David

Wen found a stool across from David and Alice in the matter of moments. "Path friends!" he greeted jovially - and quite loudly. "It is I, Daoist Wen Cheng, of the True Sutra sect."

"How could I forget?" said Alice, through gritted teeth. She poured herself another cup of wine. Already, there were many eyes on them. "The days may flow together like water, but it seems like only an hour since we've last met."

Wen was undeterred. "I thought I would sample the fine cuisine of Ping'an and, in a stroke of good fortune, I've run into friends who I have long admired."

The waitress returned with another kettle of warmed red wine and was looking at Wen appraisingly. It was no surprise. Wen looked like who he was - the inner disciple of a large sect. "Would you like anything to drink, honored customer?" she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.

"Lihuajiu", Wen said, after running his eyes over the waitress for a moment. He twirled his long hair around a finger, somewhat coquettishly. "Seeing you reminds me of pear blossoms, so I must have pear blossom wine."

The girl preened. "And what sort of cup would you like it in?" There was a bit of a challenge in her voice.

"Any cup would be fine if it were delivered by your hands, miss," said Wen without a moment of hesitation.

The girl's smile dimmed slightly.

"Perhaps something a little more simple," said Wen, trying again. "The profound hides in the simple."

But the girl only seemed disappointed as she left the table.

"What did I do wrong?" Wen asked, looking a little confused and disappointed himself. He wasn't very used to this kind of failure.

"Uncultured," said David, with the same exaggerated sniff that Alice had given him in the temple of the Falling Leaves. He'd split a kettle of wine with Alice and now found everything as funny as she did.

Wen folded his arms. "How am I supposed to know what I'm supposed to drink pear blossom wine from? Why would I spend my precious time learning something that unimportant?"

Alice mirrored the sneer that Wen loved to wear. "If that's the case, you can't blame a girl for not liking you."

Wen scowled. "Why should I care what a whore thinks of me?" he decided. But he said it quietly, because he did care. David, whose poetry had been recognized by absolutely no one before speaking to the purported whore, felt a small seething anger at his words. Instead of starting a fight, however, he took another long drink.

When the waitress returned, he accepted the tall white ceramic vase of pear blossom wine and the pewter drinking dish without complaint.

The waitress had returned her attention to Alice, now that Daoist Wen had lost her respect. She was well practiced at the art of charming customers. Alice, who fidgeted constantly and narrowly kept her hands to herself whilst sober, caressed the waitress's cheek. But the way she smirked at Wen revealed that her true intentions had little to do with the waitress.

Wen interrupted them to order a braised duck with a slight glare. He then started saying ignorant things about the style of guqin the girl in the corner was playing, hoping to impress everyone. The waitress was, at least, a little impressed.

Before the waitress could leave the table with his order, there was a commotion at the doorway.

A stocky man, at least a head taller than David and twice his age, had entered the jiulu. He ignored the madame who had led David and Alice to their seats. He wore robes a shade darker than David and Alice's light grey. There was a rather long sword at his waist in a leather sheath. He wore that white bib with red lettering that David had come to hate.

"Pay your bills and clear out!" he announced in a thin, reedy voice that did not fit his frame. "The Jiang family will eat here tonight."

The conversation died down to a dissatisfied murmur.

"Clear out, or you will all be arrested for obstructing justice!" The man sounded much louder, now that the scores of conversations came to a halt. There was dead silence, but for the sound of the girl in the back of the room still playing the guqin.

"Do you think their young master is here?" asked Wen quietly. Neither David nor Alice responded. There was a hint of aggression to the question that David did not like.

David squinted at the man with the reedy voice at the distant entrance, somewhat displeased. Alice finished her drink and then poured herself another.

Reedy Voice was now staring at the madame with a measure of accusation, prompting the waitresses to approach the tables of their customers. He pointed and blustered, annoyed about loitering, which he assured everyone was a crime.

Their waitress, who bit her cherry red lips, looked incredibly apologetic. "Four taels, please," she said, refusing to meet their eyes. There was a bit of a shake in her voice - more fear than David liked, but also some kind of resolve.

Alice, who was already quite drunk, drained another cup of wine and handed the waitress a little more than twice as much as she asked for.

"Four for the house, and five for you because four is unlucky," proclaimed Alice. The girl hurriedly slipped the small fortune she'd been tipped into a pocket in her sleeves.

Now that she'd been paid generously, the waitress was less afraid of Alice, even if her trepidation grew. It abruptly became a kind of sadness. "You're not from Ping'an, are you?" asked the waitress, looking despondent. Alice shook her head and smiled.

Most of the customers had already left by this point.

The waitress looked desperate and let the question fall from her lips. "What is the Dao?" she begged. David heard the Song, the slightest whimper from the girl - quiet beyond measure, but still clear and strong and in time.

Alice's smile widened - inebriated, graceful. She beckoned the girl close with a secret on her lips. She leaned forward like a willow tree, like a dream of eternal spring. "Don't be silly, my dear. The Dao is whatever you want it to be. And you can be whoever you want to be."

The waitress nodded frantically and slipped away. David wondered if he would ever see her again.

David stood and let the pleasant vertigo overtake him - but the sound of the Song steadied him. That annoyed him for some reason. Alice, too, stood and slipped her hand into his own.

Wen, however, did not stand. He sipped his pear blossom wine as calmly as he could - but David could see the way his hands shook.

"Have fun, big hero," Alice said to Wen, patting him on the shoulder with her free hand. "This one's definitely worth fighting about."

It was his turn to ignore her. Wen tapped the large ruby pommel of his sword - as if to check if it were there. His eyes found Alice's saber. Resentment. He looked as though he wanted to say something, then clamped his mouth shut studiously - just to open it for another sip of wine.

Members of the Jiang's entourage began streaming into the jiulu. They wore robes of different colors, but all of them wore those white bibs of the Jiang. David thought they looked ridiculous. There were eight men, all told - most of them the same age. None appeared to be in charge, though they looked to Reedy Voice for guidance.

David thought that there would be trouble, because one of them looked ready to say something to him - or more likely to Alice, but they noticed that Wen was still sitting at a table, sipping wine.

"Why are you still here?" complained the man with the reedy voice. "Were my instructions not clear?"

Wen ignored him.

David and Alice made their way towards the exit, but before David could drag Alice out of the restaurant, she turned him around at the red curtains so they could watch. A familiar tune began to play from the guqin - a timeless classic that David couldn't quite name.

"Liushui," Alice said, naming the composition before he could ask. Flowing Water. "That musician isn't very technically skilled, but her sense of dramatic timing is enviable."

Alice had lost her caution and was speaking in English. The madame, who was doing everything but staring at the impending confrontation, heard sounds of speech that she couldn’t recognize coming from a girl who was a little too pretty, a little too mysterious. She looked terrified.

Alice smiled brightly at the woman, as harmlessly as she could to reassure her. Her pearly white teeth glinted in the lantern light. The madame shuddered and looked away from them as well.

"Hey!" the large man shouted at Wen's back. It was a little shrill.

Wen turned, cup still in hand. He took another sip. "Are you speaking to this tiger?" His placid expression morphed slowly into a sneer.

Alice rolled her eyes.

Wen surveyed the men calmly. "First realm cultivators," he drawled. "If i were to take your average qi condensation stage, and multiply it by the number of you, what number would I get?"

He turned back around and poured himself more wine.

"Would it exceed your average age? Or would it be less?"

Alice sighed lightly. "Awful delivery. Three out of ten, if I'm being very generous. He's learned nothing from me."

She hummed along with the guqin. "Did you know this is on the golden record?" she asked David.

“What’s that?”

"There's a bunch of songs, from almost every musical tradition, on a cd that NASA sent into space, hoping that aliens would like our music. This is one of the songs on it."

The man with the reedy voice had picked up the vase of wine. He held it threateningly.

"Listen carefully, junior," said Wen. "I may have the gentle air of a scholar, but I will not hesitate to murder eight pigs in a restaurant."

Alice, who was still very drunk, nodded and nodded. "Fantastic, that's more like it."

The man with the reedy voice threw the bottle of wine to the ground. It broke into a million pieces.

The madame finally found the courage to speak to David and Alice. "Please stop them," she whispered. "They're going to-." She closed her eyes and shook her head, but Wen was already out of his chair.

David was more worried that Wen would kill all of the Jiangs rather than the other way around.

Wen drew his sword with a flourish. There was the keening ring of metal sliding over metal and a deep, fleshy sound. A thud. A scream.

Reedy Voice had fallen to his knees. The scream was his - loud and shrill. He was staring at the stump which had once been his left arm. It was missing from the elbow down. He clutched at it with his rapidly staining bib.

The limb had landed on the table, upright - looking as though it had grown out of the rapidly staining tablecloth. Its open palm showed an auspicious life line.

Wen stood in an exceedingly stereotypical pose - one hand had his index finger and middle finger pointed in the air with his thumb pressed against his chest. The other held his sword, which was made of a shining, clear steel, upright behind his back. There was no trace of blood on the sword.

"This is the Blood Chilling Sword of True Sutra sect," explained Wen, to his horrified audience. "You've been blessed on this day - to have seen the right of the inheriting disciple of Falcon Peak."

"Impressive," said David, who was very much not horrified and enjoying the show. There was much to hate about the man with the reedy voice and he was too drunk to feel sorry for him. David nodded to himself. Far too drunk.

"Decent," Alice corrected softly. "His technique is well practiced but his fundamentals are poor. He is out of balance and he doesn't know it. The clean blade is visually stunning but the cut would have been uneven had there been any resistance whatsoever."

David shrugged. "You're the expert here, expert. I just know it looked cool."

"I'd look cooler," Alice said, with that annoyed sniff. She looked away but David caught the trace of a smile. He pulled closer to her, letting her rest her head against his shoulder.

Two of the other men picked Reedy Voice up off the ground and another took his arm from the table, looking like it was the last thing he wanted to do. They made a mad scramble for the door.

The man who was furthest ahead turned back to Wen. "You just wait. You're going to wish you were dead now that you've crossed the Jiang family!" he shouted, now that there was distance between them.

They pushed past David and Alice. One of the men carrying Reedy Voice out of the jiulu glared at them until they noticed the symbol on Alice's hairpin. He gulped and averted his eyes.

Wen sat down and sighed. "Madame!" he called out without looking in their direction. "I would like some more pear blossom wine. I've broken my bottle by accident."

Alice tried to give another reassuring smile to the middle aged woman in her long red dress, who shook like a leaf in the wind. When she noticed Alice, she gave a little squeak and walked briskly up the staircase to fulfill Wen's request.

David and Alice left the restaurant hoping that there wouldn’t be any more trouble for the involved parties. Alice giggled to herself without pause.

“What’s so funny?”

“Don’t you think Wen has a disarming personality?”

“Shut up.”