“The prince. I think.”
Lan’s jaw dropped. The Crimson Phoenix was one of the Four Demon Gods—said to have been lost for at least a hundred cycles. But Shàn’jun and the other boy spoke of it asthough it still existed. As though they mightknowwhere it was.
A pause, the rustling of silk. Shàn’jun’s voice was somber when he spoke again. “I do not believe that the grandmaster thinks the clans will rise again. Is he, then, trying to understand more of the history? Is there something even you do not know?”
“So much.So much.”The other boy spoke vehemently. “The history of this kingdom has been rewritten. The Imperial Court determined the narrative. The Elantians destroyed it. The grandmaster wishes me to recover it. By interrogating one ghost at a time.”
“Do you think he searches for something? I have long wondered about the grandmaster’s goals and his deviation from the standard Hin beliefs. He sheltered me, a harelipped orphan. He took you and countless other clan members in. And he raised Zen—”
Shàn’jun stopped speaking abruptly. Lan caught a sudden movement, and then the door slid open.
Too late, she scrambled back.
Outlined in the backlight of the moon was one of the most attractive men Lan had ever seen. If Zen held an imperial and commanding beauty, this man bore a feral type of charm: all sharp, rectangular angles and hard planes of muscles. His hair was cut short, like Zen’s, but with untamed, windswept curls. Most arresting, however, were his eyes: gray irises ringed with pale gold, shadowed beneath strong black brows.
That face was currently arranged in a scowl that somehow seemed to befit it better than any smile.
“You,” the young man said. “I have not seen you here before. How much. How much have you heard?”
“Heard? I just got here,” Lan said quickly, but the boy took a threatening step toward her.
“You lie,” he growled, and then his gaze raked over her, searching. It landed on her left arm. “I heard. I heard the sound of your soul.”
Either this was some new practitioning term she had yet to learn, or he was barking mad. “Well, consider your ears blessed,” Lan said.
“Lan’mèi.” Shàn’jun stepped through the open door.
The air of jaunty insolence Lan had put up vanished. “There you are, Shàn’jun,” she said lightly. “I went to find you at the Chamber of a Hundred Healings, and the disciple told me you were here.” She dropped her gaze, opening herself to his rebuke or even anger at her eavesdropping.
Shàn’jun’s eyes curved in a smile. “And here I am. Ah, but where are my manners?” He stepped back, rubbing his head. “Tài’ge, this is Lan’mèi, a new disciple.” The other boy’s eyes narrowed again at Shàn’jun’s use of-mèiafter Lan’s name: a word that meant “little sister,” and a shorthand for endearment—much as Shàn’jun referred to the boy asge:“older brother.” “And Lan’mèi, this is Chó Tài—”
“That’s ‘Tai’ to you,” the boy said, the Elantian shorthand a clear insult to Lan.
“—disciple of Texts,” Shàn’jun persisted. “We were just discussing Tài’ge’s mission, from which he has returned. Pray tell, what did you hear?”
She should ask about the Demon Gods—who in their right mind wouldn’t?—but as Lan glanced at the other boy, she found a different question taking hold of her tongue. “You were a part of the Imperial Court?”
Tai looked furious, but Shàn’jun closed the gap between him and Lan. “Lan’mèi is my good friend,” the Medicine disciple said. “We can trust her to keep secrets.”
The other boy looked at Lan as if she were the last person he would trust with his secrets.
“When did you work at the court?” Lan probed again.
“In the None of Your Business Dynasty,” Tai growled.
Perhaps she should have tried harder to charm him. Cover blown, Lan rolled her eyes at Tai, but he was frowning at her, gaze fixed on her left arm. “You,” he said suddenly, in a very different tone. “You bear the will of the dead.”
The way he spoke those words sent a chill through Lan. She collected herself and crossed her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“There,” the boy replied. He stretched out a large hand and pointed to her left wrist. “Something is there. I feel a tethered will.”
“Tài’geis a Spirit Summoner, Lan’mèi,” Shàn’jun said. “He senses spiritual qì—the qì of the dead, a type of yin energy.”
“What in the Ten Hells is that?” Lan asked, her eyes never straying from the other boy’s.
“My clan’s specialty,” Tai explained with a glare, “is finding and summoning ghosts.”
“We ordinary practitioners can sometimes sense qì of the spirits, seeing as they are all subsets of yin energies,” Shàn’jun said patiently, and Lan thought suddenly of the yao, the ghostly apparition she had seen in the bamboo forest. “But Tài’ge’s clan has an affinity with the imprints ghosts and spirits of the dead have left in this world. Think of it as a branch of practitioning—an art—taught in this school…only his runs in his blood.”
