Chapter 7: Iron

The pedlar came back the next afternoon, and this time he did not bring ribbons.

Ra-on found him in the pines above the villa, sitting on a rock with his hands loose on his knees.

The scout smiled when Ra-on came up the slope.

"You're not working," he said.

"I'm working."

"You're sleeping in his bed."

"The Madam knows, Magpie."

"She says a lover is a very good place to put a knife."

"And a very bad place to put a heart."

Ra-on stood still.

"She also says the Crow is bringing a gift for the boy."

"What gift?"

"A finger," the scout said gently.

"To remind you which of you has a leash."

He had been a nobody in the Hall's lower rooms, a man who mopped.

Ra-on had watched him mop up Ra-on's own blood once, when Ra-on was fourteen.

The scout had given him a sweet bean cake afterward and told no one.

Ra-on took the wire out of his sash.

The scout saw it in his hand, and his face did something Ra-on would not forget.

It did not show fear.

It showed sorrow.

"I thought you might," he said.

It was quick.

It had to be.

Ra-on had killed forty-one people for the Hall, and every one had been a stranger or a name in a file.

He stood over the scout in the pine needles with the wire slick in his hands.

He did not feel the satisfaction he had been trained to expect.

He felt sick.

He dragged the body behind the rocks and covered it with needles and went down to the well.

He washed his hands in the bucket until the water ran pink.

Then he washed the wire, and the bucket.

His hands would not stop shaking.

He stood there in the cold dusk with his sleeves wet to the elbow.

"Ra-on," said a voice from the porch.

Ryeo-won stood at the top of the steps with one hand on the post.

His face was tilted toward the well, and his nostrils flared.

"You smell of iron," said the Blind Swordmaster.

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