In the four years Huang Jin had been studying under his Master, very little had changed about her grotto. He’d built a few temporary structures, and made use of her facilities in ways that altered their position and contents, but for the most part the multidimensional cabin remained utterly static. Peaceful, even.

  The Master’s study still served as her favorite place to await his projects. The comfy chair, the crackling fire, the picturesque landscape projected on the window, everything about this room was a soothing balm.

  And yet…

  “You look like someone took a baseball bat to your soul,” the Master observed.

  There was no hiding it. Huang Jin gripped his papers all the more tightly. He hadn’t even wanted to get up this morning, knowing what lay ahead. Monkey waddled into the study just behind the prince, holding his own copy of the research notes in both hands.

  The prince motioned his understudy forward. “Behold… Master, I hope you don’t mind if certain portions of today’s report are delivered by my assistant here.” He kept both his head and his voice low, matching his spirit.

  The Master gave Monkey a tolerant look before turning her attention back to Huang Jin. “Why? Something you’d rather have coming out of his brain than your mouth?”

  The prince had no reply. He shrank down, shrugging softly. Monkey, for his part, remained oblivious in his enthusiasm for the subject matter. If he noticed anything wrong, he did not show it.

  The Master let it pass. “Very well. Monkey, you’re up! Hand me the papers.” He did this, with an air of pure excitement, and she flipped through the file before continuing. “Now tell me, how well do you know the material?”

  

  Dahe gave Huang Jin a flat look at that, but shrugged it off. “Okay, I see where this is going. Here’s how this will work!” She clapped her hands together. “We’ll skip straight to the question-and-answer portion. And I want you to be brutally honest. Casual, even. Understood?”

   Monkey answered earnestly.

  “Great. First, give me a two-sentence summary, in your own words. Tell me what happened in the East-West war.”

  Monkey gave it a moment of thought.

  “What?” the Master gasped, feigning surprise. “Now, that doesn’t make any sense! The Empire controls more territory, has more productive land, a more dynamic economy, a larger military, and a higher population! How could they possibly be on the losing end of a sustained conflict?”

   Dahe handed the file back to Monkey, and he started poking through it to highlight various passages.

  “Monkey! I get the methodology. I’m asking about the results. How did the Tiger Clans manage to overcome the advantages held by the Empire?”

   After the slip-up, Monkey found his footing again quickly.

  “Oh? And why would the good generals be the ones losing their heads?” Dahe prompted.

  

  “Oh, my. Do you think maybe a Clan agent managed to infiltrate the Army’s high command, or something like that?”

  Monkey shook his head.

  Dahe leaned back in her chair and made a show of digesting this. “Hey, by the way, what do you make of this ‘Emperor’ fella? In your own words.”

   He clapped his hands and hooted softly at his own joke.

  Huang Jin felt like throwing up.

  Dahe did not let up. She smiled and laughed along. “Why, Monkey! Do you mean to imply that our illustrious ruler, the Emperor himself, is a dullard? A boob?” She turned to fix a wide stare directly into Huang Jin’s eyes. “Just a… just a big, dumb, petty, vindictive man-baby and an objective liability to everyone around him? A cultivator too talented and accustomed to his own power to accept or acknowledge any personal shortcoming? You know, the fucking worst kind of person possible to lead a nation?”

   Outdone in insults, Monkey reeled but rallied back.

  The prince had only one clear memory remaining from his childhood: his stern, mournful father, looking at him as though he were already dead. It hurt, and it was sad… but it was all he had left. Did even that memory have to be taken away? Not erased, but ruined?

  ‘Easy truths’ were not to be trusted, but the things he learned from that blasted library were just too horrible. It didn’t end there, either; somehow, he discovered something even more awful than the Great Dragon Emperor’s… issues.

  Huang Jin lifted his mind from misery to pay attention to the interview again. Just his luck, he found his Master leading Monkey straight into that second horror.

  “I see. But here stands the Empire, properly unconquered! If they had us on the ropes so badly, what happened? How did the war end?”

   He made no effort to hide the mockery in his mental voice.

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  “In fairness, his might is pretty superior.”

   Monkey scoffed.

  The simian flipped through the notes, pointing out the analysis Huang Jin had pieced together on the Crane’s Rest incident.

  He let that linger in the air for dramatic effect.

  Dahe shrugged. “That’s the risk when you combine an inherited monarchy with the power of cultivation. There were times when men like that got strangled by their guards in the bathtub. But that guy’s got a four-Stage lead on his Elder and a two-Stage lead on his new wife, and nobody else in politics comes close. It’s too bad.”

  With that, she clapped her hands and changed the subject to the one Huang Jin dreaded the most. “Now! What’s that dipshit been up to lately? After the war?”

  Monkey hooted again, having far too much fun with this.

  “Oh, my.”

  

  “So what? It’s a fine enough tradition, very venerable.” The statement was so loaded it nearly flowed over.

  Monkey nodded.

  Dahe held up a finger. “Well, there are details we don’t know, behind the scenes. What if, hypothetically, the princeling in question requested to be sent out early? The Clans might take that into consideration as a mitigating factor…”

  Another scoffing sound escaped from Monkey’s throat. The scoff turned into a huff of subdued laughter.

  There it was. The last, horrible truth.

  The war was over, but nothing had been resolved. The peace hinged on an act of symbolism that he, at nine years old, had trampled without a thought. There really might be some genetic factor involved…

  Dahe’s manner shifted. Her eyes hardened as she spoke with less joviality. “Monkey, I have to draw a line here. I wouldn’t put blame on such a small child, whatever the context. He couldn’t have known, or at least he couldn’t have understood.”

  

  Even as the macaque started to bow his head, Dahe stopped him. “Tut! Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to the prince in question! He’s right behind you, haven’t you realized yet?”

  Silence. Slowly, very slowly, Monkey turned around. Huang Jin had never seen such a wide look of absolute horror on that expressive little face before.

  Huang Jin did his best. “Monkey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any harm by it, I just needed an objective pair of eyes on this. I’m too close. I’m not offended.” He tried to make his voice reassuring, with limited success.

   It was no use. Monkey’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed backwards. The prince had to dive forward to catch him before his head hit the ground.

  After checking his vitals, Huang Jin concluded that Monkey would be fine in an hour or two. At that time, the poor animal would need a great many pets and compliments. “Master, I think that was kind of mean,” he said.

  “If anything, I was meaner to you than I was to him… until he made that last crack.” She watched him carefully as her expression softened again.

  Their eyes met, and the prince recognized something unusually gentle within her. She lifted herself from the comfortable chair and approached to rest a hand on top of his head. “Look, you needed a shock to finish processing this. You know… I really meant what I said. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t get me wrong! I find the entire comedy of errors that led to this point hilarious, always have.”

  Huang Jin looked down again at Monkey, regretting the decision to bring him into this… as he was beginning to regret many things. His Master didn’t let him shift his attention. She put a hand on his chin and directed his gaze back up.

  “Look at me. Huang Jin.” She almost never used his actual name. “You were a child. You’re still a child. Nobody would expect you to bear that kind of weight. You couldn’t possibly have understood.”

  “I don’t… remember anymore. What if someone told me not to go? What if everyone told me not to go, and I didn’t listen?” The prince blinked back tears.

  “Then that means they didn’t stop you. Likely, they didn’t explain it to you, they fell into that cultivator trap of hiding information and bottling everything up behind ritual and pageantry until something explodes. Love! You were a child,” she reiterated. “It was your father’s decision, in the end. It wasn’t your fault."

  “... I know,” Huang Jin lied.

  His Master sighed, and then released him. “Anyway. The report is finished, and I’d say you did a marvellous job with it. Your conclusions align well with my own lived experience. You can go take care of Monkey, for now, and tomorrow we get started with your final project.”

  The prince nodded, settled his spirit beast into a position that left a hand free, and headed for the door. Before he opened it, he turned. “Master, I have one more question.”

  “Of course, ask anything you like.”

  He hesitated. “Did you… did you at least translate ‘The Downeaster Alexa’ before you sang it to that fisherman?”

  A moment passed in perfect silence. Then, the words had their intended effect. The Master broke into laughter, long, loud, and uncontrolled. She collapsed down onto her chair, gripping her stomach, thrashing her legs, and cackling like a madwoman as Huang Jin turned to leave.

  He needed that. He needed anything but the way he felt right now.

  Dog and Pig awaited him just outside the room; Dog, because he made a habit of laying down outside of any room that Huang Jin occupied, and Pig because he’d known what would happen in there.

  Monkey considered the research purely theoretical, a mental exercise, and failed to tie the information to reality. No redaction could hide the truth from Pig. He’d made the connection between the palace and the prince on day one. The smartest of the Zodiac had to be taken off the project early, because the prince couldn’t bear his sympathy or risk his compromising Monkey’s objectivity.

  Dog and Pig nuzzled their Master from opposite sides. sniffed Pig.

  Dog’s attention flicked back and forth from Huang Jin to the comatose form of Monkey in his arms.

  The prince tried for a smile. It was a pretty good effort, by his own estimation. “It’s alright. I’m fine. Monkey’s fine. We’re all going to be okay.”

  Pig spoke.

  The two spirit beasts followed at their Master’s heels as he walked back to the prairie chamber. “What has changed? I’ve taken a good look at the road behind me. I know where I am, now. The road goes on ahead, and there are people waiting for me.”

  Something grew in Huang Jin’s heart with every word and every step. The people he’d left behind, the chaos he’d inadvertently sewn… but he was alive. And now the watching Empire, and maybe even the Clans, would know it.

  He still felt sick, but something bright stirred beneath the churning waves. “I think, when I get there… I’ll give them a show worthy of the wait.”