NOVEL NEXT Chapter 281: Just Say Yes
Behind Yizhen, Gaoyu had four men trussed like bundles on poles.
One had the bad idea of finding his feet. He met Shadow's teeth without blood, just a noise that told the body to remember whose road this was. He remembered. He sat back down on his own bones.
"You left them alive?" I asked, cocking my head as I looked past Lin Wei's shoulder.
"Only enough to write a name," Gaoyu shrugged, his eyes briefly looking over to Mingyu who had said silent until now. "If they're slow about the ink, we'll loosen their hands."
"No." The word was flat as Mingyu looked at the men. "Hands are for work. Tongues can do the writing. That way they aren't dumb enough to go too greedy with knives." His tone was completely cold, and I knew that I wasn't the only one dancing on a thin line of sanity.
Gaoyu grunted assent and kicked frost off his boot heel in a little circle that meant he was bored with mercy but would wear it for me.
I looked back to Yizhen.
Up close, I could smell the road on him. The mud, the old clay, the sour edge of a bell rope, the faint kitchen-sweet that doesn't belong under open sky. It was clear that he had not taken the time to wash up.
He had not slept.
He had not given my son to anyone else's arms even once.
"Gray Bridge," he said before I asked. "Bell hut. Monk's robe as paper. Brand under it in uglier handwriting."
"Who?"
"Someone who thinks 'Baiguang' is a country and not a direction. We'll have the line between their teeth by evening."
"By afternoon," I corrected. "I don't give the evening to men who use a coffin to move a child."
He inclined his head a finger's width. Not agreement. Not disagreement. An acknowledgement that the knife's edge had moved and he would stand where it was sharpest.
Lin Wei's fingers spasmed at the sound of a spear butt striking stone behind us.
I didn't look to see which idiot had forgotten how to hold his weapon without noise. I put my other hand around the boy, under Yizhen's arm, not to take him—he wouldn't let go and I wouldn't force him to.
It hit me hard that my son was clinging to someone else for safety, but at the same time, I wouldn't take that away from him.
"Let's go back to the palace," I suggested softly. "No trumpets. No crowds. One corridor. One brazier. One bed."
"Where," Yaozu asked, already three steps into the order.
"My rooms," I said. "The east chamber. It's warmest."
Lin Wei made a small sound then.
It wasn't a word so much as the kind of sound a wolf pup makes when it is scared. I smoothed his hair again and let my voice steady him the way his breath had steadied for me.
"You are home," I told him without softness. "You are home, Wei. I can say it twice, or I can spend my time taking heads so that you feel safer. It's your choice."
His fingers tightened until I thought the silk on Yizhen's robes would tear.
He didn't cry. He simply nodded once, the way men do when they are too young to be men and have already been asked to be.
Yizhen's eyes met mine over the top of the boy's head. He didn't offer me the child. He didn't keep him away.
He waited.
"He won't let go," he said, and there was nothing in the words but the words.
"Then you'll stay with us until he either let's go or you have to go home yourself," I answered. I didn't lower my voice. This city gossips best when you whisper. I wanted the walls to hear me clean.
A tiny thing flickered through his face—relief or acceptance or the finality of a choice made three roads ago when he bent to pick up more than he had intended.
It went as quickly as a shadow past a window.
"Boil water," I added, though he'd already said it to Gaoyu on the path. "The boy is cold."
Yaozu shifted his weight. "And the prisoners?"
"We'll keep them," I said, letting the smirk on my face loose. "But we aren't sending them to jail."
I looked at Gaoyu. "How about the south storehouse? I want them close enough to hear what happens when I'm finished with the names and far enough that Wei doesn't have to hear them make sounds they'll regret."
Gaoyu's mouth tilted in approval. "A better order. I approve."
I stepped to the side so Yizhen could pass through the gate without turning his shoulder.
Men stepped back because they wanted to keep their fingers. Shadow rose and fell into place like dark water.
A woman in a straw cape carrying dried greens on a pole put her head down and tried to become the ground. When we reached her, she lifted her chin and looked at my son.
Her mouth opened and closed. She bowed to his small back and then walked on. I didn't stop her. Small decent gestures are cheaper than silver and worth more.
We crossed the threshold.
The iron bar that held the gate from falling too quickly was up; the wood smelled like winter. The guard captain swallowed whatever speech he'd built while we were still a rumor and went to run it off in a different direction.
"Yaozu," I said without looking, "the men who sold a road to strangers will have a wife who suddenly buys new shoes or a mother who eats meat twice in a week. Go into the markets. Find the shoes. Count teeth."
"Teeth?"
"Meat leaves a different truth in the mouth," I said. "You know that."
"I do," he said, and his voice was a smile he didn't put on his face.
The east corridor was already warmer.
Someone had lit the braziers without waiting to be told a second time.
Good.
Linen went past us, white and clean over a girl's arms. A boy with a basin nearly ran. He didn't spill. I made a note to have him fed first at the kitchens for a week. Small rewards breed better habits than whips.
At the inner turn, a young physician knelt with a lacquer box. He had the careful hands of someone who'd never seen a winter road. He opened his mouth to list his credentials.
"Close it," I said. "You'll wash. You'll cut the paste out when I tell you and not before. If he sleeps, you'll do nothing. If he eats, you'll do nothing. If he screams, you'll do nothing unless I move my hand like this." I flexed my fingers once. "Say 'yes, Your—'" I stopped because I had almost given him a title I wasn't wearing. "Say 'yes.'"
"Yes," he said, and his throat bobbed like a frog's in spring.