David

The Peak Masters had expected trouble of some kind. Why else would they have assigned Hong Fanyi, the inheriting disciple of Earth Peak, to deliver flowers used for basic medicine and alchemy with him? But whatever was happening right now seemed to be more than what anyone had expected would happen.

Daoist Bo, by all accounts - including her own, was still in the process of opening her primary meridians. She hadn’t yet discovered principle. But what she’d just said had been so saturated with her Principle, the air bent and rippled like water with the Song. David considered the possibility that Bo had casually fabricated her entire conversation with him earlier.

"Who found you on the door of death, with a wound tainted thrice in Heavenly Principle? Who paid the cost to close it, my lost little star?”

Wasn’t Wen’s wound closed with the Four Stitches Sutra, a lifespan sutra of the True Sutra sect that David himself had learned from watching Wen perform. A sutra that David himself had used? David’s eyes found his whole, uninjured hand.

Tainted thrice.

Alice had tended to Wen’s wound. When Alice got overly animated when they spoke, sometimes her voice would dip into another register. It rang with a sound that couldn’t be heard, had been painted with a color that couldn’t be seen. It didn't seem intentional, as she never seemed to notice. David hadn't really noticed it either, but in retrospect it did usually coincide with every one of their roommates finding an excuse to leave. It would not be a surprise if Alice’s Principle had found its way into Wen’s wound.

Perhaps the saber itself had something to do with it - but that still left a third source.

Daoist Bo pulled back slowly, surveying Wen with a slight frown.

The Palaces will come for you one day as surely as they will come for me.

Daoist Bo's Song intensified yet again and, slowly the crowd began moving. Bright shades of red and blue flashed in David's peripheral vision - robes. Even the disciples who had been so excited to watch Wen Cheng subjected to his master's discipline were leaving, not just the mundane citizens of Huzhou.

Those disciples had already proven, by way of loitering, that they wished some sort of ill on Daoist Wen or at least wanted some kind of entertainment. Wen Cheng, who'd broken the most sacred rule of Song Mountain - so sacred it must have never been written down because no one would ever, no one could ever, fathom someone breaking it. Any misfortune he suffered would be considered a good thing to most of his fellow disciples.

Some of these disciples even began to sing along to whoever was performing on stage. The surrounding conversations were loud and full of laughter. After a few seconds, the street was deserted. David recalled suddenly that when he'd arrived at the entrance of Song Mountain, Liu Na had said she was already late for her show. Daoist Bo had walked them along the shore at such a leisurely pace a hundred disciples from both of the sects had passed them by. She'd led them just far enough for those who didn't cultivate to hear the singer on stage clearly. There were no witnesses here.

David had been wrong. The silence that blanketed the street like a wet blanket, muffling the song in the distance - this was his least favorite silence.

David heard the scratch of wood on wood - the sound of temple doors sliding shut. His eyes scanned the darkened stoops of the nearby temples. Behind one of the carved doors, he saw movement - the glint of eyes hit by torchlight. Someone was still watching, unaffected by whatever Daoist Bo had done to disperse the crowd. David felt a flash of hope.

Bo had mentioned her distaste for the sects that maintained the Bodhisattvas. The temples in this section of town were far older than the ones built on the road - any sect that maintained them would likely consider this area their headquarters. Perhaps this was a chance for-

No. Upon closer inspection, David recognized the man behind the door. Pinched cheeks and unhealthy skin, with an unkempt gray beard and tattered linen robes. That was the man who had sold him a ticket on the party carriage in Dongjing earlier in the day. He must have recognized David too, because he was glaring at David in particular. The drunk lady driving the cart was likely one of his associates, and she had probably told him about getting stopped by cultivators earlier.

Wen Cheng's knees found the well-cleaned stones of the street. He raised the back of his left palm to cover his eyes.

“Put your hand down, that is not the proper greeting,” said Bo. There was something resentful coiled tightly in her voice. “I have not managed to walk the myriad paths to the empty throne.”

Wen’s hand dropped to his side immediately.

“I can barely believe it,” she whispered. “Even in the vilest little hole of a lower realm, there is a mortal willing to mock me for not yet achieving veneration.”

Now, David was sure this wasn’t Daoist Bo. Veneration was something immortals aspired to. He turned the phrases around in his head - the myriad paths, the empty throne. David felt like something was missing, something incomplete, but those feelings fled from him before they could become fully formed thoughts.

“I meant no offense,” muttered Wen. His face was white with terror.

“You are blessed to have been born under a civilized star. If we were from a more savage house, you would have been culled without a second thought.”

“Your mercy is vast, Honored Ancestor,” Wen said, inclining his head. He was shaking.

They were true, then, the things Wen had spoken about on that little boat.

“I am no longer entertained. I wish to resolve this matter quickly and leave. What cause did you have to look skyward and invoke such a desperate sequence of prayer?”

Wen looked as confused as David felt. What did she mean by that?

This was not the response that Wen’s honored ancestor had been looking for. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You swore on the line of the House that we have built, the shape of Stars that we have arranged, and the name of the Throne that we have served.”

“I-” Wen started. “I haven’t asked-”

Wen stopped, because he realized that he had, in fact, done so.

“Do you understand what you’ve done?” Her voice was calm and still, but her hands shook - in anger or perhaps even fear. “This demands resolution.”

Wen nodded.

“The names of the one who sits in the highest heaven are many and myriad. These names are best described as aspects of her existence - ones that even the common folk can name. The Empress Ascendant. The Phoenix. But the one name that best illustrates our relationship to the Celestial Court is ‘the Debt’. You have not been the subject of tribulation - have never heard the Heavenly Questions. What is owed to her will be recorded in the stars above.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“What does that mean?” asked Wen.

“It means that your ancestors will need to make an offering on your behalf.” There was something grim about her words.

“What needs to be offered?”

She did not respond.

“What do my Honored Ancestors require-”

She shook her head and took a deep breath. What was happening? What needed to be offered?

“I understand,” said Wen. He stood. “I was told that if a cultivator should have to die, he should die standing.”

The horror in the pit of his stomach came before David could register what Wen had meant. David repeated Wen’s words in his mind. How had it turned out so poorly, so suddenly? Was there anything that could be done about-

Wen turned to David. “I suppose this is goodbye, Path Friend!” He gave David a cheerful wave. “May your Path take you ever further and-”

“I’m not going to kill you.” Wen’s Honored Ancestor had cut him off. She sounded fairly alarmed. “And more importantly, who are you talking to?”

Wen furrowed his brow and then pointed at David. “To Daoist Ji?”

She followed the direction his finger was leading her and then looked directly at him, and David heard the sound of her Song wash over him.

“How unexpected,” she said. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “You’re more than you appear.”

How had David completely escaped her notice?

David wondered, in the interest of self preservation, if he should have walked away with the rest of the crowd. But it wasn’t worth considering what he should or shouldn’t have done. He was here now. David was reasonably certain that if Wen hadn’t addressed him directly, he would have spoken up regardless.

She narrowed her eyes warily. “Who are you? Which of the High Houses claim your loyalty?“

David understood immediately. She thought David was also from some higher realm, and wasn’t sure if he were a friend or foe - wasn’t sure if he was someone she couldn’t afford to offend.

Could he survive telling her that she was mistaken?

No, absolutely not. This was an existence that he had only a single point of comparison for - Uncle Jiang. The only thing that David had going for him was her sense of caution. If she determined that he posed absolutely no danger to her, the best case scenario would be something unsure. It could get worse than that. There could be a fight - and David was under no illusions as to how that would go.

“Tell me, from which arrangement of stars do you hail?”

Well, if she wanted to know where David had come from, he could be vague enough.

“A gentle breeze passes by shoreside over grass. A lonely boat passes at night with a tall mast. Across the flat fields do stars fall, under the rising moon do great rivers sprawl.”

She continued to stare at him with her lips pursed. Her fingers found her bangs and pushed them aside. “If you’re unwilling to say, it must be because we must find ourselves in opposition. So tell me plainly, are we enemies?”

The sound of her Song rose.

David opened his mouth to say no, but stopped himself. He couldn’t know that for sure, could he? He chose instead to finish the poem. “Have my works failed to last? Leave the Court if your time has passed. However I flutter - wherever the lands, between heaven and earth - a seagull over sand.”

“A tree grown in the most distant court, or so you say,” she said, the hint of a sneer creeping onto her face. “Why are you here?”

“To visit a friend,” said David, completely truthfully.

"Why are you interested in this friend, then?"

David wasn't sure what to say, but he knew the truth was completely out of the question.

"Are you unwilling to answer?" There was a touch of disdain in her eyes. "A coward with the scars of retribution. I'd never thought I'd live to see the day."

Retribution?

David returned her disdain. "If your existence has no end, should any possibility be a surprise?"

She smiled, looking for a moment as charming as when the Daoist Bo stopped an outer disciple from making a scene in front of a carriage of concertgoers. "You're playing a game with me, saying all of these things that imply you're different people." She sighed. "I divined this morning that I would encounter greatness. Otherwise I wouldn't be humoring you."

David shrugged. Wen kept his eyes firmly on the ground. His fists remained clenched.

"I'll ask you again, why are you interested in this one? He’s made quite a large mistake, and it is now time for him to return his gifts, to be sacrificed to Heaven over Heaven."

“Isn’t that a little unfair?”

“Karma is, at its root, unfair.”

He looked directly at her, and hoped dearly for the slim possibility that any piece of the jugs that were smashed by the outer disciple on the cart had ended up in Immortal Lake, and for the slimmer possibility that the woman enjoyed a sorghum on the road. "The beanstalks are burned to boil beans and filtered to extract juice. The beanstalks are burned beneath the cauldron. The beans in the cauldron sobbed, 'we were grown from the self-same root, why must we hound one another with such impatience?'"

The woman who wore the face of Daoist Bo, who concealed her song with hers, whose principle was gorge stared at him. For the first time, she looked uncertain.

Then, she sneered, looking from David to Wen and back. "A crab who has managed to escape a full basket will no longer pull the others down, but look at those who remain with pity. You've spent so much time in these fetid waters scaring mortals that you think a true honored daughter of the stars would leave her ancestral gifts in a place like this?"

The disgust that he remembered in Uncle Jiang's voice needed no faking. "Don't you think it's a bit strange to call something a gift if you find yourself," David paused, "diving into fetid waters desperately groping for it?"

The Song rose in her, and for a moment David thought he'd pushed it too far, because it no longer had the veneer of being Daoist Bo's. Dark caves, narrow faceless mountains, the impossible, arduous task of climbing a sheer cliff, the Song of water rushing, of being lost from memory-

In an instant, she was completely calm and looked somewhat worried. "Fellow of the Path who I've met in neither enmity nor friendship, I have no wish to tie our fates and must ask for for-"

David couldn't help himself. "Are you really that afraid of karma?"

She crossed her arms and huffed, looking for all the world like a petulant child. "Are you telling me that an immortal who imposed on me their Principle, then made no offer to Sever our Karma, would be anything but a villain?" She narrowed her eyes. "Are you this sort of villain?"

She looked at David and then at Wen, and then back again.

David rolled his eyes. "I don't believe in karma."

"How dare you look down at me for mistakes made as a mortal. Not all of us are blessed with such luck, so unfortunately we must deal with our problems." She pushed her bangs out of her eyes and exhaled through her nose, hard. “I'm just here to collect the gifts bestowed and-"

David had enough. "Is it not clear that all three of his gifts have been stolen?" He suddenly realized that Wen might have lied to him when they met.

The immortal turned to Wen. "Is that true?"

Wen nodded.

She stood in front of him without a word, then pushed her bangs behind her ear. She clicked her tongue a few times, then pushed her bangs behind her ear again. She tapped her foot on the cobblestone. "Inheritances are easily stolen trinkets. Fates can be subverted even in a lower realm without too much difficulty."

She went back to clicking her tongue. "How was your truth stolen?"

Wen shook his head.

"I imagine in the same way you were going to go about it," said David, who had absolutely no idea what that even meant.

"On whose authority?"

She tilted Wen's chin up. Then, she looked at the sky.

She went back to pushing her hair out of her eyes, tapping her foot and clicking her tongue.

"What did you pray for?"