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“Is it a thing for you?” Qingming asked, with such a perfect expression of sympathy and supportiveness that Boya immediately knew the other man must be fucking with him. “The listening thing, I mean. It’s all right if it is.”
Boya wished that he didn’t automatically stiffen up with horrible embarrassment once he realized Qingming was asking if he had some sort of fetish involving the misuse of magical ears.
Which he didn’t.
“Says the man who puts seeing-eye talismans everywhere,” he said shortly. His face felt like it was burning. “I could call you a voyeur.”
“Who says I’m not?”
Boya choked.
Qingming took a sip of his drink, looking immensely pleased with himself the way he always did when he got one up on Boya – really, anyone who met Qingming for more than few minutes would immediately be able to determine that whoever said he had a fox-demon for a mother was a liar, and also that it was clearly some sort of wicked cat demoness instead.
(Sadly, that was probably just wishful thinking. Boya didn’t like demons at all, had been happy when Qingming’s story had made it sound, though somewhat ambiguously, as if his mother weren’t a demon at all, but in the end, if it had to be a demon, it being anything other than a fox would probably make Boya feel more comfortable. Unfortunately, his luck had never been very good.)
“Do you completely lack the ability to act properly?” Boya demanded irritably, wondering if he should put down the cup of plum blossom wine and demand to be sent back to the palace. It was probably the right thing to do, but on the other hand it was very good wine…
“Not at all. It’s been known to happen,” Qingming said. “On rare occasion. I try not to bring my manners out too often, for fear that I’ll wear them out through overuse.”
Qingming was a despicable man, Boya decided, even though he already knew that. Utterly despicable.
He held out his cup for more wine anyway.
-
“So you finally got him to go away,” a scratchy old-sounding voice said right in Boya’s ear, and only years of experience in distinguishing between sounds coming from his actual ears and his magical ears kept Boya from flinching, knowing as he did that the voice was nowhere near him. “Well done, fox-master.”
“That is not my name, nor my title,” Qingming said in response. His voice was calm and steady. “And I was not trying to drive Boya away.”
“Were you not?” A laugh like the shrieking of rusted hinges. “You wanted to protect him. From me.”
“An interesting assumption.” The whisper of fabric on the ground. Qingming was walking, taking carefully measured steps – perhaps going up stairs? Boya couldn’t quite tell; the sound wasn't clear enough through the magic ear. “Everyone always seems to think that I’m trying to protect someone. Boya thought I was acting as I was to protect you, from him, and you think I was acting to protect him.”
“You’re a Yin-Yang Master, whose first and final duty is protection. Are you really so surprised?”
“Perhaps.”
Another step.
“Perhaps not.”
-
“How is it still winter?” Boya demanded when Qingming came in through the door.
He realized a moment later that that had been in no way how he’d intended on greeting Qingming. Not when it had been nearly four months since they’d parted, each one of them without any intention of seeing the other again for at least a few decades, and certainly not without introduction or explanation or any form of politeness. He hadn’t made specific plans as to how he would greet Qingming, the circumstances hadn’t really allowed for that, but he’d had some vague ideas in mind – an apology for the suddenness of his arrival, for sure, a quick summary of what had caused him to need to come so quickly, and maybe, if he could figure out how to phrase it without dying of embarrassment, an admission that he’d found himself unexpectedly missing the other man’s company.
He still, to this day, didn’t entirely understand how they had grown so close, so fast.
Boya had always thought of himself as having an aloof character, finding it hard to connect with his martial brothers in the temple and in his heart indifferent to overtures of friendship (or more) from women in the capital, no matter how they pined. Yet somehow, with Qingming, it felt as though they had always known each other, as if their entire lives beforehand had been merely a temporary break in a long-running relationship, an interrupted conversation that they could effortlessly slip back into once more, as comfortable as old shoes.
Perhaps that sense of familiarity was why Boya hadn’t felt the slightest bit of awkwardness waiting inside Qingming’s house, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them every time the cold wind found its way inside the place through the wide-open terraces that were more suited for a far more temperate climate. He’d been waiting nearly half a shi, freezing his balls off, and maybe that was why when Qingming had finally arrived, he’d started out with a querulous complaint instead of a greeting.
Of course, Qingming being Qingming, he didn’t bother with pretending to be upset or offended at Boya’s behavior the way any normal person would be – any normal person in the capital, anyway, and probably any normal person anywhere else – even though he had to be surprised at seeing Boya here in his home thousands of li away from the capital, unexpected and uninvited. Instead, the other man merely smiled and said, “Spring comes late in the far north. We don’t expect to see a thaw for at least another month. Would you like something hot to drink?”
“I might freeze to death before you finish making it,” Boya said with rare directness, and Qingming laughed and pointed to the corner where there was a pot somehow already steaming.
“That was definitely not there when I last looked,” Boya grumbled, going to pour it out and only realizing that it wasn’t tea when he accidentally inhaled some of the fumes and started choking.
“It wasn’t,” Qingming said agreeably. “It’s set to turn on when I start getting close.”
That was as good an opening as any for Boya to say something apologetic about arriving unexpectedly and letting himself in, though in Boya’s opinion there wasn’t anyone in the world who wouldn’t have let themselves in rather than stand outside without any protection from the bone-chill wind. He was just opening his mouth to say something when Qingming added, “The floor is usually heated, too, except when someone who isn’t me comes in.”
Boya was too appalled by the sheer lack of hospitality to remember what he’d been about to say. “That’s – that’s –”
“Improper?”
He had been about to say that. “Antisocial.”
Qingming smirked at him as if to imply that he knew that Boya had swerved at the last minute.
“You would’ve had a warmer welcome if you’d come yesterday,” he remarked. “That’s when the auguries said you’d arrive.”
Of course Qingming had been forecasting the future, though how he’d been managing it with the clouds covering the sky Boya couldn’t even begin to guess. He hadn’t known it at the time, but it appeared that the Department of Celestial Observation in the capital had been trying to recruit Qingming for ages; they’d summoned Boya in to speak with them as soon as they had a roof again and peppered him with questions, only to be thoroughly dissatisfied with his answers. Apparently Boya had wasted all that time bothering Qingming about spirit guardians and, you know, saving the world from the Evil Serpent when he could have been picking Qinming’s brain about the meanings of arcane celestial phenomena.
“Maybe I was postponing the agony of having to converse with you,” Boya said, though actually he’d only come today rather than yesterday because of yet another last-ditch emergency that needed his personal attention. That stupid wall… It occurred to him that Qingming might misunderstand him to be genuinely reluctant to be here, which he wasn’t. “I didn’t mean that.”
Qingming was grinning, though, having obviously not taken it to heart. “How did you arrive? I admit I expected to see you coming in advance – on a horse, at minimum, if not a proper carriage.”
Boya turned up his nose. “You’re not the only one who knows transportation spells.”
That was a mistake, of course, because Qingming actually got interested – there was a very distinctive difference between his interest in Boya generally and his interest in a specific thing, it turned out – and under his intensive interrogation Boya had to admit that he actually had no idea how transportation spells worked (they weren’t exactly needed in the capital city the way they were in Qingming’s Eastern Isles) and that he’d only managed to make one to get here by reverse-engineering the spell he typically used to summon arrows back to him once he’d fired them and applying it on the arrow he’d remembered as being embedded into Qingming’s wall.
For some reason that seemed to delight Qingming even more. “So instead of calling your arrow to you, you – sent yourself to your arrow? How did you even know it’d still be here in the wall instead of in the trash somewhere?”
Boya hadn’t even considered that.
“Well, it was, wasn’t it?” he said, shrugging to try to cover up his embarrassment. “Anyway, if you’ve read enough omens to know that I was coming, then surely you know why I’ve come, right?”
“Auguries are rarely that specific, as you undoubtedly know. Something about danger, and either a plague or a corpse…?”
Boya thought about the horde of rotting corpses currently shambling through the city, bemoaning the graves that had been disturbed as a result of the actions of He Shouyue in trying to flee the city and their own in stopping him, and in either event demanding recompense. The distant cousin of the former emperor they’d dug up to take the place vacated by Princess Changming and her puppet had decided, in his infinite wisdom, that the recompense ought to be performed by the ones that’d caused the damage, and never mind that they’d only acted in defense of the city and the world. Hopefully this profound display of idiocy was a result of the shock of suddenly becoming emperor rather than anything terminal.
Hopefully.
“…both, I’d say,” Boya said. “It’s rather urgent.”
“But not urgent enough for you to come straight here instead of staying back to fix a wall.”
“The South Gate has always been my responsibility –” Boya paused, then narrowed his eyes. “I thought you said that your auguries weren’t that specific.”
Qingming’s smirk widened.
“You did leave some talismans to spy on me! I knew it!”
“Boya, I’m hurt. You didn’t trust me when I said I’d taken them all back?”
“Obviously not, and I was obviously right not to, too.” Boya scowled. “Where were they? I looked, but couldn’t find them.”
He’d even swallowed his mortification and asked one of the temple elders to look, when he’d found nothing himself. He’d been that convinced that Qingming wouldn’t have been able to let go so easily, and he’d found himself feeling strangely offended when the elder, too, found nothing. It was vindicating to find out, however belatedly, that he hadn’t been the only one to grow so attached.
“You track them through the magical signatures, don’t you? Those can be obscured if you put them near shifting temperatures, which cause similar ripples that distract the attention.”
Boya knew that. What he didn’t know was – “Where did you place it that would guarantee that there would be shifting temperatures at the same time that I would be in there?”
It couldn’t have been the kitchen, that notorious leaky window for secrets, Boya would never have said anything of relevance there. But where else…?
Wait.
No.
“Qingming,” Boya said flatly. “Tell me you did not put it in my bath!”
“Have a drink,” Qingming suggested with a shit-eating grin. “Forget your sorrows for a moment.”
It would have to be very strong drink to do that, but luckily for them both, it was.
-
After the Evil Serpent had wreaked havoc throughout the imperial capital, and a good portion of the city beyond it, the disciples of Jingyun Temple had been incredibly busy in assisting the rebuilding, and Boya had been no exception. Arrays and talismans, purification rituals and banishment of evil, filled their eyes and ears from the moment they rose in the morning to the last moment the sun faded from the horizon. To the extent they wanted to do anything for themselves, they were obligated to do it by lantern-light, stealing precious time away from sleep.
Given this, Boya’s success in refining a new type of magical ear – smaller, more mobile, harder to detect – was something of a wonder. His elders both applauded him for his achievement and politely suggested that there were greater projects afoot than this, and that he was perhaps wearing himself thin for no real discernable purpose; after all, the existing magic ear talisman worked just fine, did it not?
Boya accepted the applause and just as politely ignored the criticism, continuing to stay up until odd hours to continually improve it. If asked, he had an arsenal of explanations at hand: he was a master of music, and hearing to him was even more essential even than sight – he could close off his physical eyes in favor of his third eye, safe in the knowledge that sound was sufficient to help him navigate his surroundings, but that only worked if his ears did. It was absolutely critical that his tools support him.
Also, and this was an explanation he did not plan on sharing, Qingming could find the current version.
Clearly an upgrade was absolutely critical.
The most recent prototype Boya had created was based on a gift from one of his martial brothers: the most extraordinarily tiny little bell, exquisitely carved to resemble a fruit fly. Its little ‘legs’ were furred in such a way that gave it the ability to cling to fabric, stuck on like a burr on horse. Boya had found, with some experimentation, that he could apply it in the most subtle of ways, including simply dropping it onto the ground and continuing to walk, with it being picked up by the dragging robes of whoever was walking a step behind him.
That assumed the person behind him was wearing robes, of course, and ones that dragged, but with Qingming that was a fairly safe assumption.
-
“So where exactly is your home?” Boya asked, wishing he was shameless enough to stick his feet into the water to warm them the way he might have when he was a child. They were in the painting again, Qingming having argued that it would be more comfortable for Boya to wait in that artificial summer until the floor had warmed up once more, but it was clear enough that it the same building: the same structure, the same trees, the same body of water (notably less frozen), and of course Boya’s arrow, equally visible in both. “I thought the Eastern Isles were further to the south, with a temperate climate. But you said this was the far north…?”
“Most of our islands are to the south,” Qingming said. “This is the northernmost point guarded by my sect. There was a shadow of the Evil Serpent bound in the glacier until my shifu and his spirit guardians eliminated it…I showed you that part already.”
Boya remembered it as if it were yesterday.
“But where is it?” he persisted.
“This island doesn’t have a name, as far as I know,” Qingming said. “Think of the northernmost city you know of, then go several tens of thousands of li further up; there you will find a bay that opens into a wide sea, with two islands just barely visible from the mainland, one large and one small. We’re on the larger one.”
“…and you live here?”
Qingming laughed helplessly.
“Don’t say ‘yes and no’ again,” Boya warned him, but that just made Qingming laugh even harder.
“The house moves,” he finally explained, right around the point where Boya was considering strangling him. “There are four different islands with the appropriate foundation and the right environment, matching the painting; when I tire of one place, I can move the entire inside to another.”
“That sounds appallingly inconvenient.”
“You would think so,” Qingming smiled. “Jingyun Temple is the sect of the Northern City, the imperial capital which has the treasures of the entire country at its fingertips. I can’t imagine you moved around very much.”
“A representative of the temple accompanies the imperial retinue when they go to their other palaces, whether to the summer palace or the winter palace,” Boya said. “It was always my least favorite assignment.”
“More than the wall?” Qingming chuckled, probably at the expression of irritation on Boya’s face. “I must admit, I find myself quite curious to know what type of wall requires so much upkeep from a master such as yourself. How many demons can there possibly be left, once Master Boya has been through it…?”
Boya glared.
“Fine, fine. Then at least tell me, why is it that you feel the need to take care of any issues with this wall yourself?”
“It’s my wall,” Boya explained, then blushed at his own incoherence. “The Southern Gate of the city was given into the custody of my father, and following his death the position passed to me.”
“But surely that’s only a ceremonial position? I can’t imagine a member of the nobility actually standing guard duty.”
It had been a ceremonial position, once.
“You haven’t heard?” Boya asked, curious even in his resignation that he was going to have to go over the details again. “I thought everyone knew about the story of me and the Southern Gate.”
“I thought everyone knew about the story about my mother being a fox demon,” Qingming pointed out, quite reasonably.
Possibly everyone did, only no one had told Boya. Certainly Mistress Longyue had known – but then, she’d known a remarkably large number of rumors.
Boya sighed, giving in. “I once defeated a demon there,” he said shortly, deliberately vague, “and now demons have a tendency to go there and make a fuss in order to challenge me for a rematch.”
“A rematch,” Qingming said, somehow managing to make it sound offensive. Boya poured himself another cup of the heated liquor, which they’d brought into the painting with them. He’d need the fortification, as there was no way Qingming was going to let him leave the story there with only the simple explanation.
Sure enough, Qingming followed up by saying, “One doesn’t normally ask for a rematch in a battle to the death. How exactly did you defeat this demon?”
Boya mumbled the answer in as low and quick a manner as he could.
“Did you just say you challenged and defeated a demon in a music contest?” Qingming was visibly delighted. “I knew you were a master of music, but I hadn’t realized…! How wonderful! But in that case, with Killing Stone, why did you –”
“I only accept challenges made at the Southern Gate, and also he stole a revered pipa from my Jingyun Temple. If he had to play pipa, why couldn’t he have done it on something normal, rather than a relic?!”
“You really are far too concerned with propriety, Boya! And here I’d been thinking that you’d been recognized as the preeminent master of the Northern City entirely on the basis of your pretty face.”
Boya preferred his bow as a weapon whenever possible, but he’d left it outside the painting. No matter: he could use a fork to stab Qingming in the face instead, if it came to that.
“By which I mean, I thought from our previous conversations that you hated demons with an unrelenting passion,” Qingming said quickly, though he was still grinning. “How did you get roped into being their favorite musical opponent?”
Boya really wished Qingming wouldn’t phrase it that way, though it didn’t really surprise him, given Qingming’s partiality for demons.
“The first one I encountered there was too powerful for me to defeat,” Boya admitted. He’d been young and foolish back then, rushing off to try to defeat evil, spurred to action by the fear that someone else might suffer or even be already suffering, just as he once had. “By the time I realized it, it was too late to back out or call for help, so I took a different approach, thinking that I could bind him to stay away from the city with an oath if I could only defeat him in another way. It worked, but part of the conditions he set on his side were that if I won, I’d have to answer challenges in a similar manner in the Southern Gate for as long as – ah, going forward.”
“No, don’t stop there! As long as…?”
“Your house is probably all warmed up by now,” Boya said. “Anyway, we need to go back to the capital to deal with those jiangshi, which is urgent, no matter how much we might be dragging our feet. Shouldn’t you be packing?”
“You don’t honestly think you’ll be able to keep me from finding out,” Qingming said.
“No, but I can delay it,” Boya said. “Now get us out of here.”
-
Through his magical ear, Boya could hear the sound of steadily falling water at a distance, at least two dozen paces from where Qingming was standing. A fountain, perhaps, or a waterfall, though whether it was ornamental or natural wasn’t clear from the sound.
“Your trap was meant for me,” Qingming said. He sounded clear and steady as always, sure as bedrock.
Another rusty laugh.
“Now who’s making assumptions?” the demon said.
-
It hadn’t been especially evident on their first meeting, but Qingming didn’t like the city.
Boya couldn’t understand why not, and it was one subject – among others – upon which their minds simply could not meet. No matter how many times Qingming said, “There are so many people,” in a meaningful tone, as if expecting Boya to understand that this was a negative rather than a positive, Boya would not understand it in that way; equally so, no matter how often Boya said, “They’re all different,” Qingming would simply stare at him blankly, as if wondering what madness had possessed Boya to be not only capable of tolerating but actually enjoy the overwhelming populace of the city.
Boya supposed it had to do with their different upbringings. Just as Qingming preferred demons and distrusted humans, and Boya the opposite, Boya had been born and raised amidst multitudes. He had never known true seclusion, his every waking moment full with the minute signs that told of other nearby human life – while Qingming, it seemed, had been raised on the far outskirts of a village that was itself a bastion of isolation from civilization, barely connecting with other people and never really enjoying it. Even that house of his was designed, purposefully, to be in the most obscure of locations, intentionally unwelcoming to visitors.
As much as he didn’t understand it nor want to, still, sometimes, Boya reflected sourly, it seemed like Qingming had the right approach.
“If anyone else comes to the door, tell them it’s an unlucky day and that I cannot see them,” he informed those of his martial brothers that were supposedly serving as door guards, despite them not having actually stopped what felt like half the imperial palace from casually dropping by to say hello. All of them had been gawking at Qingming just as much as anyone else, but (to their misfortune) unlike the others, they fell under Boya’s disciplinary authority.
“What if it’s the emperor?” one of them asked.
“Yes, Boya,” Qingming said in an agreeable tone. “What if it’s the emperor?”
“Then obviously that takes priority,” Boya snapped. “Use some common sense!”
He slammed the doors shut.
When he turned to look, Qingming was grinning again.
“You know, it’s funny,” he said, unfurling his fan and giving it a glance. “As far as I can tell, your horoscope for today is completely clear, not unlucky at all –”
“I didn’t say it was,” Boya said dryly. “I told them to tell people it was. Are you ready to deal with the jiangshi?”
“Lunch first.”
“Something tells me you’re not taking this threat seriously.”
“Someone keeps telling me that one of the advantages of living in a city is the excellent quality of the food.”
Boya surrendered.
“You don’t seem to be taking this all that seriously either,” Qingming observed once they were situated in the private room on the second floor of a restaurant that Boya liked. They had an excellent view of one of the main city squares from here, which was normally a splendid sight; at the moment, it was rather ruined by the presence of shuffling, hopping corpses going in slow, dragging circles. “You were far more enthusiastic when gathering demon essence to awaken the guardians – you even scolded me for going too slowly. Why the change?”
“Someone told me that we were being stupid by not being thoughtful about how to approach it first,” Boya said. “I can’t remember who. Probably someone wise, which counts you out.”
Qingming chuckled. “A good point. Why delay now, though? The emperor’s order aside, it doesn’t actually seem that urgent.”
“Only because the corpses are largely staying in the portion of the city occupied by the nobility, who aren’t here on account of it being summer,” Boya said. “Otherwise it would be urgent – corpses carry plague, and should be banished as swiftly as possible.”
“Then, now…?”
“The emperor wants them gone.”
Qingming hummed thoughtfully. “And you?”
“I want to know first how they got here in the first place, in these numbers. The Evil Serpent’s incarnated form destroyed many buildings, including graves, but…” Boya gestured out to the square. “This many?”
“You think it’s some sort of trap?”
“I’m allowing for the chance that it might be.”
“Is that why you invited me?” Qingming asked. “Because you wanted help against whatever is causing this?”
“The emperor ordered us both to deal with it,” Boya said, because he wasn’t going to admit that he’d jumped at the first opportunity to work together again with Qingming, however flimsy the excuse – and it wasn’t that flimsy, really. Jiangshi were quite dangerous when not being controlled, and not just because they carried plague; they could be quite fierce.
It was only that these ones – didn’t seem to be.
“I see,” Qingming said knowingly.
“You always do,” Boya said, and glanced pointedly down at where Qingming generally stored his seeing-eye talismans.
Qingming laughed. “All right, then. I’ll help…but first, tell me about your wonderful flute, which you persist in using, despite having won it from a demon and carrying with it the obligation that you continue defending it from demons as long as you possess it.”
Boya stared at him. “You’ve been here less than a day!” he protested. “You’ve barely left my sight! How did you learn the story so quickly?”
“I heard things.”
“I thought hearing things was my area.” Boya shook his head. “Your spirit guardians, I take it?”
There was a brief pause before Qingming inclined his head in agreement.
That pause was awkwardness: for all of their conversation, both here in the capital and back in Qingming’s house, they had both, through seemingly unspoken mutual agreement, avoided lingering on the subject of spirit guardians. It seemed too intimate to speak of it – to remind themselves of the time when Boya’s spirit, bonded with the Vermillion Bird and freed from the confines of his human body, had knelt before Qingming and accepted his mark, emblazoned upon his forehead as a sign of eternal devotion, binding blood to blood, spirit to spirit, soul to soul…
Too intimate by far.
But Boya hadn’t come this far to simply avoid the subject forever.
He raised his eyes and met Qingming’s gaze directly.
“Tell me,” he said. “What else have your spirit guardians told you?”
Boya had found that Qingming was like lightning: bold and brilliant in his own element, but impossible to grasp in the palm of one’s hand. He was always teasing, but whenever he was confronted with a genuine emotion, a sincere connection with another person, he immediately sought to eel away.
This time was no different.
“They agree that this is a trap,” Qingming said, deliberately answering the wrong question. “Some of the corpses wear shrouds of different styles, different customs, showing that they were not all buried here. They were brought to the city intentionally.”
Boya nodded. He’d already noticed that; it had been one of the reasons he’d been suspicious, and why he’d wanted Qingming at his side. The other…
“A demon is behind this,” he said, and Qingming nodded. He’d unsurprisingly figured that out as well: only a demon would have the cleverness and the power to put something like this together. “Are you planning to try to convince me to make friends with this one, too?”
“No,” Qingming said, and Boya blinked, surprised as much by the swiftness and surety of the answer as by the content itself. “Not this time.”
“Why not?”
Qingming hesitated. It was uncharacteristic, and Boya frowned. “Why not?” he insisted. “Your spirit guardians must have told you something else, something that gives you pause. Tell me.”
“They say,” Qingming said, “that it might be a fox demon.”
Boya put down his cup and walked out.
-
“You’ve been watching Boya and I since morning, following in our footsteps,” Qingming said to the demon. “My spirit guardians warned me you were there, hiding and invisible, undetectable by any human no matter how powerful. You’ve probably been following Boya through the city for even longer. You could have approached him at any time, approached us at any time, but instead you waited until I was alone to approach me.”
“And you think, based on that, that what I wanted is you?”
“Isn’t it?” Another step. “If you have something you want to say to me, say it.”
The demon laughed a third time.
“You trust your powers, Yin-Yang Master,” it said. “You trust your spirit guardians, who whisper in your ears all that they see. But what happens if those eyes of yours – lie?”
There was suddenly a strange sound, like the beating of a thousand wings.
“You’re not a fox-demon!” Qingming exclaimed, sounding shocked. “You’re a tengu!”
Boya’s eyes widened: tengu were bird-demons, harbingers of war and pestilence. Where fox-demons could range from wicked to merely deceptive or tricky (yes, Boya could admit that such relatively innocent fox-demons existed, though it had only been recently that he had been able to concede that fact even to himself), bird-demons were invariably destructive. Like fox-demons, they could very convincingly disguise themselves as humans, often taking the forms of priests; like fox-demons, they could possess humans, typically women, and speak through their lips, though while a possession by a fox-demon could be lifted with the aid of an exorcism, a bird-demon almost invariably left its human host driven halfway to madness even when it was forcefully banished.
They were far, far more dangerous than foxes.
Qingming was in danger!
-
“What happened to your mother?” Qingming asked as they walked through the abandoned streets of the noble quarter, laying down arrays to hem in the jiangshi and keep them from getting out. It would be easier to use a single purification ritual to appease them all; if they missed any, they’d have to perform it multiple times, and that would be unnecessarily costly in time, effort, and material, so boxing them all in first was reasonable. “You said she was killed by a fox demon.”
“She was,” Boya said. A moment later, he added, “You never said how your mother died. Only that she, and you, were persecuted by rumors.”
“It strikes me as odd,” Qingming said, ignoring him. “Fox demons are known to hide amongst people, difficult to detect – while in human form, they are indistinguishable from fox-faced women, beautiful and captivating; it was because of that that the villagers I grew up with felt able to accuse my mother without any other evidence. Yet you’re so sure that it was a fox demon… It is said that they only reveal their true nature when drunk, or when frightened by a dog.”
“It’s also said that they bring down empires and destroy families,” Boya said, and struggled to keep his tone flat and unemotional. “Fox demons play tricks, each one a master of deception. A fox demon seduces a man into abandoning his family, then in turn abandons him when he discovers her true nature; he must then return to his home, finding only the devastation left behind.”
“Rather indirect, as a means of killing goes. Is that what happened to you?”
“No,” Boya said shortly. “There was nothing indirect about my mother’s death.”
Anyone else would have taken the curtness of his tone as a warning to stay away from the subject.
Qingming, unsurprisingly, did not.
“How did she die?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” Boya snapped. “She did. Or are you seeking to excuse the fox demon that did it, in order to convince me to grant mercy to this one?”
“I am only curious.”
“You want to prove it wasn’t a fox demon that did it,” Boya concluded bitterly. “Or something else, something like that…are you afraid you know who this demon, the one who’s doing it, is? Do you think it’s some kinsman of yours?”
“Do you believe the rumors about my heritage, then?”
“You never denied them,” Boya pointed out. “You said that the villagers in the town in which you were raised accused your mother of being a fox demon, and treated you as an outcast, tormenting you. You never said she wasn’t.”
“If you believe that, I’m surprised that you were willing to continue to work with me,” Qingming said, his voice scathing. “The great demon-hunter Boya, who once vowed to kill all the demons in the world, but now he runs after a demon’s son, begging for his company…”
“I never begged!”
“No?” Qingming said. “Then what do you call it?”
Boya glared at him.
“Perhaps it would make sense for you to lock in the other side of the quarter,” he said coldly. “This is not a task that requires two masters.”
“You’re right,” Qingming said. “It doesn’t.”
He disappeared.
-
Boya cursed to himself as he ran through the city to where he thought Qingming might be, wishing that in addition to a magical ear he had thought to drop one of his arrowheads in Qingming’s pocket, thinking to himself that a transportation spell would be extraordinarily useful right now. Perhaps he ought to ask Qingming to teach him how his own spell worked, or some variation on it. It was of course forbidden to seek out the secrets of the other sects, and normally Boya wouldn’t even consider something so improper – he would never have thought to ask Mistress Longyue how her gu worked, or by what method she trained her evil-detecting tadpoles.
But with Qingming, somehow, the unthinkable became merely the mundane.
For better, or for worse.
Through the magic ear, he could hear Qingming’s labored breathing in his ears, accompanied by the sound of dripping, and Boya’s blood ran cold as he realized that this was neither fountain nor waterfall, but shed blood falling onto stone. The bird-demon had probably cast out its fan of feathers, each pinion turning into a crow made wholly of darkness, and set the entire horde upon Qingming like a rain of blades. Even if Qingming had not been taken by surprise and had had time to activate his protection spell, that greatest of techniques, he would have been hard-pressed to evade it all.
“You made yourself appear to be a fox-demon to lure me in,” Qingming said. “You knew I wouldn’t be able to resist wanting to approach you on my own.”
“You should be more subtle in hiding your weak spots,” the bird-demon agreed. “You would never allow a fox-demon to be hunted without first speaking to it, yet your companion would never agree to such hesitation. You would drive him away from your side, then come straight to me.”
Qingming really had, too.
“You say all that,” Qingming said, “and yet earlier you seemed to say that it wasn’t me you wanted.”
“Right again! Now that it’s too late, you have gotten smart, or at least far better at guessing…you’re right. It’s not you I want. It’s only your blood.”
Qingming’s blood? Boya didn’t understand. Why in the world would a bird-demon care about Qingming’s blood?
“Boya.”
Boya startled and very nearly stopped running, wondering how (and when) Qingming had figured out that he was listening.
“You want Boya,” Qingming continued, and Boya realized he was still talking to the bird-demon. “You think – my blood – with blood command the spirit guardians. You want the Vermillion Bird.”
“Zhuque is the pinnacle of my kind,” the bird-demon said. “As far above a creature like me as a phoenix is to a pigeon. By itself it stands aloof, unreachable; I could not even dream to envy its powers. But now…now…”
“You think you can reach the Vermillion Bird through Boya.”
“Zhuque merged its spirit with that of a ground-bounded human, and such a thing cannot be undone.”
“Boya has said nothing of still being bound to the Vermillion Bird. Still less has he spoken anything of still being bound to me.”
“He does not need to speak of it for it to be true. A spirit guardian lives and dies with its master, does it not? I can tell that the bond between you is still there, and that he is still yours; you can summon him with your blood as you do your other spirit guardians, if you choose.”
“And there is the fault in your plan,” Qingming said. “What happens if I do not choose to call him?”
“I wasn’t planning on leaving you a choice,” the bird-demon said.
A moment later there was again the sound of wings in the wind, and Qingming’s pained cry.
-
Qingming cut a heroic figure even in his miserable state.
He had been forced onto his knees, his pure white robes streaked with blood from the cuts on his forearms and shoulders where the sharpened feathers had cut him; shadowy figures pressed him down with claws like raptor talons, leaving growing tears in the cloth. There was blood staining his teeth and pooling at the corner of his mouth, but his back remained straight and his gaze unflinching.
“I will not call him,” he said.
The bird-demon in front of him had taken the form of a hunched over old beggar, clad in layers upon layers of filth under which there was what was vaguely recognizable as a priest’s garb. It had a feathered fan in one hand and a priest’s staff in the other, and the latter was sharpened to a point as if it were a spear – Boya had no doubt that it could, and likely had, been used in such a fashion before.
“I will hurt you,” it said, rasp like a metalworker’s file in its voice. “I will cut you to pieces, fox-master, and in the end you will call and he will come.”
“I will not call him,” Qingming said, and then he smiled. “But that doesn’t mean he won’t come.”
Boya rolled his eyes and released the arrow he’d cocked a moment earlier, when he’d first crested the rooftop by the small garden where Qingming had so unwisely confronted the bird-demon and seen them there.
The bird-demon wasn’t expecting the attack. It screamed when the arrow pierced its shoulder, the lack of concentration dissolving the shadow-figures that had been holding Qingming down. Qingming was on his feet a heartbeat later, his own fan rising up, and the sharpened feathers that the bird-demon tried to throw at Boya were all re-directed into the bird-demon’s own back.
It screamed again.
“All the banishment rituals I know are too long to be convenient,” Qingming said to Boya when he dropped down to land beside him. “I can summon Killing Stone and the others to fight, but…”
“Did you send them to deal with the corpses?” Boya asked, and nodded with satisfaction when Qingming confirmed. “Let them deal with that. We can handle this bird-demon on our own.”
The bird-demon hissed at them, red-eyed and vicious, but then, seemingly agreeing with Boya’s statement, turned instead to flee.
Boya pulled another arrow out of his quiver and glanced sidelong at Qingming, feeling something content settle deep into his chest at the feeling of fighting side-by-side with the other man once more.
“Carry me?” he suggested.
Qingming’s answering smile looked like a fox’s – but that was all right.
-
“If the emperor wants someone to clean that up, he can find someone else,” Boya said with disgust, looking at down at the smear of guts and feathers on the pavement by the southwestern gate, where he and Qingming had finally cornered the creature – it had been a pitiful sight by then, plucked of many of its feathers and its already ragged clothing torn to shreds. In its final moments, it had refuse all pity and thrown itself forward at Boya’s face, its sharpened claws stretched out as if it thought it would be able to get at the Vermillion Bird’s spirit simply by ripping away the human flesh outside. Qingming had stopped it, of course; Boya had never doubted it for a second. “My Jingyun Temple has better things to do...some things really are a bit too far. Don’t you agree?”
Qingming hummed, and Boya glanced at him. Qingming’s expression was quite strange.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You came,” Qingming said.
“Of course I did,” Boya said. “Did you think I actually fell for your provocation? You were obviously trying to get me to leave you alone so that you could confront the demon by yourself.”
“Yes, you gave in and agreed to split up far too quickly for it to be anything but that,” Qingming agreed. “But – how did you know where to find me? Even with your magic ear on me, there was nothing to show where we were.”
Of course Qingming had spotted (or maybe just guessed) the presence of the ear.
The real answer was, of course, that Boya knew his city like the back of his hand, and that there were only so many places that sounded of stairs and waterfall both in the approximate part of the city where Qingming must have gone, but he turned and scowled at Qingming anyway.
“Why don’t you ask what you really want to know?” he demanded.
“All right,” Qingming said. “Do you only like me because of the spirit guardian bond we made?”
“I liked you even before that,” Boya reminded him. “Though why I do remains a mystery even to me. I’m a master same as you, Qingming; do you really think I don’t know how to sever a spirit guardian bond if I want to?!”
“The bird-demon said you hadn’t.”
“And it’s right, of course. I’ve sectioned off the bond so that it doesn’t affect me or my actions – it would be sheer folly not to do that. But it seemed like something that might be useful in the future, so I kept it.” Boya paused. “Unless you want to break it…?”
“No, no,” Qingming said quickly. He was smiling, a little one that looked almost as if he couldn’t help it. “I am honored that you thought it worth retaining. I thought you might be upset about it.”
Boya huffed. “Why would I be upset? Because it involves the Vermillion Bird? Bonding with the guardian was my idea, remember.”
Such decisions could not be revoked, and anyway, it had been worth it to defeat He Shouyue. Besides, knowing that he himself could now be thought of as a half-demon, albeit through adoption rather than birth, had been quite helpful in Boya’s grudging acceptance that maybe not all demons were evil. In fact, he had by now gotten quite comfortable with the synthesis within his spirit.
“I was more thinking about the fact that all my other spirit guardians are demons.”
“Spirit guardians don’t have to be demons,” Boya said. “In the city, spirit guardians are always people.”
He decided it wasn’t worth mentioning that that was the reason why spirit guardians were so rare in the city – people only agreed to become spirit guardians for people they were exceptionally close to, typically siblings or spouses.
He was pretty sure Qingming would find out about it on his own, anyway.
“I’m honored,” Qingming said again, and something about his tone suggested he might already know. “Boya…”
“Yes?”
Qingming smiled. “Would the bird-demon have had more luck if it tried challenging you here by the gate instead?”
Boya growled, and Qingming laughed.
“Firstly, this is the southwest gate, not the Southern Gate,” Boya lectured. “They’re completely different, not that a backwater bumpkin like you would know something like that. Secondly, I only accept musical challenges. Did you hear that thing’s voice? It clearly wouldn’t have known one key from another if it bashed its face into them…”
-
“Had you always planned on peeping at me?” Qingming asked, settling down at the table in Boya’s courtyard in the Jingyun Temple, pouring them both some of his delicious plum blossom wine. The door was shut tightly with spells and guarded by spirit guardians who had been instructed that even if the emperor wanted something, he could damn well wait until they’d had some time to rest. “I thought that was my thing, not yours.”
“I wasn’t going to let you run loose in my city all on your own,” Boya said, secretly pleased that Qingming still hadn’t found the new generation magic ear still clinging to the bottom of his robe. “You’re far too dangerous for that, clearly. Didn’t you see the damage left behind from last time you were here?”
“I like to think that that wasn’t entirely my fault.”
“Maybe if you’d listened to me about He Shouyue and didn’t trust blindly in your assumptions about spirit guardians…”
“Boya. How long did you live in the city without noticing that the Princess and the Empress were the same person?”
Boya decided to change the subject.
“You know,” he said instead, “if it’s a thing for you, I won’t judge.”
Qingming looked at him sidelong. “What is?”
“Oh, you know. The demon thing. Me being bonded to the Vermillion Bird.”
Qingming’s eyes narrowed.
Boya smiled innocently at him.
“I don’t know about it being a thing, exactly,” Qingming said. “But those tattoos were quite delectable.”
Boya choked.
“I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing them again if you happen to feel inclined to take off your shirt –”
An utterly despicable man, Boya concluded moodily, hoping that his face wasn’t as red as he felt it was. Completely shameless, to the point that it rendered teasing completely impossible.
“Just give me the wine already,” he demanded, holding out his hand.
Qingming laughed, and gave him what he asked for.