Chương 161: Chapter 158

Upon hearing the Elder's question I almost start applauding, because this is the question I have wanted them to ask me since the day Lianhua stuck the first levitation talisman on the side of my chair at the entrance to the sect, and now I only have to answer it exactly as I already have it planned.

But I have to play the part well, so I let my eyes drop toward my hands, let my shoulders sink a bit more and speak with the tone of one who has spent the morning thinking about one thing and suddenly remembers something that hurts.

"As I imagine the esteemed Elders will already know, for a time I was the student of a talisman Master come from outside the Empire", I begin. No one confirms it, but there is no need either, because I see perfectly how two or three of them settle minimally in their seats. Of course they know.

"Unfortunately, she never came to give me all the classes for which she had been contracted", I continue, and here I let the regret show, which besides I don't even have to feign.

"Nor was I able to finish the studies we had programmed, since the arrival of the Fire Qi Surge obliged her to leave the Empire considerably ahead of time." I lift my gaze while I feign that I am afflicted.

"And before leaving, as compensation for all the lessons she was no longer going to be able to give me, she left me several gifts", I tell them. And I fall silent while I let the silence do the rest of the work on its own, because the rest of the work does not correspond to me. And it works, oh how it works.

I see it install itself on Tang Bo's face first and spread afterward across the dais like an oil stain, that concrete expression of one who has just fitted two pieces together and is left satisfied at having done it all by himself. A talisman master, farewell gifts and some high-level talismans in the hands of a girl who wouldn't know how to make them even if she wanted to. And everything I have just said is true, every sentence and every word.

I was her student, she never gave me all the classes, I never finished my studies, she left ahead of time because of the surge and she left me gifts before going. The only thing I have done is put it all together in the same paragraph and fall silent at the right time. Although I cannot relax either, because there is one question that would bring it all down.

It would be enough for one of them to ask me whether the talismans are that gift for me to have to answer no, and from there the interrogation would change in nature completely. But they don't ask it, and they don't ask it because they already have an answer they have arrived at on their own, and people never review the conclusions they believe they have arrived at by themselves.

"Sun Wen", says then another of the women, and it is the diminutive old woman, the one who almost disappears inside the chair. She speaks slowly, with a thin voice one has to make a bit of an effort to hear, and for the first time since I entered this hall I have the sensation that someone is looking at me and not at an administrative problem.

"Tell me about your condition." I blink.

"About my condition, esteemed Elder?" I ask her with doubts.

"About the difficulties it imposes on you", she specifies.

"In day-to-day life. Not what it prevents you from doing in theory, but what it obliges you to do each morning." And I stay a moment not knowing how to take hold of that question, because I have spent twenty minutes measuring every syllable, calculating what I say and what I keep quiet, and suddenly they ask me the only question of the whole interview where there is absolutely nothing to calculate. The truth, here, is already the worst possible answer without my having to embellish it.

"I need help for everything that involves moving, esteemed Elder", I tell her, and this time my voice comes out different, flatter.

"To get out of bed and to go to bed. To groom myself, to climb any step, to eat, because on my own I cannot reach the dishes farthest from me, just as I need someone to hand me objects I cannot go walking to fetch." I make a pause, because I am not accustomed to saying it all in a row and aloud, and I discover that it turns out more uncomfortable than I expected.

"I cannot go anywhere on my own", I finish.

"Anywhere. If tomorrow my handmaidens disappeared, I would stay exactly where they had left me unless I threw myself on the floor and began to crawl."

The hall stays in silence after my words, and the diminutive old woman nods very slowly a couple of times, without saying anything more, and there is something in the manner in which she does it that doesn't quite fit with the rest of these people and that I don't know how to interpret, so I decide not to set it aside for now and I keep it to think about calmly when I am outside.

The next to speak is a man from the right side, the youngest in appearance of the eight, with a face that seems to reflect that he likes asking questions.

"Your book", he says without further ado.

"Journey to the West. Where did you get the ideas?" And I very nearly let out a guffaw, because of all the questions that could be asked of me in this place, this is the one that has the funniest answer.

"From novels of fiction, esteemed Elder", I answer him with all the tranquility in the world.

"From those I have been reading throughout my life. The majority of the ideas are not mine, they were simply already in things I had read and I wrote them in my own manner." And it is completely true, only that in the word life there fit more things than this gentleman imagines, since I doubt anyone could find out that I have the memories of another life beyond this one.

"You didn't invent it from scratch, then", he comments.

"You are correct, Elder", I concede right away. And he leans back in his chair with the air of one who has just brought down the price of a piece of merchandise, without suspecting for an instant that I have just given him exactly the answer I wanted to give him.

"And since we are speaking of that", intervenes then Wei Lin, the thin one, who evidently has not finished with me.

"Quite a few inventions are attributed to you. The printing press, among them. Explain to us how such a thing occurs to a girl of your age." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. And this one I also know, because I have been fearing it since Elder Feng's banquet.

"It's that I invented nothing that did not already exist, esteemed Elder", I tell him.

"There were seals, there was ink and there was paper." I raise a hand a bit, pointing at something that is not there.

"Those who did the real work were the artisans", I continue.

"They had to resolve all the problems I didn't even know existed, which were many, and it took them months to do it." And I am left perfectly at ease because I have told the truth, even if the printing press really exists in another world. Wei Lin snorts through his nose, and in that snort there is something that reassures me enormously, because it is the snort of one who has not liked the answer.

"Your handmaiden", says next the Elder Zhao Kuan, the big one, changing the subject with the abruptness of one who does not need to be subtle.

"The one who defeated a disciple of this Sect on the platform. What techniques does she use?" And there my stomach tightens a bit, because that question is indeed dangerous.

"I beg you to forgive me, esteemed Elder", I tell him with the most careful bow I can compose.

"But before coming I was taught that in the Sect each person's techniques are a private matter and that asking about them is a grave offense. It would not correspond to me to speak of another person's." And then, before he can get annoyed, I give him something in exchange, because it is never advisable to close a door without opening a window.

"What I can tell you is that Lianhua learned to fight long before entering my service", I add.

"I simply limited myself to acquiring a competent handmaiden and boosting her level of cultivation." Zhao Kuan looks at me fixedly for a good while, and it seems he is going to argue, but finally it seems he desists.

"Correct", he grunts at last most reluctantly. And that word, said with that face, is surely the closest thing to a triumph I am going to get out of this hall.

"How many spiritual roots do you have?" asks then the old woman with white hair.

"I don't know, esteemed Elder", I answer without hesitating.

"I have not opened the Gates, and until I do there is no way of knowing."

"And what do you think you could contribute to this Sect?" And there, for the first time in the whole interview, the back of my neck prickles, because that question does not resemble the others. All the previous ones sought a fact, and this one seeks for me to sell myself. And any answer that sounds like ambition, like a project or like eagerness, however small, is going to become immediately a hook to pull on, so I give them nothing to grab onto.

"I wouldn't know how to tell you, esteemed Elder", I reply, and I let the discomfort show in my voice because it suits me for it to show.

"I don't know the Sect well enough to know what it needs. I have been here three weeks and I have not left the house that was assigned to me." And that, besides being true, is a small reproach wrapped in gift paper that none of the eight can pick up without coming off as the one who isolated a twelve-year-old kid to make her nervous.

"What do you expect to do when you reach the age of majority?" asks then the third woman, who until now had not opened her mouth. And here I don't have to feign absolutely anything, because my stomach closes up all at once and my right hand closes on its own over the fabric of my short skirt, and when I open my mouth my voice comes out smaller than I intended.

"I still have to talk about it with my mother, esteemed Elder", I say. And it is the greatest and most complete truth I am going to say this morning, because my mother promised me a long conversation about all my options, and because until that conversation occurs I have not the remotest idea of what those options are, nor of how many of them include something I can choose freely. On the dais, someone murmurs something I don't manage to hear.

And it matters to me exactly nothing what it may be, because a girl who gets nervous when asked about her future and who answers that she has to consult it with her mother is precisely the kind of girl that no organization that respects itself has the least interest in recruiting.

"Elder Shen Ci", says then the one with the gray beard, and there is something in his tone that indicates to me that we are reaching the end.

"I believe we have already heard enough about that matter." And then he himself leans forward a bit in his chair, rests an elbow on the arm of the seat and asks the last question.

"Sun Wen", he says.

"How would you feel about coming to the Sect?" And there it is, the question at which everything else had been aiming, asked in a tone so light, so much like after-dinner conversation, that whoever didn't know what lies beneath would believe it. And for this one I have been preparing myself since long before the carriage left the Imperial Palace.

"The Qi of this place is much more abundant than that outside its walls, esteemed Elder", I tell him, and I say it slowly, with the respect with which one acknowledges something evident.

"That I have noticed since the first day and it would be absurd to deny it." I let that rest a second, because it is true and because I need it to stay floating there.

"But due to my situation, it would turn out very difficult for me to reside here", I finish.

And I say nothing more, only two perfectly true statements, placed one after the other, that anyone with two fingers of forehead will read as a polite refusal, and that nevertheless deny nothing, because the first is a sincere praise of the Qi of this mountain that I have spent three weeks plundering with all the impudence in the world, and the second is an exact description of what happens to an invalid in a place built on the basis of staircases.

If there is here any technique capable of detecting lies, at this moment it will be sleeping like a baby. The elder with the gray beard observes me a good long while, then sweeps his gaze over the dais, from left to right, without haste, and it does not escape me that something is being said in the hall even if I hear absolutely nothing. And finally he straightens in his chair.

"The interview has ended", he announces. I let the air out slowly and bow as much as I can, disposed to thank them for the trouble with the longest and most polished formula of my repertoire. But there is no time, because he keeps speaking.

"They are already waiting for you to take you to the entrance of the Sect", he says.

"The carriage that brought you waits there and your handmaidens have been ordered, while you were here, to gather all your things." And I am left with the bow half made, because of all the ways in which I imagined this interview was going to end, none included their throwing me off the mountain before lunch. I straighten up slowly, and striving to be polite, I ask the only question I can ask without turning out impertinent while I measure every word with a great deal of care.

"I thank you enormously for having arranged everything, esteemed Elder", I say.

"But, if I may be permitted the boldness, may I ask what such haste is due to?" And he answers without giving it the least importance, with the same voice with which he has said everything else.

"We have received an urgent notification from Sun Hao", he says.

"Something has occurred at the Imperial Palace and you must return immediately." And in my head, everything fits together all at once. This morning's summons without prior notice, without a messenger the day before, without giving me even the time granted to anyone to prepare themselves. The hurried interview, done at a run, resolved in twenty minutes and with half the chairs empty. It was not the plan. Or it was, but they have been obliged to execute it ahead of time.

These eight did not take me from my breakfast to finish off their little game of nerves, they took me from my breakfast because they had an urgent notification from the Emperor hanging over them and they could not let me leave without having interviewed me. And at the very instant in which I understand that, I realize something else.

That my father, the man who governs the Tianjing Empire, has considered that whatever has happened justifies sending an urgent notification to a Sect so that they return his daughter to him as fast as possible. And I notice how a trickle of sweat begins to slide down my back. Behind me, the double doors open again and I hear the footsteps of the Inner Disciple crossing the hall to come fetch me.

I bow one last time, say what has to be said and don't take in a single word of what I am saying because my head is somewhere else. I have it on a woman who only wants to paint, who always has my well-being in her mind and who fought so that her daughter would make this journey in the best carriage of the Empire with an escort of Nei Wei because it was the only way she had of accompanying me without being able to come. The disciple's hands close over the handles of my chair and I feel the abrupt tug of the start.

And while the wheels cross the threshold and the doors close behind me, I begin to pray to the Heavens and to whoever is listening that the haste not be because of my mother.