He hadn’t felt it, then. Lan touched the tip of her fingers to her temples. It hadn’t been anything—a momentary lapsein focus, a trick of the nerves, brought on by hunger and exhaustion. “It’s a bit different,” she replied, ignoring the familiar disappointment that curdled in her stomach.
It had been so close…and yet itwasn’t.
“Not what you’re looking for, then,” Old Wei said, clearing his throat, “but I think it’s a start. See here—the syllabary seems to be composed in the same style as yours, with those curves and dashes…but the circle outside is really what caught my attention.” He tapped two calloused fingers to the page. “Everything we’ve seen with a circle around the character has been there only for decoration. But see how these strokes bleed into the circle? They were written in a conjoined line—a clear beginning and end.”
She let him drone on, but really, her mind reeled with a crumbling realization: that she might never understand what had happened the day her mother died and the Last Kingdom fell. That she might never know how it was possible that her mother had reached up, fingers trembling and slicked with red, and, with her bare skin,burnedsomething into Lan’s wrist. Something that had remained after all these cycles in the form of a mark visible only to Lan.
A memory that existed between dream and imagination—the faintest spark of hope for whatshouldn’tbe possible.
“…hear anything I just said?”
Lan blinked, the past swirling away like smoke.
Old Wei was giving her the stink eye. “I wassaying,” he said with the peevishness of a teacher who’d been ignored by his pupil, “that this came from an old temple bookhouse and was rumored to have originated at one of the Hundred Schools of Practitioning themselves. I do know that the practitioners of old wrote in a different type of script.”
Her breath caught at the word.Practitioner.
Lan curved her lips into a smile and slid forward, proppingherself on one elbow on the counter. “I’m sure the practitioners wrote these, alongside the yao’mó’gui’guài they bargained their souls to,” she said, and Old Wei’s face dropped.
“ ‘Speak of the demon and the demon comes!’ ” he hissed, glancing around as though one might jump out from behind his cabinet of dried goji berries. “Do not curse my shop with such portentous sayings!”
Lan rolled her eyes. In the villages where Old Wei was from, superstitions ran deeper than in the cities. Stories of ghouls haunting villages in forests of pine and bamboo, of demons eating the souls of babies in the night.
Such things might have sent shivers up Lan’s spine once, given her second thoughts about walking in the shadows. But now she knew there were worse things to fear.
“It’s all just folklore, Old Wei,” she said.
Old Wei leaned forward, close enough that she could see the tea stains on his teeth. “The Dragon Emperor might have banned such topics when he founded the Last Kingdom, but I remember the tales from my grandfather’s grandfathers. I have heard the stories of ancient orders of practitioners cultivating magic and martial arts, walking the rivers and lakes of the First and Middle Kingdoms, fighting evil and bringing justice to the world. Even when the emperors of the Middle Kingdom attempted to control practitioning, they couldn’t hide the traces of evidence across our lands. Tomes written in characters that are indecipherable, temples and secret troves of treasures and artifacts with properties inexplicable—practitioning magic has always been ingrained in our history, ya’tou.”
Old Wei was one of those ardent believers in the myths of folk heroes—practitioners—who had once walked on water and flown over mountains, wielding magic and slaying demons. And perhaps they once had—long, long ago.
“Then where are they now? Why haven’t they come to saveus from…this?” Lan gestured at the door, at the dilapidated streets. At the old man’s hesitation, her lips twisted. “Even if they did once exist, it was probably centuries and dynasties ago. Whatever folk heroes and practitioners of old you believe in are dead.” Her voice softened. “There are no heroes left for us in this world, Old Wei.”
Her friend gave her a penetrating look. “Is that what youtrulybelieve?” he said. “Then tell me, why is it that you make your weekly visits down here, searching for a strange character on a scar onlyyoucan see?”
His words cut like a blade to Lan’s heart, pinning the smallest flicker of a spark she hadn’t dared utter—had never dared utter: that, in spite of all she told herself, what she had witnessed on the day of her mother’s death…had been something like magic.
And the scar on her wrist held the clue—the only clue—to the truth of that day.
“Because it lets me hope that there’s something else for me out there. Something other than this life.” The dust motes before her swirled, stained red and orange by the setting sun, like the dying embers of a fire. Lan set her hand over the slip of parchment. Perhaps there was something to be learned in the inscrutable strokes of that character. It was the closest she’d gotten in the past twelve cycles, after all.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “I’ll take the scroll.”
The old shopkeeper blinked, clearly surprised at this development. “Ah.” He tapped the scroll. “You be careful, eh, ya’tou? I’ve heard too many a tale of marks created by dark, demonic energies. Whatever’s on your wrist inside that scar…well, let’s just hope it was left by someone with a noble cause.”
“Superstitions,” Lan repeated.
“All superstitions must come from somewhere,” the shopkeeper said ominously, then crooked his fingers. “Now, let’ssee the payment. Nothing comes for free. Got rent to pay, food to buy.”
She hesitated only briefly. Then Lan leaned over the counter, brushing aside a small sack of herbal powders Old Wei had been weighing, and placed a ragged hemp pouch on its surface. It landed with a clink.
Old Wei’s hands darted out, pawing through its contents. His eyes widened as he drew something out.
“Ten Hells, ya’tou,” he whispered, and drew his old paper lamp closer. In the light of the flames, a sleek silver spoon glistened.
The sight of it brought a stab of longing to her heart. It hadbeen her prize find, accidentally thrown out with the broken dishes in the back alleys of the Teahouse. She’d been counting on selling it to buy off a moon or two from her contract at the Teahouse. The thing would clearly fetch a small fortune, for metal—any type of metal—was a relic of the past. One of the first things the Elantians did when they took over was to monopolize the supply of metal from all over the Last Kingdom. Gold, silver, copper, iron, tin—even a small silver spoon was a rarity these days. The Elantians had stopped short of seizing all the metalware in the Last Kingdom; Lan surmised that a few spoons and some coins and prized jewelry were hardly enough to build weapons of resistance for a revolution.
Lan knew where all the metal was going: to the Elantian magicians. It was said they channeled magic through metal.ThatLan could believe. She had seen, with her own eyes, the terrifying power they held. They had brought down the Last Kingdom with nothing but their bare hands.
