Page 6

6

I sleep well for the first time since I left home. When I wake, it is to the sound of birdsong, the kiss of a breeze on my cheeks, and the movement of sunlight across my eyelids. Fabric scratches at my chin.

I open my eyes. I’m curled up on my bedroll on the forest floor, the early morning light dripping through a canopy of golden larches overhead. My pack serves as my pillow, and I’m draped in a cloak. His cloak.

I study the gold stitching on its collar, the threads reminiscent of those spun by desert silkworms of the Western Province. The red is an unusual shade, the weave as fine as those Mā used to make for the nobility of the Imperial City. Curious, I bring it to my nose and inhale the crisp scent of pine, soap, and something I can’t place. Something that reminds me of a cool night breeze.

I sit up, only to find the owner of the cloak watching me.

The practitioner, Yù’chén, is perched against a bush of silvergrass, arms tucked behind his head, his black tunic dappled with sunlight and shadows of leaves. He’s chewing on a stick of sugarcane, but his gaze stirs heat beneath my skin. I can’t help but think of the way he blew on my hands to heal them yesterday, of how gentle his fingers were as he wrapped his cloak around me.

A wicked gleam enters his eyes. He shoots me a toothy grin. “See something you like?”

I draw his cloak tighter over my chest and bristle, the memories bursting like bubbles. “Your shirt’s torn in a few different places, and your cloak could use some patching,” I snap.

“Mm. Should I simply go without them?”

I grit my teeth and fling his cloak at him. He catches it with the tip of his boot.

I threw out the retort on a whim, but as I turn my attention to myself, my heart sinks. áo’yīn’s claws have shredded gashes in my dress, tearing through Méi’zi’s careful stitches. I didn’t notice last night in the cover of darkness as I hurriedly slipped it on, but in the daylight, they are glaringly obvious. My throat tightens as I run my hands over the tears. It’s silly, fussing over a dress, but this was the only gift from Méi’zi I brought with me.

“Might I hazard a guess at your profession?” The practitioner’s watching me with that lazy smile of his.

“You may not.” I snatch back my finger from where I’ve been picking at the torn stitches.

“A seamstress,” he says, and at my silence, his grin widens. “Did I guess true?”

I study the ruined fabric. “No,” I say quietly. “I just like to sew.” I blink, and correct myself. “I used to, that is.”

As we pack up and set off, my thoughts return to my strange encounters with the two hellbeasts from the Kingdom of Night. I still can’t make sense of the way Qióng’qí seemed to back away from me just moments before Yù’chén arrived, nor can I explain how I slew áo’yīn. I might have fought mó with my crescent blades, but hellbeasts are legendary creatures said to be under the command of the demon queen herself.

I chose to train you for a reason, my father wrote.

Again, I have the feeling that my father has woven secrets through my life, secrets that I have yet to unravel, beginning to manifest in signs here and there. A glowing blade that slew a legendary hellbeast, for one.

“Have you fought a hellbeast?” I ask. I’m aware of just how jarring my voice sounds, cutting through the silence and our steady footfalls. The forest has grown still as we near Heavens’ Gates, the white cottontail rabbits and golden-tailed pheasants and chittering sparrows acutely absent amidst the mist-twined firs.

Yù’chén casts me an amused look. “Is this how you were taught to make small talk?”

“ Have you?”

He turns his face from me. The sun shifts against his face, spinning gold into his hair. “I know a lot about the mó and their beasts. I’ve been to the Imperial City.”

“You’ve been to the Imperial City?” I’ve heard stories of the fallen palace, lost to the demon realm—how it’s mired in an eternal night, how red-eyed beasts and hungry demons prowl the grounds in the darkness. “What’s it like?”

“Dark. Cold. Filled with mó and hellbeasts. The wards are so broken that sometimes you don’t know if you’re walking in the mortal realm or the demon one.”

His expression has closed off. I’m about to ask him more— why was he there, what was he doing?—when he nods at something ahead.

“We’re almost at Heavens’ Gates. Blades ready. There could be other candidates here.”

The cathayas and larches are beginning to thin out, and before us rises what looks like a wall of jutting rock. It is only when I look up through the canopy that I realize two things: First, that this is no wall. And second, how the Heavens’ Gates received their name.

We stand beneath a nearly vertical set of cliffs. They soar into the skies, disappearing into dense fog. Pines and lichens dot the surface, growing from fissures that might serve as hand- and footholds…but apart from that, a single slip is a fall to the death.

It seems we weren’t the only ones who survived the Way of Ghosts. Up high, against the flat wall of rock, I spot a figure zigzagging upward. From trees to outcroppings of rock, the candidate moves with fluid ease. It isn’t long before the mist curling over the mountain swallows them.

I’m decent at climbing mountains, but not cliffs. I know that the practitioners of old trained with an art called qīng’gōng, which rendered them capable of inhuman feats: walking on water, scaling vertical walls, jumping impossible distances. I saw my father in action, his steps lighter and nimbler than those of ordinary mortals, imbued with an unearthly grace. And I’ve recognized that same grace in Yù’chén’s movements.

I glance at him now. I have no doubt he can climb these cliffs without issue. Without me. And an alliance is only useful so long as both sides provide value.

My fingers tighten on the hilts of my blades.

Yù’chén sheds his cloak and folds it into his silk storage pouch, then stretches in his formfitting black tunic and pants. He catches me looking at him and flicks me a lazy smile that sends little tingles to my toes. “Shall we race?” he says, leaning against a boulder and crossing his arms. His muscles stretch the fabric of his shirt taut—as if I need another reminder of how thin and weak my own arms are.

I dart a glance upward—the clifftop is so high, it disappears into the clouds—and wet my lips, deciding what to do.

Tell him I have no qīng’gōng skills and ask for help, and he’ll likely ditch me.

Don’t tell him, and I will fall to my death.

“I…”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid.”

“I’m not,” I snap, but his grin has widened. I spin away from him, and in a gust of stubbornness, I whip out Fleet and Arrow and make for the mountain in a running leap.

My blades lodge in the fissures easily enough, and my feet find purchase against two cracks in the surface. I heave myself up, searching for the next fissure to stab my blades into.

I don’t make it twenty feet before I slip.

When I land, it’s not on the ground.

I swallow a shout as I roll away from the body tucked into the long silvergrass. It was obscured by the tall bush and trees where I stood earlier, but now I clearly see it: a practitioner, his body bent and broken from a deadly fall. The furs and thick brocades of his cloak indicate a northern origin, as do his sheepskin boots. His sword lies a few paces from him, and his rucksack’s split open, its contents oddly strewn out toward a copse of trees.

I follow this strange trail toward a particularly large bush. It takes my mind a moment to discern what I’m looking at—and what’s looking back at me.

A boy rises from the bushes. At first, I think he’s unclothed, but that isn’t possible, because his skin is green and scaled—and it’s shifting colors to match the foliage around him as he straightens and cocks his head at me.

His long hair is white, and his eyes gleam like jade. He grins at me, revealing too many white teeth and a forked tongue that darts between them.

Before I can do anything, he leaps for the mountain. His skin shifts to match the rock’s dun color, and in the blink of an eye, I’ve lost him between the craggy rocks and the trees.

“Yāo’jīng,” Yù’chén says, stepping out behind me.

“How can yāo’jīng get into the Kingdom of Sky?” I ask. “The trials aren’t for them.”

“The trials are for anyone mortal enough,” Yù’chén replies. “As someone said, they, too, have beating hearts. They also bleed red. Those are the two litmus tests to pass through the wards into the immortal realm.”

I think of the little white fox yāo’jīng I encountered yesterday as my gaze drifts back to the dead practitioner. His eyes are still open.

I step forward and swiftly shut his eyes, willing my breathing to settle as I force the memory of my father’s face back into that dark corner of my mind. When I turn around, Yù’chén is watching me. The teasing has vanished from his expression, the quarrel from mine, as though it took a dead body for us both to remember what’s at stake here. What the outcome of all this might be.

At least for me.

He flicks his gaze up at where the shapeshifter vanished. “There are more candidates here than I thought there would be. I’ll need you to keep your stingers out, little scorpion.” He begins to unwind the long silk sash that belts his waist as he approaches me.

I take a step back. “What are you doing?”

He arches a brow. “Anchoring us together.”

My lips part in a breath. “Why?”

He steps forward, tipping his head and granting me a charming smile. “To keep you close.”

My hand is already on his chest, Arrow pointed at his throat. “You should know by now that that won’t do you any favors.”

“Mm. Well, on second thought, it’s the most practical way for you to use your hands if you need to fight. I can’t very well carry you in my arms, and you can’t use your blades if you’re busy holding on to me. If we’re anchored together, side by side, we can both climb and leverage each other’s strengths should an attack come.” He holds up the end of his belt. “May I?”

When I don’t object, he reaches for my waist and draws me toward him until we are hip to hip. His hands are large and warm, more careful than I imagined as he begins to wind his sash around my abdomen. I try not to breathe as his fingers graze my ribs through the thin silk of my dress.

When he is done, he does not step away. Instead, he gives the sash a satisfied tug and holds his hands out to me, palms forward. “A warm-up on qīng’gōng,” he prompts.

I slide my blades back into my sleeves and splay my fingers against his. My pulse quickens at the touch, at how smooth his skin feels against my callused palms. Dimly, I wonder at how he has no calluses of his own.

“Focus on the flow of spirit energy within you,” he says. I nod; I have taught this to myself. “Now focus on the flow around you. In the air, on the ground, in the trees, and in the grass.”

I close my eyes. I try, but it is akin to attempting to focus on every current in an ocean.

“It’s too much, isn’t it?”

I nod.

“When using qīng’gōng, you have to home in on a specific point of focus. Use the energy there as your basis for action. Decide what you’re trying to do: Are you trying to hold on to the rooftop, or jump off of it, or pivot, or a mixture of all those? That will determine how you channel your spirit energy. Now I want you to focus on me.”

I open my eyes. It is hard not to focus on him: Yù’chén simply commands attention. Every part of him—from his night-dark eyes to his strong, elegant jaw and soft, full lips—simply demands to be looked at. This close, I feel his energy as an irresistible pull, and I willingly comply.

“Do you feel my spirit energy?” His voice has dropped to a meditative murmur. It thrums in his chest, in the thin silks that separate us.

I nod.

“I’m going to shift my energy. I want you to respond.”

There: a shift in his palm, flowing from his arm and rooted in his chest, culminating in a spark that leaps from his fingers.

I push against that spark. The air ripples, and we both sway back as our spirit energies deflect our palms from each other. And finally, I understand. It is one thing to read the theories, to practice by yourself against inanimate objects; it is entirely another to feel it from someone else.

I realize I’m smiling. Quickly, I school my features. “Again,” I demand.

He complies. His palms press to mine. I push, and this time, I can’t hide my grin.

“Good,” Yù’chén says, his lips curling as he raises his hands. There’s a challenge to his gaze, and the spark of it catches fire in my chest as he commands, “Again.”

This time, when our palms meet, he pulls. I feel it, an insistent tug against my energy. A flutter in my chest.

I dare myself to pull, too.

Yù’chén exhales sharply as, suddenly, whatever small gap existed between us is gone. We collide in a whirl of spirit energy, fingers interlocked, breaths tangling, the planes of his body hard against me. Startled, I place my palm against his chest to steady myself—and I feel the strong pulse of his heartbeat.

Yù’chén’s hands find my hips, settling there gently. The seconds trickle away as we look at each other. “Very good,” he says.

A distant yell shatters the moment. Yù’chén glances up, and I quickly disentangle myself from him.

From the mist above and several dozen paces to our right, a candidate plunges down like a rock. He crashes into the trees and disappears from sight. His scream falls abruptly silent.

“Well,” Yù’chén says. “This will be fun.”

—

He is impossibly fast and steady. As I stab my blades into fissure after fissure, I know without a doubt that I’m slowing him down—and that he doesn’t need me. More than a few times, I slip, and my stomach jolts with swooping terror of a fall. But then the sash between us stretches taut, and I’m left hanging against the mountain, looking for purchase.

When we’re far up enough that the treetops blur into a patch of green, the mist thickens. Soon, everything around us—the outcroppings of rock, the pines growing from them—turns into shadows.

Yù’chén is tiring; I can sense it. Catching me and anchoring each of my falls has drained him; I hear his breathing growing labored, feel his movements slowing. Up here, the rocks are damp and slippery from the fog.

How much farther?

In the haze of my exhaustion, I catch movement to my right. An old, gnarled pine grows from the side of the mountain…and between its leaves, I make out a pair of eyes. Familiar, amber eyes.

It’s the little white fox yāo’jīng. She’s crouched in the branches, watching me. Without a word, she lifts a hand and points somewhere beyond me to my left. Then she vanishes into the mist.

My heart pounds as I turn to follow her warning. It’s impossible to see anything in this fog. Yù’chén is on my left, and we have about an arm’s length of sash between us. There is no easy way for me to cross over him to defend the open space on his side.

I shift closer to him. “Yù’chén,” I whisper.

He glances down at me, and it is this moment that costs him.

A slice of metal in the air; Arrow’s already out of my palm and flying toward the missile. I hear a plink as my blade intercepts the other. I hold out my hand, waiting for Arrow to return—the talisman on it ensures that it always comes back—and that’s when the second knife comes.

Yù’chén shifts sharply, but there is little space to maneuver. He grunts as the blade cuts his side.

He slips.

I bite down a scream and focus on anchoring myself to the rock, but he catches himself, right next to me. The mist whirls from our movement, and blood sprays the mountain red.

Yù’chén’s blood.

I hear Arrow whistle through the air and hold out my palm. My fingers close around its familiar hilt as I turn to face our attacker.

The assailant leaps out of nowhere. I catch the flash of a dagger as he aims at Yù’chén; at the same time, I send Arrow back at him.

He lands on the cliff wall above us and parries my attack with a violent slash downward. There is a clink as Arrow’s trajectory is broken and its momentum cut off.

It tumbles in the air and plummets. My stomach twists as it disappears into the mist below.

Yù’chén is holding on to the rockface by my side, scrambling to find purchase after his slip. Blood drips from his wound, and as the assailant aims for him again, I know he is not ready to defend himself.

I reach over Yù’chén. My foot finds a crack in the mountain. With my right hand, I whip out Striker and plunge it into a crack in the cliff face. With my left, I raise Fleet and parry.

I catch a glimpse of our assailant’s face—and recognize him as one of Yán’lù’s cronies.

I cry out as his blow smashes my arm into the mountain. He might have broken something in my hand, and I can barely hold on to Fleet. I think of Arrow plunging into the mist below.

I will not lose another blade.

Bile rises to my throat. He knows Yù’chén is the strong one—that if he just kills Yù’chén, both of us are done for.

This must be why, when he aims his dagger at Yù’chén again, I move to shield my ally’s body with my own.

White-hot pain explodes in my side. I cry out and try to twist away, but Yán’lù’s crony is still holding on tightly to his dagger, which is lodged in my midriff.

I kick him in the chest, hard. Through my tears, I see the assailant reaching for something—anything—to latch onto.

I kick again, and this time, the pain nearly takes me out as his dagger rips from my side and he falls.

The problem is, I fall with him.

The world tumbles around me, and my consciousness slips for a moment. When I come to, I’m dangling against the mountain. Above me: the sash tying me to Yù’chén. Below me: a thousand-foot plunge. Blood from my open wound seeps through my dress, droplets disappearing into the endless mist below.

In my haze, I hear Yù’chén say my name. “àn’yīng. àn’yīng, look at me. ”

My eyes flutter, but I obey. He’s holding on to a jutting rock just above me, just out of reach. His muscles are stretched taut against his tunic. The sash digs into both our waists.

Just one cut, I think. It would be so easy for him to be rid of me. Just one cut with his sword.

“I can’t reach you.” He sounds strained. “I need you to haul yourself up. Just one pull.”

Just one cut. The pain tugs at me, and as I nearly go under again, I hear his voice piercing the fog in my mind.

“àn’yīng, I need you to pull yourself up.”

My arms comply. I grip the sash and pull. Once. Twice.

A strong hand wraps around my waist, and then we’re ascending, so fast it feels like flying—or perhaps I’m so close to unconsciousness, I can’t tell what’s real anymore. My cheek is pressed to a warm neck, and each breath brings me the familiar scent of that red cloak. Somehow, I know that I won’t fall.

Between one leap and another, the wall of rock angles out, then stretches into flat terrain.

Yù’chén gives one last heave, and we’re there. With a groan, he sprawls backward onto the clifftop, and I go with him. We fall still, and I surrender to this moment of peace. Yù’chén’s chest rises and falls beneath me. We are a tangle of limbs and breaths, but my cheek rests against him and I hear the steady, strong thud-thud-thud of his heart.

He sighs and utters a shaky laugh, then his other arm falls against the small of my back. “Fuck,” he says.

I let him hold me for a few more heartbeats. I know I shouldn’t, but it feels good to be held instead of to hold.

When I feel strong enough to lift myself, I push up against him so I can look into his face. Lying against the rock with his hair fanning out in loose locks, framing his face, he blinks and watches me. His hand is on my waist, pressing on my wound to staunch the bleeding; his spirit energy warms me, weaving itself into a healing talisman. Even in his state of exhaustion, even wounded…he is helping me. As the clouds shift and the sun caresses the sharp edges of his jaw, I feel again that flutter in my heart.

“Why did you risk your life to save me?” I croak.

He snorts, a sharp shift of his chest. “Why did you risk your life to save me ?”

I close my eyes and speak the truth. “Because if that candidate killed you, I’d be dead, too.”

Yù’chén doesn’t reply for a few moments. When I open my eyes, I find him still looking at me with that expression I find so hard to read. He lifts a hand and brushes my hair from my eyes. His fingers graze the side of my face.

“Because you are a life,” he says. “You, too, have a beating heart.”

The exact words I gave him when he asked why I saved the yāo’jīng.

“You’re frowning,” he observes, and I’m keenly aware of the tip of his thumb still tracing down my jaw, keeping the wind from stirring my hair. “Are my words so hard to believe?”

“Yes.” None of it answers my question of why—why did he ally with me when he knew I was weaker, why did he save me—because I’m convinced there must be a reason. In the world I’ve come to know, people don’t help others without selfish purpose.

Yù’chén is watching me with that searing gaze of his, but if he sees the disquiet in my thoughts, he says nothing of it. “Can you stand?” he asks.

I push myself to my feet, trying not to sway. He’s healed my wound, but the blood loss makes my head feel light. “Yes.”

“Good.” He tilts his face up to something behind me and narrows his eyes. “Because this trial isn’t over yet.”