Chapter 5: Chapter 3: The Tree Acquires A Mangy Dog

With Idony safely sequestered (despite her loud protests) in an inn that was not yet completely booked up by traveling fortune hunters, Liu Xie left to go pick up the shattered pieces of his patience and to figure out what to do next. The news of the tombs being opened up was a bit worrying, the horde of greedy souls flocking in was also rather concerning. None of this was what he wanted when he came back from getting Idony from Norwen.

 

Where had the other man been, the one who sired her, he wondered briefly as he walked around a corner to find himself in a narrow alleyway where the setting sun’s rays only briefly touched the walls above him. A shiver raced through his core and he realized he was not alone, so lost in his thoughts he had failed to pay attention to something mangy that had tagged along after him since he left the inn. He kept walking without pause with his ear now keen on the light crunch of the other’s steps. His shadow’s breathing was labored, cloth rubbing against cloth, a near trip turning into a half-step, the tiniest curses beneath a dry voice.

 

Liu Xie turned around, holding his sword out so his follower’s head nearly rammed into the pommel, the charm Eona had made for him swinging at its end and tapping the pursuer in the nose.

 

The follower was a young man, filthy in caked-on grime with a shaggy mane of hair and clothes that seemed just a thread away from falling apart on his skinny body. In his dirty bandaged shaking hands he held a farmer’s sickle. The young man stumbled back a step and nearly dropped his sickle, the fear palpable in the air. “D-don’t think you scared me!” he spoke although it sounded more like he was trying and failing to convince himself. “I… I’ve killed before!”

 

“Taking the life of a person is a bit more difficult than a chicken though, isn’t it?” Liu Xie asked, still holding his still sheathed weapon up.

 

“T...the life of a fallen noble is worth less than a chicken’s,” the young man insisted. “Y-you’ll bleed like anyone else!”

 

Liu Xie made a face at being called ‘a fallen noble’, then his eyes looked down at himself. Maybe he did look a bit rich for a traveler, despite the ever constant tattering and fraying at the ends of his robes. While he was gazing down, the other man had rushed forward, so Liu Xie smacked him away with the flat side of the sheathe, sending the man rolling onto the ground and whimpering as the sickle clattered on the stones beneath their feet. The man got back to his feet and rushed towards Liu Xie again, arms extended as he yelled.

Liu Xie sighed and moved out of the man’s way, sticking a leg out to allow momentum to do its work as the man tripped and landed face first into the dirt. Then Liu Xie stuck the same foot on the man’s back to keep him firmly pinned. “Care to tell me why you’re accosting completely innocent mortal travelers?”

 

“...What?”

 

“You heard me, why are you trying to mug innocent people?”

 

“If I answer, will… will you answer if I ask a question?”

 

“If I feel like it,” Liu Xie ground his boot into the man’s spine, a bit amazed that he thought he was in any position to make requests.

 

“...I need money,” he replied softly, words half muffled by dirt.

 

Liu Xie tipped his head as he gazed into the man’s heart, something dark was sitting within that Liu Xie recognized instinctively. It was curled up deep within, festering even. But further than that he sensed something else. Something familiar. He briefly remembered a face from long ago, lost and confused. “I don’t think that’s the full of it.”

 

“I need money to buy a sword.”

 

“Swords are cheap," or at least cheap badly made ones that regularly flooded the wares of traveling merchants, "what’s the real reason?” Liu Xie asked.

 

The young man's hands, caked with filth and old scabs, dug into the ground as his brows knitted together. It was as though he was remembering something that caused him such pain he could not bear to keep his eyes open. “...I want to join Zhang’s Banners, so I can get stronger so-”

 

It was a familiar story, one that he had seen many times before. The names and reasons changed, but the anger and desire for retribution remained across the ages. Liu Xie removed his foot, “you want revenge don’t you?”

 

There was silence from the man except for soft sniffling as he sat up. Tears were rolling from his eyes, muddy beads falling off his chin and onto his bloody knees. “...Yeah… yeah… I… I need to get stronger so I can get… I want... “

 

“I feel I might regret this decision but I can help you,” Liu Xie offered. He immediately regretted even saying those words, but followed through anyway. “What’s your name?”

 

“...Bo.”

 

“...Bo? Just Bo? No family name, village name? Nothing?”

 

The man drew himself into a little ball, “I don’t have those anymore…” He looked up at Liu Xie with eyes full of hope, “you can… help me get stronger right?”

 

“I can try,” he answered.

 

Bo got onto his knees, slamming his forehead into the ground, “please boss, teach me!”

 

"So the first rule of getting stronger I will give you is to take a damn bath. Learn to take care of yourself, a rusty chipped sword isn't worth much if it can't quickly bite through skin," Liu Xie said with disgust as Bo with a splotch of blood on his forehead stared at the grime on his own body. “The second rule is to not call me ‘boss’, Liu Xie is fine.”

 

“Boss Liu Xie!”

 

Liu Xie shrugged, unwilling to press the argument. He looked up at the sky which had turned a velvety dark, stars twinkling down, and bit his lip. “Stayed out too long,” he muttered to himself before looking down at Bo. Something tiny and pale crawled in the scrawny man’s hair. “Actually I think I saw a bath house earlier, lets go.”

 

“A what?”

 

Despite how late it was, the streets were still full of people. Many were travelers, both foreign and those from the Four Kingdoms, but Liu Xie also noticed hastily made hawker stalls and peddlers too. Commerce was like a river; difficult to stop.

 

Liu Xie was rather tall, but even he found some difficulty seeing over the sea of heads and badly made market stall signs. The lights from buildings gave everything a strange patchy look of a sloshing sea of a thousand different fishes.

 

Bo was saying something but Liu Xie was more focused on the signage on the buildings. Some of the buildings were built in more foreign styles, he could see two squat stone Norwen-like taverns sharing a street nearby, proof in stone of the Southern Kingdom's lucrative trade networks, both of them looked clogged with visitors. After a few moments of pushing through the crowd he spotted a building made with reddish wood, an old banner hanging from it that had ‘BATH HOUSE’ sewn into it, but the actual name had become smudged and faded.

 

Liu Xie, holding Bo’s wrist, pulled him through the crowd and into the building. Immediately inside was a clean and somewhat spacious entry hall that ended at a table with a small statue of the Jade Prince surrounded by fresh flowers and a few coins. The light was pleasant and came from copper colored lanterns shaped like flowers with foreign runes carved into them. The air felt humid and smelled like orange blossom and faded cedarwood.

 

Two women suddenly emerged. Both were dressed exactly alike, demurely fashionably in a dull blue. “Sorry!” They both said together.

 

“Sorry?” Bo repeated back.

 

“Sorry, this isn’t an inn,” one woman said. “Or tavern.”

 

Liu Xie smiled faintly at them, “we’re actually here for a bath.”

 

“Oh? Is this a double?” The other woman asked, glancing at them both.

 

“No, I should be more specific. He’s here for a bath,” he pulled Bo in front of him. “I’m just paying for it.”

 

Both women straightened up while continuing to unnervingly speak as one, “oh, you’re customers! So sorry for the rudeness. We’re happy to have you. Welcome to the Two Sisters Bath House, founded by our father and continued by us.”

 

“It’s a nice establishment,” Liu Xie said. “My friend here has many tiny little friends of his own living on his head, do you have something for that?”

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“Yes,” said one sister. “We actually do have a treatment, but it-”

 

“Great! We’ll take it.”

 

Bo looked a little pale as he turned his head to look over at Liu Xie. “Hey boss, you didn’t let her finish what she was going to say.”

 

“Please if you will follow me,” one of the women bowed before stepping away to walk down the hall and disappear into a room. Liu Xie, still holding Bo’s hand, pulled him along even as he felt the young man’s heels dig into the flooring. They walked into a small room with a large wooden tub a third full of water that sat on top of a squat stone structure with a grate of metal in front that a sullen red glow came from, a small high table painted black, shelves with numerous jars of herbs and other medicinal ingredients, and a cloth covered opening outside where the sound of water being drawn could be heard.

 

“We have actually just finished cleaning this room and started filling the tub back up,” the other woman said as she followed behind them. “We have some screens too if privacy is preferred.”

 

“Bo, get naked and get in the tub,” Liu Xie ordered.

 

“...What?” The young man blinked before shaking his head, “h-hey. We just met, and there’s-there’s these girls watching!”

 

“I’ll go get the screens," one announced before leaving the room.

 

“Get in the tub,” Liu Xie repeated. “Having a clean body is good.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Less chance of illness,” Liu Xie replied. “Or maybe you’re hoping to kill your enemies with your smell? I don’t judge but I think that’s a bit inefficient.”

 

“Boss, you’re making it sound like I’m walking garbage,” Bo complained. “Besides, the bugs don’t bother me that much. I eat them when I’m really hungry.”

 

Liu Xie resisted making a face, “that’s bad. If you eat something that’s consumed your own blood you’ll get bad karma from self-cannibalism.”

 

Bo’s eyes grew wide in horror, “really!?”

 

“Yes.” Liu Xie lied with an expressionless face.

 

From the cloth covered entry way the other woman returned, holding a large bucket with a flat lid on top. Behind her came a very large man with two buckets large enough to hold small children. He moved over to the tub and dumped the water inside while the woman put the bucket she carried on the high table. She pulled the lid off and steam rolled out with the sharp scent of vinegar and strange tart spices. “You’ll want to use it while it’s hot.” She said.

 

Bo hesitantly moved towards the table and Liu Xie followed him. “So what am I supposed to do?”

 

“You put your hair in for a bit, until your skin feels like it’s peeling off.”

 

“Excuse me, but do you have scissors?” Liu Xie asked while ignoring Bo’s horrified expression. The scrawny man began to step away from the table but Liu Xie grabbed him by the back of his tattered clothes and held him still.

 

“Oh, yes!” She nodded and moved to one of the shelves, picking up a large set that looked suitable for shearing sheep. “Here,” she handed the scissors to Liu Xie.

 

“Uh-I’m not…” Bo continued trying to move away, only succeeding in walking in place as Liu Xie’s grip remained solid and inescapable. “You know what I think I heard someone calling my name-”

 

“I have the screens.”

 

“Thank you so much,” Liu Xie said, holding Bo’s head in the bucket as the man wildly flailed while the other woman watched wide eyed in a corner. As soon as her sister came with the screens, she excused herself and quickly left the room. Along with the smell from the liquid inside the bucket, there was also the awful stench of burnt hair.

 

“...Is he going to be okay?”

 

“He’s fine.”

 

Bo gurgled.

Liu Xie pulled Bo’s head out of the water and waited as he took huge gulps of air, then he hit him on the back a few times causing the red faced short haired Bo to spit up water. “You weren’t supposed to drink it, you know.”

“Usually we have a salve made from black snow lily root we apply afterwards, but we haven’t been able to get any since trade with Norwen stopped,” the remaining woman said apologetically. “I tried to grow some in our courtyard, but the weather is too hot and humid. The sprouts ended up rotting.”

 

Liu Xie turned his head to face the woman as he pushed Bo towards the tub. Then he pulled the screens to obscure Bo’s form. “Trade with Norwen stopped? When?”

 

“Ah, if you aren’t in the merchant business you probably haven’t heard much,” she said with her eyes downcast. “The prior ambassador was Jokull, who my father told us was a good man. Bit of a drunk but friendly and good at keeping trade going,” she spoke as though remembering happier times. “He's the one who introduced my father to those roots and explained how they could only bloom in cold regions, so all the roots we got had already been dried. We met him once when he came here with the duke. I expected him to be built like an ox but he was built more like a reed!”

 

Liu Xie kept his expression interested despite being more interested in the reason why trade stopped rather than what was actually traded but felt an uncomfortable knot of emotion. He knew Jokull, but had only spoken to him a few times, excusing himself as a visiting wanderer when he did. He was far more interested in the ambassador's daughter; Eona.

 

“He left about ten or eleven years ago and his replacement, Hulgar, came. Hulgar was far more serious but also good with trade. He came with his wife and two little boys and…” she took a deep breath. “Only a year into his ambassadorship, his sons both died.”

 

“Both?”

 

She nodded. “Yes. They drowned,” she said. “The ambassador and his wife were distraught. I heard an investigation happened but they couldn’t figure out if it was a tragic accident or murder. Either way, Hulgar and his wife left and since then trade has been largely halted. Our husbands had to go to the Western Kingdom to get herbs that could stand in for the ones we can’t access anymore, but they’ve been stuck in the Free Cities because of strife in the countryside.”

 

“Hey boss! When can I come out?”

 

Liu Xie looked over towards the screens, grateful to some degree for the distraction. Bo’s head was a silhouette awkwardly sticking out from the shadow of the tub. “How do you feel?”

 

“Uh, tingly. There’s red spots appearing on me and they kind of itch too.”

 

“Red spots?”

 

“We do put certain herbs into all of our baths to provide both pleasant scents as well as to increase cleanliness,” the woman said thoughtfully. “Maybe he has a sensitivity?”

 

“Bo get out of the tub!”

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