Chapter One: The Man Who Doesn't Lie

The thing about Xiao Hou Chuan, Yun Su observed from behind his alias and his merchant's fur coat, was that he was exactly as inconvenient as memory had made him.

Six years should have changed a man. Six years of empire-building and political compromise and the slow corruption of proximity to power should have worn down those sharp, guileless edges. The Xiao Hou Chuan that Yun Su had carried in his memory was a young man of twenty-three, idealistic and almost comically sincere — the sort of man who apologized to his horse when he rode too hard, and who once stood in the rain for two hours outside a merchant's stall because he'd accepted change for a coin he later realized wasn't his.

The Xiao Hou Chuan who sat at the Beiping Governor's banquet table, calmly and without apparent discomfort, informing the Governor that his tax records were fraudulent and that he should expect an imperial audit within the month, was that same man. Bigger, perhaps. The shoulders that had stopped those crossbow bolts had broadened further. The face that had been boyish was now something that stopped serving maids in their tracks and made junior officials stand straighter without knowing why.

But the directness was the same. The total absence of political maneuvering was the same. The way he looked at you like he was simply describing observed fact, not delivering a threat, while somehow making the threat considerably more terrifying — unchanged.

"He really told the Governor that," Yun Su murmured to A-You, his young attendant, who had come with him from the south disguised as his nephew. "At a banquet. Over pork."

A-You — whose real name was Chen Ayou and who was fifteen years old and had opinions about everything — nodded with visible admiration. "Lord Su also told the Governor's wife that her embroidery pattern was inauspicious for a woman with three daughters and that she should consult a different pattern-book. While she was wearing the embroidery."

"Incredible," Yun Su said. He meant it entirely.

It was going to be very difficult to infiltrate the household of a man who said exactly what he thought without exception. Yun Su had spent three months building a cover identity as Lin Fengyi, a spice merchant from the south with connections to the coastal trade routes and an interest in establishing a permanent warehouse in Beiping. It was a solid cover. A useful cover. A cover that would have worked on approximately every other official in the Cang Empire's northern territories.

What it would not survive was Xiao Hou Chuan simply looking at him with those steady, dark eyes and saying "That story has three inconsistencies and your hands are not a merchant's hands, they're a fighter's hands," which was, Yun Su calculated, exactly what would happen the moment he sat across a table from the man.

He needed a different approach.

The different approach presented itself at midnight, in the form of three assassins with Cang Northern Intelligence markings on their blades, who had apparently reached the same conclusion that Yun Su had: that Xiao Hou Chuan's honest tongue was a liability to someone important, and that the man should be removed.

They were professionals. They were also, unfortunately for them, operating in a city where Yun Su had spent the last two weeks memorizing patrol patterns.

He disposed of two before they reached Xiao Hou Chuan's window. The third made it into the room. The sound of furniture breaking suggested Xiao Hou Chuan had handled that one himself, which was both reassuring and professionally interesting.

By the time Yun Su climbed through the window — the door seemed impolite — Xiao Hou Chuan was standing in the center of the room with a lamp in one hand, the unconscious assassin at his feet, and an expression of mild inconvenience rather than terror.

He looked at Yun Su. Yun Su looked at him.

Six years. Six years of a burning palace and a wide smile and two crossbow bolts that should have been his.

"Your hands," Xiao Hou Chuan said calmly, "are a fighter's hands."

Yun Su, who had rehearsed approximately forty different versions of this meeting, said: "You hit a trained assassin with a lamp."

"It was the first thing I reached." Xiao Hou Chuan set the lamp down. His eyes had not left Yun Su's face. There was something working in them — not recognition, not yet, but the particular concentration of a man who is trying to locate a memory. "Who are you?"

This was the question. The answer Yun Su had prepared was Lin Fengyi, spice merchant. The answer that came out of his mouth was: "Someone who owes you a debt."

Not a lie. Not the truth. Something more dangerous than both.

— ✦ —

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