Threads 286-Depths 2

He nodded once and reached up, unwrapping his head scarf and vanishing it into a storage ring. His coat followed, leaving him in a sleeveless tunic. Ling Qi did not stare, obviously. Not everyone could wear a talisman as potent and mutable as hers.

As he began to wade out into the water, she followed, her gown remaining perfectly dry despite being submerged, little fractal blooms of ice growing and melting from the hems and her hair.

It was a bit different to encounter someone who disagreed with her direction, but not from a position of age and authority. It made her curious as to why he thought the way he did.

“A clan as old as the Bai has many rumors and stories attached,” Ling Qi beganblithely. Her feet left no mark or impression on the sand and mud of the lakebed, the water only barely rippling as it came up around her waist.

Lao Keung grunted an acknowledgement. Ahead of her, the water swiftly swallowed up his broad chest, soaking into the cloth of his vest. “There are. I am sure you and your lord have heard the truth from Lady Bai.”

“I find truth comes from many perspectives.” The water came up to her neck, and then another step down, and it swallowed her head. She blinked once as her eyes went underwater, taking only a moment to adjust to the somewhat silty lake water. “I’d like yours, that of the Red Bai’s.”

The words carried undistorted. It was trivial to draw air from the water and transform it into a medium for speech. It generated a few bubbles, but some modulation of the vibrations prevented any distortion.

Lao Keung turned to face her, his boots churning up sluggish clouds around his feet. Unlike her, the water clearly touched him, though he didn’t seem bothered by it. Where she floated, he stood on the bottom like a pillar of stone.

“Why?”

“I’m just a naive foreigner, but surely, the children of the Red Python have their own way of seeing the world. Will you humor me?”

She drifted along after him as they continued to descend the slope toward where the water flowed out into the continuation of the river. She didn’t press him further as they moved around clumps of water weed and flashing schools of fish.

“Disorderly. You are all disorderly. Confused and confusing, lacking discipline,” Lao Keung finally said. “The Celestial Peaks are more sensible, but in the Emerald Seas, it has been so long since you were ruled properly that none here knows their place. Those are the thoughts of my elders.”

“It would probably be insulting to take that as a compliment, wouldn’t it?”

Lao Keung grunted noncommittally. “We are the blade and the armored fist, the crushing coils of the python. It is not our lot to decide what is insulting, only to punish it should the White Serpents decide it is so.”

Ling Qi’s head slowly tilted to the side as she drifted in front of him, gown and hair drifting as if in a slow breeze. “And a fist which starts making decisions may strike something undesired?”

“There you have it.” Lao Keung advanced, stepping around her. The light from above glinted off the scale patterns which marked his muscular arms. “The world is ordered as it is for a reason. To seek or think outside of your place invites only suffering and chaos. Witness Sun Shao, the Twilight King, or the Strife of the Twin Emperors. All arose from individuals refusing to accept their roles. So, too, with us. Our ancestor refused to bend the knee to her elder as was the White Queen’s right, and in doing so, she nearly shattered Yao’s kingdom. No good comes from stepping beyond your role.”

“And what do you think?”

Lao Keung chose not to hear her question. “We’re here. I do detect traces of dense qi.”

Ling Qi hummed and turned her eyes to the task at hand. Something registered as faint sparkles among the murk to her senses. It was like particles of glass mixed with the mud and sand. Ling Qi gestured, and silver light flickered in the murk like the scales of schooling fish. As she examined the shifting currents, Lao Keung knelt on the riverbed, digging his fingers into the silt.

“Would it be fair to say that the Red Python are uncomfortable with this alliance then?”

“Do you not focus on the task before you?”

“Are you so limited at your realm and stage?” Ling Qi asked innocently.

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He squinted up at her through the water. She smiled back.

“The source of dense qi doesn’t seem to be active right now. These traces are breaking down.”

“Sourced from the water, not the earth. It is not an earth-metal toxin.” Lao Keung grunted, standing up. He began to walk away from the river, down into the deeper expanse of the lakebed.

She drifted after him in a wide circle, flitting through the shadows cast by tall stalks of waterweed.

“It is the hope among some that your duchess has finally mastered this place and that Lady Suzhen, in her wisdom, sees this and supports the greater ordering of things.”

Ling Qi considered this as they began to descend further, leaving the mirror-like surface of the lake further above. The darkness grew deeper even as the murk of the shallower waters settled, leaving the waters clear and still and black.

“Didn’t she rise against her role though? Upend the way things were?”

She caught a faint smirk on Lao Keung’s lips. It was very brief. “Why, her victory shows that it was the previous arrangement which was wrong and the aberration of correct order, no?”

“Victory needs no excuse?”