Beneath Ceaseless Skies - We Shall Drink Wine by Andrew K Hoe (2024)

This must be what happened:

The head elder said I would find Ai-Lian in the wooded hills that bristle with red maples. As the evacuating townsfolk slung meager belongings onto packhorses under flickering torchlight, the ascendant moon enflamed the lavender canopy beyond the town walls. I handed the reins of my horses to the elder himself as he supervised the evacuation. His were an uncouth people—but terrified. They eyed my sheathed jian, Fate Cutter, immortalized in song by countless minstrels. That was how they knew me through my riding mask. I reassured each harried frontiersman and woman, each rough-clothed child, with the clasp of an elbow, the pat of a shoulder. I touched them all, saying in the strong northern dialect of the Zhong-ren, “ni-men bu pa. Ni-men yao shenma hao pa, fang kai ba. Ni-men fang xin.” But huddled before me, they were afraid. They would not let go their fears. They would not take heart.

Some clasped graceless dao blades in martial salute, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. These nan-ren, who strove to be separate from the Empire, now wanted its protection this moon-bright night—but I would give it to them.

“The riots have stopped in the Imperial cities,” I told them. “You will be safe there.”

They bowed their heads. If any had been smug that fighting had broken out in the capitals, tonight they didn’t dare tout their independence. If they had only accepted the beneficence of the Zhong-ren, these nan-ren would not be in the peril they were in now.

I wanted to wait for the sun. As I had aged, the brightness started to bother me, but if my worst fears were confirmed tonight—that he was infected—then he’d be weaker, slower in the light. But these nan-ren started packing the moment their lookouts sighted me, wasting any element of surprise. If Ai-Lian were watching, as he no doubt was, he would have plenty of warning.

No, I needed to face him now.

And so, I set out on foot. If I could not kill Ai-Lian, then I had to delay him until the people escaped. That was—is? it’s so unclear—is my last thought as I break the wooded paths to find... him. Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I tear off my mask, let it fall to the ground. He sits cross-legged beneath a cherry tree, at a low table laid with a small brazier and lit lantern, a wine pitcher, a single celadon cup, and his sheathed jian to the side. If he is as aimless as they say, he must have a horse, a wagon or tent, but such accoutrements are unseen tonight.

“Guang-Ping,” he says, like it hasn’t been decades. And then, my old title, “Jian-di.” Younger sword-brother. And then, in his nan-ren tongue, murmured so many times to me— “Ngi jon hoi loi.”

My lips can’t help but form the Zhong-ren version. “Wo hui lai le, ni bun-dan.”

I have returned... you foolish egg.

How many times did I call him that as we jested over dialects?

Oh, memories emerge, so salient that the past collides with the present—how we journeyed together; scuffed traveling robes, threadbare boots, hair strands slipped from their bindings, horses if we had them, our trusty jian—as visceral as the forest air between us. How strange to hear his voice, calling me a young man.

It’s been thirty years.

Forty since we slew the ichilid, the deed for which we are most remembered. The one I’ve spent the decades trying to forget.

“It’s been too long, Ai-Lian,” I reply hoarsely.

In the quiet spaces of the night, I’ve trod this path back to him over and over. I’ve said I’m sorry I blamed him for what happened at Ha-Gwei-Shan. I’ve fallen into his arms, only to awaken to emptiness.

He rises, nonplussed, as if three decades have been nothing but a long summer’s night watching stars. His gown is black silk, a bronze-and-copper pattern, amber flowers blooming across the fabric. Luxuriant yet muted. Unlike the splashy colors he once favored. His eyes flick to his sheathed jian—the one minstrels call Snake Tongue—leaning against the low table, laid like a prop in the street operas we watched as boys; as much an actor’s stagecraft for this unfolding play as the wind-rustled trees. The rising moon makes the figure beneath the maple a man-shaped window into all I’ve lost.

“I know why you’ve come,” he says.

We draw jian and circle each other.

Is that how this night started...?

No, this began forty years back. After Ha-Gwei-Shan, I left Ai-Lian for the Zhong-ren Empire whence we’d journeyed. But the Troubles hadn’t fully ended; for years still, dire happenings recalled me to this outer territory of the nan-ren. Only when the region calmed, after roads were set and outposts established, did I find the strength to stay away.

But this night as I crest this moonstruck rise, Ai-Lian’s smile pulls me; his gaze steals my words. “Guang-Ping. Jian-di.” And then, in his nan-ren tongue, murmured so many times to me. “You’ve returned.”

I can’t help but correct him with proper Zhong-ren. “Wo hui lai le... ni bun-dan.”

You foolish egg. As if it’s his fault I’ve been away so long.

He laughs! Yes! On all our quests, he would tease me with uncouth nan-ren-hwa as we trudged forgotten paths to danger, and I would correct him with Imperial-hwa.

This was how minstrels portrayed us, the Heroic Pair, one Northern, one Southern—two opposite peoples cooperating to save lives.

And the audience would laugh. Beneath our hoods and carefully wrapped scabbards, Ai-Lian and I would exchange looks and grin.

Ah. But those times of sneaking into performances of our exploits are long past. The moon tonight is alien, too big, its silver light cutting through my remembrances, until I break the separating darkness.

“It’s been too long, Ai-Lian,” I say hoarsely.

He eyes my rumpled robes, my scuffed boots. My cracked lips, stray hairs escaping my bachelor’s topknot. It should be an elder scholar’s knot, a venerable gentleman’s binding, but I’ve kept my hair in the same style, and nobody has protested.

“Have you journeyed far, Jian-di?”

I lower my pack to the grass but keep my jian. “I have.”

He must think I’ve come from Shao-Shan-Xiang, the village I established with my band of reformed criminals. I forsook the roving hero’s life to dig sluices barefoot with the men, turning fields for turnips and carrots. No poetry, no gentle sips of wine! The farmer’s hoe, the sun-baked skin! But those who remembered the exploits of the Heroic Pair, Ai-Lian and Guang-Ping, had called for me. Their messenger presented a travel-crumpled letter, brushstrokes done by a shaking hand.

...we see firelight in the hills beyond our townships, where he sits drinking. He roves from place to place, as he’s done since you departed. At first, we were pleased, sir Guang-Ping. He exterminated demons. He arrested criminals. He refused money, even donating chests confiscated from highwaymen. There was no reason to suspect anything...

I had found some peace after Ha-Gwei-Shan... the ichilid we hunted in those mountains, sobbing in the dark caverns, sounding so like a little girl. Even after its eyes faded milky white and its tendrils sprouted forth, it cried. The minstrels perform the song to this day, embellished from invented details, increasingly fantasized through each retelling. They weren’t there. They never mention how we figured out it was the orphan girl who’d been infected.

She watched out for the younger children.

She was too kind.

We held hands when we entered the darkness of Ha-Gwei-Shan. Our torches guttered. The girl couldn’t have infected Ai-Lian—I was right there. Yet the letter mentioned his generosity. Donating confiscated chests? He never did that in all the years I knew him. Still, perhaps the change was natural. Yes, surely the years had polished Ai-Lian’s kindness—that must be it. Time has certainly changed me. Why not him?

Even so, I burned the letter and took up my jian. I ordered the men to bar the gates behind me. If I returned, I could only be admitted during daylight. Only daylight. I rode the hundred li to that dark mountain, Ha-Gwei-Shan. There, I unearthed a forgotten grave.

Under his maple tree—wait, that’s incorrect; it was—is—a cherry tree—Ai-Lian doesn’t seem to notice the grime smudging my cheeks, the reek of hard journeying on me. “Come, Guang-Ping. Let me look at you.”

The crickets chirp. Moonlight limns his face.

...he resupplies from us only at nighttime. Never in daylight. He hoods himself, but we’ve caught glimpses...

“Come closer, Jian-di. Why do you hang back so?”

Under the lavender-shaded leaves of the cherry, Ai-Lian’s dark locks shimmer above silken robes. Like me, he wears a bachelor’s topknot. He stands, and his face enters the clarifying moonlight.

...we thought he was like you, sir Guang-Ping, that he simply aged well. It took us years to notice...

He looks barely twenty-seven.

The grave was empty. What we slew that night—where were its remains?

“I know why you’ve come,” he says sadly.

We draw jian, cricket song broken as blades leap from dark scabbard-homes.

No! What am I missing?

Before we draw, the ascendant moon lights the cherry blossoms, enflames the maple’s lavender canopy. This I remember clearly. Cricket song fills the night.

“Come closer, Jian-di. Why do you hang back so?”

I clutch my scabbarded jian—the blade street-singers call Fate Cutter. Ai-Lian and I crisscrossed these hills during the Troubles, confronting warlords, bandit hordes, demons. On that night forty years hence, we tracked the ichilid to an orphanage. It was a youngling that hadn’t learned to fully disguise itself, had infected a pig-tailed girl. Through her, it was feeding on local livestock. When we approached, grim-faced, the girl squealed, then leapt out a third story window and skittered into the dark. We chased it to cold and dark Ha-Gwei-Shan.

Yet tonight, under this bone-white moon, Ai-Lian does not mention the harried past. He pouts, oblivious to his impossible youth. “Why do you hesitate, Guang-Ping? Shall we drink wine and recite poetry into the night?” He pronounces drink wine as yeem jeow, that strange accent of his that time has left uncorrected. That nan-ren mannerism neither a gentleman-scholar’s education nor I could correct.

Slowly, I raise Fate Cutter—sheathed blade down—in martial salute. The analects I’d researched before coming here, about the ichilid-infected, mentioned how, in other lands, sheathed swords are hung at the belt, that the manner in which a blade is held does not indicate intention, as it does for us... why am I distracted tonight? He’s asked about drinking—now that’s the Ai-Lian I knew from thirty, forty years ago—and reciting poetry. “Wine, old friend?”

Ai-Lian’s eyes flick to Snake Tongue against the low table, laid out like a prop in the street operas we watched as boys.

I feel he needs only the barest shrugging movement and it would ring from its sandalwood scabbard, the very blade that deflected the ichilid’s lightning-fast tendrils. Though I’ve practiced over the decades, I’m not what I once was. And he was always the stronger blade dancer.

Why couldn’t I have just ignored that letter?

...we’ve sent for assistance, but we think he intercepts the imperial hunters...

...you were his only equal. The only one who can face him now...

I push the letter from my thoughts—the townsfolk’s scared faces, too. Before setting out, I waved the elder’s trembling constables off. They would have been of no help against an infected commoner, much less an ichilid-bearing jian master. Their frames sagged with relief when I dismissed them. Even with my age-dulled skills, one such as I could’ve sliced through them easily.

Ai-Lian and I eye each other across the leaf-strewn landscape.

“I know why you’ve come.”

Our drawn jian ring above the cricket song; glimmer under the bone-white moon.

Our moonlit battle I’m clear on. Watching him closely, testing him for odd changes in behavior. Uncharacteristic kindness, like that girl. And yet... Something doesn’t want me to remember. Something alters the calligraphy of my mind, a brush dab here, a slashed radical there. A vertical stroke over the horizontal line for one and the number becomes ten. A maple tree becomes a cherry; a heroic deed, a murder. Ngi jon hoi loi, wo hui lai le, both meaning that I’ve returned... but have I really? Spilled ink bleeds through the pages in my storehouse of memories—

“Shall we drink wine?” Ai-Lian says. “The way you’re holding your sword, I’d think you want to duel. Do you, Jian-di? Want to duel?”

We trained as orphans under the roof of the same Blade Master. Thus, honesty between sword-brothers is due. “Yes, Jian-ge.” Older sword-brother. “We must duel. But not yet.” Yes, let’s delay. If I die tonight, he’ll seek vengeance against the townsfolk who called me.

In his eyes pools the old hurt; that hardness whenever I returned for his help only to leave again. Only his help. But he always accepted my appeals, even as I came less and less, until I finally stayed away for good.

Ai-Lian shakes his head. “You still deny what really happened. You think... you think I’m infected. You wish to see if I move the same. The townspeople have their stories. It’s me, Guang-Ping. I’m the same man you’ve always known.”

I keep my voice steady. “We still need to duel. To be certain.”

It’s the only way to see if it’s really him. Has he grown more lithe? Does the moon grant him strength? The ichilid is a stealthy demon, if demon is what it is. As the minstrels tell, fingers splaying their zither-strings, the ichilid gathers lesser ilk and controls them—but no. From what we saw beneath Ha-Gwei-Shan, the remains we found in its feeding pit, we know differently. The ichild eats demons, culling the weak so only the strong survive. It feasts on these lesser monsters first, and only when they have been depleted does it turn to livestock and people, and even then to villains nobody will miss. Ironic, no? An ichilid makes its area of infiltration safer.

Under Ha-Gwei-Shan, could one of those whipping tendrils have touched him before the creature stopped bawling in its little girl voice, Ma-ma! Jiu-ming-ah, Ma-ma!—Mother! Save me, Mother! That youngling, wounded and immature, nearly destroyed us both. Ni bu pa! Ai-Lian had cried. Don’t fear! Those lines the Heroic Pair would shout to reassure frightened commoners we were racing to rescue. Ni fang xin! we’d say, together. Take heart!

But tonight, I fight alone.

“Jian-ge, you haven’t aged a day. If anything, you look younger.”

“Not everyone’s hair greys at the same rate. You yourself still look youthful, Jian-di. Is that a bachelor’s topknot?”

Of course, I’m unmarried. He was the only one I ever...

No, I won’t let him flirt around this.

“There’ve been disappearances,” I continue. “One every year. Always a surly traveler, one nobody misses, whose vanishing only gets noticed years after.”

“Have you been riding from township to township, investigating missing persons? Yes, bandits tried ambushing me. Yes, I’ve handled them. But I’m not responsible for every missing person. And wouldn’t an ichilid infect its victims, rather than kill them? Why attract suspicion by making people disappear?”

This is true. Ichilids infiltrate slowly, because it takes them long to reach full strength, and these warmer nan-ren climes weaken them. Yet younglings burrow so deep that their hosts forget what they are—until the ichilids emerge as fully realized adults. Not wholly conscious in their incubation, they make mistakes, from which their true nature can be discovered.

“Perhaps you’re like that too-kind girl,” I say. “Acting on instinct. Feeding on blood to grow. Maybe you’re... immature.”

Ai-Lian breaks into sudden laughter—how the moon favors his white-toothed smile! “Immature? Well, you have me there, Jian-di.” In boyhood, Ai-Lian’s smirk always threatened sudden mischief. Being near him was like standing under a heavy cloud, the air beneath quickened, petrichor-scented.

I can’t help but return his smile. “Dueling was our favorite game. That is, the Ai-Lian I know wouldn’t be able to resist.”

Ai-Lian’s eyes flick to his jian leaning against the table, laid out like a theater prop in those night operas we watched. I hold my breath. Even ichilid younglings are deadly. “After all these years, I hoped you’d finally accepted what happened... While I traveled and spread myself about the wider world, you retreated to your village—Shao-Shan-Xiang, was it? Now, the Troubles are over. The city riots in your beloved Empire have ended. Join me, Jian-di.”

But I take too long to answer, and he accepts there will be no homecoming tonight. He sighs. “I know why you’ve come.”

Around us, cricket song rises, cicadas scream. Jian dances along jian, steel ringing steel.

In the street operas, actors wore backwards-facing masks—eyes painted white, rice-paper streamers for tendrils—to signify infestation. Such characters proceeded with their quiet lives, unaware they snuck out at night to drink demon blood, to infect lone walkers on moon-bathed roads. Masked actors tapped the travelers’ shoulders, and they would don backwards-masks, too. Fifty years, the Imperial analects state in spidery script: ichilid younglings slumber for fifty years, all the while slowing—no, reversing—their host’s aging. At the play’s climax, the players turned masks frontwards amid drums pounding and cymbals clashing.

“I’m the same man you’ve always known,” Ai-Lian almost whispers—wait, did he say that? Why does it feel like I’m not supposed to remember?

An ichilid-infested jian master would be terrifying. It would possess his skills and its speed and strength.

“Dueling was our favorite game,” I insist. His eyes flick, as a cobra lashing prey, to Snake Tongue—the minstrels always define his quickness with reptilian epithets. Jian are gentlemen’s weapons, neither crude dao nor savage lao-hu tiger hooks. Jian are lithe, requiring delicate wielding to effect feather-light cuts on throats and arteries. There is the pounding heart in their usage, the sweet exhalations of exertion, twisting and redirecting like two lovers entwining.

But Ai-Lian’s entire body tenses, coiled to strike. “After all these years, I hoped you’d finally accept what happened, hoped you were ready to face the truth and join me...” He raises eyes into the cool night. I think tears glimmer in his upturned gaze... or is that glimmering rage? “We don’t have to fight. Cannot two acquaintances reminisce, Jian-di? Exchange poems from wine-moistened lips?”

Now this is unexpected. A battle of words? Like when we journeyed as the Heroic Pair? “Poems?”

“Yes, poems.”

In dreams, I still feel the tunnel’s chill as we crept forth under Ha-Gwei-Shan, his hand gripping mine before the screeching ichilid charged at us in its child’s body. I also remember the loneliness of orphanhood: a hard Master; sword drills; shed blood; beds in inns when we had taels to spare—but it was those nights before our legend spread, the hard ground and too-small fires and exchanging poorly improvised verse, that I remember most.

When pressed, Ai-Lian demurs to wine. The old Ai-Lian, that is. He reaches for his pitcher. I might survive this night after all. I lower Fate Cutter.

“Let us recite poetry into the night,” I agree. “Time enough to duel afterwards.”

Crickets chirp as we sit cross-legged at the low table. The lantern flickers, orange light casting soft flecks as he heats the wine with his small brazier. Such delicate movements from such lowborn heritage. If my noble family had survived and raised me in their haughty ways, I would sneer at his origins. But I’ve sloughed off the arrogance of the Empire, the brutal supremacy of the Zhong-ren. I have learned equity and empathy. Unlike nan-ren who complain about their generations of poverty, he’s pulled himself by the bootstraps. See how he pulls his gentlemanly sleeve taut with one hand as he pours! Above, a night bird swims into the blue darkness.

“I suppose,” he says, “your poetry must be improved now the Empire’s settled. Whatever do you do nowadays, with no demons to slay, no warlords to depose?”

“I live richly off the rewards from past exploits. What have you done with your share of the taels awarded us?”

“Live richly?” Ai-Lian bites his lip, like he’s holding a flood of anger behind his teeth. Almost immediately, his face smooths into a smile as he prepares his single cup. He knows I used that phrase deliberately. His low-born bitterness remains, which should relieve me. It’s his smile that unnerves me. His restraint. That is different. Ah, back then, he would’ve railed at my carelessness with wealth. “I saved some gold ingots. Enough to live by.” A breeze rustles the branches. “I only quested for the free wine, anyway.”

Free wine. Yes, he drank heavily after missions. When we earned our jian, he argued we should use our swordskill for others besides the Imperial Court. Why aid only those who flew the Zhong-ren banner? “I’m nan-ren!” he cried. “Don’t I know how to help my own people?” He only came to these foothills at the Empire’s feet when I wouldn’t be swayed, my heart pulled by the need to uplift the wretched, to serve. To save. The nan-ren needed to be uplifted to the glory of the Zhong—how could he, a nan-ren himself, not understand?

Ai-Lian offers me the first drink. He watches as I inhale first the fumes of fermented rice and plum. I feel the heat from his gaze, as I did on those noble missions when the two of us journeyed these haunted lands.

This is all my fault.

He wouldn’t have gone to Ha-Gwei-Shan if not for me. If I’d done as he’d asked.

But tonight, I drain my regrets in one swallow. I consider the empty cup. Slowly, I rub its inside with my thumb. “I left because I couldn’t look at you without seeing a dead child.”

“We had no choice, Jian-di. It was hunting us.”

“A youngling mimics its host so well, Jian-ge, that it forgets what it is. Until it matures, it doesn’t even know it sneaks out at night. It feeds, defends territory, infects others, but the host’s memories are expunged. Indeed, it becomes the host. Manners of speech. Habits of personality. The look in her eyes, Ai-Lian. It was a girl when it died.”

“And if I’m infected, Guang-Ping? If an ichilid sleeps within me now, what then separates it from myself? If ichilids mimic the host to the point the host forgets his infection, then isn’t the personality retained? The same memories? Am I not myself, as that youngling was that girl?”

“Not exactly the same memories, Jian-ge. Some are altered by the parasite to make the host kinder. To prepare the host for full emergence. I’ve been researching in the Imperial libraries. Haven’t you ever wondered why we call them i-chi-lid?” I return his cup. His fingers brush mine, sparking the same fiery tingle on my skin. He pours. He drinks. I watch carefully. So, so carefully.

“Researching, you say?” He looks down, speaking more to the cup than me. “Then you’ve passed the cities on your way here. I confess, I’ve always wondered whence those strange syllables came.”

He stares at where my lips glossed, where my thumb caressed, the celadon’s inner curve. “A half-burned mariner’s log mentions a wayward expedition of a Ming Fleet vessel. They encountered a strange land, where the folk battled a strange affliction—an infection that caused the host to... turn nicer. The vessel’s crew barely escaped with their lives.”

“A fascinating story?” He eyes me, interested—folktales say ichilids abhor any textual mention of their kind. They take pains to expunge any literary references, driving their hosts to burn books.

“More ash-smudged pages than legible writing, unfortunately.”

He nods, finally raising the cup to drink. Unlike me, Ai-Lian sips slowly. Before Ha-Gwei-Shan, he drank often to forget our battles against warlords, demonic infestations, hauntings. He would throw back the cup as I did just now. Some nights he swigged straight from clay pots. When had he started using celadon cups?

Small changes in habit. Inscrutable nudges in routine, accreting over decades.

After we returned from Ha-Gwei-Shan, he chased out those corrupt orphanage keepers. He inspected the other children, observing them in sunlight—did they cringe? Did they prefer shadowed spaces? He doted on them. I’d thought he was assuaging the same guilt I felt. Or finally learning what I always hoped he’d learn: that we needed to be kind to one another. That Zhong-ren ideals of service worked among the nan-ren. That he accepted that my way, inspired by the analects and Imperial doctrines, was the true path to helping those impoverished peoples at the margins of the Empire, the nan-ren being the most stubborn hindrance to imperial unity and harmony. The great problem that eluded the imperial sages—that the two of us would solve.

Or was he simply following the first niggling instincts of a gestating newborn? Younglings take a lifetime to mature, digging deep into the host. If what burrowed into that orphaned girl had gotten into Ai-Lian, perhaps it needed to restart its cycle.

“The truth, Guang-Ping,” he whispers, “is that I wanted you to leave. You never said anything, but you accused me with every sidelong glance.”

I don’t expect the hardness of his admission, and hardness also leaks into my voice. “You started sleeping on the other side of the fire.”

“You never called me back, did you?”

The moonlight bathes the lavender-orange leaves of the forest with its unforgiving light. The crickets sing, uncaring.

I turn from the too-bright moon, from his too-hard question. An embedded ichilid only surfaces to infect or to defend itself.

“Do you remember, Ai-Lian,” I begin slowly, “when we watched the dragon boat races?”

“The dragon boat races,” he repeats.

On the moonlit hill, cicadas start their gentle whine. The lantern’s candle wickers.

“Jian-ge, remember the candied plums I bought? It was—”

“Jian-di. I stole those plums for you.”

“Yes. You’re right.” How have I forgotten that? “It caused such a row. Don’t you... wish we could return to those days?”

Ngi jon hoi. Wo hwei lei.

You return. No, I return. In Zhong-ren custom, the newcomer announces his arrival... why does this feel wrong? Is this how our moonlit battle happened?

Ai-Lian places his palms upon his table, fingers splayed—nothing hidden. Not anymore. “Enough probing, Guang-Ping. You only prove the point you yourself made. If I were an ichilid, I’d have the same memories.” The moon is lovely. He replaces his cup. “I know why you’ve come.”

Snake Tongue and Fate Cutter fly from scabbards, crossing one, two, three, and the night shatters.

After the tumultuous races, bright lights from lanterns shaped into cats and foxes, blue, pink, orange illuminated the night; hawkers called their wares; breathless youths stole kisses in not-so-shadowed alleys. And there were the operas. In the quiet lateness, the tale of Lord Archer Yi was enacted, he who shot down the many suns until only one remained. In the lessened light, the ichilids surfaced from unknown fissures and Lord Yi was the first infected, changing oh-so-gradually from valiant hero to kindly tyrant.

He put down his long-treasured bow, his deadly arrows, and began patient ministry of his kingdom, alms to the poor, programs to raise the squalid subjects—though his queen-wife wondered at his aloofness, his increasingly nighttime wanderings, his moonlit courts and Night Stewards. For you see, even then, the problem of the downtrodden existed. The problem of the nan-ren, the problem of whatever backwards people the Zhong-ren were burdened to save.

Only the most steadfast of the crowds remained with Ai-Lian and I, watching the collaboration of unlikely heroes who suspected Lord Yi track him to his hidden lair.

“Aiiiiiiiii!” the players shrieked at the audience, inhuman, bloodcurdling, to signify the tendrilled horrors dying as the ichilid brood saw the strength of those united heroes and realized they would never surpass that bond—for the ichilid cannot abide weakness, and it is their way to bow to those stronger.

“Aiiiiiiiii!” the players screamed behind forwards-facing masks, making us jump in delight. For the ichilid are no more, ni bu pa, ni fang kai ba, ni fang xin—do not fear, let go, take heart. The Zhong-ren drove the tendrilled horrors south, and the nan-ren, afflicted for a while, eventually pushed back; the ichilid species was rendered extinct, alive only in stories, tales to steep the blood in delicious terror.

And at Ha-Gwei-Shan, the Heroic Pair slew the final one that survived that extermination.

Why can’t I remember this story right?

No, return to before the duel. I need to see where the old Ai-Lian ends... and where the infection takes hold. The analects contain folktales where the infected can be appealed to, simpleton stories where the ichilid fully emerges, eyes milky white, tendrils snaking from yawning too-wide mouths screeching that horrible screech... and the hapless villager says just the right thing to make the ichilid-possessed host pause. I know you’re still in there!, the character says. Fight it! A cliché, entertainment of the lowly nan-ren, but I’ll take anything.

But the old Ai-Lian—my Ai-Lian—refuses to awaken. Any hope of me surviving tonight, then, lies in knowing old Ai-Lian’s habits. For as Lord Yi changed, there was enough of him left same that his queen-wife could trick him and steal the Elixir of Immortality his alchemists had achieved, ensuring the doom of their wretched species.

An ichilid once infested a kind, sickly monk inside his temple. He couldn’t swim; thus, his ichilid couldn’t either—this became key to how that opera’s heroine saved her village.

Despite Ai-Lian’s genius with the jian, he always demurred to wine when we traveled. And tonight he’s offered me the first sip. And he’s imbibed, and he’s different.

“Yes,” I say, swallowing tears. “You’re right. It caused such a row.”

Ai-Lian offers me another cup, but I refuse. “You were always so idealistic, Guang-Ping. Always lecturing about those less fortunate. Because you had involved yourself in such informed discussions, you were awoken to nan-ren plights, because you had done the research in those ridiculous libraries you always ran to, read the reports filed by the imperial governorships—those who ruled over my people with iron fists.” He clenches the celadon cup, like he would crush it. “You could never say no, even to hunting an ichilid. Yet your misplaced good intention was what I fell in love with.” His voice becomes strained. “Even after Ha-Gwei-Shan....”

I... I don’t know what to say. What he fell in love with?

Ai-Lian places his palms on the table, fingers splayed—nothing hidden. Not anymore. “Yes. I said fell in love. So what now, Jian-di?”

Besides swordplay, our Master demanded we study the scholarly arts. The jian is a gentleman-scholar’s weapon, and to be worthy of its steel, one must be a gentleman-scholar. Calligraphy. Painting. Reading. Poetry. Though Ai-Lian always turned from scholarly readings regarding the nan-ren problem.

In this moment of brutal truth, where Ai-Lian finally, after four decades, speaks of love, I begin the first decantation among the cricket song:

Grey-skinned birch

Scarred and thin

Old wanderer paused in the forest

Your crown burns orange

Wherefore come these new branches?

These strange knots

Are you truly the same tree

I passed?

Ai-Lian strokes his chin in consideration, as if he were playing a sage in an opera. “Am I the birch, Jian-di?”

“It’s a poem about change, Jian-ge. Age has clouded my mind. After all these years, something has occurred to me. An ichilid-youngling copies its host, right? Besides granting health and slowed aging, they slowly erode the host’s personhood. Do you remember how we suspected that girl?”

Ai-Lian stares at his flickering lantern. “The orphanage was kept by a miserly couple who starved the children. The girl gave her food to others. She quieted the crying infants. Everyone loved her, thus completing the youngling’s illusion.”

“It influenced the host too rapidly. It was unnatural for any of those children to be so kind—for anyone during the Troubles to act so humanely. She changed behavior quickly, and we never questioned that.”

Ai-Lian’s voice turns hard and cold. “You just insisted that ichilid we killed had become the girl it infested. In the tales, Jian-di, ichilids are drawn to goodness. Physicians, priests, philanthropists. Kindness deflects suspicion and attracts new hosts. But what if the girl was naturally kind? The nan-ren are capable of goodness, you know. Goodness is not solely a Zhong-ren trait.”

I watch his face carefully. “I wonder, Jian-ge, whether it was really a youngling that wormed its way from cold Ha-Gwei-Shan. Do you remember those songs of exceptional ichilids more cunning than their brethren, hardier, capable of surviving fire? ‘Overlords’, they were called.”

“Is it true you started a colony of violent criminals? That you reformed them?”

His misdirection startles me. He’s been watching me all this time? “They deserved a second chance. It was part of the work—”

“The work,” Ai-Lian mutters. “Everyone you meet seems to turn over a new leaf, Jian-di. Even me. You pushed me to scholarly pursuits when I would have quit the Master’s school. You foisted poetry on me. How did you put it? Even the lower strata can achieve greatness.” Again, that hard, cold voice. “I was your social experiment, the street orphan who became a jian master. Is the ability to act well, to engender greatness in others—is that not something nan-ren can do naturally? Or are you saying only ichilids do this?”

“Ai-Lian—”

“Enough probing, Guang-Ping. You only prove the point you yourself made. If I were an ichilid, I’d have the same memories.”

He starts the second decantation:

Before my steaming bath

I disrobe, turn back

Flowers in the water—

Who’s there?

It’s a mischievous poem, though he’s not smirking as he was earlier. The rainclouds I always felt about him in boyhood now rumble; my skin prickles.

Naked, I hear the screen slide

Naked, you stare back.

O, flower-strewer

He bends towards me, almost whispering:

I know why you’ve come.

His last word barely courses the air when we pull jian from scabbards, Snake Tongue and Fate Cutter singing as they cross, one, two, three, and we leap from the table.

Forty years and he’s as quick as ever—quicker!

“You, Jian-di of the Zhong-ren, always insisting you know best!” he shouts, his jian striking as viciously as its namesake, flick-flick-clang! “How you jump to help the poor nan-ren again. Reading Zhong-ren studies of our problems. It’s nan-ren laziness that’s to blame, the analects state—not Zhong-ren policy. Did you not question why that ichilid didn’t infect other children?”

“It wasn’t strong enough! The host it had chosen—”

“How you rationalize, Jian-di! As if an ichilid would choose a weak host! You lie to yourself, you reinvent what happened to flatter your self-image, you the savior, you the one who offers rescue! And I tire of excusing your delusions!”

Hah! There—the old envy! Yes, of the Heroic Pair, they call me for succor. I am informed. I am worthy.

“You don’t care so much for helping nan-ren as you care about the stories minstrels tell of you—your self-image, your virtue—properly portrayed!”

It’s such a preposterous accusation, I almost forget to parry. I? Vain? How dare he suggest—

Snake Tongue flickers, tasting the space above my right shoulder, the inch before my knee. My left eye, had I not evaded; my left ear, had not Fate Cutter parried.

Ai-Lian holds the sword-fingers of his other hand aloft, in perfect counterbalance to his sword-grip. He runs Snake Tongue through the forms we once trained together, only his skill has reached terrifying levels. He deflects my blade in Crane Stalking Swamp Fronds, spins into Windstruck Cedars, sweeps it in Wind Mowing the Waves.

I evade, Fate Cutter leaping from one hand to the other, answering Snake Tongue with King Yama’s Defense, The Leaf-Strewn Circle, and...

Ai-Lian’s blade glissades off mine, pushing it left, right, right again. We break. “You’re not even breathing hard,” he says.

In truth, I’m about to drop Fate Cutter. “Neither are you.”

Ngi jon loi. Wo hui lai.

There is danger, the old joy of combat, the familiar rivalry of trying to best each other. But he’s winning, only a light sheen on his cheeks.

His strange dialect, his nan-ren mannerisms, his memories, his inappropriate poems, his sword-skill. Everything the same. And yet, his lessened drinking. His celadon cup. I’ve missed him so much that I ran my thumb across its inside rim to caress where his lips will touch—have touched. After that night forty years ago, his attention to those less fortunate. The letter!

At first, we were pleased, sir Guang-Ping. He harassed the bandits plaguing us until we established our own forces. He arrested criminals. He refused money. He even donated chests confiscated from highwaymen.

Each phrase, proof of his infection. Words that pulled me from my denial that he’d simply grown gentler with age.

It’s been forty years—not fifty. It’s not too late.

Maybe there’s enough of the old Ai-Lian to hear my last entreaty. Please, let this be so.

“Listen, Ai-Lian! If that girl carried an Overlord, then there’s hope. I traveled to Ha-Gwei-Shan. I found the grave we dug to hold its burnt remains. The grave was empty. What else but an Overlord survives fire? What could come into these warmer regions? What could survive the Great Purge of which the operas sing?”

Ai-Lian shakes his head. “Guang-Ping, stop your delusions. Stop refusing to see.”

I wheeze at his plaintiveness. What delusions? What do I not see?

The moon reaches zenith, its ghostly light directly overhead. “If we kill the Overlord, Ai-Lian, its younglings die with it—we could cure you. One more quest, Jian-ge! Let me help you expel the Overlord from your body. Let’s finish what we started forty years ago!”

Ai-Lian’s eyes narrow, almost slitted—like the serpent that has become his epithet. “Again, the problem is me. Another attempt to better your lowborn friend.”

How can he be bitter about class structure at this time? “I’m trying to save you!”

Ai-Lian stops circling. “What if, Jian-di, I don’t want saving? Not in the way you want to save me? What if the cloying generosity of those who see themselves as superior isn’t generosity at all?” The night creatures continue their soft songs, as if nothing is wrong, as if nothing has been wrong all this time.

Snake Tongue lowers. “Guang-Ping,” he says softly. Lovingly. “In the tunnels, we held hands, like we did the night of the dragon boat races.”

“We didn’t hold hands the whole time,” I say, furiously blinking my sorrow away. “We... we lost touch for a moment. When it came at us from behind. I couldn’t see. I...”

Wait. Did it really happen that way?

“We were both drained,” he says patiently, as if speaking to a stubborn child. “We camped at the mountain’s base.”

I’m suddenly dizzy, both standing before Ai-Lian now—and simultaneously on my knees, staring into the blankness of the pit I disturbed. No.

It happened this way: the Overlord faked its death and burrowed away. It crept down to our camp that night, and while we slept, did not merely infect but climbed into...

“If that was an Overlord,” Ai-Lian continues, “then it wouldn’t have acted on instinct. It would’ve been self-aware, known better than to feed off local livestock. As you said, it wouldn’t have acted so kindly to the other orphans in such a noticeable way. So... performing these actions was intentional. It heard of the Heroic Pair and decided to eliminate a threat. It lured us to Ha-Gwei-Shan.”

I shake my head. “Jian-ge. There’s no way—”

“No way it would take a high-born like yourself? That ichilids always infect lowborn?”

Is this what our old jests have become? He trying to convince me of a truth; I trying to convince him of mine? Ngi jon hoi. “That’s not what I meant! Do not turn this into another classist argument!” Wo hwei lai.

Tonight, he’s never taken his eyes off me. All those times I turned to find him staring. Ever since that night, he’s watched me carefully, even on those new quests I returned to beg his help for. He slept on the other side of the fire. And I never called him back. Oh, regret, sharp as this moonlight illuminating this summer night in merciless clarity!

No. I’m not only Zhong-ren, those who form the Empire’s center, but from the high family of—well, yes, Zhong-ren have oppressed the nan-ren, and there are Imperials who vociferously argue for—well, that is a small minority—

—why must I justify? He is the Overlord.

I want to sob, but I can’t. Not before this thing within him—for he is the one infected—that has usurped that space in my heart that once held my sword-brother. I fall back. The tears come, blurring my vision. No, no! It’s him. The townspeople begged me to investigate, but I’ve always known. Ichilids are notoriously quick. The one we hunted all those years ago was wounded, but it has had decades to recover. And I am pure.

This is not a question of class or wealth—of course he’d cloud the issue with that.

I raise Fate Cutter to strike, but Ai-Lian counters not with Snake Tongue but a question, a simple, soft question asked with a snake-tongued voice. “Those librarians you visited. The Ming vessel’s escape. Did they allow you access to the analects... without resistance?”

What a strange query. “Of course not! Well, they did not recognize me at first, so they...”

“But they let you pass, Jian-di. Did you touch them?”

“I...” No. Is he saying I, like one of the infected characters in those street operas, tapped a sage-librarian’s shoulder, and that librarian... what? Put on a backwards-facing mask?

“Have you touched anyone tonight? The townspeople who called for you—did you touch them?”

I reassured each harried frontiersman and woman, each rough-clothed child, with the clasp of an elbow, the pat of a shoulder. I touched them all, saying in the strong northern dialect of the Zhong-ren, “ni-men bu pa. Ni-men yao shenma hao pa, fang kai ba. Ni-men fang xin.”

Ai-Lian is merciless. “Those convicts you convinced to turn to service at Xiao-Shan-Xiang. Did you touch them, too, Jian-di?”

Ngi jon hoi loi. Why can’t I respond?

No. I shake my head. I give ground, and he paces forward, pressing his advantage.

“It’s me, Guang-Ping. As you said, when an ichilid takes a host, it becomes that person—”

“It steals memories,” I say. “It rips a person’s soul out.”

Ai-Lian spreads his hands, jian swishing casually to his side. “Guang-Ping, Jian-di, I remember when we first met in the Master’s hall. I remember holding each other in the cold night, whispering to ourselves that everything would be all right, that all wasn’t lost.”

“You’re not him!”

“How do you know? You never saw me then. You still don’t see me now.”

I stare as Ai-Lian yells out all that he’s held back all these years.

“You want to kill me because I’m better than I was, and a lowborn such as I would never raise himself naturally. Without your help. For wherever would nan-ren be if we could thrive without Imperial interference? Where would I be, if I hadn’t been taken in by an Imperial Blade Master? Even now, you think you’re better—that you’re cleaner. You saving me. You reforming criminals. You, deigning to rescue us. Don’t you see, Jian-di? Nothing has changed for you. You circle the same rutted path of the Imperial-born. As it was decades ago. There’s only a you if there are people lower for you to save!”

I grip Fate Cutter. I must pay for my negligence. I should have acted then, not given this creature decades to mingle with the local populace. “How many others have you infected, demon?”

“The settlements in this region are peaceful now, Guang-Ping. When was the last bandit raid?”

Yes, bandits tried ambushing me, and yes, I’ve handled them.

And that is when I make the realization of what he’s said. What he’s confessed. “Bandits. You started infecting the bandits.”

“Yes, the bandits were first. After they were turned, they left their strongholds and became hardworking citizens of the towns and villages.”

The Imperial city-riots. The letter came after the riots resolved. Oh, that can’t be. What Ai-Lian has said tonight, and certain lines from the letter, combine to form a frightful conclusion.

While I traveled and spread myself about the wider world, you retreated to your village—Shao-Shan-Xiang, was it?

He roves from place to place... as he’s done since you’ve departed...

Did an Overlord escape Ha-Gwei-Shan? Did it journey far, within Ai-Lian’s wandering body, spreading itself about the wider world? A touch here, a tap there—that’s all it would take to spread.

Has he journeyed to the Empire? How far does his infection go? “The cities, Jian-ge! Do ichilids rule the cities?”

“Ah, your precious Zhong-ren cities,” Ai-Lian continues. “The riots. See how they’ve calmed?”

I almost drop Fate Cutter. I had ignored the rioting, so confident the mighty Zhong-ren would triumph. But that was the last stage of the takeover, wasn’t it?

And now, Ai-Lian controls the cities. Controls the governorships. Controls the outlying townspeople, who could write any letter he dictated... to summon the only one who might stand against him.

He smiles without humor. “You never sought ichilid in high places. You always suspected the lowborn of infection. There’s peace in the cities now,” Ai-Lian says softly. “We don’t have to fight anymore. Do you finally see, after all these decades? No more chaos. We can finally be together. If you would only step out of your rut and admit to yourself what happened, you conceited prick. Join me. Stop denying what happened at Ha-Gwei-Shan, the sacred task that we were given. Accept that my way has been the true way all along.”

Then Ai-Lian blinks. His jian lowers as he staggers in place. His grip falters. I attack, but he taps aside my feints, one, two, and then—a cough.

Blood dribbles from his lips.

An embedded ichilid enhances its host, magnifies his strength, his fortitude. An ichilid-infected host can still fight while wounded with terrifying force. Indeed, I tripled the dosage the analects recommended, and only now is Ai-Lian succumbing.

“Yes,” I say, moving in, now that the toxins are finally working. “I poisoned your cup.”

Yes, this sounds right. His way can never be true. A nan-ren besting a Zhong-ren is laughable.

Let’s begin the story again.

Like the townspeople said, I find Ai-Lian in the wooded hills.

No saddle, horse, or wagon—as if he wants no place to run—as if... he’s been waiting for me. But wait... that’s not right...

Each phrase, proof of his infection. Words that pulled me from my denial that he’d simply grown gentler with age... including details that only he could possibly know would catch my attention, donating confiscated chests, avoiding sunlight...

No. No, no, no. He did not summon me with a forged letter after the riots ended. I am not the final piece of Ai-Lian’s plan. I handed the reins of my horses to the town elder himself as he evacuated his township.

“Ngi jon hoi loi,” Ai-Lian says. You have returned. To me. For you have lost, Jian-di.

“Come closer, Jian-di,” Ai-Lian chides. “Why do you hang back so?”

Slowly, I raise Fate Cutter—sheathed blade down—in salute. “We must duel, old friend.”

He demurs as I hoped, the immature ichilid within falling to old habits, and his habits are uncouth. I am clever! I am stronger! He is weak. “Cannot two acquaintances sit and reminisce, Jian-di? Exchange poems from wine-moistened lips?”

As he did decades ago, he offers me the first drink. Even if he’s changed under the ichilid’s influence to not do so, I will find a way to get that cup. I don’t take my eyes off him, and he watches as I inhale first the fumes of fermented rice and plum. I feel the heat from his gaze.

If only I’d listened to him... wait, what am I saying? I did not join him then, I will not join him now. Because my way is best.

I drain my regrets in one swallow. I consider the empty cup.

Slowly, I rub its inside with my thumb, smearing the toxins—tasteless, odorless. His nan-ren kind always lacked imagination. To do what is necessary to win. My way. Mine.

Snake Tongue falls to the ground as Ai-Lian wobbles towards me. “My love, listen, I’m—Aiiiiiiiii!”

A squeal like that little orphan girl’s, too high to be human, rising higher and higher. Oh, moon goddess above—is this what you heard, queen-wife of Lord Archer Yi, when you ascended to the heavens?

Not just the squeal of what used to be your husband but the squeals of all he’d infected?

The townspeople in the distance, even to the Imperial cities, all Ai-Lian has infected in distant regions, screaming. “AIIIIIIIII!”

Masks with white streamers. White-glazed milky eyes. The moon, the moon, the bone-white moon—ni bu pa, ni fang kai ba, ni fang xin—

But he is afraid, he isn’t letting go, he isn’t taking heart...

But I am good, I am good, it is not me who is infected—see the good works I do—the problem is not me—I tried reasoning with him, but he would not listen—

Ai-Lian reaches for me...

There is an antidote. I could feed it to him and negate the toxin. Accept his way, where everyone is at peace. His way. His dialect. A happy, carefree life...

My lips form the alien syllables. “Ngi... jon... hoi...”

But no. I’m weeping as I plunge Fate Cutter through his chest. The body-weighted jian pulls me, and I’m holding him as he splutters blood. Oh, that queen-wife who, upon drinking the Elixir of Immortality, became The Goddess Who Floated to the Moon. But see what I have done, Goddess—this is a cleansing.

Ai-Lian looks above me, seeing something only he can see. His gaze drops to mine. “Despite it all, I love you....” He shudders.

No. That still isn’t right. What niggles within me says this isn’t correct.

Stop denying what happened at Ha-Gwei-Shan, the sacred task that we were given. Accept that my way has been the true way all along.

Fine. Time to face the truth. He is wrong. I do not rationalize. Here: four decades ago, at Ha-Gwei-Shan, we built a fire. In the darkness, the ichilid would have the advantage, so we waited. It was wounded.

I stepped away to clean Fate Cutter of ichilid-ichor. When I reemerged from the brush, Ai-Lian started the old jest. “Ngi jon hoi loi.”

I did not respond as I usually did, with the proper Zhong-ren-hwa version.

“I cut her first,” I said. “It, I mean. Ni bun-dan.”

“No, I did,” Ai-Lian insisted. “Even now, you think you’re better than me. That you’re cleaner. Is it so hard to believe that the lowly nan-ren jian-brother can outmatch a highborn Zhong-ren?”

Maybe that was why I didn’t say the words that egg-headed fool wanted to hear, the Zhong-ren-hwa that had become our code for I love you. I thought he might’ve been right. About him being the better of us.

Ah, but there was comfort in an old argument. “How can this be about class?”

“It’s always about class. You never seek ichilids in high places. To you, we’ve always been the problem—the nan-ren problem. You realize that Lord Yi was a king, right?”

“This one we hunt is an orphan girl, in nan-ren territory.”

“I just—” He clapped a hand over his eyes. “Fine, old friend. We have a hard task ahead.” He shifted from his dialect to the cadence of proper Zhong-ren speech. “Shall we drink wine and decant poetry into the night?” Yet he still pronounced drink wine as yeem jeow, that strange accent that time had left uncorrected. That low-folk mannerism neither a gentleman-scholar’s education nor I could correct. But I smiled when he produced and unstopped a gourd.

He grinned. “I quest for the free wine.”

He railed at me, how I studied Zhong-ren texts on the problem of social inequality, the examination system to become an official, of training the masses to read and write, never mind read the classics—how I saw the nan-ren as the problem. His tone, so condescending, explaining patiently as if I were a stubborn child. Yes, I argued, there were Zhong-ren who had oppressed nan-ren populations, but that was a small minority, and if he would only see that we were changing things—why had he followed me to this region if he disagreed with this work?

I didn’t say it aloud, of course, but I knew the problem to be his envy. In the reenactments of our exploits we watched in disguise, he was comic relief with the bumpkin accent; I was the proper scholar-gentleman. Yes, of the Heroic Pair, people called me for succor. I was informed. I was worthy.

“Ngi jon hoi,” he said again, but I refrained from the familiar reply.

Still, there was an old joy to this verbal combat, the familiar rivalry of trying to best each other. But he was winning the argument. There was only a light sheen on his cheeks. He stated that nan-ren were best disposed to handle nan-ren problems—

— “I know why you’ve come.”

Both Ai-Lian and I leapt at the girl’s voice. And there she was—the host-body bleeding; it didn’t matter who’d cut her. Instead of waiting to grow weaker, she’d taken the fight to us. She crouched onto all fours, launching lightning quick tendrils across the fire, below the moon, beneath the hulking shoulders of Ha-Gwei-Shan.

“Aiiiiiiiii!”

Snake Tongue and Fate Cutter flew from their scabbards, blades crossing one, two, three, and the night shattered.

No, Ai-Lian, my tragic love. I’m not stuck in some rut.

I didn’t spent forty years enacting the same perspective. This was not cyclical. I made progress by doing the work! Everything I’ve done is for the betterment of all. The elevation of the pitiful nan-ren, the veneration of the Zhong-ren—long live the Empire, wan-sui, wan-sui, wan-wan-sui!

“I know why you’ve come,” the girl said, emerging from that night.

She was barely taller than our waists. Her milky-white eyes glistened like pearl, like the iridescent insides of abalone shells, unblinking as she leapt and bled, bled and attacked.

“Come, heroes.” She ran into the night. “Come.”

We chased her to the caverns, where I lowered my torch over the tear on Ai-Lian’s sleeve, the puncture wound so tiny. A touch, really. “We can fix this. It doesn’t fear our fire. If it’s an Overlord, and if we kill it, its underlings die, too.”

“No,” he demurred. “It’s an Overlord that survived the Great Purge. The hardiest of its kind. Please, Jian-di. Kill me before it takes hold... It’s reworking my memories... wait... we used to watch dragon boat races, right? I can’t remember...”

It steals memories. It rips a person’s soul out.

A youngling mimics its host so well, it forgets what it is.

“Focus! Don’t let it alter your memories, Jian-ge! We must keep her running until its host-body fails.”

This was all my fault. If I hadn’t dragged him here, insisting my way was correct. Still, he took Snake Tongue and followed me...

“Come.”

We held hands, Ai-Lian and I, as we slashed another tendril away, and she retreated again. She had weakened herself considerably.

Then, the bone pit. Not human remains—but skulls with too-sharp teeth, wings too large for bats.

“It can’t be.” Ai-Lian shoved remains aside with his hands.

There were desiccated nodules in the pile, like the stems of vines—tendrils—too big for younglings. There were ichilid adult corpses in its feeding pit. The songs were wrong. They weren’t extinct because of traveling adventurers like the Heroic Pair, or because the queen-wife stole the Elixir of Immortality—but because they were eating themselves.

For the ichilid cannot abide weakness and it is their way to bow to those stronger. After the Great Purge, they’d fled to the ice-filled tunnels beneath Ha-Gwei-Shan, competing among themselves until the single strongest remained.

“Come.”

And when we were too far invested to turn back, she faced us, haggard, clutching her blood-soaked side. She tottered and fell to her knees. By now, my sleeve was also torn. The infection was taking hold.

“You both intrigue us.” Tendrils lazed out her mouth. “We don’t blame you for this.” She lifted a blood-slick palm. “You only do as we do: cull the weak, the cruel, the unclean for a better world.”

“There is your way,” she said, one luminescent tendril hovering over Ai-Lian as he moaned over the rough stone.

“Then there is yours,” she said, another tendril lazing over me. “Tell us, what do the Zhong-ren scholars say is best for the people at the margins of society?” So strange to hear it speak in that little girl’s voice, a poem of her own decanting in the icy caverns:

You, like us, unable to find peace in your strivings.

Are you both not stronger than I?

Shall I not pass, let better ones try?

But which way is true?

What to do? What to do?

I crawled along the icy cavern floor, grasped one tiny ankle in my shaking hand. “No... it doesn’t happen this way...”

The girl tilted her head, a curious dog, moon-bright eyes attending me.

“The stories... Ai-Lian...” I reached for him, but he was too far. “The minstrels will not sing... of us this way... I demand it... ”

“Ah, xiao Zhong-ren.” The girl knelt before me. “As your companion said. Your pride, Imperial-born. Ever must you be the hero. But fear not. Unlike others we have taken, your sentience will remain. Your memories will remain. Your faculties you will retain. In this manner, you both shall prove, unhindered, who is right. Who is stronger. Whose way has might.”

I shake my head. “No, it... it doesn’t happen this way!”

The girl smiled at my vehemence. “Is this how you will use our gift? So be it.”

Then the dying ichilid shot tendrils down Ai-Lian’s throat and into mine, disgorging without passion into our mouths, expelling with passion—

—serve

spread goodness—

—prove who is stronger, revive the lost colony—

No. It didn’t happen this way! I only wanted to help. To use my privilege to uplift. To part stubborn ignorance and build not for Zhong-ren, not for nan-ren, but something beautiful.

I only intended...

Wait.

What am I saying?

I won.

I am strongest.

Why was I ever confused? This is how it happened. Nothing has been shifting my memories. It has been me all along, piecing the story together into a palatable whole.

“Ngi jon hoi,” Ai-Lian said—says. His dialect. His way. His truth.

But it is the custom for the one who has come to state their arrival.

My way. My truth. The truth the minstrels will sing forever more. What occurs. What does not occur.

And what did not, does not occur, is this:

Ai-Lian and I did not murder a child all those years ago but something evil. We built a fire and burnt those remains. That is why the grave was empty.

The moon drifts past zenith as I gather wood for his pyre. The wine, cold now, and the cup I rubbed my finger against still waiting on the table.

This was—is—not a battle for supremacy, not a question of my way or his way.

They called for succor, and I granted it.

Now, they do not crest this hill, unhurried frontiersmen and women, rough-clad children strolling through the leaf-strewn trees. Not Ai-Lian’s brood; not after all, for I’ve touched each one to mark them—to take over when Ai-Lian’s marks died; they do not stare at me with milky-white eyes. The Imperial cities he’d infiltrated, the riots he’d started and quelled—they are not reignited, as without him alive, his youngling-commanders die screaming into the night, and Zhong-ren will not slaughter Zhong-ren after examining the corpses, unsure whom to trust. And I will not see the analects burned. And I will not see the texts rewritten.

And as the flames build, my band of reformed criminals do not emerge to stand with me. Everyone you meet seems to turn over a new leaf.

Those convicts you convinced to turn to service at Xiao-Shan-Xiang. Did you touch them, too, Jian-di?

No! I won’t allow his words to distract me from the work I do.

The elder does not pass reins of fresh horses to me. I will not ride to Ha-Gwei-Shan. I will not walk those lightless under-caverns to where a small corpse waits in the ice. I will not bite its still-preserved flesh and partake of that sacrament.

I will not revive the lost colony.

Nay, I will build my own.

Until then, there is Fate Cutter, weeping the blood of an old love, sharp and silent. There is poisoned wine in a celadon cup, not unlike the Elixir of Immortality the queen-wife drank. There is this cold, cold moon to which the queen-wife ascended only to find that bone-white home infested—this moon whence our kind came, the endless beyond-dark we do not sing to, lest it tear out our throats with loneliness.

It is the custom for the one who has come to state their arrival...

No. It is the custom of the strong to declare themselves, and what I did not say for that lesser love, I say now.

Wo hwei lai le.