___

Ten minutes later and Xueyies inner child couldn't have been happier, riding in the cart all the while. My inner dad was happier for the experience and the manual labor of pushing and pulling the cart back and forth felt meditative.

Getting back to civilization was something else. If you've ever trained for a race and put in the effort, well let's just say that Mom had me run a few 5ks with her when Tai Chi was a big part of my life, then we did a 10k or two and she got me to do a half marathon and I was pretty well spent afterwards. I wasn't that level of tired, but I was getting close.

We found the first place with outdoor seating and flagged down a server. It was one of the cultural universals that I enjoyed. The stone benches and worked stone seats that jutted out next to the road looked as inviting as some of the soups I saw being served. I made a mental note as to whose orders I would be stealing.

When the server came to take our order I pointed to two soups that looked promising and asked her to pick her favorite of the two. She, being a woman of impeccable taste and hair, flipped her hair and then returned to the kitchen.

I'm not going to say that I didn't watch her go, because I did. Her quipaos left little to the imagination and I was in the best shape of my life now so you can imagine how I felt when Xueyie had to snap several times to bring me back to the present.

"Ah. Apologies. I didn't know so was staring."

"That's fine. She might think that you want to marry her though, so probably best that you tell her that you don't have a dowry when you return."

I sat up straight from my reclined position to give her my full attention.

"Is that a thing here? Because if it is-"

"No, it isn't but Min whispered that you might like to hear that. What's a dowry, by the way?"

"It's something you pay to the family of the woman or vice versa. It has never been clear to me when this was a thing but, I digress. I need to tell you about her don't ?"

Xueyie mirrored my position, clearly waiting to hear more. I was a classic man, not one to make a woman wait.

"So... about Maxine. I never thought that she would return to my life in any fashion, much less as a quasi adversary, but we have crossed.this rubicon. She was wonderful when she had to be, everyone always is. But she couldn't get this idea out of her head and it kinda killed us. Honestly I don't know how she got her but this place would be perfect for us. I just wish I knew what was going on with Rachel and Courtney."

"Those are your daughters? Their names are beautiful. I've never heard them before, but beautiful."

The server arrived with a pitcher of water for both of us and Xueyie filled and drained her cup faster than a frat boy during initiation week.

"It's from my culture. Also they were relatively popular names when was your age? I'm still not exactly sure how old you are and a bit afraid to ask."

Left unsaid was that I didn't know how long years or months were here and their day system of four on and three off had thrown me.

"I'm... I keep forgetting that you're not from here. I'll be eighteen next month."

The soup arrived then, both line and hers and so was happy to see a generous portion of noodles and meat ready for me.

"Where I'm from, we have compulsory education for everyone your age and younger. Then they're on their own usually or they take up a trade like you. A lot of people, like me try to set our children up for success."

"So you took up a trade as a therapist and worked under a master before you were able to strike it out on your own."

"More or less, though there was a lot of-" *parties*"-"School to get to where I was. I had to learn a lot about social dynamics and systems. I learned a lot about how social institutions can do good. This bread is excellent though, good choice. And with the soup?"

"My mother took us here when I was a child in the in between. Generally we do the same set of plays but there is a period after the solar new year where everyone is off and we came out this far to not be recognized. We were often traveling via airship to take our show on the road so those times in between, well I thought of this bread and how close we were."

"It's just the right amount of spice to add to the goat. We might have to go again," I said, stuffing my face.

"You wanted to know about the totems and the boundary? Everyone learns about it when they are children. You can leave whenever you want if you're third realm or above but those with broken cultivation and weaker cultivators can only pass with assistance. They would be trapped out there."

I shuddered. The whole thing had been a mix up. I didn't want to kill anyone but I needed information and going to the blue coats would expose us. That indecision was probably going to be a problem. The fact that they were terrible demonic cultivators didn't register. If I just killed indiscriminately I was no worse than men who had just been following orders at Nuremberg.

"What could happen out there?"

"Spirits have free reign," Min said, "Not spirits like me, but ones that actively work to harm humans. Though If I had to I could hurt one and not with words alone. It is a great place to train and get stronger, but it is also dangerous. You should take a team with you if you're heading there and perhaps Auntie Lee."

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

If Moon Lee had been with us, she could have solved our demonic problem easily. I wondered how she would take the news of my ex wife being here. If it had been Lauren then we might have reconciled, but Maxine and I had split far too long ago.

"With my ability to hide my powers, we should be able to find a new safe house where we can lay low. I expect some heat from this if it comes back around."

The fact that the entire city was circled by a near impassable boundary meant that we couldn't just run away from our problems in the long term.

We would have to solve them. Probably after lunch though.

"I'm wondering where you think this easy steady supply of safe houses are going to come from," Min said, stretching like a real liquid cat.

"We uh... I believe that Egiya can help us in that regard. I don't know how else. We would have to set up a dead drop system-''

"I'm sorry. Dead drop? What does that mean?" Xueyie said.

"We leave a note somewhere at an agreed upon location to indicate something to the rest of the crew. Then they leave a response or... It's a way for us to communicate asynchronously. The location can be anywhere, really, and we will probably have to pick a cypher. Min could you be a dear and make us a dream cypher?"

Min rolled her eyes.

"I suppose."

"Cypher? What is this?"

"Min has access to my memories but in short it's a way for our messages to be opaque to anyone who does not have a key to decode it."

"This is beginning to sound very complex. We probably need to have a meeting."

"Yes. We need to speak to our Moon clan benefactor soon after this because of these developments. We'll probably need to have to meeting there."

Xueyie finished her plate and pushed it to the side. It was probably time to get off the more serious matters. She looked as exhausted as I felt.

"Did you want to talk about your cousin? While we're here? I think that in our rush today, I forgot to check in with you."

"Can we do that right now? What if someone hears us?"

The stone furniture that surrounded us was empty, the other eaters having left while we talked. The slow flow of commerce on the nearby street was the only noise with some conversations between people walking with friends.

"We can do that now. You can talk without saying her name? Or we can do this later. I'm only asking because today has been a bit on the heavier side and we both need to decompress. If you want, I can tell you about my daughters instead?"

She brightened.

"I would like that. You sound like ... Like the kind of father that..." She got all choked up.

"You... I don't have my daughters with me but when I'm with you and Egiya, you both remind me that there is good in this strange world."

"Hey... So you really tore into that one guy. You were excellent. You're strong and you don't need me to tell you that. What your family is doing to you is rough, but you're going to make it. My dad used to tell me that some houses had good bones. You know the underlying building material was good. Sometimes he said the same thing about people. I'm telling you that you've got good bones. We just need to renovate up here."

I pointed to my head. She hid her smile with her mug.

"I did have one more question. What's a harem?"

___

We took the long way back to her clans compound. It was good to be walking with a full belly and no pressure to sprint all out. We were not making a special delivery, but all the same I was on edge the closer we got and our talks got quiet when we were two neighborhoods away.

The faint sound of commerce blended in as the damned good smell of tea increased. A few men with pamphlets wanted to sell us tickets to the old emperor's story. I looked to Xueyie as she gave them an indignant sigh but accepted one graciously.

"It's the street team. They are here to spread our values. Some of them take this a bit more seriously."

"Uh huh," I said, unwilling to take my hands off the handles of our cart.

It was only after we passed them that we traded positions. I got to look at the bright colors of the pamphlet and she got flustered as I watched flipped back and forth between the drawings of the fully made up actors.

"This is supposed to be you? It's very evocative. I didn't know that you could bend your elbows like that. And the shade, oooh gurl."

"One has to suffer for ones art. Even from the worst critics."

"Min have you seen this?"

The familiar popped over my shoulder to look. I waited for the quip that never came as we got closer to Egiyas shop. We had decided that we could enlist her aid by a unanimous vote of two to one.

"Are you poking fun at her right now? Do you really think that this is the time?"

I gave her a glance.

"Egiya whatever you think I'm saying, I'm just saying that this makes you look good. That's all. If I said it in a way that came across as mean, I am so sorry and I'm going to try not to do anything like that again."

"Thanks. We're almost at the shop. Did you want to get in the cart?"

We had paused to apply a heavy coat of makeup on her and get workers clothes for me. The thing that made me stand out-my hair-was underneath a bandana. Keeping a low profile in the cart was a close to last resort but we had planned for me to do it when we got close enough. I was just glad that I had enough time and money to set this up on the way.

She pushed me the last three blocks, me looking like the world like a working class drunk. It hurt my internal classic man image. To be fair, she was strong and I had always wanted to be paraded around like I meant something.

As the minutes grew longer and we hadn't arrived it was clear to me that she was circling the area. For better or worse she was my eyes and ears for now. When we turned the next corner, she began a hushed talk with Min that I could not make heads or tails of.

Eventually we went down a side alley to an access point to the second floor and she stopped. She waved for me to go up the stairs that I recognize as similar to Egiyas.

I took step after anxious step up to the second floor walkway and paused to wait. Min followed once I had reached the top. Xueyie stowed the cart and joined us.

"The shop was closed," Min intoned.

I followed a house behind Xueyie as we got closer to the second floor entrance to her family apartment. The familiar painting on the wall of a scribe hard at work came into view. Xueyie motioned for Min to lead the next part and she bounded down in cat form. She approached the door and liquefied into a two dimensional flat cat to go underneath. That was a trick I was going to go out of my way to learn.

Ten heartbeats later and the familiar cat shape popped out from the door. Then it swung open, causing Min to flurry up like a sheet of paper. A familiar grey mane faced us as the face only a mother could have popped out.

"Anyone for tea, then?"