Midday sunlight white against the oiled paper of his high bedroom windows awoke Jun with slow, dawning confusion. He was miserably sore, but well rested, and his mind was clear of yesterday’s shock and exhaustion. The women who’d been in his room last night were gone. For several minutes, he lay unmoving, staring up at the silk canopy of the most luxuriant bed he had ever been in.
He’d survived the arena and beaten Leopard. He was the Guardian.
It was remarkable how a person could imagine something every day for years, and yet still have a hard time believing it when it happened. Jun closed his eyes and opened them again, several times, but the room didn’t vanish. He didn’t wake up back in Cheon, in his father’s house.
The sudden wave of grief convinced him, at last, of his reality.
Jun got out of bed. Various body parts made their hurts known as soon as he started moving, but none badly enough to stop him. Doctor Lim’s powerful skills had sped up his healing—he was relieved to see that none of his wounds were bleeding, and his many bruises were less swollen, already darkened to purple and yellowing at the edges.
He would happily take another twelve hours of sleep, but now that he was the Guardian, he had no time to relax and savor his victory. Even with Leopard dead and Cobu’s attempt to take over the Guardianship foiled, the general was still the most powerful man in the West. A war with the East could put him on the throne. And he was well aware that Jun was not an ally. Who knew what Cobu might do now? Sifu Chang was in prison and Ren was being hunted. Yin Yue was horribly wounded. Jun was on his own and would have to keep his wits about him in the coming days.
A pile of garments had been helpfully placed, folded, at the end of Jun’s bed: trousers and tunic of the finest black cloth, the cuffs embroidered with gold thread. Jun was astonished to see that the characters for “Little Dragon” had been stitched into the intricate design of cherry branches and clouds. The clothes were the most comfortable things he had ever worn, and they fit him perfectly. How had his attire been customized for him in such a short time, when he’d only won the tournament yesterday? He wondered if a tailor had gone to work as soon as the final match had ended and had toiled through the night, or if multiple outfits had been made in advance, one for each semifinalist, so that whoever became Guardian would immediately be well garbed.
So this was what wealth and status felt like.
He wondered, briefly, what had happened to the dirty, bloodstained clothes he’d worn in the arena yesterday; they’d probably been disposed of as soon as they’d been taken from him and he would never see them again. The shoes that had been left for him by the door were new and made of soft leather that made his callused feet feel as if they were walking on pillows.
Jun opened the door to his bedroom. Two servants kneeling on either side of the door bowed low, their heads touching the hallway mats. “Guardian Li,” they said in unison.
Startled, Jun failed to form one cogent question out of the many that sprang to mind. Then he remembered what Ren had said to Yin Yue, in the inn two nights ago. “The best thing you can do for us all is to win.” Yin Yue wasn’t here to help Chang and Ren anymore, but Jun was.
“How do I get an audience with the emperor, as soon as possible?” he asked the servants.
“We do not know, Master,” the woman on the right said.
“Have you heard anything about what happened after the tournament?” Jun demanded. “Was Ghostface captured, or did she escape? Is the flutist Chang still alive? The man who had his hand cut off in the semifinals, Prodigy Yin—has there been any news about how he’s doing?”
“We do not know, Master,” the woman repeated.
“What do you know?” Jun blurted in exasperation.
“We know where to take you for breakfast, Master,” volunteered the other.
Jun’s stomach rumbled. After the feast he’d been presented with last night, he wouldn’t have thought he’d be hungry again so soon, but the past three days had depleted his reserves and his body was demanding to be refueled. “Fine,” he said. “Breakfast sounds good right now.”
The servants led him through the house. His bedchamber, he discovered in the light of day when he could properly pay attention to things, was at the end of a long hallway that ran through one wing of the estate containing the Guardian’s private quarters. Jun peered into the rooms they passed: a private study, a small shrine, and an enormous bathing room. The Scroll Hall stood in the center of the Guardian’s Residence, flanked by the library and the receiving room. The other wing of the building held the kitchen, dining room, guest rooms, and quarters for the household staff and the Guardian’s disciples. Walking across the grounds took Jun past an expansive grassy field and a training hall three times the size of the entire Iron Core school.
Jun vacillated between delight and urgent worry, torn between the desire to take in his incredible new surroundings and impatience to find out what had happened to his friends. He was the only person seated at the round ebony table as the cook brought out a heaping meal of congee, lotus paste buns, steamed eggs, and hot tea. Jun was embarrassed not to have remembered any of the names of the staff members who’d introduced themselves to him yesterday, and he was relieved when the lean, stiff-faced majordomo who’d escorted him into the house yesterday evening came into the dining room and bowed low.
“Guardian Li,” said the man, “my name is Steward Tang. For the time being, I will be in charge of your household staff and assisting you in the transition to the Guardianship.”
Jun put his spoon down in his empty bowl. “For the time being?”
Tang gave a curt nod. “I was the steward for Guardian Yama and the Guardian prior to him, Guardian Ing. However, each Guardian may choose his household staff, retainers, and disciples. I am certain that many at your old school will vie for the honor of serving you and having the opportunity to be personally trained in martial arts by the Guardian.”
“I see,” Jun said, trying to wrap his mind around the idea of being master of his own school and smugly imagining the boys in Cheon who’d bullied him as a child all vying to wash his floors. “So I can choose to keep you as my steward, or pick someone else? And same for all the staff?”
“Yes, Guardian,” Tang said.
“What will you do in that case?”
“I may be dismissed and returned to the emperor’s court where I was trained, or put to death, as you see fit, Guardian Li,” Tang said with unruffled equanimity.
“Steward Tang,” Jun said, “how do I get a personal audience with the emperor?”
“As the Guardian, you have the right to request a personal meeting with the emperor at any time, without having to go through onerous layers of approval from his advisors,” Tang said. “However, it is up to the emperor to decide when to grant an audience. As you can imagine, Emperor Tandu has many demands on his time. You may have to wait days, even weeks.”
“Please make a request right away.” Jun had no idea whether, even as Guardian, he could personally persuade a ten-year-old monarch to overrule his top general, but he had to try.
“As you say, Guardian.” Tang bowed again. “Do you wish to send for any of your personal belongings from your home, or to summon any of your relatives to the capital to attend you?”
A surge of suppressed grief made Jun’s head throb. Li Hon’s body was on its way back to Cheon without him. He needed to follow and give his father a proper burial, settle his affairs, and make offerings to his spirit. When was he going to be able to do that? Surely, at least, he now had the resources to be able to travel to Cheon quickly.
Jun closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t need anything else right now,” he said, “except information. Can you find out if there’s been any news of activity by the Silent Flute Society? Has General Cobu said or done anything? And I need to talk to Yin Yue. Can you find him and bring him here?”
Yin Yue might not want anything to do with him. If Jun had been the one to lose not just a fight but his right hand, the last thing he’d want to do was visit an old rival now residing in the Guardian’s Residence. “On second thought, just tell me where he is, and I’ll go to him.”
Tang’s straight-lipped expression suggested he wasn’t thrilled with Jun’s requests, but he bowed stiffly and departed. Previous Guardians, Jun imagined, hadn’t issued such unusual demands on their first day. If his friends weren’t in danger of being executed and the country wasn’t in a political crisis that might plunge it into war, Jun would’ve been happy to take a few months to enjoy his new station, entertaining guests, choosing trainees, making appearances. It was the advice Yama had whispered to him onstage yesterday: “Just try to enjoy the job while you can.”
Jun finished his breakfast and left the kitchen, wandering the halls of his vast and luxurious new residence. It was the most impressive place he’d ever seen, but without anyone to share it with, it was just a big, empty building that did not feel like home. He would’ve gladly given it up for his father to still be alive and for them to return to their modest two-room dwelling in the theater district of Cheon.
When he went out into the sunlit courtyard, two groundskeepers paused in their work, bowing reverently toward him before returning to their painstaking task of pruning the miniature elms in the landscape containers that flanked the entranceway. Jun paced back and forth, his agitation at odds with the manicured serenity of the garden. What was he supposed to do now?
Yama had lived here for six years. In all that time, he hadn’t done anything to oppose Cobu or get involved in the affairs of the country. He’d been trained by Chang and sponsored by the Silent Flute Society, but he’d turned his back on them, remaining impassive as they became Cobu’s targets and his own former master was imprisoned. A scholar Guardian, that was what people had called Yama, on account of all the time he spent in diligent study of the Scroll. And for what?
“Don’t expect the Scroll to give you answers.”
Bitter words, it seemed, from someone disappointed by his time as Guardian.
Jun went into the Scroll Hall. The two manservants who’d brought him here in the carriage from the arena yesterday were posted by the entryway; they leapt up from their bored slump and bowed as he approached.
“Call us if you need us to bring you anything while you study, Guardian Li,” the one with the goatee said. “I’m Fong, and this is Yan.” He pointed to his younger, acne-pocked comrade. “You may take the Scroll with you to the library or to your private study, if you wish. The Guardian is the only one permitted to remove the Scroll from the Scroll Hall.”
Fong closed the heavy double wooden doors behind Jun, leaving him alone in the solemn, windowless chamber. Torches in mounted wall brackets lit the room at all hours of the day, giving it a warm but claustrophobic feel. A long table ran across the length of the back wall, presumably to allow the Scroll to be unrolled for study. Jun had seen the Scroll of Heaven displayed during every day of the tournament, and he’d held it in his hands yesterday evening, but set on its carved ivory stand in its own special room, Dragon’s divine scripture seemed too sacred an object for him to simply pick up and walk around with.
Jun reached out and lifted the Scroll from its stand.
For a moment, he stood there, half expecting some consequence to occur, for someone to rush in and stop him, for the bronze case to glow and burn his fingers, or a shaft of heavenly light to appear out of nowhere and the voice of the Blessed Consort, the Lady of Many Hands, to speak to him.
None of those things happened. None of them had happened yesterday when he’d taken the Scroll in a fight-addled daze. And of course no one stopped him; he was the Guardian.
He wasn’t the only one permitted to examine the Scroll. Priests, scholars, senior officials, doctors, and martial arts practitioners of the highest levels journeyed to the Guardian’s Residence to study Dragon’s wisdom directly. As Fong and Yan had reminded him yesterday, only the Guardian could grant approval to study the Scroll, only in this room, and only in the Guardian’s presence. Not all petitioners would be given permission. In addition to training his disciples, a major part of Jun’s day-to-day duties as Guardian would be to receive and host esteemed visitors, some of whom might stay in the guest quarters for weeks at a time, often toiling and training alongside the staff and full-time disciples in order to prove themselves humble and hardworking enough. It was up to Jun to review their petitions and determine if they were worthy.
Right now, however, there was no one here besides him. Pulse rising with anticipation, Jun undid the clasp on the bronze holder and twisted the two caps, releasing the Scroll from its case.
What answers had Yama been seeking from the Scroll for all these years? Was there anything in there that would help Jun now? What secrets were known only to the Guardian?
Carefully, Jun set down the bronze caps and laid the Scroll on the long table. He unrolled the first section, slowly and carefully at first, then faster and faster, until he hurled it fully open, the parchment spilling off the table and onto the floor. A strangled noise escaped his throat as he stared down at the paper in disbelief.
The Scroll of Heaven was blank. A damning expanse of unmarred yellow parchment, except for two small lines near the top, written in a precise hand.
Foolish is the rooster that crows at noon.
He heralds half the day and knows nothing of the moon.
“What in the eighteen levels of hell?” Jun seized a section of the parchment and held it up, tilting it back and forth, hoping foolishly that there was some trick to it, that characters would appear when viewed at a certain angle or in a certain light. Nothing happened.
Bewilderment and panic surged together, clashing and combining in Jun’s mind.
Generations of Longhanese had studied the Scroll and promulgated its teachings, using Dragon’s words to guide them in how to live. Jun could quote bits of wisdom, taught to him in school or spouted by elders, that supposedly came from the Scrolls. How could it be empty?
Because this isn’t the Scroll.
The paper slipped numbly from Jun’s hands. “Fuck me,” he breathed.
A commotion arose from outside the room—the sound of many heavy feet and then raised voices. “Stop! Stop in the name of the Guardian!” Fong cried in alarm.
The guard’s jarring wail of pain was followed by harsh pounding on the doors. “Open up!” came the shouted command from the other side. “In the name of General Cobu, open this door immediately!”