David

After reserving the room for the night, Daoist Li made good on her offer to show them the city of Dongjing. Instead of calming down, the little girl was steadily becoming inconsolable, and none of them wanted to spend more time in the hotel than necessary. The constant apologies from the woman behind the counter had pushed David's patience to a limit.

Dongjing was like no other city that David had ever been to. It was more of a large, sprawling village that hadn't stopped growing.

"They call Dongjing the city of a hundred schools, but I've always referred to it in my head as the city of mushrooms," said Daoist Li with a smile.

Her impression was one that David appreciated - pagodas grew at various heights surrounding Winds of Spring Tower which had nearly thirty stories, each one wider than a New York City block. The next tallest pagoda was only two-thirds its height.

Between every pagoda were scores of little houses with pointed roofs set with terracotta tiles in brown-red. The entrances of the houses did not face the main road - rather each of the houses faced one another in narrow alleys and cul-de-sacs. Trees grew freely, but the grass stayed neatly trimmed, and red lanterns hung at every door and at every window in celebration of autumn.

Even during the day, there were so many fireflies that the shade of every tree was bright. The shade was as well-lit as the clearings occupied by well-preserved chunks of stone which were graffitied with the names of lovers - remnants of a dynasty from long ago. The light from the fireflies at high noon cast merry shadows over the flat walls of the densely packed houses.

"By sunset, cultivators battle on the rooftops of the Everlit City without regard for its citizens," Daoist Li explained. "It’s been the subject of much drama and more prose throughout the years. It is a city of very peculiar kinds of love stories and phrases that rhyme only in the Old Languages. I'm your light, Dongjing by night."

Another chill passed over David. She might have spoken in a crisp, textbook Mandarin, but David knew what language that rhymed in. Alice's thumb found his own, pushing, pressing. He heard the sound of distant thunder.

"But that is heresy," said Daoist Li softly. "You must remember this well - there is only one language, and that is the language of the Stars in the Sky. I'm not Chan Changshou, Chow and Ji, if those are really your names. My ear is far more keen."

"They are," said Alice, suddenly defensive - those were their last names.

Daoist Li smiled and nodded. "Good. We're going to steer away from scary topics like these and have some tea, okay?"

The sky was clear and the weather was warm and it wasn’t time for a storm.

They continued to walk through the city as Daoist Li explained various attractions.

"Everyone wants to live in Dongjing, but unless you join the Clear Skies, or become an unattached core disciple in a Great Sect, it's pretty much impossible to be a successful cultivator here," Daoist Li admitted, now that Chan was not present.

"Ooh, look at that!" Alice said, pointing at a tea house. Through a window of blue-black glass, a small crowd of children watched a shirtless, musclebound old man stir a thick dark-iron cauldron of honey-brown tea on a pedestal which spun along with his circular motions.

David could feel the ebb and flow of the man's Song vibrate through the glass. When the old man slammed a ladle into the cauldron, shapes made by tea rose into the air before dispersing - mermaids and fish and trees.

"That is some incredible control," mused Daoist Li, who was also impressed. A tea lion opened its mouth in a roar before falling back into the cauldron. David felt for the currents and eddies of the man's Song, but stopped immediately when the man turned suddenly and shot him an appraising look through the glass.

Words from Jiang Xiangyue echoed in his mind - it was impolite to grasp and grope at another's principle.

David gave the man a wide, disarming smile to prove that he wasn't a threat. The man looked from David to Alice to Daoist Li, then smiled back and returned to making tea-animals.

"Must you provoke every old monster you see," asked Daoist Li, who feared for her life.

"I didn't mean any harm," said David. And he didn't!

"Down south, in Ming-by-the-Sea," said Daoist Li, "to curl your qi around someone's like that is known as the Cultivator's Question - an invitation to duel."

"Noted," said David, somewhat mildly.

Alice leaned deeply into him and looked up at him through dark lashes. "Hear that, Daoist Ji? You don't have to know the answer to every question."

"Careful, sister, your hypocrisy is going to leave your boy choking on his own rage." David rolled his eyes, hard. Alice giggled. Her head rested easily against his shoulder and her hair smelled of mulberry blossoms.

Daoist Li found a little tea shop which doubled as a bookstore hidden away in one of the cul-de-sacs along the brown-brick road. "You're going to pay for this, seeing as I've been duped into paying for our suite by that cute little receptionist."

"Duped?" asked David.

"Honestly, I offered," said Li, pushing open the door to the teahouse. "For a nice hotel like that, I expect our room is what the Clear Skies sect charges in protection money every month."

"Too right, Lady Daoist," interrupted a man behind a faded counter. "But I wouldn't say rude things about the Clear Skies where anyone can hear you. You never know who might be listening."

The man was dressed in dark yellow robes and wore a hardleather apron. On the apron was an ink drawing of a teacup with three little lines rising over it in an imitation of steam. The lines twisted into the shape of a book. The man was several years older than David.

Daoist Li scoffed. "Don't be a busybody, Tea Master. We're close friends with one of the Inner Disciples of the sect."

The man sighed, smiling. "Now, isn't that more reason not to make trouble for your friend? The lives of those fighting to become core disciples isn't easy!"

David tried to ignore the hum of the man's Song, but found he was unable. Was everyone in Dongjing a cultivator?

Before Daoist Li could say something more rude and leave his establishment in a huff, the man's smile brightened. "Now, ladies, I have some rosehip and cardamom tea that's very good for the skin! And junzi," he said, referring to David in that old fashioned word for gentleman, "I have an infusion of ginger and ginseng that will jumpstart your mind and settle your qi!" He pumped his fist into the air.

Alice, who had not encountered anything cosmetic in nature since she'd torn through her remaining lip gloss back in Cloud Mountain City, mirrored the tea master's excitement. "My skin's been so hard done by, recently," she moaned at David, expecting him to contradict her with the truth - ever since cultivating, neither had seen the trace of a pimple.

Their faces were as clear as marble, as flawless as jade. So David did not humor her. "Yes, yes, it'll help alot," he said with narrowed eyes and a wide smile, basking in the sudden murder in Alice's eyes.

"Gentleman is the bravest man I know," said the tea master. "You have my admiration," he said, giving David a mocking bow.

The four burst into easy laughter.

"We'll have anything you recommend," said Alice, showing her dimples. "And if there's any book you really enjoy but are finding a bit of difficulty in selling," she appended. "I love reading," she said, as serious as can be.

The tea house was small and crammed full of bookshelves, with only two or three round tables to sit at. Before long, the sun was setting. By this time, David felt his grasp on the language was far better than when he'd arrived - while many of the words were different, they still followed the same ideas and parts of speech of Chinese. He'd found some illustrated novels which helped him through pattern recognition and found, to his delight, that he was more or less literate after several hours.

The light of the setting sun surprisingly became bright and white through the bluish-black glass windows. It was an idyllic atmosphere - Daoist Li flirted with him and the tea master both. Alice found little moments to slide onto David's lap with little pouts and to read passages of poetry that David had never heard before.

The interruption was, of course, inevitable.

The door flew open with a bang as a trio who looked to be David's age stormed into the store as though they'd owned it. They were dressed in the pale yellow of the Clear Skies. There were two men who could have been twins, with two exceptions. One had slightly crooked teeth and the other had eyes too far apart to be considered handsome. They flanked a girl who was heavily made up, with blushed cheeks and little gold ornaments hanging from her ears.

"How can I help my benevolent Fairy and my well-read Gentlemen?" asked the tea master, shaking in a sort of deep fear that David heavily disliked.

"You're late, old Chu," said the girl. She had clear brown eyes, an oval face and the sort of expression that David wanted to sink a fist into. "Pay up."

"My dear," said the tea master. "I've already paid this month - to Daoist So."

"Daoist So," said the girl in triumph, "is no longer alive. I'm in charge of this district now."

Gorillas one and two nodded.

"Hmph." The noise came not from perennial busybody Alice Chow, but from Daoist Li. It was the same sound that they'd been making earlier in the day to mock the Daoist sitting atop the pagoda. Alice, who was seated on the arm of David's chair, trembled in repressed laughter.

The Tea Master looked as though his family had been sentenced for execution.

"Who are you?" asked the girl, turning to Daoist Li with a dismissive glare.

"Is this the sort of hospitality that the Clear Skies sect shows to the Iron Scripture?"

The glare froze on the girl's face. "My apologies," she stuttered, finally realizing the color of Daoist Li's robes. "Daoist Qiao greets a Core Disciple of the Iron Scripture Sect."

"Are these the manners you show to the owner of the favored bookstore of your Inner Disciple Daoist Chan?"

The girl was now petrified. "Daoist Chan? Do you mean Brother Changshou?"

David raised his eyebrows. That particular use of the word brother was how someone might refer to a lover.

The girl shrank into herself. Daoist Li let a sardonic grin bloom onto her face. David was sure that Daoist Chan had never visited this bookstore before in his life. But that little lie was worth it - the Tea Master looked far less downtrodden now.

"Does he know you call him Brother Changshou?"

That was the killing blow. The girl squeaked. "Something important has come up, I'll be leaving first," she muttered frantically, trying not to break into a run as she exited the bookstore.

Daoist Li tilted her head and raised her palms with a shrug, still wearing the sardonic grin as the door swung back and forth on its hinges.

"We should probably be leaving too," said Daoist Li as the door finally closed. She turned to the tea master. "I'll be letting Brother Changshou," she said with a snort, "know that the owner of his favorite bookstore is being bullied, and where his favorite bookstore is."

The tea master's head bobbed up and down as though he couldn't believe his luck.

Alice stared out the window at the sunset. "Where did the time go! We're late for meeting the man in question. How much do we owe you?"

The tea master shook his head. "Nothing, nothing at all!"

Alice insisted on leaving him twenty silver taels. The man pocketed the money as if she might change her mind.

They walked in a comfortable silence on the way back to the hotel. Alice clasped David's left hand with both of hers.

"This is power too," said Daoist Li as the sun set in full and the light of the fireflies numbering in millions matched the stars. "This is what you get to do when you join a Great Sect. It is not enough to beat down people like that with your fists. If I were to have wounded them with more than just my words, the poor tea master would have taken their empty vengeance."

She smiled, as bright as the moon at which she stared. "And I must admit, there is something fun about oppressing the cowardly."