“Gah! I just don’t get these people!” Zheng Lei roared, air whipping through her hair as she descended from the apex of her jump, bringing down her stone mace in a two handed smash.

The carved stone met the thin stem of a smoking pipe with a faint click, and Zheng Lei’s world turned into a blur as she was flung sideways to crash into the reinforced wall of the training hall. As she slid to the ground and groaned, her Master, Zheng Shu, remained where he sat, lounging on a pile of silken cushions and returned his pipe to his lips to take a long drag from the smoke of the fragrant burning herbs within.

He was tall as almost all Zheng were, though less broad than average, and wore his crimson hair in a series of braids woven through beads and metal rings. His beard ran down to his chest, smooth and flowing. He chewed his pipe for a moment, whiskers fluttering with his breath. “I’d say so, if frustrations made you so sloppy, girl. Raptor Descends is a feint to be used with a clone you daft girl.”

“I just wanted to thwack something,” Zheng Lei grumbled, rubbing the back of her neck. “Couldn’t you have let me hit ya? Not like it’d have done more than hurt my hands.”

“Feh, I spoiled you little rascals too much,” Zheng Su sighed, tapping out his pipe into a bronze dish at his side. His plain brown and white robes, made of roughspun cloth rather than silk clashed with the luxurious cushions beneath him. “Spill it then, what’s your trouble, since you obviously ain’t gonna get any useful training out while it’s on your mind.”

“I just don’t understand why everyone keeps saying the opposite of what they want,” Zheng Let grumbled petulant as she stood up. She gave the wall behind her an appreciative glance. Not a single crack. Peaks folks at least knew how to build, she’d give them that. Although the training room in the manor allotted to them was kind small and kind of boring, it was as sturdy as anything at home.

Her Master considered her silently, packing a pinch of fresh leaf into his pipe. It was only as she began to fidget that he spoke. “You’re not talking about the court at all.”

Zheng Lei felt heat in her cheeks from being seen through so easily. “...It’s not like the rest are much better, even if the Bai are worse.”

“Aye, that they are,” Zheng Shu agreed, blowing a glittering blue smoke ring. “It’s because of Yao.”

“Eh?” Zheng Lei said, tilting her head.

“Think about it girl. You don’t need a secret history to see the truth,” Zheng Shu. “Just connect the dots. Imagine a man who would do what he did, become what he did.”

She mulled that over. “Shouldn’t they be more impulsive then? He went for what he wanted, combed the continent for the deadliest spirits, killed kings and conquered on a whim.”

“That’s the thing isn’t it. The Fisher was the supreme killer of men, even our Zhi probably would have had a hard time matching him. He was a stubborn fucker, who set his mind on a target and didn’t stop till he had what he wanted, whether it was a wife or a corpse to be. But you know…”

“You know…” Zheng lei said, drawing it out. The old man liked to waffle.

“He was a shit teacher, or rather his lessons were shit for anybody tryin to live with others. Look at what happened first thing when he went and ascended, the snakes started killing each other the second he left, ‘cause they were all like him. We brawl a lot, sometimes things get carried away, but we Zheng have never warred each other, not like that. Think girl.”

Zheng Lei crossed her arms over her chest, face screwed up in thought. “You’re saying that they wind themselves so tight so they don’t go killing everything that irks them?”

“That’s the gist of it girl. They’ve built themselves to stab with words and schemes so that they don’t go stabbing with spears so much. The old fisherman’d be horrified I’m sure,” Zheng Shu said easily, puffing out a steady stream of increasingly complex smoke shapes. “And well fer better or worse, we ceded ground in the old days, kept to ourselves, let others shape this big old tottering house of cards called an Empire after the Sage showed his real colors.”

“Why’d we join it in the first place then,” Zheng Lei said.

“Ask Gramps if you like, see if you get a better answer than the rest of us,” Zheng Shu snorted.

She made a face at her Master. Like that was going to happen. But she sighed then. “Look… Master, please just tell me what I did wrong.”

Zheng Shu considered her for a long moment. “Trust. I tried to pound this into yer thick head girl, but when your bedding outsiders you gotta understand what it means to ‘em. Especially a Bai girl. I just told you how wound up they are, how they don’t let anyone in at all, ‘s why they’re all nutty. Think, if you had no bond siblings, no friends, no lovers, just folks you watch to see when the knives come out, where does that leave you when you let your face slip?”

“It wasn’t…” Zheng Lei said with a frown.

“If it wasn’t like that, why are you still so twisted up?” he snorted. “If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be so bent out of shape by being blown off and needled and prodded by snide little words. Those things can’t hurt you if they’re comin from strangers.”

Her master stood, and spun his pipe between his fingers. The cushions and silks dissolved into mist. “Figure yourself out Zheng Lei, you went in not knowing your own mind or your partners and it brought you here. When you know yourself again, you can ask me for advice.”

Zheng Lei frowned as her master took a step and disappeared. Damn old man, always leaving her to figure things out on her own.

Know her own mind, huh?

***

Bai Mingzhu glowered down at the floor of the hall from the balcony above, standing in the shadow of the pillars. Imperiously, she swept her gaze over the gathered individuals, the young generation of the Empire gathered here in the capital with only a few minders from their elders. She was thoroughly sick of it.

Sick of the cool dry mountain air of the peaks, sick of the miserable trash of lesser provinces chasing after her skirts and offering naught but dull obsequience, and sick of blundering idiots who made her look like a fool…!

She took a deep breath, shooting a waspish look at the shock of red hair she could see towering over the crowd. It infuriated her, the way that woman simply ignored her castigations. She arranged for her to be publicly caught in compromising positions? Laughed off. Minor poisons to spoil wine and induce humiliating bodily functions? Detected or dismissed with a disgusting belch. Arranging a discovery of some personal correspondence unflattering to other important figures. Shrugged off, apologies made without even a hint of injured pride.

She hunched her shoulders, frowning fiercely as she stepped back into the shadows, avoiding the returning gaze.

Worse was the chiding she had gotten from her Mother.

“Hmph, do you think your little tantrums escape my sight daughter? You edge upon spreading your embarrassment to the clan.” Cold yellow eyes and acid words in the sitting room, backed only by the quiet sound of a fountain arranged in the Bai clans chambers to give the air a more comfortable moisture.

“I am trying to ensure that the Zheng cannot think they can get away with insulting us,” she had said, casting her eyes low.

“What insult, precisely, child?”

“I…”

“Do not lie.”

She had swallowed her cover story, the embarrassment at the ball where they had met.

“You are fortunate that half of the reason we allow these gatherings is to let you children get such youthful indiscretions out in a place of little harm,” mothers voice had cut through the shadowed air like a whip.

“...I cannot just accept being treated like a common trollop Mother.”

“Then you should have never taken one of those idiot beasts to bed,” was her reply, along with a cold snort. “They have their magnetism obviously, but what did you imagine would happen?”

She had lowered her head even further, shame coloring her cheeks. “I thought she could be a useful cudgel, if manipulated by her interest.”

She tried her best not to think other thoughts surface, the way her own heart had been sent pounding by the looming figure and aggressive grin.

“At least you chose a woman, such childishness is more excusable than the alternative. Mingzhu, your mistake is the same as all who fall for the charms of those apes. A Bai should be better.”

“How can they be so carefree?” frustration and humiliation brought the words boiling out. “It is as if all the world is a joke.”

“It is. The Zheng are power without discipline. Without responsibility. They walk where they will, rut where they will, fight where they will. They allow their vassals to do as they please, only interfering when some slight personally offends some grinning wanderer. They call this freedom, and imagine that it is the true desire of all, that there are none responsible for the trampled lives in their footsteps. So it was with Zhi and the stone ape. Conquering and fighting and leaving the mortals and commoners behind them to scramble amidst the rubble without the strong hand that is needed for rule. Do not seek commitment or reason in the actions of a Zheng. Their birthright is anarchy and irresponsibility.”

“But how can they function at all then?” Mingzhu had asked.

“Foolish, you know the one true law of the world.”

“Power forgives all sins.”

Bai Mingzhu took a deep breath, shaking away the memory. She was lucky that her Mother was not a truly harsh woman, her only demand that Bai Mingzhu be more discreet. But so too had she refused any further advice on the matter. This left Bai Mingzhu at an impasse, nothing she had been able to inflict on that creature was accomplishing anything, nothing to match…

The feeling like a dagger thrust in her heart, when she had looked into those eyes and realized that nothing of the day and night before had meant a single thing to Zheng Lei.

The unfulfilled grudge roiled like a furious serpent in her stomach, and Bai Mingzhu stalked away from the light and sound of the gala below, moving out onto the balcony that overlooked the mist shrouded foot of the peak below the palace.

She folded her arms in front of her hands vanishing into her sleeves as she strode of to the bannister, sending a scathing look at the shadows which scattered from the artfully arranged hedges. Hmph, idiot children.

She turned her eyes back to the faint lights in the mist of the town below the palace. She wished, not for the first time, that she had her Viper, her Xiao Yin, along, but she had been assigned training with her Mother’s viper for the duration.

It was a bit childish, Xiao Yin was good for two things, Killing and listening, and while she might have liked to indulge the latter, it would have been empty. The girl only said what she wanted to hear. She wondered sometimes at the advice of her seniors towards one’s Viper. They were useful but hardly confidants. One might as well be whispering secrets into a teapot, like a children’s tale.

No, Bai Mingzhu thought, she would have to work through this problem on her own, find a way to resolve her mistake and her grudge.

“Yo, thought I saw you slither on out here.”

Bai Mingzhu stiffened at the sound of that woman’s voice, and whirled about to see a tall silhouette standing outlined by the light of the gala.

“How did you…”

“We’re a lot sneakier than folks give us credit for,” Zheng Lei replied with a lopsided grin. “You’d be surprised how often that comes up.”

Bai Mingzhu narrowed her eyes. She did not fear violence, ‘quiet’ or no such a thing would be felt by the chaperones. “I have no words for you ape, why not return to the tables and resume guzzling all of our hosts wine.”

“Well it’s kinda sweet for my tastes,” Zheng Lei replied. Her footfalls carried her closer.

Bai Mingzhu drew herself up, but it hardly matched the barbarous woman's looming height. “I do not care. As I said, I have no words.”

“Well, I have words,” Zheng lei said crossing her arms. “So hear ‘em, and if you still don’t like ‘em I won’t bother you again.”

Bai Mingzhu glared imperiously, and considered brushing past, leaving Zheng Lei standing alone in the dark.

But, what words could she possibly have to speak?