A brief foray into Jade Empire, which I've been playing again lately, and some of the characterisation stuck with me. The style of this one is not entirely experimental, but is rather different. It will be a two-parter. Reviews and thoughts are always welcome.
Crossings
Part One
The trees swayed, green and rippling between the swathe of the sky. She knelt on the slight dip of the rock where the path curled above the stream, her eyes on the glassy movement of the water. She could feel the ache of the last few days under her skin, the way they had marched doggedly through the forest, to the temple and to the inn and back, and beneath, to the echoing caves with their swarming monsters.
And the wrenching moment when she had stepped through the portal, stepped through and into another realm, the sudden burst of sunlight bright enough almost to hurt.
She dipped her hands into the stream until the water rushed into her palms and tried to calm the roil of her thoughts. It had happened so fast, she thought, the sunlight thicker and warmer and the trees rustling as they should. She remembered the deadened quiet of the forest two, three days ago, when they had first ventured up the stone steps and into the stagnant trees. Branches and leaves and boughs, all of them rotting from the soil up, from the monster and its children that lived beneath the earth.
Still, she thought, they had a windmap now, and a flyer, and a dam to open and then they could be gone, moving away from this tiny town and the water that lapped incessantly at its docks. They could be gone and away, and perhaps she could pry her way a little further into the secrets that had knotted themselves around her.
Her past and her thoughts and Master Li, and the woman in blue, and the weight of the amulet at her throat.
The village, burned.
She turned her hands over in the water, and over again, until the thoughts were banished and her head was full of nothing but the slow thump of her own pulse. She followed the narrow path down through the forest, bracketed on both sides by the tall, spearing trees. She discovered the town nearly silent, and by the time she had picked her way past the merchant stalls and around the side of the teahouse, she was almost glad when she heard their voices, Dawn Star laughing at something, and then again, over Whirlwind's indignant retort.
She crossed the last stretch of the path and ducked into the shade of the courtyard. Almost immediately, Dawn Star asked, "The forest?"
"As empty as we left it," she answered lightly.
"Good."
"I saw Lord Yun this morning. He and his hunters will stay, he's said."
Dawn Star nodded. "That is best for the forest, I think." She smiled and added, "Are you hungry?"
"Starving. Are you cooking?"
"You're helping," Dawn Star told her mildly.
"I'm honoured."
Later the night came down. She tried to sleep, wrapped in blankets and aware of the flicker of the fire until she drifted into the strangeness greyness of her dreams. Too soon, she jolted awake, to the ashes of the fire and the cold of a morning that was not quite yet properly morning. She straightened her clothes and fumbled her boots on before she clambered upright and made her way out into the crisp chill of the courtyard again.
Her gaze found Zu first, where he sat against the far wall. "Do you ever sleep?"
His head turned, and he answered, "I had last watch."
Mechanically, she rummaged for the pot and one of the flasks. At the firepit, the metal and the flint jumped for too long between her hands until the spark caught.
"You have a plan for today?" he asked, his voice jarring her out of reverie.
"Yes. I thought I'd walk down to the dam, and ask however many dozens of Lotus Assassins there are down there to politely go away and or else help me let the river in again."
One side of his mouth shifted. "Not the best plan you've ever had."
"Then I suppose we'll have to go down to the dam and fight some assassins."
"Yes."
"And then we can leave," she said, the honesty suddenly simmering up, the impatience, the want to be moving on and away.
"We have no way of knowing what we will find in the Imperial City."
"Better than sitting here wondering." She pushed her knuckles against her eyes. "Will you," she said, and the words caught in her throat. It was absurd, she knew – it was a fight, just another fight, another encounter, but they knew there would be assassins there, and she knew how they lingered heavy in his thoughts.
"Yes," Zu said, too quickly. "I will be there."
"Thank you."
"No need."
She nodded, and her gaze dropped to the flames, bright and new where they curled up around the pot. The heat touched her hands first, and then her face, and unbidden she thought of the village – home, and it had always been home, and too often she dreamed of it – amid the fires.
The air was on fire, the heat of it filling her mouth and her nose. She ran, aware of Dawn Star beside her, aware of the way she was breathing, uneven and halfway to sobbing. How they were both breathing, or trying to breathe, as they shouldered their way through the coiling smoke.
They found the houses and the practice yard, the ground hot underfoot and the walls wreathed in flame. There were others there, assassins, soldiers in gleaming armour, and somehow she marshaled herself and threw herself at them. Blindly she fought, the flat of her sword smacking hard against muscle and armour as often as the edge. The smoke and the searing heat ruined her balance and her breathing, and when she tried to swallow, it was painful.
Afterwards, she heard Dawn Star, her voice quiet and heavy with weeping as she tried to talk, tried to make some sense of it, of the chaos of it. She felt someone's hand on her arm and shoved away.
"No," Zu said. "Drink. You must."
"No, I," she managed.
He caught her hand, guided her to a flask, wrapped her fingers around it. Her eyes were streaming, with tears or the smoke or both. She drank, swallowing the water down in drowning gulps. She tried to pass it back to him, but he shook his head, and made her drink again, the relentless pressure of his fingers on hers punishing.
Two days later she woke early again, and took herself out to where the flyer sat, the sprawl of its huge wings and legs vast and gleaming. She meandered around it twice, dragging her fingertips against the cool glass curve that encased its head. She heard footsteps behind – deliberately loud, heels scraping against the ground – and turned in time to see Zu as he approached, his staff propped against one wiry shoulder.
"You think it'll get us there?" she asked, almost absently.
"It will have to," he said, his gaze following hers, up to the shining arches and stiff spans of the flyer's wings.
"You're so reassuring," she told him drily. She remembered the roar and rush of water at the dam, and the assassins, and the way Inquisitor Lim had stared at them – stared at Zu, she thought, pinned him with raking eyes as if he could carve his way to the why of it, the truth of it, whatever it had been that had sent a Lotus Assassin into traitorous isolation.
"Have you," Zu said, and coughed. "These visions, I mean."
"You believe me now, do you?"
"I believe you believe," he said, his voice lightening slightly.
She threw him a glare, mostly insincere, and turned away from the flyer. She dropped cross-legged into the grass and sat, her hands cupped over her knees. "I do believe it," she said. Her fingers drifted to the amulet chain, cold where it lay against her neck. "Well," she amended. "Either that or I'm going mad."
He smiled, slightly, a tiny movement. "It's possible."
"Thank you so much."
"It's also possible that you're right."
"I'm honoured," she told him drily.
"That I think you might be right?"
"That you think I might not be mad." She dug her fingers under the chain and tugged the amulet up and into her hands. Too unwieldy to be delicate, the design too unsettling to be beautiful, the metal too cold to ignore, to forget that it lay there, always there, near her heart. She turned it, the gems blinking. "I have to believe that it is as the Forest Spirit said. That she is the Water Dragon, and that I have to help her." She frowned. "As much as a mortal might think to help such a being. Do you know what the strange part is?"
"I'd been under the impression that there were several strange parts. The demon under the caves, the way we seem to walk between worlds too easily, the fact that for some reason your allies have not resorted to fighting each other yet. Your visions might come a poor last."
Suspiciously, she peered up at him. "You're laughing at me."
"Not at all." He sat opposite her, the sharp lines of his shoulders cutting the early sunlight. His gaze found hers, dark and thoughtful. "So what is the strange part?"
"I was turning it over and over in my head. Whether I'd dreamed her up. Whether I imagined what happened in the Spirit Cave. Whether if I dream her now, asleep, it's part of my imagination, or not." Ruefully, she added, "That it took a fox spirit to give her a title."
"The world is a strange place," Zu said, his voice softening. "You fight demons. Your friend senses ghosts before anyone else sees them."
"It changed so fast. I walked into that cave expecting a challenge." Unbidden, she found herself smiling. "I suppose I certainly found one."
"What else has she said?"
"She speaks strangely," she admitted. "She speaks in words that turn in on themselves. That I am to learn, but not too much. That I am meant to see, but not too clearly. That I am to succeed, but not entirely. Whatever path it is that I walk, I am directed."
"By her?"
"I don't know." She stared at her hands, and then across at his, hands and tapered fingers quarried deep with scars.
"What else is troubling you?"
"The weather," she retorted, and wondered how it was that he read her so easily, so quickly, so correctly. "She looks," she said, and struggled with the words, the words to explain the hollow ache she had seen in the woman's eyes, heard it in the woman's voice, the words fragile and raw, as if they came from a great distance, at a great cost. "She looks sad. It sounds trite. I know."
Zu's head tilted, his gaze sharpening. Footsteps intruded, and then Kang's voice, and Dawn Star's after him, both of them calling out about the flyer, and the bright clarity of the morning.
She uncoiled upright, smiling when Dawn Star caught her arm. "You're ready?"
"I think so," Dawn Star answered. "She'll fly us there?"
"It's a she?"
"Now you're arguing for the sake of it," Dawn Star said mildly. "But yes. She is."
They hauled their belongings on quickly, weapons and Dawn Star's rolled-up parchments and the two clothes chests they were sharing and the food supplies that Hou eyed shrewdly and flasks and the fragments of machines and wheels and cogs that Kang insisted must come with them. She followed them up into the flyer, feeling the rumble of it beneath her boots, the thrum of it as Kang woke it.
The ground, then, as it dropped away, the flyer climbing and climbing, its huge heavy wings fighting the air. Below, she could see the wet gleam of water, the river where it met the glitter of the sea. Mountains behind, jagging up into the sky, sawtoothed and wrapped in cloud. Briefly she watched Kang, his hands firm and certain on levers and switches and handles as he coaxed the flyer faster, dizzyingly higher, until the air was frosty against her mouth.
She turned, flattening her hands against the curve of the glass and just looking, staring down as the land unraveled beneath. Staring at the faint patch of her own breath. At the stomach-dropping emptiness beneath the flyer. At the details she thought she could find, the small rises of hills and the terraced stacks of paddy-fields and the haze of dust above the twisting serpent-shape of a road.
A shadow slanted across the glass, and she saw Zu as he stood beside her. She opened her mouth to say something, realised the clamour of the wings and the clatter of the curled-up legs of the flyer were too loud, and smiled instead. For a long moment he regarded her, his expression softening slightly. He tilted his head towards the glass, and she nodded back at him, aware of the absurdity of it – mimicking at each other, she thought, exaggerating – and when she turned back to look again, he stayed beside her, his hands level with hers where they were spread against the glass. Lean with muscle and rough with scars at the wrists and above and below, and she wrenched her gaze away, and back to the glass, and the world as it unrolled beneath.
The Imperial City was a riot of lanternlight and people as they walked, and the slopes of the streets as they curled and curved. The day sank away into dusk, and after she had wrangled with an innkeeper for a handful of rooms on the same corridor, she found her way out to the outside, stifling still with noise and the din of footsteps. Warmer here, she thought, the press of the heat from the air itself as much from the lanterns and the braziers and the throng as they wove their way through the avenues.
"This is it," Zu said. "The centre of the world. Like it?"
"I don't know," she said honestly. For long moments she stared, at the high angles of the roofs, at the strung illumination of the lanterns that crossed and crossed again above the courtyard. "Give me a day or so." She turned, and found that he was standing by the archway, a small tray between his hands, and two ceramic cups on the tray. "That's dreadfully thoughtful."
"It was Dawn Star's idea."
"Then I'll be sure to thank her for her generosity tomorrow." She grinned, and when she closed the distance between them, she clasped one of the cups. The tea was hot, jasmine-scented when it flooded her mouth. "And no, before you ask. I don't have a plan right now."
"I'm disappointed," Zu said drily.
"I'm sure." She turned again, until she found the low wall. She sat, the cup balanced between her fingers. "The arena. It seems the safest to me."
"Safe is a tenuous word."
"I know," she said. "Zu, I don't know this city. But if the princess – if Silk Fox – if she's right, then I need to get myself closer to the assassins."
"Yes."
"Tell me what you think."
"I think it's a terrible idea."
She lifted the cup again. "And if it's the only idea?"
"It's still a terrible idea." He sat beside her, steam drifting up from his cup, his gaze on the indistinct blur of the gloom. "I know I can't persuade you otherwise."
"Oh, I don't know. Depends on the manner of your argument."
His head turned, his eyes narrowing slightly. "You're laughing at me."
"No," she said, and sighed. "I'm lost."
"You're not lost. You're uncertain."
"And now you're speaking in riddles," she snapped, harsher than she meant to. "You disagree with me. Very well. Then you tell me I'm uncertain. Which is it?"
"That's the problem," Zu said, his voice roughening. "I know you want to find your master. I simply wish that it did not involve the Lotus Assassins."
"But?"
"But it does. They were the Order of the Lotus first," he said. "Charged with the spiritual care of the emperor."
"What changed?"
"Death's Hand. He is the will of the emperor, and if it means the emperor has allowed this," he said, the words brittle, flat with anger. His shoulders shifted, easing slightly. "Forgive me. I have not spoken of – it has been some time since I was here, and I find myself thinking of – old things."
"Yes," she said, softly. She stared at her own hands, wrapped around the cup, the knuckles nicked and bruised. "I know I can't tell you if it's alright, but if you want to talk about it, it's fine. It's also fine if you don't want to talk about it."
"Really," he said.
"Really," she said, deliberately mimicking his low, bemused tone. When she glanced across at him, she found him already looking at her, strangely, as if he could not quite sort through her words. "So," she said, lighter. "What else do you wish?"
"For things to be easier," he said.
She smiled and lifted the cup. "I agree."
The arena devoured her days, the relentless rhythm of the fights and the circle of shouting watchers and the chanting and the way they howled the name that was not hers, loud enough that the walls rang with it. She had chosen the name without thinking, grinning back at Qui when she said it, thinking of the dragon that looped its way down the blade of her sword, the dragons she had traced on broad swathes of paper, the calligraphy brush dripping glossy black ink. The scant moments she had left she lost to the city, to the restless dead in the Necropolis, to the dreams that dragged her out of sleep, her skin soaked with sweat.
One morning behind the tavern she found Dawn Star awake and up before her, her hair in unbound waves and her hands tilted up to catch the air as she moved, dancing her way through steps they had both learned too many years ago.
"Aren't you meant to be resting?" Dawn Star asked, her head turning slightly.
"I tried," she said, slightly apologetic. The night before had been a flurry of heat and the clamour of the arena and then the sharp, precise speed and poise of her fight with Crimson Khana.
Dawn Star paused. "The dreams again?"
"I think of the village. Do you?"
"Too much." Dawn Star turned properly. "Are you alright?"
"Yes," she answered immediately, aware that it was mostly a lie, a word thrown into the air between them. "I was thinking how it wasn't all that many days ago that we couldn't have imagined what we did yesterday, or the day before that."
"Jen," Dawn Star said, softly, her voice stretching the sound of it out, her name, half her name, the name Dawn Star had laughed and shouted and remonstrated at in equal measure.
"I'm alright."
"For how long?"
Half-heartedly, she glowered. "Alright. I don't know. I need to get into that fortress. And then I want to find Master Li and ask him quite a few questions."
"Only quite a few?" Dawn Star smiled. "I was thinking of a lot."
"We might have to take turns." She scrubbed a hand through her hair. "How do you keep that many secrets shut up inside yourself for that long?"
"You're still talking about Master Li?"
"Yes," she said pointedly. "Well," she said. "Maybe."
Dawn Star smiled. "I believe you. Come for a walk with me?"
"Right now?"
"Yes, right now." Dawn Star nudged her. "We need to get you away from that arena."
"I'm at your mercy."
"You're so ungrateful," Dawn Star said mildly. "The river's beautiful this early."
"You know," she said, and leaned against Dawn Star's shoulder. "I think that sounds like a wonderful idea."
She sat on the sill, her gaze on the glittering spread of the city. Darkness cloaked the rooftops above and still, she found that she did not want to move. Ahead, the white squares of the courtyard unraveled into the shadows.
"Are you up early or late?" Zu asked, from somewhere behind her.
"Late," she admitted, and did not turn. "I was at the arena."
"I heard. I also heard it went well."
"That time."
"Is that uncertainty I'm hearing?" he asked, his voice softening slightly.
She turned then, eventually, and looked up at him. He was standing beside the archway, scarred hands clasped over each other. "A little," she said.
"Why?"
The bluntness did not startle her, she realised, nor the direct, raking way he was looking at her, his dark eyes searching. Honestly, she told him, "Because Qui is putting together an Imperial Engagement, and I must fight my way through it."
"When?"
"Two days."
"You have presented yourself well in the arena so far."
"And what do you really think?"
The corner of his mouth shifted. "I think you will have to be careful, and fast, and perhaps you will come through this."
"Perhaps?" She grinned. "Thank you so much."
"It is different, to fight many opponents at once."
"Yes, but we have done this many times, haven't we?"
"It is different," he said again. "The arena makes it so."
"Does it?" she responded, deliberately bland.
"Yes, and you know that." His head tipped to one side. "Stand up."
"I'm sorry?"
"Stand up. If you are awake, and cannot sleep, and you must fight your way through Qui's Imperial Engagement, then let us see what we can do about it."
Slightly reluctantly, she slid off the sill, her feet touching the floor. "Very well," she said, brighter. "Impress me."
"Not the other way around? You have that much faith in yourself?"
"Well," she said. "I suppose we will see."
She chose one of the wooden practice swords, padded at the end, and waited until he settled on a staff. She moved first, as she had been taught, her heels not quite on the ground, her muscles not quite tense. She ducked two blows of the staff and turned into the third, whipping the sword up. Another gliding step had her closer and then tumbling past him, the flat of one hand cushioning the motion before she uncoiled upright. Snake-fast he whirled, following her. The staff dipped and wove and she met each stroke, her wrist twisting as she flicked the wooden blade.
"You're not surprising me," Zu said, and yanked the staff away.
"I thought we were sparring."
"We are," he said challengingly.
She grinned then, and thought she saw something in his gaze, something responding, sharpening as he looked at her.
"Alright," she said, and launched herself at him.
He flung the staff up, tilting it sideways in the same motion. Her sword slid and caught just below the padded tip before she wrenched away. As fast, she spun beneath the arc of the staff and sideways. The wrapped point of the sword dragged against his shoulder. He fought the way he talked, she thought absently, deceptively quietly and as deceptively lightly. Zu closed the distance, her sword absorbing three punishingly hard strokes that drove her back another step.
Inch by inch, she edged away, and when he lunged, she leaped over the staff. She spun upright, still moving, each motion unraveling into the next. The staff swiveled, and when she met it, she felt his weight behind the stroke. She hauled the sword sidewards, dragging his staff with it, and when he turned, his shoulder curved in, blocking her. She vaulted forward, one foot planting hard against his thigh, using his strength and his frame and his poise to throw herself over his shoulder and behind him. She whirled, some part of her thoughts aware of how he had felt, all trim muscle and practiced stance, how she had felt the shudder of contact.
Zu turned, meeting the upswing of the sword. She gave him half a step before she danced sideways, the breath shocking from her lungs when he caught her a glancing blow just above her hip. She paused long enough to glare and realised that he was smiling – almost smiling, almost, as much as he ever did – before she pushed herself off on one foot again.
"Not bad," Zu said eventually. He straightened up, his grip on the staff slackening.
She balanced the sword over her shoulder, aware of sweat on her lips, beneath the pads of her fingers. "But?"
"I have a suggestion, if you will."
"Is it a nice suggestion?"
"It's a useful one." He laid the staff on the ground. "When you roll, or when you jump, you give it away."
"How?" she demanded.
"Your shoulders roll in too early." His head tilted, his gaze unwavering as he regarded her. "It may be that I notice this since we have fought together for some time now."
She frowned. "And don't you have better things to do while we're beset by ghosts and who knows what else than watch my shoulders? Very well," she said, when he did not reply. "Overwhelm me with your wisdom."
"Let your feet move first," he said mildly. "Not even the most tested master can see or sense everything during a fight. Small moments can save you."
"Zu, I know. I," she said, and stopped when he stepped behind her.
"Like this," he said, and she felt the sudden, warm pressure of his hand against the small of her back.
In unthinking response, she straightened the arch of her spine, shifting her shoulders back. "Like that?"
"The slightest change can confuse an enemy. And you must not forget that in the arena, they are still your enemies, however much they might congratulate you afterwards."
"Most of them don't congratulate me," she said.
The rhythm of his breathing changed, as if he was swallowing a laugh. He moved, and she felt the emptiness behind her, the curious awareness of his absence.
"No," Zu said, and she heard his footsteps, receding. "I imagine they don't."
"You're hurt."
"Yes," she admitted ruefully. "Former Master Smiling Hawk was somewhat stronger than I anticipated."
"Such mistakes are dangerous," Zu remarked.
She reached for the stained edge of the cloth, wincing when it pulled. His fingers brushed the back of her wrist, stilling her.
"Not like that," he said, admonishing. "Sit down and we'll do this the right way."
She took the time to glare at him before complying, sinking onto the floor. She held her arm out, palm up, and kept her gaze on the blood she could see, flowering through the binding. Briskly, he unwound the cloth. Next he soaked a cleaner square of cloth in the ceramic bowl and mopped at the raw, swollen slice on her arm.
Curtly, he said, "This is deep. We'll wrap it properly, and you'll check it tomorrow morning. When do you fight next?"
"Four days. The Ravager." She watched as he found the salve, his fingers nimble as he dipped the cloth. "I wanted to ask you for some advice."
"About what?"
"Do you think I should approach the inquisitor?"
"You are carving out quite a name for yourself in the arena, aren't you?" He smiled, slightly, his attention still on the cloth and the wound. The salve was cool, the scent of it crisp and fresh. "Even if it isn't your own name."
She grimaced slightly. "Very funny. And you haven't answered."
"I'm thinking," he said. She felt the pressure of the new binding, unwinding around her arm, elbow to the base of her wrist, until deftly he tucked the edges under. "You have to find a way into the fortress. If that means seeking out this inquisitor as well, then so be it."
"Zu, that's not advice."
"But it is an answer."
He gathered himself as if to move away from her. Instinctively – madly, without thinking – she locked her hand around the back of his, her fingertips sliding over old scars and the glide of the salve.
"I would not," he said roughly. "The inquisitors are…it is easy to say they are all the same, the assassins. Perhaps they are. Perhaps there is no difference. But I would not want you – I would not want that to be your way into that fortress."
Raggedly, she exhaled. "This is going to sound ridiculous, but I was hoping you were going to say that."
"Why?"
"It gives me an excuse to avoid the inquisitors."
His eyes narrowed. "And if I said yes, they are the most pleasant type of Lotus Assassin around, you should go right now and drink wine with them, you would have…?"
"Called you a liar, and then demanded to know why you'd choose now to discover a rather dreadful sense of humour."
Zu snorted. "Fair enough."
The night after the Ravager was defeated, rain swept across the city. In great rippling sheets it fell, chiming against stone pathways and pattering off sloped roofs. The rain did not beat back the clinging heat of the day, and the night turned close and stifling. In the inn, she ducked past Kang, and threw a smile to Dawn Star where she sat, Wildflower nestled under one arm, the little girl already flushed and dozing. With her cup still clasped in one hand and a flask in the other, she meandered her way between the cluttered tables and out, into the damp quiet of the courtyard.
She breathed in the silence and stood for long moments, looking at nothing, and hearing only the rain. She sipped at the rice wine again, the sharp tang of it burning before it warmed.
The shadows moved, and Zu said, "Too busy inside?"
"Too busy. Too hot." Eventually she saw him, standing statue-still. She made her way across the courtyard, the rain ribboning her face and hands. She stepped up and into the open roofed passageway. Tiny oil lamps hung, throwing spots of light on the floor, on the polished benches. "Whirlwind keeps losing to Sky. Hou's facedown in his cups already."
"Revelry," Zu said.
"You don't approve?" she asked, slightly teasingly.
"I have no opinion either way."
"That's not much fun."
She held out the cup. When he gave in, his fingers circling it, she thought she saw amused resignation in his face. He drank and passed it back, pressing it into her hands.
"For once you don't look very," she said, and bit back a smile. "Agitated."
"No? I must be slipping."
"How old are you?"
"Old."
"That's not helpful."
"Older than you."
"My response is the same," she said archly. She offered the cup again and waited until he sipped and handed it back. She sat on the bench, the red wood cool when she touched it, smooth when she slid her hand across it. "Join me?"
"Is that an order?"
"It's a suggestion from someone with plenty to drink."
Zu smiled. He sat beside her, his hands clasped loosely over his knees. He stared out and into the gloom of the courtyard, and she wondered what he was thinking. She found the ceramic flask and tipped it up until the cup was brimming.
"You let Whirlwind kill Kai Lan."
"He wanted to," she said. "And he had good reason to."
"I understand."
For long moments she listened to the low rumble of sound from the inn, muted voices and laughter, her eyes on the light at the windows, the light as it spilled into the courtyard. When she held out the cup to him again, she discovered that he was looking at her, strangely, almost quizzically, as if he was searching for something to say.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I'm remembering what we spoke of. What I said, about you drinking wine with assassins."
"You're different. And you're just one assassin. Former assassin."
"That's," he said, and lifted the cup. "Not much of a compliment."
She grinned. "Sorry. What was it like, in the marshes?"
"Wet," he responded wryly. "Quiet. Bandits, sometimes. Not often, not before Gao's men."
"You enjoyed it?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes I endured it."
"I think I understand. Where did you live?"
"There are ruins. When I was first there, I moved between them. Years later I moved less."
"That seems," she said, and shrugged. "I don't know. Lonely."
"I suppose it was. What was it like at Two Rivers?"
"It was home," she said honestly. She turned slightly, her shoulder grazing his. "I don't remember anywhere else. If I think back to the first things I know, I think of there, and I think of Dawn Star."
"You and she were always friends?"
"Yes," she said. "At least I think so. It seems that way now." She found herself smiling, unbidden, and added, "She and I…we've always been there. If that makes any kind of sense."
"It makes some kind of sense," Zu said.
"When the village," she said, and the words caught in her throat, stone-heavy. "The others…it was terrible."
"But?"
"But damn you for knowing that it's not that simple," she said lightly. She grasped the cup again. "I went into that cave knowing that I would find her. That I would've torn Gao apart to get to her."
"That is because you are afflicted with a terrible sense of nobility."
"Maybe I just like fighting monsters." She sighed and added, "We'd talked about it, leaving Two Rivers. Going somewhere else. Wandering. We didn't know what or when."
"And sometimes the choice is taken from you."
"Or given to you," she said thoughtfully. "Though perhaps not when you assume."
"Careful," Zu said mildly. "Now you're sounding like me."
"Not much of a compliment," she retorted, and when he smiled – properly, unfettered and open – her stomach clenched.
The wind gusted, and the oil lamps swayed, spattered by the rain as it billowed under the angles of the roof. She watched the tiny points of light as they swung. When he pushed the cup into her hands she drank again, the wine fiery enough to make her blink. She hunted for something to say, failed, and silently wondered if it even mattered. She shifted, her shoulder settling against his. She felt him shudder, tensing, and thought he might gather himself away from her and whatever this strange, comfortable quiet meant.
Instead, he stayed, and she sat beside him, the cup balanced between their hands while the night unraveled.