Upstairs, Lu Yuxin stared at the closed door with a pinched frown.

  “You could think he has known this Qian Xuegang and Shang Hansheng for decades,” he said.

  Yes, thought Huijin. Yin Yue’s fits had been strange, but he had neither heart nor mind for the boy or his antics. In the end, he seated himself on the edge of his bed, his back turned to the other man, the ends of his hair strewn across the coarse sheets like veins of ink. He folded his hands and bent his head.

  “Speak your mind, Lu Yuxin.”

  Lu Yuxin watched him for a brief while, his bewilderment unquenched. Where he hailed from, it had been the height of insult to turn one’s back in the midst of a conversation. It had been how lords addressed lesser servants. It had been how masters of the bde treated those so unworthy that they did not even fear an ambush.

  He clenched his hands and braced himself. Why this servant chose to goad him and try his patience at every turn was beyond him. Could Yin Zhaoyang have asked him to try the hearts and the patience of those who surrounded the precious younger brother? If he lost his temper over a mere petty insult, how could he be a worthy teacher and guardian for the boy?

  But even then could he not quell his curt tone. “First, the hermit. What is your verdict, Huijin? Yin Yue wishes to see his cottage. Do you deem it wise to head there?”

  The ashen one looked over his shoulder, his astonishment as pin as his disdain. He must have spent all his virtue for the day, for though he well knew better, he could no longer temper his bite.

  “Now you ask me for my verdict?”

  He seemed to have more to say, but his drawn breath ended in a whistle, and he left it at that.

  Lu Yuxin stared back. At st he found his words. “My pardon, is there some misunderstanding, Huijin of Ming?” His voice rose in sheer astonishment. “Whose verdict should I inquire for where Yin Yue is concerned?” He thrust a hand for the door before the other could answer. “What is this?” he demanded. “Ever since we arrived here, Yin Yue has been strange. So be it, he is a young boy! His heart is not yet mastered. But worse yet, the two who watch over him do not seem to make themselves clear!”

  Huijin bared his teeth. Where was the need for my verdict st night, he wondered, when you decided to gallop away on your own? Where was it when I pleaded with you to allow us to return from the meadows and the gruesome sight of the sheep?

  Waste of words and waste of breath, he reminded himself. Too wearied to scold and quarrel. And like a mother might know, through some unfathomable bond, that her child had been hurt or endangered, so did Huijin take to wonder if the boy had feared another quarrel between his servant and his martial master. A quarrel did not warrant such deep dread, but he could not conceive another reason.

  It is dangerous, the boy had blurted. Did he speak not of Qian Xuegang and the spirit beast, but the hidden resentment between his own men?

  Let it die then, and lie fallow. He changed the subject.

  “I think we need to learn more before we send for Ming-cultivators. But I do not wish Yin Yue put in harm’s way. If he must hunt this spirit, let him do so with half of his cn at his back. To the vilgers, it will seem as as if he leads his cultivators.”

  Lu Yuxin came closer to bed and lowered his voice. If the boy listened at the door, he would not hear them.

  “If the cultivators arrive here, I fear Qian Xuegang might flee the vilge,” he murmured, thoughtful. “When we send the spirit, we will have liberated the vilge, but I wonder what Yin Yue will think if this man is not brought to justice.”

  Huijin’s shoulders rose, but he tampered down that old fear. Still, with the swordmaster so close, he no longer dared to keep his back turned and stood up.

  “You know his heart best,” mused Lu Yuxin, unaware. “This is his first brush with a zongzhu’s duties to his people. Would it —?” His brow wrinkled.

  “Would it what?” demanded Huijin.

  ‘Would it break him?’ asked the swordmaster’s frown. Rather he said, “if Yin Yue let a murderer escape justice; if this Qian Xuegang fled, how would he take it? After his brother’s death—,”

  Huijin turned his face away. A vile shadow of a smile brushed the corner of his mouth, then died before it could be born. Lu Yuxin, ah Lu Yuxin, he thought, the boy was a murderer who had escaped justice. Should Yin Yue not understand Qian Xuegang? He is compassionate to a fault. His brother died for this compassion. Ought he not then revel when another murderer escapes his fate —

  He found that his nails had bitten bloodied crescents into his palms and yielded those thoughts with a sharp and impcable sigh.

  Enough, he told himself. That was enough.

  “I will speak to him. Let him decide.”

  “Huijin,” came the sharp answer. “You know him better than he knows himself. He must practice the zongzhu’s duties, yes, but we are his guardians. We need to decide first.”

  At that, Huijin turned, stunned, then threw out his hand, and the quarrel he had sought so hard to restrain awoke like a vengeful ghost.

  “Do not endeavor to make of him a puppet and leave him compcent in that office,” he cried. “Yin Yue’s voice which must be heard first. All you will teach him is ineptitude if you take the bde from him and conspire behind his back like some Imperial eunuch!”

  At st, Lu Yuxin bristled. Many slights could he endure; could turn a blind eye to the gray one’s quaint manners, his inexplicable disdain. Could weather the boy’s disrespect. But he could not endure slights to the vow he had sworn to the boy’s older brother.

  “Do not speak as if I have the habit of conspiring behind a man’s back, that honor belongs to you alone!”

  Huijin’s irises darkened to the shade of coal. A shallow cut was this in truth, for he had endured many such whispered accusations in his years at Yuchi Court, but on this day was his a wounded spirit.

  Before he could answer, the swordmaster thundered, “I possess enough honor to tell you both where matters stand. Yin Yue is not yet experienced enough to lead. Not the cn! Not himself! If I heed his every whim, he will perish before he learns to be a zongzhu! Would you have me listen to him if he decrees that he shall hunt this spirit beast alone?”

  Huijin’s smile was as sharp as a knife and as cold as the moon’s silver. No reason was there to find in this man, this brute, he decided. Best let the quarrel die. He felt himself adrift, lost like pollen in the wind, his tongue too tired to speak for him. But the need to speak up for Yin Yue remained.

  “I never took you to be an insightful man, Lu Yuxin,” he sighed, “but this is low even for you. I told you that Yin Yue must be heard. When did I ever say his orders and whims must be followed blindly?”

  Lu Yuxin did not hear him. He thrust a finger at the remnants of that small, sharp smile, his hand like an arrow shot at the assassin’s dagger.

  “What,” demanded he, “is that?”

  But Huijin did not shrink back in fear. He spoke with the same indifference.

  “Lu Yuxin,” he said, “you offer me sweet seeds with one hand and throw sand in my eyes with the other. First you goad me for my verdict, then you profess yourself to know better. Does it please you to humiliate me? What a waste. There are better pleasures to be had in this realm.” Try a brothel, he thought, and concluded, “I see no need to speak to you any longer.”

  With that, he brushed aside the other’s hand and left their shared chamber.

  A vein throbbed on Lu Yuxin’s forehead. When he at st found his voice, the ashen one had descended the stairs. But though left alone, his eruption of wrath and disdain never came.

  “Wait, Huijin,” he tried, “wait a moment.”

  The plea fell on deaf ears. Below, the door shut with a soft scrape of wood.

  Worn to the bone, the swordmaster sat down and rested his brow upon his knuckles. Hoarse was his whisper as he spoke to the stairs below, “I do not humiliate you. I just can’t make sense of what you say.”

  In the silence, his voice grew thick. “Zhaoyang-ge taught us better than this.”

  More than that, he did not say. A ké passed, then another. He did not speak his st thought aloud; that this was all in vain, that even their quarrels and their blunders in Caodi were insignificant. Their enemies would fall upon Cn Ming soon enough, and the cn would fall. Little Yin Yue would die in agony. Lu Yuxin could not say who these shadowed murderers would be, but he had lived long enough to see what happened to a bloodied and wounded beast surrounded by feral dogs.

  Above the farmstead, the sun arced like the archer’s arrow upon the sky.

  In the end, Lu Yuxin left his seclusion; the tiger descended from his cavernous den. Since he could not find Yin Yue in the empty hall below, he thought at first the child had left with his servant and sought the roads for peace from their loathsome guardian. But as he went to the courtyard in the back, he found the boy on the raised terrace, his head rested against a wooden pilr.

  Before him was small pond upon which stood a lone peach tree with thin branches and tender leaves. Small frogs hid in the reeds; bees drank sweet nectar from the wildflowers. And Yin Yue murmured to himself in a hushed voice, like a man in prayer before the executioner’s block.

  This sight greeted the wearied tiger when he stepped into the light of day. He gave a sigh of relief, for Yin Yue’s habit of hiding from him was well known. Much use did he have, the sword-hand of Yin Yue, when the master hid from from his protector. There had been days when the boy had sought him; had pleaded for his show of martial prowess and delighted in those small indulgences. Now Yin Yue shirked his duties. He lied. He hid himself. And worse yet, the boy must have convinced his gray servant to cover for him, to veil his little schemes and hide him from his shifu.

  He frowned at his own ruminations. Huijin had asked if he enjoyed to humiliate him. An absurd thought, and yet it must have sprouted from some seed. Lu Yuxin knew the sword better than the minds of men, but he also knew that it would not do to argue with the gray one about this. And since the other man’s mind was as impenetrable as a cliff’s sheer wall, Lu Yuxin had to concede defeat.

  For a while, he stayed to watch Yin Yue; watched how the boy rested against the pilr, saw the grief on his smothered shoulders. He followed the rhythm of his breaths to understand what winds howled in his meridians, and did not like what he learned. When he at st approached, his steps were soft.

  Yin Yue did not lift his head. He quieted his murmurs, closed his eyes and held his breath; awaited the inevitable rebuke.

  And when it did not come, he sighed and parted his eyes to stare through the earth and sky.

  Lu Yuxin clenched his jaw. This too was uncouth behavior, shameful for a disciple, unfit for a zongzhu. It betrayed the boy’s weakness, and Yin Yue could no longer could afford the luxury of such vices.

  For our enemies are more numerous the stars. They could be hidden in the hills right now, thought Lu Yuxin to himself. Cutthroats sent from other cns, drunk on bck glory, zealots of a red future.

  He sat down by the boy, rested his sheathed bde upon his own knees, and awaited an audience.

  Yin Yue peered at him then, gaze clouded. But when the awaited rebuke did not follow, he lowered his shoulders and stirred as if roused from a dream.

  “Shifu?”

  Am I? The swordmaster could remember days when he had let the boy ride his shoulders; when Yin Yue had joyously thrown lotus seeds at him and delighted to see them sliced in half by the the Red Tiger’s bde.

  What disicple had the right to command his shifu as if he was a lord’s mere servant?

  “Huijin left for a walk,” Lu Yuxin began. “He is sure to return before nightfall, or we shall look for him.”

  Yin Yue raised his head, then let it fall with the next breath. He seemed shackled to the pilr, as if his every tendon had been severed.

  “Good,” he answered. “That’s good.”

  More corpse than a man, thought the swordmaster. He closed his eyes to dull the ache in his breast.

  Do not make a puppet of him, had the ashen one told him. So be it. If the boy was to be zongzhu, let him be a zongzhu.

  “We had a quarrel,” he admitted. What use to hide it from the zongzhu?

  “I heard.”

  Lu Yuxin bowed his head. The ashen one’s mind was as opaque as onyx stone, as impenetrable as Cn Zhi’s intricate traps. But for all his strange ways, for all his schemes and his yin, Lu Yuxin could not cim that he hated the man. No man who had ever held gege’s regard could be hated.

  “We have never truly seen eye to eye.” He forced the words from his throat.

  The boy offered a shallow nod. He seemed threadbare where he sat, light as air and frayed, his seams almost undone, breaths so worn that he would soon spit blood. Yin Yue wished he would; wished he could cough up his very spirit and unwind his meridians and be no more.

  And yet did his accursed heart endure, and he too had to endure.

  Lu Yuxin could not hear those hidden thoughts. He still breathed with the boy, his breaths shallow and irregur, as if he suffered from a disease.

  “But I have not given him much reason to see eye to eye with me, I expect.”

  Yin Yue shook his head. A small smile dawned on his mouth.

  “You fought about me.”

  Lu Yuxin’s brow tightened. The boy had heard more than he had hoped. Reluctant was the Red Tiger of Ming to admit this truth, but his thinned mouth betrayed him, and so he said, “we did.”

  And Yin Yue did not say more. Lu Yuxin waited, then found he had to smother the desire to wring his own hands, to turn upon the boy and pry his thoughts loose from his quaint head, to shake him and bellow at him to end his vow of silence.

  That sudden whim frightened him. Ever had he mastered his own temper. No brute was he, no brigand’s path had he ever followed. His sword had spoken for him in a tongue cold and sharp and composed.

  He rested a hand on his brow.

  “Have I been too hard on you, Yin Yue?”

  At that, Yin Yue seemed to rouse, faint disbelief on his face. Here sat the Red Tiger of Ming, his shifu, his guardian, uncertain of himself. Doubtful as the rest of them. In his astonishment, it took him a while to even consider the question. But how could Lu Yuxin ever be too hard on him?

  He, who had neither spine nor teeth; a wet leaf, a soft earthworm.

  Tears rose in his eyes. His throat tightened, for as soon as he knew the agony the question had wakened in him, as soon as he felt the hollows of his own heart and the rifts in his spirit, he could no longer numb himself.

  “No, shifu,” he breathed, “some would say you are far too lenient.”

  Lu Yuxin closed his eyes, his countenance serene. And if he did so because he could not stand the sight of the boy’s torment, that secret remained his own. He remembered those lost days of bygone summers; remembered a boy who cried because his stones would not skip across the pond. A boy who had not yet gotten all his teeth, yet shone when he smiled.

  “These ‘some’ are not Huijin, nor are they Yin Yue,” he answered, “and if they are not your gege’s chosen, I do not care what they think. I have done you a disservice, Yin Yue, and for that, I offer my apologies. But,” he drew a deeper breath and tasted the rich scent of peach blossoms and wet earth, “I would have you lend me your hand.”

  Yin Yue had not even heard his proposal before be balked. He trapped himself against the pilr, his breaths short. “I cannot!”

  Lu Yuxin stood up when the boy flew to his feet. Bewilderment, then sharp admonishment rose to his tongue. Then he remembered the ashen one’s rebukes and bit his tongue.

  “I understand,” he said, “if you cannot advise me, I will see to this alone. But I want you to rest, Yin Yue. Our days here have not been kind to us.”

  He was about to bow before his zongzhu when the boy cried, “wait — Lu Yuxin! What shall you do?”

  “I will speak with Huijin.”

  Yin Yue paled. If the man had said he would face the Emperor and battle every warrior and cultivator of the resplendent Cn Yuan, he would have been easier.

  “Don’t! — I mean,” he whispered, “do not burden him.”

  “Then join me, as the zongzhu of Cn Ming.”

  But Yin Yue shook his head, almost frantic. He pleaded, his voice as brittle as the st ice of winter, “I cannot, Lu Yuxin. I cannot. All will break asunder if I do. I — do you understand? I cannot come with you. It will be the end, the end—,”

  Lu Yuxin took one step closer, took the boy in his arms and smothered the boy’s hateful self-reproach against his own broad shoulder.

  Yin Yue strained against him, cwed at his robes, did all he could to escape the balm offered to his cerated spirit. In vain did he fight, for his hands soon clenched in his shifu’s faded, red robes, and his eyes wept with his heart.

  He did not say what had brought out this unspeakable pain, this bck distress. But Lu Yuxin stroked his back all the same.

  “You are your brother’s brother,” he murmured. “If you cannot do it now, you will in time. And we have time, Yin Yue, we have time. As much as you need.”

  But that, the swordmaster knew, was a wretched lie. A coward’s lie.

  Counted were their days, and each morning they could enjoy the sun’s light and the wind’s caresses was a morning stolen from the frigid hands of Fate.