The old man ambled along the dirt path winding down the hill. The town could be seen in the morning light, the sun brushed with white wispy clouds, the sky a radiant blue. His wooden soled sandals with twin supporting horizontal woodblocks underneath clopped over the odd rock jutting out from the earth, an irregular cadence with the abrupt twittering of bird flocks passing overhead.

He reached the town’s outskirts. Dense bamboo with their bladed leaves provided shade from the rising sun. Pigs grunted in their wood-fenced pens. Idle farmers nodded at his passing. A girl little taller than his knees halted in his path. She held out a cloth bundle in her hands, lifting it up to him, her eyes wide with her smile.

“Hi, Master Drinn! My pa told me to give you this!” she piped up.

The old man bowed to take the gift. “Thank you, Suyi. Please tell your father that his debt with Yima is done, if he can give a pig in a year’s span.”

Suyi nodded. “Hai-de, Master Drinn!” She skipped off to a nearby farm.

He unwrapped the cloth, revealing the pork jerky within. With a smile, he tied the cloth wrapping and placed it into his shouldered pack. Suyi’s father, farmer Jai, had lost to gambling for the last time – and would pay off his debts. Drinn had been given the unspoken position of peacekeeper for the past few decades, and made sure all were treated fairly in their dues and disagreements. How one decided what was fair, Drinn could only ponder. He concluded then that those with the most wisdom were the most deserving to judge, and wondered if he truly was the one to decide such things.

Soon the dirt road turned to paved streets. Lines of lanterns hung above the tiered balconies. Banners of colored silk stitched with the professions selling their wares or services hung proudly over their many shops. A wealth of savory aromas flooded the air: cured meats, smoked fish, spiced foods being fried or steamed or boiled. Men and women sat round circled wood-tables, sipping tea and playing ivory tiled Mahjong. A single stringed Erhu was being played, whining with its sweet drawn out melody. There was chatter throughout the town, full of people; of life.

The old man nodded back to those who nodded to him. He continued his journey to a two-storied stone building, its banner stitched in Shao Glyphic: Lao’s Tavern, and passed through the grey curtained entrance.

Ryo was sitting atop a stool much too tall for him, face resting over his hands. A man worked from behind the bar until he looked up and grinned. “Morning, paba.”

“Good morning, Natsu,” the old man replied.

The boy leapt off the stool. “Grandpa!

“Good morning to you too, Ryo,” Drinn smiled. “I take it you’ve eaten your first meal?”

His son, Natsu, scoffed, stepping out from the bar to embrace him. “He eats more than a boy his size should.” He drew back. “You haven’t come here in a while, paba. The others are worried. Master Kihijo has been asking for you, and still wants to send a few Gakushen to stay with you.”

“Let him keep asking,” the old man said firmly. “I’m old, and my fighting days are over, along with any who would wish me ill. Why waste his pupils’ time, when it can be better spent training?”

“If not for your sake, at least for Ryo,” Natsu insisted. He hushed to barely a murmur. "That boy means more than any one of us now."

A woman stood then from a shadowed corner. Her hair was not dark, but flaxen, her eyes blue as a clear sky, features from Vinnith, or even Arcadia. Her face was blunted with a brusque honesty to her curt set mouth. She wore the brown tunic of an Adept and held a wooden staff in one hand, shouldering a leather backpack the same as his.

Her bow was low and rigid as she said in perfectly fluent Shao, “Greetings, Master Drinn. It is an honor to meet you. I am Irsi. Master Kihijo has sent me to watch over you.”

Drinn sighed. The Masters were his colleagues, the men and women who had helped shape Shen-La’s empire an age before. “I see Kihijo is still stubborn as ever, though well meaning. You speak as if I have no say in this.”

Irsi nodded with an apologetic smile. “I was told to camp outside your home if needed.”

The old man waved a hand. “That won’t be necessary. You may accompany us. There will be food and bedding for you.”

Ryo tugged at his pants. “Can we go now, grandpa?”

“Very well.” He said his farewells to his son, the boy waving back, “Bye, ayo Natsu!”

They left the tavern, Ryo walking alongside Drinn, Irsi following close behind.

She stated, “You do not hold a kaharak.”

The boy looked up to his grandfather. “What’s a kaharak?”

“It is a staff used by the Gakushen, learned from the monks of the Shenshu Order,” Drinn answered. “Such a thing is no longer needed for these worn hands of mine.”

“Hands of stone only harden with time,” Irsi said.

“Perhaps if I were a mage. And even then, time fells all things.”

They continued onward in pleasant silence until bustling civilization shifted to the unkempt solitude of nature, a stream burbling nearby past the buzzing insects and chirping birds.

Ryo glanced back at Irsi. “How come you have yellow hair? Do you never step into the sun, is that why your skin is so pale?”

“Ryo,” Drinn chided. “Do not ask such rude questions.”

The woman chuckled. “I hail from the mountain island of Skal, part of Vinnith. The sun is still there, but does little to help with the cold. You’re quite fortunate to live in the Summerlands.”

The boy continued to pepper the woman with questions until his breath grew too heavy with their trek to his grandfather’s home. The dirt road coiled up the cresting hill, and at the top, just when the slope flattened to a ridge, stood a wide wooden house before the crop fields and bamboo groves between from the other side.

They passed the fenced bamboo gate that the old man must have crafted years past, swinging ajar. Drinn opened the circled hardwood door to his home.

“Irsi, your room is to the left hall. The outhouse is just outside.”

“If I may,” the Vinnith woman began. “May I observe your grandson’s training?”

“It would be his first day of training,” Drinn said. “Solely to build up the body. I do not see how it would benefit your own.”

She bowed. “You are the creator of Jenpo. Like you said, to master the basics is the path to mastery.”

Jenpo was the martial art titled after Drinn’s line, despite his reluctance in its naming. It was a culmination of all the ways of the Masters, not just his. The old man grimaced, closing the door. “I am merely a contributor.”

“Even so, you invented its ways,” Irsi insisted. “Please, allow me to watch, if not participate in your grandson’s training.” She lightly added, “I cannot guard that which I cannot see.”

He frowned. “Very well.” They passed a sliding door that led outside to a fenced garden of vibrant vegetables and fruits, from green and blue and orange to every color between.

“Let us begin. Ryo, set into this stance.” The man bent into a half squat, arms tucked with his fists in line with his gut.

“Like what the monk taught you, grandpa?” the boy asked.

Drinn smiled. “Yes, like Wei trained me. And as I promised, I will continue my story, so long as you remain in your stance.”

Ryo nodded determinedly, and Irsi squatted into the stance as well.

The old man’s lined face deepened as he recalled his tale.

***

The Free City. That was what the raiders called the place where we would soon arrive. I overheard conversations during breaks between our work, of which were a few sparse moments.

Eventually I asked foreman Tuo, “Where are we headed?”

He answered with one word, “Haol.”

Haol was a vast realm, of that I knew at least. I remembered Shun’s words, that it would be less than a week’s journey with this ship.

“What is the Free City?” I continued in my questioning. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“You will see soon enough.”

My training continued in the mornings with the captain, Lei Teng. In the span of just a few days I had collected my fair share of welts and bruises from his lessons. I rarely saw him past those times, only once or twice at the helm when washing its floors. I quickly became familiar with the ship, its halls and rooms and the various functions of each. The Red Tide was home to more than fifty, though less than a hundred raiders within its thick wooden hull. The foreman rarely left me out of his sight. I am sure I’m still alive due to his watch. Every man was trained and hardy in the ways of war. I had witnessed a few fights between them, though they were disciplined, always throwing down their weapons before openly brawling. There was an unspoken code between them, and though they were killers, they never attacked a man who was not facing them. I wished them dead just the same.

They would not let me into the brig where the rest of the prisoners were, save for Miuli. I suspected she had been taken to the captain’s quarters and had stayed there since then. I did not dwell long on her fate, just the possible solace that she was still alive.

Then, one day, the entire crew grouped over the deck to witness the horizon of geometric shapes spiking outward in the distance. Land. Buildings; people. There must have been countless from the sweeping expanse of the city, more than anything I’d ever seen or dreamed.

I asked foreman Tuo, “What is it called?”

He grunted, “Oreishi, the Free City. You’d be better off here than alone in such a place.”

As we drew closer to the harbor I saw the many ships and boats, recognizing some as fishing vessels with their casting nets larger than any in my village. The ships were sleek and with fanning sails the same as the Red Tide, dyed in various colors that flustered with the wind. The air above blurred, the city baking under the sun’s pelting heat. The buildings above the docks were made up of hardwood timber and glazed grey roofing tiles, thin and several stories high where shuttered windows opened for people to gaze out to the sea.

The city of Oreishi stank of smoke and sweat from what must have been the teeming number of unwashed bodies. The crew busily moved to prepare for the ship’s docking. Tuo brought me to the helm where the captain was manning the wheel. Lei Teng grinned at me, and said, “You have come this far. Should you try to escape from this ship, you’ll be another prisoner then, and be sold to which you will live out your days as a slave. Decide what your fate will be, Drinn.”

I did not say a word. My heart only burned with hatred for that man then.

The captain gestured to Tuo, “Bring him to the brig. Let him see what his fate would be otherwise.”

I was led back to where I had been held before. I gagged at the sudden stench. In the dim lantern light, a man stood to hold the iron bars of the cage and spit onto the floor at my appearance. I recognized him as Baro, face blackened from my beating.

“Filthy traitor,” he snarled. “What would your parents think of you now, Drinn? Just a pet to be used by these slavers.” His voice turned to a ragged murmur. “You helped kill my son. I’ll kill you with my bare hands, in this life or the next.”

The foreman stepped to the cage and growled, “Quiet, before I make you.”

Baro sat down once more. His words echoed in my mind: Traitor; parents; slavers. Kill. I knew I would never see this man, nor any of them, ever again. There was no anger towards Baro, not even pity, just a hollow sense of something being stripped apart – the last of those who remembered you to be soon scattered away, like dust in the wind. I looked upon them, but could not see Shun, nor had the courage, I am ashamed to say, to speak his name. Perhaps Tuo may have let me talk to Shun if I pleaded; but I could not plead, or show any weakness to any of them. I knew this world would not allow me such a luxury.

We waited for what seemed like a day’s span. That was when I first met the Matron.

***

The boy sagged down to the grass, his head lowered in defeat with his failing legs.

“Do you wish to continue?” his grandfather asked.

Ryo looked up to the old man. “Will you stop training me if I stop, like what Wei did to you?”

“You are half my age when I first started training, Ryo,” Drinn said gently. “I do not expect such things from you.”

“I want to be like you,” the boy whined. “But my stupid legs won’t stop hurting!”

“Your legs have cramped,” the old man noted at his quivering thighs. “You need to rest and drink more water.”

“But I want to hear the rest of your story!”

“You shall – in time. For now let’s sit and drink some tea.”

Drinn carried his grandson in his arms, Irsi opening the sliding door back into the house. He walked past the main hall to the kitchen. There was a round wooden table and four chairs at one side. The man lowered Ryo to rest on one chair before moving to the other side of the room, cupboards flanking a stout blackiron oven and stone chimney above it. Glassed windows filtered through the sun, its material a sign of great wealth in the otherwise carpentered dwelling.

“Stay here, Ryo,” Drinn said. He entered the small yard of carefully trimmed hedge trees and paved gardens of pink and yellow orchards that surrounded a stone well. There was a wooden rope pulley that the old man twisted to lower and fill its bucket with the fresh water deep below. He unhooked the bucket and turned to find Irsi, the Vinnish woman, watching him outside the now closed door.

She said then, “There is news concerning your grandson.”

The old man stood still, the bucket by his side. “What is it?”

“A message stamped with the Shan’s seal that a band of Kaiden voyaged to Shen-La. The Wandering Web has identified three such suspects; they have been taken to Gaku for questioning, but they are not the only ones.”

Drinn paused. “I did not recall we Wanderers imprison and torture.”

“With all respect, Master Jenpo,” she bowed her head. “Much has changed since you left the Gakushen.”

“Indeed,” the old man murmured. “It was a more straightforward time then. People knew where they stood. Nevertheless, if Ryo is not safe even here, then not much has changed in the end.”

The woman reopened the sliding door as Drinn walked past. Ryo’s downcast face brightened once he saw his grandfather. The old man rummaged through the cupboards, scraping two sparkstones together over a tinder before throwing it into the opened oven, already filled with wood logs. Soon, a fire crackled to life. He closed the oven and placed a dark glazed teapot over it, pouring the bucketful of water into the kettle through a circled wooden sieve. Smoke soon began to churn up the stone chimney.

Drinn sat down with Ryo and Irsi.

The boy asked, hopeful, “Could you continue your story?”

The old man exhaled softly. “Perhaps after the tea has set?”

Ryo nodded, forlorn.

“If I may ask,” Irsi said. “You are telling him your tale of Jenpo’s legacy?”

“Jenpo, is just a name,” Drinn stated. “I am merely telling Ryo my story. There is no embellishing to what I say, no tales of woe or triumph, only what had been and what is. My life is not one I would wish upon any.”

“If all hadn’t happened, we would not be where we are now,” the woman stated back. “Shen-La would not be what it is, were you not for what you are now.”

The old man nodded. “For good or for ill, we cannot take back our choices, only look back at them so that we may gain some measure of wisdom from it. The fate of a nation is never destined by just one individual, but its entirety as a people. We have all shaped Shen-La in our own ways. Even you, Ryo.”

Several moments passed, until the teapot whistled over their silence.

Drinn stood to dole out three handled ceramic cups and fill with the kettle’s steaming water. The herbal scent of the tea dregs resting in their cups sifted throughout the room; roasted rice and sweet leaves.

Ryo waited, quiet, and his grandfather smiled at the boy’s growing patience.

“Well, then. I said I would continue my story, beginning with the Matron. I wonder what my life would have been had she not come that day to visit the Free Markets. But her appearance set in motion the events which would mark a change for us all…”

***

We waited in the darkness of the brig. Then the thumping scuffle of several boot heels landing down the wooden steps drew my attention.

Lei Teng was first to appear, waving a hand at the metal cage and saying, “Here are thirteen men, all of good stock and strength. A worthy addition to the fighting pits.”

“Perhaps.” A woman’s voice. Her shadowed form drew closer to the lantern’s light. She was a small woman, shorter than my shoulders yet stern, her way of moving something that reminded me of a coiling water-venom snake, graceful yet lethal. She held a straight hardwood cane despite seemingly needing no support. Her indigo silk robe was gilded down her sleeves and hem with floral patterns. Her raven hair was bunned with a silvered blue jewelled headdress. Her seeming delicately tapered beauty was as tempting as a poison blossom’s heavy scent. I knew this woman was worth fearing despite her small stature.

The man behind her was the largest man I had ever seen – not in height, but sheer bulk. He seemed more muscular than an ox, his shoulders meeting with his neck. Dark beady eyes glanced at me, to which I stared back, both fascinated and frightened of his sheer presence. His black hair was closely cropped with his goatee, and he too wore a gilded robe of silkspun blue. His hands were clasped behind him, his barrel chest stretching the seams of his garment. He halted, the great shadow to the diminutively sized woman in comparison.

She shook her head. “I am not interested in more fighters. I seek warriors.”

The captain smiled. “Of that, I’m afraid I cannot give. My crew is not for sale. If, however, you would need our services-”

“What of the boy?” the woman gestured to me.

Lei Teng frowned. “He is nothing, just a deckhand.”

“Hmmm,” the woman murmured. She walked to face me. “Give me your hand.”

Her grip was surprisingly strong. Her eyes gazed back at me, as if she were staring past my form. She released my hand, turning to the captain.

“I will pay you a hundred luong.”

The room was stunned silent at her price.

“As much as that offer stands,” Lei Teng began. “I cannot accept. The boy is something of a good-luck charm for my crew. We have survived many storms and skirmishes with him on board. We could bring back ten times as much with his good fortune.”

He had lied, and I wondered why he would have gone to such lengths. How was I more precious than the woman’s payment?

“You know who I am, raider.” The woman’s tone was casual. “What I have just offered you is far beyond anything for this boy. To deny me is to deny Clan Nobusaka. Do you really wish to slight me?”

The captain, for the first time, was quiet. He bowed his head. “Forgive me, Matron Itsuni. You may have the boy, but where would you have all this gold?”

Two heavy leather purses thunked to the floorboards, produced by the large man underneath his flowing robe. The captain bent down to open one such pouch. He nodded reluctantly, as if he had lost a great deal more than a hundred gold coins. “You can take the boy, then.”

The woman beckoned with her cane. The giant man took my arm with one hand that encircled my wrist, and we ascended the wooden steps. Foreman Tuo nodded to me as we left. In the span of a few words, I had been whisked away from the Red Tide. I winced as I moved once more into the bright sunlight.

I stared out to the docks, bustling with passerby wheeling, lifting, and carting barrels, crates, and wagons in a clamor of shouting over the gulls crying, the jostling of wood or metal, and finally the ever restless sea roaring against the countless ships and boats. I was dazed by the sudden frenzy of activity, never having seen so many people in one place at once.

The woman passed down the walkway, and I followed within the giant man’s hold. There was a closed wagon, a carriage, pulled by what I knew were horses. They were said to only be used by the Tsun’s Jūngun. I had never seen such a creature, and I was rather disappointed in comparing it to just a slender hornless cousin of the oxen that tilled the soil in the neighbouring village of Arayi. Except there was no neighbouring village, and I was one of the last survivors of Giaju. Taken to only the Gods knew where.

We entered the carriage, the woman to one side, the man cramming me against the other with his bulk. In order for us to fit his arm swaddled past my shoulder, hand wrapped around my forearm. I had never truly prayed to the Gods, to Mother Sheia or Father Tujin, though acting under my parents' eyes before their shrines. Now, however, I prayed to the Mother, for her divine power, and the Father, to be worthy of his strength, muttering half-remembered rites under my breath.

The sunlight was dimmed by the dark curtains behind the glass-windowed doors. Still, I could see the wrinkled shadow of the woman’s smirk.

She spoke in marless Shao, “You must be lost in these recent happenings. I am Itsuni, Matron of Clan Nobusaka. What is your name?”

“Drinn, of Jenpo.”

She said softly, “Drinn… you are native to Shen-La, yes?”

I dipped my chin down in answer.

Her mouth glinted into a smile. “You are now a servant of Clan Nobusaka, Drinn. It is a great honor. I know you will go on to do great things.”

She leaned forward then, reaching out to press the tip of one pointing finger over my forehead. I felt a great weight upon my mind, crushing my consciousness. I succumbed beneath her influence and my head drooped down, my eyes soon shutting out the world.