“It’s illegal for someone to hide in their own household?” Jinya shot back.
“You know very well she no longer belongs to that family. She is the property of the Rao clan now.”
“Then tell them to feed her! Even the pigs eat better than she—”
The constable tried to slap her, but she ducked, sidestepping him. “Why, you insolent child—”
Kuro darted between them, causing the constable to recoil. “My good man, how are you?” Kuro said jovially. Though he was only fifteen, his considerable stature often led others to mistake him for a grown man.
The constable sized Kuro up. “I’m looking for a runaway bride,” the constable explained stiffly.
“No runaway brides around here,” said Kuro, making exaggerated searching motions. Jinya rolled her eyes, her expression unapologetic. The constable glared at her, and she glared right back. Before things could escalate, Kuro stepped between them again.
“Sorry about my—my wife,” he invented, taking her hand.
He winced as Jinya dug her nails into his palm, hard enough to draw blood.
“Control your woman,” said the constable, “or the law will intervene.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kuro. “Best of luck with your search.”
Once the constable was gone, Jinya ripped her hand out of his. “Mind your own business,” she snapped.
“Why are you so angry all the time?”
“Why amIso angry all the time?” she demanded. “Why are younot?”
“What do you mean?”
She stared at him, her chest heaving with exertion. In the silence that followed, she waited for him to interrupt, to contradict her, to make a joke at her expense. He only stared. There was something about her that drew him in, like a reckless moth mesmerized by flame. No matter how destructive she would prove to be, he knew he needed to be near her. To admire her, to draw warmth from her, and eventually, to burn with her.
“Do you actually want to know?” she asked, her voice tentative now, shy.
He nodded.
She took a step closer, pushing him into the shadows of the alleyway.
“The system is broken,” she told him, a clarity in her eyes he’d never known before. “They tell usanyonecan rise through the ranks and become a jinshi scholar, but that’s a lie they use to placate us. No boy from our backwater town will ever pass the imperial exams, because our schools are simply not good enough. Meanwhile, some noble’s son with half a brain will rise through the ranks to become magistrate—and claim the system is fair. He’ll go to the capital, while you and your brothers toil over the fields for the rest of your damned lives, sowing the crops but never reaping the harvest. The nobles will take your grain and your profit, and you will never make more than just enough to scrape by.
“As for us women, our only hope is to marry well. The better we marry, the farther away we’ll go. If our husbands are generous, they’ll let us return home once a year for the Spring Festival. Then we’ll see our families, and we’ll weep, seeing them old and withered, knowing we won’t be there to hold their hands as they pass.Knowing we belong to our husbands’ households now. That is the best we can hope for—to be a servant in another’s home. And you ask me why I am angry.”
All this I channeled into the chasm—Kuro’s awe, his curiosity, his will to live another day, and another, and another. Even his grief-tainted memories I fed to the rift, knowing this too was a deeply human emotion. I gave the veil my delight at my mother’s delight, my pride and happiness at Uncle Zhou’s praise. My first inklings that I could begoodat something, that I could aspire to something more in this life.
I assumed the impulsion would be like water pouring from a breach in a dam; at first the memories might trickle in slowly, but gradually, the pace would increase, until no spirit could stop its momentum.
Instead, the veil welcomed our human memories, absorbing our qi like a long-lost friend. It took and took and took, and still came back for more. But as our qi slowly began to supplant its lixia, the veil began to resist us, as if not knowing how to balance itself against the changing composition of our realms. I fortified my impulsion, drawing strength from my memories. “Remember,” I heard my mother’s voice say in my ears, “there is so much to live for.”
Beyond, I was distantly aware of fighting that had broken out in the human realm. Yet the sounds of bloodshed were like the cries of birds in the sky, and we were submerged deep in the sea. Only when I felt Kuro’s corporeal hand rip from mine did my concentration waver.
“Guard him!” Sky’s infuriated voice broke through the haze of the in-between realm. I felt as though I were peering up at my former commander from a great distance, trying to make sense of a world that was not my own. My body had been left unattended in the clearing, though I appeared at ease, merely sleeping. Kuro laybeside me, one hand still joined with mine. There was blood trickling down his chin.Blood?
Had Lei’s diversion failed? And yet these were not spirits fighting Sky’s soldiers, but other men. Adding to the confusion were their uniforms—which also bore the Anlai colors.
“Commander—behind you!” Captain Tong threw his spear at Sky’s attacker, grimacing as the soldier dropped. He seemed to recognize the fallen man.
And then a gray-haired warlord on horseback broke through the clearing, and I understood: Liu Zhuo had found us out.
The Anlai warlord dismounted and drew his sword, striding toward my defenseless body. “My greatest mistake was letting you go,” he snarled, as if he somehow knew I could hear him. “This ends now.”
