Lu Da bellowed again, so loud it shook the canopy of the forest above, and she roared straight into the guards who stood over Lin Chong.
She didn’t try to arrest her momentum in the least, but instead rammed into the first of them with her full weight, her staff ahead of the rest of her, and mowed him to the ground. She felt his bones break into at least fifteen pieces as his life snuffed out.
The second one tried to fight, but too slowly, as if he was frozen between knowing whether to charge her or run.
He should have chosen running. Even with his knee twisted backward. Lu Da’s staff whirled in her grip, and the wet smack of it colliding with his temple was extremely satisfying.
The woods fell quiet.
Lu Da huffed over to Lin Chong. “Sister Lin! I mean, Master Instructor! Speak, I beg you, or I shall impale myself on my sword in failure.”
Lu Da was feeling massively grievous with herself. She’d refused Lu Junyi’s offer to pay for the rental of a horse, reasoning that a horse would overtake and catch a person, but to shadow people on foot, walking both attracted less attention and didn’t need feeding or bridling before a hasty departure. But she’d been obliged to keep far back enough not to be noticed, and in staying just out of sight she’d missed the guards’ quick turn into Yezhu Forest.
She should have known right away! Lu Da knew these parts like her own hometown; she knew very well that Yezhu was often used as a shortcut. She also knew the penchant it had for eating people who entered it for that shortcut, never to be seen again if they were so unlucky as to step inside with someone who had malintent.
Realization of her dreadful mistake had just risen up to smack her, and she’d turned back in panic, when Xue Ba’s scream of pain had brought her racing to the right spot.
“Lu Zhishen! Deep and Profound Lu, how could you let this happen?” she moaned at herself. “You don’t use your head, that’s how. You’re a clay-eating donkey’s anus all the way through. Now Sister Lin is monstrously injured—you should have fallen on those evil constables from the beginning, that’s what you should’ve done. Run them both through and left their bodies in a ditch where they belong!”
Declaring this monologue at lusty volume, she crouched down next to Lin Chong. The master arms instructor’s lower body lay sprawled against the ground, her upper body sagging and supported only by her neck in the cangue. Heavy manacles weighed down her wrists, blood and bruising caking the skin beneath.
Well, that part was easily fixed. Lu Da cast about and found the keys on the belt of the older man, the one with the fully pulverized head. She freed Lin Chong’s hands and rubbed them vigorously.
“Sister Lin! Please speak. I’ve removed the manacles but I see no key for unlocking this awful cangue. I could tear it apart with my hands, surely I could, but the fragments would explode into your face and shred it bloody like cleavers. I could throw you over my shoulder and carry you to Liangshan without breaking it off, but the demon thing has nearly taken your head off already, so that would surely cause some ghastly injury, wouldn’t it? My god’s tooth would blast it to bits, but it’s the same problem, I’d crush up your tiny skull along with it and then where would we be. Oh! I should have learned better. Just as you told me, and as the monks said … Abbot Zhi was always telling me, ‘Lu Zhishen, you have great potential, if only you changed the way you do nearly everything.’ He was right, wasn’t he—‘Deep and Profound,’ my eye, better call me ‘Head Full of Mud’…”
What to do? There was no doubt in Lu Da’s mind that she must get Lin Chong to Liangshan. Not only would she be safe from more assassination attempts behind the mountain’s natural barriers and not-so-natural entrapments, but Liangshan had medicines, and beds, and people who knew much more about treating dreadful wounds than Lu Da, who was much more likely to cause them.
Besides, they were already more than halfway to Liangshan. Even carrying Lin Chong, Lu Da reckoned she could reach the edge of the marsh in a day or less. She was a very fast runner. But what to do about the cangue?
A soft groan sounded behind them.
Lu Da released Lin Chong’s hands and leapt straight up. One of the guards was not dead! She marched up to him, staff raised, and drew her sword with the other hand for good measure. It was the second guard, the one she had hit in the side of the head only. But Lu Da was very aware of how hard she could hit.
“You dog! How can you still be alive? You must have an iron skull!” she ranted. “Well, it’s easily fixed. I’ll smash out your brains until they mix with your eyeballs, and then I’ll chop through your neck and kick your head into a pine tree, just to be sure.”
“No…”
Lu Da looked around in surprise. It was not the guard who had spoken, but Lin Chong.
Energized, Lu Da sprang back to her side. “You speak, Sister Lin! Are you alive? I beg you, forgive me for being so late in beating these murderous curs off you. If they’ve maimed you I’ll never be able to redeem myself.”
“You … saved my life…” Lin Chong coughed. Her voice was thready, weak, like an old woman who had long been sick. But she seemed to be getting stronger. “Let these men live.”
“They were extremely intent on killing you.”
“Not they … Gao Qiu. He uses people … let them live.”
“One’s dead,” Lu Da said. She felt no remorse for that, not one sliver. “But since you ask it, I’ll spare the other.”
She marched back toward where the living guard still lay, his cudgel some distance away from him. He cowered away from her, shivering.
“Sister Lin Chong says to forgive you,” she declared. “I don’t agree. I was determined to mash you up like meat between my teeth. It’s Lin Chong you have to thank for sparing your life. Now go!”
The man was in no shape to move quickly, but holding his head he began to stumble away on bad legs as fast as he could, leaving his cudgel in the dirt.
“Wait,” Lu Da called.
The man turned, but only a little, not meeting Lu Da’s eyes.
Lu Da sheathed her sword and took her staff in both hands, then whirled it about and rammed it into a nearby tree trunk that was four times the thickness of one of her wrists. With a tremendous noise, the staff buried itself more than halfway through the trunk. The top half of the tree creaked ponderously and then, with a very slow cracking noise, fell away from Lu Da against its fellows in the forest.
The guard squeaked.
“And that’s without even my god’s tooth!” Lu Da cried with satisfaction. “You’re very lucky, I must have struck you a glancing blow before. Do you think you could withstand this?”
“No … Reverend Monk?” The words turned into a frightened question as his eyes took in her top knot.
“That’s right. And I’ll do to you what I did to this tree if you ever bother Lin Chong again. Get away!”
The guard hurried off into the trees, as well as he was able.
Lu Da checked the other man just to be sure, but as she had thought, he was quite dead.
“Daughter,” Lin Chong whispered. Lu Da hurried closer in order to hear. “He spoke about … his daughter…”
“If he hadn’t tried to kill you, I wouldn’t have mashed him to bits,” Lu Da said crossly. “It’s very simple. The girl is better for it without a murderous father teaching her. I had no parents at all, and I am nothing but excellent.”
Lin Chong sighed a little, but apparently she didn’t have the strength to counter this, which Lu Da took to mean she had won the argument.
“Now, we need to remove that cangue from you,” Lu Da continued. “If you have any ideas … oh! I’ve thought of something.” She knelt down by Lin Chong very solemnly. “You must use my god’s tooth.”
Lin Chong recoiled. Not a lot—she didn’t have strength nor space to move very much—but the way her eyes dipped away with taboo and revulsion, Lu Da could tell.
“Not right…” she whispered. “Yours.”
Lu Da couldn’t say she disagreed. The prohibition against touching and using the god’s tooth of another was so strong, it was akin to the most intimate violation. Legend had it that attempting to leverage a god’s tooth that was not one’s own would also lead to a warping of its powers until it corrupted and perverted the user. The only ways a person could acquire their own artifact free and clear were to be gifted one through family—either family of blood or family sworn; to find a new one—a very rare feat, not accomplished in a thousand years; or to kill someone in fair combat and take rightful possession of theirs.
God’s teeth might be rare, but the legends that “everyone knew” of them were not.
And they must hold true, surely, because never had there been a story of a thief who stole or swindled one gaining its power. That didn’t stop it from ever happening, but all the tales warned that the god’s teeth knew somehow. Even if they did not become corrupted, any artifact would dwindle accordingly if not passed on with perfect intent, with neither underhandedness nor coercion.
Thus, the vast majority of god’s teeth were passed on as heirlooms or through fair and fatal conquest.
Or so everyone knew.
Lu Da didn’t want Lin Chong touching her god’s tooth any more than Lin Chong wanted to do it. But she saw no other way.
“Here,” Lu Da said. “Let’s do this. I’ll gift you something—this dagger; it’s a damnably fine blade.” She drew the sheathed dagger from her belt and tucked it into Lin Chong’s robes. “You don’t have much to your name, do you. But if it isn’t too much to gift me a lock of your hair, we can be sealed as sworn sisters. If we’re family, it’s not so strange for you to use it, yeah?”
“Still wrong,” murmured Lin Chong. But after a moment she added, “I would be … nothing but flattered … to be your sister. Use the dagger, that would be right…”
Lu Da took back the dagger for a moment and very solemnly lifted Lin Chong’s braided queue from the dirt. Her heart beat faster, the solemnity of the ritual taking over, the vulnerability of being bound to another.
She carefully pressed the blade against a small piece at the end of Lin Chong’s queue. The blade was so sharp that a few fingers’ width of hair fell immediately into her hand.
This is more intimate than a lover, Lu Da thought, and with great care tucked the lock of hair away in her pouch before returning the dagger to Lin Chong’s belt.
“Now we are sworn sisters,” she said. The words felt like very importantly shaped things, even though they were all individual words she had said before in other sequences. “You are not just Sister Lin who I hope to make my martial sister, but my sister in truth. It’s done. Now please, Sister Lin, you must.”
And before she could think more of it, Lu Da swept the god’s tooth from around her neck and pressed it to Lin Chong’s palm.
She felt naked. No. More naked than naked. Being naked was fine, and Lu Da had on occasion gotten in severe trouble for being naked—not always on purpose; sometimes it had been because she was drunk or on a bet or had run out of her bed in the middle of the night to defend some righteous cause only to see it was a cat wailing at a bat. But her god’s tooth … even though it usually lay dormant beneath her robes, it had a constant hum to it that had become a part of her. Removing it was like sloughing off her own skin.
Lin Chong sighed slightly, and Lu Da, who still had her hand atop her new sister’s, felt the god’s tooth open.
Distantly, though. Without its touch against her skin, she could not reach for its strength herself, and even the sense of it rang like an echo of an echo. Was this the kind of thing that Lin Chong had trained to be able to see, when they fought?
She could well imagine what Sister Lin felt now—it wasn’t so much power, although that too, but wonder. The feeling of standing at every point in every universe, past or present, real or imagined, and seeing and breathing them all at once.
Would Sister Lin be overwhelmed? Her training was what the monks had always driven Lu Da to aspire to, but if she had never practiced with a god’s tooth—should Lu Da worry?
“Be careful,” she couldn’t help saying. “Remember, you want to break the cangue from you, but carefully!”
She expected the wood and metal to shatter and fly in all directions. That certainly was what would have happened if she had attempted it. Instead, something … popped. And then another pop, soft but definite.
The cangue cracked, very smoothly, along sixteen lines that crossed it exactly in the pattern of a star. Then, all at once, the pieces slipped from Lin Chong’s neck, clattering into a neat pile below.
Fortunately, Lu Da was ready, cradling Lin Chong’s body so she wouldn’t fall with the wood and metal. Lin Chong gave another slight sigh and released the god’s tooth, letting it tumble from her hand.
Lu Da held her god’s tooth for a moment and stared at it, then at the neatly fissured stack of what had been the cangue, and not a little jealousy of her new sister rioted inside her. But as usual for Lu Da, it was a cheerful sort.
“You will have to teach me that, Elder Sister,” she murmured, swinging the god’s tooth back around her neck, where it settled into place against her tattoos.
Lin Chong seemed to have lost consciousness, and didn’t make any reply back.
Well, they had no reason to wait any longer. Lu Da didn’t fancy trying to crash through Yezhu Forest after dark. As gently as she could, she heaved Lin Chong up across her broad shoulders and set off at a steady jog through the woods.
Lin Chong was not certain she could distinguish between waking and dreaming.
She was aware of being carried over Lu Da’s back. She was aware of steady movement, of pauses to rest, of a jug of water being pressed against her lips.
But she was also aware of drifting among the stars. Of seeing every living thing in all the known and unknown world, outlined in its own vibrating energy. Of being connected somehow in a giant, infinite web—but not trapped, no, only aware that every small movement twanged and echoed along innumerable links to every other breathing creature, through history and into the future.
Such was the window the god’s tooth opened. And somehow … it hadn’t gone away.
Or was that her delirium?
It was some time before she realized she was no longer lying across Lu Da’s shoulders, but on the softness of a mattress.
“She is hot with fever,” someone said. Wet cloths pressed against the skin of her forehead. Lin Chong tried to form words, but her throat felt swollen with tumors. She pried her eyes open.
Even in Lin Chong’s wobbly vision, the woman who had spoken seemed far finer in dress and bearing than might be expected, with maroon silk drifting from her elbows. Her accent fell into place as the diction of the upper classes of the northern Ji Province—but what would a landed noblewoman be doing at the side of Lin Chong’s sickbed?
The strangeness intensified with the sound of water wringing into a basin, as the noblewoman pressed another cloth against Lin Chong’s skin next to the first.
“I think Sister Lin has very hot humors.” Lu Da’s voice, distinctive and recognizable from somewhere off to the left. “So a fever is only natural. She’ll recover, won’t she?”
“You are taking her to the Divine Physician?” asked the noblewoman.
“Of course! Sister An will know what to do.”
“I’ll send a signal right away,” said a third speaker, moving at the edge of Lin Chong’s blurred view. A rougher-sounding woman, in clothes of coarse and mended cloth, who glanced back only for their eyes to meet. “Ho! She sees us!”
“Sister Lin!” Lu Da bounded forward and grasped her hand. “Are you aware? Do not strain yourself to speak. This is Noblewoman Chai—we call her Cyclone—and Sister Zhu, who owns this inn. We call her the Crocodile. We’re right on the edge of the marsh here; you’ll soon be safe.”
Lin Chong did not understand half the words spoken. What marsh? Where were they going? Who was this Divine Physician? Lin Chong wondered, muddled, if she had died and somehow reached the Heavenly Plane. I did try … I lived according to Benevolence, however I could …
Nonsense rattled through her mind.
“I’ll go call for the boat,” said the woman called Crocodile, when Lin Chong had not managed to respond. “And then I’ll make some broth and tea with chrysanthemum and peppermint to draw out the fever while we wait. Not as good as the Divine Physician, but it worked on all five of my children, eh!”
A cheerful rustle of footsteps and she was gone.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Sister Lin,” said the noblewoman. Her features were sharp and sculpted as a dragon’s. “Our Flower Monk tells me you were a master arms instructor.”
Lin Chong had a moment’s disorientation before she realized Noblewoman Chai must mean Lu Da. The Flower Monk—she’d called herself that.
A drawn-out whistling sounded through the air, fading into the distance and only adding to Lin Chong’s confusion. She knew the sound before she’d put words to it—but they were not on the battlefield, were they? Or were they? A signal arrow, one with the head carved to let out a long whistle as it arced through the air …
“I don’t think she’s sensible,” Lu Da said, dragging Lin Chong’s wandering mind back to her surroundings. “Or her throat is so bruised she can’t puke out any words. It looks bad…”
“Sister An will help.” Noblewoman Chai put a comforting hand on Lu Da’s shoulder. Then she glanced back at Lin Chong and added thoughtfully, “Will she want to stay and join us? A master arms instructor would be a great boon, and much needed.”
“Of course she will!” Lu Da answered, and then added, more doubtfully, “Won’t she?”
“I can’t imagine she has many other places to go, having escaped Imperial custody,” Noblewoman Chai said. “I must return home—here’s what you must do. Talk to Wang Lun. Impress upon her how beneficial it will be to invite in a master arms instructor of the Imperial Guard. You can get Chao Gai to help you, I am sure. If Lin Chong is open to staying, we must convince Wang Lun to welcome her.”
“Of course she will!” Lu Da said again. “Why wouldn’t she?”
Noblewoman Chai smiled. “You are a very good-hearted sister, Flower Monk. Do this: tell Wang Lun that I have personally given our arms instructor my highest recommendation, and my friendship.”
A grin blossomed on Lu Da’s broad face. “Oh, yes! I loved Sister Lin the moment I met her, too—she’s so impressive, isn’t she? If it turned out her farts stank of perfume I wouldn’t even blink once.”
The “Cyclone” noblewoman gave her another smile but didn’t respond, and even in her bewildered, half-conscious state, Lin Chong could tell that Noblewoman Chai understood something here that Lu Da did not.
Lin Chong’s strongest suit had never been politics. But nor could she have advanced to the rank of master arms instructor without a basic understanding in navigating political winds. Lu Da, it was clear, entirely lacked such an understanding, with her hot head and her equally passionate optimism about anyone she saw as a good person. Noblewoman Chai, on the other hand, saw the currents and dangers lurking beneath …
Perhaps it was the fever and injuries, or the residual awareness of the god’s tooth. But even before the woman called Crocodile came back into the room with a strong, sharp-smelling tea, Lin Chong had begun to sense crocodiles all around her, lurking beneath the water, waiting in the marsh outside this inn. Crocodiles with the faces of people.
But Lu Da patted her hand and smiled, and the rich Cyclone and the innkeeper tended to her gently, and Lin Chong did not grasp all that was happening but she did know she was still alive.
Survive. Survive in this strange new reality of noblewomen and crocodiles sending a whistling arrow over a marsh. Survive, and then see what came next.