Radeon's thoughts drifted, dull and heavy. Grass between the cobbles clutched at his boots as if the world's buried riddles were dragging him toward something he could not yet name.
As he passed beneath the ivy-drowned walls, the power in his eyes stirred unbidden. Heat gathered behind his brow and did not let go.
"A dragon thread. A black serpent riding her shadow."
Lines only he could see twisted between his eyes and hers.
'Luck on one. Ruin on the other.'
Her green eyes shone bright as river glass, her skin too smooth for the grime. A beggar's stains on the face of a lost lord's daughter.
Folks and disciples said she'd lost her wits, and with them the marvels that once clung to her.
Even the loneliest men kept their distance. Her beauty no longer drew them in; it only set their nerves on edge.
But his sight slid true past skin and bone. A bright soul. Fierce and gold. Trapped in a tired mortal shell that sagged around it like wet cloth.
"A child of the heavenly dao," he murmured.
The woman lifted her head as if heaven itself had tugged a string. Her gaze met his and held.
Radeon did not believe in mystery. Heaven might look strange to other men. To him it was only gears turning.
"Rai, was it?" Her voice came soft, almost pleased. "Have you heard the old tales? Cultivators holding the stars in their bare hands."
She could not draw a breath of qi, yet her tongue chased immortals and endings.
"Or the last apocalypse," she went on. "The one that cracked heaven and earth."
In her mouth, the world was always on the verge of breaking.
Despite all her ill news, there was one particular reason he chose to stand still. Fay was one of heaven's children, whether she knew it or not.
He had fought the heavenly sons and daughters for a place in the high wars of the sky. At their last breaths they always seemed to find some buried trick, some relic or half-starved god ready to take their side. Even at his height, the memory made his teeth clench.
For Radeon, there was only one way to live under these children of heaven. Build bonds that surpassed blood, or gain overwhelming power that commanded respect.
"Radeon is my name," he said. "I came to speak of immortality. I have found proof it is real. The things you say about the world ending are not madness at all."
"How am I meant to trust a word of that?" she asked.
Radeon did not let the doubt breathe.
"If what I know of immortality is lacking, if I have not stood upon its height, may the lightning of heaven take me where I stand."
The last word left his lips and the sky answered. Clouds shuddered. A deep rumble crawled over the roofs and walls, as if some great brush had stroked his oath hard across the bright blue.
For a heartbeat, the revetment fell quiet. Even the wind seemed to listen. Fay stared, shocked. Her body was the most sensitive to the stirrings of heaven.
No man she knew had ever claimed as much. Even she would not go so far as to swear such an oath.
Radeon laid out the plan in a few spare lines.
"Three days from now, we leave," he said. "Pack as if we might not come back."
"Is there anything else I can do?" Fay asked.
"Your spirit stones," Radeon said. "Lend me all of them. And your quill and ink. Now."
Fay dropped to a crouch at once. She dug through her bag until half her belongings spilled over the cobbled street.
Dried herbs, bent knives, a leather-bound book swollen with old rain. Radeon stooped only long enough to take the quill and a clean sheet from the chaos.
He wrote with a steady hand. Silk thread, a thousand fine needles, coils of strong rope. Then he passed the parchment back to her.
Fay drank the words in. Her heart beat so hard he could see it in the hollow of her throat.
This was not just a list to her. It was a door to the immortality she had begged the streets to grant.
"Make sure every needle is threaded with silk," Radeon said. "No knots. No tangles."
"I… I can do that. I swear it," Fay said. Her fingers twitched as if she wanted to start already.
At her belt, a leather pouch bulged. Radeon tugged it free, the contents jingling like ice in a glass.
'There had to be over a hundred,' he thought.
He loosened the strings, let the stones spill into his hand, and counted off thirty. Then he pressed those thirty spirit stones back into her fingers and kept the pouch.
"This is all I need," he said. "Spend the rest on food for a month. The best you can find that travels light. We carry no more than we must."
Fay nodded again and again, clutching the spirit stones and the list to her chest as if someone might snatch them away at any moment.
Radeon could see she was choking on questions. Her eyes burned with a hungry, feverish light.
"Heaven's secrets are not given so lightly," he said. "Nor are they taken without a price."
He turned before she could beg for more. Behind him, the parchment rustled in her hands.
A sharp little hitch in her breath told him she would cling to his words now, the way a drowning soul clings to driftwood.
'Feed them the secrets in pieces, in the order you choose. Let them feel the weight of each secret. Let them grow around it.'
If they chose to leave the road before the end, Radeon would see to it that no sword of revenge ever rose from their hands in his name.
With that vow and his new fortune in mind, he walked toward the sect exchange hall. He meant to burn every last point Rai had so kindly saved for him.
He needed to make something. Not only for himself, but for her as well. A little ward of jade or steel. Some simple piece that might turn a killing blow.
He had no wish to fatten rumors for idle merchants. What he wanted was a clean taking. A quiet heist.
With himself as the showman at its heart.