“A grievous shame!” Tzo laughed. “My turn! What’s the difference between an advocate and a bucket of manure?”

“The bucket,” Justin said, grinning back.

Tzo had led them back through the buildings to one of the internal docks next to where they had originally entered. A page had gone ahead and prepared a very swanky mostly-white paddleboat for them, with a striped black-and-white awning above pillars with rolled curtains at their top. There were four excited-looking teen boys in similarly white workclothes already standing in the cranking positions, and an equally excited looking-and-dressed teen girl at the rudder. A middle-aged woman in black robes and wimple – properly tucked – awaited them beside it with a wooden briefcase.

Tzo had introduced her as Nuti, his chief, before they all piled in, the doors were opened, and the teens conveyed them out onto the water, turning south. They’d made a bit of stilted conversation before Justin seized on the idea of asking Tzo if advocate jokes were a custom among the Riben professionals. As it turned out, not only was it so, but Tzo – like Justin – was a lifelong collector.

And now they were trading them. Or rather exchanging them, since neither of them had managed to tell the other one they hadn’t already known.

“My turn,” Justin said. “Do you know how to save a drowning lawyer?”

“Stop holding them underwater!” Tzo said cheerfully. “My turn! If we see an advocate on an oarboard, why shouldn’t we swerve to run them down?”

“Because it might be your oarboard!” Justin said, having quickly translated bicycle to paddleboard to oarboard in his head as Tzo was finishing the setup. “My turn! Do you know how to save a drowning lawyer?”

Tzo, being a savvy man, didn’t point out that Justin had just told that one. He squinted, bit his lip, and finally shook his head in defeat. “No,” he said.

Justin let the anticipation build a few heartbeats before he grinned and held out his hands. “Your turn,” he said. Tzo got it almost instantly and burst into roaring laughter. “Thank you!” he said. “That’s clever! I’ll be telling that one at dinner tonight.”

Justin nodded. “Still your turn,” he pointed out.

Tzo gave Taiko a quick, devious look. “Why did the Gods make Demons before They made advocates?” he asked.

Technically, Justin thought, it’s my ‘win’ right now, since I stumped him. Is he hoping to catch me out by edging towards a taboo?

“They wanted the practice,” Justin said, mindfully switching needed to wanted before speaking. “My turn. . .”

“We’re nearly there, most honorable Cariss, so perhaps this should be our last exchange?” Tzo interrupted.

Justin looked around. They had long since broken out of the denser islands and were now approaching the Toh’s southern shore, where a large line of docks loomed off to the east. To their south and southwest were yards and slips, mostly filled with unfinished boats, with only a few larger sea-scaled ships among them.

“Right,” Justin said. “Earlier, you said the High Court Prosecutors were the most arrogant in the field?”

“Yes,” Tzo said.

“Then I know what to end with. Do you know what the difference is. . . .”

A few words later and everyone except Taiko and Tzo were staring at him with reactions ranging from shocked offense to scandalized delight. Three of the four crankers had stopped flat, their mouths open, and the rudder-girl was covering hers with both hands, her light brown eyes above as round as pennies.

Taiko was openly laughing, and Tzo, while chuckling, was also giving Justin the professional side-eye, the look that said I see what you just did there, and yes, it impressed me. Justin winked at him, and that was the end of all conversation, jokes included, until they docked.

 

# # #

 

Master Shipwright Pei looked at the guests crowding his third-floor office and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth before smacking his lips. Decision made, he slid the wooden window adjacent to his desk aside, stuck his head out, and bellowed, “BARU!”

“yes, master pei” came a faint voice from below.

“SEND OUT THE WORD! ALL-HANDS EVOLUTION! THE ORPHAN SAILS TODAY!”

“yes, master pei – ehhhhh!?”

“YOU HEARD ME! GET TO IT!”

“Yes, Master Pei!” The voice’s last response was significantly louder and more excited. Pei slid the window shut and stretched in his chair, unconcerned with the usual proprieties Justin had come to expect seeing directed towards a Kokyu. Contrary to Justin’s expectations of a gnarled, bearded, rough sailing type, Pei was a startlingly handsome man, tall and slender with piercing black eyes, high cheekbones, and thick, wavy hair.

“The Utzin School has been looking forward to this day for generations,” he said, clapping once and rubbing his hands together. “Advocate, I’ll be troubling you to keep that slip handy for any of a troublesome bent, please.”

“Of course, Master,” Tzo said fulsomely. “It’s a banner day for the Ling Fei as well, and I wish to see this through to completion. . .mmm, not as much as you do, I’m sure, but more so than less?”

“I don’t doubt it,” Pei said, rising to his feet. “Go on, turn around, out we go, down the stairs, right at the door, around the back,” he said, waving his hands at Tzo, Taiko, Nuti, Justin, two of the crank teens, and the rudder-girl. They were a throng, Justin had to agree, as they shuffled around and began exiting.

“You do have a name ready, Brother?” Taiko asked behind him, as they all clattered and clunked down the open-sided stairwell from the offices at the ceiling. The keel and ribs of the cargo ship under construction in the Utzin’s main hangar rose beside them as they went, resembling a pair of palms with upturned fingers.

“Oh yes,” Justin said. “Had it before I left. We even. . .” he trailed off, his shoulders tensing.

Taiko patted his back gently. “Another time,” he said, understanding.

“Yes,” Justin said.

“Good to hear,” Pei said from the next flight up. “Bad luck, launching a ship without a name.”

“It never received one?” Tzo asked, sounding surprised.

“No, just nicknames. ‘The Orphan’ finally stuck about. . .” he counted on his fingers “. . .Master Huolin’s time, so about a hundred and fifty years ago? Nobody was ever going to officially name a ship that, so the others faded away.”

As they reached the bottom, the last few of the workers that had previously filled the huge room finished putting away tools and stabilizing halted pieces of construction. They rushed out the large cargo door in the back as Pei and the rest exited by the side door near the stairs.

Behind the building was a wide east-west cobblestone road, and beyond that rows and columns of more white warehouses up a gentle slope, doubtlessly full of wood and other shipbuilding materials. Pei pointed them to the west. “The Orphan’s about a twelfth that way. Unless you’re in an odd hurry, we’ll walk it.” He suited actions to words and began strolling east, the others falling in beside or behind him.

“Most of the available School should be there by then,” he continued, “and those who just heard and ran over should have finished the prep. We’ll jack it up on the rollers, haul it over to the slipway, connect the hulls, you’ll lustrate it – what’s your sacrifice?”

Justin sucked in a deep breath. “Hot tea, mint if you’ve got it,” he said, managing to sound normal.

“Can be done,” Pei said. “Then into the water it goes, you get boated out to it with a bone-crew to get you to your berth, and I get to spend the next twelfth shouting at people to get back to work, the party’s tonight you skimmers, you’re not being paid to stand around and celebrate, hey-up haw and hoo-up hey.”

Taiko opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything.

“Uncertain about offering me a Temple berth?” Justin asked him.

Taiko had the integrity to let his embarrassment show. “Yes, Brother. Any other ship but this one. . . .”

“No worries,” Justin said again, taking the opportunity to pat the old monk on the back and take back the coup he’d counted on Justin earlier. Taiko’s raised eyebrow told him the man hadn’t missed that part of it.

“Could moor out near the Drops, Orphan’s got a couple of lighters, bring the crew back in those, hire your own for the return,” Pei said.

“While I must confess that finding you mooring would exhaust our own stocks of both reputation and influence,” Tzo said, “I am also confident that we can assist you by providing crew.” What went unsaid was the implication that Sol’s slip would help stretch Justin’s 500 ri retainer a long, long way, and that this crew would naturally include trained guards.

Justin was good with all that, including the second-party security force. Tzo was a crafty old bull shark, no question, but as a retired colleague in the same field, Justin respected him all the more for it. And he believed the man’s religious near-rapture over the slip hadn’t been feigned. Tzo wasn’t just a casual believer, more greedy for the slip’s value to his social status than its metaphysical significance; deep down, where it counted, he was devout.

I definitely should inform him about the Prominonsense, Justin decided. Keeping that from his Advocate was straight-up sabotage; not only did he need to know it to do his job, but not telling him could backfire on his entire office. It was like not telling your doctor all your symptoms. He’d had clients like that himself; he preferred not to be one.

Well. . .he thought. . .as little of one as I think The Plan can handle, anyways.

Some things in his life had too much higher a priority.

Like the words he was about to say. Words he had barely let himself think a handful of times since the Contract had showed up in his mail.

Words that were going to make him lose all control in front of a slipway full of strangers, if he didn’t get his damn loins girded ahead of time.

Get to rowing, Justin.

“Advocate, a short word to the side, please?” he said, catching Tzo’s gaze.

 

# # #

 

“Very irregular!” spluttered the lanky, pinch-faced Registry officer. The man had met them at the Orphan’s land-berth as ruffled as a molting penguin. No proper notifications! No proper filings! No inspections, no certifications, no identifications!

The harbormaster, much closer in appearance to Justin’s expectations for Master Pei, lurked behind his obstreperous colleague. His fingers were curling and uncurling as if he was about to pounce on the other man and start strangling him. It wasn’t just the Utzin and the Ling Fei who desperately wanted to see the Orphan launched, Justin noted.

Mistress Nuti calmly counter-cited statute and case in a hypnotically rising and falling tone. The notifications were a custom of courtesy, not law. The filings were in front of him. Since the buyer was waiving the inspections, their absence was no hindrance, and here were the certifications directly from Master Pei’s hand. Full Riben citizenship was hardly required when other luxury sales to wealthy foreign tourists were so common, as per section. . . .

“There are both Temple and Church restrictions on the sale of Sunwood!” the man barked, with the attitude of an ill-tempered grand master putting a novice down with a fools’ mate, and Justin knew they had him.

Tzo pulled the slip out of his robes and dangled it in the suddenly pale face of the man of troublesome bent. Taiko, out of nowhere, put his arm around the official’s shoulder, and kindly illuminated the fellow as to how yes, it was a open voucher literally signed by the Dawn not an hour before, and that he, Kokyu Taiko, the Inlightened whom the Dawn had used to write it out, could and was personally attesting to the Dawn’s will that this sale be completed with the utmost dispatch.

Tzo actually winked back at Justin while Taiko. . .buffaloed the man, really. The Advocate was the one other person besides Pei he had met so far who hadn’t immediately fallen into awed respect as soon as they were informed about the Dawn’s favor. Well, not counting the priests, who had recovered from that suspiciously quickly.

The Registry official had almost melted in place by the end, and he shakily stamped and signed and accredited and registered everything necessary before tottering over to some piled boards and sitting down with his head between his knees.

To Justin’s dismay, the full evolution of the Utzin School had awakened the interest of the neighboring shipyards, and a horde of the numerous goldbrickers and management in the area that could get away with skivving off had tagged along to observe. A select few had even been allowed to pitch in with the log-roll transport of the three hulls, which to Justin’s eyes had begun to resemble an impromptu japanese mikoshi procession. The news was going to be all over the city before sundown.

Oh well, Justin thought resignedly. Keeping it under wraps was a forlorn hope of a long shot anyway. He’d intended a quiet facade of a life here while he beavered away at The Plan in secret, but. . .there were going to be bureaucrats and officials and aristos and every other stripe of self-impressed nose-poker imaginable trying to climb his hulls by morning. At the latest.

OK then. Can’t go home, so you gotta keep going big. Counter-PR. Let it all hang out, baby; get far enough in front of the rumor mill to win the race. Unobooboo and possibly Taisa would have been casting events in the worst light possible since their parting, so for once the truth really was his best offense.

Speech before christening – no; I’ll ‘dedicate’ it to the Dawn, so. . .inauguration? Um no thank you; the less prophecy the better. . .commencement? Dawny, but doesn’t gerund well. . .hm, come at it from gerund forms then. . .oh.

Hallowing. That’s - perfect. Done, next, outline. Greetings, Introduce Inlightened Taiko, appreciate years of loyalty to School and contract – no, switch those – Taiko testimony RE Prominence and the Dawn’s instructions, alchemical cures, By the – Power- yep, that’s the word – of the Dawn, I hallow this ship with the name -

He cut himself off there. Right on schedule, too, because while he was planning, the workers had gotten the hulls into position. Those up on the three decks had just finished knocking the locking pins into place - connecting the three hulls into one massive trimaran luxury junk at their decklines – and were sliding down their ropes to join the other workers about to release the restraints.

Justin climbed up on the small platform Pei’s crew had thrown together from spare scaffolding, yanking Taiko along with him by the collar when the monk had tried to demur. Appreciation, loyalty, School, contract, introducing The Inlightened Kyoku Taiko! - the man deliberately tried to step on Justin’s foot as he moved forward; childish!

The happy crowd went silent when Taiko named Justin as the Dawn’s newest Prominence. Confused and disbelieving looks were exchanged. Justin stepped forward and swept his arm back in a grand gesture of presentation towards the Orphan. That kicked the first few pebbles loose, as a few people got the point and realized who else could be worthy, of course the god descended and a couple of heartbeats later the avalanche began. The crowd were screaming their heads off; hats were thrown, spontaneous hugging and kissing broke out, two different groups began singing two different hymns, only to switch to the other’s at almost the same moment.

Justin felt slightly sick to his stomach. But like Taiko, he'd chosen this, and he too would see it through.

Pei bounded up the scaffolding and screamed at the crowd, his handsome features contorted and going red from effort:

“YOU’RE NOT BEING PAID TO WORSHIP! SHUT UP AND LISTEN!”

The crowd silenced again. Justin’s father couldn’t have done it better.

Divine instructions, cures to be brewed and sold, more to come. Taiko stepped back and Justin turned around to face the Orphan’s central prow. He took hold of the scaffolding’s banister in a death grip with his left hand, and raised the little ceramic flask of mint tea with his right, his blood pressure skyrocketing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taiko’s expression turn concerned. Justin knew he had to look like a genuine lunatic; his teeth gritted in agony, glaring madly at the ship looming over them.

“By the power of the Dawn, I hallow this ship with the name -

“RIGHT HERE CHLOE!”

The bottle smashed. The restraints loosened. The ship and its cradles inched down the oiled planking, gathering speed.

Justin released his grasp. He’d done it. He’d gotten the last words - his, their last words - out, and hadn't broken down.

With a tremendous splash, the Right Here Chloe muscled its way into the water, steady as the sun in its progress through the sky. The crowd held its breath, watching, until Pei thrust a celebratory fist into the air, and then with one mighty voice, they cried out the salutation of their forebears:

“SHE LIIIVES!”

Justin burst into tears.