Crimson Qi, Exiled Beautiful Lady Falls in Love with a Shy Demon

Ten Thousand Scrolls

A short faery -- no more than a head taller than Xi -- opened the door. Her four gray eyes ran over his head, legs, bundle, shoulders...

"Fenghuang. We have been expecting you," she said as if he had been in a habit of dropping by every week. "Or is it Chong Xi?"

"Chong Xi," he said, remembering her name in turn; she was the faery who went into exile with his mother and Yu. "May the Celestials bless your way, Sister Sayewa."

"My mother..." the rest of the question died in his throat.

The haunting string instrument he heard all over Tarkan, played deep in the house as well, but the tune was wistful, rather than titillating. Xi gently pressed the faery aside to walk towards the music as if in a dream.

The house had five rooms at most, running in a circle around a tiny courtyard. It was made smaller by the boxes, crates, and cases of scrolls. Despite the disregard for order, every visible surface was squeaky-clean, almost obsessively so. Or, perhaps, scholarly.

"Chong Xi, may we have a word first---" The faery nearly stepped on his heels, but he ignored her, searching for his invisible musician.

Sayewa kept up, his stubborn shadow, dropping yellow flowers with a sharp fragrance. Other than the extra eyes and the vegetation sprouting from her skin and hair, the faery might have been taken for a human in appearance, unlike her taller, angular-featured kin. As much as Xi was comforted by her presence, he did not stop. He was too close to finding his mother after all these years to seek a confidante.

The room he sought faced west.

It was full of scrolls too, but most of it was taken up by a bed mat and the gauze curtains. Xi did not care for furnishings and the principal directions: the musician sitting on the cushions looked like his grandmother would have, if she pinned her hair up with a single comb, and did not put on her Empress' face.

Startled by the noise, she had stopped playing even before he walked through the door. When he did, she lifted her eyes at him slowly, as if her eyelids were weighed. Just as slowly, she let go of her instrument, the zither. It slipped from her lap to the floor, producing a mournful sound.

His mother's fingers fluttered over his face. "Xi. You... you look so much like Ho!"

A momentary relief lightened his chest when she said his father's name, compared him to his father... then her feelings poured in with every touch. This new aspect of his hsin was unsettling, but he succumbed to being held, succumbed to breathing in her scent, her guilt, her joy, her sadness, her pride... everything that he longed for. He did not know if he should have kept his eyes opened, when they'd closed. Reluctantly, the rational part of him worked on slowing down the breathing and the racing of his heart -- he wished he could let it gallop instead, to the point where he would have to gasp for air out of joy.

She loved him.

"Then why?" he skipped ahead to the next question. He meant to keep it to himself, but he blurted it out into her ear.

"Xi, perhaps we can—" She glanced at the gauze bed-curtains, at the man lying on the mat, making Xi to finally remembered his promise to Jiang, to be courteous.

"Greetings, Yu." Xi made his bow not deep enough for a master or a father. Before he straightened up he knew why his mother and her companions did not leave Tarkan sooner.

All grown men look mighty to a boy who barely reaches their knees, but even when Xi was a boy, Yu stood out among men. The demon bloodline gave him wider shoulders, thicker bones and neck, heavier muscles. Yu used to have a warrior's look even when all he did was to kneel by the sick all day long.