Part 6

It was four more days ride to Wamai's capital city of Karuto, and each day Lian and Ida rode faster and faster, until the final day was nothing but a blur as they sprinted, changing horses whenever one grew too tired to continue. Each day Lian also saw more of the mystery that was the country. Fewer than a hundred Imperial citizens had seen as much of Wamai as Lian in the last hundred years.

As they crossed the highest point of the Wamaian mountains, they descended into the foothills that dominated most of Wamai, upon which the country had built a way of life that seemed to be taken directly out of the old texts of Golden Age idyllism. Small farming villages came up every ten or twenty miles on the road, with farmers' huts and shepherds' homes littered across the landscape. The farmers to the south were harvesting grains before winter approached, while the farmers further north – where the temperatures grew more temperate and snow seemed as foreign as Lian – were planting the last rice crops of the season. The crops themselves were familiar to Lian, who had grown up in a similar climate, albeit far across the other side of the Empire. But the people were wholly different than the farmers she had seen in her youth.

Farmers in Wamai seemed well-fed, clean, even prosperous to some degree. There was none of the desperation and constant fear that so often typified the peasants Lian had seen time and again during her travels across the Empire. Lian had trouble connecting the sight of the average Wamaian with Ida's stories of constant warfare and clan infighting.

"We have a different understanding of things, perhaps," he explained. "In the Empire your Ten Values of Heaven place the farmer low in the grand scheme. In Wamai we have always known farmers make all the rest possible. Without food the greatest general is but a skeleton, the same as anyone else. Most clans take pride in allowing their peasants to care for them. As a rule we do not take lands from one another for the wealth of their farms."

"Then why do you fight?"

"For honor."

As they travelled Lian saw the way honor infected every part of Wamaian society. Honor, just as much as language, prevented any of Ida's men from speaking to Lian. She was a foreigner, and therefore considered inherently dishonorable – a fact she recognized when she accidentally touched the hand of one of the men serving her food one day. The revulsion on his face and the way he tried to wipe any remnant of her off his hand was, to Lian at least, comical. But the overwhelming dedication to honor meant only the highest ranking of Ida's men could even speak to him. Similarly, the peasants, while revered, were forbidden from speaking to anyone but the lowest soldiers. The distinctions of class may not have been as numerous as the Ten Values of Heaven, but they were so rigid Lian couldn't help but think that the punishments for circumventing them must be significant. As they travelled Lian developed a sense of the moral filaments that Ida's men seemed to wrap around the value of honor, keeping everything and everyone in their place. Even though they never spoke again of Wamaian law or the arbitration Lian was going to undertake, Ida and the trip nonetheless provided Lian with an understanding of the central tenets of Wamaian way of life.

That way of life appeared overwhelmingly rural, with the exception of the one major city which they passed from a distance. Its walls were high and imposing, and its towers were nearly as tall as any Lian had seen in the Empire. The roads around the city were paved with stone and busy – carts, livestock, and peasants from all around flooded towards it.

"We're not stopping in there for anything?" Lian teased as they took their mid-day meal with the city barely visible on the horizon.

Ida smiled, the lack of politician in him coming out, "I'm afraid we can't share all our secrets with you Zhao."

Then on the fifth and final day or riding, just as the sun was beginning to set behind a wave of hills to the west, Ida slowed their pace and pointed to the top of the ridge, at a sheer white wall that traced a stern outline of the dusk's orange and purple lights.

"There," he explained, "is Karuto."

It was a small city – no larger than a dozen or so Lian had seen in the Empire, but from that very first view she knew it held wealth more concentrated than anything she had ever laid eyes on. As they approached, that impression grew stronger and stronger.

They rode quickly up the hill to that first wall, where Ida exchanged words with an outpost a hundred yards away from the wall and a pair of giant wooden doors, inlaid with gold and steel, themselves at least twenty yards tall. The outpost used a shutter on a giant steel furnace to signal the door open, and their procession of horses entered.

"It's quite a city you've got here," Lian told Ida as their horses finally slowed to a trot, the animals sweaty and exhausted from the last few hours into the capital.

"It's almost all ornamental," Ida responded. "The capital is the seat of the King, and little else. There is no commerce that passes through here, and no culture to speak of. It is a place for the King, his Ministers, and the court to hold session. The real cities of Wamai are much more impressive."

Lian couldn't think of another city she'd been to that was as impressive as Karuto – not even the Central Empire's capital of Nianjang was as clean or organized. As they passed through three sequentially impressive walled gates though, she started to see Ida's point: the city was sterile. Lavish, with enough gold embroidered across cloths, flags, wood and stone to set even the Ancient Castle of Liangyong to shame, yet distant and unfriendly at the same time. Except for the soldiers that guarded it and the few servants that scurried about and stared at Lian, the city seemed empty. There was no life or spirit to the place.

"Are there no people here?"

"No. The soldiers are loyal to the King, and the servants to their soldiers. But this capitol was built a hundred years ago, after the King's position had been…weakened. It is a neutral ground, not strategically important except for its position on the hill here." Ida then nudged his horse closer to Lian, so that their legs touched. He leaned over and whispered the last part, even though Lian couldn't see anyone and no one there likely spoke Imperial anyway. "It is a prison for the King. A beautiful, regal, prison."

They reached the true interior of the city and the Wamaian King's castle stood tall and square in front of them. An armed group of a hundred stood guard outside the final set of doors, and instructed Ida and Lian to dismount. After they had done so, Ida instructed Lian to disarm herself and present the weapon to the guards. She did so, and then followed Ida in through the doors.

The interior was even more ornate than the exterior, made entirely of smooth, polished stone, and filled with golden ornamentation. Lian knew that the Wamaians used gold as their one currency, so she could only imagine the wealth being displayed in such ornate artwork: golden sculptures of dragons, phoenixes, upright lizards and other monsters, some of them in battle with one another. The air had even been perfumed and smelled of fresh pine. Lian, still in her threadbare tunic from the travel into Three Paths, suddenly felt underprepared to face a King.

Ida read her mind. "You will have to change before you meet the King."

Lian breathed a sigh of relief. They stopped at a hall where a contingent of very formally dressed servants were waiting for them.

"These ones will prepare you to meet the King. When you enter, you must stop next to me and kowtow, all the way to the ground. You will be dressed in traditional female supplicant's clothes. You must remain in that position until the King commands you to rise. Do not look him directly in the eye until that happens. I will translate for you, but do not speak until I tell you to. Do you understand?"

Lian smiled. "Shutting up is about the easiest thing to do."

"Good," Ida bowed, "I will see you in there."

The servants whisked Lian away into a secluded room, where she was stripped bare and placed atop a metal drain, then drenched in three large bowls of warmed water. A batch of the servants then scrubbed her hands and feet clean with soft brushes as her hair, then her body, was patted dry with a towel. In minutes she had weeks' worth of grime and stench lifted off her. Presented with a large, pure white folded cloth, she picked it up and stared. After staring long enough, one of the servants unfolded it and began to dress her in it. The garment was intentionally oversized, a large gap at the top for her head, and sleeves and a single skirt on the bottom so large the only way to move was to shuffle. It reminded her of the Imperial courtiers uniforms described in textbooks from over a thousand years earlier. There, too, it wasn't just about formalizing appearances, but minimizing threats. After being completely dressed, the only way Lian could move was to hold her arms out at forty-five degrees to her shoulders, and to shuffle on top of the long train of the robe. Not even the best assassins could do much in those kinds of clothes.

Finally a female servant approached with a tray full of makeup, her hand already on the first coated brush, ready to spread the white powder on Lian's face. Lian held up a sleeved hand, stopping her. "I hardly ever wear the stuff. Wouldn't want to give my employer the wrong first impression."

The servant, not understanding a word, tried again. Lian gripped the servant's arm through tight enough to be clear, and shook her head no. There was a gasp of disapproval from the rest of the servants and some mumbles of protest, but the makeup artist could read Lian's face well enough to give it up. Lian had a feeling Ida wouldn't be wearing makeup, and she didn't want the King's impression of her to be of a typical Wamaian woman. To do her job, she needed to be a Shuli Go above all else.

She was paraded down a series of halls and then stopped on the edge of the throne room by two guards bearing axes. The King was seated on a gold throne a hundred and fifty yards away, and Lian could see Ida nearby. Ida shouted something to the guards, who uncrossed their weapons and turned ninety degrees to invite Lian in. She walked.

Well, shuffled. Slowly. As she did, she made sure to take in as much of the large, gaudily adorned throne room as she could, without looking directly at the King. The room was quiet and empty except for Ida and a few more ministers all about twenty paces away from the King, facing Lian as she made her approach, all wearing the same armor and gold circlet on their helmets. Behind them, a mere ten paces from the King, were two men, dressed in Wamaian armor but adorned in starkly different colors. Purple stood to the King's left – a tall, youthful looking man who held his helmet in the crook of his arm. To the right was an old, scared face of a man in all red, the grimace on his face either etched from pain, or hatred, or both.

Lian stopped next to Ida, then got on her knees and lay in a traditional prostrate pose, her arms directly in front of her, coated in white, her head touching the ground.

Ida spoke from her side, and included her name, and the words "Shuli Go" in the midst of his Wamaian. Lian was struck by the harmonious rise and fall of Ida's words, even if the language itself still sounded vague and imprecise compared to Imperial. His tutors had given him the voice of a statesman at least.

The King spoke back after a long-winded introduction – his voice grave and solemn – and Ida translated. "You are bidden to rise, Madam Zhao, of the Shuli Go order. Rise and hear the charge you are brought to arbitrate."

Lian rose to a kneeling position, and made instant eye contact with the King. He looked his twenty years - young, almost baby-faced - but with extremely serious eyes that met Lian's without hesitation. Eyes that knew a level of responsibility the rest of his face tried to hide.

She rose all the way to standing, and the King spoke again.

"The King welcomes you, Madam Zhao," Ida spoke, "And invites you to arbitrage between the two families who have claims to the royal bed. Do you accept?"

Lian nodded, keeping her eyes locked with the King's. "I do."

Ida translated, and the King immediately entered into another long sentence, of which Ida waited until the conclusion to translate entirely.

"The King understands the Shuli Go owe allegiance to the law above all other concerns. The King wants to know if that is true? And if so, to what do you defer if the law is indecisive?"

Lian thought for a split second. "The Shuli Go have a simple creed," she responded. "It does not work all the time, but it's the hierarchy we are trained for. The law first, then good, then right, then truth. The law is the good of all, the good is the rightness of many, the rightness is the truth of the one, and the truth is the basis for the law."

Ida repeated the old maxim of the Shuli Go, and Lian began her absorption of the Wamaian language, picking out the repeated words and saving them away for later. When the translation was finished, Lian thought she saw the smallest smirk on the lips of the King.

"I see." he said through Ida. "Then tomorrow you can start at the beginning. With the law."