Threads 198 Rite 2

Chao Yanlin stared at her, and Ling Qi squared her shoulders, meeting the older woman’s gaze. Finally, the priestess said, “You cannot be serious. I have heard of your expertise. Surely, you could simply take up the missing part?”

“I am very serious,” Ling Qi said. “While I do not have your support, Priestess, I have experience wrangling upset spirits. I am certain the Seven Hills Stream can be brought to an amicable agreement in overlooking this error. I will not risk my junior sister’s success in integrating myself into something so complex on such short notice.”

“The management of a spiritual ecosystem is not something which can simply be… done on the fly!” Chao Yanlin exclaimed incredulously. “Spirits are not merchants which you simply haggle with to arrive at a new agreement. Even this performance is an unnaturally swift change. Now, you wish to disrupt things even further? Even if you succeed, it will disrupt all other agreements!”

“Spirits are more malleable than you imply. Regardless, this is the only way I see for the festivities to go off without disruption,” Ling Qi said. “What can you tell me of the Seven Hills Stream?”

Hanyi smirked smugly behind her, and the priestess looked up at her with much more intense dislike. “Arrogant girl. Why should I have expected otherwise? It is not your people who will suffer for this.”

Ling Qi blinked at the unmasked and blunt hostility of her words. “High Priestess, I have no intention of causing difficulty for the people of the valley.”

Chao Yanlin’s frown smoothed away, leaving her expression studiously blank. When she spoke, her words were short and clipped. “The Seven Hills Stream is wide and shallow. It runs down from the high peaks and weaves between the seven eastern hills. He is patron to prospectors, who he gifts signs of lodes and veins in his sparkling waters. He is as vain as any of his siblings, but suspicious of flattery. Praise him sparingly. Do not speak his name last in any sentence which refers to more than one spirit. He loves the things which mortals make from his spoils, but despises disorder.”

Ling Qi pursed her lips as the woman turned to go, and she offered a stiff bow. “Thank you, High Priestess.”

The woman gave her a dark look over her shoulder. “I am only doing this to begin with because my uncle wishes to play for the favor of the Bao. Know that regardless of his wishes, I am reporting your interference to the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs. If you wish to play at our duties, then you may suffer our responsibilities as well.”

Then she was gone, bustling off, surrounded by attendants.

Ling Qi felt a small tug on her sleeve and looked down to see Hanyi looking up at her with a crestfallen expression. “Thanks, Big Sis. I’m sorry I messed up.”

“You didn’t mess up. Someone is messing with us,” Ling Qi said darkly. Her first instinct to accuse the priestess felt off. “Just perform well, okay? Big Sis will take care of the background stuff.”

“Okay,” Hanyi said, setting her expression in determination.

“Um, Baroness…” The meek voice of an initiate drew her attention away. “Would you like me to show you the way?”

“You don’t need to,” Ling Qi replied flatly. She was going to get to the bottom of this. To Sixiang, she thought, <Send a message to Bao Qian. Someone is trying to sabotage us. Tell him to keep an eye on things.>

<Got it, boss,> Sixiang replied.

She strode away from the initiate, passing through a door and out onto a balcony overlooking the eastern part of the valley. With the name and the knowledge of the spirit’s nature and a passing understanding of the geography she had passed through on the way here, it would not be difficult to find.

I don’t need to go there physically, I suppose,” Ling Qi murmured.

“I alerted Bao boy,” Sixiang said. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going on a little jaunt,” Ling Qi said. She slid a foot forward, feeling at the fabric of the waking world, and stepped through the balcony.

She emerged in a clear blue sky without end filled with countless drifting leaves. Some were tiny, normal curls of autumn color. Others were tremendous leaves the size of ships’ sails and every size in between. As she immediately began to fall, Ling Qi felt her foot alight on a palm-sized leaf, spinning soundlessly in the sky. It made a crinkling sound as she pushed off of it, jumping to a leaf nearby, and then another and another.

“I’m glad you’re getting into this quickly, but I gotta ask why.” Sixiang asked. When next her foot fell on empty air, it rippled like the surface of a multihued lake and her next leap carried her much further.

“Two reasons,” Ling Qi replied, catching the edge of a drifting red leaf and using it to swing forward, sending the giant thing spinning. At its core, she saw the stylized ink paintings of people moving through their lives, preparing for the winter. “If I travel physically, I will need to explain myself to more people.”

“And the other?” Sixiang’s voice asked her, coinciding with a gust of wind that carried her across a wide gap in the falling leaves.

“Less people know that I can do this,” Ling Qi said bluntly.

“Ah, that’d make sense,” Sixiang said. They materialized ahead of her, perched on a boat-sized leaf spinning lazily in place, hovering on unseen currents.

The muse reached out, and Linq Qi caught their hand, landing on the leaf to peer at her surroundings. She closed her eyes, letting the words of the spirit’s name resonate in her head, not merely the syllables of the imperial tongue that made it up, but the faint resonance they left in the world.

Her senses resolved the feeling as the gurgle of water flowing over stones. Ling Qi turned toward the “sound” and leapt again, dashing through the endless autumn sky. Soon, from the way she came, she began to feel ripples of power, the soft strains of a song, and a cold breeze. Hanyi’s show was beginning.

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