Chapter Eighty-one (Patreon)

They sat together in silence for a while, each watching the sleeping kobold, until Lianhua looked over at Kaz and said simply, “I’m sorry.”

He tilted his head, genuinely confused. “For what?”

Her skin was just settling back into its usual pale perfection, but a flush rose to her cheeks again. “For… everything. For melting down over nothing.”

Kaz frowned. “But it wasn’t nothing. You were sad.”

She laughed awkwardly. “I was, but- I’m still sorry. And… I’m sorry your family was separated. I’ll make sure you get back to Katri when this is all over.”

He froze, then drew in a long, slow breath. He certainly hadn’t planned to have this conversation now, but to be honest, he hadn’t really had any kind of plan in mind at all. Vague ideas, hopes, and dreams of open skies and flying with a dragon, but no plans.

“Can I go with you?” he blurted.

It was her turn to still, staring at him. “What?”

“I’d like to. Go. Leave the mountain. I don’t… belong here. I don’t belong anywhere, but I need to, to try to find Li’s family. Or at least other dragons. And I can’t do that here, and I’m not strong enough to go alone, and I don’t really want to go alone, but once you find proof that these Diushi lived here, you’re going to leave your home, too, and I think… I think I’d like to go with you. If you’re willing.”

That was an absolutely terrible way to ask, and Kaz instantly wished he could take it all back and start over again. But Lianhua was already answering.

“Do you want to leave,” she said, “or do you want to go with me?”

He clenched his fists, feeling his shoulders draw up and his ears flatten, squishing Li slightly so she moved away from her preferred position on his shoulder. She sent him an image of herself and Kaz, alone together, flying away from a blurry rock that was vaguely mountain-shaped. A sharp sense of indignation was layered over the picture.

Kaz sent her the warmest flush of affection he could, while answering Lianhua at the same time.

“Both,” he said firmly, finally certain of at least one thing. “I want to - am going to - leave the mountain. I don’t want to be just another male, obeying the females, my mate, and my chief for the rest of my life. But I also don’t want to live my life constantly trying to overcome other kobold’s assumptions about me. Even if I become strong, I won’t fit in here. I’ll just not fit in in a different way than I always have before.”

He met her eyes, trying to convey his conviction without begging for her understanding or agreement. “I’d like to go with you. I’ve never met anyone who was willing to just let me be me before. Even my father and Aunt Rega wanted me to hide part of what makes me who I am, and Katri… I don’t know what Katri really thinks of me. I thought I did, but now, looking back, I think I may have misunderstood something very important.”

Reaching up, he gently stroked Li’s neck, while keeping his voice as steady as he could. “You understand the outside world. You know what humans are like, and they’ll listen to you, while they’d probably just try to kill me.”

He smiled, and if there was a little bitterness in it, there was nothing he could do about that. “You know where the dragons are, and the best way to get there, and, when the time comes, and we go our separate ways, I think you’ll let me leave. In return, I’ll help you in any way I can, and if you want to learn more about kobolds, or the mountain, I’ll teach you, and I hope,” his breath caught, “I hope you’ll really teach me to read.”

Lianhua’s eyes widened. “I forgot! I can’t believe I forgot. Oh, Kaz, I’m so sorry. I know our lessons were only an excuse so Li could eat and stretch, but I could tell you really wanted to learn, and I forgot.”

He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, but his ears flattened and he could feel his tail trying to hide. “It’s all right. Things kept trying to kill us, and we had to keep going. My job is to guide you, and you already gave me the rings so Li could stay outside my pack.”

On his shoulder, Li lifted her leg, turning her head so she could eye the golden ring encircling it. She looked from it to Lianhua, her feelings about the other female suddenly muddled.

Kaz sent her his memory of Lianhua giving them the rings, tiny Li trying to eat or steal them, and him putting the master ring on her leg. Li sent back vague pictures of a great blue hand sliding the ring on her leg, but Lianhua was just a blurry white blotch in the background.

Kaz blinked. Did she really not remember? She had been very little, not that she was so much older or larger now. He sent the memory again, adding a few more details, including as much of the conversation between himself and Lianhua as he could, and then added more memories of Lianhua protecting them in battles before she realized that Kaz wasn’t completely helpless. Lianhua distracting Gaoda when the male was angry or frustrated. Lianhua’s face lighting up as she watched a tiny golden dragon scamper around, in spite of the fact that that same dragonling had tried to bite her more than once.

A swirl of confusion touched him, but Li was staring at Lianhua now, so he thought he was just sensing the edges of her emotions, the way she always seemed to sense his.

Lianhua knew none of this, of course, so she just shook her head. “No, it was wrong of me. I promised I would teach you, and I haven’t, and… Kaz, can I answer you later?”

A lump formed in his throat. He had been prepared for a flat refusal, had hoped for a ‘yes’, but he didn’t know what to do with ‘maybe’. He swallowed and nodded. “Of course.”

She leaned forward, lifting her hand. Usually, she would stop herself before touching him, but this time she didn’t. She let her fingers rest lightly on the back of his hand.

“If I don’t find my proof,” she said, “I won’t be able to help you. Grandmother would have kept Grandfather from forcing me to marry, but she,” her eyes shifted briefly to the silent female kobold, “isn’t there. He’s old, and he still thinks the best thing for women is being protected by their husbands. If the sect grants me Scholar status, Grandfather will let me leave, because that’s what Grandmother wanted.”

She leaned forward, gaze intent on his. “And then, yes, Kaz, I would very much like it if you and Li left this mountain with me, for however long you choose.”

Behind him, Kaz’s tail swept across the stone, and his shoulders relaxed, allowing Li to settle back into her usual place, though he could tell her eyes and her thoughts were still on Lianhua.

“Then would you,” he almost choked again on his next words, “keep a secret for me? I haven’t told you everything.”

He shook his head. “I’ve never told anyone everything, except Li. But I think I need help, and there’s no one else I can ask. Not now, and maybe not ever. Even… even after I leave the mountain.”

Lianhua bit her lip. “I can only promise to try. Here in the mountain, I can keep all the secrets, but once we leave, I have other commitments. I can’t imagine any secret you could have that would require me to break my promise to you in order to keep one I already made to someone else.”

Kaz half-wished he’d let the moment that started all of this pass, but he hadn’t, so now he said, “If you do decide you have to tell someone, can you warn me first?”

Her expression relaxed, and she smiled. “That I can do.”

Reaching into her pouch, she pulled out the chalk, and drew a series of runes on the ground between them before placing the chalk down with a decisive click. Pushing ki into it, she said, “I swear to keep secret anything Kaz Broken Knife tells me in confidence, unless doing so will harm someone I care about, or violate a previous oath. If I do need to tell someone else, I will do so privately, and first give Kaz as much warning as I possibly can.”

Kaz stared down at the glowing runes, which were filled with all three of Lianhua’s colors. On his shoulder, Li, too, looked at it, and then an image came into his mind. He picked up the chalk.

Carefully, comparing what he was doing to the picture in his mind, he extended the curve of one rune, then licked his finger and smudged away the corner of another, leaving two unconnected lines, rather than one. When he was done, he set the chalk down again and laid his hand across the drawing. Pushing his ki, he shoved threads of all five colors into his palm, and the chalk drank it down like it was a patch of moss whose pool had dried up. The gold, blue, and black latched onto Lianhua’s, while his white and red wound through them, tying everything together in an intricate knot.

“I swear to keep secret anything Lianhua Long tells me in confidence, unless doing so will harm someone I care about. In addition, I swear to help her find out what happened to the Diushi, at least until one or both of us decide to part.”

The runes flared, and Kaz could see from the way Lianhua’s eyes widened, and the colors reflected in her dark pupils, that she could see them, too. The white chalk grew dark, lifting from the stone until it wrapped around Kaz and Lianhua’s hands, where it sank into their flesh, binding and then vanishing. A new link formed between the human and Kaz, hanging in the air like a filament of light.

Lianhua gasped, and so did Kaz, though for an entirely different reason. There, dangling from the thread that now bound human and kobold, was something that resembled a miniscule chain. It was formed of tiny links made of nothing but ki, each one a different color. Blue linked to gold linked to black linked to red linked to white, and then the pattern repeated again, three times in total, leading directly downward, into the heart of the mountain.

“Kaz,” Lianhua whispered, “what was that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but that’s part of my secret. Lianhua, I have five colors of ki, and I can see it. All of it, not just my own.”

Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. A smile appeared on her face, but there was an edge of pity to it. “Kaz, that’s not possible. If you had all five forms of ki, and a core, you would already be in the late Golden Core stage. But you can’t reach Golden Core without also having at least Rhodium body, and you’re not even Tin yet, so-”

Kaz reached out and touched the rune she still held in her palm, tracing his finger over its shape. Then, following an urge that he was fairly certain came from Li, he pushed his own ki into it, displacing Lianhua’s, before lifting it away from her skin. Maintaining it was draining, especially when he was already tired and had just infused the runes of their oath as well, so he quickly dropped it again, sliding it back into the pool of her ki that was gathering in her palm now that it had nothing to power.

Lianhua’s mouth fell open, and this time it took far longer to close. Her hand cupped around the rune, her ki seeping back into it as Kaz withdrew his own.

“What are you?” she asked, and Kaz shrank back, the momentary confidence that had filled him when he felt their mutual promises take hold draining away like water vanishing into a crevice.

“I’m just me,” he said, voice shaking and ears flat.

She shook her head, voice awed. “Yes, that, but… Kaz, I think you may be a Divine Beast.”