Threads 396 Recovery 4

“For what it is worth, things should settle down soon for a time. The major campaign will not start until after year’s end. You shall have plenty of time to view your lands and work on them even with your remaining recovery time ahead,” Bao Qian glanced at her before seating himself on the edge of the veranda beside her chair. “Even with the investment being poured into the south, proper infrastructure isn’t built in a few months, and the contracts for fortifications Her Grace is sending out are not small.”

“Many happy Bao,” Ling Qi said. “And many, many more happy Wang.”

“Just so,” he agreed. “And the foreigners—these White Sky—seem quite invested themselves. Plans over the north-south road are being argued over, though I’d not expect a shovel to strike earth for a good decade yet.”

“It still feels very strange to make plans so early,” Ling Qi said.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around, isn’t it?” Bao Qian agreed. “Even when I’ve heard it all my life, I think it’s strange as well.”

“Maybe so,” she agreed. “It’s one thing to be told something, another to experience it.”

“I mean, is ten years a long time?” Hanyi wondered.

“Of course not, junior sister,” Ling Qi said wryly.

“I expect it will be hardly any time at all for us by the time it’s passed,” Bao Qian said.

“S’pose so,” Sixiang said. “But really, the sect is pretty calm right now…”

It was good to sit quietly in the garden surrounded by kin and allies, peaceful even, despite their conversation coming to touch on more serious topics. She knew in her heart that these were the wages of success, but she couldn’t help the itch under her skin that had nothing to do with her burns.

She wasn’t quite sure how much more she could bear this stillness. She needed to do something, advance something, to clear this painful blockage of her meridians and make the world as vibrant as it should be again.

Everyone was smiling and being cheerful for her, and yet…

She couldn’t reciprocate.

Nothing made that more clear than Hanyi’s words as her junior sister wheeled her to the rooms set aside for her on the first floor later that night.

“Am I doing a bad job, sister?” The question was quiet, barely audible over the sound of Ling Qi’s bedroom door creaking open and the quiet wind blowing in through the partially open window where the moon’s light shone down on the bed

“You’re not, Hanyi,” Ling Qi reassured. “You’ve been a very good girl.”

Hanyi looked back at her from where she stood by the bedside. She had a mortar and pestle in hand and was grinding the medicinal pills set there down to powder that could be mixed into water. “Then how come you’re always miserable? Sis is a bad faker.”

“I suppose I am,” Ling Qi reflected. “It’s nothing you’ve done, Hanyi. I know you—and everyone else—are trying very hard. I’m sorry if I seem ungrateful. I just need to keep moving. It feels painful, being stuck like this.”

“I guess I’d be mopey, too, if I felt like I did with Mama at the end.” Hanyi said, looking down. The pestle crunched through the broken up pill rhythmically, releasing the bitter but invigorating scent of the medicine.

“Trapped,” Ling Qi murmured.

“Crushed. I like dancing, too. It’s nice to feel so light.”

“You’re good at it. I like the one you’ve been practicing, the one with the fans. Biyu liked it, too.”

“Big Sis would do that one really well.” Hanyi set the pestle aside, squinting at the powder in the stone bowl. “Littlest sister isn’t so bad, I guess. She’s better at respecting her senior sister now.”

Ling Qi smiled. Hanyi was weak to praise, and perhaps especially weak to the thoughtlessly honest praise of a child.

“Let’s find a mountaintop and play again when you’re better, ‘kay? Two proper ladies shouldn’t spend all their time in this icky warmth.”

Powder was poured into the water, and it emitted a pale green light, sparkling in the shadows of her room.

“I’d love that too, little sister.”

Carefully, Ling Qi took the cup and drank her medicine down.

After swallowing, she asked, “What else have you been working on? I’d like to hear more about these minions of yours.”

Hanyi’s expression smoothed out, becoming completely innocent. Ling Qi gave her an unimpressed look over the rim of her cup.

“Look, Big Sis, you gotta understand, there’s been nobody properly in charge in those hills for a long time.” Hanyi was doing a good job of sounding serious. “Like yeah, there’s the really big spirits, but they don’t pay attention to little stuff. All the spirits like Momma, the ones who’d pay attention to human-sized issues are gone.”

“Ogodei’s invasion was a massive disruption of the south,” Ling Qi agreed patiently. “The spirit courts of the empire were no more given mercy than its towns and cities.”

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“Yeah! I dunno why new ones haven’t been born or nobody has grown up… Actually, I think it’s cause those slush brains keep fighting and dragging down anybody who starts getting bigger.”

“Those slush brains being your new subordinates?”

“Kinda. Well, some of them anyway.” Hanyi pounded her fist into her other hand. “Like, some of ’em are bigger than me still, but people like me and pray to me and not to them, and they can feel Big Sis too, so they don’t make too much trouble, but I haven’t been able to smush their faces in the dirt and make them listen yet!”

Ling Qi let out a long, low sigh, her head resting back against the cushion behind it.