"I would be perfectly happy to see the Ming overthrown," Wen said. "It's just not my main goal. What I want is to get rich." For some reason he found himself reluctant to admit that his primary reason for getting rich now was to help his father. Perhaps, he thought, it isn't the sort of thing a dangerous desperate pirate would really say. "If the dynasty falls in the process, that's just fine." He turned to her. "Would you like to be rich?"
"Who wouldn't?" She turned to face him, and he felt the mountain crumbling away beneath him. It was a lot easier to understand what men were thinking from the way they looked at you; the expression on Fengzi's face was... disturbing. "But would wealth really make me any happier? I am content here, Wen Xia. Scholar Wu leaves me alone to pursue my studies, and what more could I really want?"
"You have all the manuscripts you need, then? Or desire? Aren't there limits, Lady Fengzi, to what one can teach oneself?"
"Possibly." She turned away. "Oh, look! Here comes Wu, and he's bringing drinks himself!"
Your timing is absolutely perfect, Wen thought. He got to his feet. "You honor me with your kindness," he said.
"Oh. Thank you." Wu thrust a small goblet, apparently carved from some sort of stone, at him. Distracted was too mild a word, thought Wen as he took the cool goblet. Inside it was a jade-colored liquid, with flecks floating in it. Flecks that turned out to be ice. "How in the world," Wen said between loud sips, "do you keep ice up here, in this heat?"
"Not all that well," Wu said, blushing. "Lady Fengzi has helped me, but mostly it's because there's a cavern underneath my home, and ice will keep for at least a while there, if it's wrapped in cloth and rested in straw."
"Well, I am more than grateful for everything you and Lady Fengzi have done with this," Wen said, draining the goblet. "That was wonderful."
"Oh," said Wu; after a moment he added, in a faint voice, "Would you like another?"
"Thank you," Wen said. Then, seeing the look on Fengzi's face, he added, "But no thank you. I do not want to become over-cool. And I will shortly have to walk back down the mountain, to rejoin my ship."
"Oh, you're a sailor, then."
"After a fashion." Wen nodded in the direction of a large stone, set next to a twisted, gnarled tree whose leaves were actually spikes. "Lady Fengzi, would you walk with me?"
"Oh," Wu said. "Please forgive me. I have been intruding."
"Not at all," Wen said, lying again. "But I do have to leave soon, and I would speak with the lady again before duty calls me back down to the harbor." And to Pocapetl's, where I can get a proper drink.
"He really is kind," Fengzi said once Scholar Wu had left them, "though you are probably seeing him at his best. Most of the time he scarcely seems to notice that I'm even here."
I'd have thought that would be an ideal situation for you, Wen thought. He kept the thought to himself, though, if only because he had already experienced enough of her displeasure to know that he'd regret upsetting her. "Aren't most scholars that way?" he asked. "Certainly the men my father associated with, when I was a child, were very much like that."
"Your father was a scholar?"
"My father wanted to be a government official. For all I know, he never stopped trying to be." Wen had a vision of his father trying to find time to study in the evening, after finishing whatever crippling job or chore he'd taken on in order to feed himself. I wonder if he's now so sick that he's become bed-ridden, he thought. Wen kicked at a pebble on the path, conscious that in doing so he was probably destroying a symmetry based on thousands of years of careful study and adherence to the rules of men long dead. "That's why I've asked you to join me—us—I suppose. My father's way ended up doing neither him nor me any good. And I think you know how it would have done for you."
"You don't have to remind me, Wen Xia."
"That wasn't my intent. But if it nudges you into my crew, I'm more than willing to upset you."
"You would be." Fengzi bent to pick up a spike that had fallen from the unusual tree. "You are a very strange man, Wen. Why should I listen to your offer, much less accept it?"
Wen didn't answer for a moment. That's a good question, he said to himself. Then he shook his head; self-doubt was a fatal trap, and he knew that. There was no need for her to remind him. "I'm the best chance you have," he said, smiling, "to prove to your father that you're better than any son he could have had."
The next instant he was on his bottom, in the pool, and anxious carp were goggling up at him. It was rather pleasant and cool, actually. She likes me, he thought.
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