Chapter 188: The Nearest Door
The mountain let them go a little after dawn, and by the time the sun cleared the ridgeline Skyedge had shrunk to a gray smudge behind them, one more peak in a province stuffed full of them.
Two horses, and no one riding at their backs. Xuan had waved the escort off himself, because a quiet road stayed quiet a good deal longer without a column of Skyedge guards clanking down the middle of it.
Qingyue rode on his left with the reins loose in one hand, hood down, taking the morning like she had somewhere finer to be and had graciously decided this would do.
The talk with his father hadn’t let go of him yet. It had gone the way he’d guessed: badly, then fine.
Lin Zhen had read the seal longer than the letter, and put it down like it might scorch the wood. "A great sect throws its gates wide in the last quiet weeks before a war," he’d said, "and my son wants to walk through them whistling. You’ll forgive an old man for hearing a snare in that."
"It isn’t one." Xuan hadn’t reached for the letter twice. "Yan Wuji lost in front of the whole province and walked off breathing because I let him. A man like that doesn’t spend his sect’s seal on an ambush. He spends it clearing a debt."
[ There’s no trap in it, ] Mira had put in, only for him. [ I read every line twice on the way in. They want something off you, sure, great sects always do, but nobody’s whetting a knife for the gate. It’s an honest hook. They’re not after your head. ]
That had dragged the old man from a flat no to a watchful yes, which these days was as far as he moved for anyone.
And the mountain would hold without him. His father had the walls. Wei Tianming had the outer disciples running drills till their arms gave out, and the two hundred Frostmoon blades answered to the pair of instructors their own sect had sent along, so there was nothing at his back to lie awake over. For once the only thing on his list was the road under the horse.
They came down out of the high pines by midday, and the land opened in front of them, the peaks easing into hills and the hills into a broad brown valley with a trade road stitched straight through it.
A pale line unrolled along the bottom of his vision, the road redrawn as a thread of light running east through a crumple of painted mountains. He’d stopped being startled by her doing things like that months ago.
[ Right. You’d ride into the sea if I let you, so pay attention. Follow the shiny line. That’s the whole job. Congratulations, you own a map. ]
’You built me a map.’
[ Yes. Try not to lose it. ]
’How far?’ he asked.
[ Week and a half, give or take, if the passes stay open and you don’t dawdle. ]
’That’s forever.’
[ That’s nothing, you spoiled thing. The Pavilion’s practically a neighbor. Every great sect worth the name roosts up a mountain no army can march, same trick your father pulled, so they’re all packed into the one range. Of the big doors, theirs is the nearest you’ve got. ]
’A week and a half on a horse.’
[ Yup. Foundation flies. You walk. So get used to the saddle. ]
He let it go, because she wasn’t wrong, which was the annoying part of it.
[ Oh, you’ll want this bit. ] The line of light pulsed at a fat knot where the road crossed a river, a third of the way along. [ Day four, day five, a mortal city planted square on your route. Hundred thousand souls, give or take. ]
’And?’
[ And not one cultivator worth the word in the whole crush of them. Just people — traders, dock crews, the usual shouting mob. ] He heard the grin arrive. [ You’re the one who told me you’d be riding into weeks of folk who need things. Well. There’s a hundred thousand of them stacked in one spot. I’d stop. ]
Beside him, Qingyue had been watching him drift off mid-thought, the way she’d taught herself to let him, and finally hauled him back.
"You’ve gone off somewhere again," she said. "Your eyes flatten and your mouth moves like you’re winning an argument the rest of us weren’t invited to."
"I’m planning the route."
"In your head." She wasn’t hiding the amusement. "With your lips?"
"It’s a very detailed route."
She huffed a laugh and turned back to the road, letting the riddle of him keep, the way she always did. "Then plan us an ending with hot water at the far side of it. You smell better than last month, I’ll grant you that much. But last month set the bar in a tomb."
They rode on into the afternoon, the valley unspooling gold and brown on either side, and for a good while neither of them reached for words. Qingyue broke it, and the tease had drained out of her when she did, replaced by the cool, unhurried attention she kept for people she meant to take apart piece by piece.
"Back in the courtyard, you told me why you were going," she said. "That you can’t insult a great sect and expect to sleep easy after, and that you need a buyer for the Dragonvein before the war reaches us." Her gaze came off the road and found him. "True, and sensible, and exactly what you’d have handed anyone who thought to ask."
"But?"
"But you admitted there was one more reason. That it was yours, and that you weren’t going to give it with servants three feet away." A dry thread wound through her patience. "There’s no courtyard out here, and nobody to overhear but the horses. Just a very long road, and me on it beside you."
He kept quiet, which with her had never once been enough.
"So." The question came level and direct, with nothing soft folded around it. "Why did you really say yes to Yan Wuji?"