Please Stop Spreading Rumors About Me — They Keep Coming True

Guo finally caught up to me. He’d walked four days to reach our camp, and when he finally stumbled into the firelight, he was covered in dirt and looking ready to kill someone; Tao Tao just handed him a bowl of soup before he could get a word in, since that’s the one rule we actually enforce.

”You made it way worse,” he said.

”I did.”

”I had four hundred people to deal with. Now I’ve got eleven hundred, and some guy’s actually opened an inn because of it.” He slammed the bowl down on a rock. ”I can’t do my job. I can’t haul wood. My own daughter can’t even walk down the lane without people bugging her about what I’m supposedly like when I’m home.”

”I know. I’m sorry.”

”’Sorry’ doesn’t fix anything.” He glared at me. ”You’re the most powerful thing in existence. Just fix it.”

”I can’t,” I told him.

”Then what’s the point of you?”

”Honestly? In this, there isn’t one,” I said. ”That’s the truth, and you deserve to hear it. I can hold up a collapsing mountain, sure; but I can’t force four hundred million people to stop believing a lie. And every time I try to deny it, the rumor just gets stronger because my denial is basically the only ’proof’ they need. I sat down across from him. ”I’ve been the wrong shape for this my whole life, and being the ’wrong shape’ is exactly how I got famous in the first place.”

Guo buried his face in his hands.

”So I’m just stuck with it then.”

”Some of it. Not all.” I pushed his bowl back toward him. ”Eat, then let me go get Ji Lan; she’s going to explain how to get out of this because I’d only make it worse.”

— • —

Ji Lan showed up, stared at him for a few seconds, and said, ”You’ve been telling this story in taverns for nine years.”

”…Yeah.”

”Drunk?”

”Most of the time.”

”Good. That’s the entire solution, so quit moping.” She sat down and folded her hands. ”Here is what you’re working with. You have a story four hundred million people love, and a denial from him that they’ve correctly tagged as exactly what someone would say if the story were real. You can’t beat that with a ’no’.” She leaned in. ”You beat it by telling a better, actually true story. And the good news is that the truth about you is incredibly boring, and boring is the one thing a legend can’t survive.”

”I don’t get it.”

”Nobody has ever heard your side,” Ji Lan said. ”That’s the problem. For nine years, you’re the only person who hasn’t told this story in public. Everyone else has had their turn. So go tell it. All of it. The real version. Even the parts where you look like an idiot — especially those.”

Guo turned bright red. ”There are a lot of those.”

”How many drinks were you in?”

”…Eleven.”

”Perfect,” Ji Lan said. ”Lead with the eleven.”

— • —

He did it in the Reedmoor square, because she insisted it had to be his home town, his own neighbors, in daylight, while completely sober, with the eleven hundred listeners watching.

I was there. I stayed in the back and didn’t say a word, following strict instructions, because Ji Lan said if I even nodded, it would become ’The Calamity attended the succession’ and we’d be stuck cleaning up the mess for another year.

Guo was terrible at the speech. That’s exactly why it worked.

”Right,” he started. ”So. I was eleven drinks in.

”I did go to the wedding. Everyone went to the wedding. There were — I don’t know the number, there were so many people on that hill you couldn’t even sit. I was a mile back. I could see a fire. I couldn’t see a man. I couldn’t have told you which speck he was even if my life depended on it.

”I’ve claimed in this square that I was at the front. That was a lie. I’ve claimed he walked past me. He didn’t; some guy in a coat walked past our group on the path an hour before, and I’ve never been sure if it was him, but I kept saying it was because people kept buying me drinks whenever I did.

”I’ve never talked to Lin Bo in my life. He’s standing right there at the back, and this is the first time I’ve actually been close enough to see his face.

”He didn’t choose me for anything. He came to my house nine days ago, sat on a cask, and told me he couldn’t help. It was the least useful thing anyone has ever said to me, and I’m pretty sure it was the truth.