Interlude: Truth

You are Cai Renxiang, and truth scourges your mind.

The white and gold threads of Liming, your minder, your shield, your bones, hang in the air, glittering in the crackling firelight. You sit stiffly upon a plush divan in a light dressing gown, and the sensation of dead, lifeless thread makes your skin crawl. But it is a small pain compared to the agony as fingers wrought of flesh harder and more unyielding than mere steel plunge into Liming’s fabric and emerge with glittering threads of soul clinging to painted nails.

Cai Shenhua, Duchess of the Emerald Seas, sits casually on the divan beside you, wrapped in her own flimsy evening shift. Her hair falls loose and unstyled around her face. She hums a soft tune as her fingers dance, stitching and severing threads of light while Liming twitches and growls. You hold back your own scream with the ease of long practice.

You sit in a room that should be cozy and comfortable. Warm and soft colors adorn the room, rather than stark white and gold or bold crimson of the Cai colors. The fire that burns in the hearth is precisely tuned, neither too hot or too cold nor too bright or too dim. On the table in front of you sit a softly steaming tea kettle and plates of light and sugary treats and snacks, the sorts that a child might be allowed to indulge on a festival day. A weiqi board and other games and entertainments are packed onto the single shelf across the room. So it has always been when Mother called you.

No one has ever touched the refreshments. They have never touched the games.

Once, when you were very young, you had believed that they were there waiting for the day that you were strong enough to tolerate Mother’s presence. Some part of you still wishes to believe that.

Another part, born here at the Sect, wonders if the radiance that clothed itself in a woman’s flesh only knew the shape of maternal affection with nothing of context or reason. She wonders if these actions are from a ghost mindlessly repeating the labors of life.

“The damage is not so bad.” Your mother’s voice, throaty and rich, pounds into your ears like driven nails. Your skin burns. It is better now. You are stronger now. Your own light no longer threatens to gutter out before the firestorm. “An interesting interaction though, this strange qi that clings to your wounds. You think it came from the sky lights, darling?”

“Yes, Mother,” you say, keeping your eyes fixed ahead. You are stronger, but mastering the tremble in your voice still took work. Liming writhes under your mother’s hands. “That matches my observations. The problem occurred only the night after our encounter with the ice spirit.”

“I am not pleased that your retainer was forced to enter your mind in such a way,” Cai Shenhua comments idly. A seam tightens, and Liming shrieks.

“Your humble daughter can only apologize for her failure,” you say, lowering your eyes. “Ling Qi is trustworthy. She has my full confidence.”

“If she were not, the memory of me she encountered would have reduced her to ash.” Your mother laughs as if over a minor jape. “You have chosen well with that one at least.”

Eyes of unblinking radiance look upon the limply hanging Liming with a master craftsman’s eye. The voice of the spirit in your head is silent. These times are the only times Liming is wholly silent.

The eyes turn upon you, a hand brushes your hair, and steel fingers pierce bloodlessly into your flesh in the same way that they plunged into cloth. It is everything you can do to restrain the flinch as radiance and truth invades your thoughts further, light penetrating every crevice of your mind. You feel as Mother observes your memories, flipping through them like a scholar thumbing through a well worn book.

You have no secrets. You never have. Not from Mother. You know in speaking with Ling Qi and with Gan Guangli that the average cultivator retains some sense of privacy in their innermost thoughts. You have heard idle conjecture about how Mother’s truth might be twisted around or bypassed. You have, in rare idle moments, wondered what that would feel like to believe in such a thing. Mother’s light pierces all cloaks, and nothing can be hidden from it. Not in her direct presence. You have changed a great deal in this last year. Your thoughts and choices have shifted little by little.

You await censure.

Mother hums to herself, shears of spirit combing through your spirit. They trace seams and thread, but only a few stray snips send the expected pain burning through your nerves. They withdraw.

“Turn. Give me your back, Renxiang. You really should take better care of your hair. It is your best feature.”

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You obey without thinking, drawing your legs up to sit cross-legged upon the divan as a glittering crystal brush materializes in her hands. The tines touch your scalp, and the pain is almost nonexistent compared to the two radiant lights still burning into the back of your head. The reflexive apology does not come to your lips as it should. Instead, something wells up in your chest, hot and helpless and chaotic, an unfamiliar emotion that you almost mistake for Liming’s return.

Your dress hangs silently from the frame.

“What do you want from me?” The voice that speaks, tiny and afraid, is hardly recognizable as your own.

The brush pulling through your hair stills, the teeth like a dozen knives pressed to the back of your neck. The radiance burns, and it is all you can do not to break.

“Hoh, it is not like you to question me, Renxiang.” Your mother’s voice is warm and teasing, but there is a blade in it all the same.

“You have seen me, Mother,” you say quietly, eyes squeezed shut against the blinding light. “You know of my failures and deviance.”

“Do I?” she muses, and the brush pulls again through your hair as if nothing was wrong. As if you could not feel her peeling you apart thread by thread. “Speak of them, daughter. Your poor old mother must be growing forgetful.”