Threads 467 Revelry

Ling Qi tossed the scroll in her hands aside and sighed, rubbing her forehead as she squeezed her eyes shut.

Sixiang snatched it out of the air. “Oi, oi, your boss put a lot of work into this.”

“I was going to catch it on the wind and deflect it to land on the roof,” Ling Qi groused.

“Were you really?” they drawled, propping themselves up on one elbow. Sixiang pulled the scroll in toward their face and squinted. “Moons, Boss Lady has some dense handwriting.”

“Only when she’s writing for herself or to me!”

Up here on the roof of the manor, the breeze was cool and crisp, much more comfortable than the humid warmth which accumulated on the streets where so many bodies passed. Even on this second trip to Xiangmen, it was strange to look up and see only a vast dome of green rather than a starry sky. Even more strange was the fact that even at night, it wasn’t really dark. Lights glittered from countless lanterns, torches, and floating faerie lights, so that the cloud district of Xiangmen glowed at night only a little dimmer than it was during the day.

“With everyone else, she uses a much fancier hand. ‘It’s the expected presentation. Maximizing efficiency in this case harms the soft factors in communication,’ she says.”

It was worse because she, of all people, knew Renxiang was right and approved of her liege taking it into account.

Of course, she was Renxiang’s friend, as well as retainer, so the heiress would be more natural when corresponding with her. That meant a scroll so dense it was nearly black inside, encoded with layered information she could only read because of her more advanced senses.

She should have never made the mistake of glancing at Renxiang’s personal notes and asking after it when she first returned to Shenglu. Now that Renxiang knew she could read it, there was no escape!

“Cept that she’d stop if you asked her,” Sixiang commented on her private laments.

“I would never be defeated so easily.”

Besides, even if it made her head buzz and her eyes water after deciphering it, it was an amusing prank to share with Renxiang. She’d get her back later, even if her liege was becoming annoyingly resilient to her tricks. However, Ling Qi would not allow herself to be stymied for long!

In any case, the first scroll, the cultivation pill and elixir catalogue for Xiangmen’s cloud district, had been fascinating. She worried she might have overspent, but even without the privileged access of a patron, there were many, many options available for her cultivation level.

“I hope I won’t have to drag your butt out of the meditation room while we’re in the biggest concentration of art and artists in the Emerald Seas. If I have to dump a bucket of water over your head, I will, and there will be glitter,” Sixiang threatened.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I haven’t overdone my cultivation enhancer intake since I was in the first realm, Sixiang. Honestly, I’m not that bad. Besides, it’s not as if going out on the town doesn’t benefit my cultivation, too.”

Sixiang gave her an exasperated look. Smiling impishly, she reached out and snatched the scroll back, winding it back up with a flick of her wrist. “Anyway, I don’t need to read all of this tonight. What say we take a walk?”

“You won’t hear me complaining.” Sixiang reached out to her, and she took the muse’s hand and pulled them to their feet. The two of them leapt down from the manor roof to the path outside, earning a few startled looks from their house guards. Thankfully, most of these were from Renxiang’s permanent detail, so they were used to such nonsense.

“Going out to review nighttime conditions in the city,” she said to them. “Please take any messages for me to review on my return.”

One of the men at the manor gates thumped a fist against his chest, and then, they were off, strolling down the branch trunkward, where the lights were at their brightest.

“Whatcha got in mind?” Sixiang asked, trotting to keep up with her longer stride. It was still strange to think of Sixiang as having an actual physical presence, but even the pressure on her palm wasn’t wholly ethereal anymore, for all that it masked the sensation of porcelain and wood beneath the visible skin.

“That’s the fun part,” Ling Qi confessed. “I have no idea. It’s been too long since I’ve let the wind take me, don’t you think?”

She was proud of her work, and happy with her recovery, but she’d not had a chance to just wander in a while.

“Hah! Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” Sixiang crowed. The muse made a show of shading their eyes and peering into the distance. “Heh, I wonder where we’ll end up.”

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“I’ll choose the first turn, and you choose the second,” she offered. “We’ll alternate until we find something interesting.”

“Sounds good!”

The first intersection they came to was an unassuming T-shape. Two smaller summer manors faced each other across the road, and a larger branch estate blocked the way directly forward. The other directions were lined with hedges of brightly colored bush. There was nothing to really distinguish one choice from the other.

The breeze kicked up, tugging at her hair, blowing… left?