“Senior Tian, why does it seem like everyone is talking, but I can’t really hear anyone? Or, I can, but I can’t hear the words. Everyone is talking too quietly.” Little Treasure complained. Tian could see his eyes drooping, and his vital energy felt a little weak. Tired and hungry, probably.
“Have a little tea. The reason is simple- everyone is talking quietly. Not whispering, just talking quietly. Oddly enough, that’s harder to make out than the whispers. Everyone assumes that everyone else has very sharp ears, and you never know what you might say that happens to offend someone. My own big brothers were very clear on that point.” Tian explained. Liren nodded along.
“My sisters said the same thing. Followed up with a list of things you can mutter under your breath just loud enough to provoke your target, but quietly enough that you can deny saying anything to the rest of the room.”
Tian turned to look at her in shock. Who would have guessed her sisters and his brothers would have the exact same advice?
The feeling of strangeness intensified in the dining room. Part of that was the dying of the light outside, but a bigger part was that one table plainly wasn’t on the same page as everyone else. Which made the other diners grip the hilts of their sabers and carefully eye what was between them and the door over their wine cups. Tian could hear the words “Old freaks” and “Immortals?” whispered from lips nearly touching ears.
“Ah, here is dinner. Now then, big sis Hong and I will eat first, and if we give you the nod, then it is safe for the two of you to eat.” Tian grinned. He was looking forward to this. Hong looked quizzically at him, but nodded.
The plates reached the table- a big bowl of rice, fish, both stewed and roasted, long, oily green beans cooked with just a bit of char on them and the fragrance of chillies, roasted broccoli and carrots, dish after dish arrived. Well prepared, fragrant, and, when Tian tried a bite of soup, disappointingly off. Not poisoned, but off. Liren nodded, having come to the same conclusion.
The two shared a look, and shrugged. “Off” in some esoteric way was probably not a good enough reason to starve the mortals, who were looking distinctly ragged after a day and a night of roughing it.
“It’s not poisoned.” Tian started to push the bowls over to Censor Henshen as the eldest, when a sudden thought intruded. “Shh! Hey Junior, don’t peek, but isn’t that cat made of diamonds?!” Tian subtly pointed left. Little Treasure naturally whipped his head to the side, trying to spot the cat.
“Where? Where?”
“It was too fast, eh? Clearly a magic cat. Oh well, eat up.”
Treasure’s bowl had mysteriously filled with rice, meat and vegetables while he was looking away.
Tian felt very pleased with himself, until his next food delivery was intercepted by Hong. Not that she wanted the food for herself. She used her own stealthily flicked piece of roasted broccoli to divert his carrot, ensuring that the broccoli landed safely in the bowl and the carrot went flying off the edge of the table.
Naturally, this meant war.
Chopsticks flickered back and forth across the table. Side dishes were defended while the soup rippled and shook from the sea battles that crossed it. The rice bowl became strategically ignored by both sides. Rice is the God of the People, and therefore should be spared the ravages of war.
This, of course, was a trap. Tian knew that Hong was going to make her move and betray the silent trust as soon as she had his attention distracted. Tian was determined to get his betrayal in first. He nodded pointedly at a nearby table, where there was a wine battle going on.
The wine battle was worth watching. A balding man, with a ratty fringe of hair pulled back into a ponytail that was shorter than his equally ratty beard, was exchanging “friendly” toasts with a wanderer who favored gray linen, a pair of heavy knives and fur lined boots even in the hot, humid interior of the Broad Sky Kingdom.
They would smack their wrists together, displaying remarkable muscular control to keep the tiny porcelain wine cups from spilling the clear liquor. Then they would shove, back and forth, hopping their cup over the other’s arm and catching it on the other side, pouring more in the other’s cup even as that cup shoved the lip of the bottle back; always moving, but with a definite cadence to it.
Tian found himself subconsciously mimicking the timing. There was something about it- after each exchange, there was a bare moment’s pause for both sides to see the outcome. Then they were straight back into it. Hong quickly picked up on it, and she smiled like a child with a new toy.
She nodded to a table slightly behind Tian. When he looked over, they were having a similar duel under the table. Each side was eating dreadfully politely, while their legs thrashed against each other. Even their rough wooden chairs were rising off the ground very slightly as they moved. Hidden battles were taking place all across the room. Everything was a competition. At any moment, a table could be flipped over, and the whole room would be plunged into a bloody melee. But for now, everyone was playing at being polite.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Tian chuckled and looked back at the table. He suppressed the urge to slap his chopsticks down on the table and wave his finger right at Hong’s nose. While he was appreciating the unique customs of the restaurant, she had betrayed him and pushed a big portion of rice into Little Treasure’s bowl.
Little Treasure was looking bewildered at his bowl, which somehow was more full now than when he had started eating. Censor Henshen calmly kept his eyes on his own bowl, eating with the elegant manners of one long accustomed to being watched by enemies. Unable to control the single rogue muscle twitching in his cheek.
Even the senior playing the erhu seemed to be getting into it. His bow sawed back and forth in lively time, encouraging the silent battles.
There was a loud crack. One of the wine duelists had missed their mark and fell forward, smashing head first into the table.
“HAH! Lightweight. Trying to battle me with wine? You are ten years too early!” The ratty haired man downed his cup, then took big gulps straight from the jar, not minding the wine trickling out of the corner of his mouth.
Tian didn’t drink. Partially because Grandpa kept going on and on about how it would stunt his growth and poison his mind, and considerably more because the one time he did try a brother’s wine, it tasted the way a barnyard smelled and every exhale was an awful chemical burn the length of his throat. Fire being a real possibility, as wine had a way of bursting into blue flames if you put a candle to it. But the ratty martial artist was drinking it from the jug in great gulps, his adams’ apple bobbing wildly.
The pace of the Erhu picked up. Tian felt a change in the qi, something in the air was shifting. The threatening feeling outside was pressing up against the windows now, waiters rushing around to close the heavy shutters and bar them against the changeable weather. The crack of legs smashing against each other picked up. Tian and Hong were far from the only dueling chopsticks going back and forth, and others had imitated the wine duelists.
More collapsed. The wine drinkers went first, then those competing to see who could eat the most. The leg-kickers were still holding out, but their faces were flushing and turning white. Tian narrowed his eyes and put his hand over Little Treasure’s bowl. Censor Henshen had already put down his chopsticks. His eyes slid across Tian and Hong as he did. With the way the immortals had been going at the food on the table, it was easy to miss that none had landed in their own bowls.
The other cultivators had been hugging the walls, nursing their own food and drink. One of the men had seemingly had enough. He stood and staggered across the room. Everyone pretended not to be watching, but Tian could feel the weight of attention find its focus. A hard looking level seven, his hair in a casual bun and his trousers and tunic looked as worn as the martial artists around him. There was nothing casual about the long saber at his waist. That was well used and lovingly tended, if the scabbard and hilt were anything to go by.
He planted himself in front of the female cultivator. “Fairy Lan has guarded her primordial Yin Qi for seventy years, her famed Snowblossom Iceheart Physique deepening and nurturing its virtue. As it happens, my yang fire is too rampant and needs cooling. Come. Let me cure seventy years of waiting and show you why yin and yang are incomplete alone.”
He wasn’t keeping his voice down. The other two male cultivators shot to their feet and started making their way over. The martial artists paused their contests to watch. Or they seemed to. Tian saw heads dropping onto tables and heard the smashing of cups and bowls. He glanced at Hong from the corner of his eye. He could read the stance of her shoulders and the change in her breathing.
“I don’t know you. Nor do I wish to. Scram. And if you don’t want to scram, then you will have to argue with your fellows about who gets to fall under my blade first.” Cultivator Lan’s voice was soft, floating, and frigid.
“Oh, I don’t think we will argue-” The cultivator grinned and coquettishly stroked the hilt of his saber. “We can find ways to share, I’m sure.” His eyes shot wide open. He coughed, once, twice. Blood poured down his mouth, over his chest, over the long knife that had pierced through his back and out his front.
“I never learned to share. I’m too old to change now. But I do know how to settle an excess of yang, and the virtues of such exquisitely tended primordial yin” One of the other cultivators had done the work. The third man didn’t wait and swung his hatchet at the head of the man trying to remove his heavy knife from his victim.
“Hehe. The mantis stalks the cicada, not seeing the oriole behind! Die!”
“Who’s dying?” The murderer lashed a foot backward even as he folded his body forward. Contorting into a handstand and rising kick that caught the cultivator attacking from behind in the gut. There was some dreadful art in that kick, some trick of metal qi or just a blade hidden in his shoes, because it ripped open the ambusher’s stomach even as the blow raised him into the air. Blood and intestines fell in a heap before their former owner collapsed on top of them.
“So much for the oriole.” He sneered at the fading man at his feet.
“I’ve had suitors call me an oriole.” The crunch of a sword punching through the back of a head was clear over the tumbling hurry of the erhu. Fairy Lan didn’t need a rescue. Her snow white sword was stained red as she pulled it back, flicking the remnants away before stowing it in her ring.
Three dead in six seconds. Nobody was stupid. Each of the attacks had happened faster than a mortal could move. The woman hadn’t been carrying a sword a second ago, and it vanished as soon as she was done using it. Immortals. There were immortals in their midst, and three had just died. The so called immortals fought like bestial creatures over a mate, and all three fell.
It was a night when anything could happen. Anything. And nobody was saying a thing. Even the waiters weren’t fussed, waiting by the wall to be called by a guest or the kitchen. A night where all grudges could be settled.
A table flew into the air in a crash of crockery and the clanging of knives. Then another screeched as it was shoved back, hands and feet flying, elbows flying, knees flying, every blow aimed to cripple and kill.
The room fell apart into a melee, every man and woman for themselves. Every hand bloody. Above it all, the blind cultivator sawed away at his erhu.