The abbot at the monastery had given Lu Da the name “Zhishen,” meaning “Deep and Profound.” He had told Lu Da he hoped it was aspirational, with a little bit of pleading in his eyes as he said it. It was the same look of despairing patience he got when he happened upon Lu Da when she was drunk and cheerful with song, or when he caught her with a side of pork or a handful of duck legs tucked in the front of her robes.
(How did vegetarianism help with enlightenment? Lu Da wished to eat her way deliciously toward becoming an immortal, and she couldn’t fathom any problem with that. The other immortals would tear their hair in jealousy when they saw her in their ranks chowing down on pork belly!)
Lu Da did not let it bother her overmuch that nobody had achieved immortality in hundreds of years, not even the ascetic Fa masters. She also did not hold with her erstwhile abbot’s sad aspirational sighs. Deep and Profound? She was plenty deep and profound already, thank you very much. The haojie out at Mount Liang certainly seemed to think so, and Lu Da was coming to believe she was far more suited to their ways of thinking than the monks’ anyway. What a boon that this new fellowship had opened their ranks to her and welcomed her among them! How they would all change the world together!
Lu Da did believe in the way of the Fa—well, except for the vegetarianism, and the temperance, and the celibacy, and also how was it possible one needed that much practice at one’s art to reach enlightenment? But as little actual philosophizing as she might do, her heart was the heart of a philosopher, and she would live according to the Fa (with her own adjustments) until the day she died. Or preferably didn’t die and became an immortal forever.
But the way of the Fa didn’t have to be the way of the monks, did it? What a revelation—there, was that thought not the peak of deep and profound? She had not been with the Liangshan group long, still some distance shy of a year, but she was already coming to believe they were her own type of monks … sort of, if she tilted her head and squinted. They were heroic and chivalrous, after all, with the most strict codes of belief. What was more monk-like than that? Chao Gai even had religious training in a monastery, though as a Transcendentalist rather than with the Fa, and for the practice of ghost hunting, which fascinated Lu Da. Ghosts! She very much wanted to meet a ghost. She thought it must be wild, like wrestling a boar or running naked with panthers. In fact, Lu Da thought she might want nothing more than to be like Chao Gai—such a powerful official and ghost hunter, with so many connections and such genius in plans and tactics—and who chose to break from those dastardly societal hierarchies to crusade for true justice.
What a magnificent haojie, a genuine hero. And such a pure example of Lu Da’s new family at Liangshan!
Such were Lu Da’s convictions that she did not have to wonder for even an instant what Chao Gai or her other fellows at Liangshan would think of the situation with Lin Chong. A loyal patriot of the Empire, locked away on a pretense, on the whim of one of the region’s most putrid and gutless bureaucrats? A man whose innards were so rotten with corruption that even maggots would gag at them? Unacceptable! Chao Gai would say so; their leader Wang Lun would say so; and Lu Da certainly said so.
She would have even before meeting the other haojie. After all, had she not brought pulverizing justice to the skull of that predatory butcher? And had the brand to prove it, thank you very much!
Her righteous rage did not keep her from devouring a plate of steamed pork buns, however. Or two sacks of salted duck egg yolks. Or several platters of fried tofu. Or five bowls of wine. Lu Junyi had left her with a generous meal stipend while she waited … how rude it would be, Lu Da reasoned, if she did not make fullest use of it? Lu Junyi had seemed to think she could make headway at the prefectural yamen with words rather than fists, and she’d declined Lu Da’s offer of accompaniment.
Lu Da didn’t mind, especially when Lu Junyi asked if she would wait at a very well-stocked inn.
With exuberant cynicism, Lu Da privately did not expect the foray to have any effect. Everyone knew the ways of the bureaucratic courts these days. She kept her staff leaning up against the table, determined to stay fully prepared. As capable and fancy as Lu Junyi seemed, Lu Da thought it very unlikely she could talk the master arms instructor’s execution out of happening. It would be as easy to convince a fish to marry a dog. And when the effort crashed in failure, then it would be down to trusty staff and sword to make things right.
At least Lu Junyi could also fight—skillfully, too. Her martial talent was only a little surprising. After all, many of these rich folk learned the martial arts alongside music and calligraphy from the time they were pushed out from between their mothers’ bloody legs. Learned from private tutors, too, not scraping to find a master like Lu Da … only a little jealousy gnawed at that thought.
A little more unusual that Lu Junyi had kept on with her study, though. Lu Da was willing to bet most society women retained only the most basic forms and then went on to pop out well-educated broods of their own—at least, she didn’t think most rich people practiced eye gouges for amusement, though to be fair she’d never known enough rich people to be sure, so maybe they did. Maybe they gouged out the eyes of all their servants on the regular! Though in that case, Lu Da probably would have met a few more eyeless people than she had, so probably not. The point was, Lu Junyi’s skill was satisfactory enough to have a person’s back, which made for better odds when busting up a prison together.
Hypothetically.
Lu Da was just finishing a plate of pork-fried noodles and a twelfth bowl of wine when the curtain at the door pushed aside and Lu Junyi slipped inside the inn. The setting sun slanted in briefly behind her before the curtain fell closed again. She came over to Lu Da’s table to join her, sinking to the bench and raising exhausted hands to her face.
“How did it go? Does Master Instructor Lin still live? Are we burning down the jail to get her out?” Lu Da slurped the grease from her fingers and tightened a hand around her staff. It sure would be glorious to break apart the jail. Likely even she and Lu Junyi together did not stand a quarter of a chance, but if they failed it would be an excellent death.
“She’s alive.” Lu Junyi inhaled sharply and tried to straighten the fatigue out of her posture, without success. “Prefect Teng agreed to keep her from the headsman’s sword. Oh!”
She appeared gripped with such emotion that Lu Da felt profound sympathy. Lu Da did not have any similarly lifelong friend, but already she knew she would die for her Liangshan martial fellows, and if one of them fell to such injustice … well, she would rend limbs from bodies to make it right, until the ground was knee-deep with arms and legs and heads. All of them would.
When she’d met Lu Junyi only days ago, Lu Da had been quietly and a little huffily intimidated—what with Lu Junyi’s rich clothes and delicate table manners and porcelain-white hands. Even the fact that her fingers were streaked with ink pointed to a far more erudite life than Lu Da had ever known. Not to mention that the skin beneath the streaks was the kind of pale that wealthy women lusted after and Lu Da privately thought looked sickly, as if some creature had sucked the blood from the woman’s body. Lu Da’s own skin was the bronze of her hometown to the south, darkened and cracked further by the sun and thickened into calluses by swords and fistfights and a day-to-day life that had never known servants … but seeing Lu Junyi’s despair over her friend somehow made her feel much more like a sister. Even more than discovering a mutual interest in the fighting arts.
I will make sure she does not have to suffer the loss of this friendship, Lu Da swore to herself. It’s only right.
Lu Junyi managed to compose herself. “She’s to be taken to the work camp at Canghu. It’s at least ten days’ hard journey. I need … she asked me to go to her rooms, her things…”
“How can I help?” Lu Da had to admit she felt a prick of disappointment that they were not to break Lin Chong out of prison. Maybe she could take this to Liangshan once Lin Chong was in Canghu, though. The haojie would never tolerate hearing such a story, standing for justice above all as they did. Chao Gai would come up with a plan to bust Lin Chong from the work camp in three whisks of a rat’s tail. Lin Chong was an honorable woman, so it should be done whether or not her own friend thought it was the right move, shouldn’t it?
Lu Da knew her grasp of politics was tenuous and often taken over by more hotheaded goals, but she could consult with Chao Gai and the others. They would know what to do.
“If I can ask…” Lu Junyi pressed her hands to the table. “You have no obligation to us, but as a charitable monk, perhaps you would be willing…? The guards are to take her tomorrow. The journey will be treacherous; she is already very weak, and I—I do not think I would have the endurance to follow. But I think you are stronger than I—if you are willing, I would give you gold and silver for the journey, of course…”
“Say no more,” Lu Da declared. “I will see that they deliver her safely to the prison camp. Such a contradiction, though, isn’t it? A prison camp isn’t very safe.”
“No. It isn’t. But I have sent a courier to the supervisor, and I’ve given Lin Chong gold for him—I’ve done this for others before; enough gold will see her a soft assignment. Sweeping out one of the temples, or keeping watch…”
Hrrmph, Lu Da thought. Lu Junyi’s way of solutions was to fling ingots of gold and silver at the matter, like flinging meat to quiet a yapping cur. Not an option that had ever been available to Lu Da, and less noble in her eyes than bashing a few heads together, freeing Lin Chong, and taking her to Liangshan. But she could also see how Lu Junyi’s hands knitted against each other, how worry and grief bit over the skin of her face. I will dance your dance for now.
It would do no harm to watch over Lin Chong. Make sure she was protected on the road.
“I’ve paid the guards already also,” Lu Junyi continued. “With a promise of more upon their return, so they will be motivated not to mistreat her. But I hear increasing reports of bandits roving to the northeast of here, and I fear the abuse of her punishment will make her take ill on the journey. If you would—forgive me; it is all so much to ask.”
Bandits, thought Lu Da, with a private chuckle. Yes indeed, that’s what they call us! But she did not mention the Liangshan haojie. She’d decided she liked Lu Junyi, but a woman who could walk into a yamen and demand an audience with the prefect—and obtain it!—was one she would wait to trust with the truth about the honorable “bandits” of Mount Liang.
Less honorable bandits also roamed the roads to the northeast, of course, ones who would slash innocent travelers in the back rather than carefully target those they stole from. Lu Da had full confidence she could protect Lin Chong from them. And if she ran into any of her Liangshan family, so much the better. Too bad she didn’t have time to get back and speak to them now.
“You have no need for more worry about Master Instructor Lin,” she told Lu Junyi. “I’ll see her to Canghu alive and intact—I swear on my life.”
Lu Junyi bowed her head. “I don’t know how I can thank you. I will owe you a great debt.”
“No debt,” Lu Da replied carelessly. “As you said, I am a monk of the Fa! Protecting those in need is what we do.” And I am a bandit of Liangshan, and protecting those in need is also what we do.
The people of Bianliang would know the name of the Liangshan bandits soon enough. And Lu Da would help carve out those stories on the lawless roads, beginning with the protection of one Honorable Master Arms Instructor Lin Chong.
By the second day on the road, Lin Chong’s feet were bleeding.
The heat beat down from a naked sun above, and the cangue weighed heavy on her shoulders. They’d resecured the wide square of wood and metal to be locked fast around her neck, and its dimensions extended for nearly a pace on each side. Its weight crushed down her spine, reigniting stripes of fire where the bamboo lashes had struck. In the shadow of the cangue, the manacles dragged at her wrists as if she hauled her own corpse alongside her.
She did not know the reason, but her shoes had been confiscated back at the jail, and the guards had presented her with a much thinner pair of straw sandals that were woefully inadequate to a hike. The two constables prodded her along with cudgels and showed no patience when she stumbled. They were not men she had trained—likely recent transplants to the capital, from their accents, rather than having advanced into the Guard at Bianliang.
No doubt such a choice of escorts had been intentional.
“Get a move on. We have three hundred li to Canghu,” one of them complained—she’d caught his name as Dong Chao.
“We were told you were a master arms instructor before you were a traitor,” added the other mockingly, the one called Xue Ba. “What lies. Can’t even keep up.”
He bent and whipped his cudgel down hard, not at her body—but against the top of her left foot. Sotted with exhaustion, Lin Chong was too slow to move in time. The full brunt of the hit was like a stone urn dropped to crush every small bone.
She gasped, listing to the side.
“Weakling! Walk faster. Faster!” Xue Ba yelled. He let loose with the damn cudgel again, buffeting her about her knees and feet. Lin Chong managed a clumsy slip from some of the blows, but then the other guard grabbed her cangue and shoved her back to the first with a chuckle. He held her in place while Xue Ba wound up for one more smack against the side of her left ankle.
The cudgel landed so hard that the pain jolted up her whole spine and back down in a black flash.
He hadn’t splintered the joint. She knew what that felt like. This wasn’t that bad; she could shake it off, she would shake it off. She’d suffered worse …
“Now go. Run!” cackled Xue Ba, giving her a shove. “Sprint, or you’ll get a proper beating!”
Lin Chong wobbled into a staggering jog, every step another thumping stab. One of the straw sandals came loose and a rock sliced against the bottom of her foot. The cangue overbalanced her and her knee came down hard on the road.
Behind her, she could hear the guards laughing.
She stayed on one knee, trying to breathe. Her feet throbbed, knots of pain.
“What a lazy old fart,” Xue Ba said, the guards ambling up abreast of her. “Get up, you floppy prick of a traitor.” He smacked her with the cudgel again, against her elbow this time, in a starburst that shot up to her shoulder.
Lin Chong reached for some level of inner stamina, but she felt her body collapsing in on itself. More than she ever had in her life, she wanted to kneel before them and beg.
For decency. For mercy.
Not even the most grueling of her training, nor the ruthlessness of the combat field, compared with this slow erosion of her strength. Her instincts warred with each other. If she asked for leniency—it was humane—it was deserved …
But she had never in her life gained results by showing herself weak. Even against guards such as these, someone else might have succeeded in elegant pleas or humble charm … someone gentler, or more pitiable. But Lin Chong had never been the type of person others gave leeway or compassion. Her vulnerabilities only became targets for their resentments.
So how have you succeeded, then?
Hard work. Persistence … and seizing for respect instead, when she couldn’t gain pity.
“Constable Dong,” she said, as she pressed herself back to her feet by what felt like force of will alone. Her tongue was swollen in a cracked mouth, but she forged on—she’d wondered, when she’d first heard him speak … Ask. You have nothing to lose. “Your accent is of Yu Province. Might you have fought at the pilgrims’ revolt two years ago?”
The older constable hesitated, and his eyes slid toward her suspiciously. “I was there. What of it?”
“I rode with the Imperial Guard. Perhaps we were allies on the field.”
A slow recognition stole over Dong Chao’s countenance. “You … a Master Arms Instructor Lin Chong led the left flank when Captain Xia fell to the rebels’ arrows. You’re that Lin Chong?”
Some type of crusted hope lit in Lin Chong’s aching joints. She had only been trying for some connection—but if he had truly heard her name—“I merely did my duty. It was the stalwart holding of the line by yourselves in the Yu regiment that won the day.”
Dong Chao’s eyes had gone from lazy scorn to a dazed shock, and he moved his hands unconsciously toward each other as if he wanted to salute. “We would have perished had the Guard not arrived when it did. We owed you all so much that day.”
“Think nothing of it,” Lin Chong said hoarsely. “We were all serving the Empire to the best of our ability.”
“Until you turned treasonous,” Xue Ba cut in loudly, jostling back uncomfortably close to her. “Come on, get going.”
Lin Chong knew she must grab this opportunity with both hands, and she ignored his jibe even as she began limping down the pitted road again. She didn’t dare ask yet to fix her shoe, but instead threw the very highest gamble she could. “Constables, it’s nearing midday, and it is so hot. I see an inn up ahead—it would flatter me if you would allow me to buy you both a rich meal. As gratitude. For your kind protection of me.”
The guards looked at each other.
“Well, we must eat,” Dong Chao reasoned aloud.
“We can eat while walking,” Xue Ba objected.
But Dong Chao was the senior of the two, and the starry reverence when his eyes caught on Lin Chong had stuck. At least for now. Overruling Xue Ba’s grumbles, he led them to the inn.
Blessed, blessed shade, and coolness, and water for her parched throat. Lin Chong invited the constables to order whatever meat and wine they liked, with as much grandness as she could muster, and then managed to rest the edge of the cangue against the wall and tilt her feet up so her burning soles could get some slight relief. She also clumsily managed to retie the loose sandal, though she could feel the blood sticking between straw and skin, gluing the strands against her toes.
Not only on the foot that had hit the rock, either. How can they expect me to walk three hundred li this way?
She had to focus on this day only. Make it to sundown. Then worry about the next. She had Dong Chao on her side now, or at least the edge of it. It was something. And they’d allowed her to buy them a meal.
Lin Chong had worried about revealing to the constables how much money she carried, the ingots from Lu Junyi. She’d also hesitated to spend more than travel coins on meals because Lu Junyi had directed her to use the heavier riches for the guards at Canghu—but if she did not gain the better graces of these constables, she would never make it to Canghu.
I must survive. Each day separately, I must survive.
Beneath all the immediate obstacles, her anger from the prison still simmered, a caustic pit threatening to suck her into self-destruction. It kept rising to grasp and choke her at unaware moments, like the strike of a snake. She tried to press it down, bind it into a swollen bundle to be dealt with later, reminding herself over and over: Before anything else, you must live. You must live …
She had to live, or her poison confession, the lashes and branding, all she endured even now—it would be worth nothing.
The wine and rest loosened the constables’ tongues more. Xue Ba was still reticent, but Lin Chong roused herself to engage Dong Chao in a patter of conversation and found it did not take much effort. She learned he had a wife and daughter, and that they had moved all the way from Yu Province to the capital so they could be nearer the wife’s sister and brother-in-law, the latter of whom was a clerk in the outer city. A glow came to Dong Chao’s face when he described his daughter—“Perfect as a plum blossom, and can’t stop asking every question she can think of. Four years old last Spring Festival! She’s now begging me to find her a dragon egg so she can raise one as a pet. I tried to explain that dragon eggs take three thousand years to mature and that no dragon would consent to being a child’s pet—and besides which no one has any idea where the dragons have got off to these last hundreds of years anyway. She sniffs and says I’m just not looking hard enough!”
He guffawed. Lin Chong managed to smile slightly and speak all the appropriate flattery of the child, making the father light up with pride.
At Xue Ba’s grumbling urging, they took to the road again as the sun trailed past noon. The men’s bellies were full and they seemed in good spirits, and Dong Chao continued to speak to Lin Chong now as a fellow soldier. Xue Ba only sniffed and threw the occasional snide taunt her way, but at least his abuse had left off for the moment, perhaps in deference to his superior.
As the day crept on, and Lin Chong’s feet again threatened to curdle and give out beneath her, she risked enjoining upon Dong Chao to take another rest under a copse of trees. He allowed it with only a slight hesitation, and she sank into the shade and closed her eyes.
Though her feet swelled and burned and every muscle and joint was jagged metal, she began to think she had found a way through.
If I can continue this cordiality, surely I have the strength to reach Canghu. And then … then she would figure out what came next.
“Give me some of that flask of water.” Xue Ba’s voice drifted from a few paces away, where the guards stood watch over her in the shade. A pause. Then Xue Ba again: “I hope you aren’t softening on what we’ve got to do.”
Dong Chao made a frustrated grunt. “I wish now we had never taken the money.”
“Take the money, don’t take the money, it’s all the same,” hissed Xue Ba. “We discussed this! We have no choice but to obey a grand marshal. Be more afraid that after we return to the city we’ll be arrested by Marshal Gao for murder, even with all his promises. But it’ll be far, far worse for us if we fail at killing her—both for us and for our families.”
Lin Chong’s breath stopped in her chest. She stayed very still, not reacting.
Gao Qiu had paid her guards to kill her.
Survive. How could such a thing feel increasingly impossible? How was Gao Qiu not satisfied, after everything he had done, everything he had stripped from her?
The anger slithered up her throat again, filled her to the hollows of her fingertips, like ink soaking into paper until it was stained so black it could take no more. And this time, it stayed.
He will not be content until I’m dead. That is what his pettiness demands.
She could not allow him this final satisfaction. But how? How?
“We’re due to turn off the road and cut through Yezhu Forest by midafternoon.” Dong Chao’s voice was toneless and resigned. “We’ll do it there.”
Yezhu … why did that name ring dull familiarity in Lin Chong’s mind? Ah, yes, the butt of jokes, of sideways euphemisms—travelers getting “lost” in the shortcut through Yezhu Forest and never returning. Always, somehow, travelers who suffered some grudge against them—exiles or debtors or prisoners or runaways.
She had never connected that this was a real practice, that the sly jokes were out of fear because those in power—they did this—they truly did it, like it was normal, like it was nothing, without compunction or regret. Yezhu Forest, the place where escorts were bribed into murder.
Cracks in civilization. How much blood soaked that forest floor?
Now Lin Chong’s blood too would mingle with those loamy layers of ghosts. Unless she did something. Unless she found a way to act. Here on this lonely road would be the most important contest of her life.
She tried to enter a meditative state and gather her strength. But despite her desperation, she only had fitful success before the end of Xue Ba’s cudgel poked up under her ribs. Not gently.
“Wake up!” he barked. “Time to walk again. Quickly this time!”
Lin Chong made a show of obeying while quietly dragging herself to slowness as much as possible. Maybe if she delayed them past dusk—would they enter the forest in the dark? Surely not; they would have to find an inn for the night. She could keep forging a bridge with Dong Chao, and maybe he would have compassion for her, or at the very least hesitate …
But Dong Chao would no longer meet her eyes, and gave one-word answers when she tried to engage him. After a few more tries he snapped, “You’re a prisoner! Stop trying to talk to me like we’re fellows in arms.”
After that, she stopped.
She surreptitiously tested her freedom of movement. Abysmal. Even those parts of her body that were not weighed down by cangue or manacles, not bruised or bleeding—all the restraints had acted to harden her body’s fluidity into stone. As if the dragging weights and festering injuries had all worked together to warp and fossilize her.
I must be able to defend myself somehow. They only have cudgels. If I can leap, take them by surprise—a knee, a groin—will it be enough? She could not outrun them, not in this state. She would have to incapacitate them, and then…?
Survive first.
Xue Ba’s cudgel again, this time against her damaged back. Pushing her up off the road. Trees loomed above, rising into a sloping hillside with blackness beneath their canopy. Lin Chong glanced back—should she try now, her last chance while they were still on the road? Even with no other travelers in sight, she might be better off here than lost in the woods … but Dong Chao was too far ahead of her for her to have a hope of striking them both in quick succession. If she failed at surprise, she would fail.
She stumbled across the ditch at the side of the road, undergrowth snagging at her feet and ankles, then climbed to follow Dong Chao into the trees.
Yezhu Forest closed over them.
The trees were like a warren of caves. The undergrowth alternated between walls of denseness and tracts of empty, spongy ground where the canopy closed off all light above them.
How many skeletons were hidden in the brush? How many people had this forest tightened its fist on until they disappeared?
The road winked out behind them as if it had been extinguished.
“Aiya,” Xue Ba moaned, stretching his arms in a clearly theatric performance. “I’ve gotta rest a moment. Let’s stop here.”
This is it, Lin Chong thought. No more time. She tried to roll to the balls of her damaged feet in preparation and almost fell, the cangue taking her dizzily to the side.
“Go ahead, sit down and rest,” Xue Ba urged her. He and Dong Chao had taken up tense positions to either side, both just out of range from easy attack.
“Thank you for your kindness.” Lin Chong did not think her brittle statement any more believable than theirs. “I shall … rest by that tree.”
She moved toward Xue Ba.
He whipped back his cudgel and swung downward at her head like he would drive her into the ground.
Lin Chong was expecting it. Her training tried to respond. She moved, clumsily, dropping in a duck and slide in, but not fast enough. The cudgel made a glancing blow with her head and then bounced off the cangue, a loud crack in the quiet forest. But she managed to use the half-dodged move to get in close, and as much as her slide was turning into a stumble, she brought her leg around with all the energy she could dredge from every reserve.
Her shin smashed into the side of Xue Ba’s knee.
His unearthly scream echoed to the treetops, and he fell away from her. Dong Chao was coming up from the side. Lin Chong only had to regain her balance this one time—if she could make this single attack, just this one, he would soon be in range—
But Dong Chao did not wait to get into her range at all. Instead, he swung the cudgel when he was still too distant to hit her.
Because he wasn’t aiming at her. His cudgel slammed into the edge of the cangue.
It was as if someone had taken an iron bar to Lin Chong’s throat. Her windpipe crushed in and the world shredded inside out with the edge of death, vibrating into every limb as if all control to her body had been cut. The momentum of the hit took the cangue in a wheeling arc to the ground, and Lin Chong’s head with it.
She had no way to break the fall. Sky and brush and trees yanked past her vision in one sickening instant before the cangue hit the dirt so hard the corner dug straight into the loam, and Lin Chong’s head snapped back against it with so much force that for one delirious moment she was certain her neck had been severed.
She couldn’t move. The forest alternately went dark and bright, the shapes of branch and leaf becoming nonsense abstracts.
Two shadows moved among the jumble. One lopsided, limping. Both with cudgels.
Lin Chong reached for her discipline, her control. A finger twitched against the ground.
“You finish it,” keened one voice, high with pain. “I’m not getting within striking distance again.”
“You shouldn’t have let her get that close in the first place. You heard me talking about her military skill. We would’ve been in trouble if she wasn’t weakened.”
“Avoid her face. Remember, Marshal Gao wants us to cut the face off to bring in the tattoo as proof. Hit her in the back of the head.”
Hesitation. They were still wary of getting close to her.
“Should we tie her legs first? Just in case.”
“Break them, if you think she’s so much of a threat. I think you’ve near killed her already.”
Lin Chong tried to move again, but her last wandering thoughts had divorced from her body. She didn’t even feel pain.
This is where I will die, then. In a corrupted wilderness, folded into its deadly fissures as if she had never been.
When the shapes in her fading eyesight exploded in an echoing howl of rage, Lin Chong could only assume it was a vision of every one of her souls screaming at the injustice of it all.