Something in the air shifted, and when Lan looked into Prince Hóng’yì’s gaze, she saw in their darkness the golden palace and bleeding roses, great feathered wings that burned. The pupils of his eyes seemed to expand, and she felt herself tip forward into them as they seized her whole.
The sensation was not physical; it resonated in her mind, yet seemed so searingly real that she felt as though a pair of hands had clamped over her cranium. There was a moment of pressure, and then her vision faltered as a foreign presence slipped inside her head.
Memories sifted past her in rushes of color and sound: a brightly lit teahouse, a girl in pale pink silks, a woman whose metal nails sliced, a dusty shop kept by an old man with a cough—
“The qì of the mind is fickle,”came a voice. Hóng’yì stood across the river of memories, his red páo as bright as a flame.“Find a memory and step within to stabilize the mind. The art, then, is to tease out information by rebuilding strands of the qì within, and coaxing your opponent to open more and more of their mind to you.”
I am in my own mind,Lan thought.
Hóng’yì turned as a courtyard house appeared behind him, willows shifting in the slanted sunlight, and stepped into the memory.
When Lan blinked again, she sat in a study across a set of fretwork windows. They had been thrown open to a great courtyard outside. A warm summer breeze blew in, and the weeping willows whispered across fanstone paths. Sunlight gleamed across ponds, refracting on the arched stone bridge and pavilions that wound between eggshell-white walls. The entire thing felt like an image out of a dream.
Lan couldn’t quite remember how she’d gotten here.
“You fell asleep copying sonnets again,” came a songlike tenor voice behind her. She turned to see a young man seated on one of the lacquerwood chairs. He leaned over a tea table—she hadn’t noticed the table—and loose parchments strewn on its surface fluttered in the breeze. Neat vertical rows of calligraphy spilled down their lengths, though upon closer examination, they seemed to blur.
“Is this…home?” she asked, and a pang of wistfulness hit her so strong that she thought she might weep. She couldn’t fathom why.
“Of course,” the young man replied.
She frowned and focused her gaze back on the young man. He, too, was familiar—beautiful, with a slim, chiseled face and hair that spilled down his shoulders like ink. There was something to his smile that was teasing as he shifted to watch her, his chin in his palm. His cheeks were flushed, his lips red as though they’d been painted, but as she looked at his forehead,she couldn’t help but feel as though something was missing. Red…something red…why was she thinking of red?
“What are you hiding?” he asked her.
The question came out of nowhere. She startled, her thoughts reeling.
The star maps inside the ocarina—
On the tea table between them, her ocarina appeared, summoned by her thought.
Mama’s Seal, which bound to me the Silver Dragon—
The air began to glow. Lan’s heart started to race as her mother’s Seal materialized before them. Within, a great serpentine form moved, as though trapped.
Something was wrong: all of her deepest secrets, ones she had never shared with anybody, were manifesting before this stranger.
Outside the window, the clouds were shifting; the color was leaching from the willows, glittering white snow sweeping over the grounds. No, this wasn’t her courtyard house. This wasn’t home.
Home no longer existed.
Winter crackled over the house, ice clamping over the green of the willows and freezing over the ponds. Pools of red bloomed across the snow, and the air grew heavy with the scent of metallic qì. Lan looked back at the young man sitting across from her. His face was blank, but surprise flickered in his eyes. She could sense them now, the strands of qì of her thoughts and memories he’d coaxed together, building into this memory.
Lan seized the qì and pushed it away.
The memory shattered.
Lan gasped and wrenched her eyes open. The scene—lacquerwood chairs, fretwork windows, weeping willows, andsummer light—vanished like smoke. She sat on the floor in the prince’s dim study, incense smoke from the altar table in the corner thick in the air. It smelled of desert roses, of something bitter and burning.
Across from her, Hóng’yì’s eyes flew open. Beads of sweat had appeared at his temples, pearling over the cinnabar eye on his forehead. His lips parted, and for a brief moment, she imagined he looked annoyed. Then he puffed out his cheeks and blew and gave a shaky laugh, and the moment was gone. “Ah, I did not expect that. You did well for your first time.”
She realized how low the lantern burned. It had felt like only several minutes. “I’m a quick study,” she replied, picking up her tea to drink. She hoped he would not notice her hands trembling.
“The trick,” Hóng’yì said, “is to convince your opponent that it’s real. There are some who prefer quick attacks on their opponents: disarm them, lull them into a comfort, and then strike to penetrate their mental walls before they put shields up. That was my intent when I asked you for your secrets.” His eyes crinkled. “If I tell you not to think of something, you’ll find that you immediately will.
“But if you can learn to weave your own qì of thought into your opponent’s mind, disguising it astheirthoughts, theirwill…that is the true power of this art, Lán’ér.”
“Have you used this art often, then?” She set down the teacup, keeping her tone light.
