The maiden in the black robes walked deeper into the narrow lane, and here and there a household had hung out a gaudy scarlet lantern in celebration. Next to the others, the veiled maiden had no careful groundwork laid by any family, no long-laid threads and snake-lines running a thousand li in advance — she had come blundering into the town alone, with nothing but herself.
Not far along the lane stood a youth in rich brocade robes, both hands holding aloft a seal of green jade, the size of a child's palm. About it were carved a prowling dragon and a crouching tiger, and as it caught the sunlight it gleamed and glittered, with the barest tendrils of roseate light flickering up within. The brocade youth tilted his head back and squinted at this peerless treasure in his hands, his face brimming with rapture.
At his side knelt a tall old man, down on one knee, carefully wiping the mud from the youth's boots with his sleeve.
Out of the corner of his eye, the brocade youth had long since taken note of the strange maiden — the curtain-veiled hat of the shallow-screen fashion, the narrow blade in its green scabbard at her waist, the steady, measured stride. It was plain as day that she was no native of the town.
Yet the brocade youth paid her no mind, and continued to study the ancient jade seal that had lain silent for a thousand years. In the depths of his heart, he almost wished the maiden would take the notion to snatch his treasure — for it would be too dull, otherwise.
After all, two things had already fallen into his hands, a harvest so rich it far exceeded his hopes. If he did not find some way to occupy himself, he would only be able to take his old retainer and quit this place — and for a youth of his breeding, that would be like something missing.
It was much the same at that home of his, more than ten thousand li beyond the town, where he wore a golden robe woven with nine pythons — only that robe was forever short one claw.
To come to this town, each chosen one was permitted to carry three tokens, kept each in their own brocade pouch and embroidered bag. One pouch had been handed over to the gate-keeper at the outset — a toll that had to be paid; say who would in what high place, pass a country gate, however broken down, even a sovereign of a realm or the founding patriarch of a sect, they had to submit to this rule, plain and simple. The remaining two pouches meant, at the most, one might carry two treasures out of the town; otherwise, scrape up ten or a hundred treasures as you liked, and every one of them had to be given back. The tokens in the pouches were coins of three special forms — the lucky coin that the common folk struck to celebrate the raising of a ridge-beam; the spring-welcome coin that the imperial palace hung upon peach-wood plaques each year; and the offering coin borne in the palm of the City God idol. Though they were called coins, in truth they were wrought of a rare and precious gold-essence, and to most common mortals "below the mountain," even the official stamped silver was a rarity, let alone a whole pouch of heavy "gold" — enough to make a man deliver his heirloom treasure into their hands with a willing heart.
The brocade youth, poring over those three sorts of coin unrecorded in any orthodox history, had studied them down the whole road and could not tease out a single principle from any of them.
Ahead, the maiden, exuding an icy, forbidding air, walked straight on, treating the master and servant in the lane as if they were not there at all.
On a sudden impulse, the brocade youth changed his mind. He put away the jade seal, stowing it in a cloth bag that had been prepared beforehand and hung at his waist — yet he still stood in the middle of the lane, with no intention of yielding the way.
The tall, pale-skinned old man also rose to his feet, and said in a soft, eunuch-tinged voice, thin as a thread: "Your Highness, here is one who has stepped into the hall — a practiced martial hand, and not to be taken lightly. Beyond the town, there would be no cause for concern. But in this place, even this body of yours truly, which follows a path of pure martial refinement, bears at every moment the crushing restraint of this small world, and finds it most unpleasantly trying. Should I throw all my breath into full operation, fling every aperture wide, it would be like seas and rivers rushing back upon their mouth — my meridians and apertures would flood over and overrun, beyond all checking. In such a pass, this one's own death is a trifle; it is your Highness's safety that weighs most heavily. If, through my want of care, the smallest fault should appear in your Highness's age-old endeavor of probing the Dao, how should this one account to his Majesty and the Empress Dowager on our return?"
The brocade youth, with a teasing air, said: "Uncle Wu, since you left the palace you have grown wordy. In former days, inside the palace, year round you turned over the same few sentences again and again — duller by far than that idiot parakeet my elder sister keeps."
That the old man called himself "this one," with a subservience steeped through bone and marrow, and took a private pride in it — could only mark him as a eunuch of the palace, loyal through and through.
Seeing that his young master seemed not to grasp his meaning, the old man was forced to be plainer still: "Your Highness, here in this lane, this person has the potential to pose a threat to you."
The brocade youth drawled lazily: "I have heard, to be sure, that on the road of cultivation the three teachings and nine schools are a tangle of dragons and snakes, full of crooked doings and more side doors by half. But she and I have met but by the chance of a passing acquaintance. Would she, at the sight of wealth, rise up to kill and plunder? Surely not. If everyone 'on the mountain' were so minded, would the realm not long since be plunged into chaos?"
The old man sighed. The dynasties below the mountain and the immortal houses above it, for all their seeming accord, looked on one another with mutual distaste — two sides eyeing each other with equal loathing.
The brocade youth was rather downcast. "Enough, enough. To lay this rotten account at a slip of a girl's door — that would not be the deed of a great man."
The maiden came to a stop before him, her left hand resting on the hilt of her blade.
The brocade youth smiled, turned his body aside, and gestured for the maiden to pass first.
The maiden in black also slackened her pace a little, and half turned, the eyes behind the veil-pendant sharp with wary vigilance.
When the aged eunuch noticed the maiden's two hands, swathed in cotton bandages over fresh wounds, he could not keep from knitting his brows.
"Insolence!"
All at once the old man thundered — a spring thunderclap bursting from his tongue — and his feet seemed almost to slip; his towering figure was there before the brocade youth, and with a light settle of his back he drove the youth on a concealed angle against the wall of the lane, at the same time splaying the five fingers of his left hand.
From the center of his palm came a dull, weighted thud.
It turned out that someone had struck at the side of the brocade youth's head with a stone as though it were a concealed weapon.
The force of it was fearsome — enough, nearly, to punch clean through a wall.
The old man smashed the fist-sized stone to powder within his palm, yet did not strike out at that assassin; instead, his right fist lashed toward the maiden in black.
The blade-wearing maiden hesitated a moment, fought down the instinct to draw her blade, and instead cocked her head aside — just clearing that heavy, mighty, uncompromising fist.
The gust of the blow scattered the thin gauze of the maiden's veil in a single breath.
The tall old man turned his straight punch into a sweeping blow, the fist coming about to crash into the maiden's head.
The force of the fist flowed full and round, without the least deadening hitch.
The maiden had no choice but to lift both arms swiftly, lay the backs of her hands one atop the other and hold them poised beside her ear, in a crisscross defensive guard set before the path of the blow.
The next instant, the maiden was slid sideways a dozen-odd paces.
She spat out a slow breath of spent air, and with the hand whose blood had soaked through more of the cotton, reached up and set right the veil that had been knocked askew upon her head.
She was a little angry.
The maiden turned and fixed the tall old man, who had glanced once this way and that, with a deliberate look. "If it had not been me, he would already be a dead man."
The old man acted as though he had heard nothing. Yet compared with a moment before, this old eunuch, richly versed in the ways of ambush and treachery, had demoted the maiden's threat to second place — the first seat upon the throne he had given over to whoever it was, on the lane's other side, who had struck that blow.
Of course, aside from master and servant, the true outsiders in this lane numbered only two.
At the far end of the lane stood a masked man, tall and gaunt.
His arms, however, were extraordinarily thick — muscles swelling like knotted balls of iron.
At his waist hung two sacks, packed full with round, bulging objects.
He simply stood where he was, as if to say that the ambush a moment before had been no more than a word of warning.
When that cold, forbidding gaze swept across the maiden's body — the man's lips curled into a hint of a smile, and he flicked out his tongue, his eyes burning hot.
The maiden laughed, a cold little "heh," and said two words.
"Come back!"
No sooner had the words left her than a sword swept past, over and behind her head.
The flying sword came to her side and circled her at speed, like a child wheedling and coaxing.
She said crossly: "Scram!"
The flying sword vanished in a flicker.
Master and servant stood utterly dumbstruck.
It was not the art of the flying sword itself that startled the aged eunuch.
It was the abysmal fear he felt that the maiden could harness a flying sword at will in this place.
That feeling carried the old man back, in a blur, to his youth — his first time entering the palace, trembling and submissive, when on some far-off day he had watched, from a distance, a senior official in a vermilion python robe walking beneath the palace walls.
It was not, of course, any awe for a eunuch whose very name he never learned — it was the dread of that one slash of blinding crimson.
Coming back to himself, the brocade youth smiled, full of self-mockery, stepped forward, and asked in a solicitous tone: "Uncle Wu, are you all right?"
The white-haired old eunuch's face was somber. He shook his head. "Careful is best. If it comes to the worst, this one will..."
The youth waved his hand quickly. "Then how about offering our apologies?"
The old man was caught unprepared, and then grief and self-reproach overwhelmed him.
To shame one's master is to die.
Especially in a house of emperors and kings!
But the brocade youth was already smiling. "Uncle Wu, when a wrong has been done, a word of apology is no great hardship."
The old man still thought it unwise — and the brocade youth had already walked on toward the maiden.
In that instant, a hundred emotions surged through the old man.
There was not the merest speck of mud upon the youth's back.