4 A Madman's Arrow

~TIEN LYN~

The banquet in honor of Admiral Thirty Claws launched Tien Lyn's life on a lopsided trajectory, like an arrow shot by a madman in the dark. She wanted it to be her social triumph, of course. She had done everything right to prepare for it too! She had scrutinized miles of scrolls on etiquette and the Chronicles to find suitable quotes for the display of her calligraphy. Every detail had then been vetted by her mother, Lady Chen Guang.

"We must compare the most recent victories with the ancient ones, but do so elegantly, Tien Lyn," she had instructed. "Ah, but I wish the Dynasty of Purifying Glory was not in fashion. It is too dull and brutal for you."

"I have an elegant hand, and nobody will read it," Tien Lyn had argued before obediently leaving out the gory passages. Brutal they might have been, but dull? She would not admit how much time she'd spent hunting down obscure mentions of her favorite lords and ladies instead of perfecting her brush-strokes.

It felt silly now, to have spent all this time on the old stories when the right here and right now was made so vibrant by the light of the lanterns and the showers of the fireworks; the gentle music and the aroma of the thousand spicy dishes carried around. This banquet would win Tien Lyn an invitation to appear before the Imperial family. And then... Ah! Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of what might happen 'then'.

Those lords and ladies were thousands of years dead, and she was here, alive, on the cusp of her own conquests! Daydreaming, Tien Lyn only half-listened to her cousin, Xia Dao Ni's, prattle. Luckily, it was always the same. "Oh, I am so envious of Aunt Guang! There is something magical about her taste!"

As always, she smiled modestly before inserting, "She had help."

Xia Dao Ni giggled and extended a tiny dish with a dozen candied lotus seeds. "What help? Yours? Is that why a certain crone has just berated the 'libertine fashions'?"

"Of course. The silkscreens are spaced too wide in our Great Wall of Silk between the men's and women's sides of the hall." Tien Lyn stiffened up her back and tried to emanate the matriarch's disapproval: "It veritably invites scandalous behavior."

Tien Lyn popped the treat into her mouth while nobody was watching except for Xia Dao Ni who had pilfered the delicacy in the first place. The sweet flavor coated her tongue, calling on her eyes to close for a heartbeat to savor it.

Xia Dao Ni's voice still got through to her, "Ancestors, no! We might catch a glimpse of men! Us, the unwed maidens!"

"I told her that I would endeavor walking with my eyes closed." It felt apt to keep squinting with pleasure.

When she finally opened her eyes, Xia Dao Ni was hiding a far too wide smile behind her fan. "What did the lady say to that?"

"A very loud 'hmm'. But she loved the themes of the offending screens, all these allegories of the traditional virtues. So, on balance... we won her." Tien Lyn made a face. "Still, what a waste of the artists' talents!"

Xia Dao Ni studied the screens with a critical eye. "That one with the flower baskets is not half-bad. Who's the dame? The Wanton Empress Du?"

"Xia Dao Ni! How dare you!" Tien Lyn placed another sweet seed into her mouth, this time intending to roll it around for longer. "She is a 'Pious Lady Offering the Flowers to the Temple of Serene Joy'. This sublime scroll next to it has all the details."

"We should go sit near her, Tien Lyn. Look, there is always someone interesting there." On the other side of the screens, the embroidered cushions invited the men to recline for a polite conversation with the powerful matrons. And, of course, catch the tantalizing glimpses of the Xichon City's maidens. Xia Dao Ni had a point. The traffic around the Pious Lady was significant.

"Mmgh." Tien Lyn played with her fan. "Maybe later."

"Are you shy or already promised, my newly modest sister?"

"Neither. It's just..." Tien Lyn tried to sound calmer than still water. She'd very nearly succeeded. Then the secret burst out of her, "The fortune teller read in the tea leaves that they will sing about my marriage for a thousand years."

Xia Dao Ni's mouth formed a delicate 'o'. "Ancestors, Tien Lyn! You are destined for marriage into the Imperial Family! Could it be anything but?"

Tien Lyn shrugged one shoulder: "Tea leaves are not as reliable as a bone horoscope, my dear." If she would marry a Prince of the Imperial bloodline, it would become a pinnacle of a century and a half of the Chens' family ambitions. Her mother, Lady Chen Guang, worked tirelessly to achieve this union. If Tien Lyn didn't jinx it, of course.

She was dying to tell, but now the cat was out of the bag, she regretted her indiscretion. "I just... It doesn't matter. I want to find a place closer to the Admiral. I am sure he tells the men about the wars."

"I thought that you were bored with the wars? Isn't that all that Uncle Xi ever talks about?"

That much was true, her father talked about it incessantly. But his ruminations had no heroes, no intrigues, and no victories. Instead, he counted silver spent by their Celebrated Emperor Wo Jia, listed the provinces that had to draft these many new soldiers, and all those boring things. If that's how one won accolades at court, Tien Lyn was not all that eager to be invited. Ah, whom was she kidding! If they invited her to court, she'd talk about the sacks of millet.

For now, she would have much preferred the demon hordes and the war mages.

"Admiral Thirty Claws' talk will be different," Tien Lyn assured Xia Dao Ni, not that her cousin cared. "He is a war hero and sails a ship as tall as a castle. I can just imagine him booming the commands across the deck."

Immediately, her imagination pictured a huge ship, just like the one on a lamp overhead, with the magic fireballs exploding all around and the clouds of arrows whistling through the air, just like during the Siege of the Windowless Castle.

"The Admiral does not bother to lower his voice, that's true enough." Xia Dao Ni pursed her lips so sternly it put the matriarchs to shame. Of course, Ni's lips were plenty full and perfectly painted, not thin and colorless. "He is a lowborn savage. A pirate! But if you wish to listen about places we've never even heard of before and now conquered, suit yourself. Once you are bored, do visit me and my new dearest friend, the Pious Lady."

Xia Dao Ni bobbed a bow and slipped away in a rustle of silk and a waft of perfume. Tien Lyn watched her jostle with the other curious guests for a spot, then found her own nook sheltered by the screen picturing the Modest Lady.

No wonder there was a free cushion there! The Modest Lady was captured just as she cut off her own silk hand after it was touched by a lewd man. The perpetrator, small and dark, was hard to pick between the complex swirls of crimson blood. As horrid as her silk neighbor looked, the spot afforded an excellent view of the Admiral's shaven head.

He had just bitten off a large chunk of veal spiced with ash seeds and coughed without closing his mouth or turning away from the table. Then he grabbed a bowl of rice wine and slurped it down praising the peppers to high heavens. It was much like watching a feral beast, and it reminded her that the lotus seeds was all she had eaten since morning caught up in the excitement of the day.

Before her tummy rumbled, Tien Lyn turned her attention away from food. The pirate in the Admiral could neither be disguised by the meters of the gold-embroidered silks nor by the small mountain of gold-and-coral jewelry. If anything, the splendor of his outfit made him look even more barbaric.

He had been a scarred, tattooed, murderous ruffian before the Emperor made him the Admiral of the Imperial River and Ocean Fleets, and nothing had changed that.

Tien Lyn started to count the demon claws on his necklace, one for each demon he'd slain. The grisly trophy wound round his neck thrice. It had far, far more claws now than the namesake thirty. The storytellers claimed that the nickname 'Thirty' came from his very first battle when he was just coming into his manhood at seventeen.

That's as old as I am now. Tien Lyn shivered with either dread, or excitement, or both. The excitement did not last, for the Admiral said nothing about demons, fleets, mages, wars or the Emperor. He was talking about the same things her father did. Silver, conscript, grain barges... Truly, men must be in a conspiracy to keep all the interesting things to themselves, unless it happened during the Dynasty of Purifying Glory.

Tien Lyn did not hear anything worth repeating, save for a few crude words before her mother, Lady Chen Guang, glided to her side with a sing-song, "Ah, there you are, my dear!" Her mother's words were sweet, but Tien Lyn picked up on disappointment.

She tried to repair the damage. "I was reminiscing about the value of modesty, Mother."

Lady Chen Guang threw a suspicious glance at the silken blood on the silken screen. "Oh, the glorious days of old! So pure, and ever so dramatic. Speaking of drama... it is time for you to play the guzheng for us."

The familiar excitement nearly overwhelmed Tien Lyn. It didn't matter that she knew her musical piece. It did not matter that the guests were so mellowed by food and drink that they would not care if she plucked the strings at random. She walked to the tastefully appointed raised platform with her lovely instrument the way a condemned man walks towards his executioner. Or so she'd imagined he would...

The slightly curving surface of dark wood and the strings pulled across it soothed her a little as she lowered herself on a stool in front of it. She touched the guzheng's polished corner for luck, then massaged the icy-cold fingers of one hand with the ice-cold fingers of another. A drink of calming tea, or a stimulating draught... something, she needed something... maybe both. Admiral Thirty Claws does not need calming teas every time he spots a demons' raiding party, she chided herself, in wane. Good thing she did not intend to face demons, not now, not ever. She'd be terrible at fighting them!

The music was specially chosen to suit the martial mood of the Imperial Court and its insatiable demand for tales of the heroic deeds from the times immemorial of the Dynasty of Purifying Glory. She started tentatively, got mixed up, blushed, then... Then something odd happened.

Her fingers no longer threatened to break at the touch of the strings, more fragile than porcelain. Instead, she got lost in the stirring, brave composition, so different from whimsical modern tunes. There they were, the banners flapping overhead, the grim chuckles of the warriors net to her, still in her fist, and the mad dash forward, towards victory or doom, no matter...

Carried away by the music to a glorious land, Tien Lyn did not sense the hush that fell over the room, until her hands froze above the instrument after the last chord, the music exhausted.

The silence enveloped her, crushed over her like a blanket of snow. She stumbled off her seat on unbending knees, and pressed the trembling fingers together, making the stiffest bow in her life to her mother and to her father, and to their Guest of honor, the Admiral Thirty Claws. She tried to see what was the matter, why there was no usual polite hum. Did the deceptively mild Southern wine put them to sleep? Or was the music too barbaric for the refined audience?

"By demon's bleeding ass! Why y'all sit like these dumb clay pots?" Their guest of honor roared breaking the spell. He slapped his thick thighs in approval, while his bushy eyebrows shot upward. Each 'dumb' pot was a priceless porcelain vase at least three centuries old, but Tien Lyn did not have the time to resent the man's poor taste.

"The girl is fiery!"

Did she just wish for accolades? Well, here it came, loud enough for the entire room, nay for the entire Xichon to hear. And he was not done praising her yet. "Real fiery! A touch skinny, but I am taking her for my elder-boy! And if he doesn't like her, or what-not, I have a couple more strapping lads needing a woman!"

Tien Lyn wished the suffocating silence back with every fiber of her trembling being.