“Shit, shit, shit. Piss on Dragon and his Consort.” Jun’s hands shook as he hastened to roll up the long parchment. Why were Cobu’s soldiers here? Visitors to the Scroll Hall were required to formally request an audience with the Guardian well in advance; they couldn’t simply barge onto the grounds.
Cobu wasn’t one for following rules. Jun already knew that. Was the general already aware there was something horribly amiss with the Scroll?
Renewed banging. “This is your final warning before we break down the door!”
He was making a mess of the paper, rolling it up askew. It wasn’t going to fit back into the scroll case. Jun spun in a circle, casting about wildly for somewhere to hide or a way to escape. Heavy thuds shook the doors in their frame. They held against the blows but wouldn’t for long.
“General Cobu,” Steward Tang’s voice exclaimed from outside the Scroll Hall, stiff with shocked indignation. “If you wish to examine the Scroll or speak to the Guardian, there are procedures to be followed. This uncouth behavior by your soldiers is disrespectful to the—”
Another shuddering thump on the doors. It seemed the Scroll Hall had been designed to be secure against invasion, but the intruders were clearly not about to leave. There was no other exit out of the chamber, and it was only a matter of time before they broke through the doors.
Jun finished rolling up the Scroll as best he could. Tucking it under one arm, he summoned all the authority of his new station and strode to the doors, throwing them open before the next blow could land. “How dare you interrupt me while I’m studying Dragon’s wisdom?” he demanded.
Half a dozen armed soldiers of the Sixth Division were standing outside the Scroll Hall. To Jun’s dismay, Fong and Yan were lying on the ground, their clothes rumpled and their faces bruised, a soldier standing over them with sword drawn.
Jun let out a bellow of outrage. “What are you doing?”
The two soldiers nearest to him who had been pounding on the doors took a hesitant step back. The young man in front of them might be unarmed and injured, but he was still the Guardian. Trespassing against the Guardian was only a step below offending the emperor.
Unfortunately, the soldiers were not alone. General Cobu strode between his men and into the Scroll Hall, passing Jun without the slightest deference. Quickly recovering their composure, four of his men followed after him, hands on their weapons, in violation of everything Jun had been taught about the sanctity of the Scroll Hall and who was supposed to be allowed to enter.
General Cobu turned and fixed Jun with a steely glare of accusation, pinning him to the spot as if he were a butterfly under the claw of a mantis. The general was in full military garb, boots, riding trousers, leather breastplate over his tunic, a helmet under one arm, sword belted to his hip. Despite his age, he emanated formidable intensity. He looked ready to ride out to war at the head of his troops. In his stately home, before the final match, the general had been upright, dignified, and cordial. Now he was terrifying in his wrath, his weathered face like granite.
“Where are they?” Cobu demanded. When Jun stared back at him in confusion, the general bellowed again, “Did you help them escape? Are you hiding them now? Where are they?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Jun did his best to sound calm, holding Cobu’s frightening gaze and trying not to look down at the partly rolled Scroll in his hands.
“Guardian Li has not left his residence since his arrival yesterday evening, nor has he had any visitors,” Steward Tang corroborated, entering the room, fearless in his disgruntlement.
“Search the grounds and every room in the house,” Cobu ordered his soldiers. Half of them rushed from the building to carry out his command. Cobu stood in front of Jun, eyes narrowed. “Did I misjudge you, baby dragon?” His low voice was full of questioning menace. “Were you part of the Silent Flute Society all along? Did you help the flutist and his daughter escape, and are you hiding them now? No one could’ve broken out of that cell without help.”
Jun’s heart leapt like a startled deer. Chang and Ren had escaped? They were free and on the run? Hope blazed in Jun’s chest. “I didn’t help them,” he told Cobu. “But I wish I could’ve.” If only they’d trusted him from the start. “I was busy winning the tournament, remember?”
Cobu’s lips twisted into a scowl. “A strategic distraction. While everyone in the city was busy watching you, that blind traitor and his conspirators were able to break free and slip out of the city. They won’t get far, though. And if you played a part, I will find out. Don’t think for a second that you can stand against the country. No one is forgiven for treason, not even the Guardian.”
“I’m not the one who’s a danger to the country.”
Nervously and without thinking, Jun shifted the bundle of parchment in his hands so it was less visible. A mistake. Cobu glanced down at the disarranged roll. The wrinkles around the general’s pitiless eyes tightened. Suspicion crawled into his expression. “Give me the Scroll.”
Jun moved away. “As Guardian, I forbid it.”
“You must be joking,” Cobu intoned in contemptuous disbelief.
“You can’t see it without the permission of me and the emperor.”
Cobu sneered. “Who do you think makes the emperor’s decisions?” With a swift grab, he seized the Scroll.
Reflexively, Jun stepped backward and yanked hard in return.
The Scroll tore.
A horrified gasp went up from everyone in the room, even the soldiers.
Jun stared at the one scroll rod in his hands, attached to a tumbling section of blank parchment. General Cobu’s half of the Scroll fell open as rage and disbelief darkened his face.
“What have you done?” His whisper was like a dry, hot wind.
“Nothing!” Jun exclaimed. “It was like this when I opened it for the first time just now.”
Cobu’s eyes fell upon the two thin vertical lines of taunting text. His eyes grew wide with understanding. With a snarl of incandescent fury, he threw the damaged relic onto the stone floor of the chamber. Striding to the wall, he seized one of the bracketed torch lamps and hurled it onto the pile of rumpled paper. Burning oil splashed across the Scroll and it went up in flames.
Steward Tang clapped a hand to his mouth in horror. “A fake,” he whispered.
It was universally known: The Scrolls of Heaven and Earth could not be destroyed. Many stories throughout history had proven this. Though they were ancient beyond memory, the Scrolls did not degrade. They could not be torn or burned. If they were lost, they always reappeared.
The general’s lips parted around one snarled word. Jun knew, with a revelatory sense of certainty and betrayal, the name he would hear before Cobu uttered it as if it were a curse.
“Yama.”
The Scroll of Heaven had been publicly displayed and constantly guarded all week. Only one person would’ve had the opportunity to replace it with a meticulously fabricated replica before the tournament had even begun. The Guardian himself.
General Cobu stomped out the flames violently, scattering ash and bits of blackened parchment under his boots. The first time Jun had seen Cobu, he’d seemed a distinguished grandfather. Now he seemed a vengeful demon, his face flushed and murderous.
“I am tired,” he ground out through a clenched jaw, “of so … many … impediments! I will see to it that Yama begs for death before I give it to him. And you—” He pointed at Jun as if at a rat that had been spotted in his bedchamber. “How do you fit into all this, you pestilent, worthless boy?”
Jun wished he actually knew the answer to Cobu’s question.
“General, I assure you that Guardian Li could not have played any part in the disappearance of the Scroll,” Steward Tang insisted, stepping forward bravely toward the general. “He’s only—”
Cobu drew the sword at his hip in one smooth, practiced motion and thrust it into the steward’s belly. Tang stared, uncomprehending, at the blade in his stomach. Cobu yanked it out, and the man collapsed to the floor of the Scroll Hall, his blood spreading in a pool around him.
“Kill the two sentries,” Cobu ordered his men, pointing to Fong and Yan huddled outside. “Then round up and arrest all the household staff and servants. Put any who resist to the sword.”
Jun launched himself at Cobu with a howl of rage. He had no weapon, only the singular consuming intent of driving his fist through Cobu’s face. Soldiers moved at once to seize his arms and drag him down. Jun kicked one of them in the knee, buckling the joint, and headbutted another in the nose before doubling him over with a fist to the sternum. It didn’t matter; two others took their place, and even Jun couldn’t fight his way free of men with armor and weapons in tight quarters. Through the open doorway, he saw Fong hauled to his knees, eyes wide with terror as his head was pulled back. Steel parted his throat in a crimson bib; his body was dropped to the ground. Yan broke free and tried to run. He made it a dozen paces before one of the soldiers notched an arrow and let it fly, shooting the man at close range between the shoulder blades.
“Why are you doing this?” Jun screamed as he was forced to his knees.
Cobu wiped Steward Tang’s blood off his blade before sheathing it. “Everyone in this house has failed their one sacred duty—to protect the Scroll of Heaven,” he intoned without looking down at Jun. “With the Scroll gone, their lives are worthless.”
Screams began to erupt from the kitchen and the courtyard. The sounds skewered Jun, made him want to cover his ears. He’d been the master of this house for one day, and this was what he had brought to the people who had lined the walkway yesterday to bow to him in welcome. They were being captured and killed and he, their Guardian, was helpless to stop it.
If he’d been a member of a big, prestigious school like Tiger Spirit, he would’ve already had many classmates as his disciples here to defend the house. If he’d had another few weeks to choose his attendants as Steward Tang had instructed him, he might’ve had fighters present to oppose Cobu. But he didn’t have those things. He hadn’t had any chance to be the Guardian.
“Once we’re done here,” General Cobu said to his men, “place generous bounties for the flutist and the girl traveling with him, as well as Yama. Preferably alive, but dead will do.”
“I’m the Guardian of the Scroll of Heaven,” Jun shouted at the soldiers, praying for some of them to oppose what was happening. “I rank above the general, and I demand to speak to the emperor!”
Cobu’s terrible temper had passed like a summer storm and he glanced at Jun with disinterested contempt. “Without the Scroll, there is no Guardian.” He strode toward the doors of the Scroll Hall, then paused as if remembering something; he came back to stand in front of Jun. “I invested a lot of time and money into Leopard,” he said, and smashed a fist into Jun’s face.
General Cobu was a strong, robust man for his age; his blow connected cleanly with the side of Jun’s chin. Jun’s vision exploded white, then snapped to black; he slumped forward limply, consciousness scudding away from him. Before blacking out, he heard very faintly, as if from the end of a long tunnel, the general say to his men, “Keep him alive and locked up until he can be properly executed. Spread the word through the city: the Little Dragon has betrayed Longhan.”