sweep the monastery floors—and goes to bed late after scattering dust over those same floors to teach him acceptance.
On the day of his fiftieth birthday, Kai’s acolytes present him with a handsome gift.
It is something new and dangerously different. In Kai’s language, the words for “different” and “wrong” are nearly identical.
The gift is a tiny round bronze ball; and if you fill its tank with water and light a fire under it, it starts to spin.
Alone before going to sleep, Kai thinks about this different miracle long and hard. He decides that there is no magic in it. It is as hard and as fair as drought or pestilence.
The Westerners are building whole engines that work like steamballs.
And the Neighbors are buying them.
The state of Kambu is so weak that the King has to pay to keep the neighboring states from invading. Kambu’s King is so powerless that his own army is run by advisers from these states, and so helpless that he enforces their corvées of Kambu labor.
Kambu troops are being used to corral or even kidnap the Chbap-reciting farmers, herding them away to work on a new kind of road in the Commonwealth of the Neighbors.
Hero Kai sits on the beautifully swept floor. His little steamball spins itself to a stop. Candlelight fans its way through the gaps in the floorboards and walls. Everything buzzes and creaks with insects. In the flickering light, Kai thinks.
If only the King were strong. If only the Sons of Kambu stood up as one against the Neighbors. If only there were ten of me. Our army is controlled by our enemies. Our wealth pours out to them and when they want more, they just take it. The King’s magic makes girls pretty, fields abundant, and rainfall regular. It holds back disease and the ravages of age.
The Neighbors make the magic of war.
Kai finds he cannot sit still. He stands on one leg and hops so lightly that the floorboards do not shake. He makes many swift passes with his sword, defeating imaginary opponents.
He loses heart and his sword sinks down toward the floor.
The unquiet spirit spends his strength in cutting air …
Kai takes out an incising pen and cuts a letter to the King in a palm leaf. He fills the grooves with ink-power and burns it so the ink hardens in the grooves but can be brushed away from the surface.
Then he wakes Arun and gives him the letter. Kai tells him to walk to the lake and take a boat to the distant, tiny, capital.
What can a mouse do when caught by the cat?
Do not act until necessary
A year later Kai stands with the farmers in revolt.
His monk robes are gathered up over his shoulders to free his arms and legs. The cloth is the color of fire. His body is hard and lean, as if cut from marble, with just the slightest creases of age across the belly and splotches around his ankles.
His sword is as long and lean as himself.
The Commonwealth of Neighbors is hot and smells of salt and drains. The sea hammers a coast that used to belong to the Sons of Kambu. The rich plains get all the rain that the mountains block from Kambu. Everything steams and rots.
Kidnapped fathers sweat in ranks, armed with hoes and pickaxes. Some of them simply carry rocks.
They have been starved and beaten until they are beyond caring. Families, fields, home are all hundreds of miles away.
They have nothing to lose.
The Road of Fire grins like an unending smile. The lips are burnished tracks of metal that gleam in mathematically parallel lines. The teeth are the wooden beams that hold the tracks in place. The Road of Fire looks like evil.
The Army of Neighbors looks beautiful.
They are naked except for white folded loincloths. Their bodies are hard but round from food and fighting, and their eyes are gray. Their earlobes are long and stretched, bearing heavy earrings.
Every one of them is a holy man.
The Army of Neighbors is famously small and famously bears no arms. For a moment or two the armies look almost evenly matched.
Then the Neighbors start to
On the day of his fiftieth birthday, Kai’s acolytes present him with a handsome gift.
It is something new and dangerously different. In Kai’s language, the words for “different” and “wrong” are nearly identical.
The gift is a tiny round bronze ball; and if you fill its tank with water and light a fire under it, it starts to spin.
Alone before going to sleep, Kai thinks about this different miracle long and hard. He decides that there is no magic in it. It is as hard and as fair as drought or pestilence.
The Westerners are building whole engines that work like steamballs.
And the Neighbors are buying them.
The state of Kambu is so weak that the King has to pay to keep the neighboring states from invading. Kambu’s King is so powerless that his own army is run by advisers from these states, and so helpless that he enforces their corvées of Kambu labor.
Kambu troops are being used to corral or even kidnap the Chbap-reciting farmers, herding them away to work on a new kind of road in the Commonwealth of the Neighbors.
Hero Kai sits on the beautifully swept floor. His little steamball spins itself to a stop. Candlelight fans its way through the gaps in the floorboards and walls. Everything buzzes and creaks with insects. In the flickering light, Kai thinks.
If only the King were strong. If only the Sons of Kambu stood up as one against the Neighbors. If only there were ten of me. Our army is controlled by our enemies. Our wealth pours out to them and when they want more, they just take it. The King’s magic makes girls pretty, fields abundant, and rainfall regular. It holds back disease and the ravages of age.
The Neighbors make the magic of war.
Kai finds he cannot sit still. He stands on one leg and hops so lightly that the floorboards do not shake. He makes many swift passes with his sword, defeating imaginary opponents.
He loses heart and his sword sinks down toward the floor.
The unquiet spirit spends his strength in cutting air …
Kai takes out an incising pen and cuts a letter to the King in a palm leaf. He fills the grooves with ink-power and burns it so the ink hardens in the grooves but can be brushed away from the surface.
Then he wakes Arun and gives him the letter. Kai tells him to walk to the lake and take a boat to the distant, tiny, capital.
What can a mouse do when caught by the cat?
Do not act until necessary
A year later Kai stands with the farmers in revolt.
His monk robes are gathered up over his shoulders to free his arms and legs. The cloth is the color of fire. His body is hard and lean, as if cut from marble, with just the slightest creases of age across the belly and splotches around his ankles.
His sword is as long and lean as himself.
The Commonwealth of Neighbors is hot and smells of salt and drains. The sea hammers a coast that used to belong to the Sons of Kambu. The rich plains get all the rain that the mountains block from Kambu. Everything steams and rots.
Kidnapped fathers sweat in ranks, armed with hoes and pickaxes. Some of them simply carry rocks.
They have been starved and beaten until they are beyond caring. Families, fields, home are all hundreds of miles away.
They have nothing to lose.
The Road of Fire grins like an unending smile. The lips are burnished tracks of metal that gleam in mathematically parallel lines. The teeth are the wooden beams that hold the tracks in place. The Road of Fire looks like evil.
The Army of Neighbors looks beautiful.
They are naked except for white folded loincloths. Their bodies are hard but round from food and fighting, and their eyes are gray. Their earlobes are long and stretched, bearing heavy earrings.
Every one of them is a holy man.
The Army of Neighbors is famously small and famously bears no arms. For a moment or two the armies look almost evenly matched.
Then the Neighbors start to
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