A Look into a Future: Loyalty Earned, Loyalty Given.
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Following Ling Krissa was always an adventure, Pan Liwen thought. Krissa was not a woman of direct paths, or really any direction at all. Her thoughts were as messy as her half of their room, and twice as winding. She could go from discussing the merits of wind spiritual arts in balancing a foundation to how to hunt steel clawed hawks without missing a beat, leaving everyone else in the dust. Pan Liwen was able to keep up better than most, though only from experience. Still, the Ling scion was a genius, and it showed: she was already a half-step green, and the Argent Sect's truce had ended just a month ago. Even the Zheng Lady didn't dare face them in open combat, only funding agents in the dark to stir unrest.
Even so, the cave she was following her blonde roommate into did not comfort the mind. The fact that Krissa was talking about spirit veins, rather than where they were going, didn't help. They were technically out after the curfew set by Cai Shuying, though Liwen doubted the Cai Lady would openly criticize her allied ducal.
"But I digress," the heiress spoke casually, as if she didn't expect to be understood. "Have you kept up with your readings on the history of the Ling?"
"Ah." Liwen flushed. She had in fact read everything the outer sect had on the Ling, but it was either too dry or too artsy for her to remember clearly. She remembered reading it, for sure, but didn't internalize anything. She fidgeted, the most classic action of any bad student exposed before their idol.
Krissa laughed. "I get it. Dad makes a game of trying to make our history as obtuse as possible. Says it needs to be to match the other dukes' longer pasts.
"Anyway, while knowing about the courts would help a lot with this, all you really need to know is that the Duchess, Ling Xiaoyu, is expansionist. Well, that's a bit of an oversimplification, because the expansionist faction of the Ling differs from the expansionist faction of the Emerald Seas significantly, and even more so from the Empire's expansionists, but suffice to say Duchess Ling is a reformer, putting her at odds with her court and the Mountain, but gaining the favor of the Ice Queen."
Pan Liwen understood some of that. Well, she recognized the names of the Ling's ancestor spirits. "Uh huh. And what's that have to do with why we're delving in this misty cave?"
"So impatient!" Krissa huffed, though by the mirth in her round eyes she wasn't really angry. "It's important politics, you know? That's why we still go to the Argent Sect, even when Copper Peak, back home in the Wall, is far better at raising musicians."
"Right, well I don't know any of that. I just live around here."
The cave tunnel widened up to a central corridor, arched above in a naturally acoustic fashion. Krissa drew a stool from her storage ring, taking a seat at the room's center and drawing her two-stringed violin from her storage ring. She closed her eyes, drawing her bow across the strings in a testing note, then a simple, lighthearted melody that filled Pan Liwen's mind with memories of sitting by the hearth at home, listening to mother telling stories.
Rooming with Ling Krissa was no coincidence for Pan Liwen. The foreigner stood out like a sore thumb on the first day, tall, toned, and dressed in a fur-trimmed azure dress. Liwen didn't know where she was going to room until midnight on the first day, when she heard the girl's music from the roof of the dorm she commandeered. Liwen saw that beautiful figure, the fairy descending to the mortal world to teach the lowly rabble culture, and knew she had to follow her. So when Krissa played, Liwen listened, and blocked everything else out.
"That's right," Krissa said, her voice fading into the background but imprinting itself in Liwen's memory. "You live in the Emerald Seas. That's why you matter, and why you're here."
It was strange, how even her words could fit the melody, when Krissa played. "Here like at the sect, or here like this cave?"
"Both. Neither the sect nor I would have accepted you were you not native."
She felt a little miffed. "So you only care about where I come from?"
Krissa kicked her in the shins. "Don't be like that. I like you for you. But I wish to be an Emissary, and I can hardly achieve that by only associating with my kin."
Her hand swished to her storage ring between notes, tossing a thick, runed iron pillar towards Liwen that she caught with both hands.
"That reminds me, can you deploy that? Just press the flat end into the ground and tap the top."
Liwen did so, and felt the barrier deploy around them, cutting off the whispers of air passing through the cave, and leaving them with just Krissa's music.
"Uncle Qing supplied me with a number of privacy barriers for my time here," She explained. "Great Aunt wanted to do the favor instead, but the sect doesn't like it when they can't see all of their disciples at all times."
"But why this cave? Couldn't we do this anywhere?" Liwen asked.
"That brings me back to my original point. What do you know of the Diao and the Ling?"
Liwen blinked. "Cai Shuying's retainer? What about her?"
Ling Krissa laughed. "Did you know the Ling used to be retainers of the Cai?"
Pan Liwen gaped. The Cai were barely older than the Ling, by the records, and a smaller family besides. "How?"
"The Duchess Ling was the retainer of Grand Tutor Renxiang," Ling Krissa said, spitting the 'Tutor' title like acid.
"So the Ling broke off from the Cai in settling the Wall, and the Cai got angry at you?" Liwen reasoned. "But the Cai lady was so polite to us when you attended the peace conference."
"Hardly, the Ling are not so unloyal," Krissa snorted. "The betrayal did not come from us."
"But someone was betrayed?"
"Precisely. The Diao love the imperial ways, no matter how outdated. The Ling remember our original history. The Cai decided that our bond was not worth our past."
The word 'Weilu' ghosted into Liwen's mind, carried by a wind she couldn't notice before. It passed through both stone and barrier like they were air. She looked up, and could feel the faint radiance of the moon through dozens of meters of solid rock. She felt like she could hear the moon snicker.
"Holding a history lesson, Krissa? May I join?" A bold voice that sent shivers down Liwen's spine emanated.
The woman leaned against the cavern's far wall, not present a second earlier. Her red hair was cut straight and scandalously close to her scalp on one side, falling messily onto her shoulder on the other. Her robes hung off her arms, exposing her wrapped chest and chiseled midsection. More importantly, she was Bronze, having broken through in the past week. With her as always were her three goons, Lao Feng, Shi Jin, and Fang Shen. Whenever trouble started in the outer sect, one of them was always behind it.
"Perfunctorily late as always, Miss Yaoye. Please, take a seat." Krissa replied without missing a beat.
The lout waltzed in like she owned the place, setting her own chair which she unceremoniously kicked back to lean back on. "Don't mind if I do. Finally introducing the little chick to us, huh?"
Krissa sighed. "If you would, please refrain from suggesting we were conspiring to such an extent while I explain this to Liwen."
"Conspiracy?" Liwen squeaked.
Zheng Yaoye nodded sagely. "She and I go way back, y'know. We've been in talks about overthrowing the tyrant since the first week of classes."
"I am, as ever, committed to the order and stability of the outer sect for supporting the growth and development of disciples," Ling Krissa replied, in blunt monotone.
Zheng Yaoye guffawed. "That's a Ling for you! No lies, but I don't see a lot of truth there either."
Krissa sniffed, and Pan Liwen gaped. When did they build such a rapport? They never even looked at each other at council meetings, much less talked to the other. Were they… involved? But Liwen was Krissa's roommate! She hid her face behind her hands. Krissa stopped playing to pat her on the head, before scowling at the Zheng, who just grinned.
"Look at you! You've made her all useless now." Krissa complained. "And don't get me started on your behavior. So unscrupulous, flouting every law you can because you don't agree with them."
Yaoye just shrugged. "Some laws are made to be broken. In'it right, Feng?" Her lackey nodded along.
"The Lao ban on alcohol, revelry, and all enjoyable activities was well-thought out, rigorously planned, and definitely not a staged cause for a righteous band of plucky heroes to gather together to save the province." He said, deadpan.
"And that's how it goes. Sometimes you just gotta knock around some heads to get 'em less stuck up."
Liwen's brain sputtered like a dying motor. Krissa set her on her lap to knead her temples. "Back to the point. So, Liwen. What do you think loyalty is?"
Pan Liwen looked up into her sky blue eyes, and tried not to squirm. "It's, um, always being there for your lord, and helping her where you can?"
"And what is loyalty to a lord? What makes a lord worthy of loyalty?"
She scrunched up her small brows, trying to find an adequate answer. "Power? Kindness? Respect? Assistance?" Krissa tilted her head. "All of those?" Liwen offered.
"Perhaps. For us," Krissa waved toward the Zheng and her companions, then over herself. "Loyalty is not so transactional. It is something we offer without expectation, and in turn we receive Connection without judgment."
Shi Jin nodded. "Well said. I expect nothing from Yaoye-" "Cause she's got nothing to offer." Fang Shen interjected, before yowling as his master tugged his ear. "-and in turn am rewarded independent of services rendered. While there can be transactional aspects, they are not the core of why we interact with Yaoye. We do so because we want to."
"On my first day at the sect," Ling Krissa whispered into Liwen's ear, her cold tone sending shivers down her spine. "Cai Shuying asked me to be her retainer. In the presence of Diao Xing. I have never been so insulted in my life."
"What'd she say, 'Just like old times'?" Zheng Yaoye chuckled.
"She spoke of old bonds that could be rekindled. As if the oath taken by Duchess Ling was not to two figures long gone, long discarded by them." Krissa spoke, her words more venomous than Liwen had ever heard before in her life.
"Which brings us to now," Yaoye continued, with the resonant articulation of a natural orator. "An autocrat expands her cruel grasp over the helpless denizens of the outer sect, stifling opportunity and means of development. We, of course, as naturally moral and upright characters, could hardly let such tyranny run unchecked."
"You've brought the goods?" Krissa asked.
"Of course. We will suffer through no siege tonight, my lady," the Zheng replied, twirling a thick engraved baton in her hand, before passing it off to Shen. "You've done quite the number on the night watch, or so I've heard. Got them chasing ghosts all over."
"Naturally. Our early detection would jeopardize the entire plan."
The Zheng tucked her hair behind her ear, as best she was able. "Still, that illusion work was really something. Don't mean to judge, but I didn't take you for one of Spring's."
Krissa smiled, which Liwen misliked. "I'm not. Winter born and bred. But any good musician knows more than a single genre."
The Zheng laughed, full belly. "Very well!" she knelt before Liwen, red orbs peering intensely into her own. "My fair citizen of the Emerald Seas, we are but outsiders who feel the presence of injustice, compelled to intervene by the strength of our morals. But you, who have lived this experience, are the truest judge of character. So I ask this of you, my noble Pan Liwen: Is our cause just?"
Liwen's mind whirled. She looked towards Krissa for assurance, but her roommate's face was carefully neutral, not betraying a thing. She spoke, low and clear. "It is customary in the Ling to enshrine Truth within our souls, so that no matter how deep the games played in our courts go, they remain just games, and we never descend to the level of the Hui. So believe me when I say that I will not judge you, regardless of your answer. I will support you no matter what."
Lao Feng tensed. He was right to, Liwen realized. If she said no here, they'd have to fight. They were out after curfew. The only justification either of them could offer was apprehending the other. Krissa drew her bow across the violin strings, the first trill of a battle anthem Liwen knew by heart echoing through the cavern. The Zheng didn't move, but her legs tensed.
Drinking wine of grapes in luminous cups, the song ringed. Pan Liwen realized it was never even a question to her. She was only born here. Krissa was far closer to her than Cai Shuying would ever be. Loyalty wasn't given, it was earned.
"Cai Shuying's vision is lofty," Liwen began, finding her voice as her momentum built along with the song's intensity. "But she has forgotten the hearts of the common people. Such a despot is not worthy of the title Ruler."
The tension peaked, and Zheng Yaoye's eyes shined. "Well then, let the third act begin."
Krissa's song ended, the last line of the tune echoing through the cavern as they climbed out into the night air.
We rush into battle as the four-stringed lute plays.
