Xu Hao had decided to be sensible about the copies.
This lasted until breakfast.
Er Bao found him sitting on a flat stone with his eyes closed, one hand resting on Sia's thick neck. The husky watched the giant approach but didn't move.
"I thought we agreed you would rest before experimenting again," Er Bao said.
"We agreed I wouldn't exhaust myself."
"That's a different thing."
"A very important difference. I'm only looking."
Er Bao sat beside him. He didn't insist that Xu Hao stop. Instead, he examined his youngest brother for signs of fatigue and waited until Xu Hao opened his eyes.
"What did you find?"
"Two available copies. No instructions, naturally. I seem to own the world's least helpful manual."
Er Bao considered that. "Could be worse. Da Bao once spent three days trying to follow a map he was holding upside down."
"I heard that!" Da Bao called from the fire.
"You were meant to," Er Bao said.
Xu Hao smiled, then looked towards Sia. She had stretched herself across the warm stone and was watching a beetle with great concentration.
"I think I can make them," he said. "But I'm afraid of what happens if it costs as much as the first card."
Er Bao was quiet for a moment. "Then we should find out only when you are strong enough to endure a mistake."
"That's the trouble. I don't know what strong enough looks like."
"Neither do I. We can still choose to be cautious."
They waited another day.
* * *
The next evening, Xu Hao ate a full meal, drank water and sat down where both brothers could see him. Da Bao had been told to remain quiet unless something went wrong.
He lasted perhaps a minute.
"Do you feel anything?"
"No."
"Now?"
"No."
"Perhaps if you—"
"Brother Da Bao," Xu Hao said without opening his eyes, "could you go and practise being silent behind that rock?"
Da Bao looked hurt. Er Bao pointed towards the rock.
The giant went, grumbling.
Xu Hao entered the dark hall. He concentrated on Sia's card, not on creating a new creature. This time the pale shapes appeared behind the original, two thin outlines awaiting his decision. He chose one.
There was a brief pull beneath his ribs. It made him wince, but the pain didn't spread. The first outline brightened, moved free, and disappeared.
When Xu Hao opened his eyes, a card rested in his palm.
He was breathing normally. His arms felt a little tired, but he could still move them.
Er Bao let out the breath he'd been holding.
"One?"
"One."
Xu Hao turned it over.
Name: Empty.
Card Type: Beast — Wind Husky.
Rank: Dust Realm, First Layer.
Rarity: Unique (Copy).
Below were smaller numbers than Sia's and a Wind affinity of fifteen percent instead of twenty. Yet both abilities remained: Wind Step and Guardian's Instinct.
The final lines interested him most. The copy would improve whenever the original improved but remain one step below it. It was also marked as submissive to the original.
"I'm not sure I like that last word," Xu Hao said.
Er Bao leaned closer. "Maybe it means the copied beast will obey Sia."
"That's a possibility. It doesn't tell us how the arrangement works."
"Do not assume you know until you test it."
Xu Hao looked up and smiled. "You do listen when I talk."
Er Bao handed the card back. "More often than my brother does."
They summoned Da Bao from behind the rock to inspect the result. He burst into praise, then wanted to know when the new beast would appear and whether it might be stronger than Sia.
"We don't know," Xu Hao said.
"Could it pull a hunting cart?"
"We don't know."
"Could it chase down one of those mountain deer?"
"We don't—" Xu Hao stopped. "Brother, are you planning to ask every question you can think of?"
"Only the useful ones."
Er Bao looked at the club resting beside Da Bao's feet. "We could start by asking whether it can tolerate you."
* * *
Xu Hao made the second copy only after he was certain the first hadn't left him ill.
There was another small tug and another wash of pale light. When he opened his hand, two cards lay side by side. Their pictures showed Sia's familiar face, but the writing on their backs described weaker beasts. Both had the same abilities. Both had blank spaces for names. The line beneath the original card now read: Copies available: 0.
He inspected his breathing and pulse, then closed his eyes long enough to check the deck. The brush still floated where he expected it. He hadn't consumed another blank card merely by copying Sia, but he couldn't call the copies free. Making both had left him tired enough to want to sit down.
He wasn't going to do it again anyway. The card had made that decision for him.
Da Bao reached for one. Xu Hao moved it away.
"Careful. We haven't established whether touching it gives you control."
Da Bao withdrew his hand. "I was only looking."
"Then look from there."
For an hour they talked about the risks. Er Bao asked whether Xu Hao could reverse the process. He didn't know. Da Bao asked whether copied beasts could die. Xu Hao didn't know that either. Could someone steal a copy? Could it be passed to a different holder? Would Sia become weaker if two others used her abilities?
They wrote every question down on Xu Hao's bark sheet.
Somewhere in the middle of the discussion, Da Bao grew unusually quiet.
Xu Hao noticed.
"What is it?"
"Those cards," Da Bao said. "People would pay a fortune for them."
"That seems likely."
"And if somebody knew you could make them..."
Xu Hao remembered the stories about Card Drawers living in royal palaces, surrounded by servants and unable to walk out through the gates.
"I know," he said.
Er Bao looked from the two cards to his brother. "Nobody outside this camp can hear about them. Not until we understand what you're capable of and who might be searching."
Xu Hao agreed. His first successful creation had already taught him the price of treating the unknown as harmless.
* * *
That night, he laid the two copies on a clean cloth beside Sia's sleeping form.
Da Bao had given him a sheltered place beside the fire when he first arrived. Er Bao had fed him after the day in the forest, tended his injuries and spent hours teaching him words that sounded impossible until they began to make sense. Both had chosen to protect him when they could have walked away.
Xu Hao knew exactly how awkward it was to owe a debt you could never repay. He'd felt that way often since waking beneath the trees.
He remembered the first night he'd sat tied to a tree and listened to them discuss him as if he were a strange animal they'd caught. He hadn't forgotten it. He doubted he ever would. Da Bao had struck him hard enough to leave him unconscious, and Er Bao had admitted that selling him in town had been among their first ideas.
There were reasons for their suspicion. Their family had been hunted. A boy in unfamiliar clothes had walked out of the forest speaking an unknown language. Reasons didn't make what they had done right.
Yet the men had changed their minds. When Xu Hao confronted them, Er Bao had admitted the wrong without asking him to pretend it was nothing. They'd let him decide whether to stay. Since then, the brothers had treated him with a care that appeared even in the smallest habits: Er Bao checking his blisters, Da Bao leaving the softer part of a blanket beside the fire, both waiting whenever he couldn't keep pace on a hill.
None of it erased the past. It did mean Xu Hao no longer judged them only by the worst thing they'd done to him.
His father had once said that trusting someone wasn't the same as assuming they could never disappoint you. It meant knowing what they were capable of, good and bad, and deciding what you could reasonably place in their hands.
Two powerful cards were quite a lot to place in anyone's hands.
He studied Sia as she slept, then glanced at the brothers. If something happened to him in this forest, the two of them would still have to find a way to survive. They had already kept him alive once when there was no profit in it.
He wanted to give them a better chance of doing the same for themselves.
He was also aware that his new ability might be worth more than anything the brothers had ever owned. If he handed over the cards, he wasn't giving them a pleasant souvenir. He was offering something that could make them targets.
Sia opened her eyes when he touched the cloth. He scratched her ears.
"Two little sisters, perhaps," he murmured.
She rolled onto her back, asking for her stomach to be rubbed.
Xu Hao obliged, then looked towards the brothers arguing good-naturedly over supper. He couldn't ask them to accept without telling them what it might cost.
He gathered both cards and went to the fire.
"Brothers," he said, "there's something I want to offer you. But before either of you agrees, I need you to listen carefully."
Da Bao brightened at once. Er Bao set down his cup.
Xu Hao placed the two cards between them, with the pictures facing up.
"These are Sia's copies," he said. "I've made all that I can make for now. I want you to have them."
Da Bao stared at the cards.
For once in his life, he had nothing to say.