A cold wind reeking of smoke, horse sweat, and the sour stench of the gutters tore at the hem of Lin's tattered cloak. He pressed his back against the rough, icy stone of the city wall, trying to shelter from the morning torrent pouring through the giant gates of the Eternal City. The capital of the Huang Empire. Legends spoke of golden streets and palaces soaring to the sky. Lin saw only mud. Deep, brown mud, mixed with straw and refuse.
*Squelch.* A guard's boot in a faded blue uniform sank ankle-deep. The soldier cursed through clenched teeth and yanked his leg free. Splashes of icy slush drenched Lin.
"Move it, vermin! Don't block the way of honest folk!" another guard bellowed, jabbing the butt of his spear into the back of a merchant whose scrawny horse trembled with fear and cold.
Lin ducked into the maw of the time-blackened gates. Noise slammed into his ears like a hammer: the shriek of wheels on stone, the clang of iron, vendors' cries, a child's wail, arguments over space at a brazier. The air – a thick soup of smoke, stinking sweat, fried grease (rarely), sewage, and dust. Overhead, between the crooked houses with overhanging galleries, hung the sky. Grey. Heavy. Like water in a gutter ditch. *The Age of a Hundred Rivers*, Lin remembered. Not poetry. They said there used to be fewer rivers, and wars were quieter. Now there were a hundred rivers – rivers of blood, rivers of refugees, rivers of betrayal. The river of life here flowed dirty and churning.
"Seeds! Hot seeds! A copper a handful!" a boy shrieked shrilly, deftly weaving between legs. His elbows were sharp as razors.
"Knives-axes! Sharpen 'em! Two coppers!" hissed an old man by the wall, turning a grindstone, the ring of copper barely audible in the general din.
"Bread! Fresh baked! Three coppers a loaf!" a woman hawked from a tray, but her eyes darted, searching for blue uniforms. Flour was dearer than silver for the likes of her. Lin saw a craftsman, grunting, count out three worn coppers for her, shove the warm loaf under his arm, and hurry away.
Lin pressed a hand to his hollow stomach. Three coppers... He didn't have a single one. Hunger – an old acquaintance – squeezed him like pincers. He walked on, not knowing where, absorbing the Eternal City through every pore:
* **Glitter:** A gilded palanquin swept past, guarded by warriors in lacquered armour. The scent of expensive incense – sharp, alien, like the crack of a whip. Behind the silk curtain flashed a pale, bored face. Lin caught the hard gleam of a gold clasp on the noble's robe – a fortune dangling from a button.
* **Filth:** By an open sewer ditch, children scrabbled, fishing for something. A legless old man squatted nearby, a wooden bowl trembling in his hand. People walked past without looking. In the bowl – a couple of pitiful coppers.
* **Steel:** At the crossroads, two men in worn but sturdy leather doublets sized each other up. Short, practical swords with dull copper pommels hung at their belts. Not noblemen's toys. One spat at the other's feet. The crowd swayed, anticipating a spectacle. Blue uniforms appeared like shadows, clubs whistling. "Break it up! Imperial Decree! Gatherings forbidden!" One of the swordsmen, backing away, jingled a purse – silver clearly rang inside.
* **Fear:** On a house wall – a yellow scrap of parchment. A Decree. Fat characters screamed: "Treason!", "Execution!", "Confiscation to the Treasury!". Beside it, scrawled in charcoal: "Down with the Leeches!". Someone was already smearing mud over the seditious words.
Lin turned into an alley where the stench hung like a solid wall. It was quieter here, but no safer. He found a half-ruined stone niche – a place for some forgotten guardian spirit? – and huddled down, curling into a ball, trying to conserve warmth. From here, he could see a slice of the main street and a well.
By the well, two men were drawing water. The thin one, with sunken cheeks, lowered his voice:
"Heard? The Yamato Clan's stirring again. Word is, their vanguard's at Lan River."
His companion, stocky, with a face scarred by old wounds, snorted as he set a full bucket down:
"Yamato? Kindling. The real trouble's the Fierce Wolves in the north. Their cavalry's already crossed the Lan. They say the Imperial Guard, the 'Crimson Lions', have marched out. Again."
"Again?" The thin man glanced around fearfully. "Last time they barely stopped them at the walls! How many lives did it cost to push them back..."
"Lives?" The stocky man gave a rasping laugh, spitting loudly. "Firewood for the war furnace. Since when do we care? Thing is, bread's gonna get dear again. Might hit silver a loaf, mark my words. Starve to death all over again."
"Shut it!" The thin man shoved him with a shoulder, looking around. "Ears everywhere. See any work? That job at the East Gate's done. Back to begging?"
"Try Blacksmith Wang," the stocky man said, hefting his bucket. "Heard he's got a contract for garrison spears. Five hundred. But don't get your hopes up – pays pennies. A copper for ten, and that's if he pays on time."
"A copper for ten..." The thin man gave a bitter smirk, lifting his own bucket. "Better coppers than an empty purse and belly..." They trudged off, leaving Lin alone with the roaring street and the fiery growl in his own emptiness.
*A shadow.* Something large and silent blocked the meager light. Lin pressed himself into the stone, trying to become invisible. An old man stood before him. Not a beggar, not a trader. His clothes were simple but sturdy homespun, clean, unpatched. His face – like an old map, crisscrossed with wrinkle-trails. But his eyes... Too clear. Too watchful, like a hawk's. In his hand, he held a strange thing – a thick copper tube with two glass circles at the ends.
"You... where from?" asked the old man. His voice was dry, like autumn leaves, but without the usual street malice or contempt. "Your face... not from here. Your eyes... empty. Or too full for these stones?"
Lin stayed silent. The first rule of the street: be quiet, be a shadow, be a stone, be nobody. A tongue was just another hole in your defenses.
The old man didn't insist. He raised the tube to his eye, aimed it at Lin, then lifted it to the grey sky, then lowered it to the dirty, graffiti-covered wall opposite. Clicked something on the tube.
"Interesting..." he murmured to himself, as if deciphering a complex character. "Patterns... Repetition... War, pitiful peace... War again... What's in between? What ties all these threads?..."
He lowered the tube. His gaze fell on Lin again. Not piercing, but... appraising.
"Hungry?"
Lin, not taking his eyes off the old man, slowly nodded. There was no point in lying here.
The old man rummaged in a canvas bag slung across his shoulder. He pulled out not a loaf, but a flat, hard cake of coarse flour mixed with bran. Not bread, but... food. Hard. Grey. He held it out to Lin.
"Here. Should share. Especially in the Age of a Hundred Rivers." He nodded towards the grey, low sky, as if the era itself were to blame. "I'm Min. Old Min. Live up there." He gestured with the tube towards a high hill in the city center, where behind a fortress wall the stern, tiled roofs of the Imperial Academy were visible – a city within a city. "Find something... unusual. A stone of strange shape, unfamiliar grass, a bird with unseen plumage... or just thoughts spinning in your head like mad hamsters – find me. I like to hear the unusual." He turned to leave, then glanced back over his shoulder. "Your name?"
Lin, already biting into the hard but incredibly sweet-tasting cake (after long hunger, it tasted like a feast!), mumbled through crumbs:
"Lin... Just Lin."
Old Min nodded, as if he'd heard an important revelation or a rare scientific observation.
"Lin... Just Lin. Good. I'll remember." And he melted into the crowd as suddenly as he had appeared. Only the glint of the copper tube flashed one last time between the backs of passersby.
Lin licked the last crumbs from his palm, carefully sucked his fingers. The hunger quieted but didn't leave; it merely retreated a step. He looked after the old man. "The Academy." A world of books, scrolls, instruments like that tube. A world of scholars and nobles. Not for him. He looked at his hands – dirty, scratched, and scraped. At his ragged clothes, reeking of sweat and smoke. At the alley filth ground into the stones. *The Eternal City.* A city of golden spires and stinking ditches. A city of death decrees and whispers of rebellion around the corner. A city where old men with copper tubes sought the "unusual," and children – scraps and lost coppers.
He stood up, brushed himself off – more from habit than hope. He needed shelter. At least a corner in some half-ruined shed where he wouldn't be chased off by a guard's club or an owner's kick. Tomorrow... Tomorrow at dawn – look for work. Or steal food. Or root through refuse. The time for stars, for pondering "threads" and "patterns" like Old Min spoke of, hadn't come yet. Now was the time to survive. One day at a time. In the deep shadow of the Age of a Hundred Rivers. At the very foot of the impregnable palaces of the Huang Empire. The world began here, in the mud, amidst the jingle of coppers and the whispers of war.