David

The cool night air brought sobriety along with it. The wind, directed by the shape of the city's buildings and canals, slaughtered the warm miasma of wine clouding David's thoughts.

"He was looking for us when he walked in, I'm sure of it," said David quietly. Alice pretended to have not heard him, but he felt her fingers tighten over his, hard. She was nervous or annoyed, or both.

Under the incandescence of the jiulu, Alice had seemed larger and brighter and more beautiful than life, but now as she shivered and clutched onto his arm under the moon, she seemed younger than she was.

"So," David tried again, as they made their way over the stone bridge that separated the jiulu from the street leading to the dock.

"So, Wen's a bit of a psycho, isn't he?" Alice said, with a fake cheer.

David thought of the way the hand twitched in that lantern light which had been as bright as the noonday sun. "I thought you said he had a disarming personality."

Alice elbowed him lightly in the ribs, but clutched his arm more tightly.

"I guess people around here just swing first and ask questions later?"

The madame had been afraid, but she seemed to have expected some kind of violence. Only the bravest of the serving girls - including their own waitress with that saucy, vulpine grin, had the courage to watch. But most of them seemed more resigned than surprised.

David felt Alice shaking her head emphatically by the way she rocked against his arm.

"It's not even that. Wen doesn't fear the Jiang family, so he can act like that," Alice started. She became a little more quiet - the cold river wind had picked up, pushing against them. "That poor girl. That poor restaurant. It's going to get raided for sure. Wen can leave the city whenever he feels like it. If they try to stop him, he'll fight his way out."

As we will, David heard in her voice - as we might have to if they connected us to him.

Alice sighed and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. "I wish the restaurant had turned us away, like they'd wanted to."

David chuckled lightly. "When they wanted to turn us away, it was because they thought we were travelling musicians."

"We are travelling musicians," Alice protested. "Bards, even."

David turned to look at her with something sardonic, but Alice was staring into the moon, into the stars. "The Weaver of Many Songs and the Warrior Poet." English.

The wind picked up again, as though it agreed.

They continued to walk slowly towards the docks.

There were less people outside now - it was getting late. Those who still walked the streets were laborers who looked at them with guarded impassivity, but unkind eyes. Cultivators who crossed the canals by leaping did not spare them a glance. But they also did not look at each other - afraid of any offense.

Alice's lips ghosted beside his ear. "I think we're being followed," whispered Alice, in their language.

"Should we find a ship or a place to stay for the night?" asked Alice, completely normally - too nonchalantly.

David thought Alice might have been a little paranoid, but it was better safe than sorry. "We should just leave by boat right now," he decided. They were headed back for the docks anyway.

David and Alice stepped lightly through the cobblestone streets, hyper aware of the eyes of them. Most people did not dare to stare at them for long - and had been on the streets first, besides. When they arrived at the nearest dock, however, only Jing's ship was visible. No one else had docked at this particular one.

As they stood on the dock, David realized that while there were many more boats and ships along the piers of Ping'an, most of them had been anchored and tied for the night.

"I don't think we're going to find any ships leaving Ping'an tonight," said David.

"A place to stay for the night it is. I have a bit of a headache, and we have quite a bit to go over in private," said Alice, trying to convince herself that this was the right decision.

Instead of backtracking up the street, they walked alongside the avenue hugging Sky River. The roar of the river was a comforting sound.

Here, most of the buildings were two stories and many of them showed stone plaques with a familiar name on them - Jiang. The sun had long since set, so the number of men and women running in and out of buildings seemed a little abnormal.

David could guess why.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Unlike the previous Jiang family members they had seen, these men and women seemed far more polite when they stopped people in the street to ask them questions. They carried thin sheets of rice paper with sketches of charcoal on them which they showed to the denizens of Ping'an and bowed at them when people shook their head.

"Excuse me! Are you cultivators here for the ceremony?" The boy who had addressed them was barely thirteen years of age. He was approaching at a running pace, wearing a white bib over ill fitting robes. On his back was a spear with a purple ribbon tied onto its handle.

Unlike the other Jiangs, who wore hard expressions after they were done bowing, he looked harried and frantic. "Good, good," he said, without waiting for an answer.

He was holding one of those sheets of rice paper, creased and torn at the edges by the wind. "Have you seen this man?"

It was a hastily drawn image of a man without any recognizable features save one - a bird on his robe.

David and Alice looked at one another.

"Who's that?" David said. Wen was probably following them, and was probably trying to steal Alice's sword, but David had been born and raised in a city. He wasn't a snitch.

"Just some troublemaker," said the boy offhandedly, sighing. "Sorry for your time."

The boy bowed at them and ran off to accost the next cultivator in sight.

Alice made no comment. She wasn't a snitch either.

They walked for a few more minutes before they came across a building with lanterns of many colors that was almost as large as the restaurant. It was constructed almost entirely of wood and had many balconies.

The most encouraging thing was a sign which had been nailed to the wall, most of which David was unable to read. What he could read, however, were the words one night for three somethings and seven nights for twenty somethings.

This was an inn.

Alice came to that realization as well, so she dragged David through the door with her.

The lobby of the inn was quite similar to a hotel's back home. There were chairs which lined the walls, spread out by smart little wooden tables. A middle aged man stood behind a long wooden counter.

He looked somewhere between bored and tired. The man looked from David to Alice, then perked up. "Cultivators? Five taels a night," he said.

David almost expected Alice to fish out five pieces of silver from the coin purse, but she folded her arms. "We don't need two rooms."

That was clearly not what the man had meant, but he acquiesced easily. "Three then." He looked disappointed.

Alice had counted out three pieces of silver when the door flew open with a bang. In strode Wen, wearing a robe of midnight blue, with the falcon of Falcon Peak conspicuously missing from its breast.

"Really?"

"Hello, Path Friends! It is I, Daoist Wen Cheng of the True Scripture Sect, the inheriting disciple of Eagle Peak!"

Shameless.

Shameless, but ingenious, given the quality of the drawings on the rice paper.

"Greetings, Daoist Wen," said Alice with an incendiary anger.

"It is such a coincidence that I should run into my Path Friends, who I have long admired, after just arriving in the city of Ping'an!"

"Yes, such a coincidence," David muttered.

Wen turned to the innkeeper imperiously. "Your best room." He put down two silver taels onto the counter.

The innkeeper handed him a key. "The room at the end of the hall," he said, pointing behind him to the left.

Alice stared at the innkeeper, long and hard. He kept his eyes to the counter, busying his hands with a pewter pot of tea. When Wen was completely out of sight and there was the distant sound of a door closing, he looked up at her apologetically.

"Three taels, please."

"We're going to find somewhere else," Alice said, more angrily than David thought she'd feel.

The innkeeper shook his head, looking chagrined. "Please, young miss, this is the best inn on this side of Ping'an. And most other inns are closed at this hour."

He looked miserable. "You know that type," he pointed down the hall and whispered. "They're not the most reasonable. My best rooms are the ones that are closest to the lobby, anyway. Don't I look like an honest man? I wouldn't try to scam guests of the Jiang family."

David did not think he looked like an honest man at all.

Alice, who was tired of the situation, counted out two taels and laid it onto the counter. "If we like the room, I'll give you another come morning.”

Alice glared at him. “If we don't, I'll show you unreasonable."

The innkeeper looked more miserable than before, but he handed Alice a small bronze key anyway. "The first room to the right. Please enjoy your stay."

Despite David's expectations, the room was well furnished and decently large in size. When they closed and locked the door, little runes carved into the doorway glowed a soft blue and then disappeared. The room was dead silent - the buzz of noise in Ping'an was completely gone.

Alice went to examine them immediately.

"Interesting," she said. Her words echoed very slightly, despite the open door that led to a balcony raised a meter off the ground outside.

Alice dashed out to the balcony and said something to him outside, but David couldn't hear her.

"What?" David asked, as Alice bounded back into the room.

"It's soundproof," said Alice, in English. She was loud. "Maybe it was worth three taels after all," she decided, lowering her voice to something more conversational.

"Isn't this crazy? This is another sign that we're somewhere magical, somewhere fantastic," said Alice, speaking more and more quickly.

Alice took off her guqin and her saber, placed them on a table in the corner of the room, then took a running leap onto the bed, which was covered in fine silken sheets. She landed with her face in a pillow. David admired the shape of her body spread on the bed - the way her inky hair pooled about her, a contrast to the light grey robes which were just long enough to cover her upper thighs.

But before David could resolve those thoughts and perhaps act on them, he heard a light snore coming through Alice's pillow.

Despite himself, a grin found its way to his face.

Whatever they had, whatever thoughts they had of the future, whatever they learned in the past few days - it could wait for tomorrow. David put his flute down beside Alice's guqin and slid into the bed and closed his eyes.

In a way, this was what he’d always wanted.