Threads 373-Finishing 1

“To success!” Gan Guangli boomed, raising his cup.

Ling Qi smiled wryly and held up her own. “To success.”

“It is early for celebration, yet for your efforts, I will allow it,” Cai Renxiang said. At the table where they sat, she alone did not yet have her drink because she had insisted on hand brewing her own tea. The pot was bubbling away, but not yet ready.

“We aren’t completely done,” Ling Qi agreed. “…I’ll need Hanyi for this next part, she had better behave.”

“I am certain your junior understands the gravity of this situation, or at least your investment in it!” Gan Guangli said brightly.

“The latter, maybe.” Ling Qi took a sip from her cup. The drink was from a bottle which Bai Meizhen had given her. It burned all the way down like cold fire, threatening to freeze her blood and organs. It had more kick than rimefruit extract, more like spiced wine. She’d have to ask Meizhen for the name.

“I am certain it will be fine. Sir Xuan will be advising for this next section too, no?”

“Yes, though it’s as much for legitimacy to the ministry and the nobles,” Ling Qi replied. “No slight to his knowledge, of course. He’s given me some ideas for what can work.”

“If we succeed on the informational and cultural exchanges, we will be well placed to negotiate the foreign quarter notion properly, both as an expansion to the embassy and for future settlements in the Wall,” Cai Renxiang mused. Steam hissed, and she carefully poured her tea, dark, nearly black liquid arcing delicately into her cup.

And that was the crux. After all the preliminary negotiations, being able to convince all parties that a permanent mixed settlement, even a segregated one, here at the embassy was desirable. They were part of the way there with the staff of the magistrates. Getting shared use of the observatory was another piece of that puzzle.

Humans came with webs of need and connection. If they could just set the foundations to make it possible, then they would build this place themselves, never needing to be pushed into place like weiqi pieces.

Ling Qi thought that this might be just a little taste of what Xin’s plots were like. She was right to say that life was a game without any clear players. That destiny only existed in hindsight. There was choice and mystery and the secret that those who thought themselves masterminds and seers hid even from themselves. They could not control everything, and they could not plan for every factor. Past a certain point, the future was unknowable, much like the black depths of Lake Hei.

Ling Qi considered her drink, the venomous icy wine within hissing and bubbling faintly, slowly freezing through the lining of the cup.

The Starless Shroud technique was not one she could wear in the long term. There were pieces of it that she could use. The contemplation of mystery in the unseen depths. The notion of supreme wholeness. The ability to take any harm but remain herself and whole. But she was not certain she had much more to gain from the art itself, beyond its value as a building block for an art of her own.

Well, she did have an idea, an idea going all the way back to the Thousand Ring Fortress art and its source of a mystery she had left in the Dream. She remembered seeing the shadow of a reptilian behemoth in the dream and an ever regenerating corpse. That was likely her little brother’s “real” mother.

Discomfited at the thought, she frowned deeply.

“Is the Bai wine so sour?” Gan Guangli asked, and she startled in her seat, the drink in her cup sloshing.

“Oh, no, it’s more of a, uh… fizzy taste.” Ling Qi took another long drink. Best to drain it before it shattered the cup. She made a note to use a sturdier one next time.

Cai Renxiang sighed. “Please do not refer to a high quality Bai wine as ‘fizzy’ in good company, Ling Qi.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad! I’m just relaxed with you,” Ling Qi defended. She was a little tipsy now, maybe; she shouldn’t have drunk that so quickly. She furrowed her brow and circulated her qi, kicking her toxin processing organs into quicker and more efficient function.

“What are we going to do after the summit?” Ling Qi wondered. She had been focused on this project for so long, she might have lost track.

“Spend time resolving some of the many issues about our land,” Gan Guangli proposed. “It would be good to solve them.”

“It may be possible. However, the campaign below the earth is likely to begin soon, barring any sudden move from the Twelve Star Confederation. The ith-ia simply represent too alien a threat, and the province demands that they be brought to heel,” Cai Renxiang said. “Expect it to begin within the year.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“How will we even advance a proper campaign? What, is your mother going to burn a borehole big enough for a division and its supply lines down into the earth?”

She chuckled, as did Gan Guangli. Cai Renxiang did not.

Their smiles faded.

Ling Qi remembered the echo of Ji Rong’s memory, of the shattered stump of a mountain and a kilometers-wide bleeding pit in the earth.

“Really? The spiritual disruption alone…” Gan Guangli looked horrified.

“Hence why she intends to use the site of Elder Zhou’s death, I believe. It will be symbolically pleasing, and the area is already devastated. It is also far enough into the mountains to avoid too much harm. I also believe that is the secondary reason as to why there are so many geomancers in the south now..”

“We’ll have to use our time well,” Ling Qi said. “It will be good to not be the ones in command for a bit.”

Cai Renxiang shook her head. “We will see how long that attitude lasts.” She took a deep drink from her tea and set the cup down with a clack, reaching up to massage her own temples.

“It is tomorrow’s challenge. Why not keep our minds on today’s? Especially with our successes!” Gan Guangli exclaimed. “It would not do to never stop and contemplate our victories, else we will no longer see them.”