Li Yunxiu's face went cold.
Wang Yu's newborn internal energy was far too shallow for his eyes to keep up. He saw the two blue-robed men come skimming in like lightness-arts masters off a television screen, dragonflies flicking across water, sword-light glittering in their hands — but the blades themselves he could not make out at all.
The guards around the carriage drew their sabers as one, and squad leader Song Yong spurred his horse forward, blade out.
"Come back! You are no match for them!" Li Yunxiu called sharply.
One heartbeat of hesitation was all it took — the two blue robes were on him. He wrenched himself aside, but all he saw was a flash of sword-light; pain bit into his shoulder and under his ribs, and he went tumbling from the saddle.
"What a fast sword!"
Song Yong twisted around in horror, just in time to see the pair already at the carriage.
The Southern Sea Twin Swords spared not a glance for the few guards in their way. One bound carried them into the air above the carriage horses, their eyes fixed on Wang Yu and Li Yunxiu inside.
Wang Yu could see the killing intent in those eyes.
Strangely, he was not afraid.
He might be fresh off the crossing, but his wits had made the trip intact. Li Yunxiu had told him, minutes ago, that a master traveled with them — and here she sat, not a trace of fear on her face, chatting him through sect trivia. What was there for him to be afraid of?
Sure enough, in the next moment, the master moved.
It was not anyone hidden among the guards. It was the white-haired old coachman.
Just as the Twin Swords cleared the guards and swept in above the two carriage horses, the old coachman rolled his eyes at them — even found the time to knock his pipe against the footboard — and only then angled it upward.
A dry-tobacco pipe a foot longer than any common pipe slid suddenly into the space between the two blossoms of sword-light, lodging exactly between man and blade. A push and a strike; a turn and a rap.
The Twin Swords' faces changed. Wrists snapping over, they pulled their blades in to guard — and still could not keep up with the pipe's changes. Pain lanced through the hegu point of one hand, the shenmen point of the other; their fingers went half-numb, and both longswords flew from their grips.
Thunk! Thunk! The two swords stabbed slantwise into the earth and stood there quivering, light shivering off the blades.
Disarmed in mid-air, the Twin Swords' expressions changed yet again — but they were old jianghu hands, and their recovery was fast as thought. Stranded aloft with nowhere to turn, left palm met right palm in a mid-air clap, and they flung themselves apart to either side.
They were fast. The old coachman's pipe was faster. Having struck away their swords, it followed them upward like rot into bone, afterimages weaving snakelike left and right — one man striking with the effect of two.
Up along the arm: chize, tianfu, yunmen. Down the trunk: shencang, juque, zhangmen. And at the last, one tap each to the dubi point at the knee.
The old coachman drew back his pipe and settled again onto the driver's seat, while the Southern Sea Twin Swords drifted down on either side of the carriage.
Their feet had barely touched ground when the strength ran out of their bodies. Their knees buckled, and they collapsed.
The old coachman knocked his pipe against the footboard once more, took a pull, and breathed out a slow smoke ring, not sparing the two men crumpled on the ground so much as a glance.
"Now that's a master!" Wang Yu stared at the old coachman. He had not seen the man's movements clearly. At all.
And in the same moment, he worked out why the master was the coachman.
By rights, his impersonation of Zhao Yu was a secret of the highest order — beyond the emperor and himself, only the princess consort Li Yunxiu and her maid Ziling knew. Yet the two of them had been discussing all of it openly inside the carriage.
The guards rode too far out to hear talk within. But the man driving the carriage would hear every word.
If the coachman were an ordinary man, no one would ever let him carry a secret like that — let him swear whatever oaths he liked, the only road left would end in a silenced witness. But if he was the great master secretly guarding Wang Yu, then everything squared.
And posted outside the carriage, he could also make sure no one else got close enough to listen.
"Thank you for your trouble, Elder Yan."
While Wang Yu was still thinking it through, Li Yunxiu had already offered her thanks and stepped lightly down from the carriage.
She went first to Song Yong and helped him up, sealing several acupoints to stop his bleeding, then beckoned two guards over to bind his wounds. "You dodged in time. Flesh wounds — nothing that matters."
"My thanks, Your Highness!" Song Yong said hastily — then, catching Wang Yu's eye, he flinched back a step without thinking, careful not to have one touch more contact with Li Yunxiu than he could help.
He knew exactly how twisted this Westguard Prince's temper was said to run. If the man decided his own guard had designs on his consort, killing him was hardly out of the question.
Li Yunxiu paid it no mind. She strolled to the blue-robed man who had fallen on the right and considered the knife scar under the corner of his left eye. "Cloud Sword, I take it?"
Cloud Sword answered with a question of his own. "Who is that man?"
Li Yunxiu answered with hers. "Who sent you to kill my husband?"
Cloud Sword's laugh was low and ugly. "If I tell you — will you let me leave?"
"I can make you beg for death," Li Yunxiu said, mild as ever.
The words ended and her hands moved, seizing his arm — a wrench, a twist, the Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocating Hand. To Cloud Sword, it felt as if the two great sinews running fingertip to heel were being wrung into a braid. Pain swallowed every inch of him.
He made one muffled sound through his teeth. Sweat sheeted down his face. He did not cry out.
"A hard man." Li Yunxiu nodded — and her raised sleeve swept gently across his throat. Cloud Sword's eyes bulged; twice came the rasp, "hhk, hhk"; then his body arched once, and he was dead.
Under the drifting sleeve, she had flicked out one finger and crushed his throatbone.
Then she walked, entirely unhurried, toward Wind Sword where he had fallen at the carriage's left. She was still a zhang away when he started talking.
"Zhao Yu drugged and raped our sect leader's daughter in the capital!"
"Hm?"
Everyone turned to look at the carriage — where Wang Yu was leaning out, watching.
He pointed at his own chest. "Me again?"
After that, Wind Sword poured out everything in one breath.
"The wife of the Vice Minister of Personnel is our sect leader's younger sister. Mu Zhiqiu came to the capital half a year ago to visit her aunt — and disappeared. Three days later, she was dumped at the Vice Minister's back gate, bruised black and blue, her body already violated. She woke, and hanged herself.
Mu Zhiqiu was not only our sect leader's treasured daughter. She was betrothed to the eldest young master of the Lin family — she had come in person to invite her aunt home for the wedding.
Vice Minister Xu and his wife sent riders south with the news. A thing like this disgraces every name it touches, and stains a dead girl's reputation worst of all, so the sect leader smothered it and sent only the two of us to the capital to investigate quietly.
Half a month ago, we finally traced it: Zhao Yu had her drugged and carried off. We meant to ride home and report — but just then you left for the Westguard Manor, and word went around the capital that people wanted you dead. So we talked it over and took the bounty. Vengeance for Mu Zhiqiu, and silver in the bargain."
Wind Sword caught his breath and looked up at Li Yunxiu, struggling. "It was Old Cloud who offended you — I praised you just now, remember? Spare my life, Your Highness. I swear I will go back to the Southern Sea and never set foot in the Central Plains again."
Li Yunxiu nodded. "Thank you for the explanation."
"Then..."
Hope kindled in Wind Sword's eyes. Then he watched her hand sweep gently across his chest.
Two men killed in the blink of an eye. Watching Li Yunxiu walk back to the carriage with a face like still water, Wang Yu felt the corner of his mouth twitch. The last time he had watched a man die, it had been in a movie.
***
The guards, well practiced, carried the Twin Swords' bodies deep into the trees, and it was a good while before they returned. The carriage rolled on.
Rumble, rumble...
Wang Yu watched Li Yunxiu lift her cup and sip her tea, slender fingers pale as fresh scallions — nothing about her suggesting a woman who had just killed two men.
Catching her glance, Wang Yu moved his eyes elsewhere with perfect naturalness, then pointed outside. "And the gentleman up front would be...?"
"His name would mean nothing to you." Li Yunxiu shook her head.
Ziling picked it up instead. "All you need to know is that in his youth he stormed Mount Taiheng alone and shook both banks of the Great River — one short staff against the seventy-two great acupoints of the human body, and for a while, no one's star burned brighter."
"Ohh—" Wang Yu cupped his hands toward the front of the carriage, the very picture of admiration. "Respect! Respect!"
"Is he an Innate expert?" he asked.
Ziling blinked and said nothing. The silence turned faintly awkward.
Through the front of the carriage came the old coachman's aged voice. "Someone crippled my dantian. Knocked me out of the Innate realm."
Li Yunxiu smoothed it over. "But your internal energy runs as deep as ever, Elder Yan, and your eye and experience are all still there. Even an ordinary Innate expert might not walk away your better."
Outside, Elder Yan chuckled twice and said no more.
Inside, Li Yunxiu set down her teacup, thinking aloud. "So you drugged and raped the Southern Sea sect leader's daughter. That, I did not expect."
Wang Yu's face fell. "It wasn't me!"
Ziling nodded, very earnest. "It was absolutely you."
Wang Yu sighed. "Is the Southern Sea sect leader an Innate expert?"
"Of course he is — and no ordinary one, either. If your father were still alive, he'd be nothing to fear." Ziling was all sincerity.
"But my father is dead." Wang Yu had finally settled all the way into the role of Zhao Yu.
"Relax. You still have fifty thousand troops, and the Manor keeps masters of its own. Mu Tianxiong will not set foot in the northwest lightly." Li Yunxiu looked entirely at ease.
"Really?" Wang Yu asked.
"Really," Li Yunxiu said.
"Then I'm relieved," Wang Yu said.
"But I am not," Li Yunxiu sighed.
"What are you un-relieved about now?" Wang Yu demanded. You were consoling me a second ago!
"Because I do not know whether the Southern Sea sect leader's daughter is where your list ends," she said, her voice drifting. "If it turns out you also slept with the daughter of the Taihua Sect's leader, I doubt we make it out of the Hexi Circuit."
Wang Yu gave up. "And what kind of power is the Taihua Sect?"
"The Taihua Sect is one of the Seven Great Sword Sects of the Central Plains. Their leader, Hua Ziqing, may not be the first man among the Seven — but in recent years Taihua produced the Little Sword Immortal, Fang Shaobai, and in the next generation they may well stand at the top." That was Ziling.
Wang Yu sighed right along with Li Yunxiu this time. "Why does nobody ever tell me anything?"
"There was too little time," Li Yunxiu said. "And our purpose in returning is to take the border army in hand and govern the region. We have no intention of meddling in the martial world's affairs — so there seemed little point in telling you more."
Fair enough. Wang Yu was a fake; even with the art learned, it was learned for show. What business would he have meddling in the martial world?
Still, the thought left him a little less steady. "I didn't actually sleep with the Taihua leader's daughter too, did I?"
Li Yunxiu smiled, slow and serene. "You did not."
"How do you know?"
"Hua Ziqing has no daughter."