Reborn as the Henchman Who Protects the Villain novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: First Taste
Shi Wen eats the Lord's dinner first, lies badly about how he knew, and sees the Lord cough blood. He remembers the cupbearer dies at midnight and begs to see her.
The Sect Lord's dinner arrived on eleven dishes, and Shi Wen ate from every one of them with the Lord watching.
Cold Spring Court was the coldest place Shi Wen had ever eaten in.
The walls were bare black stone, a brazier burned in each corner, and the air still bit.
Duan Linxiao sat at the head of a low table with his chin on his fist and his fur collar up to his ears.
He had not touched his chopsticks.
"Braised eel," said Shi Wen, and chewed.
He had worked six years behind a hospital pharmacy counter.
He knew what bitter almond smelled like, and what a spoiled kidney bean tasted like.
This eel was clean.
"Next," said the Lord.
"Pickled mustard greens."
"Next."
By the ninth dish Shi Wen's hand was steady, and his stomach was not.
He was not afraid of the food.
He was afraid of the man, who had not blinked in a long time.
"Clean," he said, setting down his chopsticks. "All eleven. You can eat, Sect Lord."
"I will eat when I have an answer," said the Lord.
His voice was low and level and bored.
"You were at the sixth pillar. You moved before she raised the cup. Why?"
Shi Wen had spent the walk from the hall working on this.
"Her sleeve," he said. "The cuff was red. It looked wrong."
"Everyone in the hall could see her cuff. Three hundred people looked at it and stayed on their knees."
"I have good eyes?"
"You have good legs," said the Lord. "Try again."
"I felt sick. Something told me not to let you drink."
"Something."
"A feeling, Sect Lord," said Shi Wen.
The Lord looked at him for a while.
It was a long, slow, unkind look, and it started at Shi Wen's face and went down to his boots and back.
"A third guard with a feeling," he said. "In three hundred years, I have found that feelings are usually paid for."
"I haven't been paid."
"Then someone is going to be very disappointed in you."
He drew his hand from his sleeve and laid it flat on the table.
It was long, white and finely made, and when he coughed, it closed.
He turned his head and coughed into a cloth, three times, hard, with his shoulders going rigid.
Shi Wen did not look at the cloth.
He looked at the wall, the brazier, a crack in the stone, and anywhere else.
When the Lord lowered it, a dark stain showed at the folds, and the cloth went back into his sleeve.
"You saw nothing," said Duan Linxiao.
"I saw a very clean wall, Sect Lord," said Shi Wen.
"Good. The last taster talked."
"What happened to him?"
"He is under the plum tree in the east garden," said the Lord, without any expression.
"It is a good tree. It has never bloomed better."
Shi Wen laughed before he could stop himself.
It was a single short breath through the nose, and he clamped his mouth shut after it.
The Lord's eyes narrowed.
He might have been angry, or he might have been interested, and on that face there was no telling the difference.
"You find that funny?"
"I'm sorry. I find it, I think, very efficient."
"There are four rules," said the Lord.
"You eat first, whatever it is. You sleep in the outer room, on the mat. And you touch nothing of mine but the cup."
"Nothing but the cup," said Shi Wen.
The Lord's gaze did not leave him. "I do not like to be touched."
"Then why did you let me hold the cup?"
"I did not let you. You hit it."
The Lord's mouth moved at one corner, very slightly.
It was not a smile.
The Lord tapped one finger on the table.
"The fourth rule is the one I said in the hall. You do not die until I say so."
"I'll do my best, Sect Lord," said Shi Wen.
"Do better."
He picked up his chopsticks at last, and ate a single bite of eel, and put them down again.
It was not appetite, Shi Wen realized.
It was a man doing the minimum his body required to keep him in the chair.
Under the table, his fingers shook once and went still.
Shi Wen understood two things at that moment, and neither was comfortable.
The first was that he had stepped into the book with no map, and the second was that he did not mind.
He had spent eleven readings wanting somebody to step in and hand this man a cup that wasn't poisoned.
Somebody had finally done it, and it had turned out to be him.
Then the rest of Chapter Thirty-Eight came back to him, and it was cold.
In the book, the cupbearer did not live to the morning.
The cupbearer was found in a Discipline Hall cell at midnight, wrists cut, with a note in her sleeve that named the Lord's own steward.
It was all lies, and it closed the case.
It was dinner time now, and the midnight gong was hours off.
"Sect Lord," said Shi Wen.
"You have my attention for as long as it takes me to be bored."
"The cupbearer. May I see her tonight?"
Duan Linxiao raised his eyes slowly from the table.
"She belongs to the Discipline Hall," he said.
The Lord did not blink.
"She is in Han Zhuo's cell, under Han Zhuo's key. I do not take things from his cells for a taster who has a feeling."
"She's the only one who can prove the cup was poisoned."
"I know the cup was poisoned," said the Lord. "I smelled it from the dais."
Shi Wen stared at him.
"Then you knew," he said.
"I know a great many things," said the Lord. "Tell me why I should open that cell for you."
He folded his hands, and waited, and the braziers ticked in the quiet.
"Persuade me," he said.
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