Ken Liu - The Wall of Storms

Tino glanced at the few coins in the tip bowl on the table and turned back to Scarface. He bowed repeatedly like a chicken pecking at the ground. “Master Farseer, please! That amounts to two week’s earnings even when things are going well. I’ve got an aged mother at home who is ill—”

“Of course you do,” said Scarface. “She’ll miss you terribly if you are held at the constable station, won’t she? A proper interrogation might take days, weeks even; do you understand?”

Tino’s face shifted through rage, humiliation, and utter defeat as he reached into the lapel of his robe for his coin purse. The other patrons looked away carefully, not daring to make a sound.

“Don’t think the rest of you are getting off so easily, either,” said Scarface. “I heard how many of you cheered when he veiled his criticisms of the emperor with that story full of lies. Each of you will have to pay a fine of one silver as an accessory to the crime.”

The men and women in the pub looked unhappy, but a few sighed and began reaching for their purses as well.

“Stop.”

Scarface looked around for the source of the voice, which was crisp, sharp, and uninflected by fear. A figure stood up from the shadowy corner of the pub and walked into the firelight of the stove, a slight limp in the gait punctuated by the staccato falls of a walking stick.

Though dressed in a scholar’s long flowing robes edged in blue silk, the speaker was a woman. About eighteen years of age, she had fair skin and gray eyes that glinted with a steadfastness that belied her youth. The radiating lines of a faint pink scar, like a sketch of a blooming flower, covered her left cheek, and the stem of this flower continued down her neck like the lateral line of a fish, curiously adding a sense of liveliness to her otherwise wan visage. Her hair, a light brown, was tied atop her head in a tight triple scroll-bun. Tassels and knotted strings dangled from her blue sash—a custom of distant northwestern islands in old Xana. Leaning against a wooden walking stick that came up to her eyebrows, she put her right hand on the sword she wore at her waist, the scabbard and hilt looking worn and shabby.

“What do you want?” asked Scarface. But his tone was no longer as arrogant as before. The woman’s scroll-bun and her boldness in openly wearing a sword in Pan indicated that she was a scholar who had achieved the rank of cashima , a Classical Ano word meaning “practitioner”: She had passed the second level of the Imperial examinations.

Emperor Ragin had restored and expanded the civil service examination system long practiced by the Tiro kings and the Xana Empire, turning it into the sole mode of advancement for those with political ambition while eliminating other time-honored paths to obtain valuable administrative posts, such as patronage, purchase, inheritance, or recommendation by trusted nobles. Competition in the examinations was fierce, and the emperor, who had risen to power with the aid of women in powerful posts, had opened the exams to women as well as men. Though women toko dawiji —the rank given to those who had passed the Town Examinations, the first level in the exams—were still rare, and women cashima even rarer, they were entitled to all the privileges of the status given to their male counterparts. For instance, all toko dawiji were exempt from corvée, and the cashima had the additional right to be brought before an Imperial magistrate right away when accused of a crime instead of being interrogated by the constables.

“Stop bothering these people,” she said calmly. “And you certainly won’t be getting a single copper out of me.”

Scarface had not expected to find a person of her rank in a dive like the Three-Legged Jug. “Mistress, you don’t have to pay the fine, of course. I’m sure you’re not a disloyal scoundrel like the rest of these lowlifes.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you work for Duke Coda at all.”

Scarface narrowed his eyes. “You doubt the sign of the farseers?”

The woman smiled. “You put it away so quickly that I didn’t get a good look. Why don’t you let me examine it?”

Scarface chuckled awkwardly. “A scholar of your erudition surely recognized the logograms in a single glance.”

“It’s easy enough to forge something like that out of a block of wax and a coat of silver paint, but much harder to forge a believable order from Farsight Secretary Coda.”

“What—what are you talking about? This is the time of the Grand Examination, when the cream of Dara’s scholars are gathered in the capital. Those who like to stir up trouble would seize the opportunity to harm the talented men, er, and women, here to serve the emperor. It’s natural that the emperor would order Duke Coda to increase security.”

The woman shook her head and continued in a placid tone, “Emperor Ragin prides himself on being a tolerant lord open to honest counsel. He even honored Zato Ruthi, who once fought against him, with the position of Imperial Tutor out of respect for his scholarship. Charging a storyteller with treason for taking some literary license would chill the hearts of the men and women he is trying to recruit. Duke Coda, who knows the emperor as well as anyone, would never give an order to authorize what you’re attempting.”

Scarface flushed with anger, and the thick scar twitched like a snake crawling over his face. But he stood rooted to his spot and made no move toward her.

The woman laughed. “In fact, I think I’ll send for the constables myself. Impersonating an Imperial officer is a crime.”

“Oh no,” whispered Théra in the corner.

“What?” asked Timu and Phyro together in a low voice.

“You should never corner a rabid dog,” moaned Théra.

Scarface’s eyes narrowed as fear of the cashima turned to desperate resolve. He roared and rushed at the cashima . The surprised woman managed to scramble awkwardly out of the way at the last minute, dragging her weak left leg. The lumbering assailant crashed into a table, causing the patrons sitting at it to jump back, cursing and screaming. Soon, he climbed back up, looking even more enraged, swore loudly, and came at her again.

“I hope she fights as well as she talks,” said Phyro. He clapped his hands and laughed. “This is the most fun we’ve ever had sneaking out!”

“Stay behind me!” said Timu, stretching out his arms and moving to shield his brother and sister from the commotion in the center of the pub.

The woman unsheathed the sword with her right hand. Bracing herself against the walking stick, she held the sword in an uncertain manner and pointed its wavering tip at the man. But Scarface seemed to have gone berserk. He continued to rush at her without slowing down and reached out to grab the blade of her sword with his bare hands.

The patrons in the pub either looked away or flinched, waiting for blood to spurt as his fingers closed around the sword.

Crack. The sword snapped in half crisply, and the woman was on the ground, stunned by the impact of the burly man against her body. She was still holding on to half of a sword, and not a drop of blood could be seen.

Scarface laughed and tossed the other half of the sword into the open stove, where the wooden blade, painted to look like the real thing, instantly burst into flames.

“Who’s the real swindler here?” Scarface sneered. “It takes one to know one, doesn’t it? And now you’re going to pay.” He strode up to the still stunned woman like a wolf closing in for the kill. Now that the hem of the woman’s robe had ridden up, he saw that her left leg was enclosed in a kind of harness, similar to the sort worn by many veterans who had lost limbs during the wars. “So you’re a useless cripple, too.” He spat at her and lifted his right foot, clad in a massive leather boot, aiming for her head.