(un)Talent, Chapter 4 of 11
Jan. 6th, 2011 02:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laleiaChapter 4:
Please see Chapter 1 for the Summary, Author's Notes, additional details, etc.
She must have gasped out loud or something, because both the floating head and Jason turned to look at her.
The floating head shimmered and disappeared just as Jason said, “I can explain, Avi.”
“No need,” Avi bit out, and turned to leave.
But Jason was fast, faster than she’d realized. He had her arm in his grasp, holding her from storming off like she wanted. “Wait. Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” Avi said bitterly, “Wait, let me do the explaining. You were talking to a floating head – so you’re Talented, which you’ve been hiding it from me. Which would be plenty understandable if you thought I were mundane. But if I were mundane, I’d see what I wanted to see, which means I wouldn’t have noticed the floating head. Your reaction would have been totally different. Since you knew I saw it, that means you know about me. You know who I am. And you were hiding who you were despite that. Have I missed anything?”
“I didn’t mean to hide from you-” Jason said desperately.
“Bullshit. I recognized who that floating head was. I’m not stupid. That was Matriarch of the Liang Family. If you’re in conversation with her? That means you not only knew who I was, you were told to get closer to me. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not wrong, but you’re not right either,” Jason said hastily as Avi tried to wrench away. “Yes, I knew who you were, but I didn’t lie to get close to you. My orders were just to observe. I got close to you because you interested me. I wanted to know more about you.”
“That would be more believable if you hadn’t just admitted to being a Liang Family spy!” It was getting harder to have this conversation when her throat was choked with emotion, and tears were pricking at her eyes, though whether they were tears of anger or sadness she couldn’t yet tell.
“Not a spy! An … emissary is all. It doesn’t mean anything! I was just checking our Family interests, not spying!”
Avi yanked her arm out of his grasp and backed away. “So let me get this straight,” she said evenly, “you’re Heir to the Liang Family, is that what you’re telling me? How is that possible? You said you grew up in Seattle!”
“I did! It’s just … Grandmother’s upset with Uncle so she un-designated him as Heir, which means all her grandchildren are Heirs. It’s why I was called back. I was supposed to observe you, as a test to prove myself. But I thought you were cool and that’s why I started hanging out with you. Honest!” Jason didn’t try to grab her again, but he did try to look earnestly in her eyes and use his obvious distress to get her to trust him.
It didn’t work. “I can’t deal with this right now,” Avi bit out.
“Avi-”
“I have to go.”
And then she turned and fled.
---
The knock on the door woke her.
She was groggy and a little hungover, having depleted her apartment’s small stash of alcohol upon arriving home. This wasn’t exactly something she could call Aly and complain about, nor was it something she would consider calling home about. Therefore, that’d left the only other option – drink.
She would have ignored the knock and waited for whoever it was to go away, but the knock came again thirty seconds later, and again thirty seconds after that. After the fifth set of rat-tat-tat, Avi left her warm, comfortable bed, marched to the door, and flung it open.
It was a little too early to think beyond Shut up! Some of us are trying to sleep! so she was more than a little surprised to see Maya at the door.
“I still have way more than 24 hours to send Zhang Matriarch my decision,” Avi said crossly, “and I’ve been in touch with my parents within the last 24 hours so you can’t be here on their behalf. So what exactly do you want?”
Maya didn’t answer, instead pushing her way inside. “We need to talk,” was all she would say as she shut the door behind her.
Rather annoyed with this home invasion, Avi didn’t even bother fetching the folding chairs she usually put out for guests. Instead, she stood by the doorway, arms crossed. “About what? About how you betrayed me to the Matriarch even though my parents specifically asked you to keep me out of it? About how you think I should trust you after everything?” Avi demanded. “Or about the way you pretended our thing was one-sided back in high school?” Damn, that had come out cattier than she had intended – she hadn’t meant for it to sound like she still cared.
Maya didn’t even blink, and ignored the last question. “Don’t whine to me about doing what I specifically told you I would do the night before. I’d warned you, you made your decisions regardless. If I hadn’t reported your presence and some other retainer had come across you? You’d be lucky to be alive. Anyway, it’s not as if your situation wasn’t already precarious,” Maya snorted. “Rumor has it Liang Family had a spy on you the whole time and you didn’t even notice.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Avi looked away, flushed with shame. Apparently, she was once again a source of malicious gossip.
“Well, too bad, because I overheard the Matriarchs talking about it and apparently there’s more to the story than that.” Maya’s expression was grim and concerned, and this more than anything convinced Avi that something was up. Maya was normally the epitome of impassiveness. That she was showing any emotion meant that something was wrong.
“What do you mean more?” Avi asked, suspicious. “They sent someone to get close to me and find out secrets. The guy I’ve been shamelessly flirting with for over a month now was a plant. What could be worse?” Perhaps that was a slightly exaggeration, but she felt it more eloquently communicated her outrage. She moved to brew herself some coffee. She might need some serious caffeine to get through this.
“Liang Family isn’t just keeping tabs on you as an emissary. They think you have Talent.”
“That’s not new,” Avi snorted. “They can join the club.” How many healers had her parents sent her to, hoping that one of them would be able to figure out where her Talent was, and why it hadn’t manifested yet? How many tests had they run, trying to foresee when the natural field of unTalent that everyone was born with might dissolve into true Talent worthy of the Lau Family name.
“No, they accept that you think you have no Talent, but they … well, it’s a long story, but apparently your Family has history …” Maya waved her hands vaguely in a failed attempt to help her communicate.
“What are you getting at? Stop beating around the bush.” Avi poured herself some coffee.
“When your parents broke away and emigrated to the U.S., they made a lot of enemies,” Maya said slowly.
“I know. So?” This wasn’t exactly news – you didn’t leave behind friends and family to set up your own corner of the – well, the closest mundane equivalent was like a crime family syndicate – without making a few enemies, as they said.
“Apparently, legend has it that the Patriarch of one of the local Families—nobody’s sure who—set Words on your Family.” Maya looked serious, so this wasn’t a joke – but that’s what it sounded like. Ancient enemies? Setting Words? This was more like something out of one of those stories her parents used to tell her at night.
“What, you mean somebody cursed them?” It always helped to clarify and “setting Words” could technically include any number of non-malicious activities.
“Specifically, they cursed your parents with a Dud.”
“What?” Avi dropped her coffee mug, and cursed as coffee splashed everywhere.
“I don’t have the full details, but there was apparently something along the lines of ‘And one of your offspring shall be born with Talent surpassing all that in known records but you shall reap none of that reward for their Talent shall be stolen from them while they are young and that power shall then be imprisoned out of your grasp.’”
Avi worked on autopilot for a couple of minutes, cleaning up the coffee spill and trying to digest this new information without visibly freaking out. Maya waited patiently, recognizing her need to think. Finally, Avi threw away her paper towels, washed her hands, and turned to look at Maya. “Imprisoned where?” she asked calmly, as if she hadn’t just experience a paradigm shift.
“I didn’t catch that. I was eavesdropping. And I’m not even sure Zhang Matriarch knows – all of her information relies on rumors and gossip, and that’s the kind of things people might speculate on but wouldn’t actually know for sure.”
“And your Matriarch thinks that the offspring in question is me?”
“It would make sense.”
“How come this has never come up in any of the million conversations with my parents about my Talent?” Avi bit out. “They never thought it relevant to mention there might be a curse on me?”
“It’s possible they didn’t know,” Maya shrugged. “Rumors travel faster if you’re on the same continent or keep in touch. Maybe they figured it didn’t take and your issue was an unrelated one. Maybe they didn’t want to psych you out in case you were just a late bloomer. If you want to know the answer, you’ll have to ask them.”
Avi ignored this subtle reproof – if Maya was meant to warn Avi about the Feuds in the area, she was probably still in touch with her parents enough to realize that Avi hadn’t been very comprehensive in her last check-in with her parents, failing to mention any of the important events that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Instead, she took the conversation in a different direction. “So that’s what she meant when she kept on insinuating I’d come to unlock my Talent.”
“Yes. She’s still convinced that’s why you came in the first place – why else would you go the city your parents left behind so abruptly?”
“And of course, the concept of a gap year is incomprehensible,” Avi scowled. “And what does this have to do with Jason?”
“By Jason, you mean the Liang Family Heir?”
“One of them, yes.”
“Well, from what I overheard, the Liang Family should know about the entire issue; that’s why they were keeping tabs on you, to track you and see if you found your Talent. Zhang Matriarch was fishing to see if the rumors are true, but Liang Family must have a more specific source of information. Who knows, it might even be them that cursed your parents.”
“So what, if I talk to Liang Family, I might be able to find out where my Talent is locked away? If I find it again, is it even something I could regain? Would I have Talent? I mean, have talent again?” she corrected herself. Avi felt shaken. Her whole life she’d had to deal with being a Dud, with having gifted siblings who brought honor to their Family while struggling to prove herself despite her mundane nature. And to think, the thing that seemed to define her life could be so easily fixed.
“No, don’t go to the Liang Family. They’re hiding things. They’re not to be trusted,” Maya said hastily. “I’m telling you about what they’re hiding so you can be prepared, Avi. They’re going to try to manipulate you with this. You can’t fall for it.”
Avi was only half-listening. “I can’t believe that Jason- that they were sitting on this kind of information. I can’t believe my parents never told me. What the hell? Is the whole world conspiring against me?”
“I’m not telling you this to get your hopes up, Avi,” Maya cautioned. “This whole thing is still just a rumor, remember. But it’s one all the Families half-believe in. You need to be careful, because some of them are going to start acting soon, especially since it’s common knowledge that Liang Family has started moving already.”
“Just great.”
“Zhang Matriarch may have decided to give you some time to think about it, but some of the other Families may choose to act quickly, hoping to eliminate a potential threat while they still can. You need to be careful!”
“Potential threat? Me? So I might get my Talent back. So what?”
“It’s not just Talent, Avi. Didn’t you hear me? You’d have Talent that surpasses all known record. You’d be an unbeatable weapon.”
“And of course, it’s easier to kill the girl when she’s just unTalented, rather than waiting for her to restore her Talent and risking the chance she sides with an enemy and you need to take her down at the peak of her power,” Avi rolled her eyes.
“I’m glad you understand the situation,” Maya said ironically. She glanced at her watch. “I’ve been here too long already.”
“What?”
“I have to leave before anyone realizes I’m here – I wasn’t exactly supposed to eavesdrop and pass on sensitive information to potential enemies.” Maya crooked a smile at Avi, and for a moment she looked like the bright, inquisitive girl Avi’d had a crush on five years ago. “I came because I felt it was your right to know, Avi, but this could be dangerous business. Don’t get yourself killed. Don’t make me regret coming here today.” With those parting words, she shimmered in place and disappeared.
Avi was left to stare blankly at the spot where Maya had stood just moments ago. This … this whole situation called for some serious consideration before she made any decisions regretted. First, though …
Avi took out her cell phone and dialed a now-familiar number. “Hey, Aly? I was wondering … you wouldn’t happen to know Jason’s address, would you?
---
Avi hesitated in front of the door for a very long time, trying to decide what exactly her opening line should be. Should she launch the offensive, make accusation after accusation before finally revealing her true intention for coming and demand his aid as reparation? Should she state her purpose up-front and conduct negotiations carefully with both sides’ hands revealed? Should she let him explain himself, defending his actions until he’d dug himself into a hole, then offer him a way to redeem himself as a way out? Finally, she just gave up and knocked. She’d see what he said first, and take it from there.
It took a few knocks before Jason actually answered the door. He looked very attractive, with his bed-rumpled hair and dressed only in boxers. Even his abs couldn’t distract Avi from the very serious matter at hand, however. “Jason,” she said curtly.
“Avi,” Jason said, surprised. “Er…. How did you find me?” He looked very confused, probably having just woken up from her knock.
“It’s complicated,” Avi scowled. “We need to talk.” Without waiting for him to respond, she pushed her way in much like Maya had earlier in the day, and tried to mimic Maya’s loose stance as she leaned against the wall. She quickly learned that she had not the same ability to look distantly aloof when she accidentally slipped, so instead she situated herself on the couch in the living room.
Jason watched her actions with a rather bemused expression, still not quite sure what she was doing here, but probably not wanting to risk her anger by actually asking. Finally, he settled on “Well, I was going to go talk to you tomorrow anyway because I thought you might have calmed down a bit by then. That would have been more of a formal visit on behalf of my Family, though.” He hesitated. “Did … what did you want to talk about?”
Avi snorted. It was obvious from his tone he hoped she’d come in forgiveness. As if it’d be that easy. “It’s about your Family that I want to talk to you,” she said coolly and business-like.
“Alright,” Jason said readily, his body language open and his palms turned upward. “What exactly did you want to talk about?”
Avi was up-front. “I believe your Matriarch has something in her possession that in fact belongs to me.” She watched his face to see how he reacted.
He looked genuinely confused. “Grandmother? What on Earth do you think she has that belongs to you?”
“I have a source that informs me your Matriarch apparently knows where my Talent is hidden.”
Here, Jason paused just a half-second too long before answering. “I’m sure-”
But Avi had seen his hesitation and knew it for what it was. For a moment, she didn’t know whether to be more disappointed that it turned out he wasn’t such a nice guy after all, or more disappointed that his poker face was so abysmal. “You!” Avi hissed, leaning forward, fists clenched to prevent from throttling him as she’d like to do. “You know about it, too! In fact, I’ll bet you knew all along.”
“Listen to-” Jason began, hands up in an attempt to placate her, but Avi wouldn’t let him finish.
“So not only did you try to … to seduce me to get close to me and use me, you apparently knew where my Talent was hidden from the first moment you met me and never thought to let me know during any part of our acquaintance!” Avi was furious. She’d genuinely liked him, and it seemed she kept on finding dirty secret after dirty secret, each one just another nail on his coffin.
“I don’t know where it’s hidden. I just know that Grandmother believes it is hidden rather than nonexistent, and that she knows somebody who knows somebody who might know where it is.”
“So you’ve known this all along, and known about my secret, and then when your background came out, you still never thought it was important to tell me-”
“Oh you mean I really should have told you the moment you found out I wasn’t mundane? Would you have believed me? Would you have stopped to listen? In any case, it shouldn’t even matter where your Talent is hidden if you really believe all that Dud Pride stuff,” Jason insisted.
“How- where did you find out about that?” Avi demanded. Dud Pride was one of the movements she’d started at university, though it hadn’t been very far-reaching or very successful by dint of its small target population.
“I looked you up when I was first assigned to observe you,” Jason said matter-of-factly, and that very matter-of-factness made it less of a creepy stalker move and more of a practical background check. “I recognized a few of your essays, actually – I’ve skimmed across those letters to the editor on the Talent” (the unimaginatively-named primary English-language publication for the Talented community in the United States) “and I still remember the furor that your Dud Pride movement stirred up. I read your arguments that unTalent isn’t something to be ashamed of, it’s not a disease to cure, it’s just a skill you happen to lack – your exact words were ‘It’s like being tone-deaf. If people don’t go around trying to cure people of tone-deafness, they shouldn’t be trying to cure me. I’m not sick. I’m fine the way I am.’ Those were your words, right?”
“Your point?” Avi said evenly. She was trying very hard not to punch Jason, because she was certain he was going to throw her words in her face.
“If you believe those words, then what does it matter if your Talent happens to be lying around somewhere?”
“Your argument is not only flawed, it is presumptuous,” Avi bit out. “Regardless of whether or not I choose to search for the Talent, or any further steps I may or may not take to ‘cure’ myself of my unTalent, so to speak, the decision is mine to make. More precisely, your decision to withhold information that is rightly mine infuriates me far more than your Grandmother’s possession of knowledge that may or may not lead to my Talent.” Avi looked him in the eye. “All rhetoric aside, I deserve to know.”
Jason looked a bit sad. “I don’t deny that you deserve to know. But you have to realize that if you find this, Avi, you will have the most powerful Talent anyone has ever known. You will be unstoppable. Your life will irrevocably change. Your Family will gain more prominence, everyone will be after you – they’ll either want you on their side, or they’ll want to eliminate you. Nothing will be the same.”
“Once again, that sounds like my judgment to make, not yours.” Avi was sick of others trying to order her life – her parents, and Maya, and Zhang Matriarch, now Jason – they all seemed to think they knew better than her.
“You’re right,” Jason admitted. “So. What did you want from me besides that admission?”
“I want an audience with your Matriarch.”
“Sure. I’ll just let her know, and I’ll get back to you about-”
“You mistake me. I want you to take me to her now.”
Jason arched an eyebrow. “Even I don’t get access to her whenever I want, and I’m one of her precious Heirs.”
“Yes, but if I gather correctly, she has three Heirs, and there’s only one potentially-powerful weapon that she’s been trying to keep an eye on for three months. Take me to her. I can guarantee that she’ll be open to an audience.” Avi would bet on it. She didn’t grow up surrounded by Family politics not to recognize the best kind of leverage one needed to persuade a Patriarch or Matriarch.
“Whatever you say.” Jason stood up and swept a mocking bow. “Our carriage awaits.”
---
Of course, there was no carriage.
When all was said and done, the entire trip took an hour in total. First Jason had to put on appropriate clothes, and then they had to take the taxi through Beijing’s traffic to practically the outskirts of Beijing, near the Sixth Ring (六环), where they walked for another ten minutes through wilderness (at least, wilderness as compared to the rest of Beijing) and came to a tree, a rather scrawny-looking one. After rather melodramatically checking to see that nobody else was around, Jason waved his hand over it a few times in a special configuration that really just made him look ridiculous. The tree rather dramatically turned into a door in the middle of nowhere. Avi was a little impressed by the theatrics, even if they were a bit unnecessary.
When they stepped through the door, they ended up in front of a Siheyuan in every way as impressive as Zhang Family House had been. If Avi’d had a background in ancient Chinese architecture, she might be able to pinpoint the differences between the two buildings, and could probably have ventured a reasonable guess as to the underlying differences between the two Family’s histories, hierarchical structure, and importance. As it was, they both looked the same.
“That’s an awful lot of hoops to jump through to see your Family,” Avi commented dryly as she tried to count the number of designs that seemed to move when she wasn’t looking at them.
“Well, if you weren’t here I would normally just transport myself here, but well…” He looked sheepishly at Avi.
Being unTalented meant certain spells and minor Talented work didn’t affect her. You could do more to hurt another Talented than you could a mundane person, in part because mundane people see what they want to see, and that aura of un-belief served as a natural protection against minor Talented work. Avi didn’t have quite the power of an aura of un-belief, but she did have that nullification of unTalent – not enough to protect her if she were ever really in danger, but enough to be inconvenient. As a result, she could never be transported by Talent without the use of a very strong spell that was as likely to rip her apart as take her from one place to another. This was no doubt why Zhang Family had transported her by magical creatures – non-humans weren’t affected by unTalent in the least.
“Of course,” Avi said. “Well, let me in.”
Jason walked past the stone lions with no issue but when Avi tried the same, they turned to attack. Only when he hastily grabbed her hand, indicating she was his guest, did they subside. He knocked on the door, and said, “Sorry, I didn’t realize that was going to happen.”
Before Avi could reply, the door opened to reveal one of the most beautiful men Avi had ever seen. As such, she didn’t even need to see his tell-tale earrings before she turned to hiss at Jason, “You have an Immortal (神仙) working for you guys?”
“He owed one of my ancestors a debt,” Jason hissed back as they followed him inside, “and offered up 100 years of servitude.”
“That gift’s a double-edged blade,” Avi muttered. It must be awkward having a servant you needed to be so exceedingly polite to, lest they be unsatisfied with their servitude and upon release from it, choose to destroy your entire Family. There’d been stories of just such occurrences in the past, actually.
“I understand English, you know,” the Immortal said coolly.
Avi flushed. “Sorry,” she squeaked. She wondered if this counted as rudeness to an Immortal, and whether he was the kind to hold petty grudges for long periods of time.
“She will see you now,” the Immortal said, leading them to the right set of doors. “And,” he added, nodding to Avi, “that was rather the idea.”
It took Avi a moment to realize he was referring to her commentary, and wondered at the kind of person who pledge his servitude for 100 years to make such a point. But of course, he wasn’t a person, per se.
But then there was no time to think on in this manner because she and Jason were being hustled inside and she had more pressing matters to worry about.
Please see Chapter 1 for the Summary, Author's Notes, additional details, etc.
She must have gasped out loud or something, because both the floating head and Jason turned to look at her.
The floating head shimmered and disappeared just as Jason said, “I can explain, Avi.”
“No need,” Avi bit out, and turned to leave.
But Jason was fast, faster than she’d realized. He had her arm in his grasp, holding her from storming off like she wanted. “Wait. Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” Avi said bitterly, “Wait, let me do the explaining. You were talking to a floating head – so you’re Talented, which you’ve been hiding it from me. Which would be plenty understandable if you thought I were mundane. But if I were mundane, I’d see what I wanted to see, which means I wouldn’t have noticed the floating head. Your reaction would have been totally different. Since you knew I saw it, that means you know about me. You know who I am. And you were hiding who you were despite that. Have I missed anything?”
“I didn’t mean to hide from you-” Jason said desperately.
“Bullshit. I recognized who that floating head was. I’m not stupid. That was Matriarch of the Liang Family. If you’re in conversation with her? That means you not only knew who I was, you were told to get closer to me. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not wrong, but you’re not right either,” Jason said hastily as Avi tried to wrench away. “Yes, I knew who you were, but I didn’t lie to get close to you. My orders were just to observe. I got close to you because you interested me. I wanted to know more about you.”
“That would be more believable if you hadn’t just admitted to being a Liang Family spy!” It was getting harder to have this conversation when her throat was choked with emotion, and tears were pricking at her eyes, though whether they were tears of anger or sadness she couldn’t yet tell.
“Not a spy! An … emissary is all. It doesn’t mean anything! I was just checking our Family interests, not spying!”
Avi yanked her arm out of his grasp and backed away. “So let me get this straight,” she said evenly, “you’re Heir to the Liang Family, is that what you’re telling me? How is that possible? You said you grew up in Seattle!”
“I did! It’s just … Grandmother’s upset with Uncle so she un-designated him as Heir, which means all her grandchildren are Heirs. It’s why I was called back. I was supposed to observe you, as a test to prove myself. But I thought you were cool and that’s why I started hanging out with you. Honest!” Jason didn’t try to grab her again, but he did try to look earnestly in her eyes and use his obvious distress to get her to trust him.
It didn’t work. “I can’t deal with this right now,” Avi bit out.
“Avi-”
“I have to go.”
And then she turned and fled.
---
The knock on the door woke her.
She was groggy and a little hungover, having depleted her apartment’s small stash of alcohol upon arriving home. This wasn’t exactly something she could call Aly and complain about, nor was it something she would consider calling home about. Therefore, that’d left the only other option – drink.
She would have ignored the knock and waited for whoever it was to go away, but the knock came again thirty seconds later, and again thirty seconds after that. After the fifth set of rat-tat-tat, Avi left her warm, comfortable bed, marched to the door, and flung it open.
It was a little too early to think beyond Shut up! Some of us are trying to sleep! so she was more than a little surprised to see Maya at the door.
“I still have way more than 24 hours to send Zhang Matriarch my decision,” Avi said crossly, “and I’ve been in touch with my parents within the last 24 hours so you can’t be here on their behalf. So what exactly do you want?”
Maya didn’t answer, instead pushing her way inside. “We need to talk,” was all she would say as she shut the door behind her.
Rather annoyed with this home invasion, Avi didn’t even bother fetching the folding chairs she usually put out for guests. Instead, she stood by the doorway, arms crossed. “About what? About how you betrayed me to the Matriarch even though my parents specifically asked you to keep me out of it? About how you think I should trust you after everything?” Avi demanded. “Or about the way you pretended our thing was one-sided back in high school?” Damn, that had come out cattier than she had intended – she hadn’t meant for it to sound like she still cared.
Maya didn’t even blink, and ignored the last question. “Don’t whine to me about doing what I specifically told you I would do the night before. I’d warned you, you made your decisions regardless. If I hadn’t reported your presence and some other retainer had come across you? You’d be lucky to be alive. Anyway, it’s not as if your situation wasn’t already precarious,” Maya snorted. “Rumor has it Liang Family had a spy on you the whole time and you didn’t even notice.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Avi looked away, flushed with shame. Apparently, she was once again a source of malicious gossip.
“Well, too bad, because I overheard the Matriarchs talking about it and apparently there’s more to the story than that.” Maya’s expression was grim and concerned, and this more than anything convinced Avi that something was up. Maya was normally the epitome of impassiveness. That she was showing any emotion meant that something was wrong.
“What do you mean more?” Avi asked, suspicious. “They sent someone to get close to me and find out secrets. The guy I’ve been shamelessly flirting with for over a month now was a plant. What could be worse?” Perhaps that was a slightly exaggeration, but she felt it more eloquently communicated her outrage. She moved to brew herself some coffee. She might need some serious caffeine to get through this.
“Liang Family isn’t just keeping tabs on you as an emissary. They think you have Talent.”
“That’s not new,” Avi snorted. “They can join the club.” How many healers had her parents sent her to, hoping that one of them would be able to figure out where her Talent was, and why it hadn’t manifested yet? How many tests had they run, trying to foresee when the natural field of unTalent that everyone was born with might dissolve into true Talent worthy of the Lau Family name.
“No, they accept that you think you have no Talent, but they … well, it’s a long story, but apparently your Family has history …” Maya waved her hands vaguely in a failed attempt to help her communicate.
“What are you getting at? Stop beating around the bush.” Avi poured herself some coffee.
“When your parents broke away and emigrated to the U.S., they made a lot of enemies,” Maya said slowly.
“I know. So?” This wasn’t exactly news – you didn’t leave behind friends and family to set up your own corner of the – well, the closest mundane equivalent was like a crime family syndicate – without making a few enemies, as they said.
“Apparently, legend has it that the Patriarch of one of the local Families—nobody’s sure who—set Words on your Family.” Maya looked serious, so this wasn’t a joke – but that’s what it sounded like. Ancient enemies? Setting Words? This was more like something out of one of those stories her parents used to tell her at night.
“What, you mean somebody cursed them?” It always helped to clarify and “setting Words” could technically include any number of non-malicious activities.
“Specifically, they cursed your parents with a Dud.”
“What?” Avi dropped her coffee mug, and cursed as coffee splashed everywhere.
“I don’t have the full details, but there was apparently something along the lines of ‘And one of your offspring shall be born with Talent surpassing all that in known records but you shall reap none of that reward for their Talent shall be stolen from them while they are young and that power shall then be imprisoned out of your grasp.’”
Avi worked on autopilot for a couple of minutes, cleaning up the coffee spill and trying to digest this new information without visibly freaking out. Maya waited patiently, recognizing her need to think. Finally, Avi threw away her paper towels, washed her hands, and turned to look at Maya. “Imprisoned where?” she asked calmly, as if she hadn’t just experience a paradigm shift.
“I didn’t catch that. I was eavesdropping. And I’m not even sure Zhang Matriarch knows – all of her information relies on rumors and gossip, and that’s the kind of things people might speculate on but wouldn’t actually know for sure.”
“And your Matriarch thinks that the offspring in question is me?”
“It would make sense.”
“How come this has never come up in any of the million conversations with my parents about my Talent?” Avi bit out. “They never thought it relevant to mention there might be a curse on me?”
“It’s possible they didn’t know,” Maya shrugged. “Rumors travel faster if you’re on the same continent or keep in touch. Maybe they figured it didn’t take and your issue was an unrelated one. Maybe they didn’t want to psych you out in case you were just a late bloomer. If you want to know the answer, you’ll have to ask them.”
Avi ignored this subtle reproof – if Maya was meant to warn Avi about the Feuds in the area, she was probably still in touch with her parents enough to realize that Avi hadn’t been very comprehensive in her last check-in with her parents, failing to mention any of the important events that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Instead, she took the conversation in a different direction. “So that’s what she meant when she kept on insinuating I’d come to unlock my Talent.”
“Yes. She’s still convinced that’s why you came in the first place – why else would you go the city your parents left behind so abruptly?”
“And of course, the concept of a gap year is incomprehensible,” Avi scowled. “And what does this have to do with Jason?”
“By Jason, you mean the Liang Family Heir?”
“One of them, yes.”
“Well, from what I overheard, the Liang Family should know about the entire issue; that’s why they were keeping tabs on you, to track you and see if you found your Talent. Zhang Matriarch was fishing to see if the rumors are true, but Liang Family must have a more specific source of information. Who knows, it might even be them that cursed your parents.”
“So what, if I talk to Liang Family, I might be able to find out where my Talent is locked away? If I find it again, is it even something I could regain? Would I have Talent? I mean, have talent again?” she corrected herself. Avi felt shaken. Her whole life she’d had to deal with being a Dud, with having gifted siblings who brought honor to their Family while struggling to prove herself despite her mundane nature. And to think, the thing that seemed to define her life could be so easily fixed.
“No, don’t go to the Liang Family. They’re hiding things. They’re not to be trusted,” Maya said hastily. “I’m telling you about what they’re hiding so you can be prepared, Avi. They’re going to try to manipulate you with this. You can’t fall for it.”
Avi was only half-listening. “I can’t believe that Jason- that they were sitting on this kind of information. I can’t believe my parents never told me. What the hell? Is the whole world conspiring against me?”
“I’m not telling you this to get your hopes up, Avi,” Maya cautioned. “This whole thing is still just a rumor, remember. But it’s one all the Families half-believe in. You need to be careful, because some of them are going to start acting soon, especially since it’s common knowledge that Liang Family has started moving already.”
“Just great.”
“Zhang Matriarch may have decided to give you some time to think about it, but some of the other Families may choose to act quickly, hoping to eliminate a potential threat while they still can. You need to be careful!”
“Potential threat? Me? So I might get my Talent back. So what?”
“It’s not just Talent, Avi. Didn’t you hear me? You’d have Talent that surpasses all known record. You’d be an unbeatable weapon.”
“And of course, it’s easier to kill the girl when she’s just unTalented, rather than waiting for her to restore her Talent and risking the chance she sides with an enemy and you need to take her down at the peak of her power,” Avi rolled her eyes.
“I’m glad you understand the situation,” Maya said ironically. She glanced at her watch. “I’ve been here too long already.”
“What?”
“I have to leave before anyone realizes I’m here – I wasn’t exactly supposed to eavesdrop and pass on sensitive information to potential enemies.” Maya crooked a smile at Avi, and for a moment she looked like the bright, inquisitive girl Avi’d had a crush on five years ago. “I came because I felt it was your right to know, Avi, but this could be dangerous business. Don’t get yourself killed. Don’t make me regret coming here today.” With those parting words, she shimmered in place and disappeared.
Avi was left to stare blankly at the spot where Maya had stood just moments ago. This … this whole situation called for some serious consideration before she made any decisions regretted. First, though …
Avi took out her cell phone and dialed a now-familiar number. “Hey, Aly? I was wondering … you wouldn’t happen to know Jason’s address, would you?
---
Avi hesitated in front of the door for a very long time, trying to decide what exactly her opening line should be. Should she launch the offensive, make accusation after accusation before finally revealing her true intention for coming and demand his aid as reparation? Should she state her purpose up-front and conduct negotiations carefully with both sides’ hands revealed? Should she let him explain himself, defending his actions until he’d dug himself into a hole, then offer him a way to redeem himself as a way out? Finally, she just gave up and knocked. She’d see what he said first, and take it from there.
It took a few knocks before Jason actually answered the door. He looked very attractive, with his bed-rumpled hair and dressed only in boxers. Even his abs couldn’t distract Avi from the very serious matter at hand, however. “Jason,” she said curtly.
“Avi,” Jason said, surprised. “Er…. How did you find me?” He looked very confused, probably having just woken up from her knock.
“It’s complicated,” Avi scowled. “We need to talk.” Without waiting for him to respond, she pushed her way in much like Maya had earlier in the day, and tried to mimic Maya’s loose stance as she leaned against the wall. She quickly learned that she had not the same ability to look distantly aloof when she accidentally slipped, so instead she situated herself on the couch in the living room.
Jason watched her actions with a rather bemused expression, still not quite sure what she was doing here, but probably not wanting to risk her anger by actually asking. Finally, he settled on “Well, I was going to go talk to you tomorrow anyway because I thought you might have calmed down a bit by then. That would have been more of a formal visit on behalf of my Family, though.” He hesitated. “Did … what did you want to talk about?”
Avi snorted. It was obvious from his tone he hoped she’d come in forgiveness. As if it’d be that easy. “It’s about your Family that I want to talk to you,” she said coolly and business-like.
“Alright,” Jason said readily, his body language open and his palms turned upward. “What exactly did you want to talk about?”
Avi was up-front. “I believe your Matriarch has something in her possession that in fact belongs to me.” She watched his face to see how he reacted.
He looked genuinely confused. “Grandmother? What on Earth do you think she has that belongs to you?”
“I have a source that informs me your Matriarch apparently knows where my Talent is hidden.”
Here, Jason paused just a half-second too long before answering. “I’m sure-”
But Avi had seen his hesitation and knew it for what it was. For a moment, she didn’t know whether to be more disappointed that it turned out he wasn’t such a nice guy after all, or more disappointed that his poker face was so abysmal. “You!” Avi hissed, leaning forward, fists clenched to prevent from throttling him as she’d like to do. “You know about it, too! In fact, I’ll bet you knew all along.”
“Listen to-” Jason began, hands up in an attempt to placate her, but Avi wouldn’t let him finish.
“So not only did you try to … to seduce me to get close to me and use me, you apparently knew where my Talent was hidden from the first moment you met me and never thought to let me know during any part of our acquaintance!” Avi was furious. She’d genuinely liked him, and it seemed she kept on finding dirty secret after dirty secret, each one just another nail on his coffin.
“I don’t know where it’s hidden. I just know that Grandmother believes it is hidden rather than nonexistent, and that she knows somebody who knows somebody who might know where it is.”
“So you’ve known this all along, and known about my secret, and then when your background came out, you still never thought it was important to tell me-”
“Oh you mean I really should have told you the moment you found out I wasn’t mundane? Would you have believed me? Would you have stopped to listen? In any case, it shouldn’t even matter where your Talent is hidden if you really believe all that Dud Pride stuff,” Jason insisted.
“How- where did you find out about that?” Avi demanded. Dud Pride was one of the movements she’d started at university, though it hadn’t been very far-reaching or very successful by dint of its small target population.
“I looked you up when I was first assigned to observe you,” Jason said matter-of-factly, and that very matter-of-factness made it less of a creepy stalker move and more of a practical background check. “I recognized a few of your essays, actually – I’ve skimmed across those letters to the editor on the Talent” (the unimaginatively-named primary English-language publication for the Talented community in the United States) “and I still remember the furor that your Dud Pride movement stirred up. I read your arguments that unTalent isn’t something to be ashamed of, it’s not a disease to cure, it’s just a skill you happen to lack – your exact words were ‘It’s like being tone-deaf. If people don’t go around trying to cure people of tone-deafness, they shouldn’t be trying to cure me. I’m not sick. I’m fine the way I am.’ Those were your words, right?”
“Your point?” Avi said evenly. She was trying very hard not to punch Jason, because she was certain he was going to throw her words in her face.
“If you believe those words, then what does it matter if your Talent happens to be lying around somewhere?”
“Your argument is not only flawed, it is presumptuous,” Avi bit out. “Regardless of whether or not I choose to search for the Talent, or any further steps I may or may not take to ‘cure’ myself of my unTalent, so to speak, the decision is mine to make. More precisely, your decision to withhold information that is rightly mine infuriates me far more than your Grandmother’s possession of knowledge that may or may not lead to my Talent.” Avi looked him in the eye. “All rhetoric aside, I deserve to know.”
Jason looked a bit sad. “I don’t deny that you deserve to know. But you have to realize that if you find this, Avi, you will have the most powerful Talent anyone has ever known. You will be unstoppable. Your life will irrevocably change. Your Family will gain more prominence, everyone will be after you – they’ll either want you on their side, or they’ll want to eliminate you. Nothing will be the same.”
“Once again, that sounds like my judgment to make, not yours.” Avi was sick of others trying to order her life – her parents, and Maya, and Zhang Matriarch, now Jason – they all seemed to think they knew better than her.
“You’re right,” Jason admitted. “So. What did you want from me besides that admission?”
“I want an audience with your Matriarch.”
“Sure. I’ll just let her know, and I’ll get back to you about-”
“You mistake me. I want you to take me to her now.”
Jason arched an eyebrow. “Even I don’t get access to her whenever I want, and I’m one of her precious Heirs.”
“Yes, but if I gather correctly, she has three Heirs, and there’s only one potentially-powerful weapon that she’s been trying to keep an eye on for three months. Take me to her. I can guarantee that she’ll be open to an audience.” Avi would bet on it. She didn’t grow up surrounded by Family politics not to recognize the best kind of leverage one needed to persuade a Patriarch or Matriarch.
“Whatever you say.” Jason stood up and swept a mocking bow. “Our carriage awaits.”
---
Of course, there was no carriage.
When all was said and done, the entire trip took an hour in total. First Jason had to put on appropriate clothes, and then they had to take the taxi through Beijing’s traffic to practically the outskirts of Beijing, near the Sixth Ring (六环), where they walked for another ten minutes through wilderness (at least, wilderness as compared to the rest of Beijing) and came to a tree, a rather scrawny-looking one. After rather melodramatically checking to see that nobody else was around, Jason waved his hand over it a few times in a special configuration that really just made him look ridiculous. The tree rather dramatically turned into a door in the middle of nowhere. Avi was a little impressed by the theatrics, even if they were a bit unnecessary.
When they stepped through the door, they ended up in front of a Siheyuan in every way as impressive as Zhang Family House had been. If Avi’d had a background in ancient Chinese architecture, she might be able to pinpoint the differences between the two buildings, and could probably have ventured a reasonable guess as to the underlying differences between the two Family’s histories, hierarchical structure, and importance. As it was, they both looked the same.
“That’s an awful lot of hoops to jump through to see your Family,” Avi commented dryly as she tried to count the number of designs that seemed to move when she wasn’t looking at them.
“Well, if you weren’t here I would normally just transport myself here, but well…” He looked sheepishly at Avi.
Being unTalented meant certain spells and minor Talented work didn’t affect her. You could do more to hurt another Talented than you could a mundane person, in part because mundane people see what they want to see, and that aura of un-belief served as a natural protection against minor Talented work. Avi didn’t have quite the power of an aura of un-belief, but she did have that nullification of unTalent – not enough to protect her if she were ever really in danger, but enough to be inconvenient. As a result, she could never be transported by Talent without the use of a very strong spell that was as likely to rip her apart as take her from one place to another. This was no doubt why Zhang Family had transported her by magical creatures – non-humans weren’t affected by unTalent in the least.
“Of course,” Avi said. “Well, let me in.”
Jason walked past the stone lions with no issue but when Avi tried the same, they turned to attack. Only when he hastily grabbed her hand, indicating she was his guest, did they subside. He knocked on the door, and said, “Sorry, I didn’t realize that was going to happen.”
Before Avi could reply, the door opened to reveal one of the most beautiful men Avi had ever seen. As such, she didn’t even need to see his tell-tale earrings before she turned to hiss at Jason, “You have an Immortal (神仙) working for you guys?”
“He owed one of my ancestors a debt,” Jason hissed back as they followed him inside, “and offered up 100 years of servitude.”
“That gift’s a double-edged blade,” Avi muttered. It must be awkward having a servant you needed to be so exceedingly polite to, lest they be unsatisfied with their servitude and upon release from it, choose to destroy your entire Family. There’d been stories of just such occurrences in the past, actually.
“I understand English, you know,” the Immortal said coolly.
Avi flushed. “Sorry,” she squeaked. She wondered if this counted as rudeness to an Immortal, and whether he was the kind to hold petty grudges for long periods of time.
“She will see you now,” the Immortal said, leading them to the right set of doors. “And,” he added, nodding to Avi, “that was rather the idea.”
It took Avi a moment to realize he was referring to her commentary, and wondered at the kind of person who pledge his servitude for 100 years to make such a point. But of course, he wasn’t a person, per se.
But then there was no time to think on in this manner because she and Jason were being hustled inside and she had more pressing matters to worry about.
