Fox and Phoenix (Lóng City 1)

One lock of her hair had worked loose and curled around to tickle her cheek. With hardly a pause, Yún tucked the lock behind her ear and kept writing. One last dot, one last line and she glanced up. I quickly turned back to my blank paper.

“Kai-my-son, have you done with the writing?”

Ma mi’s tone was dry.

“Almost.” I dashed off three columns that might or might not have had anything to do with her lecture.

Yún gave a tiny smile, dimpling her cheeks.

“And do not copy from your classmate,” Ma mi added. “Listen and transcribe the words upon your heart and mind, as well as the paper, as Wu Cheng the philosopher writes. To continue, my students . . .”

Off she went, reciting page after page from some old text about the parallels between chi and blood and air, and how knowledge of the body aided the student with the chi, which everyone knew was another word for magic flux.

Or at least, that’s how it sounded to me. Most likely Ma mi would announce a surprise test, and insist we recite the words exactly. That was the main reason I was flunking both advanced calculus and magical philosophy. Well, that and she subtracted points for illegible handwriting. If she couldn’t read it, she said it didn’t count.

You could practice your penmanship, Chen offered, speaking quickly. (Our spirit companions were not supposed to talk with us during class.)

I do practice, I replied.

A faint squeal. A loud crack. Chen vanished.

Attend, said a familiar voice inside my head, while out loud, my mother’s lecture continued “. . . but people use the chi every day and do not understand it . . .”

Damn straight, I thought, struggling to keep up. At one point, I shot a glance at Yún. She pretended to ignore me, but her eyes were bright with amusement as her brush skimmed across the page. Maybe she’d let me read her notes, just this once. That wasn’t exactly copying . . . more like refreshing my memory.

Just as my hand cramped up, the clock chimed the hour. Yún made one last dot and waited. I scribbled the last

few characters, trying not to drop my brush. Ma mi surveyed us, her lips pursed, as though considering another hour of misery for us.

“Students dismissed,” she said at last. “Kai, you will take the second afternoon shift of watching the store. Three o’clock. Remember you must also review our accounts this evening. Please consider that when you arrange your studies for today.”

I nodded, as though I always planned my studies.

“And Yún. You will take first afternoon shift. Please review the inventory against this list. Mark the items we need and provide a written account of the cost.”

She handed over a tightly wound scroll. Yún tucked it into her pocket and made a sitting-bow, her face wiped clean of anything but obedience. Hypocrite, I thought. I choked back a snort before my mother could suspect it, and made my own sitting-student bow. Ma mi’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. She said nothing, however, merely swept from the room with the dignity of a queen.

Yún screwed the cap onto her ink bottle and began to stow her books and writing materials in her satchel.

I stuffed my own books into my satchel. “Say, Yún?”

Her eyebrows lifted, reminding me of swift elegant question marks. “Yes?”

“I, um, was wondering . . .”

“. . . if you could read my notes?”

“Well, I thought I could . . .”

“Kai.” She made my name sound like a sigh. “You know what your mother said.”

“She said no copying. Not no reading—Oh, never mind.”

I slung my satchel over my shoulder and stalked from the classroom. Ma mi stood behind the counter at the front of the shop, paper and basket in hand, frowning. Before she could say anything, I pounded up the stairs to my bedroom and flung my satchel into one corner. Just in time, I stopped myself from letting out a howl.

Last year. Everything had changed since then. Last year Yún and I had been friends. Last year we’d run pranks in the marketplace. We’d plotted together how to win the king’s challenge. It was Yún who tricked Ma mi into giving us the magical spells we needed. And it was Yún who stood next to me when we faced down watch-demons and ghost dragons. Sure, Lian was with us, too, but it was Yún I remembered.

But Yún had turned into Little Miss Proper. She had no time for pranks, only her studies. Even worse, she lectured me the same way Ma mi did. I wasn’t smart enough, steady enough. Oh, sure, she didn’t say those words exactly, but telling me I had “lots of potential” was just another way of saying I was too stupid right now.