Chapter Seven
“Did you get the job?” Shanlin asked the moment Leander stepped into the house.
“En,” Leander said. “Yes,” he corrected himself. Switching from one language to another was making his brain sore. He froze when he realized someone else was in the room. “Welcome to my home, honorable visitor,” he offered with a small bow.
The stranger bowed lower. “Honorable Boon Lian, Acolyte Nie Heng sends this gift to celebrate your choice to join the village.” He gestured to an elaborately painted chest.
Leander bowed. “Thank you for delivering this gift, and please express my gratitude to Acolyte Nie Heng.”
The stranger bowed again and then left.
“He showed up while you were gone, and I thought it would be rude to make him wait outside.” Shanlin sounded defensive.
“You did well. We can’t afford to be rude to anyone, and servants will report on our behavior.
” Leander opened the trunk to find layers of cloth.
He lifted a subtle reddish-brown cloth and found it was a robe.
It was sleeveless, to be worn over a shirt and loose trousers, and there were vines and embroidered flowers woven into the fabric.
“Wow, that’s beautiful. What is it?”
“A robe for me,” Leander said. “I think Heng is trying to tell me that my clothes are unacceptable.” He draped the robe over a dining room chair and picked up a shirt done in rich brown. The long sleeves featured the same flowers.
“Are you really going to wear a dress?”
“It’s a robe, and we will both wear them,” Leander said firmly.
“This is a working robe, which is why the fabric is rougher and it ends at my knees.” He held the embroidered robe up to his chest to show the length.
It seemed ridiculous to decorate the historical equivalent of jeans, but he was no stranger to idiots who thought fashion mattered.
Soft-brained morons wasted their money to make themselves pretty, like that mattered.
But Leander's money hadn’t gone to this ridiculousness, and politeness required him to avoid calling Heng to accuse him of being a vainglorious, excessive, ridiculous fool.
“The shirt feels nice,” Shanlin said.
“The shirt is silk, so that will be soft against the skin.” Silk. Leander contained a snort. He had expected more common sense than a silk work shirt.
Leander found four robes and seven shirts for himself.
The most ornate and elaborate robe fell to the floor.
Then Leander lifted out the first small robe.
“Apparently your clothing is inappropriate as well,” Leander said as he held the blue robe out for Shanlin.
All Leander’s clothing came in earth colors–deep greens, browns, and reddish brown.
But Shanlin’s clothing was more colorful with tiny embroidered turtles, cranes, rabbits, deer, or roosters on the trim.
At the bottom were shoes for both of them.
Shanlin studied the stack of clothing as if it were a snake that might bite him. At least none of his clothing had the ridiculously long sleeves of two of Leander’s shirts, and his stack didn’t include the ten-foot sashes Leander needed to learn to wind around himself.
“I thought you said people were super polite here, but you said this means he’s insulting our clothes.” Shanlin looked spectacularly unimpressed.
“They are polite, which is why Heng will insult us by sending clothing instead of telling us we look ridiculous.”
“So, he’s being rude, but quietly?”
Leander gave Shanlin all his attention. “This culture is about status and politeness and tradition. We don’t have the status to challenge anyone, so we will be polite without fail. Leave insults, subtle or not to people who have status.”
“Like Auntie Daiyu?”
“Exactly like Auntie Daiyu or like your new teacher, Luo Zheng, who you will always call Teacher Luo. If they insult us, we thank them for the helpful advice.”
“So we let them bully us?” Shanlin wrinkled his nose.
Shanlin had too much child in him for Leander to know how he was supposed to handle him.
All he could do was be honest and hope Shanlin could control his immaturity.
He sat and invited Shanlin to sit in the chair next to him.
“We need to find our place in the village. Eventually, if we work hard, they will respect us for what we can offer the village. Auntie Daiyu helped us find work and helped you get into Teacher Luo’s school, and that shows she respects us.
But that is because we are family to Heng.
If we get angry or are rude, they will never respect us, and Heng’s status will fall because of us.
And no bully buys such fine clothing.” Leander struggled to find the right explanation because so far, Shanlin wasn’t buying it.
“A young child might choose a green polka-dot shirt to go with purple pants and pink shoes, and a parent would tell them to change and might insult them. It’s not meant to bully the child. We came dressed strangely, and Heng has sent clothing.”
“So, it’s like when Father bought an orange-striped shirt and Mother told him he looked like an idiot and burned the shirt with the iron?”
Leander cleared his throat and imagined the puppy-dog eyes Finn would have turned on his wife after losing one of his atrocious shirts.
“Exactly like that,” Leander said. “As his wife, his family, she had to make sure he didn’t look like a fool. But remember, we tell everyone I am your father. Even here.”
Shanlin pushed his pile of clothing away. “It still feels like letting other people insult us.”
“Auntie Daiyu insulted us by suggesting we were unemployed and helpless without her intervention. Heng insulted us by sending us beautiful clothes we can wear tomorrow. It’s not a bad way to be insulted.”
“We’ll look funny in dresses,” Shanlin said, wrinkling his nose.
God save him from children. Leander had to plumb the depths of his soul to find the patience to avoid becoming a raging harridan, or whatever the male equivalent would be.
“They’re robes. Actually, I’m sure there are more specific names for them in English, but all I know is the generic word robe.
We will look normal in robes, but you can wear the simplest ones.
Shanlin fingered the trim of the sea-green robe with attached sleeves. Turtles and fish swam along the trim, and the fabric had a subtle ombre with the green growing darker on the bottom. “It’s going to be really strange,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Leander said, “it will be. When I was here before, I had been sent to study. I knew there would be an end, and I looked forward to leaving. I wanted to get back to my home and friends.”
“Like my parents,” Shanlin said softly.
Leander sighed. “Yes. We should not talk here. Chinese magic users cultivate skills Westerners can’t, and one of their skills is enhancing their senses. But yes, I missed them. Badly.”
“Mother said you grew up together. She said that if something happened, I should find you or Creek. Is he the last of your friends now?” At least he had edited out his father. It was important everyone believe Leander filled that role.
Emotions surged until Leander had to catch his breath. “Yes.”
“Is he coming? Mother said you would both take care of me.”
Leander ran his fingers through his short black hair.
“I invited him,” he admitted, even though it was a knife to his soul.
He had a lot of practice ignoring facts, and he would like to pretend Creek never existed.
Talking about or even thinking about him was painful. “He stayed behind because he’s afraid.”
Shanlin’s gaze darted away. “Because of the government,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Leander agreed. Creek had been fifteen or sixteen when the government took him, so the fear was reasonable, but Leander still thought he had the spine of a jellyfish .
“If he gets caught running, the government will lock him in a cell or assign him the most miserable job and have him watched. It’ll be a miserable life. ”
Shanlin looked at him. “Mother was talking to Creek about giving the government information. Is that what would’ve happened to her?”
Why didn’t the child ask simple questions, like why the sky was blue or where babies came from?
Leander thought those were the questions that children used to plague parents.
“The government would have to prove she had used her magic. If they did, yes, they could arrest her and sentence her to serve for life.”
“Momma was careful. So careful. All the time!” Shanlin was getting upset even though Tecca had moved beyond the concerns of this world.
Despite their differences, Leander hoped she had found a better world.
He couldn’t bring himself to hope she was with Finn, but if life were fair, she had found him again.
Leander was just too selfish to wish for that.
“She could have made a deal with the government if they had no evidence. She would’ve agreed to work for them, the way Creek does. That would be volunteer service, and she would have rights, even though she would have to work somewhere approved by the government.”
“Did you have the same choice when you were young? To work for the government?” Shanlin studied Leander as if the secrets to the universe hid in his prematurely aged face.
Leander was developing a headache. “Tecca and I both believed the government was wrong. If people volunteered, they got some choices, but it still wasn’t the same sort of freedom that non-magic users got.
We believed the man we worked for would help fix the system.
He would fight back against the unfairness, and we would be part of his victory.
” They were fools with the brain function of amoebas and the survival instincts of a fart.
Leander was deeply ashamed of his stupidity.
“The way we are part of Uncle Heng’s success and that’s why they let us stay in the village?”