Chapter 28
The roads of the eastern provinces are miry, drowned by rain one minute, then savoring clear skies the next.
It’s hard to travel without transport. Boots get stuck in the mud; luggage cases take forever to drag through the wet sludge.
Still, the westward migration starts in earnest. News travels fast. Gaiyu doesn’t have unpredictable weather.
Gaiyu doesn’t have palace guards clashing with old gods.
To survive the shake-up in Talin, rural dwellers should go to Gaiyu.
It’s an easy decision for anyone who has saved some coin from their last season of crabbing sales.
Pack their bags, rent a new hovel in the trees, learn to capture birds to sell instead.
But many refuse to leave. Many believe in the old gods, in their return and their reckoning.
Reanne waits by the wagon, examining her nails.
For sixty years, she has made a living as an acupuncturist in Kelitu, the only one that villagers travel across the province to see.
She was by no means powerful when the heavens were full, or relevant unless it was the spring season and select trees along the south required an extra push during their harvest. Very few families made it their goal to adopt the god of peaches for their patron, because the god of agriculture would fare better, and anyway, if Reanne fizzled away, the peaches would still be fine.
The pompous god of agriculture could look over their qi.
Reanne only stuck around every season because she spent most of her time with mortals, absorbing enough qi to be of service.
When the heavens started to rot, Reanne was the first god to descend.
She hadn’t hesitated as the others had. She hadn’t cried, mourned, sacrificed parts of herself in an effort to heal a small fraction of their realm.
The message disseminated quickly: before long, the immortals would succumb to the damage.
Flee to the mortal realm before it was too late.
There would be no access to heavenly qi, but they would remain immortal, at least. Choose wisely upon that first invasion onto earth—they did not have mortal bodies, so they needed to be strong enough to take over the life they chose.
Minor gods became minor mortals: rural dwellers, city workers.
Prominent gods took over aristocrats, who had all gathered tightly in San-Er by then.
If Reanne believes the whispers that have since traveled along her network, the king of the heavens did not come down until three decades ago.
He held on, fighting for a fix, until he was finally out of options.
“Hey!”
Reanne looks up. Her shoulders loosen when she sees it is only Tenzen, approaching with an animal on a leash.
They have hidden the wagon off the path, behind the greeting sign of an empty market.
Otherwise, there would be plenty of opportunists stopping to talk, looking to hoist themselves onto traveling groups.
“They’re lending horses for absurd prices,” Tenzen calls. “I went for a donkey instead.”
Reanne frowns. “We can’t ride a donkey.”
“It can pull the wagon with our bags. We’ll walk. Easy.”
The rain could restart soon. It has been rather unpredictable.
When Reanne stepped along the coast earlier, two of their people were grappling on the sand, light flaring bright with each strike.
One of them did not get back up, so the rain poured again.
Minutes later, as the victor gathered their bearings, the rain stuttered into a light mist, the well of the god’s power still low.
Reanne has lived in Kelitu long enough that she has some sense who the two might have been.
Godling of love from matchmaking and god of children’s teeth.
Before heavenly power came down to earth, she thought they’d been friends.
Tenzen ties the wagon to the donkey. Pats the animal, urging it to move, but the donkey is slow, hungry.
“Tenzen,” she says. “I am grateful that you will have me join you in Gaiyu. I am. But we are not traveling to the kingdom’s farthermost west by walking.”
He checks his pocket watch. “Not if you keep dragging your feet like that. Come on. We could likely make it to Pashe before we collapse from sleep deprivation. Maybe even Leysa now that we have our qi.”
“That’s not funny,” Reanne says.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny. But we must depart. Daol has already entered utter subjugation, and I fear what will happen when these provinces erect blockades to mark conquered territory.”
A distant boom shakes through Kelitu, as though the land itself is responding to Tenzen’s claim. His power doesn’t quite extend that far, so Reanne knows that he didn’t do it on purpose to make a point. She glances southward, where Daol Province is, and she worries her lip.
“You didn’t want to take a horse while the trader was looking the other way?”
“I don’t think I’m fast enough for that,” Tenzen returns.
Of course he would be. They are gods. Their heavenly qi has returned. Even the most minor among the pantheon, god of peaches, has the ability to blast qi from her hands, shove aside a mortal with a blink.
“Alas,” Reanne says softly, “you sound like them now.”
Tenzen frowns. Despite her tone, there is something about her words that feels derogatory, and her friend must be deliberating between giving grace or picking a fight.
The frustration goes beyond whether Tenzen should steal a horse.
It is Reanne becoming increasingly troubled by the fact that she maintains every memory of her time as a god while everyone else has been losing them.
Everyone else is phasing into this state where their time in the pantheon becomes some vague dream.
But not her. She suspects it is punishment for being the first to leave, too eager to adopt the mortal form.
While Tenzen adapted to Gaiyu, his every day no different from those of the peaceful villagers taking care of a province where nothing much happens, Reanne waited out her entire time in Kelitu afraid that something like this was coming.
And a hundred years later, here they are.
Another boom. Tenzen glances over his shoulder, tensing. The donkey is stubborn when he pulls its leash. It appears bothered by the weight of the wagon.
“Do you think someone needs to tell them?”
“What?” Tenzen asks. He plants his feet firmly in the grass. Hauls at the leash.
“Do you remember anymore?” Reanne demands. “Can you tell the story of how we met?”
“Reanne.” Tenzen, finally, allows a flash of qi to shoot from his arms, sparking along the leash.
The donkey rears briefly, then yanks the wagon out of its hiding spot and back onto the gravel path.
“Once we arrive in Gaiyu and get away from these other gods who want to smother us, maybe then we can reminisce about the good old times.”
“You don’t remember,” Reanne says dully.
“Reanne.”
Mortals follow the law of the earth. The earth follows the law of the heavens. The heavens follow the law of the Way. And the Way is unpredictable.
The Way chooses their designation in the pantheon. The Way births them when there is a need for their domain. The Way terminates them when their domain no longer bears relevance.
Rain starts overhead once more. A splutter to signal its arrival, and then steady drizzle stinging Reanne’s shoulders.
“There was a day,” she says, “during the epoch in which only the godling of qi ruled alongside the king, when she took pity on the mortals she loved. She heard about their pain, and she looked across her sleeping pantheon. Where are the floods when they need their fields nourished? she asked, and the god of rivers begged innocence because he did not know there was drought. Where are their treasures when they dig into the caves? she asked, and the god of precious metals claimed no one had spoken their desires. The godling of qi worked for three days and three nights at her desk without eating or sleeping. Finally, when it was done, she had created a language of her domain. Sigils that corresponded with each immortal in the pantheon, to be used by mortals as an inescapable summons. She did not give herself one, because each sigil was attuned to her, tied fundamentally to her life force. From each tier of the pantheon she requested a representative, and off went the gods and godlings to share such news with the mortals who needed it most.”
She stops. Watches her friend. In her mind’s eye, it could have happened yesterday. Their glee while flying through the wind, traveling as dandelion seeds because Tenzen could steer them across the open fields of the east.
“Her representatives traveled wide, dispersing every adjustment, relaying every piece of feedback, until the godling of qi finally perfected her craft,” Reanne continues.
“When someone was called in the pantheon, she knew too. She was everywhere; she was the gift upon all mortals. She was incredibly dear to us—we were her favorites to call on. We would have continued in everlasting partnership until the godling of greed stole into her office and used her work, invented a sigil to take her power, and offered it to a human queen to solicit resurrection. We would have continued together forever, but the godling of qi collapsed where she stood, screaming, and that was the last we saw of her.”
It is inaccurate for Reanne to claim she was the first who descended, fleeing the rot. The first was the godling of qi. She needed to, because she was tied to the force that broke the heavens, and she wouldn’t have survived a second longer.
Tenzen stares at his shoes. He is silent. Waiting, until Reanne finishes her tirade, the two of them growing drenched in the rain.
When he looks up, pity carves his eyes hollow.
“I don’t remember,” he says. “And in truth, I don’t wish to remember. The godling of qi is gone. She’s cast somewhere across this kingdom, with no help to us. She could be dead. She could be someone captured in the capital. I don’t care. I just want to go home.”
He tugs the leash. Walks off without urging Reanne to follow.
So she does not.