The next day, the city of Cloudwheel woke to the rumor that Red Sand Ridge had swallowed thirty-six men and spit out one. Su Xuan brought them out one by one, wrapped in torn shirts, singing to the stone and telling it it was tired. The earth listened.
They called him blessed. The Su clan called him lucky. The steward looked at him like he looked at a piece of dust that had learned arithmetic.
"Your luck is the clan's," the steward said. "You will contribute your wages for six months."
Su Xuan sorted through four lives' worth of patience in his chest, found only one, and let it speak. "I must enter Skysong Sect's entrance trials."
The steward laughed like rot. "You?"
He said nothing. The Ten Thousand Path Wheel turned a fraction and time slowed; he watched the man's color, the tremble on the left hand, the unevenity of breath. The steward was a middling Body Temperer, and lazy in his cultivation. Su Xuan could break his arm in three motions without using either hand. He did not, because he had been a god and some habits die hard.
"You will contribute your wages," the steward said again, slower, in case it was a problem of comprehension. "Then you may dream."
Su Xuan lifted his eyes. The dragon in him looked out. "I will enter Skysong," he said, and the words were not a plea. They were a line.
He left before the steward could gather the wit to be offended.
Cloudwheel's streets were a grid of light and laundry and smoke. In the market a hawker sold talismans made of palm leaves and chicken blood. An old woman stirred a pot of broth that tasted like old promises. A traveling sword-cultivator whose hair looked like a waterfall stood at a stall watching a knife as if it were a question.
She had the stillness of a mountain and the aura of a drawn blade. People edged away from her without knowing they did.
"Excuse me," Su Xuan said, because he had been a god and because politeness is a kind of path.
She looked him over. Her eyes were a shade between winter sky and old steel. Her robe was plain, travel-stained, and unadorned. The sword at her hip was sheathed in black wood. She was perhaps twenty-three, which in this corner of the world meant she had been an adult long enough to acquire a few regrets.
"Entry to Skysong," he said. "How often?"
"Once a year," she replied. Her voice was low, calm. "Three days from now."
"Thank you."
He walked away without asking her name. He did not need to, because he would see her again. The Ten Thousand Path Wheel hummed when people mattered.
He should have eaten. He should have slept. Instead he climbed Cloudwheel's east wall where the wind came in from the salt wetlands and watched the sky. The clouds were massing. The Dragon Gate would open.
It was an old story. Fish leap the gate and become dragons. Farmers know it; the old gods know it; children playing at the river know it—draw a gate in the mud with a stick, and jump it, and feel the wind catch your hair and pretend your breath is thunder. When the Gate opened for real, though, you didn't need to pretend. The world did it for you.
On the third night the storm arrived. Lightning wrote sigils across the clouds. Rain came down in bars like prison iron. Su Xuan walked into it as into his own house, boots slipping in the red clay. He went to the river where the town drew its water, and he stood on a rock and called out:
"Open."
The Ten Thousand Path Wheel spun. He touched the Water Path and asked it to be a lens. He touched the Thunder Path and asked it to be a ladder. He touched Dragon and asked nothing, because Dragons do what they wish.
The river arched. Rain slowed. A gate of pale blue light rose up from the water and stretched to meet its reflection in the sky. The first bolt of lightning scissored down and struck the gate's lintel.
In the distance, bells rang. Skysong's watchers had seen the Gate climb.
Fish leaped. Real fish—slick, bright bellies flashing. They struck the Gate like arrows. Some fell back, dazed. A few made it through. They did not transform, because fables lie, but they learned the feeling of wind on scales. It would do for a seed.
Su Xuan leaped, because the world is habit and leaping is the habit of those who remember.
He hit the Gate and passed through. Lightning struck him. He ate it, because he was hungry. On the other side the water was sky and the sky was water. He hung between them a heartbeat. The Ten Thousand Path Wheel cracked once, very softly, like a joint being set.
He dropped back into the river. He crawled out. He felt different. Taller inside his skin.
Behind him, someone clapped. The sword-cultivator from the market stood under a willow, rain silvering her sleeves. With her was a second woman whose eyes were the color of old tea and whose smile meant she lied as often as she breathed. She wore a robe of silk patterned with peonies and a small bottle at her hip that smelled like cinnamon and poison. She was perhaps twenty-six and did not mind you knowing it.
"You look like a boy who picked up someone else's sword and found it fits," the sword-cultivator said. "Bai Ningxue."
"Su Xuan," he said.
The other woman tilted her head and smiled. "Mu Ziyu," she said. "Alchemist, poisoner, collector of rare moments. That Gate was a rare moment. I'm glad I came out tonight."
He nodded. The Ten Thousand Path Wheel purred. Fate threads tugged. He saw three lines: one that ran between Ningxue's wrist and a broken mountain, one that ran through Ziyu and a black kiln, and one that ran from both of them to him. He was careful not to touch them.
"Skysong will see that Gate," Ningxue said. "They'll send someone to ask questions. Better to be inside their walls than out. Will you come?"
He could have done this alone. He could do almost anything alone. He was tired of alone.
"Yes," he said.
As they turned, a third presence arrived. It moved with the shameless grace of a satisfied cat. The wind curled around it like a hand petting fur.
She wore a traveler's cloak so plain it drew the eye. The hood was up, shadowing her face, but the air around her was thick with sea-salt and the rustle of silk in deep halls. When she looked at him, he tasted copper—the old taste of dragon on the tongue.
"Cloudwheel is noisy tonight," she said, as if she had no idea who he was and had never been a princess with a thousand servants training her to speak like stars. "Some fool opened the Gate."
Mu Ziyu snorted. "That fool's standing there dripping in front of you, darling."
The hood drew back. She was not human, not entirely. The pupils of her eyes were long, the way cats' are. Her hair was river-black. A single scale lay like a turquoise ear-stud at her left temple, visible only when the light caught it just so. She smelled like thunder, jasmine, and old coins.
"Long Ruyan," she said. "Merchant. Traveler. Person who is curious when the world does something interesting." She looked at Su Xuan and smiled with her teeth. "And you are?"
"Su Xuan."
Her pupils narrowed. Her nostrils flared a fraction, and something like recognition passed through her. She hid it. She reached out and touched the rain with her fingers as if she were testing a bath.
"Skysong," she said. "I'll assume we're walking together."
They walked.