David

In the silent comfort of the room, it was inevitable that they were jolted from their sleep with a bang and a loud thump.

David could hear Sky River crashing upon rocks and a single pained moan - a sputtering like a dying automobile.

They both sat up and David immediately noticed something important - the door was ajar.

"The saber," Alice whispered, more confused than angry - more scared than incensed.

Of their three effects, two remained - the instruments.

The door to the balcony was as they left it - open. But with the door open as well, whatever array or formation kept the sound in the room had been deactivated. It was stupid, to believe that it provided any kind of security, in retrospect.

The saber was gone.

Alice was on her feet in an instant, her guqin had found her back and the stone flute sailed through the air into his hands.

David half rolled, half pushed himself out of the bed and hit the ground running behind her into the hallway.

His first thought was that surely the noise must have been coming from the innkeeper up front, but the man's face showed from behind the wall like a child playing hide and seek. There was a sheer terror on it as it looked down the hall towards Wen's door, which was also ajar.

When he saw that David had noticed him, the innkeeper ducked behind the wall with the tiniest of yelps.

Alice and David strode down the hall - in her face, murder. The hairpin bobbed angrily on her head.

When they did step into Wen's room, the scene was still not what David had expected.

Wen's room was, indeed, the nicest one in the inn. The furnishings were trimmed with gold and there were paintings on the wall - most of them of better quality than Mayor Lin's. A sharp line of thick, dark red blood split the painting over the headboard of an enormous bed in half.

On the ground, in front of the bed, was Wen.

His sword had been driven through his back and remained in his chest. Wen was crawling towards a familiar pouch that was stained with his blood. It contained pills of many varieties - one of which Wen had eaten to suppress his appetite.

"Oh no," said Alice.

To David, 'oh no,' seemed a little understated.

She knelt down beside Wen.

"Pull it out," Wen groaned. "Please, pull it out."

Alice looked at David, with the obvious question in her eyes. David shrugged, a helpless gesture.

She placed her hand on the pommel of the sword and Wen screamed. Alice gave a wince, but her intent was true and the sword left his back in a meaty schlick.

Wen screamed again but his lips were now forming the words of a sutra.

"Four stitches, four stitches, one wound to knit, two strings to sever, three needles divide, four stitches, four stitches."

With more strength than he should have had, he found the pill he was looking for and slipped it under his tongue.

Wen cut off the repetition of the sutra midway, turned to Alice and whispered a single word at her.

"Jing."

He slumped onto the floor, unconscious.

David didn't know what possessed Alice, because she gave Wen a hard slap across the face forcing him awake with a gasp.

"You can't sleep," she said. "You'll die if you sleep. And you can't die. You need to avenge your master, don't you? You can't die."

Wen let out another long scream, but his lips formed the sutra yet again.

"Four stitches, four stitches."

Whatever pill he consumed must have been truly, truly vile because Wen continued to gag and gasp. He closed his eyes but Alice gave him yet another slap.

"Four stitches, four stitches," Wen agreed, his eyelids firmly open and tears formed by virtue of sharp pain dripped out of the corner of his eyes. Wen looked at Alice with the sort of worship which David misliked.

When it became clear that Wen would be able to keep himself awake, David remembered something important.

"The saber."

Alice shook her head. "Fuck the saber. I'll keep my promise with or without it."

There was the sound of distant thunder and David felt a premonition - that whatever he was about to hear would be something he wouldn't like much at all.

"What promise?" David asked, in a soft, deadly whisper.

"Four stitches, four stitches, one wound to knit," Wen chanted, but his heart wasn't in it - his eyes glittered in anticipation.

"She who draws the sword from the stone shall be King," Alice said, in English - a challenge in her posture.

David, who could feel when Alice was lying, rolled his eyes at her and let out an explosive sigh he didn't realize he was holding in.

Wen, of course, did not understand them - but he did understand that Alice had said something David didn't like and he did understand that there was a somber weight to her words.

"The truth, Alice Chow," David insisted.

"Three needles divide, four stitches, four stitches."

But David had a good mind and he was already piecing it together - the blood from Alice's injury as the sound of Silkworms made her whole again, the lightning strike on the dead Temple that the history of the Falling Leaves scoffed at, the dust of bones in the air, the saber that an ascendant immortal could not draw, Alice's fixation on Wen's vengeance.

The puzzle pieces slid into place.

"We need to find the saber," David realized, his volume rising. "We need to find the saber!"

"No," Alice said, soft but unyielding - in different words, in different languages now. "We need to make sure our Path Friend does not die. This is the cross I will bear."

But Wen, with what little he understood, disagreed with her as well. "You need to find your Gift," he said, in a somber sort of pain. "What is lost cannot be reclaimed."

Alice exploded. "What will be lost is your life," she hissed at Wen, who looked a little sheepish, a little flattered, and had a dusting of pink on his cheeks that David really, really misliked.

"Four stitches, four stitches."

Wen's eyes closed again a few more times in the following minutes, but it happened less and less. While the pool of blood beneath him grew, the combination of his Four Stitches Sutra and whatever pill he had consumed did the lion's share of the work in keeping him alive - and Alice's left palm did the work in keeping him awake.

It was at this moment when Wen jerked forward, mid chant and pointed through the balcony into Sky River.

A very familiar ship with two masts was cutting through the water, picking up speed.

The sound of David's Song rose within him, tempered by the biting, crunching, crackling of a million silkworms.

"Are you going to fall asleep again?" Alice asked, knowing the answer.

Wen shook his head.

David and Alice stepped over the threshold, onto the balcony, together. Their knees bent, very slightly, in unison.

And then David heard the sound of the Lightning, somber and deep, in the back of his mind once more as the chittering of silkworms and the creaking of an old tree could be heard above all else.

And the sound of your Song will define you.

They both landed, each on a different mast of Jing's ship, nearly four hundred meters from shore. A pair of thumps, so close together that it sounded like the stutter of a drummer’s snare.

"Hello, Jing," Alice said brightly. "I would like my saber back."

"I've already sold it," said Jing. In this last darkness before dawn, David would have expected him to look sinister - but he was still the swarthy, jovial man who looked younger than he should have. "To the Eight Earthly Treasures Pavilion, if you want it back."

Neither David nor Alice, who looked like a proud falcon perched on the mast, moved or spoke.

"Look," said Jing. "I appreciate the silver you compensated me for the wine. And I even did in Wen for the extra fifteen you gave me besides."

Now Alice was confused.

Jing shrugged. "Eighty five for the wine and I just assumed the extra fifteen was because you wanted to be rid of Wen."

"I've changed my mind," said Alice quietly. "I will have every piece of silver back, and this boat."

"I guess you were the pirate all along," said Jing, with a hint of humor.

With that, Alice fell upon him like a meteor.

Alice

As Alice landed on the deck of Jing's boat, she tasted blood, so she swallowed. She had put the momentum of her fall into a savage axe kick which Jing hurriedly dodged.

Her foot sank through the wood of the deck easily, into the space beneath. Had it gone any further, it would have gone straight through the hull and into the water of the river. Still, the boat shook.

It didn’t hurt, but Alice felt the shock of her foot hitting the wood and splintering it into a million pieces. She took ragged breaths, then pushed away the adrenaline that coursed through her, seeking calm. In her best fights, she was calm - in control.

Alice slid into a stance she’d used to win many awards against larger and stronger opponents - a Wing Chun form, the Seeking Bridge. She swayed forward, her center of gravity in her shoulders, like she was leaning on air.

But Jing chose defense instead of offense, planting himself in a horse stance - even distance between two flat feet, bent knees as though he were sitting, fists at his waists. The sound of his Story reverberated from him as they stood on the deck of the ship, neither of them moving an inch.

“This isn’t even your ship,” Alice said. “You were the pirate all along, and this ship was carrying sorghum wine, however many years ago you commandeered it. I could see it in your eyes, the way you spoke about it.”

Jing lashed out with a foot, aiming for her shoulder, but Alice dodged easily. It hit the mast, splitting it like a lumberjack would split a log. Jing howled in anger over the damage he had done to his ship.

Abruptly, he twisted and spun on his other heel, and struck out at Alice with a pair of palms. “The Dun Emperor Pushes the Waves,” he proclaimed, as Alice dodged one palm and met the other with an errant elbow.

It was a glancing blow, pushing the combatants back slightly.

“You know what we call people who shout the names of their moves?” Alice taunted, her laughter on the wind.

Alice twisted, snapping her foot upwards and outwards like a spring, and found his chin with a little flick.

“Alice Just Does It” she said, completely for David’s benefit.

She heard his quiet chuckle on the ship’s back mast as there was the popping sound of Jing’s jaw dislocating. David was angry at Jing too.

Jing staggered back, with his mouth ajar. Alice's meticulously white sneaker hung in the air where it had collided with his chin, her body frozen in a classic martial arts pose. The line of her body was in perfect harmony, her hair hanging in the river wind, eyes on the sky, letting her body form a straight line as her other leg kept her aloft.

She really made a very beautiful T shape, if she did say so herself.

Alice held the pose for dramatic effect - it paid to do that sort of psychological damage to your opponent, after all, if all it cost was a bit of a vain display. Her breathing was still heavy and now she was excited.

But Jing was not fazed. He grabbed his jaw and shoved it back into its socket with a sickly click and charged at her, screaming expletives in his riverboating accent - fast and sharp and drawling.

Alice nodded, knowing that this fight was hers, that this world was hers - and met his fist with her own, as the silkworms whispered things she knew, things she didn’t, and most importantly, things that Jing would never hear.

To do otherwise, would be a betrayal. It would tell the wrong Story.

They collided in the middle of the deck, fist on fist and Jing bounced back as his elbow gave a hearty crack.

“S-seeking Principle?” he muttered. “But how? You don’t even have a core. You don’t even have a foundation!”

That disbelief was music to Alice’s ears, even as the blood rose in her throat. The taste of iron blotted out her senses, but in that exchange, Alice learned everything about who Jing was - and she didn’t like who Jing was.

Jing made a running leap for the edge of the ship, but something like bloodlust rose in Alice now as the sound of silkworms filled her ears.

And Alice. Alice would be the end of Jing’s story.

She crossed the distance between them with a flying kick. The point of her foot found the softness right beneath his ribs and there was a sickening sound - like a key turning in a lock except made of meat - and blood sprayed from Jing’s mouth as he flew like a punctured balloon fifteen meters off the ship onto the water, hitting the surface with a loud splash.

Jing disappeared beneath the waves and with her perfect, perfect vision, Alice could see bubbles of air rise to the surface in the rosy, dawning sun.

Alice heard David suck in his breath loudly. He was still standing atop the unbroken mast of Jing’s ship, which listed forward, finally remembering that it was less than whole.

And so Alice sunk to her knees and expelled the blood and bile that had built up in her throat, because she had realized.

In a way, this was what she’d always wanted.