Chapter 214 (Patreon)

The lamps we brought out to the courtyard so we could clean are still lit, and in their light the stones of the floor almost look the way they always do.

Almost, because in front of my room I am looking at a circle a little over a meter across in which not a single tile has been left as it was.

The tiles in that area have their surfaces lifted in flakes, like the crust of a loaf someone forgot in the oven, black in the center and gray toward the outside. Very fine cracks run out from the center in every direction, like the legs of a spider, and two of the tiles are missing a corner.

It is the only thing in the courtyard we haven’t been able to fix.

Everything else is done. The eight bodies are in the river, and with them everything they had on them, including the sandal that came off one of their feet when he fell.

And I am not going to think about what it was like to carry them to the water. Not tonight and, if I can help it, never again.

Then came the water and the brushes. Xia scrubbing on her knees, and me holding another brush with the Dragon’s Grip, until the water running between the joints of the stones stopped coming out dark and I stopped knowing whether what I smelled was the blood or the memory of the blood.

And even so, as I look at the mess in the courtyard, I can’t help being grateful that I gave the talisman some height.

When I placed it in front of those two men, I left it at mid-height, and thanks to that the only thing it did to the tiles was scar their surface. If I had let it drop at their feet, I wouldn’t be looking at a circle of burned stones now, I would be looking at a hole.

I sigh at that thought, since it still doesn’t spare me from having to hire some masons. Although at least, in a city built by and for cultivators, I don’t think a circle of burned tiles in the middle of a courtyard is the strangest thing a mason has ever seen.

After that thought, I turn my head toward the magnolia, where, beneath it, at the stone table, Xia has fallen asleep.

She is sitting on one of the benches, with her arms folded on the tabletop and her head resting on them, sideways, with her mouth a little open and a lock of hair stuck to her cheek. She still has her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and the knees of her trousers are dark from the water.

A while ago she told me she was only going to sit down for a moment, and I am glad she has fallen asleep, because at least someone in this house is going to manage to sleep tonight. I can’t, since every time I close my eyes for more than a couple of seconds, the courtyard insists on filling with smoke again, and beneath the smoke, with sand, so I would rather keep watch.

I decide to stop wasting time looking at the broken tiles, and the wheels rattle over the stones as I go around the burned circle and pass the first of the posts, the only one that has survived this night, heading for the door of my study.

Not to work, since my hand isn’t steady enough to trace a single rune without burning the paper. But a book is the best way I know to make time pass without having to sit imagining the worst outcomes of this night, because Lianhua hasn’t come back yet and the moon has traveled a good stretch of the sky since I heard her leave the island.

I am not worried that she won’t come back. Lianhua told me she would, and Lianhua doesn’t say things she doesn’t expect to be able to keep, but what worries me is the state she will be in.

I am a couple of pushes from the door of the study when I hear, in the silence of the night, a dull knock of wood against wood, that of a hull touching the dock, and then the rub of a rope tightening against a post.

A boat has just tied up at the island, so I close my hands around the rims and the chair stops with a short squeal.

It could be Lianhua, and most likely it is. But when I went to bed, it also seemed most likely to me that no one would come into my courtyard at night, so I turn the chair on the spot until I am facing the courtyard gate, put my hand into my sleeve, take out a Minor Explosion Talisman and hold it between my fingers, without activating it yet.

I look at the gate, and then I glance sideways at the circle of broken tiles, thinking that, since I am going to have to call the masons anyway, having them fix the gate as well won’t make any difference.

On the stone path that goes around the island, footsteps I recognize begin to sound, but even so, I don’t lower the talisman.

Finally, the hinges creak, the gate swings inward and the one who crosses the threshold is Lianhua.

When I see her, the air escapes my lungs in a sigh of relief and I lower the hand with the talisman.

But then Lianhua takes two more steps and enters the light of the lamps, and my relief disappears, since her left sleeve is still stiff and black from the shoulder to the elbow, as it was when she left. But now, in addition, her clothes are open at her side, with the fabric dark and hardened around the cut, and at her right shoulder her tunic is slashed in a long, clean line that shows the skin beneath.

I put the talisman back into my sleeve without looking where I leave it and head toward her.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Are you all right?”

Lianhua finishes closing the gate behind her and comes to meet me, so that we meet halfway, where she stops in front of the chair, at just the right distance for me not to have to tip my head back to look at her.

“I am fine, Xiaojie”, she replies. “They are not serious wounds.”

She touches the edge of the cut at her side with two fingers, like someone showing a torn seam.

“They have already begun to heal”, she continues. “It is only a matter of time.”

She says it in the same flat, polite voice with which she lets me know that the meal is served, and I look her up and down once more, searching for something that contradicts what she is telling me.

But she isn’t bleeding. The fabric is dry, and along the edges of the cut on her shoulder there is a glimpse of pink, taut skin that looks more like a wound several days old than a wound from tonight.

The pill and the Nature Gate, doing their work with an efficiency that eases my worry a little.

“I’m glad”, I tell her with a smile.

And then I ask the question I have spent hours not wanting to ask.

“Is everything taken care of?” I ask her.

I say it just like that, as if I were asking whether the order from the Tower had arrived, but we both know that what I am really asking her is whether she has carried out the order I gave her, the one to go and kill a group of people.

Lianhua doesn’t look away.

“As far as I know, yes, Xiaojie”, she replies. “If any member of the Iron Oar Gang is left, it is because they were neither in tonight’s attack nor in their hideout.”

I nod slowly, but I don’t ask her how many there were, or how she did it. Maybe I will ask her someday, or maybe not, and right now I don’t know which of the two I would prefer.

But before I have time to say anything else, a shout comes from the magnolia.

“Lianhua!” rings out across the courtyard.

I look back and see that Xia has woken up with a start, with the mark of her sleeve still printed on her cheek, and she is already running toward us before she has finished getting to her feet, so fast that she almost loses one of her sandals.

But she finally reaches us and throws herself at Lianhua, hugging her around the waist so hard that Lianhua has to take half a step back to keep her balance, and I see her face tense for an instant, just one, when Xia’s arm squeezes her ribs.

But she says nothing, and Xia doesn’t notice either, because she has already pulled away from her and is looking her up and down.

“Are you okay?” she asks her. “What did they do to your shoulder? And that on your side? Does it hurt? Have you taken another pill? How many do you have left?”

“I am fine, Xia”, Lianhua replies. “I have already taken a pill, and it is already healing.”

“But you’re covered in blood!” Xia tells her.

“Dry”, Lianhua replies.

Which, for Lianhua, is a complete explanation, but for Xia it is nowhere near enough. She grabs her right wrist, which is the only thing that seems to have neither a cut nor a stain, and pulls.

“Sit down”, she tells her.

And without waiting for an answer, she drags her toward the stone table.

Lianhua could stay where she is and Xia wouldn’t manage to move her an inch even pulling with both hands, but she lets herself be led. She crosses the courtyard behind her at her usual pace and, when they reach the table, Xia practically pushes her down by the shoulders until she sits on the bench, taking care not to touch the cut, mind you.

I follow them and position myself at the head of the table while Xia sits on the bench opposite, but she doesn’t let go of Lianhua’s wrist, as if she were afraid Lianhua would disappear through the courtyard gate again the moment she let go.

She looks at Lianhua, then looks at me, and then at Lianhua again.

“Is it all over now?” she asks. “I suppose it is, now that Lianhua is back.”

It is a simple question, the kind you ask hoping that is the answer, and I would like to be able to answer it just as simply.

But I sigh, since it probably isn’t that easy.

“It all depends on what whoever sold them the information wants to do”, I tell her. “And on whether they know what happened tonight.”

Xia frowns.

“What do you mean?” she asks me.

I rest my forearms on the edge of the table.

“We already figured that we were being watched at midday”, I tell her. “That someone was watching from a distance what we did with the three who came to extort us, but we don’t know whether they also know what happened tonight, and that can change a lot of things.”

I raise a finger.

“If they know, and they saw that Lianhua was the one who took care of everything, what they’re going to conclude is that we depend exclusively on her to defend ourselves”, I continue.

I raise a second finger.

“But if they don’t know anything, when they find out, all they’re going to know is that the Iron Oar Gang messed with us”, I finish. “And that, in a single night, it disappeared.”

I lower my hand, and there is no need to tell them which of the two versions I prefer.

The first is that of a house with one person to defend it, where all it takes is to draw that person away for everyone else to be left defenseless. The second is that of a house no one really knows much about, except that the last people who dared to mess with the people living inside died in a single night.

Xia keeps looking at me with her brow still furrowed, and it is Lianhua who continues.

“I did not notice anyone following me all night, Xiaojie”, she says. “Neither on the way there nor on the way back.”

She pauses briefly.

“And before going into their hideout, I checked the guards the Iron Oar Gang had posted”, she continues. “There was no one else nearby either, apart from them.”

She clasps her hands on the table, although, since Xia still hasn’t let go of her wrist, she does it with Xia’s hand held in hers.

“That is why I believe the second possibility is the most likely”, she continues. “And for an information broker, the worst thing that can happen is to have a variable they do not know.”

“Why?” Xia asks her.

“Because people in that line of work live off their reputation”, Lianhua replies. “If they sell a piece of information and it turns out to be wrong, the repercussions can be very serious. So the most likely thing is that they will decide to wait and see what happens before doing anything.”

I look at Lianhua, since of the three of us, she is the only one who knows that world from the inside. She was a Yushi of the Yushitai for years, and if there is anyone at this table who knows how people who live off knowing things about others think, it is her.

“You’re the one most familiar with that world”, I tell her. “Is there any chance they’ll want to test us again?”

Lianhua shakes her head.

“It is very unlikely, Xiaojie”, she replies.

She pauses briefly.

“Most likely there are people who know that they were the one who gave the information about us to the Iron Oar Gang”, she continues. “And when word of tonight spreads, their reputation will already be badly damaged. They will not risk the same thing happening again, because that would ruin it completely, even if only for a while.”

Which makes all the sense in the world, since once can be blamed on bad luck. But if something similar happens again with their information, then there is a problem with that information, and no one buys information from someone who gets it wrong.

“Then how much time can we count on?” I ask her.

Lianhua thinks about it for a moment before answering, which is something she very rarely does.

“Being attacked should not happen again, Xiaojie”, she tells me. “Not in the short term, nor in the medium term.”

Beside me, Xia squeezes Lianhua’s wrist a little harder, and I am not sure she realizes she is doing it.

“What has happened to the Iron Oar Gang is going to spread like wildfire”, Lianhua continues. “In that world everything gets known, so the small gangs will not want anything to do with us.”

She pauses briefly.

“Besides, the rivals of whoever sold them the information will hurry to sell what happened tonight”, she continues. “Not only to make money, but because they can also take advantage of the moment to sink their rival’s reputation. So no gang the size of the Iron Oar is going to dare to end up like them.”

She separates one of her hands a little, as if to emphasize her words.

“That means that only larger gangs or organizations would dare to come near us”, she continues. “And that kind of gang or organization only does something like this if they know, without any doubt, that they are going to get something that makes up for the risk.”

She looks at me steadily after those words.

“And I do not believe that, for the moment, anyone knows what they could get out of us apart from trying to extort us”, she finishes. “For that kind of organization, that is too weak a motive.”

I let myself drop back against the backrest of the chair and let the air leave my lungs slowly, like the steam from a pot whose lid has finally been taken off.

Not in the short term, nor in the medium term.

Coming from Lianhua, who hasn’t exaggerated a single thing in all the years I have known her, that is almost a written guarantee.

But almost isn’t quite, and what happened tonight can’t happen again, not in a year or in ten, because next time Xia may not have time to barricade her door, and I may not have the right talisman at hand.

I straighten up in the chair.

“Even so, we can’t go on like this”, I say.

They both look at me.

“They’re already watching us”, I continue. “So, for now, having a few more people looking at us doesn’t matter that much either.”

It is the same logic by which, in my other life, celebrities often didn’t even bother dodging the press. When everyone is already looking at you, one more makes no difference.

“So it’s better that we hire some guards”, I continue. “Even if that means I have to cultivate in a more normal way until I can create the island’s formation.”

“And that is still a few months away”, I add. “No matter how many books I have or how many of Master Shi’s classes I go to.”

Because it is one thing to carve a Qi-gathering formation into the floor of a room, and quite another to surround an entire island with something capable of stopping people like those tonight without leaving a single gap. And I am still learning to calculate where and how those formations have to be placed.

Lianhua just nods, while Xia, on the other hand, stays silent for a moment, with her eyes fixed on the tabletop, and that silence lasts long enough for me to wonder what she is thinking.

And when she finally speaks, she does it with all the seriousness in the world.

“If we have to feed them, we’ll need to buy more provisions”, she says.

I smile on hearing her; I can’t help it.

It is the first time all night that I smile without having to think about it first, and it is because there is nothing more like Xia than that. We have had a fight, a circle of burned stones a few meters from the table and an entire gang that has ceased to exist, and the first thing that worries her about strangers coming to guard the island is how much food we will have to buy.

And to be honest, it doesn’t seem like a bad order of priorities to me.

I look toward the courtyard gate, closed, and then toward the sky, where the moon has already begun to sink toward the western islands.

I am going to spend what is left of the night awake anyway, so I decide that at least it should be good for something.

“I’ll finish tonight’s watch”, I say.

Lianhua raises her eyes to me.

“And you go to bed”, I continue. “You need to recover, Lianhua. That’s an order.”

And Lianhua, who before dinner offered to keep watch without anyone asking her to, doesn’t argue with me at all this time.

Xia finally lets go of her wrist, although it is clear that it costs her, and Lianhua gets up from the bench.

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she tells me.

She inclines her head, turns around and starts walking toward her room.

But she only takes one step, and stops.

She stays like that for a moment, with her back to me, the lamplight outlining the cut on the shoulder of her tunic, and then she turns her head toward me.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me. “I also wanted to tell you that the Advanced Privacy Talismans, with their ability to delay their activation, are very effective.”

She pauses.

“Perhaps too effective”, she finishes.