Chapter 6: The Road

Ti Mo walked west because the river went west and he was lazy enough to let geography decide for him.

Bai Zhi followed at a distance of twenty paces. She had been following at twenty paces for three hours. She did not close the gap. She did not widen it. She maintained the distance with the precision of someone who had measured it against survival.

Ti Mo did not look back. He knew she was there. He could hear her footsteps when the road was dry. He could hear her silence when the road was mud. Both sounds were distinct. Both were predictable. Predictability was the only quality he demanded from companions, since he could not demand wit or conversation or the ability to grind ink properly.

The road was a dirt track between wheat fields. The wheat was tall, gold, ready for harvest. Farmers moved through the stalks with sickles that caught the sun and threw it back in pieces. They watched Ti Mo pass with the same suspicion the villagers of Gray Valley had shown. A foreigner in black robes. A girl in robes too large for her. Neither of them looked like they belonged to the land.

Ti Mo did not belong anywhere. That was the point.

At noon, he stopped by the river. The water was brown, fast, full of mud from upstream rains. He cupped his hands and drank. The water tasted of stone and dead fish. He drank it anyway. Thirst had no standards.

Bai Zhi stopped twenty paces away. She sat on a rock. She did not drink. She watched the road behind them.

"You are watching for bandits," Ti Mo said.

"There are always bandits."

"There are always farmers too. Bandits are more interesting."

"Bandits are more dangerous."

"Danger is a form of interest. The only form some people can afford."

Bai Zhi did not answer. She continued watching the road. Ti Mo appreciated this. She did not argue with his philosophy. She simply ignored it and focused on practicalities. Practicality was rarer than philosophy. Philosophers were cheap. People who watched roads were valuable.

Ti Mo took out his brush. He had no inkstone with him, no water, no soot. He dipped the brush in the river. The muddy water coated the bristles.

He drew a circle on a flat stone by the bank.

The stone did not warm. The water was too thin, too diluted, too full of fish and silt and the memories of upstream villages. The circle dried and vanished.

"Water is not enough," Ti Mo said. "Mud is not enough. The ink requires concentration. Intention. The river has too many intentions. It wants to reach the sea. It does not care about my circles."

Bai Zhi looked at the stone. "You are talking to the river."

"I am talking to myself. The river is simply present. Like you."

"I am not present. I am twenty paces away."

"You are present in my awareness. That is the worst kind of present. It requires no effort and cannot be returned."

Bai Zhi almost smiled. Ti Mo saw the corner of her mouth move. He pretended to study the river.

They continued walking.

The bandits appeared at the bend in the road where the wheat grew thickest and the trees cast shadows long enough to hide in. There were four of them. Young. Malnourished. Armed with knives that had been sharpened badly and would probably break if used against anything harder than cloth.

They stepped onto the road. One of them, the tallest, raised his knife. "Your money," he said. "And the girl's."

Ti Mo stopped. He looked at the bandits with the same expression he had directed at the wheat. Mild curiosity. Mild disappointment. The disappointment of a man who had expected better and had received exactly what the world usually delivered.

"I have no money," Ti Mo said.

"Then your robes. They look expensive."

"They are not expensive. They are old. The silver thread is tarnished. The fabric is worn at the elbows. If you steal them, you will be disappointed."

"We will decide that."

"You will decide incorrectly. You have poor judgment. I can tell by your knife. It is sharpened at the wrong angle. The edge will roll after three cuts. Also, your left boot has a hole. You have been walking in wet socks. This affects your balance."

The tall bandit blinked. "What?"

"Your balance. It is compromised. If you attack me, you will lean to the left. I will step to the right. You will fall over. It will be embarrassing for both of us."

The bandit looked at his boot. There was indeed a hole. He looked at his knife. The edge did look slightly wrong. He looked at Ti Mo with an expression that was no longer threatening but was not yet friendly.

"Are you a sorcerer?" the bandit asked.

"No. I am observant. Observation is a kind of magic, but it is slower and less impressive."

"We have four knives."

"You do. And I have a brush. The odds favor you in quantity. They favor me in quality."

Ti Mo drew a circle in the dirt.

He used no ink. Only the tip of his brush, wet with river water, tracing a line in the dry soil. The circle was large. It enclosed him, Bai Zhi, and the flat stone where he had failed to draw earlier.

The bandits laughed.

Then their knives became heavy.

Not gradually. Instantly. The weight of the metal multiplied, tripled, became something that no arm could lift. The tall bandit's knife dragged his hand to the ground. He grunted. He strained. He could not raise it.

The other bandits fared no better. Their knives stuck to the road as if nailed there. They bent, pulled, cursed. The knives did not move.

Ti Mo stepped out of the circle. He walked to the tall bandit. He examined the knife. He touched the blade. It was ordinary steel. Poorly forged. Unremarkable in every way except for the fact that it now weighed more than the man holding it.

"Mediocre craftsmanship," Ti Mo said. He picked up the knife. The bandit stared as Ti Mo lifted it with one hand, easily, as if the weight had never changed. Ti Mo turned the blade in the light. "The balance is wrong. The tang is too short. It will break if you strike bone."

He handed the knife back.

The bandit took it. The weight was normal again. He could lift it. He could move it. But he did not raise it against Ti Mo. He simply held it and stared.

"You have two choices," Ti Mo said. "You can continue being bandits, in which case I suggest you find weaker victims. Or you can find honest work, in which case I suggest you learn a trade that does not require balance."

He walked past them. Bai Zhi followed, maintaining her twenty paces. She did not look at the bandits. She did not look at Ti Mo. She looked at the circle in the dirt, which was already fading in the wind.

The bandits did not follow.

Ti Mo walked for another hour before he spoke. "You are not asking questions."

"You do not answer questions," Bai Zhi said.

"I answer some. You simply have not asked the right ones."

"What was the circle?"

"A request."

"A request to whom?"

"To the knife. I asked it to be heavy. It agreed."

"Knives do not agree."

"Everything agrees if you ask properly. The difficulty is in the asking. Most people demand. They command. They threaten. These methods work on people because people are cowards. They do not work on knives because knives are honest."

Bai Zhi considered this. "Can you teach me to ask?"

"No. Asking cannot be taught. It can only be learned. And learning requires mistakes. And mistakes, in our line of work, can raise corpses or turn trees yellow."

"Our line of work?"

Ti Mo paused. He had said "our." He had not meant to. The word had slipped out, uninvited, like a guest who had not been announced.

"My line of work," he corrected. "You are merely following me. Remember?"

"I remember."

"Good. Keep remembering. It is important to maintain distinctions."

They walked on. The river bent south. They followed it. The wheat gave way to reeds. The reeds gave way to marshes. The road narrowed and grew soft.

At dusk, they reached a crossroads. A signpost leaned in the dirt. One arm pointed to Gray Valley, which they had left. One arm pointed to Three Rivers, which was two days ahead. One arm pointed to the mountains, which were nobody's destination in autumn.

Ti Mo looked at the signpost. The wood was rotted. The letters were faded. Someone had carved a crude face into the post, a circle with two dots and a line. A child's drawing of a person.

Ti Mo touched the face. The wood was cold. It did not warm. It was just wood, just a signpost, just the ordinary debris of a world that continued whether he observed it or not.

"Three Rivers," he said. "They have an archive. They have a market. They have enough people that I can disappear among them."

"You cannot disappear," Bai Zhi said. "Your hair is the wrong color."

"I can disappear in plain sight. It requires only the willingness to be boring. Boring people are invisible."

"You are not boring."

Ti Mo looked at her. She looked back. The dusk light caught her face and made her look older than fourteen. Or younger. Age was difficult to judge in children who had never been allowed to be children.

"That," Ti Mo said, "is the first compliment you have given me. I will not thank you for it. Compliments are debts, and I do not incur debts I cannot repay."

"It was not a compliment. It was an observation."

"Observations are worse. They are accurate."

He walked toward Three Rivers. Bai Zhi followed at twenty paces. The signpost watched them go with its crude carved face, blank and permanent, a witness that did not care what it saw.

Ti Mo did not look back.

He had a destination now. He had a follower. He had a brush that wrote circles and an inkstone that ground intention and a road that led somewhere he had never been.

It was almost enough to make him feel like he had a purpose.

Almost.

Not quite.

He walked faster. Not because he was eager to arrive. Because the dark was coming, and the dark brought questions he was not ready to answer.