The Blind Swordmaster Took In His Own Assassin novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Crane and the Crow
"Let him go," said Ryeo-won.
He had not raised his voice.
He stood where he was, in the middle of the floor, with the staff in his left hand and his right hand hanging open at his side.
"The Court has no further business with the boy," said Madam Gwak.
"The Court has no further business with any of you."
"I regret this."
"I really do."
She closed her fist.
Ra-on saw the cords.
He had never noticed them before, thin black threads running from every lantern ring up through the ceiling.
They all ran to a single iron peg set in the dais.
Her ringed fingers had been resting on it the whole time.
She pulled it down.
Every lantern in the cellar dropped on its cord and went out.
The dark came down.
Somebody screamed, and a bench went over, and two hundred candles ticked and hissed in their paper husks.
Ra-on stood frozen in blackness.
He was an assassin.
He had spent sixteen years learning to move in the dark.
He stood there with a knife in his hand and could not find north.
A sound came out of the dark, light and almost amused.
"There," said Ryeo-won.
"Now it's fair."
Ra-on felt air move.
He heard the long clear whisper of the Crane leaving its scabbard.
He heard a man's quick wet breath, and Kang-sik's voice, high, saying, "Where is he, where?"
"Here," said Ryeo-won, very gently, from somewhere else.
A blade rang off a blade.
It rang again, from the left this time.
Ra-on took two steps, and his boot hit someone's leg, and Dong-ju's voice yelped from the floor, "Brother Ra-on, I'm here, he dropped me!"
Ra-on got a hand in the boy's collar and hauled him behind a bench and put his body over him.
The fight went on over their heads.
It was the strangest thing Ra-on had ever heard.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Blind Swordmaster Took In His Own Assassin are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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