The child frowned and then looked out of the window. The cart was approaching a marvel of slackcraft: a massive square of water that stood unsupported, enveloping the center of the Grand Palace. A hundred yields high and a thousand yields in length and breadth, the moat-cube was large enough to swallow fifty houses. Golden fish bigger than a child’s head sluiced through crystalline turquoise.
Sonami tugged gently on the Slack, and the waters parted just enough to admit the cart. Curious fish swam around this intrusion into their habitat. The cart was headed for the innermost sanctuary of the Grand Palace, the place where only the Protector, her closest advisors, and her family were admitted. Head Abbot Sung had never seen it himself, until now.
The cart exited the water into the hollow center of the cube. A lifetime of purging emotion and base desire had not prepared the Head Abbot for the spectacle of the Protector’s sanctuary. Stone floated on water, slabs of gray forming a base for a tessellation of square buildings woven out of wood of every color. Trees—cherry, willow, ash—entwined with one another, roots and branches knitting into nets through which light dappled: lantern light, dancing from the enormous paper globes that hung glowing in the air.
Then the Head Abbot realized that the trees and the buildings were one and the same. Some unknown Tensor architect had knitted living wood around stone foundations, folded them into right-angled, geometric shapes indistinguishable from traditional construction. Even the carvings on the ends of roof beams were live wood, guided into precise shape by slackcraft. Dragons and phoenixes and flaming lions lived and breathed and grew.
“It took a lot of work,” said Sonami, to the Head Abbot’s fresh, unbelieving intake of air.
“Did your mother do this?”
“No, I did.” As the Head Abbot frowned, they added, “I, and a few others. But it was I who directed the design.” The child looked out at their handiwork. “The old sanctuary was designed by someone who was purged after the riots. Mother wanted it changed.”
“And she asked you to do it?”
Sonami nodded. “It was a test. I did not know it at that time, but it was.”
“It’s very well done.”
“Mother says I have talents that are best not wasted. It’s a rare gift, she says.”
Sonami stopped the cart under the canopy of two intertwined cherry trees, one red and one white. As they disembarked, Sonami said, quietly, “You should not have given my mother space to interpret your request however she wished.”
The child led the Head Abbot up a series of gentle stone steps. As he walked down a corridor of wood framed by windows of delicate silkscreen, the Head Abbot steeled himself. If the Protector imagined he would give up on their agreement without a fight, she was wrong. The ancient codes that governed such things ran deeper than the rivers and older than her blood. She could not throw them away so easily. To disrespect them would be to call into question the very nature of authority itself. And she, a descendant of foreign invaders into this land, would not want that.
She had promised the monastery one of her children, and she would give the monastery one of her children. The Head Abbot would see to that.
With a gesture, Sonami rolled aside the white silk door protecting their destination. Cool air gusted around the Head Abbot’s ankles and neck, and enveloped him as he stepped inside.
And then he heard it: the high, thin wailing of a newborn.
A baby. A child.
The Head Abbot shut his eyes and silently recited a centering sutra before following Sonami past the privacy screens that had been set up in the room.
Protector Sanao reclined on a divan, supported by cushions of yellow silk, her face unpainted and her hair gathered cleanly in a bun on her head like a farmer girl’s. She wore plain robes, the thick linen dyed dark blue, with none of the finery associated with her office. But she didn’t need ornamentation to occupy the room as the sun occupies the sky.
“Venerable One,” she said, her voice hard and smooth as marble, “I’ve brought you here to settle our debt from last summer.”
The Head Abbot had already seen all he needed: the looseness of her robes, the flushed skin that spoke of her recent exertions. The mysteries that had plagued him like summer heat—her public disappearance, Sonami’s cryptic remarks—unraveled like old yarn.
The Protector pointed, and one of her aides, a Tensor barely older than Sonami, ran forward to pull the red cloth off the woven basket on the table between them.
The Head Abbot knew what was in that basket, and he mentally prepared for the moment he had to look inside. Yet when that moment came, he blinked in surprise. Inside, swaddled in cloth, was not one red-faced, writhing infant, but two. One of them was crying; the other looked like it wanted to, but hadn’t figured out how.
“Twins,” the Protector simply said.
The Head Abbot looked at her and then back at the basket. Words would not come to him.
“You asked a blood price, and I am paying fully, and a little bit more. The fates conspired to double our blessings. Consider this gesture of generosity a measure of my gratitude for the monastery’s support last year.”
The crying infant stopped wailing to stare up at the Head Abbot. It had mismatched eyes, one brown, one yellowish. Its face crumpled in confusion, or some other unreadable emotion—it was only an infant, after all. Then it started crying again. Finally, the other twin joined in.
The Head Abbot’s feelings swung like a pendulum. Anger at himself, for not having predicted this. Disgust at the Protector, for having done this.
The Protector folded her hands together. “They are yours now. Do with them as you wish.”
“The Grand Monastery does not apprentice children younger than six,” he said. And it was true. They had no facilities, no resources to deal with the unannounced arrival of two hungry newborns. “I will take them to one of the minor monasteries that has an orphanage, perhaps—”
“I did not birth these children to have them raised by nuns in some gutter district,” the Protector said crisply.
Head Abbot Sung found himself at a loss for words again.
“Very well,” she said. “If the Grand Monastery will not take them, I will raise them myself until they are six. You may return for them then.” She gestured to the Tensor aide. “Xiaoyang.”
The aide replaced the red cloth and took the basket away, disappearing behind the wall of painted silk that stood behind the Protector.
The Protector smiled at the Head Abbot like a tiger would. “I am sure you will find them adequate when you return,” she said smoothly.
He stared at her.
“Do you contest the fulfillment of our agreement?”
“No, Your Eminence.” He bowed in obeisance. What else could he do?
Sonami led him back out. They both settled into the cart and sat there awhile in silence.
The Head Abbot said to the somber child, “I am sorry.”
Sonami shook their head. “You tried your best. Mother is Mother. She does what she wants.”
“Indeed.” He folded his hands together. “But I don’t understand the purpose of twins.” She must have had a reason for conceiving two children.
“It was an accident,” Sonami said. “Conception through slackcraft has its risks.”
“But why would she keep both infants?”