“The Way is in all things and the Way is all things,” Rose from the River says, wrapping her fingers warningly around Qiu’s wrist. They both take a step: Rose back, Qiu forward, the world outside them drowned into stylization. Petals dance in the breeze, her flowers blooming. “Its voice is so quiet that we will often drown it out in the worlds we construct for ourselves. And because it is so quiet, we who devote our lives to following it, in practical terms, follow those who have the most experience listening.”

Neither one of them has drawn their sword yet. Neither one of them has to. The air between them is a Hell of Purgation. Woe to the bird that thinks to flit between them!

“So, really, it wasn’t anything [i]personal,[/i] your radiant excellence. It was that my school’s [i]sifu[/i] has declared you are... disharmonious. Mmm. Yes.”

When she cocks her head, one earring rests against her jaw. Qiu melts into her as they dance to the beat of their hearts— no. The wrong metaphor. Qiu makes a beachhead of her body as they display their footwork.

“And so I am here because someone else told me to chastise you. Because she knows how to move in time with the auspicious path of motion better than I do. Because I am, always and ever, following orders in one way or another. I made three choices myself, you know that? Ever. And the first two were both wrong. The third one... we’ll see.”

In and out, between the shadows of pillars so high that their tops cannot be seen. They’re speeding up now. Their swords are still sheathed. They are building inexorably to a drawing, neither willing to do so preemptively. The proper moment is not yet here.

“But I am also here because I have seen the ouroboros of power, Threeshard Princess. I have watched the leviathans of monopoly at their feeding. I know what happens to the market when one player gets too big to do anything but expand, and what happens when there is nothing left to eat but itself, company paying out to charge its own workers for what they make to record as profit to pay back out, over and over. I have seen the ruins of empire, little girl; I have shed myself of them to be a new thing.”

And Qiu lowers Rose into a deep dip, one smooth hand on that maddeningly ordinary face, the other’s fingers barely brushing the tiles. In that moment of tension they are the opposites that contain themselves, the yin and the yang, the mountain and the sea.

“Anything that threatens this world that has grown from that poisoned soil, pure and flourishing, will see me as its enemy, Qiu Threeshard; and even if you are wiser and better than we fear, and you very well may be, now that I have met you I know that you are still [i]insufferable.[/i]”

Fingers tighten on hair. Whose? Does it matter? Artifice peels away, and what is left is a chariot pulled by three horses, one tempestuous, one staggering, one aspirational: the one that wants to start a cat fight right [i]here[/i], the one desperate to find someone strong enough and [i]good[/i] enough to yield completely to, and the one that wants to do the right thing, even if it be so hard as groveling at Qiu’s foot. And here is the middle ground between the three:

“So are you going to submit to my judgement and relinquish your third shard to the care of the White Doe School, little girl, or will I have to [i]chastise[/i] you first?”