David

When David and Alice stepped onto the dock, there was that same relief he felt when he left Cloud Mountain City.

"Honestly?" David said, in English - the language he still thought in, "I'm just not comfortable pretending to be someone I'm not."

Alice found his hand easily, comfortably. "So are we going to talk about it or not?" Their steps were slow and leisurely - the sun had almost slipped over the horizon, but the street ahead was lit by hundreds of patterned red lanterns which hung beside every door.

"Talk about what?" David asked.

Alice stopped to give him a stare. "This morning, of course. The great game in the sky."

David knew she meant the failed Ascension, but he didn't quite understand her words. "Game in the sky? What game?"

"The game of weiqi, during the storm. That whoever wanted to become an immortal lost."

A little spike of realization found him. "That's one way to see it, I guess. It was more like a conversation to me, an argument - a debate, even. Where she believed something was important and that wasn't, or wasn't exactly, what the Heavens wanted. But the thunder said she knew she was wrong and she wanted to die."

"Was she courting death?" asked Alice, her eyebrows twitching - using Wen's words.

David exhaled through his nostrils, somewhat exasperated. "It's not funny."

"I know." And she did, because she was now somber and contemplative. They were speaking quietly because there were still people around - people who most certainly could not understand them, but they didn't want to attract any more attention.

"It's just, if you don't laugh about it, wouldn't you want to cry about it?"

David found this acceptable. "It's like the story of Patriarch Jiang, but not quite. She didn't get to ascend, after all."

The few streets in New York which were still paved with stone for historical reasons were exasperating to walk on, but compared to the dirt roads and forests, the cobblestone streets of Ping'an were a blessing. Their sneakers, however, were certainly drawing strange looks and some pointing.

Luckily, the city was amidst celebration, and while they didn't quite match the staid Daoist robes they had taken from the sect, the attention was not negative. There were people wearing far more ridiculous things - masks used for Chinese opera representing deities, stuffed birds perched on hats, gossamer wings spun of silk.

"I love the architecture here," said Alice. The buildings were constructed of either fired clay bricks or dark wood. There was that perfect, cramped feeling - with nary a foot between most buildings. The sidewalks were straight and narrow as well - but instead of streets paved for vehicles or horses, there were canals. Water was king here. It alone determined how large each block was.

Some blocks had only one or two buildings, others had so many that they had been divided by what must have been man made canals. There were also no crosswalks, for obvious reasons. Instead, arched bridges, of warped stone welded together somehow, connected the blocks. The bridges were high enough for rowboats to pass under.

"It's hard to believe how old this city is," said David. Alice nodded. It was.

Here, the citizenry were divided very clearly along the lines of cultivation. Those who were dressed up for the celebration didn't use the stone bridges. Instead, they leapt over the canals. The more plain citizens made way for them naturally.

While there weren't throngs of people, especially now that the sun had set, there was still the buzz of noise which pressed in from all directions. Ping'an sounded like oars hitting water, like the echo of conversation bouncing off of stone, like arguments had through windows across streets and the laughter of lovers.

They walked in silence, hand in hand, as the sun set completely.

"So, uh, where are we going?" David finally asked.

Alice fidgeted. "I was kind of just following you," she admitted.

They broke into unrestrained laughter. David and Alice had walked in a straight line from the dock with no purpose - but that was okay.

"Let's find somewhere to eat," said David. "We'll probably want to catch another ship going further north to Red Wind Sect, so let's head back towards the docks."

They turned around and came face to face with someone familiar with well coiffed locks, sky blue robes with a falcon stitched onto his breast and a garishly eye catching sword.

Wen was twenty paces behind them.

David frowned.

"Hello, Path Friends!" Wen greeted enthusiastically.

"Are you kidding me?" Alice asked, of David, of the heavens.

"Why are you following us?" David asked, as bluntly as he could.

Wen sneered delicately. "Following you? You walked past this Daoist without noticing and I'm following you?"

Perhaps David was being just a little bit unreasonable. "I apologize," said David, meaning it. "It's dark out and I didn’t expect to see anyone we knew."

"We're just going to head back the other way now," said Alice, her fingers tightening.

"Suit yourself," Wen said, sneering. He walked past them. Their encounter had drawn a few excited onlookers, possibly hoping for some sort of confrontation. Most of them seemed disappointed, but they melted away as quickly as they had arrived.

One who did not leave was a man of nondescript age on a nearby stone bridge wearing a white bib with Jiang on it. When he noticed David's eyes, he glared back. David recognized a police officer when he saw one.

"I guess they really do run this city," Alice mused.

They were halfway back to the dock when she caught sight of a jiulu - the sort of restaurant that she'd wanted to see. "Smell that? Smells like dinner," Alice said, sounding excited.

The jiulu had two stories and was the size of at least four other buildings put together. There were several large windows - made of glass, flanking an entrance which had a pair of gauzy red curtains for doors. Above the door was a stone plaque with a single word - wine.

It occupied its own little island, surrounded on three sides by the canals. A stone bridge led to its entrance. There was no line to enter, but from the moment they'd caught sight of it to their first steps onto the bridge, three groups had gone in and two had left. Most of them wore noticeably celebratory regalia - dangling earrings with many gems, robes with exaggerated sleeves and rows of clanking bracelets of silver and gold. Everyone was in high spirits.

"Business is booming," Alice said in his ear. Halfway over the bridge, Alice had an idea.

"We should drink." Clear brown eyes, impossibly long lashes, cheekbones that were unreasonably high and the faint hint of dimples - that was Alice. David liked Alice.

David wanted to tell Alice that he thought it was horribly irresponsible, that if they ran into trouble no one would be able to help them out and, amusingly, that he wasn't old enough to. But he didn't say any of these things.

"No one can stop us," he realized with a wide smile. "No one's going to ID us. They're going to be trying to convince us to drink."

They hastily crossed the stone bridge and David pulled Alice through the curtains.

If there was a buzz of ambient noise in the city, the restaurant was a roar of sound. The ceiling was as high as the building and stairs of well worn, but polished wood led to the upper floor from both wings of a grand dining room.

The dining room, as bright as day, had between thirty and forty round tables with red tablecloths - each seating parties of up to five. Upstairs, larger tables for larger groups were visible through a balcony. There were some more private rooms with the same gauzy red curtains for doors.

Groups of eating and drinking revelers sat at the tables on sturdy wooden stools. For each reveler, there were several eggshell white plates on every table. They ate with chopsticks. Every table had differently shaped bottles of ceramic, pewter and glass - as well as cups of many kinds. There was a single commonality - pots of tea.

There were no waiters in sight. Instead, giggling women in that same gauzy silk, but of many colors, flitted from table to table, with heavy plates and heavier makeup. They ranged from a few years younger than David to twice his age. Most of them stayed at the tables they arrived at, but there were as many women as there were customers.

"It's also a brothel," Alice realized - sounding far more excited than David expected. "This is the sort of place you can only read about back home."

Most of the tables were occupied by groups of men wearing robes like David's - but many were not. There were even some families with children along - though none of them were very young.

There was also music playing. At the back of the room, in a corner, a more conservatively dressed girl who couldn't have been older than Alice was playing a guqin somewhat listlessly - in contrast with the jaunty tune. The twanging notes cut through the noise pretty easily, but few people were listening.

A middle aged woman wearing a bright red cheongsam - a rather traditional Chinese dress with slits along the side, and holding a girthy bamboo fan greeted them. Her eyes passed from David's flute, to Alice's guqin case - and she looked hard and unwelcoming for just a moment, before she noticed the little silver pin in Alice's hair with the bagua. It shone, reflecting the warm yellow lights of hundreds of lanterns that hung around them. The unwelcoming look morphed into a practiced smile.

David thought Alice's idea of being wandering musicians might have gotten a little more pushback than she would have believed in Cloud Mountain City.

"Honored guests, are you expecting more company, or would you like a table for two?" David and Alice were still holding hands.

"A table for two," said Alice, with a light grin.

The woman led them to a recently vacated table across the room, twenty feet from the guqin player. By the time they had arrived, all the used plates were gone and the tablecloth had been replaced. Only two stools remained, besides one another rather than across, like at most tables.

She rattled off their selection of drinks beside them as they approached the table and sat down.

David's seat was still warm.

A pot of tea and a pair of eggshell white ceramic cups found their way onto the table as they sat and the woman who had seated them drifted away, replaced by a girl slightly younger than David.

She was slim, with wide, round eyes and lustrous black hair. She wore the same sheer silk robes of the other waitresses - in a leafy pastel green. Unlike the other women, she didn't wear much jewelry - an artfully shaped flower of silver hung from a chain around her neck. She smiled, showing slightly crooked but fairly white teeth - at Alice, who she looked at with undisguised something. Her cheeks were slightly flushed.

"What will you be drinking today?" she asked. Her words were quick - like Jing's, but had none of the drawl. Each word was sharp and clearly pronounced. While her voice wasn't necessarily melodic, it wasn't hard to listen to. This was a girl who'd grown up in a city - for sure.

Alice looked around, at the drinks being poured from table to table, and saw something she liked. Her eyes looked almost rapturous. "Wine, as red as you have it, in cups of luminous jade."

Now David, too, was delighted. "Drinking wine of grapes in luminous cups-

"We rush to battle as the four-stringed lute plays," finished the waitress, to his surprise. "Our honored guests are well read," she said, slipping away from the table to bring David and Alice their wine.

Alice and David looked at one another, grinning.

"I'm happy," Alice said.

David nodded. "I'm glad we decided to come to this-"

Alice shook her head, still smiling. "I'm happy to be here. And that you're here with me."

And David realized he was, as well.

The wine, warmed in a brass kettle, and the cups of jade arrived at their table with the same waitress, who looked a little out of breath. Compared to the tables around them, with all manners of cups of horn, bronze, silver and other precious materials, the cups somehow weren't an extravagance. Had there been less light in the room, however, the luminous jade would have earned its name.

"Would you like anything to eat?" she asked, as she poured wine for them.

"I hear the braised duck of Ping'an is known far and wide," said Alice. The waitress nodded enthusiastically and disappeared again.

Alice took a deep swallow of wine from her cup, draining most of it. “Houjiu!” she exclaimed - good wine, a phrase that echoed through the restaurant every minute or so. David could see the horrified wince of someone who rarely drank overtake her.

He didn’t think he’d do any better, but David threw back the blood red wine which contrasted with the clear, green cups anyway. “Houjiu,” he returned, more sedately. The wine was closer in alcohol content to a spirit. His eyes watered.

David and Alice continued to pour wine from the kettle, though they drank it more slowly as the night wore on. Alice’s face grew more and more flushed, as they traded embarrassing stories about places they might never see again. It was a sort of catharsis neither knew well, but maybe that was what was needed.

Alice’s smile no longer looked hollow and her eyes no longer had that look as though she believed nothing was real.

The waitress brought them a whole braised duck and flirted with both of them without pause, with a sort of hope in her eyes that neither of them understood. It was, somehow, contagious.

Their good humor ended when Wen stepped through the entrance. His eyes swept across the room and found them drinking together.

Wen waved. David frowned. Alice groaned.