Three knocks landed against the wood.

Knock.

Knock.

KNOCK.

Lin Xuan was at the door of his father’s chamber, where he had been told to come after dinner. The corridor behind him was quiet. The inner court of Skyedge ran on a curfew most outsiders never witnessed, and the lanterns along the walkway burned at half their oil during the hours after dusk. He had walked the path knowing the destination. He had no real idea what his father wanted from him at this hour.

Before the voice on the other side could answer, he opened the inner channel.

’Do you know what my father might want to discuss at this time of night?’

[ I have several options. The first — how you are. A great deal has happened over the past days. One of his sons has fallen into a bottomless hole and nobody knows when he will climb out of it. I imagine he is watching how you are carrying yourself through what is happening, too. He is a good father, Xuan. I think he is worried. He lost his first wife to a betrayal he did not see coming, and being the patriarch of a regional sect, which is no longer the small local thing it once was, puts pressure on him the rest of us do not feel. He has a great deal of work ahead of him. ]

Lin Xuan held the analysis a beat. Each point arrived with its own weight when he turned it over inside his head. The first wife. The son in the hole. The pressure of the regional chair. The work ahead. None of it new. All of it accurate.

’You are right.’

The voice came from inside.

"If it is you, son, please come in."

Lin Xuan opened the door.

"Here I am, father. As you asked."

Lin Zhen lifted his head from the brush he had been finishing. The chamber had been pared down to its working essentials — the writing table, the brazier, the small low table with two cushions, the long screen behind it carved with the dragon-mark of the Lin line. Lamp-light put amber across one half of his father’s face and shadow across the other.

"I am glad you came, Xuan’er. I am glad you are well, truly. These have been hard days for me. But I cannot afford to keep staring backward."

The line did not have the patriarchal weight Lin Zhen used in the council chamber. It had the weight of a tired father in his own room, talking to his son after the rest of the corridor had gone to bed. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Lin Xuan crossed to the small table and lowered himself onto the cushion opposite his father — the same cushion he had used the last time he had been called here. A small unobtrusive pity moved through him. The pity a son felt for a father he had only known two months and had already come to value.

"I am here, father, so that you can lean on me as well. People are allowed to complain about what has happened to them. And to let it out."

Lin Zhen received the line without rushing through it. The corner of his mouth moved up a degree.

"Thank you for that, Xuan’er. I am glad to have you at my side. Sit. There are a few things I want to discuss with you."

He reached for the iron kettle on the brazier and poured tea into both small cups — Xuan’s first, his own second. The steam climbed in a slow column from each porcelain rim. The pour was unhurried. The conversation, by the look of it, would take its time.

"May I ask, father, why you called me at this hour?"

Lin Zhen released half a smile.

"Several reasons. The simplest first. I wanted to see how you are. I would not want my other son to fall into what Lin Kai has fallen into." He turned the cup in front of him a quarter rotation. "And how did your first day with the outer disciples go?"

"May I be honest with you, father?"

Lin Zhen nodded.

"If you will permit me, I will begin. The foundations are bad. Most of them did not know how to perform the Nine Dragons breathing correctly. I had to teach it from the beginning. Many of them do not have the body they should have at this point, because they have been slacking off. Flat push-ups, going through the motions of conditioning without anyone correcting them. A good number of them are simply not in a state to be useful right now."

Lin Zhen was quiet for a stretch. His hand rested on the rim of the cup. The tea below it stayed untouched.

"It is a shame." A pause. "I should have paid closer attention to that yard. If the load is more than you can carry, Xuan’er, tell me. I will find a way to hire someone to take the work off your hands."

"Hold there, father." Lin Xuan lifted one hand. "There is no need. I said they were in a bad state. I did not say the problem is impossible to repair. Leave them with me, as I asked. I promise you this. Before Su Qingyue arrives with the messengers of her sect, and with her own patriarch behind her, I can guarantee you that those disciples will look like different people from the ones you are remembering tonight."

"Is that so, son?"

Lin Xuan nodded. "Without a doubt. Many of them have a measure of talent. None of them have had the firm hand needed to do with them what should have been done long ago. That changed this morning. Trust me. The way you trusted me at the tournament."

Lin Zhen brought his attention up to his son’s face.

The boy across the table was no longer a boy.

The patriarch held the look one breath. He did not move. He did not speak across three full breaths of the lamp burning between them. The flame on the wick did not waver. Lin Zhen was reading his son the way he had read his own father at the same age, and his father before him, when a son had finally crossed the line that fathers waited for and did not always live to see.

When he finally spoke, the line was simple, and the line was the one Lin Xuan had been waiting for the moment he had crossed the threshold.

"Good. Now let us turn to what truly brought me here tonight."