The trip back felt longer than the trip out, even though it was the same three days.
Nobody talked much the first day.
Feng Li, of all people, went quiet for most of the morning, which worried Tianyun more than anything the guardian had done.
By afternoon he’d mostly recovered enough to complain about his pack again, which felt, weirdly, like a relief.
Like something going back to where it belonged.
“You’re doing the thing,” Chen Hao said, around midday on the second day, walking close enough to Tianyun that nobody else would really hear it.
“What thing.” “The thing where you go somewhere else in your head and don’t tell anybody.” “I didn’t know that was a thing I did.” “It’s a thing you do.” Chen Hao didn’t say it unkindly.
Just stated it, the way he stated most things.
“You did it after the tournament too.
Before you’d talk to anybody about it.” Tianyun didn’t answer right away.
They walked a while.
“I keep hearing that guy,” he said finally.
“The one on the platform.
The sound he made.” “Yeah.” “I don’t even know his name.” “No.” “That feels like it should matter more than it does.
Or less.
I don’t know which.” Chen Hao didn’t have an answer for that, and didn’t pretend to, which Tianyun appreciated more than he could’ve explained.
They kept walking.
Somewhere behind them Feng Li was trying to get Lin Yueqing to agree that the cursed cooking pot theory had been at least partially validated by recent events, and she was refusing, on the grounds that a guardian made of stone had nothing to do with soup.
“It’s about bad luck,” Feng Li said.
“The pot’s just a symptom.” “That’s not how luck works.” “You don’t know that.
You’re a healer, not a — luck expert.” “Nobody’s a luck expert, Feng Li.” “Exactly my point.” It didn’t make sense, not really, but it filled the air with something other than the sound the man on the platform had made, and for that Tianyun was grateful, even if he didn’t say so.
Xuan Zhen walked ahead most of the way home, alone, and didn’t offer any more riddles or half-answers than usual, which was its own kind of unusual.
Tianyun caught up to him on the evening of the second day, while the others were setting up camp.
“You didn’t sleep, back at the vale,” Tianyun said.
“Before we went in.” “No.” “Why not.” Xuan Zhen didn’t answer right away.
He looked toward the darkening trees for a while, jaw working slightly, like he was deciding how much of something to hand over.
“I’ve seen that kind of harvesting before,” he said finally.
“A long time ago.
Long enough that I’d convinced myself I’d never see it again in my lifetime, which was foolish of me, because things like that don’t go away.
They just wait for someone new to try them again.” He glanced sideways at Tianyun.
“It wasn’t a good night for old memories.” “You could’ve said something.” “I could have.” He didn’t apologize for not doing it.
“Some things aren’t better for saying out loud at two in the morning surrounded by people who need you to seem steady.” Tianyun thought about that for a while, walking beside him in the fading light.
“You don’t have to seem steady around me,” he said.
“Not always.” Xuan Zhen actually laughed at that, short and a little surprised, like the offer had caught him off guard.
“That’s a kind thing to say to an old man who’s been lying to you about several important things for weeks.” “I didn’t say I’d forgiven you for that part.” “Fair.” Something in Xuan Zhen’s expression eased, just slightly.
“Fair enough.” Elder Bao met them at the gate before they’d even finished walking through it, which meant somebody had run ahead to warn him, probably one of the younger disciples who’d been watching for their return.
He took one look at all five of them — dirty, tired, Feng Li favoring one side slightly where his ribs were still healing — and didn’t ask a single question until they were seated in his study with tea nobody really drank.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
“In order.
Don’t skip the parts you think I won’t want to hear.” They told him.
Xuan Zhen did most of the talking, calm and precise, though Tianyun noticed he left out the part about not sleeping, and didn’t correct him on it.
Lin Yueqing filled in the details about the man on the platform, voice steady until she got to the sound he’d made, where it caught for just a second before she pushed through it.
Elder Bao sat very still through most of it, hands folded, face giving away less than usual, which Tianyun had learned by now meant he was more upset than he wanted to show.
“You saw a living person being drained,” he said, when they’d finished.
Not a question.
Just making sure he’d heard it right.
“Yes,” Xuan Zhen said.
“And you left him there.” The room went quiet in a way that wasn’t comfortable for anybody.
“We had five people and a bad injury against seven cultists and something in that spire we don’t understand,” Xuan Zhen said.
“Going in would have meant losing all of us and not saving him either.” “I know that.” Elder Bao’s voice was tight.
“I know the math.
I’m not blaming you for the math.” He rubbed a hand over his face, hard, like he could scrub away some of the tiredness that way.
“I just don’t like that we’re the sect who has to live with knowing and not acting, while a bigger force takes a month to organize itself.” “Neither do I,” Xuan Zhen said quietly.
Nobody had anything to add to that.
It sat there in the room a while, ugly and true, until Elder Bao finally exhaled and reached for the tea he hadn’t touched yet.
“I’ll send word tonight,” he said.
“Everything you saw.
Word for word, if I can manage it.
I’ll push the Palace and Azure Cloud both — tell them a month isn’t acceptable anymore, not after this.” He looked around the room at all of them, something almost apologetic in it.
“That’s the most I can do right now.
I know it doesn’t feel like enough.” “It’s not,” Feng Li said, quiet, not really meaning to be heard, and then looking startled that he’d said it out loud at all.
“Sorry.
I didn’t mean—” “You did mean it,” Elder Bao said, not unkindly.
“And you’re right.
It’s not enough.
I don’t have a better answer to give you tonight.” Later, after the others had gone to wash up and eat something that wasn’t trail rations, Tianyun found Lin Yueqing sitting alone on the low wall outside the infirmary, knees pulled up, staring at nothing in particular.
He sat down next to her without saying anything.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
“I keep thinking I should have done something,” she said eventually.
“I’m a healer.
That’s supposed to mean something, in a moment like that.” “There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.
Not without dying trying.” “I know that.
Knowing it doesn’t help very much.” She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, not really looking at it.
“I trained for years to save people.
And the first time it really counted, out there, I hid behind a wall and watched.” “You hid behind a wall because Xuan Zhen was right, and going in would’ve gotten you killed along with him.” “I know that too.” She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“Doesn’t make the wanting-to-have-done-something go away, though.
Knowing the right choice and feeling okay about it are two completely different things, apparently.
Nobody tells you that part.” He didn’t have an answer for that either.
He just sat with her, close enough that their shoulders touched, and after a while she leaned into him a little, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the three days of walking.
“We’re going back for him,” Tianyun said.
“Whoever he was.
With enough people this time.” “You don’t know that we’ll be in time.” “No,” he admitted.
“I don’t.” She didn’t say anything else for a while.
Eventually she reached over and took his hand, same as always, and they sat there together until the sky went properly dark and somebody — probably Feng Li — started arguing loudly with Cook Deng somewhere behind them about whether trail rations counted as food or as a war crime, and the ordinary noise of the sect settling back into its evening slowly, unevenly, started to fill in some of the quiet neither of them had managed to fill on their own.
It didn’t fix anything.
Tianyun understood that much, even as it happened.
But it helped a little, having somewhere to sit with the not-fixed part instead of carrying it around alone, and for that night, at least, that turned out to be enough to get some sleep on.
To be continue….