Some of Father's clan came in the early afternoon while Bolin was running the cohort’s final week of drills.
Ten of them, on foot, carrying what looked like a week’s worth of provisions between them. They came through the south gate with road dust on them. They had stopped to rest when they entered after the exhaustion hit them all at once. Luan Mei saw them first from the clinic doorway and called for me.
I saw that they were of mixed ages, one woman who looked to be in her fifties, three in their thirties, the rest of them were younger. They assessed the training ground and the River Fork Academy with wide, curious eyes, perhaps marveling at the scope of it all.
And their traveling companion was a cat.
It was sitting on the gatepost watching me approach. It was small with metallic grey fur, perched completely still. Its amber eyes tracked me as I crossed the ground.
The ambient Qi around it was being drawn to its core but it wasn't circulating it.
I stared at it and kept walking.
“Creepy cat,” Bolin said, appearing at my left shoulder.
I agreed with him, but I didn't want to raise alarm yet. “Focus on the students,” I said. “It’s their last week so I want it to go smoothly.”
He looked at the cat once more, then turned back to the drill line.
We brought them to the clinic.
Liu Jun had cleared the examination room and Luan Mei had already started water heating before I asked. The ten settled in. They had been trying not to want anything for long enough that being offered something decent showed plainly on their faces.
Pei Yan was in the clinic working on the militia injury records when they came through the door.
One of the women, third from the left, younger than Pei Yan by perhaps five years, was already moving toward her before either of them spoke.
They held each other without saying anything. Pei Yan’s hand was flat against the back of the woman's head and her eyes were closed.
I looked away and gave them the time.
When the room had settled I sat across from the eldest, the woman in her fifties, who had introduced herself as Pei Wu. She had the bearing of a leader, especially with the way her family members showed deference to her.
“Tell me how you found Hekou,” I said.
She told me.
They had been moving along the eastern roads in small groups for three weeks, routing around the garrison checkpoints the way people routed around obstacles. The first checkpoint had been straightforward. They had the documentation Pei Yan’s contact had arranged. The second had been harder. The road past it was watched, which they had known, and the ridge path that bypassed it ran through the southern country hillside that were home to creature activity.
“We were trying to decide whether to wait it out or risk the ridge,” Pei Wu said, “that was, until the cat appeared.”
Hao leaned forward slightly.
“It came out of the hill country to the south,” she continued. “It sat in the middle of the road and looked at us. When we didn’t move it turned and walked south. When we followed it into the ridge path the creatures pulled back.” She paused. “Every time. We could hear them in the scrub on both sides but they wouldn’t come near us.”
“Did the cat acknowledge them?” I asked.
“It didn’t look at them.” She looked at her hands. “It just walked and when we followed it we arrived here.”
I looked at Suyin across the room. She was already watching me.
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I took a moment and expanded my ambient Qi sensing across the compound.
The compression signature of the cat was moving rapidly towards my home, scurrying and sniffing about, getting closer and closer to another signature near it….
…the spirit stone.
I stood up. “Liu Jun.”
He appeared in the doorway immediately.
“Finish the medical assessments. Injuries first, then general intake.” I moved toward the door. “Talk to Luan Mei about the administrative records when you’re done. She’ll know what documentation framework to use.”
Liu Jun nodded and bowed his head. “Of course.”
I looked at Hao and Suyin and tilted my head toward the door. They followed me out.
“The cat is at my house,” I said, once the clinic door was closed behind us.
Suyin’s eyes moved to the house. The cat was not visible from where we stood. “How do you know?”
“I can track its Qi.” I continued tracking the compression signature when I realized that it had stopped moving and was concentrated at the floor of the main room, the specific section near the east wall where the floorboard I had replaced six weeks ago sat slightly proud of the others.
“It’s digging for the spirit stone," I said.
Hao said nothing.
The compression signature moved again, faster now, heading south through the training ground and out the gate.
“It’s gone,” I said.
I walked to my house to confirm what it had took and saw that the floorboard was disturbed and it had shifted two inches from its original position, the soil beneath it was recently turned. The hollow where I had buried the spirit stone was empty.
I quickly moved back outside.
Suyin and Hao looked at each other as I began moving quickly towards the cat's direction.
“Can you track it?” Suyin asked.
“I'm tracking it now.” The compression signature was moving south and slightly west in a steady pace. It wasn't in very much of a hurry anymore which would give us more then enough time to catch up to it. “It’s not moving fast.”
I took a step toward the south gate.
Shan Pei was standing near the militia ground twenty feet away. He had been doing equipment maintenance, which was what he did in the afternoon when the militia wasn’t drilling. When I stepped toward the gate he went completely still.
Gao Shu, Gao Ren's ten year old daughter, was near him, sitting on the fence watching him work. “Shan Pei?” she perked a brow at him, her face was colored with worry. “Are you alright?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His face had gone pale and his eyes were wide with disbelief. There was sweat running down his temple despite the winter cold.
He shook it off the way someone shook off a full-body flinch after the fact. “Nothing,” he said while shaking his head. “It’s nothing.”
I looked at him but he did not look back at me.
Hao appeared at my shoulder and spoke quietly. “I have never seen Shan Pei frightened like that.” He paused. “Whatever is south of that gate, he knows what it is.”
I looked at the gate. The cat's signature was still on the move.
“Come on,” I said.
We went through the south gate and into the hill country track that ran along the river’s western bank. The ambient Qi was different here than inside the compound so it was more difficult for one to gather their bearings through Qi Sense alone, but I had been working this field for months and I knew its signatures.
The compression from the cat was clear: A point of disturbed ambient Qi moving ahead of us through the scrub, the spirit stone was being carried in its mouth as it moved through the brush.
We followed it through the curved track where the tree cover thickened and nearly blotted out the sky. The river sound faded behind us as we continued deeper into the thick of it.
Then I felt something else.
It arrived in my ambient sensing before I registered it. A wave of Qi disturbance moving outward from a point ahead of us, the way a stone moved water, except the disturbance was one of an other worldly nature.
The visualization confirmed it: what should have been channel structures was more akin to units of Mai that were expanded to such a degree that the vessel had a capacity that far outstripped any creature that I had ever sensed before.
There was no doubt about it, something large was ahead of us, and now I know why Shan Pei had broken out into a cold sweat.
Hao touched my arm. “What’s wrong?”
I turned and looked at them. Suyin’s face was calm and attentive. Hao’s expression was full of curiosity as he was examining my face. Neither of them showed any sign of distress.
They didn't know the anamoly that awaited us.
What is this power? Is this a monster? I can’t believe it.
I turned to them as I felt the sweat drip down my brow. “Run.”
Suyin looked at me. “Wh-What? Why?”
I gritted my teeth and began to walk back as quickly as possible. “We need to go back to the compound now!”
“Why? I don’t feel—”
The figure came down from the trees.
She dropped from a branch fifteen feet overhead and landed in the track ahead of us without sound, which should have been impossible at her size. She was taller than Hao by a foot and Hao was not a small man. The muscles in her arms and shoulders were the kind built by work I did not want to think about. A tattered cloth wrapped around her body in rough functional fashion, covering her bust and waist and little else. She wore a necklace of heavy cord with a single tooth suspended from it. Her hair was red, the deep red of dying coals, cut roughly and running the length of her back in irregular spikes.
She looked down at the three of us.
The ambient Qi around her was compressed so far inward that the local environment felt thin. She was drawing all available qi into herself without effort or intention.
Her gaze moved across Suyin, across Hao, and then came to rest on me.
“I don’t like being peeked at, kid.”