Chapter 5: The Torn Page

"He's going to kill me," Yeon-hwa said, as soon as the hall doors shut behind them.

"He's going to try," Mu-hyeon said. "That's different."

"He looked at me like a man pricing a coffin."

"He looks at everyone like that. He priced mine three days ago."

He walked her up a stair cut into the cliff to a small pavilion with a red door.

There was a bed inside, a brazier, a window over the drop and a basin of hot water somebody had already filled.

"Mine is across the court," he said. "Pyo will put a man on your door."

"One of yours?"

"One of Pyo's. Pyo's men would cut their own hands off before they'd let him down."

He hesitated in the doorway.

She had never seen him hesitate.

"Do you have a house art, Seol Yeon-hwa?"

"I have a box," she said. "Let's find out."

He left.

Yeon-hwa sat on the bed and opened the lacquered lid for the first time.

There was a smell of camphor and old paper.

Inside lay a thin bound book wrapped in yellow silk, and nothing else.

The cover said "The Falling Snow Sword of the House of Seol" in faded brush strokes.

The pages inside were in a different, newer hand.

She knew without being told that it was her father's.

He had copied every form out for his daughter, with little drawings of a girl in the margins, her feet marked with dots.

First Snow.

Snow on the Pine.

Drifting Snow.

Night Snowfall.

White Field.

Moon on Snow.

She turned the page for the seventh.

There wasn't one.

It had been cut out with a blade, close to the binding.

Only a ragged stub was left, and on the stub, half a word at the top edge.

"Red."

Yeon-hwa sat there with the book open on her knees.

The kindest man in the Alliance had kept this box for ten years.

He had given it back to her in under a minute.

Of course he had.

He'd already taken what he wanted out of it.

She read the six forms through once.

Then she put the book down and closed her eyes, and her hands knew every word of it.

Every turn, every step, every place the weight moved.

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