If Norn was surprised by the sudden improvement in Ren’s work performance, she was even more surprised when Garam asked her to teach Ren how to work the floor.

But there weren’t even words to describe how she felt when he was actually good at it.

The mopey, kicked-dog pain that always sat just behind his eyes seemed to melt away while he was chatting with the guests, taking orders, and fetching meals.

Also, the boy who she’d mentally nicknamed the Bowl-Breaking-Urchin, hardly broke anything anymore and seemed to know what the customers wanted before they even asked. It had hardly been a week and he was already able to beat her at the game she had invented, guessing whether a customer would ask for mead, rice wine, or water.

Nobody came to Garam’s—or Blade Street for that matter—looking for fine spirits. The mead Garam imported from the west already set the tavern apart.

She took her eyes off of Ren, the little server-boy, and looked over at Garam who was raising an eyebrow at her.

Ashura’s Tits! She forced down the traitorous smile that had crept onto her face while watching her protege. She hated when Garam teased her. He was so damn good at it. After their years working together, he knew where all her soft spots were.

*******

Ren wasn’t sure if Wind Tickles the Leaves was actually doing anything, but work had felt a little easier lately. The hours neither sped away like shadows fleeing the candle of time, nor did they drag on like a one legged beggar crossing a desert. They just… flowed.

He’d always been good with people, good at reading them anyway. They hadn’t always liked him, though. His eyes and skin tone had given him away as a foreigner in every city his family had moved to.

But he’d always been able to feel what other people felt. Even as a kid. It was part of why he’d struggled to understand how someone like Sig could be a bully. It had taken him growing up a little to realize that not everyone saw life how he did. Some people were just closed off. They shut the gates to others, and didn’t worry about the pain surrounding them.

If he was being honest, he envied those folks sometimes. He didn’t think he could turn off his empathy even if he tried.

But his new meditation felt like a natural expansion of that very quality. He’d open himself to the world and try to feel all the things around him. Try to breathe with them. Try to let their will and presence flow through him. He was supposed to be trying to feel the current of the Great River that passed through everything, like the wind tickling leaves on its way through the trees. Seriously, did his uncle have to make everything a joke? Couldn’t he have named the technique something cool, like Unifying Flame Meditation?

Ren chuckled and looked around the market as he waited for the butcher to finish his cuts. So many people, each heading their own way, each a leaf drifting down in its own path.

Wind Tickles the Leaves was easier to maintain while washing dishes, but he was starting to get the hang of doing it with other people too.

Ren didn’t know why, but he shifted his weight to one foot and turned his body slightly, only to watch as a man charged through the space he’d just been in—guardsmen close on his tail, each pinning their scabbard in place with a hand to avoid banging their legs with every step.

It was moments like this that made him think maybe the technique wasn’t just rubbish. This kind of thing was happening more and more.

He thanked the butcher and picked up the sack of meat from the stall counter. Time to get back to the inn. Garam would need the cuts of lamb to go in the pot as soon as possible if the stew was going to be ready for the dinner rush.

Garam was a strange man. The tavern was almost never busy, but they always made a full pot. Ren suspected it was because the big man actually planned to have extra to hand out in the mornings to the struggling families that huddled under overhangs and curtains repurposed as roofs in the slums to the south.

Ren hadn’t even known people like the innkeeper existed when he was out on the street.

“Hey, no-name!”

Ren froze mid-step. Sig.

Aziroth’s Flaming Horse Cock! That curse was becoming his favorite lately. Appropriately vulgar and blasphemous while still accurate.

He turned. The big, handsome ass-hat of a boy-trying-to-be-a-man strutted with whats-his-name and his uglier cousin, goon number two.

Ren wasn’t breathing. His shoulders began caving in, the comfort he’d started to feel in his body gone.

No.

Ren straightened, and pointed behind the boys. “Hey Guardsman Tallow!”

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Guardsman Tallow was actually one of the guardsmen who had beaten Ren as a punishment for being homeless, and he hoped never to see the man again—but these boys didn’t know that.

Sig and his buddies paused, looking over their shoulders.

Piss-brained meat-heads. Ren took his shot and darted into the milling throng, leaning on his months of practice being invisible. The fact that he wasn’t tall helped, and he was lost in the crowd and on his way back to the inn before the other boys had a chance to see anything.

That trick would only work this once. He knew that. Next time he’d be better prepared.

*******

Ren had been acting weird for several days. A serious expression had buried his inner puppy-dog.

He would disappear for several hours, only to return with shoes splattered in filth that tracked into the inn. He’d clean his shoes, and mop the floor, but that wasn’t the point. Something was going on.

Norn had finally gotten fed up when he left with the scarf she had cleaned up for him, and returned without it. When she’d grilled him for information he’d just stared back at her. It was infuriating!

But Norn was happy right now. Her new regular—the one who had started coming in shortly after Ren began working as a server—was here, sitting at his usual table in the corner. And he tipped well.

The man’s hooded head followed Ren’s movements as he collected dirty dishes and brought them to the back.

Norn’s features tightened even as she set his usual tea on the table.

“Strange one, isn’t he?” she asked. Trying to keep her tone neutral.

“Ah! It appears you caught me, child.” The man smiled sheepishly up at her from under his hood. A strange expression that bent his deep wrinkles into a mosaic of abstract crescents. “It’s curious to me how young they start you kids working here in the Republic.”

“Ren’s not that young.” What was she doing? Why was she defending him? And being rude to a customer? That wasn’t like her.

“Looks like I struck a nerve. I always seem to be stepping on my tongue. No offense intended.”

As she turned to leave she heard him muttering, “So the boy’s name is Ren… Very interesting.”

Ren was in the back, cleaning dishes infuriatingly well.

“Ren,” she said, louder than she had to, and frowning when he didn’t even startle, “there is a creeper watching you out there. You don’t happen to have a thing for old men do you?”

“What? What do you-” There it was, the flustered spluttering she so enjoyed.

*******

Ren cautiously made his way to the table in the corner where a man sat, still in his cloak.

He didn’t have any idea how to fight with the kitchen knife he’d tucked into his cloth belt, but he hoped it would make him more intimidating if what Norn had said was really true. He’d finally found somewhere he was safe, and he didn’t want anyone to ruin it for him.

The man dropped his hood as Ren approached. A spiderweb of wrinkles framed his twinkling eyes, one blue and knowing, the other all white and framed by scars.

“Old man- er- I mean- Honored Elder?” Ren tripped on his words. The man was much cleaner, and had obviously washed his cloak, but there was no doubt this was the elderly wanderer he’d encountered a month ago.

“Ah, it is good to see you doing well, child. I’ve been wanting to thank you for your aid. I’m not sure I would have made it through the night without your kindness.” The man smiled at him. It was a guileless, childlike grin that covered his face from his forehead to his wispy bearded chin.

Ren flushed and bowed shallowly, “It is good to see you doing well too, honored Elder.”

“Osai.”

“What?”

“My name is Osai. I have no need for honor at my age, and I hardly need to be reminded how old I am.”

“My apologies.” Ren started bowing again.

“None of that. I came here to thank you, remember? Now, once your work is finished, why don’t you come sit with me and we can catch up. Perhaps I can repay your kindness with some wisdom from these creaking bones. But first, take these coins to the serving girl. I really am quite fond of her and I don’t want her to think I have a new favorite.” He pulled out several copper dham and handed them to Ren. Quite the tip. He was lucky when folks left him a few bits for his trouble.

Norn laughed as he returned the knife in his belt to the kitchen, but she thanked him when he passed on Osai’s tip and compliments.

He finished the dishes and returned to the table with a refill of tea for the old man and a cup for himself.

“Your name is Ren, right?”

“How did you-”

“The girl mentioned it.” Osai took a sip from his steaming cup, closing his eyes as he savored the tea. “Do you know what your name means?”

Ren did, but he wasn’t particularly proud of it. He squirmed, but nodded. “It means Lotus.”

A girl’s name for a boy who fought like one.

“Indeed it does,” said Osai, leaning forward and steepling his fingers. “Quite the name. Do you know much about cultivation Ren?”

“My uncle is- was one, a cultivator I mean.” It still hadn’t sunk in. Not really. When he was reading the manual, it felt like Irah was there with him.

“Mmmm. Yes. That makes sense. Well, what did he teach you?”

“Nothing much. A mortal grade meditation. A song. He didn’t talk about it much.” Ren hadn’t lied. His uncle really hadn’t taught him much, and he certainly wasn’t going to share with a stranger that he had a cultivation manual hidden in the attic.

“A shame, really. But then again, maybe your uncle was wiser than I.”

“Are you a cultivator then?” Ren couldn’t keep the squeak of excitement from his voice. Was this man the wandering master who he’d always dreamed of meeting?

“Do I look like one?”

Ren didn’t know how to respond to that. So he said nothing. The easy answer would have been no. He looked like a sick old man, barely healthier than his uncle had been on his deathbed.

That thought hit him like a punch to the gut. His uncle was dead. Never coming back. And it was stupid of him to think that this man was some kind of secret cultivator. Life didn’t work that way. The lesson had been beaten into him enough times already.

“Haha!” the man laughed.”No need to look so glum. I’m no cultivator. Couldn’t walk that path if my life depended on it.” There was an extra weight behind those words that Ren couldn’t quite place. “I am at least as old as I no doubt look, though, and you shouldn’t discount the wisdom of age.

“I’ll be in this city for several more months. How about I share some of what I know with you when you have the time?”

What harm could there be in humoring the old man?