Reborn as the Weakest Heiress, I Gave My Inheritance to the Enemy's Daughter novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The East Terrace

Linxia guards the Quiet Courtyard and finds that Zhaoxue's meridians are nearly empty, so she lends her qi with a palm on her back and asks why Zhaoxue flinches from Ning Zhiyuan.

The east terrace was a flat stone platform outside the Quiet Courtyard, with a low wall and a long drop to the east gate.

Linxia walked its whole length twice before she said anything.

She paced the edge and looked over the wall at the courtyard below.

She looked at the gate itself, a double door of black ironwood with a bar as thick as a man's thigh.

"That's the bar you wrote about," she said.

"Yes."

"It takes four disciples to lift it."

"It took nobody to lift it the night I..." Zhaoxue stopped. "In the dream, it lifted without a sound."

Linxia gave her a long look and let the slip go by.

"Then somebody inside oiled it," she said. "Good. That's item three. We'll watch the bar."

We, Zhaoxue thought.

She had not expected a we.

Behind them, the door of the Quiet Courtyard opened, and her father came out leaning on a servant's arm.

Feng Dehuai was fifty-six and looked seventy.

His lungs had been bad for three winters, and his hands shook so much he had stopped holding a brush.

He wore a pale green robe and an old smile.

"Zhaoxue," he said. "Someone tells me the Mo daughter is on my terrace."

Linxia bowed with her fist in her palm, properly, down to the waist.

"Master Feng. My father sends greetings and a jar of coast plum wine."

"Plum wine." He coughed, and it took a while.

"Your father and I once drank eleven jars of that and fought over a bridge."

"He says you won the argument and he won the bridge."

Her father laughed, and the laugh turned into another cough.

Zhaoxue stood close enough to hold his elbow and did not touch it.

She had watched him die in the Quiet Courtyard once, and she did not trust herself to touch him yet.

"Go to bed, Father," she said.

"Tyrant," he said fondly, and let the servant turn him around.

When the door closed, Linxia said nothing for a moment.

"He doesn't look like a man who expects a war," she said.

"He never does."

"Then it's a good thing his daughter does."

Zhaoxue started to answer, and a hand caught the end of her sleeve.

She went rigid before she knew she was doing it.

It was Ning Zhiyuan, come up the terrace steps with a ledger under his arm.

He let go at once, smiling.

"Sorry, shimei, I called three times. The Mo riders want a place to hang their wet cloaks.

"Shall I give them the east shed?"

"The west shed," Zhaoxue said.

"The west shed leaks."

"Then they'll have wet cloaks. Put them in the west shed."

He looked at her a moment, surprised and kind.

"As you like," he said, and bowed to Linxia, and went back down.

Linxia watched him until he reached the courtyard.

She said nothing about it.

Instead she said, "Sit," and pointed at the low wall.

"Why?"

"Because you're breathing like a rabbit, and because I would like to see how weak the weakest heiress is."

Zhaoxue sat.

Linxia crouched in front of her, took her wrist in a calloused hand and pressed two fingers over the pulse.

The terrace was cold and the evening was going blue.

Linxia's fingers were warm, and they stayed on her wrist a long time.

Her face changed.

"Your meridians are nearly empty," she said. "Not damaged. Empty. Like a cistern nobody has filled."

"I told you. One candle."

"I thought you were being modest."

"I'm never modest about my failures."

Linxia's mouth twitched.

Then she stood, stepped behind Zhaoxue and laid one palm flat between her shoulder blades.

"Breathe out," she said.

"What are you..."

"Breathe out."

Zhaoxue breathed out.

Heat poured in through the palm, not a rush but a slow tide.

It spread across her back and down her spine and out into her arms.

It reached places that had been cold since she was nine years old.

She made a small sound she had not meant to make.

"Keep breathing," Linxia said, close above her ear.

"Don't stop," Zhaoxue said.

"Good. I'll lend you this much every night."

"Why?"

"Because you can't hold a sword with those arms, and I'd rather you didn't have to."

Her palm stayed where it was.

Through the thin blue silk, Zhaoxue could feel each of her fingers.

The heat of her wrist, and the edge of the cord of the Pine Seal brushing her shoulder.

It was her own seal, on someone else's neck.

She had not thought she would like it as much as she did.

Her heart was beating hard enough to shake her whole chest.

She told herself it was the qi.

She told herself it was number one on the list, working the wrong way round.

Linxia finally lifted her hand, and the cold came back in a rush.

"Better?" she said.

"Yes."

"You're blushing."

"It's the lent qi."

"Is it."

Zhaoxue could hear her smiling.

Then Linxia's voice dropped, and the smile went out of it.

"You flinched when Ning Zhiyuan touched your sleeve," she said.

"He's your senior brother, and he's been kind to you all day. Why?"

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