Li Yan lay still a moment, blinking up at the strip of grey sky visible between the tenement roofs.
Several centuries. He filed that away with the growing list of things he had no time to interrogate.
He forced himself upright, ignoring the ache blooming across his ribs where the guards’ staves had actually connected. The blood might have been an illusion of the space’s making, but the bruises beneath it were real enough. His fingers brushed the small pouch tucked into his sleeve, and it clinked softly.
Silver. Four whole taels of it, lifted clean from Li Wei’s own coin purse during the chaos of the dying. His brother would not notice the loss until he reached for it to pay some sing-song girl, and by then it would be far too late to trace.
He pushed himself to his feet, swaying once before his legs steadied beneath him. Blood had dried in dark flakes down the front of his robe, more crusted along his jaw. He could not walk through the city like this, not unless he wished for every guard in the district to stop him on sight.
"I require a name for you." Li Yan kept his voice low. "I refuse to keep addressing you as ’Spirit of the Mythical Pavilion’ each time I wish to speak with you. It is a mouthful, and should I ever mutter it aloud in public, someone will conclude I have lost my mind conversing with ghosts."
"A name?" The space’s cheerful hum faltered, suspicious. "What did you have in mind, Master?"
"Xiaoxiao."
A long pause.
"Xiaoxiao." The voice turned the sound over slowly, as though inspecting every corner of it. "That is a name fit for a lapdog, Master. I have guarded the Phoenix bloodline since the first emperor of your line drew breath. I have witnessed the rise and fall of—"
"Xiaoxiao it is, then." Li Yan was already moving toward the mouth of the alley. "Now. That trick with the blood. What was it, exactly?"
"A minor illusion pill, dissolved beneath the tongue before you left the courtyard." Xiaoxiao brightened at once, apparently deciding a lapdog’s name was preferable to being ignored altogether. "It mimics the appearance, scent, and consistency of blood loss from internal injury, down to the coughing reflex. Entirely harmless to the body, though the taste is regrettable, I admit. I keep several dozen in stock. Heaven-tier alchemists wept blood of their own perfecting that formula, back when your ancestors still—"
"Several dozen will suffice." Li Yan cut off what promised to be a very long story. "Good. I may require them again."
He stepped out of the alley and into a side street, keeping to the shadowed edges where the crowd thinned. No one spared him more than a glance. A dirty, blood-streaked youth was not an unusual sight near the poorer quarters, and pity here was scarcer than silver.
He needed clothes before he needed anything else. Bloodstains drew eyes, and eyes drew questions he had no patience to answer.
The tailor’s shop sat at the corner of a wider street, its front hung with bolts of dyed silk that caught the afternoon light: deep plum, jade green, a soft blush pink he would never have been permitted to wear in the Li household. A small bronze bell chimed above the door as he pushed it open.
The female attendant behind the counter looked up, already halfway through a polite greeting, and stopped. Her eyes swept over him, the dried blood, the torn hem, the dust ground into his robes, and caught on his face instead, and stayed there.
"Oh." She pressed a hand to her own cheek. "You poor thing. What happened to you?"
"A small accident." Li Yan let a touch of practiced fragility color his voice. "I fell. Clumsy of me. I want a change of clothes, if it is not too much trouble."
"Of course, of course, come in, do not mind the mess, we will have you sorted in no time." She was already bustling out from behind the counter, eyes flicking over him with an appraising interest that had nothing to do with pity anymore. "My, my. Underneath all that dust you are going to be devastating, are you not? Look at that waist. Look at that face."
Li Yan did not answer. If the rest of the world despised him, tailors adored him. Everyone he had ever met welcomed him without hesitation, entirely unbothered that he was a Ger, which unsettled him rather more than it flattered him, as though they wished to dress him up like a doll for their own amusement.
It was not hard to guess what he was. No true son of a wealthy house walked so slender, so fine-boned, with skin that held light rather than merely reflecting it. Any Ger who wandered into public without a chaperone invited stares, and Li Yan, it seemed, invited more than most.
The attendant was already pulling bolts of fabric from the shelves, discarding the plain, mourning-dark cloth Li Yan reached for in favor of brighter silks: a deep coral that would warm his pale skin, a soft lavender that would catch his eyes.
"None of that dull grey for you." She swatted his hand away from a bolt of unremarkable brown wool. "A face like yours in colors like that? A crime against heaven."
"I would prefer something plain." Li Yan reached for the grey again.
"You would prefer to be noticed by every eligible bachelor from here to the capital, whether you like it or not." She batted his hand away a second time, entirely unbothered by his protest. "So we might as well let them see something worth staring at."
He was still arguing the merits of a plain grey robe over a fitted coral one when the bell above the door chimed a second time.
A young man stepped inside, trailed by a single quiet attendant who hung back near the entrance. He wore deep indigo robes of a cut and quality that made the tailor shop’s finest silks look almost humble by comparison, his hair bound with a jade pin far too fine for an ordinary merchant’s son. He carried the unhurried bearing of someone who had never once needed to hurry for anyone.
His gaze slid across the shop out of idle habit, shelves, silks, the fussing attendant, and stopped on Li Yan.
Whatever he had been about to say to his own attendant died somewhere in his throat.
Li Yan, blood and road dust clinging to him, shoulders faintly hunched from the ache in his ribs, did not look away first. He held the stranger’s gaze for a single flat, unimpressed beat, long enough to register the man’s evident wealth, his sharp-cut features, the faint furrow of surprise between his brows, and dismissed him entirely, turning back to the attendant.
"The grey. Please."
The stranger, to his visible confusion, found himself still standing in the doorway.
"You." He seemed to decide he was speaking before he had fully decided what to say. "Have we met?"