The Huan moved through the Oldtown night unnoticed.
Or at least he hoped so.
It was difficult to conceal his identity. The fine and expensive clothing he normally wore could be exchanged—and had been—for a plain, rough jōe that a tradesman might wear. He'd scrubbed away the scent of perfumes and ointments and let the smoke from the choked flue of a tavern hearth coil around him until he smelled of soot and ashes. He'd mussed his hair; he'd been careful not to use the cultured accents of the wan'-and-shu', but instead the broad intonation of the lower classes. Still, his voice was distinctly high-pitched, which he knew was a cause of occasional jest when people talked of him. There was no disguising the squared jaw under the band of well-trimmed beard: the jaw his papaqin and great-papaqin had possessed also, and which was prominent in portraits of them. He could stoop, but it was still difficult to disguise the way he towered over most people, or to hide the trim muscularity of his body. He kept a cowl pulled over his head, he leaned heavily on a short walking stick, and he spoke as little as possible.
He enjoyed nights like this. He enjoyed the anonymity; he enjoyed the escape from the constricting duties of the Huangdi's court; he enjoyed being simply "Yong" and not "the Huan." As Huan, he was bound to his mamaqin's whims and her rules.
When he was Huangd, all that would change. Then Orbis would dance to his call. The empire would awaken from its long decades of slumbering under his matarh and the current Guji and his predecessors and realize its true potential.
Soon enough . . .
Oldtown, despite the intimation of the name, wasn't the oldest settling within Orbis. That honor went to the Isle Huang, where the Huangdi's Grand Palace, the Old Shrine, and Huan's own estate all were situated. But the original dwellings on the Isle had long ago been razed to make room for those far more magnificent buildings and the lavish, manicured grounds on which they stood. Oldtown and the narrow, twisting streets on the north bank of the Yellow River had been the shores onto which the growing city on the Isle had spilled four centuries ago, and Oldtown had changed little in the last few hundred years. Many of the buildings dated back that far. Oldtown clasped its dark past to its bosom and refused to let it go. Mysteries lurked down claustrophobic alleyways, murder and intrigue in the shadows. Its shops contained anything the human heart might desire, if you knew where to find it and could afford it; its taverns were loud and boisterous with the alcohol-buoyed glee of the common folk; its streets swarmed with life in all its glory and all its disgust.
If you can't find what you desire in Oldtown, it doesn't exist. It was an old maxim in Orbis.
Yong had found love in Oldtown, and it was toward love that he hurried, every night that he could find the time to steal away from those around him.
"Pardon, Mister. Might you have a coin to spare for someone to buy a loaf of bread?" The voice came from the black mouth of an alley, accompanied by the scent of rotting teeth. Here in the bowels of the city near Oldtown Center, well away from the torii-lights of the Main Boulevard, what illumination there was came mostly from the open windows of taverns and brothels, fitful and dim. Wedges of darkness shifted and Justi saw the man there. He knew him, also: the beggar known as Mad Song. Where foul things happen, you'll see Mad Song. It was another saying within the city. The man seemed to be ubiquitous, wandering everywhere through the city, and present often enough at critical events in the city that Commandant wan'Zhuge himself had questioned the man. It was rumored that Song had acquired at least some of the scars on his body then.
Yong rummaged in the pocket of his cloak; his fingers plucked a small coin from among the others there. He brought his hand out.
"Here," he said to the beggar. He kept his voice deliberately low, growling the words and disguising his natural high tenor. "Buy yourself bread or a tankard. I don't care which."
A hand flashed out and caught the coin as Yong flipped it toward the man. "Thank you, Mister," he said. "And in return, let me give you something."
"I want nothing from you, Song." Yong took a step away from the man, his right hand straying to the knife he had hidden under his cloak.
Song seemed to chuckle. "Ah, Song's no threat to you, Mister. Not tonight. But you do want something from me. You simply don't realize it. Isn't that the way it happens too often? We don't know what it is we need until it's taken from us, or until we receive it." His voice changed: it became a breath, a hoarse, urgent whisper. "I know who you are. I know what you want. I know what you're searching for, and what you've found."