Chapter One hundred ninety-seven (Patreon)

Kaz was only half right. He was in trouble, but Li was not.

He woke in a pool of unclean water. Someone had taken the tent down without waking him, and the water that was held outside the oilcloth lining sluiced in as it flattened, swirling around the sleeping dragon and kobold. The camp was taken down within a matter of minutes, every part of it vanishing into storage pouches, and then they were mounted and riding away.

The rain was slowing, and apparently that meant that soon it would no longer cover their tracks. Raff knew of a cave where members of his mercenary group kept supplies and sometimes rested if they were in the area overnight.

“It’s south and west,” Raff told Lianhua, who looked unhappy, though Kaz wasn’t sure what part of it displeased her. It wasn’t until they’d finished eating a cold meal while the sun rose behind them that Lianhua started talking to him. A fact that he almost instantly regretted.

“You gave me that speech about trusting one another,” Lianhua finally burst out, though she kept her eyes fixed on the tail of Raff’s beast, switching as it brushed away the flying insects that were appropriately called ‘flies’.

“You said, and I quote, ‘I’ll have to depend on you the same way you need to depend on me here. We have to trust each other enough to say the bad things, not just the good.’” Now dark amethyst eyes flicked toward him.

“But you didn’t even ask before you pulled that bottle out and ate whatever was in it. You didn’t trust me to keep you and Li safe, so you decided you needed to get stronger. And this is after I warned you that doing things on your own was dangerous. And I was right! You almost-” She bit off whatever she was going to say, her gaze flitting toward Chi Yincang, who was grimly clinging to the back of his horse with the look of a kobold who had caught a beast much larger than he expected.

“No more,” Lianhua said firmly. “Promise me. If you’re going to do anything involving ki, talk to me about it first.”

“Can I make a light?” he asked, having done so many times by now, and genuinely unsure if she meant for him to stop using ki entirely.

Apparently, she thought he was mocking her, because now she glared at him. “You know what I mean! Anything new. Definitely any attempt to increase your cultivation level. You raised both your physical and spiritual cultivation levels within far too short a period. You could have crippled yourself, or even shattered your core!”

Li, who had been suspiciously silent since they left the campsite behind, hissed in agreement. <You almost died! What if you had died? You promised to help me find my family. You… I… I need you!>

She let out a series of sputtering breaths, causing cool water to drip into the newly regrown fur that coated Kaz’s chest. He could feel her fear and misery through the ki that bound them, and Kaz dared remove one hand from where it gripped the mule’s neck fur so he could stroke the dragon’s head. She hissed at him, but allowed it.

Lianhua watched this, and nodded sharply. “She agrees with me, doesn’t she.” It wasn’t actually a question.

Kaz sighed and nodded, which caused water to drip into his eyes. The rain had almost stopped by now, but a few drops still struck him every now and then, and when the wind blew, even more water flew from the leaves of the dense trees that surrounded them. Lianhua’s umbrellas weren’t sturdy enough to use while rapidly riding enormous beasts, so they were all wet again, but the two kobolds were taking the worst of it thanks to their fur.

Lianhua was right. His core was a mess. Rather than smooth, thick streams of ki, there were swirls of color, not unlike the way Li’s eyes had roiled with streaks and sparks when she was newly hatched. It was far more difficult than it had been before to separate out one particular type of ki, and it was almost too strong for him to control. Even when he tried to focus on it, it seemed to slip away from him, requiring far more concentration than it had before.

On the other hand, the chunks of hardened mana that he’d accidentally formed while trying to compress his core after it broke were almost entirely gone now. Only a few specks remained, like silvery sand floating in a churning river. And, to Kaz’s silent satisfaction, the mark left by Nucai’s hand was now completely gone.

“I won’t do anything else until I talk to you,” he agreed. That didn’t mean he would do whatever she recommended, but he would certainly listen. He respected Lianhua, but humans and kobolds weren’t the same, and she herself had told him that she was more interested in scholarly pursuits than cultivation.

<Me, too,> Li insisted, biting his fingers when they stopped petting her. <I know more than she does, anyway. I’m a dragon.>

Kaz scratched a spot behind her horns, and sent silent agreement. How many times had Li saved him after he made an impulsive decision? He had long thought of himself as someone who was patient and planned ahead, but he was coming to realize that when left to his own devices, he was more inclined to trust his own instincts and leap forward than wait to see what happened. When his decisions affected only himself, that was fine, but he had friends and companions now, and he couldn’t allow them to be hurt by his poor choices.

Lianhua looked up as another gust of wind blew a fresh flurry of rain onto their heads. “I want to be dry, but I also don’t want to be found,” she said to no one in particular. It seemed that she was done chiding Kaz, and he was grateful for her inclination to avoid arguments. As it was, she must have been very angry or very worried in order to yell at him at all.

<I’m not done,> Li told him, then butted her head against his fingers. <Keep scratching, and don’t stop until I tell you you can.>

Raff shrugged. Lianhua had finally gotten the full story of his day out of him, and he’d been riding in bitter, thoughtful silence ever since. Now he released one of the strips of leather that guided his horse and rubbed at his eyes. “I think we’re clear,” he told her. “If they had a way to track us, they’d have caught up while we slept, storm or no. It’s a good thing it’s the Royal Guard after us, and not the Adamant Reach, though. Eugene wouldn’t have stopped until we were in his custody.”

Lianhua lifted a brow. “Eugene?”

Raff chuckled. “Didn’t you meet him? Old, gray hair, about twenty feet tall an’ just as wide? He’s the leader of Adamant.”

She gave a twisted little smile. “Gaoda arranged everything. I was too busy taking care of Yingtao and looking in local bookstores to see if I could find anything interesting.”

Kyla looked up from where she was hunched miserably in front of Lianhua. Kaz had invited the puppy to ride with him again, but she’d declined after telling him he still smelled bad, and she hadn’t spoken since.

“Who’s Yingtao?” she asked.

“My… friend,” Lianhua said, and not for the first time, Kaz wondered at the little pause between the words. “Technically, she’s a cousin, in much the same way Gaoda was.”

Kyla nodded. She’d gotten a very broad description of the annoying male when he was mentioned before they reached Wheldrake. The explanation had actually filled in a bit of information Kaz hadn’t known, including Gaoda’s exact relationship to Lianhua.

Apparently, Gaoda was the third son of the second wife of the second son of the leader of the clan into which Lianhua had been born. Lianhua’s father was the first son, and her mother was his only wife and the first daughter of the Long clan. That meant that while they were cousins, their rank was very different. They’d barely seen each other, and certainly hadn’t known each other well, especially after Lianhua was adopted by her grandfather, which technically made her her own mother’s sister.

It was all very confusing, but meant that Gaoda and Lianhua could be mates, even though they wouldn’t have been able to if Lianhua hadn’t been adopted. Gaoda apparently thought it was good enough. Of course, Lianhua had no interest in any such thing, but that had never stopped her former cousin from attempting to convince or force her into agreeing.

“My Xiang grandfather had five wives, and more than two dozen children,” Lianhua said, her voice carefully neutral. “His fifth wife had only daughters, and Yingtao is the daughter of one of those daughters. They have some rank thanks to the fact that their grandfather is clan leader, but Yingtao’s father is only a merchant, and a third son himself. Yingtao was sent into service at about the same time my grandmother decided I needed a friend and servant of my own, so Yingtao came to live with us.”

A soft smile curved her lips. “We hated each other at first. Yingtao saw me as a spoiled girl, without a care in the world, while she had to start helping her family almost as soon as she could walk. I was annoyed by the way she insisted I stop reading long enough to get dressed, eat, and spend some time outside. Then someone tried to kidnap me, and-”

Lianhua shook her head. “We were friends after that. She protected me more fiercely than anyone other than my grandparents. When I went to study with the Zhe sect, she went as my servant, and of course when I decided to go on this journey to prove my hypothesis, she came with me. Unfortunately, she got sick soon after we reached Holiander, and Gaoda refused to send for a healer. He believed that all of the healers here had to be frauds, since they don’t have ki. He said it would just be a waste of money.”

At Li’s prompting, Kaz said, “You told him it was his fault Yingtao got sick. Is that why?”

She nodded, her shoulders drawing up defensively. “I should have insisted we get help. No, I should have just gone to find help myself. But Yingtao is a fair healer herself, and she swore she would be fine.” Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears, though exactly which of the many emotions visible on her face had caused them, Kaz wasn’t sure.

“She hid it well,” Chi Yincang said, the unexpected words causing everyone else to turn and stare at him. He was like a silent stone most of the time, so this unasked-for interjection was utterly shocking.

When he said nothing else, Lianhua gave a sharp nod, eyelashes fluttering as she blinked away the tears. She tilted her head toward Chi Yincang, one brow lifting. “Chi Yincang is Yingtao’s half-brother.”

Once again, everyone stared at Chi Yincang, who had suddenly shifted from an unknowable, almost omnipotent being to someone who had a family, including a sister.

Raff let out a startled laugh. “I thought y’were in love with the girl,” he exclaimed, and Chi Yincang’s dark eyes locked onto his, making him flinch. The big male looked away, clearing his throat, as he explained, “He hovered ‘round her almost as bad as Lianhua. You’d think Yingtao was dyin’, the way they acted. Like hens with only one chick.”

“She could have been dying!” Lianhua exclaimed, cheeks as red as Kaz had ever seen them. Chi Yincang nodded agreement, though he didn’t speak again.

Raff shrugged. “Could’ve,” he agreed. “Wasn’t.”

“What was wrong with her?” Kyla asked. “Why didn’t she come with you?”

“It was something she ate,” Lianhua said, frowning. “The food in Holiander is very different from what we eat in the Empire. At first, we barely noticed. We just assumed her stomach was upset because of the different spices, and she would get used to it. Then she started vomiting blood, and even when Chi Yincang cooked for her, using food from our stores, she couldn’t keep anything down. She lost so much weight, and she was terribly weak. She actually passed out a few times.”

Kyla’s eyes were huge, and she had a hand pressed to her own belly. She and Kaz were certainly eating a great number of things they’d never had before, and the puppy was obviously concerned. “But she got better?”

Lianhua looked at Chi Yincang, and something passed between them. “After Yingtao went to stay with the healer, so he could monitor her and control what she ate and drank, she started to get better. Just not fast enough. Grandfather gave me six months to find my proof, and we’d already used half of it. There was no way we could get to Shensheng, explore it, and return home in time. And I agreed that I would marry and stay home if I’m even a day late, or if I couldn’t find proof that the Diushi went to Shensheng after they vanished.”

Kaz did some simple math, based on what Li overheard Raff say to his brother. “So you’ve already used four months or more of your time?” Were months the same for humans as they were for kobolds? To him, a month was twenty-eight days, which left no more than fifty-six to reach Cliffcross, retrieve Yingtao, and return to Lianhua’s home.

Lianhua rubbed her temple. “Four and a half. At least. I asked one of the shopkeepers what the date was yesterday, but Holiander uses a different calendar than we do, so I’m not sure exactly how long I have left. It should be plenty of time, though, especially if we hire someone to send us through a portal. It would be incredibly expensive, but much faster than riding back through the mountains.”

Chi Yincang made a soft sound. “Once we pay Raff for guiding us, we won’t have much money left, my lady.”

Lianhua pressed her lips together. “Stop ‘ladying’ me. Gaoda isn’t here, and you’ve known me almost as long as Yingtao has.”

The corner of Chi Yincang’s lips twitched. Barely. “Elder Long would not approve.”

Lianhua huffed. “Fine. But when we get home, I’d better be Lianhua again.”

Unperturbed, Chi Yincang said, “As you wish, my lady. Regardless, the funds Elder Long gave you have nearly been depleted. I have more, but if you use it-”

“I concede that I’m unable to handle being in a party in unknown territory for an extended period of time,” Lianhua said, sounding defeated. “What in the world did Gaoda do with it all?”

Chi Yincang’s horse jerked to the side as a small animal darted out in front of its hooves. The male’s hands tightened on the leather straps almost convulsively, and his skin paled.

Raff held up a hand. “Shh,” he whispered. “Somethin’ spooked that bunny.”

As if his words had been a signal, a pack of four-legged beasts appeared from the bushes ahead, tongues lolling from their long muzzles as they chased after the fleeing bit of fluff. The horses came to a halt, dancing in place and making high, worried sounds as the animals turned, yellow eyes bright over long, gleaming fangs.