The 'why me?' danced on the tip of his tongue for the rest of the insufferably long ceremony. Instead of it, Xi promised to carry out the Emperor's orders to the best of his abilities.

Sayewa paid his words as much attention as they deserved, watching the colourful crowd filing out of the palace. Xi gave it a look as well. The robes's perfected over the centuries made wonders for the male figures. The slender or stout, the tall and the short - the cut improved their appearance, the silks lent the sense of dignity. He subconsciously wished for a mirror to see how he compared.

The faery interrupted his train of thoughts just when he started pondering if Minh would have even noticed him in the full splendour of the court. "Be ready to leave in five days' time," she commanded. "The portal is too small for Fenghuang, even though she will be eager to join. Convey my apologies, Chong Xi."

"I will carry out the Emperor's orders---" Xi started again, but Sayewa hurried away after the other Council members. In a swirl of petals, the faery was gone, moving too fast for the humans to keep up. All that was left to remind him that it all was real was a spray of golden blooms by his feet.

***

Rustam Bey invited Xi to stay while he was in Sutao. Back in his old apprentice cell, Xi agonized over being dismissed as much as he agonized over being chosen.

At least where the dismissal was concerned, Xi was in the most august company, that of the Emperor Hsuanji. That comforted him for a bit, then he sat up bolt upright on his mat. Perhaps the faery had troubles distinguishing between a young man and an adolescent, and Sayewa treated them the same for that reason?! He fell back, groaning. The ceiling above his head would start crumbling if he kept on staring like that... She did say 'mage' when she referred to him, and alluded to his abilities... did that mean anything?

On the third day of waiting, a messenger brought him a perfumed scroll of the finest rice paper.

Zijun wanted to see him.

He did not want to see her, childishly perhaps, but if that's how the world insisted on treating him... He crumpled the letter into a ball, enjoying the pleasant rustling sound the paper made and tossed it against the wall a few times aiming for a hair-fracture. On the twenty-third toss, it ricocheted off some unevenness of the whitewash and rolled behind the clothes's chest.

Five days was not enough to visit his mother either, but he wrote a letter to send with Jiang. It read cold but respectful. He took it to him anyway.

Rustam disappeared into the library and reappeared in the doorway on the fourth day with the request for him to lead the apprentices in practice.

He thought that it would be awkward because he had been one of them only a year ago, but that one year took him farther away than he had imagined. He led, he advised, he even caught himself imitating Rustam's faraway tone of voice and did not blush. He did smile to himself in the evening though. The faery could think what she wants, he was a war mage, not a boy crowned or not.

***

When the acolyte from the Hill of the Five Seasons came to fetch Xi, he should have been ready to go, but he tarried. He sat on his sleeping mat, probing the insides of his bundle, chilled with tiny suspicions about forgetting this or that, then feeling it with his fingers, and chuckling nervously at his silliness.

Last time he had left, for Tarkan, he did not have time to do that, because he was too eager to leave. It was not that he did not want to depart this time around, it was that his legs felt too leaden to jump up, his hsin too burdened with sadness. If Minh came North, Xi would be gone---

The acolyte started humming something ethereal.

Xi picked his bundle off the mat and slang it over the shoulder in one swift move worthy of a swordsman fighting for his life. "Lead on, Serene Acolyte."

In the courtyard of the Temple, the faery exacted her revenge: she left him to wait, while she went to fetch Mother Sayewa. It took extraordinary long. Xi peered at every faery that passed him. Did they know he was an accessory to the murder of Mother Weynala? Not a single one spared him a second glance, except for a Sister who came to check what business he had with the Temple, and even she drifted away satisfied with his answer. If anything, she treated him with reverence the moment Sayewa's name left his lips.

They did not suspect a thing, the air was clear, the sun was gentle, the breeze smelled of flowers... Xi slumped on a wooden bench that some enterprising vine covered with its sky-blue blooms. He closed his eyes to mediate away a sharp pang of premonition. The sunlight warmed up his hair, and the sleep that eluded him in the night nearly overtook him at noon.

"Chong Xi, are you ready?"

He smiled, without opening his eyes. "Yes, yes, I am, Serene Mother. Are you sure we cannot fit Fenghuang through the portal?"

She did not raise her voice, but it sounded clipped. "Not if she is alive and in one piece. Please, follow me."

He loved jumping off the cliffs into the Jade Sea to be jolted awake - this felt the same, his drowsiness gone, his premonitions swept away by her businesslike manner. Dancing up to his feet, Xi dashed forward from his seat.

And stopped short. There was no carriage or saddled horses. He lowered his voice to an incredulous whisper. "Serene Mother, is there an entrance to the Heavenly Realm within walking distance from here?"

Sayewa leaned in so close that her breath touched his ear. "An easy stroll, but it gets challenging afterwards. And precisely for that reason, we should leave the questions for later, my enigma."

The sun touched the tips of his ears already while he dozed. Unless he missed his guess, the tint deepened now to rival the scarlet of that peony Sayewa sprouted on his last visit. He checked the bloom involuntarily - it was white with gentle pink middles, plum blossoms maybe or apples.

"The nicknames are but a bit of childhood silliness," he muttered, "because we were both 'fenghuang', and the dogma bored me... and---"

He gave up. The joke was between him and Fenghuang, and it could not be explained to the outsiders. If Sayewa knew Fenghuang called him 'beloved' in private, well, it could not be helped.

As his ears and cheeks cooled, Sayewa started up a quiet tune as they wound their way through the lower slope of the Hill of the Five Seasons. There, a sacred trail branched away from the main road. As she had predicted, the going became more challenging after they had strolled through the woods and came to the naked rock wall. Its sheer face did not slough, and not even moss dared to mar its pink flesh. It broke the line of the vegetated slope like a carved and polished stele, ready to be filled with the pronouncement of Imperial will.

Xi bit his shirt's collar to not scream in exhalation as he first climbed pink-and-brown rocks, then crawled through a narrow cavern. This, this was an entrance to the Heavenly Realm. Here, in Sutao, a secret getaway to the Celestials!

His jaw relaxed, letting the chewed up silk fall back to his neck at the sight of the glowing disk set between fantastical statues. He no longer had the voice to cry out, robbed of breath. The cavern walls bristling with crystals, reflecting the light of the Celestial Portal. It shone in his mind once he closed his eyes. It nearly blinded him once he opened them up again.

"Is this..." His voice echoed brazenly. He lowered it to a whisper. "Is this how Yu eluded capture?"

Still half-frozen by wonder, Xi stretched shaking hands towards the portal as if it were a fire that could ward of the chill. Inch by inch he walked towards the Heavenly Realm. Its beauty drew him in the same way a lit lantern draws night moths.

"Yes." Sayewa's reply came from far away, even though she glided to stand right next to him.

Her fingers squeezed his forearm, and she tossed him away from the light with inhuman strength. Xi landed on his back among the limestone-encrusted relics and bones, dazed.

"It is not without protective wards, Chong Xi. Can you control yourself while I open it?"

Xi rubbed the parts that took the brunt of the impact. "I will endeavour to carry out my orders, Serene Mother."

Sayewa sang, silhouetted against the portal's streaming light.

He sifted through the ancient rubble, keeping his eyes down. If he was this susceptible to Celestial's magic, Sayewa might have chosen her companion wrong.

Saywea sang until the deepening of the shadows told him that the light of the portal had diminished.

"Come quickly," she called. Blue flowers dotted her temples, all four eyes squeezed shut.

He took a running start.

"But go slowly," she whizzed.

One leg already through the gray mist billowing in the portal, Xi checked himself.

The other side was a narrow ledge. Xi slipped to the right making room for Sayewa, and fought the impulse to press his back into the wall. Next to him was another portal. And another one, up and down, left and right, as far as the eyes could see. A misstep would take him to Celestials's only know which realm.

Sayewa pushed through the mist. She gave him a reassuring smile, not realizing that behind her ---

"Watch out!"

Behind the faery, a ghost undulated, gray smoke inside the gray mist. The figure was smothered but unmistakably human.

Sayewa whirled on the narrow shelf.

The portal shut with a bright flash, blinding Xi for an instant. The vision started returning. Through the sunburst in his eyes, Xi saw two widening moon-white eyes, a black star in the middle of each instead of the pupils. The rest of the face and the clothes turned to gray strands, like greasy hair.

He swayed, fighting for balance.

Sayewa steadied him with her strong arm. "Someone tried to cross after us. They failed."

"We should go back," Xi whispered as a terrible suspicion entered his mind. "Maybe we can---"

"He is dead," Sayewa said, "and I will have no strength to part the barrier long enough for us to cross again for a week or more. Climb down, Chong Xi."

"Was it—-" Xi swallowed the words that would not come out of his throat, the words he repeated so many times in the past few days, both out loud and in his mind.

The Son of Heavens.

Sayewa ignored him and his unvoiced questions. She kneeled and dangled one foot down to feel for a leghold.

It was a long way to the gray shifting floor, a length of many honeycombed portals gleaming in the dark hall.

"Give me a moment..." Xi gave himself a shake and focused his mind. The natural laws of the Celestial Realm should be knowable. Should be. Are they?

Sayewa continued her descent as stubborn as when she had refused to answer.

With a pleased nod to himself, Xi opened his mouth to boast that he understood, but her panicked cry echoed through the thousands of worlds, drowning him out.

He dove forward after the falling faery, reflecting the tamed energy off of the floor. It caught them, vibrating with the impact like the jetties on the River of Tassels, like Minh's staff, like Minh's upper lip... and he pressed the faery to his chest, jutting chin into her sternum.

"Do not move, Serene Mother."

Sayewa tensed against him, and Xi created a judicious two inches of distance for propriety's sake and to avoid a curious emotion radiating from her. It was not a heady burst like Minh's had been, but he was certain that a small part of it was due to an attraction, something indirect, vague, just out of his reach.

The gap between them filled with the bountiful faery blooms. "Wait."

Slowly, he lowered their energy platform to the moving paving stones of the floor. Shifting grey stones...

"Are those...rats?" He did not feel like dissolving his spell to find out. A snout rose up, sniffing at them, eliminating all doubts. They were hovering above the backs of giant rats, not shiny gray slate slabs that moved around for some reason. The only reason he took them for stones was that he expected stones, understood stones below their tiny pink feet.

"Welcome to the Mistress of Rats' domain, Chong Xi," the faery said formally. "Follow the rats, they are quite intelligent."

"Ah... some of them would reach up to here..." he jammed his finger into his mid-thigh.

She snorted and wiggled out of his embrace.

They walked in the press of the furry sides and trembling whiskers. To his relief, the tails were tacked in out of sight, but the paws tread over his feet once in a while sending shivers through him.

"Where are they taking us?"

For a change, Sayewa provided an explanation immediately. "To their mistress, the Mother of Sorrows."

"That does not sound propitious," Xi sighed. Seemingly whenever he wrang a direct answer out of her, it was never something he had wanted to hear anyway.

"She is the only Celestial I know," said Sayewa.

That was one more than Xi did. He looked at the plump faery with a renewed sense of awe and immediately blushed, remembering the faded feeling he got from her touch. "Why did you pick me?"

"First, I do not wish to share my knowledge with another faery. Second, the enhancements to your constitution make me hopeful that you will not succumb to the Celestial's humours the way most other humans do."

Yes, yes, it was never something he wanted to hear... Xi surreptitiously searched his body for signs of sickness. He was not queasy, delirious or sore. "I feel well so far, Serene Mother."

She acknowledged it with a satisfied nod.

The hall opened up into another chamber, this one free of portals, walls painted with an image of a strange land with wicked plants and an orange sunset in a blue-and-emerald sky.