Chapter 1

The Night of the Assassination

Late autumn nights in Hangzhou were the season when the mist rising off West Lake climbed over the walls and seeped deep into every courtyard, and so the lantern light of Qin Manor, soaked in that mist, spread in a yellow blur and wavered.

Xiao Han, passing beneath the eaves of the inner hall, stopped. On the sill of the open window sat a single teacup, and upon the cold tea the mist had settled into a faint film. Ever since he had passed through the gate of this house at the age of ten, for thirty-five years without a day's difference he had been respectfully pointing out that a teacup ought to be kept on the table if it was not to be cooled by the wind; and tonight, as on every other night, his master's teacup was on the windowsill.

"Han'er." A low, weighty voice drifted out from within.

"Yes, Master."

"Leave the cup where it is."

Xiao Han drew back the hand he had been about to extend and bowed his head. The master, who at seventy was called the foremost sword under heaven, was not ignorant of what his servant was thinking; nor was the forty-five-year-old servant ignorant of the fact that his master knew it and did so on purpose all the same. In that manner the two of them had grown old together under one roof for thirty-five years.

Yet something that night was out of joint. The yellow dog in the kennel at the corner of the yard, which barked every night, was not making so much as the sound of breathing, and of the two lanterns hung above the main gate, one had gone out. It had been Xiao Han himself who filled them with oil at sundown; to blame the wind would have been too convenient a coincidence, and to blame the oil more convenient still.

"Master."

"I know."

Within the room a sword left its scabbard. It was a presence one would hesitate even to call a sound, like a fold of silk brushing against another fold of silk. The sword of the master who wielded the Heavenflow Sword Art seldom made a sound as it left its sheath.

Xiao Han folded the rag he had been holding and hung it neatly over the basin beneath the eaves, then picked up the wooden sword that leaned against the wall. No true blade would ever find its way into a servant's hand; for close to thirty years he had watched his master's dawn training from nearby, yet the only things his hands had ever held were a broom, a rag, and this worn wooden sword.

Beyond the mist, black shadows rose one by one along the top of the wall. At first there were three, then soon seven, and in the time it took Xiao Han to draw a single breath they had swelled to fourteen.

Before the first shadow could set foot in the yard, its head had fallen away into the mist, and the two who followed gave up their flanks to each other's blades. Qin Tianming's sword was like water running down a mountain gorge: if one blocked it, it slipped past as a stream bends around a boulder, and if one evaded it, it followed after as water seeps toward low ground, until at last it found its way in.

Xiao Han had watched that flow for close to thirty years. Before the break of dawn, broom in hand in a corner of the yard, from the First Form to the Twelfth Form, he had taken into his ears every last line of the sword formula his master murmured under his breath. He had only ever watched, and nothing more.

"Han'er, get inside."

"That, I cannot do."

"...You rascal."

There was a trace of laughter at the end of the scolding voice. To laugh like that in the very heart of a death trap was truly like the master, Xiao Han thought, and brought the wooden sword down. The feel of an approaching shadow's wrist bone snapping beneath it ran up through his palm, and when the blade slipped from the shadow's grip and rolled across the earth, Xiao Han hooked it with the tip of his foot and sent it flying over the flowerbed. If a blade were left lying about the yard, someone would step on it tomorrow morning.

Fourteen became seven, seven became three, and at length not a single shadow remained standing in the yard. But upon the wall, one was still left. This one differed from the rest of the band even in the way he stood. He rested on the edge of the roof tiles like a feather, as though his body held not a single ounce of weight, and his black mask and black robes were so still that they seemed to have wrapped themselves in mist without ever growing damp. For the first time, Qin Tianming shifted his grip on his sword.

"...Who are you?"

In place of an answer, the shadow flowed down from the wall. And Xiao Han saw it: a sword that went around when blocked and followed when evaded, a sword that ran like water.

It was a sword that resembled the Heavenflow Sword Art. Seven parts in ten had plainly sprung from the same source, but the remaining three were twisted at every bend. Each time the flow broke at a turn, as a river breaks its course against a rock, the master's sword arrived at that broken place half a beat late.

Qin Tianming took a step back. In the thirty-five years Xiao Han had served him, it was the first time he had ever seen his master give ground.

"That sword... where did you..."

From beneath the mask came no answer at all. His body moved before his thoughts did. The two legs that had stood behind his master's back for thirty-five years leapt, that night for the first time, in front of it.

The wooden sword snapped in two, and after it came Xiao Han's chest. A piece of ice-cold iron entered his chest and withdrew as if nothing had happened, so that the chill reached him before any heat did, and Xiao Han, on his knees, looked down at the earth before his eyes. It was the yard he had swept with his own hands that morning. The marks of the broom still lay even upon it, and the thought came to him that he was glad it was clean.

"Han'er!"

When he raised his head, his master was meeting the masked man's blade. Three exchanges passed, and the seventy-year-old foremost sword under heaven was being driven back for the first time. The half beat lost before the breaking flow accumulated, once, and then twice.

And in the final moment, the masked man shifted his sword into his left hand. A stroke begun with the right hand came to its end in the left. It was a move found nowhere in the twelve forms of the Heavenflow Sword Art. In the instant his master's sword moved to guard the left, the blade's point drove in from the other side and pierced his right flank.

Qin Tianming fell. It was right beside Xiao Han.

His master's face lay upon the earth. Seventy years of wrinkles and a beard gone white as frost, the face to which, for thirty-five years without missing a single day, he had carried washing water, was one foot away.

"...Han'er."

"...Yes, Master."

"The teacup..."

Was that what he meant to speak of at a time like this? Xiao Han could not help but laugh.

"...I left it on the windowsill, just as it was."

"...Well done."

That was the last. The masked man looked down for a moment at the two fallen men. From the point of the sword in his left hand, a drop of blood fell, and then another, and sank into the earth. At length he turned without leaving a single word behind and went over the wall.

Xiao Han kept that retreating figure in his eyes to the very end. He strove to miss nothing: the breaking flow, the angle of the wrist as it shifted the sword to the left hand, even the habit of setting down the left foot first when going over a wall.

Then his sight blurred like the mist. The last thought that came to him was a question of who would sweep the yard tomorrow morning.

"Han'er! You wretch, Han'er! The sun is already high in the sky!"

A palm came down on his back. It was a stinging, heavy hand.

Xiao Han opened his eyes. It was the yard. But there was no bloodstain anywhere upon the earth, nor any fallen shadow, nor any wooden sword broken in two. In place of the late autumn mist, spring sunlight had settled over the whole yard, and on top of the wall two sparrows were quarrelling over a single roof tile.

"If you doze off holding a rag, do you suppose the rag will walk about and scrub the yard for you of its own accord?"

He turned his head, and there stood Old Wang. This was the old man who had first put a broom into the hands of a ten-year-old Xiao Han, and the old man whose body Xiao Han had washed and laid out with his own hands one winter fifteen years ago. That same old man now stood with his walking stick tucked under one arm and his back held straight, frowning down at Xiao Han.

"...Elder Wang."

"Elder, nothing. Woke up from a nap and forgot how to address your betters? I told you to call me Steward."

Xiao Han looked down at his own hands. They were small. On their backs, in place of calluses, were freshly healed scratches, and the joints of his fingers were thin and delicate. And in those hands was clutched a single wet rag.

When he slowly rose, his legs were light. His left knee, which for the past ten years had ached whenever it rained, gave no sign of itself at all. Without a word Xiao Han walked across to the well on the far side of the yard, drew up water with the bucket, and gazed down at its surface.

A fifteen-year-old face, with gaunt cheeks and a jaw not yet grown, looked back at him. When Xiao Han closed his eyes once and opened them, the boy in the water closed and opened his eyes as well.

"Has this boy truly taken ill somewhere? Why does your face look like that?"

Old Wang came over and laid a rough palm on Xiao Han's forehead. Calloused fingers touched his brow and then withdrew. It was a hand that had held a broom all its life.

"No fever, at least."

"...I am all right, Steward."

His voice cracked. It was the voice of a boy whose voice was breaking. Xiao Han cleared his throat and spoke again.

"...Truly, I am all right."

"Then why is an all-right boy shedding tears?"

Only then did Xiao Han realize his cheeks were wet. He wiped them with the back of his hand, only to realize it was the hand holding the rag, but by then muddy water had already spread across his face, and Old Wang clicked his tongue and turned away.

"Go and wash your face. I hear Auntie Zhang put meat in this morning's dishes. If you are late, that Xiao Fu will eat every last scrap."

Watching Old Wang's back recede, the servant who had lived forty-five years only then began, in his head, to reckon. If Old Wang was alive, and even his own voice was cracking like a boy's, then this would be the spring of the year Xiao Han turned fifteen. And in the spring of the year he turned eighteen, this house had burned.

The fire of Hangzhou. Half of Qin Manor had become a heap of ashes, and within those flames, the Madam had departed this world. From that day on, the master had never smiled again. Pursuing the hordes of the unorthodox sects, he had washed the martial world in blood for three years, and when he returned, he was no longer the man Xiao Han had known.

Three years remained.

When Xiao Han clenched the rag, droplets of water ran down between his fingers. At that very moment, the door of the inner hall opened.

Qin Tianming walked out into the yard. There were no seventy years of wrinkles, no frost-white hair; he was a man of forty with a beard black as ink and broad shoulders, and the sword at his waist gleamed softly in the spring sunlight. In Jiangnan the swordsman Qin Tianming was a name of some repute, but these were the days when no one yet called him the foremost under heaven. The master's gaze made a circuit of the yard and came to rest on Xiao Han.

"Han'er."

Xiao Han bowed at the waist. The waist of a fifteen-year-old servant bent, by the habit of thirty-five years, without the slightest deviation.

"Yes, Master."

"Have you eaten?"

"...Not yet, Master."

"Eat first, then work."

Leaving only those words, the master walked toward the main gate. He was on his way to the hill behind the manor for his morning training. Right foot, left foot, right foot again. He was alive, and walking.

Xiao Han straightened, went into the inner hall, and stood at the window. Through it he could see his master's back as he went out through the gate: the length of his stride, the height of his shoulders, even the angle at which his right hand met the hilt of his sword, none of it differing by so much as a hair from the opening stance of the Heavenflow Sword Art's First Form. Xiao Han engraved every part of that walk upon his eyes until it vanished beyond the gate.

Then he picked up the teacup from the windowsill and set it down on the table.

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