The Dawn of Yangchen (The Yangchen Novels, #1)

by F.C. Yee

It was simply unjust. To remember the events of a single life was painful enough. Reliving dozens of lives would be . . . well, it would be like getting caught by a tsunami. Swept away by forces beyond your control.

Jetsun wasn’t related to her by blood, or maybe she was in the manner of fourth or fifth cousins, but it definitely didn’t matter. The girl who cut up fruit in a stupid way but at least gave you the symmetrical pieces was your sister. The girl who showed you no mercy on the airball court and laughed in your face as she kept you scoreless was your sister. Jetsun was either the person who would listen to Yangchen cry with utmost patience, or the one who’d upset her in the first place.

A guide was an anchor as much as a pathfinder, a calling voice in the darkness.

“A hand either opens or closes. But it can’t do either of those twice in a row.”

“Humility isn’t more important than the truth.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Jetsun said. “We don’t do anything. There is no use to the Spirit World, and therein lies the great lesson. Here, you don’t take. You don’t anticipate or plan; you don’t struggle. You don’t worry about value gained and lost. You just exist. Like a spirit.”

Let a problem last for too long and people begin to believe it’s not a problem.”

the old woman wasn’t going to let the customs of Water Tribe hospitality be forgotten. Food was meant to be shared with anyone who needed it.

“I’m not turning you in to anyone,” Yangchen said. “This is a recruitment pitch. I want your skills put to use for a nobler cause.” She paused, and then clarified. “Me. I’m the nobler cause.”

“I may be the most watched and scrutinized person in the Four Nations. All of the attendants foisted upon me by the leaders of the world, the ministers, the diplomats, advisors, sages? They’re spies, more often than not. Spies reporting back on me to their real masters.

My friends, every day the chance to make the Four Nations a better place pays us a visit. Every day, rain or shine or snow, the opportunity comes calling. Let us not turn away such an important guest.”

Earned. That was the thing about these merchants. They feigned enterprise and risk-taking when all they were doing was drinking from a river no one else was allowed to approach.

Nowhere in any great library of the world did it say one had to let a mighty injustice occur before getting out of your chair. Better to parry the sword than heal the wound it made in the flesh.

“We met under very unlikely circumstances where you managed to demonstrate a number of useful skills to me,” Yangchen said. “One of which is being an adept liar. I made the choice to bring you on. Do you know how the best cons work?” Kavik did know. “By making the target feel like they’re in control. You think there’s a chance this was one big ploy to gain your trust.” “There’s a Pai Sho saying: ‘A good move for you is a good move for your opponent.’

She preferred the artwork on the walls, paintings of monks against the clouds done in colors meant to fade over time to teach the lesson of impermanence. Maintaining them required passing on skills from generation to generation, constant effort through the centuries. The exercise was ultimately futile against the power of time but still worth pursuing. Like most things in life.

The larger the mistake, the higher you had to raise the flag of your shame.

A lie that rested on an intelligent victim piecing the falsehood together themselves was the most perfect form of the art.