Whoops. They’d revealed more than they’d meant to.
“It’s bad enough,” Bongsunga said flatly, “that you think it’s necessary to bow to the conquerors—”
Jebi made a frantic shushing motion; there were things you didn’t say, even within your own apartment.
But Bongsunga didn’t care about that. She continued, “—and even worse that you’re impersonating them.”
“It’s not impersonating, really,” Jebi protested, “I’m just letting them make whatever assumptions they want to—”
“You know perfectly well that Rassanin don’t live in this part of town. Even the lower-ranked ones have no trouble turning decent people out of their houses so they can loll about in luxury. The truth about your heritage will come out eventually, and then where will you be?”
“I just thought—”
Jebi might as well have been trying to argue with a monsoon. Bongsunga’s voice rose just slightly, like a string tuned too taut. “You know how Jia died!”
They did, although Bongsunga rarely spoke of it. Her wife had gone to war against the Razanei; had been cut down by a Razanei duelist wearing flamboyant Hwagugin red and blue—except the witnesses had seen the Sun in Glory armband, and she’d wielded a curved Razanei sword. If it hadn’t been the duelist, it would have been artillery shells or bullets, anyway. Hwaguk’s old-fashioned military, wielding swords and spears, had been no match for the Razanei with their tanks and modern rifles, technology reputedly stolen from the Westerners. Jebi still remembered the awful day when the messenger from the Hwagugin army had brought the news and recounted the whole thing in detail, and how Bongsunga hadn’t spoken for a week afterward.
I should have anticipated this, Jebi thought, fighting to keep their face from crumpling. They’d wanted Bongsunga to be happy. If only she hadn’t found the name certificate, everything would have worked out all right. Why had their luck charms failed them so badly?
Bongsunga was shaking. “Jia would have been appalled—appalled—” Then, to Jebi’s horror, their sister began to cry.
Jebi reached out instinctively. “Bongsunga, I—”
“Get out,” Bongsunga snapped. “Since you’re so keen on working for the conquerors, you might as well rely on them for your housing too. I’m not going to share my roof with a collaborator.” She thrust the name certificate at Jebi.
They stared at her. “You can’t mean that.” But they snatched the precious certificate anyway.
Bongsunga’s chilly stare was answer enough.
Numbly, Jebi walked to their room, all the while aware of Bongsunga watching, and packed their money, clothes, and most essential art supplies as quickly as they could. They didn’t want to linger one second longer than necessary. Not with their sister in this mood.
It wasn’t until they were out the door that they realized that they had left behind the fried pancake.
TWO
JEBI PULLED THEIR coat more tightly around themself as they walked away from their sister’s apartment. She’ll cool down, they thought miserably as the evening’s chilly wind skirled up their sleeves and cut past their scarf. I’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ll have breakfast, and everything will be all right.
They had the sinking feeling that reconciliation was the last thing on Bongsunga’s mind. She rarely mentioned Jia by name; that she had done so was a testament to how upset she was.
Jebi could think of several friends they could stay with for a few nights, but not a long-term solution. Money was going to be a problem until the end of the month, unless they took out another loan, which they didn’t want to do. They shivered, sinking further into misery, and to top things off, they were really hungry.
They walked the half-hour to Hak’s place. Hak worked as a low-level clerk for the Citizens’ Bureau, on account of her beautiful calligraphy, in addition to brokering art sales on the side. In an earlier era, she would have been a poet, renowned for her graceful turns of phrase and ability to quote from the Huang-Guan classics. As it stood, she entertained herself in her off hours translating Razanei poetry into Hwamal. There was an underground market for the stuff, and Hak was a practical woman.
Most collaborators were less obvious about it, but Hak was a gumiho, a shapeshifting fox spirit. The Hwagugin didn’t want to cross her. The gumiho were known for seducing travelers and eating their livers. The general sentiment was that Hak was welcome to hang around the Razanei and eat their livers, if they were so foolish as to offend her. The one time Jebi had asked about the topic, Hak had laughed and said that she was a modern gumiho, not a traditionalist, with better ways of obtaining food.
Getting the name certificate had been Hak’s suggestion, so Jebi could count on her sympathy. Just as importantly, Hak had a generous spirit and wouldn’t mind hosting a down-on-their-luck artist for a couple nights. Jebi hated to inconvenience her, but of their friends, Hak was the best prospect.
I’ll make it up to her later, Jebi thought as they passed beneath the street lights. A lone automaton was igniting the lanterns one by one, although the sun was still a red-orange disc on the horizon. Jebi had no doubt that, by sundown, all the lights would be on, and timed perfectly, too.
That was one thing they liked about Razanei rule, although they’d never have admitted it to their sister. The Razanei had cleaned up the streets, hired street-sweepers, wired the central portion of Administrative City Fourteen for electricity. No electricity out here, of course—the street lights were ordinary lanterns—but they sometimes caught themself wishing for it in their home district. The streets felt safer with good lighting, even if violent crime was a rarity in most parts of the city thanks to the automata patrols. After all, automata didn’t care about day or night, or need to sleep at all.
While they were daydreaming, they wouldn’t mind electric lamps in a spacious art studio. Bongsunga—as much as it hurt to think about her—had originally given Jebi the larger room, not just so they could have the space for their supplies, but because it had a wonderful north-facing window. The other room was in the shade most of the time, thanks to a profligate wisteria that attracted hornets in the summertime. Being able to work whatever hours they pleased with good light, instead of being bound by the rising and setting of the sun, sounded like an impossible luxury.
Perhaps the best way to proceed would be to—and Jebi sighed—bring a small gift. It was the polite thing to do, even if they had to hoard their money carefully until the job came through. Still, the best way to ask for a favor was to do a favor, wasn’t that how the world worked?
With that in mind, Jebi detoured to a book-seller’s stall. There were always book-sellers, many of them trading in old Hwamal books and the occasional import from the great land of Huang-Guan to the north of Hwaguk’s peninsula. Increasingly they sold books in Razanei, too. The Razanei government attempted to regulate the trade in books, but so far their efforts had been half-hearted and not terribly successful, unless the book-seller was stupid enough to pass around openly seditious literature.
This one-armed book-seller sat on a stool that had seen better days, hunched over a ledger as they cataloged their stock. The two of them exchanged nods of recognition: they both wore their hair in asymmetrical haircuts, like geu-ae currently did in the capital. The Razanei seemed baffled by geu-ae, people who chose to live not as men or women at all, or who sometimes dressed and spoke as one and sometimes as the other. But they left them alone, for which Jebi was grateful.