Chapter One hundred twenty-two (Patreon)

Kaz slipped into the water not far from where Li was splashing, and soon the dragon made her way over to him, using him like a stone in a pool. Climbing up onto his shoulder, she slithered back into the water as if she’d fallen by accident, thrashing until he scooped her up and put her back onto his shoulder. Next, she clambered up to the top of his head and jumped off, gliding a few feet before plummeting into the water with a splash that made him sneeze when droplets got in his nose.

Lianhua laughed, finally lowering herself into the water, where she sank up to her neck, steam nearly obscuring her face as she finally spoke.

“Kaz, I’m sorry.”

Li, who had just made her way back to Kaz’s shoulder, hissed softly, and another soft laugh came from the mist.

“I’m sorry to you, too, Li,” she said, and sighed. Tilting her head back to rest against the side of the pool, she went on. “I promised I would wait until it was safer to investigate the mosui, and I meant it. I swear I did. I admit I was considering telling the others about the stairs and trying to prod Gaoda into going down in spite of the danger, but at least we would all have been together, and-”

Water rippled as she shifted uncomfortably, then slipped down another few inches, until her chin touched the surface. “We just promised to help each other, and I should have told you what I was thinking. I should have trusted that you would do your best to help me. And then, when Li became so tired after we got to the map, I should have been patient until she recovered, or tried to sneak back alone. I really thought it would be better to hide on the other side, and since you opened it, too, that wouldn’t trigger any traps or alarms.”

She sat up a little straighter, steam curling away from her as she did. “But there wasn’t anything there. No carvings of a city, nothing that looked like humans, no Diushi runes, just… stairs. And I was so frustrated. So I went down a few steps.”

Li hissed softly from across the pool, and Lianhua shook her head.

“You’re right. I went down a lot of steps. Li tried to get me to go back. She tried to fly, but she was still too weak. I definitely should have turned back when I saw the fulan, but by then I wanted to know what was down there. What if the stairs ended in the ruins? What if I was only fifty or a hundred steps from the proof I needed?”

Another sigh, and she said, “So I used the shield rune and went on. Li and I were safe, and I was going to stop at the bottom, so I wasn’t really being foolish, was I? And then I heard something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it sounded a little like a kobold, and a little like a child, and I thought, what if someone came down here and got hurt? I can just go find them, and bring them back to the den. So when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I didn’t stop after all.”

Stretching out her arms, she waved them through the water, creating gentle waves that sent ripples through the entire pool. “And then I fell in that stupid pit. Like an idiot. Li almost got free, but they put some kind of soporific dust in it, and when she flew out of my shield, she breathed it in. The kobold who came down to look at me was going to-”

She shuddered, and Kaz could feel the movement in the water from where he sat.

“Kaz, he was going to kill and eat her. By the time I realized what was going on, and that they weren’t there to help me, there was already a collar around my neck and he was standing there with a knife pointed at her heart, and I couldn’t do anything. I tried, and the collar burned me.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“I’ve never felt so much pain, but I pushed him away, grabbed Li, and I held onto her until it stopped. Then I told the mosui that I would do anything they wanted, as long as they left her alone. That was when they put her in the box.”

Kaz thought back to his own encounter with the mosui, and didn’t remember seeing anything as conspicuous as a ki-crystal encrusted box large enough to hold even a very small dragon. Perhaps there was only one, and since Li was in it, it hadn’t been available when the mosui went back out? It also seemed that different kobolds were used each time, since he was certain Dax would have told him if he’d picked Lianhua up as well.

“We were brought to the city,” Lianhua went on, sounding awed. “Oh, Kaz, I’ve never seen anything so magnificent. It was everything I could possibly have hoped for. A real Diushi city, down to the vertical emphasis, circular windows, and perfect bilateral symmetry. On our journey here, I visited a few ruins, as well as two extant cities that were built on Diushi foundations, but this one… It was like I might see a Diushi citizen wander out of one of the arched doorways at any moment.”

She groaned, sinking back down. “But of course I didn’t. Instead, they brought us to the tower, and we were supposed to be taken directly to Zhangwo, but Yanshu saw me first. She liked that my hair matched her fur. Did you know the mosui would select kobolds to serve them based on their fur color?”

Lianhua sounded horrified and indignant, and Kaz smiled to himself, gently stroking Li, who was coiled around his neck again. The dragon had finally managed to overheat, and now only her tail dipped languidly in the water.

“Yanshu told them I was hers now, and the mosui who brought me in couldn’t contradict her, because she outranked him. Someone must have gone to tell Zhangwo, though, because soon a husede came and told her that her grandfather would allow her to play with me for a little while, while he was trying to find a cored beast who had entered the level.”

Both Kaz and Lianhua looked at Li, who clicked a sleepy inquiry in response. They both knew exactly who that ‘beast’ was, and it was horrifying to realize that Zhangwo had had some way to tell she was there. If Lianhua had managed to tweak Gaoda’s pride enough to get him to go down the stairs, which would have been easy enough to do, would they have found themselves confronted by Zhangwo himself?

A long silence lay between them, and then Lianhua splashed her face with water before climbing back out of the pool. Her usually pale skin was deep red above and below the towel she wore, and Kaz quickly followed suit. His refinement kept him from feeling heat and cold as much as he used to, but it was still uncomfortable to be too hot for too long.

Lianhua reached up and removed the carved yumi reed that held her hair up, and it cascaded down, wet strands sticking to her arms and back. It was so long it reached to her thighs, and for a moment, Kaz wanted to reach out and touch it. It looked soft, and he wondered if this was why Lianhua seemed comforted when she petted his fur.

“After that-” Lianhua wrapped her arms around herself, staring into the swirling steam. “I was Yanshu’s pet for a day. Every time I asked if I could let Li out, she would give me something else to do, and if I hesitated for even a moment, she would use the collar. Eventually, I heard scratching from the box, and knew Li was awake, and trying to get out, and I… convinced Yanshu to feed both of us.”

Her eyes slid away, then back to meet Kaz’s gaze. “It was the same thing they keep bringing me now: mushrooms and some kind of steamed larvae. Food was never particularly important to me, and I always thought it wouldn’t matter that wandering scholars have to eat whatever the indigenous people prepare, but I don’t think I can ever eat bugs again.”

She shuddered, then asked, “Did you get my message? When I fed Li, I tried to tell you to get Chi Yincang and the others, but I didn’t know if you could hear. You said you could see what Li did, but maybe it was too far, or the image isn’t that clear, or-”

“I did,” he told her, breaking his silence for the first time. He saw her shoulders relax at the calm tone of his voice.

“I was already here by then, though,” he admitted. “I was only a few hours behind you, but it took a very long time to get to you.”

She knew he’d been taken to the mines because he’d introduced Dax, and his pups, Eld and Nogz, who’d been working in the yumi pools. Dax was now part of the ‘council’ that now controlled the city, a fact which also confused Ehlan, who had tried giving him commands much as she had Kaz. Ehlan didn’t seem like a bad leader, not given how much her mate and tribe respected her, but she was very much like Oda in the way she treated anyone who wasn’t one of her people.

Lianhua nodded, looking relieved. “Then you know what happened after that. Zhangwo must have realized that the creature he was looking for was the one who came in with his granddaughter’s new toy, and he sent for Li. By then, Yanshu thought she’d broken me, so I managed to knock the box over and smash the lock before she got her control device out again. Li escaped, and more husede came to take me away. Eventually, you rescued me.”

It had been a bit more complicated than that, and Lianhua had suffered quite a bit at the hands of the mosui, but it was clear that the human didn’t want to talk about it, so Kaz simply asked, “Do you trust me?”

Lianhua had fixed the smile she used when she was trying to placate someone onto her face, but now it froze. Her amethyst eyes jerked back to Kaz, and she said, “Of course! Kaz, you saved my life!”

He nodded, but his tail was tucked. This was the hard part. “Lianhua, do you trust me to help you find the Diushi? To keep you safe in the mountain, at least as well as I can?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it and nodded.

Kaz sighed. “Then you can’t ever do that again. If you don’t like what I tell you, you have to talk to me about it, not go off on your own. Not even just ‘through the door’ or ‘down the stairs’. When we leave the mountain, if you still want me to go with you-”

She nodded so vigorously the steam cleared away from her face for a moment.

“Then 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.”

Lianhua’s fists clenched at her sides, and she nodded sharply. Her eyes stared into his as she said, “I promise. Not a ki-vow, but just words, from me to you. I promise that I’ll tell you if I don’t agree with something you said.”

“Or if I make you angry, or insult you without realizing I did,” he insisted. “And I’ll do the same. I won’t just swallow my feelings any more, or try not to offend anyone, ever.” Feeling his deep uneasiness at this declaration, Li wound down into his arms, which came up to support her without thinking about it. He began to stroke her long neck, and it vibrated beneath his fingers as she started to purr.

Lianhua nodded, hands relaxing at her sides. “There’s only ever been one person I could talk to like that,” she said. “I couldn’t even tell my grandmother some things, because she might tell Grandfather, who always tried to fix everything, whether I wanted him to or not.”

That was very different from the reason Kaz had learned to hide who he was, and what he thought and felt. It was strangely amusing to find that being loved too much and too little led to the same result.

Kaz nodded, shifting Li to the crook of his left arm. She was almost too large to hold with only one arm now, but she wrapped her tail around his bicep and clung there stubbornly.

“Good,” he said, bending down to pick up his extremely full pack. “Then I have a few things to show you.”