33 A Clerical Error

~BU LIANG~

Prefect Bu Liang parted the curtains of his litter with a flick of his pale wrist, even though there was nobody there to appreciate the elegance of his gesture. His litter-bearers were pushing its way through the throng of common men barely halfway from Sutao's government district to its destination.

The port was newly abuzz after the epidemic of the Inscrutable Contagion. He cringed at the exaggerated vigour of the crowd. According to his office's impeccable record keeping one in three of them had ended up on a funerary pyre. The survivors' appetite for living on this fine summer day was perfectly understandable, yet vulgar to his eyes.

Liang pulled the curtains shut hiding the spectacle, leaned back, and sighed. If the litter managed to navigate the traffic prior to his death of ripe old age, he would see someone as far from plebeian as could be. Serene Mother Weynala had grown to mean a lot of things to him, and yet neither motherly nor serene was among them.

The last time he'd gone to meet her, he had slipped a certain scroll from his sleeve into hers. It had nothing to do with official business, but he wondered if he had been summoned today on account of that.

It could go two ways, and one of them might have delighted him beyond measure. He imagined her whispering the verses he'd written, while flower petals fell from her eyelashes, past ready scarlet lips. He had painted the faery in her full bloom a thousand times and he had never gotten tired of it.

That second possibility also loomed. The imaginary Weynala ripped his scroll to shreds and threw it at him. The finest rice paper twirled up in the air and floated down past her scarlet lips.

He protested the changes to the lovely scene. No matter what was about to happen, the daydream should have been his to enjoy.

Why, oh why?

***

The faeries had attracted his attention only after he'd come to Sutao. Before that, he had no time for the base cravings of his body. He left that to the reprobates like Shan Jiang who studied the whorehouses more regularly than the classics and had the nerve to insist that he needed the 'material' for paying his living expenses.

Liang himself had earned the honour to sit the Imperial Examinations through years of all-consuming, fruitful studies. When he'd finally been admitted to sit the Examination, it had been a rapture. And it had gone marvelously! His peerless scholarship and the clarity with which he interpreted the classics had earned him the coveted position in Port Sutao. The failed candidates, his rivals, wept bitter long tears into that night. He had been told that Jiang had left the exam altogether, that fool.

Then he'd then found his days stretching out before him, aimless and dull, until the day he would die. He'd still served diligently, hoping that a goal worthy of his mettle would manifest itself. Alas, neither the provincial political intrigues nor the administrative puzzles had challenged his mind sufficiently. Even the crisis response to the Inscrutable Contagion had proven to be a short-lived excitement before devolving into the simple arithmetics.

Sutao offered but one diversion that he loved.

On an auspicious day in mid-summer, quite like this one, a bored Liang had not delegated his duty to consult the Temple of Serene Joy on matters where ecclesiastical and secular interests intersected.

He'd gone before Serene Mother Weynala and his mind had awakened from its mortal slumber.

Since then, for three years and eleven days to be exact, he had aspired to win Sister Weynala's love at least as fervently as he'd once wished to sit the Examination.

Today could be the day, providing the radiant litter moved.

When he finally stepped into the welcoming courtyard of the Temple of Serene Joy, he suddenly lost all of his impatience. He tarried to take a long look at his reflection in the mirror pool. All and all, he was no worse for wear. He tugged the crimson robes of his office straight, adjusted the tall horsehair hat, and patted the pistol gently into place on his belt. The latest pricey accessory suited the look, despite a few mocking whispers he had heard to the contrary.

Finally satisfied with his inspection, he beckoned for a faery acolyte to lead on. The faery led away from the glorious pagodas that crowned the Hill of Five Seasons. An informal audience then, how fascinating.

The Temple grounds went on and on, sprawling far beyond than the size of the hill should have permitted. At every turn, and there were many, the faery headed to another tiny garden, each existing in its owner's preferred season. Today he walked mostly through displays of spring, the fairies' season of chosen delight on the day.

He guessed which property was Weynala's before his silent guide pointed it out to him. Among all the pink and white blossoms' laden boughs, maple leaves blazed red, disturbing and irresistible, like passion.

His heart leaped into his throat when he realized that his silent guide remained by the gates, meaning that Weynala would receive him alone.

He found her inside the maple-fronted pavilion, her private residence, reading a scroll. It was not his, but he could see it, unrolled, in front of her.

"Welcome, Prefect Bu Liang," Serene Mother Weynala said after she'd finished her scroll.

"Just Liang, please," he lowered his voice to give her a hint of his passion.

"I see you have acquired one of these... novelties?" she ignored his overture, and pointed at the accessory he'd been toying with while waiting on her convenience.

"The pistol?" he gave an ostensibly dismissive shrug. "They are peculiar. Back when our Celebrated Emperor Wo Jia was but one of many Princes, he upset his Father. They made a pistol for him, to offer in place of a sword for his own ceremonial execution. This way the old Emperor did not need to heft a heavy blade in his shaking hands or use a small dagger like a feeble woman. Shooting pleased the senile tyrant so much that the Prince was spared."

"A delightful anecdote," Mother Weynala commented. "Though I am surprised that the Son of Heavens allows these things around to remind of his chastisement."

"He did not at first, but over the years he grew more lenient." He smiled in a self-depreciative manner before adding, "Fashion is a powerful force, Serene Mother. Even the best of us are not immune to its lure."

"Ah."

Liang's mouth went dry, while his neck, on the contrary, perspired beneath the silk. The poisonous teeth of insecurity dug into his mind again. Why did I have to drone on about the pistol? Was she bored? Was my hinting at my wealth too overt and distasteful?

"As exciting as the contraption is, I trust you did not lose your interest in antiquities, Liang?" Golden sparks twinkled in the green pools of her eyes. She did not ignore his overture then.

The floor solidified under his feet. "Never, Serene Mother!"

"Then I have a gift for you." She proffered him the scroll she was reading. "Given how learned you are, the Celestial Court's mingling with the Imperial Family during the Dynasty of First Dawn, and their wars on the demons won't be new. The rest of the text, however, is not often shared with humans."

He sat by the window and smoothed the treasure in his lap. The scholar in him did not want to miss a single passage, but the man found the woman's presence hard to ignore.

Weynala watched him read with inhuman patience. He tried to hide that he was disappointed that the text did not concern the Final Interdict, something completely lost to human knowledge.

"Now you know," she said the moment he was done. "The faery bloodline is a mixed one, human and Celestial. We were created to guard the humans against the demons' depravities and to help them recover their numbers after the wars. We used to welcome many of the faery-touched to live with us. To study, to create, to mate. But over the years we became more... separate, the humans and the faery, because the offspring of the unions were always faery."

A scarlet leaf dropped on a paving stone.

Weynala is about to say I am faery-touched. There could be no other reason for today's meeting.

"You are faery-touched, Liang," Serene Mother sounded like the distant thunder, exciting, promising a grand storm. Or did he want to hear it so much that he imagined it?

The faery nodded encouragingly: "You know just how exceptional you are. So do we. I am empowered by the Council to set a task for you, a payment, for your joining us. Should you so wish, of course."

He managed a polite bow: "I will be honoured."

The long oval of her face inclined gracefully to one shoulder: "There is a man in your custody. He is a blasphemer who pretends to be a healer and confounds the commoners with a mockery of our sacred rituals. The Temple can ill afford the smear to its reputation."

"Perhaps. Humans rarely pursue ecclesiastical matters," he fretted, colour rising in his cheeks. His city's jails were full of riffraff, and he did not keep track. "I will check the records, I will –"

"This information is accurate," Serene Mother assured him with a touch of her cool palm.

Of course, she'd know! This was a test, after all, another examination set before him. He took in a chest-full of air – the air scented by the blossoms that dotted her hair, and almost ended up missing her words.

"The blasphemer has already been tried and convicted. He is to receive a beating with bamboo sticks during the Ceremony of Sorrowful Penitence. We want you to release the corpse to the Temple of Serene Joy after the punishment is administered. "

Liang echoed the words to actually make sense of what was said. He might have laughed with relief but checked himself.

Weynala's fingers slipped down to lightly grip his chin.

"If there is a corpse, Liang."

He might have never guessed that her eyes could turn so dark, nearly black.

"I accept the task."

So, he had to nudge the hand of Imperial Justice a little, make certain that the wretch who had displeased the Temple died during the Penitence. A trivial task for someone in his position.

He felt certain that Serene Mother Weynala had asked after him at length, and had thought of recruiting him for an even longer while.

As further proof of favour, when he made to leave, Mother Weynala accompanied him and dismissed the patient acolyte by the gate. "I will walk Prefect to his litter, Acolyte Sayewa."

It must have been highly irregular because the younger faery hesitated a fraction before leaving the two alone.

***

He was nearly dizzy with excitement for the rest of the day, but he woke up in the middle of the night with a niggling sensation that something was not right. He vaguely recalled the dream that had destroyed his sleep. It went way back to the stories his old nurse told him to scare him away from leaving his bed at night, the tales told and retold since before the Dynasty of New Dawn.

In them, the faeries were cunning creatures, who bent careless humanfolk to their will to feed the demons. Demons, the night hunters, who were ever hungry for qi. How this distrust of faeries had persisted through the centuries of benevolent friendship between the two races, and near extermination of the demons within the Empire, Liang could not fathom.

Ignorance is frightening.

As it often happened with dreams, his own had intertwined folklore with the memory of Weynala's darkening eyes.

Here I am, up at dawn, feverish with worry, because I am scared that Serene Mother Weynala would feed me to the demons, because... Ah. What nonsense!

But if it's nonsense, why am I up at dawn?

The answer came to him later in the day, in his office, while he reviewed the healer's case.

It was not the ill reputation that faeries might have gained, it was his own sense of integrity that tormented him.