Chương 21: Lìchūn: Tempering 1

The hole in Liu Yinhua's robe is no larger than a coin, which does not improve her mood. She sits on the low wall at the edge of the training ground with one knee drawn up, her borrowed bow resting beside her and the sleeve guard Tang Mingxia made tied neatly around her wrist. Her hair has come loose again, strands clinging to the damp at her temples, and there is a cold patch drying along her ribs where one of Xie Lianqiu's water shards had clipped her too closely. The shard had missed skin.

It had still gone through cloth. Liu Yinhua presses two fingers around the torn edge and tries to decide whether the fabric can be mended neatly or whether the patch will look obvious no matter what she does. Across the yard, Xie Lianqiu is laughing at something Shen Yuanzhou has said, her bow held loosely in one hand and a ring of water turning above the fingers of the other. She looks fresh enough that Liu Yinhua dislikes her a little. It is not a serious dislike.

Serious dislike would require Xie Lianqiu to stop smiling at her as if Liu Yinhua is the most entertaining thing to have wandered into the week.

"You are glaring at your robe," Shen Yuanzhou says, dropping onto the wall beside her with the careless heaviness of someone who has never once worried about looking graceful while sitting.

"I am considering its future," Liu Yinhua says.

"It has a hole."

"Yes. That is why its future is uncertain." Xie Lianqiu hears them and turns, bright-eyed.

"If you are going to be upset, you should be upset with yourself. I did tell you the third one would curve."

"You said it after it was already curving."

"I said it very clearly."

"You said, 'Oh, watch that one.'""And you did watch it."

"I watched it cut my robe." Duan Xueheng, standing several paces away with his practice blade angled down, glances over the tear with the mild interest of someone assessing damage to equipment rather than clothing.

"Your turn was late." Liu Yinhua looks at him.

"Thank you."

"It was also too wide."

"Thank you again." He inclines his head, apparently satisfied with this exchange, and returns to adjusting his grip. Shen Yuanzhou snorts beside her, and Liu Yinhua has to look down at the torn cloth because her mouth threatens to move. This has become easier, somehow. Sitting here with them.

Listening to Xie Lianqiu complain when Chi Yanluo refuses to rise to her teasing, watching Shen Yuanzhou try to explain things with too many gestures, hearing Duan Xueheng cut through a whole conversation with six words and no change in expression. Liu Yinhua still does not know where she stands among them, and she does not trust any place that appears without a price, but she knows the rhythm of the group better than she did a week ago.

Tang Mingxia would say that knowing the rhythm is not the same as understanding the song. Tang Mingxia has begun saying things like that since deciding the household suffers from educational neglect. It had started with Liu Yinhua's questions about cultivation realms, then moved to sect structure, clan etiquette, the Blueglass Isles, and, after Xie Lianqiu's invitation to hunt, the Crimson Wastes.

Tang Mingxia had been polishing the side of her teacup with one thumb while she spoke, as if speaking of the Wastes required something for her hands to do. She had explained that the Crimson Wastes were not merely a desert or a distant border region, whatever lazy city gossip liked to make of them. They were fortresses, command lines, red stone, old civil war, and families raised with the knowledge that peace had to be guarded by people willing to be ugly about it.

Wu Cailan had listened for perhaps three minutes before asking whether any of this would help her carve steadier talisman lines. Tang Mingxia had said yes, if only because an educated disciple was less likely to insult someone important and be killed. Wu Cailan had called that indirect. Liu Yinhua had kept listening. The Chi were the central command family now, though Tang Mingxia had been careful in the way she described it.

Not imperial kings, not quite, but close enough that the distinction mattered most to people who cared about exact language. The Duan family stood beside them in military matters, old service and old blood tying them close. The Shen family had lost men in the border skirmishes, including Shen Yuanzhou's father. Xie Lianqiu's family had been close to the Chi since before she was born, though Tang Mingxia had not known whether that meant friendship, obligation, or both.

Liu Yinhua looks at them now and suspects the answer is both. Chi Yanluo stands a little apart, speaking quietly to Xie Lianqiu while she rolls her eyes at him with practised ease. His bright hair catches the afternoon light, and the wind stirs around him in small, constant motions that never quite seem accidental. He is not loud. He does not need to be.

The others turn toward him as naturally as plants toward warmth, and Liu Yinhua has spent enough of her life around power to know when someone is used to being obeyed by people who also love him. That is dangerous in its own way.

"Do you want me to mend it?" Xie Lianqiu asks, appearing in front of her with no apology for having crossed the yard mid-thought. Liu Yinhua lifts her eyes.

"Can you?"

"No." Xie Lianqiu smiles.

"But I thought offering would be kind."

"That was very generous of you."

"I thought so." Shen Yuanzhou leans closer to inspect the hole, then winces when Liu Yinhua turns a flat look on him.

"Sorry. It is small."

"It is in my robe."

"You have more robes."

"I have exactly enough robes." Xie Lianqiu's expression softens a little, though she keeps her voice light.

"Then I owe you thread."

"You owe me cloth."

"That seems harsher."

"You did put a hole in mine."

"You moved into it."

"I am beginning to see why people start feuds." Duan Xueheng says, "A feud over a practice robe would be improper." Xie Lianqiu points at him without looking.

"See? Duan Xueheng agrees with me."

"I did not."

"You objected to the feud."

"Not to the debt." Liu Yinhua turns her head just in time to catch Xie Lianqiu's brief betrayed look, and this time she cannot quite stop herself from smiling. It is small, but Xie Lianqiu sees it at once and looks pleased enough that Liu Yinhua regrets rewarding her. Chi Yanluo walks over then, and the conversation settles without anyone ordering it to.

"Your footwork improved," he says to Liu Yinhua. She lowers her hand from the torn robe.

"It still got hit."

"Less often."

"That is an encouraging standard."

"It is the first useful one." His gaze drops briefly to her left foot, then to the bow beside her.

"You are drawing too much qi into the first step. Let the movement begin before you feed it." Liu Yinhua considers that.

"The manual says to move with the wind qi."

"The manual assumes you know when to stop reading." Xie Lianqiu makes a delighted sound.

"That was almost a joke." Chi Yanluo ignores her. Liu Yinhua is less successful, though she keeps her face mostly composed.

"I am trying to learn from the text," she says.

"Good. Then stop letting the text move your foot for you." That is annoying because she understands what he means. The Dance of Falling Blossoms does not work when she tries to place each piece exactly as described. It becomes stiff then, step and turn and breath all lined up in her head while the attack arrives faster than thought. The best moments have come when she sees the gap and moves before she finishes naming it. She looks down at the packed earth, where old footprints overlap in dust.

"Tang Mingxia says the Crimson Wastes prefer practical instruction." Shen Yuanzhou laughs.

"That is a polite way to put it."

"Tang Mingxia is often polite."

"She called Shen Yuanzhou's home province a tragedy with cavalry," Xie Lianqiu says. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"She did not," Shen Yuanzhou says, offended. Liu Yinhua thinks back.

"She said a great deal of your history might have been avoided if more people had learned to sit down before drawing weapons." Duan Xueheng's mouth moves by the smallest degree.

"That sounds more like her."

"She also said the Wastes produced excellent soldiers and terrible dinner guests," Liu Yinhua adds. Shen Yuanzhou brightens.

"That one is fair." Chi Yanluo looks at her for a moment, and Liu Yinhua cannot tell whether the faint narrowing of his eyes is amusement or assessment.

"You asked about us."

"Yes."

"Why?" Liu Yinhua smooths her thumb once over the edge of the sleeve guard at her wrist.

"Because I keep accepting your help, and it seemed discourteous to remain ignorant." Xie Lianqiu tilts her head.

"Only discourteous?"

"No," Liu Yinhua says after a moment.

"Unwise." Duan Xueheng gives a small nod, as if that answer is acceptable. Shen Yuanzhou watches her with a warmer expression, and Xie Lianqiu's smile turns thoughtful in a way that makes Liu Yinhua wonder what she has just given away. Chi Yanluo only says, "Then ask when you need to know something."

"That seems easy."

"It is." Liu Yinhua looks at him and thinks of Tang Mingxia's careful explanations, of the old civil war, of dead fathers and command families and children raised beneath histories that did not end merely because a sect placed them in the same training yard. It is not easy. Nothing about these people is easy. Still, the offer stands there between them, plain enough that pretending not to see it would be its own kind of answer.

"I will," she says. Xie Lianqiu claps her hands once.

"Lovely. Now that we are all becoming more educated and emotionally honest, Liu Yinhua should shoot again." Liu Yinhua looks at the bow, then at the hole in her robe.

"I thought we were resting."

"You were resting. I was waiting."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes. I look prettier doing it." Shen Yuanzhou makes a strangled sound. Duan Xueheng turns away, but Liu Yinhua catches the faint movement at the corner of his mouth. Chi Yanluo's expression does not change, which somehow makes it worse. Liu Yinhua stands, brushing dust from her robe with what dignity remains. The left leg route warms as she settles her weight, sun held in stone beneath the skin.

She takes the bow, fits the sleeve guard more securely, and steps back into the yard while Xie Lianqiu walks ahead with her water already gathering bright along her fingers. This time, Liu Yinhua watches the spaces between them before the first shard flies. ——— Xie Lianqiu catches Liu Yinhua's arm as they are packing up to leave. It is done so suddenly that Liu Yinhua's first instinct is to still, though she manages to keep the reaction small.

Xie Lianqiu winds her arm through hers with easy familiarity, her shoulder sitting a little higher than Liu Yinhua's, and for a moment Liu Yinhua cannot help thinking the other girl must be inconvenienced by the angle. Xie Lianqiu does not seem troubled by it. If anything, she looks as if she has considered the matter and decided that being inconvenient is worth the result.

Shen Yuanzhou is still arguing with Duan Xueheng over whether an arrow that has struck the right tree but the wrong mark should be counted as half a success. Duan Xueheng appears to believe the answer is no. Shen Yuanzhou appears to believe that effort should matter more when he is the one who has made it. Chi Yanluo has already gathered the practice bowls and set them neatly beside the wall, and the late light catches along his hair as he turns back toward the path.

Xie Lianqiu tugs Liu Yinhua a few steps behind the others before speaking.

"I owe you an apology." Liu Yinhua glances at her.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"For the hole in my robe?"

"That too, but mostly for not thinking before there was a hole." Xie Lianqiu's tone remains light, though there is a steadier thread beneath it than usual.

"We have been making you train with us for several days. Water shards, dust, grass, bowstring, Duan Xueheng being discourteous with a practice blade. I forgot your clothes were not treated." Liu Yinhua looks down at her sleeve. The tear near the cuff is small, and the hole at her side can be mended if she is patient. The fabric has begun to wear thin in places that training robes probably should not, and there is a faint pale mark where a water shard struck hard enough to stress the weave.

"They are sect robes," she says.

"Yes," Xie Lianqiu says.

"Issued robes. They are meant to make sure disciples are not naked. They are not meant to be used as if they are properly reinforced training wear." Liu Yinhua does not answer at once. Xie Lianqiu looks ahead, where the boys have started down the path and are pretending poorly not to listen.

"I forget things sometimes."

"That seems unlikely."

"I forget practical things when someone looks as if they belong in better surroundings." Xie Lianqiu says it plainly, which is more difficult to answer than teasing would have been.

"You are refined. You speak well. You stand like someone who has been corrected every time she breathed too loudly. Sometimes I look at you and forget that you are not a noble girl with three chests of clothes and a steward complaining about laundry somewhere."

"That is a strange mistake."

"It is." Xie Lianqiu looks back at her, and her smile softens without becoming weak.

"It was also careless." Liu Yinhua studies her face, searching for the hook. There is one, because there is always one with Xie Lianqiu, but it does not sit where Liu Yinhua expects it. There is calculation there, certainly. Xie Lianqiu is not a girl who gives without knowing what giving might do. But there is embarrassment too, faint and real, hidden under the sweetness of her expression and the careful looseness of her hold.

"You do not need to apologise for my clothing," Liu Yinhua says.

"I am not asking what I need to do. I am telling you what I will do." Xie Lianqiu pats Liu Yinhua's arm once, as if this has settled matters.

"I am buying you a robe." Liu Yinhua stops walking. Xie Lianqiu stops with her, still linked at the elbow.

"No," Liu Yinhua says.

"Yes."

"No."

"Liu Yinhua."

"Xie Lianqiu." The other girl's mouth curves.

"You are very pretty when you are stubborn."

"That is not going to help you."

"It often helps me."

"I am sure it does." Xie Lianqiu laughs, though she does not release her arm. Ahead of them, Shen Yuanzhou looks back openly now. Duan Xueheng continues walking for three steps before stopping as well, which makes the pretence worse. Chi Yanluo turns his head slightly but says nothing. Liu Yinhua lowers her voice.

"I cannot accept a robe from you."

"You can. You are choosing not to."

"There is no difference worth arguing."

"There is always a difference worth arguing." Xie Lianqiu's fingers tighten lightly against her sleeve.

"Listen first. I am not taking you to some ridiculous silk shop in the inner market and dressing you like a festival lamp. I mean a plain training robe from the outer disciple market. Decent weave, treated thread through the hem and sleeves, enough reinforcement that my water shards do not ruin it every second day. Nothing fancy."

"That is still expensive."

"It is less expensive than replacing three cheap robes."

"I have not replaced three."

"You will, at this rate." Liu Yinhua looks away first, annoyed because the answer is reasonable. That makes it worse. She has enough coin and chips for small things, not enough to spend freely. Her stones are for cultivation. Her task marks are for access. Cloth, thread, salve, oil, food beyond the provided rations, all of it has begun to form a quiet list in the back of her mind, and she dislikes that Xie Lianqiu has seen even part of it.

"I can mend this," she says.

"I know."

"Then there is no issue."

"There is an issue because I am the one damaging it." Xie Lianqiu's voice loses a little of its playfulness.

"I asked you to train. I shot at you. I put holes in your robe. I should pay for what I damage." Liu Yinhua looks at her then. For a moment, she is back in rooms where gifts are never gifts, where a hairpin means expectation, where silk means debt, where every beautiful thing placed into a girl's hand comes with someone else's fingers already closing around her wrist. Xie Lianqiu is watching her carefully enough that Liu Yinhua suspects some of that has shown, if only in the stillness of her face.

The other girl says, more quietly, "It is not a chain." That should make Liu Yinhua step back. It does not.

"It is a debt," Liu Yinhua says.

"It is payment for damage."

"You said it was an apology."

"It can be both." Xie Lianqiu holds her gaze for another breath, then lets her expression brighten by degrees, not enough to erase what has just passed between them, but enough to make it easier to stand beside.

"Also, if I am being honest, I truly cannot bear to see someone so pretty in dull robes much longer. It offends me personally." Liu Yinhua stares at her. Xie Lianqiu looks back, entirely unrepentant.

"That is your apology?"

"It is part of it."

"My dull robes offend you."

"Deeply."

"They are sect-issued."

"That only explains the crime. It does not excuse it." Liu Yinhua feels the tension in her shoulders loosen despite herself, which is inconvenient and therefore suspicious.

"And what will you ask for later?" Xie Lianqiu does not pretend to misunderstand. That, at least, is one of the reasons Liu Yinhua does not dislike her.

"Nothing for the robe," she says.

"For training, perhaps many things later, if you become useful enough. Help with a task. A favour in the medical hall. Standing where I ask you to stand. Telling me when someone has been foolish enough to underestimate you in my hearing. But not for the robe." Liu Yinhua lets out a slow breath through her nose.

"You make friendship sound very martial."

"I am from the Crimson Wastes."

"You are from the Xie family."

"Worse." The answer is dry enough that Liu Yinhua almost smiles. She turns her face away before Xie Lianqiu can look too pleased with herself. Ahead of them, Shen Yuanzhou calls, "Is she winning?"

"No," Liu Yinhua says, perhaps a touch petulant.

"Yes," Xie Lianqiu says at the same time. Duan Xueheng looks between them and says, "She is probably winning."

"I thought you were honourable," Liu Yinhua says.

"I am accurate." Xie Lianqiu beams at him.

"Thank you." Chi Yanluo's gaze rests on Liu Yinhua for a moment, not pressing, only present.

"A training robe is sensible."

"That was not requested," Liu Yinhua says.

"No." His mouth moves by the smallest degree, perhaps amusement, perhaps nothing at all, and he continues down the path. The others follow, Shen Yuanzhou still looking entertained. Liu Yinhua looks down at the sleeve guard Tang Mingxia made. The cloth is neatly stitched, practical and careful, tied where the bowstring catches. Tang Mingxia had given it to her because the tear was untidy and dangerous. Xie Lianqiu is offering something larger for much the same reason, though with more smiling and less dignity.

"I will accept a plain robe," Liu Yinhua says at last.

"Plain, and nothing that makes me look as if I have been dressed up." Xie Lianqiu's expression turns far too innocent.

"Would I do that?"

"Yes."

"That is fair." She starts walking again, still arm in arm.

"Plain training robe, treated weave, good seams, no dramatic colours."

"No jewellery sewn into it." Xie Lianqiu sighs.

"You make everything difficult."

"I am mildly inconvenient, at best," she quips.

"I have room for growth." The laugh Xie Lianqiu gives is bright enough that Shen Yuanzhou looks back again, grinning. Liu Yinhua feels warmth rise in her face and chooses to blame exertion. Her robe is torn, her hair is loose, her left foot is still damp from the last burst of water, and she is going to let a girl from the Crimson Wastes buy her a plain training robe because refusing would be pride dressed up as caution. ————