Chapter 10: The Whetstone

Chuhe woke the next morning to a low hum.

It came from Hanjue, who was sitting up in Auntie Wen's narrow bed.

His hair was loose around his shoulders, and his eyes were on the window.

It was a slow tune with four notes, going up and then down, over and over.

"What is that?" Chuhe asked, from the pillow.

Hanjue stopped.

"I do not know." He frowned. "I was humming. I did not know I was."

"It's nice. It sounds like a lullaby."

"I have no lullaby. I have no one who sang one." Hanjue rubbed his face, troubled. "It comes when I am quiet. It comes from somewhere."

Chuhe sat up.

The burns on his palms had closed under Auntie Wen's salve into pink tender skin.

He reached for his sash, folded on the chair, and found the thing he always kept in it.

"Here," he said. "Hold this."

It was a flat grey whetstone as long as his hand, worn smooth in the middle from years of use.

"It was my foster mother's," Chuhe said. "She was the smith's widow in Lanxi village."

"She took me in when I was six and taught me the hammer, until I got ideas about the sect and left."

"She sharpened every knife in the village on this."

Hanjue took it.

The moment his fingers closed on the stone, his shoulders dropped.

"It is warm," he said, wondering. "It is like the bath."

"It does that for me too. Always has."

Hanjue turned it over and over.

His thumb moved along the worn hollow in the middle, quite certain of where to go, and the humming started up again from his chest.

A tear ran down his face, then another.

"Why am I crying?" he asked. "I do not feel sad."

"You don't have to know why."

Chuhe took the stone gently, set it on the pillow, and pulled Hanjue into his arms.

They sat for a while.

"You asked me to give you orders," Chuhe said, into his hair. "I said no. I was wrong to say it so hard."

Hanjue went still.

"You said you wanted it. Not because you had to. Because it felt good, and safe."

"Yes."

"Then I'm going to give you every order you've been begging for," Chuhe said, his voice dropping low.

Hanjue's breath hitched, his grey eyes darkening at once.

"Tell me what to do," Hanjue whispered.

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