Oriole and Radishes
Lin Yīng
Lin Yīng liked forms.
This was not a popular opinion.
Most people who came to the Manor did not like forms. They liked results—healing, blessings, petitions granted, audiences secured. The forms were, to them, an obstacle between desire and fulfillment.
Lin Yīng understood better.
Forms were the reason the line moved.
Forms were why the desperate did not trample the merely worried. Why merchants did not elbow past widows. Why a man missing three fingers did not wait behind a man missing none but complaining loudly about it.
Forms were civilization.
She dipped her brush in ink and continued her work.
Name. Origin. Nature of request. Urgency. Supporting documentation.
The characters flowed neatly beneath her hand, each stroke measured, balanced. Her father said that good calligraphy revealed the state of the soul. If that was true, then Lin Yīng's soul was orderly, efficient, and only a little irritated.
"Next," she called.
The line shuffled forward.
The Manor was busy today. It was always busy, but today had a particular energy to it—the kind that hummed through the air like the first note on a harp.
The Heavenly Lady was expected to return.
That alone would have been enough to swell the crowds. But there was more. There were rumors—new ships sighted on the horizon, the same sleek hulls that had departed east toward the Saffron Straits. There was strange cargo unloaded at dawn, beasts of shadow locked within fused obsidian cages with great spears of sorcerous steel impaling them. Trophies and curiosities of the Great Expedition past the Vale of Shadows.
Tai Le Bay thrived on such rumors and oddities. It ate them, digested them, and turned them into trade.
Lin Yīng approved.
She stamped a form, set it aside, and looked up.
The next petitioner stepped forward, a fisherman with a bandaged hand and a patient expression. Good. She preferred the patient ones.
As he spoke, she worked, her mind half on the words, half drifting—as it often did—backward in time.
⊙
She had not always lived in Tai Le Bay.
She had lived with her dad, her mama, and her little sister in a smaller town further inland. They had heard the rumors first: of a Great Divine from the past who had returned to bless the Empire again. They had heard that she flew on a great silvery beast. That she commanded fire and sky.
Then the rumors had stopped being rumors when one day, a dragon flew over the city. The whole town had stopped and looked to the sky. They all had felt it then—the whisper of gold and crystal in the backs of their heads.
The Heavenly Might.
Dad, however, felt a gold of a different make. He felt the call of his purse. Her father, Lin Chen, was an artist. A master painter. His purse—and their tummies—always felt the caprices of an artist's lot: great abundance when work sold, then long lean moons when the commissions dried. As such, a Divine settling in a nearby region was both a call to the soul and a call to the moneybags.
Dad's hunch had been vindicated in short order, when criers, couriers, and the Imperial Postal Relay all extolled the same message: the new Divine had Heavenly Wisdom to match her Might. And she had issued an invitation for scholars, artisans, and artists to join her blessed endeavors.
Oh, and Her Radiant Presence was obscenely wealthy—something to do with magical knick-knacks she had gathered from the ruins of that famous western kingdom that went and blew itself up.
That had been what convinced her mama.
Her mother, Wei Lian, was far more practical than dad. While her father worked with ink and paper, her mother was given to plants and powders. She was an herbalist and ran a shop that smelled of cinnamon, ginger, dried lavender, and rare spices. Mama's shop kept their bellies full when dad's paintings did not sell.
Mama handled the money in their family. And a Divine patron with proven wealth was a good reason indeed to put their lives on a cart and travel.
There had been a road. Weeks of it.
Dust, and the slow creak of wheels, and the smell of her mother's herbs hanging in bundles from the sides of the wagon. Lin Yīng had walked more than she rode. It was easier that way—she could keep count of things. The pots. The ropes. Her little sister.
Always her little sister.
Lin Hui had been small enough then to sleep among the plants, curled like Tuan Tuan—their family's cat—between clay pots and woven baskets. She would wake with leaves in her hair and dirt on her cheek, blinking as if the sun had only just risen to greet her.
Tuan Tuan was either napping atop the great wagon or curled alongside her sister. The cat took its tribute of warmth wherever he could.
Mama treated the plants like kin even on the road. She watered them from streams, shielded them from harsh sun, muttered to them under her breath.
Travelers sometimes stared.
Lin Yīng did not. It was simply how things were.
Dad's head was lost within a cloud for most of the journey. He walked with them, yes. He helped, sometimes. But more often he paused—at a bend in the road, at a hilltop, at the sight of a farmer in a field—and drew. Quick strokes. Ink on paper. A mountain reduced to three lines. A man bent beneath the weight of his labor, captured in the curve of his spine.
"Good practice," he would say.
"It is not helping with the ox," mama would reply.
Lin Yīng had learned early that both things could be true.
At night, by the fire, her father would sometimes draw for Lin Hui. Little things. Birds, mostly. Songbirds and orioles, fleeting shapes with more beauty than meaning.
Lin Hui would stare at them for long minutes, utterly absorbed.
Paper can hold life, her father told them once.
Lin Yīng had not understood then.
She did now.
⊙
"Done," she said, handing the fisherman his slip. "Take this to the third hall. They will see to your hand."
"Wings and water keep you, miss," he said, bowing slightly.
Polite. Efficient. A good interaction.
"Next."
The line moved.
⊙
They had arrived at the Bay with their wagon battered and their clothes dusty. Only the plants had kept a pristine demeanor after the journey. The Bay greeted them with salt air, unfamiliar birds, and the noise of a prosperous port town.
They joined the line of new arrivals. They had not waited long before standing before a bureaucrat and a bizarre contraption. The man was wearing the usual dress of an administrator, yet his robes held an odd brooch: two wings—one insectile, the other draconic—fashioned of burnished silver.
Odder still was his station.
A column of featureless obsidian rose from the earth before sprouting a lectern that held his paper and inkpot. The man also sat on an obsidian throne, with a colorful cushion beneath him. Shading him from the sun was yet another smooth blackstone umbrella.
Lin Yīng wondered how such stone furniture could be fashioned.
And why use stone when there was wood aplenty?
The man had written their names and her parents' profession. He had paused, just briefly, when her father said he was a master of the brush. He had a contemplative, almost appreciative look before writing additional notes in an adjacent journal that looked sparsely used. Then he gave them one of countless printed scrolls. "For directions," he had said. He also provided them with a stamped paper writ for a lot within the artisanal district.
Dad inspected the scroll with an air of confusion before motioning them closer and explaining.
"The city is peculiar. It is organized in a grid, like every proper Yitish city, but the Divine's Manor is not in the center. It is on the shore, to the side of the city. Instead, they are building some five-tiered garden thing in the center. Have you ever heard of a hanging garden?"
Mama shrugged.
Lin Yīng wanted to know what a hanging garden was, but they had to keep moving, and her thoughts were stolen by the road beneath them. The main avenues were that same impossibly fused blackstone. And they were huge! Ten carts could have ridden abreast. Their smoothness made their own wagon bang and clang a lot less.
Unfortunately, the black stone made it obvious when the oxen relieved themselves. A harried cleaner barked at them and ordered them to stop. He ran off before coming back with a large bag of fabric meant to catch the inauspicious droppings.
"Cleanliness is Our Lady of the Bay's foremost decree!" he intoned.
They continued their trek through the city, stopping now and then to consult the scroll. There were no walls separating the wards, and no external curtain wall either. The city had a Heavenly Patron, after all. Not even the most dimwitted of fools would dare to cause mischief.
They arrived at the promised lot and found it already built.
It was an unsettling abode.
The building was black—burned black, the stone melted and cooled into something harder than nature intended. Its walls were smooth and unornamented, meeting at sharp corners that seemed to reject the very idea of decoration. There were no eaves, no pillars, no carvings. Just a door-shaped hole in one wall and window-shaped holes in others.
A gift from Her Radiance, the administrator had said. Free to any who needed shelter.
It looked like a mausoleum.
Her father touched the wall, fascinated.
"She sings the stone," he had said.
That night, they unrolled their bedding on the bare stone floor. The sea wind crept through the window-holes in damp gusts, but they did not shiver. The stone held a hint of warmth, as if the sun were still heating it. Hui had abandoned her covers and sprawled directly on the floor. Tuan Tuan perched atop her belly. It was a warm night, but not a comfortable one.
"Tomorrow," mama said, looking at the empty stone, "we buy paper."
⊙
"Next."
A man in silken, bejeweled robes advanced, carrying himself like a trader of considerable means—or a minor noble from a nearby city. He nodded, then gave a deferential bow to her regardless. He might have more wealth than a hundred generations of Lins could accrue, but Lin Yīng was clad in silk too.
She wore the official dress of an Administrator of the Manor. The back of her robes was painted and stitched with gold thread to resemble the wings of a great moth. She was of the Golden Wings—a gatekeeper to the Divine's affairs. That afforded her more respect than some of the lesser nobles would have.
Education had been another of Her Radiance's edicts. And Yīng had been among the first cohort to be taught in the new school. Heavenly Wisdom had applied there too.
Indeed, the Radiant School was less about passing the Imperial Civil Service Examinations and more about making everyone a little bit brighter. Instead of the Fourteen Books and Five Classics of the Dawn, the 'curriculum' was diverse: sciences, mathematics, native and foreign languages, history, arts, and martial education. It was also compulsory for the young, and while that may have ruffled some feathers, it had come with the promise of two full meals in the canteen.
Lin Yīng still maintained that the school's canteen made the best dumplings in the Bay.
Yīng had learned a great deal in school. She had also discovered an agile mind for languages, both local dialects and foreign tongues. That aptitude was what helped her pass the Manor's examinations and become one of the administrators of these hallowed grounds.
Language earned her her Wings.
And the respect of any soul, be they high or low, local or visiting.
"I would like to inquire about harboring my own humble trading fleet in your waters," began the wealthy man after a quick greeting.
"I have already visited the docks. The office of the Harbormaster claimed that such an endeavor would fall under the aegis of the Manor."
That was correct, indeed, but this fleet-master had come to the wrong office. The Manor had several. Still, the man had been polite and had shown initiative—two dear qualities in the Bay. So Yīng reached into a drawer and withdrew a glass candle. Then her hand went to a purple bell, and she rang it. At the bell, a veiled woman exited from behind a nearby screen and stood beside Yīng.
"The Expeditionary Office, if you will," said Yīng.
The summoned apprentice focused on the candle and lit it. A beat later, the witchfire showed Yīng's counterpart in the correct office.
"Do you have the time to send a runner my way? We have a distinguished guest who may want to add more hulls to your overall trading effort," she asked.
Her counterpart acquiesced, and help was sent to escort the wealthy guest.
"The Lady's peace upon you," she bid him farewell.
⊙
Dawn came pale and grey on that second day in the Bay. It filtered through the blanket and gently woke Yīng. But when she sat up, she found dad already awake. Lin Chen was busy sketching the building's sharp angles by the weak light. He smiled when he saw her and showed her his drawings.
"There is promise here, little songbird. Some simple wooden grids would soften the edge. Then we can add screens to divide the house. It is big enough for you and Hui to have your own rooms!"
He had forgotten to wish her good morning in his joy.
"And there is a courtyard in the back too! The perfect place to unpack your mother's potted plants."
His excitement had woken Hui and mama, and they proceeded to have their first breakfast in the Bay. They ate a rice congee with pickled vegetables and steamed buns they had gotten from the market. Then the whole family gathered around a wooden plank propped up on two crates—a makeshift table until they could unpack.
Atop it stood the Great Round One.
It was the biggest winter melon Yīng had ever seen—enormous, heavy, with a pale green rind. They had bought it from a roadside vendor a day or two outside the Bay, and they had saved it for their new home.
Yīng still remembered the sound the knife made when it went in. Crack.
Then, a sweet, clean smell filled the stone room, like warm summer rain. Yīng ate her portion in thick, neat, dripping wedges. Hui, however, held hers with both hands, juice running down her wrists, seeds stuck to her cheek.
Hui had always been the Messy One.
Tuan Tuan appeared from nowhere—as he always did—and sat at her feet, waiting for a dropped piece. He got none. The melon was too sweet. It might have upset his stomach.
After breakfast, her mother looked torn between shopping for supplies and staying in to care for her plants, now that she had a suitable garden.
In the end, they all went to the administration building together. The whole family, hunting for wood and paper.
Tai Le Bay looked stranger that morning. It was a battlefield where blackstone was constantly losing ground against color. Theirs was not the only family declaring war on the all-consuming black in the name of gaiety. There were also bizarre buildings to gawk at—like the great black serpent that rose from the ground and snaked all over the outer city.
"What are those?" she asked her father.
"Aqueducts. They are raised stone canals that move water around. But this is strange. The empire usually builds them from hills or mountains, so the water flows down."
Confused, he asked a stranger in very officious robes.
"Ah, the aqueduct starts in the sea. I know it is unusual. But see that big black blob of rock on the west side of the docks? It is a building where Her Worship worked some heat magic to turn sea water sweet."
"But how do they send the water up? More magic?"
"Ah, not entirely. There is a clever scheme there. An elaborate pump, I hear it called. The Silver Wings came up with it."
"Silver Wings?"
"The best scholars in this here town! They came from all over to study magic under Her Radiance's guidance. You can find them in the academy."
"There is an academy already?"
"Yes! And Her Worship is building a new school too, a big one for all the little ones… and the not-so-little ones as well."
Water, it seemed, had been another edict of the Divine.
The town had already been known for its hot springs. Those had multiplied in the wake of the dragon. There were also many bathhouses in every ward they passed through. Water and cleanliness went together. Soap too. And there was an abundance of it, if her nose had not lied. She smelled fragrant perfumes as the wind played through the streets.
They arrived at the central administration building later than they should have. The sights had been distracting.
The administrative hall was different from their new home—warmer, lit by lanterns, with wooden counters and paper screens. A clerk—someone very much like the person Lin Yīng would become—explained how it all worked.
"Our Lady provides the shell. The town hall provides the fittings. You may borrow wood and paper and tools. You pay when you can, or you pay in trade. That is the way of Tai Le."
Lin Yīng remembered that clearly. Along with the clerk's ink-stained hand, gesturing most happily. She had understood, even then, that this was something new. Something precious. Something to be proud of.
They spent the morning selecting materials. Thin wooden beams for a frame. Paper for screens and windows. A roll of woven reed matting for the floor. And lanterns—many lanterns, in red and gold and pale white, some plain and some painted with little fish and clouds. The town hall also provided several cheerful youths for carrying duty.
Lin Hui clutched a small paper lantern shaped like a rabbit as they left the hall.
No one told her to put it back.
⊙
"Next."
A woman with a cough approached. She was wearing one of those paper half-veils to cover her mouth and nose. The Healing Hall distributed them. The woman stopped two steps before the painted boundary, but even from that distance, Yīng could tell whatever ailed her was mild.
She should not have come here.
Ailments were matters better left to the Healing Hall. The Manor's healers were better suited for accidents and injuries—where the pain was visible and outside the body. Sickness, however, burrowed inside. It was harder to cure through the flesh-shaping magic the apprentices were learning. Only the best practitioners were as adept as the Divine at burning sickness.
And they usually stayed in the Healing Hall.
Yīng shook her head, but she still wrote a note for the woman—a recommendation to visit Wei's Remedies and Rare Spices, her mother's apothecary. If the woman was impolite enough to ignore proper medical procedures, then Yīng could at least send her mama's way and let the family gain an extra customer.
Filial piety was a cherished quality in the empire.
⊙
By the evening of that second day, the blackstone house was no longer a tomb.
They had not finished—far from it. But the entrance now had a wooden frame and a sliding paper door, painted with a quick, hasty brush by dad. Lanterns hung from a temporary line strung across the main room, casting warm spots of color.
A small obsidian lantern glowed a soft orange in the corner. It had been entrusted to them by the administration—another gift from Her Radiance. One magical light per family, to keep the shadows at bay. The smart scholars of the academy would recharge it once it grew weak. It was cheaper than burning wood. The clerk had also said the Silver Wings were working on another useful wonder—a heating disc big enough to cook upon. It was not ready yet, but once they made sure it was safe, every house would receive one.
Mama had asked if witchlight was good enough for plants. The clerk did not know, but he gave her the name of a wizard who might answer.
Meanwhile, her mother had claimed the back room, where the light fell softest and lingered longest. She had arranged her potted plants in a loose semicircle near the window-hole. Pride of place went to the three-colored leaf plant—a rare heirloom from Grandmama, whose leaves brewed the finest tea in the world, or so mama claimed. Beside it sat a cinnamon sapling, still young and shy. Further off, a purple-pod vine curled in its pot, dreaming of the day it would climb the walls of their new home and bear fruit that tasted of the one they had left behind.
"I need a shopfront," she said, looking out at the street. "Somewhere with morning sun."
"We'll find it," dad answered. Yīng knew he was already planning the wooden counter he would build, the shelves for her jars, the sign he would paint.
She was hanging the last decoration, standing on a wooden crate to reach the beam, when Hui set down her rabbit lantern. Her little sister picked up one of her father's spare brushes. She was drawing on a scrap of paper, her tongue between her teeth, her small face very serious.
She drew a dragon.
It was not a good dragon. It was a pudgy dragon. Round in the belly and squashed in the snout, its wings more like cabbage leaves than anything that might fly. But it was hers.
She showed it to no one.
But Yīng caught the moment—the careful fold, the quiet tuck into her sleeve.
⊙
"Next."
A gaunt man in tattered robes and a painted face advanced. He smelled of magic. It was not a particular smell, and it changed between practitioners—sometimes sharp like struck stone, sometimes sweet like overripe fruit. But Yīng had been around enough magic to recognize it, no matter how novel the fragrance. It always smelled other.
He drew a voluminous record from a messenger bag that had probably seen war. The notes were written in Asshai'i, which was a bit unusual. Yet they were the correctly filled forms for an apprenticeship request within the Order of the Silver Wings.
Yīng firecalled their office to forward the new supplicant, only to discover that he had already been approved and entered in their records.
Before Yīng had sent the forms, that is.
That was unusual, for certain. Yet it was one of those oddities of the Bay. Sometimes requests were pre-approved before reaching a desk. Sometimes they underwent faster routing with no visible reason. And occasionally, a form was already stamped when it arrived.
They were told not to question it. She didn't. She merely adjusted and reordered her stack.
The Bay was often strange like that. And it never failed to amuse her how travelers or newcomers blinked owlishly when the errant bout of oddity struck. They would sit at a drinking corner, then notice two drunks getting rowdy. A usual happenstance in many taverns across the land. But in the Bay, the rowdy pair would be denied misconduct. They would usually blink in confusion, then ungainly shuffle toward the nearest guardsman for a well-deserved night in a damp cell.
Mischief did not take root in the Bay. Especially when the Divine was present. The Lady was fair, and the Lady was ever watchful.
Yīng could sometimes see her Might in her dreams—a great Golden Queen atop a throne of crystal.
The supplicant was sent to the correct office, but before she could call "Next" again, bells chimed softly from deeper in the Manor. She listened to the tune in concentration. The signal meant the Great Dragon had been sighted by the remote sentry.
Her Radiance was near.
The thought sent a small thrill through her, that she quickly smoothed into composure.
She was a professional.
⊙
They had barely lived a moon in the Bay when her father was summoned by the Heavenly Lady.
It was an auspicious thing, or so the courier who knocked at their door had said. The official who had marked dad's profession in that odd journal when they had entered town had put him forward for consideration. Indeed, the Divine wished to learn proper Yitish arts, and a coterie of masters of ink-wash painting was being assembled for the task. The summons came with two bags—one filled with jade chits, the other with countless iron strings. They hit the communal table with a hefty bang.
Divine attention was very lucrative.
She remembered nothing of school that day—not the lesson, not even the dumplings. And when the bell rang, Yīng ran home faster than an oriole would have flown. Dad, too, was dazed when he came back later that evening. He put down two more bags of jade chits on the table.
Mama's eyes bulged.
"Well, I am hired… somehow?"
"How was the Divine, dad?"
Her father blinked at the question, then thought for a moment.
"Distant."
He continued.
"Extremely polite, but distant. Like she had trouble seeing us? Like there was a wall of glass between us."
Well, she was of the Heavens. It seemed appropriate to Yīng.
Hui, however, was more exuberant.
"How did she look, dad? How did she look?"
"Magical! She had golden light in her eyes!"
"Oooh!"
"And great dragonfly wings at her back!"
"Oho!"
"I have also seen the dragon close. It was as big as a mountain!"
Dad was gesturing animatedly while little Hui's eyes shone like two giant pearls.
He was making a grave mistake.
"Can I see her too? Please, please, dad!"
And there it was.
The trap had sprung.
"Uh, I do not know if that would be possible—"
"Please! Please! Please!"
To their family's everlasting shame, her father proved a coward in the face of Hui's assault.
He acquiesced.
To their eternal mortification, he had asked the Divine if he could bring his littlest daughter to visit the Manor.
To their utter incredulity, the answer had been a bemused agreement. And so Lin Hui was bundled into her best dress. She also received a blistering lecture from mama about keeping polite and keeping neat.
Off to the godly abode went little Hui.
And as the moon edged away the sun, she returned quieter than she had ever been.
Fearing for her little sister, Yīng asked what had happened. She was treated to a litany of "Ohohos!" and "Uwahs!"—further supported by entirely helpful sentences like "Big!", "Gold!", "Preeetty!" Her little sister was more than fine. She was just a little bit overwhelmed.
However, when Hui calmed down enough to play with a brush, the pudgy dragon she drew sprang to life.
A little ink dragon flew away from the paper.
⊙
"Nex—"
Two men in dusty cloaks and banged-up breastplates barged most rudely into the hall. One was older—hair a battlefield where red and white fought for dominance, interrupted by small, cratered islands of baldness. The other was younger, with the lightest shade of hair she had ever seen and eyes a fetching purple.
Both were still dirty from the road.
In the Bay, that was a choice. And a supremely impolite one at that.
The public bathhouses were free and always open. One need only pay for the best soaps—and even those were cheap, for the Lady insisted. Anyone could have scrubbed themselves clean before seeking the Manor. Everyone did.
Everyone, apparently, except these two.
Outsiders, then. And not the good kind.
Sure enough, their boorish behavior continued as they proceeded to ignore the orderly queue and march straight to her station. Yīng sighed. No matter how many scrolls were disseminated throughout the city, some people never bothered to learn proper procedure. She watched with a vengeful eye as the interlopers passed the painted boundary and collided with an invisible wall of magic.
Ignore the line to your peril, cretins.
The pair stood unsteadily and blinked, most assiduous in their confusion. Then they started raising hesitant hands to feel the sorcerous boundary. The line lost some of its glorious neatness as titters arose in response to the uncivil but amusing display. Yīng allowed it for a breath before she raised her hand in one single, imperious gesture toward the line.
Elder Red was still blinking stupidly, but Purple Eyes had a more agile mind. He tugged his companion and dragged him to the back of the queue.
Order had been restored.
For now.
⊙
Dad had always said that ink wash painting was an art of controlled spontaneity.
A master could paint a bamboo stalk in three swift strokes—the first for the joint, the second for the body, the third for the leaves—and capture not just the shape but the bamboo-ness of bamboo: its flexibility, its resilience, its quiet strength.
Little Hui could not do that. But the Divine had blessed her regardless with a sliver of the Heavens.
The dragon her little sister painted that night was meant to be a majestic serpent of the clouds. Instead, it came out looking like a radish with legs.
It sprang to life anyway.
It wobbled into the air, flew three faltering circles around the room, and landed on Hui's head with a tiny, damp squeak.
It was the herald of an invasion. An infestation.
Hui kept the painting.
The next morning, another radish-dragon emerged. And another. By the end of the week, the house was full of them—clustering on windowsills, nesting in teacups, and staring at visitors with small, inscrutable eyes.
They all breathed uneven puffs of ink.
Mama was incandescent.
Their home was well on its way to becoming a shrine to drying ink before mama's anger cooled enough for brilliance to strike. She went into the storage room and came back with a jar. Hui was instructed to command her dragons to breathe into the jar until they had spent all their stores of ink.
Dad then asked if they could breathe colors other than black.
They could. And so it became a ritual, every morning and every evening, for the radish-dragons to line up and breathe into prepared jars. Mama's shop gained new goods to sell. The pudgy pests made some very fine ink indeed.
They were also numerous. Hui's winged caterpillars stayed alive for up to a week. So long as the painting survived, the dragons kept emerging. The paper could produce a dozen, a hundred, a thousand—each one slightly different, each an imperfect copy of the last, like so many generations of tadpoles.
But if a drop of water, a careless fold, or a spilled cup of tea damaged the painting, they all ceased. Every wobbly flier would wink out of existence, leaving behind only a puddle of ink.
And so Lin Hui kept painting, and their home kept hosting the little menaces. They drifted sideways, bumped into walls, or tried to mimic a roar only for a funny squeak to emerge. Some were grumpy, others were lonely, but most were mischievous.
Dad tried to thank the Divine for her blessing, but when he came back, he told them that the Lady had been bemused. As if her blessing had not been her design.
Yīng thought that Her Radiance was just being humble.
In any case, little Hui was invited to the Manor once more. The Lady wanted a closer look at her radish-dragons.
Mama gave her a basket full of dumplings, spices, and other offerings for the Lady, and sent her on her way.
Unbeknownst to them, Hui had tucked Tuan Tuan the cat into the basket as well.
⊙
"Next."
The line moved ever forward, and Yīng dispatched the supplicants with precise alacrity. Each received a form, a stamp, a direction. Each bowed and shuffled away.
Yet she was denied the comfort of well-oiled bureaucracy. The two outsiders kept being rude.
They kept talking. They kept disrupting the stately serenity of the Manor. Elder Red, in particular, was a nuisance. Yīng could tell that he tried to speak in a low voice. But he was the kind of man given to a loud one—like the sailors bellowing in the docks, or their surlier fishwives. Loud whispers were particularly grating. They cut through the quiet like a dull knife.
Worse, they did it in Andal. Not in proper Yitish or sophisticated Valyrian.
That tongue was rare this far from the Sunset Kingdoms. That made their conversation gibberish to most in the line—and therefore interesting. Eyes turned inquisitive. Ears swiveled to catch what they could.
The queue lost its attentive edge.
It was getting slightly crooked.
Yīng, of course, understood Andal perfectly. She knew many languages. She was of the Golden Wings. And her Wings had included Andal in the examination. As such, she kept overhearing the conversation, no matter how diligently she focused on her work. The words drifted into her ears like smoke under a door.
"… near the end of our journey. I know losing the Company has been hard…"
"… I know your aunt refusing you, refusing to even consider you kin, was harder…"
"… no matter. This is your sister. Half-sister. Her dragon is Silverwing. I saw it years ago, when it ate the Company's elephants. It is a mountain of flesh. It makes your aunt's mounts look like small birds. With that dragon, you will have your inheritance back. And your traitorous aunt will never object to you again!"
Now what were the interlopers talking about? The mention of dragons pricked her ears. Her hand paused over a form. This might yet become something worthy of ringing the red bell.
"But how do we convince her, Jon?"
"She is your younger sister and a bastard besides. You have the superior claim. You are her lord. Twice over, after you marry her!"
Marrying brother to sister? How ghastly!
Yīng's mind began to form a worrying suspicion. The outsiders might be talking about Her Radiance. But that could not be. Surely even outsiders were not this blasphemous. The Divine was beyond such mortal schemes.
Besides, even if they were addled enough to claim kinship with a Divine, Purple Eyes looked nothing like the Lady.
Oh, he was a very handsome man indeed. She could admit that, as a mere professional observation. The line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the way his purple eyes caught the light—he had a slightly heroic countenance. But he was pale as milk, while the Lady had a healthy tan. His hair was light and straight, so different from the Lady's glorious, dark curls. He had no shining eyes of gold, nor wings folded against his back. He had no smell of power, no hint of old magicks barely resting under the skin.
He had no weight.
The Lady, even when she was not there, filled a room. Her presence lingered—a shining crystal of gold in the back of their minds.
So he was likely an impostor with a foolish scheme. The Sentinels would see to that.
And if he was merely mad, they would see to that as well.
⊙
When Hui came back from her second visit to the Manor, she told them the Divine had called her a bud.
Little Hui had inherited a small sapling of the Great Crystal Tree that was the Lady's magic.
"She taught me how to hear and see through my dragons!"
Yīng was not cheery about the prospect of thousands of radish-dragon spies. But she was not one to question Heavenly Wisdom. Mama, however, would have to impress on Hui how dangerous that gift was.
"She told me seeing and hearing were her oldest tricks! She also told me I could be a hero! But I need to be a hero to myself first? A hero to myself and to my family!"
Any discussion of Hui's future heroics was vigorously derailed when Tuan Tuan hopped onto the communal table from inside the basket. The cat had two great dragonfly wings at his back. A line of fur down his spine gleamed gold.
Her parents gasped, then swiftly turned to her little sister. Yet Hui was cheerful and entirely unrepentant.
"I asked the Lady to give Tuan Tuan wings! Like her!"
The wings fluttered as the cat tested them. He jumped from the table, wobbled perilously for three breaths, then crashed into the wall. Their family used to have a lazy cat. Now they had a bumbling flying cat.
That very next day, Yīng awoke to Tuan Tuan's wings buzzing like an angry insect. He dragged his tail for balance, eyes wide with the terrible realization that the ground had become a suggestion. A radish-dragon was floundering nearby in the air.
Hui's pudgy, cabbage-winged little creations had found a natural predator.
The cat launched himself, misjudged the distance, and landed on a shelf of dried herbs. The shelf tilted. Tuan Tuan hovered, but the peppercorns were no longer in their jar.
Mama shrieked.
Tuan Tuan kept on careening like a drunken swan for two moons before he perfected his technique. He went on to become a menace in the markets—stealing fish and dumplings alike before flying away. Mama kept a purse at the ready to reimburse the unfortunate food vendors.
But overall, the flying pest became something of a town spirit. Tuan Tuan had clearly been blessed by the Lady. That meant he was lucky. That meant he brought you luck even as he stole something tasty.
And so the people of the Bay learned to smile when a golden-striped cat with dragonfly wings dropped from the sky, snatched a bun, and vanished over the rooftops. They called it a blessing.
Tuan Tuan, for his part, never did learn to land gracefully.
It did not trouble him in the slightest.
⊙
"Next."
To Lin Yīng's chagrin, it was the two blasphemers' turn.
She finished a line, set the brush down carefully, and looked up. She put on a professional smile.
"Good day to you, travelers," she said in clear, polite Valyrian. "Welcome to the Manor. Are you here for healing?"
The older man turned to her, frowning.
"No. We demand an audience with Visenya Targaryen. I am Jon Connington. This here is Aegon Targaryen, the Sixth of his name—"
The pair of fools invoked a bizarre name, but Lin Yīng's smile did not change.
"Please fill and sign an audience form," she said, sliding one forward. "With luck, we can arrange a visit within three months. Her Worship maintains a full schedule."
"Unacceptable," the man snapped. "Her lord brother is here, the head of her house—"
Enough of this foolishness. Lin Yīng reached to her side and rang the red bell.
It chimed, sharp and clear. The room shifted. Two hidden entrances slid open. The Crimson Wings—the Sentinels—stepped forward. They were quiet, armored, and entirely uninterested in the conversation.
"Please fill the form," Lin Yīng said, still smiling, "or I will have you escorted out. There are hostels available if you lack coin. Her Worship is generous to all travelers, no matter how… feebleminded."
The younger one looked uncertain.
Good.
The older one, however, was madder than a wet hen. He rallied.
"How come your guards are all clad in Valyrian steel? Did Visenya rediscover its secrets? That is a Valyrian secret. A secret of House Targaryen! She had no authority to share it with you outsiders!"
Fourteen glaives snapping in unison had him reconsider his bluster.
The mad pair was encircled, then detained and sent to the cells by the docks at the other end of the city. They were the most miserable—and the furthest from the Manor.
The outsiders had committed no grand crime yet. But disrupting the Manor's quietude in such an outlandish fashion merited a night of cool, damp sea air. And being paraded down the length of the main avenue would hopefully instill in the churlish duo some sorely needed spirit of politeness.
Lin Yīng closed her booth and retrieved a red slip. If there was one principle the Manor impressed upon its clerks, it was this: never trouble the Lady. This Connington and this Targaryen would. Therefore, they would not meet her.
Simple.
She stepped out to deliver the Red Notice to the Whispers Office personally. Their intelligence arm would deal with the idiots if they attempted to cause another mess. They would also investigate Purple Eyes' claim to old Sunset Kingdoms royalty. Yīng did not believe it. No true noble kept as unseemly a companion as Elder Red. The Black Wings would find the truth regardless.
Then a sound came as she walked.
A titanic roar.
It rolled over the Manor and the Bay like a tidal wave.
Lin Yīng stopped.
Closed her eyes.
Crossed her arms over her chest in the shape of wings.
The Great Dragon had returned. The Lady was back.
A smile, a real one, touched her lips.
Today would be recorded as a blessed day.
A day touched by wings.
Tomorrow, the forms would move once more.