Cai Zhao was small. Qian Xueshen was lean. Together they fit easily on the back of the golden-feathered roc. The air grew colder the further north they flew. The roc's wings cut through grit and cloud without slowing. Before the third sunset, they landed at the town crouched at the foot of the snow mountains. In the far north, days shrink and nights stretch. The sky sat low and colorless, the color of old lead. Across the grey-white expanse, a few dark figures moved without sound or hurry. Xueshan Town was small. One inn. It sat at the center of town and bore the unremarkable name Xueshan Inn. Two heavy wool-felt curtains blocked the doorway against the wind. Both were stiff with old grease, their original color long gone. Cai Zhao lifted the curtain, met a wall of stale air thick with smoke, liquor, and the particular sourness of men who had not bathed in weeks. She frowned, breathed through it, and stepped inside. A slender girl and a fine-featured young man appearing in the...
Mr. Qian was drying his hair in the courtyard when a crash of voices erupted from inside the main house. A moment later, the handsome young man was kicked out the door, water still dripping down his cheeks. Mr. Qian froze. "Miss Xiao Cai is bathing in there — and he was inside ? That's... not right." — He said this as a man whose business dealings ran unconventional, but whose moral floor remained firmly in place. Mu Qingyan glanced at him. "The men a brothel girl has known are beyond counting. I doubt she finds it troubling." Qian Gongzi went quiet. He watched Mu Qingyan's tall figure disappear down the path and cursed under his breath. There were truly vicious people in this world. A short while later, Cai Zhao stepped out of the house, fully dressed and composed. Spotting the young man lingering in the courtyard, she asked his name. Qian Gongzi explained that his master, the Thousand-Faced Old Man, had found him on a day of heavy snowfall and name...