The Sack of the Summer Palace

Where our story begins

The Rafters of the World are justly and unjustly famed for many things. The mandarins of the Orchid Court praise the refinements of poetry, strategy, and agriculture that have draped our craggy lands with the rich silk of a flourishing society; the lamas of the White Way praise the favor of the deities that brought us the great prayer-engines of the Iron Harvest, whose secrets are like oysters, sweet to the persistent mind and lacerating to the hasty; the half-civilized zealots of the River whisper in fear of our deadly snakes, which they describe in terms that violate the precepts of physics and physiology, and croon with longing at the merest mention of our unremarkable goats. But even the albino barbarians, who betimes blow in on the spars of shattered ships or stumble arrow-pierced across our border with the Grass, are clear on one thing: Uä is not a warm realm. Warm days there are, aye, and warm regions, especially in the south of Degyen where the tableland begins its kowtow to the sea; but the kingdom's fame is for chill cliffs, tree-deep avalanches, bears and tigers with fur enough to hide a brace of Therku lumberjacks and warm their lunchpails.

Wherefore it might be asked—and was asked, when the order to build it was given, albeit in low tones, far from the throne room—why a summer palace? 

And the question made its way from the bricklayers and stonecutters who asked it; to the supervisors who were pricked themselves by curiosity on the matter; to the aides of the mandarins, who looked forward to the prospect of biennial migration; to the mandarins themselves, who abhorred it; and eventually to the king who had given the order, that king being Red Tenshing Dvitiya, fresh from the reconquista of the Great South Plain, the founding of Rassha, and the completion of the Orchid Palace. And Red Tenshing uttered a pronouncement which he would only utter once:

"If the Gardener Emperor merits a summer palace, why less for him who rules the Rafters of the World?"

And that was the end of the question, then and every generation after. The Summer Palace was built just south of the border of the disputed territory that would, in time, become the province of Therku, and Red Tenshing and his retinue there migrated every summer until his death, where they drank boiling-hot tea all day and made happy men of the northern lumberjacks by paying handsomely and often for their least salable timber, which they burned to stave off the summer's chill. And, in due time, Red Tenshing died, and Magnanimous Tenshing took the throne; and all of Red Tenshing's retinue died and were replaced; and in his own time Magnanimous Tenshing died, by which time the migration to the Summer Palace was all any Uä'n, royal or otherwise, knew. And so it continued, through the reign of Tenshing Silverhand and into that of Cold Tenshing Panchama, where our story begins.