Chapter 7: Blood on the Sleeve

The cut was clean, a hand long, and deep enough to need stitches.

Linxia sat on the edge of her bed in the guest courtyard, jaw tight.

Her left arm lay stretched out on a folded towel.

Zhaoxue knelt beside her with a basin of hot water and a roll of white linen.

She had a green jar of wound paste that her hands had barely managed to open.

Outside the paper window, two hundred Salt Tide guards were being shown to their billets.

Mo Zhenhai had told the whole courtyard that his daughter had walked into a practice swing.

Then he had laughed so loudly that nobody dared say otherwise.

Then he had pushed Zhaoxue gently toward the guest rooms and said, "Go and fix her. I'll sit with your father."

She had not known what to say to him.

She still didn't.

"Sleeve," she said now.

"It's stuck to the blood."

"I know. I'll be careful."

Linxia let her cut it away.

The black cloth parted under the little scissors.

Then the white inner sleeve, and then the skin was bare to the shoulder.

Her arm was long and brown and hard with muscle.

It had a fine silver line of old scars, and a new red one that Zhaoxue had made.

Zhaoxue's own hands shook as she cleaned it.

"Stop that," Linxia said.

"I made this."

"You stepped on your hem, charged a man who had done nothing and nearly started a war between two sects. It was impressive."

"Don't joke."

"I'm bleeding. I'm allowed."

Zhaoxue pressed the cloth down harder than she meant to, and Linxia hissed through her teeth.

"Sorry. Sorry."

"It's all right."

"It's not all right! You could have..."

"I could have let you swing at the guard, and watched you get cut down by his friends," Linxia said.