Helged’s reaction to Linua’s new clothing style the next morning was simply to cluck her tongue and pull at the loose threads of her mutilated shirt.

“Look at that, lovey, what a mess. You had better let me sew up the edges.”

She achieved this with quick, neat stitches while Linua ate breakfast wearing the mitani backpack, unfolded out into its hood-and-cloak form. She had just put the newly sewn shirt back on when Grandmother appeared in the kitchen, still in her dressing gown and wanting to know why her breakfast had been delayed.

Grandmother’s first words were, “You’re not going out like that!”

Linua hadn’t realised that adults actually said things like that. She looked down at herself.

“What on Inanna have you done to that shirt?” Grandmother asked, after a moment. “You’ve destroyed a perfectly good shirt!”

“It’s too small,” Linua said.

“You had an opportunity to remedy that yesterday. I cut your afternoon tuition short just so you could have that appointment with the dressmaker, and you wasted it!”

“I don’t want to wear those clothes anymore!”

“Well, you certainly can’t wear that! Enough of this nonsense, Linua. Go and put your uniform on!”

Linua refolded her mitani cloak into its backpack form and loaded her books into it, careful to keep the Keng Boh Kids novel hidden at the bottom of the stack, underneath Stellar Spectral Classification and the latest volume of the Journal of Astrophysics.

“What are you waiting for?” Grandmother asked irritably.

“I can’t put my uniform on,” Linua said, staring at the folds of the backpack.

“What do you mean you can’t? Surely you still have fresh uniforms available.”

“I can’t,” Linua repeated gritting her teeth. “I can’t bear it anymore! I just can’t!”

This dragged into a repeat of the conversation yesterday—Grandmother was torn between being hurt, bewildered and outraged, and Linua felt herself creeping into a defensive shell of stubborn sullenness, despite her attempts to meet Grandmother’s objections with logic that surely should have been self-evident to anyone not stuck in the previous century. It was as if Grandmother was deliberately refusing to understand!

“You can’t go out like that!” Grandmother repeated, eventually.

Linua immediately sat back down at the kitchen table.

“What are you doing?” Grandmother demanded.

“You said I can’t go out!”

Linua had been hoping that Grandmother would refuse to send her to Castle Yi, but in the end Grandmother backed down, probably because she didn’t want the fuss the Yi family would kick up over any absence that wasn’t an illness. To make things worse, Grandmother informed Linua in no uncertain terms that she would not be going to the Astronomy Club that evening dressed like that.

She had called Linua’s bluff.

Linua slouched down in the back of the car as it swept down the mountain side towards Herkow. She had to attend the Astronomy Club—she had to tell them about the missing artefact, and she wanted to do that in person. If only the clothing war had kicked off tomorrow or the day after, everything would have been much easier!

She saw the bus stop slide in the village slide past and suddenly had an idea.

“Hey, could you stop?” she asked the driver. “I need to check something.”

Linua had a plan.

Linua wasn’t sure what reaction to expect at Castle Yi when she turned up in clothes that were little better than rags. On one hand, the castle was imposing and wealthy, with immaculately dressed servants pacing soundlessly about. Linua would look scruffy by comparison. On the other hand, no-one ever paid any attention to her.

However, the first thing Auntie An Pai said, as soon as Linua walked in, was, “Great ancestors, child, what in the heavens are you wearing?”

“Er…” Linua said. Auntie An Pai and her husband, Uncle Wai Ren, had been crossing from one part of the Great Hall to the other when they had caught sight of her. “I grew out of my clothes and Grandmother hasn’t bought me any new ones yet.”

Auntie An Pai was Sayo Hui’s mother, and was renowned, even amongst Yi women, for her ferocity and implacable will. Linua knew that if she explained the circumstances of the clothing war she would get absolutely no sympathy whatsoever from Auntie An Pai. Shang children were supposed to respect and obey their parents in everything, no matter how unreasonable or old-fashioned their demands might be.

“She is just letting you go around looking like a homeless person?” Auntie An Pai demanded. “That woman has no sense of responsibility!”

Linua felt the strange urge to defend Grandmother, which was odd considering how angry Linua was herself about the whole situation.

“I’ll get some new clothes soon,” Linua said.

Auntie An Pai made an impatient sound and went clacking up the Great Stairs. Uncle Wai Ren was swept up in her wake, like a tugboat someone had forgotten to detach from a ship of the line, but as he went past Linua he stopped and dug in his pocket. He brought out his wallet, thumbed through a sheaf of banknotes, and pulled a couple of them out, which he handed to her.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Here, get yourself something to wear,” he said.

It had the feel of a well-practiced manoeuvre, as if he was used to handing out bank notes to teenagers at random. Maybe he did it for Sayo Hui and Sayo Dahn all the time. Linua was so overcome for a moment she could hardly speak.

It was the first time anyone had ever given her money.

After a few seconds, she remembered her manners.

“Thank you,” she said, aware that her voice sounded slightly shaky. Uncle Wai Ren’s forehead creased slightly, as if there was something odd about her response, but then he smiled vaguely and let himself be towed away in Auntie An Pai’s wake.

Linua looked down at the notes in her hands. They were two fifty-shekel notes, and while she didn’t handle money very often, she knew that it wasn’t a small amount. She didn’t even have a purse to put it in. After a moment she recalled one of the secret pockets in the Keng Boh Kids backpack, and spent a minute hiding it there.

The money seemed like providence. It was as if the universe was telling her to go ahead with the plan she had thought of in the car on the way over. The next thing she need to do was find a phone.

The Castle major-domo had an office on the ground floor which had several telephones. Unfortunately, it also had several secretaries. They weren’t always in the office, though. Maybe the office would be free. Linua peeped through the door, but saw at least two people, a man and a woman, clacking away on keyboards. She was about to withdraw, but the woman spotted her.

“What can I do for you, blossom?” she asked cheerfully.

“Oh … I’m sorry … I just wanted to make a phone call.” Linua made to retreat again, but the woman beckoned her in.

“Of course, my dear, use that phone there.”

Linua hadn’t realised that it would be so easy.

Now she had no choice but to make the phone call under the kindly, indulgent gaze of the secretary. She’d never actually called anyone by herself before, mostly because she had never had anyone to call. At home, only Grandmother and Helged used the phone. When Linua wanted to get in touch with the others from the Astronomy Club she did so via the bulletin board, which she accessed by secretly logging onto Grandmother’s computer late at night.

She was relieved when Anith was the one who answered, and it took only a few moments to secure a ride to the Observatory that evening. However, the argument with Grandmother and the time taken to make the phone call meant that she was nearly ten minutes late for wushu training.

Wu Bai was not pleased. He stroke up and down in front of the line of cousins, every so often stopping abruptly and wheeling in front of Linua, then thundering a question at her.

Did she not wish to honour her parents?

Linua had very mixed feelings about her parents, but she felt quite sure that her mother, at the very least, would not have cared a button for wushu training.

Irrespective of this, the questions continued. Did Linua not wish to make the Yi family proud of her? Did she not wish to attain the highest possible proficiency in wushu? Did she—in the most awful tones Wu Bai could summon—not respect her teacher?

The answer to all these questions was, of course, no—but Linua could hardly say that. She gritted her teeth and endured it, until Wu Bai felt she had been properly chastened and it was time to move on.

It was perhaps because of the argument with Grandmother, or due to the terrifying prospect of deliberately disobeying her and sneaking out to the Astronomy Club, that Linua found it difficult to concentrate on wushu. This seemed to be happening a lot to her, lately. Wu Bai, already considerably put out by her temerity in being late, ascended into towering clouds of outrage, and vented his displeasure almost solely on her, rather than any of the cousins. With each repetition of the forms she could feel herself getting worse, until in the end he banished her from the class in disgust.

As she went back into the changing rooms, torn between tears and resentment, she realised that it wasn’t shame she felt over the banishment, but instead a mixture of anger and relief.

For the first time she wondered about the specifics of the custody agreement. Hhow old did she have to be before she could quit wushu for good and wash her hands of the Yi family? She’d always vaguely assumed it would finish when she was eighteen and went off to university—just like Grandmother had planned—but it was something she should check. Maybe she could get out of wushu training sooner.

At least being kicked out of class meant she would have time to read the final instalment of the Keng Boh Kids novels.

About the time that wushu practice would be winding to a close, Sayo Hui came in to the changing rooms and sat next to her. Linua put away her book.

“How are you doing?” Sayo Hui asked, after a moment.

“I’m fine.”

There was another short silence.

“Wai Bing kind of went nuclear on you.”

“He’s an arsehole.” This was one of the words that Hoblin the thief had used last year. Linua had carefully saved it for a time like this. She wasn’t sure if pretty, perfect Sayo Hui would find that shocking or not but, unexpectedly, she laughed. Encouraged, Linua went on, “Why doesn’t he ever say anything nice? I think I’ve heard him give one grudging comment of approval this year, and that was to you. He’s just so relentlessly horrible all the time.”

Sayo Hui heaved a sigh.

“It’s because we need someone else to ascend if the family want to stay on the Guardian Council. It has to be one of us. That’s why there’s all the pressure.” She nudged Linua’s arm. “Hey, at least nobody’s expecting it of you.”

Linua pulled away, offended.

“Because I’m not good enough?”

“I didn’t mean it like that! We know it follows the Guardian family bloodlines. It’s not impossible for you, just less likely, because your mum didn’t come from another bloodline. And I mean it as a good thing. You think it’s bad now? If you showed any sign of ascending the pressure would be ten times worse. I just pray it doesn’t happen to me.”

Linua had occasionally had a little fantasy in which she ascended. This mostly focused on the amazed reactions of people in the Yi family who generally either took no notice of her, or, like Sayo Dahn, actively viewed her as lesser due to her half-Keretu blood. She had never really considered what the cousins might think of ascendance, or that they might not want it for themselves at all.

“You don’t want to ascend?” she asked.

“Sayo Dahn might, but he’s an idiot,” said Sayo Dahn’s older sister. “It would mean everyone would be expecting you to uphold the honour of the family. You would serve the Guardian Council and you would have to do whatever they say for the rest of your life.”

The Guardian Council was made up of delegates from the nine Houses that were descended from the original Guardians. The Yi family delegate was Great-Grandfather Yi’s oldest son, Jayo Ji. The Council represented the territories which the Houses controlled and, to outsiders at least, presented a united political front, despite the huge amount of intrigue and infighting that went on between the Houses. There were currently fourteen House practitioners who had achieved ascendance, and they formed the core of the Guardian Council’s military arm. Uncle Tai Wu, for all his singular ability to cultivate his own Qi, was subordinate to the Council.

It was a weird reversal of perspective to realise that Uncle Tai Wu was, perhaps, no better off than Linua. Linua didn’t have the Guardian Council breathing over her shoulder and controlling her every move—instead she had Grandmother continually pushing her into astronomy without once consulting her wishes.

“Right,” she said. “Yeah.”

“I mean,” Sayo Hui went on, “there are enough expectations on us as it is, there’s no point in making it worse on ourselves if we don’t have to. Anyway, Auntie Hui Ying sent me to get you for meditation practice.”

Linua perked up at that, pleased that she wasn’t going to miss it. Meditation practice was always nice because no-one demanded anything of you, and you could just drift with your thoughts without being demanded to perform.

Nothing had improved, however, once she got home.