5. A Toast to Oblivion

Three days after the blood oath, Lady Liu sent for him.

The summons came through Brother Shen, who appeared in the outer circle's common room with his usual expression of gentle detachment. "Brother Wang Zhen, your assistance is required in the preparation chamber. Lady Liu has requested you specifically."

The other members of the outer circle looked up from their meager breakfast of rice and pickled vegetables. The merchant's eyes narrowed with something that might have been jealousy. The scholar regarded Li Jun with renewed interest, his calculating gaze sharper than before. The farmer simply looked relieved that he had not been chosen.

Li Jun rose and followed Brother Shen through the tunnels. His palms were damp, and his heart beat a steady rhythm of warning against his ribs. He had been hoping for this opportunity, but now that it had arrived, he felt only dread.

"She does not often request assistance," Brother Shen remarked as they walked. "You must have made an impression."

"I spoke with her only once. Briefly."

"Lady Liu notices things that others miss. It is what makes her valuable to the Radiant Messenger." Brother Shen glanced back at Li Jun. "Be diligent in your service. She reports directly to the inner circle."

"I understand."

The preparation chamber was located deeper in the tunnel network than Li Jun had yet ventured. The air grew colder as they descended, and the walls changed from worked stone to natural rock, damp and glistening with mineral deposits. The sound of dripping water was louder here, and beneath it, Li Jun could hear something else. A low, rhythmic sound, like breathing magnified a hundredfold.

A subterranean river, he realized. They were near water.

Brother Shen stopped before a heavy wooden door banded with iron. "She waits inside. I will return for you at the evening prayer."

He departed, leaving Li Jun alone in the cold corridor. Li Jun took a breath, steadied himself, and pushed open the door.

The chamber beyond was unlike anything he had seen in the sect's underground complex. It was large and high-ceilinged, lit by oil lamps that hung from iron chains. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with clay jars, bronze vessels, bundles of dried herbs, and instruments of glass and metal that Li Jun could not name. At the center of the room stood a massive stone hearth, its fire burning low and steady beneath a copper cauldron large enough to hold a man.

Lady Liu stood beside the cauldron, stirring its contents with a long wooden paddle. She wore a simple gray robe today, its sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms corded with lean muscle. Her hair was bound back with a strip of cloth, and her face was flushed from the heat of the fire.

"Close the door," she said without looking up.

Li Jun closed the door. The iron latch fell into place with a heavy clang that echoed through the chamber.

"Come here. Stand where I can see you."

He approached the hearth. The heat from the fire was intense, and the smell rising from the cauldron was complex and strange. Herbs he recognized from the sacred wine. Flowers he could not name. And beneath everything, the metallic tang he had tasted in the cellar, stronger now, almost overwhelming.

"You are not afraid," Lady Liu observed.

"I did not say that."

She looked up from the cauldron, and her dark eyes found his. "No. You did not. Most men would have denied their fear. You simply admitted it without admitting it. That is... unusual."

"I was taught that honesty is a virtue."

"Honesty." She laughed, a short, sharp sound with no humor in it. "There is no honesty in the old world, Brother Wang Zhen. Only layers of deception. The honest man is the one who admits that he lives in lies."

She returned to her stirring. The liquid in the cauldron was dark and viscous, bubbling slowly. "Do you know what this is?"

"The sacred wine."

"No. This is the base. The unrefined essence. The sacred wine is made from this, but diluted and sweetened. What is in this cauldron is pure." She paused, watching the bubbles rise and burst. "If you drank a cup of this, you would be dead before you hit the floor."

Li Jun felt the skin tighten across the back of his neck. "Have many people drunk from this cauldron?"

"Only those who needed to be purified." She said the word as if it were ordinary. "Enemies of the Pure World. Traitors within our ranks. Those whose corruption was too deep to be washed away by prayer alone."

"Then the sacred wine..."

"Is a mercy. A gentle version. The faithful drink it to touch the divine. The condemned drink what is in this cauldron to meet it." She withdrew the paddle and set it aside. "You are wondering why I have brought you here."

"I assumed you needed assistance."

"I need many things. Assistance is merely the one I announced." She turned to face him fully, and Li Jun saw something in her expression that he had not seen before. Not cruelty. Not suspicion. Something closer to exhaustion. "How long have you been with the Pure World, Brother Wang Zhen?"

"Ten days."

"Ten days. And already you have been elevated to the outer circle. That is very fast."

"I was eager to learn."

"Yes. You ask many questions. You learn very quickly. You do not flinch when you drink the sacred wine. You do not flinch when your blood is taken for the oath." She tilted her head. "You do not flinch. Most men flinch."

Li Jun said nothing. He had the sense that any word he spoke would be the wrong one.

"I have been with the Pure World for three years," Lady Liu said. "I was brought here by General Murong Baojie, who found me in a tea house in the western quarter. I was a singer then. Do you know what a singer does in a tea house, Brother Wang Zhen?"

"I can imagine."

"No. You cannot." Her voice was flat. "The men who come to those places are not looking for music. They are looking for something to consume. I was consumed many times, by many men, before General Murong found me. He offered me a different life. A place where I would not be consumed. A place where I would have power over those who had used me."

"And did he give you that?"

"He gave me this." She gestured at the cauldron, the shelves of herbs, the instruments of glass and metal. "He gave me the sacred wine. He told me that through the wine, I could purify the corrupt. I could wash away the filth of the old world. I could be an instrument of the divine rather than a vessel for men's desires."

Li Jun listened, and beneath her words, he heard something unexpected. Not faith. Not fanaticism. Something closer to doubt.

"Do you believe that?" he asked quietly.

Lady Liu was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled. The cauldron bubbled. Somewhere in the depths of the mountain, the subterranean river breathed its endless breath.

"I believed it," she said finally. "For three years, I believed it. I prepared the sacred wine for the faithful and the pure essence for the condemned. I told myself that I was serving a higher purpose. That the men and women I purified were corrupt beyond redemption. That their deaths were necessary for the coming of the new world."

She turned back to the cauldron and resumed her stirring. Her shoulders were tense, the line of her back rigid.

"But recently, I have begun to wonder. The Radiant Messenger speaks of a Final Baptism. He says that hundreds will be purified in a single ceremony. Hundreds, Brother Wang Zhen. And I am the one who must prepare the sacred wine."

Li Jun's heart was beating so hard he was certain she could hear it. "When is the Final Baptism to take place?"

"At the next full moon. Twenty days from now." She looked at him over her shoulder. "Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity."

"No. Not curiosity. You ask because you want to know something specific. You want to know how much time you have." She turned again, and her eyes were very bright in the firelight. "Who are you, Brother Wang Zhen? Truly?"

The question hung in the air between them. Li Jun felt the trap closing around him, the careful structure of his lies beginning to crack. If he answered wrong now, he would join the seventeen names on General Yang's list.

But something in Lady Liu's voice, something in the exhaustion that shadowed her eyes, made him hesitate. She was not accusing him. She was asking him. There was a difference.

"I am a man who wants to stop a massacre," he said.

The words fell into the silence like stones into still water. Lady Liu did not move. Her expression did not change. But something shifted in her eyes.

"A massacre," she repeated.

"Twenty days from now, at the full moon. The Radiant Messenger plans to purify hundreds of believers. He calls it a baptism. I call it murder."

"Who are you?"

"Someone who knew General Yang Sixun. Someone who knows what you put in his wine."

Lady Liu's face went pale. The paddle slipped from her fingers and clattered against the stone floor. "You know nothing about that."

"I know that Murong Baojie ordered it. I know that you prepared the poison. I know that General Yang died in agony on the floor of Murong's banquet hall because he had discovered the truth about the Pure World Sect."

"He was corrupt." But her voice was weak now, the conviction drained from it. "The Radiant Messenger said he was corrupt. He said the general was an enemy of the pure."

"The general was investigating seventeen deaths. Seventeen people who had been purified by your sacred wine. He was trying to stop the killing. And for that, he was killed."

Lady Liu took a step back. Her hand found the edge of the hearth and gripped it. "Seventeen. There have been more than seventeen."

Li Jun felt the words like a blow. "How many more?"

"I do not count them. I try not to remember their faces. But there have been more. Many more." She closed her eyes. "I told myself they deserved it. I told myself the Radiant Messenger knew their corruption. But the last one... the last one was a girl. Fifteen years old. She had tried to leave the sect. She wanted to return to her family. And they brought her to me."

Li Jun took a step toward her. "Lady Liu. You do not have to be part of this. You can help me stop it."

"Stop it? How? The Radiant Messenger has an army of believers. Murong Baojie has the protection of the imperial court. You are one man. What can you do?"

"I do not know yet. But I know that if you continue to help them, you will have the blood of hundreds on your hands. Not just enemies. Not just traitors. Believers. People who trust you. People who will drink what you give them and die believing it is salvation."

Lady Liu was silent for a long time. The fire crackled. The cauldron bubbled. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.

"I have dreamed of their faces. The ones I killed. They come to me at night, in the darkness. They ask me why. And I cannot tell them. I cannot tell them because I do not know anymore."

"Help me," Li Jun said. "Help me stop the Final Baptism. Help me bring Murong Baojie to justice. It is the only way to silence those dreams."

"And what will happen to me? If I help you, what will happen to me?"

Li Jun wanted to promise her safety. He wanted to tell her that the imperial court would be merciful, that her assistance would earn her leniency. But he could not lie. Not now. Not to her.

"I do not know," he admitted. "You have done terrible things. The law may not forgive you. But if you help me save hundreds of lives, perhaps that will count for something. Perhaps it will be enough."

"Perhaps." She laughed again, the same humorless sound. "You are not very good at offering comfort, Brother Wang Zhen."

"My name is Li Jun. I am a clerk in the Ministry of Justice. I am not a soldier or a spy. I am no one. But I am trying to do the right thing."

"Li Jun." She tested the name. "That is a better name than Wang Zhen. It suits you more."

She pushed herself away from the hearth and walked to one of the shelves. From a small clay jar, she took a pinch of dried powder and dropped it into a cup of water. She stirred it with her finger and held the cup out to Li Jun.

"Drink this."

Li Jun looked at the cup. The water was cloudy, with a faint green tint. "What is it?"

"An antidote. Or a partial one. It will protect you against the sacred wine for approximately four hours. If someone offers you a cup, you will be able to drink without dying." She pushed the cup toward him. "You will need it. The inner circle tests the faithful regularly. Suspicion falls on everyone eventually."

Li Jun took the cup. The liquid was bitter, coating his tongue and throat with a slimy residue. He forced himself to swallow, to drain the cup completely.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked.

"Because I am tired of the dreams. Because I am tired of being a vessel for death. Because perhaps you are right, and this is the only way to find peace." She turned back to the cauldron. "Now go. You have been here too long. Brother Shen will be waiting."

Li Jun set down the cup. "I will come back."

"I know you will. You need me. And I..." She paused, her hand on the paddle. "I need to believe that I can still be saved."

Li Jun left the preparation chamber and found Brother Shen waiting in the corridor, just as she had said. The older man studied him with those gentle, knowing eyes.

"You were in there for a long time," Brother Shen observed.

"Lady Liu had many instructions. The work is complicated."

"Indeed. Lady Liu's work is very complicated." He began walking back toward the upper tunnels, and Li Jun fell into step beside him. "She is one of the Radiant Messenger's most valued servants. Her skill with the sacred wine is unmatched. But she is also..."

He paused, as if searching for the right word.

"She is also what?" Li Jun prompted.

"Troubled. She has been troubled for some time. The Radiant Messenger is aware of this. He watches her closely."

Li Jun felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold of the tunnels. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you are new, Brother Wang Zhen. You do not yet understand the dynamics of the Pure World. Lady Liu is essential to our mission, but she is also a point of vulnerability. Those who grow too close to her often find themselves under scrutiny." Brother Shen smiled his gentle smile. "I merely offer a friendly warning."

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Li Jun's mind was churning. Brother Shen's warning was not merely friendly. It was a threat, delivered with the same calm courtesy that characterized everything the man did. The inner circle suspected Lady Liu. They were watching her. And by extension, they were watching anyone who spent time with her.

When they reached the outer circle's quarters, Brother Shen departed with a polite bow. Li Jun returned to his bunk, but he did not sleep. He lay in the darkness, feeling the antidote churning in his stomach, and thought about what he had learned.

Twenty days until the full moon. Twenty days until the Final Baptism. Twenty days to stop a massacre that had been years in the planning.

And now he had an ally. An ally who had killed dozens of people, who brewed poison for the faithful and the condemned alike, who was watched by the inner circle and troubled by dreams of the dead.

Lady Liu was a dangerous ally. She might betray him. She might lose her nerve. She might be discovered and purified before she could help him at all.

But she was the only ally he had.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But sleep did not come. The darkness pressed in, and the sound of dripping water marked the passing of the hours, and somewhere in the depths of the mountain, a woman stirred a copper cauldron and wondered if she could ever wash the blood from her hands.