by Vivian Chak
Chapter 10: Family Leave-Takings
Xiang rubbed his temples in frustration. He had the familiar urge to pick a fight, but after how last night had ended, perhaps it wasn't wise. His blade had several nicks in it already, from his senseless hammering of steel on steel. The thought made him chuckle at the irony. His meeting with his father had been of the same nature, though his father had evidently been the harder blade. Xiang felt slightly chipped even now, as if he had been an extremely inferior piece of steel, when he recalled their conversation.
“As it stands, I am to accept that my son was found by the Lian sisters, failed to eliminate them within the length of the week, and provided them with the means to kill.” Prefect Li wore his customary blank expression as he spoke, but Xiang could see the anger in his father's tightened features.
“I'm not a cold-blooded murderer.”
“A meaningless retort. Would I have spent so much time raising a murderer?” His mother nodded in silent agreement as his father continued, “Did I title you Xiaowen, filial son, without knowing full well what expectations that laid on you?”
“What woe! The gods must have been angry, to give me such a son.” His mother joined the scene, sobs accentuating her words. Li silenced her with a glance.
“You are your father's only son. I do not wish to see you courting your own destruction.”
“What I taught Lian Flame is hardly sufficient against what you've taught me.” Xiang immediately tried for self-preservation. Prefect Li was probably upset enough to have his anger slightly lessened by indirect flattery, and at the same time, ignore such sycophancy from his own son. It didn't work, however.
“Evidently you failed to learn anything,” his father snapped at him sharply. “Did you even kill Lang yourself?” Xiang winced within. Afterwards, it had seemed as if his teacher had let Xiang kill him, by deliberately failing to parry. That had hurt him even more― he could not claim to have killed Lang, and at the same time, he was responsible for his death.
“I facilitated his death, yes,” replied Xiang slowly, crossing his arms in thought. It was slightly vague, but Prefect Li would have been livid if he had said, truthfully, what he was thinking: Lang helped me.
“Then you didn't.” His father had divined his thoughts. “Li Xiaowen, I expect honesty in your answers. Why are you intent on destroying your family, as you must be, in your protracted efforts to avoid killing the two Lians?”
“Because I find it dishonourable, Father, to kill without reason.” As in the case of Lang, he almost added, but he didn't. That was too close to insolence.
“Insults are no reason either,” his mother interrupted. “I have told you such, time and time again, after you return from your gutter fights.”
“You are right, Mother, in saying so, but I only duel in response to familial slights.”
“This is a familial slight,” said his father, in reply. “Lian Flame would see me dead.”
“How do you know this?” Xiang couldn't resist asking. He had known as much, from conversing with her, but how had his father?
“If your magisterial post is ever forthcoming, you will find that position carries with it influence, and with this, men will attempt to exchange secrets for favour.” His father then tapped the sword that hung from his wall: “Raw power carries such heft as well.” Rounding on Xiang, he added harshly, “And both need to be exercised, if one intends to keep both.”
“I will,” Xiang said, in response. What else was he to say? His father was correct― how else had he kept his position of prefect for over three years? Prefect Li made a noise in his throat.
“If you did even a tenth of that, it would be many magnitudes greater than what you do now.” The prefect drew his blade from the wall. His mother protested, against the wielding of steel in the house, but Prefect Li ignored her. “Draw.”
Xiang reluctantly unsheathed his blade. No sooner than he had done so, his father's blade streaked sideways for his head. He twisted and parried the blade away, but the movement was poorly done, and his father's sword bit into the edge of his. That would leave a mark. His father's blade was one of superior steel and make, with multiple alloys hammered and folded when hot, each one adding a different strength. The most Xiang could say of his sword was that it had been differentially hardened, so as to avoid softening its edge, following forging.
The twisted steel made for his throat, and Xiang leaped back, nearly tripping over a chair. That was new. His father had always insisted that they use the more traditional, though old-fashioned, sitting mats. It was good for cultivating one's composure, his father had told him. But now there was a chair. It felt out of place.
Prefect Li stood back a pace, sword at his son's throat. Xiang didn't move. How was he to know what his father wanted?
“I was once in a position where both Lian girls were under my power. In a moment of weakness, I showed mercy. It seems that I must now pay for that mistake with my son.” At that moment, with his father's blade at his throat, and strange words to accompany it, Xiang questioned his father's sanity. His mother was silent, as if any word would provoke the prefect. No, that was wrong, he told himself immediately. If his father's actions appeared extreme, it was only because Xiang had pushed him to that point. He should have complied with his father from the beginning, and then maybe Lang wouldn't have had to die.
Li withdrew his blade, moonlight gleaming from its sharp edges. He set down his sword on the desk behind, turning back towards his son, hands empty. “Strike.” The prefect's face was perfectly composed. Xiang stepped back, in confusion.
“Your father orders it. What you're doing now is surely meant to destroy Family Li; if I've taught you any resolve, you'll carry out your intentions swiftly, and now.”
“Look what you've done, Xiaowen!” His mother scolded him, voice nearly shrill with anger and fear.
“There is no reason,” Xiang protested, intent on placating Prefect Li, sword loose in his hand. It was unthinkable for him to strike his father, who faced him unarmed.
“There is no reason for you to protect the Lian sisters either.” Xiang thought he could detect an undercurrent of fury in his father's voice, though Prefect Li's face remained flat.
“I'm not protecting them!” His father's blade sprang for him in reply. Xiang parried each blow, restraining himself from returning them, for then he would truly prove that he was set on destroying his father and family. They circled his father's desk, blades flashing, Xiang retreating.
The sword sliced through an edge of the chair, and Xiang realized that his father's blows were real. That worried him. His father must have been furious. But Xiang would not apologize; not for telling the truth. Instead, he threw his sword down.
His father's blade swept back, and circled around in a returning slash for his head. Xiang followed his sword to the ground, narrowly avoiding the slash as his mother cried out.
“Pick that up,” his father ordered, blade tip pointing at his dropped weapon.
“No, Father.” An uppercut swung for his chin, and Xiang scrambled back, scraping a strip of skin from his wrist on the broken side of the chair. His hand bled. Prefect Li's face was inscrutable, but Xiang held his gaze resolutely, even as his father's blade thrust for his chest―
―and buried itself in the chair, somewhat unsatisfactorily. Xiang had almost been ready to die at that moment, for being his own man. Now the idea seemed stupid, as the sharp steel vibrated gently in the ruined seating. His father had known that he would capitulate all along. Indeed, Xiang thought he saw a faintly triumphant smile tug at the corners of the prefect's taut mouth.
“It would seem that I've taught honesty,” Prefect Li admitted, mouth stretching into a true smile now. Xiang was relieved. His father almost looked normal again, save for heavy rising and falling of the chest. “Now tell me truthfully, will you eliminate the Lians or destroy Family Li?” At this, Xiang took a deep breath, weighing his words carefully.
“I will kill them when I
have gathered full proof of their family's treasons. Or when they threaten the Prefect's life.” His father nodded thoughtfully in reply.
“Perhaps they would threaten said Prefect earlier if my son had taught both Lians swordplay,” said his father sardonically.
“That was not my intention,” Xiang confessed, slightly relaxing with his father's returned humour. “Though it suits the final objective conveniently. But the other Lian is a complete pacifist, intent on becoming a Buddhist nun.”
“Becoming a nun does not make one a pacifist,” his father commented. “Particularly in the case of your aunt.” Xiang remembered that his father's sister was a nun at Yongtai. His father sent spies to inform on her regularly.
“That is why I must procure instead proofs of their family being marked for lianzou.”
“You may spare yourself that effort.” His father brought out a dusty ledger for him. “The proof of Prefect Lian funding rebels is marked here, and you will find copies of the official warrants stored at the Imperial library here as well.”
“In that case, it may be better if I show them such documents to provoke their violence.” The idea of killing, without a preceding physical attack upon his person, was abhorrent.
“Wishful thinking.” His father and mother spoke the words almost simultaneously.
“I should have had you kill Lang seven years ago,” mused Prefect Li, “when he began trying to turn you against me.”
Maybe his father was trying to make him feel better by taking some responsibility for Lang's death, but Xiang felt guilty once again. Lang had cared for him as a son; that was all. The insulting calligraphy gift must have still been embedded in his father's mind, considered Xiang. But Prefect Li's words disproved the thought.
“He wanted you to renounce what I've taught you― that only with mastery over oneself and one's conscience, can one move forward. Where would Family Li be today, if not for our efforts to protect the Empire, in spite of its moralizing detractors?” Xiang had to concede the point. His father gave him a meaningful look. “I hope he has not succeeded, though your inability to carry out simple tasks directly is clearly thwarting that hope.”
“I won't waver this time,” Xiang promised. Otherwise, his father would likely find some other innocent to blame, and then Xiang would have to kill that unfortunate person as well.
“See to it that you do not,” said his father, wrenching the blade from the chair, one-handed. “And don't use that sword anymore,” he said, indicating Xiang's blade. “You've outgrown it.” He pressed the hilt of his own into Xiang's hand.
“Thank you, honourable Father.” Xiang bowed out of the room, as Prefect Li seated himself cross-legged on the mat before his desk.
Outside in the corridor, his mother handed him the ledger and fussed over his bleeding hand.
“Truly, Mother, it's just a scratch,” insisted Xiang, as he tried to knot a bandage over it with hand and teeth, as the monk Wong had done.
“You're doing it wrong,” his mother told him. She retied the bandage for him, then stepped back to appraise her son. Xiang knew from her silence that she was deeply disappointed.
“Don't ever provoke your father like that again,” said Lady Li, as she fixed her son with a steely look.
“Yes, Mother.”
And now he was wandering the empty streets of Bianjing at dawn. His own sword was still belted, and in his hands he held both his father's sword and Lian's ledger. A metallic taste hung in the back of his throat, as he considered what he would have to do to merit his father's steel.