Book 1: Chapter 11

“So apparently it is a map,” Eret told the others triumphantly.

Everyone had come out of the museum and decamped to a nearby café that served tomato and cheese flatbread. Linua had never had it before. The shop smelled very nice—of baking bread and cheese—but she was nervous about what they were going to expect her to eat.

“Just not star map,” Pickle put in.

“Yeah, so, get this … it’s a map of ancient cities from Ancient Kāruan times, but made during the Post-Deluge period, when they probably still had paper maps of the cities that were under water. They were trying to preserve their history in a way that would last.”

“But,” Pickle interrupted, “they also used it as a way to record secrets! It doesn’t have writing, as such…”

“…but there is a code in the way the holes are stitched,” Eret said, sitting forward on the edge of his seat. “Each hole is meant to represent a city, and the way the edge around the hole is constructed tells you what the name of the city was and other information about it. Plus the pattern of the netting between the cities tells you the distances between them and geographical features and stuff like that.”

“So,” said Pickle, “if someone could work out which of those bits are cities we know about, it could point us to another Ancient Kāruan city that we might not know about!”

“A lost city!” the red-headed kid said, sounding excited. “Totally mes!”

Linua had discovered that his name was actually Solpet, but everyone called him Solly.

“Which,” concluded Eret, “might be why the thief wanted it. An undiscovered city would be full of really supe stuff.”

“New technology,” Pickle breathed, his eyes staring into space.

One of the Keng Boh Kids episodes that Linua had seen at the Castle had revolved around treasure hunters attempting to make off with dangerous technology from Ancient Kāru. It made sense—the thief must work for a treasure hunter. She remembered Anith saying that the trustees of the Observatory had refused to let the thief have access to the museum, when he had first pretended to be a researcher. How had the thief known the map was there? Wait, a better question was why the map had been there in the first place.

“Why was the map in the Observatory museum vault?” she asked. “It’s not got anything to do with astronomy.”

The others looked at her.

“Is that important?” Solly, the red-headed kid, pointed out, a little scornfully.

Linua shrugged.

“It may have got mis-identified as a star map,” Anith suggested.

Eret waved a finger to get everyone’s attention.

“The real question is, what should we do with it?” From the way he spoke, it sounded like he already had an idea.

“We could have asked the curator that Pickle was talking to in the museum,” Linua said. “She would have known what to do with it.”

They had told the curator that they were doing research for a school project, which she had accepted without question. Eret opened his mouth again to voice his idea, but Solly spoke over him, bouncing up and down on his seat.

“Don’t be so draff. We should totally form an expedition and go and find it ourselves!”

They all looked at him.

“Well, you are kind of like the kids in Keng Boh Kids,” Linua said.

“Oh yeah,” Pickle looked enthusiastic. “I’m Hacktra.”

Linua nodded.

“Eret’s like Saga.” That was the boy who knew everything.

Eret looked amused but impatient, as if he got compared to Saga every day.

“And I’m Mitan,” Solly said loudly. They all looked at him again.

“Right, okay, so it looks like we have to share being GoGirl,” Anith said dryly to Linua.

Linua felt so happy to be included she almost didn’t mind either being GoGirl or the flatbread arriving. It smelled amazing, but the cheese oozed all over it, hiding lumpy bits that could be anything. The crust was plain bread. She could eat that. She pulled a bit of crust off and nibbled tentatively at it.

She could see that Eret was getting more and more impatient to tell everyone his idea about what they should do with the string map.

“What do you think we should do?” she asked.

“We should send the pictures to the University of Shinboa.” Not waiting to be asked why, Eret began to tick reasons off on his fingers. “One, they have the most famous archaeology department. Two, Shinboa is where the World Council is, so any finds will be shared out to all other countries, not kept for personal gain by any city or country, or individual treasure hunter. Three, the University of Shinboa has the biggest archive of Ancient Kāruan maps in the entire world, so they would have enough material to cross-reference and find this unknown site in the first place.”

There was a silence as they ate their flatbread and considered this. Linua had enough time to finish off the crust on the outside of her flatbread, and was considering the cheese. It might be safe to eat bits of it, so long as it hadn’t been too contaminated by the strange lumps underneath.

“How would you get in touch with the archaeological faculty?” Anith asked. “Who would we even contact? And why would they believe us?”

“We would pretend to be a researcher at the Observatory, and send a photo from there,” Eret said. He grinned. “We know the password to that computer terminals and I know my dad’s email password. I can go to the Observatory tomorrow night and do it.”

Pickle leaned towards Linua.

“Are you going to eat that?”

After the café—Anith paid for Linua’s mutilated flatbread without even asking—they walked back through a local park to the bus stop that Solly and Pickle would take to get home. Solly resumed his campaign to get Linua to fight him, and at first she refused. Secretly diverting her grandmother’s car service to go to a museum with the Astronomy Club was one thing—she felt fairly sure that, even if she was caught, she could persuade Grandmother that it had been an educational evening with the Astronomy Club, or authorised somehow by the astronomers. She would be in trouble, but not that much trouble. But fighting when you were forbidden to do so without a Sheyboh present was quite another thing. The Yi family had very strong views on disobedience.

However, Solly was very annoying when he wanted to be.

“But what if we did it as just taps for hits?” he persisted. “If you’re afraid of getting hurt.”

It wasn’t that Linua was afraid of getting hurt, it was more what Wai Bing Sheyboh would say if she did. She sighed.

“Alright, just taps, and nothing on the head or face, it all needs to be on arms or legs.”

Solly agreed to these terms and, to the amusement of the others, fell into a combat stance. Linua circled away from him, keeping herself light and balanced, concentrating on her rivers of Chi. Wide and slow; fast and narrow.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Solly said.

Could he not see that she was? She watched him shuffle clumsily towards her. Was he trying to be very obvious because he thought she was bad at this? She danced in, tapped his wrist easily, and danced away.

He blinked.

“I wasn’t ready! Let’s start again.”

Linua could hear Sheyboh’s sarcastic voice in her head, but all she said was, “Okay.”

Once again she watched him settle into a combat stance, then make a few very obvious steps and jab slowly towards her. She evaded him easily, returned with a jab to his other arm, and danced back. He tried a couple more times, and she got light taps in on his shoulder and his left leg. He didn’t even come close to hitting her.

By this point he was flushed a deep red, obvious even in the poor light of the streetlamps.

“I thought you said you were lowest ranked in your dojo?”

“It’s just my cousins, but yes, they’re all better than me.”

“I can’t really show you what I can do under these circumstances,” he announced. “We would need to have a proper fight.”

Linua realised that even if they did fight properly, he was unlikely to be able to land a hit on her. He was embarrassingly slow, and telegraphed every move before he made it.

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But no face hits. If you did manage to hit me,” she managed to swallow the words ‘by accident’ rather than saying them out loud, “and I turn up tomorrow with a bruise, my Sheyboh will kill me.”

He came in with a wild flurry. She slid her arms between his hands and used his own momentum to flip him over his own head and onto his back.

“Oof!”

She leaned over him.

“Are you okay?”

She saw Eret standing a few feet away with his hands in his pockets and a smirk on his face. Something told her that Eret wasn’t surprised by this outcome.

“I’m fine.” Solly staggered to his feet. “Again.”

This time he put his hands up defensively and waited for her to come to him. It proved no more successful a tactic, and within a few seconds she had tipped him over onto the grass again. He was puffing now, even though they had barely started. He got onto his hands and knees.

“How often … do you practice … in your dojo?”

“Every day,” Linua said, surprised. “How often do you go?”

“Twice … a week.” He pushed himself to his feet. “You must be from a ranked dojo, there’s no way you just go to your family’s place.”

Linua didn’t reply.

“Where is your dojo anyway?”

Linua didn’t want to answer. It made people funny when they knew she belonged to a Shang House. The Astronomy Club were all ethnically Keretu, and even though nowadays most Shang didn’t act as if the Keretu were any less than the Shang, they did so in a deliberate, careful way that implied there was a difference, and they were just kindly pretending that there wasn’t. It made things awkward if you disclosed to a bunch of Keretu teenagers that you were descended from the highest of all the Shang, and hadn’t actually mentioned that fact until now.

“Why don’t you want to tell me?” Solly asked, getting angry.

She might as well get it over with.

“I go to the Yi family dojo,” she said quickly.

Solly stared at her, open-mouthed.

“You’re allowed to train with the Yi family?” Eret asked. Even he seemed to be surprised, despite having expected that she would be able to beat Solly.

“My dad was a Yi,” Linua said, even more reluctantly.

“You belong to House Yi…?” That was Anith.

“Not really. I’m only half Yi,” Linua said quickly.

The group digested this in silence.

“So…” Eret said. “How many hours a day do you train?”

“About three or four.”

Eret nodded at Solly.

“That’s what the difference is. You can’t compete against someone who trains four hours per day, every day.

“You tricked me!” To Linua’s dismay, Solly sounded on the verge of tears.

“But doesn’t that mean you’re rich?” Pickle asked. “How come you’re a janitor at the Observatory?”

Solly walked rapidly away from the rest of the group, towards the park gate that led to his bus stop. Anith jerked her chin at him.

“Pickle you better catch up with him.”

“What?” Pickle protested.

“Go on.”

He muttered, but he went.

“It’s a good question,” Anith said, as Pickle lumbered into a half jog to catch up with Solly. “Why are you a janitor if you’re a Yi?”

“Half-Yi,” Linua corrected. Not that it made any difference from where they were standing. “My grandmother wants me to be an astronomer so she arranged for me to volunteer at the Observatory every evening. But I hate astronomy, so I follow Alnan around instead and help him with cleaning.”

“Why would you prefer cleaning to astronomy?” Anith asked blankly.

It was hard to explain. It was the first thing, the only thing, that Linua had ever chosen for herself, instead of having everything chosen for her. She wasn’t sure how to put that into words without making her life sound terrible.

“I like Alnan. He’s funny and he tells me interesting stories. He was in the army. Astronomy is mostly just lots and lots of really yawny data entry.”

Eret gave a little snort of laughter.

“You’re not wrong there. Why didn’t you tell us you were a Yi?”

“Half-Yi,” Linua said again, glumly. “There have been other kids at the Observatory before the Astronomy Club. They always treated me differently if they knew. They seem to think I ought to have loads of money and be able to do anything I want. But it’s not like that.” She added, “I never get to choose anything,” and was mortified by how much unintended bitterness came out in her voice.

Eret and Anith glanced at each other.

Linua wanted to sink into the grass with embarrassment. She thought she’d been accepted by what had turned out to be a mez group of friends, but the moment they found out about her Yi family connections they acted like she’d deliberately lied to them instead of … not mentioning stuff. She felt guilty about Solly for some reason she didn’t understand. He was an annoying, pompous little idiot, and it was his own fault he’d ended up flat on the grass. Linua hadn’t asked him to fight her!

“Will Solly be okay?” she asked reluctantly. She realised that she did actually feel a little bit bad for not telling him before. Solly wouldn’t have been so shocked, or made such an idiot of himself, if she had told him earlier about her House training.

“I expect you taught him a lesson,” Eret said, and intercepted a glance from Anith. “What? It’s true! It was time he shut up about how good he is at wushu.”

“Solly has been following Pickle around for as long as we’ve known them,” Anith explained, then she shrugged. “He’ll come round.”

“How did you all meet?”

“Eret and Pickle met at Computer Club and decided to form an Astronomy Club. Dad didn’t trust either of them wandering around up at the Observatory by themselves, so I got volunteered—hoy!” Anith exclaimed as Eret pushed her. She shoved him back. “And Solly does everything Pickle does.”

Linua had a sudden flash of insight. Solly followed around Pickle, and the other members of the Astronomy Club, because he wanted to be one of them, but he didn’t quite fit in. He wasn’t ferociously intelligent like Pickle, or tall, good-looking and confident like Eret and Anith. That’s why he’d boasted about his martial skills, because it was the only thing he had to impress them with.

And then Linua had come along, and was suddenly part of the group. She’d tripped up and stopped the thief, she’d found the storage stick, and then she’d turned out to be miles better at wushu, and Shang nobility to boot. No wonder Solly had marched off just now. He must have been sick with jealousy.

Linua knew what that felt like. She knew what it was like to sit outside a group and not be one of them. She felt it every day at Castle Yi, being the outsider and not being as good at things as anyone else. She’d felt it, a little bit, when the Astronomy Club had had their weekly meetings at the Observatory, and told herself that she didn’t want to get involved.

“Do you know anyone who is ascendant?” Eret asked her, as they waited.

“My great-uncle is the only one in the family.” Anticipated the next question, Linua added, “But I’ve never seen him do anything supe.”

They got to the bus stop and stood around awkwardly until the bus for Pickle and Solly arrived. After it had trundled off, with both boys aboard, Eret turned to Linua.

“Are you getting a bus back? No, I forgot, you have a car service. Where is it picking you up?”

“From the museum at ten.” Linua shivered a bit in the cooler air, then took off her backpack and unfolded it into the mitani outfit.

Eret burst out laughing.

“That’s so cool. Hey, you said you watch Keng Boh Kids with your cousins. Is that your Yi cousins?”

Linua reluctantly grinned.

“Yeah. And they deconstruct the wushu scenes, and then re-enact them, so the second half of any episode is full of my cousins bouncing off the walls.”

“Oh wow.” Eret sounded awed. “I wish I could see that.”

Linua decided not to mention it had only happened once. Hopefully she could persuade Sayo Hui to put on more Keng Boh Kids episodes on the Nimrasday after next. Maybe that way she could catch up with all—what was it, five?—series before anyone realised that she hadn’t yet seen many of them yet.

“You’re just going to hang around at the museum until ten?” Anith checked her watch. “It closes at eight, and it’s after that now. Can’t you call the car service to come earlier?”

Linua shook her head.

“I’ve never asked them to come earlier. And Grandmother would wonder why I wasn’t at the Observatory.”

Anith frowned. It was a concerned grown-up look, despite the fact that she was only a year older than Linua.

“It’s not a bad part of town, but you really shouldn’t be sitting around by yourself that late. We’d stay with you, but we have to be home by nine. We’re really pushing it with our parents by coming out tonight, we can’t be late.”

“Oh no, I’ll be fine,” Linua said quickly.

“Why doesn’t she go to the library?” Eret suggested. “That’s open until ten, and it’s right next door.”

So Linua waved goodbye to them on the steps of the city library.