Forge of Destiny

Threads 543 Fantasia 6

”You sold your memory easily,” Ling Qi said.

”I have many summer mornings, and I shall have countless more. To trade what you have in abundance for that which you lack is just the simplest precept of building wealth,” Bao Qian replied. ”Sheʼs hiding out then. A liminal labyrinth. Do you think you could find the entrance?”

”Now that I know itʼs there, most likely. You think you could navigate it?”

”Probably. Although…”

”Although?” Ling Qi repeated, following Bao Qian’s eyes to the spirit performing on the fire.

“It might be simpler if we could trace her divination, but we would have to draw attention to get her eyes on or near us,” Bao Qian proposed.

Ling Qi tilted her head to the side. ”True. I might be able to bypass the labyrinth with a direct link. My dance is good enough, assuming the madam does not interfere. Youʼre thinking of making noise with the other maiden here?”

”If Miss Ling might enjoy a little musical challenge, we would surely draw her ire—and make a tidy sum of offerings, too.” Bao Qian gestured toward where offerings were being thrown to the performing spirit, sizzling away into streamers of qi on the fire.

”Ire, and maybe respect, as I show her a superior performance,” Ling Qi said thoughtfully. ”Then again, it could also result in envy, and make her own capture harder, rather than easier.”

”Fire is fickle, but rarely holds grudges. It’s too impermanent for that,” Bao Qian disagreed.

”I know a friend who disproves that. However, she is human, not something so pure as this Hongpao.” Ling Qi thought about Bao Qian’s proposal. ”Didnʼt I once say that I prefer to perform for myself first, rather than an audience?”

Another misplayed note from the performing fire spirit, the wrong register for what was being played. It was wrong differently from the last one, so it couldnʼt even be a deliberate dissonance. She felt bad for the poor instrument, which clearly hadnʼt been tuned properly before being played.

”You have, but that was before that play of yours, and your pivot to taking the stage in other ways. I do not think you are the same as the jumpy woman I fumbled my first meeting with,” Bao Qian rebutted.

”It might have been better if we had been attacked by beasts or stumbled into a spirit labyrinth on that first outing,” Ling Qi replied, smiling. ”Or if the ghosts of that old manor had been more potent.”

”Another point where my caution hurt me! Imagine, trying to avoid serious trouble when courting.” Bao Qian grinned. ”I think I am right that giving your own little concert does pique your interest.”

”I have come around on the idea of crowds.” Ling Qi tugged at his hand. ”Letʼs go refill our ciders, and you can tell me what you have in mind. I doubt you just want me to jump up on a roof and busk.”

”You could manage it, but you deserve a better stage than that. Something to draw the eye in even as your song draws the ear…”

Ling Qi listened intently, nodding along as they strolled back to the stall for their promised refill, discussing how they would go about challenging Hongpao.

This was going to be fun.

***​

It was no loud announcement, what they did. The liminalʼs mutability was to their advantage. They needed room in the square to make their arrangement, and so, room there was. Packed earth rolled and shifted like water underfoot, gentle enough to make no quakes.

From Bao Qianʼs fingers, jewels fell like seeds being sown. Swallowed up by the earth, they re-emerged slowly from the earth along the perimeter of the stage, clasped tight in mountings of stone formed of compressed minerals, pebbles, and rocks churned up.

Her humming spread a layer of frost, then ice, over the surface, spreading in ripples from her footsteps, leaving the dirt stage covered in a clean, mirrorlike surface of pale blue and white swirling together.

Above, moisture condensed into transparent lattices, suspended like spun glass over the stage, held up by smooth pillars of rock at the four corners of it, forming an array of lenses and mirrors. This was the hard part, as she was not familiar with what she was creating, but Bao Qian had talked her through it.

Hongpaoʼs loud, flashy performance kept attention away from them as they worked to create a stage, but not all of it. In ones and twos, curious spiders drifted from the crowd watching the bonfire concert. They clambered along their aerial roads to peer down at them, and then scuttled away. She left the attracting of the spiders’ attention to Bao Qian. She might be the songstress, but he was the showman.

He really did enjoy this, she realized, observing him as she strolled onto the stage, letting the mist pour from her sleeves and the hem of her gown. Bao Qian enjoyed people. Not merely friends and kin, but people in general. He was not like Ling Qi, who, if she were honest with herself, only really enjoyed the presence of specific people. She had learned to let herself connect to a wider array of peoples, to perform and speak out under many eyes, but connection wasn’t enjoyment.

Bao Qian voiced worry that he was too false, but did she not have her own masks she had made? It was easier to admit that now. She believed what she had told him, and it did not itch as it had before she had resolved the snarl of truth within her cultivation.

”It is a beautiful sight, isnʼt it? Worry not. It shall not be in your way once we go on ours.” Bao Qian clasped his hand and fist together in a gesture of respect for the human-faced spiders who had clustered around him.

They were really drawing notice now. With the stage fully erected and with the billowing mist filling it in a facsimile of concealing curtains, even Hongpao was noticing. The fiery autumn faerie craned her neck to look over at them.

”You have not said what this is, waking one,” a spider clacked. ”You talk in circles!”

Bao Qian laughed. ”So I do. Please forgive my indirectness, sir. I only wish to preserve the surprise for my performer. In truth, the preparations are done!”

Ice crackled between Ling Qiʼs fingers. Moisture was drawn in, forming a long tube of ice, the only flute she had in her possession for some time now. She had avoided buying a new one for so long, but that really wasnʼt an option for much longer. She would have to obtain one before the Emerald Seas’ offensive against the ith started.

”I bring to you, fair folk of autumn, a breath of winter, a tribute to the fading sparks and the rich harvest, an appreciation by a traveling master, who looks upon the bounty of your village and wishes to give her own tribute! I bring you today the Maiden of Winter’s Deep from the lineage of the Songstress of Endings!”

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Even now, that introduction felt like too much, Ling Qi thought with amusement, raising the transparent flute to her lips. The frozen chill was comfortable to her. Bao Qian raised a hand, the jewels on his fingers glinting, and the gems embedded in the stage blazed with inner light. The colorful beams shot up, diffusing through her mist, to meet the mirrors and lenses.

Ling Qi turned to face her gathering audience and tugged on the mist, parting the thickest of it like rippling curtains being pulled apart in time with the blooming of the light show above. Only then, after a moment of stark, deep silence in the moment of the reveal, did she let the first note ring out.

Her song was soft and strident, the wind of winter blowing down for the first time from the frozen mountains. Ling Qi may not have focused her art on the contemplation of the winterʼs first snows, but she had practiced enough in honing Hanyiʼs performances that it was not an unfamiliar styling.

Like that wind, she let her notes rise to a high, trembling peak of sound that rippled out and demanded attention before letting it drop off. It was not a song of freezing winds, punishing a late harvest, but rather that of a cold future not yet here, tugging at shutters and sending hearths flickering. It was a deliberate contrast to throw the hard labors of harvest and comfort of their completion in stark relief.

Ling Qiʼs flute rang with a song of clear starry nights and frozen winds and of the moon silhouetting the mountains and the tallest trees. She played a song of the last leaves and their fluttering fall to the dark earth, and the rousing joy huddled in warm homes.

Its smooth, serene flow and sharp technical precision was, if she could be allowed some pride, a deep contrast with the energetic but undisciplined notes from the crackling bonfire, whose light wavered under the cold breeze blowing from her stage.

Ling Qi reached the first pause, the negative space between the start of one section and the next, and met the wide, outraged eight-eyed gaze from all the way across the square. She did not smirk, tilt her chin back, or mock with her expression. Ling Qi merely lowered her eyes demurely and allowed herself a small but challenging smile.

Ah, sometimes, bait really was too easy. She felt the flickering swell of outraged heat pushing back against her cold.

More of the gathered crowd was breaking toward her, scuttling their way over in curiosity. She let the feelings of the crowd, the whispered words and exclamations of praise at her song, her elegance, and her bearing wash over her. It wasnʼt a rush; she didnʼt know any of these spirit beasts, nor did she have anything profound to convince them of, but it was fun and gratifying to have her performance praised.

Bao Qian strode up and down in front of the stage as she performed, gently, but insistently, keeping back any who looked like they might clamber too close and offering exhortations to cheer and applause whenever she paused long enough in her performance. In some ways, that made the crowd a part of the performance; Hanyi had spoken about this to her, but she admitted she had not really gotten it before.

All the while, the rings on his fingers flashed, and the lights projected from the gemstones moved. They haloed her in light that refracted through her mist, rendering the gloom into something mesmerizing as she swayed and circled across the stage in time with the song pouring from her flute.

Flames roared, the zither cried out, and a jolting scream of song that was almost electric in the tingling vibration and energy that it put into the air answered her. Ling Qi met the faerie’s gaze again. She had heard it done better.

It did stem the flow of interested viewers to her, though. Hongpao launched into a fresh melody, surfing on rising flames as her fingers blazed across the strings of the zither. Even badly tuned, even with childish enthusiasm more than skill, beauty did pour forth from Madam Autumnʼs zither. It brought forth a festival song, a song of thronging, packed streets, the laughter of festival games, and tables groaning with the weight of feasting.

Ling Qi didnʼt let her smile grow behind the mouthpiece of her flute. Nor did she let it shrink. After all, the plan wouldnʼt work if Hongpao didnʼt give her some contest.

”Hoh! Our other player is jealous over their audience! Such energy and contrast!” Bao Qian exclaimed as the vibrant notes of Hongpaoʼs new melody crackled against the soothing tones of her own song. A twitch of his fingers altered the lights playing over the stage, adding warmer color and emphasizing a feeling of conflict. The change brought whispered and cheered admiration from the audience at the artfulness of the colors playing in the air above them.

Ling Qi, for her part, simply adjusted her song, playing into Hongpaoʼs more aggressive melody and not letting her notes be drowned out. At the same time, she did not rise to bombastically crush this junior either. Instead, she improvised a fresh bar that rose where Hongpao’s fell and fell where the spirit’s song rose, making it seem as if they were merely in duet, albeit with her as the lead.

It was quite challenging to anticipate what Hongpao would play next and preempt it, weaving a trap of a melody that Hongpao couldnʼt help but respond to in her next bar without sounding like a stumbling amateur, making a mess of the show. She hadnʼt done something like this in a while. Not since she had been doing training exercises with Xiao Fen had she seen a junior bristle like that.

”A fine performance by our local star. She’s doing so well in following the lead of her senior!”

Bodies jostled at the base of the stage, the many spirit beasts’ jaws clacking hungrily, and long legs scraping against the erected barriers of earth. It was underhanded of her, but projecting hunger was natural in a winter melody and certainly kept the audience attentive. She let enough wisps of potent qi out with her notes that she sated the appetite she created. Mostly.

It gave Bao Qian good business in between his exhortations. The little knick-knacks, the banners, dolls, and other merchandise drenched in Ling Qiʼs qi had been meant for Hanyiʼs concerts, but their styles were close enough that it wasn’t obvious at first glance. Spirit beasts were rather more direct in their consumption of the products, though.

Ling Qi felt the distortion in the whirling hot and cold qi that was forming almost the moment it opened. If she had not specifically been paying attention for any signs of clairvoyant viewing from the madam’s other granddaughters, she might not have. It was like looking back through a kaleidoscope, but she could feel the wisps of cool, languid lake qi leaking through the imperfect technique before whipping away in the windstorm she and the harvest faerie were kicking up between themselves.

Even as she whisked off a shard of attention into her own hidden eye slipping into the connection and skulking back through the current of qi that filled it, the main body of her attention was taken by a booming crash as Hongpao landed on the stage in front of her, briefly cracking the shell of ice and leaving puddles in the shape of her feet where she tread. The other performer was still furiously working the strings of her zither, trying to take back the lead of the dueling melody that Ling Qi had drawn her into.

”Dunno who you think you are, but this is my stage! Itʼs not your season here! Whatʼs the big idea?” Though Hongpao shouted, sparks on her breath, Ling Qi did not think the words reached the audience.

Absently, she allowed herself to be pushed back along the stage in a swaying dance. She retreated, only to take a step into a boil of thick mist and reemerge back at the front of the stage, retaking the momentum with a strident verse.

”Just a passing traveler admiring your work. Such a fine instrument you have there. Itʼs quite a struggle to keep up with it, using only a bit of moisture from the air.” Ling Qi spoke without needing to take her lips from the mouthpiece of her flute, creating the sounds a bare centimeter from the spirit’s ear.

”Why, you—!”

This was almost too easy. At least Xiao Fen made her work for a reaction, most of the time.

Ling Qi signaled Bao Qian with a silent pulse of qi, meeting his eyes across the distance. They would be going soon.

They circled each other on the stage, weaving between them a tale of warmth and plenty, of happy feastdays and winter winds calling the hard working to rest in their sturdy homes. At last, Ling Qi felt her probing wisp of qi connect, finding the source of the spying eye in a dark room. A girl with deep blue hair lay on her belly with a mirror in one hand and a plate stacked high with sweets and snacks in the other.

Ling Qi reached the end of a verse, and this time, she lowered her flute and spoke aloud, her voice carrying to reach the crowd beyond.

”My apologies, young miss. Truly, I never wished to offend. I mean no intrusion, only tribute to the great palace of many colors. If I am truly unwanted, I shall go, and leave the festivities to you.”

A whirl of cold dream qi locked around the solidity and metal of Bao Qian, and her focus shifted to her eye so far past crumbling temple wards. She met Hongpaoʼs eyes with a smile and whirled away with her companion, disappearing from the stage.