They faced off, she in Demonform, circling, growling, licking her lips, and him grinning back at her, keeping the tip of his spear between them.

“I can’t get over how big you are,” he muttered.

She opened her mouth to make a crude joke but all that came out was a growl. When she fought Mother she felt like fighting a mountain; she had no clue how she could beat her, she didn’t even know where to start. It wasn’t a size thing, it was a matter of presence. Resistance seemed futile.

She got no such feeling from Jin. Where Mother seemed immovably solid Jin was nimble, flexible. When she went left his spear did too, his body shifting with her, his feet, hips, shoulders making tiny adjustments. Same when she went right. He was just annoyingly fundamentally sound—how could she charge? She’d run right into the point.

She gave him a little swipe, just to see, and he pulled away—not too much, not too little. She showed the start of a lunge and he hopped back just the right distance, keeping the space between them. She saw how it was. This time she dashed, feinted a lunge high, then leapt for a low swipe—

Her eyes watered with searing white. A blast rocked behind her ears and she was driven headfirst into the sands, flipping over herself, somehow landing on her feet. She snarled at him, shaking her head, yawning the ringing out of her ears. She didn’t feel very hurt, just lightly singed. And embarrassed.

“Good try,” he said. That speartip came between them again, tracking her with maddening precision. “But you’re not the only one who’s learned some new tricks, dear sister.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Her breaths frosted the air; black sands crackled white beneath her claws.

“Err,” he got out, then she lunged. First left, then right, then left again, switching with dizzying speed, crashing over him, slashing one huge paw like she meant to take his head clean off his shoulders. He tracked her admirably. His spear tip flared and a blast threw off her slashing arm—just as her other arm, the one she really meant to whack him with, caught him right in the belly.

He skidded nearly five strides, then fell to a knee, wheezing. His skin shone under his nethersteel combat robes. His qi blunted his slash. Still it took something out of him; she could tell by the way he stumbled up.

Fighting, like talking, was an art of disguise. The better you got, the more you learned to hide your true intent. You could never be too obvious; that would get you hurt, especially against a clever enemy. Your strikes had to have layers.

Either that, or they had to be undeniable.

“Okay,” said Jin, coughing. His smile was still playful, if pained. “Have this.”

He took a step and heat blossomed at his feet. She thought little of it. He took another and his foot sank a little into the voidsand; a pad of light hugged his step. A third step sank even deeper, a tiny seething crater opening up at his sole, and she sprung back, hissing at him. He stepped a fourth time and the air began to sizzle; all this time his spear grew hotter, burned whiter, and now sparks flew off its tip—

She couldn’t let him finish. She lunged for him and let loose her field.

The air chilled so fast he shivered; the sparks smoked out. The field, wet with melted frost, seized up in an instant—suddenly it was as though they stood on a frozen lake.

His spear was like a candle flickering in the wind. But he sucked in a breath, stood his ground and stepped.

Five. An earthen rumbling rattled the courtyard. The air about him trembled, warped, running with the heat of him. Light poured out from his body and his eyes brightened like torches. The spear flared bright, given a second life—

Her claw fell upon him, streaking bright blue, weighted with all her muscle and flesh and essence. His spear arced up to meet her.

The crash broke the ice beneath their feet into a thousand jittering fragments. Ruyi was sent tumbling, cracking her head on something, flattening against painful-hot sands. She choked on smoke and steam; her eyes were filled with cloying gray; she blew out hard, and there was a whooshing, a shrieking. The gray rushed for the skies in thick clumps.

She was about a foot taller than she should be. That was how puffed-up her furs were. She had to wipe them out of her eyes to see.

On the far side, Jin was splattered against a courtyard wall, soaked through head-to-toe. He slid to a groaning halt.

“Fuck,” he groaned. “I nearly—”

His face blanked with shock as he began to tilt. The whole bamboo wall gave out beneath him, the planks fracturing as they went. There was a piercing shattering underneath—it sounded like porcelain, and a lot of it.

Ruyi humanformed, shrugged on her robes, and dashed over fast as she could. Together, they blinked at the damage.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“If Mother asks,” she told him. “This is your fault.”

***

The next time she visited Mei’s Wards it was like stepping into a different city.

On every street corner was a stall stacked high with crates, sliding up Ruyi Elixirs like drinks at a bar. And there were few miscreants in the alleys anymore—instead she saw huddles of white cloaks, like an infestation on the body of the City; the Emperor had promised a steady diet of food, drink, and Ruyi Elixir on the Emperor’s coin, and the Post had said the sign-ups were so great the Alchemist’s Guild was having trouble keeping pace—even with nearly a thousand Alchemists brewing in mass cauldrons, round-the-clock. For once it hadn’t been lying.

The streets were choked with people; lines snaked into one another. As bank of clouds let out the mid-day sun, she saw hundreds of hopeful, hungry faces lit up in yellow, then let down in drab blue as the clouds passed over. In history textbooks she’d read of lines for grain during famine; this felt almost like that. She saw a woman flash the Guard’s white, snag her vial of Elixir, then feed her little boy the drink under cover of the same cloak.

The bodies slumped in the alleys weren’t drunk. They were cross-legged, cultivating. The Lower City was steeped in concentration. It was oddly quiet. There was the rattling of wheels, but that was only to wheel around more Elixir.

“It’s her!” cried a voice. She’d been waiting for someone to notice. “The Lady Ruyi!”

Qi-drunk cheers engulfed her, and she put on her usual smile and waved. There was a reason she never wore a hat to the Lower City.

“The Hero, too!” came a voice. There was still bubblings of cheers here and there. Much less loud, she noted with guilty delight.

“Wow,” said Jin, scanning the street. “You’ve really made your mark on the place.”

“I know,” said Ruyi proudly. “And we’re not even at the Wards yet.”

“Have you had any trouble?” said Jin.

“What do you mean?”

“Well. Most of the folks here are good folk, but… I wouldn’t want to be known as the noble handing out free Elixirs. Not that you shouldn’t,” he added quickly. “I think it’s great. Only… bring a guard, maybe? You wouldn’t want to expose anything in a confrontation.”

“No need,” said Ruyi. “I only walk the main streets. They’ve got Imperial Guard on every corner. Someone tried to rob me once, didn’t even get his knife out before they tackled him. A builder came over and said he would’ve done it himself if the Guard didn’t.”

Jin was right. People were mostly good, she really believed that.

But some folk were savages. And to them you could show no kindness or mercy.

The trouble was, sometimes it was hard to tell who was who until they got up close. Sometimes you could know them ten years and have them turn on you.

Her policy now was to never let them get close. Let them see her practiced smile, maybe even speak to her, but keep them at arm’s length, never close enough to touch her. She was happy putting up a face—showing them the perfect Hero of their imaginations. She just needed them to love her; they didn’t need to know her really. They wouldn’t like her very much if they did.

Together with Jin she floated through the Wards, waving and laughing and letting their warmth wash over her. They were stopped before they left by an artist for the Post, who sketched them together in his moving inks. It appeared on the front page of the newspaper the next morning —Ruyi Yang and Hero Make Appearance!

Ruyi Yang and Hero. Not Jin Yang and Sister, as the damned Post had thrown up every headline for the past ten years. She showed it to Jin and Jin didn’t even seem to notice. He looked at her with that dumb oblivious blinking of his. “Your dress looks nice in the picture?” he tried.

“No, look—Ruyi Yang!”

“…That’s your name.”

She sighed, turning sideways so she could fit the toolbox through the doorframe. “Nevermind. Move—I’m nailing this to my bedroom wall.”

It wasn’t until she was down the staircase when she heard Jin go, “Please don’t tell me it’s—”

“Yep.”

As she was hammering she heard a drawn-out sigh through the open door.

“This is petty. Even for you.”

“I know.”

***

The Emperor sent Jin an invitation for tea. The Emperor had an offer to make.

Jin sent back a one-word decline.

A week later, he sent Ruyi a letter, offering to send Tingting to their manor to make an offer to Jin.

He might’ve been callous and stupid but he was a political weasel, that one. He knew exactly what he was doing. He thought he’d found Ruyi’s weakness.

…As it turned out, the bastard was right.

“Let’s just hear him out,” said Ruyi. She was holding pads for him as he drilled kicks. “He wants something from you. We could use this!”

Later, over drinks—“It can’t hurt, right? It’s just tea.”

Later, as he was lounged on a couch, trying to read—“C’mon, please? It’s not like you’re agreeing to anything.”

He set down his Technique manual and started rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “I can guess what this is about. Who’s he sending?”

“…’s not relevant,” mumbled Ruyi.

“It’s Tingting, isn’t it?”

“So what if it is?”

“Rue, she’s betrothed. To Young Master Qin,” said Jin gently. “Maybe it’s time to let this go.”

“I can’t,” she wailed, and flopped onto the couch.

“Oh, bother,” sighed Jin. He sat up to make room as she wormed her way on.

“What’s wrong with me?” said Ruyi, facedown, muffled in the velvet.

“Nothing,” said Jin. “This is natural. You can do this—you let Sen go, didn’t you?”

“…No…” muffle-mumbled Ruyi. “She was going to let me go, so I got scared and let her go first. And then I crawled back to her. It’s not the same. I think… people just get stuck in me, like food, y’know. In teeth. Keep picking at it but you can’t get ‘em out.”

“That’s disgusting,” sighed Jin, stroking her hair. “But I know what you mean. I think I’m kind of the same way.”

She scrunched her way until her head faced up. “I mean just look at us. After you poked me in the neck,” she said. “I swore I’d never forgive you, and I’d never ever talk to you again, you know that? I lasted like two days.”

He winced. “I’m sorr—”

“Shut up, that’s not the point of the story. The point is, I think I need to get better at hating people.”

“I like you just the way you are,” said Jin. “Suffering is a part of love. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.”

She squinted at him. “They teach you that in monk school?”

A ghost of a smile. “No, I figured that one out all by myself.”