Jianghu
Tang Lili’s black hair shone against the plain steel blade of her flying knife. She sheathed the pack and swung it onto her body, in a place no one knows. No one can know where her flying knives come from when they loose from her quick, small hand.
The lavish wooden curves of the Silk Merchant’s house. The heavy intricate teak furniture low to the ground, brave with dark red silk and gold-threaded pillows. Tang Lili opened a door, and strode into Another Place.
The Kingdom
She hasn’t killed a person yet. She would have to on her journey, and she hated the thought, because she did not want to take a life. Because she finally knew the value of her own.
A long horizontal scar ran across her entire neck. The soft spongy tissue is still healing, and she hated the touch of it whenever she accidentally grazed it with her hand or the handle of her blade.
Steam from the locomotive engine she landed on hit her face with a sharp, blasting heat. The steam stuck to her lids and her long black lashes, which she wiped away, and then looked about her. Her black irises burned liked the coal below. The train was chugging at a ferocious pace, roaring and whistling, shrill and loud. It was surrounded above and around at the same terrific hurtling pace by the maniacal Mother Holle and her piratical crew on their air dinghies. Small and nimble, the air dinghies were made of handsome, subtle brass and light Russian birch. Tang Lili saw the luxurious and exotic teak of Mother Holle’s own air dinghy’s wheel, and smiled in recognition. She remembered: she had traded the material to Mother Holle for Baltic amber.
Though Mother Holle could, generally, be trusted, Tang Lili knew here she stood out with her Cathayan face. Mother Holle, the local, looked every centimeter the Teutonic air pirate captain, her yellow braids flying fiercely against — not with — the wind, shouting commands to her crew as they got ever closer to the frantic locomotive, the panicked conductor letting loose whistles of fear and supplication. Mother Holle makes a point of personally leading the charge on her raids, not possessing the temperament to merely oversee the siege from the airship far above that’s floating in exact pace with the fray.
This time Tang Lili wasn’t after the gold coins filling cases and chests in the train car below her, the ones that drew Mother Holle and her crew. This time Tang Lili was looking for her great-grandmother, Dowager Li. This time, hot tears came to her eyes.
It all began in Soochow, where Tang Lili grew up with her family in their garden of surpassing beauty. Father then was often away to Central Asia along the Road. Soochow was a famed producer of Cathayan silk…