22. The Wagon Rolled On (Patreon)

Empress

The wagon rolled on and on.

I guess the empire is pretty big, maybe even as big as the United States… maybe even bigger, like Russia or something… because it took forever to get from Emerald Vale to Lake Lhim City. The horses that drew our wagon along weren't very fast, which certainly didn't help.

At their usual plodding pace, the horses made eight or nine miles per hour, and we stopped twice each day for two hours so they could rest, meaning in the course of an entire day, we traveled what would take me three hours driving northbound up the five on a good afternoon. And the wagon was The. Worst.

For starters, it smelled like a barn.

No, it was worse than that - it smelled like the primate house at a zoo (which I had all kinds of ethical problems with to begin with - monkeys are intelligent and emotional animals). It smelled like a primate house because most of the recruits hadn't bathed in weeks, if ever. And they didn't even seem to mind being filthy! You can bet I took whatever opportunity arose to take a bath (most of our trip was along the same river that converged at Rushing Rivers), but the soldiers sure didn't.

"You can order them, you know," Monkey Yang told me. "You're above them."

"What do you mean?"

"You're in the qi-refinement realm, which means you're a so-called middle cultivator. All of these guys are divine awakening, which is the lowest of the low. That means you outrank them, along with every commoner without an imperial seal…"

"What about nobles?" I asked.

"Well… they outrank you, obviously. Yes, even the ones who aren't cultivators. Though…" a mischievous look crept across his face, only accentuated by his grinning cheeks pulling up near his bushy sideburns. "No, I shouldn't tell you. It's too early…"

"Tell me what?" I asked. "Tell me what, Monkey?"

"Well… high cultivators have noble-equivalent rank in the same way that the families of nobles do."

"High cultivators," I repeated. "What realm is that?"

He shrugged. "It starts at fifth realm and reaches to the heavens. A ninth realm cultivator is equivalent to a duke's rank, though there are only a handful of those in the empire and a few of them are actual dukes. I doubt you'll ever make it that far - almost nobody ever does."

"Well I will," I stated, knowing as I did that success was mostly a matter of persistence and opportunity. "They shall call me duchess…"

Monkey rolled his eyes. "Again, you wouldn't be an actual duchess. Not unless you grab the attention of the emperor and he decides to personally elevate you…"

"Hmm… better hold off on that, then," I said, wrinkling my nose. Why couldn't everything in life be straightforward like cultivation? "Well… since I'm a midcultivator, and you're a low cultivator, I guess that means I could order you to make the soldiers in our cart take a bath?"

"Sure," he shrugged. "Theoretically. And when I tell you to fuck off and you go to the lieutenant to complain about it, what do you think he's going to tell you?"

"Uh, fuck off?" I said.

"Probably in politer terms, but yeah. You want 'em to bathe, I suggest you start practicing your command voice…"

"Oh? Is that a qi thing?" I asked.

"No… it's a being bossy thing. I'm pretty sure you're a natural…"

I scowled and slapped his shoulder. "I am notbossy!"

"You sure sound bossy to me!" he laughed.

So, I took Monkey's… advice, I guess… and politely and in a non-bossy way asked the conscripts to bathe. And, when absolutely nobody took me up on the request (though a few suggested that they could bathe with me - no thank you!), I asked a bit more forcefully and suggested that I might use them for sparring practice if they insisted on being unpleasant.

They'd already seen me practice sparring with Monkey, so that got a few of them to bathe… maybe even most of them, because the smell improved noticeably. It upgraded from 'extremely unpleasant' to 'quite unpleasant' and a few sloshed around in soaked clothes because they were afraid of somebody stealing their smelly rags if they bathed au naturale.

Baths among the soldiery made the wagon a lot less offensive, but that was the first of many problems. For instance, it was just about impossible to sleep in the thing due to the constant creaking, thumping, and clanking of the huge vehicle. Sure, I could cultivate instead of sleeping, but I liked to sleep. It was almost therapeutic and just about the only thing about my life that still felt normal-ish, and yet I couldn't do it during our travels.

The last problem was the lighting - our officer's area at the front of the wagon had no windows. Instead, it was lit by a series of six crystal panels that gave off the same light as a 40-Watt equivalent soft white eco-friendly LED bulb. Or just a 40-watt bulb, I guess.

Apparently, it was a status thing to have no windows, because glass was rare and not especially clear and nobles did not present themselves for all to see as they traveled. That meant any fresh air and sunlight that I got entailed going to the back of the wagon, where the conscripts treated me with equal parts awe and suspicion whenever I was near…

When they weren't daring one another to try to woo me. "Would miss care to share a bench with me?" one of them asked.

He was a scrawny guy who couldn't have been older than seventeen - cultivation pills had filled his frame with wiry muscle and given him just enough courage to be pressured into asking one of the lady cultivators to sit with him. I thought it was sweet and funny, and I would have said yes - I had said yes the first time one of them asked, because I did want a window seat for a few minutes. Fresh air and sunshine? Yes, please!

"Lynn… you cannot accept a strange man's offer to sit with him," Ichika had hissed.

"Why not? It's harmless," I said.

"It is not harmless - it signals your interest…"

"I am interested," I stated. "Interested in sitting next to an actual window."

"A woman who accepts the advances of men and then acts as if her time and attention are fleeting and negotiable will quickly gain a reputation as a harlot. Do you want a reputation as a harlot?"

I sighed. "No, I don't want a reputation as a harlot… even if we're never going to see any of these guys ever again and it doesn't even matter, because you'd just bother me about it more…"

"Lynn, a cultivator's reputation is no laughing matter. I realize that these are not your customs, but they are our customs, and there are many more of us than there are you. I won't force you, but I advise you to spurn any offers from these men, however innocent."

"Fine," I huffed. "I can still order them off the bench if I want to sit there, though, right?"

"Yes, absolutely," Ichika said, almost insulted that there was even any question over it. "Come, let us go out there now and establish ourselves…" with that, she strutted back into the common area of the wagon and pointed at the four men sitting on two consecutive benches. "You and you - we require your benches. You will vacate them… please," she turned to me and whispered, "a little politeness is still okay."

And so we sat down facing one another, a smug smile on Ichika's face as the wind fluttered her dark hair. And the wagon rolled on and on.

--------

The Great Jade river glowed along, so wide that the trees and farms across the river occupied a thin band on the horizon. Its surface was slate-green… or jade-green, I guess, dotted by barges and boats, especially when we passed through one of the small villages dotting the road. Past the river's marshy delta, past fifty miles of rice paddies and tiny farming villages, the river emptied into Lake Lhim.

"Have you ever seen so much water?" Hana gushed. "This makes Rushing Rivers look like… like a desert!"

I didn't bother to question the logic of her metaphor. "It's a lot of water," I agreed.

And I guess it was a lot of water - you couldn't see the opposite shore at all, just a great big plane of placid, green water occasionally marred by a little white-sailed dhow or a small, tree-strewn island. But it felt vast in the way that Lake Michigan felt vast and not in the way the Pacific Ocean was mind-bogglingly immense.

After an entire day along the fairly large lake, we rolled into Lake Lhim City on an early afternoon. We'd been on the road for over a weak, mile upon mile in a stinky wagon, and I Was. Done. The lieutenant cracked the doors open and motioned us forward. The twelve conscripts in our wagon piled out.

With a sigh of relief, I stumbled toward the pale sunlight beyond, only to be stopped at the last second as one of our guards grabbed me by the collar.

"Hey!" I shouted, rubbing at my neck out of habit rather than any real harm - it would have to be a hell of a horse collar to harm a middle cultivator like me.

"Sorry, this is Fort Gialt-syn," the lieutenant said. "Final stop for our conscripts. You'll keep going until the Lake Ascent in another twenty li or so."

I frowned but relaxed as the imperial guard released his hold on my top. "I guess that's not too bad…" I craned my neck to get a better look outside. Beyond the lieutenant, a great stone fort loomed atop a small hill. In the sizable plane below the fort, a few hundred tents had been arrayed in a neat grid, and in the dusty yard amid them, a few hundred soldiers were lined up and going through fighting drills with their spears.

"Good luck on the mountain," the lieutenant said as he closed the wagon door.

"Mountain? I thought we were going to a lake," I said. "The one we've been rolling past for over a day?"

"If I'm not mistaken, the mountain is next to the lake, which is also next to the city," Big Shilei said equanimously. "Virtually all sects lie upon some sort of high ground to symbolize its members' aspirations toward the heavens. The higher upon the mountain, the further along one's dao, the closer to heaven."

"Aw. I was hoping for… I dunno… a lakeside retreat?"

"A sect is not a retreat, Lynn. It represents a serious commitment…"

"But no funny religious stuff, right?"

"I should think not."

That was good news - I had quite a few friends back in Cali who were 'spiritual but not religious', which was fine. Somebody might even describe me like that! But occasionally, my friends got into much kookier stuff, like my high school boyfriend, Micah Zinn, who ended up joining some kind of UFO cult, dropping out of college, and living in a bunker out near Redding. I didn't have commitment issues, probably, but I definitely didn't want to have anything to do with that nonsense.

I rushed to one of the wagon's windows the moment I heard the sounds of the city - the rumble of carts over flagstones, the chatter of people, the clop of horses, and the boom of industry. Outside, passing by us, were hundreds of people in a dizzying array of styles and colors. This wasn't a town like Emerald Vale or Rushing Rivers - not to speak poorly of either of those frontier towns, but they weren't cities. Lake Lhim City was a city.

Which, I guess, was kind of obvious from the name. Still… I once stopped by Salton City on the way to a hiking trip out in Mesa Verde and it was basically a ghost town, so 'city' doesn't necessarily mean much.

Whenever we passed a market, I almost unconsciously made my way toward the door and Ichika had to physically restrain me so our guards wouldn't. But the markets were huge. Well… each one was around the size of the north market in Emerald Vale, but they had way more stuff.

Clothes of every variety, even pants for women(which were not sold anywhere in Emerald Vale)… no cute shorts or anything more risqué than midi skirts, though. Food of every sort, including, yes, some really gross dead animals, but also dozens of fruits and vegetables I couldn't begin to name. I'd be able to make a different smoothie every day for a month! Probably two months!

And I could read the signs!

Well… most of them. I guess my lessons with Hana were paying off. I wasn't what I would consider literate, but the signs on the street were aimed at the lowest common denominator, which was right about where I sat - able to understand and express myself in simple, straightforward sentences, able to write in uncertain, messy script…

Hopefully, it would be neater when my hands finished growing back.

Hana wouldn't let me use a pencil. My own student wouldn't let me use a pencil for my literacy lessons, the little martinet! Apparently, pens did exist, but nobody would take you seriously if you couldn't use one of their funny little brushes to bust out perfect Yu script.

I did once get a Best Handwriting award in 2nd Grade, though, so I was sure I'd get it eventually if I kept practicing the basic characters, as recommended by both Hana and Ichika. As Bruce Lee once said: I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.

Hey! Maybe that could be part of my martial dao?

The buildings in Lake Lhim City were far larger than those in the frontier - just passing by the fish market, I could see a dozen broad, three-tiered buildings the size of the bureaucratic palace in Emerald Vale, and two or three buildings significantly larger than that, palaces with grand granite courtyards, brassy brown roofs, and silken pennants whipping in the wind. I saw at least three people wearing lots of blue - nobles!

"Would I get in trouble if I wore blue?" I asked Ichika - if any of my friends knew, it would be her. But it was Monkey Yang who answered.

"Oh yeah - you'd get a proper lashing for the first offense and worse if you kept doing it, though…" he adopted the mischievous expression he liked to make when he thought he was being clever.

"But I'll be allowed to wear blue when I make it to the Domain Formation stage?"

Monkey deflated in disappointment. "Am I so predictable?"

"Am I?"

"Fair enough."

I turned back to the window. I smiled at the sight of a pair of nobles, a man and a woman in robes so fine they might have been printed porcelain, both of them gliding through the marketplace like ships upon a placid sea. Six servants bustled along with them, two of them managing a portable awning to keep the sun off the nobles' skin and the other four clambering behind with all manner of bags and crates from the latest shopping trip.

"Retail therapy," I sighed.

"Disgraceful," Ichika tutted. "Servants are not properly-trained if they cannot be as respectable as their masters."

And the city continued - houses, gardens, guard houses, bureaucratic buildings, and marketplaces.

Gradually, the brick and wood buildings gave way to old, gray stone and the teeming streets became less and less crowded until we were rolling through what appeared to be an abandoned city. The buildings were ancient, looking more like something out of ancient Babylon than medieval China, but they were well-maintained. The ivy that coated the sun-facing walls was carefully groomed, and I could see the vibrant colors of rooftop gardens swaying in the breeze.

Where I saw people, though, they looked tough and wary. Most of them were armed.

As we continued on, I felt Lin stir deep within my dantian. She was unsettled by something but didn't want to come out to warn us. Whatever that meant I can only guess. If it was really dangerous, she probably would have popped out to warn us, since if I died then she also died. At least that's what everybody who knew anything about spirits thought.

Finally, after several blocks of seeing not a soul, our wagon eased to a stop in a great stone courtyard, the seams between the pale paving stones ran verdant with moss and tiny ferns. The lake trailed off for miles and miles beyond us and to the wagon's other side rose a sheer cliff.

After a minute or two of silence in the stifling, slightly-smelly wagon (body odor does not dissipate easily), I glanced at our guards. "Well? Are you waiting for an invitation?"

"Yes, actually," our guard sergeant stated.

Then I felt a presence, the same feel of a powerful cultivator that I got from Cold-blood Ieyasu or Lord Inspector Fun, and a moment later the wagon doors creaked open. The silhouette of a broad, short man contrasted against the sunbaked courtyard.

He spoke in a voice that was cool and powerful like the waves on Malibu Beach in early spring. "Welcome to the Starry Waters sect, friends."

--------

Our guide introduced himself as Core Disciple Khando, smiling affably the whole time as our four guards signed over custody of our small group like we were a bunch of convicts getting transferred to a new prison. I suppose that wasn't so far from the truth - the sect would be our 'prison' for the foreseeable future.

As the guard sergeant crossed his t's and dotted his i's (except in Yu characters) with the paperwork, Ichika, Monkey Yang, and I said our farewells to Big Shilei. He tried to turn down our money, but Ichika kept pressing it back into his meaty hands whenever he refused.

"Don't be stubborn, Shilei," she said. "You must establish yourself while we'll have our food and lodgings seen to by the sect. If there's extra money in two weeks' time, after you've gotten things arranged, you may gift it back to us however you see fit…"

The big man frowned but did not object, clasping his hands to his chest and offering a slight bow. "That is… acceptable, Lady Ichika," he said, his eyes beginning to tear up.

Ichika clicked her tongue in displeasure. "You may call me 'Lady' when you re-enter my sworn service as a cultivator, and not a moment before. I release you from your duty, my friend."

"And yet I will continue," he said with a wan smile. "Stay safe and be prudent - ask yourself what I would do, and then do likewise only if I wouldn't be a fool. Take opponents seriously and grudges lightly, and accept assistance while watching for snakes. Likewise with you, Monkey and Lynn - remember your virtues and do not let the mores of insular sect life let you confuse what is common with what is right… and you, Hana, "

"I think I got about half of that," I admitted.

"That is one half more than most people get. I will take my leave before you think I make a habit of these manly tears."

As we finished our goodbyes, the guards finished their dealings with Core Disciple Khando and packed back into the wagon before it ponderously turned under the massive power of the tortoise steeds and rumbled back toward Fort Gialt-syn and out of our lives.

"It is good to see that you are packed lightly," Khando stated. "It is a considerable hike to the steps - a hike that some find taxing…" he glanced toward Hana, the only cultivator in our group who wasn't at least peak body refinement. "Let us be off."

There was a small bronze gate, green with age and humming with qi, and emblazoned with the three symbols announcing it as the starry waters sect. Just beyond it were stone steps carved into the cliff face. Without further comment, Khando plodded through the gate and started up the stairway.

The steps were perfectly level and perfectly consistent, broad steps just long enough for me to take one step at a time. Poor Hana, whose legs were a good bit shorter than mine, had to manage them in one and a half. Great exercise for quads and glutes. They were also about five feet wall, from the striated, sun-drenched rock of the cliffside to the overhang, which got higher and higher with each step.

There was no railing. None at all. OSHA would have had a field day.

Every hundred steps or so, the path would reverse course at a little square landing. Khando didn't so much as glance back to make sure we were still following. He just pivoted on one foot and continued up as if there'd been no landing at all. He could probably hear all of us, especially poor Hana, who puffed along after the first few hundred steps (which, to be fair, requires pretty decent cardio - a sedentary mortal would have been done dozens of steps before).

I took a little pause at each landing to let her catch up - but Khando kept plodding along at his tireless, steady pace without any seeming concern for who was keeping up. On the fourth landing, I paused to look out over the landscape. Even from hundreds of feet up, Lake Lhim occupied most of the vista, glittering in the afternoon light, boats like tiny, white-tufted toy models in the distance.

Beyond the lake, I could spot hazy mountains looming, gauzy green through the lake's humidity but capped with white - the Southern Scythe Mountains, for which the sect's mountain was a lesser peak. The range curved along the southern extent of the lake in a great crescent.

"I'm… I'm… I'm…" Hana gasped beside me, hands on her knees as she bent over and clearly not enjoying the enviable scenery. Oh well - I'm sure she could enjoy it from the top. Eventually.

"You're having trouble?" I asked. "It's fine - it takes a while to build up cardio. Take a breather."

"But… but…" she gestured toward the others, still plodding upward at Khando's clockwork pace.

She had a point. Sure, I could catch up with them if I hurried a bit, but the longer Hana rested, the more she'd have to push herself to catch up, and the faster she'd gas again. I could remember my first few forays into track running in high school - I'd run for two years before spraining my ankle at the beginning of junior year track season and getting into yoga. The day after those first few long runs, my legs felt like jello embedded with a thousand tiny pieces of glass and I walked around like my Great Grandma Lee.

"Want a piggyback ride?" I asked.

"A piggyback…" she stopped gasping and threatening to vomit or long enough to shoot me a quizzical look. "Why would anyone… ride a… pig's back?"

"Because that's…" I frowned. "That's a very good question. Why is it called piggyback?"

"Why is… what called… piggyback?"

I sighed. "Do you want a ride on my back or not?"

"That seems… undignified for… a cultivator…"

"Is that a no?" I started up the steps.

Her eyes went wide. "No! I mean… yes, I'd like a ride, please?"

That was how I wound up carrying Hana the remaining seven hundred sixty-two steps up to the outer sect of the Starry Waters Sect. It was amazing how I could still hoof it up the stairs with my own small pack, as well as carrying Hana (who probably weighed about what I did) and her small pack for hundreds of steps, but that's exactly what I did.

It would be inaccurate to say I wasn't winded at all - I felt like I'd just jogged a mile for warm-ups - but I could have easily gone another thousand steps with Hana on my back remarking about how pretty the view was or how the birds wheeling about and swooping almost within arm's reach were different from the birds that lived around Rushing Rivers.

At the top of the winding stairs, the view was almost anticlimactic. From a quarter mile up, most of Lake Lhim City and the lake itself were washed out in the afternoon haze and the distant mountains were faded and washed in shadow, enough that they might as well have been distant clouds.

The view of the sect wasn't much better, either - an unassuming village of neat stone structures - small huts, slightly-larger residences, and larger communal buildings all constructed from solid stone, as if somebody had simply raised the rock right out of the mountain, shaped it in simple, curvilinear shapes with rectangular doorways and circular windows, and called it a day…

Actually, that's probably exactly what happened. Cultivator stuff.

There were small gardens, and the occasional tree, too, but at least half of the surroundings were plain, unadorned stone. Numerous people walked about the place, some of them alone and some of them in small groups. There were more men than women, perhaps a two-to-one ratio, but the robes were unisex. I guess the sect had a dress code. But at least jewelry was allowed - rings, bracelets, earrings, bangles, necklaces, and brooches, all were on display. I rubbed my finger along the little bangle that Ichika gave me - she was so nice!

Core Disciple Khando took in a deep breath of mountain air and turned to face us. "Thus concludes the first little test of the sect - for most of you. It may be quite a while before the doughy girl makes her way up, so perhaps we should…" he paused, eyeing Hana with suspicion. "You're barely first realm. How did you make it all the way up the stairs?"

Hana glanced at me. I shrugged - I wasn't going to take the blame for jack shit. Hana shrugged and offered a sheepish grin. "Good breeding?"

Khando huffed, unable to hide his disappointment, but did not follow up on his line of questioning. "Very well - there will be more tests to come. Let us see Brother Qing for assessment and housing designation. As we proceed to the lower administrative hall, you may see classes or training in session. I encourage you to look, but please do not disturb any of the students until you have a better understanding into how we have arranged our-"

"You!" a voice shouted from nearby. "Yes, you!"

I turned to the source of the voice to find a solid, short-haired girl storming through the sect right toward us. She stopped right in front of our group, offering Khando a slight bow before turning to face me. "You!"

"Me?" I sputtered. I was fairly certain I'd never seen this girl in my life.

"You!" she confirmed. "I challenge you to a student's duel!"

So that just happened.