For the second time this morning Xi stepped onto the combed sand of the temple's pathways. This time he did not dash for the main gates.

Sayewa led him through the maze of the private pavilions and gardens where the Serene Mothers lived. The patchwork of gardens with the trees in the spring bloom, trees bountiful with the summer fruit and trees in the fullness of the autumnal finery separated by the walls, not the passage of seasons, stretched beyond what should have fit on the hilltop.

"It was a gift from the Celestials, a pocket of another realm allocated to our monastery to extend the land the Emperors gave us," Sayewa explained not waiting for him to ask.

He stubbornly kept his mouth shut, even suppressed an exclamation of surprise when he saw Sayewa's private abode. Alone among her sisters, she chose a winterscape to surround her quarters with.

A maple tree in the middle of the yard held on to no more than a dozen of browned leaves, but it looked festive, frosted in shiny white. The same crunchy white dusted the ground, sounding out Xi's every step. Tall reeds with fluffy tufts squeezed into the gaps between the boulders carved with faery symbols - the guardians of a tiny pond. Ice reached out from its banks with translucent fingers and fern-like branches towards the spring of gurgling water in the middle.

Involuntarily, Xi stopped to take in a purifying, teeth-aching breath and the stark view. The place was cold and peaceful, gray and white.

Sad.

He shivered — not because his tunic was too light for the unexpected touch of winter — and hurried indoors.

The insides of the pavilion were all the more inviting for its bare surroundings. The russet hues of the carpet and the warm shade of the wood paneling, the blazing red fire fed by a humming acolyte - the warmth tempted Xi to curl up in a catlike fashion and doze off.

"Thank you for keeping my hearthstone warm," Sayewa said to the acolyte. "How is she?"

A dreamy smile stretched the acolyte's lips. "The tiny corm is asleep as soundly as you could wish, Serene Mother."

Before Xi could decipher the cryptic conversation, Sayewa took him by the hand. She led him through the screen of wooden beads to a small chamber. The curtain swayed behind him, concealing the reddish sitting room. Here, everything was green, covered entirely in living moss and ferns. A carved wooden tree trunk stood in the middle, also tinted with moss. Cradled inside its velvet grasp was a tangle of dark roots topped with three star-shaped red flowers, maybe a dahlia or—

The root opened its eyes - four of them, not the eyes as in the flower shoots - it... she opened her four brown eyes with the first lively hint of sentience - and extended all of her appendages towards Sayewa.

"A faery child..." Xi mumbled dumbly, as the baby started to babble a long incomprehensible greeting.

Serene Mother Sayewa picked her daughter up from the cradle. Mother, of course! The title in the Temple's hierarchy has a literal meaning!

She smiled proudly. "Her name is Tajinyu, 'the remembrance' in the faery tongue."

The language was never taught to the outsiders. Xi did not know if it had anything in common with Shen, but he had an absolute certainty that it was not the only way to translate the baby-faery's name.

"Remembrance, or 'the memory of Yu'," he said. "Is not it right?"

Sayewa darted a glance at the click-clacking curtain. Beyond it, the acolyte went on with her humming. There were the sweeping sounds too, while she moved around cleaning.

"Yes. We can conceive of pure thought."

Out of courtesy, Xi switched to whispering as well. "Of pure thought and... just how much of his qi? Did he agree to that? Was that the price of the ritual?"

His old, life-long animosity towards Yu reared its head anew. Did it have to be this complicated? Couldn't the demon had simply consorted with this faery behind his mother's back? No mystic rituals or pure thought required...

"Not everything is done by design," Sayewa said, tilting one of her eyes towards him, and keeping the rest on her daughter. "I could not face the thought of him being gone from the world without a trace. My sorrow quickened in my womb without my knowing, let alone his."

Xi believed Sayewa because he had asked those same questions in secret once before, about his own parentage, and had been proven wrong. He shook his head, ashamed of suspecting Yu, even more ashamed of wishing the man his mother loved to be evil in nature...

While he sulked, the faery took the last of her eyes off him in favour of Tajinyu. Her face turned more serene than he thought possible.

"Have you ever regretted anything in your life?" he asked sourly.

"Yes," she replied with the damnable honesty, that sounded like lies. "Living a long life means atoning rather than wallowing in regret. I would have thought Rustam Bei taught you that."

The baby kept on gurgling like the spring in Sayewa's frozen garden. Her red flowers rested against her mother's plump forearm.

Xi took in the peaceful tableau with a sigh. Did the faery feelings for Yu were akin to Fenghuang's for him? She obviously doted on the child, but it would be different for him if he became a dragon. There must be a difference. He searched for it.

"Is Tajinyu a faery or... something else?"

"Only a faery is born to a faery, no matter whom she mates. That caused a rift with the humans in antiquity, and it is still true today," Sayewa said, then added barely audibly, "her abilities might prove unconventional."

Xi searched her face and found no hint of deception. Not that there ever was one on her soft visage. "I need time to think things over."

"I understand. You are welcome to stay here to reflect. I will not pressure you. You've just seen my one and the only reason to want a dragon watching over the Empire, and I dislike repeating myself."

"A dragon?" A bitter smile found its way on his lips after the resentful exclamation. He could not undo either, but he lowered his voice again before continuing. He could fight his way out only by maintaining control and self-possession, and only with logic. They would not listen to the ramblings from the heart. "No, Serene Mother, you do not want a dragon. You want this one Dragon you've already created in your mind out of me. Now you play with the Celestials's scrolls until they fit me like a glove for expediency."

"Our situation dictates expediency, Xi." She lowered the baby to her bed of moss and smoothed the scarlet flowers out of the sparkling eyes. "If we are to build the Forge, I must arrange for an audience with the Son of Heavens and the Empress in a week's time or sooner. The construction could take—"

"I know how long it would take," he said bitterly. The child's tiny rootlings curled round and round in questing spirals to grab at her mother's tresses. "I had studied it for you."

"So you did. Aren't you at least a little invested in building it?" For once all four of the faery's cloud-gray eyes fixed on him. A year ago, he would have squirmed, but today he met her gaze without as much as a shiver. If she had anything else left to burn him with, let her.

"You can stay with us for as long as we survive if you reject Ascendance. You can stay until the end comes, be that a year or a decade."

"Thank you for the generous offer, but I will keep my old cell in Rustam's house. It is not far," he said.

After days of intense travails suddenly all he had left to do was to think, only one decision to make. It was the most exhausting labour imaginable.