The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate #1)
J.Y. Yang
To my queer family, who chill with me in the Slack
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my editor, Carl Engle-Laird, and my agent, DongWon Song, for their faith in me and for making this novella duology work. To Irene Gallo, Christine Foltzer, and Yuko Shimizu, for the amazing cover, and for perfectly capturing Akeha’s permanent level of grump. And to the crew sailing under the banner of Alyx, Kelly, Kelly, Jay, and Merc: you kept me afloat through the long nights of word processing. Thank you.
Part One
MOKOYA
Chapter One
YEAR ONE
HEAD ABBOT SUNG of the Grand Monastery did not know it yet, but this night would change the course of all his days.
He stood at the foot of the staircase leading to the Great High Palace of the Protectorate: that sprawling, magnificent edifice that few across the land would ever gain the privilege of seeing up close, much less entering. Tonight the Protector herself had summoned him.
Eight hundred alabaster steps stretched above his head. Tradition dictated that the journey to the palace be conducted without slackcraft, and Head Abbot Sung was nothing if not a traditionalist. There was no way around it, and so—he began to climb.
Darkness had fallen like a cool hand onto the peaks of Chengbee’s exhausted, perspiring roofs. As the Head Abbot mounted step after step, his robes clung to him: under his arms, in the small of his back. The moon rolled uncloaked across the naked sky, but in less than an hour, the sun would return to scorch the land, bringing with it the start of the next waking day. On good days the nighttime exhalations of the capital city took on a lively air, the kind of energy that gathers where the young and restless cluster around the bones of something old. But all summer Chengbee had lain listless, panting like a thirsty dog.
Last summer, temperatures like these had wilted fields and dried rivers, turning them into brown gashes in the land, stinking of dust and rot. Fish bellies by the thousands had clogged the surfaces of lakes. The heat had brought on food and water rationing, the rationing had brought on riots of discontent, and the riots had brought the Protector’s iron fist down upon the populace. Blood had run in the streets instead of rain, and the ruined fields were tilled with a fresh crop of gravestones.
The streets had stayed quiet this year. The Head Abbot found that this did not weigh on his conscience as much as he’d thought it would.
By the four hundredth step, the Head Abbot’s breath was acid and his legs were lead. Four hundred more to go. No amount of meditation and training—not even a lifetime’s worth—could compensate for old age.
Still, he climbed onward. Even a man of his stature could not defy a direct summons from the Protector. And there was the matter of the debt she owed him from the last summer.
It was strange. The Protector had not been seen in public for several months now, and webs of rumors had been spun into that absence: She was ill. She was dead. Her eldest children were embroiled in a power struggle. There had been a coup by her ministers, some of whom had publicly voiced opposition to last summer’s brutality. The Head Abbot had heard all these whispers, weighed their respective merits, and been unable to come to a conclusion.
At least now he could rule out the rumor of her death.
He ascended the last step with a great sigh. His legs were curdled jelly, and the entrance pavilion lay shrouded in a curtain of stars that danced and pulsed as blood slowly returned to his head.
Head Abbot Sung had grown up in a tiny village in the northern reaches of the Mengsua Range, a trading post of a mere thousand. The Great High Palace, with its wide courtyards and endless gardens, was easily three times the size of his home village. Its thousands of denizens—cooks and courtiers, administrators and treasurers—traveled from point to point on floating carts.
One such cart awaited the Head Abbot as his vision cleared. Standing beside its squarish, silk-draped bulk was someone he had hoped to see: Sanao Sonami, the youngest of Protector Sanao’s six children. Sonami had just turned fifteen, yet still wore the genderfree tunic of a child, their hair cropped to a small square at the top of their head and gathered into a bun. They bowed, hands folded in deference. “Venerable One. I have been asked to bring you to my mother.”
The Head Abbot bowed in return. “I hope you have been well, Sonami.”
“As much as I can be.”
The cart was just big enough for two seated face-to-face. On the inside it was shockingly plain, simple red cushions over rosewood so dark it was almost black. Sonami pulsed gently through the Slack, and the cart began to move, floating serenely over the ground. For one so young and untrained, their slackcraft had an elegance and a simplicity to it that the Head Abbot appreciated. As the white walls and wooden bridges of the Great High Palace drifted past the cart’s embroidered windows, he asked, “Has your mother spoken to you about coming to the monastery?”
Sonami shook their head. “I only wish.”
“I see.” The Head Abbot had hoped that the summons were about the fate of the child—though perhaps “hope” was too strong a word when it came to matters concerning the Protector.
Sonami said quietly, hands folded together, “She has decided that I should apprentice with the masters of forest-nature in the Tensorate.”
“Is that so?”
The child stared at their feet. “She has not said it directly. But Mother has ways of making her wishes known.”
“Well, perhaps our discussion today might change her mind.”
“Discussion?” Sonami looked at the Head Abbot, alarmed. “Then no one has told you?”
“What have they not told me?”
“If you’re asking, it means they haven’t. . . .” The child subsided into their seat with a sigh. “Then it is not my place to tell you, either.”
The Head Abbot had no idea what the child meant. A mystery to be solved at the end of this journey, he thought.
Sonami said, “When you agreed to help Mother with the riots last summer, what exactly did you ask for in return?”
“I asked for one of her children to be sent to the monastery.”
“And did you say my name, specifically?”
The Head Abbot chuckled. “No one would be so bold, with such a direct request. I cannot imagine how the Protector would have responded. Of course, it was expected that she would send you eventually. That was what we had hoped for, wasn’t it?” All her older children had already had their roles in the administration parceled out to them. Sonami was the only one left.