YEAR SEVENTEEN

“THE HEAD ABBOT is going to die soon.”

Akeha opened their eyes a slit. Mokoya lay on their divan across the room, silhouetted by the night sun that filtered through the thick paper pulled across the window. They considered pretending they hadn’t heard it and letting that pronouncement die in the quiet night air.

Then reality settled in. Of course Mokoya would know they were awake. “Why do you say that?” they said, refusing to sit up from the bed.

“I saw the confirmation ceremony for the new one.”

“Oh? Who was it?” Akeha lazily rotated the memories of the monastery’s senior ranks through their mind. They hadn’t thought much about those people in the time since they’d left, and suspected nothing much had changed in the nine years since. The monastery was a place of stagnation, a place that loved its doctrine and cared more about inner purity than anything else.

“No one we know. A young man.”

“What?”

“Someone our age, maybe a bit older, maybe twenty.”

A preposterous idea. It took twenty years for acolytes to complete their training, and from there it was a slow climb to the top. No one that young could take the post.

“A Gauri boy.”

That was the thing that got Akeha to sit up. “A Gauri—are you sure you had a vision, and not a fever dream?”

Their twin sat up, and in the dark, they heard the click of a lid opening. Soft blue suffused the room as Mokoya prized the capture pearl out of its box with careful fingers. The glass drop, small enough to fit in their palm, glowed silver and aquamarine and plum with a freshly decanted vision.

Akeha had objected when the Tensorate’s researchers presented Mokoya with the dream recorder. It seemed suspect that they wanted Mokoya to wear it all the time, even though the visions only happened in their sleep. The way Akeha saw it, it was just another way for Mother’s lackeys to control Mokoya. But Mokoya seemed to appreciate its presence. And it turned out to have its uses.

“You can see for yourself,” they said, holding it out.

The pearl harbored alarmingly lifelike warmth. Akeha tensed the vision open, unspooling its coils like a snake. Mokoya’s vision washed over them.

A procession of monks sang sutras as they shuffled down the thoroughfare in front of the Great High Palace’s ceremonial pavilion. Tensors and palace staff lined every building, every corridor, hands folded, watching silently. Handbells rang, rhythmic and solemn, and heads bowed as the front of the procession passed them by.

Leading the procession was a young man Akeha had never seen before. Lean and broad, dark-skinned, jaw framed by a hefty beard that seemed impossibly neat. His head had been shorn and tattooed with the sigils of the five natures. This was him. The new Head Abbot. He was a boy. And it was preposterous. He looked like a student dressed up in ceremonial robes for a play.

At five-step intervals, the new Head Abbot stopped and bowed, pressing his forehead to the ground. The boy’s face was perfectly serious. Akeha watched as he got to his feet, walked five steps, and bowed again. Deep-set eyes, straight and narrow nose. He had a presence that could be felt even through the echo of a vision. And the vision lingered on him—in a way that Mokoya’s visions never did—as if the fortunes, too, found him irresistible.

A Gauri boy. Extraordinary.

Where was Mother in all this? Akeha pulled on the reins of the vision and spun it around, searching for the Protector in this theater of ritualized obeisance. They’d learned to do this recently, based on notes they had borrowed from the laboratory studying Mokoya’s visions. It turned out they weren’t just dreams, but chunks of time captured in their entirety. With enough willpower, you could navigate through them.

Akeha found the Protector on the high dais in the ceremonial pavilion, shaded by awnings of yellow silk. Sonami was seated next to her, as she usually was these days. Kara, Sonami’s youngest, clung to his mother’s lap. He didn’t look much older than he was now, freshly turned three and freshly declared to be a boy. Mokoya was right: this was going to happen soon.

Mother’s face looked like she’d drunk a cupful of vinegar. Good.

Akeha exited the vision and pressed the pearl back into Mokoya’s waiting palm. “Ha. Did you see? Mother’s going to burst a vein.”

“This isn’t a joke, Keha. There’s nothing funny about it.”

Akeha quieted. It was crass, they supposed, to be amused by this turn of events. The Head Abbot’s health had been failing for several years, but the old man had looked after them as children. He was the closest thing they had to a father. “I’m sorry.”

Mokoya sloshed the vision around in their hands. “I don’t understand,” they said finally. “Why him? Who is he?”

“It’s the flow of fortune. Why start questioning it now?”

The capture pearl froze sharply midrotation. “Why don’t you ever take anything seriously?”

Akeha blinked. Their twin shoved the pearl back into its box, closing the lid with a harsh snap. “Moko,” they said appeasingly, but it wasn’t enough to stop them from furiously collapsing back against the divan.

“Oi.” Akeha slipped off their own bed, hesitantly, afraid to cross the gulf between the furniture. They half stood, half leaned against the hard wood of the bed frame. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Mokoya said. They had turned to face the wall. “Go back to sleep.”

Akeha sucked on their bottom lip and let several seconds pass. When Mokoya said nothing further, they ventured, “It’s not nothing. You’ve been grouchy for the last few days. Something is wrong, you just won’t say it.”

Silence from the other side of the room. Then Mokoya sat up, slowly. “Our birthday is in less than two weeks. I want to be confirmed.”

Akeha sucked air between their teeth, willing what they’d just heard to change. “What?”

Mokoya turned. “I want to be conf—”

“I heard you. Why?”

“Why? Keha, we’re turning seventeen. We have to do it at some point.”

“We made a promise never to get confirmed.”

“We were six when we made that promise. We’re not children anymore.” Mokoya shifted on the bed. “Keha, you didn’t really think we could avoid confirmation forever, did you?”

Akeha shrugged, not trusting their mouth to say the right things. Nobody jumped from undeclared gender straight to confirmation. They’d take a couple of years to be sure. Unless they were Sonami, and Akeha wasn’t Sonami.

Mokoya sighed noisily. “Keha.”

“So that’s why you didn’t talk to me? You thought I’d be upset?”

“Well, you are.”

Akeha wordlessly clambered back into bed. I’m not upset, they thought. This is not a big matter. But it was.

“You don’t have to decide now if you don’t want to,” Mokoya said. “I’m just telling you that I’m doing it.”

Akeha lay motionless on the divan, which suddenly seemed unreasonably hard and lumpy. They watched spots of light dance across the ceiling and listened to the uneven cadence of Mokoya’s breathing from the other end of the room.

Eventually Akeha asked, “And what will you be confirmed as?” But even as the question left their lips, they already knew what the answer would be.

“A woman,” Mokoya said, without hesitation.

The room was silent except for the soft sounds of their breaths.

Into the dark their twin repeated, “You don’t have to decide now. I’m just telling you what I want.”

* * *

The sun beat down upon baked dirt and brick as the twins slipped through Chengbee’s intestinal byways like fish, flat-soled feet barely making a sound as they ran with the shadow of the Great High Palace at their backs. They had shed the company of their hapless minder, Qiwu, long minutes ago, losing him in the thick porridge of the main market’s morning crowds. Now they were putting distance between themselves and the places they were meant to be. Mokoya, racing slightly ahead, traced the twins a solid path through the twisting streets.

They were headed south, to the ragbone-meat quarter. Mokoya’s pace slowed as they headed into unfamiliar territory, trying to connect real living streets, in all their dirty, shouting confusion, to lines on a painted map.

The ragbone-meat quarter had its own market, a gregarious collection of carts assembled at the confluence of several streets. Unlike the main market square, with its artfully arranged displays and slackcraft-powered signage, the ragbone market pulsed with barely contained chaos. Rolls of dried goods flanked battalions of preserves heaped upon trays. Craftswomen rubbed elbows with men selling candied nuts in paper cones. Children in assorted shades of brown darted to and fro, hawking pots of spiced tea and fruit on sticks. Laundry flapped in second-floor windows, soaking up the perfume of incense and hot oil and roasting chestnuts.

Looking at this bright and symphonic scene, someone from out of town—a traveling farmer who did not buy the news scrolls, perhaps—would never guess that just a few days ago, the ground they stood on had been glutted with sitting bodies, living and breathing, arms locked in protest, boldly facing down lines of Protectorate troops. The city’s tiny Gauri minority was often characterized as hardworking and easy to please, but the past week had clearly shown that they had limits.

That limit was this: seventeen of their compatriots killed in a silk factory fire and the factory owner exonerated from blame, even though it was clear the fire had been the fault of his greed and carelessness. Minor riots had broken out before more calculating heads swept in and organized sit-ins. For days the arteries of Chengbee’s southern quarters had been obstructed by clots of protesters, singing and obstinate, arresting the flow of commerce.

The Protector finally defused the situation by executing the factory owner. Official pronouncements declared the incident over, justice served, and harmony restored. But the acid stares of the crowd as the twins plowed through it told a different story. Even if the people did not recognize them, Mokoya and Akeha looked Kuanjin and wore clothes of fine quality. That was enough to draw their ire.

It was far from an inspiring endorsement of Mother’s rule.

Mokoya reached into the fold of their robes and extracted a picture scroll. It was the same one they’d woken Akeha with in the morning, exclaiming, “I knew I’d seen him somewhere!” Rolled on its inner surface was a crisp light capture of the Gauri protesters: a row of calm, determined faces, most half bowed or eyes shut as if in prayer or meditation. The lone exception was a young man who had been looking right at the woman who had tensed the light capture into permanence. Frozen in a semifrown, he stared intensely, his mouth a disapproving, unyielding line. Their mysterious future abbot.

Mokoya scanned the crowd as they threaded through it, looking for easy targets. Most avoided their gaze, ducking their heads as they saw Mokoya, some less subtly than others. But one woman—a vendor of straw mats and slippers and other woven things—was too slow, and Mokoya caught her eye.

“Honored aunt,” they said, approaching the woman respectfully, “could you tell me if you’ve seen this man?”

They showed the picture scroll to the woman. She waved her hand and made inaudible excuses.

Unfazed, Mokoya moved on. Akeha followed quietly in their wake. A strange, glacial distance had swelled between them, a kind of false peace, the tangles of arguments to come writhing under the surface. As Mokoya accosted passerby after passerby, Akeha watched the crowd instead. Watched the way people’s movements changed in the orbit of their twin. Watched the way Mokoya deformed the world around them. Over the years, and perhaps by necessity, Akeha had learned the trick of sliding quietly into the background, drawing as little attention as possible. Very different from their twin.

So Akeha watched. And it was through watching that they noticed the old man who was watching back. He was a shoe mender, crouched on a stool under the sign advertising his services. Instead of fear or disdain, his expression was touched by something resembling hope. And that interested them.

They let space and bodies come between them and Mokoya. Casually, incrementally, Akeha walked up to the watching man.

Their eyes met, and Akeha nodded at him. The man didn’t return the gesture, but he didn’t look away either. He had the tanned skin and wide cheekbones of a southerner, the look of someone who lived farther downriver than Jixiang. And he wasn’t as old as Akeha had thought. Just weathered.

“Busy day, uncle?” Akeha asked.

“As if.” The man snorted. “If you think this is busy, you should have seen this street before all those troubles came.” He gestured in front of him with hands that were blunted by his craft. “Normal days, I get four or five customers by morning. Today, nothing. It’s been like this for a week. A man needs to eat, you know?”

“Of course. There’s been a lot of trouble in this quarter lately. Were you here during the protests, uncle?”

“Where else would I go? I live here, I work here. Of course, those people don’t care.”

“That must be difficult.” As the man huffed in agreement, Akeha said, “We’re looking for somebody connected to the protests.”

“Hah.” The man slapped a thigh. “Hah! I knew you were Protectorate. One look, I knew.”

It occurred to Akeha that recognition of the prophet child of the Protector might not be as widespread as they’d assumed. “We’re not here for trouble. We just want to talk to someone.”

“Which one of them? Hah, you know, they all look the same to me sometimes.”

The man’s laugh, Akeha decided, was markedly unpleasant. “A young man. Very tall, big beard. He sat in the front row at the protests.”

“Oh, that one.” The man muttered something inaudible, shook his head, and gestured. “Go to the circus. Behind, over there. Ask for the doctor.”

Akeha looked where the man pointed. Their mind turned this information over and over. A doctor?

“Thank you for your help, uncle.” The monastery had taught Akeha to express gratitude for favors granted, no matter what unpalatable form the favor came in.

They caught up with their twin. Mokoya had cornered a woman selling jars of pickled vegetables and was on the verge of convincing her to give them directions to the circus. But the woman looked up, saw Akeha approaching like a shark, and changed her mind, waving Mokoya off with a muttered excuse.

“Honored aunt, it’s really important,” Mokoya said. “The future of this land could depend on it.”

The woman stared blankly at them.

“Come on, Moko,” Akeha said. “I’ve found out where he is.”

Mokoya narrowed their eyes. “How?”

“Talked to an awful old uncle. Come on.”

Mokoya fell behind in the viscous crowd, a half dozen steps’ worth of reluctance between them. Akeha slowed until they were both abreast. “Are you all right?”

“I am.” Mokoya squeezed their hand once, quickly and tightly. “Thank you for coming here with me.”

“Why are you thanking me?” The idea of Mokoya sneaking out alone was unthinkable. “Who else is going to take care of you if you get into trouble?”

Mokoya punched them lightly in the arm. A couple of loping steps later, they said, “I thought you were still angry with me.”

“I wasn’t angry.”

Mokoya glanced sideways at them, and a small smile tweaked the corners of their lips.

Conversation lapsed into pensive silence. As the clamor of the market subsided into the burble of a busy street, Akeha said, “So how come you decided to be a woman?”

Mokoya’s puzzled frown revealed everything they thought about this question. “I didn’t decide anything. I’ve always felt like one. A girl.”

“I see.”

“Don’t you?”

“I’ve never thought much about it,” Akeha said slowly, which was only slightly skirting the truth. Ideas and feelings bubbled as though their mind were boiling over. None of it lined up into coherent, defensible thought.

“You’ll figure it out, anyway,” Mokoya said with a confidence that ended where Akeha began. They nodded to their twin, as silence took up its easy crown for the rest of the walk.

* * *

The circus nestled on the borders of the ragbone-meat and paupers’ quarters, in the courtyard of a disused tanning factory. Its rotting timbers and shingles formed a stern backdrop to the dozens of horse-drawn carts arranged in a loose semicircle. Circular tents of plain waxed cotton had sprung up in between them. Some had laundry hanging outside, others racks of drying fish. Along one side of the main clearing, rows of weathered benches sat under hand-erected awnings. Once, long ago, this had been a traveling circus, but weeds had grown amongst the wheels, and mold speckled the sides of the tents. Chickens pecked in the dirt, and a pot of curry simmered somewhere close by.

The eerie silence reminded Akeha of a plague ward, but suspicious eyes watched them from slits in the fabric of the tents. The only other signs of human life were a couple of rail-thin children who had been kicking a rattan ball around. They stopped and stared sullenly as Mokoya approached.

“We’re looking for the doctor,” Mokoya said.

The younger child—a boy—ducked behind the other one, a girl bearing an ironclad expression. She pointed wordlessly to one of the tents, never taking her large dark eyes off Mokoya.

The twins turned in the direction the girl had indicated. Behind them, the children burst into a smatter of furious whispers, a collision of words in their own language. Akeha did not blame them for being intimidated.

The tent’s roll-up door was closed. Mokoya pulled the heavy canvas aside and stepped in, Akeha right behind them. “Hello?”

A tall boy stood with his back to them, wrapped in patterned crimson cloth that left half his torso bare. He was sorting through an army of powder bottles on a cluttered, dye-stained table and didn’t look up. “The clinic only opens on water and metal days. Come back tomorrow.”

“I’m not here for treatment,” Mokoya said.

The boy turned around. His face, those eyes, were exactly as they had been in the light capture. In person, he seemed both more normal, and more intense than in the picture. And he was much taller than Akeha had imagined.

He was beautiful.

The boy’s expression changed as his gaze swept over the twins. Here was someone, at least, who recognized who they were.

“I have something to tell you,” Mokoya said.