The shopkeeper was lying on his side, face to the wall, as if asleep. When the man sent to wake him rolled him over, a knife jutted from the chest. Half the mattress had drunk deep of blood and gone stiff with cold.
The room went quiet. Everyone looked at each other.
The thief Lantian Yu stepped forward. Jin Baohui immediately raised a hand. "Check whether the man had valuables on him. Set them aside. Nobody touches anything."
Lantian Yu's face was flat. "Then do it yourself."
"I'm not a coroner." Jin Baohui produced a snow-white handkerchief, pressed it to his nose, and retreated against the wall with elaborate distaste.
The handsome middle-aged traveler and his two servants had drifted to a corner and stood there watching, arms at their sides, showing no interest in moving closer.
Zhou Zhiqin looked at the young faces of Cai Zhao and the others, then stepped forward to examine the body himself. He was not a physician, but he had seen more corpses in the last few years than most men see in a lifetime.
"The body is chilled through. Livor mortis just beginning to set, still pale. He was killed roughly two hours ago." Zhou Zhiqin turned the body carefully. Under the dim butter lamp, the shopkeeper's lined, ugly face had locked into an expression of helpless terror.
"One wound, straight to the heart. Nothing else. Bruising across the lower half of his face, both sides of the nose. Someone covered his mouth when they put the knife in. He never made a sound." Zhou Zhiqin searched the bedding and the man's clothing. "The killer pressed cloth against the wound during the thrust. Most of the blood soaked inward rather than spraying out. Whoever did this has done it before."
He pulled the knife free and frowned. "What kind of blade is this?"
The narrow, slightly curved blade was filmed with dark blood. Cai Zhao recognized it at once. "That's a kitchen boning knife."
The words had barely left his mouth before the four inn workers were already shouting and bolting for the kitchen to drag out the chef.
Qian Xue stood very still, murmuring to herself in a daze. "Women like that, sharp enough to do anything they want."
"Don't accuse people without cause." Cai Zhao dropped her voice and moved closer to the body. "Senior Zhou, can you tell from the wound whether the killer had martial arts training?"
Zhou Zhiqin shook his head. "Straight thrust to the chest. No technique required. A strong adult could do it."
"A man, then?" Cai Zhao noted it.
Zhou Zhiqin reconsidered. "Not necessarily. A woman with martial arts training could manage it just as well."
Cai Zhao was about to press further when she caught herself. She stepped back, sighed, and put a hand to her heart. "Oh, this gave me such a fright. I have always hated killing and blood, ever since I was small."
Behind her, Mu Qingyan let out a low, amused sound.
You, surnamed Mu, are asking to be hit.
The four workers hauled the chef and the proprietress in within minutes, shoving them both to their knees on the floor.
Zhou Zhiqin found himself functioning as judge.
The chef's name was Wang Erniu. He swore on everything he had that he did not do it. The workers immediately began talking over each other.
"The mistress has been carrying on for years and everyone knows it. The boss was a patient man. He told her Wang Erniu was young and foolish, said if he repented he'd let it go. This was how he was repaid!"
"She was no good and the boss punished her a few times for it. She must have held a grudge. Her and Wang Erniu together, they killed him!"
"The boss forgave you again and again. And you paid him back with this!"
"You have to speak for our boss!"
Zhou Zhiqin cut through the noise. "You two. Confess."
Wang Erniu's face went dark red. He kept shaking his head. "That old monster was not a human being. I wanted to kill him, yes, I'll admit that much. But I did not. If you don't believe me, go look at our room. Qin Niang and I already had our bags packed. The plan was to slip away while he was leading you all up the mountain. Why would I kill a man I was already leaving?"
Zhou Zhiqin's voice was measured. "You were having relations with a married woman. The husband treated you with patience you did nothing to earn. You felt no shame, no remorse. A man without loyalty or conscience has no place in this world." His eyes went cold.
"Who has no conscience?!" Qin Niang's head snapped up. She was hollow-cheeked and sallow, but her features were fine, her jaw sharp. Even worn down to nothing, she was a beautiful woman.
Jin Baohui drifted forward a step without appearing to notice he had moved. Lantian Yu gave him a contemptuous look.
Qin Niang's voice shook with fury. "Erniu and I were engaged since we were children. We were weeks from being married. That old animal threatened my parents' lives to get them to hand me over."
Jin Baohui spoke in a thin, polished tone. "Whatever the circumstances, once a woman is married she should honor her obligations. Conduct like this is indefensible."
Cai Zhao turned a knife-edged look on him.
Qin Niang let out a short, hollow laugh. "You're right. That's what I told myself five years ago. You are married now, so make the best of it. At least your parents will never go hungry or cold again. But this thing was not a man."
She wrenched her collar open.
Her shoulders, her neck, her chest. She pushed her sleeves up to the elbow. Every inch of skin was a record: burns in circles where charcoal had been pressed and held, whip marks crossed over older whip marks, purple finger-bruises, bite wounds gone to scars. The people looking went silent.
Dongfang Xiao said quietly, "That is... that is something else."
Zhou Zhiqin's face had gone the color of ash.
One of the workers found his voice. "You were unfaithful. What's a few beatings?"
"You're lying through your teeth." Qin Niang's voice cut like wire. "Erniu only came back to this town last year. Are you saying I got all of this in twelve months?"
Dongfang Xiao said, "She's right. These scars are layered. The oldest ones go back four or five years at least."
Everyone in the room had spent time on the road. They could read scars. Nobody argued.
One of the workers began to cry. "The boss just drank a little too much sometimes. He didn't mean anything by it. He always felt terrible afterward."
Jin Baohui said, with the breezy certainty of a man who had never been afraid of anyone in his own house: "Married couples quarrel. That doesn't make a wife justified in having her husband murdered."
Cai Zhao could no longer help herself. "Does Master Jin have a wife?"
Jin Baohui stiffened. "My wife passed away some years ago."
"What a shame." Cai Zhao's voice was like silk over a blade. "When we get back to the city I'll personally find you a match. A woman with excellent martial arts skills and a temper to match. Let Master Jin learn firsthand what a quarrel between husband and wife really feels like."
Mu Qingyan said without inflection: "Sister, don't waste your effort. What evil star would choose to marry this one. You'd be doing the woman a disservice."
Jin Baohui sputtered. Zhou Zhiqin, to his credit, pressed his lips together and said nothing.
One of the workers was crying harder now. "Alright, alright. The mistress may have had... other men. Before Erniu. The boss went through a lot. He only hit her when he truly couldn't stand it anymore."
Dongfang Xiao looked at him flatly. "Name one of the other men."
The worker's eyes moved like a rat in a trap. "Merchants. Traveling men. Nobody from around here."
Qin Niang smiled, and it was not a kind smile. "Fine. If you want to bury me in filth, then I will empty the whole pit. That old animal." She looked at the corpse without flinching. "He couldn't keep to himself and he couldn't stand to let me be. He liked to bring men in and watch."
The room went very still.
"He liked to watch them hurt me."
She pointed at the four workers. "Those four. All four of them. He called them in himself."
The four men fell back as one.
"Not fit to be animals." Zhou Zhiqin's palm hit the table hard enough to rattle the lamp. His face had gone from ash to fury.
The four workers dropped to their knees together, heads down, talking over each other about how they had never had a choice, how the shopkeeper had pushed them into it, how they had never been cruel of their own will.
Wang Erniu was crying openly now. "I thought, even if he was older, he had money, he had standing. I thought Qin Niang would finally have a comfortable life. I never imagined..."
Lantian Yu said, in a voice like midwinter ice: "You didn't imagine the man was a monster. So you stabbed him."
"No. I didn't." Wang Erniu looked up, red-eyed. "Last night, after the travelers arrived." He gestured toward Jin Baohui's group. "I saw there were more people than the boss had told me to expect. Not enough food for everyone. So I walked to Lao Yutou's place in Zhenwei in the middle of the night and bought everything he had stored. Bacon, sausage, sweet potatoes. I've barely been back an hour. When would I have had the time?"
Qian Xue, who had been standing quietly near the wall, spoke up. "Did you really just return?"
"Old Yutou's whole family can say so. I was at his house clearing out his stores until first light. Two of his sons helped me drag back two cartloads. I had just finished unloading when all of this started." Wang Erniu spread his hands.
"Then the chef didn't kill him." Qian Xue spoke with more confidence, then seemed to feel the room looking at her and faltered. "I mean... last night I couldn't sleep. The inn was all noise and movement when Master Jin's group came in, everybody hauling bags and no one paying attention to me. So I went to the kitchen myself to ask for noodles. When I got there, I walked in on Chef Wang and the mistress holding each other and crying. I stood at the door for a while but they weren't finished, so I left. On the way back I passed the shopkeeper. He was talking to one of the workers. Still awake, he said, had to lead the guests up the mountain in the morning. Said to get Master Jin settled and let everyone rest."
She paused to collect the thread of it. "I turned back toward the kitchen a few minutes later. I saw the mistress coming from the other direction. I thought good, they're done, now I can get my noodles. But when I reached the kitchen doorway, I saw Chef Wang going out through the back. Which meant I still couldn't eat." A note of real grievance entered her voice. "So I went in and helped myself to cold wine and steamed buns. I was in there long enough to finish eating. He never came back in through the back door the whole time."
Dongfang Xiao laid it out plainly. "She saw Chef Wang. Then the shopkeeper, alive. Then Chef Wang leaving through the back. The walk to Zhenwei is half an hour each way. Add the time to buy and load two carts. Chef Wang had no window to commit the murder." He looked at Qin Niang. "The mistress is slight, untrained, couldn't have landed a single fatal thrust like that. Which means someone else killed the shopkeeper. Someone else, in this inn, last night."
The room had started with the assumption of a simple adultery killing. It ended somewhere else entirely.
Lantian Yu let his gaze move slowly around the room, resting on each face in turn. "Killing a sleeping man with a knife to the chest asks for nothing special. Almost anyone here could have done it." He did not say it to alarm anyone. He said it because it was true, and the chill that settled over the room was proof enough that everyone had already thought the same thing.
"Are we done yet."
A lazy voice from the doorway. Everyone turned.
Mu Qingyan was leaning against the frame. He was tall enough that the purple-gold crown set in his black hair nearly brushed the lintel. He looked bored in the specific way of someone who has been bored for a long time and has made peace with it. "A dead piece of garbage. Is he really worth all this fuss?"
Jin Baohui began, "How can you say—"
None of the workers dared open their mouths. They had seen what Mu Qingyan's hands could do.
Mu Qingyan shifted one hand behind his back. "This shopkeeper coerced a girl into marriage by threatening her family. After he had her, he tortured her for years with methods that turned every stomach in this room. That makes him a bad man."
"Bad men die well. The death of a bad man is a good death, a fitting death, the correct and natural conclusion to a bad man's story. We are all good people, or at least we are trying to be. Why should good people waste an hour mourning a bad man's end?"
The expressions in the room went slowly flat. Cai Zhao pressed a hand to her temple and stared at the floor.
"Heaven's principles are clear and unhurried," Mu Qingyan continued. "This old animal was rotten through. Some passing knight, some upright soul who had seen enough, came through the window in the night and put an end to it. This is a good thing. A pity we cannot pour that knight a drink."
He turned his cold, even gaze to Jin Baohui. "Would you say I'm wrong?"
Jin Baohui smiled with effort. "No. You're... quite right."
From the corner of the room came the sound of someone clapping, slow and deliberate. The handsome middle-aged traveler lowered his hands, still smiling. "Well put. We all have business in the mountains. Standing around over a man who had nothing good left in him is a waste of what little daylight we have."
Zhou Zhiqin let out a long breath. "You can work against heaven and survive. You cannot work against yourself and live."
Dongfang Xiao glanced at the window. "We eat early and move out. The days are short this high up. We don't want to be caught on the mountain after dark."
One of the workers asked, small-voiced, "What about the body?"
Mu Qingyan said, pleasantly: "Feed it to the—"
Several people made alarmed noises. Zhou Zhiqin turned with an expression.
"—though perhaps not." He paused. "Leave it in the cold room. Someone can deal with it properly when the road opens up."
Cai Zhao balled her small fist and knocked it against his back.
Mu Qingyan's eyes curved with satisfaction.
Wang Erniu and Qin Niang had come into that room half certain they would not leave it alive. They were standing, untouched and free, which had not quite become real to them yet.
The four workers had not dared say a word, but the resentment in their bent heads was legible. They were thinking: once this lot leaves, we settle things our way.
The inn fed the travelers, the luggage was strapped and loaded, and then Mu Qingyan turned to the four workers and told them they were coming up the mountain as guides.
The four stared at him.
"Your shopkeeper is dead. If you won't lead us, who will?" His voice carried no heat, no room to negotiate.
The rest of the party thought about it and found no flaw in the logic. The workers, thinking of many things they would not say aloud, agreed.
Zhou Zhiqin dropped back and fell into step beside Cai Zhao. "Your brother is a good man."
Cai Zhao blinked. "...Sorry?"
"Once the workers guide us to the mountain and turn back," Dongfang Xiao said quietly, "Wang Erniu and Qin Niang will already be gone. He's giving them the window."
Cai Zhao had been about to say you're reading too much into it, that man is simply constitutionally opposed to people annoying him. Then she remembered her own role in this situation and adjusted her expression into something flustered and sweet. "Thank you both for saying so. My brother has always had a generous heart, even if he doesn't always show it—"
"What's my sister saying about me?" Mu Qingyan glanced back.
"I was speaking well of you," Cai Zhao said, through her teeth.
Mu Qingyan shook out his arms. The gray fur moved in the wind. He swung a heavy velvet-lined cloak around her shoulders in one easy motion.
His eyes were warm as winter sun. He bent slightly toward her and said, quiet enough for her alone: "Mountains are cold. Can't have my sister freezing."
Dongfang Xiao's eyelid twitched.
Brother and sister. Sure.
The sleds were waiting outside the inn. Some of the party rode horses; others rode the sleds up through the snow toward the peaks. Half an hour out, the golden summit came into view above the treeline, wrapped in soft haze, catching light that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the clouds.
One of the workers pointed ahead. "South slope. That's the way up."
A second worker, remembering Mu Qingyan's earlier efficiency, was quick to add: "The shopkeeper always stopped here. Just directions is all he gave."
Mu Qingyan stepped off the sled, straightened, and smiled at the four of them. "You've worked hard. A long trip through cold country just to see us this far."
The four workers started to wave it off, saying it was nothing, no need—
Silver light crossed the air once.
All four felt cold at the throat before they understood what had happened. Then four sounds, quick and quiet as snapping branches. Four men folded into the snow and went still. Red lines bloomed across their throats. Blood spread in an even tide through the white.
Mu Qingyan stood in the middle of it, calm, holding a drawn sword.
Nobody spoke. The wind moved.
Jin Baohui realized, slowly, that the sword in Mu Qingyan's hand belonged to one of his own guards. The guard in question had not yet fully registered what had happened.
"What is the meaning of this?" The handsome middle-aged traveler's voice was careful.
Mu Qingyan looked at him. "Good men or bad ones. Those four."
Jin Baohui opened his mouth to rage — you killed them before asking, what were we supposed to say — and closed it again without producing a sound.
Zhou Zhiqin turned it over. "They helped the shopkeeper, for years, and called it nothing. That is not good."
Dongfang Xiao said, "They helped him hurt that woman, then stood in a room and tried to hang the murder on her. That is something worse."
Mu Qingyan reversed the sword and walked back to Jin Baohui's guard, offering the hilt. His manner was serene. "I killed four bad people. Does that make me a good person?"
Jin Baohui said, with great care: "...It makes you a good person."
"Another good deed done today." Mu Qingyan released the sword and looked faintly pleased, the way a man looks when a long journey turns out to have decent scenery. "It really does lift the spirits. I should do more of this."
The assembled company stared at him.
...