Threads 237-Spymaster 1

“Snow Blossom, huh?” Sixiang peered over Ling Qi’s head. Their weightless image appeared to lean on her back, trailing off into nothingness below the shoulders. “That’s kind of fanciful for you lot.”

“Well, Lady Cai nixed anything too humorous from the start.”

“The cabbage pun you proposed right off the bat had nothing to do with that, I’m sure,” Sixiang deadpanned.

Ling Qi gave an offended sniff. Baicai was a perfectly fine name for a river.

“It was forced.” Sixiang huffed.

“They can’t all be winners,” Ling Qi dismissed. “Anyway, Renxiang’s proposal was pretty so I backed hers.”

The name came from the way the ice floes drifting down from the headwaters dotted the clean blue of the river like blossoms floating downstream. They grew steadily smaller and more broken up until at last, those that remained were broken in the great falls that fed the lake.

Having answered Sixiang, Ling Qi’s eyes flicked back to the letter in her hands.

The young Miss Cai’s ambitions show that she has inherited the fire which raised the Duchess to ascension. This humble scribe is more than pleased to provide the small information that you ask on her behalf, Lady Ling. The success of the heiress’ project and the acknowledgement of the old clans truly shows that the Emerald Seas is finally ready to take its rightful place among the peers of the Empire and…

Her eyes drifted from the page toward the neat stack of a dozen more pages that made up this letter alone.

When she had begun sending out missives using some of Hou Zhuang’s neat lists and pieces of advice, she had assumed they would reply, trusting the elder cultivator’s acumen. What she had not expected was the enthusiasm which came with some of them.

“You are a direct line to the province’s heir,” Sixiang said, the point of their chin digging into her scalp. Ling Qi glanced up with a sour look, and Sixiang tumbled off to the side, coming to rest on the arm of her chair with a wholly visible body.

“It’s not just that. I can understand those,” Ling Qi replied. People—minor nobles, ministry members, certain craftsmen—obviously would see benefit in connecting to Renxiang. She could even see why they would pile praise on a foreign project. Saying nice things about one’s superiors regardless of personal thoughts was just good sense.

“But it feels sincere in some of ‘em. It’s like you’ve made this guy’s day. What did you write to him?”

“Hou Zhuang’s notes said to talk about the advancement and pride of Emerald Seas, making reference to the ability of the Jin and Xuan to push interactions with foreigners as they liked,” Ling Qi answered. “This guy, others too, there’s this current of not even being focused on the Cai, or like the Cai are just-”

She struggled for a moment to find the words. It wasn’t really disrespectful, but it felt like the Cai, or even the Duchess, were just symbols. Many of the letters she had gone through, even the less sincere or excited ones, felt strange to her; these people were happy to bypass chains of feudal loyalty and even familial loyalty.

It was as if for them, the Emerald Seas was more than just the name for a chunk of land or the Duchess’ domain, but an entity that existed on its own. This conflict with the cloud nomads and the underground people was their war rather than the Empire’s, the alliance with the Bai showed that the Duchess had raised the Emerald Seas to the respect they deserved, and the project that the younger Cai was undertaking showed that the Emerald Seas could now do what other provinces could.

“This ideal is more the province of the sunny boys, those preachy dawners. But it’s still a dream, isn’t it? It’s a dream that you and your neighbor are both part of some greater movement with historical significance. I think that’s the real scary thing about what the Duchess did here. She stitched together a lot of old things.”

“It’s not unreasonable, I guess,” Ling Qi mused, setting down the letter. Most of it was simple forwarding of Ministry of Commerce reports, documents that someone of Renxiang’s rank was allowed to view anyway. According to Hou Zhuang, it was important to start these kinds of relationships with easy, authorized information. She knew that the provided information could indirectly outline the movement and numbers of soldiers in the Jia lands, but Renxiang was better at this type of analysis. “Family isn’t really about blood. That’s just the way it works out most of the time.”

“The result and not the reason?”

“This type of ideal is still only a small number really. Most of these letters are what you’d expect: favor trading or simple sniffing after gain.”

There wasn’t anything wrong with that more mercantile mindset, though she was sure Renxiang or Gan Guangli would debate her on the degree to which that was acceptable. But people needed things, and it wasn’t until she could look after herself that she could start looking to others. That said, realistically, most cultivators lived far above the point of ‘looking after themselves.’

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“Sure, but I wonder if we should focus on and build that type of idealism. Lying too much gets you in trouble, but people need stories and dreams. By embarking on this project, you’re telling the start of a story and making sure you have an audience. That’ll go a long way.”

“Maybe so,” Ling Qi allowed, rubbing her eyes. She rarely felt so glad for the constitution of a cultivator. Cultivators loved to write small novellas in their letters. “I let you off from explaining before, but what is the difference between the Dawning Sun and the Dreaming Moon?”

Sixiang pursed their lips, sliding off the arm of her chair to float around to the other side of her desk, one leg crossed over the other as if they were still sitting on something solid. “Ugh, do I really gotta? Isn’t it enough to know that we’re awesome and they’re boring?”

“Sixiang,” Ling Qi said flatly.

“Fiiiine.” Her muse made an exaggerated sigh. “Look, art is about making people feel things. At the root, that’s what we’re both about. Dreams don’t exist without reality, so we’re both into teaching people to take the clay of their experiences and shaping it into something that can convey feeling to others.”