Beneath an Opal Moon (6 page)

“Another time, Aerent. I am meeting Kossori—”

“Ach! What you see in that layabout I cannot understand.”

Moichi smiled good-humoredly. “I think, perhaps, it is more his personality that rubs you the wrong way, Regent.”

“Huh! I set no store by useless persons, Moichi. You know that full well. How they act is of no matter to me. This friend of yours does nothing with his time, helps no one. Tell me, of what use is he to others or to himself?”

“He is a fine musician,” Moichi said. It was not the first time he wished he could say more.

“That is as may be, my friend, but I have little respect for those lazy enough to loll about the squares of the city all day playing music. And at night—”

“Tonight he takes me to the Sha-rida.”

The Regent turned abruptly away. “I will forget that I heard you say that.”

Moichi was puzzled. “Is it so terrible then? There are many slave markets within Sha'angh'sei.”

Aerent spun around, his face drained of color. “Do you not know?”

“What?”

The Regent touched his shoulder gently. “My friend, you still have a great deal to learn about this city. The Sha-rida is a very special kind of slave market. One I intend to destroy one day.”

“Won't you tell me what it is?”

Aerent shook his head as if he were suddenly weary. “I will speak no more of it. Let your good friend, Kossori, answer all your queries.” He ran a hand through his hair, walking away from the table a little way. His legs clicked quietly. “But now, before you take your leave, we have an important matter to discuss. Azuki-iro's ship,
Tsubasa
, is scheduled to dock tomorrow at the beginning of the hour of the cormorant. I trust that your late-night wanderings will not prevent you from meeting me promptly at Three Kegs Pier, eh?” He smiled.

Moichi rose. “Have no fear on that score, Aerent. I will be there. And by that time I trust there will be news of the current happenings in Kintai.” He turned at the door. “By the way, what is the name of this girl, the Kunshin's daughter?”

“Chiisai.”

Now it was Moichi's turn to smile. “A beautiful name, at least.”

“What else did you expect?” said Aerent. “It is Bujun.”

Koppo

Kossori lived on Silver Thread Lane, a crumbling, narrow alley that belied its name. There, it was always dark with the shadows of the surrounding, taller buildings, days of twilight, nights of perfect pitch blackness; the alleys of the city had no night lights as did the wider streets, avenues and squares. This perpetual darkness did not seem to bother Kossori. On the contrary, it amused him. He professed to love the darkness.

With all that, however, he could rarely be found at home. He preferred, as Aerent had indicated, to spend his days in the wide sun-splashed squares of Sha'angh'sei, making music. He was an exceptional musician, adept at both the flietē, a wind instrument, and the kyōgan, an ellipsoid stringed instrument, quite thin, the tuning delicate and most difficult to master.

On any given day, Kossori could be seen in his richly colored tunics at Hei-dorii Square during the morning and, perhaps, Double Hogshead Square in the afternoon, playing serenely as the swarms of people swept by him at a frantic pace.

He was not a large man but he had wide shoulders and a narrow waist which, combined with his enormously powerful legs, made him a figure of no little distinction. His black hair was glossy and longer than was usual in Sha'angh'sei; the end of his queue reached down to the top of his buttocks. It was but one outward manifestion of his inner iconoclasm.

He was a man of myriad acquaintances but few friends, which made his deep friendship with Moichi all the more unusual. Certainly it was his strangeness which, in part, attracted Moichi, who, more often than not, found himself bored by the company of people who seemed obsessed with the pursuit of wealth and women. And no doubt it was those times more than any others that Moichi felt himself pulled toward the crashing sea, preferring the soughing of the humid salt wind through the straining lines, the comforting pitch and roll of the tarred deck, the flying spray at the cleaving bow as all canvas was let out before the following wind.

Not that either of them lacked for women. Many was the night they would set out through the vast labyrinth of the city in search of the perfect wench. They had, of course, never found such a one, for then surely their sport would be through. Kossori had an enormous appetite for women. Not necessarily sex but, seemingly more importantly for him, companionship. And more than once, Moichi had observed in his friend a serious, even a desperate drive, beneath their playful nights in the soft arms of the women of Sha'angh'sei.

This evening Kossori was in the center of Jihi Square, in the shadow of the rose-and-white-quartz monument to Kiri, the last Empress of Sha'angh'sei. The sculpture was of a woman metamorphosing into the Kay-Iro De, the patron deity of the city, said in legends to guard Sha'angh'sei from all harm. It was a sea-serpent with a woman's head and it was further said, by those who claimed to have actually seen it, that this was how Kiri had died during the last day of the Kai-feng, that she had become the deity in order to help defend her city. And who could gainsay them? Moichi thought, gazing with fondness at Kiri's facial likeness. In his adventures with the Dai-San, he himself had been witness to stranger and more terrifying sights.

He approached Kossori through the milling throngs rushing home to supper with families or in the many smoke-filled taverns of the city, after which a night of carousing would begin.

Kossori was in the midst of a song. He was playing the flietē. It was one that he had made himself, eschewing the more traditional substances of bamboo and ebony for silver. The metal gave the blown notes a semi-sad plangency that was unique to this instrument.

Moichi stood on the far side of the square watching and listening. He studied the man's face, noting again the angular features—the high cheekbones, the wide firm-bridged nose—and the light gray defiant eyes. It was certainly a strong face, bold and unconventional. Yet beneath that was a deeply hidden sadness, echoed now by the music.

The song ended and Moichi moved toward him. Kossori, looking up, spied him and smiled.

“Hola!”

“Hola, Kossori. A fine tune. Is it new?”

“Completed just this morning.” He stretched out an arm. “Come and sit down in the shade of a legend. It has been a hot day.”

Moichi, glancing up, said, “How long ago it seems to me, the Kai-feng.”

“Uhm. Well, the human brain has a remarkable ability for recalling the past. Pain and suffering dim, thank the gods, more quickly than the memories of pleasure, which never seem to fade, no matter how many years have passed.” He slipped his silver flietē into its worn chamois covering, thence to its hard leather case. “We are well clear of that time, Moichi, that I can tell you.” He shuddered. “The world is a far better place without the interference of sorcery.”

“There is white sorcery as well as black,” Moichi said, thinking of the Dai-San.

“No, my friend. As far as I am concerned all sorcery is bad
tsuzuru
.”

Moichi knew this as a Sha'angh'sei dialect word which had a number of subtle shades of meaning. Here he was certain his friend meant ‘magic spell.' But he was surprised and said as much. “All these people”—he raised an arm, flung it outward toward the crowded square, taking in the people hurrying by—“know you as a fine musician, Kossori. Even the Regent is not unaware, I think. But I know what you possess and I do not think fear is part of your makeup.”

Kossori sighed. “There is none else in all the world to whom I would dare admit this, Moichi, but sorcery does indeed frighten me. It frightens me because it conforms to no laws I can understand. I feel impotent before it, even with these.” He made fists of his hands, put them in front of his face. “Even
koppo
is no match for magic.”

Moichi laughed and clapped the other on the back. “Come, my brooding friend, enough of this gloomy talk. Our world has been reborn again through the purging of the Kai-feng and The Dolman. In this new age, there is no room for sorcery on our world.” They stood up. “I think a bit of a workout at the doho will make us both feel a whole lot better.”

Quitting the spaciousness of the square, they plunged into the narrow swarming streets, at length turning left onto Copper Foil Street. It was the wrong end and they found themselves at once in the midst of three solid blocks of outdoor stalls so jammed with wares and milling customers that they felt like fish struggling upstream against a powerful current. Spices hung heavy in the air: cinnamon, marjoram, thyme, black pepper and heady nutmeg; there were flapping multicolored rugs and pewter lamps molded into lewd vertical shapes, fresh vegetables and dried fruits, candies and exotic liquored sweetmeats, fresh fish on shaved ice and crawling langoustes in their saltwater-filled glass cases. The cries of the vendors filled the air like the calls of strange forest birds, carrying their strident staccato messages; customers haggled prices and sellers cried out melodramatically, pulling at their hair, turning over their goods for taels of silver and winking to each other behind the purchaser's back. Wire cages housed hissing lizards with bright beaded eyes and dry wrinkled hides smelling faintly of sweet loam; small red and brown monkeys chittered from tiny wooden swings, unconcernedly evacuating on the dirt below them while they pointed to the passersby; yellow dogs with matted fur crouched, tongues lolling, by the sides of the stalls or ran, loping, through the angustate aisles; children carried on their mothers' backs bawled, red-faced, tiny fists clenched, or slept peacefully, their heads at an angle, resting on one shoulder.

At last they were through the crowds, on the far side of the stalls. Here vendors had set up makeshift grills on which bits of meat and vegetables sizzled above coals glowing an incandescent white, and brown smoke hung in the air, pungent and tangy.

Kossori led the way up a creaking wooden stairway, the steps worn smooth by constant use. They passed the first landing and, on the second flight, were obliged to press their backs against the wall in order to let a bulky man with an enormous chest and belly pass by them. He wore only a loincloth and he was sweating heavily. They knew him casually; one of the many wrestlers who frequented the doho. He nodded to them in greeting and went on past, heading for the baths on the second floor.

They went to their lockers and changed into plain white cotton robes that covered them only to mid-thigh. But instead of heading toward the doho proper, they chose instead to climb the last flight of stairs to the roof. They often went here because it was quieter, not only more isolated but infinitely more pleasurable to be in the open, as now, beneath the lavender evening sky, streaked with haze and the black silhouettes of the circling gulls above the distant harbor.

Three sides of the rooftop were covered, at their borders, by dwarf trees, cultivated into gnarled, twisting shapes. These formed a dense tangle to screen the top of the doho from any prying eyes attempting to observe from neighboring rooftops. The fourth side held a sharply sloping rock garden kept wet by a clever recirculating stream of water which dribbled over the rocks at their highest point. This constant moisture allowed a wide variety of moss and lichen to grow in weblike patterns in the interstices so that the rocks appeared to be one variegated whole. It was a beautiful sight, a spot meant for deep contemplation and meditation and it had been there for as long as Kossori had been coming here, which was much of his life. The floor of the rooftop was constructed of wide wood boards held down and together by hardwood pegs rather than nails. It had been lacquered many times with clear coats that, over the years, turned the wood an almost bright yellow. It was perfectly flat, with excellent drainage outlets on all four sides so that there was never a problem with rain.

Over the tufted tops of the stunted trees, they could see the myriad, oddly shaped rooftops of Sha'angh'sei stretching as far as the eye could see, seeming to roll right into the sea as they turned southwest, the buildings hiding the low sweep of the bund and its long line of harttin.

The sun's last degrees were slipping into the shimmering sea and now the reflected light became intense so that the nebulous clouds, drifting high above the cityscape, were lit an incandescent gold and plum even while the edges of the rooftops were darkening to black, their outlines firming up and hardening after the glaring blaze they had endured during the height of the sunset.

This evening, they were alone up here with the wind and the encroaching darkness spreading slowly westward like a prayer shawl drawn across the heavens by an unseen hand.

As they began their warming-up exercises, Moichi said, “Tell me, Kossori, what is it about Aerent that rubs you the wrong way?”

Kossori waited until he had completed his deep breathing sequences before he replied. “It's what he represents, Moichi. I am afraid I'm just not very good with those in power. The Regent's not a bad sort, really. It's just what he has chosen to do.”

“But don't you think a ruler can be beneficent? Help the state through his power?”

“No,” Kossori said simply, “I do not.”

“But surely—”

“My friend, let me tell you something. Nothing good ever came out of power. Yes, of course, there are those whose intentions are at first good. But the taste of power is too potent a draught and they, too, gradually get caught within its web. There are no exceptions.”

“Power corrupts, in other words.”

“Corrupts, yes. The mind expands with self-importance while the soul withers into impotence. There—” His head swiveled quickly and he whispered, “Step back.”

“What—?”

“Quickly, man! Do as I say!”

Moichi stepped back so that the line of twisted trees brushed against him. He looked to where Kossori was gazing. South of them a shadow had materialized as if out of the night itself. It was in violent motion yet silent and smooth, running lightly then leaping across the narrow chasms between buildings as if it were but a wisp of smoke. A cool breeze off the water rustled the spiky leaves of the trees and Moichi shivered slightly, feeling his muscles tense. Still he watched the shadow approach, the fluidity of motion mesmerizing, for there seemed to be no disturbance to the continuous flow of energy: run, leap, run, leap.