“Your ma is sleeping,” Hilo said gently. He placed the supplies Eyni had been carrying into the smaller suitcase along with the child’s other packed belongings, then shut and latched it. He searched inside the open purse and found Niko’s birth certificate tucked inside Eyni’s passport; when he unfolded it, he saw that the field for the father’s name had been left blank. He refolded the certificate and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He knelt down and pointed to the toy car in Niko’s hand. “Would you like to go for a car ride?”
The boy’s expression brightened. He stopped trying to rouse his mother and held out his arms to be picked up. Hilo kissed the child on the top of the head, then scooped him up in one arm and picked up the suitcase with the other. He carried Niko out of the house and to the car where Tar was still waiting. Hilo threw the suitcase into the rear seat, then got in the front passenger side, holding the two-year-old in his lap. “Niko-se,” he said, “this is your uncle Tar.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Niko,” Tar said, ruffling the toddler’s hair. “You’re a good-looking boy.” If the Pillarman was surprised to see Hilo emerge alone from the house with the child, it showed only as a shift of alertness in his jade aura, a beat of hesitation as he looked at the Pillar questioningly.
Hilo said, “We need to call the airline to transfer your plane ticket to Niko. And I need to find a typewriter to fill in his birth certificate, so he can board the plane with me. You’ll have to stay behind to deal with the boyfriend. Be quick and careful about it. He’s not so bad; he shouldn’t suffer at all.”
Tar nodded, then handed the car keys to Hilo. “You’d better put the kid in the back seat and take the car back to the hotel. I’ll wait here. See you in a few days.”
Six weeks later, Wen gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Hilo brought his nephew into the room where Wen was resting. Kaul Rulinshin, three hours old, lay on his mother’s breast. Bouquets of chrysanthemums and yellow heaven’s breath flowers—symbolizing joy and good health—had been sent by the clan faithful and crowded every available surface in the room.
“Baby,” Niko exclaimed. “Little baby.” He had begun to string Kekonese words together into short sentences. After several frustrated tantrums, he no longer tried to speak Stepenish.
Hilo swung the toddler up in his arms and set him on the edge of the bed. After sixteen hours of labor, Wen’s eyes were ringed with exhaustion but shone bright with triumph. Hilo leaned over and placed a kiss on Wen’s brow, then on the baby’s head, breathing in his son’s indescribable sweetness. Niko reached out to pat the infant’s wispy hair. “That’s your little cousin,” Hilo told him. “The two of you have to take care of each other from now on.”
FIRST INTERLUDE
Lost and Found
A well-known figure in the ancient history of the Tun Empire is a man named Ganlu, who was a warrior, healer, religious philosopher, and advisor to Emperor Sh’jan the Third. Ganlu is described in Tuni historical texts as a bearded foreigner who came from the Island in the West. Accounts differ as to the date of his arrival, but it is said that when he saw the vast plains of the Great Basin of Tun he fell to his knees and praised the gods, famously exclaiming (in a phrase that would later be appropriated by various Tuni rulers and generals as justification for imperial expansion): “Glorious land, where a man can walk for his whole life and never reach the sea!”
Ganlu traveled for many years. In the wake of recent famine and war, the Tun countryside was plagued by lawlessness and banditry, against which common villagers were often helpless. Wherever Ganlu went, he confronted crime and immorality, taught martial skills to the ordinary people, treated sickness and ailments with his healing touch, and espoused a philosophy of peaceful living, neighborly obligation, and communion with the divine spirits of the land, rivers, and sky. His teachings formed the basis for krajow, the Tuni fighting arts, and greatly influenced the Shubai religion.
Eventually, the traveler’s reputation reached the ears of the emperor, who summoned Ganlu and his disciples to the palace and asked him to become a royal advisor. Ganlu refused three times before consenting, each time asking the emperor to offer evidence of his virtues as a monarch. Ganlu’s acumen as a counselor and the founding of his schools of krajow are recounted in further legends, which differ in detail but hold in common that Ganlu derived extraordinary power and wisdom from an enchanted stone given to him by his forest goddess mother and which he wore close to his heart at all times. It is said that Ganlu lived until the age of one hundred and seventy; upon his death, his spirit went into the stone, which was kept in the Imperial Palace so that the emperor could continue to consult it.
While historians agree that Ganlu was a Kekonese Green Bone and that his teachings bear considerable resemblance to both Abukei folklore and pre-Deitist spirituality, only recently have they concluded that he was most likely the third son of the king of Jan during the early part of the Three Crowns period in Kekonese history.
Kekon has no record of this man, other than a royal genealogy set down at the time with an unnamed reference to “a young prince, lost.”
CHAPTER 22
The Grudge Hall
Anden played relayball twice a week now, with Dauk Corujon and a group of his friends, in the grass and dirt field behind the neighborhood high school. One day, two weeks after the dinner at the Dauks’ house, the Pillar’s son had ridden by the Hians’ home while Anden was outside, standing on a stepladder and fixing a broken gutter. Instead of speeding past as he usually did, Cory stopped his bicycle and called up to Anden. “Hey, islander, you play relayball?”
Anden wiped his hands on his pants and came down the ladder. “Yeah.”
“Are you any good?” Cory asked, not in an arrogant or scornful way, merely curious. The young man looked Anden up and down.
“I played on the team at the Aca—” Suddenly, he didn’t want Cory to know he’d gone to the Academy, that he’d been trained as a Green Bone. “At my school in Janloon.”
“What position did you play?”
“First guard.”
Cory nodded. “Fifthday evening, all right? I’ll come get you.” He pushed his bike forward and pedaled off again before Anden could say yes or no.
At the first game, Cory introduced him to a group of similarly aged young men and said, “Look here, crumbs, this is our new first guard, Andy.”
“Anden,” Anden corrected quickly, and perhaps more forcefully than he’d intended. He smiled to soften the unintended rudeness and said in a friendlier voice, “I go by Anden.” He hadn’t meant to strike yet another awkward note with the local Pillar’s son, now that they’d finally had a conversation of more than twenty words and he was being brought into Cory’s group of friends. It was just that back home, his cousin Hilo was the only one who ever called him Andy; it seemed strange for someone else to do so.