Someone lucky snored right next to Xi, while he had to meditate again. Xi sighed at the unfairness of it all... and opened his eyes. He was not an apprentice any longer, and he sat cross-legged on a hill-slope, not in his dorm. The ground was cooling down under the seat of his pants as the afternoon wore off into the evening. "I am a war mage," he whispered.

Further up the slope, Fenghuang preened herself. Xi could not take his eyes away from her for a few heartbeats: in place of the beak and the bird's head, he saw a tilted face of a woman. What unnerved him the most was that he saw a different woman's face every time this had happened. Even if he caught just a sliver of it, he knew it was not the same woman each and every time, always strikingly beautiful, but never the same one.

Apprentice or mage, Xi did not have the courage to ask Fenghuang if she was pranking him. He shook the illusion away before she noticed that he was aware of his surroundings once more, and turned his attention to the source of the gravely sounds.

The snorer reclined comfortably on the grass, his hefty butt and thighs insulating him from the chill. Sunset and the life-long pursuit of dogma's interpretations found only on the bottom of the wine bowl colored his nose and cheeks a divine shade of pink. Poor old man must have been exhausted with his chasing Fenghuang cross-country after they left the Imperial squabble.

Xi suppressed a chuckle and removed a scroll from the snoozer's hands trying not to disturb him: Master Jiang was such a happy sleeper. On the other hand, Xi was ravenous, and his rice cake was conspicuous by its absence. Jiang was the only and obvious suspect.

"O Master Shan Jiang!"

Jiang woke up mid-snore and immediately presented the world with a beatific smile. "A treat to see you again, Xi. Fenghuang tells me that I can finally call you Xi and offer my congratulations on your advancement. I must say I am overjoyed with it for an entirely trivial reason. Having both of you respond to Fenghuang made conversations challenging. I bow to the wisdom of mages, I do, but this was the strangest thing."

Jiang's bows did not go very far thanks to his paunch. Xi's own tummy rumbled mournfully in envy, and the man laughed. "I concur, I concur, we must eat before your belly button fastens your guts to your spine. Come along, my boy. I've hired a boat in the village like a diligent student of the old poets."

A diligent student he might have been, but Xi did all the rowing in imitation of the old masters. He did not mind that, providing that Jiang took care of the talking.

Their conversation was not suitable for a tea-house, it had to be done away from unwanted ears, and even then -- in whispers. Fortunately, the stream favored secrecy. The slow water of autumn pushed past the sand bluffs gently, rather than ripping them to shreds with the spring's fervor. Xi tried to keep the splashes when he dipped his oars in even quieter than the water's gurgling.

Jiang took a deep breath in. "Guang terrifies me."

"I doubt that the Benevolent Emperor calls my grandmother Guang when he joins her on the bedmat. I certainly do not." Xi realized what he'd just blurted out when Jiang laughed heartily. It echoed strangely in the night, like a demon's howl. Who knew how many other innocent sounds the night turned into omens of doom?

"Don't drop the oars, Xi," Jiang's voice softened to an intimate tone of a friend, rather than a teacher. "If my information is correct, he calls her Dew-on-a-petal on these occasions. Alas, his health is failing so fast that it does not happen often, with her or concubines."

Xi got the measured rhythm of the oar-strokes back. It made sense for the Emperor to use her private name, but it was not what he needed to know. The other piece of courtly gossip was far more important, the illness that ate into the Emperor's allotment of days. "Is the Son of Heavens in decline again? Is that why Han Yun risked the today's showdown?"

"I am not a faery or surgeon to tell, Xi, but the Empress dared not waiting. She gambled her neck to burst the boil of the conspiracy, and drain its pus."

The breeze changed direction, and tossed cold water from the oars back at Xi, making him shiver.

Han Yun was honored as the Emperor's earthly father. He wanted seize regency over the young princes after the Emperor's death. Xi understood that much, but he wanted to know just how many he doomed today by swooping down on his magic bird to defend his grandmother. "What of the young princes' mother?"

"What of her? She is a lesser wife, with no family to back her up. Her only distinction from the rest of the Imperial concubines is her fortunate ability to give birth to sons. Guang has no reason to eliminate her."

Xi sighed. Sometimes you had to ask the historians direct questions to get an answer. "Jiang, how many will die because my grandmother could not bear children in her second marriage?"

"If you had a thousand royal uncles, Han Yun would still have to die. Or vice versa. One or the other must be devoured for the Empire to stand united on the morning Zha Yao's ashes are buried. They both knew it. He plotted her downfall, she outmaneuvered him."

The moon shone down on them, and the breeze had settled. The rustle of the trees and the reeds of the countryside was barely audible, but they still whispered of peace in their sleep. Who wouldn't dream of peace?

"You did well, Xi," the once-singer said in tune with the leaves and the river.

Xi wished he could let it be, but morbid curiosity drove him on. He had to know. "How many degrees of relation to Han Yun will grandmother order to be purged?"

His high-pitched voice produced a noticeable dissonance with the soothing sounds of nature.

"Mmgh," Jiang closed his eyes to think, a strange thing to do in the dusk. "She will avoid a family purge. After all, Han Yun is the Emperor's earthly father. But how many names they will get out of him under torture— Oars, Xi, watch the oars!"

"I am sorry," Xi muttered, taking deep breaths in. "I need a moment to compose myself."

"I am in no hurry," Jiang said accommodatingly. "It is a pleasant night, and the country air is enticing. Next spring you might have to hunt me down in the provinces if you wish a conversation. There I will be, hoeing lean soil, and writing poems about the joys of the simple life, ah..."

Xi rowed in silence, his mind winding down with every stroke. Perhaps the repetitive exertion of this kind was as good as the mental drills of understanding. He should check if any mage before him had thought of that.

"We are here, Master Jiang," he called when the boat bumped softly to the river dock to wake Jiang up. The old man dozed off again.

It was a sizable village, and the lights were bright in the tea-house even at this late hour. The customers silhouetted against the windows. No costly paper in the window panes here to remind a poet of white egrets, but it was warm inside, and the owner took them to a cozy place in the corner.

Xi settled on the mat, then leaned across the table to Jiang. "Did the Emperor—"

A violent movement in his peripheral vision interrupted him mid-whisper. Xi jerked away from Jiang.

"Aren't you servin' them fast! It's not like he's going to die of starvation, the leech!" A huge stranger with a weather-bitten face stood in the serving girl's way between the tables.

The girl cradled the steaming pot, hunching her shoulders pitifully as if expecting a punch. Our pot, Xi's gut complained, while his mind cataloged the color of the man's ragged tunic, the matted fur at its collar, the quilted pants and vest: a soldier. No. A deserter.

The owner's pink face appeared in the kitchen doorway, but before he moved in to control his domain, Jiang spoke up, "We can share, my good man. Come sit with us."

Jiang's mild tone did not disarm the angry deserter. If anything, it had the opposite effect. He glared daggers at the court historian. "They grow fat on our blood, our misery, that's what Zha Yao said when he was one of us before he became an Emperor!"

As soon as he said the Emperor's common name his eyes watered with the tell-tale tears of a tipsy man as if by magic.

Jiang seized the opportunity. "Then let's drink Zha Yao's health! Serve everyone a bowl of wine to taste our Benevolent Emperor!"

The owner wiped his hands on the greasy apron, smiling and nodding to his new hero.

The patrons cheered, but Xi watched the deserter's face, his hand splayed on the tabletop, the fingers trembling as he readied his magic. He understood the smooth surface of the wood, and the air and the light. The other kind of understanding told him that yes, Master Jiang knew his way around the taverns better than any man alive, but his corpulence and his silks set him apart from the other patrons nowadays.

The deserter tittered precariously on the brink between drunken weeping and rage.

The mousy serving girl decided the outcome, by edging furtively away from her bane, thinking that the storm had passed. It had the same effect on the deserter that running away would on an incensed dog.

He grabbed the pot from the poor thing, who dropped to her knees, cowering and covering her head with her arms. "I'll serve 'em!"

The pot swung, its contents splashing from side to side, ready to fly at Jiang.

Xi dug his fingertips into the wood, snapping a nail.

Through the wood and the air, through the cast iron walls, he understood, and his magic followed.

The noodles and the mushrooms, and the dark bok choy leaves welded together into one vibrating porous mass. It sucked up, then spat out the newly-boiling broth into the deserter's face. A couple of noodles leaped to splash the leftover bit out like playful koi.

For a heartbeat, the deserter remained frozen in shock and pain, giving Xi all the time he needed. He vaulted over the ankle-high table and shoved him well past the weeping girl.

"You want to fight?! Go fight the Empire's enemies, not its servants."

The man screamed, batting the hot liquid trickling down his scruffy cheeks away from his neck and chest. The angry red splatter pattern darkened across his cheek.

Xi shoved again, palm firm, but not with a fist, despite his scorching anger. He hated someone abandoning their duty when his mother was in peril, in the threatened territory. He hated when men raged like humiliated beasts.

He hated.

He'd never hated like this.

The owner and a couple of braver men caught up to the altercation. Together they pushed the screaming deserter out of the doors, into the night.

Their eyes, so many eyes, focused on Xi, bringing him back to his senses. He reached for his mantra.

Modest yet cruel was Empress Mei, modest...

He hid his scowl by leaning over the girl, breathing away the fit of the unnatural anger. His vision clouded with white spots, but the tremor in his voice was less than he expected. "Are you hurt?"

The girl crawled away from him, crablike, mute, not even shaking her head in a 'yes' or 'no'. He should have known. The poor thing had probably never seen a mage in her life, let alone had a mage unleash his understanding over her head. "I'm sorry," he muttered again.

Modest yet cruel was Empress Mei...

Taking deeper breaths in, Xi slunk back to his place by Jiang. The historian's eyes were hooded. Before Xi's butt touched the pillow, his old mentor started up a song.

Xi'd heard Jiang chant poetry for his students as 'examples' often enough, but he had never seen him perform. Nobody did for close to sixteen years, but if the old storyteller was out of practice, Xi could not tell. Jiang always scoffed at qin as the instrument for the whiny aristocrats, favouring a drum of a street singer. He had neither with him, yet his voice was sufficient to fill the teahouse.

The song Jiang chose was a relic of the ancient wars, back in the Dynasty of Purifying Glory, and talked of a boy — even Xi could call him a boy from the height of his nineteen years — being taken away to the borders to fight off the demons.

The four millennia old melancholy calmed down both the gathering and the restless thumping of Xi's heart. His heart should not have raced at all. The spell he cast before pouncing at the deserter was minuscule, it did not have to be much, then why was he riled up enough to take on a horde of demons? Never mind...

Xi listened and wondered if Jiang picked the song simply because the ancient tune did not require music, or if he had a special reason, a message for him.

After the verses were done, and the soft buzz of conversations resumed, Jiang shook his head slightly. "Xi, my old bones tell me that your mother's return is a forewarning of something sinister. You are to bring her back, not get yourself killed in a nameless hovel."

The rebuke was delivered in a soft voice, but it was unmistakably a rebuke.

"He was going to hurt you."

"I am past fifty, my boy, and losing my teeth. The man was bitten by fate enough times for you to... ah, never mind," Jiang interrupted himself with a head-shake. "Would you like a bowl of wine while we're waiting?"

Xi shook his head too, a 'no'. He wished he could also say 'no' to what Jiang had left unsaid.

Alas, Jiang was right to upbraid him. He judged, he acted like a nobleman, and a mage was anything but. A mage had to blend into his surroundings like one grain of sand among the others to serve the realm.

"Mages..." Jiang sighed again, in unison with Xi's thoughts. The wrinkle between his brows smoothed out, and Xi put his brooding aside too.

"I promise to learn humility, Master Jiang."

The poor maid brought over Jiang's wine, then another hot pot, all the while keeping as much distance from Xi as possible. I am sorry...

The sight and smell of food made his innards uncoil from the pitifully tight knot. He gave the girl as docile a smile as he could manage, and spooned a generous serving into his bowl. Jiang watched him fall upon his former weapon like a starving tiger. It was a surprisingly comfortable experience until Jiang spoke up. "Ah, you eat like Yu."

Xi set the chopsticks down, his appetite gone, if not satisfied.

Jiang shook his head. "Xi, Xi, if you balk at the mere mention of the man's name, what are you going to do when you find him at your mother's side?"

"For one, I will be courteous," Xi replied sulkily.

"Point taken, but think of it, my boy."

They chatted about little things, court gossip, and poetry. Xi even mentioned the faces on Fenghuang, asked after the lore. The historian steepled his fingers, searching his memory. "No, nothing that I can recall. But..." his eyes gleamed merrily, all thoughtfulness evaporated, "I am heartened by your interest."

His confusion must have been written plainly on his face, because Jiang laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Someone close to me told me once that your ilk's coldness is exaggerated. Mage or no, you're nineteen. When I was your age, I saw the shapes of beautiful women in the clouds, flowers, and ink blots."

Xi let him laugh and sigh at pleasant memories. That was not it, he knew. He was used to the laymen questioning him, with curiosity or affront, about the mages' impotence... or if they did not dare question him, he felt the burden of their curiosity or pity. Or even weighing the privileged life of a mage against the virility, as if they could have chosen. As if he could have had. Magic manifested in whoever it did. Then, the choice was stark. One either surrendered everything to hone his hsin to perfection, including the ability to make new life, or went mad.

"Speaking of beautiful women, Master Jiang, I know it is not my place to ask, and the lady has a father to see to her well-being, but I feel a certain responsibility for Zijun. Would you... would you look after her?"

The historian grew somber. "Alas, our glorious Empire is still chewing on your grandmother being a Chancellor, and Deserving Du sitting as a governor in Xichon. Chewing, chewing, and not swallowing. I wish I could send Zijun to sit the examinations, but the idiots would only shame her and chase her away. I would have suggested the faery monastery, but her temperament is unsuitable for spiritual life."

"The faery monastery?! No!" Xi blushed. The resentment at the thought of Zijun leaving the human lands forever to live with the faeries ripped a swath through his hsin. He searched for calm, and for words. "I... I have gathered this much from my last conversation with her. She loves the scrolls, but I cannot picture her spending her life in seclusion, singing to the flowers and helping the healers."

"No," Jiang said darkly, "the lady is not a healer." He drank in sullen silence for so long that Xi gave up on asking the other questions that tunneled through his mind like termites. Master Jiang was at his disposal for fifteen years, and now... now he wouldn't be.

Xi sighed and came over to help the older man to his feet. He had to lift him by his shoulders, a silly sight, given how huge Jiang was next to him. "It is growing late, Master Jiang... or early. Let us go."

He led the stumbling old master to his room.

"Yes, yes," Jiang muttered, as Xi dragged his shoes off and tucked the blankets and pillows in. "I passed through the gate that separates the years of ambition from the years of wanting it all to have a meaning—"

Xi bounded down the stairs chuckling at the thoughts of the day when he'd have to do the same for Rustam Bei... a Dynasty or three from now. Never, more likely. He giggled again.

Xi's merriment dissipated once he left the inn. It was almost as if Jiang infected him with his drunk happiness, just like the deserter charged him with his anger... a strange night after a strange day.

It was a long walk under the stars back to the hillside where Fenghuang would meet him, but Xi did not mind that. He did not share the apprehension about being alone in the dark with everyone else he knew either. The chill of the night and its welcome silence washed away the last jitters of the brawl, the irritation with Jiang's pointed question about Yu and the dizzy feeling.

Only the broader worry remained, advancing from the back of his mind, the angst of a child searching for a mother who'd left him behind. That one was certainly his own.

The fenghuang returned from her hunt, sleeping off whatever she had feasted on, a glowing mound at the hillside. He looked at the beautiful tail and wings for a while, before shifting his eyes to her head. He saw a rich fall of the golden feathers from the crown of the head to the neck, maybe a little like unbound hair of a human maiden, but the shape of the head was all-bird, the beak tucked in under the wing.

Xi snuggled to Fenghuang until she took him under her wing and closed his eyes, instantly comforted. His mother should not have, could not have disappeared for fifteen years without a trace for a lover's sake... there must have been a better reason, he thought before falling into a dream.

The magic map took up most of the room in Rustam's mansion. Xi walked to the North West corner again, moving as if in a dream, drawn, pulled, called to the city of Tarkan in the mouth of a mountain valley in Quantong Province. The one that opened up on the Sandsea of Bones.

Then a wax figurine with his mother's face called his name.