The Last Dual-Cultivator

Chapter 7: Chapter 7

Outside the paper screen, a shadow the exact size and shape of Ruan Tie was pressed against the wall, very obviously listening.

Yan Shuo looked up at the Frost Lotus Fairy from his cot and chose his words very carefully as if to choose footholds on a crumbling ledge.

”Senior Sister,” he said. ”I poured wine. Young Master Chi knocked the jar. You caught it. That’s everything I did. It was just my clumsiness.”

”That’s what happened to the jar.” Lanying’s voice stayed level. ”I’m asking what happened to me.”

”I don’t know what happened to you.”

It was true, in a narrow way. He knew what had happened to himself. Her side of it, the frozen knot in her chest loosening under his eyes, was something he had only seen from the outside.

’Good,’ Qin Wuyue murmured. ’Keep it that narrow. Every word you give her is a blade she can carry somewhere else.’

Lanying studied him. She had a way of looking at a person that didn’t feel like looking at all. Cutting and filing to see what was underneath.

”You’re lying,” she said.

”I’m at the first layer of Qi Gathering, Senior Sister.” He lifted his splinted hand slightly from the blanket. ”Six years at the first layer. If I knew how to crack bottlenecks, don’t you think I’d have started with my own?”

For the first time, she hesitated.

He watched the logic work its way through her. It was a good argument. It had the distinct advantage of sounding exactly like the truth everyone already believed about him.

”Then explain your eyes,” she said.

His heart gave one hard thump against his cracked ribs.

”My eyes?”

”When I caught your wrist. I saw them in the frost on the jar.” She took one step closer, and the air around the cot dropped another degree. ”For one breath, they were silver.”

Yan Shuo kept his face tired and puzzled, which took very little effort.

”There were spirit-jade lanterns on every eave that night, Senior Sister. Everyone’s eyes looked strange.”

”I know what lantern light looks like.” She said.

”Then I don’t know what you saw.”

She stared at him. But Yan Shou started looking at the bruise-colored square of sunlight on the ceiling and counted his breaths.

Under the water, deep in the hidden cave, the coal had begun to warm. She was standing close enough now that he could feel her qi pressing at the edges of his senses. It was cold, restless, and strangely unsteady, like a lake in early spring when the ice begins to groan. He could feel that something in him wanted to reach out for it.

Yet, he held perfectly still.

’Brat,’ Qin said quietly. ’Her bottleneck is open and hungry. Your blood can smell it. Keep her hands away from you today.’

’I wasn’t planning to let her touch me.’

’You may not but your bloodline might be.’

Lanying turned away abruptly and walked to the window. She stood with her back to him, looking out at the terraced herb gardens, her hands clasped so tightly behind her that the knuckles had gone white again.

”Three years,” she said. ”Do you know what the sect says about me? Youngest Foundation Establishment in its history. Its brightest jewel. The Frost Lotus Fairy.” She said the title the way someone repeats a joke they never found funny. ”A jewel that stopped growing at twenty. Every elder knows it. Every pill they bought me, every cave I sat in, every technique I copied out until my fingers bled. But still nothing.”

”Then the Chi Clan came with their spirit vein. Suddenly the sect didn’t need me to grow anymore. It only needed me to marry. As if I was no longer a prodigy but a bargaining chip.”

Yan Shuo said nothing. Anything he said would be either a lie or a mistake.

”And the night of my betrothal,” Lanying went on, ”a service disciple touches my wrist, and after three years, something finally moves.” She turned her head enough to look at him over her shoulder. ”You understand why I’m asking.”

”I understand.” He made his voice gentle. ”But whatever moved was already yours, Senior Sister. Three years of pressing against a wall. Maybe it was ready to crack, and it happened to crack on a night when the whole sect was watching. It was you and it has nothing to do with me.”

She was quiet for a long moment.

”That’s a very convenient answer.”

”Convenient answers are sometimes true.”

”Rarely.” She turned around fully. ”And it doesn’t explain why my brand burned.”

He kept his face carefully blank. ”Your brand?”

Lanying drew back her left sleeve a finger’s width. On the inside of her wrist, the small mark sat beneath her pale skin like a coin at the bottom of a pool. It was faintly brighter than it had been at the banquet. Around its edges, the skin was pink and tender, as if from a recent burn.

”The Chi Clan’s Sun Brand,” she said flatly. ”So my fiance always knows where I am, and so I never forget what I’ve been promised to. When my bottleneck moved that night, it burned for an hour.” She let the sleeve fall. ”Whatever happened, the Chi Clan’s seal didn’t like it.”

’Interesting,’ Qin breathed. ’Very interesting. A brand that flinches from resonance.’

Yan Shuo filed that away. He said only, ”I’m sorry, Senior Sister. That sounds painful.”

Lanying looked at him with something closer to frustration than suspicion now.

”You are very good at saying nothing.”

”I’ve had a lot of practice.” Yan Shuo replied.

To his surprise, something moved at the corner of her mouth. It was too small to call a smile, and gone almost before it arrived. But it changed her whole face for an instant, like a single crack of sunlight changes a frozen lake.

”Yes,” she said. ”I imagine you have.”

The screen slid open. Bai Rou came in carrying a small porcelain bottle, followed by a waft of warm courtyard air and a distinct scuffling noise as Ruan Tie scrambled hurriedly away from the wall.

”Ice-Heart Stabilizing Pills,” Bai Rou said, offering the bottle with both hands. ”Twelve. One each morning, never two, and don’t take them on an empty stomach or you’ll spend the day shivering.”

Lanying took the bottle. She glanced at the bandaged figure on the cot, then at Bai Rou.

”How badly was he hurt?”

”Badly enough.” Bai Rou began rearranging her needle tray with great attention. ”He’ll heal in ten days if he stays off the mine track.”

”Who did it?”

Yan Shuo said, ”I fell, Senior Sister,” at exactly the same moment Ruan Tie’s voice boomed through the open screen: ”Zhao Kun and three of his dogs!”

There was a short, incredibly painful silence.

Bai Rou closed her eyes briefly.

Lanying looked at the doorway, where Ruan Tie had appeared, very red in the face, as if he had only just realized his mouth had been open. Then she looked back at Yan Shuo.

”Zhao Kun,” she repeated softly. ”Elder Gu’s runner.”

Yan Shuo said nothing but he was getting a feeling.

”The day after the banquet,” Lanying said, piecing it together aloud. ”Elder Gu summons you to the Law Hall. The day after that, his runner beats you half to death in the deep mines.” Her pale eyes narrowed. ”And you would like me to believe nothing happened at that banquet.”

’Well,’ Qin said. ’That’s torn it. Your friend’s mouth is a natural disaster.’

Yan Shuo met Lanying’s gaze steadily, abandoning the pretense of being entirely harmless.

”I’d like you to believe that a service disciple who catches the Law Hall’s attention gets beaten, Senior Sister,” he said quietly. ”And a service disciple who catches the attention of the sect’s most valuable bride gets beaten worse. If you keep asking questions about me in public, I don’t think I’ll survive the answer.”

That landed. He saw it hit. Some of the aggressive ice went out of her posture, replaced by something heavier.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she turned the pill bottle over in her fingers and tucked it into her sleeve.

”Very well,” she said. ”I’ll stop asking in public.”

Yan Shuo didn’t like the way she put the emphasis on the last two words.

”Physician Bai. Thank you for the pills.” Lanying inclined her head to Bai Rou, glanced once at Ruan Tie—who bowed so hastily he nearly fell over—and walked to the door. On the threshold, she paused without looking back.

”Recover quickly, junior brother,” she said. ”I find I have a great many questions, and I am a very patient woman.”

She stepped out into the courtyard.

She made it exactly three paces.

Through the open screen, Yan Shuo saw her stop dead.

Someone was standing just inside the courtyard gate, casually weaving between the drying racks of cloud moss. Red-gold sleeves. A sun-shaped jade swaying gently at his belt. He was leaning against the gatepost with his arms folded, looking as relaxed as a man waiting for a friend at a teahouse, and he was smiling.

Young Master Chi Yao.

”There you are,” Chi Yao said warmly. ”My brand told me you were in Medicine Valley. I was worried you’d been hurt.” He pushed himself off the gatepost. ”Are you unwell, my dear?”

”I came for pills,” Lanying said. The courtyard air had suddenly gone cold enough to make the cloud moss crackle on its racks. ”Elder Shen’s order.”

”How diligent.”

Chi Yao strolled toward her. As he did, his gaze drifted past her shoulder. Through the open screen. Into the sickroom. It passed over Bai Rou and her needles. Over Ruan Tie, frozen in his awkward half-bow.

It came to rest directly on the cot.

Yan Shuo watched the young master’s eyes take in the bandages, the splint, the bruised face. He watched the recognition arrive, slow and pleased.

Chi Yao’s smile didn’t change a fraction.

”Ah,” he said softly. ”The wine boy.”

He looked at Lanying then back at Yan Shuo. The calculations were practically audible behind those warm, laughing eyes: his fiancee, who had spent three days avoiding his company, had just spent a quarter of an hour alone in a closed room at the bedside of a servant.

”How very kind of you to visit the sick, my dear,” Chi Yao said to Lanying, without once looking away from the cot.

The gold mark on Lanying’s wrist glowed faintly through her sleeve.

On the cot, Yan Shuo felt the temperature of Chi Yao’s attention. And Yan Shuo knew, with the kind of sinking dread that only comes from perfect clarity, that he had just made his second powerful enemy in three days.