Chapter 9: Kneel

Chuhe ran straight at Elder Pei.

He did not think about it, because if he had, he would have stopped.

The Elder saw him coming and lifted the glowing seal to hold him off, but Chuhe didn't slow.

He grabbed the chain in both fists and pulled.

The old links groaned.

Heat shot up his arms from the bronze, so sharp that he cried out.

He kept pulling until the chain snapped around Pei's neck and the seal fell into the dust.

Behind him, Hanjue gasped and sagged forward onto his hands.

"The seal is the Hall's!" Pei hissed. His thin cheek was scored red where the chain had torn it. "Guards! Take this boy!"

Nobody moved.

A hundred outer disciples stood in a ring at the back, with their buckets and brooms.

Yan Jingyi stepped in front of the guards, white and blue, with his sword still stuck in a bamboo post behind him.

"The challenge is finished, Elder," Yan said, clearly. "The Hall gave its word. It holds its peace until Midwinter. Everyone heard."

Every elder in the ring looked at the ground.

Pei bent, stiffly, and took the dead seal from the dust.

He turned it over in his long fingers.

"Very well," he said, with terrible calm. "Midwinter."

He walked out of the ring without looking back.

Chuhe knelt beside Hanjue and put an arm around him.

His palms were burned red and blistered in the shape of the seal's rim, and he could not feel them at all.

"Can you stand?" he asked.

"Yes. Give me a moment." Hanjue's face was wet. "Chuhe, your hands."

"They're fine."

"They are not."

Auntie Wen had already appeared at his side with a bowl of cold water and a roll of linen.

Her face dared anybody to say a word.

She took them both back to the kitchen.

She sat them in the little room behind the storeroom where she slept.

She bandaged Chuhe's palms with her mouth pressed thin and left a pot of soup on the table.

At the door, she looked back at Hanjue, huddled on the bed with his arms around his knees.

"Eat," she told him. "Both of you."

Then she shut the door.

They did not eat.

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