Something about those words hit deep. The air in my chest turned thick and hot, almost impossible to breathe through.
She hadn't tried her best. Chu Tiansu's words about an unavenged sea of blood had branded themselves onto every step she took, and she had watched Cangyun cut down right in front of her.
Changling's eyes were open and perfectly still, cold enough to raise goosebumps. She held his gaze without flinching and said nothing to justify herself, only: "There has to be someone expendable in every fight. I am not your grandmother. I have no reason to die in her place."
"You——" Mingyuezhou's grief was still raw. He stepped toward her, then stopped.
A mist of blood erupted from Changling's body. Her eyes rolled shut and she collapsed.
He lunged forward and caught her. The moment he steadied her, he saw the knife wound on her right arm, wide open and pouring blood, her whole body cold as stone. He hadn't known the injury was that bad. Panic seized him immediately. Wind was already screaming down the mountain and the river below was swelling fast. If the bleeding didn't stop, she wouldn't last till morning.
Mingyuezhou was a soldier. He forced himself to think. He read the terrain quickly, located a cave in the mountain face, and carried her inside out of the storm. The cave was pitch black. Both of them were soaked through, not a dry strip of cloth between them for a bandage.
He had no choice but to sit her upright against his chest, press two fingers directly over the wound to slow the bleeding, and feed his internal strength into her body to fight off the cold.
He held that position through the night.
By the time the eastern sky faded from black to deep blue and the wind finally dropped, the cave had gone unnervingly quiet. Through the thin layer of wet cloth he could feel her heartbeat easing from frantic to something steadier, and her skin had recovered a faint warmth. When he saw the blood had stopped, the knot in his chest loosened slightly.
Pale morning light reached into the cave. He lifted his hand from her wound and saw her brow pinch with pain at the movement. He held his breath and looked at her, this slight girl lying slack against him, lips cracked, breathing shallow.
He thought of everything he had said to her the night before, and shame settled over him like a stone.
What gave him the right to blame a wounded woman for not sacrificing herself to save him.
Mingyuezhou exhaled slowly.
Besides, he was currently bolted into an iron mask. He had no face to speak of.
He eased her down carefully, draped his outer robe over her, and went out to find water.
A stream ran not far from the cave. He drank a few mouthfuls himself, then wrapped water in large leaves and started back. Before he reached the cave, he saw them from a distance: soldiers moving along the mountain path, long spears probing the undergrowth, searching methodically through the trees.
The Tomb King Fort had already caught up.
His first instinct was to retreat, but Changling was lying in that cave. If they found her and dragged her back, the outcome didn't bear thinking about. And he couldn't simply charge in either. He was one man, unarmed, facing soldiers covering the whole mountainside. Rushing out rashly meant nothing except death.
He was still calculating when a sharp cry exploded from the direction of the cave. A flock of birds burst upward from the canopy, startled into the sky by something below.
His blood went cold.
He stopped thinking and moved. While the soldiers' heads turned toward the birds, he sprinted through the trees toward the cave, low and fast. The high canopy and the howling wind covered his sound.
He was almost at the cave entrance when two soldiers walked out of it.
One of them laughed. "That little beast has some tough bones. Carved up like that and it still put up a fight."
The other twirled his blood-stained spear. "Tough for nothing. I gave it a clean shot in the end."
The words hit Mingyuezhou's skull like a hammer. His ears rang. He stood frozen for one full second, not yet understanding.
Then the cold wind slapped him back to his senses, and something came up from his legs without him choosing it. He was already moving, already on top of them, had the spear free and drove the point through the first soldier's throat before either man could react.
The second soldier turned, saw his partner drop, and his voice died before it reached his lips. He stood there watching the spear tip emerge from his own chest, round-eyed and silent, and went down.
Mingyuezhou let go of the bloody shaft. He stared at the dark smear coming from the cave entrance and felt a chill move through him that had nothing to do with the wind.
He walked toward the cave one step at a time, as though each step required deliberate courage. He steeled himself and looked inside.
A voice came from behind him. "What are you doing back here?"
He spun around.
Changling stood three paces away, face drained of color but entirely upright. She was watching him.
He looked back into the cave. In the shadows, a wolf-dog lay dead in a pool of blood. The "tough beast" the soldiers had been congratulating each other over.
Changling tilted her head and studied Mingyuezhou with calm, faintly puzzled eyes.
When she had woken to find him gone, she assumed he had slipped away while he still could. She wouldn't have blamed him. Then she heard the soldiers outside. She hadn't taken them seriously. She came out of the cave, tucked herself into a tree, and used a stone to provoke a stray dog into the cave to frighten off the search party. She had expected the soldiers to scatter and had been waiting for a clean path down the mountain.
She had not expected the Mingyue boat to turn around and come back.
He had an iron mask locked to his skull, every reason to vanish into the forest, and he had run back up the mountain and stabbed two men to death.
She glanced at the bodies. "Tomb King Fort wasn't certain we'd left Luming Mountain. But now you've stepped into them. The moment the patrol captain reports back, they will seal every route off this mountain, and there will be no flying out."
Mingyuezhou was not unaware of this. He was quiet for a moment. Then, flatly: "I couldn't leave you here alone."
Changling hadn't expected that answer. "Hm?"
"I can't forget what you did for me."
She paused. "You were furious with me last night for leaving your grandmother behind."
"I was wrong about you. The truth is——"
"There's no time for this." Changling stepped toward him, studied the iron mask, and walked slowly around him twice. Then she motioned for him to lower his head. He obeyed, confused. She held the iron face in both hands and examined every seam and surface for a long time. "No keyhole anywhere visible. This isn't coming off quickly."
Mingyuezhou reached up out of habit to scratch his head, found his hand against cold iron, and put it down. "The iron skeleton is the work of Dong Zhi, the master craftsman of Tomb King Fort. Cast as solid as a shield. Once locked on, nearly impossible to open. That's where the name comes from."
Changling shook her head. "When Dong Zhi was forging this thing, was he not at all worried about trapping himself by accident? There are no locks in this world without a key. Telling people it's unbreakable is just a way to make them stop trying."
That flat certainty swept away the last of the dread Mingyuezhou had been carrying about the mask. He looked past her at the mountain terrain surrounding them and said, "Wearing this thing, I won't get past a single checkpoint..."
He thought for a moment, then crouched beside one of the soldiers, tore a strip of cloth from the man's uniform, and used a bloody finger to write several lines in the script of Yan State, which Changling could not read. When the letters had dried, he folded the cloth and held it out to her.
"East of Luming Mountain, two or three days' travel, you'll reach Qizhou Acropolis. In the city, ask for Li Hu at the Situ Mansion..."
"Li Hu?"
Mingyuezhou blinked. "What is it?"
Changling's eyes shifted briefly.
The Yue clan had fought Yan State more than once. There had been a formidable general on the Yan side with that name. Whether it was the same man, she didn't know yet.
"Nothing."
"Give this to Li Hu. Once he reads it, he'll send men to get me out."
She looked at the cloth. "Even if I leave now, two or three days on the road in this condition..." She handed it back. "Better to dig a hole and wait. Cangyun knows where you are."
Mingyuezhou coughed lightly. "I have a way to buy time."
What he did not say was: if things went wrong for him, that was fate, but at least she would be clear of it.
Changling pocketed the cloth without ceremony, said nothing in the way of farewell, and turned to go.
He watched her take several steps. Then she stopped.
"I wanted to help you," she said, not turning around. "Your grandmother made sure of that. She sealed every major point on my body. I can barely perform basic movement right now, let alone fight properly. If you're leaving, you'll have to find your own way out."
Half of that was true.
The sealed points would release on their own within half a day. Getting off Luming Mountain was no great difficulty for her.
What was not certain was whether Mingyuezhou would make it.
She had already honored her promise by getting him out of Tomb King Fort. There was no obligation to risk herself further. Yet she kept seeing Chu Tiansu in her mind, cutting that last bloody path open for them with everything she had. The image didn't sit easily.
And if this Li Hu was the same Li Hu from the Yan army, and if Mingyuezhou could be of use in uncovering the truth about Shen Yao's dealings with Yan State, then letting him die here would be a waste.
Mingyuezhou understood none of this. He heard her tone and assumed she meant to stay with him. He started to speak, stumbled over the words, and found nothing.
He was still searching for the right thing to say when the corner of his eye caught movement behind her.
A shadow. A man, already mid-swing, blade coming down.
He didn't think. He threw himself forward and covered Changling with his body. Steel rang against iron as the blade struck his helmet and gouged a chunk from the right ear of the mask.
The ear of the mask was narrow. The bone beneath was jarred but the blade didn't reach his skin.
Before the attacker could reset, Mingyuezhou drove a backhand strike into the man's throat. The crack was clean and final. He looked back at Changling as the body hit the ground.
She was staring at him with an expression he couldn't quite place.
Mingyuezhou had been poisoned and wounded in Tomb King Fort. His body was half-broken. He had escaped through the night on what was essentially nothing, and he still had that kind of speed.
She bent down to confirm the man was dead, then looked up at Mingyuezhou with a slight frown. "What was that for?"
He opened his mouth. He had been about to say: because I was afraid you'd be hurt. He swallowed it.
Changling's frown deepened. "Don't do that again. I am not going to be beaten by a nobody with an unnamed blade. The next time something like this happens, keep your distance and let me handle it."
He said nothing. He didn't quite dare.
A whistle cut through the air not far off. A small unit crested the ridge and spotted them. Mingyuezhou grabbed Changling's wrist and they ran.
The soldiers on the mountain began closing in from all directions. Both of them had experience running from pursuit and fell into an unspoken rhythm without needing to discuss it, but Luming Mountain was not large. Once the main roads down were blocked and reinforcements arrived, it was only a matter of time.
More boots, close overhead.
They pressed themselves into a gap beneath an overhang of stone wall, dense with wild grass and horizontal roots. From above it looked like flat ground. No one would have guessed the gap was large enough to hold two people.
It was barely large enough to hold two people.
They stood face to face with no room to move in any direction. Mingyuezhou kept his full attention on the sounds outside. Then he came back to himself and felt her, the warmth of her, against his chest, and had absolutely no idea what to do with his hands.
Changling heard the sudden frantic jump of his heartbeat and said calmly, "They've passed. Nothing to be afraid of."
His thoughts had not been about the soldiers.
She glanced at him, then went still. She rose onto her toes and brought her face toward his, and the iron mask felt to Mingyuezhou like it was going to crack from the inside out. He managed: "What are you——"
"Hold still."
Changling raised her eyes to the damaged ear of the mask. Something shifted in her expression. She extended one finger and pressed it lightly against the broken section where the iron had been sheared away.
"There's a small opening here," she said. A trace of a smile crossed her face. "I think that's the keyhole."
"What?" He couldn't keep up.
"The maker built the iron around the ears deliberately thinner than the rest. Nobody would think to look there, because the obvious conclusion is that you'd have to destroy the ear to get inside." She paused. "You're fortunate that soldier only gouged it instead of taking the whole piece."
Changling drew a thin iron needle from her sleeve, set the tip into the exposed hole with practiced precision, and turned it gently.
A single clean click.
The lock released.