“Well, now that we’ve got that settled,” Harato said, “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re doing here, young master?” As he spoke, the older Banqilun man knelt down, leaning to one side to slip his staff with the two pails off his shoulder. He pulled a trowel out of one of the pails then began filling it with black sand.

  Yipachai stared at him for a moment, trying to reconcile the man’s casual demeanor with the story he had to share. He had experienced so much these past days, he thought a more serious environment would be more appropriate. But Harato couldn’t have known that.

  “I’m an acolyte from a monastery in the Hongshu forest,” he said. “East of Hanaburi.”

  Harato simply nodded and continued to fill the pail with sand.

  “I’m not sure how many days ago it has been now, but there were some bandits who came and set fire to our buildings. They stole our food, kidnapped some of us, and…killed…a few of the elders.”

  Harato paused to look Yipachai in the eyes. The man’s face was painted with sympathy, but he nodded for Yipachai to go on.

  So he did. He told the strange Banqilun man of everything he remembered, from finding Elder Satsanan, to being captured, to waking on the ship and being beaten. He told him about the storm, waking up on the beach, and even about his conversation with Haimunei.

  The only thing he left out was the depth of his anger at the bandit named Mangsut. That, and the idea of tracking the man down that had started budding in his mind.

  As Yipachai spoke, Harato eventually moved on to filling his second pail. When he had finished with that, he sat back, kneeling with his weight on his heels, and listened intently to Yipachai until his story was complete.

  “I’m truly sorry, one so young as you has fallen on such evil times,” Harato said. He looked like he truly meant it. “Those men, I’ve seen them a time or two, paddling their little coast boats back and forth. I’ve heard they’ve caused some trouble for some of the villages a little farther down the coast as well.”

  The Banqilun shook his head, then, apparently dismissing thoughts of bandits from his mind, rummaged around in the bag at his side and pulled out three pale gold samao fruits with one hand. Yipachai would’ve had to use both hands for two of them, but Harato’s long Banqilun fingers held them easily. Harato stood, then strode over to carefully place the samao down one at a time near the tide line, bowing his head after each one and apparently whispering a prayer.

  Yipachai eyed the fruit hungrily. The last thing he remembered eating was the boiled rice that first day he had woken on the ship. It was also the last time he had drank fresh water. He couldn’t help imagining drinking the samao juice, feeling the tangy sweetness on his tongue. His mouth suddenly felt dry. Yipachai licked his lips at the same moment that his stomach grumbled.

  Harato caught him staring. “Here, take this one.” He reached into his bag, producing another samao and tossing it to Yipachai. He pointed with his chin toward the fruit he had left in the sand. “Those are for the mhonglun.”

  “Thank you!” Yipachai said, barely listening. He jammed his thumb into the samao’s peel and ripped it open. His hand shook as he broke off a section of the fruit and shoved it in his mouth.

  It was wonderful. Just the right mix of sour and sweet, and juicy enough to slake his thirst for the moment. He quickly finished it off, section by section.

  “Well, we should probably be off then,” Harato said, grinning at Yipachai’s enthusiasm. He shaded his eyes and looked at the sun. “That is, if we want to be back in time to have supper before dark. Are you coming along, or will I have to trust you not to defile my offering out here on your own?”

  “I’ll go!”

  It seemed odd to trust a stranger so quickly, but Yipachai needed help from someone. Besides, he was growing confident that Harato was the one Haimunei had told him to wait for. And she had saved his life, and was a friend of Tianfu to boot.

  “Alright then, you go along in front. Warn me of any snakes you see along the path. I hate those things.”

  Yipachai nodded and hurriedly climbed up the dark stone outcropping at the edge of the beach. At the top, he paused to take in his surroundings while he waited for Harato to follow. Beyond the rocks, the land quickly transitioned into a patch of light woods. The trees here were different from the ones Yipachai was accustomed to back in Hongshu. There, the branches were full of rich green leaves of all sizes. Hongshu was also known for its mangroves along the coast. Those trees were easy to identify because they always grew in the water with their roots half out of the ground like stilts. Here, in eastern Amigawa, the trees hardly seemed to have leaves at all. Instead they had spiky green needles.

  Harato wasn’t far behind Yipachai. The man may have looked old, with that long, bushy beard, but he moved quite well. Better than most of the elders back at the monastery did. Or had.

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  The Banqilun pointed off to the southwest. “The trail’s right over there. After you, young Yipachai.”

  The trail turned out to be a fairly well maintained path, at least by Yipachai’s standards. The branches had been cleared to a height well above his head, though he thought Harato might’ve had to duck every so often.

  “So, how old are you, boy?”

  “Fifteen, but I’ll be sixteen when the rains come again.”

  “Ah, then not long indeed. Then you’ll be a man, unless you Hetanzou count it earlier than us Banqilun.”

  “In Hanaburi, it’s when you turn sixteen, but in the monastery, it’s when the elders call you for your initiation ceremony. I knew one man who was still considered a boy at twenty-two!”

  Harato chuckled. “I see. And have you been initiated via this ceremony yet?”

  Yipachai looked back at the man over his shoulder. “Not yet. But I thought I was getting close.”

  They walked like that for the better part of an hour, Yipachai in front watching out for snakes—he never saw any—and Harato in the rear, patiently answering Yipachai’s questions and stopping occasionally to set his staff and sand-laden pails down and stretch his shoulders.

  “What is the sand for?” Yipachai asked. “Seems pretty heavy to carry all this way from the beach.”

  “I’m a blacksmith,” Harato replied. “This sand is full of iron that I can smelt down and use for making things.”

  “How does that work?”

  “Depending on how long you stay, you might get the chance to see for yourself.”

  They continued on to a place where the trail met up with a small stream, maybe five or six paces across. Harato signaled for Yipachai to follow it to the left, and they went on for another quarter hour. By that time, Yipachai had begun to sweat. The air was humid—perhaps not as bad as Hongshu during the wet season, but enough that a thin sheen coated his arms and exposed shoulders. Thankfully, there weren’t as many mosquitoes as there were in Hongshu.

  Before long, they arrived at Harato’s home; a simple, but fairly large wooden structure built with logs that had notches cut into them so that they all fit together. On top was a steep roof covered in wooden tiles.

  Next to the house stood a similar building, with the same kind of, steep-angled roof. This one, however, only had two walls. Inside was a large anvil and something that looked like a giant block made of stone bricks. A substance that Yipachai couldn’t identify had been smeared between the cracks and had obviously hardened. On one side was a small iron door.

  Harato set down his staff and pails next to the strange structure—he called it his smelter—then ushered Yipachai into the house. Inside was almost completely dark; the small windows barely let any light in.

  Behind him, Yipachai heard Harato digging into his pouch again. Then, a flash of green light briefly illuminated the room, a rather large ball of green flames shooting up and colliding with the ceiling. Almost immediately, the ceiling began to glow, bathing the house in even white light.

  “There we have it,” Harato said, tapping a thin wooden rod about the length of his forearm—a l’anti wand—on the side of the doorway so that a little cloud of sawdust fell outside the house. “Home at last.”

  The inside of Harato’s home was spacious, but comfortable. Solid, like someone had lived a good many years there until everything has finally found its proper place. A few folding paper dividers sectioned off what Yipachai assumed were sleeping areas. In the main space, one whole wall was obscured by shelves full of books—as many as Yipachai had ever seen in one place.

  And there, stuck in the far corner, stood two tall wooden racks full of swords. Not the thick-bladed sabres the bandits had wielded, but true, beautiful Banqilun-made blades—single-edged with a graceful curve. Faint waving lines decorated the steel, stretching lengthwise along the blades.

  “What are those?” Yipachai asked, his eyes wide.

  “Those,” Harato said with a sigh, “are my failures.”

  “What do you mean failures?”

  A pained look came over the Banqilun’s face. “I mean that those are swords I made that did not win duels for their owners.”

  “Duels?” Yipachai asked, his curiosity thoroughly piqued. “Do Banqilun duel often?”

  Harato sighed again and stroked his beard. “It is…more common than outsiders might realize. Some see it as sport. Others as a matter of honor, or of justice. But most agree to duel by swords because dueling between two Lan Banti invokers tends to end with both combatants in pieces.”

  That certainly made sense. Yipachai had seen the power of Lan Banti. Builders invoked great forces in their construction projects, hewing large stones with power from their staffs, then hoisting the pieces up and into their final resting places. Soldiers trained to hit far-away targets with enough force to rip a man to shreds. Even relatively untrained invokers, like those bandits, had been able to set the monastery on fire. Lan Banti was useful for many things, but it was especially well-suited for destruction.

  That was why Elder Satsanan had revered it, or so she said. It was a great gift to Sentientkind, and worthy of use only when the one who used it had been properly instructed and purified.

  “Now before you go and start getting any ideas,” Harato said, “I’d say you’re better off staying away from things like those if you can help it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Yipachai said, nodding.

  But it was too late. The moment he laid eyes on those blades, a plan had already begun to bloom in his mind. If he could learn to use a sword like one of those, bandits like Mangsut wouldn’t be able to stop him.

  “Good, now why don’t you go wash up and I’ll see what I can do about supper.”

  Yipachai obeyed, crossing the main living area and poking his head around the wooden room dividers to see where the wash basin was. He found it on the left, next to a small shrine with wooden carvings of mhonglun arranged neatly on a decorative box. Two small bundles of wildflowers lay in front of it.

  Suddenly, Yipachai was back in the monastery, his life peaceful and unhurried. Simple. There, he had been just an acolyte boy, destined to join the ranks of serene monks, meditating his days away and contemplating the beauty and mystery of the mhonglun.

  But that life was gone. That boy had been kidnapped, beaten, and drowned.

  Your rage cannot sustain your soul forever.

  The dragon Haimunei’s words came to his mind unbidden. In truth, she was probably right. Yipachai had heard things like that from Elder Satsanan before. But his life was different now. His rage might not sustain him forever. But he could live without letting that anger out immediately.

  It can sustain me for now.

  For the rest of the night, Yipachai’s mind was in two places. One was in Harato’s home, smiling and enjoying the man’s hospitality. The other was on a ship, pressing a fine Banqilun blade into Mangsut’s heart.