This meant that the Black Tortoise lay northeast of them.
Dread clotted thick in his chest, beginning to work its way up to his throat even as he did the calculations. It would take several hours only, should he go by the Light Arts—or within reachable distance by Gate Seal.
The candle in their room flickered as a sudden cold wind blew in from the open window.
“Zen?” Lan came to crouch next to him, and he could not help but look at the way the lambent light draped soft over her outline, the shine to her eyes as she looked at the maps, then to him. His eyes trailed from her mouth to the crook of her neck where the red cord of his necklace hung, the silver amulet pressed into the curve of her chest. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
He shut his eyes briefly, hating that he could not drive the thought of her from his mind. Since when had he become so painfully aware of her presence, every move or shift or tilt of her head, the way she looped her hair behind her ears or chewed on her lip when she was thinking?
For the past eleven cycles, Zen had lived a life of austere self-discipline, following every rule and holding on to every principle he could find, convinced that doing so would pull his soul back from the abyss, would erase the demon he had hidden inside himself and the terrible bargain he had made once upon a winter sky.
Now he had broken all the Code rules, run away from school and the man who had saved him. Kissed a girl without a marriage vow—a breach of one of the most longstanding traditions of Hin society.
It is not just our bodies and flesh that must complement the Way—but our minds as well.
He finally understood what Dé’zihad meant by those words. For all that Zen could attempt to follow the rules of the Way and the codes outlined in the classics, there was still the part of his mind that rebelled no matter how hard he attempted to smother it. The rules had only been chains to hold him in place—a kind of self-assurance that he was working toward the good, the balance—but beneath, the person he was had never changed.
The Elantian outpost had broken something inside him, or perhaps set something inside him free. The shackles he’d put in place over himself were beginning to crumble.
He felt fingers slide over his. His eyes flew open, to see Lan looking at him, her face open and tender.
“Nothing,” he said, and summoned a smile as he touched the tip of her nose. “I’m looking at you.”
She broke into a smile. “You look so grave when you think,” she said, and reached forward, poking her index and middle fingers to either corner of his mouth, pulling it wide.“Smile,Zen.”
He reached up and cupped his hand over hers, unfurling her closed fingers so that her hand splayed against his face. Closing his eyes, he sighed and pressed his mouth to her palm just as the candle burned out.
He would wish for this night to never end. For them to live in this moment infinitely, instead of the long cycles that stretched ahead of them—whatever those might bring. In all the cycles of his life he had spent fighting himself and the world, it was the little moments with Lan in which he felt as though he could breathe again. As though he’d finally walked out of that long winter night into a clear spring day.
She shifted, leaning against him, and kissed him, her familiar scent of lilies wrapping around him. Zen gave in this time, hating himself as he drew her against him, his handsremaining chaste against her back yet wanting more, always more.
He did not wish to find the Demon Gods.
He did not wish to fight the Elantians.
He did not wish to think of the school, the masters, of what might happen to them.
All he wanted in this moment was to stay in this little village in the mountains with the girl he’d fallen for and sit by a window of rain, watching her hair grow white as snow with time.
It was a desire that could be little more than a fantasy, not the reality they had been born into: the reality of Elantian rule closing its grasp tighter and tighter over the Hins’ necks.
The Hin had a saying:Speak of the demon and the demon comes.Zen had never paid it heed—had never paid any silly superstitions any mind—but now he froze as a voice threaded through the evening.
“An army! There is an army!”
The voice was clear and bright, the same one that sang the songs of tilling fields and herding water buffalo each evening. Zen drew back, and he found his expression reflected in Lan’s: the jarring realization of one waking from a dream.
They hurried out of their room, across the courtyard, their urgent steps scattering the feeding chickens. On the street, doors were being thrown open, villagers poking their heads out, faces frightened and curious at once. Their expressions mirrored those of the children, who had stopped nearby and were reporting their finds with a shine in their eyes.
“—wearing silver and blue—”
“—they looked like ariver,Auntie!—”
“Where?” Zen grasped the nearest child, a boy about eight cycles old, his hair patchy from having been shaved off by his mother for convenience. “Where were they?”
The child gave him a frightened look. Lan smacked Zen’s hand away; she turned to the child and beamed. “You saw an army of foreign devils!” she exclaimed, employing the term the Hin used to refer to the Elantians. “Are they near?”
“They were walking the mountain pass,” the boy replied, pleased at her attention. He pointed to the north, where the sky had settled into a dark indigo and the mountains were no more than silhouettes. “That way.”
