit, and the halves fly past us on either side.
As we drive toward the line of three cannonskiffs, I call out, “Deploy magnets!” We each pull out one of the magnets we secreted from Sensei Master Ram’s classroom. We snap our arms out and aim the magnetized disks at the cannonskiffs as we pound on alternating drums. We weave in and out between the cannonskiffs, flicking our wrists as Crick taught us. The air is filled with the sound of wood creaking and nails singing as they fly out of the planks and ping against our metal disks. With a crumple and a moan, the cannonskiffs collapse all at once into a pile of wooden boards.
We drive away, leaving the wood and the stunned students bobbing in the sea.
Sensei Madame Yao announces, “Three points to Nobody and the Fire-Chickens!”
Doi, Yinmei, Hisashi, and I lift our drumsticks in the air, twirl them in our fingers, and bang all eight of them together.
We scream with all the air in our chests:
“‘No one can deny
“‘Someday we will die!
“‘How we live and what we give will be determinative!
“‘Answer the command,
“‘“Come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!
“‘“Come and join our band!”’”
Overhead, several of the Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots are careening on their battle-kites toward a trio of cannonskiffs. As the sparkle-pilots prepare to dive down, a blast from a magnetized giant metal shamisen punches into them, sending them and their crumpled kites crashing into the face of Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess. The pilots spiral into the water as Etsuko tries to disentangle herself from pieces of kite and moaning sparkle-pilots.