Here follows the tale of Hu of Pwup Swa, treasurer of Wom Gyep Tswom, later chaplain of Lying Shäm Züp.
In the three hundredth year of the imperial era, and the year of the man.
A hot, heavy mist lay upon the waters parting Wom Gyep Tswom from the mainland. Fishermen stayed close to shore if they ventured out to sea at all, and all shipping was stranded at port. Yet one lone sailboat glided forwards, rowed by four slaves, her sails limp in the still air, steadily bearing the next treasurer of Wom Gyep Tswom to the island that would be her home the next five years.
Hu was born to a family of craftswomen in a suburb of Pwup Swa, the imperial capital before the Great Rebellion. In childhood, she’d endured the mockery of other children for her great height and thick legs; in adolescence, she’d suffered the riots, sieges and occupations of the Great Rebellion. But her passion for her books and her gift for telling true silver by mere touch had put her on the path to greatness. Tens of thousands of women bid for fewer than a hundred offices in the imperial service. A mere handful were awarded to women without wealth or title.
Hu was one of the chosen few.
She was now an imperial treasurer with a monthly income of twenty golds, more gold than her family had once earned in a year. She tried to stand up straight and proud, but her hair was damp with sweat and her legs unsteady. She missed her home, her husband, her daughters; and she was sick from the child growing in her belly, the long hours at sea, the clinging, summer heat.
Through the white mist Hu caught her first glimpse of Wom Som, Wom Gyep Tswom’s sole city: a distant flickering of flame high in the air, glowing like a star, which shone alone awhile before the rest of the city appeared, at first in fragments, then all at once. The flame burned atop the temple tower. By the tower’s side was the dome of the hall of fire. Temple and dome stood lonely upon an escarpment over the sea, then appeared docks, moored ships, fishing boats, and short rows of houses enclosed in a fence of palisades. The boat rowed into the river that divided the city. Wom Som was less city than town, smaller than whole neighbourhoods of Pwup Swa, but its smallness gave Hu strength. Half the homes of Pwup Swa were empty, and weeds grew upon its empty streets in abandoned neighbourhoods. But Wom Som was busy with people; it brimmed with life. From the fish market on the eastern bank came the sound of haggling voices, even as the boat drew west to the lone dock on the opposite bank between two great stone buildings.
As the slaves tied the boat to the dock, Hu kept her head bowed low, took deep breaths, and wiped her forehead with the end of her ngom wrap. “Courage, Hu, courage,” she muttered, then rose and stepped off the boat. Waiting to meet her were three women a head shorter than her, and two men of her height. She bowed to them as they introduced themselves: the former treasurer; the judge; the commander; the commandress; and last, the third woman, a girl her daughter’s age, surely only fifteen, sixteen years of age. She wore white from head to toe and smiled nervously.
“The priestess Pyik Kyik,” said the girl.
“Treasurer Hu,” answered Hu, as she’d answered all the others.
Her legs had steadied. She’d met the great and the good of the city, such as they were, and was now one of them. Five years. I do the job, I make my mark. Then I’ll go and never return. She couldn’t have known that in fifteen years’ time, she’d be back in Wom Som again as treasurer, and that she’d end her career not a high official in a great city, but chaplain of a village, here on this little island at the world’s edge.
Wom Som is a small city, home to only two thousand souls. Its two halves are joined by a bridge across the river Wom Nyew, and one can cross the city in under ten minutes. It has but twelve streets in all, yet also a garden, stadium, barracks, admiralty, palace, temple, five mansions and three taverns. Small but rich, it is a bustling port, earning its wealth from the island’s seafood and the salt mine at the salted ruins.
In the three hundred and sixteenth year of the imperial era, and the year of the eagle.
Hu knew the coin was false the moment she picked it up. It lacked the warmth and weight of true silver. She turned the false great-silver over in her hand, admiring the forgery’s quality. The empress’s head was carefully carved, as were the words inscribed upon the coin’s back: fom wop lung, tśyëp wop hi. Daughter of gods, queen of the world. She passed her hand over the rest of the coins in the box upon the pier. The coins lay hot under the midday sun, each one the work of a great craftswoman, each one struck from false silver.
She’d mistrusted the judge Gyem from the first she’d met him, this man who’d wed his way into a wealthy, local family, who’d put down roots in the city he was meant to order and judge without fear or favour. He stank of rot and corruption. There he stood, waiting, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his cotton shirt. Hu thought his smile uneasy. He must know his scheme was too complicated, trading gold coins from the army for silver coins, for how many times could a judge forget to order silvers instead of golds from the mint? But maybe it was her imagination, for the forgeries were fine: he would have no cause to fear.
“Ask for more silvers and fewer golds next time,” said Hu. “All this trouble you might save yourself! Who pays soldiers’ wages in gold anyway?” Her head itched. She reached up to scratch it, finding her hair warm from the midday sun. It was near the end of fall, but there was no relief from the humid southern heat, not here in the land where summers were hot and winters warm, where crops grew the whole year round, where time passed without moving.
“It’s no trouble,” said Gyem easily.
“Your mother’s sent this ship every four months, has she not? Is that an expense she should bear?”
“I see that she’s repaid.”
“And handsomely, I’m sure.” She held up a false great-silver. “What is this? Tin? Lead? Iron? Yet you sell it for the price of silver. You see your mother repaid, indeed.”
Hu saw Gyem’s fear come and go in an instant: the eyes widened in fear, the face slack with shock, before eyes narrowed and face hardened, and he was so close to her she could see the red lines in the corners of his eyes. “And what of it, treasurer? They’d take my hand off for this. But I know every family in this city. You know, and I know, that the soldiers here would sooner take orders from me than from you.”
“I’ve suffered siege and hunger, a man’s sword at my neck, soldiers quartered in my home, armed patrols prowling the streets. I passed them every day on my way to the temple and back. Every, single day. I was fifteen years of age when my daughter was born. I’ll never know which of those foul rebels sired her.” The heat of the sun fuelled the pain of her past, and it flooded from her as rage. “How old were you when Pwup Swa fell? Had your voice even deepened? Don’t threaten me, judge. Don’t you dare threaten me.”
Gyem didn’t flinch, but he drew his face back, his breathing heavy and laboured. All about them, the townsfolk saw only two officials talking heatedly and going about the work of empire, work beyond their ken or care. Life was simple for them. Slaves haggled at market with their masters’ coin, dogs lazed in the shade blinking at flies, and women called their children home for dinner.
The judge took a pouch of gold from off his belt, and gently emptied half of it, spreading gold coins upon false silver. He lowered his gaze. “I spoke rashly. Forgive me. This needn’t turn ugly.”
Hu sighed. The ten great-golds glimmered, gold enough to buy another slave, gold enough to pay her two months’ wages. This needn’t turn ugly. A gesture of peace, and a kinder threat. Her anger was lost now, softened and bewitched by gold. “No more shipments,” she said. “This stops now.”
Gyem bowed. “Of course, treasurer.”
I’ve stopped a theft of imperial coin. I’ve stopped a minter of false silver. She had done her duty. Now she stared at the gold before her, the army’s gold, the emperor’s gold. It wasn’t the judge’s to give. It wasn’t hers to take. She didn’t need it, but she wanted it; and so she took it, sweeping it up in one fluid motion into her hands.
Gyem smiled. Hu nodded at the pouch still in his hand. “You won’t be needing that either,” said she. A pause, a sigh from the man, then the ringing of trickling coin, bright music to the ears.
The treasurer oversees all the finances for an imperial region. She pays the soldiers and the judge, runs the papermaker and mines, collects the poll tax, and conducts the quinquennial census of every household, both rural and urban. The treasury of Wom Gyep Tswom is an undemanding, unambitious post, a typical first post for new officials, but also somewhere to place officials with less skill. The salt mine is lucrative, and the city has few expenses, allowing the treasurer the easy glory of boasting of endless annual profits.
In the three hundred and nineteenth year of the imperial era, and the year of the sabretooth.
The air in the priestess Pyik Kyik’s quarters was warm and close. Hu sat across the desk from her, hair limp with sweat, not hearing what the priestess said. Her breath was still short, and her calves burned from the climb up the large, spiralling stone steps of the temple tower. Her gaze wandered to the books and scrolls lining the shelves around them, and the mural of Dyeng adorning the far wall. It showed a winged god who bore a torch, lighting the night with stars.
“Will that do, madam?”
It was that last word that brought Hu back: she was treasurer no more, just an older woman, a common woman. Indeed, she felt common and small despite her height, for she was slouched over and her hands fidgeted, restless.
“I’m sorry, priestess. I – I didn’t hear.”
“A chaplaincy.” The priestess was clothed as ever in white, glowing in the soft light through the paper window. “The village of Lying Shäm Züp. It’s just across the bay to the east. They speak some Lwumic there. I know you don’t speak the local tongue.”
“A chaplaincy?” Hu saw children in rough, tattered clothes, thatched roofs and dirt paths, open latrines swarming with fleas, and harsh hands stinking of fish. “You couldn’t make me a scholar? Or a teacher? Or …”
But her voice faltered. She was the elder, and in Gyem’s posting, Pyik Kyik had looked up to her and sought her advice. But all that was changed now. The priestess looked younger than her thirty-six years, yet for the first time, Hu saw the noblewoman the priestess had always been. Fine, gold lettering embroidered her ngom wrap, a frayed and old piece of cloth, bequeathed, not bought.
“I have scholars, I have teachers,” said the priestess, “women who have given years of service, and will stay for years to come. You’re not from here. You’d leave once your dues are paid.”
“But how much does a chaplain earn?”
“Twenty-five silvers a month.”
It took all Hu’s strength to swallow a retort. She’d made twenty golds a month as treasurer. Twenty-five silvers was less than half her past wages for a day. In her youth, she’d sought glory and greatness, to rise in the ranks to work in a great city. Wom Som had only been meant as a staging post to greater things. Instead, she’d been shuffled across the empire, sent to fringe towns and faraway places, till at last she was returned to Wom Som four years ago for what would be her last posting. In all her years, she’d taken only one bribe, but her sole lapse had come to light. The priestess had sailed to Ey Yew to parley with the chancellor and beg for her mercy, so that Hu was neither punished nor disgraced, but released to the temple’s service. For that she owed Pyik Kyik her grudging thanks. So she shrugged and said, “It’s fine. I don’t want for gold.” She tried for insouciance, but her bitterness betrayed her. “It wasn’t greed that made me take the bribe. I had no choice!”
“There are always choices,” said the priestess simply.
Hu didn’t answer. In the end, the judge Gyem’s crimes had been found out, and he was released from imperial service and disgraced. He believed Hu was to blame for his downfall, and so ruined her for revenge. The game was lost, the dance was ended. There were no bargains left to be struck.
The priestess gave a wan smile. “A chaplain feeds the hungry, heals the sick, burns the dead, blesses newborns, teaches children, weds lovers. That is honourable work.” Hu saw the kindness on the priestess’s face and hated it. “You can do this work with your head held high.”
Hu straightened and sat tall. “I’ll do the work,” she said curtly. “But you can spare me the honour.”
Every priestess of Wom Gyep Tswom has been born into the same noble family nearly two hundred years. She beds no man, takes no husband, and bears no children. As the island’s spiritual leader, she has many duties. She leads the temple servants in rituals of worship and prayer to the gods. She manages the temple, which is hospital, school, observatory, library, archive, courthouse, almshouse, lighthouse and prayer hall all in one. But her most solemn duty of all is to care for the welfare of her people, both body and soul.
In the three hundred and twentieth year of the imperial era, and the year of the mother.
“Tsu … sho … mu’oi” read the little girl Imeinowei, tracing her finger slowly under the letters Hu had written. There was dirt under her chipped nail, a crooked black worm.
“Join the sounds,” said Hu. “Move your lips faster. And remember the rise and fall in your voice. Once more: dzwu śo mwoy.”
“Dzwu sho mwoy.”
“Better.”
The hour was late. Rain fell through black night to hammer upon the roof of the chaplain’s hut. Here alone with this peasant girl of seven years, Hu found her only refuge from the endless days. She took no joy in tending fevers, nor in blessing newborn babes, nor in wedding boorish boys to simple girls, nor in settling petty quarrels over who owned which chickens. When Imeinowei had first come knocking at her door to learn her letters, she’d taken no joy in that either. She saw a peasant girl smelling of sweat and salt, her feet splayed and bare, wearing only a brown skirt, rough and faded, an embodiment of what she hated about the villages. The dirty clothes and drab colours she could accept, but not the way grown men and little girls bared their chests like boys and slaves, nor the stink that overwhelmed her when they came close.
“Remember what dzwu means?”
Imouneiwei mimed eating. “You eat it. At the daytime. After morning. Sun high. Hot.” The girl then said a word of Agheidö which Hu guessed meant lunch, but she couldn’t be sure. She knew no words of the peasants’ strange, babbling tongue. Hu forced herself not to laugh. She’s always thinking of food, this one. “That’s true, but dzwu has another meaning too, remember?”
Imouneiwei frowned awhile, then widened her eyes, nodding keenly. She leaned forwards to touch Hu’s desk.
“Aye, good! And what does mwoy mean?”
The girl touched a hand to her leg, then pointed at the desk’s legs.
Hu nodded. “Good.” Imeinowei’s eyes darted downwards. She tried not to look too pleased, and Hu dared not praise her. Imeinowei learned quickly, and harboured big dreams of learning at the temple, of seeing a wider world and doing greater deeds. A waste for a girl so clever to be born to a place like this, thought Hu. She doubted the girl’s family would have the coin to send her to the temple for schooling the next year. Hu wondered if she taught Imeinowei for the child’s sake, or to keep her own boredom at bay. It came to her that Imouneiwou was almost her granddaughter’s age.
She picked up her quill, dipped it in the inkpot and wrote out another sentence. “Alright, Mei Nou, let’s try another.”
The rain kept tapping upon the roof, and under dancing lamplight, the girl deciphered another sentence, and another, and another.
And so passed another long, languorous night.
On the second day of the third month of water, the people of Wom Gyep Tswom and all the province of I Ney mark the death of the concubine of an ancient king of Ileshawo. Her name in Agheidö was Ibujouzha. She was dearly loved by her king, but this love roused the queen’s jealousy, and so the queen had her killed. The god Ḍying Fom wept for his grief, and made the world to be flooded for a whole year. To this day, the girls’ name Ibujouzha (and the boys’ name Ubujouzha) is popular in the villages.
In the three hundred and twenty-first year of the imperial era, and the year of the man.
The winter wind blew steady and cool through the open chapel doors. Hu clutched her ngom wrap and shivered. Two boys ran across the village pit, shivering and bent low, holding their arms tight to themselves. Hu would have laughed at them before, but what was once to her an ordinary winter’s day now chilled her to the bone.
I’ve lived here too long, thought Hu.
She had laughed at the story of the concubine and the year-long flood when first she’d come to Wom Gyep Tswom. But then she’d watched the crowds in mournful black gather at the temple to offer the names of their dead to the fires in prayer, and to pray the sun, moon and brightstar preserve their loved ones from death and harm. She’d listened to the priestess Pyik Kyik chant prayers in thanks for the element of water. She’d been moved and awed, and wondered who this ancient concubine had been to inspire such reverence even today, long after her kingdom and people were faded and washed away.
But here and now in Lying Shäm Züp, mere miles from the city, there were no crowds in black, and no chants of prayers. The villagers ate a thin soup of gha leaves in the morning, and families passed through the chapel doors throughout the day, mumbling names for Hu to write and drop in the eternal flames in the centre of the chapel. Here, they mourned in heavy silence, and all the still quiet was raw and strange in its newness. For a while, she found herself alone in the chapel, and sobs tore themselves from her breast. She wept tears for her pride and her exile, tears for her children and grandchildren whom she missed. She wept for past ghosts she’d thought long buried, for all the dead and maimed and raped of the many years of war in the Great Rebellion. And she wept for herself.
When her tears were done, she went to visit each family of the village, and say the prayer to them that the priestess said each year for the city: “Dyeng ṭwoy khëng, wuy Śäk ṭwoy khëng, wuy Bẅï ṭwoy khëng. Ṭü khaw yew nyeng byip ṭwoy tẅew wap khëng.” The three luminaries, Dyeng, Śäk and Bẅï, bless and keep you.
A full education takes thirteen years, but most girls receive only an early education of five years, beginning at the age of eight years. Even the poorest girls from Wom Som receive early education, but most village girls are never schooled. Rural families simply can’t spare a child who could work in the fields, and they would need to pay for boarding or find a place to live in town, for the daily distance to travel is too great. Only one girl at a time is given free board and education at the temple. But a boy is never schooled at the temple. If he learns to read at all, he learns at home from their mothers.
In the three hundred and twenty-third year of the imperial era, and the year of the beast.
What once had been quaint and quiet was now to her a bliss of riotous noise. Food stalls and cobblestones, teahouses and vast buildings of stone, men and women and children in proper dress crowded upon the few streets of the small, lively city of Wom Som. She took a room at the Mammoth Tavern, where she stayed to arrange passage for herself and her gold back home. She ate dinner at polished mahogany tables upon cushioned seats, then went out and walked every street of Wom Som under the spring sun. She passed smithy and laundry, brewhouse and dyehouse, through the part of town where lived woodworker, tailor, sailmaker and shipwright. The heat of the forge, the clinking of iron, the smell of pong, the snipping of cloth, the hammering of wood, the shriek of crows, old women and young girls bearing water and laundry upon their heads, men gleaming with sweat as they chiselled away at wood.
She had left the village without looking back, but the hardship of Lying Shäm Züp continued to weigh heavily upon her, a burden she had to lay down before she left these shores. What did you change there? she thought. You could have helped someone, at the least. You could have helped the girl.
She delayed her return home till the new year. She coaxed and clashed with the priestess, begging that Imeinowei be schooled, if not for the girl’s sake, then for the sake of their long friendship and acquaintance. But Pyik Kyik would not be moved. Free board and schooling had already been offered to a girl from Min Nin Yiw in the island’s southwest. “Besides, madam, the girl has ten years now. She’ll be two years behind the others.”
“But the girl can read! Why should she not be schooled?”
But there was nothing to be done. The priestess’s daughter counselled Hu:
“What would a fisher’s daughter do with schooling anyway? The city girls would torment her. She would see the city only to be sent back to the paddies! Better she stay where she is.”
Hu wanted to help Imeinowei, but she couldn’t shield her from the cruelty of children, nor walk the girl back through time to make her eight years of age again. She had exhausted all her cleverness.
For this was not a problem for her mind, but a matter of the heart. She’d tried with all her wit and might to make others help the girl, but only eight golds would see her through five years of early education, a mere forty more through later education. A couple more golds would buy her clothes fit for the city. Fifty golds, less gold than she’d taken in a single bribe seven years ago. Imoeinowei’s life was in her gift. All she had to do was stretch forth her hand and give.
She returned to Lying Shäm Züp by road, fleet of foot and light of heart. She was glad to see the wildflowers, and delighted in splashes of dark blue, soft purple and bright yellow in the dense shrubbery below the jungle trees, watching them sway and dance in the hot afternoon breeze. The peace of the island’s isolation lodged deep in her heart. Am I doing a great thing? wondered Hu. Is this honourable work? It was a good thing, at the least, and maybe that was enough.
She came at last to the village to knock upon Imeinowei’s family’s door. The girl herself opened it, her eyes bright as she bowed and cried in Lwumic, “You’re back! Are you our chaplain again?”
Imeinowei’s accent was still thick, but she spoke in sentences unbroken, with strength and ease. Soon, she would learn to name stars and empresses, to write letters and numbers, to read poems and histories, as Hu herself had done as a child more than forty years ago.
“No,” said Hu, kissing the top of the girl’s head. “I’ve come to take you to the temple. I’ve come to take you away.”
My thanks once more to Kate Bull for drawing Hu’s arrival at Wom Som, and giving us a little glimpse of the city itself.
Wet Broken Things 
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