Serpent's Eyes 1

It had been nearly three full years since Bai Meizhen had looked out over the shores of lake Hei. By all objective measure, it was a miniscule length of time. Yet, to her it felt like the gulf of a lifetime.

But, to look out over the blue-black waters, stretching beyond the horizon, was to be reminded of how small one was. She was nearly a different person. Lake Hei was immutable.

The waters were smooth as a glass mirror, barely stirred by wind. The shapes of their serpentine kin, or the wake of boats. Here, in the falling wet season, the shore was shrouded in mist, the dull red mud where the waters gently lapped under the docks of Zhenjian were like smears of old blood. Far out at the edge of her vision, she saw the sacred isle of communion, the peak roofed temple silhouetted in the mists, the black gates of which framed the door to Grandmother's realm bound with heavy temple rope, woven in bundles of cord many meters thick.

There where the physical remains of Yao were interred, the Dukes and Patriarchs could speak directly with Grandmother Serpent, and receive her wisdom.

Zhenjian itself loomed on the eastern shore, along the road ahead. The city followed the organic curve of the shore, docks stretching long fingers of wood and stone out over the smooth waters. The blue tile of the rooftops glinted under the mist, stretching out to the high snaking walls which surrounded the city entire. There were no dirty little shanties huddled against or outside of them, exposed to the worst of untamed spirits as she had seen in some settlements going south. No, every building in Zhengjian was regimented and standardized, from the peasants' hovel to the noble's palace.

As in life, the place for personal expression was inside, protected by your walls.

Only the raw black stone of Zhengjian citadel stood out, looming over the city center. It was all that remained of Yao’s original citadel, razed in the rebellion of the younger daughters against their elder, but on it, the vast Palace complex of Zhengjian had been rebuilt, artificial waterfalls of liquid venom poured from the towers, blanketing the gardens in a thick lavender mist, which spilled down the craggy sides of the citadel, into the sluices and pump systems of generations past which piped it back upwards to spill down again. The colors changed from season to season, from festival to festival.

…She had missed it, this austere beauty, this order and surety. But a part of wondered how stifling she would find those halls.

“You are troubled?” Xiao Fen said quietly, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, she stood a step behind Meizhen with her head down.

Bai Meizhen smiled faintly. “No, merely appreciating and reflecting upon the past. Come we should resume our journey, I will not insult my Aunt by being late. She turned back, where her carriage waited on the road, feet gliding over the grass without the train of her gown ever touching it. By the carriage Xia Anxi fretted, and Lao Keung sat, not quite slouching on the bench beside the driver. The rest of soldiers and courtiers assigned to her retinue occupied a handful of small wagons and carriages strung along the road behind.

“Come, that is long enough for my flight of fancy,” Bai Meizhen said crisply.

“Your whims are our command,” Lao Keung rumbled, nudging the nervous driver with his elbow. She felt some pity for the gray scaled man, sweating profusely despite the fact that her aura was reigned in. She would give a good word on his service to the stablemasters.

“Zhengjian is most beautiful at this time of year,” Xia Anxi murmured, only somewhat insincerely as he followed a beat behind her and Xiao Fen entering the carriage. He did not, in his heart, think much of the honor of riding with her, she thought.

“It is,” She agreed as the carriage lurched almost imperceptibly, resuming its path toward the city. “Tell me, did you enjoy your brief access to the observatory, Xia Anxi?”

He stilled for a moment, clearly parsing her words for hidden questions and intent. “Our allies have some impressive talents in lenscrafting and observation formations. I would be pleased to study the anomalies of the southern sky, if my own small interests are to be indulged.”

“Good, I trust you will put in words with the naval equipment workshops,” Bai Meizhen replied idly. She did find the blunt honesty of the southerners, her friends, to be refreshing, but all the same it was sometimes good to be able to speak efficiently and be understood, without needing to spell every little thing out.

“I am pleased to use my expertise for this. Personal farseeing and astropathic equipment are weak industries with few experts in our Lakes,” Xia Anxi said carefully.

At least he was able to say such things to her now. The amount of cajoling and… she did not wish to call it training, but it was was it was, in order for her subordinates to speak basic truths to her without slithering in drunken circles for minutes at a time was frustrating.

“I must support my Aunt’s efforts in the shipbuilding industry as I can.”

It made her mind turn toward Mother’s journals.

The scathing rhetoric and frustration her mother had left in those pages very nearly sizzled in the open air when she had unlocked them for the first time. It was… strange. She remembered Mother as a quiet, thoughtful woman insofar as she remembered her at all truly, for all that she had enshrined those fuzzy memories of warm hands and soothing words, of walks in the garden cradled in slender arms. It was a childish thing to spend a mote of cultivation on, to lock infant memories and preserve them against mortal fading.

But no, Mother’s words glittered on the page, filled with enough venom to turn a stallion into a bloated corpse with their mere fumes. Her opinions on their Bai clan, on the dominant political faction of the White Serpent’s…. At first she thought it some sick trick, but her Aunt would not be fooled, these were her mothers thoughts.

…She found they flowed very well, if more deeply and articulately with some of things she had begun to toy with, in the privacy of her mind.

Their clan had grown deeply sick, hadn’t it? It was a feebleness which cloaked itself in the gown of might. Her eyes drifted to Xiao Fen, so deadly, so studious, so dedicated…. And crippled socially, barely able to provide her the insightful mirror, or check her the way that a confidant should. She considered Xia Anxi, whose sharp eyes and careful thoughts were curtailed by his immediate instinct to cringe and slavishly agree with her, to never point out flaws in anything their clan was doing.

Even Lao Keung, for all that he sometimes seemed to dare her to strike him down for impertinence in small ways… they were small ways, barely perceptible, compared to the impertinence allowed to subordinates in the south. She sometimes wondered if was as bewildered as she had been, walking among them, in those first months.

Which of her ancestors had chosen the path of crippling those beneath, and in doing, allowed their indomitable drive and ambition to be hollowed out from within?

“Of course, Lady Suzhen is wise, and brings much prosperity to the north. I will gather names which are worthy of your sponsorship,” Xia Anxi said. “Will Lady Bao be our supplier?”

Glasswork wasn’t Qingling’s specialty, but she knew the drudging work of a merchant better than Bai Meizhen did. “Yes. Do not go without Lao Keung, nor the talismans I have provided. As my retinue, you may be tested.”

She felt the twitch in his pulse, saw the slight straightening of his shoulders even without fully opening her half lidded eyes.

The gates of Zhengjian loomed. She would miss her time in the soft fantasy of the Emerald Seas. The days of warmth and growth, of romance and friendships. Yet, she was a daughter of the Bai, descendant of Yao the Fisher, Kingkiller, Inviolate Death.

Her Aunt intended to do her great honor, and she would repay that in full.

Bai Meizhen’s cousins were going to learn that she was not a sad, isolated young girl any longer.

Her venom had not grown any less potent, her fangs no less sharp. In allowing herself to be hurt, she had grown far less brittle than the glasslike strength of those who would continue to drag the Bai down into the decline her Mother had seen. The decline her Aunt had seen fit to drag them from, kicking and screaming.

Let them hiss and bite and probe, she would break as many fangs as she needed too, in order to proudly claim to be the daughter of the White Blade Devil.