Do-do-sol.
The first notes crested across the chamber like a gale, stirring sheets of paper and whipping the flames of the lamp into a frenzy. Time seemed to slow as Dilaya charged, Wolf’s Fang curving through the air. As Lan played the next chords of song, the notes whipped past Dilaya like invisible throwing knives, stirring up the sleeves of her páo and splitting against her blade with audibletwangs.
Lan closed her eyes and played the next notes—except this time, she altered them slightly. It was the subtlest shift, yet as she blew, she could sense the song shifting, the qì wrapping around it differently, comprising different components…almost as though she were drawing a Seal.
Do…sol-do.
The riff caught Dilaya: a jab on her neck, the exact spot Lan had seen Erascius hit on Zen’s neck. The girl stumbled, her lips parting in shock as her body gave way to paralysis. She crumpled on the floor, her sword clanging at her side.
Shàn’jun knelt, his face pale as he beheld the unconscious disciple of Swords. Slowly, he raised his gaze to Lan. “What was that?” he whispered, and she saw his eyes flick to the ocarina in her hands. “What did you do?”
She wished she had an explanation for him. She wished she could explain any of the events that had arisen since the night in Haak’gong. Since she’d chosen to go down this path, to follow the ghost of her mother’s song.
“I don’t know,” Lan replied. “Forgiveness, Shàn’jun.”
She turned toward the door.
Fingers latched onto her wrist: warm and long, their grip tight. When she glanced back, she saw that it wasn’t Shàn’jun but Tai who held her. A lock of his tousled hair had fallen into his eyes; half his face was shrouded in shadows, half in the flickering light of the lamp.
“Your mother,” he said quietly. “Was she a member of a clan?”
She had no idea how to answer that—no idea how the question was even relevant in this moment.
She was running out of time.
“Ask her ghost, if you so wish to know,” Lan replied. “Let me go.”
To her surprise, Tai stepped back, his arm falling to his side—but his eyes did not leave her.
“I know” was all he said. “I know now.”
She feared that if she remained any longer, she would not leave. Lan turned and, clutching her ocarina, ran into the night.
A practitioner requires not only devotion of the body but that of the mind and soul. An obedient body with a traitorous mind is self-deception.
—Dào’zi,Book of the Way (Classic of Virtues),1.6
Zen had been in the Chamber of Clarity twice before in his life: once when he had first arrived at Skies’ End, and the second time when he had stood trial after his demon had maimed Yeshin Noro Dilaya. Both times, the grandmaster had saved him by appealing to the other masters, saying that he could still be taught, his aberrant ways rectified, when he learned the principles of the Way.
Now Dé’ziwas silent. The chamber was dark and made completely of stone, with carvings of the Hin pantheon of gods and demons watching from the cornices. There were no windows; the only light came from several paper lamps. Zen knelt before all the masters of the School of the White Pines. A dull pain throbbed in his back, where the ferule had left red welts across his skin.
Dé’zihad long declared the ferule an antiquated method of punishment.Pain and cruelty can be borne by those with a will strong enough,he’d once said, his words ringing with finality in this chamber.It is the mind we must heed more.
You were right, shi’fù,Zen thought.Pain is only flesh-deep. My scars I bear on my soul.
Ulara had taken pleasure in chaining his hands to the iron pole, binding him so he could barely move. Zen did not mind. He would have taken the ferule in silence either way.
It was a small price to be paid for what he had done, and what he was about to do. If the masters caught wind that he meant to hunt down the Demon Gods, banishment from Skies’ End would be one of the kinder punishments.
“Well, that’s it?” squawked Feng’shí, the Master of Geomancy. He leaned back, a hemp pouch slung across his chest bearing turtle shells, bones, and a pipe he put out only in the presence of Dé’zi. Geomancy—the interpretation of fate according to stars and bones—had been Zen’s worst subject as a disciple, and the master, though unpredictable and impartial to all but his own strange whims, bore Zen no fondness. He’d claimed to have seen the evil incarnate in Zen’s soul; he’d read of Zen’s deviation from the Way in the stars. “You’ve nothin’ else to your story than how the Elantians tracked you and that girl down and you destroyed their outpost?”
“I would say that’s plenty, Master Feng,” said Ip’fong, the master of Iron Fists. Large, lumbering, and essentially two hundred jin of pure muscle, he was one for more action and fewer words. “The Elantians are preparing to launch their long-overdue invasion into the Central Plains. We have been lucky to evade their scouts throughout the cycles, but our Boundary Seal will not stand against a full army.”
“Yet all this begs the question,” said the Nameless Master of Assassins, his voice like smoke in a starless night, “of what these disciples were doing outside Skies’ End in the first place.”
“Have I not stated clearly enough?” Zen asked, his chains clinking as he raised his head to look around the chamber at the masters. “We searched for the ghost of her mother. Iagreed to take the girl in hopes of giving her closure on the matter. It was affecting her studies.”
“And you knew that was wrong,” the Master of Texts said loudly. “You know better than to go against the Code of Conduct, Zen.”
