Normally Uncle Tai Wu served the Guardian Council, which was across the sea in Shinboa, the seat of the World Council. He was a disappointingly ordinary-looking man, shorter than average, with the same wide cheekbones that characterised the rest of the family. All she knew about him was that he had ascended at the age of twenty and that he was Great-Grandfather Yi's youngest son, which made him Linua's great-uncle.
Great-Grandfather Yi, as a venerable ancestor of a prominent Shang House, played hard to the stereotype. He was small, shrunken and wiry with a long, slender, snow-white beard sprouting from his chin, and his face seemed to be permanently frozen in an expression of serene wisdom. Today he had been installed in a carved wooden chair at the top of the castle steps, overlooking the courtyard. The Yi family and all the retainers lined the inner walls, leaving space in the centre for the cousins. Uncle Tai Wu stood next to Great-Grandfather Yi and surveyed the courtyard with a benevolent smile. When a retainer hurried up with another chair he held up a hand to decline it. The retainer bowed respectfully and backed away.
Linua formed up with the other cousins in the centre of the courtyard. Everyone wore traditional Shang clothing, in the form of a silk jacket with embroidered patterns of cranes or lotuses and tied with a sash, and underneath that either a narrow ankle-length skirt, or loose trousers bound at the ankles with strips of cloth.
One of the retainers banged a gong, and Wai Bing Shu Fu solemnly strode out. He faced Great-Grandfather Yi and Uncle Tai Wu and bowed to them. Then he turned back and bowed equally solemnly to the cousins, who mirrored the gesture.
Another gong banged, and they began to move through the forms.
Rather than stand next to Great-Grandfather Yi and observe, Uncle Tai Wu ambled down the steps. Sadly, he didn't use Air Walking and dramatically fly down them with his silk clothes rustling behind him. Instead, he walked using his feet, just like anyone else, and proceeded to wander up and down the double row of cousins as they shifted between forms.
Occasionally he put out a hand and gently corrected a stance. When he stopped in front of Linua, all he did was place one finger on the back of her neck, and say, in a kind and pleasant voice, "Looser, my child. Chi is like a river—make the riverbed wide and shallow, for such a current is inorexable and full of slow power. Then, when you need it, change the current so that it is deep and narrow but strong and fast."
Linua spent the next few forms envisioning the flow of Chi through her muscles as if it was different kinds of rivers. Strangely, his advice did help a little bit.
She let herself slip into the brief but seductive fantasy that one day—maybe next week—she would ascend herself, and Sheyboh and the entire Yi family would stop treating her like an irritating and incompetent inconvenience. Uncle Tai Wu would take her under his wing and tutor her personally, and wouldn't be anything like as unpleasant as Sheyboh. Instead, everyone would admire her and ask her how she had found the path to ascendance, and all the cousins would be envious.
Her train of thoughts was interrupted by the demonstration coming to an end. Uncle Tai Wu clapped and thanked Sheyboh for showing off his students. Great-Grandfather Yi creakily got to his feet as everyone organised themselves to walk to the Twelve Shrines.
The family lined up in order of seniority, with Great-Grandfather Yi at the head of the line and Uncle Tai Wu by his side. Linua was near the back of the cousins, and the retainers followed behind them. As the line formed up, it slowly wound its way down through the gardens to the Twelve Shrines. Great-Grandfather Yi was very old, so of necessity the procession advanced at a slow shuffle.
That lent plenty of time to look around and think.
Each garden was separated from the main path by a differently shaped archway. Some were completely circular, some were narrow ovals, some were true arches, and each offered a glimpse to the section of the garden beyond, the whole designed so that the viewer saw what amounted to a diorama. The rockery looked like miniature mountains, the pond garden looked like a lily-strewn lake stretching into the wilderness, the bamboo garden looked like a mountain full of secret paths to enlightenment.
The gardens were Linua's favourite place at the Castle—very nearly the only part of it she liked. Normally she filled each little mysterious glimpse of garden with characters and events from Alnan's stories, but today all she could do was think about what the artefact in the photo might be.
She imagined an ancient scroll illuminated in gold and lapis lazuli, detailing the astronomical observations of an ancient supernova. No, she thought, her mood souring a little. It would be something related to the Nimrasian Mysteries. Maybe it was a Kingdom of Kāru orrery of brass and gold which held some hitherto undiscovered clue to the location of the mothership. Or perhaps it was an Ancient Kāruan astrolabe, worked with exquisite gold filigree, which created a puzzle that, when decoded, would point to the co-ordinates of Nimras's Portal.
There was really no telling what the mysterious item might be, or even if it was only one item and not a collection. She ought to stop thinking about it.
At the bottom gate, the procession shuffled across the road and into the Twelve Shrines. There was a bigger entrance and a car park further down the hill, for the benefit of the general public from Herkow, but this entrance was purely for the Yi family.
A priest stood and waited for them, nearly as ancient as Great-Grandfather Yi. He fell into step a couple of paces behind Great-Grandfather Yi and the procession shuffled onwards with painful slowness.
In the central plaza there were twelve shrines, one for each of the Houses, with the First Guardian of each house prominently displayed within. Only nine of the Houses were still extant, three having been disbanded, or simply having lost the mandate of the Guardians by failing to produce an ascendant heir.
This was a fate that would befall House Yi in the next twenty years if a member of the younger generation didn't ascend soon, and it was a topic that was very much on everyone's minds these days.
Uncle Tai Wu stood directly before the Yi family shrine, with the priest on one side and Great-Grandfather Yi on the other. In order to show respect to the first ancestor, all the retainers and the entire Yi family bowed one hundred and thirty two times, once for each generation since the First Guardian.
To bow properly you had to kneel on the ground and touch your forehead to the paving stones, then stand up fully at the end, which made the bowing process last a long time. It was also, Linua thought, quite a feat for a ninety-year old man like Great-Grandfather Yi. She didn't know how old the priest was, but he wasn't far off that himself.
Linua ran through the fantasy about ascending again, this time polishing it a little and adding some improvements, particularly when she dwelt on the satisfying expressions of dismay and disbelief on the faces of Wai Bing Sheyboh and Cousin Sayo Dahn after she had revealed her powers in the children's dojo in the middle of practice by using Leap of the Antelope to fly from one end of the hall to another.
It was a pleasant daydream, but towards the end it foundered at the thought of Grandmother, who already had it settled that Linua would attend university and become a famous astronomer. Grandmother would never stand for Linua ascending and joining House Yi as a full-time member.
Instead Linua would probably end up going to university just like Grandmother wanted. She wondered if it would be possible, once she got to university, to change from astronomy to something else, but she wasn't sure what else she wanted to study. Anything but astronomy.
Linua started to make another dip then realised that they had all completed the one hundred and thirty-second bow to honour the First Guardian, and hastily stood straight, hoping that no-one had noticed she hadn't been counting.
Now there would be an interminably long dance, with lots of banging gongs and drums, and priests chanting. The chanting was funny because, unlike with Keretic hymns, none of it rhymed. One of the aunties had once told Linua that this was because Zuyu had changed over the millennia, so that even though they could still read and understand Ancient Zuyu, it would have been pronounced completely differently three thousand years ago. The words were the same, but the rhymes had long since worn away, leaving mere ghosts of themselves scattered through the stanzas.
There were tall scrolls positioned around the shrines which told the story of each guardian, using the older form of Zuyu rather than the condensed modern form. 6666678Linua normally occupied her mind by trying to read it, and had done this so many times by now she was nearly word-perfect on the old stories of the Guardians. Today, however, all she could think about was the storage stick.
Happily, once the ceremony ended, the family didn't have to wait for Great-Grandfather Yi to shuffle slowly back up the gardens. Linua and the younger cousins ran ahead, the adults walked in groups of twos and threes, talking in low voices, and Great-Grandfather Yi stayed on at the shrine to talk to the elderly priest—he would be ferried back up to the house by car later.
After the feast—where Linua had pulled apart her chicken dumplings to ensure that there was nothing untoward in them, and proceeded to nibble cautiously at the shredded pieces—the cousins congregated in the big entrance hall to the Castle. There was an argument between sixteen-year old Sayo Hui, who wanted to stay in the main feast hall with all the grown-ups, and her mother, who expected her to babysit all the younger cousins.
"It is your duty," Sayo Hui's mother said. "The fact that you are begging me to come and be with the adults tells me you are not yet an adult. Demonstrating that you are dutiful and responsible is the first step towards adulthood."
Linua thought it was particularly hard on Sayo Hui. It was obvious the adults would keep heaping the responsibility for overseeing the cousins on Sayo Hui because none of them wanted to do it, but poor Sayo Hui was too old herself now to want to play silly kids games.
Having lost the argument, Sayo Hui slunk back into the Great Hall.
"Shall we play hide and seek?" Sayo Dahn asked.
Sayo Hui rolled her eyes.
"We always play hide-and-seek."
Normally Linua liked it when they played hide-and-seek, or whatever other game was chosen, because it allowed her to disappear into the gardens. Now, however, she sensed an opportunity. Yesterday thief had talked about a TV program called Keng Boh Kids. Linua had never heard of it, but it sounded like the sort of thing that Grandmother would disapprove of. Maybe the cousins knew about it. Keng Boh was a Zuyu word, after all.
"Do you have any episodes of Keng Boh Kids?" she asked.
Sayo Hui brightened.
"Yes! That's a much better idea. Let's go to the den and watch Keng Boh Kids."
"But I want to play hide-and-seek," Sayo Dahn whined.
"Tough. We're watching TV."
"I'll tell oma you're not letting us play hide-and-seek!"
Sayo Hui crossed her arms.
"Go on and tell her. She only wants me to look after you, she doesn't care what we do. If you complain she will just tell you to listen to your bigger, older and wiser cousin. Which is me! And I say we're watching TV."
Linua had been in the den before, but never when the TV had been on. The den was filled with tatty, hand-me-down sofas dumped from elsewhere in the Castle, and usually had crisp crumbs on the floor, despite the fact that the staff probably cleaned it regularly. There was a big wardrobe against one wall which was full of toys, games and video cassettes. Sayo Hui unearthed a stack of video cassettes from the back of it, and promptly put one on.
Previously, Linua had only ever watched the kind of programs that Alnan liked. Mostly he watched a long-running serial that had been made a couple of decades previously, which was a comedy about a group of disparate characters serving in the army. Sometimes he watched news and documentaries.
He'd never watched anything like this.
There were four kids in it. Hacktra was a girl who hacked into computers all the time—she made Linua think of Pickle. GoGirl was Hacktra's best friend, and she made gadgets out of paperclips, string and any old junk she could find lying around. Then there were two boys. Saga was a historian who was confident, knew everything about anything, and seemed to be the leader. He reminded Linua a little of Eret. Then there was the last boy, who was a mitani, a type of secret agent with wushu powers, sort of like a rogue Guardian. He was unimaginatively called Mitan.
It was clear that the makers of the TV series had no idea what a mitani actually did, but he could fight and run up buildings and across tight-ropes, and he had a backpack that unfolded out into a traditional black mitani outfit, complete with a hood and mask.
In this episode, the foursome stumbled across a mad treasure hunter who was stealing bits of Ancient Kāruan technology to make a giant death ray machine which he would send into orbit and hold the world to ransom so that the World Council would be forced to do his bidding. The Keng Boh teenagers were the only ones who could stop it, and spent the episode using all their super-skills to foil the mad treasure hunter's evil plan.
There was a wushu fight scene half-way through which the cousins picked apart and then noisily re-enacted while the rest of the episode continued, but Linua didn't mind. When the credits finally rolled she realised she was sitting on the edge of her seat.
"Didn't know you were a Keng Boh Kids fan," Sayo Hui said, eyeing Linua. She was sprawled on the next sofa, with a magazine about make-up and hairstyles on her lap. "Do you watch it at your grandmother's house?"
"Grandmother doesn't have a TV," Linua said, and then wished she hadn't said anything at the look of pity in Sayo Hui's eyes.
There were three more episodes of Keng Boh Kids on the video cassette, and there was time to watch them all before the car came to take Linua home.
She was walking across the Great Hall when she heard footsteps behind her, and turned. Sayo Hui held out something crumpled made of black fabric. Linua wondered why she was being shown a bundle of cloth, and then Sayo Hui shook it out, and Linua realised it was a backpack with the Keng Boh Kids logo on the front pocket.
"It's Mitan's backpack from Keng Boh Kids," she said. "It really does unfold out into a mitani outfit, with a hood and a mask and everything. It's too small for me now. Do you want it?"
"Yes please!" It was made of soft, good-quality material with a very slight stretch. The straps were a little shiny with use, but Linua didn't care. "This is amazing! Thank you!"
Sayo Hui laughed.
"You're welcome. Have fun!"
The moment Linua got home she tried on the mitani outfit, but she couldn't see what it looked like in her bedroom because she didn't have a mirror. She would have to go into the bathroom and stand on the bath. If she did that and crouched down she would be able to see almost all of herself except for her feet. She sneaked across the landing quietly, and put the light on over the mirror instead of the overhead light, so that the fan wouldn't make any noise and wake Grandmother.
Balancing on the bath, she totally looked like a mitani. Linua had a slender, wiry build, and the mitani outfit enveloped her upper half completely. Her face was oval, with Keretu eyes but a little Shang snub nose, and the high cheekbones of the Yi family. Normally it was a face that was neither one thing nor the other, and didn't fit in anywhere—to the Keretu she looked Shang, and to the Shang she looked Keretu. Under the mitani hood, her face became instead that of a mysterious stranger, ready for adventure.
Eventually she went back to her room, where she emptied all her belongings out of her normal backpack, and put it in the mitani backpack instead. There was even a little hidden compartment for the storage stick.
During her daily morning session at the Castle the next day Linua barely heard Sheyboh's haranguing for once, because her thoughts were occupied entirely by the storage stick. In the afternoon it was back to lunch with Grandmother, and tuition with Mdm Patoni, who kept asking Linua what the matter was, and please could she pay attention.
Once she got to the Observatory, Linua wanted to bounce with excitement, but she made herself walk quietly. She wandered around the building, checking in every room, and was finally rewarded by the sight of Eret and his sister, Anith, in one of the offices. Anith was sitting at the desk with her back to the door. There was a schoolbook displayed in front of her, and she was busy scribbling in a jotter. Eret was sitting on the other side of the desk with the computer in front of him, tapping intently at the keyboard.
Finally, Linua would be able to show them the storage stick, and find out what was on it.