David

After struggling with the cloth purse for a few seconds, Alice handed Jing fifteen silver taels in a neatly balanced stack.

Jing took the money and stuffed it in his robes like he couldn't believe what was happening. "You're not going to recount how many you're giving me?" By the time he'd asked, it was a moot point, as every single coin had been stuffed into an inner pocket of his robe.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm sure I can count to fifteen without issue."

"It's true what they say, then. In the Great Sects, it is easier to find free money than a cup of tea."

Neither David nor Alice responded, choosing to follow him down the dock.

They made it halfway before Jing turned around. "You're really just going to give me fifteen taels without even trying to haggle?"

David shot a glance at Alice but she looked as bewildered as he did, so he responded for both of them. "You said that you didn't bargain."

In truth, even if Jing hadn't mentioned bargaining, David would have never even considered the matter. In fact, David would go as far as to say the topic of bargaining was the source of many embarrassments. He had a particularly vivid memory of his mother trying to convince the lady who ran the booth at the local train station to give them a discount for the train fare.

Jing stared at him as though he were an exotic animal. "But everyone says that."

"Everyone says that they're not going to bargain, right before they start bargaining?" David gave him a flat stare.

Jing shook his head, unable to put to words exactly why David was wrong. After opening and closing his mouth a few times, he turned back towards the ship in a march. "No refunds," he decided.

David turned his attention to the ship now that the business was concluded. As he'd noted when they reached the trading post, it had two masts which divided the ship into thirds. Up close, the rigging looked even more meticulously managed. Even with his complete lack of experience, David was sure that he would be able to figure out how to adjust the sails - and quickly.

Between the helm of the ship that pointed north at Ping'an in the distance and the mast to their left was a simple steering wheel - a pair of planks nailed together. But it was not a haphazard thing. The planks had been carefully sanded down and polished so that even from this distance, the afternoon sun glinted off of the smooth wood.

When they were halfway along the dock, a scant twenty paces from boarding, the figure pacing up and down the deck finally noticed them.

Jing and his passenger were a study in opposites. Unlike the well tanned sailor, the man on the boat had skin as fair as Alice's. He also had long hair - but it was far from an unkempt mess that got in front of his face. A piece of jade in the same style that Young Master Lin had worn kept his hair in that familiar, neatly coiffed bun on top of his head.

At the man's hip was a sword with a ruby the size of an egg on its pommel. The sword was sheathed in a light brown block of wood - a somewhat unusual choice for a scabbard. The scabbard was carved with many, many words which left not a single blank space - at least as far as he could tell.

"Hello, Path Friends!"

David saw Alice reflexively fold her arms in the corner of his eye.

"This disciple, Wen Cheng, of Falcon Peak from the True Sutra Sect, greets you humbly!"

Wen was wearing a sky blue robe with a patch of dark cloth sewn onto it. It looked somewhat like a bird with its wings outstretched, so David assumed that it was a representation of the falcon of this Falcon Peak.

Wen stared at the pair of them expectantly, expecting them to introduce themselves.

Jing was already onboard, both hands on a thick length of rope that ran over the starboard side of the ship. "I'm about to raise the anchor," he shouted. "Get on or get lost!"

David looked at Alice, still unsure as to whether they should board. She tugged at his sleeve expectantly, so they did. They easily cleared the railing, roughly a meter above the dock, and landed onto the deck which sat deep in the hull.

Jing let out a heavy grunt as he pulled, lifting the anchor off of the riverbed. Slowly but steadily, he encircled one of the masts, coiling more and more of the rope around it. The ship began to list away from the dock.

David heard the sound of the Song as Jing let out another heavy grunt and increased the speed he rounded the mast, lifting the anchor clear out of the water. He tugged it over the railing and onto the deck, where it landed with a thud that rocked the ship like a cradle.

Alice looked a little nauseous as the ship slowly righted itself. David felt his stomach churn and rise, but as soon as it had come, the urge to vomit was gone.

By the time the ship was steady, Jing was already perched at the helm of the ship. He spat on his forefinger and raised it into the sky and waited. After a few moments, he seemed to be satisfied with what he'd learned, because he then moved to the ship's rigging and began adjusting the sails.

The ship began to pick up speed as it drew on the strength of the wind to slice through the currents. By now, they were far from the dock. Either with luck or skill the conspicuous lack of someone at the steering wheel did not pose any issues.

After another tense minute and a half of the sails flipping this way and that before Jing managed to guide the ship into the center of the river. After they were a safe distance from shore, Jing made a few final adjustments to the position of the sails and then ambled over to the wheel.

Jing gave the wheel an experimental spin. The ship began to turn slightly, so he righted it immediately. With everything finally in order, he found a nearby crate to sit on and gave a satisfied sigh.

Alice looked thoroughly impressed. This was the sort of quiet expertise that she liked watching in action. "I thought there would be other sailors before we boarded," she said to David.

Wen scowled. "It's not that great. He raised the anchor with a bit of qi and adjusted the sails."

Since boarding, the only person who had moved around the ship was Jing. Alice and David still stood between the two masts at the center of the deck. They had forgotten that Wen had been standing beside them the entire time.

Alice turned on Wen. "I don't recall asking?"

David might have turned towards the helm of the ship to make his grin less obvious to Wen but Jing had no such compunctions. Jing's laughter rang over the waves.

The beginnings of an angry blush appeared on Wen's cheeks. "It is unseemingly to show such disrespect to a Path Friend you've just met."

"Who are you calling your Path Friend?" Alice was in a shockingly antagonistic mood. There was something dismissive about her posture, something impatient in her demeanor.

Upon closer inspection, however, David realized it was not impatience. Alice was still at least a little seasick - she was more pale than usual, her movements were more abrupt and when she blinked, she kept her eyelids shut for the span of a full breath. If David were Wen, he could easily believe that Alice despised him.

Alice did actually despise Wen, but David had divined that more from the sarcastic glint in her eyes and the slight agitation in her Song.

Wen snorted as loudly as he could and walked to the edge of the ship to stare at the waves. He had clasped a hand over his fist behind his back.

Jing, who was still lounging on his crate near the steering wheel, caught David's eye. He raised his eyebrows. David's grin widened.

"Imagine refusing the honor of being my friend," Wen said to the waves.

"Cultivate diligently, Daoist Wen. I'm sure you'll meet somebody willing to be your friend if you live forever."

Alice wasn't done. "But perhaps not. I've always been overly optimistic."

Wen was fully red in the face now and no longer staring at the waves for the sake of melodrama. "If we were at my sect, I would challenge you to a duel to the death."

"And until the sun no longer rises, they would light incense in my honor for proving that it can be done. It is possible to die from secondhand embarrassment."

Wen's palm found the pommel of his sword.

"There will be no swords drawn on my ship!" Jing shouted, standing.

Wen slipped his hands behind his back again and had the decency to look apologetic.

"Unless we run into pirates, I guess," Jing amended. He looked at the jugs of sorghum wine which were tightly packed against the railing in the back of the deck.

"Is that likely?" Alice asked, with a feigned nonchalance. Wen had also momentarily forgotten the string of insults that his Dao heart could not bear. David disliked the similarity in the way they both leaned forwards in excitement and the restlessness in their fingers.

Jing crossed his arms. "Do I really look that stupid? As if I'd answer that and invite that kind of karma onto my ship."

Alice pouted.

Jing gave another appraising look at the wine. "Imagine taking the trouble to attack the smallest boat on the river, expecting nothing.”

He wore a sardonic grin. “After boarding, you see jugs and jugs of high quality pewter and you think you've lucked out big time."

His laughter bubbled up between every word but it was a touch bitter. "Then you open the jugs and it's all sorghum. All of it. Every jug. Can’t sell it because even people who like the stuff wouldn’t want that much."

David put his skill of laughing along politely to good use. It had barely been thirty minutes since they’d met Jing and he was already recycling material. By the time they arrived at Ping'an, David expected his least favorite word would be sorghum.

Alice was now in a better mood - her seasickness had gone away. She amused herself by batting her eyelashes at David, giving backhanded insults to Wen by way of life advice and listening to Jing's anecdotes about life as a merchant.

As night fell, the wind died down, taking the conversation with it. The ship still continued onwards because the river naturally ran north, but it felt sluggish. It reminded the passengers that they, too, were tired.

David and Alice had colonized one of the masts. David was sitting at a more upright angle than he would have liked with his back against the mast. Alice was attempting to use David's shoulder as a pillow to nap with some success.

Wen had gone back to pacing. Thankfully, his footfalls barely made a sound. There was the barest hint of the Song in his steps, so David amused himself by analyzing it with his eyes closed.

Jing sat on his crate with his legs dangling over the side of the ship, staring at the reflection of the half moon on the waters. He'd produced a ratty blanket from somewhere on the ship and had draped it onto himself. He was a few plastic bags and a stench short of being a caricature of the homeless.

"Alright, here's the deal," Jing said suddenly. The sudden noise woke Alice, who rubbed her eyes - not with her own sleeve but his. She stood up, stretching. David, who had been a huge fan of the previous arrangement, found he was also annoyed.

Jing continued onwards without noticing. "Normally, I anchor at night. But normally I'm alone and sailing against the current. But as far as I can tell, we'll be moving in a straight line towards Ping'an until the morning rain in the mountains brings the wind to us."

He looked from Wen to Alice to David, trying to divine whether they were reliable enough. "I want to sleep. There aren't many shallows on Sky River, which is good because it means it's very hard to mess this up and run us aground."

There was a heady distaste on his face. Undoubtedly, he'd run aground before and it wasn't his favorite memory. "If we start drifting towards shore, turn the steering wheel the other way until we’re not headed for certain doom. Then try to get the ship to go in a straight line."

Jing took a deep breath. "If anything crazy happens, obviously just wake me up." He paused, rethinking his decision. A trepidation overtook the distaste.

"Actually, if you need to steer the ship at all, just wake me up." Jing frowned. "As I said, I'd normally anchor, but there's no point. If we keep going we'll likely make it to Ping'an before sundown tomorrow. If we anchor at night we'll arrive a full day later."

With that, there wasn't any more to be said, so he slid off the crate and onto the deck, then proceeded to cover himself with the blanket.

"It's kind of hard to believe that he's as superstitious about karma as he says when it comes to pirates," Alice said. "Especially after whatever that was."

David groaned and looked up past the sails into the stars he had never gotten to see in person, stars that had hidden by the glow of street lamps and billboards and traffic lights.

“Isn’t karma just a way of taking responsibility for coincidence?” He did not receive an answer - not from Alice, nor from the Heavens, so he lowered his head.

Alice's nose was an inch from his own. When their gaze met, she deliberately closed her eyes.

He did as well.

He could hear her Song, and his own.

A moment passed and then another.

David grew tired of waiting and began to lean forward.

"Now wouldn't it be such a shame if we ran aground on shallows and then while we were trying to dig the ship out, we got raided by a ship full of pirates?"

David opened his eyes. "Alice!" he hissed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. "Do you believe in karma after all?" It would have been more convincing had he not been able to see her face despite the darkness.

That satisfied smirk was significantly less endearing when it was directed towards him.