Flying Swords, chapter 14 (Patreon)

I needed a little bit of a break on this one to let matters stew a bit. But I’m back!

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“Is that man angry at us?” Shanlin asked once the door closed behind them.

“Craftsman Zhiyuan has his own story, one which has little do to with you or your father,” Master Teacher Wang said.

“Nei Heng should not be in Yaan by himself. These people could be dangerous.”

“Acolyte Heng is dangerous,” Master Teacher Wang countered, “and he is not alone. He has taken a friend–a woman–so his journey appears mundane. To outsiders they will appear as a rural couple seeking a night or two of romance. In addition, she is also not without talent.”

A strange squirming filled Leander’s chest. He was not so self-deluded to miss the signs of jealousy, but that was stupid. He hadn’t been in Heng’s life for a decade. He’d been off manufacturing drugs, so he had no right to hope Heng would have waited for him. Hell, Leander had not thought of Heng more than a dozen times since leaving China. He’d made his bad choices, and he’d lived with them rather than retreating into a fantasy life where he’d made better ones.

Master Teacher Wang pushed open gilded doors to reveal a room done in greens and subtle blues.  Creek was lying on a Chinese bed–an ornate structure with carved panels that was nothing like the utilitarian, hard thing at the house they were sharing.  He turned toward the opening door.  “Leander!” His smile was weak but genuine.

“Lian,” Leander corrected him, feeling like a hypocrite because he kept thinking of Creek as Creek, and not Xi.  Hu Xi. 

Creek’s smile faded, but it returned when Shanlin ran to his side. “I’m so glad you’re awake. When Heng came to get me and said you were sick, I thought you were dead. When father–” Shanlin sucked in a breath.

“Shhh,” Leander said. He didn’t want Shanlin talking about Finn here, around people who thought he was Shanlin’s father.  “We don’t want to wear Xi out.”

“There are people in town. Outsiders,” Shanlin blurted, as if Leander had not, with his previous breath, not said to avoid wearing Xi out.

Xi sucked in a quick breath and then clutched his stomach.

Master Teacher Wang moved to his side, waving his hands over Xi for a moment before nodding.  “Your qi tries to move through damaged pathways. It will hurt for a time, so I would advise you to avoid calling on your magic. You have cultivated enough that you are between the egg drop soup and stew stages, so it is too thick to move easily through injured pathways.”

“Egg drop soup?” Xi looked around in confusion.

Shanlin pushed between Master Teacher Wang and Xi, planting himself at the edge of the bed.  “Master Wang explained it all.  Magic gets thicker when you develop it. Mine is like air–like a burp caught under my ribs. Yours is thicker–like stew.”

Master Teacher Wang smiled so the lines at the corners of his eyes turned to furrows. “Little cicada friend, I never said yours was air.”

Shanlin frowned. “Yes, you did.”

“No, I said in children, it is like air. For most, it is. For you, the qi is like tea. You can still burp tea, but it is a good deal more messy,” he said in a tone that suggested he was sharing a great secret. Seeing a wise Chinese sage sharing this as some mystical secret startled a laugh out of Leander.  Master Teacher Wang winked at Leander, a gesture Leander had not thought stately Chinese adults used.  “You, little cicada, are in the foundational stage–at the beginning with body foundation.  Your father and his qidi are in the core formation stage, which is good.  Hu Xi, you never would have survived Craftsman Lian’s inelegant cure had you not completed your body foundation stage.”

Xi frowned. “There is so much in there that I don’t understand that I don’t know where to start.”

Leander stepped forward, resting his hand on Shanlin’s shoulder. “I used my power over plants to pull the poison from your blood, but it made you bleed. Everywhere.”

“Accurate,” Master Teacher Wang said. “Unless you develop more finesse, Craftsman Lian, I would suggest you avoid such treatment unless one has completed their foundational stage. It took a strong body and spirit to survive the cure, but had Craftsman Lian not performed such odd magics, you would have died, qidi of his.”

“Then shouldn’t he be Healer Lian?” Xi asked with an inappropriate grin in Leander’s direction. None of this was funny. None.

“No, I think I shall call him Craftsman Lian,” Master Teacher Wang said with exaggerated seriousness. “Come, little friend cicada. You have not eaten and your father and his qidi must speak.” He put a hand on Shanlin’s shoulder and guided him toward the door. Shanlin looked at Leander, and he nodded that Shanlin should go with the teacher.  He would be safe with the old man, although the old man’s ears would not be safe if Shanlin figured out what a cicada was. Or more precisely, how loud one was.  Leander watched Master Teacher Wang take Shanlin away before he turned his attention to Xi.

“How do you feel?”

“Like shit. Like I got run over by a truck.  Like I was blown up after being run over by that truck. And I can’t use my magic. Do you have any idea how annoying that is?”

“I can imagine,” Leander said.  Here in the school he was disconnected from the network of magic he’d left in the plants outside, so he felt a little blind, himself. But at least he could feel the gardens and the vines crawling along the walls, even if he hadn’t yet tangled magic with those plants. It felt disrespectful to do so in such a magical place. But the lack of connection left him uneasy and cranky. He would be more angry, only he still felt disconnected from the world and his own feelings. It was probably for the best.

“Tecca told Shanlin that you knew dangerous people.” Leander had never believed in avoiding the cold, harsh truth.

“Yeah. They’re called police,” Xi said with a snort.

Leander considered the room–the ornately carved chairs, the lacquered chest standing against the wall, the calligraphy wall hanging illustrated with a tree and cranes set against stylized clouds. Leander hated all of it.  His stomach was soured and he wanted to find a mountain cave and sit in the silence.

“Lian?” Xi asked softly.

Leander ran his fingers through his hair. It was greasy and he was sweaty and he could smell himself.

“What is it?” Xi hissed in pain as he tried to sit up.

The strange fog that had settled over Leander’s senses cleared and he pushed Xi back down. “Stop being an idiot. I didn’t pull the poison out for you to kill yourself pushing too hard.”

Xi yielded, settling himself on the embroidered pillow.  “Then tell me what’s going on.”

“You’re keeping secrets, and we both remember how badly I react to secrets.”

Xi snorted and then winced as he pressed his fingers into his stomach, right where Master Teacher Wang had said the dantian lay.  “You’re a bastard.  Finn apologized, if you remember. You’re the one who held the grudge and drove him away.”

“Not how I remember it,” Leander said.  Once Tecca had lost her baby, she’d been the center of everything. If they watched television, she was in the middle of the couch with the remote and all the attention. If they went out for dinner, she was the one they all had to pay for. And she had chosen places Leander couldn’t afford and shows he couldn’t stomach. The others just put up with it and worked extra shifts and stole a few more wallets to pamper their precious, precious princess.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to relive the past,” Xi said.

“Trust me. I don’t.  However, I do want to know what secrets you’re keeping.”

A flicker of fear crossed Xi’s face. Leander wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t been watching so closely–and if he hadn’t retained some of that strange sense of Xi’s body, as though some ghost of the poison still flowed through his veins, highlighting them to Leander’s senses.

Anger made Leander clench his jaw.  “Secrets.  We are isolated, hunted, in danger from every direction, and you keep secrets.”

“I don’t!” Xi winced.  “I can’t tell you other people’s secrets,” he said in a much quieter tone.

“Who do you know that is more dangerous than the police?”

Xi gave Leander a blank stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Shanlin told me that his mother was afraid of your other friends–the ones that were more dangerous than the police. She said she would work with the police to avoid them.”

With every word, Xi looked more alarmed.  “What?” He struggled up onto one elbow, clutching the edge of the mattress.  “Tecca… she didn’t know…. She wouldn’t have told a child….”

Leander sank into one of those ornately carved chairs. It was ridiculous to spend so much time on something that just needed to hold up someone’s ass. “She knew more than you assumed because she told Shanlin that these people were dangerous, and he thinks your anonymous friends are the ones who found us. I might not have liked Tecca, but I trusted her judgment. So, who is hunting you, Xi?”

Rolling onto his back, Xi stared up at the carved canopy.  “They wouldn’t….”

Leander snorted again, and Xi gave him a weary look.

“There are westerners in the nearest town,” Leander said. “Tecca was more afraid of these strangers than the police, and we are guests of a government not our own, one that can turn us over to the authorities if we make too much noise or attract any attention. Is this the time to keep secrets?”

Xi didn’t meet his eyes.

“I’ll leave you,” Leander threatened. “I’ll take Shanlin away and leave you to deal with your own shit.”

“It’s your shit, too,” Xi snapped, his gaze pinned to Leander as though afraid he would vanish this very second.

Leander jerked away, startled by the vehemence in his tone.  “Do you mean Druwolf? Is he behind this? Were you involved with him?”

“That psychopath? Fuck, no. I have more self-respect than to get involved with that bastard.”

Shame burned in Leander’s veins.  As an adult, he could see the other choices he’d had, choices he hadn’t noticed as a teen.  But the rest of the friend group–the ones that had survived, had made the same terrible choice.

“The people…. I….” Xi swallowed.

Leander hated emotional manipulation, but his life was on the line.  Shanlin’s life was on the line.  He put a hand on Xi’s forearm, squeezing for a moment the way his foster mother had always done right before she asked him to do something he desperately didn’t want to. He established that moment where they were connected–when it was the two of them versus the world.

“We are both in danger. Tell me who we’re in danger from. Let’s prepare for this together.”  He felt slimy even saying the words, but something in Xi softened.  His gaze slid away, and he curled his fingers into the slick sheets.

“I always knew the police were wrong,” he said softly.  “Even when they took me away. They acted like they saved me, but they took me away from everyone I loved–all our friends. I loved you…. Even you who worked so hard to push us all away.”

“Tecca’s pregnancy….”

“Came later,” Xi interrupted him.  “I was gone by then, but you were already pushing people away. You were a cactus, and we all had to carefully navigate around your spines, but I loved you. I loved Tecca and Finn and… the others.”  He closed his eyes, and so did Leander. Remembering those bright flames that had been extinguished by life… this is why he avoided people and any thoughts of the past.

“I always thought of myself as a beetle–hard shell, ugly.”

Xi looked up. “You’re not ugly!”  His hand caught Leander’s arms, squeezing it in a much more genuine mirror of the gesture Leander had used on him.  “You’re not,” he repeated.  Then he sighed. “But the government took me away from all of you, and I didn’t see you for years as they trained me.”  The word dripped in disgust and fury.

“You were working against them,” Leander guessed.  It was the only possibility that made sense.

Xi nodded.

“The dangerous people that Tecca was afraid of… the people Shanlin thinks followed us here… you were working with the underground.”

Xi looked at him. “I was, and I know they moved people internationally, but there’s no reason why they would come after me.” Xi’s words made sense, but there was a threadiness to his voice that suggested he didn’t believe those words himself.

“Other than you know their faces and know enough about the operation to know they’re international?”

“They wouldn’t hunt me down and try to kill me,” Xi said firmly.  They sat in silence, and now where their hands were linked–Leander holding Xi’s arm and Xi holding Leander’s–felt too hot and awkward and Leander’s shoulder ached from holding the odd position. Still, Leander waited. He knew the power of silence.  Eventually, Xi sighed. “They may have wanted to kill you.”

“Kill me? Why?”

Xi pulled his hand away and groaned as he struggled to sit up. Leander watched without helping.  “Because you are the poster child for why the government should control us. You had a gentle gift–a simple one that should have allowed you to have a good life. You could have bought a flower shop or a farm and used your gift quietly, without anyone seeing. Instead, you make fucking drugs for a fucking monster. So yes, lots of them talked about wanting you dead.”

“Then they must have loathed Tecca and Finn,” Leander shot back.

“They celebrated their deaths as fucking karma,” Xi agreed. “I loved you guys… love you still… but other people see what you did and will never stop hating you. I wasn’t even supposed to be with you today, so if someone poisoned the fucking porrage, it was for you.”

“It couldn’t have been the porridge. We all ate it for breakfast,” Leander said almost absent-mindedly. He knew he was a monster. He did. He was a drug dealer. Was there any worse scum in the world? He knew what happened to them on television. He saw how newspapers reported on the deaths of his fellows without a hint of regret for a life lost. But the idea that other people saw him that same way startled him. Had he spent so much time with monsters like Tecca and Druwolf’s other employees that he’d forgotten how normal people would see him?

Xi sighed. “You’d make a terrible cop, Leander.  Your kitchen has large bowls and small ones. If I were trying to kill you, I’d assume that you used the large bowls and Shanlin the small, and I’d coat one of the large ones with poison.”

“They would have needed to get past my plant guardians.”

“Or they’d need a magical talent that could bypass yours.  I could have gotten into that kitchen with my shadows.”

“You couldn’t have coated a bowl with poison with them,” Leander said.

Xi remained silent.

“Could you?” Fear soured Leander’s stomach.

“Shadows are more flexible than people think.  Most magical gifts are, and the group I was helping had more extraordinary magical gifts than the government could even imagine. Your plants are not the defensive line you think they are.” His words were soft, almost apologetic.

Leander ran his hands through his greasy hair and tried to bridle the fear that swelled in his chest.  Extraordinary magic users might want him dead because of his choices.  “Why didn’t they target me before, then? If you were helping get magic users away from the government, they were in the city.”

“And you were well-protected by Druwolf. You might not have seen it, but there were layers of magical protections around you. It’s why I never approached you at your house.  I wanted to get you out.  I wanted to–” He cleared this throat.

He’d wanted to save Leander… that’s what he’d been about to say.  Leander slowly slid backward in his chair, leaving an inch or two of distance between them. “I didn’t need saving.”  His throat was dry and the words came out rough.

“You did,” Xi said.  “You needed saving as much as I did, but we were both caught by choices we made as kids.  I couldn’t run using the escape paths the group had set up because I was too well known by the police. I worked too hard to make myself valuable to them.  And I couldn’t get to you to offer an escape.”

“I wouldn’t have taken it,” Leander said. “I always said that when you make a bed, you lay in it.”  He’d been raised to believe that, once literally sleeping in his own piss to teach him the lesson.

Xi sighed. “I know. That’s why I didn’t track you down at the grocery store.”

“Why would they come to the other side of the globe to kill me?”

“We don’t know that they have,” Xi said. “First rule of police work–don’t make assumptions.”

“There are western magic users in town,” Leander said.

Xi nodded. “It could be government officials or members of the underground I worked with or people visiting the quaint countryside as part of their vacation.  Don’t make assumptions.”

Leander didn’t answer, and after a second, Xi reached for his hand, squeezing it.  Then he repeated, “Don’t make assumptions. We survived this, and we’ll survive whatever else comes.”

Leander wasn’t so sure.  He and Xi were all that was left of a group of friends that had clung to each other when they had no one else. It seemed entirely too easy for something to rip one of them away.  “Promise me that if something happens you’ll find a safe place for Shanlin.”

He smiled. “I already made that promise to Tecca.”

“Then make it again. To me.”

Xi tightened his hold.  “I will. I will always protect Shanlin, and I’ll protect you, too.”

Leander snorted. “I’m an adult. I can take care of myself.”

“I’ll protect you, too,” Xi said again.

Leander caught Xi’s arm in his free hand and held on tightly.  He didn’t know what else to do.