Volume 2 Chapter 17

  Tan stood out in the field of barley. This field was one of the first they’d planted in the spring, and it was the first ready for harvest. The grains were golden, and when he brushed his hand against one of the stalks they came away without much effort. They were bending slightly, and the plant itself had begun to dry out as it reached the end of its life cycle.

  Tan nodded. The harvest was coming soon.

  He took a deep breath, focused his intent, and formed the technique.

  For six feet around him, right around his ankles, a blade of air cut around him in a swift circle. The stalks all shifted, then fell to the side.

  Tan exhaled, then panted for a second. That had taken a lot of effort, he reflected. Not just now, but over the last few years, ever since he had seen Zenith perform the Blade That is Everywhere, he had been working towards a technique like this.

  He was rightly very proud of himself.

  He walked through the downed grain and into the rest of the field, where he repeated the technique. He continued to scythe down the field until he was mentally exhausted, then he returned to the house for a quick drink before continuing.

  It took him all day to scythe down the entire field. The others came in behind him and began bundling up the grain for processing. The stalks would be used for hay, while the grain went into Tren’s storage ring for … whatever it was that Tren did with their excess crops. Tan had never really questioned it before, but now he wondered.

  So, over dinner, he asked.

  “Oh?” Tren said, snatching a dumpling from his wife’s plate. She immediately responded by snatching a piece of choice pork from his. “Lately I’ve been selling them to Renton, I suppose. Before that, I didn’t really do anything. It was good for the land to be harvested is all, so I planted as much as we could and threw everything into one of my storage rings.”

  Tan blinked. “You have more than one?”

  “I left the palace with a ring on each finger, Tan,” Tren explained. “Two of those were lifesaving talismans, of course, and one of them was full of treasures. The other were mostly empty, and what they did have in them I’ve emptied out over the years. Many of the things I thought I would need in my new life weren’t as useful as I thought they would be, and the things that I did need I learned to make myself, or I got from the village.”

  “I see,” Tan said. “So, you just had an entire ring that you filled up with our harvests?”

  “No, I filled up five of them before I started selling them to your uncle,” Tren admitted. He scratched his nose, then subtly sneaked a pea pod from Safron’s plate. Safron didn’t like pea pods, though, so she just snatched a dumpling from his.

  “Oh,” Tan said, then he snatched a piece of meat from Ko’s plate. She retaliated against her brother, who retaliated against Pao, who simply sighed and filled his plate again from the serving dish. He was the oldest and biggest of them, so he needed to eat more, but he had his mind on other things at the moment.

  Like the kiss that Ko had given him the day before.

  It wasn’t long before they’d be old enough to marry. His parents teased him about it when he went to town, but it was a serious consideration. What would that do to the quartet’s dynamics, and what would Tan think especially, and--

  Won sneaked another dumpling from him, and he jerked himself out of his self-imposed contemplation and grabbed a chunk of fried egg from Won’s plate to retaliate.

  “I’m getting better at making blades out of the air,” Tan bragged.

  “I noticed. I saw that the cuts were getting sharper towards the middle of the day, and then duller again towards the end, but that was likely due to fatigue,” Tren said, praise in his voice.

  “It would still be easier to cut it down the traditional way,” Tan said. “It takes a lot of effort to use that technique endlessly.”

  “That’s why it’s good for you,” Tren said. “We’ll continue to have you do most of the scything until we start to run behind on the harvest. Then we’ll all start contributing. Even Safron.”

  “Me too?” the little girl said.

  “You’re old enough now,” Tren informed her.

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  “But I already help with the water.”

  “Yes, and that’s very helpful. But you’re old enough for more than that this year, I think. Tan was already in charge of the chickens and the pigs when you were his age, and I think that you’ll be taking over those duties when he goes to stay with Uncle Renton after the harvest.”

  Safron pouted slightly, but didn’t argue with her father. Instead she stole a mushroom from his plate.

  Then she remembered that she didn’t like mushrooms and spat it out.

  The dinner continued for a while, followed by the post-dinner cultivation session and reflection on the day.

  Then the quartet returned to the cultivation hill for the evening. They sat in their traditional spots in silence for a while.

  “So, it’s almost time for us to leave,” Pao said eventually. “I mean, we’re already retainers to the imperial prince, but when we go to the capital, we’re going to really be retainers to the imperial prince. It’s so surreal to think about it.”

  “Stop talking about it, you’re making it weird,” Tan complained.

  “If we don’t talk about it now, when will we?” Pao asked.

  Tan was silent, because he didn’t have a good answer. “I don’t want you guys to bow to me. Not ever. I checked with Renton, and that’s a thing that I can order you to do. There are reasons for it. Like, that way you can examine the crowd while everyone else is bowing, or something. I don’t know, but it means that you’re my most trusted friends and allies, which you totally are. So if anyone says that you’re supposed to bow, to me, tell them that I ordered you not to and that should solve the problem.”

  “What about your uncle?” Ko asked. “Do we bow to him?”

  “I think so,” Tan admitted, the words leaving a sour taste in his mouth. “I don’t have to, but you do. But only when he’s acting in his official capacity. When he’s around the palace and being himself, then we’re supposed to pretend we don’t know who he is.”

  “But we do know who he is,” Won pointed out.

  “Yes, but not everyone in the palace who has seen his face knows that he’s the emperor. He introduces himself as the servant of the empire . Apparently nobody can tell the difference between that and being a servant of the emperor . And it helps that he also instructs his closest allies to also call themselves servants of the empire, so most people think that Renton Shen is just a powerful expert.”

  “That’s kind of weird,” Won said. “Why doesn’t he want people knowing who he is?”

  “I guess it goes back to my grandfather,” Tan said. “It was tradition by the time my dad and Uncle Renton were born, and although he could break it anytime that he wished to break it, he keeps it going instead. He says that it makes things more complicated, but also a lot simpler for him personally.”

  “What are we going to do when we get to the palace?” Pao asked. “I mean, what are our responsibilities?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have any,” Tan admitted. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have more schooling to do.”

  “What about us?” Won asked. “I mean, Swenshion spends all of his time with you, so who’s going to teach us?”

  “I don’t know, Won,” Tan admitted. He sighed. “I don’t know what the palace is like, okay? I know there are other kids. Like, a lot of them. I guess the outer palace itself is like a walled city, with ten thousand people living inside it. Then there’s the inner palace, and only the emperor, his servants, his guards, and children of his servants are allowed to go inside. We’ll be staying there, of course, but we won’t be confined there. We can go wherever we want in the entire palace, so I guess in our free time we can explore?”

  “Huh,” Won said. “Sounds a lot different from Mosantos.”

  “Yeah, but Mosantos was different,” Tan said. “Zenith was just educating us, or whatever. We’re not really going to the capital to be educated. It’s to...I don’t know. Establish me at court or something. I don’t really get it.”

  “Yeah, well, if your parents and your uncle say that you need to do it, then you probably do,” Ko said.

  “I know. I just wish I didn’t have to,” Tan admitted.

  They sighed and fell into silence, and they continued to cultivate until full dark before retiring to their beds.

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