Chapter 186: The Next Step Has Weather
The Third Princess did not stay the night.
Whatever she had climbed the mountain for, she had it now, two sects’ worth of swords promised and a young man’s refusal to turn over in her hands, and a woman in her position could not afford to linger in the east while her father finished dying in the west.
"You will forgive me if I do not stay, Patriarch." She was already on her feet, her guards folding in around her with the ease of long practice. "There is nothing I would like more than to see this famous outer yard of yours, and drink your wine, and pretend for one evening that the world is not about to catch fire. But my father has days left in him now, perhaps fewer, and when he goes I mean to already be standing where I intend to stand. A princess who arrives late to her own succession tends not to arrive at all."
Lin Zhen saw her to the doors with the full courtesy of a patriarch who knew exactly what her goodwill was worth. She gave it back in kind, gracious to the last, and Xuan watched two people who ran on cold arithmetic warm a room by sheer practice.
At the threshold she paused, and looked back, and found him.
"Master Lin." The warm mask held, but the hard thing behind it looked out at him plainly now, one professional to another.
"Think on what I said. Not the position, you have made your feelings there admirably clear. The rest of it. When the fighting starts, and it starts within the month, the east is going to be very far from the capital and very easy to forget. I do not forget my friends, and I do not forgive the people who move against them." A small, warm, wholly genuine smile that never once touched the math underneath it.
"Stay alive, and stay mine, and you will find I am a very good person to have picked. That is not a threat. I never bother threatening the people I like. Goodbye, Master Lin. With any luck, next time we meet, one of us will be wearing a crown."
And she was gone, a hundred guards and an imperial seal and the most dangerous smile in the province flowing back down the mountain toward a dying emperor and a throne with four hands already reaching for it.
Xuan let out a breath he felt like he had been holding for most of an hour.
[ Well. ] Mira, dry. [ She likes you. Which, with that one, is somehow the best and the worst thing on the menu at the same time. ]
’Yeah,’ he thought. ’I got that.’
He turned his mind, with something close to relief, back toward the one thing he had actually wanted to do before an imperial retinue landed on his roof. ’At least it is done. Now I can finally get back to it. Foundation. Tonight, if I can find a quiet room and a locked door.’
[ Yeah, about that. ] And the humor slid out of her voice in the way that always made him listen. [ Before you go flinging yourself at Foundation, you and I are finally having the conversation you have been very talented at dodging for months. Look. ]
A panel unfolded in the corner of his sight.
═══════════════════════════════
[ CELESTIAL KARMA ]
[ Current: 124 / 500 ]
[ Warning: at high totals, the heavens take a personal interest in you ]
[ Note: Foundation Establishment draws a tribulation. Celestial Karma feeds it more than it should. ]
═══════════════════════════════
[ Quick version, since you have ducked the long one all year. ] Mira, brisk. [ Every time you do a thing the heavens count as cheating, it goes on a tab. The Override that wiped Master Hu out of the world? Fifty in one afternoon. Beidou, folding space in front of a screaming crowd? A little more each time. You are sitting at hundred twenty-four right now. Which is fine. Irritating, but fine. ]
’I hear a "but" coming.’
[ Oh, there is a big one. ]
[ Foundation is not a quiet little step like the nine you just walked up. When you crack into a whole new realm, the sky looks down and notices, and it sends a tribulation to check whether you deserve the seat. Lightning. Everybody gets one. ] Her voice dropped a notch. [ But the heavens read your Karma when they decide how hard to swing. An ordinary cultivator gets a slap on the wrist. You, with a tab like yours and climbing, get something a whole lot closer to an execution. And it gets worse the higher that number goes. So, no. You are not breaking through tonight because you are bored and annoyed. Not until we have thought very hard about that number first. ]
’So the one thing I broke my spine for two months to reach,’ he thought, ’is going to try to kill me with the actual sky the second I reach for it.’
[ Yup. ] She sounded almost fond about it. [ Welcome to the roof of Qi Refining. Lovely view. The next step up has weather. ]
’And how do I get the number down?’
[ That is the right question. It is not a simple answer, and it is very much not a tonight answer. We will work it. ] A beat. [ For now, just carry the fact that the free ride you were about to take is not free, and put the breakthrough back down. ]
So he put it down. Again. Which was rapidly becoming the story of his year.
He left the hall while servants were still gathering the princess’s untouched cups, his head full of lightning he could not yet see and a throne he wanted no piece of, and he had made it halfway across the courtyard toward the honest promise of a bath and a bed when Lian came around the corner at a half-run and nearly went straight through him.
She had a letter in both hands.
This was not sect paperwork, and not one of the hundred routine things that crossed his desk in a week. Heavy paper. A wax seal pressed deep and formal. And the careful way she carried it, out in front of her, like a thing that might have teeth.
"Young master." She was a little out of breath. "This came for you. Private courier, hard ride, and they would not put it in any hand but yours." She turned it so the seal faced him. "It is a great sect’s mark. A real one."
He took it. The wax under his thumb was stamped with a pair of crossed swords inside a ring of cloud, and the instant he saw it, something cold walked slowly up the back of his neck.
’Mira.’
[ Yeah. ] Every scrap of the easy humor had left her. [ I see it. That is the seal of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion, Xuan. One of the great sects. The one whose golden boy you beat half to death in front of the whole province, and then chose to let live. ] A pause. [ Sects like that do not send letters to nobodies. Open this one very, very carefully. ]