He awoke to a burning sensation in his chest, the kind that happened whenever he tried to cultivate. Voices murmured nearby; two people moving about. He groaned as a fresh wave of pain shot through his chest.

“Tez’?” It was his mother’s voice. Then was the other person his father? Tez’ Mu moaned, already dreading facing him. If not that he’d been seriously wounded by the blood thirsty generals of the Mu army in the name of apologizing, why would his oasis be as badly damaged as this?

“Tez’, can you hear me?” Essa-kest’ Mu asked again, her voice cracking.

Odd.

She just had to probe by touching his arm to know he was fine.

“I didn’t know it was this bad,” he heard her murmur to the other person in the room. “To think he’s been keeping it to himself. What did you call the name of that pill again?”

“Oasis Repressor.” So the other person was Royan’ Mu. Tez’ Mu was relieved. He opened his eyes slowly. The light stung.

“Tez’!” Royan’ Mu was at his side in an instant. “Are you feeling better? Does your oasis still hurt?”

Tez’ Mu tried to sit up. He did not answer the question.

“The pill,” he was surprised that his voice came out so hoarse, “where is it?”

“Tez’, you can’t take it anymore! Instead of helping you, it’s damaging your body! If your oasis collapses completely, you might never use magic again, Tez’!” Royan’ Mu shuddered, “Where did you get it from? The person making such a thing should be imprisoned!”

“Where—where is it?” Tez’ Mu croaked again, his eyes dilating, “Please, let me have it. That’s—that’s the only thing that helps. If it wasn’t for that pill, I would have—”

“Tez’!” The two women cried together as Tez’ Mu fell back onto the bed, limbs falling limp like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Royan’ Mu quickly covered both her hands in healing essence, and placed it on his chest.

“You too, mother!” She said urgently to her mother. Essa-kest’ Mu joined her, hands trembling as she summoned her own energy.

Slowly, very slowly, color returned to Tez’ Mu’s pale lips, and his ragged breathing steadied. Sweat glistened on Royan’ Mu’s brow as she pulled back.

“What do we do, mother?”

Essa-kest’ Mu looked aghast, almost as pale as her son. “I am going to talk to your father,” she said, clasping her hands tightly.

***

The world had the audacity to move forward as though nothing had happened.

Tez’ Mu moved through the manor, giving orders and making preparations alongside the others as the household bustled in preparation for the wedding party between Royan’ Mu and Dor’ Yan.

As he passed by the main house, he ran into Chan’ Mu. Tez’ Mu immediately turned around, however, he didn’t escape the hawk eyes of the little girl.

“Tez’!” Chan’ Mu called out, hands on her waist, “seems like you’re fine already. I want you to do something for me.”

“Shut up,” he snapped, not breaking stride. “I’m going to Darin now.”

But Chan’ Mu would not be ignored. Snapping her fingers, she conjured an array beneath his feet. Tez’ Mu struggled against the binding force but couldn’t move. She strode up to him, grinning triumphantly.

“How about now?”

Tez’ Mu scowled. He could fight this—could demand she leave him alone—but the last time he had snubbed Chan’, it had taken a week to clear the scorch marks from the west corridor. He wasn’t in the mood for another spectacle. “Fine,” he sighed, “what do you want?”

“Do you know where that ship model Vin’ Hai made Father is kept?” Chan’ Mu asked.

“It’s probably in his study. And Vin’ Hai didn’t make it for him. It’s a royal tribute. Father intends to give it to the Dowager on her birthday.”

“I don’t care about all that,” Chan’ Mu rolled her eyes, “find it for me. Quickly!” With that, she snapped her finger and Tez’ Mu was freed from the effects of the matrix. As she walked towards her chamber, she said over her shoulder.

“I’m not very patient today, brother.”

“What do you want with it, anyway?” Tez’ Mu frowned. Chan’ Mu did not reply. She swayed her tiny hips as she sashayed away. Her cultivation prowess was still a mystery to Tez’ Mu. One night he had gone to bed and his sister was still learning how to say his name; and he woke up the next morning to see her casting sigils and matrices left and right.

Giving up his plan of going to his mother’s chamber for the teleportation scroll that would take him to Darin, Tez’ Mu instead entered the main house. His father was out with the army, so this was perhaps the best time to snoop around the study. To be safe, however, he knocked twice on the door.

Satisfied with not receiving an answer, Tez’ Mu creaked the door open. His father’s armor stood on a pedestal next to the wall map needing polishing, a red robe thrown over one shoulder. Tez’ Mu gave the study a sweeping look. Nothing was out of place, and this was definitely not where the model was kept.

His gaze turned to the door hidden in plain sight behind his father’s desk. Tez’ Mu knew exactly which knob to turn to enter the enclosed space where Raq’ Mu kept his treasures. Did he dare...?

Crossing the room quickly, Tez’ Mu reached behind the draped curtains by the window and turned the small knob kept just out of sight. The hidden door slid open with a low hum. Tez’ Mu entered swiftly, leaving it slightly ajar.

The secret room smelled faintly of damp parchment. Scrolls and files lined the shelves. An ornate scroll rested on a pedestal, glowing faintly in the dim light. It was Raq’ Mu’s Technique Scroll, chosen decades ago. Tez’ Mu stared at it briefly before shaking his head. He wasn’t here for that. It was preposterous to think that the legend of some scrolls being heritable would suddenly come to play here. Besides, what would that do to his cultivation bottleneck?

Best to find Chan’s model ship and get out of here. Tez’ Mu quickly hurried down the rest of the small room but found nothing of the sort. Eventually, he pressed his lips tight with a frown as he returned to the middle of the room and raised the leather mat that covered the trapdoor entrance to the Mu underground network of tunnels.

One good thing about Raq’ Mu’s secret storage, though, was the absence of booby traps. Tez’ Mu jumped down into the second level and dusted himself as he rose up from his crouch. The tunnel was lit with twinkling lunar stones in the brackets lining the walls on one side. The other side was devoted to shelves. He traced his fingers along the grooves in the walls, vaguely recalling how the tunnels linked to one another from the times he and his elder twin brothers used to sneak in here looking for ancestors knew what, racing through these passages. Back then, it had been a game. Now, he walked alone.

Tez’ Mu turned around, finally deciding on the northwest fork from among the four paths that led out of the landing. Walking through this path, he noticed a difference in the contents of the storage as opposed to what it used to contain back then when he and his brothers used to come in here. Back then, his grandfather had just died and Raq’ Mu was still in the process of taking control of the army, so the storage mostly contained documents, letters, weapons and curious substances in glass phials.

Now, however, the shelves had portrait scrolls, maps and on the ground; plain wooden boxes marked Mu and Ji, silver bordered wooden boxes marked Zi, and golden bordered oak boxes marked Tribute; stacked together and on top of one another.

Tez’ Mu raised his eyebrows and made towards one of the boxes marked Tribute. He pushed the lid to one side and gold stared back at him. Gasping, he closed it quickly. Ochelon was a mainland country, and the few mines it had yielded iron, jade and copper. What were fat blocks of gold doing under Raq’ Mu’s study?!

Tez’ Mu opened the second box and the same yellow light shone out. So did all the boxes marked tribute. He smirked. Raq’ Mu was intending to give all this to the Dowager Queen? No wonder his father was her favorite subject!

Rising from the boxes Tez’ Mu wondered then, if the model ship was supposed to be tribute too, where was it? He went down the passage and then stopped short, freezing. His breath hitched in his throat as he stared at his own unfinished portrait hanging from the wall where the shelves ended. The heavy hand in the lower left corner of the portrait was Raq’ Mu’s, written in Miyuan letters.

Of the noble house of Mu

The fourth offspring,

Tez’ Mu

He was also wearing robes from the eastern kingdom in the painting, something he had never worn in his life. The relaxed expression on his drawn face was also unsettling. What was this? Why did Raq’ Mu order his portrait to be drawn as if he were a prince of Miyuan? To what purpose? And why was it unfinished?

The painting stopped at the clasp of the Miyuan robe at his chest. His lower body remained to be drawn. Tez’ Mu frowned. When had he even modeled for this portrait without realizing it? Or had the painter drawn him from memory? It didn’t seem so. The natural parting of his polled hair slightly at the left side of his head above his ear was a detail that had to be seen firsthand.

Raq’ Mu’s storage was full of surprises. Tez’ Mu turned away from the portrait and looked around the rest of the room, now conscious that he had spent a while. And finally he saw it. The ship, Arkan, sitting on a rocky ledge just a little way away. Its sails were flying, as if the very wind of the sea were blowing them. Vin’ Hai’s craftsmanship was indeed unrivaled in Ochelon. Personally, though, Tez’ Mu figured that the gold would please the Dowager Queen more.

Chan’ Mu had said to find it, and definitely not to take it. Tez’ Mu noted the model’s location and then turned around. He took another glance at the portrait of the smiling stranger with his face and hurried out of that passage. Just as he came to the entrance of the main tunnel, he froze.