Chapter 14: The Departure

They left at dawn because Ti Mo woke up early and decided that waiting was stupid.

Wen was not awake. Ti Mo did not wake him. He left a note on the archive desk, written in the local script but with his usual slant, the one that made every sentence look like it was leaning against something for support.

"The eastern wing is yours. The colors will fade in six months. Reorganize then. Do not reorganize before. You will regret it."

No signature. No farewell. Ti Mo did not do farewells. Farewells implied that the separation mattered, and he had not yet decided whether it did.

Wei Lin had more to pack. He had accumulated things in Three Rivers. A second coat. Three books he had borrowed from Wen without asking. A half-empty bottle of ink that he insisted was special. Ti Mo watched him stuff these items into a sack and felt a mild curiosity about why people collected objects that slowed them down.

"You do not need the coat," Ti Mo said.

"It is cold."

"I will draw circles if we are cold."

"You forget to draw circles. You fall asleep. Then we freeze."

Ti Mo could not argue with this. He did fall asleep. He did forget. His circles were reliable only when he was awake, and he was awake only intermittently.

"Fine. Keep the coat. But leave the books."

"No."

"You have read them."

"I have not finished the third one."

"It is a manual about irrigation. You are not a farmer."

"It might be useful."

"For what?"

"I don't know. That is why it might be useful."

Ti Mo sighed. It was becoming his default respiratory state.

Bai Zhi had nothing to pack. She wore Ti Mo's old robe. She had three dried plums in her pocket. She was ready before Ti Mo had finished his tea.

"You are the only person I know who travels lighter than me," Ti Mo said.

"I have less to lose."

"That is not true. You simply refuse to own things. Ownership is a trap. You understand this instinctively."

"I understand that things get stolen."

"By whom?"

"Everyone."

Ti Mo nodded. Bai Zhi's definition of "everyone" was expanding. Soon it would include the wind and the rain.

They walked out of Three Rivers through the western gate. The guard was half-asleep. He did not ask their business. He did not notice Ti Mo's foreign hair or Bai Zhi's oversized robe. He was thinking about breakfast.

Ti Mo approved of this. People who thought about breakfast were honest. Their priorities were clear.

The road west was mud. Not the hard-packed mud of main highways. The soft, greedy mud of paths that few people used. It sucked at their boots. It made every step an argument.

Ti Mo did not complain. He simply walked slower. Walking slowly was his solution to most problems. If you moved slowly enough, problems often lost interest and wandered off.

Wei Lin did not walk slowly. He walked quickly, nervously, constantly looking back at Three Rivers as if it might follow them.

"It is a town," Ti Mo said. "It does not move."

"It moved for me. It changed me."

"You changed yourself. The town was merely present."

"You were in the town."

"I am present in many places. That does not make me responsible for what happens there."

Wei Lin was quiet for a while. The mud sucked at his boots. A bird called from a tree. The tree was bare. Winter had stripped it of pretension.

"Why did you agree to let me come?" Wei Lin asked.

"I did not agree. You followed. There is a difference."

"You could have told me to stay."

"I could have. But telling people to stay requires energy. I was tired. You took advantage of my fatigue. That makes you slightly clever. I reward slight cleverness by pretending not to notice it."

Wei Lin smiled. "That is the most complimentary thing you have ever said to me."

"It was not a compliment. It was an observation. Stop smiling. Smiling uses facial muscles that could be reserved for more important expressions."

"Like what?"

"Like skepticism. Skepticism is underrated. The world is full of lies. A skeptical face is a survival tool."

They walked until noon. The mud gave way to gravel. The gravel gave way to grass. The grass grew patchy, then sparse, then disappeared entirely as the land rose into hills.

Bai Zhi walked ahead. She always walked ahead. Not because she was eager. Because she liked to see what was coming. Forewarned was forearmed. And Bai Zhi liked being armed, even if her only weapon was knowledge.

"There is a ruin," she called back.

"What kind of ruin?" Ti Mo asked.

"The kind that used to be something."

"That describes most ruins. Be more specific."

"Stone. Overgrown. A temple, maybe. It is on the highest hill."

Ti Mo looked. He could see it now. A jagged line against the sky. Walls that had collapsed inward. A roof that had fallen but not completely, creating a shelter that was half architecture and half accident.

"I like it," Ti Mo said.

"You have not seen it closely."

"I do not need to. I like the shape. It looks like it gave up gracefully. Most things fight ruin. This ruin accepted it. There is dignity in acceptance."

"That is profound," Wei Lin said.

"No. It is lazy. Fighting requires effort. Acceptance requires nothing. I prefer activities that require nothing."

They climbed the hill. The path was steep. Ti Mo stopped twice to rest. Not because he was out of breath. Because the view was interesting and he saw no reason to rush past interesting things.

The temple was larger than it had appeared. The walls were stone, local granite, weathered smooth. The gate was missing. Not broken. Simply gone, as if someone had removed it carefully and taken it somewhere else.

Inside, the floor was covered in leaves and bird droppings and the debris of decades. But the structure was sound. The walls held. The partial roof held. The back wall had a niche that might have held a statue once. Now it held only shadows.

Ti Mo walked to the center. He turned in a slow circle. He looked at the walls. He looked at the sky through the hole in the roof. He looked at the dust motes dancing in the light.

"Here," he said.

"Here what?" Wei Lin asked.

"Here. We will stop here. This is where we will be."

"For how long?"

"Until I get bored. Or until the roof falls completely. Whichever comes first."

Bai Zhi was already exploring. She found a side room with a stone bench. She found a corner that was sheltered from the wind. She found a crack in the wall where someone had hidden a clay jug. The jug was empty. She kept it anyway.

Ti Mo sat on the floor in the center of the main hall. He took out his brush. He ground ink on his stone. He drew a circle on the floor.

The circle warmed the stone. It did not glow. It did not sing. It simply made the floor comfortable.

Ti Mo lay down inside the circle. He closed his eyes.

"I am going to sleep now," he announced. "Do not wake me unless something interesting happens. And do not define 'interesting' yourselves. Your definitions are wrong."

Wei Lin and Bai Zhi looked at each other.

They said nothing.

They began to clean.

Not because Ti Mo had asked. Because a shelter required maintenance, and they were people who maintained things. Even things that were not theirs. Even things that belonged to a man who had fallen asleep in the center of the room and was already snoring.

The afternoon passed.

The sun moved across the hole in the roof and illuminated Ti Mo's face, then his chest, then his feet. He did not wake. He slept through the light like a man who had made peace with being observed.

Bai Zhi swept leaves. Wei Lin patched the roof with branches. They worked in silence. The only sounds were the scrape of the broom, the rustle of branches, and Ti Mo's irregular breathing.

At dusk, Bai Zhi sat on the stone bench. Wei Lin sat beside her. They shared a dried plum. It was sour. They ate it anyway.

"Is he always like this?" Wei Lin asked.

"Yes."

"Does he ever... lead?"

"He leads by being still. We move around him. That is his method."

"It is inefficient."

"It works."

Wei Lin could not argue with this. Inefficient things that worked were better than efficient things that failed. He had learned this from personal experience.

The stars came out. The temple grew cold. Ti Mo's circle kept the center warm, but the edges of the room were freezing.

Bai Zhi and Wei Lin huddled on the stone bench. They did not have a blanket. They had each other, which was warmer than nothing but not by much.

Ti Mo slept on.

He did not dream of the white room. He dreamed of wheat. Gold and gray and endless.

In the dream, he was walking through the wheat. He was not going anywhere. He was simply walking. And somewhere behind him, at a distance of twenty paces, a girl in black robes followed.

He did not look back. He knew she was there.

That was enough.