Chương 160: Chapter 157

The Inner Disciple walks ahead of us at a pace that is not exactly fast but that also makes not the least effort to accommodate ours, and I have spent the time since we left the courtyard asking myself whether that is a calculated rudeness or simply the manner he has of walking when he is accompanied by someone he considers a piece of furniture with wheels.

Whatever it may be, the practical result is the same, and it is that Lianhua has to push faster than she would like and I feel the few bumps of the road with force. And then there are the staircases. The first flight appears before we have covered two hundred paces, and Lianhua, who doesn't need me to tell her anything, stops, puts her hand among the folds of her clothing, peels a talisman off the block and the chair rises a few fingers.

We climb, and as we climb the landscape changes in a way that turns out fairly easy to read even if one knows nothing about sects. The buildings become larger and older, the stone of the paths is better fitted, the pines seem pruned and the people we cross paths with, who are no longer many, step off the path before it is necessary to ask them to.

The second talisman comes into operation shortly before the climb ends, and by then I have already stopped looking at the buildings and am devoting myself to mentally reviewing the plan, which is a plan so simple that it almost gives me shame to call it that. I left the house fresh from the breakfast table, without preparing myself, without an hour to think and with the face of one who doesn't quite know what is going on, and the only thing I have to do is emphasize that all of that has affected me.

I had never been assigned such a comfortable role. And at last, when the path ends, we arrive. The building is fitted into a terrace almost at the very top of the Sect and is wider than it is tall, with a roof of very long eaves and some columns of dark wood that someone keeps varnished with an evident devotion. It is not exactly pretty, but rather it is one of those buildings that are constructed so that whoever sees it notices right away that it is a place where important decisions are made.

And in the center of the facade there are double doors, tall, of the same color as the columns, with the emblem of the Celestial Sun distributed between the two leaves so that it is only seen whole when they are closed, as now. The Inner Disciple stops three paces from them, turns, and for the first time in the whole journey deigns to look at me directly.

"Your interview will be held in the Main Hall of the Sect", he tells me. And then, without transition or courtesy, he repeats himself by adding what he told me a scant half hour ago, but which by the look of it he needs to repeat here for the record.

"Your handmaiden cannot follow you", he finishes. I look at him a moment, and then I lower my gaze toward my legs, toward the wheels, toward the entire ensemble of my person, and I lift it again toward him.

"I beg you to excuse me", I tell him with all the politeness I can.

"But if no one pushes my chair, I cannot enter." Upon hearing me, the Inner Disciple furrows his brow, and it is not a gesture of annoyance, but that of someone who has just stumbled upon a problem that was not in his instructions. He stays an instant motionless, with his gaze lost in some point that is not in this courtyard.

And while I observe him, a sudden idea occurs to me, and it is that if I had learned the Golden Chains of Ogma, right now, at this precise instant, I would be seeing a golden line coming out of this man and entering the hall through the closed doors. One line, or perhaps several, and with that I would know exactly how many people there are on the other side waiting for me.

But while I am thinking about that idea, the Disciple focuses his gaze again, looks at me once more, and when he speaks he does so with a tone in which the annoyance no longer bothers to disguise itself.

"I myself will push your chair to the hall", he says. And at the exact moment in which he finishes the sentence, the double doors begin to open inward, slowly, without anyone touching them and without a single creak, splitting the symbol of the Celestial Sun into two halves that separate.

"Lianhua", I tell her as I turn my head to look at her.

"Leave him the spot." And I notice perfectly the half second her reluctance takes to let go of the handles, although when she finally steps aside she does so with a perfect inclination and withdraws to one side of the threshold with her hands crossed in front, still as one more column.

The Inner Disciple occupies her place behind me, and I discover right away the difference between someone who has spent half their life pushing this chair and someone who touches it for the first time and who besides would prefer not to be touching it, because the start is abrupt, the wheels catch the edge of the threshold and it jolts me before we have entirely entered.

I clench my teeth and say absolutely nothing, because complaining would be unbecoming and because, sincerely, entering the hall with the face of having had a fright does not harm me in the least either. And then we enter the Main Hall of the Sect of the Celestial Sun. It is a large room, much larger than it seems from outside, with a floor of gray flagstones polished by the feet of countless generations and a ceiling of dark beams that loses itself in the dimness.

And the first thing that surprises me is how little there is in it, because there are no tapestries, nor statues, nor golden lacquers, nor any of those accumulations of wealth to which I am accustomed at the Imperial Palace. There are two bronze braziers, a couple of long banners hanging from the beams and little more. Just enough for it to seem important. And it achieves it, one must acknowledge, although it probably achieves it because of that.

At the front there is a raised dais, and on the dais there are chairs. One in the center, alone, higher than the others and empty. And to the sides of that one, eight on each side, sixteen chairs in total with eight of them occupied. I register that fact before any other, because it is the one that first tells me something, and it is that half the chairs of this dais are free.

Either the Sect has fewer Elders than seats, which I doubt, or half of them have decided that interviewing the crippled daughter of the Emperor is not sufficient motive to get up this morning. And in case any doubt remained for me about the second, the eight occupied chairs are not even distributed with symmetry, but rather there are five on the left side and three on the right. I lift my gaze toward them. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Five men and three women. And if they have anything in common, apart from the tunic, I am not capable of finding it, because the appearances range from a man who does not look much more than forty years old to an old woman so slight and wrinkled that it seems the chair is swallowing her. One is enormous and broad-shouldered, another is so thin that the tunic hangs on him as from a rack and one of the women has completely white hair gathered with a simplicity that at court would be considered an insult.

But the tunics are indeed identical, all of the same cut and the same sober color, all with an embroidery on the chest that I have not seen on any disciple of this mountain, nor on the patrols, nor on the man who is pushing me. And with that I have more than enough, without anyone having to explain anything more to me. These are the Elders. I then search, quickly and without letting it show, for the only face I would know how to recognize, and it is not there.

Among those eight there are no small dark eyes that would probably look at me with hostility, so the Elder Feng has not come. And the relief lasts me exactly as long as I take to realize another problem, and it is that there is another person in this Sect who would have more than enough motives to sit in one of those chairs and whom I would not recognize even if they put him in front of me, so I look at the eight faces again, searching for one that reminds me of my father or my brothers, but I don't find any.

Which probably means that my grandfather has not come either. But what I do notice is that all those present look at me exactly the same way, with the tranquil and dispassionate attention with which one watches a cart of merchandise arrive that must be weighed before deciding the price. The Inner Disciple stops in the middle of the hall, at a distance from the dais that is evidently fixed by some norm and then he steps aside a pace, joins his hands and dedicates to them a long and deep bow before leaving afterward.

I hear his footsteps moving away at my back, I hear the whisper of the leaves turning on their hinges and, finally, the dry and clean thud of the doors as they fit together. And I am left alone in the center of the hall with eight people looking at me from above. The first thing I do is breathe, slowly and through my nose.

The second is to settle myself in the chair, and here is where the work begins, because what I do is let my shoulders drop a finger's width, join my hands on my lap with my fingers a little too intertwined and lower my chin just enough that my gaze has to rise a bit toward the dais. It is a minimal adjustment, so small that it could not even be called acting, and that is precisely the motive for which it works.

A twelve-year-old girl who has been taken from her breakfast without prior notice, who has spent three weeks shut in a house without seeing anyone and who has just been left alone before eight powerful strangers should be exactly like this. Besides, and this is what truly matters to me, I have to take for granted from this very instant that in here there is someone capable of knowing whether I am lying.

I don't know whether it is a technique, an artifact or an ability earned at some step of cultivation I don't even know about, but I would be an idiot if I took for granted that it does not exist when in so many of the works of fiction of my previous world it is one of the first things that are promoted when a society has magical powers. So the rule for the next few minutes is simple and admits no exceptions, and it is that I am not going to tell a single lie.

I am going to tell the truth, but evidently only the one that suits me, placed in the order that interests me and with the gaps that may be necessary, all following the manual of the Aes Sedai in the White Tower. Having that clear, and since a guest does not wait to be interrogated without having greeted, I rest my hands on the armrests, incline my torso forward as much as my body permits me and compose the cleanest bow I am capable of offering seated.

"Sun Wen greets the esteemed Elders of the Sect of the Celestial Sun", I say, and I make sure the voice comes out clear but not too firm.

"And thanks them for having had the kindness to receive her." For a couple of seconds no one answers, but afterward, the elder seated nearest the empty chair on the left side, a man with a short gray beard and a thinness that does not quite become sickly, moves his head barely a finger's width.

"The Elders of the Sect of the Celestial Sun return your greeting", he says. And with that, the courtesy is over. No one introduces themselves, neither he nor any of the other seven. No one tells me their name, no one indicates to me how I must address them and no one considers, apparently, that that is a problem.

And I, who have spent my whole life in a court where a badly done introduction can ruin a family's week, take mental note of the magnitude of the disdain, file it away and decide to think about how to draw advantage from it. The first to take the floor is the thin man on the right side, the one with the tunic hanging from his shoulders, and he does it without any preamble whatsoever while he runs over me up and down with a grimace he doesn't even try to disguise.

"Is it the custom at the Imperial Palace to present oneself at a formal reception in those strange clothes instead of in decent attire?" he says with contempt. I lower my gaze an instant toward it, toward the light fabric, the crossed straps, the short skirt and my bare arms, and toward the wide collar of lapis lazuli and gold that Lianhua put on me in a great hurry before leaving, and then I lift my gaze again.

"I beg you to excuse the offense, esteemed Elder, because it was in no way my intention", I tell him.

"These clothes are copied from those used by a Celestial Sect that lived in a place where the heat there is now in the Empire lasted all year round. And since I do not have the Fire Gate open, the heat affects me the same as any ordinary person." I make a very small pause.

"It is the clothing I brought with me", I finish.

"And it is the clothing I will have to wear on the return journey." The Elder presses his lips together, because skipping a dress code out of comfort is a breach of etiquette, but he cannot reply much to me without setting about discussing the style of dress of a sect that lives in the Celestial Realm. And as a bonus, I have just slipped in, with complete naturalness and without anyone having asked me, that I do not have the Fire Gate open.

"Elder Wei Lin", says then one of the women from the left side, without raising her voice.

"If you have finished with the wardrobe, there are more useful questions." The woman who has just spoken is the one with white hair gathered with simplicity, and she has a voice without edges, of those that don't need to raise their tone because no one ever interrupts them. She waits for the thin one to lean back in his chair and then addresses me.

"What is your level of cultivation?" she asks me. And there arrives the first real question.

"I have finished the Body Tempering and have begun with the Gate Opening, esteemed Elder", I answer her. And I don't say a single word more, because each extra word is an opportunity to put my foot in it, and because what I have just said is completely true, even if it is not the whole truth. I then notice something. It is a faint sensation, barely a pressure that grazes me and disappears, and I stay very still while it lasts, trusting blindly in the earrings and in a woman who left the Empire years ago.

The old woman with white hair does not change expression, so I assume the pearls have done their job.

"And how?" she asks next.

"At your age, and in your situation, that is not common."

"At my residence in the Imperial Palace I have a Qi-gathering formation, esteemed Elder", I reply right away, because this answer I have had prepared since before climbing into the carriage.

"I finished the Body Tempering thanks to its help." And that is also true, word for word. What happens is that none of the eight has any motive to ask themselves when that really occurred. And I am certainly not going to be the one to suggest it to them.

"Sun Wen", says then an enormous man from the left side, with a voice that makes the air of the hall vibrate.

"One of your handmaidens is in the Condensation of the Elemental Cores." He says it as an accusation, not as a question, and waits.

"That is so", I confirm.

"How have you achieved it?" he asks. And here the answer is also easy, because it is also true.

"She is my personal bodyguard, esteemed Elder", I tell him.

"And I cannot defend myself from absolutely anything on my own. So I have assigned her a monthly quantity of spirit stones that she is obliged to spend on the formation of my residence, whether she wants to or not." I raise my shoulders a bit.

"I had to order her to", I add.

"Because she thought the quantity was excessive, she was opposed to my spending those resources on her." And fortunately no one, absolutely no one, asks me what that quantity is. I stay waiting for the question a couple of seconds with a small knot in my stomach, because if they ask it I will have to give the figure, and the figure would indeed make me draw attention. But it doesn't come, and therefore I can keep maintaining the fiction that I have spent a great many resources on Lianhua.

"Elder Tang Bo", says the one with the gray beard who returned the greeting with a gesture.

"It is your turn." Elder Tang Bo turns out to be a man of broad face and small eyes who until now has not moved a muscle. And when he speaks, he does it slowly, like one who sets a trap and stays watching to see who steps in it.

"During your stay at this Sect you have made use of several high-level talismans", he says.

"Talismans that someone of your level of cultivation should not be able to afford." He makes a pause.

"Where did you get them?" he asks finally.