The “Ney” flute was tricky to learn without a teacher, but eventually he found the right mouth positioning and air pressure to achieve a resonance that was quite pleasing—at least to him. He had yet to play for an audience, only taking the instrument from its case during the day when the guests were out in the city.

Then, once he was able to play a single note without the thing screeching or squawking, he picked up the sheet titled Sapling Song of the Autumn Breeze. He was excited. The memory of his uncle’s dancing fingers on his sitar, and his deep, molasses sweet voice played in his mind. Would his songs make even the flowers in the window-pots dance?

Then he read the first line of instruction.

“Every bird wants to fly, Ren, but each wing has six muscles that control its flight. Like a bird learning to fly, you must master each note before you learn to play Sapling Song of the Autumn Breeze. Make each note its own song and let them sing together.”

It would have been a beautiful thought if it didn’t mean he had to wait even longer before he could properly play anything on the instrument.

After a week of trying, he learned that he did, in fact, have an audience.

“What are you doing up there?” said Norn. “It sounds like a bird’s been kicked in the head and forgotten how to sing.”

*******

Norn grinned at the sight of how Ren responded to her challenge. When he’d first arrived, he’d curled up on himself like a stepped on pup every time she spoke to him. Now she saw how his fist tightened at his side.

She wasn’t trying to hurt his feelings. The young woman just wanted to help him grow a backbone. A man should have a backbone.

It was also really annoying listening to him play the same damn note over and over. Even Ashura the Ever Burning herself would have burned down the building at this point just to make it stop.

He still didn’t talk back to her though. Her protege was a good boy after-all. But he stormed past her and started angry-washing dishes. Anger was good. Much better than moping.

*******

Ren sat on a rooftop several blocks from the inn. His new cloak wasn’t as good as his old one had been, but it did the trick to keep the worst of the autumn nights off of him.

After his encounter with Norn, he’d decided he needed more privacy, so he took some of his tip money to the market and got a bolt of wool and some thread. His plan was to ask her to teach him to sew.

She’d just taken the materials and muttered something about him already being half a woman and not needing any more lady-like traits.

He didn’t understand the attachment folks had to gender roles here in the Republic. Before his family settled in Katarn, he’d lived plenty of places where people just did what they were good at and didn’t think twice about the yin and yang of it. All the same, he still felt the crush of shame whenever he was insulted for not being ‘a man’.

He’d forgiven her, because two days later there was a new cloak, fitted to him, folded neatly by his bedroll.

She was the kindest asshole he’d ever met.

A breeze picked up and he brought the Ney up to his mouth, playing a note into the wind, trying to match its intensity. His uncle hadn’t specifically instructed this, but it made sense given the name of the song. Plus, his new sense of Wind Tickles the Leaves, tingled in a happy way every time he did this.

The Ney was tricky. It had seven holes along its wooden length, six on the front, one on the back. The base notes were easy enough, but his uncle had made it clear that playing the “subtones” between those notes was critical, and finding the right balance of partially covering a hole—while maintaining the perfect airflow and meditating on the “essence” of the note—stretched his wits.

Another week passed with him escaping to the rooftops to practice as often as he could, and he was ready to move past that first instruction and learn the actual song.

*******

Osai sat under an eve every night, thanking the stars and sky spirits for his thick cloak.

Leaves had started to fall from the trees, and into their midst danced a note from the rooftop above him, spinning in the breeze like a falling seedpod. He closed his eyes. The musical seed buried itself in the soil of his mind where it drank and ate of the rich ground of thoughts and dreams. Another series of notes danced with the first, coaxing the seed to grow, to rise, to rejoin the wind above its shelter in the soil.

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The seed was afraid, but it heard the whispers of the other notes, the rumors from the roots about it, and it did rise, poking through into the air.

And then the song of the breeze really began, autumn sung leaves of every shade and hue from their perches on branches. They twirled about, calling out to the sapling.

Grow.

Grow big and make leaves and play.

And it did.

The final note of the song faded into the night, even as the breeze calmed, and the air stilled, humming in the sweet ecstasy of silence following a dance.

The old man hadn’t felt this way since he’d traveled amongst the dervishes along the spice road.

Osai was amazed by the boy. His Qi seed, the one all living beings had, was quite small. And yet… and yet the Qi around the boy was alive, responsive. It whispered to him, tapped him on the shoulder, supported him. And for the most part, the boy listened, somehow. Even though he wasn’t a cultivator and had never touched the River.

Truthfully, Osai was learning much from his time with Ren. More accurately, he was unlearning a whole lot he’d taken to be wisdom and truth in his life as a cultivator. Every day he felt a little closer to that mystery his master had tasked him with unraveling. A goal he had all but abandoned long before reaching Katarn.

This child who played his flute into the wind for hours every night would make the most interesting student.

But it wasn’t his place to teach the boy to cultivate. And he hardly had the power or resources to help the boy advance. There was also the matter of the Republic’s heavy regulation of cultivators and education on the subject.

But whenever the boy sat with him at the table, he told the boy stories and hinted at deeper truths. And the boy listened.

*******

Basher was even more ornery than he’d been after the failed hunt for the rat-spy, and Fish-Lips wanted nothing more than to stay out of his way, or give him a win.

It wasn’t that he was fond of the boss. It was fair to say that he hated him. Worthless twot-rot in human form.

But Basher was getting more and more unpredictable. Unpredictable was dangerous.

What’d happened this time was big, and bad news for everyone.

The organization, everybody’s boss, had ordered a stand down. And they’d threatened Basher. Basher didn’t take threats well.

The order was in everyone’s best interests, technically. Some lady cultivator had shown up a couple months back. Apparently on the payroll of the Osirus Clan, who played the balance between extortion and protection of Low Town. Since then, business had gotten tough, and bodies were stacking up in the maze.

Fish-Lips passed one such pile of severed limbs and split torsos. The blood puddle was still like a mirror this deep in the maze where the wind barely reached.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but all the bodies belonged to gang members who worked for the organization. He’d heard that one of the groups had arranged a meet, offering to turn-coat—then tried to poison her.

Idiots. Even if the root had worked on a cultivator of her level, it would take too long, and she’d know before it disabled her. That was the day they’d found the first stack of body parts.

“Stand down and wait for someone to come and ‘clean up’.” That wasn’t ominous at all.

Fish-Lips headed for Lake Street. They couldn’t officially conduct business for now—not until things cooled down—but he could still hang out in the markets. And if he happened to see the rat-spy, well, that was just a happy accident. One that would get him paid, and on Basher’s very small good side.

*******

His mom pawed at the cloak. Her face a mask.

“The stitching is very nice, Ren.” Her voice was a little too sweet. “Who made it for you?”

He supposed it was hard for all moms to deal with the thought of being replaced by another woman.

“A coworker.” He shrugged.

She gripped the wool a little tighter. “Oh, really? The stitching is really nice. I’m amazed someone you hardly know would go to so much trouble. This is quite a complex technique.”

She was really fishing now. Why was she doing this? Had she been this way about Sitara?

Yes.

But she’d calmed down once they met. Too bad there was no way in hell he was bringing Norn here. Not that she’d even come. Or that things were at all like that between them. He was still half convinced she hated him.

“It’s not like that Mom. I think Norn is just trying to make up for how much she makes fun of me.” Shit, he shouldn’t have said her name.

“Ooooo, Norn” she cooed, “A beautiful foreign girl is flirting with you and making clothes for you, and you’re just now telling me about it? When you were little we used to talk about everything. What hap-”

Her teasing died as she looked around the small room that housed the four remaining members of the Karami family. This was the answer to her unfinished question. The silence squeezed in on them, wringing out all sweetness and mirth.

The door flung open. It was Asana and Mako, back from their chores in the Clan headquarters.

“Brother, brother!” Asana yelled as she charged at Ren, jumping full force at him and knocking him from the stool.

He didn’t have the heart to correct her—he wasn’t her brother anymore. Not in the eyes of the law or the Temple of Light, anyway.

“Play with us, Ren!” She pounded ineffectually on his chest.

Mako, true to his nature, was silent by the doorway, but his eyes were alight with quiet excitement.

“YOU DARE CHALLENGE THE GREAT FIRE DRAGON MULAHANA!” Ren roared, flinging Asana carefully from his chest. “VENGEANCE WILL BE MINE!”

The twins squeaked and bolted outside.

Ren paused in the doorway and looked back. The grief was still there, but at least she was smiling.

He’d save them. Somehow.