Thankfully, her ‘guards’ were happy enough with silence and did not try to engage her in further conversation. It was still awkward, but silence was better than fumbling in unfamiliar territory. Soon after reaching the residential area, she spotted Cai Renxiang

  The heiress was trailed by a train of other girls hurrying along in her wake and walked with her hands clasped behind her back, posture stiff and straight. Ling Qi raised a hand to wave to the other girl for attention.

  “Lady Cai, good morning!” she greeted politely.

  Cai Renxiang halted outside the gates that marked the edge of the residential zone, eyeing her speculatively. “Ling Qi, good morning,” she greeted in return, her train waiting patiently behind her. “It is rare to see you on the road.”


  “I suppose so,” Ling Qi admitted sheepishly, restraining the urge to fidget under the faintly glowing girl’s regard. “I was hoping I could accompany you for a time?” She left unsaid her reasons why, despite the curious looks from the other girls with Cai and her own ‘guards’.

  If the heiress was surprised by her request, she didn’t show it on her face. She simply nodded briskly, her long hair swaying with the motion. “Of course, I would not refuse such a minor request from you.” Her words were quick and without embellishment. She gestured and the other girls fell back a step, giving Ling Qi room to fall in beside Cai Renxiang. “Are the subordinates I assigned you performing to satisfaction?” the heiress asked as they began to walk.

  “.…… Yes, I have no complaints,” Ling Qi replied formally, despite her discomfort at the notion. She did her best to ignore the way the Ma sisters seemed to brighten at her half-hearted praise. “Thank you for your consideration.”


  Cai Renxiang dipped her head fractionally. “Given your contributions, I could not do less. If you require something, please ask. If it is within the realm of reason, I will grant it to you.” Her eyes remained ahead as she spoke, but Ling Qi saw the corners of her lips quirk up. Ling Qi suspected the other girl was feeling quite pleased that she was showing consideration and interest; no doubt Cai was aware that Ling Qi had asked Gan Guangli about her as a liege.

  Ling Qi ignored the respectful and admiring looks from the girls around them. It was mostly directed at the heiress, but she could feel eyes on her own back as well. Instead, she focused on Cai Renxiang, testing her improved senses. The girl was a perfectly sculpted pillar of mountain stone awash in blinding white light. She looked away before her eyes could start to water. “You have my thanks,” she said again, wondering what to say. “So, where are we going at the moment?”


  “I must attend a meeting with the market suppliers over bulk purchases,” Cai Renxiang said. Her gown rippled briefly, the eye-like wings of the butterfly splayed across her chest narrowing. “Following that, I will go to the council pavilion to hear petitions for a time before I begin reviewing reports from Fu Xiang.”


  That sounded…… incredibly boring, if Ling Qi was honest, but she nodded agreeably anyway. She had come to see what Lady Cai’s day-to-day operations were like. As it turned out, Ling Qi’s suspicion was right. Watching Cai Renxiang cow unruly Outer Sect merchants with her stern disapproval over their attempts at gouging her agents was kind of amusing, but that was the last of the entertainment. Listening to second and third year Outer disciples complain, cajole, and flatter Cai could hardly keep her attention. It did give her a somewhat unsettling idea of just how far the heiress had gone in establishing herself as an authority though.

  It left her thoughtful as one of the girls attending to them laid out tea for both her and Cai Renxiang. She cast a glance out of the pavilion as she waited for her tea to cool. The line of petitioners was gone, leaving only the enforcer guards. Ma Lei was making eyes at one of Gan Guangli’s subordinates while her sister seemed to be trying to set the other girl’s hair on fire with disapproval. Gan Guangli himself stood at attention at the bottom of the stairs sternly looking over the field.

  “You had a question.” Cai Renxiang’s voice drew her attention back to the girl sitting across from her. The heiress looked at her evenly over the rim of her cup, sipping from the still steaming liquid.

  “Yeah,” Ling Qi admitted, lifting her own. She supposed that she really didn’t need to wait for the tea to cool; hot tea was hardly going to hurt her. Her eyebrows rose as she took a sip. The flavor was much stronger than last time. It was actually pretty good. “Wasn’t some of that stuff too petty for you to be dealing with? Those merchants and half of those petitioners…… Shouldn’t you have someone else taking care of that?”


  “Perhaps,” Cai Renxiang agreed. “But I am no Duchess yet, and a mountain cannot stand upon a foundation of gravel.”


  Ling Qi furrowed her brows as the girl watched her. “So…… what? You want to have experience with the lower level things as well?”


  “I wish to see the order of my province perfected,” Cai Renxiang answered. “Even the Lady Duchess cannot be in all places, nor be all things. Order depends upon delegation, and I must understand these lower positions in order to best select the ones to hold them. In my youth, I toured villages and forts at the edges of civilization. Here, I hold a position similar to lesser nobility. As a Cai, I refuse to approach this task with any less than full effort, regardless of what my position may be.”


  Ling Qi leaned back in her seat, taking a sip from the steaming tea to give herself time to consider. That was understandable, if a little obsessive. “When I was inside Sun Liling’s fortress, I heard Lu Feng call all this a ‘game’. Is that really all this is to you and other nobles? A training exercise?” It grated that for people like her, this conflict had real consequences.

  Cai Renxiang considered her answer, the constant light shining behind her pulsing quietly. “Yes, it is,” she said frankly, meeting Ling Qi’s gaze straight on. “Ultimately, the purpose of the Outer Sect is for it to be a place for young nobility to compete and play at their adult roles in an environment of relative safety and few consequences.”


  Ling Qi scowled. “So I guess people like me just have to keep our heads down?”


  The girl across from her set her cup down with a soft clink. “The ascension of talented commoners is a secondary purpose at best,” she admitted. “It is also, you may find, not an inaccurate training scenario for surviving among the ranks of the least nobility where houses rise and fall in mere months and years rather than decades and centuries.”


  It wasn’t fair, but neither was what came after she became a landed nobility. Ling Qi let out a long breath. She was being childish. The world wasn’t fair, and it never had been. She knew that well enough.

  “What is it that you actually want from me?” Ling Qi asked. “You know my background so you know how ignorant I am in some ways. What will taking your offer really mean?”


  Interest sparked in the heiress’ eyes, and the eye-wings splayed across her chest narrowed hungrily. “It would mean being my hand in many matters.” The light behind her sparkled, increasing in intensity. “The Lady Duchess has, in her generosity, indicated that I will be granted a fief from her holdings in the borderlands should I prove myself worthy within the Inner Sect. Rather than serving your term within the Sect’s forces, you would instead serve among the forces of that holding.”


  “So I’d still get a little patch of mountains to call my own?” Ling Qi asked, only half-joking.

  Cai Renxiang took her question seriously. “You would, of course, retain all privileges of a normal vassal. In the interest of development, I would waive the standard property taxes until you have become established.” She paused. “Primarily, you would be among those who attend to me when I must visit the capital or other similar functions.” Left unsaid was what sorts of things she’d probably be asked to do there. Ling Qi knew what talents she was valued for.

  Ling Qi looked down at her own empty cup then back up. “Thank you for answering me frankly,” she said after a moment’s thought. “May I be excused then, to think on it further?”


  The other girl let her leave easily enough, not pushing for an answer, thankfully. Ling Qi dismissed her own guards as they left the pavilion area and set off into the woods, cloaking her presence as she headed down the mountain.

  Her destination lay at the base of the mountain. She had put in the request and paid the points for tutoring, receiving a response promptly. Her tutor, Zhong Peng, would be available in the late afternoon, and he would be waiting for her on a hilltop a little way to the east of the main road.

  She was brought up short when she caught sight of him standing at the top of the cleared hill. Zhong Peng didn’t look like an archer with his build more like Gan Guangli than Han Jian, but the massive recurve bow slung across his back said otherwise. The bow looked like someone had uprooted a small tree and bent it into a bow; it would be as tall as the tutor when drawn.

  The boy himself looked to be eighteen or nineteen years old with rough, blunt features and sun-darkened skin. His hair was a fiery red cut close to his scalp, and the beginnings of a beard grew on his chin.

  “Good effort, but quit lurking.” Ling Qi startled as his sharp eyes locked onto hers. She was still more than a hundred meters away, hidden in the shadows of the trees. It wasn’t like she was going all out to hide, but…… “Girl, are you here to train or gawk?” He frowned at her, crossing his arms over his wide chest.

  “Sorry,” Ling Qi apologized, stepping out of the shadow. She didn’t raise her voice, but he seemed to have no trouble hearing her. “I wasn’t trying to be insulting. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get waylaid on the way here.”


  “Things have been loud down here this year – or so I’ve heard,” he acknowledged, impatiently gesturing for her to come closer. “Too many big names in one place,” he added in a grumble that she barely heard.

  “Just a little,” Ling Qi replied, doing her best to keep her voice from going dry. She hurried closer, quickly reaching the top of the hill. Zhong Peng was a good head taller than even her. “Do they pay much attention to the Outer Mountain in the Inner Sect?”


  “Depends on the disciple,” he said with a dismissive wave of one meaty hand. He peered carefully at her. “Your qi is a mess, but I can feel the Sect arts well enough. Mirror is a powerful tool for perception, but not an archer’s. Your range will be crippled as things are.”


  Ling Qi blinked, startled. “How did you……?” She cut herself off. That was a silly question. Of course perception arts could read that kind of thing. “Thank you for your advice, Senior Brother Zhong,” she replied politely. “I will keep that in mind. Will it impair my training?” She hoped not; she didn’t have the Sect points or the time to go hunting down another art right now.

  She met his hard gaze evenly as he continued to study her. “No, I will simply not bother with the distance training. What archery art do you practice?”


  “Falling Stars Art,” Ling Qi replied. The older disciple was brusque, but that was fine with her. He seemed knowledgeable enough about archery.

  He grunted thoughtfully, but she thought that she saw a hint of approval in his eyes. “It is a good foundation. I mastered it myself in the Outer Sect. It is just a foundation though. Do not be content with only that.”


  “Of course. How will we begin, Senior Brother?” Ling Qi asked. She was glad that she had picked a good art at least.

  “With a run,” he said, turning away. “You said you wished to work on your conditioning and speed as well. Thrice around the mountain, and then we will begin shooting.”


  Ling Qi held back a sigh. She did put that on the form where she requested a tutor.

  She would come to regret that request in the coming hours as she found herself unable to keep up with the third realm disciple. Apparently, a hail of exploding missiles was an appropriate way to encourage her to pour on more speed.

  She couldn’t let herself be slowed down.

  threads 127-Convergence 5

  The most effective thing Ling Qi could do would be to keep the barbarians’ attention until the reinforcements arrived while Cai Renxiang duelled the shishigui envoy. Ling Qi’s eyes flicked upward to where the barbarian musician was turning, reorienting on Cai Renxiang as her saber met a fluid whip of impurity with the screaming hiss of a blazing coal being dropped into cold water.

  In the cacophony of the ongoing battle, he didn’t react to the scream of one more eagle. It was a mistake.

  The notes of the man’s song stumbled over one another as phantasmal talons seized him and his mount and flung him toward Ling Qi and her spirits. Ling Qi was already dancing backward, a wordless pull on her connection to her spirits urging them to retreat with her toward the starstone. All around her, bestial phantoms rose among and from the dancers of the revel, girt in rime and frost. Her gathering host yowled a challenge as they gathered around the stone, although at a distance as those that drew too close broke down into shimmering lights and motes of frost. Above her, the song of her sword rang out, and another barbarian was lost in the depths of the Mist.

  For a moment, the challenge rang unopposed in the caldera as Ling Qi landed lightly beside her little brother.

  Then the response came.

  From above, a renewed song clashed with her Mist, wresting her victims from its grasp. Three bowstrings sounded, and three lightning bolts fell, stakes of snapping electricity slamming into the ground around her, forming a perfect triangle as lightning arced from one to the next. Electrical current roared out, spilling to fill the whole of the area, and Ling Qi raised her hand. Three bells chimed as the lightning arced into her hand, her Three Moons Chime drinking in the field of lightning before it could finish coalescing.

  Dozens of screaming and slicing arrows flew wild, striking phantoms and shadows, and Ling Qi wove between dozens more as they fell upon her through sheer chance, a frantic spinning dance made all the more desperate by the gathering power from across the cavern.

  There was a crash and muffled boom as the fourth realm barbarian slammed Guan Zhi, grasped in his eagle’s talons, against the caldera wall. Rock cracked and splintered, letting in light as her commander was plowed through meters of volcanic stone.

  The cry of her phantom eagle was drowned out by the furious screams of seven real eagles, and at her feet, powdered, sterile stone exploded into a cloud of chalky dust as the echoing noise shattered it into dust. Ling Qi felt a tightness in her ears, as if something was straining, ready to pop. Around her, phantoms wavered on the verge of breaking apart.

  But her winter did not recede. A warmth in her chest burned, and phantoms snapped back into solidity. The power of the winter hearth refusing to be extinguished. Her next step carried her on the wind, and Ling Qi dissolved into whispers and shadow, slipping into the silent spaces between echoes to avoid the ear-splitting wall of sound.

  But even through the shriek, she could still feel the hum of bowstrings.

  Zhengui let out a challenging bellow as he stepped in front of Hanyi and Ling Qi both and bore the brunt of the volley. Two layers of roots and wood sprang up, only to be shattered in moments by screaming, slashing wind. His shell rocked as a dozen arrows and more battered into his side, and centimeter by centimeter, his four stout legs dug furrows in the chalky stone as he was pushed backward. The boxy spikes of his shell shook and crumbled, bits and pieces of bone breaking and scattering, leaving their smooth edges jagged.

  The last missile struck the hardest, a spinning drilling missile of wind that howled like a thousand clashing blades fired from the bow of the strongest of the Twelve Stars’ retinue. It struck Zhengui’s shell dead on, and Zhengui skidded backward a full meter.

  Zhengui’s shell was cracked on the side that had faced the barbarians, a dozen tiny fractures surrounding a great bleeding wound where the last arrow had struck with cracks radiating around it. Blazing blood like liquid magma dribbled to the floor in hissing, molten drops.

  Ling Qi materialized in front of Zhengui, even as veins of green began to glow across his limbs and the ash in the air started to shimmer. The next arrow that flew struck her and vanished without a ripple, and so did the next. Hanyi joined her, her song of cold and winter stealing momentum from incoming attacks as the cracks in Zhengui’s shell healed ever so slowly.

  To her right, Cai Renxiang was holding out well, the tendrils of light that formed her wings hissing and sizzling as they beat away droplets of impurity. Several glowing scars marked the shishigui envoy’s armor, but in turn, droplets of corruption stained Renxiang’s luminosity, dimming her light where blackened droplets marked her, each one seeming to vibrate as they struggled to expand against her purifying light.

  But they weren’t being cleansed. They were only being contained, and Cai Renxiang was being pushed back.

  Ling Qi grit her teeth as she took in the battlefield, and her eyes fell on the barbarian marked by her hoarfrost, already joining the others in drawing back his bow, while the barbarian musician and others were looking toward Cai Renxiang again. She had to keep their attention on herself.

  Ling Qi called her sword, and it shot downward like a falcon, its point diving for the barbarian musician’s throat, forcing him to canter back and deflect it with a shout. Ling Qi might not be able to touch him, but she didn’t need to to stop him from defending his shishigui ally.

  She raised her flute and felt an arrow slice across her cheek as she looked to the barbarian already marked by her hoarfrost. Her fingers danced, and her flute played silence. She didn’t look away, even as a second and a third arrow struck her gown, feeling like the strike of fists. The barbarian died as he crashed to the caldera floor and shattered.

  The barbarians were swift in their reply. Once again, she dodged like the wind through a storm of missiles, but the barbarians were learning. Just as she rematerialized, toes touching the floor, a vortex arrow like the one that had nearly bored through Zhengui came. Gritting her teeth, Ling Qi pulsed her qi, and the Black Mirror technique swallowed it.

  There was a sharp report then, a singular, deafening noise of grinding shifting stone from the far side of the caldera. A single crack raced up the caldera wall from where Guan Zhi had been buried. Stones and pebbles burst out as the crack reached the rim. The caldera wall broke apart in a roar of falling rock, uncounted tonnes of stone exploding outward around the flexing limbs of the furious woman. Over her head, a single boulder, perhaps half the size of the starstone, cracked and compressed inward, becoming a perfect black sphere. The remains of the wall shot toward it as if dragged in by the earth. Even Ling Qi felt a harsh tug toward the sphere, and she planted her feet in the chalky dirt as her hair and gown alike whipped around her limbs.

  Perhaps she didn’t need

  the attention, Ling Qi thought faintly as the man with the starstone mask raised his blade, and the storm answered. A funnel of wind descended from the sky to armor him and his retinue, the churning wind burning with iridescent light.

  Ling Qi forced her eyes away and threw out her hands, activating the Rippling Starless Shroud technique, dimming her surroundings under a shroud of liquid darkness that twinkled with faint frosty moonlight. She felt Cai Renxiang’s qi flare in response, and the dark shroud that settled around her and her spirits gained an edge of burning radiance. Zhengui finally straightened up, flesh no longer visible beneath the hole in his shell as howling arrows bounced off his hide and flew wildly into the revel. The next sheet of lightning that erupted through their space sparked off of them, no more harmful than static. Her qi was starting to flag from activating all of these defenses, and once she had no more qi……

  Ling Qi saw the phantom of the suited bear that had seized the dancer fading away, its head cleft from its shoulders. She spun immediately and blew a single sharp note that wobbled as it met a descending blade of green stone. The note went silent as it was sundered, and Ling Qi spun away into the revel, blinking meters away to let a laughing phantom made of rose petals and thorny vines be slashed apart in her place. The dancer did not have time to regret her miss before Zhengui’s anger erupted beneath her feet in a column of magma.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her own shadow twitch and felt a ripple through her qi and reacted in time to play a Hoarfrost Refrain right into the masked face of the second dancer. The dancer spasmed violently as her flesh blackened and cracked, and she leaped away into the shadows again. Ling Qi began to follow her, only to realize something else.

  The ice woman was standing there, barely three meters away.

  Ling Qi’s phantoms turned to attack, but it was as if they were moving through molasses. Even so, the press of bodies should have harmed her, but claws struck her armored gown with the force of feathers, and fangs cracked and shattered where they bit down on her limbs. The ice woman looked through the revel as if it was not there, even as the elegy of the mist continued to swallow up barbarians above.

  Zhengui saw her, and Zhen hissed out a warcry, striking as a blur. Ling Qi saw the woman’s left hand, holding that ugly iron scepter, twitch, and she knew she wasn’t going to be fast enough. Then, the woman met her eyes, and she saw the swing aborted. The woman’s right hand rose instead, and Zhen’s striking fangs hit her palm and glanced off, his entire head and body jerking backwards as if he had been struck by something twice his size.

  Air rippled, and Ling Qi felt the moisture in the air flash freeze. A wall of frost rose behind the woman, curving over their heads in a dome that met the caldera wall, cutting them off from Zhengui, Hanyi, and the other barbarians.

  Then a second layer sprang up, cutting off her spirits from the barbarians, too.

  The woman took another step toward her, ignoring the grasping roots that withered and died around her feet before even touching flesh. The woman stared hard at her and spoke something in a hard, consonant heavy language, gesturing between her and the starstone with her scepter. There was something familiar about the language. It wasn’t quite hill tribe speech, but it was close in a way.

  There was something about lineage. A question. Why was she here? And, uh, something about aid, maybe?

  Ling Qi sucked in a breath, feeling everything that was going on outside the dome. The reinforcements were arriving at the rim, and the barbarian attention was being forced toward the newcomers and the now unchecked brawl between the cyans. Cai Renxiang was losing ground, and she could feel an ugly corrosion nipping at the edges of the girl’s qi. And in the storm above, there was a charge, something that made her instincts scream danger.

  Dome or no, Ling Qi could slip out of this cage. But her mind flew back to the meeting and the words of the White Sky representatives and their actions after the fight started. They didn’t seem to want any part of this fight.