Flying Swords 10 (Patreon)

Today is a short chapter. I’ve started painting and redoing one of the rooms in my house, and doing renovations on the downslope of your fifties is way harder than I anticipated. Even five years ago, the ladder posed far less of a challenge. However, I want to repurpose one of my rooms into something darker and cozier—a place for tea and reading. So, my old bones are doing the ladder. And you get a shorter chapter. But hopefully still a strong one. These two are speaking to me.

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Chapter Ten

“Did you know that magical people didn’t always dress like this?” Shanlin asked, excited to tell them all about his day at school.

“Really?” Leander busied himself with the lotus roots he had harvested. He was determined to get as many of their calories as possible from free sources. Auntie Daiyu might be impressed with his baskets, but there were a limited number he could sell.

“That’s interesting,” Creek said. Not Creek. Xi.  Leander had to think of him as Xi. Only Xi. Their real names would make them too easily found if someone started looking. So he was Hu Xi, qidi to Boon Lian. Shanlin had accepted Creek back into their lives with the ease of someone who had expected it to happen, and only the unfamiliar name made him frown. But now they sat at the table together like this was normal, as if they had sat down to dinner together a hundred times. Leander still wondered what Tecca had told her son about the people she’d grown up with, but he didn’t want to bring up Shanlin’s mother when the loss was so new.

“Before the revolution, the wealthy nobles would wear long robes with the pants underneath and most people wore short pants with short robes or long shirts because it was easier to work in, and because the nobles would beat them if they dressed up in clothing that wasn’t proper.” He was oddly excited about clothing.

“That sounds crappy,” Xi said.

“I know! Anyway, when the revolution happened, in mundane China, everyone started dressing like commoners, but in magical China, everyone started dressing like nobles. Now the only status that really matters is how much power someone has. Everyone at Teacher Luo’s school said that Master Teacher Wang at the school on the hill is the most powerful magic user ever. Some of the kids said that he was like a thousand years old.” He whispered the last part with awe.

Xi laughed. “I doubt that. Either they’re exaggerating or they’re telling you a story because you’re new.”

“Not necessarily,” Leander said. “The Chinese cultivate magic and that gives them a much wider range of powers. I know that longevity is one of the effects of developing magic.”

“But a thousand years?” Xi asked, doubt in his voice.

“It’s possible,” Leander said. He needed Xi to understand that this was a different world and it functioned with different rules. “Everyone in town speaks of Master Teacher Wang as a truly remarkable man with impeccable control over magic. He might have extended his lifespan with magic.”

“You’re truly remarkable, and you’re aging normally,” Xi said. “Hell, for that matter, I”m truly remarkable and I have gray hairs coming in when I’m not not even thirty.”

“You are remarkable,” Leander reassured him, “but we use magic differently.”

“In what way?”

Leander stopped cutting lotus root and turned around. “I have no idea, but I know the shifu I had when I came to China as a teenager had to teach the outsiders in a separate class because we couldn’t do magic the way the Chinese students could. And they couldn’t perform magic like we did. We had different forms of magic.”

Xi narrowed his eyes. “If the magic was different, one teacher couldn’t have taught both. He would have one type of magic or another, and I refuse to believe that Chinese people are genetically superior when it comes to magic.”

“He knew both.”

“Then he had both, so it can’t be that different. Genetically speaking, people are people.”

“And they develop magic differently.”

“Seriously? Isn’t that just propaganda to make outsiders feel weak?”

Leander was frustrated, but he saw Shanlin watching with wide eyes and he swallowed all the anger that made him want to choke Xi to death with a nearby morning glory vine climbing the outside of their house. “I never said it was genetic. It might be they grow up in more magical areas. It might be something they eat or something that is taught to them as children. I don’t know.”

“I might grow up more powerful because we moved here?” Shanlin asked. Leander would expect a child to be excited about the prospect, but he sounded horrified.

“We don’t know,” Leander said. He put down the knife and sat next to the boy, unsure what else to say.

“I don’t want to be powerful.” His voice shook.

Leander looked at Xi, but he seemed just as lost. They were two fools stumbling in the dark.

“Mother was powerful!” His voice was stronger now, and Shanlin stood so fast that the chair fell over. “I don’t want to be powerful.” He bolted away, out the door. Leander lunged for him, but Shanlin escaped, the grass and flowers marking his passage as he ran for the hills.

Xi shot to his feet, but Leander held up a hand. “I can feel where he is. Don’t crowd him.”

“Don’t crowd him?” Xi demanded. “Druwolf is after you, the American government signed a warrant for your arrest, and you want him to run around unprotected?”

Leander stood. “I can feel where he is. I have the magical equivalent of eyes on him, so he’s safe.”

“Safe?” Xi’s voice rose to a near shout. “Safe like Tecca was safe? Like Finn was safe? Do you have any idea what I’ve seen on crime scenes where Druwolf left his mark?” Xi leaned closer and the shadows grew darker.

“Yes!” Leander shouted back. “Yes, I do! Do you have any idea what I had to do to survive working for that psychopath? Do you know what Tecca did?  I do, at least some of it. So don’t lecture me.”

Xi jerked back like he was burned. “You work with plants. You wouldn’t have…” He studied Leander with such cold suspicion that Leander wanted to punch him, to make that expression go away.

“Plants have many uses,” Leander said, not willing to be more specific than that.  He knew how much pressure it took to break a man’s neck with a vine or strangle a woman who had tried to steal a shipment of drugs. He knew how to coax an oleander to yield a more potent poison. He knew these things as well as he knew how to create a better hallucinogenic and a stronger high. He wasn’t a good person. But these were truths he couldn’t drag into the light. Not now.

“Do you have any idea what Finn did? Imagine what use Druwolf would have for someone who could negate the healing magic of a victim, how he could have imprisoned you and cut you off from your shadows. I know why Finn died–he died because he could have challenged Druwolf himself, and now you who never stood in the same room with that psychopath want to tell me how dangerous he is. Get over yourself.”

Xi had lost most of the color in his face. 

Leander sank back down into his chair and let his magic run along the ground where Shanlin sat under a vine-covered arch.  “Shit,” he whispered. They were allies, but the days when they’d sat around with popsicles stolen from the corner store were long over.

“I just thought…” Xi cleared his throat. “I know Tecca did things she hated. She told me things… when she was trying to arrange a voluntary surrender. But you…?”

Leander closed his eyes, and his mind summoned the image of Tecca over a huge pot, dripping blood into the concoction to make it more addictive, to make the high last longer and the drop to hit harder.  Leander could coax plants to the edge of their natural power, but Tecca could take them past that point.  He looked up at Xi who still looked at Leander like he was dirt–like he was a drug dealer.

Leander scoffed, a familiar sneer settling on his face. “And how many innocent magic users did you turn over to the government? How many people are enslaved right now, some of them in literal chains, because you were a good dog for your masters? How many have killed themselves rather than serve, all while you had your comfortable life and comfortable job? What deaths are on your conscience, Hu Xi, younger brother of mine? Maybe you are the one who needs some ethical instruction.”

With every word, Xi shrank away, physically backing up to the wall. Only then did Leander realize the pot had boiled dry and the lotus root had started to burn.

“Fuck,” he snarled before he jumped up to save their dinner. When he turned around, Xi was gone. And whatever he’d done, he’d managed to avoid plants. Yeah, they were off to a great start.

Right now, Leander hated Xi almost as much as he hated himself.