6 The Poet and the Pauper

Shan Jiang's room was dark, but he could see the ceiling swinging around because it was so low above his head. Jiang sighed and closed his eyes, but the dizzying motion did not stop. His grass-mat acted like a cradle, rocking him side to side, making him wish he'd throw up already, but he never did. In the thirty-four years of his life, many were spent trying to be drunk as often as possible, and a hangover - as rarely as possible, but his stomach always triumphed.

Jiang whimpered and groped for a dish with a slice of ginger that he left near his pillow. Once he stuffed the burning remedy into his mouth, he tried to think of things less miserable than his aching head and inflamed tongue.

His midnight visitor wore white, and that was stupid. White had to be the worst possible color for a noble outlaw's garb. It made the wearer an easy target for oppressors' minions in the moonlight. The deeds of valor would quickly spoil the look.

Jiang groaned. The man must have been something to stick in his poor head like that. Something, but... what? Big? Important? Interesting? Nope, he could not remember, and he did not care that much. He was a drunken delusion, that's all. Normally, Jiang saw veiled maidens or demons, often together. But last night it was this outlaw in his impractical attire, he must just be getting old.

Wincing, Jiang rolled over to his belly and crawled on all fours around the darkened room in search of the water jug. Luckily, he did not have far to go, a few steps this way and that, the moderately important people had bigger tombs than his room. Ouch! The writing desk, thank you so much, the bump on the head was really just what he needed right now....

Something rolled off the top of the writing desk. Jiang lifted his head. It could not be... Silver coins... Honorarium?! There is good left in the world after all! He was not growing senile and he did not dream up the noble outlaw in white. The midnight visitor was real, and he paid Shan Jiang the Storyteller for a song. A prayer of thanks is in order! Ring the gongs!

Ouch! Excited by his discovery, Jiang finally, finally took a bite on the blessed slice of ginger he rolled around his mouth. And it burned for all it was worth, the blessed thing. All this suffering, and it would come nowhere near curing his monster of a hangover. It would take the entire Temple of the Serene Joy to handle---

Oh, how Jiang wished he did not think of the faery chorus singing the life-asserting healing hymns! He'd take an ax to the forehead first. Or this flavorful bastard, the ginger root. Sure, it fell short of curing Jiang, but the burning taste did revive him enough.

Or just enough to unroll the scroll weighed down by those welcome silver coins. Ancestors, he did pen down a song last night! Ouch again. He should have known better. Oh, no, no, no! He couldn't face it just now. Jiang massaged his temples. Maybe fresh air would help with his headache.

Jiang picked the least stained of his two tunics and brushed off its front. The left shoe gave him more troubles by going into hiding. He'd finally spotted its toe gamely poking from behind his desk. Tsk, tsk...

He put on the shoe and was ready to face the world. Except someone pounded urgently on his doors. Always the distractions. The world conspired against his genius.

The loud visitors were his landlords, of course. Their timing was uncanny enough to make Jiang suspect that his comings and goings provided the old couple with more entertainment than his art. He tried not to take it as a verdict on his poetry and counted out silver in the oldman's calloused hand with no regrets. If Celestials had wanted him to be greedy, they would have made him a landlord.

Once Jiang squeezed himself from his alleyway onto the busy street, he had to close his eyes for a bit again.

His room was cavernous and he liked it that way. Who needs to be woken up by bright light? It was past midday, but still too early to make a round of his favorite patrons in search of work. He still had a few coins left. A barber, perhaps? He started walking down the street, knocking pebbles out of the way with the toe of his mischievous shoe.

A beggar on the street corner glanced up at him from under the tattered shawl, and called piteously: "Master?"

Jiang squatted next to him. "What's your name, friend?" The beggar swallowed, surprised after what must have been a lifetime of being shunned. Jiang repeated his question.

"Yu," the man replied. "They call me Demure Yu around here."

"Well, Yu, what's your story?"

"You have a bad headache, Master," Yu glanced at him shyly. "I can help. For food."

"I must look worse than I feel." Jiang rubbed his chin and smiled: "I'll buy you a meal anyway, friend. Just for your sto---"

Just like that, his headache disappeared.

"Why, what do you know, it worked. You are my new best friend, Yu. Come along, come along."

Yu leaned forward and massaged his temples in a strangely familiar gesture. Maybe he was hungover too? The bones in Yu's wrists protruded badly, but Jiang who'd met plenty of drunkards did not see the tell-tale signs of men drinking their food. Yu was starving.

"Come on," he seized the slim shoulder and pushed the beggar upward. Yu swayed, the shawl slipped down, and he immediately re-wrapped it with furtive shaking hands.

Jiang felt doubly pleased for sharing his small fortune with the man. Not only he would be saving someone, but it would be a redhead in the country of the black-haired men. There was a story there, alright. Slowly, Jiang walked his guest towards his favorite place.

The Beaded Curtain was nearly deserted, so Mistress Light Feather greeted them personally. "Get out of here, beggar! I mean you, Jiang. I've had enough of you filling my girls' heads with songs, and my pockets with promises."

Jiang showed Madame the coins he had left with an ingratiating smile: "I am just trying to buy a meal for this poor man. We can patronize the teahouse down the road if we came at the inopportune time."

Light Feather frowned, but motioned for them to make themselves comfortable on the pillows where the clients usually lounged with dainties while making their selection. Jiang's silver did not go far enough to summon her flock of fair companions for inspection. But Madame put one of the pretty faces to serve them food, which was one advantage the establishment had over the teahouse down the road.

The girl brought out a couple of steaming bowls from the kitchen, and smiled familiarly at both men, as she placed the food before them. Despite her well-advertised assets, Jiang's eyes stayed firmly on the soup. "Just noodles today, plum blossom." He was rewarded with a giggle. Ah, they loved him here, no matter what Light Feather said.

"The Beaded Curtains' kitchen is run by an unacknowledged culinary genius," Jiang said the way he always did after slurping his first bite. "What do you think, Yu?"

Yu did not respond, sitting in a sort of a trance, staring into the noodles... no, not the noodles, somewhere else. Somewhere better than the Beaded Curtain, if there was such a place under Heavens. Then he shivered, picked up his spoon and started eating so fast that Jiang felt tears welling in his eyes. Hunger was a scary thing.

"Yu's welcome here, since he doesn't think the whores roll in silver and doesn't charge a fortune for healing like the others. But feeding him is a waste of good food. He eats for three, and puts none of it on his bones." Light Feather came to stand near them, hands on hips.

"I doubt withholding food from Yu will help matters, Mistress."

She knew him too well to feel chastised for her lack of hospitality. "Just look at him, he's like a ghost of a ghost."

"It's a gentlemanly thing to be trim, Mistress." Jiang was himself a spare man.

"Like you would know, Jiang."

"I am proud of the back alley that's my birthright."

Madame covered up a smile with a sigh. "Jiang..."

"My list of ancestors goes all the way back to the Lord Good-for-Nothing and Lady Some Peasant."

That earned an eye roll. "Eat up, Jiang."

He obeyed the command and dug into his own bowl with gusto, but he had to admit that Mistress Light Feather had a point. He was no match for Yu. So he traded the bowls, then sat back with a satisfied sigh and watched the beggar healer slurp his noodles.

When the man lifted his face, Jiang almost forgot to ask the questions he was mulling over. He was not looking at a wasting wraith any longer, but at a youth on the cusp of manhood, with glowing skin, shiny eyes and a blissful smile, almost handsome enough to join Madame's staff. Ancestors, what did they put in his noodles...

"You should drink less, Master Jiang," Yu said into the silence.

"Who'd pay for your meal today then, friend Yu? And I must drink to write, poetry has no love of the sober." The healer did not mean it as an offense, not that Jiang often took offenses. He then remembered his questions: "I've never seen a human heal like you. No knives, no needles, no herbs... "

A lock of strange reddish hair slipped from under Yu's shawl and into his eyes. He blinked it away. "I was raised by the faeries in Sutao. They taught me."

Ancestors, the man would not fool a toddler with this tale. "Yu, attractive grown-up men 'retreat' to the faery temples once in a while, but I've never heard of them taking in orphans."

Yu blinked and wisely said nothing in response.

Jiang tried another tack: "Maybe you should sing a hymn to make the healing more faery-like?"

"I did, once," Yu said earnestly. "But they got angry and charged me with blasphemy."

Jiang smiled almost as happily as his dining companion. Now that was an honest reply, a rare thing in Xichon. The faeries guarded their rituals closely, dispensing them to humans in exchange for goods and silver. They tolerated the respectable medics, but a vagrant healing for food was a travesty.

"Well, Yu, there are not many faeries in Xichon, and I trust you to cure my hangovers any day. I'll buy you a meal every time," he offered magnanimously.

"Thank you," Yu muttered. "But I'm going home. I like the sea." He got up and paced restlessly.

"It's quite a walk to Sutao," Shan Jiang observed.

Yu blinked. "I can run." He bowed awkwardly to no one in particular and marched out of the Beaded Curtain as if he decided to leave for Sutao right there and then.

"He's always like that," Mistress Light Feather sighed behind Jiang's back. "I'd keep him, but the poor boy is simple."

"Hmm, I would not call him simple. A peculiar character, for sure... and that strange hair." Jiang laid back on the cushions enjoying the postprandial bliss and the mystery.

Mistress Light Feather shrugged. "I've seen stranger hair on the girls traded down the Sandsea of Bones. Red and yellow, like the leaves in the fall."

"Ah!" Jiang saw his opening to broach a delicate issue. "Speaking of trading, perhaps you can finally tell me which lucky lord bought Aynu from you?"

Compassion for the hedge healer must have softened Madame's heart, because she pulled Jiang up to his feet fairly gently, and walked him to the doors with some courtesy. He still watched her feet carefully. Her feet were that of a dancing girl, trained for a thousand and one precise movements, including kicks that could leave a man a eunuch.

"Someone who has more than two silver coins to rub together. Give it up already, Jiang." She encouraged him to exit with a bit of a shove. She meant 'just like you gave up on the civic examinations'. She did not need her knees and toes to hit him.

Jiang spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening ferreting out every contract he could find in Xichon to prove Madame wrong. He did not give up on the examinations because he could not pass, he gave up because he had no desire to be a pin in the wheels of the Imperial chariot.

He would have stayed out later, but he was chased inside by a dry wind from the Sandsea of Bones. It hit Xichon as usual, without a warning, promising unseasonal heat and a thick coating of fine yellowish dust in its wake.

With a handful of paper slips for dates and which story was requested for what occasion, Jiang hid from its howls in his room. This was the work he truly wanted, writing songs and performing stories to the enraptured crowds!

Right, work. Work...

He should start with the last night's scroll. He was paid to write a song, something about that outlaw in white.

Jiang lit up his oil lamp, lined up his favorite brush and the inkwell, and shook the scroll. It unrolled with a great swoosh. He could not have made a better mockery of calligraphy if he'd used a live hog's tail for a brush. Ancestors, just how much had he drunk? And for how long? Well, at least now he had an inkling as to with whom.

The Noble Outlaw in white was called... ah... there, right there, he wrote it all down.

That's not a name... not even a word... or is it? 'Zha Yao' maybe? The 'black powder'?

Something about the Gracious Lady's honor... Aynu?! Ancestors, why did he write Aynu's name instead of the client's lady-love, referenced right here, on the margins...

'Tien Lyn'? That at least sounded like a real name.

He frowned as he deciphered his wiggly writing. If Zha Yao's story had a shred of truth to it, there could be trouble. Then again, maybe not. After all, this song was dictated by the rice wine in the dead of night. He liked the verses, free-form, like the poor folks' sing, not the formal five signs per line nonsense. A line must say what it had to say, no matter how many words it took.

Jiang chewed the end of his brush. Maybe with a bit of editing, he could turn it into a decent song... After he blotted out Aynu, of course.

Tien Lyn and Zha Yao... Zha Yao and Tien Lyn... yes, the names went well together and would make a good song, maybe even a great one.