Chương 33: The Orphanage

Rowan The clouds had swallowed the sun, the air thick and wet on his skin. Rowan walked slowly towards the orphanage, each step taken blending with the next. He did not know what dangers awaited him. This morning, he'd scraped himself out of bed with the goal of finding targets to practice his Germination on. He knew demonic cultivators were evil. He had heard all the stories. But witnessing this horror himself - He tried to distract himself by going over the advancements he'd made with Germination today.

That had been the whole point of this, hadn't it? Scouring the wharf for Clodde Bastin had pushed his Divine Sense further than any training drill would have. Real use, real growth. In turn, the speed and accuracy of his Germination had improved significantly - about a tenth. Rowan knew, from the earliest lessons both in House Helsing and the sect, that an improvement to Divine Sense was the most reliable indicator for advancement in general cultivation ability.

He'd saved a life, and his cultivation had advanced weeks beyond where quiet meditation and hitting training dummies would've put him. Small mercies, given what it had cost to get there. He shook his head, shifting the corpse in his arms again. He was a cultivator. Wallowing was unacceptable. He had a job to finish. Rowan channeled the Red Thread Fate Divining spell again, focusing on the girl in his arms. The colors bled away immediately.

The thick, red strand that bloomed in his vision immediately linked him to the structure directly ahead of him, down the road - far quicker than he'd expected. This part of the district was no less rundown than where Bastin's barn had been, but it was slightly more crowded. When the residents milling the streets took one look at him - the grandiose stereotype of a cultivator in his well-made sect robes and qi-sculpted features - they began to stare and point.

When they saw two pale, unmoving legs peeking out of the coarse blankets he carried, a fearful silence blanketed the street. Rowan wondered if any of them would alert a constable, or if such a neighborhood even had the means to contact the Dao Court. Either way, Rowan would not wait for authorities to arrive, be it from the Dao Court or the sect, because a third emotion, stronger than the trepidation, stronger than the morose despair at what had transpired, began to overtake him as he approached the orphanage.

Orphanages, as a whole, were places of high Yin qi. Children arrived here in the darkest moments of their lives, and the orphanages themselves tended to be poor and understaffed, leading to more negative feelings. Rowan expected some Yin qi. And considering the evil practices happening here, it would be denser than in the average orphanage. But there was no Yin qi at all. No sign, spiritually, of suffering. The absence was louder than any of the buffeting winds of Yin qi he had expected.

As he stepped past the rusting iron gates into the orphanage's front yard, he knew what he felt wasn't just his anger at demonic cultivators or his resolve to see this excursion to its conclusion. Rowan wanted revenge. He knocked on the door. Hard. The orphanage door had been freshly painted - he could smell it. But the green was already chipping, flaking at the edges in a way that had nothing to do with wear. Something was eating through it. Under his touch, more paint crumbled away, dusting his boots.

A few whispers from behind the door. In the windows, he saw the faces of young children looking at him with curious eyes. Finally, the door cracked open, revealing an older woman, who craned her head outwards. Her hair was in a strict bun, gray shot through with white. The skin around her eyes and mouth was papery, and when she smiled at him, dozens of folds appeared. Behind her, Rowan counted almost twenty faces. All younger girls. None of them met his eye.

"Young immortal master," she welcomed, "this lowly matron welcomes you to our establishment. How can I be of service?" Yesterday, he might have considered the practiced smile motherly. Rowan let the cloth fall away, revealing the body of the girl.

"Do you recognize her?" he asked, sharp and to the point. It was about all he could manage. The matron covered her mouth, letting go of the door, which swung open further. She stared at the girl, and shook her head.

"What a terrible tragedy," she whispered.

"Is she from this neighborhood? I-""Adorna!" one of the younger girls behind the matron screamed. An older girl frantically clamped her palm over the girl's mouth, dragging her away, furiously whispering in her ear, begging her to stay quiet. For just a moment, Rowan watched as a deep, primal fury invaded the matron's eyes. Her fists clenched. She schooled her features back into that motherly mask, dripping with contrition, as she threw up her hands.

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"O-oh no," she half-sobbed.

"My old age must be getting to me. How could I have failed to recognize poor-""The poor girl that you sold for a few silvers?" The woman fell to her knees.

"Please, great immortal, there's been a misunderstanding. I had no hand in this tragedy. The girls aren't- they aren't sold," she wailed, her fingers clutching at the ground.

"We do charge a pittance of an adoption fee if any kind sponsor can pay, but only to feed the rest of the children. If we didn't, the girls would go hungry. We take in any poor lost souls-" Rowan stared past her, at the girls who stood as still as statues, or hid behind pieces of ratty furniture. Some of the older girls gave him hopeful looks, and contorted their faces into welcoming smiles.

One surreptitiously lowered a dirtied blouse, and tilted her face upwards, in imitation of the courtesans along the main road. He thought of the way Dalia had instinctively shed her modesty when he'd announced himself as a cultivator, even with the remains of Bastin warming the barn, even with the cool body of Adorna laying beside her. Someone had taught them this. Rowan stepped past the kneeling matron. As soon as his boot crossed the threshold, the world shattered.

The protections concealing the orphanage could no longer hide the truth from Rowan. Yin qi rushed forth, cold and dull, enveloping him entirely. It was the worst place he had ever been in. This qi was years of hopelessness. It wasn't the churning dread of demonic arts, just the damp miseries of mortals. And someone had gone through considerable effort to hide it. He shivered.

"Please, please," the woman cried, knocking her forehead against the molding floorboards.

"I'm a victim too. The men, they said they would leave no one alive if I didn't give them the girls that caught their eye, I-""You were threatened," said Rowan, turning back to the matron. She looked up at him hopefully, tugging at the hem of his robe.

"Yes, threatened with the most painful death." She exhaled, nodding frantically.

"I did my best! I could only save-" Rowan cast his eye over the girls, over the barely hidden bruises, the smattered cuts and scabs from rose bushes, the sudden nervousness in their eyes.

"You were threatened, and the girls were taken despite your best efforts," Rowan continued.

"Yes, yes, honorable immortal. What a fortuitous day, that a righteous cultivator has finally been sent from above, that our prayers for justice could be answered-""And then they paid you ten silver taels per girl," Rowan finished, flatly. The matron stopped, looking up at him in quiet dread. Rowan was taught that the process of ascension was a struggle against the heavens, that cultivation was the grandest act of defiance, and that immortality was the proof of victory in that contest.

Today, he couldn't help but believe that sometimes, a cultivator's motives and the will of the divine had to align. He gently placed Adorna's body onto the ground and drew his sword.

"Those prayers are answered," Rowan whispered. A flash of steel. The matron's head went flying off her neck. Blood sprayed from her severed arteries, splashing the hallway. Her head rolled until her forehead met the baseboard, eyes staring open at her own blood dripping down the walls. He scoffed and kicked her head down the hallway. Short, muffled screams. Sounds of surprise, not fear. When he turned to the girls, the tired relief on their faces sparked a fresh anger. His voice stumbled as he addressed them.

"I don't have a place for you to go," he said, taking on the stilted, formal tone he'd been taught to speak with in important circumstances.

"I apologize for any inconvenience my actions might cause." Rowan paused. Now he was the one who was unable to meet anyone's eye.

"I'm sorry." Sorry that he, too, in a way was a penniless orphan, who was unable to give them the bloody inheritance that Dalia had gotten. Sorry that he couldn't even bring himself to tell them to leave letters with Old Hesser if they were in trouble. Sorry that he was shaking too hard to comfort the girl who'd darted out from one of the back rooms and threw herself onto the corpse at his feet, sobbing silently. One of the older girls tugged at his sleeve.

She seemed to be the same age as Dalia, and far more plain, which might have saved her from the Bastins that solicited the orphanage.

"Will you be alright?" Rowan schooled his features. Was his distress so obvious?

"I'm fine."

"Are you very powerful?" the girl whispered. Rowan nodded, trying to find a reassuring smile. Her voice lowered even further.

"More powerful than the immortal downstairs?"

"Downstairs?" Rowan repeated, suddenly alert. She shook her head, looking around. The panic from the girl was contagious, as the girls were suddenly reminded of whoever Rowan had just been warned of.

"Please kill him," she mouthed, and then suddenly bolted for the open door, taking off in a dead run. As silent as mice, girl after girl ran or briskly walked past him. Some of them thanked him softly, but they all seemed to only have escape on their mind. In mere moments, only three or four girls remained, sullenly perched behind worn sofas. The girl rocking Adorna's body had exhausted herself, and had fallen into a troubled sleep on her corpse.

"You have to leave," Rowan said to them. One nodded back at him dully, but none of them moved. Rowan picked up both the sleeping girl and Adorna's corpse in one arm and carried them outside, past the iron gate. He didn't want to put them down in the dirt, but he felt he had no choice. A crowd had gathered across the road now, brimming with frantic energy. Their eyes planted on the naked, dripping blade clutched in his right hand. None of the girls who'd fled the orphanage were in sight.

Rowan took a deep breath and stepped back into the malaise of Yin energy. A few girls were still inside. He shook the blood from his blade, droplets flying.

"This place isn't safe anymore. Get out." He ignored the flinches. They scrambled past him like spooked rats. Rowan looked down at the headless matron, and then further away, where her head was wedged under a couch. Rowan was sure that after the affair was concluded. The sect would have to perform some sort of exorcism. The qi was too dense, too sad, and the dead matron had been responsible for too much of it. But first, Rowan would deal with the cultivator hiding downstairs.