The barn was drafty and smelled of goats, but it was dry and had been swept as clean as could be expected. The townspeople had furnished three pallets, which lay against the back wall, along with sheepskin blankets that Jun didn’t think they’d need, as the nights were fortunately still warm. Two low tables had been brought in as well, one with a basin of water for washing, the other with a small brazier.
Ren put down the lamp and set the water warming over the brazier. She glanced over her shoulder at Jun, still standing silently near the entryway. “What?” She snorted. “The traveling performer’s life not as glamorous as you thought it would be? Not every stop is like Cheon, you know. You’re only a day’s ride away if you’ve changed your mind and want to go home.”
“I haven’t changed my mind,” Jun muttered, stung by her tone. It wasn’t as if he were unaccustomed to hard living; he could clearly remember the times earlier in his life when he and his father had been poor.
His father. Jun grimaced. Li Hon would’ve discovered his son’s absence by now, as well as the note he’d left behind. Jun could imagine his father’s reaction—the same look of angry exasperation and bewildered concern he used to give Jun every time he came home with fresh bruises or bad grades. “Why are you this way?” Li Hon would moan, pressing his forehead.
The worst part of it was that his father usually seemed more upset with himself than with Jun. Li Hon blamed himself for their circumstances and for Jun being who he was. He’d be furious with Jun for running away—but he’d be furious with himself, too.
Jun pushed aside the guilt-ridden thought.
“I know you don’t want me here,” he said to Ren. “I’m sorry I tricked you into giving me a ride, but I promise to do my best to help, or simply stay out of your way if you prefer.”
Ren whistled a resigned sigh through her teeth as she knelt on the mat in front of the water basin. She’d already changed out of her stage costume and taken off the false beard, but the makeup had given her face hard, masculine lines and strong shadows. As she washed off the paint, the softer, elegant curves of her face reemerged. Jun remembered how the previous night she’d been effortlessly convincing as the Lady of Many Hands, draped in silk and wearing a beatific smile that could make anyone in the theater believe she meant it just for them.
“It’s not about you,” Ren said without looking at Jun as she dried her face. “I just don’t like changes that I didn’t see coming.”
It was a strange thing to say, Jun thought, for someone always on the move, who slept in a different place every night. Jun dropped onto the nearest pallet. “Sometimes change strikes as a disaster,” he admitted, thinking of how That Day had turned his life upside down. Yet his father’s stagnation wasn’t a good thing either. “On the other hand, sometimes embracing change is the only way to get where you want to go. I didn’t expect to be sleeping in a barn tonight, but I’ll welcome anything that gets me closer to Xicheng.”
“Why do you care so much about becoming the Guardian?” Ren snapped.
Jun blinked at her, stunned. What an absurd question.
The Guardian was the best warrior in the country. He lived on a grand estate near the imperial palace in the center of the capital city. He was a personal advisor to the emperor and the unofficial leader of the martial arts community throughout the realm. Martial artists from all over the West traveled to train at the Guardian’s Residence. His school and fighting style would be preeminent during his tenure and attract thousands of new students. The Guardian was respected and revered as the keeper of Dragon’s wisdom, the one person who protected and controlled access to the Scroll of Heaven, one of the two sacred texts that had guided leaders and philosophers throughout history.
Who wouldn’t want to be the Guardian?
Jun had been ten years old when the previous Guardian’s Tournament had taken place. Even in Cheon, far from where the action was happening in the capital, it had seemed to be all anyone talked about for a week. Messengers arrived with news and images of the competitors sketched by artists who’d seen them in person. Jun’s schoolmates all had favorite candidates they were rooting for. When Yama won the title, the entire city celebrated because he was a southerner—not from Cheon, but Jinhai, thirty li away—close enough to be one of them.
What Jun remembered most, however, was that for a short while, his father had been in love with martial arts again. Li Hon might only have been a stuntman at the opera house, but he’d trained all his life and could not resist getting caught up in the excitement of comparing fighters and debating the relative merits of their styles, eagerly waiting with everyone else for news of wins and losses. Every day, Jun would rush to read the latest bulletins that were posted on street corners, then hurry home to discuss the results with his father over dinner. “Yes, of course, even with the gift of speed, she couldn’t win against a much better grappler,” Li Hon would say, or he’d laugh and declare, “If I were fighting him, I’d go like this,” as he wrestled his son to the floor.
For once, it hadn’t felt like they were missing anything. The two of them had been enough.
That was the power of the Guardian. To bring people together—martial artists and nobles and common folk alike, even if it was just for a short while—and inspire them to be their best.
It lightened Jun’s heart to think of his father coming alive like that, acting like the energetic warrior he’d once been—as he surely would again, if his own son was triumphant.
“Being the Guardian is the next best thing to being the emperor,” Jun insisted to Ren. “Better, actually, because emperors are born into their position, but Guardians earn their place.”
Just as some children were gifted by Dragon, but others made their own way.
The East had many Aspects, but in the West, there was only one Guardian.
“I wouldn’t want to be the Guardian or the emperor,” Ren replied, unimpressed. “Think about what it would be like every day. Ceremonies, and servants, and people constantly currying favor and wanting things from you. Never a moment of freedom or peace. No, thanks.”
Jun countered skeptically, “You’re telling me you wouldn’t want an enormous house with servants, the best clothes, the best food, the chance to make life a whole lot better for you and your father?”
Ren gestured around them derisively. “I’d be happy with any house. Staying in one place for more than a week would be an unimaginable luxury.” She waved a hand toward him with exasperation. “You have a home, a job, a school where you train every day, and a father who wants you to make a good life for yourself. Isn’t that plenty? Why would you want to leave all of it behind?”
Jun set his teeth. Because what she’d described was the path of mediocrity. Of bowing one’s head and kneeling in acceptance of what others decreed. Not fighting. Not destiny. I wasn’t meant to have that life. He came from a long line of master martial artists. His family had been meant for something else, something better—before That Day. Jun was sure of it.
Sai’s voice came into his head, sounding a bit smug. At least, it was how Jun imagined his brother would sound now, at their age. His voice was an awful lot like Jun’s own. Deep down, you’re still that little boy trying to show off to the Aspects that you’re just as special as I am.
Easy for you to say, he shot back, when people assume you’re Dragon’s chosen.
Jun crossed his arms and gave Ren a searching look. “Let me ask you a similar question. You and your father are obviously good enough to be hired on permanently by a big theater in Cheon or another city. Why travel all over the country and perform in poor little towns like this when your life could be a lot easier?”
Ren frowned but didn’t answer. She was silent for enough time that he wondered if he’d managed to really offend her now. At this rate, it was going to be a very long journey.
“Your point is taken,” she muttered at last. She looked pensive, not angry, as if she’d pondered his question before but hadn’t expected anyone else to pose it to her aloud. “I shouldn’t judge your decisions any more than I’d want you judging mine.”
Jun relaxed a little. “I’m not judging. I was being honest about you being too good for places like this. I’ve watched a lot of shows at the opera house, and you’re the best dancer and actor I’ve seen. You could be making a lot more money as the star of a proper theater. Though, personally,” he added with a cautious smile, “I prefer when you play a woman.”
Ren snorted, but with amusement instead of exasperation. She came to sit, cross-legged, on one of the other pallets, leaving an empty sleeping area—Chang’s—conspicuously open between them. A nervous thrum went through Jun’s chest. This was the first time he’d shared a sleeping room with a girl his age. Even though it wasn’t actually a room, just the floor of a barn, warmth rose into his face. He leaned back on his arms, trying to seem casual.
Ren picked distractedly at a loose bit of straw at the corner of the pallet, oblivious to Jun’s thoughts. “Proper theaters are found in big cities,” she said. “Life would be too difficult for Sifu. Being out in the countryside is much easier for him. There aren’t as many obstacles to deal with, and with Dragon’s Breath in nature all around us, he can see clearly in his own way.”
Chang did seem far more independent out here. Was he still meeting with the town leaders? What could they be discussing so late into the night? Jun didn’t want to ask any nosy questions that would draw Ren’s ire anew, not when she had begun to act less unfriendly toward him, but he decided to chance it. “Does your sifu have some connection to this town? He seems to know the mayor and townspeople pretty well.”
“We’ve come through here before,” Ren said, “but it’s been awhile. Whenever we stop by, Sifu brings them the news and advises them on any issues they’re having.”
Her answer didn’t entirely satisfy Jun, but he got the sense she wasn’t about to elaborate. Instead, he asked the other question heavy on his mind. “When you played a soldier onstage tonight, you wore the emblem of a white chrysanthemum.” When Ren gazed at him with steady expectation, waiting for him to go on, he said, “I’ve only ever seen that symbol when I was very little, back in the East.”
Ren nodded slowly. “I played a soldier from Lushin Province.”
“Why?” Did she know that he was from Lushin as well? She’d heard his father’s accent so she must know his family came from the other side of the Snake Wall, but they’d never talked about it. Now Jun felt as if their conversation were treading on oddly unsteady ground.
“You mean, why would I portray a soldier from the East when it would make more sense and be more patriotic for him to be wearing the sigil of one of the twelve divisions?” Ren shook her head. “That’s not the message Sifu and I want to send to our audiences. Especially not now, with political tensions as high as they are and the military agitating for war. We wouldn’t want our performances to lend support to General Cobu and the Imperial Army.”
Jun didn’t keep up much with current political happenings. The way he saw it, he couldn’t do anything about what the emperor or any other leaders chose to do. Hoping for some diplomatic breakthrough that would reopen the Snake Wall had only brought him and his father disappointment. It was better to focus on what he could control—his own training. He’d worry about bigger issues when he could do something about them.
But he knew the name of General Cobu—everyone did. Cobu was the country’s most prominent military leader and reputedly the emperor’s closest advisor. From the way Ren spoke his name, as if she were muttering a curse, it was obvious she didn’t think well of the man.
“Why wear the chrysanthemum emblem at all, though?” Jun asked, puzzled.
He’d learned from personal experience that most people in the West didn’t want to think about the East. When they did, it was with a mixture of curiosity and deep unease. Easterners didn’t look any different, but their society had been shaped by decades of rule by the rigidly dogmatic and secretive Council of Virtue. Much of the bullying and suspicion Jun had endured from other children when he’d moved to Cheon sprang from the fact that the rebels remained a vague threat. Even though there hadn’t been an active military conflict for a long time, there was always the possibility they might attempt to invade and overthrow the emperor, as they’d tried to do half a century ago. Unlike that first attempt, the East now had a feared cadre of breathmarked warriors, established in the years after the separation to maintain the Council’s power. Jun had suffered through cruel schoolyard comments calling him a “rebel spy” and a “yellowsleeve”—the derogatory term for Aspects—barbs that stung extra hard when it was the hated Aspects who were responsible for him being in the West at all.
It was better, Jun had learned quickly, to avoid any mention of the East.
“The tragedy of war isn’t unique,” Ren asserted. “The soldier from Lushin might’ve gone to fight for the Virtuous Rebellion, believing it to be a worthy cause. Or maybe he was conscripted and had no choice. In any case, he wasn’t all that different from anyone on this side.”
She turned her gaze fully on Jun for the first time that evening, her eyes reflecting the glow of the brazier coals. “That’s what we want to leave the audience with, at the end—the reminder that we’re all human, we all feel joy and pain the same way, in the end we all die and join our ancestors. If we can make people feel that way about a fictional soldier who lived in the East fifty years ago, then maybe we can all become more compassionate.”
“Like the Blessed Consort,” Jun added quietly, meeting her gaze. Ren really was different from anyone else he’d known, far different from all the boys in Cheon he’d had to earn respect from with his fists. It would’ve meant a lot to him to have heard such words eight years ago, when he’d felt as if the world were against him. “You’re spreading a good message.”
Though he still didn’t think that was all Chang talked about with the town leaders afterward.
“It’s another reason why we have to live like this,” Ren said, casting a resigned glance around the barn. “Sifu wants to travel to as many parts of the country as we can. He’s always said that the only way to reach people—not just physically, but in their hearts—is to go to where they are. Staying in a place like Cheon, we’d only be performing for aristocrats.”
“True. Aristocrats pay a lot better, though.” As a guard and usher, Jun had to deal with rich people’s whims all the time, but at least they tipped him when he aided them to their seats, or fetched wine, or delivered notes or gifts to their favorite performers.
Before going onstage that evening, Chang had instructed Jun in his duties as their new assistant, including how to keep the ledger that recorded the income from their performances. The earnings hadn’t been much tonight. The meager collection of coins amounted to less than what Jun typically made in tips at the opera house on a good night, though it was undoubtably still an extravagance for these families. Above that, a meal and shelter for the night were about all the people of River Maiden could offer.
Chang’s voice came from the open door to the barn. “There used to be an inn in this town, a nice one. It shut down a few years ago, after the water dried up.” Tapping his bamboo cane along the ground, he came over to them, moving briskly and with assurance, rolling around one of the remaining peaches from dinner in his other hand. He didn’t seem as though he’d come from anything important; he was as blithe as Jun usually knew him to be. “River Maiden used to be a major trading hub on the river, but now…” The flutist gave a sad shrug and bit into the peach, sucking its sweet juice. “You can see what’s left.”
Jun tried to imagine the ramshackle town as a bustling port, back when the buildings were newly constructed from the logs and brick carried on barges down the busy waterway. River Maiden would’ve been the last supply stop for travelers heading upriver from Cheon, and thus a growing borough in its own right. “Why did the water dry up?” he asked.
Chang turned toward Jun as if surprised he didn’t already know. “The Dengu River starts in the Black Turtle Mountains in East Longhan,” he said. “When the Prosperity Dam was completed eight years ago, it severely cut the flow of water to farmlands in the West. Many towns like River Maiden lost their livelihoods, and the lack of water has meant terrible drought and wildfires. This year’s been the worst yet.”
Eight years ago. Jun frowned. “Is that why the Snake Wall was closed?”
Chang took another slow bite of the peach. “The Prosperity Dam was one of the main reasons relations broke down, yes.”
That was why his father’s dreams of reuniting their family had become impossible? Why he was unlikely to ever see his mother and brother again? Because the Council in the East had built a dam? And the smoke that irritated his father’s weak lungs all summer—that was also because of the East?
“There were other reasons, too,” Ren added as she laid out the blankets. “West Longhan was already reducing shipments of food to the East over their unjust treatment of martial arts practitioners. The Council approved the building of the Prosperity Dam to increase arable land so the East would be self-sufficient. Also, the West launched military incursions along the northern border in response to reports of the East refusing safe passage to refugees.”
By now, Jun wasn’t surprised that Ren had a much stronger grasp of recent history than he did. All Jun remembered from that time was how he had felt. Sadness when his mother’s letters stopped arriving. Excitement that his father was at long last letting him train again. He looked away, embarrassed by his ignorance and wondering if Ren was judging him for it.
“It isn’t just people like the townsfolk of River Maiden who’ve suffered over the last fifty years. Ever since the Scroll of Earth was taken to the East and the realm divided, the energy of the land itself is different. Dragon’s Breath is declining with every passing year.” Chang’s voice quieted. “I can tell.”
A gloomy silence fell in the barn. Jun stared pensively into the lamplight, recalling unhappy talk he’d overheard recently in the opera house and on the streets of Cheon. People muttered that all the natural disasters were a sign of Dragon’s displeasure. Heaven was punishing the people for sundering the land and separating the Scrolls, and it was all the fault of the traitorous East, or so many believed. Something had to be done, but no one expected the emperor and his court to reconcile with the Council of Virtue. Dragon’s anger would surely intensify, and meanwhile conditions would continue to worsen for the common folk of the realm.
The possibility of the Snake Wall reopening seemed further away than it had ever been. As much as Ren said she and her father strived to use their artistic talents to send a message of understanding, it seemed nearly impossible that their efforts could have any effect. What could a little song and dance accomplish in the face of political tides far above them?
But this was a special year. A year of the Guardian’s Tournament. The Guardian of the Scroll of Heaven was an influential and celebrated public figure, one of the few who could command an audience with the emperor himself. Unlike a lowly opera house usher, the Guardian was someone who had a hope of making a difference. All it took was one person in the right position to move a great lever.
Jun laid back on the pallet, hands laced behind his head, staring into the rafters of the barn. “When I’m the Guardian, I’ll come back to River Maiden,” he decided aloud. “They probably won’t remember a lowly stage assistant, but even though I can’t make the river rise, a visit from the Guardian always brings attention. Maybe I can convey their plight to the emperor. Or set up a martial arts school here to attract people to the area. I could do something.”
Guarding the Scroll of Heaven was a singular honor and responsibility. Jun had spent years envisioning what it would mean for him and his father. He hadn’t considered what it might mean for others.
A surge of renewed purpose filled Jun’s head and limbs with tingling warmth. His reasons for winning the Guardian’s Tournament were now even greater than he’d already imagined. He’d come from the other side of the Snake Wall and understood the East better than most. Ren could fill him in on history and politics. He could help the emperor make the right choices.
He was exactly the right Guardian for this important time in history. It all fit.
Chang stood over him, and even through the blindfold, Jun felt as if the man’s unseeing gaze rested on him for a long, curious moment. Then the flutist laughed. “Our assistant is an impulsive fool and a big dreamer. I like it!” He spat out the peach stone, which he’d sucked as clean as a dog could work a bone. “Enough melancholy for tonight. Time to train.”