Nanami crossed her arms. “How come you can’t shape things?”
Xiao stiffened. “Can you do everything the Sea Dragon does, then?” he challenged.
“I think so. Not as well, most things, I suppose, but I have the same abilities. The skill will come with time.”
Xiao didn’t believe her. After all, “Bai said the Sea Dragon can shapeshift, and you said you can’t.”
Nanami frowned. “Yes – well, I’ve never seen him do that. My grandfather is the only one I have ever seen change shape.”
Xiao was shocked. He leaned closer, eager to know more. “The Moon Deer? He can really shapeshift?”
“He can become a deer – his original shape.”
Wow. What would it be like...
Nanami poked him in the arm. “Stop using shapeshifting to avoid the issue. You should be able to do what your parents do.”
He was tired of this. So he grabbed the finger that was poking him, winked at her, and kissed its tip. Nanami yanked it back, and that deep flush he had first seen at the Wood Pavilions spread over her neck.
A throat cleared from the door, and Xiao turned to find Luye glowering at them.
He removed Nanami from his lap. “Calm down,” he muttered, “I was just comforting her.”
Xiao needed a little space. “I’ll leave you to Luye’s excellent care,” he told Nanami and headed out of the pavilion.
That wasn’t enough, so Xiao went through the gate of Jin’s residence.
Several Light Hands were waiting just outside, including his favorite third disciple. He started to slouch as if he were drunk, but he gave up almost immediately. He hadn’t dumped any soju on himself today because, ever since that little slip at Salaana’s light show, he had found the scent of alcohol harder to resist. So let them know he was sober and not useless. He had broken through Salaana’s will effortlessly to aid Nanami; these women clearly had seen that themselves or heard of it, based on their wary stances.
“What do you want?”
“Our lady would speak with you.”
“I haven’t any interest in speaking with her though, and you can tell her that Nanami the Thief is a friend of Jin’s. Let her chew that over.”
He brusquely pushed past them and made his way to Guleum’s compound, where he pounded on the door.
A servant opened it immediately, but when Xiao asked for Guleum, the man apologized and said the young master was busy.
“Feeling dreams?” Xiao drawled.
The servant’s eyes darted away, and Xiao took that as confirmation.
“I’ll wait inside.” He brushed past the man’s a token protest and strode through Guleum’s pretty, if boring, garden to his house. Guleum was stretched out on the floor, his big head creaking his too thin neck, like a flower stalk that had failed to support its bloom. His eyes were closed, and red smoke clung to him, filling the air with an overwhelming scent of cinnamon. His limbs lay askew, and Xiao might have feared that he was dead if it weren’t for his hands – thin and long, they twitched periodically, like a dog’s legs as it dreams. Xiao sat down beside him.
He felt a bit nauseous. Was this how he looked like to others, after a night of partying? Was this how Jin had viewed him over the years? No wonder she was reluctant to marry him. But Nanami had seen him like this at the Wood Pavilions and still found something worthwhile...
About ten minutes later, Guleum’s eyes opened. His breathing was irregular and he struggled to sit up, so Xiao helped him. He seemed mildly confused by Xiao’s presence, but he smiled. “Hey, what brings you?”
Xiao should have spent the time waiting planning what to say, but he had been too emotional to think. He tapped his knees, then, “Let’s be straight with each other. The Sun Emperor is dying. Gang and Salaana both want the throne. You favor Salaana. Will you offer her aid, whatever that might be?”
Guleum’s mouth hung open for a moment before he shrugged and agreed.
“But Salaana’s overly harsh. She sees the world as black and white,” Xiao told him. “She just burned off the hand of my friend.”
Guleum crossed his arms and looked smug. “Your friend is a thief?”
Xiao scowled. “She’s a thief, but she only steals from those who deserve it.”
Guleum snorted. “Deserves it? Not sure you’d be saying that if she stole from you.”
“She did steal from me. That’s how we met. And I deserved it.” And not for Jin’s sake, he admitted for the first time. For my own. Because I was drinking my days away, and I deserve better than that. And there it was – the reason he was working so cursed hard to stay sober at the Sun Court. He liked it. He wanted to be seen as a power, to be able to offer his challenge of Salaana from a place of equality.
Guleum scratched his nose.
“Look, Xiao, Salaana did me a big favor. I owe her my loyalty.”
Xiao leaned forward. “Is that you or your blood talking?”
Guleum frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“How many drops of blood have you given Salaana? Fifty? A hundred?”
“I don’t know. What does it matter?”
Xiao wanted to smack him. “Your family has an affinity for blood, you idiot! When you give someone a piece of you, they can use it for spells, curses – the Sun Emperor is under a death curse right now, cast by one of his blood! Salaana may have used the blood you gave her to cast it – so you will look like the culprit!”
“She didn’t do that!”
“How do you know!”
“Because I cast the death curse!” Guleum leaped to his feet. “I killed that old bastard before he could kill my mother! He deserves to die, he’s a murderer! And you and everybody else are always underestimating me! I thought you’d understand because they call you the useless god. But you’re just like everybody else. Get out! Get out now!”
Xiao stood his ground. “I know what you’re doing, okay? I get it. I get overwhelmed too. When you find something that can make you feel good, that keeps the stress at a distance, of course you want to embrace it. But long term, it doesn’t make the problems go away. In fact, they get harder to deal with, more overwhelming until it feels like you don’t have any other choices–”
Guleum shoved him hard in the chest. “I’m not like you! You’re a drunk – a useless god! I can handle my life – dreams of justice are just inspiration.”
Suddenly the air began to move faster and faster around the room, buffeting Xiao with alarming force.
“I control the air! What can you do?” Guleum shouted.
Something snapped in Xiao. He grabbed Guleum’s shoulders and found the fear at the root of Guleum’s anger. He magnified it until it enveloped Guleum.
“I can control you,” growled Xiao.
Guleum knelt before him, tears streaming down his face. His shoulders shook beneath Xiao’s hands.
Xiao pulled back, horrified at himself. He had seen his mother do this many times – take someone’s emotions and twist them to her purpose. He had always hated it.
“I’m – I’m sorry,” he stuttered, before turning and running.
“XIAO.” Nanami was knelt next to where he had passed out on the mossy bank of Jin’s pond and shook his shoulder. No response. She pressed a hand to her face – this close, the harsh fumes of hard liquor and acrid vomit nearly overwhelmed her.
He looked a mess – it was hard to believe he was the same tender caregiver whom she had seen this morning.
She cast another glance at Jin’s disciples. The two women reminded her of birds, with their anxious movements.
“Do you know when he returned last night? Where did he drink?”
One of them bit her lip and the other said, “Not in the palace. He stormed in here and teleported. We don’t know when he came back.”
Nanami’s remaining hand fisted in Xiao’s robe. She forced it to relax.
“Please, would one of you bring me tea and a bowl of r
ice?”
When the shorter disciple returned with her requests, Nanami pulled water from the pond, dumping it on Xiao. He woke sputtering, but Nanami offered him a cup of tea before he could fully process what had happened.
“Are you okay?” Nanami asked him.
He gulped some of the tea. “This dumping water on me seems to be becoming a habit of yours. A bad habit.”
Nanami shrugged. “I tried to wake you up through other means first.”
“You could have let me sleep it off.”
“I could have, but I wanted you to know I was upset. And I wanted to know what upset you.”
He scowled. “Gu cast the death curse.” He rubbed his face. “I guess on top of your hand, it was just too much.”
Nanami hesitated, then gently touched the back of his hand with her fingertips. He twisted his hand immediately and clasped hers. “Is that all?” she asked.
He hesitated, not meeting her eyes. Then, “I used one of my mother’s nastier tricks on Gu. He tried to blow me out of his residence, so I amplified his fear. And then I felt guilty. He needs help and support, not punishment.”
Nanami squeezed his hand. “You feel too much,” she told him.
“I don’t know how to stop.”
She considered that for a moment. “You don’t have to stop, but you have to learn how to deal with it besides alcohol. You think Salaana manipulated Gu?”
“Yes. Undoubtedly. And someday he will realize that he’s a murderer – that he committed patricide. Will she be able to wipe that away by calling it just?”
Nanami knew the question was rhetorical. She had seen Guleum around the palace, fresh faced and barely pubescent. It was hard to believe he had tried to murder someone. She suddenly decided that if she had any influence in the matter, she would help Jin save the emperor, just so that Guleum didn’t become a murderer. Fates curse Salaana. “You faced Salaana down when she took my hand. Why don’t you confront her now?”
Xiao squeezed her hand. “Everyone was wondering how I broke her wards – even me. Salaana would kick my ass.”
“She shouldn’t be able to. You’re the scion of two Colors.”
“Why does that matter?”
Nanami had never been particularly interested in magic theory, but she obviously understood more than Xiao. She spent a moment to gather her thoughts, then, “The Colors are the nine most powerful beings in our world. An immortal receives all the power of their creation years. The nine of them each appeared one thousand years after each other, but after Hei, immortals appeared yearly. So they are all a thousand times more powerful than other spontaneous immortals. And we, their children, inherit their power. My mother is of a later immortal lineage, so none of my siblings and I are noticeably more powerful than my father. But you are twice as strong as any color.”
“Twice as strong as Bai?” Xiao snorted.
“Yes. Don’t you know the story of Gang and Olli the Spider?”
“Of course I do. What does it have to do with anything?”
“Gang is also the son of two Colors. The Spider was one of the most dangerous immortal creatures. It almost killed Aka. But Gang defeated it easily and imprisoned it in the Underworld.”
“But he was trained by Bai...”
“Even Bai was afraid of Olli. He did not want his pupil facing him. It was power that won the day. If you want to face down Salaana, show her that she should be as wary of you as she is of Gang.”
“How?”
Nanami looked around her and reached toward an iris, only to find she had no fingers to pluck it. She stared for a moment at that sad stump, and a feeling trembled its way from her gut to her throat. She managed to swallow it back down. Brusquely, she freed her hand from Xiao’s and broke the iris’s stalk. As she passed the deep purple flower to Xiao, she said, “Think of what you want, of what it could be. Then will it so.”
NANAMI sat cross legged at the low table in Jin’s living room. She was trying to sharpen one of her throwing knives and had managed to nick herself twice.
“Do you want me to do that?” Xiao offered, and Nanami glowered at him.
She wasn’t sure who frustrated her more – Xiao or herself. They’d been hiding from the Sun Court for over a week now, protected by Jin’s wards. (Salaana had attempted to break them once, in return for the insult that Xiao had given her, and Nanami doubted she would ever try again after the humiliation that followed). Xiao lay back on the smooth boards of Jin’s hall, slowly shredding some wisteria. If they stayed here much longer, there wouldn’t be a purple flower left in Jin’s garden, and Xiao hadn’t managed to transform a single one of them. He kept insisting that they didn’t “want” to be anything but flowers, and Nanami made the mistake of telling him that flowers didn’t have desires. He had proceeded to stroke her arms with the flower he was holding as he outlined flower reproduction in shockingly sensual terms.
“The knife is sharp,” she snarled at Xiao. “The problem is I need to be able to sharpen it, not that it needs to be sharpened.”
“Why? Why not just make a new knife every time this one dulls?”
Nanami sighed. “I could probably do that. After all, I won’t need a new one that often. But it’s the principle. I should be able to do this. I should...” Her voice cracked.
Xiao sat up and leaned close to her, his arms slipping around her.
She let go of the knife and braced her hand on his chest. This wasn’t the first time she had wondered if he might kiss her, but Luye or Yeppeun had always interrupted in the past. Neither was in the residence at present.
Nanami swallowed as she remembered how it felt to be kissed by him in the Wooden Pavilion. Unlike then, he moved slowly, gently, until their mouths met, as soft as butterfly wings. Xiao’s hands slid up and down, bringing her tight against him, as his lips grew hot and urgent. Nanami forgot everything and just felt.
He suddenly pulled back, his eyes faraway and his brows knit.
Nanami stiffened, confused and a little embarrassed.
"Something’s wrong,” he said, and Nanami realized he wasn’t even paying attention to her. “Jin’s summoning me.”
Hot jealousy surged through Nanami. And how can she do that? Nanami wondered. What did you give her of yourself? “Then let’s go,” she said aloud. She offered Xiao her remaining hand.
Xiao looked at her other arm. “Are you ready to leave? I can go alone–”
“It doesn’t need to heal. Salaana cauterized it even as she burned my hand away. I can adjust anywhere. Maybe it will help, to be somewhere that forces the issue.” She continued to offer him her remaining hand.
Xiao hesitated a moment longer, then seized it. She just saw his smile before they moved between.
Chapter 11: How Jin Was Rescued
JIN was dreaming of falling and falling, surrounded by darkness and damp and cold. Finally she stopped falling but continued to spin. Slowly she opened her eyes, but there was little difference between her dream and reality. It was so dark that she could only see her own hands as pale blurs. She tried to move them, just to confirm that they were indeed her hands, and found heavy metal manacles restricting her movement. Rough stone and straw bit into her cheek. The smell of mold and damp was overpowering, though there was a phantom-like sickly sweetness at the edge of her awareness. When she tried to focus on it, to identify its odd familiarity, the smell disappeared entirely.
She felt damp all over, except for her mouth which felt dry and full of fluff. She tried to draw some saliva into her mouth as she sat up. She managed only the latter, the chains attached to the manacles clanking.
Godsbane, she suddenly thought. The sickly-sweet smell must have been godsbane.
When Neela and she had wound their way through the Cold Peaks two thousand years ago, they had stopped very briefly in a valley near Mos Lake, where the ground-covering was a pale yellow and had reeked of rotten fruit. Jin had asked her grandmother if the strange herb was diseased
.
“Gang’s mother was murdered here,” Neela told Jin. “Her death poisoned the whole valley and now this herb is the only thing that will grow.”
Neela had used a handkerchief to pick some. “Remember this herb and its smell, Jin. The locals named it ‘godsbane’ because it harms immortals in five ways. Touching the plant would cause your skin to itch and rash. If it were boiled, the tea would make you vomit for days. If the oil were extracted, its vapors would knock you unconscious. The cut of a blade painted with its juices would put you in a coma. And if you ate the plant, you would die.”
Now that the memory had returned to her, Jin touched the faint scar on her cheek, Was it godsbane that paralyzed me a week ago? Bai might not be familiar with it. Godsbane grew only in that small valley. It could not be transplanted any more than it could be eradicated. Neela had told Jin that Gang had set a powerful protection over the entire valley to stop beings from harvesting the herb.
“But if that’s true, how did we enter?” Jin had asked in surprise.
“With his permission, of course.”
Now, in her dark and dank prison, Jin curled as tightly as the manacles allowed. Had Neela done this to her? Had her anger over Jin’s perceived betrayal been even greater than Jin realized? Jin grabbed her throat in abrupt panic, but she relaxed when she felt the strong chain which carried both the peacock pendant from Aka and Kunjee. Surely not NeeNee then. But perhaps Neela had left Kunjee deliberately, knowing Jin would not teleport away from it?
Jin could quite clearly recall what had preceded the dream of falling. She had left Bai abruptly – childishly, she supposed – when she realized that he was keeping secrets from her as well. She had exited the theatre with the crowd, only to find a little girl crying quietly near the entrance.
Everyone seemed oblivious to the little girl’s distress, and though Jin was rather upset herself, she had tried to go to the child. However, the little girl had run away. Jin had hesitated then, but she followed the girl into the small alley next to the theatre, where the girl had hidden her face and continued to sob. Jin had knelt and asked what was wrong.
Vows of Gold and Laughter (The Immortal Beings Book 1) Page 24
