Bangqiu dreamed.
Not the usual drifting fragments of memory and nonsense, but something sharper—deliberate. A voice, or perhaps several, repeating the same simple instruction:
“Ask Lao Ren to send you to Khanbaliq. We found something strange. Kafka needs your help.”
He listened. Lao Ren agreed. "We will keep your ship until you return."
Kafka, Bangqiu’s companion on many an adventure in years past, had settled down in Khanbaliq. Not settled. Prospered, in all the ways that mattered to him.
After decades of corruption, the Monastery of the Two-Fold Path had been restored, at least in principle. No longer a hiding place for slavers, gangsters, and apostate monks, the still decrepit physical structure was now home to sincere students dedicated to correct teachings.
But beneath it…
Kafka spoke carefully. There were tunnels that at first seemed to be the home of scavengers or remnants of the Black Flower gang, stealing from the monks’ meagre food stores. But beyond these crude passageways, there were older thoroughfares. Older than the monastery. Remnants of something unpleasant—an ancient cult of death worshippers. And beyond that, passages that did not behave properly. Corridors that led not just deeper underground, but… elsewhere. Even… elsewhen.
Bangqiu was glad to hear about the success of Bo-Jing and Gwinch in addressing these issues. He discussed with Bo-Jing what, if anything, they should do next, how much further they should explore. But before any decision was reached, they were interrupted by a visitor at the gate.
There was no fear in her bearing. Just composure—and purpose.
She did not give her name at first, but she did not need to. Everything about her suggested someone accustomed to being obeyed, or at least taken seriously.
“I intend to disappear,” she said.
Not flee. Not escape.
Disappear.
She needed a place beyond reach—of the court, of her enemies, of anyone who might try to shape her son’s future. If they could help her, she promised, they would not be forgotten when that future was decided.
“You will be the most trusted friends of the next Emperor.”
Bo-Jing joked that he was already close friends with himself.
Bangqiu, used to wandering, knew of one such place.
Beatriss’s castle. The Happy Valley.
The woman seemed surprised by the suggestion but then smiled. “Yes, take me there. Tomorrow. Just me, and my son, and my bodyguard.”
In the morning there was a change of plans. At the walls of Khanbaliq, the party saw the woman speaking crossly to the man who must have been her bodyguard—a doughty, mournful warrior, a cloak thrown over gleaming armor.
“It’s only the Happy Valley,” she said. “They are more than capable, and I will return in a week.”
The bodyguard looked long and hard at the party—Bangqiu, Bo-Jing, Batzorig, Ryu, and Kafka—then shrugged his shoulders, turned his horse and re-entered the city.
The woman’s son was about fifteen. Like her, he wore a dull-colored but fine-woven traveling cloak that half-obscured his face. Mother and son were quiet, taking their place in the middle of the group, speaking little, and only to each other.
In the early afternoon, they left the imperial highway and took the smaller road that wound toward the Valley. Descending a gentle winding path that ran along a steep ravine, the party noticed a shrine at a bend in the road. And three men who were desecrating it, casting the offerings of flowers and coins onto the ground.
Bo-Jing and Bangqiu shouted jokes at the men, emphasizing how little they cared about protecting roadside shrines. Somehow, the men were able to register these jokes as insults. One of them walked down from the shrine, challenging Bangqiu to a fight.
“We’ll see who has learned the superior style.”
Bangqiu slipped from his horse as if to accept the challenge. But when the man charged at him, launching a flying kick at his head, Bangqiu summoned the elemental powers of fire and water and blasted him with scalding steam. There was a scream of pain—from the man’s compatriots next to the shrine. The duelist passed through the cloud unscathed and landed a flurry of kicks.
The duel became something else—
magic and motion, arrows from Bo-Jing and Batzorig,
and Ryu summoning snakes to incapacitate them.
Throughout the battle, the damage did not fall where it should.
Blows meant for one man were taken by another, standing apart, as if the group shared a single pool of endurance. The “bystanders” suffered in place of the duelist, staggering but not falling.
The hallmarks of Dragon Claw, which Bangqiu and Bo-Jing had seen in Guibao.
The fight escalated until a wall of fire sprang up, isolating the party from their wards. Bangqiu rose into the air, sealing the flames within a dome of force. Kafka charged forward to attack the still-unscathed duelist with his frost brand. Two more figures emerged from nowhere—previously unseen, now very real—striking at Kafka from either side.
Ryu and Bangqiu employed more fearsome magic, transfixing the duelist and sending the other two fleeing in terror. The other shrine desecrators were killed by the swords of Bo-Jing and Batzorig. And lots of snakes.
The wall of fire died. The wall of force shimmered and vanished.
There had been no scream. No struggle.
And the woman, her son—their charges—were gone.
Batzorig dragged the dead bodies out of the road. Ryu sent the snakes into the ravine.
Then came a surprised half-scream from below.
The boy.
Certain they had been tricked, Bo-Jing demanded that Ryu call down divine punishment into the ravine. Ryu protested that although the ravine was narrow, calling a flame strike into the forest could have unpredictable consequences.
And so Bangqiu and Bo-Jing shrugged it off.
They had been part of something they did not fully understand—something with strange and dangerous components. Bangqiu had been badly wounded in the battle. Kafka began to question the wisdom of leaving his monastery without a leader.
Along the way, they passed by an inn. A drunk man stumbled out and pointed at Bo-Jing.
“A man passed by this way—he was looking for you.”
They bought the man a drink and got a description.
“A sad-looking old warrior. Fine armor beneath his traveling cloak. I told him you were going east, to the port.”
