Xiaodan shrieks until his voice is nothing but a feeble breath of air, inaudible over the wind rushing past him on all sides and then, mercifully, he faints dead away.

He never feels the impact.

“You’re saying this is just business.” Xiaodan felt his face grow hot. “She doesn’t –”

“Many things are just business,” his father said gently. “They’re ambitious, yes, but… she’s pretty. Educated.” He shrugged, looking suddenly excited. “Rich. And she’s looking for a husband.”

“Tian Zhaoling doesn’t want a husband,” Xiaodan mumbled. “Everyone knows that. A prop, maybe. A chess piece.”

“A single chess piece can still win the game,” his father pointed out. “I know how it –”

He trailed off, sucking on his pipe, the acrid smoke curling up around both sides of his face. His wife was dimly visible through the curtain, talking to a customer out on the shop floor, patiently sorting through yards of iridescent silk in rosy orange, pink and red.

Xiaodan shifted uneasily, right hand massaging his left arm, almost without thinking. His father followed the motion.

“I know it bothers you,” the old man said. “I know it wasn’t supposed to be like this. But it’s not just… an entry in a ledger somewhere, boy. It’s an opportunity.”

He set down the pipe, that eager, childish light back in his eyes.

“I’ll talk to her,” Xiaodan said grudgingly.

“Good.” His father nodded. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

Strangely, despite having been dashed to pieces at the bottom of that impossibly long fall, he’s dreaming. He knows it’s a dream because now Zhong’s in it, too, and Zhong is dead. I killed him, Xiaodan thinks dimly, didn’t I? But his brother-in-law is looking at him over a cup of wine with that same supercilious expression he always had.

“Do you have a problem?” Xiaodan said flatly. “With me?”

“Not a problem, as such.” Zhong shrugged, raised his drinking vessel to his lips and tipped his head back, then swallowed. “Not yet, anyway. You’re not the first, you know.”

“I heard,” Xiaodan muttered.

Tian Zhaoling? people said, at the archives. You honestly think you can break her in?

“Your face.” Zhong snorted. “I get it. You don’t want to be here. Neither do I, truth be told.”

“You answered.” Xiaodan shrugged. “The invitation, I mean. Everyone else... Jianjun still walks out of the room the moment I come in.” He flushed. “So no, I don’t want to be here. But she said to be nice. And you answered.”

The crowds outside the tavern filled the street in the noonday sunshine. Xiaodan found himself tapping his foot under the table. His knee was hurting so badly he realised he was sweating profusely, and he couldn’t understand why.

“She does say that sort of thing.” Zhong wiped his mouth with his sleeve and belched. The liquor hung sweet and sour on his breath. “My sister… knows her own mind, for want of a better way to put it. She’s not interested in anybody who sees her as…” He waved a finger. “Someone to be controlled.”

“I know that,” Xiaodan retorted. His own words came back to him, from that last conversation with his father. Tian Zhaoling doesn’t want a husband. A prop, maybe. A chess piece. “I don’t want to –” He almost said break her in, but stopped himself in time. “Tell her what to do.”

Zhong took another gulp of wine and regarded him owlishly.

“You think I’m making this up?” Xiaodan said.

“I think...” The other man set his wine cup down. “I think that’s what you’ve told yourself. I mean, I heard about you. Tried to join the Hēi Yīng, right? Hired a Southlander to tutor you, and you still failed the exams. Joined the archives because you were sulking after the guard kicked you out –”

Xiaodan smelt something strange, clammy, wet and deeply unpleasant, which didn’t seem to belong in the dream at all.

“What does that matter?” he said with an effort.

“I know your sort,” Zhong said patiently. “You’re a dreamer. Head in the clouds. The kind of person who’d see this whole arrangement as an opportunity.” He used the word as if it was an oath. “We don’t need –” He shook his head. “Zhaoling doesn’t need some blinkered idealist, either –”

The smell is overpowering –

“I’m not,” Xiaodan protests weakly. “I just want to –”

To make her happy, he wants to say, but the words won’t come out.

“Strange.” Zhong blinks. “You actually sound like you believe it. Still –” And then he leans forward across the table, grasps Xiaodan by the shoulders and looks him straight in the eye. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

Xiaodan lurches bolt upright and gasps.

The smell is everywhere, hanging so thickly in his nose and mouth it’s all he can do not to be sick. It’s wet and cloying and over-ripe, as if he’s sitting in the palm of a giant, grimy unwashed hand. His knee is still throbbing, his skin is sore and tender, and his muscles sag like wet towels, but he’s alive and intact.

He tries to get up and slips, sending a bolt of pain through his knee. Whatever it is that’s underfoot is so unsteady Xiaodan loses his balance entirely, and then finds himself sliding down a gentle incline with something suspiciously sticky coating the ground.

As he coasts to a stop he suddenly realises how dark it is. How quiet.

The silence is like nothing Xiaodan has ever heard.

The liquid gurgle of a stream trickles past not far away. Some kind of flying creatures are fluttering in circles overhead. Flies buzz unsteadily past to investigate whatever it is he woke up in. Other than that, the air is so still he can hear the rock gently groaning as it shifts all around him.

The rock?

High above him, Xiaodan can just about make out a tiny patch of grey against the shadows. The effect is as if someone had painted the clouds the moment they’re just about to open after a storm. Slowly his eyes adjust, and it begins to sink in just how far off that faint smear of colour really is.

This space he’s sitting in looks like a temple, a vast, natural stone vault where the sides go higher, higher, higher still, drawing together painfully slowly all the time until presumably they meet at some point, way up there with that fitful ray of light. Xiaodan realises he’s shivering. It’s not the cold; it’s the dawning realisation that he –

That he fell –

This far –

Below the –

His mind shies away from that idea, and he glances around, anxiously searching for something else to think about. He stands up, awkwardly, trying to keep the weight off his injured knee.

In the middle of the cave the ground rises up into a modest hill directly beneath the light. It’s crowded with mushrooms. Nothing anybody would eat, unless they were desperate. These are colossal, almost twice his height, with stems he’d struggle to get both arms around. Besides the smell, they’re a deeply unappetising, fish-belly white.

He must have landed straight in the middle of them. Several have practically exploded, scattering their meat across the chamber like discarded offal. The sight makes Xiaodan think of when he and his friends – not long into their teens – used to blow up rotten fruit with firecrackers for fun.

The light in the distance wavers, like a candle in a gentle breeze.

Surely it’s not about to go out. Surely.

He still has his satchel. Was he holding onto that all the way –? His sword is inside, and his tinderbox. Water and food, though how long will those last? Still, at least he’s got light. There’s nothing he can see that looks as if it might burn, but he’s got spare flints and a reel of cord.

Slowly, Xiaodan raises the tinderbox as high as he dares, shielding the flame with his hand. Some of the flying creatures flutter downwards, drawn by the glow, however feeble, but wary of getting too close to it. Bats, from the flapping and the high, thin squeaks and the dim impressions of spindly, leathery wings.

He can see a little more of the walls, now, lumpen stretches of rock painted with giant stretches of what he guesses must be moss. There’s more of it under the enormous mushrooms, a carpet of growth with a long trench dug out of it where he slipped, and little patches all over the floor.

Everything seems literally drained of colour. The moss is pale and listless, and the smaller fungi look wrong, somehow, pinched and bent over. Xiaodan remembers, from browsing the archives, that living things need light to flourish. Perhaps that explains some of what he’s seeing.

He picks his way across the cave, trying to avoid another fall. It’s slow going, with his injuries, not to mention it’s been a long time since he ate. It’s an uphill struggle just to process what’s going on.

Clearly there’s more down here than just this cave. There are tunnels – natural fissures in the walls, some so low he can reach the roof, others big enough to drive a wagon train through. Xiaodan remembers looking up at the mountains, from the trail, and trying to take in the sheer immensity of them. How far do these tunnels go, and where?

How has nobody ever found this place?

The light from the tinderbox glitters faintly on running water. That must be the stream he heard. Are there fish, maybe? Could he catch them? At least he wouldn’t go hungry. Assuming they’re even –

As he cranes forward for a better look, Xiaodan feels his leg give out and hisses with frustration, trying to stay upright. A futile effort. He topples forward – please, no –

Right into the stream.

The water’s cold enough the chill goes bone-deep in an instant. The shock is so great, and his throat still so hoarse, he can’t even find the breath to scream. It’s fairly shallow, but there’s nowhere to steady himself at the bottom, so he rolls along the channel, floundering for purchase. Finally he surfaces, spluttering for breath, and drags himself to the bank.

Maybe there were fish, before he scared them away. The water itself is vile, though. There’s a distinct rotten aftertaste at the back of his throat. So much for filling his canteen. Is that some kind of sediment from upstream? Or maybe those giant fungi, depositing their spores?

He’s wet through, shivering so hard his stomach cramps, and his teeth are rattling around his jaws. The tinderbox has gone out. And –

Xiaodan realises in abject horror the light far above him has vanished. The cave is now in total darkness. Not merely dim; he can’t see his own hand right in front of his face. Worse still, there’s a noise; the sound of taloned feet picking gingerly across sodden beds of moss and scattered bits of mushroom.

“Rat!” a voice calls out, in a harsh whisper. “You there? Rat?”

It’s the Yèkǒng.