Chapter 140 - Wanting Blood for Bruises.

  Hao kept a close eye on the servant. The man started to sweat as he lowered his head behind Taoyi, who turned to whisper into the servant’s ear. His shoulders bounced as he listened. When he lifted his head back up, his neck pulled back as he turned, running up the stairs as if his life depended on it.

  Taoyi stepped forward, blocking the view. He took Hao’s attention, asking, “Junior Hao, I hope you aren’t set on taking the other one, the youngest one with him today.” That amiable that he pretended to have melted. His gaze lingering on the sleeve, Hao tucked the holding back, his eyes sharp enough to cut through the fabric.

  Hao looked back at Taoyi. “You don’t have to worry, if you give me time, Senior, I will give you what I can to make that bid, as long as she isn’t taken away beforehand.”

  For Penqi, he just had to delay. The best he could hope for was that the girl was spared from the Fourth Elder before he had a plan, or at least enough wiggle room to do something drastic.

  Hao bowed as Taoyi sighed. He waited to lift his head as the sound of four feet came stomping down the staircase.

  “All done then, Junior Hao. Perhaps our future transactions will be more faithful, and just as quick.” Taoyi said.

  Hao looked up, seeing Meiqi pull her arm from the servant’s grasp. He didn’t look directly at her until she stomped past Taoyi, her hand resting on his shoulder, nails digging in to hang on for dear life.

  “Young Master?” she said, her words scraped through her dry throat.

  Hao’s heart lightened, nearly leaping with joy. It all disappeared in an instant, like the sun dipped below the ocean as he reached out and touched her forehead, staring at the bruise above her right eye.

  “What happened?” Hao asked in a voice Taoyi had never heard from him. He didn’t want his voice to change. The light, spirited voice he spoke with was plucked of all its feathers.

  Hao ran a finger down the bruise. “Your brow, all the way to your cheekbone…” She seemed older, not just from the bruise, but the wrinkles gathered under her eye were more pronounced.

  Meiqi stayed silent, her eyes moving. It was a clever tell that seemed accidental, the servant backed away, moving behind Taoyi as Hao followed her instant glance.

  The servant cowered. Well washed, dressed, groomed, and fed, all that meant nothing as he sweated, hiding behind his master’s back.

  “Him?” Hao asked, just a whisper.

  Taoyi seemed to favor the older-looking man, even though he was just nutrition for plants and feed for animals, or, in Taoyi’s typical way of viewing someone, a coin to be traded for a more useful coin.

  Hao viewed it as even less for a moment.

  What seemed like a wriggling tentacle in the hands of Pao Taoyi was dozens of massive tentacles crawling through the body of the servant. From just sweating to panting, the servant froze. He stared back at Hao, but like he was looking at a hairless monster, one he couldn’t take his eyes off, or it would pounce.

  Hao was doing the same thing to the servant. He scanned him down to his bones and marrow, getting a sense of his empty mind.

  Taoyi stepped in the way. That connection was split the moment Taoyi blocked the glare connecting the two of them.

  “Young Master,” Meiqi pulled on his shoulder, “It’s okay, it is alright for now.” Her words were finished with more subtle yet deliberate glances.

  Hao looked back one last time. Trying to get another look, staring through Taoyi like he could almost see the servant, the faint flicker of his heart.

  His hand came down from Meiqi’s face. He bowed to Taoyi with a new form of reluctance; all of that was gone in the moment. He put on a disgruntled, but serene face; one that seemed appropriate in the moment.

  “I apologize, Senior. I lost myself, I was just so shocked… I hope I don’t have to come back for compensation myself…” Hao let his words linger in the air, his intent as heavy as the afternoon clouds.

  Taoyi scoffed up a chuckle, “Young Friend, Hao, you don’t have to worry. I can discipline my servants myself.” His voice was rich and deep, his eyes piercing; he didn’t bother trying to hide his exhaustion from Hao being at his door longer than he was welcome.

  Hao bowed again, his hands cupped. He looked back one last time as he stepped from the Courtyard with Meiqi at his side, and this time, nothing was taken from his pockets.

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  “Well, that went well, until the end,” Hao whispered, turning back down the path, leading to the center of the Sect, and a little further, a place to finally close his eyes, and rest beyond just sleep.

  **

  Taoyi slammed his door the moment the disciple was no longer on the path that led to his house and courtyard.

  “Idiot! You are lucky he is just a naive boy right now. Ha! What kind of mess will he make of you in a few years? I’m curious to know if age doesn’t take you first.”

  He walked back to the table, where the food was going cold. He put a knee on it, a hand covering his face, feeling his own breath warm his face. In all his time leading the servants’ hall, this servant was the most loyal, not to the sect, but to him; of course, Taoyi gave him a few liberties to ensure that.

  “I enjoy having you here. You’ve become like a disciple to me; you aren’t worth cultivating, you don’t have the aptitude.” Taoyi sighed, his hand falling from his face, leaving him staring at lukewarm soup, with a layer of floating oil broken by a meatless bone.

  Taoyi picked the bone from the soup, the scent of herbs wafting up as he flung oil from his fingers. “You and I, we are the only ones in this house that can speak… You are the only one who can still speak.”

  Taoyi pointed the bone at the servant.

  “Master, you won’t let him kill me, right?” The servant asked.

  Taoyi smirked, his breath spitting steam, “Do you think I could do anything to him if he wanted to?”

  He brought his foot down, stomping on the floor. “Since the First and Fourth Elders started to lead things around here, servants have lost all the power they held.”

  Porcelain plates and bowls rattled, silverware rang, falling to the floor. Taoyi marched over to the servant, putting the chicken bone to his forehead. “No matter how many fellow servants you bully around. He is a disciple. Someday, he may fly, with the connections to the Elder he has, the little Second Elder and her Uncle at his side, maybe much more.”

  “You are a bookkeeper, one I pay in chicken legs!” Taoyi threw the greasy bone to the ground.

  The servant dropped to the ground, driving down his knees as the meatless bone bounced, his forehead touching the greasy splatter.

  “Please…” The servant started to beg.

  Taoyi pushed his shoulder with a kick, “Get up.”

  The servant rose again. His height was just below Taoyi’s, giving the wide, tall man a clear view of the nearly snow-white hair of the old servant.

  Taoyi smirked, “Pfff, he seemed full of righteous fire, the old Drifting Stream would have been a good place for him.”

  He turned, spinning to look outside with surprising agility. His stomach narrowly missed plinths and pedestals holding fine decorations, books, plates, and glowing stones. “You are lucky he doesn’t know you are the one who killed that girl in the old servant quarters on the day he joined the sect.”

  The servant looked up. His face was even whiter than before, drained, drained of all color, as if fear was a brush washing away his life.

  Taoyi could get enough of it. That look was too good; he had been wearing it since he was a boy, such boldness to murder, yet the cowardice that made him constantly run to Taoyi’s shoulder. He would turn coat if he got the chance, so he had to scare him once or twice every summer’s passing to keep him in line.

  “He was staying up there, with the two he desperately wanted to keep to himself, the one you left a bruise on… You felt that, right when he saw the bruise. Like a pot boiling, forcing down its own lid, he is ready to burst; he is like the Fourth Elder in that way, but not so disgusting in his desires and ambitions.”

  “Yet he seems to have a righteous streak hiding beneath the blood under his fingertips. It’s those righteous freaks that you have to be wary of, as much as the demons; they are two faces of the same story.”

  The servant’s head fell, ruining his fun, so he had to turn back, lifting it, yet a sudden compulsion filled his body. He smacked the servant, pulling its eyes up to meet his.

  He spoke through gritted teeth, “What do you think he would do to you? He would probably feel responsible for what you did. If that boy Hao was his name, he or any other with that righteous itch found out any of your crimes, that for them is the perfect excuse to use all that power burning in their bodies. Magic would keep you alive, and you would be SKINNED alive.”

  Shivering, Taoyi was shivering, no, no, no, it was just the servant in his hand, his shivering made his handshake, that’s all. That was all.

  He let the servant go, “Her right eye?” he asked, remembering where that bruise on the woman Meiqi’s face was.

  His voice lowered to a whisper. “The original excuse I had to keep her was because of her safety; that whole facade might have let me take her back soon, then I could force something out of the boy to make him pay extra for her.”

  Yet she was beaten here, and not on his orders.

  Taoyi pulled the servant to stand, right in the middle of his dining hall, the nature just outside in his courtyard floating behind him, beyond the fence he had instead of a wall, so he could look out like it was a pavilion.

  “It was a nice view, but you got in the way…” Taoyi muttered, he found it poetic, “Do you know what this is?” he asked, grabbing a stone from his shelf of oddities he looked at while he ate.

  The servant shook his head.

  “It’s a rock,” Taoyi threw it, hitting the servant in the right eye, no blood, just swelling that grew in an instant.

  “You’ve already smeared the Servants’ Quarters… Start listening, or I will have to do worse to you.” Taoyi sat staring at the servants as he rang the bell.

  Six servants slithered slowly from the back room. Blindfolded and muzzled, wearing rags not even a collared dog would smell, platters of steaming food in their hands.

  “The boy should have gotten a residence somewhere in the Sect since he visited the Fifth Peak, the Fifth Elder, and his disciples, like to play land owner; find it before I have to find others to rely on to have their eyes open.”