Threads 379-Roil 2

Ling Qi was surprised by the sheer, quiet panic in his voice. She had thought she understood the implications,as someone who studied the past and the many times clans had fallen in the Emerald Seas, the Chu only being the most recent.

Jin Tae fell silent, and it was Cao Chun who spoke. “We have, thanks to Baroness Ling, a Name, and more than one after my own investigations. Would you know the Name of a hidden elder of your clan, if it were presented to you?”

Meng Dan looked pained. “I am too young to receive such knowledge.”

“Then…”

“But my grandmother is not. I have a way to contact her, immediately and in real time, for a dire problem.”

Cao Chun shook his head. “And we are to trust that she is not in contact with the perpetrator?”

“Meng Diu would not be involved in this,” Ling Qi stated.

Perhaps… Perhaps that was only a mask. What the woman wanted her to see, she would, given the differences in their cultivation. But Meng Diu’s actions since their first collaboration spoke otherwise.

“Inspector Cao,” Ling Qi continued, “if we are correct, is it not worth seeing this matter shut down at the root? It is even possible, given his abilities, that the perpetrator is still physically in Meng lands.”

Cao Chun looked at her hard, a small tic in his cheek.

“If this is allowed to burst into public view unimpeded, it will tear the province apart. We may disagree on much about this summit, but this is beyond that. Please, inspector.”

“I will allow it,” he said grudgingly.

Jin Tae’s eyebrows flew up.

“It will be done right here under my supervision. Does this method allow multiple speakers?”

“If we are close. It does not last long,” Meng Dan said.

He didn’t hesitate any further. There was a flash as the item appeared from within his ring. It was a small, smooth stone like any other that could be found on a riverbed. Ling Qi could neither see nor sense no formations on it.

He spoke, and the words were half-foreign to her ears. They sounded like ancient and archaic imperial and a little bit of hill tribe, but with elements foreign to both. The meaning still came to her clear enough, even without the sounds making sense. The Rains Arrive.

Cao Chun squinted at Meng Dan, and Jin Tae frowned as the Meng scion continued to speak in that odd archaic tongue.

“Grandmother, there may be a traitor dragging us into the duchess’ light. Uncle is compromised, even if the source is another. The ministry knows. They have a Name.”

She understood but kept her peace until she felt a trickle of the old woman’s qi through the stone, like a single eye opening, peering down a long tunnel.

“And you believe him?” she asked, dry and creaking, sounding older than Ling Qi had ever heard her.

Cao Chun spoke, his qi pushing to the fore, ripples of metallic light gleaming on his skin. He spoke what could only be the words pried from the second parasite.

Preservation. Wholeness. Purity. Keeper Against Defilement.

There was a beat of silence.

“I believe Lady Ling, who found the first Name.” Meng Dan bowed his head to the stone in his hand.

The sensation of the eye fell on her.

Ling Qi inhaled, and when she spoke, what came out of her mouth was not merely sound, but a full recreation of what she had felt hating her from the other side of a dream parasite’s eyes.

Still Waters Deeping. Archivist of the Reviled.

There was another beat of silence.

In that old and unintelligible tongue, Meng Diu swore.

The obscenity echoed in the tiny office room.

Meng Dan’s face had gone white with alarm.

“You recognize the name then,” Cao Chun said clinically. “You understand the gravity.”

“I do. These were names I expected to hear only at final funerary ceremonies,” Meng Diu said. Her voice was unruffled again, no sign of alarm or outburst. “You are correct. The name is known to me. Its owner should be preparing themselves for the end of this cycle. There is no reason such a name should be known by one like the baroness.”

Find this and other great novels on the author’s preferred platform. Support original creators!

Cao Chun snorted irritably, but didn’t comment on his exclusion. The Ministry of Integrity might have other methods of acquiring a Meng elder’s name. She was fortunate that Meng Diu knew her and could read the truth in her voice, even from so far away.

“I see,” Cao Chun said. “It is always a misfortune when an honored elder slips upon the threshold of life and death from a rotting soul.”

“It is indeed,” Meng Diu replied warily. “Meng Delun’s preparations should have been too far along for such distant operations.”

“Is it possible that his stores of talismans have simply been put to use by some lesser saboteur?” Meng Dan asked. “If I recall, Elder Delun’s domain is the restricted archives and storehouses. Could some number of his lieutenants and apprentices be making a play?”