a story of all the times they have shared together. He sees too how immature and petty, how strong and noble, the tiger truly is.
It is then that the man steps back into the cage with his earnest companion. The animal wishes to devour him even now; it still fears for its lasting survival.
But it does him no harm, for he is the master here.
He is sane.
It was in this way that Ash was no longer certain of himself. He no longer knew if he was flowing skilfully with the Dao in clear and detached purpose. Perhaps, in his grief, he had lost the Way.
How to know, though? How could he ever know the right way from the wrong way, when everything seemed equally as dark and unclear to him now?
Just breathe and go with it, the Chan monks of the Dao would have said. So Ash inhaled the cool night air deep into his lungs, and exhaled in a single long release all the pressure and confusion that was caught up within him; and from his stillness he launched himself from where he sat, springing up like a man on fire and sprinting through the darkness across the hard paving of the quayside, out onto the wooden planking of a jetty, pounding all the way to the very edge of it, where he leapt with a whoosh of breath and dived headfirst into the sea.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Breach
The procession of cloud-men walked along the cobbles with their black robes flapping in the wind and their voices loud as they chanted the solemn words of the death rite. Clatters sounded from the occasional coin dropped into their begging bowls; incense trailed grey and pungent around their shaven heads. In the hands of the oldest monk, following at the very back of their procession, a wooden aeslo clapped together like the jaws of a mouth, beating a slow and steady rhythm that was a jolt to the senses every time that it sounded.
Bahn offered nothing as they passed by. It wasn’t that he wished to refuse them a donation; he simply couldn’t rouse himself enough to perform the simple act of it. He was standing as though buried ten feet within himself, looking out through a bramble of whispered thoughts in a weariness that had become familiar to him now.
All he desired just then was to skip his duties this afternoon, and catch a rickshaw back to their home in the north of the city, and climb into bed, and pull the blankets over his head, and shut out the world until morning.
He had been plagued with this lethargy for a week now. Achieving sleep had always been a nightly struggle for Bahn, his head spinning with reflections and concerns. Yet now, no matter how much sleep he was able to manage, whether three hours of tossing and turning or ten hours of total oblivion, he would still wake feeling lifeless and drained.
It was all he could do to watch indull silence as the monks rustled along the street between the lines of onlookers paying their respects; and after them, the pale mourners who followed, the small jar of ashes cradled in a young man’s arm, his even younger wife next to him, barely able to walk without support.
Bahn needed to resume walking again, if only to invigorate his senses. Not wishing to show his disrespect by rushing past them all, he stepped behind the mourners for a while, trying not to yawn as he watched their grief from behind.
He headed south, through the bustling Quarter of Barbers, that district where Bahn had been born and raised, along with his two brothers. From there the Mount of Truth could be seen rising gently over the rooftops to the west, the hill with a crown of green parkland around its flattened summit, and a building of white that was the Ministry of War, where Bahn reported on most days to his superior, General Creed.
Not today, though. With the lull in the fighting, the general had taken the opportunity to fly to Minos on a personal mission of diplomacy, or so he had deigned to explain it when Bahn had voiced his curiosity. Bahn hoped he would not be long in returning. It had become a daily chore of his to field the endless missives from the Michinè council, demanding to know when the Lord Protector would be back, why he’d failed to seek their consent before deserting Bar-Khos and the Shield for so