Threads 309 Traditions 3

Ling Qi let out a breath as a few more small pleasantries were shared, and the White Sky left, along with Wang Lian. Jin Tae said his goodbyes, managing to never once drop his smile, as if she’d not irritated the ministry at all.

It left her and Xia Lin with the general still standing there, stock still. She waited another beat, not wishing to leave first, but that blank mask of a helm remained fixed on some point in the distance.

Finally, Ling Qi nodded to Xia Lin, and they turned to go.

“Baroness. I will speak with you.”

Ling Qi stopped, exchanged a mildly alarmed look with Xia Lin, who glanced over her shoulder at the unmoving general, and then gave her a helpless shrug. Ling Qi hid her grimace with a cough and turned back around. “Of course, General. What can I help you with?”

The metal figure standing by the table was wholly unmoving, save for the faint motion of fingers brushing the hilt of her sheathed blade. “My information on you was incomplete.”

Ling Qi was not entirely sure how to respond.

“Your methods are wrong. Foolish. You lean on rotten scraps and broken foundations,” the general criticized. “The dead build nothing.”

“I must respectfully disagree,” Ling Qi said very carefully. “You can build new from old.”

“And that is why I say my information was incomplete. Your methods are wrong. Your goals are correct.”

Ling Qi blinked, taken back.

That faceless helm turned toward her with only the faint creak of oiled metal, but Ling Qi felt the heat on her face, as if she stood before a roaring forge fire. She felt her eyes water and her nose and lips go dry as the general really looked at her.

“Do not do things for dead men. They cannot appreciate it. Building is for the living and those yet to come. Do not allow sentimental attachment to worthless minutiae and dead men’s words to bind your efforts. Perhaps you have found a worthy use for these materials, this salvage of yours. We will see.”

Ling Qi blinked, not just because of the words spoken, but the echo of something else, something old that burned a stray tongue of flame in her thoughts.

“Pride, traditions, history, faith! Is that all you can say, you miserable old man? What has any of it bought us but humiliation, defeat, and disdain?!

The sound of a fist striking flesh. A young woman’s snarl of pain. Blood spat on the ground.

“We cannot answer even the most blatant insults. Your precious traditions can defend none of us from any abuse. You, half in the ground, chain us to graves even older, longing for a past you’ve never seen, and would strangle any who try to break them. Fine, then! Strike to kill the next time, grandfather, or when I return, I will burn those graves, and sever those chains, all.”

It was a bare moment, leaving her blinking. Her eyes flicked up to the general’s face plate. That… had been the general, younger, angrier, but still…

“I will take your words to heart. Whatever you think of my methods, my eyes look forward.”

“Many who use your methods have believed that,” the General said, finally looking away. “Dismissed.”

The air screamed and split vertically, severed air a pale electric blue, and the general turned, her silhouette narrowing until it was only a single gleaming edge, and then, she was gone.

“What was that?”

“I think my aunt has adjusted her opinion. Slightly.” Xia Lin sounded shocked.

“No—” Ling Qi started to deny and clarify that she meant those strange echoes, but Xia Lin hadn’t heard them, had she? Ling Qi looked down at her hand, flexing the fingers, studying the qi flow beneath her skin.

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[Communication]

The word reverberated in her spirit. Had that strange moment come from what she had developed in the nightmare tribulation?

She wished she could ask Sixiang, but she supposed they probably wouldn’t know either.

“Ling Qi?”

“I’m sorry. I was lost in thought.”

“You handled leading that meeting well. A moment of introspection is not untoward.”

“I suppose it isn’t. I apologize for saddling you with a difficult duty without notice.”

“Difficult duties often arrive unannounced,” Xia Lin said dryly as they set off down the path. “Acting as the general’s voice is not the worst duty.”

“Nerve wracking though,” Ling Qi muttered.