Reborn as the Henchman Who Protects the Villain novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cup
Shi Wen wakes on the floor of the Sect Lord's hall on the day the book says the Lord will be poisoned, and he dives for the cup and says he tripped. The Lord does not punish him: he makes him his taster and says not to die before he decides.
Shi Wen woke with his forehead on cold black stone and his knees on fire.
For one stupid second he thought he had fallen asleep on the pharmacy night shift again.
Then he smelled lamp oil and hot iron, and a hand jabbed his ribs.
"Head up," a man hissed beside him. "The Lord is coming."
Shi Wen lifted his head and knew where he was, and what would happen in the next few minutes.
He was kneeling in a row of men in black cloaks, along the wall of a hall too long to see the end of.
Red lanterns hung from the rafters, and every one of them was lit.
Three hundred disciples sat at low tables below the dais with their sleeves folded and their eyes on the floor.
On the dais stood an empty chair of black wood.
Shi Wen had read about that chair.
It was in Chapter Thirty-Eight of Dawnbreaker, a novel he had finished on his phone in a night bus at three in the morning.
That was the last thing he remembered.
The body he was kneeling in remembered other things.
It knew its own name, which was Shi Wen, and its rank, which was third guard.
It knew its place, which was the sixth pillar from the dais.
The book had mentioned the name once.
Chapter Thirty-Eight had a list of the dead, and the list said: a dozen guards by the lord's seat, whose names do not matter.
Under the list, in the footnote of the fan edition, one of them had a line.
It was "Lord, the wine," and then the sentence ended in a sword.
Shi Wen felt a laugh coming up and swallowed it.
A gong sounded once, and the hall went silent.
The Sect Lord of the Moonless Valley walked in from the side door.
Duan Linxiao was tall and thin and dressed in black, with a collar of white fur pulled high around his throat.
He looked twenty-nine, and the book said he was three hundred.
His face was so beautiful it looked unwell.
Nobody in the hall raised their eyes to it.
He sat in the black chair without looking at anyone.
He coughed once into a folded cloth and put the cloth away before the room could decide whether it had seen.
Shi Wen had loved this man for eleven readings.
He had been the only adult in the whole novel.
A woman in grey came up the steps with a tray, and Shi Wen's stomach dropped through the floor.
She was the cupbearer.
On the tray sat a single jade cup of Founding Day wine.
Her right sleeve had a smear of red on the cuff.
It was the red of cinnabar ink, the kind only one hall in the valley used.
Shi Wen looked down the long table of elders and found the owner of that ink.
Han Zhuo, Elder of the Discipline Hall, sat with a cinnabar ring on his thumb and a pleasant smile.
He was not watching the Lord.
He was watching the cup.
In the book, the Lord drank, and coughed black blood, and could not stand.
Han Zhuo then declared him unfit in front of three hundred witnesses, and cut down every guard near the dais for negligence.
After that the Moonless Valley belonged to the Discipline Hall, and the Lord's death was only a matter of chapters.
The cupbearer knelt and raised the cup in both hands.
The Lord took it.
Shi Wen thought about shouting.
If he shouted, a third guard would be accusing a Discipline Elder's cupbearer of poison, with nothing in his hands.
He would be dead before he finished the word.
If he said nothing, he would be dead in a few minutes anyway, and so would the best man in the book.
The cup rose.
It was halfway to the Lord's mouth when Shi Wen decided he was done kneeling.
He was up before his knees agreed, and six steps was a long way to cover from the sixth pillar.
He went up the dais stairs on both hands and one shin.
The Lord's cold wrist was in front of him, and he slapped the cup out of it.
The jade flew in a small bright arc, struck the black stone and rang.
The wine ran down the steps.
Where it touched the stone it hissed, and a green pit opened in the floor the size of a coin.
Nobody breathed.
Shi Wen lay on his face on the dais stairs with a hand still stinging from the cold of the Lord's skin.
"I tripped," he said into the stone.
It was the stupidest thing he had ever said, and he had said some things.
"Seize him," said Han Zhuo, rising from the long table.
His voice was grieved.
"A guard who lays hands on the Sect Lord forfeits both of them. Captain, take him out."
Boots started across the floor.
The Lord had not moved.
He sat with his empty hand still raised and looked at the green pit in the steps.
Then he looked down at Shi Wen, slowly, from under heavy eyelids.
It was a long, flat, tired look, and nothing in it was surprised.
"Han Zhuo," said the Sect Lord, in a bored voice. "You are shouting in my hall."
The boots stopped.
The Lord lowered his hand, lifted two fingers, and pointed them at the back of Shi Wen's head.
"You," he said. "Third guard. The one who trips."
"Yes, Sect Lord," said Shi Wen.
"From tonight you are my taster."
Three hundred people in the hall decided not to gasp, all at once.
The Lord leaned back in the black chair and coughed once, softly, behind his cloth.
"Don't die before I decide you can," he said.
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