Twinned Destinies Chapter 64. Headquarters (III) (Patreon)

The fog parted like curtains on a stage, and Ruyi’s breath caught in her throat.

They stood on the banks of a lake. It had to be a lake, since there were no oceans this deep in the province, but it could’ve fooled her—it stretched on and on with seemingly no end, fading into the murky white distance. It wasn’t very deep; the water went up to maybe her hip. Its surface was like one great slab of glass, clear down to its bottom. Clumps of eelgrasses waved gently at the bottom, silvery fish big as her arm drifting in and out of them, so pale they seemed tricks of the light. She saw a white-shelled turtle float on by. It was much calmer on the surface. Paths of floating bamboo logs stretched out from the banks, linking with other paths to make a great spiderweb for humans to walk.

Sometimes these paths linked to floating platforms like miniatures town squares, then broke apart in their divergent directions, then linked up again at another platform, hundreds of paces off.

Houses were clustered around these greater platforms. They were small straw huts raised on bamboo stilts. Lights peeked through their windows. Maybe it was the constant hum of the water, or maybe it was the curling of mists up and down the water, or the soft twinkling of the lights, or the gentle laps of the waves, but Ruyi felt a sense of peace. She got the sense things moved slower here, more deliberately. Things seemed clearer.

Sleek canoes, thin as serpents, drifted about the surface of the lake. As Master Po brought her up to the shore, two were just sidling into the riverbank. One of its passengers took off her cap.

“Mother!” cried Ruyi. Mother smiled, waving.

Ruyi almost ran to tackle her before she remembered she was here as Grandmaster Yang, and there were servants on the boat blinking at her. So was Master Po. She was suddenly conscious of folk on a few nearby canoes looking over too. Her face reddened—how loud had she screamed? Not too loud, she hoped. She had an image to uphold.

She went down to the water’s edge at a reasonably unhurried pace. And then hugged her, but not too tight. There was a certain amount of affection you could show in public before it just got embarrassing, Ruyi had learned, and she was very prone to overshooting.

“How was your trip, dear?” said Mother. “Did you enjoy the qilin?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty,” said Ruyi, grinning brightly. “I want one.”

Mother chuckled. “The Clan only has a handful. They only let them out every so often to deliver very important personages, you know.” She ruffled Ruyi’s hair. She always knew how to make Ruyi feel good.

“The servants will ferry your bags. This—” She gestured to the scatterings of houses. “Is the Outer Clan. But our residence is up there.”

Following her finger, Ruyi could barely make out the outline of a mountain wreathed in mist.

“Lan will ferry us.”

There was a thin old man at the head of their canoe, wearing a straw hat so big Ruyi wasn’t sure how he could see over the top of it.   They set off. Lan rowed in the rear, and they sat at the front. It gave them a little privacy.

Mother asked how she’d been doing these past few months, and Ruyi started rambling excitedly. Mother smiled, listened, and nodded; she hardly said a word the whole time, except to answer Ruyi when they paddled past something shiny and Ruyi asked what it was.

“—but she didn’t believe me, and I said, run it again! And she said she did, and she checked it with her advising Master, and I said, ‘then you’re both wrong.’”

“You didn’t.”

“And you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said I didn’t even deserve my title! She thought I must’ve bribed Grandmaster Yin!”

Mother gasped. “Surely not.”

“I swear it’s true.”

Ruyi didn’t know how Mother did it, but she made Ruyi felt heard just by being there and paying attention and letting Ruyi babble on. She loved talking to Mother, even when Mother hardly talked.

“What’re those?”

Ruyi pointed to a circle of canoes, some of which dragged barges laden with sticks. They’d already stuck four huge ones into the dirt. It seemed a building project.

“Those are because of you, dear,” said Mother.

“Heh?”

“We’ve gotten so many new Outer Clan members these past few months from all over the Province,” Mother said. “It feels like a crop of new Foundation disciples comes every week! That’s new housing for them. It’s the sixth new neighborhood this season alone.”

Ruyi took a moment to soak it in.

She always felt what she did was important, but it was different stumbling across it in person, changing the world.

“Woah…” she murmured. “I’m really something, aren’t I?”

She could feel Jin rolling his eyes at her from all the way back in Jade Dragon City.

“Yes you are,” beamed Mother, giving her a squeeze. “My little genius.”

The farther they rowed, the more building sites they passed. She saw clumps of disciples making their way out of a pyramid-like hall blazing with light. A few held skewers of meat—a mess hall? She could hear their soft laughter. There were boys and girls both, all dressed in the silky blue-silver robes of the Li Clan. They seemed to be about her age, but she was here and they were there, mingling, talking. She wondered what it was like. Sometimes she dreamed she’d been born no-one at all, someone utterly normal. Maybe she’d be floating about in the crowd, all silly and happy. Sometimes she didn’t want admirers; sometimes she just wanted a friend.

It was a dumb fantasy. She’d be miserable being a nobody. Looking at them, she wasn’t sure why she felt such a stinging sadness.

They took notice as her canoe passed. There was a wave of hushed whispers, then they rushed up to the edge of the planks. A few waved, a few called out things she couldn’t hear. Then the lights were at their backs, and they were lost to the distance.

They were drifting toward the mountain. From afar it seemed a great hunk of steel, but Mother said that was just the sheen of the stone. As they neared she saw it was like a volcano, constantly erupting, but without so much force—and rather than fire spilling down its sides there were rivers, forking and branching and winding into each other, crisscrossing so much you could hardly walk a quarter of a li without needing to ford a stream.

“The Inner Clan lives on Silver Mountain,” said Mother. “It sits at the heart of Lake Equanimity. It houses all of the Li Clan’s elders, martial elders, ancestors, board members, and their families. The spring at the top has been running since before demons roamed the lands. It has been running since dragons and serpents were still one and the same, or so Elder Guan likes to say—he’s the Archivist, by the way. Sometimes it feels like he knows more than all the tomes in the stacks put together…Ah! There’s so many people I must introduce you to.”

“Heh?” said Ruyi. “Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

She’d been lost in her own little fantasy. She was thinking of how Jin used to visit the Lower City, and how silly she’d thought him. What if she wore a disguise and snuck out to mingle with some other folk her age?   She would probably bore of it quickly. And she wasn’t sure how long she could stand it before tore off her wig and did her big reveal. But she could kind of see the appeal, she supposed.

Their canoe started on a long slow arc around the mountain.

“Why aren’t we docking?” She could see land right there.

“Ming—” Mother nodded to the oarsman—“Will ferry us right to your hut. It’s a wonderful little place. I think you’ll love it.”

“I thought you said it’s on the mountain.”

“It is. But Ming can’t go up any of these rivers,” Mother gestured at the mountain’s face. “They all flow downhill.”

“They’re rivers. What are they meant to do? Go uphill?”   At Mother’s whimsical smile, she said, “Wait. Really?”

“Shh,” said Mother. “Just watch.”

They made for the right half of the mountain.

Sure enough, the rivers flowed up. They weren’t sucked up, they flowed up, like she was sat at the top of a high mountain watching water rush down—except down was up, and she was at the mountain’s base. It messed with her head just looking at it. As she craned over the canoe’s edge, she saw its neighbor, a trickle a stretch of dirt away—that one rushed down.

“How’s it doing that?” She whispered. “Are there arrays? Inscribed in the riverbeds, maybe, or—”

“Dear,” said Mother. “Sometimes you ask too many questions. Wouldn’t it be nicer if you didn’t know?”

“Why?”

“It’s more magical, isn’t it?”

Ruyi frowned at her.

“But there’s no such thing as magic.”

Mother sighed, then smiled. “Sometimes I forget how much like your Father you are.”

Ruyi didn’t think she was like Father at all. “Oh! When’s Father coming?”

“He’s already here, dear.”

“He is?” Ruyi jerked up. “Can we meet him? Where is he?”

There was a long pause as Mother opened her mouth, then closed it, looking pained, then tried again. “He’s working. He said he’s set out a time with you tomorrow afternoon, after you finish your work with the army Alchemists.”

“…Oh.” Ruyi wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. It had been years. She’d had this vision he’d be waiting for her on the banks with this warm smile. Maybe there’d be some hugging, maybe even some crying, mostly from her. She wasn’t sure why she thought he’d be smiling; he never smiled. “I see.”

“The demons have been keeping him busy day and night. He hardly sleeps. He always thought of himself as a general first—his first duty is to the dynasty… you know how he is.”

Ruyi drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. For a while, she stared silent into the vast empty dark. “He knows I’m a Grandmaster of the Guild now, right? And—and I’ve set up all these wards, they’ve served tens of thousands, and I’m leading the program set by the Emperor’s decree.”

“He does,” Mother assured her. “And he’s very proud of you.”

The oarsman, Ming, wasn’t even paddling anymore, just tilting; the river moved them for him. They drifted past a big building shaped like a water-drop. They went past disciples meditating on islands, a huge floating platform where clan members dueled under the eyes of white-bearded elders, a lilly-pad obstacle course, a bunch of waterfalls and statues and buildings that all looked the same to Ruyi, all wispy and insubstantial. She wasn’t even looking at them by the time they got to her villa. She was staring at her feet.   

“Hey,” whispered Mother. “We’re almost here. Are you hungry?”

“No,” said Ruyi calmly. “Please excuse me. I’ve had a long trip. I’m very tired, and I would like to rest now.”

“Ah—of course, dear.”

They docked by a straw roof-ed bamboo villa.

“Good night,” said Mother.

“Good night,” she said.