Chapter 4: Red

Chuhe slid off the cot and crouched by the lattice, close enough to smell the gold polish on Yan's rings.

"Why are you telling me?" he whispered.

"Because I hate you," Yan whispered back. "But I'd rather lose to a water carrier than see the Hall cheat."

He glanced down the corridor.

"My uncle keeps the Hall's notes, and I read them last night."

"The Midwinter rite marks three hundred years. Pei wants the blade sealed back in the stone under the Hall's own seal."

"The bearer is to be made unfit before then."

"Unfit," Chuhe said flatly.

"Dismissed. Crippled. Dead. The notes didn't say which."

Yan's mouth twisted.

"I'm not a murderer, Shao. I wanted that sword, but not that way."

"What do I do?"

"Stay alive for sixty days. Stay close to him."

Yan's eyes slid to the dark corner where Hanjue sat listening.

"The guard changes at the third bell. I have to go."

His white robe slid away along the wall and was gone.

Chuhe stayed crouched there for a while.

Sixty days.

He had spent five years on this mountain being invisible.

Now a man in the Hall wanted him unfit.

"Master," Hanjue said softly from the cot. "I can kill him."

"No."

"Then I will go back into the stone, and they will take me, and you will be left alone."

"Hanjue, no."

Chuhe came back to the cot and sat down heavily.

"I don't want a weapon," he said. "I carry water, and I've never wanted to hurt anyone."

"I want you to stay a person, not a sword."

Hanjue was silent.

When he spoke, his voice was very quiet.

"No one has ever called me that."

Chuhe took his hand and held it.

It was a long time before either of them spoke.

Then Hanjue sat up, turned, and settled himself on the cot facing Chuhe with his knees folded under him.

"You did a kindness for me," he said. "Earlier. Now I will do one for you."

"Hanjue."

"I have been thinking about your hands on me, and I want my mouth on you."

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