They tumbled together, clawing at each other. The drop was only free fall for an instant before they hit the slope—an unforgiving mass of boulder and root. Even falling, Yang Zhi’s elbow came at Lin Chong’s face, her sword flexing between them, and it was more than Lin Chong could do to turn from it or dodge away. Her mind was in free fall too, plummeting out of control, spinning her in all directions as she tried to cling and control and arrest their headlong dive.
Their plunge smacked into a plateau, rolling them each out apart from each other on a harsh ledge of stone and gnarled brush somewhere between earth and sky.
Lin Chong lay on her back and tried to breathe. Her side burned, wetness soaking her tunic. She couldn’t tell how bad. She didn’t taste blood, not yet.
The pieces of the staff had fallen separate from her. She groped for where she thought they might lay, hoping for an aid to push herself up, for at least the pretense of a weapon, but could find nothing.
A shadow fell across her, blocking the vast blue of the sky that walled their world. Yang Zhi. That magnificent sword in hand, the one that had sliced both sword and staff as cleanly as paper. She raised it to point at Lin Chong’s throat, and when she spoke her voice was anguished.
“Why? You fight like some damned hero. And yet you drug and thieve for your living? Those skills, someone must’ve taught it—it’s not just the Empire you betray here; it’s your master.”
Lin Chong did not know what her masters would have thought. Whether they would prefer she die here, rather than become one of Liangshan. Perhaps it would be best after all, if her life ended now.
“Kill me,” she croaked. “It is your right.”
Yang Zhi’s arm jerked back as if she would deliver the blow, but then she stopped and her face contorted. “Then what? I kill you, who can do the Iron Crane and has the inner strength of a damned monk, and then what?”
She glanced up at the long tumble of rocks that was the cliff they’d fallen from, her eyes squinting against the bright. Too steep to have any hope of catching the bandits who had outwitted her. A cut on her forehead dribbled red across the scarred blue birthmark that covered her face. Her breath heaved, and she transferred her eyes to her sword, staring in revulsion, as if the sharpened steel were a viper.
“This here blade has been passed down generations. To me. My family’s only inheritance, but such a fine one. Cuts through steel and copper like they’re not more than a cooked noodle. If you blow a hair against it, ’twill slice right through. An’ it can kill one like you so fast, so sharp, it comes away with no blood on it. None at all.”
Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Yang Zhi’s blade did seem as keen and unstained as it had when they started.
“It’s a damn honor to die by this sword,” Yang Zhi continued. She gave Lin Chong a look of pure loathing, and threw the weapon to the ground, flat on a dirt patch where it thumped up a puff of dust. “Use it better than I did.”
Lin Chong was beginning to get some movement back. With difficulty, she rolled to the side, clutching one arm against her ribs to try to stop the blood. Her other hand reached, touched, automatically closed on the sword hilt, grasping for this advantage before it was removed. But why? Why? Why would Yang Zhi—oh.
No. No.
Commander Yang was not moving very fast either, limping thanks to their mutual bruising on the rocks. She turned away from the climb that would lead back toward civilization and stumped out across the ledge, out toward where its edge met sky.
“Stop…” Lin Chong gasped. She tried to push herself up. Failed, tried again, her hand that gripped the precious sword hilt fisting against the hard ground. “Stop!”
Yang Zhi did not stop. Did not even seem to hear. Simply continued walking, out toward where she could release her failure and her shame and the end of her career in the long-traditional way for a person to retain any scraps of dignity she had left.
And Lin Chong was angry.
None of this was Commander Yang’s fault; it didn’t merit suicide—Yang Zhi who had been given an impossible charge, and who had done as well as any person conceivably could have. It was the bandits who had taken it from her, Wu Yong’s plan which had been designed to twine through every human vulnerability; the officials who insisted on such a dangerous and pointless and frivolous flattery, one that was damn well asking to get its handlers killed; and Gao Qiu in the first place, for knocking the legs out of Yang Zhi’s esteemed career for a situation no one could have won, for banishing her to a penal colony where she had to prove herself anew with such ludicrous and wasteful tasks … Yang Zhi had done nothing but perform loyally for the Empire she served and the men she commanded, and every level of government and society had chewed her up and spit her out onto this mountain ledge like a piece of offal, the same way they had Lin Chong.
“Wait!” Lin Chong cried. She struggled to rise, first one foot under her and pressing against the ground, then the other. “Commander Yang! I heard your men talking. I know what Gao Qiu did to you!”
Yang Zhi’s step hesitated this time, but only for a moment. She didn’t turn, didn’t stop.
“Wait and listen, please. My name is Lin Chong. I was Master Arms Instructor of the Imperial Guard. I taught the Iron Crane to Captain Sun, just as my master Zhou Tong taught it to me. Gao Qiu did the same to me as he did to you!”
This time Yang Zhi’s step did pause, less than a pace from the edge. Lin Chong staggered forward, laboring to make the short trek. She was dizzy enough that she was afraid if she got too near the precipice she would go over by accident, so once she came even with the other woman she sank down on a boulder, resting Yang Zhi’s sword beside her.
“Look,” she said. “Look at me.” And she reached up a sleeve to wipe the smeared makeup from her face.
Yang Zhi looked. She was listening.
“Gao Qiu did this to me.” Lin Chong tried to speak plainly, but her voice shook, from somewhere deep inside her that wasn’t yet healed. “He banished me for nothing. He sent his men afterward to kill me. If it hadn’t been for the bandits of Liangshan…”
“Liangshan?” Yang Zhi stared, then threw back her head and let out a mirthless laugh. “Of course it was Liangshan that beat me. I know your ilk.”
“Then you know what they fight for,” Lin Chong said. “What we fight for. Can you honestly tell me this mission was anything but folly? Presents for Chancellor Cai Jing? He has enough personal treasure to fill a snakepit.”
“Not my place…” The words sounded rote. They were words Lin Chong might have said, once upon a time only weeks ago.
“Cai Jing demands this theater, and the governor wants favors from his father-in-law, so he sends it,” Lin Chong said. “There was no reason for this. You know that as well as I.”
Commander Yang had tilted her head back, the sun against her face, and she stared into its brightness as if it would cleanse her. “I told ’em,” she murmured, to the sky. “I tried. Not my place but I did. I said there’s no way to do this, not right now. I said it’ll lose good men, it’ll only fail. They said they’d send all the pomp of fifty platoons and I said, then they’ll really know we have stuff to steal, won’t they? With some o’ these bandit strongholds having full armies, it was no right risk.”
“It was your idea to go small,” Lin Chong realized. “It almost worked. I think if we hadn’t gotten wind of the whole plan…”
Yang Zhi made a noncommittal gesture. “Not surprised. Too many knew. I’d only just dared to hope—that we’d made it far enough, that we’d make it all the way in. Two weeks ago I was sure it would be my death sentence. Never should’ve let myself hope different.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Lin Chong said softly. “You could walk away. Come back with me to Liangshan.”
“And do what? Go bandit? Better to die here.”
I might have thought that too, Lin Chong knew. If things had fallen out differently for her. “Sisters at Liangshan saved me from Gao Qiu’s assassins,” she said. “They healed me. They’re not perfect, but many of them want to be … better. To be haojie.”
Commander Yang didn’t respond, but she didn’t jump, either.
“It’s not … easy, for me.” Hard words to get out, as if Lin Chong spoke someone else’s convictions. “But your souls don’t have to end here. You could find heroism at Liangshan. You could live in the edges of the world and still fight for the Empire. It could be … it could be what you make of it.”
And if it was true for Yang Zhi, it was true for Lin Chong too. She could remake this lawlessness into her own mold, one that didn’t stray from being on the side of what she had always fought for.
Yang Zhi’s feet shifted, wavering. Then she stumbled back a step and let her legs give out beneath her to sink down on a boulder opposite Lin Chong. A twin to each other. “Gao Qiu shit on your head too, did he?” she said.
The details still felt too raw to give. “I heard your men talking,” Lin Chong answered instead. “You did right by your platoon. Any soldier who knew the field would say the same.”
Yang Zhi looked down at her hands, flexing them against each other. “Master Instructor Lin Chong, eh? Yeah, I heard of you before. Got me some good people off your training a few times.”
“I only passed on what I’ve learned,” Lin Chong said. “People like Sun Shimin worked diligently every day to master what they did. I was merely the conduit.”
“As are we all,” Yang Zhi said with a grunt.
Lin Chong couldn’t tell if it was sarcastic or not.
“Come back with me,” Lin Chong said quietly. “Make Liangshan better. Make the Empire better. Do what you would have wanted to do in the Guard, but on the roads and in the hills, and live well while you do it.”
She was uncomfortably aware she was echoing something too close to Song Jiang’s justifications—that they were righteous because they fought for the Empire out of love and loyalty, even on the side of lawlessness. None of it had seemed entirely right then and it didn’t now, but somehow it didn’t seem entirely wrong anymore.
Either way, Yang Zhi should not die for Liangshan’s crimes.
Or for Gao Qiu’s petty cruelty, or Cai Jing’s callous greed.
Lin Chong lifted Commander Yang’s heirloom sword, blade tucked back under her arm so she could offer it hilt first.
The commander’s mouth quirked. “Not afraid I’ll cut you through?”
“You had the chance already.” It had not even occurred to Lin Chong to doubt.
Yang Zhi nodded, and she reached out to close her hand around the hilt of her weapon.
It was a chaotic but giddy group who regrouped at Bai Sheng’s cottage.
The little round wine vendor took her share of the treasure and secreted it in her shed. “I’ll find a way to bring it out to my husband slow,” she said with a laugh. “He’ll think the town is drunk on my wine!”
She and Chao Gai bantered and joked as they taped the smaller cut across Lin Chong’s collarbone and the wider laceration on her ribs, which had begun a white-hot burn all up and down her side. Yang Zhi’s sword was so sharp that the edges of the wound did not tear, only gaped smoothly all the way down its length. It was luck that the angle had made it only a glancing slice, or she would be dead.
“The Divine Physician will sew it up when we return,” Chao Gai assured her. “I am no match for her ministrations, but this will get you through to the mountain.”
Bai Sheng also offered compresses for Lin Chong and Yang Zhi’s various purpling bruises from their roll down the rocks, but Chao Gai refused on their behalf, saying they had to be on the road before evening dropped. The other bandits had assiduously divided the treasure among bags for the horses, and they mounted up considerably more weighed down than when they had arrived.
Wu Yong was still too woozy to sit a horse properly, so rode double with Hu Sanniang, the lightest of them. Sister Hu was also, happily, one of the best riders among them—fancier even than Lin Chong’s cavalry training—and she seemed to take it as a fierce personal duty to keep her fellow bandit ensconced securely against her.
It left Wu Yong’s horse for Commander Yang.
None of the bandits had seemed surprised when Lin Chong had shown up at the cottage of Bai Sheng the Sunmouse—long after the rest of them had arrived and begun repacking their new haul for travel—with Yang Zhi a respectful step behind, waiting to be introduced. Lin Chong had been girding herself for fear and argument; she had expected to have to convince them that the former commander no longer meant them harm and had sworn herself to join them. But no one even questioned her on the recruitment. Instead, they all acted as if it was a matter of course, with several polite compliments of how impressive Yang Zhi’s fighting skills were and what a welcome addition she would be to the mountain.
It made Lin Chong feel somewhat as if she had gathered her strength to leap only to stumble when the gap was an illusion.
It also disturbed her. Something tugged at her mind, that conversation with Chao Gai in the grove, when Lin Chong had brought her the information on Commander Yang—telling Chao Gai that she was upright, honorable …
As they wound back down the road into the darkening sky, back toward Liangshan with their weighted packs, Lin Chong goosed her gray-white horse up next to Chao Gai’s.
“You knew,” she said.
Chao Gai did not pretend. “We knew Commander Yang was in charge of the convoy, yes.”
“You knew, and you set us up to bring ruin to her life.”
“I would say an Imperial Marshal, a Grand Chancellor, and a governor had more of a hand in that. We merely opened up … another path for her.”
Lin Chong spurred Little Wujing in closer, so suddenly the horse tossed her head and whinnied. “Opened up a path? Only after we burned the last one. You set me up to undo her and then recruit her.”
“Not so much ‘set up’ as ‘hoped,’” Chao Gai said serenely, with no apparent shame. “The Professor called it fateful perfection, how well Commander Yang would fit with our number. And why should she be abused by her superiors when she could live a rich, fat life with us? Who is served by Commander Yang’s misery, Sister Lin? Is she? Are you? Marshal Gao had her caned and force-marched hundreds of li into an exile post, all for the audacity of living through a storm that took all else. And now she was supposed to regain her rank with this doomed and wasteful errand, merely to feed a Chancellor’s vanity?”
She’d begun to sound angry, the sort of righteous, frustrated fury at the world Chao Gai sometimes possessed. But Lin Chong’s own simmering anger didn’t have room for sympathy.
“You lied to me.”
“Should we have told you the whole truth?”
Chao Gai’s eyes had been on the road ahead, but now she looked over briefly to pin Lin Chong with that sharp, intelligent gaze. If they had shared everything—what would Lin Chong have done? She didn’t like to ponder the answer. All of her other paths had been burned, too.
“Was this ever about the treasure?” she asked stiffly. “Were we after the gold, or Commander Yang?”
“Oh, we wanted the gold,” Chao Gai answered. “But yes, we also wanted the commander. Life never has to be about only one thing, Sister Lin. Sometimes we find cunning ways to make the puzzle fit more pleasingly … One arrow piercing two eagles, no?”
She sounded entirely too satisfied with herself. Lin Chong clamped her jaw shut. She didn’t even know what she wished to say, only that this was wrong, even as each step seemed so easily explained by Chao Gai. Lin Chong had trusted her own internal moral ethic her whole life, and Chao Gai could explain for eight hundred and eight years, but that sting would never go away.
This had been wrong.
“We thought to spare you,” Chao Gai said more quietly, after Lin Chong had not spoken more. “The Tactician was confident that if things branched as they did, you would play your part well and earnestly, and be spared any untoward motives we might impose on you. You are a haojie, Sister Lin, as is Sister Yang, and you spoke to save her. You did it not out of selfishness or duty in bringing her to us, but out of a true desire to offer her your hand and share our fortune with her—”
“Don’t,” Lin Chong interrupted. “Never again. Do you hear me? Or I’ll walk and make my own way.”
“I understand.” Chao Gai sounded sincere, but also, still, unbothered.
“I’ll make my own decisions,” Lin Chong persisted. “I’ll not have you make them for me, just because you think it would be easier. That’s not what I’ve agreed to, it’s not who I am, and how dare you and Wu Yong—”
Chao Gai held up a hand, nodding. “I take your points. A harder path, but one I admire. I promise that from now on you will know all. Does that satisfy you?” She said it without rancor, and waited for Lin Chong’s cautious nod. “Good. Then welcome to the ranks of leadership at Liangshan, Sister Lin. I hope it fits you as well as we wish it to—and if not, I hope you will change us to match yourself, rather than leaving for elsewhere.”
Lin Chong blinked, briefly wondering if her injuries had clouded her head. How had they gotten to—she had done no more than speak her mind, yet somehow, some way, Chao Gai had gotten to exactly the place she wished, with Lin Chong in the ranks of Liangshan’s chieftains … Lin Chong marching in to set herself up as a force for change, as an exemplar among the bandits, exactly as Song Jiang had wanted.
And still Lin Chong could not tell if Chao Gai spoke sincerely, or only as manipulation. After all, Lin Chong had done no less than demand it, hadn’t she?
Her heart felt shaken. She’d doubted Wu Yong’s sincerity many times, but never Chao Gai’s.
Lin Chong let her horse drop back again, away from Chao Gai, back where she could think.
By the time they arrived at the mountain, Lin Chong’s whole body ached, as if she had fallen trapped into a whirlpool and been buffeted against its walls for days. They’d reached Zhu Gui’s inn long past dark, and the Crocodile had taken their fatigued mounts for a rubdown and rest while the party fell onto prepared mattresses. Despite the burning ache from the wound in her side, Lin Chong slept like the eternal dead, but woke to a body that barely responded. Her side was tender under the bandages, all the way down to her hip and spreading front to back, but worse were the bruises—the fall had pounded her in places she would not have thought possible.
She was relieved they were almost returned. She would need—she would need the Divine Physician. And a bed. Her bed, now that this had become her home.
Fortunately, the first part of the day was on the ferries, where she could slump with her back against the railing. Seventh Brother Ruan seemed to have taken it upon himself to give Commander Yang the same tour he had enthused about to Lin Chong on the way out, and she let the words wash over her, glad there was no call for her to speak or interact. Lin Chong noticed with some jealousy that Yang Zhi didn’t seem to be having any trouble standing, or joking around and thumping Seventh Brother on the back—although, to be fair, she hadn’t been stabbed in the ribs as Lin Chong had.
Taking injuries might not have fazed Yang Zhi, but she was, apparently, very, very good at inflicting them. Wu Yong was in a similar state to Lin Chong, and had limped onto the ferry supported by Chao Gai’s arm before also settling to the decking, eyes closed. Even so, a slight smile quirked the edges of the Tactician’s lips.
Their ferry captains—the Tong and Mu sisters this time—took on the task of loading up most of the treasure, cheerful where the homecoming bandits were exhausted. Lin Chong listened to them crow about the haul every time they peeked into a saddlebag—they were already planning lustily what they’d do with their own shares of it. Live a rich, fat life with us, Chao Gai had said. Why should it be denied to people like Yang Zhi, to live as someone like Gao Qiu did every day, with his savory duck and fragrant, rich wine and silver chopsticks? The thought drifted through Lin Chong’s wrung-out mind, innocuous and pleading and yet oh so dangerous. Why should this be denied any of them?
The ride up the mountain was agony; the world blurred together as Lin Chong leaned on the saddle and gave the horse her head as much as possible. Little Wujing was good at following the mount in front, and had left off the friskiness she’d danced down the mountain with—her nose had dipped down and her hooves plodded, kicking against the ground. Doubtless she, too, wanted nothing more than to rest—and roll in the grass—after the long and heavy journey.
But if Liangshan’s heroes of the robbery were ready for sleep, the Tongs and the Mus were very much not. Even on foot after stowing the boats they easily caught up to the horses’ weary pace. Their shouts and cheers rowdily surrounded the return journey along the path, and in between escorting they sidled up time and again for more peeks at the prize trove that lay in the packs, glimpses of the glittering hoards within. Lin Chong was not one to lose her head over riches, and her life had been lived in desire for security rather than luxury, but she had to admit that the giddiness was … infectious.
Despite everything, she thought she might rest well tonight. Other worries could wait.
As they rounded up the last turn to the settlement, the shouts and cheers echoed back and forth between their escorts and first the lookouts in the watchtowers, then those on the fighting ground who witnessed their arrival and sprinted to spread the word.
“They’ve returned! Sister Chao and the others are back!”
“They have the birthday presents! They beat Cai Jing!”
“They got it! Come see, come see!”
Eager hands offered to take Lin Chong’s horse, and she gratefully slid off and passed everything over. Chao Gai became the center of the hubbub, calmly directing various bandits to unload, to unsaddle and care for the horses, to fetch the Divine Physician even though Wu Yong kept mumbling that it was not necessary. Somewhat to Lin Chong’s surprise, though there was much crowing of delight over the goods and the occasional grab out of one of the bags to hold something aloft in excitement, none of the bandits seemed to be filling their own pockets or squirreling away ingots or gemstones from the others.
Either there were consequences for such things here, or it had become its own social taboo. Lin Chong knew vaguely that some amount would be kept for the group’s treasury—as overseen by Jiang Jing, the Mathematic and accounting wizard—and the rest would be divided so that every member of the group got an individual share. Even split among the three-dozen-odd members of Liangshan, the wealth here would be sizable.
It had not occurred to Lin Chong until that moment that as a member of the bandits, she was about to be rich. Even a fiftieth of this treasure—even a hundredth—would be more than she’d held in her hands together at any time in her entire life.
The thought dizzied her.
“Sister Lin! Sister Lin, I heard you were injured—I’ve torn my very hair out. My Elder Sister!” Lin Chong turned toward the voice only to meet a crushing bear hug from the much larger Lu Da. Too crushing—she tried to push away, coughing slightly.
“Oh, Elder Sister, I’ve hurt you. Curse me and the next ten generations out of my loins. Sister An! Sister An, Sister Lin needs you! Er, again.”
“See to Wu Yong first,” Lin Chong grunted.
Lu Da took Lin Chong’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length like a prize. “Sister Lin. You have proven your worth here at Liangshan a thousand times over. Everyone sees it! The rumors of your feats are already buzzing in the whole camp, and the riches, hooo whee, the riches on this one. This is the greatest haul since Liangshan’s founding, they are all saying, and Sister Chao says it’s all thanks to you, that you saved them all!”
Chao Gai had said that? It didn’t seem right, considering the parts the rest had played in taking out the soldiers.
“I did only what was needed,” she mumbled. Besides, Chao Gai and Wu Yong had planned far ahead to engineer Yang Zhi into joining them … could Lin Chong truly be said to have accomplished anything of value, when she had only been playing their predetermined part?
More than the riches were dizzying her. Liangshan, the Empire, every step she’d ever taken, every choice she’d made.
“Elder Sister, you’re swaying. Divine Physician! No, Sister Lin, this is my fault, I must prostrate myself before you—I deserve to be flayed, I am awash with guilt—I was unfair to your magnificence and it has been stewing in me like a pot of boiled pig stomach—and now you’ve been harmed when all you did was fight loyally for us here on the mountain. It will be my fault if you die, stand straight, Elder Sister, I beg you!”
Lin Chong would have chuckled if her ribs were not on fire. Whatever slight the excitable Lu Da imagined herself guilty of, it had doubtless been no more than a stray thought or minor misstep.
She reached out to pat her younger sister’s hand. “Do not worry yourself, Little Sister. I’ll be fine. Nothing some rest among friends cannot cure.”
“And what’s all this?”
The new voice cut across the cheering bandits and Lin Chong’s own conversation. Wang Lun had arrived.
The joviality died down among the other bandits, and they drifted back a few steps, creating a clearing for their leader. So she might step forward to view the heavy packs stacked upon the ground … and the celebrated homecomers standing among their spoils.
But Wang Lun looked anything but proud.
She scanned across the seven returning bandits plus Yang Zhi, and her lip curled upward as if a fishhook had caught her in the edge of the mouth. “You brought someone back with you. Without permission.”
“I gave it,” Chao Gai spoke up serenely. “I’ll vouch for Commander Yang. We are very lucky Sister Lin convinced her to join us. Sister Yang is a renowned military commander with untold years in the Imperial Guard, and will make a fine addition.”
“‘Sister Lin,’ eh?” Wang Lun swung toward Lin Chong, the ropes of her hair sent flying with the force of the movement. “Sister Lin! I demanded you bring me a head to prove yourself worthy of us. I see no head!”
“I did bring you a head.” In her exhaustion, Lin Chong did not even try to moderate her tone. Her arm snapped out to point at Yang Zhi. “I brought you a fine head of a fine officer, only still attached to her body. Send me away if you like, but if your jealousy is too great to keep someone with Commander Yang’s skill, then you aren’t fit to lead these people.”
Wang Lun’s face flushed bluish purple, and a collective gasp went up from the surrounding bandits, including from Lu Da where she still gripped Lin Chong’s arm. Lin Chong’s gut went hot and liquid, because when had she ever spoken such blunt thoughts? When had she ever spoken at all without careful consideration first?
Except she was a bandit now, and outside the law, and everything was back-to-front, and she would repent not one word of it.
Some of Wang Lun’s most loyal lieutenants—Du Qian, Song Wan, Sun Erniang the Witch—had begun hurrying to her side, but she held up a harsh hand to them and they stopped. The leader of the Liangshan bandits stepped closer to Lin Chong deliberately, once, then twice, each footfall a threat.
Lu Da’s grip had begun squeezing hard enough to bruise.
When Wang Lun spoke, her voice was like gravel ground under iron, but the mountainside had gone so quiet that she might as well have shouted.
“You challenge me?” she demanded. “You challenge me?”