Threads 63-Dressmaker 3

Ling Qi looked down at their destination, tucked away at the end of a winding river valley. Trees grew thickly at the riverside, and the branches hung heavy with cocoons. The silken wrappings were a riot of colors and glittered like jewels under the morning sun. Some were tiny, barely the length of a finger, while others were large enough to hold a small child. In the dark shadows of thick canopy, she heard the susurrus of thousands of wings and spied the movement of many fuzzy insect bodies.

Yet even more than the cocoon forest, the building at the end of the valley consumed her attention. She could think of only one thing to say.

“It’s very bright,” Ling Qi said, something between wonder and trepidation in her tone.

“Mother’s apprentices are all somewhat eccentric,” Cai Renxiang agreed, peering down at the sprawling, blazingly bright pagoda complex.

Ling Qi supposed she was being unfair. It wasn’t the sort of eye-searing monstrosity that Elder Jiao presented himself with. The pagoda was like a sunrise rendered into architecture, bands of vibrant color that seemed to shift every time she moved her eyes. Roof tiles shone like mirrors, and burning braziers hung from the eaves, crackling with pinkish white and pale orange flames.

“The Dawn isn’t the worst, so far as sun spirits go, but ugh, that’s a lot of solar qi,” Sixiang grumbled.

“Mm, while it is not for me, there is nothing inherently wrong with brighter colors,” Meizhen mused, standing beside them with her hands tucked into her sleeves. “The Coral Serpent families cultivate their towers and temples in a similar fashion.”

Ling Qi glanced at Meizhen, trying to picture a Bai dressed in bright and gaudy colors. She failed. “Should we head down? We have an appointment.”

“Quite right,” Cai Renxiang said briskly. “Sir Lin is quite busy. Let us not be rude by making him wait.”

They descended the stairs carved into the hillside and found the path leading toward Lin Hai’s workshop. Paved with white stone, it stood out sharply in the darkness beneath the trees. That darkness, Ling Qi noted, was artificial given the dense dark qi infused into the leaves, causing them to cast wider and darker shadows. It seemed to be for the benefit of the multitude of moths that flew and nested above their heads. Like the cocoons, they came in a myriad of colors, sizes, and shapes.

In the end, she put them out of her mind. The spirit beasts were happy to mind their own business, and she was happy enough to mind hers.

<Good thing, too. What a lewd bunch they are. Wouldn’t want your ears catching fire,> Sixiang chuckled. <So this is the lovenest, huh.>

Ling Qi kept her eyebrows from twitching and ignored Sixiang as they left the shadow of the trees and stepped onto the stone path that wound through the colorful gardens that surrounded the main building. As her eyes roamed up the stairs which lead onto the wide veranda surrounding the main building, she almost startled as she met a pair of bright green eyes.

There, lounging on the railing, was a beautiful woman with long golden hair and fair features wearing a scandalous, pale rose gown that left her shoulders bare and displayed a near indecent part of her generous chest. The hem of the gown barely fell past her knees and rode almost halfway up her thigh thanks to the position she was seated in. Ling Qi barely had time to take the sight of her in, along with the unsettling fact that she had not felt her presence at all, before the woman vanished in a flash of light, leaving a fox with pale golden fur and five tails to leap down from the railing and then trot off into the interior of the pagoda.

“That is Sir Lin’s spirit companion,” Cai Renxiang said from beside her. “She is likely going ahead to announce us and rouse him from his labors.”

“Of course,” Ling Qi replied automatically. In retrospect, it was pretty obvious.

“He should teach his spirits to appear more appropriately in their human shapes,” Meizhen said with a sniff.

As they mounted the stairs, Cai Renxiang said, “Worry not. Although Sir Lin has extravagant tastes in his personal appearance, he remains a master of more traditional fashions.”

Ling Qi glanced down at her dress, which was apparently the man’s work. She supposed that he must be given the style of her own dress.

<It’s a good thing you don’t remember most of the guests at Grandmother’s party very well,> Sixiang chuckled.

Ling Qi kept her peace as they entered the pagoda proper and came to a comfortably appointed waiting room lined with lavish couches and hanging planters full of colorful flowers. A closed set of sliding doors awaited on the far side of the room. When she stepped through, a pace behind the others, she glanced back to see the doors swinging silently shut behind them. Yet the room did not grow dark. The paper lantern hanging from the ceiling, painted with images of the dawn on all four sides, managed to cast enough light that it still felt like they were standing outside.

Ling Qi had just turned to look at Cai Renxiang, opening her mouth to ask if they should take their seats when the faint rattle of sliding doors cut off her words. Across the room, the doors slid apart, and dark purple mist billowed out, crawling along the floor and rising in churning strands of fog. Then lights, a beam of solar radiance that shot from the lantern overhead only to split into four smaller beams, carved a channel through the mist for the figure that emerged.

Tall and thin as a willow whip, the man that strutted from the mist had features far more fine and delicate than even most women. His long black hair was like silk, and faded to a dark purple color in the ringlets that reached his bare shoulders. He wore a billowing, open-chested violet top with a thick layer of feathery material around the low cut, partially concealing his shoulders and chest. Ling Qi felt herself flush darkly as her gaze slipped down, and she immediately fixed her eyes on his face rather than the skin-hugging black silk pants he was wearing.

Even then, she couldn’t help but notice further details like the hint of color on his lips or the thickness of his eyelashes. If she had just looked at his face in isolation, she would have been almost sure that it was the face of a woman. As she contemplated that, the lights swung back in to illuminate him then exploded into motes of light, scattering the purple mist and leaving only a few streamers curling around his sleek boots.

“Lady Ren!” greeted Lin Hai. The man stood with one hand on his hip and the other cupping his chin. A golden jeweled claw that encased his pointer finger rose to tap against his cheek. “How was the entrance? I believe I have improved since last time.”

“It was very impressive,” her liege replied. “A very controlled display.”

“Of course that is the part you would compliment,” the man said ruefully. “Still, I was not wholly certain how much your companions would be able to handle.” The strangely dressed man before her rippled then, space seeming to stretch and warp for a bare instant as she glimpsed his unrestrained qi, vast and placid. Sights and sounds and smells crawled along the edge of her senses, a decadent riot, an endless festival of sensation just out of reach. Then it was gone, and only the man remained.

“You are preparing to take the next step then?” Cai Renxiang asked. “Mother will be pleased.”

“I will not boast until my first star has bloomed and my elder’s seal has been received,” the peak fifth realm cultivator replied easily. It was interesting he had not already been chosen to be an elder. Normally just being a fifth realm was enough.“But enough of myself. I see you have brought two of my children back to see me, and their owners, too, at that. My apologies, young ladies, but might I have your names?”

“I am Bai Meizhen,” her friend greeted first with a shallow bow appropriate to greeting an unrelated senior. “Thank you for the work you have already provided.”

Ling Qi bowed a little deeper as one would to a clear superior. “Sir Lin, it is an honor to meet you. I am Ling Qi. Your work has been invaluable to me.”

“It was a pleasure to do a favor for Lady Ren,” Lin Hai said, abandoning his pose to stroll toward them. “And a wonderful challenge to create something appropriate with such limited materials. That it brought the Young Miss to my doorstep was a welcome bonus.”

Ling Qi glanced toward Cai Renxiang, whose expression was a touch wooden by her judgement. “Your encouragement toward irresponsibility is noted, Sir Lin, and also dismissed, as always,” she said.

“Ah, it seems I have earned a rebuke, although yours are not so sharp as Master’s just yet, Lady Ren,” the odd man chuckled, and filtered through Sixiang’s perceptions, she thought that she caught a fleeting hint of melancholy from him. It was gone before her muse could so much as articulate the feeling, but it left Ling Qi to wonder at the history implied there.

Lin Hai clapped his hands then, and any hint that he was less than boisterous and cheerful vanished. “So, let us inspect how my children have fared over the last year,” he announced brightly. He stepped toward Bai Meizhen, who looked up at him with a staid expression.

“You will find no fault with my maintenance, Sir Lin,” her friend said evenly, managing to look up at the taller man without craning her neck.

“Of course not, Miss Bai,” he dismissed, inspecting her carefully. He flicked his golden clawed finger at the air above her shoulder, and shimmering spectral threads rose, dancing around the man’s fingers. “However, the impression of this child’s experiences will allow me to determine the best way to improve upon the original weave.”

“Are our gowns alive already then?” Ling Qi asked tentatively, thinking back to what her gown had done in the dream and a few other moments of odd reactions from it.

“That is a more difficult question than you might think, young lady,” Lin Hai said, not looking up from the complex weave that had formed over her friend’s shoulder. “There are many degrees of life, you will find, but in the traditional sense, no. I am not my master; such craft is beyond me for the moment. That said, their potential lies closer to the surface than most.” He flicked his fingers again, and the spectral threads dissolved. “You are a redoubtable young woman indeed, Miss Bai. It seems this child is a good match. I know just the materials to use for your improvements and custom pieces.”

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He turned to Ling Qi and repeated the motion with his fingers. This time, the threads he drew from her shoulder sparked and snapped like oil from the pan as they wrapped around his fingers. Lin Hai’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “I see you have met my master as well,” he said. “Lady Ren?”

“She is a direct retainer of the Cai. Mother granted me certain dispensations,” Cai Renxiang answered carefully. Bai Meizhen glanced at Ling Qi with pursed lips but did not ask the obvious question.

Ling Qi remembered the thread of Liming she had accepted when she pledged to Cai Renxiang and looked down at her gown uncomfortably.

“Well, Master does as Master wills,” Lin Hai said cheerfully, peering down with narrowed eyes at the incomprehensible pattern of sparking and snapping threads that curled around his fingers. “So I am afraid that I will not be able to improve on your gown directly, Miss Ling. This girl has a seed of self, and I will not alter that. But my, what a jealous daughter. I shall have to be careful in fixing your accessories so that she does not take offense.”

“Why do you refer to my gown as a ‘she’ if it is not alive yet?” Ling Qi asked, plucking at her sleeve. She sensed no spirit in the threads, but she wasn’t going to say that the gown’s maker was wrong.