Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Chapter 18

The snow on Frost Lotus Peak never fully melted, even in summer. Su Lanying had always liked that about it.

She stood in the practice courtyard at dawn with her sword in her hand and ran through the Seven Winter Forms for the third time that morning. Each cut left a trail of frost hanging in the air behind the blade. Each step left a print that filled with rime before she lifted her foot. Her master had taught her the forms when she was nine years old, and in thirteen years she had practiced them every single morning.

This morning, she kept losing count.

She finished the sixth form, turned for the seventh, and found herself thinking about a polished black stone in the Outer Valley. About a silver channel climbing past the third mark, and a service disciple standing with his palm flat against it, his face as still as a frozen pond.

The seventh form came out sloppy. Her blade dipped a finger’s width on the final cut. The frost trail wavered.

Lanying lowered her sword and stood breathing hard in the empty courtyard.

She should not have gone. She had told herself she was going to observe the Re-Assessment on behalf of Frost Lotus Peak. That was nonsense, and she had known it was nonsense the entire way down the mountain. Frost Lotus Peak had no interest whatsoever in which kitchen servants were sent home.

To tell the truth, she had gone because his name was third on the list, and she had wanted to see it with her own eyes.

Fourth layer. Three layers in a single month. And a round-faced physician from outside the sect stepping forward to neatly explain it all away.

Lanying sheathed her sword with a sharp click and went to find her master.

Elder Shen Qiuhua was in her study, drinking tea and reading reports, which was what she did every morning and had done for thirty years. She was a narrow, upright woman with iron-grey hair pulled back so tightly it seemed to lift her eyebrows, and she had never once in Lanying’s memory raised her voice. She had never needed to.

"Sit," she said, without looking up.

Lanying sat.

"Your figures from the ninth level." Elder Shen laid a hand on the page beside her cup. "The old workings past the collapse. The density is twice what I estimated."

"Yes, Master."

"And your cultivation." Now Elder Shen looked up. Her eyes were the exact same pale blue as Lanying’s own, just faded with age. "For three years, you’ve been stuck at Foundation Mid. Now you stand at its peak. In a month."

Lanying kept her back straight and her hands folded.

"The vein in the old workings is dense, Master. I’ve been measuring it with my own qi. My cultivation responds."

"So you said in your report." Elder Shen sipped her tea. "Very dense, to break a three-year bottleneck through a jade disc."

"Yes, Master."

The silence stretched. Lanying had sat through a great many of her master’s silences, and she had learned long ago that the only defense was to wait them out.

At last, Elder Shen set down her cup.

"The Chi heir asked me yesterday," she said, "why my disciple spends so many afternoons in the dark of the mines."

The brand on Lanying’s wrist prickled.

"What did you tell him?"

"That my disciple is doing her duty to her sect. That the sect has a year of qi left and someone must count it." Elder Shen picked up the next report. "He smiled at me for a long time. I didn’t care for it." She turned a page. "Be careful down there, Lanying."

It was the closest her master had ever come to a warning. Lanying rose, bowed, and left the study with her heart beating far faster than the Seven Winter Forms had made it beat.

The weekly dinner with her fiance was that evening.

It was held in the moon-gate pavilion of the guest residence, as it always was. There was spirit-fish from the koi pond, as there always was, and plum wine, which Lanying did not drink. The lanterns were hung so that the light fell flatteringly across Chi Yao’s handsome face.

Chi Yao told her about Blazing Sun City, and the new wing his father was building on the clan estate, and the rooms that would be hers. He described the view from her future window in loving, possessive detail. Lanying ate small portions, answered in complete, correct sentences, and watched the lanterns.

"I hear the Re-Assessment was exciting," Chi Yao said, casually, during the second hour.

"Was it?"

"Oh, very. My retainers tell me the whole valley was talking about it." He refilled his own cup. "The wine boy. A late bloomer, apparently. Three layers in a month. They say a Medicine Valley physician had to step in and explain it to the Law Hall."

Lanying set down her chopsticks.

"I wouldn’t know," she said. "I was there on my master’s behalf. I didn’t pay attention to the servants."

"Of course not." Chi Yao smiled warmly. "You pay attention to the vein. All those long afternoons in the dark." He reached across the table and took her left hand in his, exactly as a loving fiance might. His thumb rested lightly over the inside of her wrist.

Directly over the brand.

"It burns, sometimes," he said softly. "Did you know that? On my side, too. A little tug, right here." He touched his own chest with his free hand. "The night of our betrothal. And once again, not so long ago. Right around the time you contained that pocket of yellow air."

The brand began to warm under his thumb. Gently at first. Then hotter.

Lanying sat perfectly still. Heat crawled up the inside of her arm along the meridian, a slow, red ache that made her fingers want to curl into fists. She kept them flat on the table. She kept her face exactly as it was.

"The yellow air was very frightening," she said evenly. "I nearly died."

"I know." His thumb pressed down. The heat climbed past her elbow. "I’d hate for anything to happen to you, my dear. I’d hate it so much."

Then he let go. The heat drained away in an instant, and he picked up his wine and began telling her about the hunting grounds north of Blazing Sun City, as if nothing at all had happened.

Lanying finished her fish. She thanked him for the meal. She walked back to Frost Lotus Peak with her spine perfectly straight and her left hand tucked deeply into her sleeve. It was not until she was alone in her room with the door heavily barred that she sat down on the edge of her bed and pressed the heel of her hand hard against the brand until her eyes watered.

She did not sleep for a long time.

She lay on her back in the dark and made herself think about it clearly, the exact way her master had taught her to think about a difficult form. Break it into parts. Examine each part and try to find the error and where exactly it laid.

The arrangement was simple. Hands only. Cultivation only. Every third day, a quarter of an hour. She had set the terms herself, and he had kept every single one of them. He had never once asked her what she’d felt in the fire. He had never touched her beyond her palms. He sat across from her in that burned black chamber and closed his eyes and breathed, and her bottleneck gave way a little further every time.

That was all it was. A cultivation method she didn’t understand, with a partner she didn’t need to understand.

She made herself list what she did understand.

He carried the lantern without being asked. He took his tea the way she did, or pretended to, which was somehow entirely worse. He answered every question she put to him truthfully, and none of the answers ever told her a thing. When she’d told him about the marriage, he had said thank you for telling me instead of something stupid and placating, and she had wanted to throw her teacup at his head and had not understood why.

And in the fire, inside the ice, with his weight across her and her fingers locked around his wrist, she had felt six years of nights on a narrow bunk. She had felt a boy watching his mother’s hands. She had felt herself, a pale wrist at a banquet, viewed through his eyes, and realized exactly how often he had thought about her since.

Lanying rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket over her head.

That was the part she did not think about. She had decided that very clearly, three days after the fire, and she was holding to it. If she thought about that part, the arrangement would stop being simple, and she desperately needed it to be simple. In a few months she would marry Chi Yao. The brand on her wrist would make absolutely sure of it.

She did not think about it until the sky outside her window turned a bruised, dawn grey.

The next inspection was in the early afternoon.

Lanying stepped into the lift with her jade disc in her sleeve and her face rigidly composed. She had slept two hours. She had done the Seven Winter Forms twice and gotten the seventh right both times. She had decided that today, she would be entirely professional.

The basket rattled down through the dark and thumped onto the floor of the ninth level.

She stepped out, and stopped.

Yan Shuo was sitting on an overturned ore cart outside the barracks. The round-faced physician from Medicine Valley was standing right beside him.

Bai Rou had a ledger tucked under one arm and two fingers gently pressed to the inside of his wrist, taking his pulse with her eyes half closed. She said something Lanying couldn’t hear. Yan Shuo answered. Bai Rou laughed lightly, and swatted his shoulder playfully with the ledger.

He ducked his head and smiled. Lanying had never seen him smile like that.

Bai Rou released his wrist, made a quick note in her ledger, and said something else. He nodded. She patted his arm and turned toward the lift.

She saw Lanying and bowed politely.

"Senior Sister Su. The Medicine Valley elder asked me to record a follow-up on our late bloomer. The case will go in the valley’s annals." She smiled brightly. "He’s healing beautifully."

"How fortunate," Lanying heard herself say.

Bai Rou stepped into the lift and rose out of sight.

Lanying stood exactly where she was. Under her boots, a thin web of frost spread violently across the stone of the cavern floor, rushing far wider than she meant it to. A hairline seam split the solid rock with a faint, dry tick. Across the cavern, Ruan Tie looked up from his cart and very carefully, very wisely, looked away again.

Yan Shuo had risen from the ore cart. He was bowing to her, polite and perfectly composed, the lantern already waiting in his hand.

Lanying looked at the place on his wrist where the physician’s fingers had just rested. She felt an ugly feeling claw its way up her throat, taking a long moment to finally put a name to it.

When she did, she was horrified.

It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t the icy pride she had worn as armor her entire life.

She was jealous.