Book 3: Chapter 19: Successful Plays and Theater |
Hu Shui moved through the slums outside the city walls like a girl on a mission from the heavens themselves.
Which she was, obviously.
Long Ti bounced on her back again, having given up on the concept of walking roughly thirty seconds after she grabbed him and vaulted the western gate. The guards hadn't even finished turning their heads before she was three hundred paces past them and accelerating. She could hear Long Ti's prayers to ancestors he probably didn't remember the names of, muffled against her shoulder.
The slums hit her nose before they hit her eyes.
It was the same mud, rot, and the same sour something that clung to the back of her throat and made her want to gag. The perfumed scarf helped, but only barely. She slowed to a jog, then a walk, scanning the sprawl of huts and lean-tos and bodies huddled in clusters around fires that burned things fires had no business burning. Eyes washing over the well off individuals walking around with their families and followed them because that would be the main indication for what she was looking for.
Where is that old fox...
Shui extended her senses. Pushed past the mortals, the weak cultivators hiding in their little hovels, the beggars that dotted every corner and intersection like mushrooms after rain, and locking onto the richest men and women she could find. She was looking for the gap. The place where someone powerful enough to flatten half this camp sat pretending to be nothing.
It only took a moment before she finally found him sitting on the same patch of dirt he'd been on when they first arrived. Cross-legged, hair of red and silver catching the late afternoon sun, hands extended toward a merchant couple that was hurrying past with a basket of bread, and collecting coin from another child that had been told by their parent to give it to him. The insufferable smile plastered across his sharp features like it had been painted on at birth and never removed.
Shui set Long Ti down. The old man's legs buckled and he grabbed a fence post to keep standing.
Long Ti's face cycled through four expressions in rapid succession. Recognition. Dread. Resignation. And then something that might have been professional pride if it weren't drowning in abject terror. "The... the flattery routine?"
"Different play this time! New script." Shui held up one finger. "You follow my lead. When I look at you, you look sad. When I pause, you shake your head like things are really, really bad. When I say 'isn't that right,' you say 'I'm afraid so, Lady Shui.' Can you do that?"
"I can do that."
"Good. Also look scared."
"That part requires no acting, Lady Shui."
She patted his hand and grinned. She would have patted his shoulder, but he was a bit too tall. "Perfect. Let's go."
They rounded the corner and approached the red-and-white-haired beggar from the side. Shui made sure to slow her pace, drag her feet a little. Let her shoulders drop and her head tilt downward like she was carrying the weight of something terrible. She'd watched Jun do this exact posture whenever she wanted Ancestor to feel guilty about limiting their cultivation hours.
It worked on him every single time.
Then there was the time she had actually been sad and heartbroken when she saw him cuddled with all the dragon hatchlings.
Her Ancestor would have flipped the world over to make her happy again.
The old beggar noticed them at twenty paces. His smile didn't waver, but his eyes sharpened as they tracked her approach. He dismissed the merchant couple with a wave and tucked whatever coins they'd given him into his rags. The kid ran off to his parents sensing the change in the atmosphere.
"Well, well. If it isn't the little lady from the Ancient's party." His voice carried that same oily warmth. "Come to donate to the Beggar's Clan of the Angry Turtle? We accept all forms of—"
"I'm not here for that." Shui stopped five paces away. Close enough to talk, but far enough to make it look like she was keeping distance on purpose.
The beggar's smile thinned by a fraction. His eyes flicked to Long Ti, dismissed him, and returned to Shui. "Then what brings such an esteemed young mistress to my humble patch of dirt? Not many of the sects or clans ever find themselves out here once they enter YellowHearth City. Except when they’re running away and need help being smuggled out… Then there are quite a few of them."
Shui bit her lip and looked away. Counted to five in her head.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five
"It's about my Ancestor."
The beggar's smile held, but his fingers stopped moving. They'd been fidgeting with a coin, rolling it across his knuckles in a pattern so smooth it had to be decades of muscle memory. Said coin froze mid-roll and dropped to the ground. The old man picked it up off the ground and set it on his thigh. "Oh?"
"He's... displeased." Shui let the word hang and watched it land.
The coin vanished into the beggar's sleeve. His posture shifted, subtle enough that a mortal would have missed it entirely. Weight redistributing, centre of gravity lowering by half an inch, his hair straightening, but the smile remained even if the muscles around his jaw tightened.
"Displeased?" he asked.
Shui nodded once with as much gravitas as she could put into the moment. The way Ancestor nodded when someone had done something monumentally stupid and he was deciding whether to address it with words or with the kind of silence that made Zhong Da's knees give out.
"With me?" the beggar asked.
Shui glanced at Long Ti.
Long Ti shook his head with a slow mournful look. His eyes downcast. The old man had found his role and was committing to it with clear desperation.
Which it did, not that Shui would ever think of it.
All she could register was how proud she was of her training the old man.
"The situation is... precarious." Shui chose the word carefully. She'd heard Zhong Da use it once and it had made everyone in the room go pale. It seemed appropriate giving the nature of the situation. "Ancestor doesn't talk about these things openly. You know how the ancients are. Always quiet and always watching."
The old beggar frowned as he considered what Shui was saying. His eyes drifted way from her to the people that surrounded him and then up toward the treeline on the hill where Yin Hu's party had first stood overlooking the city. His throat bobbed.
"He mentioned the interaction you had. The way things were handled." Shui paused and let the silence do the work. "The cost Senior Zhong Da paid was more than generous. Ancestor felt the information given was... insufficient for the price."
"I gave everything he asked–"
"I know." Shui raised her hand with her palms out. The exact gesture Ancestor used when he was about to say something that would ruin your entire week. "I know you did. That's why I'm here. I felt for you. You aren't a bad person and I can tell that from the distance. So many people would not send their kids to you with coin, faces full of smiles, had you been an evil person."
The old man stared at her. His smile had finally cracked. Replaced by something guarded, but underneath that, underneath the decades of hustling, surviving, always winning, and reading people like open books his finger twitched and that facade cracked.
Not because Shui was convincing, but rather because of a simple idiom: Where there was smoke, there was fire.
Shui should not, as a child at least, had any thought about doing something like this unless she had heard or saw something or another.
That was enough for the old beggar.
"I came to talk to you because I thought maybe we could fix this before it becomes... unfixable." Shui dropped her voice. "Isn't that right, Long Ti?"
"I'm afraid so, Lady Shui." Long Ti's delivery was flawless. Filled with haunted memories and traumas. The voice of a man who had witnessed the unfixable and lived to regret it… Which had been his situation ever since he had the misfortune of the little girl standing there before his stall and humming about what she was supposed to buy. He considered what he could have done to change everything–
The beggar studied them both for a long, uncomfortable stretch.
His eyes moved between Shui and Long Ti with the rapid precision. The red and silver strands of his hair shifted in the breeze and jaw worked. "What do you suggest then?" The words came out careful. Each syllable placed like a foot on uncertain ground. "You know him better than I do."
Shui's heart hammered. She kept her face as sad and concerned as possible to nail the coffin shut.
Don't smile. Don't smile. Do not smile!!!
She furrowed her brow and tapped her chin, chewing her bottom lip. She made a small sound of consideration that she'd copied directly from Jun during her most theatrical moments of deliberation. Drew it out for five full seconds until the beggar leaned forward half an inch.
"You need to do things worthy of the cost," Shui said. "Things that show you aren't just taking. That you're giving back so he wouldn't be displeased."
"Like what?"
Shui hesitated and shuffled her feet. Glancing at Long Ti all the while, who shook his head again on cue, adding a small sigh for flavour.
"C'mon." The beggar's voice had lost its oil. "Out with it."
"Well..." Shui made herself look small. A girl caught between loyalty and compassion. "I am his direct descendant and he loves me a whole bunch. More than anything in this world." She paused. Letting that truth, because it was true, every word of it, settle into the space between them. "I don't want to use his love for me against his interests... but..."
"What are you suggesting?"
Shui looked up at him. Eyes wide and earnest.
"Work for me for some time. Complete tasks I need done… Small things really and nothing special at all. And when Ancestor watches from a distance, because he always watches, you've seen that yourself, he'll notice you doing good things, but most importantly above all else… You’ll be helping his favourite, most loved, best, prettiest, most amazing disciple and direct descendant. His most cherished person on the entire planet." She held his gaze without blinking. "And he won't be mad at you anymore."
The old man sighed and closed his eyes. He could ignore the little girl like he would usually do, then again… the risk was to great.
"You don't want him to be mad. Right?"
His jaw clenched and the muscles in his neck corded. He opened his eyes and they went distant for a moment. Shui could practically see the memory replaying behind them, the moment he'd looked into Ancestor's eyes and frozen. The moment his hands had trembled and his smile had died and he'd called himself a foolish junior without a shred of his usual bravado.
He remembered clearly every single moment without an ounce of vagueness. It took long moments of tense silence before he finally exhaled through his nose.
The old man pulled out the coin he had hidden and his head dipped once.
"Good!" Shui clapped her hands together. The shift in her energy was instantaneous. Bright, bubbly, excited, and positively radiating the enthusiasm of a girl who had just been handed exactly what she wanted. "It won't be much. Just follow me around and look mean at things. I have a few places I need to visit and—"
She smiled.
Wider.
Wider than before.
Something passed behind her eyes. A flicker that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun and everything to do with the silk pouch of Qi Stones tucked against her hip. A darkness that settled into her pupils like red ink dropped into clear water. Her smile stretched past the point of warmth, past the point of enthusiasm, past the point where any reasonable person would still call it a smile at all.
Long Ti saw it first. His shoulders drew up to his ears and hands found each other, beginning their familiar wringing. His teeth clicked together in a rapid staccato that he couldn't stop.
The red-and-white-haired beggar saw it second later.
His smile, the one he'd been rebuilding piece by piece throughout the conversation, collapsed. The coin he pulled out of his sleeve slipped free and clinked against the dirt.
This time de did not pick it up.
His gut twisted into a shape that decades of survival instinct recognized with perfect, horrible clarity.
The old man had made a massive mistake.
----------
The CoolSpear Gang's warehouse sat in the industrial sprawl between the western wall and the river district. A squat, ugly building of grey stone and rotting timber that had been reinforced with stolen iron plates bolted across every surface the gang could reach. Two guards flanked the main doors. Four more patrolled the roofline. The banner above the entrance depicted a spear wreathed in blue flame, painted by someone who had clearly never seen blue flame or a spear used with any competence.
Inside, the celebration was loud enough to rattle the iron plates.
Gang Leader Fao Wen sat at the head of a table long enough to seat thirty. Fifteen lieutenants flanked him, seven to each side and one standing behind his chair like a personal shadow. Platters of roasted meat, stolen wine, rice, an entire cow in the center of it all, and fruits that had no business being in this district covered every inch of available surface. Grease ran in rivers between the plates. Cups slammed against wood in toasts that grew less coherent with each round.
"To the Iron Fang's territory!" Fao Wen raised his cup as he laughed loud and boisterous. Broad-shouldered, thick-necked, mean looking, and with a scar that bisected his left eyebrow and continued down to his jaw. His cultivation base hummed beneath his skin, a low vibration that made the air around him dense and heavy.
"To their territory!" fifteen voices roared back.
The warehouse erupted as dozens of gang members packed into the space behind the lieutenants' table cheered, stomped, hooted, hollered, shouted, and banged weapons against shields. Someone had brought drums. Someone else had brought a guzheng and was playing it with more enthusiasm than skill. The noise was a living thing, pressing against the walls and ceiling, filling every gap and corner.
Fao Wen grinned and bit into a leg of something that had been alive that morning. Juice ran down his chin. His lieutenants matched him bite for bite, drink for drink. The Iron Fang had held the eastern slum territories for three years. They occupied that area with cruelty, numbers, cultivation power, wealth, and a leader who thought himself untouchable.
Said leader was currently tied to a post in the basement, missing several teeth and most of his dignity.
Victory tasted better than the meat.
Fao Wen reached for his cup—
The double doors exploded inward.
Both of them, simultaneously. Ripped from their hinges with enough force that the iron bolts holding them sheared clean through. The left door spun end over end and crashed into the centre of the main table, splitting it lengthwise. Platters launched into the air. Wine erupted in geysers of red. The right door followed a half-second later, carrying the unconscious body of the roof guard who'd been standing closest to the entrance. He slammed into the wall behind Fao Wen's chair and slid down it in a boneless heap, leaving a smear of blood on the stone.
Fao Wen was already on his feet and cup discarded. He waved his hand and his spear launched itself from the side wall and slammed into his waiting palm. His lieutenants moved with him, chairs kicked back, weapons drawn, bodies shifting into formation with the muscle memory of cultivators who had fought together for years. Qi flared across the warehouse in fifteen distinct signatures.
Fao Wen's was the brightest, a deep blue corona that pressed outward and made the debris on the ground tremble.
His two strongest lieutenants flanked him.
Bai Shu on the left, twin dao blades already spinning.
Ren Ke on the right, a massive tower shield planted before him, Qi reinforcing the metal until it glowed faintly amber.
The gang members behind them scrambled for weapons, positions, stable ground, and anything that would keep them alive against whatever had just torn through reinforced iron doors like they were made of wet paper.
Fao Wen opened his mouth to give the order—
Only to slam his mouth shut as Red Miasma made its entrance.
It crept through the shattered doorway like fog rolling off a frozen lake.
Except fog didn't scream.
This did.
The air itself shrieked as the red miasma poured across the warehouse floor, curling around table legs, climbing walls, filling the space between bodies with something that tasted like copper, terror, lightning, spirit energy, and the absolute certainty of death.
Pressure befell the entire warehouse and all who occupied it.
Fao Wen's knees buckled. He caught himself on the ruined table, spear arm shaking. His blue corona flickered and compressed against his skin like it was trying to hide inside him.
Beside him, Bai Shu's twin dao clattered against each other as her hands lost their steadiness.
Ren Ke's shield arm dropped against his struggling will as his amber glow died.
Fao Wen gulped as he felt the gang members fall around him one by one.
First was the weakest and youngest, and then the full wight of the Red Miasma entered whereby a dozen dropped at once, faces hitting the stone floor with wet smacks that echoed through the sudden silence. Bodies crumpled where they stood, where they sat, where they'd been reaching for weapons they would never lift. Unconscious before they understood what was happening and before their brains could process the signal their cores were sending—you are prey, you are nothing, you are already dead, and the thing that killed you hasn't even decided to yet.
Forty-seven gang members hit the ground in under the time it took for him to recognize what the hell just happened.
Fao Wen's vision narrowed a moment later as he focused at the doorway. The edges went dark first, bleeding inward like spilled ink consuming a page. The light from the torches, rays of sun that streamed in from the windows, and even all the Qi signatures of his remaining lieutenants… All of it vanished toward the doorway, pulled into the red miasma like water into a drain.
All he could see was the entrance itself and nothing else.
A figure stepped through.
It was a small figure. The silhouette of a child framed by the ruined doorway, backlit by the dying afternoon sun that couldn't seem to penetrate the threshold. Red miasma coiled around her legs, her arms, her shoulders, her entire body, rising and falling with each step like a living cloak that breathed when she breathed.
Her eyes—
Feo Wen’s gasped and struggled to keep his head up.
Lightning crackled behind red irises.
Fao Wen's grip on his spear failed. The weapon clattered against the broken table. He grabbed for it and missed. His fingers wouldn't close as he tried again and again to pick it up and face the Red Demon that had entered their abode. Except they shook too violently, joints locked at angles that his cultivation should have prevented.
Two figures followed the monster through the doorway.
Both were old men.
One hunched and trembling so hard his teeth were audible across the warehouse.
The other standing straighter, red and silver hair catching the last of the light, his face arranged into an expression of absolute and total regret.
The monster stopped three paces from the destroyed table and surveyed them.
Fao Wen looked down at it.
At her.
The darkness that surrounded her and the lightning that leaked from those red eyes and the smile that split her face from ear to ear.
"You all work for me now."
Her voice had a light and musical tinge to it. The voice of a girl who should have been playing in gardens, chasing butterflies, playing with pretty toys, dressing in princess dresses, or doing whatever it was that children did when the world hadn't broken them into weapons.
"Any objections?"
Silence met her previous declaration. No one dared to utter a sound.
Not like they could either way. .
Fao Wen's mouth hung open. No sound came out.
Bai Shu dropped his blades, the clattering of metal on stone was muffled by the loud pressure they rumbled in their minds.
Ren Ke's shield had fallen entirely, the massive slab of reinforced metal resting against his leg while his arms hung limp at his sides.
The monster waited for a few heartbeats. Challenging them all to say a single word so it could have a chance to show them why it had developed the Red Miasma and what it could do when put to the test against foes like them. People to small and insignificant to do anything against a Red Demon that could have ended them all without any of them knowing what had happened, but had chosen them to keep alive.
Her smile grew wider at their response.
"Thought so."