The Marukan Alliance
"I finished my fight against Mayhiros Tesos with a bitter taste in my mouth. It was not the exchange of blows - I but repaid his insults against me as befits one of my people - but rather the smallness of his ambitions that disturbed me. Every strike I turned aside rung against Hiparkes' Mirror with a man's strength, but not an ideal's. I brooded on his words in the Storm's Eye House, but even my dear Sweet Brass could not give me solace.
"When I could bear no more, I set out. Though the Third-Arm Glaive reached out for my hand, I left my panoply behind. I left off even the use of my Charms and simply... rode. Vaults the Moon beat the miles back under his hooves and I watched the land as we passed. We skirted a careful line between two rice paddies far southwest of the Eye, and my heart swelled to see the farmers work together, using Rivers' tools to ease their labor. We travelled further east, along one of the smooth stone roads our engineers have built, and I waved as I passed three draughtsmen. They lead a team of four before a great wagon laid down with the first harvest of spring; without the roads, the burden would've taken half again as many horses.
"I spent my nights in open fields, with the tall grass as my bed and the stars as my blanket, and I breathed easy. I have not said as much to my brothers, but my fear has ever been that we would pave over Marukan and turn the whole into something every bit as squalid as Nexus. Though I know in my heart this could never happen, the fear of it had grown worse since we uncovered The Infinite City. It was good to reassure myself.
"I had been gone for half a week when I came to a little farm in the southeastern hills, midway between the Eye and Varsi. Were the city by the Grey not as it is, this would have been a large range town, built on trade. As things stand, there was only one lonesome farmer and his brood. No one there knew me by sight - without my weapons or retainers I look little different than any other man of my people - and I did not offer my true name. The farmer, Yun Shih, took me in regardless.
"I stayed for another two weeks. I worked where I was able - breaking the yearlings and weaning the foals - but mainly I watched them, and I listened. Yun Shih told me about his summer troubles with claw striders, and his sons told me of their eagerness for the coming road. They were not starved for news there, nor were they fools. Ma-Ha-Suchi was only a distant noise, but they knew of the Mask. They knew, too, that war with him would come, no matter what we did - no matter if my circle was there or not. And for that they were glad of we Solars; if anyone, they said, was to defend our nation it should be an army of our own people, not a hired army from Lookshy fighting on our behalf.
"I near wept as I kowtowed to Yun Shih. None of our teams of amalgams had been near here, no Charms had gone to work on their minds. They were their own men, and still they saw.
"I left them then and rode home; I knew that my Marukan had at last been born."
-- Storm of Amber, Zenith
