The first two were obvious. He spent them on Lian and Lin Zhen.

Lian. The hands that had stitched him back together half a dozen times. The voice that fussed at him through cracked doors and threatened to bring more soup whether he wanted it or not. He pictured her, and his thumb pressed the wick.

The thread blossomed into a small bright flame. Stable gold.

Lin Zhen. The father who had carried him across the threshold of this house as an infant and never once allowed its corridors to feel borrowed. He pictured the patriarch at his writing desk, the candle at his side, a pen moving across paper that had been waiting two days for his attention.

The second wick caught. Stable gold.

’Both gold.’

[ Which means both of them are well. No interference, no injury, no hand on them. Continue. ]

’Good. Onward.’

The third wick was Wei Tianming, the disciple who had crossed two provinces to follow him and bowed five-count bows to a Young Master who had not yet deserved such bows. The wick lit. Stable gold.

Three of the people closest to him, all well. He inhaled the first easy breath of the evening.

The fourth was harder.

He pictured Lin Kai. Two years of corridor cruelty since the curse had pulled Lin Xuan off his own legs, two years of a young master who had spent the whole rest of his life walking behind his stepbrother finally allowing himself to savor the experience of walking in front. Before the curse, Lin Kai had felt small in every room he had ever shared with Lin Xuan.

After the curse, he had paid that smallness back across his stepbrother’s face with the mean satisfaction of a younger brother who had been handed his first winning hand at the table.

And the morning before the Arena, the boy had blocked the corridor to confess what his mother had done in the alley. The stepbrother who had not yet asked for forgiveness had at least asked for the conversation that opened the door to one.

His thumb pressed the wick.

The flame caught, and it was not gold.

The thread fluttered in a thin oscillation, the flame tinged the color of poppy at dusk. Flickering red. Faint. Slow. The lamp’s pulse of warning hovered just above the line of normal.

Lin Xuan tightened.

’Mira. Is this what I think it is?’

[ Yes, but contain yourself. If the flame were oscillating sharply or burning a fiercer red, it would be grave. This is mild. He is not bleeding in an alley somewhere. ]

’Then why is it red at all?’

[ Because the lamp reads the mind as well as the body, Xuan. A wounded mind counts as a person in distress. Your victory at the Arena could be doing that to him. He has not yet digested what it means to live in your shadow. The wick is reading his soul on a difficult night. ]

’The mind, not only the body. I have never had a tool listen to a soul before.’

[ The mind is everything, Xuan. More than the body. A healthy mind is necessary in ways a healthy body never has to be. Hold onto that. Now. Who is next? ]

He did not speak the name aloud. He pictured her instead. White robe. The small fierce composure of a young mistress who had carried Heart of Winter into a sword fight against a man who turned it back on her without breaking stride.

Mira intercepted him before the wick lit.

[ Her? Worried about that one, are we? Do you like her, by any chance? (¬‿¬) ]

’I am checking on a colleague to confirm she is well. That is all.’

He brushed the wick.

The fifth flame burned. Stable gold.

’Gold. She is fine. I will keep her on the lamp regardless. The list of people I know is not exactly endless, and the slot can be reassigned later if I need it.’

[ Although I do not think you will need to reassign her. ]

’Did you say something?’

[ Nothing. Who is next? ]

’Elder Ren.’

The old man who had carried his father’s investigation in Yuncheng on his shoulders for two weeks. The sixth wick caught. Stable gold.

Six wicks burned in a measured row of patient warm light. Six of the people he had chosen to carry on his shoulders, and every one of them well. Well enough, anyway. Lin Kai’s slow red oscillation pulsed quietly among them, the only chord out of key, the only voice in the room not singing in the same color as the rest.

That was six.

That was almost everyone he was prepared to track.

There was one more, and he had been postponing her since he opened the lamp.

Mira read his hesitation through the panel.

[ Her turn. ]

’...Yes. Her turn.’

Madam Mei.

The First Wife of Skyedge. The woman who had worn the title for longer than Lin Xuan had been old enough to call himself anyone’s son. The woman who had let his ribs break in an alley a fortnight ago and watched the family nurse him without lifting a finger to ask whether he had survived the night.

He did not want to give a wick to her. The lamp had twenty slots, and to assign one of them to her was to admit she had earned a place on the board.

He brushed the seventh wick anyway.

’Vigilance is not affection.’

The wick lit.

The flame was violet.

A deep cool violet that pulsed like the underside of a stormcloud, slow and rhythmic, the breathing of a thing that lived inside another thing and was working hard not to be noticed.

Lin Xuan felt the bottom of his stomach drop a finger’s width.

Violet flame:

Person is being affected by external Qi. Examples: manipulation, possession, curse, control technique...

’...Shit.’

The panel above the lamp had hushed entirely. Mira’s voice came soft, the kaomoji absent, the tone she had used the night of Yun Hai’s mountain.

[ Exactly what you were afraid of, Xuan. You have had the enemy inside the walls for a very long time. ]

The lamp glowed on the small table beside the bed. Six wicks of gold patient light, one of slow red pulsing in unease, and one of violet breathing the slow rhythm of a thing with its hand on a string that ran out of the house and into the dark.

He had won the tournament that morning.

It was three hours past midnight.

And the woman who had been eating at his father’s table for almost two decades was burning violet in his lamp.