14 – Bridging Buildings
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The Ling Fei offices geographically matched their client list, Taiko relayed to Justin, straddling the border between an upper-middle-class and lower-upper-class neighborhood. This far from the tourist centers of the city, the blocks were smaller. According to Taiko, Ribe’s islands decreased in size steadily from the west to the east, with a broad, empty bay of the freshwater Sea of Toh between the last and the Holy Peaks on its eastern shore.

The old monk sketched the city’s basic outline for him on the upholstery with a fingertip as the polemen shuttled them east-by-south-east through increasingly narrow canals. The city was essentially a half-circle, with the tourist areas mostly to the north and the local homes and businesses to the south. In the west were the farms and ranches on the mainland. Then came the lower class districts, mostly in the southern half, where the land began breaking up and the canals started. The northern to middle arc of the central city beyond composed most of the tourist section, with middle class native housing again farther south.

The upper-class districts began as the islands shrank in size and grew in separation, with the wealthiest and oldest families occupying some whole mid-to-southern islets to themselves, and the wealthiest visitors touring and guesting on the northern ones.

As the polemen approached an arcing bridge, the rear one called out to an elderly woman sitting in a little one-woman opera-box of the silvered-green wood attached to one end, holding a fishing line dropped into the water below.

“Oy, Old Mother Rakko!” he said.

“Noways cursed enough to be a mother t’ you, Imtak,” she screeched back. “Whaddya want, y’little rowdy?”

“Directions to the Ling Fei, should it please yeh!”

“Southeast side o’ th’ Rice Parade! And keep yeh t’ th’ south here, boys; don’t be scarin’ m’fish!”

“Much obliged, Matron!”

A dismissive hmph! was the only reply. Justin studied the bridge’s carvings of crawly, unfamiliar shellfish as they passed by it.

“Bridge o’ th’ Rice Parade’s two more east and one south, honored guests,” Imtak said. “Nearly there. Told yeh we’d do it wind-swift, Kokyu!”

“I had no doubts, brother,” Taiko said.

As they passed the next intersection, one of the black outrigger pirogues came gliding down the center of the canal crosswise to them, and the polemen slowed and swayed off to the right to give it way.

“What are those, by the way?” Justin asked Taiko.

The old monk twitched. “You can see the- !” He sighed. “Of course you can see the Hokki. They are mobile Shrines, Brother. A topic for another time, though, please?” He deliberately looked back and forth in warning between Justin’s eyes and the back of Tosa at the boat’s prow.

“Sure,” Justin shrugged. “Save it for dinner?”

“That would be wisest, I think.”

 

# # #

 

The Bridge of the Rice Parade was apparently named for the bas-relief depiction of human rice haulers on its sides who met at its center. They were unknowingly dribbling out a trail from their leaking sacks, which was followed by a chain of creatures feasting on each other in sequence. First, there were small birds like tits or finches, pecking at the ground, followed by bullfrogs gulping down the last ones in line, then geese, foxes, owls, wildcats, large hawk-ish avians, and finally children with bows.

This place is incredible, Justin thought. Historical art everywhere. If he didn’t have alchemy and spellcrafting to focus on, he could have spent weeks, months, touring it himself. Then again, he wasn’t going to die of old age anytime soon, on top of having his youth back.

Imtak and Tosa poled under the bridge and up to a small wood jetty between two closed water-doors in the middle of the next block. Above the landing, a stairwell blocked by a shiny brass gateway topped by more brasswork overhead led to a two-story passageway with an arched roof, like a large french traboule. The entire small block appeared to be one four-story building, with a first floor exterior of windowless solid stone. The second story had a few narrow double panes, all closed, while the third and sprouted fourth larger pairs, some open, and balconies wide enough for table seating.

“Should w’ wait on yeh, sirs?” Imtak said, as Justin climbed out.

“No, thank you,” Taiko said, standing and passing a handful of coins back to the man. “That was a good, quick journeying, brothers. May the Dawn warm you.” He stepped onto the jetty and shook his hands at them.

“Do appreciate th’ blessing, Kokyu. Alright, Tosa, punt us off!”

Beside the gate there was another box with a ball-tipped pull-cord in it. Justin waited for Taiko to join him before giving it a couple of yanks. This time, he heard no wooden knocking sounds, but after a moment he heard a latch click and clack. There was a rustle of slippered steps, and a young woman in a white wimple and black-on-black serving robes appeared a few feet back from the gateway, out of grabbing or even stabbing range. Her gaze flickered over Justin before settling on Taiko.

“How may I assist you, Kokyu?” she asked, in a professionally demure voice – polite, but noncommittally neutral.

Taiko beamed at her. “Tairyu Omon of the Northern Temple instructed me to help my Brother here make a purchase and arrange some other legal matters. I am confident the Ling Fei will be very interested in his business.”

Justin interpreted this as The bank’s handing you a low-profile high-depositor on a golden platter, so let us in already. Which was likely close enough, because the woman took out a key right away, moved forward, and unlocked and opened the gate.

“Please, enter,” she said.

“Thank you, sister,” Taiko said, gliding in. Justin followed him; the woman closed and relocked the gate, and led them down the dark traboule to a pair of wooden double doors facing each other across the passage. She thumped the southern one thrice with her fist and stepped back to let it open. Beyond it was a mudding room with a bench along the east wall, barrels stacked next to a lectern against the west, and an internal door between them to the south.

The woman led them inside, and a work-clothed doorkeeper closed the door behind them before moving behind the lectern. He squinted at them in the light of four square glass lanterns burning in the corners of the ceiling. “Names?” he asked the woman.

Taiko shook his hands at the man and identified both himself and Justin, whose attention was on the lanterns. They held what looked like 120-degree arc sections of blazing bamboo stood on end, burning smokelessly. Curious.

“Business?” the doorkeeper asked.

“A ship purchase, arranging citizenship and licensing, and if satisfied with those, a retainer agreement,” Taiko said. “Brother Carse here was scheduled to lunch with Advocate Tzo at the Silver Palace, but a higher authority gave us reason to believe that an earlier meeting would be preferable.”

Nicely parsed, Justin thought approvingly. The more he watched the man work, the more he believed in his working theory that Taiko’s role in the Temple was some kind of wide-application problem-solver.

And I doubt he was ‘Inlightened’ before today, too. I wonder how that’s going to affect things for him. Another topic for dinner. An early topic for dinner, at that.

The doorkeeper jotted down their details before opening the southern door for them. The woman led them through it into a back hallway of dark brown wood and up four flights of a stairway to their left, both lit by more of the same lanterns. At the top she guided them east down another hallway, floored with a series of long, identical deep red rugs and paneled in similar wood to that below, but lighter. This hallway was much more richly appointed, with small tables against the walls holding various objets d’art interposed with portraits of men and women on the walls. Most of them were wearing the same kind of formal robes below their serious faces.

Even in another world, Justin could recognize a company’s Buffalo Walk when he saw it. Though he chose to repress a chuckle at the familiarity, he couldn’t prevent a small smile from creeping out. Just as doctors tended to make the worst patients, lawyers tended to make the worst clients. Including how they knew the tricks for impressing clients and, among other purposes, putting them into a more submissive, obedient state.

At the hallway’s midpoint was a long series of windows overlooking another canal, and Justin realized that not only did the Ling Fei own both the western and eastern blocks, but the private bridge between them that they were crossing as well, and that furthermore this was a subtle message to people like him: we know you know the game; now look upon the true level of success to which our standards and traditions have raised us.

Well played, Justin acknowledged. As professional power moves went, it was far from the worst he’d encountered. The art was valuable, but it wasn’t wealth in the way that sole ownership of two entire blocks straddling the middle and upper class boundary was.

About twenty feet past the edge of the second building, the small tables began to replaced by doors. Down at the hall’s far end, a massive pair of double panels with simple but elegant gold trim awaited those of sufficiently exalted status.

The young woman, displaying a finely tuned sense of status, led them to a southern door two-thirds of the way down the hall – well past the hoi polloi line, and close enough to the final sanctum to flatter, but still with plenty of distance left for further rewards of increased respect. She knocked; a voice inside said, “Enter!” and she turned the handle and pushed it open. After the past few minutes of consummate professionalism, Justin was naturally shocked when out of the half-dozen people in the room, one of the two priests from the Bank whipped around, pointed a finger at them, and shouted, “That’s him - it!

 

I have no idea if 'Buffalo Walk' - a term I made up for this scene - in the sense of conveying visitors deeper inside businesses' offices past public "We Love Us, See How Awesome We Are" walls, displaying their awards, wealth, longevity etc., is actually a real psychological status tactic in the real world.

I think I'll just go with the idea that it was personal slang unique to Justin's former firm. Yeah, that works.

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