“It is done,” Fan Rui said, and cackled, lifting her hands from above the bowl. “Done! Like a man’s souls trapped in ice forever, never to be reborn.” Her tiny, wrinkled grin jumped in an expression her chaperoning guards couldn’t see, and above the guards’ heads, the minerals on one of the shelves spontaneously combusted in a flash and a thunderclap.
The guards leapt to attention and shouted, their spears pointing everywhere at once.
Lu Junyi held up a hand to calm them. Smoke drifted from the blackened shelf, turning the air rancid. Fan Rui covered her face, giggling at disturbing length.
“Those materials are—very flammable.” Lu Junyi tried to cover for her, flashing on nightmares of what would be done to Ling Zhen if Fan Rui were blamed for her prank. It was hard to speak clearly enough to be heard over the priestess’s unsettling glee. “The minerals combust by themselves sometimes…”
Thank Benevolence, the soldiers nodded warily and straightened.
Lu Junyi stepped away from her own alchemical measurements to gaze at Fan Rui’s work. The shard of scholar’s stone, the would-be god’s tooth—the god’s fang, as they’d somehow, ludicrously, taken to calling it … it drifted against the bottom of a solution of carefully mixed salts and minerals, chunks of heavy dark metal surrounding it like a mountainous prison.
The god’s fang itself had now taken on a dull sheen reminiscent of the metals.
Astounding, even knowing Fan Rui’s priestess skills, even watching her stand over this basin of materials for so many watches of the day, concentrating on the power of the minerals within. Outside, clouds had drawn in from every direction, thunder rolling in roiling darkness above where she worked. Rain had begun to slash at the outer courtyards before she was done.
The scholars and monks who worked walled away in the other side of this building must have wondered. Some of the monks, at least, would recognize the effect of powerful scholar’s skills being leveraged nearby …
Lu Junyi would have to be vigilant as to whether any of the scholars’ work revealed they knew what was at stake here. In her apprehension she’d begun manufacturing some irrelevant calculations and experiments in addition to the needed ones, all to muddy the trail and protect her men from inadvertently stumbling over a conclusion that would tempt Cai Jing’s hand. She must not fail in her duty to protect them.
The Chancellor had continued to be fearsome in his orders that only those deemed absolutely necessary would be told the truth of their project. Lu Junyi had to defend the decision rigorously before even Fan Rui could be told. She was still the only one.
Not even Ling Zhen had been permitted to know.
Despite the veil over exactly what the end purpose was, the little old incendiary expert had worked to repeat the phenomenon from Anfeng at much smaller proportions—but to no avail. With the aid of the team of scholars and alchemists provided to them by Cai Jing, Scholar Ling had carefully analyzed crumbs of ashen dust gathered by Lu Junyi from the existing god’s fangs, then tested that dust to ferret out its constituent parts. He and Lu Junyi had together built the tiniest of delivery systems: a rocket the size of a pea. A few grains of explosive powder mixed with gravel, then wrapped in a tiny twist of lantern paper—which would snap with a loud crack when thrown against a hard surface. Sweating nervously, Lu Junyi had shaved a fine sprinkling of scholar’s stone into splinters and spread it across a flat rock in the middle of one of the vast empty courtyards, after which they had propelled the tiny incendiaries from a blow gun many paces away.
No matter how consistent the formula, the results always differed. Once the scholar’s stone burst into a column of purple flame. Once the flat stone table melted through, bubbling up as though dissolved by acid. Once tiny stabs of lightning cracked out across the courtyard with a bang that took their hearing for an instant. Ling Zhen yanked Lu Junyi down only just fast enough to avoid being punctured by its searing fire.
They varied the proportions of materials time and again, all with equally unusable results.
“It’s the nature of scholar’s stone,” Ling Zhen had said helplessly. “If there is an exactness that makes it repeat itself in a predictable fashion, we humans cannot achieve it. Whatever results the Chancellor wishes to guarantee, it’s not possible.”
He’d begged her not to tell Cai Jing, fearing some punishment to his wife.
Instead, she’d reported their failure fully. She had to. If the Chancellor ever discovered them hiding the smallest piece of what they researched—it wouldn’t only be her head, but Ling Zhen’s and Fan Rui’s and the life of every scholar she gave directive to, whether they knew the secrets here or not. The idea that either Ling Zhen or Fan Rui might suffer fallout from the discovery that nature’s reality did not bend to their project’s needs—it anguished her, but it could not turn her decision.
Any punishment would be far worse for hiding their lack of progress.
Ling Zhen had been correct in his fears, however. Cai Jing had not been well-pleased. He’d thrown the little old scholar back into his hole of a prison and had Fan Rui brought up instead. Cleaned, bathed and dressed, Fan Rui put Lu Junyi in mind of a saucy grandmother.
Except where her gray-white hair dangled lank over the healing stump of her left ear. Or the way her skin hung off her bones now like too-loose clothing.
Cai Jing had not had much choice in whether Fan Rui knew the truth of everything. Not if he wanted her to be able to advance their goals. Somehow, Lu Junyi felt sure the priestess would have guessed anyway, the way she breathed deep and closed her eyes when in the presence of the god’s fangs for the first time.
“Wobbling, wobbling,” she’d murmured. “The energy isn’t settled, it tips like a sinking boat…”
“You can feel that?” Lu Junyi had asked.
“Steady it, he says, is that all. Steady like a steersman, steady like an Empire. Steady like a corpse.”
She laughed.
That was when Lu Junyi realized what the Pit had done to her mind.
The few times they had met before, Fan Rui had been a quiet, primarily playful presence at her husband’s side, but when she’d spoken, it had made sense. Lu Junyi remembered a shy but cutting cleverness, her rare comments landing in conversation in the manner of a subversive surprise, like biting down on a whole clove. Often unexpected, but Lu Junyi had never doubted Fan Rui’s cleverness, nor her capacity for reason.
Now she spoke in scattered metaphor and senseless rambles.
Lu Junyi had feared, briefly, that it meant the alchemical priestess would no longer be able to understand the work. Fortunately, her scholar’s skills were still intact, and she appeared to comprehend Lu Junyi’s explanations, if in a nerve-rackingly sideways manner. “A metal cloak,” she’d said abstractly. “Heavy, dark metals to weigh it down, make it slow and lumbering. Or a cooling elixir to draw out the negative energy … Lodestone may cause it to dampen, if my Thunder God can alter me some—oh, let it go, overflow, let it go to somewhere else, the power must leak somewhere…”
The Thunder God, it seemed, was Ling Zhen’s all-too-fitting nickname. Fan Rui had revealed in one of her rambles that in her youth she’d been called Chaos Demon.
As omens went, it wasn’t the most auspicious.
It had taken some discussion to determine the meaning behind all those words. Or the methodology behind the processes Fan Rui spun out of her vast alchemical knowledge. In the end, the priestess was exactly what Cai Jing had desired: someone with plenty of ideas of how to temper power within minerals, and with the alchemical scholar’s skills to enact them. Lu Junyi was but a student at her knee—able to follow and understand, but barely. She had read much on the theory of alchemy out of interest’s sake, as many scholars did, but knew only the broad basics of how to practice.
She’d had Fan Rui begin teaching her. While the priestess worked at the far more advanced metallic plating, Lu Junyi toiled to master the foundational tenets of alchemy, then to apply their exactitude to constructing various cooling and healing elixirs Fan Rui named as having a chance of calming the god’s fangs. Elixirs Fan Rui claimed needed little proficiency or finesse to accomplish. Lu Junyi privately differed, perspiration turning her hair to wet strings as she attempted to cram the principles into her head while bending over hot crucibles or grinding insect legs to the finest powder.
Feel the pieces of it in your mind! Fan Rui kept telling her, before laughing about it.
So far Lu Junyi’s potions had shown no effect at all on scholar’s stone. Either the wrong avenue, or she lacked the proper skill.
Happily, the dark metals did seem to shield some of the volatile effects—enough times in enough ways to apply one to a singular precious god’s fang. Today, under Cai Jing’s orders, would be their first true test.
Lu Junyi had failed to eat even a single morsel of food that morning.
The Chancellor had so far been pleased with the advancement they had wrought since Fan Rui had begun work. It would all fall to nothing if they did not see at least marginal success today.
In her reports to Cai Jing, Lu Junyi had tried to emphasize and credit Fan Rui’s usefulness, eager to provide a reason for leniency toward her. Instead, the Chancellor’s response had been a pleased resolve to search for other skilled alchemists to draft.
“Scholar’s skills in materials … unfortunately such a rare talent,” he’d groused. “You say she’s instructing you?”
“I am barely at the level of an apprentice,” Lu Junyi tried to explain. “I have studied much of the theory, but working in tune with the various materials is another matter entirely … in only weeks I could never hope to come close to a Renxia priestess. It is not only her skills, Grand Chancellor, but her instincts. I can follow her reasoning, but I would never think of the avenues her experience guides us toward.”
“It seems the husband’s reputation had the wife’s Renxia sorcery behind it, then. That’s good to know, Lady Lu; I thank you.”
Lu Junyi breathed deep to prevent herself from now panicking on behalf of Ling Zhen. Could nothing bring these two redemption in Cai Jing’s eyes? “Begging your pardon, Chancellor. Scholar Ling is extremely adept as well. I do not think anyone could equal his skill at these new incendiary powders. In fact, Priestess Fan has stated that she will need him to construct certain elements for her tests.”
“I see. Very well.” Cai Jing tapped his rings against the table he sat at to take her report. “I shall survey the Empire for more alchemists. In the meantime, you’ll need test subjects. I have selected a handful of military volunteers. Prisoners would be better, considering the expendable nature of these experiments, but if you succeed we cannot risk a traitor gaining that level of power.”
Cold beads of sweat broke out across Lu Junyi’s skin. She hadn’t thought ahead … of course they would come to a point of testing their work.
Military volunteers. How athwart was it for her to wonder just how voluntary this duty, one that could hollow out and ravage these men, body and mind?
Once again, however, she had no other path … this tightrope led in only one direction. Besides, how many soldiers might such a weapon save, if these same Guardsmen were sent to defend the Empire’s borders against those who would mean its people harm?
If they truly were volunteers … good soldiers who considered their own self synonymous with the needs of Empire … such an attitude prevailed commonly among the Guard. Jia would even go so far as to say any other way of thinking bordered on improper. Disloyal.
The values of the Empire have long diverged from your own. This is no different. They may take true satisfaction from serving here.
Succeed, and you yourself may achieve the power to change everything.
Succeed, and Ling Zhen and Fan Rui might be saved from a fate of execution. Succeed, and she might gain the Imperial Court. Succeed, and she’d help protect the Empire from invaders who would destroy it before it could be changed—Cai Jing had not been shy in impressing upon her the threat to the north.
Succeed, and they would unlock a door to power that could be democratized across all, and reshape the face of the land in ways no one could imagine.
Lu Junyi had always believed in progress.
Her abstract elocutions on the value of innovation had never considered that she might stand in a vast, cleared courtyard in the heart of the inner city, about to test an untried weapon on bonding with a living person.
She held the altered god’s fang on a tray, carefully, so she would be in no danger of touching it. Fan Rui stood beside her, the chaperoning guards hovering behind.
“Are you sure it feels correct?” Lu Junyi had asked the question a dozen times in a dozen variations.
“It bobbles instead of wobbles,” Fan Rui answered, bobbing her head herself. “Oh, yes, very close. Metals temper the energy, tamping down the heat…”
“Does it feel as a regular god’s tooth does?” Lu Junyi pressed. While speaking to Fan Rui, she eyed the man who stood a ways away in the center of the courtyard, a man sent to them by Cai Jing. Two tassels marked him as a garrison commander. “How certain are you?”
“Life is uncertainty,” Fan Rui provided helpfully. “Let him burn!”
She began to laugh again.
Lu Junyi had not detailed this type of behavior in the reports to Cai Jing.
She would have liked to have more assurances, but could think of no other precautions to take. She’d required Fan Rui to show her this method on raw scholar’s stone first, which had allowed Lu Junyi to painstakingly—and with some jumpiness—record the decrease in reactivity when the stone was plated through with various weights of heavy metals. Odd, how only certain metals had such an effect. Odd and admittedly fascinating. Fan Rui had demonstrated the same method with kohl instead, and when she had, stone, liquid, and basin had frozen solid halfway through the process, then dissolved into dust at a touch.
Lu Junyi had run as many observations as she dared and passed the charts to the other scholars to calculate patterns and write out tables. Every exploration of understanding had been attempted before she’d presented the data to the Chancellor.
She’d known when she did that he would declare it ready. That they must wait no longer before performing this first test.
She had expected he might be here today. She could not help a nervous relief at his absence.
Likely he chose not to risk himself near a potentially building-leveling experiment.
Her relief was nonsensical anyway. If they failed—provided Lu Junyi lived through the failure—the Chancellor’s absence only meant any consequences would be delayed, not mitigated. If they failed … Lu Junyi shied away from imagining how she might deliver that report. Absurdly, her tangled apprehension balled up with as much eagerness as fear. As much as she wished to avoid Cai Jing’s wrath, she equally wanted the satisfaction of proclaiming her own success to him.
Ridiculous. Such flights of fancy would only bring her to ruin. She must be tempered by caution, modesty—and never forget the lives that hung in the balance, the lives that were not her own, starting with the man in the middle of this courtyard.
Standing here in silence, however, would hardly improve the matter.
Lu Junyi moved toward the stalwart commander before her. As she drew closer, he straightened and saluted her with a sharp shout of respect.
“What is your name, Officer?” she asked him.
“My family name is Wen, madam. I am here to serve.”
“Have they informed you what the dangers are today?” She had to know.
“I am to take possession of a god’s tooth that has been deemed unstable. If I can I am to wield it for the Empire. If fate determines otherwise, I will die.”
Lu Junyi lingered, unsure what else to ask, to say, what might selfishly soothe the prickling of her ethical doubts. “If I told you we might find reason to delay or defer…”
A look of appalled shock fell over his stoic expression, and he dropped to one knee. “I beg you, madam, tell me how I have offended. I will scrape my hands to the bone to rectify it.”
“You have caused no offense,” Lu Junyi said automatically. “Why would you think so?”
Commander Wen hesitated. “It is always my honor to serve the Empire, but I was granted this chance as a reward, in recognition of my deeds in service at the northern border … Any Guardsman would yearn for it, madam. To wield a god’s tooth for the army is to advance in the footprints of Minister Duan, General Han, or General Gao.”
Minister of War Duan, who wielded a god’s tooth. General Han—known as the Undefeated, and one of the few other military leaders who possessed one. And General Gao, a cousin to Marshal Gao Qiu, and one of the only high-ranking men in the Guard who could deploy scholar’s skills on the field of battle. Famous names, all. Names that had written their deeds in legend, names of wealth, of favor from the Emperor.
This man would gamble his own existence to become one of their number. He would beg her not to deny him that chance.
“This is the artifact in question,” she explained slowly. Every word felt fragile, as fragile as a human life. “When you touch it with your bare skin, you will feel its power. Enter a state of meditation if you can, and only draw the smallest breath of energy from it. If you feel a wrongness, do not drop it, but attempt to deepen your relaxation and separate yourself from its pull. That may give us some time. Do you understand?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Even if we have succeeded in our efforts at stabilization—all god’s teeth are dangerous by their nature, and from what we can tell, this artifact is even more powerful. If it works as we intend, you will still need time and training to achieve skillful wielding of it. God’s teeth escape control easily, and this is no ordinary one—drawing on it too broadly will cause great energy to release in destructive or deadly ways. Be cautious. Take only small sips.”
“I understand, madam,” Commander Wen said gravely.
Lu Junyi had never held a god’s tooth, but after reading every scrap in existence on the subject, she felt world-heavy with knowledge of them. Of god’s teeth, and of the tragedy at Anfeng Monastery, and of the four men who had died in its aftermath discovering the initial properties of the god’s fangs.
“Wait until I reach the edge of the courtyard,” she said to the commander. “We shall give you a signal.”
She placed the tray on the ground and retreated, all the way back against the building. Several stone plinths stood empty near this end of the space, doubtless left over from when this garden had housed statued lions or even its own sculptures carved of scholar’s stone. Recalling the lightning-soaked experiment with Ling Zhen, Lu Junyi beckoned Fan Rui partially behind one of the heavy stone weights, and ordered the priestess’s guards to arrange themselves behind other barriers.
“If it starts to go wrong…” she reminded Fan Rui.
“Then we learn.” Fan Rui said the words as if she swooned in the arms of a lover. “Failures spawn greatness.”
“No. Or, that may be true, but—” Lu Junyi turned Fan Rui to face her, speaking seriously and severely. “We discussed this, Priestess. If it starts to go wrong, you will do everything in your power to hold him safe, to unbind him if possible, and keep the god’s tooth stable. Can you do that?”
“People who ask the impossible should not be so disturbed by uncertain answers,” Fan Rui sniped.
“You said you would do all you can. Swear to it. I don’t want anyone to die today.”
“Everyone dies. Odd that we make so much of it.” She pushed away from Lu Junyi. “I swear your swears, even though they give me bad breath.”
It was the most Lu Junyi could hope for. One way or another, this had to happen today. The Chancellor would expect her results this evening.
“Commander,” she called. “You may begin. Remember—slowly.”
Commander Wen leaned down, and after the barest hitch, he closed his fingers around the god’s fang. Straightened. Beside Lu Junyi, Fan Rui’s eyes had closed.
A whisper in the air. Did Lu Junyi imagine it? That tickle on the edge of hearing, like a light wind through new growth …
The rustling increased. Commander Wen’s eyes had closed too, and he reached out his other hand straight in front of him. Dry leaves danced across the stone, pattering to swirl under his outstretched palm.
Lu Junyi tried to keep hope from somersaulting through her. The unaltered god’s fangs had functioned for only moments before corrupting their hosts from inside …
“Oh.” Fan Rui made the sound very softly.
Lu Junyi gripped her arm. “Is something wrong?”
Fan Rui didn’t answer. Across the courtyard, the lines of Commander Wen’s face had begun to harden, struggling into a grimace. His hands shook as if he clung to something too tight.
“Priestess!” Lu Junyi cried. “What’s happening?”
“He cries,” Fan Rui whispered.
Lu Junyi gazed across at the commander. She wanted to run to him, but dared not.
Tears. As Fan Rui had said.
Thick tears. Tears of some shining dark gray that welled from his eyes. Slid down his cheeks.
Not tears—more like blood—blood of molten metal. Creeping drops at first, then rapidly multiplying, becoming a flood. More molten gray leaked from his ears, his nose and mouth, squeezed out from his hand where he gripped the god’s fang …
“Commander!” Lu Junyi shouted. “Back away from it. Release its power!”
He either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Dark metal streamed down his neck and chest now, hardening on the folds of his clothes. All over his body, it welled from every pore, flowing against itself to drown skin and hair and eyes …
“Do something—” Lu Junyi begged Fan Rui. “Do something, stop it—”
Fan Rui had begun to hum. Very lightly, but for a long and terrible moment, the tune carried in harmony with the still-rustling breeze.
Then everything died to abrupt stillness.
Lu Junyi slipped out from behind the plinth. Her hands were trembling. She felt as if she should not be able to stand upright.
In the center of the courtyard, Commander Wen stood, encased in a shell of dull metal. The hardened material outlined his eyes, the tendons of his neck, his teeth in a mouth that had partially opened as if to scream silently forever. The last slow drips had frozen in time to create a metal man caught in the moment of melting to nothing.
It had all been so quiet.
Fan Rui spoke by her ear. “Ah. You feared death. He lives still.”
Lu Junyi had thought her horror total. Now it eclipsed her whole mind, made it hard to speak. She caught the plinth with her hand, its roughness anchoring her.
Such a state of living death—surely it could not last long, not without breath and air. Surely Commander Wen’s peace was near.
The moments stretched. Behind Lu Junyi and Fan Rui, a disturbed shuffle came from the priestess’s guards, the consternation a break from their usual discipline.
“Priestess.” Lu Junyi’s voice was brittle, barely a whisper. “Please. Surely he can’t…”
Hear them, see them, sense this world he’d been walled away from … still be living …
“His life force draws on the god’s fang,” Fan Rui murmured. “Hmm. I wonder if the Fa monks ever tried this version of immortality.”
Immortality.
Immortality.
To live forever, sustained by the energy of an unstable god’s fang, every sense screaming to nothing.
Commander Wen had been willing to die for his Emperor.
No one had ever warned him of this.