Chapter 49
Tan groaned as his father woke him for the morning. He grumbled a bit, then dressed and did his chores. He fed the chickens, picked their eggs, and pumped the water into the basin in the kitchen to help his mother. When he’d finished, he sat at the table, waiting for the other children to finish their chores and their mother to finish cooking the eggs.
His little sister walked into the room, yawning and half-dressed. She smirked at him, and he glared back. It wasn’t fair that she got to sleep in, but then again she was still only five and at this point in the year there weren’t enough chores to go around to all five of the children.
Still, he sometimes thought that his parents were spoiling his sister compared to him.
“Safron! Come help me in the kitchen!” his mother called, and the little girl finished buttoning her dress and wandered in that direction to help.
Tan sighed and looked up at the painting on the wall. His father had done it, he knew. It was a landscape of a mountain. The other children had been surprised when he’d put it up, but Tan had seen it in the old place, so he didn’t think it was anything special.
Even if he could see the magic in the painting. The way that the wind swept over the mountain, the blazing of the sun, and the majesty of the river and the mountain itself …
It might have been a Dao drawing, but to Tan it was just his father’s doodles.
Still, he spent a while studying it each day, and each day he thought he understood it a little better.
He noticed Pao doing the same thing with a slight look of reverence in his eyes. Tan shook his head. It was strange, but sometimes his friends acted like his parents were Important people somehow. Tan knew better. If they were actually important, then they wouldn’t live in the middle of nowhere growing rice and sorghum and wheat.
Sure, Tan’s father had apparently known someone important in Mosanatas, but knowing someone important didn’t make you important.
Anyway it didn’t really change anything, the way that Tan saw things. Life on the farm was life on the farm. He had chores to do, and between chores and cultivation he still had a few hours every day to play with his friends and little sisters, and also the spirit animals who had begun to show up recently, and …
He frowned. Okay, so maybe they were a little weird. He was pretty certain normal kids, even ones with cultivators for parents, didn’t have so many spirit animals living at their homes.
Or maybe they did. He shrugged. He wasn’t really an expert on what was normal, he reflected. That was fine. Everyone was a little weird, so it was fine if Tan was too.
The table filled up with the breakfast crowd, and a moment later Wensho appeared with a platter filled with eggs. Tren helped serve each of the children, and they ate the eggs with toasted bread and honeyed tea, as well as salted gnasher-cobra meat. The food was rich in Qi and delicious, and all of the children spent a few moments cultivating at the dinner table to process the Qi in the food. Even little Safron, who was a proper cultivator now.
Her success had driven another wave of children from the village to ask for a spirit stone, and she was confident that very soon, she would have friends too, just like Tan had Pao, Won, and Ko. Tan frowned at this suggestion, wondering where they would sleep. The manor had spare guest rooms, and there was always the old house, but when winter came and the spirit animals returned to their human forms …
He shrugged. That was a problem for the grownups to figure out.
“Tan, there’s an errand that we need for you to run,” His father said, snapping him out of his own little world.
“Oh? What is it?” Tan asked.
“We need you to deliver a message to the Zang family,” Tren informed him.
“The who?”
Tren blinked in surprise. “You don’t remember them?”
Tan shook his head. “Nope. They don’t live in the village, so--”
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“They’re the ones who want you to marry Kora. They’re the reason you got in trouble and had to find the spirit stones last year,” Tren reminded his son.
“Oooh, I remember now,” Tan said. He frowned. “Do they still want me to marry that stupid older girl?”
Tren smirked. “Well, yes, Tan, they do. We promised that there would be another meeting between the two of you this year. They sent us a letter the other day to arrange it, and they’re awaiting our reply. I was going to ask you to fly to Lima city and deliver a letter to Sean Zang, who should be waiting for you.”
“Does this mean I get out of my other chores?” he asked.
“Yes it does,” Tren agreed.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Tan agreed.
Tren spent a while filling him in on the rest of the details of the job, and then after they had all finished filling their bellies Tan took his leather, pulled on a warm coat to combat the cold of flying high in the air, and he took off towards Lima city.
He flew even faster than he had two years ago, and without tiring once. The journey, which would take a non-cultivator a week on foot, took him three hours. He arrived at the city gate, plopping down in front of the startled guards.
“Hey. I’m supposed to deliver this letter to Sean Zang, do you know where I can find him?
The guard’s gawked at the boy who had arrived in a gust of wind. They bowed the polite depth to bow to a cultivator, and assured him that inquiries would be made into Sean Zang’s location immediately, if he did not mind waiting. Tan shrugged.
“I have a few coins to spend, so I’m going to wander the streets for a bit and buy something to eat. I’ll be back in an hour, so if you can find him before then I’d appreciate it,” he said, and he wandered off while the guards scrambled to obey his commands.
Which he hadn’t seen as commands at all. He just thought that this was the way of the world; guards were there to help people, were they not?
He wandered through the city. He wasn’t dressed in any clothes that gave away his cultivation status, but he still drew attention from the few other cultivators in the city. They left him alone, but they could sense the power inside him, as he hadn’t quite developed the knack for masking it like his parents could.
He frowned now and then as he sensed their intent. Now that he was learning to sense it, he found that anyone who so much as looked at him curiously would draw his own attention. It was annoying, and so he’d blast their curious glares back with a wave of annoyance to tell them to mind their own business.
Those on the receiving end were often startled, and promptly found something else to be interested in other than the young master who was browsing the street shops.
Tan ate a meat pie and purchased a set of dice to play with his friends and another doll for his sister. He frowned as he contemplated that purchase. He knew that he was contributing to Safron being spoiled, but at the same point she’d really pout at him if he came back from his city adventure without a present for her.
He shrugged.
After an hour or so had passed, he returned to the guard station, and one of the guards volunteered to bring him to the inn where Sean was staying. Tan spoke with the innkeeper, who was initially reluctant to disturb the cultivator who was staying under his roof until the guards explained that this boy was also a cultivator. After which the inn mysteriously emptied, and the innkeeper instructed the boy on where to find his target.
Tan knocked on the door and waited patiently. A moment later, a young man with an abundance of Air Qi about him opened the door. He looked down at the child-messenger, who passed him the letter from his parents.
“There you go,” Tan said. “I’m supposed to wait until you have a reply. Do you have any snacks?”
Sean blinked, then broke the seal of the letter and read the contents quickly. It was a simple invitation for Kora to spend a few days on the Shen farm in order to get to know the family a little better. He grinned; this would not only advance the plan of marrying Kora into the Shen family, but even if everything fell apart, the Zangs would still finally know the location of the center of the Qi Oasis which was starting to look more like a Qi lake.
“Tell your parents that this arrangement is most satisfactory and that we shall arrange for Kora’s arrival to occur on the eighth day of the seventh month.”
“Yeah okay whatever,” Tan said. “Is that it?”
“Yes. Thank you, and it was pleasant meeting you, Tan,” Sean said.
“Kay. I’m going to go.”
So Tan flew away, heading out over the city and causing some people to cry out in surprise at the flying boy. But whatever, it wasn’t his fault that they were super scared of children who could fly for some reason. Maybe he could desensitize them to it if he kept doing it.
He sped home and arrived in time to spend a few hours cultivating with his friends before it was time for dinner. He gave his sister her new doll, which joined the expansive collection that she already had, and then the kids spent the evening playing dice.