Notes: Sorry this one took forever to get up. I've had a very busy past couple of months with school and getting ready for graduation. Enjoy!
After an entire day of hard lesson of balance and speed and agility, Kia Min and Darting Lynx made their way to the port where sailors were unloading and loading cargo and new merchants were setting up shop. With the number of townspeople swarmed by the docks, Kia Min felt like she was back in One Stone during harvest season, when the farmers came in from the fields with stocks of produce to sell for the upcoming cold winter. Darting Lynx even made a comment about it, noting that this was the most hustle and bustle she had ever seen Tien's Landing since arriving many weeks ago.
When Kia Min, with Darting Lynx in tow, asked the captain of the ship to passage to Golden River, the port Darting Lynx called the closest to the Imperial City, he shot one look at her bamboo staff and stepped aside. Kia Min met Darting Lynx's eye, and she smirked as though to say, "I told you so." A crew member hurried to their side to show them the way to their room, and there, for a whole week, the two women continued to teach each other and continued to learn about one another.
"So, you're an acrobat," said Kia Min their second day on the river over a bowl of soggy rice. "What made you get into it?"
"Well," said Darting Lynx as she swallowed her food, "when I was little, a team of acrobats came through my hometown. I was mesmerized, and I kind of stowed away in their caravan."
"You ran away?" asked Kia Min, and she knew it was impolite to gape like she did.
Darting Lynx laughed. "You assume I had a home to begin with. Don't really know or remember what happened to my mother. My father died of some lingering disease from the Long Drought just a month or two before."
"Oh," said Kia Min, cringing. "I'm sorry, I--"
"Don't be," said Darting Lynx with a casual shrug. "It was a long time ago. Anyway, I was running out of his secret stash of silver, and I was a day away from becoming a petty thief, a real street urchin. So this was for the better. Luckily, the leader of the group saw it my way, and became my master. I traveled and performed with the rest of the acrobats for a time, but it wasn't the best run group in the Empire. After my master died, well, we all dispersed, and that's how I came to travel alone. The rest, well, the rest is largely unimportant."
Kia Min nodded and toyed with her rice, thinking of what else to say. This gruel was practically like soup, she realized, and then she shook her head. "So, then, is Darting Lynx a stage name or...?"
"Stage name," said Darting Lynx. "I really don't even remember my real name anymore, to tell the truth. My master started calling me Darting Lynx early in my training, when he thought that I was a little too fast for my own good." She crinkled her face and said in a deep voice through her nose, "'You dart like a lynx, but you balance like a drunken frog!'"
Kia Min threw her head back and laughed.
The fourth evening, as Kia Min finished her meditations and Darting Lynx completed her final balancing exercises, Darting Lynx rolled in front of Kia Min and asked, "So, you and the Lotus Blossom were classmates, right? Where?"
"Two Rivers," said Kia Min, and she hoped that Darting Lynx would not ask why they left and would assume that they graduated. She had little interest in telling that story again. Twice was hard enough.
Darting Lynx considered this for a moment. "... nope. I've never performed there before. About where is it?"
"Near the south border of the Empire," said Kia Min. "It's a quiet town, really, and secluded. The only visitors are merchants. In the five years I'd been at the school, we never had any traveling performers come through."
"Oh, so you're not from Two Rivers, then?"
She shook her head. "One Stone."
Darting Lynx grinned. "One Stone, now there I've been! Just last year, actually. But you wouldn't have been there. Five years in Two Rivers, I'm assuming you left there recently?"
Kia Min bit her lip. "Yes," she said slowly. "I did."
"To follow the Lotus Blossom." Kia Min nodded. "Do you mind if I ask why? I guess I kind of get why you are. She's doing some good in the Jade Empire, and you want to help out, but why? The glory? Admiration for her? Or do you know what's going on and have a personal stake in it?"
Kia Min hesitated before she said any of the reasons that came to her mind first. They were fighting Lotus Assassins, and they were freeing slaves and ending slavers, of which Lotus Assassins were a part of. Making the Jade Empire a better place. But then a word came to mind--revenge--and Kia Min quickly beat it down. There was no way she could track down the men who directly killed Ni Joh and his family, and she had already taken care of Jing Woo's murderer for Wu, but...
That was when Kia Min remembered the customer, and Yao Hong, Yao Hong's soldier, Wayfarer Wei and Little Qing, and Hehua.
"It's a long story," she started, "but I guess we have a couple more days until we reach Golden River. Okay. Let me tell you the story of after I left Two Rivers..."
Three days later, they came to port at Golden River. Kia Min tried to offer the captain of the ship some silver, but he raised a hand and told her that it was his pleasure; he wanted no trouble. Before Kia Min could insist, Darting Lynx gently pushed her along off the boat.
"Free passage, better than what I was expecting," said Darting Lynx. "Nobles are stingy, so you'll need all the silver you can get for the flyers. I'll help you out. I'll come to the Imperial City with you."
Kia Min frowned. "Why? You said that cityfolk aren't the greatest of customers, and you're low on silver."
"For food and lodging, yes, I'm low, but travel, I'm not. Besides, I learned a few new tricks since my last try through the Imperial City. Maybe I'll luck out this time and not have to deal with people treating me like a common beggar," said Darting Lynx with a wink. "Besides, after what you said about Hehua... I feel like I need to do something about it, too. I mean, that's the real reason you're out here, isn't it?"
Kia Min weighed her options. Darting Lynx was no warrior, she admitted that much, but she was resourceful and was more knowledgeable about the Jade Empire than Kia Min was. Not to mention that the company would be nice, and Darting Lynx would not be an unpleasant companion.
Finally, Kia Min nodded. "Alright, then. Come on, let's find us a nobleman with a flyer. Between the two of us, we should have more than enough."
They did not. Over the course of the next few days, nobleman after nobleman refused the offerings Kia Min and Darting Lynx gave. They never started with the total they had at Kia Min's insistence--bartering, she explained to Darting Lynx. Never let the merchant know exactly how much they had. The tactic was to no avail, and after the second night in the inn, Darting Lynx decided to begin doing shows in Golden River.
"It'll buy us a couple of days," she said. "Enough to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. I'll do this, and you keep trying the noblemen."
"Couldn't we just catch a merchant on his way to the Imperial City by foot?" asked Kia Min. "This is taking too long. What if they leave?"
Darting Lynx replied, "We'll lose more time in the long run if we go by foot. Don't worry. Within the week, we'll find our way there. Just keep asking around. Persistence is key. So is compromise."
And so Kia Min kept asking, and the noblemen still did not budge, though one had deliberately eyed her from head to toe as she tried to make her case. "Well," he had said, in a slimy voice, "I suppose we could come to some arrangement..." But Kia Min was not yet desperate enough to compromise her dignity, and no amount of silver could change the noble's mind.
That night over dinner Darting Lynx jokingly suggested that they begin offering their bodies. "What man could possibly resist the charms of a flexible acrobat and a well-toned warrior?" She paused. "Well, I suppose I'd have to be the one offering my body. You'd be too intimidating for them, I would think. They'd think you'd kill them in the middle of the act."
Together the women laughed, and the very next day Kia Min trekked through the town. Every noble she saw she had bartered with once or twice before, now. Darting Lynx, if she was not already, would be running out of customers soon. No flyers had arrived to Golden River in the past couple of days, so unless one came in by the afternoon, Kia Min knew that their luck was out. She would have to find a new way to the Imperial City.
How long would it take by foot, Kia Min wondered. A month? Was that what Darting Lynx said? That would take too long, and if Wu and Dawn Star were not already departed from the Imperial City, the trail would be cold. She would be too late.
Kia Min sighed and stopped as she came to a crossroads within the town. All of this traveling, all of this intent, and this is what it comes to? Was Hehua her one purpose after all? It couldn't have been.
She could not give up.
"Excuse me, miss?"
Kia Min turned to face a young man in blue and green silks and a handsome demeanor. She frowned and reached for her staff; the nobles never approached her.
"Yes?" she said as she wrapped her hand around the cold bamboo and kept her eyes alert for any stray movements. Too many of these rich men in this port regarded her with disdain anymore, to the point where she almost feared that Darting Lynx's jests would have to come to fruition.
Her defenses were not subtle enough for this young man, and he took a step back. "I'm sorry, miss, but... you're the one trying to find a way to the Imperial City by flyer, right?"
"Right," said Kia Min slowly.
"Well, my father already refused you once, but he's caught up in business here and is having me go back to the Imperial City to take care of matters there. If... if you... and your friend... are still looking for a way to the Imperial City, I'll be glad to take you. No cost. I promise."
This had to be a trap. "Really," Kia Min said shortly.
"You don't trust me?"
"I've been turned down by everyone here in Golden River when I offered them silver. Why do you approach me now?"
The man blushed. "Well, it's... it's just that... I... hate to see a pretty young lady such as yourself stranded here when she could be in the Imperial City, as majestic as... as wonderful as..."
Kia Min took this in for a moment before she relaxed her shoulders and held her breath to keep from laughing. "And your father would have no problem with your doing such a favor for a couple of peasants?"
"He wouldn't have to know!" said the man. "Well, not that I'm afraid of telling him, but he doesn't have to know. I'm good at not letting him know things. So... do you want to go?"
Kia Min let a couple of chuckles loose and nodded. "Alright. When do you leave?"
The next morning, Kia Min and Darting Lynx packed what little belongings they had and paid the innkeeper the fees for the past few nights, and made their way through the port. Kia Min thought it unusual that they had to maneuver through the crowds more carefully than normal, and that she found it necessary to turn back to make sure Darting Lynx had not lost her. But perhaps this was a normal weekly routine, or monthly routine, of the city. She had not been in Golden River for very long to be sure.
Once they reached the hangar where the young nobleman had said to meet them, Darting Lynx turned to Kia Min and said with a grin, "I still can't believe you were able to get someone to agree to take us, and for free! Are you lying when you said you did it without violence or taking off your clothes?"
Kia Min smirked. "Oh, but a good merchant never reveals her secrets."
"But you're not a merchant."
"I could be, someday."
"You'd want that?"
Though Darting Lynx said that in jest, Kia Min added nothing more to their banter. Luckily, before her mind could stray and before Darting Lynx could divulge further, a voice boomed from the middle of the hangar.
Unfortunately, the voice belonged to a man whose robes Kia Min knew all too well.
"Lotus Assassin," she breathed.
"A traitor runs amuck in the Jade Empire in a flyer, and she is known to be armed and dangerous. The Scourge of the South comes to the heart of the Empire, and in the name of our new Emperor Sun Li, all air travel is prohibited until this traitor is caught."