The third speck was becoming a personal insult.
Xu Hao sat beneath the shelter with his eyes closed. Beyond the sound of the fire, Da Bao was trying to persuade Little One that a piece of burnt meat was a perfectly respectable supper. The dog appeared to disagree. She had been offered better by Xu Hao and knew it.
Inside the dark hall, two small lights hovered beside the deck of blank cards.
Two. As they had been yesterday. As they had been for nearly two weeks.
He waited for the warmth beneath his ribs to deepen, then tried drawing it inward. For several breaths the sensation grew stronger. He reached for a little more.
It vanished.
Xu Hao opened his eyes.
Er Bao sat across from him, repairing a leather strap. He did not need to ask what had happened.
"Two?"
"Unless one was hiding behind the other."
"Headache?"
"A small one."
Er Bao set down the strap.
Xu Hao sighed. "A medium one."
"Then that's enough for tonight."
"I was closer this time."
"You said that yesterday."
"I might have been closer yesterday too."
Er Bao gave him a look he was coming to know very well.
Xu Hao rubbed his forehead. "You and my mother would have got along."
"Was she strict?"
"She was a surgeon. She had little patience for people doing foolish things with their bodies."
Er Bao picked up the strap again. "A sensible woman."
Xu Hao suspected the two of them could have discussed his shortcomings for hours.
He lay back against the rolled blanket. Tucked into his bundle was the herb trader's folded paper, with directions to a shop in Hibiscus Town. There were proper roads beyond this hill, and books, and people who might know something about Card Drawers.
All he had to do was produce a third speck of light.
He almost preferred it when his greatest problem was Da Bao hitting him with a stick.
* * *
The next morning Er Bao found him sitting on a rock beside the stream, trying to retie his shoe.
The salve he'd bought from the herb trader had helped with the raw skin above his heel. Unfortunately, the shoe itself seemed determined to open wider each day.
He pulled the cord tight. The damaged seam puckered, then split another finger's width.
"Wonderful."
Er Bao stopped beside him. "Why did you pull so hard?"
"Because it was coming loose."
"And now?"
"It's coming apart."
Er Bao held out his hand. Xu Hao surrendered the shoe.
His brother loosened the cord, settled the torn edges back into place and tied them with a loop that held without pulling against the split leather.
"Try that."
Xu Hao put his foot down and shifted his weight. The knot held.
"You could have taught me that before I destroyed it."
"I have. Three times."
Xu Hao looked at him.
Er Bao's expression remained entirely innocent.
They walked up from the stream together. The path was damp beneath the trees, and Sia had developed an intense interest in a hollow log. Xu Hao called her away before she could bring him another unidentifiable present.
At the steepest part of the hill, Er Bao asked him to notice the warmth beneath his ribs.
"While walking?"
"Yes."
"Da Bao usually makes me concentrate on not falling while walking."
"You can do both."
Xu Hao tried. His legs were working hard enough that the warmth was difficult to distinguish from the ache in his muscles. He slowed, waited, and found a faint trace of it.
Then the path turned slippery. He caught himself against a pine, heart thumping, and the sensation vanished.
"I lost it."
"Did you lose your footing?"
"Nearly."
"Then perhaps keeping your footing was more important."
They reached the ridge without another attempt.
Xu Hao understood what Er Bao was trying to show him. He understood it particularly well because it was annoying. His Spirit was becoming easier to sense, but every time he noticed progress, he seized at it until he lost the very thing he wanted.
He remembered lecturing a student who had broken a cracked bowl by gripping it too tightly. The memory was not comforting.
* * *
Da Bao had laid out the trade goods: cured skins, the valuable tiger hide, dried meat and cord.
"Ready," Da Bao announced.
Xu Hao looked at the heaps. "You said that three days ago."
"Now they're ready in a different arrangement."
Er Bao examined the bundles. "The tiger hide stays here until we decide who to sell it to."
Da Bao frowned. "That's the most valuable thing we've got."
"Which is why we won't show it to the first stranger who asks."
Xu Hao lifted his bundle. The herb trader's little jar knocked against his cup, and he moved it somewhere safer.
Da Bao watched him.
"We could go without waiting," he said.
Xu Hao looked up.
"Don't encourage him," Er Bao told his brother.
"I'm encouraging you. If the little brother gets tired, I'll carry him."
"You offered that when we were widening the escape path," Xu Hao said. "I remember how it went."
"That was a narrow path."
"I'm sure the town gates will be built with your shoulders in mind."
Da Bao grinned, but Er Bao did not.
Xu Hao put down the bundle. "Why exactly the third layer? I can run farther now. I know the warning signs you've taught me. I have Sia. Two specks aren't going to keep me safe, but will three really make so much difference?"
"No," Er Bao said.
The answer came too quickly.
Xu Hao frowned. "Then why wait?"
Er Bao looked towards the southern ridge. The road to Hibiscus Town lay beyond it, hidden by trees Xu Hao still could not name.
"Father used to say the first layer proves you can find Spirit," he said. "The second proves you can return to it. By the third, you should have some sense of what it does when you're tired or distracted."
"And if I reach it, I'll be safe?"
"No. But it gives me a way to know you've learned to stop before you hurt yourself."
Xu Hao thought of the headaches he'd inflicted on himself over the past fortnight.
"You might have chosen a test that doesn't depend on my magical stationery."
"I could have. But you need to understand your own strength. I can protect you from some things outside this camp. I can't reach into that hall and pull you out when the brush takes too much."
Da Bao's grin had disappeared. He remembered the night Sia's first card appeared. All three of them did.
"Three layers," Xu Hao said quietly. "And then we go?"
Er Bao nodded. "We go. Unless you're ill. Or the road is blocked."
"Or Da Bao decides to bring his interesting rock."
"It's still a very interesting rock," Da Bao said.
Xu Hao laughed. The argument had been waiting for him for days, but he found he no longer wanted to have it.
They were not keeping him in the forest because they enjoyed watching him fail. They had made him part of the family, and families had an irritating habit of worrying.
He could live with another few days of that.
* * *
Three evenings passed.
Xu Hao practised his breathing after supper and left the hall when the warmth faded. He ran the trail with Da Bao, lost arrows in the wind and once followed Sia into a thicket to find a rabbit she'd decided was a friend.
The specks stayed at two.
On the fourth evening, Da Bao burned their supper.
He claimed the blackened parts were a delicacy in his family. Er Bao observed that their mother had usually cut those parts off. Da Bao argued that their father ate them happily.
"Your father ate them because he loved you," Er Bao replied.
Xu Hao set aside the darkest piece. Little One accepted it, which failed to settle the dispute because she would also have eaten the cooking pot.
When they finished, he helped clean the bowls and checked the knots on the shelter. The cord around his shoe still held. He considered sitting down to meditate and found, to his surprise, that he wasn't particularly eager.
Er Bao noticed. "Tired?"
"A little."
"Then rest."
Xu Hao sat near the fire with Sia's head on his knee. He listened to Da Bao calculate how many coins they could get for their hides. Er Bao corrected him once, then let the next mistake go because it was too entertaining to interrupt.
Xu Hao smiled, closed his eyes and let his breathing settle.
He entered the dark hall almost without noticing.
The two specks shone beside the deck. He watched them for a while, not expecting anything. He could hear the brothers outside, their voices faint but familiar, and feel the weight of Sia leaning against his leg.
Warmth gathered beneath his ribs.
He let it gather.
For a moment he felt the old urge to reach for more, to hold it there before it escaped. He thought of the shoe seam opening beneath his clenched fingers. Then of the trader's mule, easing uphill only after they'd stopped pulling against the trapped strap.
He left the warmth alone.
His breathing stayed even. The feeling spread gently through his chest, down both arms, into his hands.
A point of light appeared beside the other two.
Xu Hao waited.
The new speck remained.
He counted several breaths, then looked again. Three small lights hung in the darkness, distinct and steady.
Nothing spectacular happened. No thunder shook the hall. The brush did not leap to attention. Xu Hao could not suddenly sense every beast in the forest.
But when he turned his awareness towards the warmth, it stayed with him rather than slipping away.
He opened his eyes.
Sia was watching him. Her tail thumped once against the ground.
"I think," he said, "I've finally done it."
Er Bao looked up from the fire.
"Show me."
Xu Hao closed his eyes briefly, found the warmth again, then described the three specks. Er Bao asked him to open his eyes and try once more. He did, without difficulty.
The giant smiled.
"Third layer."
Da Bao was on his feet at once.
"LITTLE BROTHER!"
He caught Xu Hao beneath the arms and lifted him clear of the ground.
"Brother Da Bao," Xu Hao wheezed, "I would like to survive my promotion."
Da Bao put him down, looking only slightly ashamed.
Er Bao checked his pulse and made him drink some water. Xu Hao endured the examination without protest. For once he felt neither the hollow weakness that followed using the brush nor the headache that accompanied forcing his cultivation.
"Well?" he asked at last.
Er Bao looked towards the packed supplies.
"We leave for Hibiscus Town in three days. First light."
Xu Hao stared at him.
Da Bao began explaining how much meat they'd need. Er Bao reminded him they'd already packed most of it. They were halfway through a disagreement about the tiger hide before Xu Hao found his voice.
"Three days," he repeated.
"You wanted time to buy shoes," Er Bao said.
"And paper."
"Yes. Even paper."
Xu Hao laughed. He had counted his days in the forest by bruises, meals and marks on bark. Now there was a date at the end of them.
He put a hand on Sia's head and watched the brothers quarrel over the food. He had wanted a way home. He still did. But when he thought of leaving the ridge, he found himself hoping it wouldn't be the last time they sat around this fire.
* * *
Later, while Da Bao was searching for a blanket and Er Bao was putting the last of the dishes away, Xu Hao returned to the hall.
Three specks shone in the darkness.
The deck waited beside the brush, ninety-seven blank cards remaining. Sia's original hung apart from them, with the two copies linked to it.
He turned his attention towards her card. A line of writing brightened.
Superimpose Sia? — Available.
The ability had been locked since he'd last strengthened her. Now it was waiting again. Xu Hao remembered the pain of making her first card, and the draining weakness of the previous upgrade. He did not reach for the brush.
Something else appeared beside the deck.
Tame New Beast?
Xu Hao read the words twice.
The journey was three days away. He had only just found a way to hold his Spirit steady, and already the hall was offering him something he knew almost nothing about.
He looked from one choice to the other.
"Of course," he murmured. "You couldn't possibly have come with instructions."