Dao of Language

The wheels of my chair cross the threshold of my room, I hear the door close at my back and, at last, I can leave behind the nightmare that the last six months have been.

“It’s over”, I say toward the ceiling without bothering to disguise the relief. “It was about time the whole matter of the funeral ceremonies for the Fei Lan and the Fei Zhi finally ended.”

Lianhua doesn’t answer, because at this point she knows perfectly well that that sentence is not directed at her and limits herself to placing the chair in its usual spot and going around it to head toward the wardrobe.

I, meanwhile, lift my gaze toward the beams and choose the usual one while I concentrate on it with the Myriad of Hands, although now I have to use nine of them as a result of my growth and therefore my increase in weight.

I notice how my body detaches from the seat, how my legs hang and I remain suspended a little more than half a meter above the chair, weightless, while Lianhua returns with the house clothes folded over her arm and begins to remove the uncomfortable outfit from me.

Because imperial mourning is not white by chance, and it is not comfortable by deliberate decision. It is undyed hemp, coarse, rigid and deliberately rough, sewn in such a way that it scrapes because the Lǐbù understands that the discomfort of the living is part of the homage to the dead, and I have spent half a year confirming in my own flesh just how far they understand it that way.

“Lianhua”, I tell her while she unties the bows at my side. “Do you know the best thing that can be done with this clothing?”

“Tell me, Zhāohuán Wen”, she answers me without lifting her gaze from the bows.

“Burn it”, I reply with all the satisfaction in the world. “Take it out to the courtyard, make a small and very pretty bonfire, and the two of us stay looking at it until not even the ash remains. That way I wouldn’t have to see it again for what remains of my life.”

Lianhua finishes with the side and passes the sleeve over my arm while she answers me without being altered in the least.

“It would be a waste”, she tells me. “One can never know when the appropriate clothing for this kind of ceremony will be needed again.”

And I, floating in the middle of my room and half dressed, feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Because in all the stories of my previous life, there existed a perfectly identifiable moment in which a character said aloud a sentence exactly like that one. An innocent sentence, reasonable and full of common sense.

And in each and every one of them, without exception, that sentence was the absolute guarantee that the thing was going to happen soon.

“No”, I tell her firmly. “Don’t you dare.”

Lianhua stops an instant and lifts her eyes toward me.

“I beg your pardon?” she says with a certain questioning tone.

“Don’t be a jinx”, I explain to her. “You have just planted a flag the size of a battle standard, because someone saying aloud that one never knows when something will be needed is the fastest way that exists of making sure that it is going to be needed.”

Lianhua holds my gaze exactly the time necessary to make clear to me, without saying a single word, what she thinks of my theory.

“Fine, fine”, I give in, and I make a gesture with my hand that costs me an adjustment of the technique and half a hand-span of height. “Put it away, I am not going to argue with you over an outfit. But put it away somewhere I won’t have to see it, because after six months putting it on every few days I can no longer stand it, and I assure you that is not an exaggeration.”

“As you wish, Zhāohuán Wen”, she tells me, and keeps dressing me as if we had not spoken.

When she is finally satisfied with the fall of the fabric she takes me in her arms, I release the technique and she seats me in the chair, places my legs in their spot and gives one last review to the folds.

“To the study”, I tell her the moment I notice her behind the handles.

Lianhua doesn’t ask, she only pushes.

We travel the hallway, we enter, she places me in front of the desk and, without my having to indicate it to her, she turns around and throws the bolt. And the moment the latch fits into its place with that dry click that at this point is practically the signal that I can stop feigning, I turn toward her.

“Good”, I begin. “Now that the whole circus is over, are your contacts going to be able to buy talismans with a certain regularity again?”

Lianhua positions herself in front of the table with her hands crossed in front, waiting, so I continue.

“Because the matter is worse than it seems”, I tell her. “In six months we have sold a pittance and, at this rate, before long we are not going to be able to even keep the Qi-gathering formation lit, which is the only thing I truly cannot afford to lose.”

Here I make a pause, because there is a part that makes me feel somewhere between laughter and shame to acknowledge.

“And that counting on the fact that my thirteenth birthday fell right during the ceremonies and I have spared myself the party”, I add. “So on top of it I have had luck. Imagine the panorama if I had also had to pay for that party.”

Lianhua listens to me until the end, as always, and only when she is sure that I have finished does she begin to speak.

“The situation is going to improve, Zhāohuán Wen”, she tells me. “And not only because the period of ceremonies has concluded, although that already returns to the city a good part of its normal rhythm.”

“And what is that due to?” I ask her.

“The most important thing has occurred this past week”, she continues. “The Sect has intervened directly by getting a warning to the Ma and Xie families in which it reminds them that its decree about not disturbing the tranquility of the Empire remains in force, and that if they continue ignoring it they will personally take a hand in the matter.”

She lets the sentence settle a moment before finishing it off.

“And with the two families obliged to withdraw their hands from the hilts, businesses will little by little return to normality”, she finishes. “Not only talismans, all of them in general.”

I let the air out through my nose, and this time the relief is sincere.

“Thank goodness”, I say. “Because I would hate to have to begin rationing the use of the formation right now, when I finally notice that I am close to opening the Yin Gate.”

And there I cannot help the resentment escaping me.

“Which I would have opened already, be it said in passing, if it weren’t for all that useless fire Qi that fills my room and that I cannot take advantage of in any way”, I add. “Half a room full of Qi and me gathering crumbs.”

Lianhua doesn’t answer that, because there is nothing to answer and she is not one of those who say things to fill the silence, so she simply stays waiting while I drum my fingers on the wood of the desk.

And at some point of that drumming, a lightbulb goes on for me.

“Ah, that’s right”, I say, lifting my gaze all at once. “I had forgotten completely with all this. How is what I asked you for going? The matter of finding out how many people have the Golden Chains of Ogma.”

Lianhua doesn’t even need to think about it, which tells me that she reached a conclusion some time ago and had been waiting for me to ask her.

“There is no way of knowing, Zhāohuán Wen”, she answers me. “Those who possess it have no motive to announce it, and I have asked everything that could be asked without raising suspicions but I have obtained absolutely nothing.”

“And there is no way at all?” I insist.

“Only one would be reliable”, she says. “But it would imply going about using the technique and checking whether, by chance, we cross paths with someone who is also using it and the line connects us with that person.”

And I let out a dry laugh, of those that don’t have a shred of humor.

“No, not on your life”, I tell her. “I have not the slightest interest in repeating the experience.”

Because I have the memory as fresh as if it were from this very morning.

It was one of the many ordinary ceremonies I had had to attend, so that, dying of boredom in the third hour of the rite, I decided that it was a splendid moment to entertain myself talking with Lianhua, so I made a sign to her to use it too while I activated it, and out of me there came a golden line toward Lianhua, just as I expected.

And another two toward the people seated at my side.

One ended at my father and the other at the Jiangjun Han Xin, with the two of them joined to each other from quite a while before anything occurred to me, which meant that the Emperor of the Tianjing Empire and the commander of the Army of the Left had spent the whole ceremony chatting tranquilly in front of the entire court.

Until two new lines appeared.

The two of them turned their heads at once, with that perfect synchrony one only achieves when two people receive exactly the same fright at the same instant, and stayed looking at us.

And it was not a quick or dissimulated look, it was an instant so long and so unbecoming of two men who have spent decades without permitting themselves a gesture out of place that the master of ceremonies interrupted himself in the middle of a formula and took a couple of seconds to take up the rhythm again.

I released the technique as fast as I could and spent the rest of the rite with my gaze fixed on my lap and the absolute certainty that that was going to have consequences, although fortunately my mother simply told me a bit later to be more discreet, I imagine by order of my father.

I look at Lianhua and confirm that she has remembered too, because she has that minimal expression that in her is equivalent to a grimace of pure displeasure.

“And that means the technique, for now, is practically unusable”, I say slowly.

Lianhua nods once.

“Because the problem is not using it”, I continue more to myself than to explain it to her. “The problem is that never, ever, are we going to be able to be sure that someone who is in the same room as us won’t take it into their head to activate it at just that moment. They don’t need to be looking for us, they don’t need to suspect anything, it is enough for them to switch it on and there we will be, with a golden line coming out of us and signing a confession.”

And here comes the truly ugly part.

“And of all the people in this palace, I am precisely the one who cannot afford it”, I finish. “Because officially I don’t have a single Gate open, and someone who has no Gate open cannot use techniques, which would make that fact incredibly suspicious.”

I sigh and let myself fall back against the backrest.

“Ninety spirit stones”, I murmur. “Ninety to have a technique I cannot use anywhere there is someone in front of me, which is exactly the only place where it would be of any use.”

And I allow myself a moment of lamentation with all the dramatism the occasion deserves, before acknowledging the obvious.

“The only thing we have gotten out of all that clearly is Sensing the Qi”, I admit. “Which is not little either, truthfully, because since I use it the talismans come out for me with far greater ease. Feeling the density of Qi in the ink instead of going blind and finding out that I have overdone it when it is already crumbling has saved me more paper than I want to calculate.”

“And I find it comfortable”, adds Lianhua, and that spontaneous contribution of hers is the closest thing to enthusiasm I am going to obtain today. “I can keep it active without difficulty while I use the Vision of Horus.”

“There you have it”, I concede. “Ninety stones for nothing and sixty for something. It could have been worse.”

And with that I consider the lament closed, because there is an enormous difference between analyzing an error and wallowing in it, so I direct my attention toward one side of the study, make the box where I keep the talisman-creation utensils float until it comes to rest on the table and I open it.

“Well”, I say as I uncover the ink. “Since you say we are going to be able to sell again, we had better have something to sell.”

I take the brush and make it spin between my fingers.

“We are going to increase the reserve”, I tell Lianhua. “Because one thing is to have a worrying liquidity problem, and quite another very different one is to stay idle instead of resolving it.”

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