The wall of the rear garden took on a faint warm tint in the afternoon sun. Xialuote stood beside a tree close to the back of the mansion and looked down to check the hem of her skirt once more.
To move more easily, she had already gathered the hem of her long skirt with a few pins, baring calves in wool stockings, and changed into lighter soft-soled shoes. If a servant saw her dressed this way, they would probably think the young lady of the house had at last been driven out of her wits by one fright after another.
At that thought, she looked toward the other side of the garden.
The gardener stood with his back to her, trimming the hedge, the shears going snip-snip. No maid was nearby, and no manservant was making his rounds.
Good. No one was watching.
Xialuote let out a light breath, strode to the wall, glanced up, and at once picked out several suitable places to climb.
A few days earlier, even knowing the decorative columns and the projections of the window ledges could give her purchase, she would never have believed she could climb to the second-floor balcony. Even with that kind of strength in her arms, the long skirt, the shoes, and her fear of heights would have been enough to leave the attempt only in her mind.
She sprang lightly. Her left hand caught the edge of a stone carving, and her right foot found a projection less than a meter off the ground. As her body drew upward, her other hand had already locked precisely into the patterned seam that divided the first floor from the second. The stone was a little rough, and dust stuck to her palm, but she did not let it distract her. A light push from her toes, and she moved up flush against the wall.
Distance and angle, the shift of her center of gravity—these hardly needed deliberate thought. It was as if useless details once scattered through her field of view had suddenly been set in order by some invisible rule and placed before her one by one.
A moment later, Xialuote swung over the low stone railing and was back on the second-floor balcony.
She looked down at her hands. A little dust clung to her knuckles, and her breathing was slightly quick, yet she was nowhere near the wretched exhaustion she had imagined.
So this was the power of an "Arbiter"...
She pushed open the French window, entered the bedroom, and an excitement she could not hold down rose in her.
The change the potion had brought could not be summed up by the phrase "excellent fighting ability." Her strength, agility, control of her body, and powers of observation all seemed to have improved. None of the gains was extravagant—far from breaking a rolling pin with her bare hands, or leaping from a roof and landing without a scratch—but when these changes stacked together, they became a change in kind.
In pure strength, Xialuote still did not think she could surpass tall men with military training, such as Luosaier or Gelin. But if they were not on guard beforehand and failed to coordinate in time, she ought to be able, in a very short while, to seize an opening and take the two of them down separately.
The thought had barely surfaced when the scene of Weiyefu preparing holy water flashed through her mind, then Hengli'aite's figure appearing out of nowhere, and the black-robed woman's ambush, as if she had melted into the shadows.
"Arbiter" was only the lowest Sequence. The potion's improvement of the body was merely the surface; those powerful and mysterious abilities were what mattered... She quickly pressed down that wisp of airy pride, straightened her skirt, and was just about to wash her hands when she sensed footsteps drawing near. She looked toward the washroom that adjoined the bedroom.
Laila came out carrying a copper basin of hot water and towels. The moment she took in how Xialuote looked, her eyes flew wide.
"Miss! Your hands, and your skirt... If His Lordship the Baron saw this, he would surely..."
"Don't breathe a word of this."
Xialuote spoke and stopped her.
Laila's open mouth halted halfway. She even forgot to press any further, and only lowered her head by instinct, saying quietly:
"Yes, Miss."
Xialuote herself was startled.
In that instant she had not deliberately used any ability. She had only thought that Laila ought not to make such a fuss, and her tone had naturally taken on a force that brooked no question.
Was this the Arbiter's authority, and that convincing presence? She glanced at the maid, who had plainly grown constrained, and eased her voice.
"After several incidents, I ought to have at least a little strength to protect myself. Hiring someone to teach me fencing or fighting would draw too much notice. Training my body is the least likely to raise suspicion. I will only try it at home, and I will not let outsiders see."
Laila nodded again and again.
"I understand, Miss. I won't tell the master."
She answered with perfect ease, and did not even offer any of the discouragement proper to a lady's maid.
But this hardly confirmed the effect of the extraordinary ability. As a maid, Laila was already accustomed to obeying me... Xialuote watched her set the copper basin beside the washstand, not very satisfied.
The other servants in the house, the butler included, were the same, and she could not test it on her father, who clearly knew something of mysticism. These past two days, then, her trials of the Arbiter's power had been mostly bodily—climbing to the balcony and the like—and going to the butler, perfectly justified, to demand the pocket money her father had promised.
The noble hunt a few days from now might be a chance. Those young noblemen and young ladies near her in age and similar in station were just suited to persuasion and intimidation. Luosaier, for instance.
I hope he comes to the hunt, in the form of my prey... She muttered it inwardly, washed her hands in the basin, and found an excuse to send the maid away.
Only after the door had shut again did Xialuote sit back at the small table by the window. From deep in the drawer she took out the handwritten booklet Weiyefu had given her, but she did not open it at once.
These two days, aside from testing her strength, what had taken most of her time was reading this Peripheral Member Handbook and meditating.
The method was not complicated. Regulate the breathing, empty the mind, and shut out interference from outside. First sketch in the mind an object that exists in reality and fix one's attention upon it; then replace it with an object that does not exist in this world, imagined out of nothing. Only in that process can the meditator transcend the self, let the spirit body become one with this world and the universe, and reach the so-called "mystical union."
Meditation was a key step in many rituals. When Xialuote had just taken the potion and her condition was unstable, she had relied on the first step of meditation to steady her spirituality and return to normal.
But when she truly attempted the second step, sketching "an object that does not exist in this world," she failed several times.
The first thing she thought of was a steam engine that had not yet been invented. Yet no matter how she pictured pistons and pipes spewing white vapor, she could not enter that stable state. Considering that the Craftsman Church, or some genius, might already have built a prototype, she next tried to imagine a nuclear power plant marked with a yellow-and-black emblem, with orderly workshops and cooling towers. It was still no use.
For a time this made her suspect that spirituality might be able to recognize something bound to appear in the future—or else that man-made objects were simply unfit as objects of meditation.
She had even tried an abstract concept from her original world, "God," and failed all the same.
At last Xialuote thought of her original self, of Gao Linyuan, who did not exist in the present world.
When she sketched in her mind that original face, the short hair, the rather ordinary features, the eyes that always looked a little listless in the mirror, and that body so utterly different from the one she had now, her irritable mood settled in an instant. Her thoughts drifted. Her spirituality extended. She transcended the self.
Now, after several attempts, she could already use an abstract symbol of her own making in place of that familiar face and enter meditation with ease.
Following the method Weiyefu had taught, she used rapid meditation to open spirit vision and then close it, repeating this several times until the action grew more practiced. Then she stopped meditating and opened the little booklet at hand.
The handwriting was fine and graceful, very likely Weiyefu's own. At the front were some basic words of the Hermes language, with meanings and pronunciations marked beside them in the Yindisi language. The nun had told Xialuote to memorize the common words and the dangerous words first, lest she misread or miswrite them without knowing their meaning and bring on some grave consequence.
Past the Hermes section came basic knowledge of mysticism, the rules of secrecy a peripheral member must observe, methods for telling true ritual magic from false, and the behavioral traits of certain secret organizations and evil cultists.
Xialuote understood that her greatest value lay in the surname Suolun, and in a noble identity that could enter social occasions ordinary Purifiers found inconvenient to enter. One of Weiyefu's purposes in recruiting her as a peripheral member was to make her a pair of eyes hidden in the dark, so she read this part with the greatest care.
The handbook warned in particular that evil cultists were not always mad, sullen, or strangely dressed. On the contrary, many might seem no different from ordinary people on the surface, and might even hold decent rank and a respectable identity. People of middling station who were quick-minded, anxious about their circumstances, or deeply discontented with reality were all the easier for someone with a purpose to lure. Believing they were only touching forbidden knowledge, seeking an opportunity, or taking revenge on others, they would stray step by step and sink deeper and deeper.
"...Signs worth noting include a lack of basic respect for the orthodox gods, long seclusion aside from necessary social contact, unexplained accidents or anomalies that always accompany them, and excessive avoidance of, or excessive sensitivity to, certain topics in mysticism...
"These can serve only as clues for observation, not as evidence, and still less as grounds for acting on one's own. If an anomaly is discovered, report it at once to the cleric in contact with you."
Xialuote's gaze moved over the lines of small writing, and her expression gradually grew grave.
After a moment of silence, she locked the booklet deep in the drawer. Then, before the mirror, she set her skirt and cuffs to rights and made sure she still looked like the proper, quiet Miss Suolun. Only then did she leave the bedroom. She went down the carpeted stairs, passed the family portrait in the entrance hall, and walked toward the deeper corridor on the other side of the mansion.
That was where Lawuer usually kept to himself and painted, far from the areas servants often passed. The farther in she went, the older the patterns on the carpet, and the few busts set along the wall seemed quiet and cold, as if watching everyone who approached uninvited.
Xialuote stopped before a red wooden door. She lifted her hand, hesitated briefly, and knocked lightly.
From behind the door soon came the voice of Baron Lawuer Suolun:
"Come in."
Chapter 23