Beneath an Opal Moon by Eric Van Lustbader

Kossori said softly as if addressing the wind. He had been silent for a time after the ending of the tune. “But still the awkward music of a boy.
    â€œâ€˜You play very well,’ she said to me. And, although I didn’t, I was pleased at the compliment. ‘Who taught you?’ she said. ‘I taught myself,’ I replied. ‘Really?’ She raised one eyebrow. ‘You have real talent.’ Now I really didn’t believe her and, wondering what she could possibly want from me, said: ‘Now how would you know that, lady?’ I think perhaps I expected anger but instead she threw back her head and laughed. Then she pulled out the most beautiful flietē I had ever seen. It was wrapped in tar-cloth to protect it from salt air. It was of ebony and all the air holes were rimmed with silver. She began to play. I could not in ten thousand years describe to you what she played or how, but suffice it to say that she was a virtuoso. ‘I suppose that now you would like to learn how to play this way.’ The laughter was still on her face. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes I would.’ ‘Then come with me and I shall teach you.’ She lifted up one arm, the sea-cape spreading out like a great wave until I was enfolded.”
    They had come to the end of the street, a singular occurrence in Sha’angh’sei, where all thoroughfares seemed without real beginning or end. It debouched upon a wide square—one with which Moichi was unfamiliar—surrounded by two-story dwellings all with delicate wrought-iron balconies strung in an unending line like some grotesque confection. The square was deserted, and, though these buildings were obviously entirely residential in nature, they nevertheless had the appearance of being deserted, an unthinkable actuality in crowded Sha’angh’sei.
    â€œThe townhouses of the rich,” Kossori said, as if reading Moichi’s mind. “Many of those who live within the walled city find it convenient to maintain residences in the city’s lower reaches—when they want to descend into the mud with the common folk.” He laughed, a harsh, discomforting sound.
    How he hates authority in any form, Moichi thought. And how he covets the wealth of the fat hongs who, in truth, rule this city.
    Kossori led the way, taking them obliquely across the deserted square from right to left, and presently they had plunged back into the twisting labyrinth of the city’s streets, taking Purple Peacock Way into Frostlight Lane and thence to Pearling Fast Road. They were very far indeed from the Nanking, Moichi knew, Sha’angh’sei’s main thoroughfare. In point of fact, they were a good distance from any well-known landmark.
    â€œShe took me to that inn,” Kossori continued, as if there had been no interruption in the flow of his narrative. He was taking his time, Moichi knew. But he was also aware that he was hearing a tale that was both extremely important to Kossori and which, he was quite certain, no other had ever heard. Kossori was an individual of few friends and great reticence. Moichi was being accorded a singular honor and he was careful not to take it too lightly. “It was the same one where I had been thrown out earlier that evening. Now they were ever so solicitous, for, it seemed, Tsuki was well-known here. If she was not from Sha’angh’sei, then she was obviously a frequent visitor—”
    â€œYou did not ask her where she was from?”
    Kossori glared at him as if he had been asking the other to get ahead of himself. “No,” he said slowly. “It never occurred to me to ask.”
    Moichi shrugged and remained silent, listening.
    â€œShe had them bring food for me. In all my life, I never ate so much nor has food ever tasted so delicious to me. In time, I was sated and we went up a winding rickety staircase, along a dark hall and thence into a warm room with an enormous