There was a peace to moving with no expectations. Tian jogged to keep up with the returning cavalry, his black robes flapping and his straw… he was never quite sure what to call it. Hats didn’t usually cover the whole head, face included, in what was closer in appearance to a straw basket. Whatever it was, it bobbed around as he ran, looking as awkward as it felt.
Tian didn’t know what to expect from a city. The streets were wide and lined with big pieces of flat stones. There were gutters for water, though they looked shallower than the ones in West Town. The buildings looked strange to his eyes. They were taller than he expected. The buildings in West Town never exceeded two stories, and while the monastery had fine, soaring halls with high roofs, most of them were just a single story. Taller than a three story building, but strictly speaking, it was mostly empty volume.
Not in Burning Flag City. He wasn’t even sure Burning Flag had houses as he understood the term. The buildings were all four stories tall. No deviations permitted. They were built out of the same stone as the streets. They had the terracotta roof tiles he was used to seeing, but they were thicker than normal. No gaps between the buildings either, but he could see that they weren’t all built at the same time, nor were the exterior walls shared. When a new building was constructed, they built it like it would be standing alone, but flush against the older building.
Sometimes the logic of a place could be deduced from looking at what was built there. Tian was ready to put his hand up and admit ignorance. At least the streets were colorful.
Hawkers and vendors were already on the streets, greeting the dawn with simmering woks full of frying dough sticks and warm soy milk. Others, those with a heartier appetite in the morning, could buy steamed buns, or even skewers of mutton. Tian could see them laid out in neat little rows, chunks of meat the size of his thumb nail skewered on slivers of bamboo. Ready to go down on the coals and be brushed, if his nose was to be trusted, with a coating of spicy oil and cumin.
Tian was suddenly famished. He hadn’t been a minute ago, but seeing a whole street full of cooking food, he could safely say that he was starving. But Ten Man Commander Attun had promised him a meal and there was nothing that tasted quite so good as free. Tian controlled himself. Barely.
The vendors lived here. He could try them all before he left. All of them. Especially the granny with the green bandana and what looked like char-grilled green onions floating on a bowl of noodles and a light broth. She was old, at least a hundred and eighty, maybe even a hundred and ninety. She couldn’t escape.
Tian almost face planted when he remembered he was in a city full of mortals. That granny could be any age under a hundred. He… really didn’t know how to tell the age of mortals based on how they look, beyond “Very Old, Somewhat Old, Eh, Eh But Younger, Twenties Maybe? My Age-Ish, and Kid.”
Everyone cleared out of the way of the soldiers, moving with a casual familiarity. The soldiers kept up the exact same quick walking pace in the city, the horses hooves now loud and clattering on the stone. The mortals kept right on chattering and having breakfast, though they did give Tian plenty of odd looks. He looked right back. The mortals were fascinating!
The people here were dressed in far more variety than he was used to. Rusty brown pants and desert sand colored jackets. Blue shirts with gold embroidery, hats trimmed in fur or felt. Boots too- he was used to the soft, thin soled shoes of the temple. Not so the mortals of Burning Flag City. They had boots of felt or leather, with sturdy leather soles.
It was all just so new. It was bigger than West Town by miles and miles. Bigger than the Depot, and he had thought Depot Four was huge. He had never seen so many people, and it was still early in the morning. The snippets of conversation he heard hardly made sense.
“Still saving for our Bo to get married-”
“Anything for a toothache?”
“Ah, my back is killing me! That turtle soup-”
“Eeeh? Horse traders? Not in this neighborhood.”
They went past every sort of store- grocers with their fruits and vegetables displayed on trays and carts, crafters with their maker's mark proudly painted above their doors, some with pieces on display and watched over by burly apprentices.
Nobody was talking about the war against Black Iron Gorge. Nobody mentioned heretics. Nobody looked particularly worried about the fact they were on the border of a desert filled with giant carnivorous monsters. They looked like people who wanted breakfast and were chatting with their neighbors. Working in wine shops and pottery shops, and tea houses and hawking their food or trinkets from stalls. Shoveling horse dung off the streets and into wheelbarrows.
People just living.
The patrol trotted its way back to the stables in the military quarter. It wasn’t as walled off as Tian imagined it would be- civilians were wandering in and out of it steadily. Some bringing food, others carrying bundles of what looked like laundry, or pushing wheelbarrows of dung. It seems that, like the Monastery, the Big Brothers in the army needed a lot of servants too. Although they probably didn’t call them that.
“Alright, Barracks Number Eight. Lucky Eight!” Attun chuckled. “You will need to get that basket off if you want to eat, Tea Monk.”
“You would be surprised, Ten Man Commander Attun.” Tian mimed picking up a cup and lifting it under the edge of the basket and slurping. “The purpose isn’t to be anonymous, but to create a sense of being in seclusion no matter where you go.”
His voice trailed off. People were staring at his forearm. His sleeve had slid down while he was miming drinking.
“How the hell are you so pale?” A soldier asked. Not hostile, just tired and bewildered.
“I’m sorry?” Tian had no idea how to answer that.
“Even the officers pick up a tan out here. You look like a teacup of milk.” A different soldier asked, giving himself a good scratch in the process.
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“It couldn’t possibly be a pitcher of milk, could it?” Tian remained hopeful.
The silently shaking heads of ten men somehow managed to be a hundred times more painful than just one would have been.
“This little monk is going to be six one. Just you wait.” Tian muttered. His last growth spurt had stalled out a while back, but he had undergone not one but two bodily reconstructions AND he was cultivating the Hell Suppressing Sutra. If he couldn’t reach his ideal height, he was going to hunt down every last body reforging sutra he could find and make himself the right height.
“Bamboo shoots and mutton.” One of the men volunteered. “That’s what my granny told me. Bamboo, so my body knows to grow tall and straight, and mutton so it has something to build with.” Tian eyeballed the cavalryman. He wasn’t six one, but he was at least five eleven.
“This little mendicant will remember, and do his best to follow the prescription.”
“Still not giving up on the monk thing, huh?” the commander snorted. “Kid, I can see your hands. Leaving aside the fact that only the monks from Pure Land Temple wear those… hat things…” The commander plainly didn’t know what to call them either. Tian felt a surge of vindication. “I can see you have been through hard times. You don’t have to keep playing the part.”
Tian nodded gratefully, then smiled. “This little monk is happy in his role.”
“Oh?”
“It’s got rules. One remains humble and speaks to others with respect. One doesn’t start trouble, but it’s okay to finish it. Everyone is your benefactor, which is nice, even if some people don’t realize they are, or have fallen into sin. Being a wandering monk is a good life, so long as you don’t need much.”
Someone laughed. “He really is the Tea Venerable! Here, Tea Venerable, see what you can manage with our Red Plume Army kettle and the “highest quality” military ration tea leaves.”
Tian got busy. It wasn’t his usual tea setup. No lidded cup, no friendship pitcher, no tea pet. Just a big teapot and an even bigger kettle. There was a little mesh strainer before the spout on the tea pot. He could figure it out from there.
“You are putting in too many tea leaves.” One of the soldiers said.
“Patience will be rewarded, Benefactor.”
The troopers were pulling off armor and carefully stacking it for cleaning. Others were pulling on felt slippers, groaning with satisfaction as the heavy leather boots came off. The stink of sweaty horses mingled with the stink of sweaty people. People who probably didn’t smell very nice when they got on the horse in the first place. The soldiers weren’t filthy, but Tian suspected that baths were an occasional treat rather than a regular occurrence. Diseases must be a hell of a problem.
“How was your patrol, Benefactor?” He asked Attun.
“Quiet. It’s always quiet, this close to the Redstone Wastes.” The commander shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck with a rag dipped in water.
“Pardon? The Wasteland is quiet?”
“Yep. Always. Most boring post in the kingdom.”
“The Redstone Wastes.”
“That is where we are, yes. Well, it’s where we’re near, anyway.”
“The Redstone Wastes with its giant insects, demonic birds the size of buildings and evil cultivators.”
That got him a lot of odd looks. Tian was used to those. He checked the water in the kettle. It needed to be a bit hotter.
“Kid, I have been posted here for six years and haven't seen a single one of those things.” One of the troopers shook his head as he massaged life back into his feet. “You have been listening to too many stories.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There is weird stuff in the wastes, no doubt, and yeah, you do hear stories about sinister immortals hiding in the depths of it and all that, but Hell, the wasteland is bigger than the Kingdom. It would be stranger if there weren’t.” This from a trooper sprawled bonelessly on a bench.
“But none of it leaves the Wastes, and we don’t go in. Even with heavy headwraps, the air in there isn’t safe to breathe. The nomads and caravaneers all grew up in the wastes and can stand it. Everyone else? No chance.” This from the foot squeezer. Tian added the hot water to the leaves. They used black tea pressed into round cakes. Tian had to break off a chunk to put in the tea pot.
“They grew up in the wasteland?”
There were nods all around the room. “Yeah. Apparently all the water is super salty there and nothing really grows, but they found a way to live. What it is, I don’t know. The weird bastards get extra weird when you try and pin down how.”
“Horses and camels. That’s what my Grandad’s family does.” Commander Attun had moved on to mopping his face then washing his feet. “Horses and camels give you meat to eat and milk to drink. As long as they have grass and water, the tribe can survive. The wasteland nomads have horses and camels, so they must have ways to get grass and water.”
Nobody had a better theory. Tian reckoned the tea looked right and smelled right, so he started pouring. It had been interesting. He had to adjust how he would usually prepare the tea to account for the pot and kettle being made of iron, to say nothing of how a big dose of elementally rich tea would impact mortals.
“All the salt the caravans bring in has to be coming from somewhere, right?” He asked.
“Sure, but that “somewhere” is “somewhere deep in the wasteland so it’s not our problem.” A trooper grinned as he accepted his tea cup. He gave the tea a sniff, and his eyes opened wide. He gave it another sniff then a taste.
“Did you add anything to this?”
“Only tea leaves and water, Benefactor.” Tian kept pouring for the other troopers.
“It’s less bitter than usual. Tastes better too.”
“Benefactor may have been getting the water too hot and letting the leaves steep for too long to make up for a lack of leaves in the pot.”
“Huh. Maybe.” Tian could faintly sense tiny tendrils of qi spreading out in the mortals. Unnoticibly small for cultivators, but he could feel it filling invisible gaps within the soldiers. Tian hid a small smile. It wouldn’t cure everything that ailed them, but he suspected that they would be remarkably refreshed and energized once they had a good night’s sleep in them.
“Did Benefactor say the caravans coming out of the wasteland belong to people living in the wasteland?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense for a merchant to travel all the way to who knows where when they can make shorter trips. The nomads don’t want to leave the Wasteland, our traders don’t want to leave the Kingdom. And here we are, ready and waiting for both of ‘em.”
“The salt caravans trade here for… food or something, then Broad Sky Kingdom merchants bring it into the rest of the country. Is that right?” Tian asked.
There were more nods. “Or something.” A trooper growled. The troopers seemed to find the subject unpleasant, so Tian changed it.
“Then may this little monk ask what you are on patrol for?”
The looks turned grim. “That’s the other reason I picked you out of the line. Slavers, kid.” Commander Attun leaned in. “They trade salt for money and food but most of all they trade salt and weapons for slaves. And all kinds of border tribes are only too eager to take them up on the deal. A healthy kid like you, all on his own? You would have had an iron collar on your neck and been chained to a wagon in no time. It’s a miracle you weren’t already.”
The commander blew out his lips and settled back on a bench. “It’s not legal, but… it’s the border, kid. Even a Tea Venerable needs to mind their little life.”