His mother had always made it seem so easy. All of it. When it came time to prepare a fresh pot of ukha, she dove in the dirty canals for only as long as it took the boy to finish washing their clothes. When she emerged, it was with hand-woven nets full of slippery river-fish.

Together, they would travel to the night market. Strung up on temporary tents for only as long as it remained dark, Mama would trade herbs for common vegetables. Priceless medicinal herbs--made less than worthless by her Shaolish hands. Yangganju for white onions, bailin for carrots, meigui-tea for potatoes as small as the boy's fingers.

"They are attempting to cheat us, Mama." He had said once, turning a single carrot over in his palm. It had cost them nine luhui stalks, and it was slim enough that he thought he could floss his teeth with it. "Why do we not grow our own?"

She smiled, as sweet as the daylight coming over the crest of the Eastern Mountains. "My Rypka," she laughed. It was an Empyrean word, one that meant little fish, "my sweet Pearl."

As she called him these even sweeter things, her hands danced out in front of her, singing the song of their faraway homeland. Her fingers twisted into the dawn, spelling for him things he would never let himself forget.

"If I did not trade yangganju to Lesnoy, his poor wife would thrash about all night as sleep evaded her. If I did not collect bailin for the butcher's boy, his father's wrists would ache far too much to continue his work. His son would have to pick up the blade, and he is younger than my sweet Pearl. If I did not brew meigui-tea for those potatoes, then when else could their family enjoy the delicacies of the land?"

He watched her hands, listening not to the words that poured from her mouth. They were Empyrean words, and all he wished to hear from his mother was Shaolish.

"They could be fair to us." He snarled.

She turned, halting on the path home. Her silky black hair hung past her hips, tangled and ruined by the muckish water in the canals. Her bones stuck from beneath her skin, holding her as taunt as a canvas tent. "They are as fair as we can expect, Pearl. They allow us to live in their village, do they not?"

"We deserve-"

"Jun."

He flinched. She sighed, running her grime-kissed fingers over her pale face. He remembered when Mama had not been so worn, when she had smiled. When Baba had been there--when he had returned, once long ago.

"Do not ever say that again." She warned. "Do not ever begin to expect from this world. We have done much to earn our place beneath their boots. It was not so long ago that our countries were at war, destroying everything beneath the Heavens for just a taste of enemy blood."

"That was centuries ago, Mama!"

"What is a century to a mountain?" Mama asked, kneeling down before him. She set her knapsack on the soft forest floor, reaching up with slender fingers to hold his cheeks. "What is time to the land? These things take more than time. More than magic, strength, and love. These things take forgiveness. They take change, Jun. Change that only you can bring some day."

He shook his head. He had not meant to, but it shook away her warmth and she did not reach for him again. How he wished, more than anything, to take her hands--to press them to his cheeks once more and memorize how it had felt. But he did not. Because he could not have ever imagined the day when Mama would not be warm. When her laugh would not fill their one-room cottage. When her scent did not cling to his clothes.

"Come now, my sweet Pearl." She whispered. "I shall teach you how to make ukha."

"Can you, Mama?" He said. "Make it for me one more time."

"Alright." She smiled. "Anything for my sweet Pearl."

She filled their largest iron pot with fish-broth. Before the steam could even begin to rise from the cauldron, she had their pitiful vegetables sliced and dropped into the stew. While chatting to Jun about the chores ahead, she stood over their cooking fire. With a spoon the length of his arm, she twirled around the contents of the bubbling soup.

"It is nice to cook out in nature, is it not?" She hummed.

Jun glanced over her shoulder to their one-room hut. The lights inside had gone dim seasons ago. The water no longer flowed in from the pipes, Jun had helped his Mama to dig a well in the barren back gardens. Their home was as dead as the yellow grass east of the village--the very same field that Mama had been blamed for cursing. Land that Mama would never know they had blamed her for, since Jun had taken the blame and the lashes across his small back.

So, he said, "yes it is nice to cook with a fire." And she smiled.

Somehow, in her slender arms, she collected the iron pot. Together, they went to the center square. As they walked down the hills separating them from the rest of the village, Jun chatted loudly to drive away the sound of their harsh whispers.

He told her of a meadow he had found, one blooming with yellow cattails. She warned him that there must have been water nearby--hidden beneath plains of algae. His meadow was a swamp. He held his excitement by its tail, nodding along stoically so Mama would not think him a fool and forbid him from seeing his swamp again.

Jun unfolded the wooden structure held in his awkward grasp. A table, one seasons older than himself and full of toothy nails. He placed it down, in the center square, and Mama placed their iron pot onto it. She took a step back, wiping her brow with the back of her palm.

The scent of ukha filled the air, dancing up into the breeze as beautifully as fallen leaves. Jun took up a stick and made whooping whistles at all the daring alley cats slinking from the shadows.

Together, they waited. Until the sun began to fall beneath the Western Mountains, casting its impressive spine in glowing oranges. It was only then, when the first of the seven moons rose over the mountains, that they came.

Too ashamed to be seen taking handouts from a dirty Shoalish woman--but they would come with cloaks over their gaunt faces. And they would take their fill. And, because giving out bowls of ukha was something Mama liked to do on Old-Saints day, she would say prayers for them--ones that they hissed at and spit at her feet for.

Because Old-Saints was Empyrean, and Mama was Shaolish. And because they were Empyrean, they hated her. It did not matter if she spoke their words or said their prayers--they called her the same word. Over, and over, and over. Until Jun was dizzy on it. Until the sun rose, and they vanished into the dawn.

"Are you hungry, Pearl?" She asked, looking at the thin yellow broth which remained in the bottom of the pot.

"No," he lied, "perhaps the cats want it?"

"They have been very patient." Mama agreed, turning the pot over to spill the last of the ukha against the cobblestones.

Mama made it look so easy. And he did not know how. He did not know where her strength came from. Nor her kindness. Nor her way of navigating their turbulent world.

He had splashed around in the channels for three days, blinded by the brown algae collecting along the canal walls. Hardly managing to catch even eight guppies. Lesnoy at the night market demanded all of his yangganju and gave him only onion skins in return.

When finally the pitiful ukha had finished boiling, a collection of watery broth and vegetable waste, he attempted to lift it from the cooking flames. The iron pot tipped, quicker than he could stumble away from the hearth. The steaming yellow soup slipped up past the lip of the cauldron.

Jun screamed as it licked up the tanned skin of his slim arms. He dropped the pot--not caring as his work went to filth. Scrawny fish, scraps of vegetables, watery yellow broth tumbled out across the grass, into the fire, and against his dirty clothes. The guppies he had hunted for three days and nights sailed out of the pot, sleek gray corpses which fell into the ash of the extinguished fire.

Tears sprung up into his eyes, as eager as ukha to his flesh, and he screamed. No longer in pain. Just in anger. It was something that had been long nailed down--suddenly snapping. His rage surged forward, rising up on the sounds of his tore voice.

And he screamed. Until the sun went back behind the mountains, until the people slipped out into the town's square to see that there would be no more midnight ukha.

Because Mama had made it seem so easy, and he didn't know how she did it.

He cried, knelt in the middle of the cooling fish stew, until the raw red flesh of his arms began to dim into a gently glowing pink. Exhausted of tears, he rubbed his curled knuckles at the puffy skin beneath his dark eyes. Shoalish eyes--just like Mama. Eyes that no one in their small village dared to meet.

He shoved himself to his feet, whimpering at the tingling contained in the surface of his burnt skin. Mama had harvested luhui seasons ago. He remembered it, how she had slathered the cooling green sap over her own fingers after a stray spark ignited her grease towel. And then she had traded the rest for half a sack of flour.

But he could remember where she had found it. Growing along the muddy banks of the Southern Canal, not the one she dove in to collect gray riverfish. The Southern Canal was too flushed with passing ships. It scared away all the fish.

Jun limped into their small hut. He removed his soup-sullied clothes and pulled dry cloth around his throbbing flesh. His legs, arms, and chest were pink with blights. Wrapped as a present on Old-Saint's eve, he trailed back out of the hut and down towards the canals.

Jun did not like the canals. Traders come in on them, shouting curses at him from the decks--but no, that was not why. He hated the canals, because Baba had left on them, too. He had boarded his speed ship, waving his hand as the ropes were loosened.

Jun had begged for him to stay. He had pleaded--and he had begged Mama to plead, too.

"I can not." She whispered, tears sliding down her tan cheeks. "If I ask him to stay, he will. And I can not do that to him, Pearl."

Jun never saw him again. And now he was alone. So, perhaps that was why he did not run as soon as he saw the strange man slumped over at the bank of the Southern Canal--bitter loneliness. Or maybe he simply lacked the strength. Jun's fingers curled at his side, tugging at the white cloth around his left thigh. It did not much matter. The man was sitting beside a large bushel of thorny luhui.

"Excuse me," Jun interrupted. "May I have some of that luhui?"

The man flinched, twisting to find the source of Jun's weak voice. His eyes found him in the dark, paralyzing Jun in place. They were as blue as ice, as bright as the sky. Even beneath all his filth, the mud and algae which coated him as a second skin, Jun knew his man was Empyrean. More than most. As if he was the heart and blood of the land.

Jun bowed his head and twisted on his heels. His heart flinched upwards into his throat, filling him with sickness. He could still recall the tongue of the whip as it flayed his skin from his spine. There were those in his village that had learned to make piece with his presence, but this man was-

"Wait." The man croaked.

Jun--Old-Saint's be damned--waited. His feet held as sticky as fly paper beneath him. This man was Empyrean. Jun knew he should run. He should-

"Please." The man whispered.

Jun's muscles unwound, turning into putty over his bones. How could he look upon his Mama again, having ignored such pitiful sobs? He turned, slow as pie baked under the twin suns, and looked at the man crouched in the mud.

"You. . . " the Empyrean whispered. "You are Shoalish?"

Jun's throat turned dry. He nodded stiffly. "My Mama was--but I have lived in this village my whole life! I am not a Se-"

"It is okay." The man breathed. "I did not mean to question you--I merely. . . I need help."

Jun's tongue ran over his trembling lips, wetting them. "You need my help?"

"I think you would understand." The man winced. "Or your mother-"

"No." Jun bit. "Mama is. . . not here anymore."

"Oh," he breathed, folding in on himself. His gaze fell to his lap, where curled against his trembling body was some large object. Jun did not know--because the man had wrapped it in a cloak. "I am sorry for your loss. I, too, know how it feels to lose. . . everything."

Jun nodded stiffly. They remained that way, perched on the edge of silence, for a long time. Long enough that the belated fifth and sixth moon began to peak above the horizon. Finally, Jun sighed. He crept towards the water's edge and sat beside the man, on the other side of the thorny luhui bush. He folded his knees against his raw chest and placed his chin on the tops of his knees. They sat and watched the canal below, without a single word passed between them.

For so long, Jun thought he might fall asleep.

"What is. . . your name?" The Empyrean man asked.

Jun turned to look at him. He didn't know why he did it--perhaps he knew the man would not hurt him. He dragged his fingers outward from his chest, before cupping his hand and tracing the outline of his throat. The Empyrean man watched his hands move with quiet concentration.

"That's your Shoalish name." He said.

Jun nodded. "Pearl."

The man smiled softly, as if a bitter sadness had consumed him. He held out his hand and made two jagged drops with his pointer finger, as if gesturing at something beneath them.

Jun's mouth opened before he could stop himself. "You have--you speak-"

The man laughed, tilting back his head to gaze upon the moon-full sky. "I do, and I can. I am still learning."

"Who taught you?" Jun asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

The man smiled down at the cloak in his embrace. He peeled back the layers of the grimey fabric. Jun had to hold in his screams as the moonlight washed the pale face of the corpse. He shot up to his feet, stumbling back with wild panting breath.

That the man was dead, that he was being carried around in an old cloak, and that he was soaked in blood was hardly the most disturbing part to Jun.

"He's Shoalish."

"Yes." The Empyrean man agreed.

Jun had never met a Shoalish man. He thought it would remain that way until he himself grew into one.

"He's dea-"

"No." The man said, shaking his hair until mud and algae began to slide from it. Until Jun could see that it was Empyrean gold, as yellow as the second sun. "But he is dying. I need help."

Jun's shoulders slumped. "How can I help?"

"I need a place to purchase sambuk." The man said. "Supplies, gauze, sewing thread."

Jun shook his head. "No one here will help a stranger--and if they find out they were unknowingly helping a Shoalish man-"

"Please."

Jun sighed. He glanced down at his own chest, wrapped in white gauze, and nodded stiffly. "I will bring you home, I will try to help."

The man sucked in a dry sob, nodding his head. "Thank you. Thank you."

Jun grabbed fistfuls of thorny luhui as the man lifted the Shoalish stranger over his shoulder. Together, Jun took them to his one room hut. Mama had always used the big pot out in the cooking fire, but it was still dumped over the green grass. So Jun lit their small fireplace and stuck a small steel canteen into the blaze to boil a bit of cleaning water.

The Empyrean man piled cloaks, cushions, blankets, and towels in front of the fire. He formed a nest and placed his Shaolish partner in the center of it. Slowly, he peeled away the cloak. Where it stuck to his skin with dried blood, he worked even slower.

"What happened?" Jun asked, handing the man a wet rag to clean the wounds with.

The Empyrean did not answer. He dragged the fabric down his partner's chest, wincing each time the man's chest shuddered. Jun had his doubts--but it was true. That Shaolish man was alive, for now.

He handed back the dirtied rag, Jun dipped it in fresh water and handed it back.

"It is," the Empyrean man whisper, "a very long story."

Jun shrugged--and then winced. The Empyrean man eyed the state of his pink flesh.

"Do you need help, too?"

"Your Shoalish man-"

"He is plenty strong enough to wait for me to help a young boy in need." The Empyrean man said, shaking his head. "He will not go anywhere without me."

Jun nodded slowly. "Mama said the same. She said Baba would always stay if she asked him to."

"Then you understand." The man sighed, brushing long black hair from a pale and sunken face. "Let us now tend to your burns."

Together, they moved to the small kitchen. Only a few paces from the man curled in front of the fire. Jun peeled back the thorny stalks, and the Empyrean man attended to the burns he could not reach.

And Jun said, again, "what happened?"

The Empyrean man held his breath as he dragged salve down Jun's thin shoulders, tracing the scars from his lashes.

"I do not think you would believe my story." He murmured.

Jun laughed. "I do not have to believe it to hear it."

The man smiled. "That is true."

"So?" Jun pressed.

The man snorted in amusement. "Well, would you believe me if I said that once upon a time I was a prince? Sent on a valient mission to save the world?"

Jun could not contain his laughter. He doubled over the wooden counter, nearly spilling the luhui sap onto the floor. "My Mama used to tell me jokes like that, too. She said she was a princess from a far away land."

The stranger smiled. "Well, then perhaps my story will not be as entertaining as I hoped."

"No!" Jun said, spinning around on his heels. "I would like to hear it!"

The Empyrean chuckled, nodding his head. "Alright, then hear it you shall, Pearl. But I must warn you. This is not a happy tale. This is not a story for the faint of heart. This is the story of how a naive prince lost everything. Of how beginning in hopes to save the world taught him something else instead."

Jun held his breath, leaning forward on his toe-tips. "What did he learn?"

"That the world is not worth saving." He whispered. "That instead, he shall destroy it."

The Empyrean man ran his fingers through Jun's oil black hair, brushing it aside from his dark Shaolish features and narrow eyes.

"And when I am done speaking, Pearl. I would like you to join me."

"Join you?" Jun whispered coarsely.

"Help me destroy the world," he agreed, "end both of our damned countries--that is my wish."

Jun could recall something, faint and buzzing in his ears. Words his Mama had left him with: "Only you, Jun, can change the world."

Kerning

Prologue

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