What If I Did Kill You
The air all around went suddenly still.
But Zheng Nanlou’s voice went on, the muffled coughing he could not hold down making him sound as though speaking hurt:
“Senior brother Xie, are you not thinking too highly of me?”
“Or is it that you are truly willing to admit a waste like me could wound you?”
He bit down hard on the word “waste” on purpose, lips gone white with pain parting and closing as he produced a wretched smile that strained to look ingratiating.
It looked like begging for mercy, and yet as those words landed in Xie Heng’s ears they scalded him, and his blood surged again and again.
This man. He was doing it on purpose, plainly on purpose.
He could feel quite clearly the eyes of the several disciples beside him, the ones who usually trailed at his back, turning his way now. Doubting, speculating, disbelieving, and perhaps already carrying a trace of scorn. Those looks, real or imagined, coiled around him like vipers flicking their tongues.
All his life it had been his part to look down on others. When had anyone ever looked at him this way?
“Shut up!”
Xie Heng was beyond anger, and barked it out.
He tore the sword from his waist, scabbard and blade grating out a ring that hurt the ear.
In the instant the cold light appeared, a biting sword energy had already passed along the side of Zheng Nanlou’s face and shorn away a loose strand of hair at his temple.
The point halted half an inch from his throat, and the chill it threw back felt as though it had already opened it.
Scattered moonlight ran slowly down the blade and cast back Zheng Nanlou’s pale face.
The sword was truly too close; he could even smell the faint trace of blood left on it, mixed with the rich perfume smoked into Xie Heng’s sleeves, the two blending into a cloying sweetness that turned the stomach.
But he did not move, and not even the light in his eyes flickered, as though he had been frightened perfectly witless.
And yet, when the wind of the swinging blade brushed his cheek, in a shadow no one noticed, something like an undercurrent seemed to pass through his eyes. Like irritation. Or like…… laughter?
That faint flicker of feeling vanished in a moment, like the shadow of a bird passing in the deep of the night.
But in Xie Heng’s eyes he was only trembling and shrinking from the blade a hand’s breadth away, his voice so broken with fright that it had lost all shape:
“Sen, senior brother Xie, surely you do not…… really mean to kill me?”
Xie Heng’s hand stopped where it was.
He looked down at the sorry state Zheng Nanlou was in, and strangely enough the anger in him eased a little; an unnameable secret pleasure even outweighed the shame of having just lost face in front of the others.
He realized that he must be enjoying it, enjoying the last dying struggles of prey fallen into his hands.
It was more exciting, even, than simply standing on him.
He tilted his head and let the sword drift slowly down, leaving a shallow line of blood at Zheng Nanlou’s neck as though in play:
“You’ve called yourself a waste. Since you know yourself so well, what if I did kill you?”
As he spoke he bent down suddenly, a cruel enticement in his mocking voice:
“Though if you beg me again, I might consider…… letting you go.”
Zheng Nanlou’s breathing came faster and faster. He raised a hand with difficulty as though to catch at the hem of Xie Heng’s robe, then let it drop weakly in midair. His eyes seemed filled to the brim with tears, giving off a broken light under the dim moon.
Just as Xie Heng expected him to bring out something humble, even self-abasing, he parted his trembling lips and said instead:
“If you kill me, are you not afraid of my master?”
“He is, after all, my master.”
In all the Hidden Snow Sect, everyone knew where Xie Heng’s inverted scale lay.
It was nothing but the name “Wangyu.”
That one word, “my,” was a spark landing in dry grass, and a great fire went up all at once inside Xie Heng’s head. The trace of a smile at his mouth froze on the instant, and in its place came a rage he could not hold back.
He no longer cared about anything else, and the killing intent around him swelled all at once.
“You want to die!”
He roared it out, and the long sword tore through the quiet night straight at Zheng Nanlou’s chest.
Zheng Nanlou neither dodged nor flinched. The terror on his face fell away the instant the sword energy rose, so quickly it might have been a trick of the eye, and his lips moved to shape a word without sound:
“Idiot.”
Before Xie Heng could make out the shape of it, a pebble came cutting through the air, and with a “clang” his blade shook violently, driving him back several steps along with it.
Zheng Nanlou showed no particular surprise. He only turned his head and saw someone come out from among the pitch-black tree shadows beside them.
What little clear light came down through the gaps in the thick canopy could barely trace the man’s outline, and even that much was familiar enough to make the heart shake.
Then he came fully to himself and touched his own chest without thinking. The worm that had been forced inside him slept quietly, without the least stir.
The man came two steps nearer, and the moonlight grudgingly lit half his face: brows and eyes that were lovely and clear, but with less of the chill.
Not Wangyu, but……
“Eldest senior brother.”
Xie Heng had spoken before he could, the violence in his voice not yet gone, though a measure of wariness had entered it.
Unruly as he had always been, his cultivation was in the end no match for Lu Zhuobai, who was some years older. Even with everyone here stripped of spiritual energy, that one small pebble had set his blood churning and nearly shaken the sword out of his grip.
Lu Zhuobai’s voice had lost the mildness it carried by day, and had plainly gone cold:
“The sect strictly forbids private fights. What was junior brother Xie about to do just now?”
The tone was severe, and carried a good deal of the bearing proper to the sect’s “eldest senior brother.”
“I……”
Xie Heng meant to argue further, but Lu Zhuobai’s brows drew together as he looked over; he had plainly not raised a hand, and yet the pressure of it was beyond words.
“What junior brother Xie has done tonight I will report to the sect leader point by point once we are back. As for the reasons behind it, we can speak of them then.”
Cut off like that, Xie Heng knew there was no use in saying more. He threw a furious glance at Zheng Nanlou, still lying on the ground, and left outright, taking his people with him.
Only as the sound of his steps faded did Zheng Nanlou force himself up into a sitting position.
Every movement sent an unbearable pain through the place on his chest that had been trodden on, but he never made a sound; only the hand hidden in his sleeve shook beyond his control.
Lu Zhuobai came over without a sound and made to help him up, but under cover of wiping away sweat he shifted his body aside without a trace of it showing, and the offer passed him by.
The long, jade-like hand hung in the air, the fingertips pausing slightly.
“Thank you, senior brother.”
Zheng Nanlou thanked him hoarsely, with exactly the right measure of gratitude in his voice: not so little as to seem perfunctory, nor so much as to invite suspicion.
Only his eyes stayed lowered the whole while, as though he meant to avoid Lu Zhuobai.
He braced himself against the trunk beside him and stood up slowly, the movement looking labored and difficult.
Lu Zhuobai drew his hand back, yet seemed not to feel Zheng Nanlou’s resistance at all, his voice gentle as water, the same as ever:
“This is my fault. My martial uncle told me plainly to look after you, and I was careless for a moment and let you be hurt like this.”
Hearing that, Zheng Nanlou could not help a cold laugh in his own mind; but when he raised his head there was nothing left on his face but a meek dejection:
“It is not senior brother’s fault. It is only that I am no good.”
With that he was unwilling to say anything further. He bowed his head to him, pressed a hand to his chest and walked off on unsteady feet.
Only Lu Zhuobai was left standing among the layered shadows of the wood, thinking who knew what.
Morning in the Sunken Sword Abyss never came as bright as it did outside. The rising sun was blocked by the dense woods, and only a few thin threads of greyish white managed to reach in; before they could touch the ground, the fog drifting among the trees had swallowed them.
Now and then a wind blew through, and the branches and leaves shook with a “rustling” that sounded like the low whimper of some strange beast.
Zheng Nanlou had slept only a little while before he was called up. The injury to his chest from the night before still ached dully, and he picked some herbs out of his storage pouch and chewed them. They did not help much, but at least they settled the churning in his blood.
The party gathered their things and set out once more.
The interdiction here was utterly overbearing. If it said spiritual energy was sealed, then not the least thread of it could be used; the meridians were hollow and empty, as though something had drained them dry by force. The cultivation they all took such pride in was of no use at all in this place.
That made things hard for the sons of great houses, who leaned far too heavily on their spiritual energy.
Zheng Nanlou followed at the end of the line as he had the day before. He had scrambled and clawed his way through childhood in that cursed place, the Zheng family of Huaizhou, and had gained little after entering the Hidden Snow Sect either; he had long been used to surviving without borrowed strength, so this was nothing much to him.
Xie Heng, walking up ahead, was nowhere near so at ease.
The pampered young master had come out on a trial in an elaborately made brocade robe, and every few steps he had to stop and pull thorny vines off the hem. In half a day the garment had been torn open in several places and spattered with a good deal of mud besides, which spread over the dark gold embroidery in ugly blotches.
“This cursed place.”
He cursed under his breath and kicked irritably at a dead branch blocking his way, then slipped without meaning to and pitched forward, staggering. Someone behind him hurried to catch him and paid no attention to his own footing; one tripped another, another knocked into the next, and the whole group went down in a clattering heap.
Zheng Nanlou watched coldly from the rear, and then heard a clear, smooth voice at his side:
“Junior brother Zheng moves rather well.”
He glanced over and saw that Lu Zhuobai had come to his side again at some point, and was watching him with a light smile.
Zheng Nanlou lowered his head. The plain robe of the man in front of him was without a speck of dust, conspicuous in the middle of all that mire.
“Nothing compared with senior brother,” he answered mildly.
But before the words were out, a shrill howl came from deep in the fog-shrouded wood ahead.
The sound was not like any ordinary beast, but more like the strange noise of hard things grinding together, mixed with heavy panting, sharp enough to make the eardrums ache.
After that terrible cry, the whole wood dropped abruptly into an eerie silence.