Ch. 050| Laying It Bare

The two-zhang courtyard wall behind the herb-lodge—Lin Que tried it three times under cover of night.

The first night, he drew his breath and leapt, and the breath scattered halfway; half his body slid down the wall's face, and he twisted his ankle. The second night, he skimmed over the wall's crest, but came down so heavily he startled the night watch, and he lay in the grass, not daring to breathe until the man had walked far off. By the third night, he drew a breath from the Gushing Spring point clear through his whole body, touched a toe to the wall's foot, and his body rose, cleared the top, and came down soundless on the far side—that "skimming" art had, at last, come smooth.

But once he'd skimmed the wall, he understood one thing.

The skimming art could get him past those four guarding eyes at the forbidden court's gate. But past the eyes, once inside the outer yard—when the stone house's door opened, when the "Teacher" was present, when the living men came bearing stock, when that ring of patrols changed watch—of all this he knew nothing. To break in through the dark on the strength of a skimming art alone would be the same death as Senior Brother Xu's, following that north-bound cart through the dark.

The sword and the skimming art were the feet and hands with which he'd storm the forbidden court. But he still lacked a pair of eyes planted inside the forbidden court itself.

Those eyes—in all the Xuanzhao Sect, only one person could lend them to him: Bai Heng.

But ever since the night Bai Heng probed the forbidden court for him and was swept by a glance from the "Teacher" across the yard, Lin Que hadn't dared send word again. That one glance sweeping over her—Bai Heng's days in the Xuanzhao Sect were, most likely, no easier than his own.

He wavered two days, and in the end still followed the old method of a slip of paper tucked into a sachet, and got a message across to her.

---

The place Bai Heng set was no longer the west slope. It was an abandoned old training ground at the easternmost edge of the outer gate, half its wall collapsed, unvisited year-round.

When Lin Que skimmed over that fallen wall and in, Bai Heng was already waiting inside.

Under the moonlight, she was thinner than when he'd last seen her. The plain white robe of a true-lineage disciple was still trim and neat, but beneath those habitually cool eyes were a few threads of red, worn there by too little sleep.

"You do pick your moment to send word." Her voice was pressed low; she first swept a glance beyond the fallen wall before turning back. "Wherever I go these days, there's a pair of eyes behind me. Tonight I begged off sick, and climbed out the back window of the medicine-shed."

Lin Que's heart sank. "That night, I brought trouble down on you, Senior Sister—"

"No need to speak of that." Bai Heng cut him off. "Probing the forbidden court was my own doing; it's no fault of yours."

She paused, and her voice dropped another half-degree. "Your message comes at a fitting time, too. There's a matter here I've been holding in, with no one to tell."

"This past half-month, that 'Teacher' has been going to the forbidden court more and more often," she said. "There's a wrongness in the sect, too—the Pill Hall firing pills through the night, the lamps of the Archive Hall burning past midnight, as if hurrying to put something in order. The other day I heard a supervisor talking with someone—said the 'Teacher's' business was 'drawing near,' and here at the Xuanzhao Sect's end, things were 'about at their finish.'"

Lin Que's heart lifted into his throat.

Drawing near. At its finish. That "Teacher" was no man of the Xuanzhao Sect—Bai Heng had said long ago that he was an outsider who came by once every so many days. Once an outsider's business was done, of course he'd leave. Laid alongside Madam Chang's "scrambling to make up the sum, trouble's near," the two meant one and the same thing: that lot were tying off the ends.

Once the "Teacher" left, that stone house, the source of it all, would most likely be emptied out and wiped clean along with him, never to be found again.

To move, then, was to move before the "Teacher" left.

The words had barely fallen when, beyond the collapsed wall, a point of dim yellow light suddenly flared.

A torch. Along the abandoned path outside the training ground, swaying, swaying, it came this way.

Bai Heng's face changed abruptly. "The one watching me—he's followed this far."

Lin Que's left eye swept the path that torchlight came by. A dozen-odd paces more, and the man would round the fallen wall and light up the yard. A herb-lodge menial and a true-lineage senior sister, meeting in this derelict training ground at dead of night—caught at it, and Bai Heng's life was forfeit.

"Go to the middle of the yard, Senior Sister, as if you'd come out sick for air. Don't turn around," Lin Que murmured, very fast.

Without waiting for Bai Heng to answer, he drew his breath and sprang, touched a toe to that collapsed rampart, and his body was already skimming up to the darkest spot atop the wall, crouched behind a broken brick, his very breath held in.

The torch-bearer rounded the fallen wall and lit up the yard. Bai Heng was strolling slowly, hands clasped behind her, like an invalid unable to sleep, out to ease her mind.

"Senior Sister Bai?" The man started. "So late—how is it you're here?"

"The medicine-shed's stifling." Bai Heng's voice was flat, without a trace of the urgency of a moment before. "Out for a walk. Does that break a sect rule too?"

The man, abashed, cast his torch about here and there. That light swept across the top of the wall, coming within three feet of where Lin Que crouched, then moved away.

"N-no, I wouldn't dare. The night's deep, the dew heavy—best you return early, Senior Sister." Not daring to ask more, the man withdrew.

The torchlight receded. Lin Que skimmed down from the wall's crest and came back to Bai Heng's side, soundless underfoot.

But Bai Heng did not let that breath go. She stared at him, and the look in her eyes was no longer what it had been a moment before.

"That leap just now, and that landing." Her voice was pressed very low, a word and a pause at a time. "A three-zhang collapsed wall, and you went up and came down without disturbing so much as a loose brick. Is that the skill a herb-lodge menial ought to have?"

Lin Que did not answer.

Bai Heng's lips tugged into a bitter smile, half of it knowing. "I've long suspected you were no simple thing—those eyes of yours see what others can't. And now this hand added on top." She stared at him, a word and a pause at a time. "The eyes on me are tight. But what you hide under this timid shell of yours runs deeper than anything anyone's watching for."

Lin Que looked at her, and that pang of guilt in him grew a degree heavier. "Since you'd brave this risk to come, Senior Sister," he weighed his words, "it can't only be to pass a message."

Bai Heng looked at him, and those reddened eyes slowly sharpened.

"I probed the forbidden court for you, and staked my place in the sect on it. Now I've begged off sick and climbed out a window to bring you word." A word and a pause at a time. "Lin Que, I've braved enough for your sake. I want something too."

"What does Senior Sister want?"

"You know what I want."

She took a step forward, and through that habitual reserve in her voice, a crack opened. "That year, you said I'd been stuck at my chest for three years—not because I fell short, but because that stretch of the art was missing a stroke. You can see that flaw. I ask you—"

She stared into his eyes, as if to gouge the secret out of them: "Can you mend it, or not?"

Lin Que did not answer at once.

Bai Heng watched the flicker of hesitation cross the bottom of his eyes, and her voice went cold. "You won't answer—which means you can mend it, but won't say so." She stepped back half a pace, and that reserve, so lately cracked open, closed again. "So be it. What your gift can see, what it can do, is the very root of your life, kept in the deepest box—why should you throw it open for me alone?"

"You've thought it crooked, Senior Sister." Lin Que looked at her.

To mend that flaw of hers, he could do it—by the same course he'd mended his own flaw, he could see where that stroke broke off, and how it ought to be joined. But this one joining would be the same as throwing open, before Bai Heng, another layer of what these eyes of his could do.

Yet, looking at those two patches of red worn into the bottom of Bai Heng's eyes, at the risks she'd braved for his sake, the "I can't see it clearly" that had risen to his lips, in the end, he did not speak.

"To truly mend that flaw back, this here and now won't do," Lin Que said. "It takes the right stock, the right hour." He paused. "But these years, Senior Sister—that breath at your chest catching, aching the moment you raise it to that spot—this, I can ease for you right now."

Bai Heng was startled.

"Raise a breath to your chest, Senior Sister," Lin Que said. "Slowly."

Half-believing, Bai Heng raised her breath as told. Lin Que's left eye followed along the course of that breath—the qi ran up to her chest, struck that severed flaw, jammed, and surged back. No wonder that, three years running, raising it brought pain.

"Stop," he said. "That flaw sits to the left of center in your chest. Your breath has always driven straight up into it, so of course it hurts. Try—taking that breath along the meridian on the right, and going around it."

Bai Heng closed her eyes, and, as he'd said, canted that breath to the right.

It went around.

That breath, pent up for so many years, striking the flaw the moment it rose—for the first time, it went smoothly around that barrier, and ran a whole full circuit.

Bai Heng's body gave an all-but-imperceptible shudder; she snapped her eyes open and fixed them on Lin Que. Into those cool eyes surged something even she could not hold down.

"This…" Her voice trembled.

These years, her master, her fellow disciples, even she herself, had all said her aptitude had reached its ceiling, her heart-state was unsteady. She'd accepted it. Yet this herb-lodge menial before her, with a single word, had made that breath go around the thorn that had pricked her for years—so it had never been that she fell short. A flaw truly was lodged there; it was only that, before, no one could see it.

"This is only going around it, easing it; the flaw's still there." Lin Que had already turned the talk aside. "To truly mend that stroke back in, I'll have to wait until I've got the right stock and found the right hour. Keep this method of routing the breath in mind, Senior Sister—use it when it aches."

He did not notice that Bai Heng's gaze, resting on him, held far longer than usual.

---

A good while later, Bai Heng steadied that breath and recovered something of her everyday composure. From her sleeve she drew a slip of paper folded very small and held it out.

"The patrol changes in the forbidden court's outer yard, the hours the stone house opens its door to take in stock—this past half-month, I've noted them all down," she said. "Fix one thing firmly in mind: the stone house opens its door once every three days to take in the stock heaped in the outer yard, always in the small hours, around the hour of the Ox. And it just so happens that around that same moment, the watch at the southeast corner changes, leaving a gap the space of a scant half-cup of tea. If you're to go in, that scant half-cup of tea is all you have—miss it, and you'll wait another three days for the next."

She pushed the paper into his hand. "This one slip is all. I'm watched now, and can't get into the forbidden court—from here on, I can give you no more."

The paper, reaching his hand, still carried a little of her warmth. This one slip was the last piece he lacked to storm the forbidden court.

"Take care, Senior Sister." He tucked the paper into his robe. "This while, don't stick your neck out for my affairs again. The eyes watching you are tighter than the ones watching me."

Bai Heng gave a small laugh, a touch of self-mockery in it. "I've my own reasons to see this cleared up. That flaw, that stone house, these years at my chest—did you think it was only for you?"

Lin Que did not take up the words. But he knew Bai Heng was right. She was looking into this business for reasons of her own; her road and his had simply, for a stretch, run alongside each other.

Skimming out over that fallen wall, the night was already deep. The mountain wind carried the raw smell of grass, and the thin slip of paper against his chest, though it dug in, was no light weight.

The next hour of the Ox the stone house opened its door, Bai Heng had said, was three days off; and around that same time, the watch at the southeast corner would leave a gap of a scant half-cup of tea. Lin Que set these two hours side by side in his mind.

He drew his lapels closer, tucked that paper snugger against his body, and strode homeward along the darkened mountain road. That still-raw skimming force underfoot pressed, step by step, deeper into the solid.

【Ch. 050 End · the outer gate of the Xuanzhao Sect · the derelict training ground at the eastern edge】