The north wind drove fine snow sideways through the streets. Pedestrians hunched into their collars and buried their hands in their sleeves. Fan Changyu moved against the wind at a fast clip, a black-iron bone-chopping knife in her grip, the tendons on the back of her hand standing out like cord.
A crowd had gathered at the entrance to Minxiang, the lane on the west side of the city. Voices tangled together, shouting and argument, the wail of a child underneath it all.
Someone spotted her first. "Changyu's back!"
Eyes dropped to the blade in her hand. A sharp intake of breath rippled through the onlookers.
"Is she going after her uncle again?"
"Can you blame her? Fan Da isn't human. Fan Er and his wife barely cold in the ground and he's already trying to use the orphan girls' house to cover his gambling debts. Doesn't he fear the dead coming to him in his sleep?"
"Casino people don't back down for a girl with a knife. She's not going to talk them out of anything."
The Fan family courtyard was already wreckage. Broken crockery and overturned furniture stretched from the threshold all the way into the back rooms. Several thick-armed men were still tearing through the place, tossing the family's bedding onto the floor.
Little Changning was pressed against Aunt Zhao's side, sobbing so hard her whole body shook. Aunt Zhao wept with her, crying out uselessly, "Stop it! Stop smashing things!" Nobody listened.
Fan Da stood off to one side, bent and fawning, speaking in a low, ingratiating voice to a man who had the look of a casino manager about him. He had one hand tucked under the other arm, and he smiled as he spoke. "Master Jin, once we find the land deed I'll take it straight to the government office and transfer the title. Then the house is mine to repay the debt. The debt gets repaid."
The man called Master Jin didn't even look at him. "If the deed doesn't turn up today, I take a hand back instead. We'll call it even."
Fan Da pressed his sheltered hand tighter against his ribs. "I'll find it, I'll find it..."
A single shout cracked through the noise from the doorway, sharp enough to sting the ears.
"Every one of you. Stop."
The room went still. Every head turned.
She stood framed in the doorway, snow on her shoulders, eyes as cold as the flat of the blade she carried. The lintel above her seemed to press lower.
Changning saw her and broke. "Sister."
Fan Da's eyes slid sideways. He shrank behind the casino manager and said nothing.
Master Jin looked at the pig-killing knife and smiled a thin, amused smile. "Ah. The eldest Fan girl."
Fan Changyu took in the ruined room in one sweep. Her jaw was set. "Take your people and get out."
Master Jin raised an eyebrow as if he found her impertinence mildly entertaining. "The casino follows its own rules. Fan Da vouched that this house belongs to him. We're simply collecting what's owed with the title deed. What goes on between your family is not our concern."
Her gaze cut to Fan Da like a blade finding a seam. "Is this house yours?"
Fan Da's nerve failed him entirely. He shifted to sentiment. "Niece, your uncle had no choice. The casino wants a hand today if I don't pay. Your mother and father are gone. You and Ning Niang are girls, you'll both marry out eventually. Without male kin from your birth family, who stands up for you when your husband's family makes trouble? Help your uncle this once. Hand over the deed, let him settle the debt. After that, I treat you both as my own daughters. Your cousin becomes your brother. You'll have someone to rely on."
Fan Changyu let him finish. Then she laughed, short and cold. "You use your own house for your debts, not mine. And that son of yours, who runs up gambling debts himself, I'm supposed to rely on him? I'll be lucky if he doesn't get himself chopped up before I ever need him for anything."
Fan Da flushed and pointed at her. "You have a vicious tongue. Cursing your own cousin when he's trying to arrange a marriage? What do two girls need a house for anyway? You're both going to someone else's home."
"What my parents left for me and Ning Niang," she said, "is mine to decide what to do with."
When he saw that sentiment and family pressure had both failed, Fan Da's tone shifted to something uglier. "Fan Er died without a son. His property reverts to the clan by law. What does a girl who's marrying out have to fight over?"
He went further. "Besides, everyone knows what you are. You killed your parents' luck. Then the Song family divorced you for it. Who's going to marry a girl with that name on her? Maybe you're clinging to this house because you know no one wants you. Your sick little sister will follow you down in a few years too. What kind of man would be fool enough to take a cursed woman like you?"
No one in the room saw her move.
When their eyes caught up, the pig-killing knife was buried to the hilt in the wall behind Fan Da. The blade had passed close enough to his ear that several hairs from his head lay on the floor. His face went the color of old ash. His legs shook. His mouth opened and produced nothing.
Master Jin and the thugs had been watching this as entertainment. Now they looked at her differently. Something had shifted in the calculation.
Fan Changyu fixed her eyes on Fan Da. "Everything my parents left behind goes to Changning's medicine and doctors. You take the casino people and you leave this house right now. If you don't, as long as you still have one hand, I will make sure you have nothing left to bring back to them."
Fan Da was shaking. He stammered something about the county government office, then went and folded himself into a chair, curved over like a man trying to take up less space, and spoke to Master Jin in a strained voice. "Can you give me two more days?"
Master Jin scoffed. "Huixian Casino doesn't give grace periods. Word gets out we backed down, people think we're soft." He glanced at Fan Da's sheltered hand. "Unless you want to settle it that way."
Fan Da's sweat ran cold. "Not that, but this girl..."
He glanced at Fan Changyu. His courage failed him.
Master Jin said simply, "If it's truly his property, find it yourselves." He turned to the thugs. "What are you standing around for? Find the deed."
They went back to tearing through the rooms.
Fan Changyu pressed her teeth together. Her fists closed at her sides.
Master Jin spread his hands in mock apology. "Casino rules, Miss Fan. Nothing personal."
Aunt Zhao had been watching with a burning helplessness. Then she seemed to remember something and pushed out through the crowd gathered at the door. She went straight to the Song family gate next door and hit it with her palm.
"Song Yan! Fan Da brought casino men to take Changyu's house and you're in there with the door closed. You read all those books, the Fan family was good to you. Come out and say something for her! You're a juren, the casino would respect your word!"
The entire alley knew what was happening at the Fan house. The Song family gate didn't open.
Aunt Zhao beat on it until her hand ached. When no answer came, her grief turned to fury. "Song Yan! Have you eaten those books whole? When your son died so poor he had no coffin, who do you think paid for it? You're not afraid of him hearing you underground?"
Her voice carried the full length of the lane. Inside, Song's mother trembled with outrage. "That foul-mouthed woman! That divorced girl's mess has nothing to do with us. I'll go out and give her a piece of my mind!"
From the study, a quiet voice said, "Mother."
She stopped. Composed herself. "Don't go out, Yan. Don't get tangled up with that family. You have a title to earn."
In the attic room of the Zhao house, separated from the Fan property by a single wall, Xie Zheng had been listening to all of it.
The afternoon light came through thin and pale. The frost on the roof tiles caught the low sun and gave off a cold, brief gleam. The same light lay across Xie Zheng's face, warm in appearance but carrying no heat.
He pressed his mouth into a flat line. Apparently he was not going to get any rest.
His hand, still pale from blood loss, still scabbed at the knuckles, reached for the pair of crutches the Zhao carpenter had made for him that morning. He pulled himself upright. The bandaged wounds on his body pulled with the effort and began to seep again, dark spots spreading through the wrapping. He didn't look at them. He set the crutches and walked toward the door at a slow, even pace.
If he didn't deal with whatever was happening next door, he would not be in any shape to sleep tonight.
Back in the Fan house, the thugs had reduced the place to a shell. They were knocking on floor tiles with sticks, checking beneath them. Changning pressed herself against her sister's back and wept without making a sound. Fan Changyu stood in front of her with one arm back in protection, her face turned partly down, expression unreadable.
One of the thugs reached the ancestral table where Fan Changyu's parents were enshrined. He knocked the spirit tablets to the floor. He raised his foot to stamp on the small wooden altar to check what was hidden underneath it.
His collar jerked tight around his throat. He left the ground and flew. The back of his skull hit the door threshold hard and he lay still, blinking at nothing.
The room fell silent again.
Fan Changyu stood where the man had been standing. She looked down at her parents' tablets on the floor. The cold wind moving through the open hall lifted the loose hair at her temples. Small drops of blood fell from her palms, where her own fingernails had broken the skin while she was still holding herself back.
"I'll ask once more," she said. Her voice was steady in a way that made it worse. "Are you leaving or not?"
The casino men looked at each other. Fan Da had already slipped quietly toward the door on shaking legs. The knife throw earlier had hollowed him out.
Master Jin had been collecting debts for years. He had never been handled like this in front of a crowd. Half the lane was watching from outside. If he walked away empty-handed today, the casino would be a joke by nightfall.
He shoved the thug nearest to him. "Get up. Keep looking. I've been working this town for years, I'm not going to be chased out by one woman."
The thugs steadied themselves and moved in together. Fan Changyu didn't look up. She caught a fallen stick off the floor with her foot, tossed it into her grip, and started moving.
She didn't fence with them. She worked through them the way a person works through a task, methodically, efficiently, the long stick sweeping and hooking and driving. The strokes were those of a long-handled blade with the blade removed. One after another the men folded over, staggered backward, and went out through the gate like cargo being unloaded, landing in the lane to the sound of gasps from the watching crowd.
Fan Da, seeing the weapon form she was using, turned the color of old paper and pressed himself into the corner like a quail.
Master Jin made for the gate. The black-iron bone-chopper flew past him and buried itself in the door panel a finger's width from the end of his nose.
He stood very still.
"Misunderstanding," he said carefully. "This has all been a misunderstanding."
From outside came a stir in the crowd. "Officers coming! Make room!"
The thugs on the ground went loose with relief.
Carpenter Zhao arrived at a run, sweat streaming, his official contact at his side. He stopped at the gate, ready to speak, and took in the scene: casino men piled in the lane, Master Jin standing rigid at the door with a bone-chopper in the wood beside his face.
The words he had prepared died in his throat.
Xie Zheng, who had made it down from the attic on his crutches by then, arrived at the gate in time to see the same thing. He had noticed, from the sound of her breathing earlier, that she trained. He had not anticipated this.
The crowd was absorbed in the spectacle. No one noticed him. He looked down at his shirt, red-soaked where the bandages had given, and turned back the way he came, forehead already beaded with cold sweat. His expression was blank.
At the Song family gate, which had opened a crack during the commotion, a young scholar in a blue robe looked out, saw the officers, looked toward the Fan house, and quietly pulled the gate shut again.
Inside, Fan Changyu knelt and picked up her parents' tablets from the floor without speaking. The blood from her hands smeared the wood. She wiped it away with her sleeve.
Her father had taught her this weapon form. He had also told her never to use it where others could see. Keep it for a last resort, he had said. Use it openly and it brings trouble.
She had broken that rule today. Not to save her own life. For a piece of carved wood with her father's name on it.
She held the tablet and shut her eyes. The rims were red.
Father. Don't blame Changyu.
With officers present, the rest moved quickly. Fan Changyu had put several casino men in the dirt, but they had broken into her home and destroyed it first. The officer instructed Master Jin to compensate her for the damage and sent them on their way. He said nothing about medical costs for the thugs.
Fan Da raised his voice about clan inheritance law. The officer gave him a long, sideways look. "That's a separate matter. Write it up and bring it to the county office. Let the magistrate decide."
Fan Da went quiet.
The casino men helped each other out of the lane in a rattling, groaning line. Fan Da slipped away behind them, gray-faced. The crowd dispersed.
Fan Changyu turned to the officer. "Thank you, Uncle Wang."
Wang Butou had known her father. Carpenter Zhao had gone to him specifically for that reason.
He lowered his voice. "Today I enforced the law as I found it, not as a favor to you. But if Fan Da writes up that case and brings it to the county office, I don't think you can hold the house. The law is what it is."
Fan Da had avoided the magistrate so far because lawsuits cost money and effort. But with direct pressure failing him, he had every reason now to file the case and use a judgment to clear his gambling debt through the deed.
Fan Changyu's face was exhausted and bleak. "I've tried everything I can think of. I even had someone ask a lawyer. They all say the same thing. The property can't be transferred to protect it."
Wang Butou was quiet for a moment, turning something over. "There may still be one way," he said.