Chapter 122: New lord

"Ahem."

Both of us froze. At the door of the room, with one hand raised politely to her mouth and an expression of unshakeable professional blankness, stood Captain Ru. Behind her, peering over her shoulder, was Jiang Wei. Behind Jiang Wei, craning for a better view, were three of the village healers and Old Liu.

Nobody said a word. Qing Yan vanished. She was off the bed and across the room in the time it took me to blink, standing with her back to us and her hands clasped primly in front of her. Every inch of her skin was the color of her robes.

"I was checking his pulse," she said to the wall.

"Of course," said Captain Ru gravely.

"He is very weak."

"Naturally."

"I was very concerned."

"We could tell," Old Liu said. One of the healers made a small choking noise and turned it into a cough.

I put my arm over my eyes. "Please, leave me to die."

"You have done enough of that," Captain Ru said, walking in. She hadn’t changed. The scar on her chin, the bow across her back, the steady gaze. But she stopped at the foot of the bed and put her right fist against her left palm, bowing low. It was the old salute, the kind sects gave to their elders.

Jiang Wei and the others copied her.

"Captain," I said. "Please don’t."

"Senior Barry," said Jiang Wei, straightening.

"You’ve been asleep for ten days. A great deal has happened."

"Then start there."

He did. He was good at it. He had a way of laying things out in order that made even bad news easy to process.

The army had retreated north and hadn’t returned. Scouts had followed them for three days, reporting a long, ragged column dragging wounded, with no sign of Asmodeus. Half the ridge above the Throat had come down in the strike, and the road through the pass was blocked solid with fallen rock. It would take months to clear, which, Captain Ru said dryly, suited her fine.

Forty-one villagers had died in the first night’s fighting. Another sixty were wounded. They were burying the dead by the river. They had waited, Old Liu added quietly, until I could be there. I looked at him and couldn’t say anything.

"There’s one more thing," Jiang Wei said.

His voice changed. I knew the tone. It was the same one he had used when he found the first trap.

"Han Shuo is gone."

I sat up. But It cost me. Something in my side flared like a hot wire, and Qing Yan was at my shoulder in an instant, but I waved her off. "Gone where?"

"We don’t know. He wasn’t at the ridge after the army pulled back. Nobody saw him leave. His house is empty." Jiang Wei hesitated. "The veil is still up. It’s holding. But it’s... different. It’s steady now. Not like it was when he was feeding it."

"So he’s not dead," Qing Yan said slowly.

"No one can say. But the anchor stones are intact, and the veil doesn’t need him anymore." Jiang Wei held out a single sheet of cheap paper, folded once. "He left this on the table in the hall."

I took it.Inside, in a hand as neat as a scribe’s, were three lines.

’The valley is yours now. Keep it as you kept the road.’

’Do not ask me where I have gone.’

’We will meet again when the time will come.’

That was all. No signature.

I read it twice.because I had a strong feeling I had missed something.

"That’s not a goodbye," I said. "It’s an assignment."

"He knew," Qing Yan murmured. She was reading over my shoulder, her breath warm against my ear. "He knew he would leave. He told us at dinner that night. He said he had things he would have to say."

"And then he didn’t say them."

"No."

I folded the paper and set it on the quilt. The room had gone quiet. Out in the yard, a rooster crowed, someone laughed far off, and the river went on talking to itself.

"Barry," said Captain Ru.

I looked up. She had stepped back from the bed, and she was not alone. Somehow, while I was reading, the room had filled. There were villagers in the doorway and the hall beyond, crowded shoulder to shoulder, spilling out into the yard.

Old women. Boys with bows. Farmers with calloused hands, a woman holding a baby. Some had bandages. Some had tear tracks. All of them were looking at me.

And as I watched, they knelt. It wasn’t a ripple. It happened all at once, row by row, the way a field of wheat goes down in the wind. Captain Ru went to one knee. Jiang Wei followed, and Old Liu, slowly, with a hand on his back. The healers. The boys. The woman with the baby bowed her head until her forehead touched the boards.

"No," I said. "No, stop. Get up."

Nobody moved.

"I mean it. I didn’t do this so you could—" I tried to swing my legs out of bed, and the room tilted. Qing Yan caught my elbow. "Captain. Please. Get up."

"The Lord left us in your hands," Captain Ru said to the floor. "We would be dead without you. We would be in chains. We have lost so much, Senior, and we have never had a reason to hope until you walked out of that forest. If you would lead us, we would follow."

"I didn’t ask for this."

"No," said Old Liu, raising his head. His eyes were bright. "That’s why we’re asking you."

I looked at them. Every face turned up toward mine was a face I had seen on that road, in that line of chains, in the first dusk of this world. They weren’t a mob. They weren’t afraid. They were people who had decided something.

I looked at Qing Yan. She hadn’t knelt. She was standing at my shoulder with her chin up and her hand still on my arm, looking at me. There was no teasing in her eyes, and no worry. There was something much quieter—a calm, steady pride.

"They’re right," she said softly. "And you know it."

"I’m a thief with a good right hook."

"You are the man who held the Throat." She squeezed my arm. "You do not have to be a lord. But you cannot walk away from them now."

I closed my eyes. The old stone in my chest shifted. I thought of a woman on a mountain, a burning hall, and a promise I hadn’t been able to keep in the past.

’I’m not doing it again,’ I thought. ’Not that way.’

When I opened my eyes, the whole room was still waiting.

"Fine," I said. "I’ll stay. But you don’t kneel to me. Not ever. Anybody who wants to talk to me can do it standing up, looking me in the eyes"

There was a long silence. Then, from somewhere at the back, a boy’s voice cracked. "Can we still call you Senior?"

"No."

"What about Lord Barry?"

"Absolutely not."

"What about her majesty husband?"

"Who said—" Qing Yan began in a strangled voice, and the whole room erupted into laughter.