Chương 87: Death's Unfinished Business, III

In the end Shan Guoxi hadn't shown up. Lady Jin had kept her word, for now. He wasn't sure how she'd done it and he wouldn't be sticking around to find out. Wu Hao was there, as requested, at dawn. Qi had made it so he didn't need as much sleep, and besides it wouldn't be the first time that he'd gone without. He'd put Old Qin's salve on the wounds in his arm, cleaned it off just before arriving, and still faintly smelled its muck on him.

He hadn't met anyone while heading over, but if he had he'd have tried to see if they smelled it too or if it was just his own senses playing up. He'd also cleaned up the blood on him, was wearing his usual clothing again, having taken care to wear something else the evening before, and the bodies had been safely stashed where he figured no one would find them.

That had taken some doing as well, but qi had helped with dragging them away and with the locks around the building itself - well, he'd made it, and that was the important thing. Nonetheless he still felt out of sorts, standing there waiting for Wang Hangsheng to arrive. It wasn't just that it was early or that the fog was blanketing the square, and it wasn't that he'd forgotten anything because he'd triple-checked before he left his room.

It wasn't that his clothing didn't fit, and it wasn't that he felt guilt or shame or anything like that, for what he'd done. He'd killed to save himself from being killed. That seemed fair, and besides they'd called out to him first. To be a martial artist was to be prepared to kill those who were trying to kill you. He'd read that in a book somewhere, he felt sure. And yet... Wang Hangsheng's shape resolved out of the pre-dawn fog, his qi swirling quietly in his chest.

He looked around, spotting Wu Hao standing there, and grunted something. Maybe it was Wu Hao's ears playing tricks on him, but the other man seemed almost disappointed. Whatever feeling had taken hold of him fled, replaced with a more usual annoyance. That, at least, was a feeling that Wu Hao could do something with. Wang Hangsheng walked off, gesturing to follow him, and Wu Hao went across the small square, falling in behind Wang Hangsheng's footsteps.

The guard didn't hurry but neither did he bother for even a single moment to slow his pace to allow Wu Hao to catch up. If not for qi, Wu Hao might have been out of breath by the time they'd weaved through a sequence of paths. Coincidentally, they'd passed by the training arena, where no one was yet. Between tendrils of fog and the morning light, Wu Hao couldn't make out much of the arena itself, but it was clear that there'd been fighting. Cracks riddled the stone.

Something flashed in the distance, shards of glass that'd been left from when he'd kicked Shan Kong into the lantern. Most didn't shine, speckled with blood as they were, but a few did. A broom lay abandoned nearby, making it clear that the scene of the crime had been discovered. And cleaned up, somewhat. The blood had been left as it had been, and the corpses had been gone long before any cleaner had arrived, but there should have been bits of gore here and there.

The glitter of fragments from his exploding knives. He didn't see any of those fragments, and that was worrying in and of itself. Wu Hao's breath momentarily quickened, but Wang Hangsheng didn't stop, and so he had to hurry behind the guard again. They arrived near one of the outermost courtyards. It boasted a wide entrance, from where carriages could enter and leave.

Vague memories of his supposed youth as a travelling merchant made it clear this was where peddlers would stop, hand out their merchandise, and be shooed away again once the agreed-upon time was past. He was pretty goddamned sure that they hadn't needed to pass past the arena, actually. It seemed like a detour. Wang Hangsheng had done it to gauge Wu Hao's reaction.

Maybe, Wu Hao thought, it was done to show him that it'd already been discovered, but Wu Hao knew that much just from the way Shi Huyin's threads had reacted last night. In any case he wouldn't give Wang Hangsheng the pleasure of seeing anything except the smooth, emotionless mask of the deathsworn on Wu Hao's face. The guard himself stood with his large arms, folded, watching a grim-faced group of people was preparing a carriage for a voyage.

He didn't tell them to hurry, didn't speak out, but the moment that he'd arrived the preparations had shifted into another gear and even the vague sounds of the morning had fallen away in his presence. It was there that they met another man. He looked different from Wu Hao and from Wang Hangsheng both: he was visibly old, with the thick lines on his forehead that spoke of heavy thought, but he did share Wang Hangsheng's thick, musclebound arms. Wu Hao wondered if he was going to look like that, at some point.

The new man wasn't even a martial artist. He could do without the new man's short white beard, uneven and stricken with burn marks here and there, matched by occasional tufts of hair that left the man's actual scalp bare. He could do without the scowl he'd learn would be ever-present. He'd definitely say no to the man's prosthetic left leg, too. No effort was made to hide it, with the iron leg and boot strapped directly to the clothing wrapped around the man's stump. Maybe that was why he scowled so much.

But the muscles might be nice, Wu Hao decided. Maybe then they'd take him more seriously. Presumably this was the blacksmith who was supposed to come with them. Wu Hao studied the old man with some interest, but he was roundly ignored in return.

Maybe a few minutes later, the last bag was thrown into the carriage with more haste than seemed really warranted, the last servant disappeared hurriedly into the morning fog after a quick bow, and one man who Wu Hao had taken for little more than a carer for the horses had jumped up, revealing himself to not only be a third-grade martial artist but also their coachman.

"Get in," Wang Hangsheng said. His tone didn't betray anything, but Wu Hao imagined he was annoyed it'd all taken so long. The old man snorted but obeyed, hobbling forward into the carriage. Every second step issued a thud as his prosthetic met the stone until he was at the carriage steps, and after that there were only two thuds of steel on wood before the old man had sat down. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Wang Hangheng's hand pushed at Wu Hao's shoulder.

"Go." Wu Hao went, studying the inside of the carriage as he sat down. He'd only really remembered ever having seen two, and this looked a lot more like the ones of the Diancang Sect a few years in the future than it looked like the carriage of the Golden Lotus Company. The sole cushion had been taken up by the blacksmith, whose detached leg now rested on it while he sat morosely with his arms crossed. Otherwise, there wasn't much in the way of decoration.

Wu Hao raised up the underside of one of the benches and placed his own bag there, which held nothing except one of the scrolls that he'd taken from the library days ago and a few items of food that he'd broken into the kitchen to get. And his knives, but that went without saying. Wu Hao had wondered for a moment if maybe he was better off leaving them in his room, but Wang Hangsheng knew they existed now, so it wouldn't really matter either way, he'd decided.

Even so he'd probably try to keep the specific patterns on them secret for long as he could, just because. The blacksmith who sat across from him met his glance, giving a quick jerk of his beard.

"You one of ours?" he asked.

"Yeah," Wu Hao said. Odd that the blacksmith would only take an interest in him now, but whatever. He wouldn't have minded the silence, but there were heavy silences and there were light silences, and if this old man was as reticent as Wu Hao and Wang Hangsheng were, the silence would be so heavy that the carriage's wheels might not be able to bear it.

"Whose whelp are ya?" Wu Hao looked back with an impassive face.

"No one," Wu Hao said. The blacksmith snorted.

"Don't give me that bullcrap." Wang Hangsheng stepped inside, bowing his head to dodge the low-hanging frame of the carriage, and closed the door behind him. Head still bent as he went through the carriage, he knocked against the wood to alert the driver. A quick jerk later, and they were underway, but the blacksmith's eyes still bored into Wu Hao.

"I'm nobody," Wu Hao said.

"Nobodies," the blacksmith said, "don't get sent on missions by Lady Jin, or get assigned a guard like him, either." Wang Hangsheng said nothing but folded his arms over each other, closing his eyes to the world.

"You're important?" Wu Hao asked the blacksmith.

"If you're here..."

"Course I'm important," the blacksmith grumbled.

"I'm the third apprentice of the great master of the Hebei branch blacksmiths of the Jin clan, Ou Ziye." Only the third? Wu Hao thought to himself. Was that meant to be impressive? Besides, even at his advanced age the man was only an apprentice?

"So," the blacksmith said again.

"Who're you? No bullshit this time. I don't recognize you."

"I'm nobody," Wu Hao repeated.

"I've been with the Jin clan for a week, at most." Ou Ziye gave a frustrated yank of his beard, then clearly had to withhold the urge to spit on the floor.

"Alright," the blacksmith said. He raised a hand, making a beckoning motion.

"Show me your saber, then."

"Why?"

"So I can look at it," Ou Ziye said, one of his bushy eyebrows drawing up.

"You stupid, boy?" Ah, Wu Hao thought. Now they were on more familiar territory. Insults.

"I forget faces," Ou Ziye explained.

"Sabers, though? Don't forget a single one my hands have touched or my eyes have seen. Could pick out which unit of which battallion someone's in just by a quick look at their saber, and I don't recognize that one you've got slung out over the bench there. Show me." Wu Hao sighed, pulled his saber out from the sheathe in one smooth jerk, and handed it to Ou Zeyi.

He might've been more worried about handing a sharp, bladed weapon over, but in these confines there wouldn't be enough room to swing a cat, let alone a weapon the size of the bandit's saber. Besides, the blacksmith wasn't a martial artist, and muscled or not, his prosthetic was sitting next to him. Wu Hao had yet to see a single-legged man do martial arts, and he doubted today was the day he'd see it, either. Ou Ziye took the saber, basically pulling it out of Wu Hao's hands.

"This thing?" he asked, as if not quite sure if he believed Wu Hao.

"Yeah."

"How'd you get it?"

"Took it off a bandit I killed," Wu Hao explained.

"Yeah?" the blacksmith asked, running a finger along the back of it. He tapped at it, listening keenly to the sound of his fingernail tapping against the nail, sucked at his fingertip afterwards and giving his beard a quick jerk.

"What size was he? Twice as tall as you, or what?" Wu Hao looked from the tip of the saber up to its hilt, a length of steel that stretched from his fingertips to his shoulder if his arm was fully extended. Cracks ran along the side of the blade, a result of last night's battle with Shan Kong and those other two.

"Yeah," he said.

"Something like that." Whatever tests Ou Ziye was running, he finished them by staring at the saber again, feeling the weight of it against his hands. Wu Hao knew that weight - it was too much for him to really bear for longer periods without qi in his system, but apparently for Ou Ziye it wasn't as much of an issue.

"It's shit steel," he said.

"Don't know where it comes from, or what fuckwit forged this thing, but it's not a saber forged for anything except looking intimidating. It's a thug's saber, plain and simple." He tossed it back at Wu Hao, the muscles in his arms straining only barely before it flew through the air. Wu Hao caught it with both hands, the tip cracking against the side of the carriage.

"Guess you're right," the blacksmith said.

"You're not a son of the Jin, after all. Can't even take proper care of it, can you? Fuck's sake."

"He isn't," Wang Hangsheng said bluntly.

"Now shut up, the both of you." No other words were spoken the entire rest of the journey.