David

The Skybound Path left the city of Bei'an from the Northeast and arrived at a pair of doors that belonged to the Ascending Sky sect's Earth Peak. The doors were carved from unadorned stone, each three times David’s height and twice his wingspan. To accommodate their size, the path bulged as it meandered through the valley.

A quarter’s way to Earth Peak, at the crossroads where the graffitied welcome banner had been planted, the Skybound Path changed from light cobblestones into a primitive form of concrete. . It was not the unbroken slate of the Iron Road, but pebbles joined in sand and clay and smoothed until level. Pavement. When he closed his eyes, David could almost believe it was a city sidewalk.

Even the conversation taking place was familiar - Alice and Feiyan were quibbling about due dates.

“Look,” said Alice, as she pointed to the bottom of the banner. “it says that the registration ends on the Autumn Festival. You know what it doesn’t say?”

“What?” Feiyan asked.

“It doesn’t say after the Autumn Festival.”

Feiyan rolled her eyes. “It also doesn’t say that you can’t show up the day of the festival. That’s what a deadline is - the date given.”

“Have you ever had to meet a deadline in your life, princess? Do you really want to wait for next year to apply?"

Feiyan wore a familiar expression - one David knew well. “Today’s the last day?” she asked, looking upwards. They’d stopped ten paces in from the banner, which was thirty feet tall and completely without mercy.

“We’re too far away, I don’t think it can hear you,” Alice said with a startling venom to her words.

“Why does it have to be today?” protested Feiyan, who was looking up and down the banner as if she were hoping it would suddenly say something else. She clearly didn’t want to wait another year. She clapped her hands with a sudden inspiration. “It’s written unclearly. You both agree, don’t you? They have to trial us, it’s their fault. They can’t hold me accountable.”

David gave her a flat stare.

"Now normally, if applicants were to show up late to a trial like this, they’d fail immediately,” she began.

“Which is what will happen here,” said David.

“But this is a special situation," said Feiyan, ignoring him. "Don't you know who I am? I need rest before the trial begins. That’s important because," she paused. “It’s important for the continued growth and success of the Empire,” she finished triumphantly. “Thus, by misrepresenting the date, they’re undermining the House of Zhu, which could lead to the eventual collapse of the dynasty.”

Neither David nor Alice reacted, so the girl nodded emphatically on their behalf.

“This plan is perfect!” Feiyan shouted. A passing family of four gave her identical looks - somewhere between caution and disdain. She lowered her voice immediately, only to say something even more ridiculous. “What are the chances I can get the elders to apologize to me?”

“Yeah, what are the chances you’ll enjoy your time in the sect after publicly humiliating the elders?” asked David. Feiyan winked at him.

"We're not missing the sect trials to pay for your hotel room," said Alice.

And nothing Zhu Feiyan could say or do would change that. They’d gone on a two week long wild goose chase to arrive at the place where they could potentially get the saber back.

Li had worked out that it was someone from the Ascending Sky who'd stolen the saber from her mulleted junior, but that was only the official reason as to why Alice wanted to be a part of the sect.

He felt it too - there was something about learning that it was considered the best sect in the world that motivated him to join the sect, rather than investigate in the city. David supposed it was the way he was raised - to want to be the best at everything. He couldn't escape the standing challenge of the Ascending Sky's existence.

"Are you sure I have to do it tonight?" Feiyan whined. "We do things differently here in the Middle Continent."

"If there's anything that's universally true, it's what's late and what isn't," said Alice. "What are the chances there would even be a disciple working at the office during the Autumn Festival?"

Feiyan bit her lower lip. "I can pull some strings, and get them to trial us after-"

"First of all, there's no us," said Alice, finally putting her foot down. Her lips twisted into something mocking. "And second, you can pull those strings to get yourself a place to stay for the night."

"It's not my fault I don't have any money with me! You saw those men, they were trying to kill me. And they ran away with all my luggage."

"Have you considered that it might be safer to keep your belongings in a pouch attached to your person?"

Feiyan looked horrified. "I'm not carrying a pouch around! Do I look poor?"

It should have been a rhetorical question, but Feiyan's eyes checked her clothing as her fingers adjusted the pearls in her hair.

David decided that he'd had enough of the argument. "I'm not so sure what you could do between today and tomorrow that would get the Ascending Sky to view you more favorably," he said.

At this, Feiyan gave a long sigh, but she didn't say anything.

"Are you hoping to have a little bit of a breakthrough?" Alice jeered.

Feiyan's cheeks turned pink.

"Thought you were going to cultivate desperately through the night, and that in the first light of dawn, you were going to discover that the power was in you all along?"

David thought Alice might have been taking it a bit too far, but then he remembered that the girl had stopped her ride to antagonize them on the road, unprompted.

Feiyan clenched her fists. "I wanted to write a letter back to the palace," she finally said. She looked around, as if she were in danger. "My sword, and the talismans I'd been given for the trip - they were stolen too," she admitted.

"Can't that wait until you're already a disciple in the sect?" asked David. "I'm sure there's a sword somewhere in this mountain they can lend you, if you really need it."

Feiyan looked bitter. "Of course you wouldn't understand," she said, mostly to herself from the way she muttered and stared at the hem of her dress. After a few moments, she found a way to look down her nose at him, despite being a head shorter than Alice. "For people like you, if you're not successful at cultivating, you're nobody," she said. "But for people like me, if you're not successful at cultivating, you're a victim. I pity you, really."

She paused. "Do you even own a single talisman?"

David didn't know what a talisman was.

"I thought as much," said Feiyan. "Not everyone can be fortunate in life. If there is anyone to blame, blame the heavens," she said. "You are cultivators - that is your right. You should hope to have luck like mine in your next life."

David didn't necessarily agree, but Feiyan took his silence as a prompt to continue.

"The family gave me an incredible, one of a kind treasure. My grandmother, on my mother’s side of course. She gave me her Heartblood."

Neither David nor Alice had any idea what that was, and it showed on their faces.

Feiyan threw up her hands. "She gave me a talisman made with her heartblood." She pointed at her chest, as if they were more likely to know what heartblood was compared to where their hearts were in their bodies.

"I don't know what that is," said David, whose annoyance had overtaken his curiosity by a hair.

Feiyan put her hands back down and said nothing. She looked from David to Alice. Her next words came out soft and angry. "Are you making fun of me?"

"I guess I misjudged how much you liked me," she said, sounding miserable.

David pressed his lips into a thin line and shook his head.

Feiyan clearly didn't believe him, because she balled her hands into fists and began marching up the Skybound Path without another word.

Alice looked over at him and shrugged. "Well, she was right. I didn't actually like her."

David grinned. "What do you mean you didn't like her? She's the eleventh princess of the House of Zhu. How dare you, peasant?"

Alice chuckled and then leaned into him.

"What do you think a talisman is?"

Alice didn't answer, choosing instead to tilt her head upwards to read the banner for the fiftieth time. From the way she traced the lines on his palm, David could tell that something was bothering her.

"Do you think if I were in her place that I'd act the same way as her?"

"Let me see. While traveling towards a sect, a girl loses her weapon to someone she shouldn't have put her trust in-"

Alice elbowed him in the ribs. "I'm being serious," she said. David expected to see a smile or a pout when he met her eyes, but found genuine concern and an uncharacteristic helplessness - despair.

"I'd hope your life never depends on the kindness of strangers on the road," said David, meaning it.

She shook her head lightly. "Do I sound like her? When we're talking to people."

"Sometimes," David admitted easily.

"Do I sound like her when I'm talking to you?"

"Not in the slightest," David reassured her. "What brought this on?"

Alice didn't want to say, or she didn't know. David put his arm around her.

"Do you ever wish it would stop?"

"The Song?"

"When I don't want to see something, I can shut my eyes. When I don't want to hear something, I can put my hands over my ears."

David hadn't found it too difficult to tune out the overlapping dissonances of the Song. But he could understand why Alice, who perceived qi as stories, was so frustrated.

"Hearing voices isn't a superpower," said Alice so impassively she couldn’t have been anything but terrified. “It’s mental illness.”

"You’re not mentally ill if other people can hear the voices you can hear," said David, hoping that Alice wouldn’t end up believing that she was crazy.

Alice gave him a wide smile, but he could see a flash of paranoia in the way her fingers twitched. "You don't have to look at me like that. I don't think that this..." She swept her arm across the field of vision and then inhaled the scent of Tianbei Valley - morning dew. “This isn't some strange dream, I'm sure of it, now. I’ve been sure since we left Ping’an. But I still think there's something off about this place."

David couldn't disagree. “We have to learn to like it. I think it’ll be really hard to get home, if it’s possible at all.”

"I feel guilty," said Alice. "That I like it here. That I try not to think about home. Not because it hurts too much or something, but because it doesn't hurt as much as it should. Every morning, when the sun rises, I force myself to be sad that I might never see my parents again. I've always been a little narcissistic, but I didn't think I was a full blown psychopath."

"I don't think you'd feel guilt if that were the case. Especially not about missing your parents," said David, who hoped that he wasn’t witnessing the birth of yet another strain of emotional turmoil.

"But you miss home, for real. That's what you'd wanted to ask Daoist Nan about before I blurted out the dumbest question I could. That's why you've started looking so hopeful lately. Because you miss home and you think there's a chance we can go back."

"I would miss home a lot more if I were alone," said David. "And you would too."

Alice responded by pulling him into a long hug. In sunny Tianbei, it was hard to be mad about a single moment in the bamboo forest which had been as dark as the night. So he decided to hold onto Alice instead when she tried to push off of him. After a few seconds, she began squirming out of his grasp.

“Let me go!”

“Nope.”

Alice narrowed her eyes. "You’ll need to show a little more loyalty before you get to hug me like this. I bet if I died back at the Falling Leaves, Jiang Sanli would be standing right here in your arms, healing your heroic, wounded heart," Alice mouthed into his chest. Her tone was partly sardonic, partly indulgent - a sure indication that her crisis of confidence had been averted, or at least postponed.

"Oh yeah? I bet if you were alone, you'd be drinking sorghum wine and engaging in acts of petty piracy with Captain Jing. Real skillful, having your little boat on autopilot. Not about the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean, eh?"

Alice wrinkled her nose. "Gross.”

David quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who likes the smell of fish. If I’d gotten tragically lost in the bamboo forest, you’d have joined the Iron Scripture." She adopted a higher pitch and stopped breathing through her nose. "Help, sect bro, I tried to crawl back into the Cubic Crucible, and now I'm stuck. But if you smash my anvil with your hammer just right, I think I’m gonna break through."

Alice sounded more like she had a sinus infection than like Daoist Li. David would show her how it was done. He injected as much campy cheer into his voice as he could manage. "Hello, Path Friend! A big man with a small boat slipped his sword into me, and you’re the only one who can save me. Luckily, I have a sutra you can use to lend me your Yin energy. This inheriting disciple has already prepared a suitable cave."

They were both laughing now, which was more fun than being homesick and a lot more fun than worrying about Alice.

Alice pointed her chin at him, level with David’s nose, and sneered. "Just so you know, I was perfectly fine with being surrounded by three large men, peasant. It's not like I want you to bring me to a nearby hotel and call me princess or anything like that. "

"So you were making fun of me!"

Alice groaned into David's shoulder. "Why is she back?"

"I never left," proclaimed Zhu Feiyan, who was dashing back to them from where she'd shouted - a few hundred feet down the road. When she arrived, she took a moment to catch her breath. "Go ahead."

David frowned. "What?"

"Go ahead and apologize for laughing at me," Feiyan panted. "You were supposed to run after me, but after a while I realized that you're not very well educated and didn't know the proper thing to do when a lady leaves in anger."

David considered the best way to deal with her. They could almost certainly outrun her, but their destination was too close for it to matter. They could pretend they'd never met her before, but while Feiyan was beyond naive, she wasn't that dumb. The only thing he was sure of was that he was never, ever going to apolo-

"I'm sorry you felt that way," said Alice. She gave Feiyan a pat on the head.

"I'm not a kid!" Feiyan stood as tall as she could and folded her arms beneath her breasts.

Alice smirked.

"We'll see who's laughing when you fail your trial and end up a cripple!"

That was oddly specific. "Do you know what the trial is?" David asked.

"Well, sect trials in the middle continent are-"

"So that's a no," said David, wishing he hadn't asked.

Feiyan glared. "Everyone knows that the trials from the Great Sects are designed to separate the swans from the chickens, to force the dragons to ascend and the snakes to burrow into the dirt, to-"

"Yes, yes. You might even say that the cream rises to the top," said Alice, who was still smirking.

Feiyan looked at her blankly. When no explanation was offered, Feiyan went back to glaring. "For example, the Iron Scripture pushes incoming disciples into a gigantic kiln and withstand the heat of molten metal. If you don't manage to crawl out, you're made into a sword."

"I see," said David.

"The Rolling Clouds blindfolds their applicants and forces them to walk over one of the eight bridges into Qiaoxin, and if two make it from opposite cardinal directions, they must fight to the death for a spot in the sect."

"That seems a little wasteful," said Alice.

"It is, but in order to comprehend the sword forms of the Rolling Clouds, you must understand the true nature of symmetry," whispered Feiyan, as if she were imparting an enormous secret. She pointed up at the banner. "See how confident the disciples of the Ascending Sky are? Even willing to deface a banner planted by their Council. Would someone who hasn't passed a test of life and death to join the greatest sect in the world dare to do that?"

The late morning sun bathed her in warm light and the pearls she wore in her hair glowed. The Eleventh Princess was a vision of quiet determination dressed in a white hanfu, with the subtle promise of heroics in the way she set her jaw. Or maybe David was wrong. Maybe the girl had an even more flattering mental image of herself.

"Right," said David, who wasn't fully convinced that the charcoal on the banner, depicting a stick figure entering the sect, had really been an act of transgressive tagging rather than a design choice.

"It's clear to me now," said Alice, nodding without pause. "The Heavens have set themselves against you. They’ve sent assassins to steal your talisman and a pair of musicians to trick you into attempting the sect trials unprepared."

"Exactly," Feiyan said, looking pleased that Alice finally understood her.

"Well, good luck next year, then," said David, pulling Alice along the Skybound Path with him at a brisk pace. Alice's lips were firmly pressed shut, but the way her shoulders shook told David that she was trying her best to make sure Feiyan didn't know she was laughing.

"Wait!" came a shout behind them. "Wait up! Peasants, the House of Zhu demands that you wait for me!"