The Carriage House.

Gao Xining had spread a grass mat in the courtyard and sat cross-legged upon it. To her left sat a chess box filled with white pieces; to her right, a chess box filled with black. She sat there, cross-legged, and laid out a sheet of xuan paper before her. She raised her brush and set it lightly to the paper. The brush she used was very fine, the lines she drew straight and precise, the result neat and handsome — the meticulous style of gongbi.

She drew with extraordinary speed, sketching out several locations across the paper in no time at all.

After about half a quarter-hour, the paper was covered with what looked like pavilions and towers, the brushwork swift yet controlled.

When she finished, she took up the box on her right — the one filled with black pieces — and pinched a piece between her fingers. What she set them on was no game board; it was a map of positions.

The first black piece landed on Yunzhai Teahouse. After placing it she paused briefly, then set three more black pieces around that same spot. Her hand hesitated, and then she drew a white piece from the left box and placed it at the very center of Yunzhai Teahouse.

Black pieces on all four sides, a single white at the heart.

At that same moment, at Yunzhai Teahouse itself —

Four carriages drew up outside the teahouse almost simultaneously, front and back, left and right. People descended from each carriage — four or five men per vehicle. Two remained behind with each carriage while the rest filed in through the front door, eleven or twelve of them streaming in one after another. The last man through turned and pulled the door shut behind him.

The man at the head of the group appeared to be in his mid-thirties. As he entered he was already unshoudering a long, narrow bundle and unwrapping it, all while his eyes swept toward the counter.

Seated at the counter was a man with a pipe clamped between his teeth. This was not the proprietor — they had made careful inquiries before coming; the owner of Yunzhai Teahouse was a man named Sun, timid and easily frightened, and this was not the right face for that.

The man with the pipe looked rather capable, his face marked by a scar that ran from his forehead down to his left cheek without ever touching his eye. A scar like that tended to look fierce. He sat there puffing away with steady contentment, watching these men who had appeared in the teahouse without explanation, showing not a flicker of surprise — for he himself had appeared here without explanation.

“Who are you?”

The man at the front of the group unwrapped the long bundle and drew out a ring-pommel saber.

His name was Xu Qingnan. He was not from the main Xu family line, but he carried some weight within it — the dirty work, the grinding tasks, all of it fell to him and his sort. They did not consider themselves part of the underworld, yet they were more professional than any underworld operative. They killed, silenced, destroyed bodies, erased evidence, leaving no seam, no trace. Their methods were far more refined than anything the underworld could manage.

Xu Qingnan had asked: who are you?

The man smoking at the counter replied: “I’m called Chang Dingsui. Have you heard of me?”

Xu Qingnan frowned and shook his head. “No.”

Chang Dingsui smiled. “Good.”

Xu Qingnan asked: “Where’s the little singing girl from this teahouse?”

Chang Dingsui shrugged. “That’s me.”

Xu Qingnan swept him with a cold look, then waved a hand. “Search the premises. Leave no one.”

Chang Dingsui said: “No need to search. It’s only me. Kill me and there will be no one left.”

He reached beneath the counter and produced something. Xu Qingnan looked: it was an axe.

“An axe…”

Xu Qingnan sighed. “You don’t even have a proper weapon?”

Chang Dingsui grinned. “This thing works fine. Care to try?”

Half a quarter-hour later, someone pushed open the door from outside. More than ten bodies lay on the floor. Chang Dingsui, drenched in blood, crouched beside Xu Qingnan and looked at the man gasping out his last breaths. “Well?” he said. “Do you know now whether an axe works or not?”

He brought it down and cleaved Xu Qingnan’s throat open.

Then he stood, wiped his blood-slicked hands on himself, and said in a flat voice: “Clean it up.”

Seven or eight men came in through the door, hoisted the bodies, and carried them out through the back.

All around Yunzhai Teahouse, a carriage waited at each point of the compass. Right now, men were loading bodies into those carriages, then scrubbing the bloodstains from the ground until nothing remained. The four carriages were brought round to the teahouse’s back door, and the men emerging from inside began filling them.

They worked in silence and with speed, as if what they carried were not corpses but sacks of earth, or lengths of timber.

Chang Dingsui leaned against the doorframe watching the last body disappear into a carriage. He lit his pipe again and exhaled a long plume of smoke.

He said, with mild regret: “Men raised in these grand city households really are something else. Look at these clothes — the fabric alone. They come out to kill people and still dress impeccably, every one of them the same, and it looks sharp, I’ll give them that. Not like us, dressing as carelessly as we do. Pity — they had the intimidating appearance down perfectly, they just couldn’t take a beating.”

One of his men said: “The way they sealed off all four sides — it actually looked somewhat professional.”

Chang Dingsui sighed. “They looked like professionals at this kind of work. But we are professionals at this kind of work.”

He knocked out his pipe, climbed up into a carriage, and settled himself atop the load of bodies. He reached over and rummaged through the coat of the corpse beside him. A moment later he pulled out a money pouch. He weighed it in his hand — it clinked pleasingly — and the corner of his mouth curved upward.

—

The Carriage House.

Gao Xining sat on the grass mat, pinching black pieces from the box one by one and setting them on the map — seven or eight pieces in all.

She had barely finished placing them when figures came vaulting over the walls on all four sides of the courtyard. Black-clad, blades in hand, they rushed into the yard with speed.

The girl sat there alone without lifting her head.

“Hey!”

The lead figure called out: “What’s your name!”

Gao Xining did not answer. She set aside the box of black pieces and began placing white pieces on the map. Seven or eight black had gone down, but the white pieces outnumbered them — enough to encircle the black entirely.

The lead figure, seeing she would not speak, gave the order: “Whoever she is — kill everyone left in the Carriage House!”

His men acknowledged the command and surged forward.

At that moment, the sound of repeating crossbows erupted — not one, but many.

Men poured out of the buildings on all sides, repeating crossbows cycling in rapid fire. The thirty or forty black-clad intruders who had come over the walls had no time to react before they were knocked to the ground. The tough scouts of the Green Brow Army’s reconnaissance battalion advanced step by step, firing as they went, then checked the bodies underfoot. Anyone still alive got another bolt — the crossbow set against the head, one deliberate press at a time.

One of the men walked up close to Gao Xining, crouched down, and said: “Did that frighten you?”

Gao Xining raised her head. Her face showed nothing that looked like fear — though she had been frightened — and she gave a small shake of her head. “No.”

The man straightened and called out to the others: “Clean it up.”

Gao Xining began picking the black pieces off the map one by one. She did not put them back in the box, but set them aside. The map was cleared of black, leaving only white.

But things were not finished, and so she was not finished placing pieces.

Her gaze settled on a particular spot on the map, and she began placing black pieces there — quite a few of them, with only a single white piece to match.

Out on the main street, a carriage rolled slowly forward. The window was open. Through it one could see Xiahou Zuo’s mother seated within. On both sides of the street, men fell into step alongside the carriage, their gazes fixed on it without wavering.

After about half a quarter-hour, the carriage stopped at the mouth of a lane. The driver helped Lady Xiahou down and they went inside — the very last household at the lane’s far end.

The men who had been following the whole way swarmed into the lane like water flooding into a channel, filling it in no time at all.

The courtyard door was kicked open with a single blow. Inside they found the grass-hatted driver standing alone in the yard, his back to the gate.

The assailants took him in for a moment, then drew their weapons and charged. The driver turned and removed his hat —

And the men rushing forward slowed all at once, the foremost nearly stumbling in sudden fright.

Ye Zhangzhu set the hat aside. He glanced to his left and noticed a broom. He bent, picked it up, gave it a small shake — the handle snapped — and raised the broken half in a light, easy motion.

“Come on.”

Just two words.

Many of the men who had poured through the gate were underworld figures, and some of them had seen Ye Zhangzhu before and knew who he was. That was why they had frozen, unable to press forward.

Several were already thinking of retreat.

At the same moment, back at the Carriage House, Gao Xining placed a few white pieces behind the cluster of black.

The assailants tried to withdraw from the yard — and found they could not, because more people were entering the lane. Walking at the front of them, Jiang Ran took off his hat, then lifted both hands to unshoulder a repeating crossbow from each hip. He raised them, took aim at the assailants, and the corner of his mouth split into a grin.

The men with him were the same — two crossbows each, walking forward and firing as they came. The assailants packed into the gateway had no way forward and no way back.

A moment later, Ye Zhangzhu drove the blood-dripping broken handle upright into the ground beside him and turned to look at the building behind him.

The door opened, and Lady Xiahou emerged, raising her hand to peel away a layer of mask from her face.

Changmei the Daoist took in the bodies covering the ground and went slightly pale.

Ye Zhangzhu looked at the Daoist — fully kitted out in women’s clothing — and couldn’t help but smile. “Might have been better to leave the mask on.”

Changmei asked: “Why?”

Ye Zhangzhu pointed at the Daoist’s chest and smiled. “Doesn’t quite go with your face, Daoist.”

Changmei made a sound of displeasure, then reached into the front of his robes and pulled out two steamed buns. He examined them, then looked at Ye Zhangzhu: “Still warm. Want one?”

Ye Zhangzhu: “…”

—

The Carriage House.

Gao Xining studied the map before her. Only one position remained empty, and in her hand she still had a box full of black pieces. She sat in thought for a moment, then upended the box entirely. Black pieces rolled out everywhere, filling that last spot completely.

Gao Xining let out a slow breath. The one position she had not been fully certain of — the one that worried her most — was this last one.

—

Twenty li outside Jizhou City.

Li Chi glanced to the side from horseback. In the carriage he was escorting sat an elder who carried himself with quiet distinction, eyes closed the entire time, never once looking out.

Li Chi’s gaze shifted from the carriage beside him to the road ahead. Riding atop the forward carriage was a powerfully built man — a head and a half taller than Li Chi at minimum, sitting there like a great bronze bell, and when he stood he would look like an iron tower.

Li Chi looked back. The driver of the rear carriage was not very tall but looked enormously strong. As Li Chi watched him, the driver watched Li Chi in return.

Li Chi smiled at him. The driver smiled back. Both smiles were somewhat forced.

Up ahead, a great stretch of forest gradually sharpened into view. Just then, the elder seated inside the carriage slowly opened his eyes, looked out, and found Li Chi looking directly back at him.

The elder smiled at Li Chi. Li Chi smiled back.

Both smiles were even more forced than before.

—