Threads 336-Hunters 1

Ling Qi blinked and managed to keep her reaction to the meaning gleaned from a moment spent listening so closely to that heartbeat to herself.

“Thirdly is your territorial claims. We already spoke of this in public, of course.”

“Yeah, yeah, you wanna get everyone on the same page so we don’t go stabbing your little buddies too and ruining your show here.”

And though the scars had been removed from Sun Liling’s face, Ling Qi could feel in the dense mist of blood that filled the dream here, the presence of crusted-over scabs, never healed wounds. They felt as if they had been split recently.

The blood was not all pouring in. Sun Liling was bleeding.

It was difficult, riding the line between material and liminal. Difficult to keep her focus. Difficult to not give anything away. There was a limit to what she could manage, knowing that this conversation could not last forever.

In the mist of blood, rippling with the force of a beating heart, Ling Qi saw three wounds most clearly. She saw them, connected to them, and grasped understanding through her own cultivation.

She saw the wound of the heart, the gash torn in the community.

She saw the wound of the mind, the aching scars of isolation.

She saw the wound of the soul, the eyes blinded by power.

If what she was doing was noticed, then even leaving aside all other consequences, this whole effort would be for naught. Part of her was fascinated by the interlocking web of pains which she could barely perceive between the most prominent wounds. It was a puzzle she would have liked to pick apart to give Ji Rong the best answer, but to do so was beyond her ability and beyond what she was willing to attempt.

Community. That was the concept she saw with the most clarity. Sun Liling’s view of it was harsh. To her, a community was a ringed fortress. There was no room for uncertainty or diffusion in it. One was either inside a wall or outside it. But here, the outer wall was dust and rubble, the middle walls were breached, and blood oozed from the stones of the citadel.

“Feh. You’re not wrong either way. There’s folks who study that junk, but frankly, we don’t have the time or resources to dig them out of their workshops right now,” Sun Liling said in the waking world. “Rong can talk to you about the pass and about our claims n’ plans. We don’t have any obligation to dig into the rest.”

“I understand. Would you object if I asked for whatever cursory knowledge your people here might have?”

“You wanna pick up barracks rumors and tall tales from the lads ‘n ladies? Pft, go for it. I won’t tell you you can’t,” Sun Liling drawled. “Is there anything else I gotta hear out?”

“There is one other matter…”

Her searching gaze passed over the outer wall in the liminal. Here lay the broken trust in the empire. The air was rank with the bitter scent of betrayal. Silence from the throne. Silence from far distant kin. She heard the scurrying feet of rats and vermin, hungry and opportunistic.

Ling Qi could understand this. To Sun Liling, those who had backed away from the Sun the moment the Bai had begun to find their feet were no better than vermin. But for all her brashness that first year, she had not believed it so until her loss and had stolen all pretense of their dedication to her family’s cause.

Rats would scurry, and rats would bite. What rats would never do was stand and fight. But she ignored them at her peril. She fed them fat, lest they gnaw her foundation to ruin at another behest.

It was an ugly way to see the world, but Ling Qi could not fully disagree. There were so many who would bite the open hand at the first opportunity. They would do so out of reflex or out of malice, even if it helped them only for a moment in exchange for years of pain.

Seeing past the haze of immediate hunger was the first step to being more than a beast.

The middle walls were different. Breached and crumbled, blood poured through the gaps. Here lay the men and women of the West. Looking down upon them, she could feel them blur before her eyes, defenders and assaulters both, in a mist of blood and stinking fear. Uncertainty lay here. She loved them still. Were they fools? Was she?

The blood was a lie. It never mattered from whence it flowed.

There was the great gatehouse of the citadel. It was a battered thing. It had fallen once, but it had been rebuilt with painstaking care. She could see the ash on the walls where the gates had burned before, their shapes lingering in the scorches.

A tall, broad chested man with crimson hair and a kind, easy smile. A silent wooden casket, laden with flowers, too light to contain such a man whole. A woman, far away and blurred to start and getting further, with her back turned and never looking back.

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On the ramparts of the new gate burned the lightning star, small and spitting furious. It burned bloody mist to belching black ash, refusing to disappear.

But beyond the gates lay the bleeding citadel, and here, there was the molten wound at its freshest.

The citadel was one man. A grandfather, heavy lined face shrouded in a lion’s mane of white hair. Strong and immovable. The steady mountain that held up the sky and pinned down the earth.

The man had eyes that were open pits of blood. A comforting hand became a pitiless grasp. Roots writhed under her skin. Soldiers marched to the tune of a drum, never hearing its beat.

Everything for Family. Family is Everything.

There was a bitter lilt to words that should have been the foundation of Sun Liling’s domain. Community could crush and kill. There was nothing in the world that could not be a weapon.

“… And that is?” Sun Liling asked.

Ling Qi blinked, and she tried to drown out the beating drums. “My apologies. I was lost in thought for a moment.”

Even with all of her preparation, she’d almost lost herself there, teasing out even those garbled visions. Sun Liling was looking at her with narrowed eyes.

She continued, “I wished to know if the Sun family plans to coordinate with the Emerald Seas in their military operations.”

“Your boss really gets cut out of the loop by her mum, doesn’t she? Sad, that,” Sun Liling needled.

“Her Grace prefers for Lady Cai to prove herself at every step.”