“And your plan was… what? Lead us to the fortress and extract your wife while you were… what exactly?”

  Tai-li knelt in the leaves and lowered his head. “My plan was to give my life to save her if needed, but I hoped between the four of you and my own guards, you would save her before I needed to give myself up.” He raised his head and faced me, a powerful resolve in his eyes which made me reassess my opinion of Fukan’s tiny lordling. “Nothing will hurt Falina though. Nothing. I will die for her if needed.”

  Ryzen spat into the leaves while Hanari and Huang stood on either side of the lordling. None of the guards in the trees made themselves known, which was good because I might have attacked them out of habit if they had.

  I stared into Tai-li’s eyes and could feel the oaths I’d made to Odgen pressing around me. It was impossible to sift the innocent from the guilty, I was no god nor spirit to know men’s hearts. But there with his knees on the ground and his eyes level with my own, I was certain I could see into Tai-li’s soul. Odgen would have helped him, in more ways than one.

  “You know you may have doomed everyone in earshot with your lives?” My voice was ice, it should have sent frost over the lordling’s beardless cheeks.

  “I do.”

  “And do you regret it?”

  He made fists with both hands and shook his head. “I do not.”

  “Good.” Ryzen swore in surprise and Hanari giggled at my answer. I walked over to Tai-li and held my hand out to him. “Get up. Cease your blubbering and let’s see if we can rescue your wife.”

  “You’re going to help me?” Tai-li looked around at the others. “After the lies?”

  “You’re going to pay us if we do, right?”

  Tai-li snorted, smiling sincerely for the first time since I’d met him. “Is that all you want?”

  “No, but the gold will help me sleep better at night.” Tai-li and Huang tilted their heads at me as if confused by my words. Rather than explain myself, I motioned to them and led them off to the East, in the direction of Tai-li’s wife. And a fortress full of trouble.

  “Why won’t you give me my sword back?” Tai-li stood where I’d told him. After purging the lie from his chest, the lordling had rediscovered humility.

  “It is a distraction.” I pointed to his feet with the tip of the Mountain Cutter’s scabbard. “Your stance is pathetic and is why you don’t get your sword back yet.”

  “Yet?” Tai-li grimaced at his feet as his eyes followed my gesture.

  “Yet. When your stance demonstrates you are ready for it, I will gladly hand you your sword. How would you train without it?”

  Ryzen made a “tch” sound and sat up from his bedroll. “Do you two have to do this near our camp? Fuck off if you’re going to make noise all night!” He pulled his robes over his head and grumbled at us.

  I nodded to the swordsman and pointed to Tai-li. “Follow me and I will see if we can grant our companions a measure of peace.” A chuckle filled my voice because Hanari lay on her back with Odgen’s robe akimbo, her hand over her belly, and her tongue lolling out of her mouth. Huang sat at the base of a tree with his legs folded in the old style and his fists pressed together knuckle to knuckle. Neither Haung nor Hanari stirred at our noise.

  “Keep your feet in motion and shift your weight with care.” I walked next to Tai-li and demonstrated the shuffling gait Odgen had taught me. “This is the most basic step and the best to use on even terrain.”

  “You’re barely lifting your feet.”

  “Precisely.”

  We reached a small copse of trees were Tai-li and I would not trouble the others. A small pond lay nearby and reminded me of a group with an old woman and an old man, the former of whom had set out to the spring where I rested to see the latter dead. I shook my head at the premonition and turned back to Tai-li.

  After his confession and kowtowing, the young lord’s manner had completely changed. He wasn’t exactly deferential, but he kept his attention focused on me and obeyed my instructions as if he’d chosen me as his new master. And as much as I might have scorned him at first, I could not deny his dedication.

  “Good.” I tapped his thighs with the Mountain Cutter’s scabbard, “widen your stance and shift your dominant foot ahead slightly.”

  He complied at once and I shook my head at the sight. Tai-li possessed little in the way of natural strength. And whoever had taught the young man the basics of swordsmanship was a fraud. But with a dozen men who possessed his willingness to learn, focus, and determination, I could take back the Western Dragon Mountains in a month.

  “What is it, Master Isha?”

  He caught me shaking my head and looking off in the distance. It was too early to compliment the young man, it would spoil the peach as Odgen would have said. “Nothing. I was thinking about how deficient your stance was considering the person who already trained you.”

  “I was told I lacked any natural talent.”

  “They were not wrong, but your lack of skills speaks more to a deficiency in your former master than to your lack of natural ability. And please, call me Isha. I am not yet a Master.” Wei had been a Master. I was not even close to her level yet.

  Tai-li shook his head and turned his eyes back to his legs. From the way he stared at his feet and the smile on his lips, I suspected he was contradicting me in his head. Good. A small amount of defiance is important at this stage too.

  Only when Tai-li began to sway and blink as if under a witch’s spell did I send him back to camp with instructions to meditate and sleep as much as he could. He started to argue with me, but snapped his mouth shut and bowed.

  Such an incredible change from divesting oneself of a single lie. Odgen had spoken those words to me decades ago. And it was only as Tai-li padded back to the others to sleep that I recognized how much of myself I saw in him.

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  He was noble, a lord’s son and prince of his region. There were many differences of course, he was human, the heir, and he had not shed his own family’s blood in a moment of prideful rage. But surely he blamed himself for his wife’s abduction. If she died, I could see him joining me on the path through Hell.

  No one else should join me in such a life.

  As I walked back, I found Hanari still spread eagle and snoring. When this job was concluded, I would have to part ways with the Kitsune as well. She had been a pleasant, if chaotic companion. But I had no desire to inflict my choices and personal damage on those around me.

  Huang and Ryzen were different, of course, they were allies of circumstance. And though Ryzen possessed an ill temper and dark aspect, I knew he could be trusted to complete our mission. I did not sleep the first night of our journey. I had no desire to taint this mission with nightmares.

  Four days into our travels, I returned Tai-li’s blade to him with a bow. Hanari or Huang could have easily broken the lordling’s stance, perhaps even in their sleep and by accident. But no bandit would have succeeded. Good enough would do for what I intended the last night of our journey.

  “I am going to teach you a very simple drawing technique, ideally suited for the blade you carry.” I tapped Tai-li on the arm and pointed to his sword. “Grip your handle thusly,” I demonstrated the grip, as close to the tang of his blade as he could get, “and draw with the speed of a lightning blast.”

  I turned away from the lordling, leveled the Mountain Cutter behind me and demonstrated the sweeping cut. Steel rang out from the scabbard and sang through the air with a pure, finely tuned note. As swiftly as I’d drawn the sword, I returned it to its home without looking.

  “Now you. But slowly at first.”

  Memories of Odgen guiding my initial attempts at proper sword play made me nostalgic for the old man. He’d told jokes and laughed as he trained me. I could recall every single lesson the old man imparted, but I could not remember a single line from one of his jokes.

  Tai-li’s original master had been a fool. The lordling was not traditionally talented, he lacked the strength of Ryzen or the speed of Huang. But his control was superb. Most mortals moved as though their joints and muscles were at odds with each other. Not so with Tai-li.

  The crescent slash of his blade was smooth and even enough to balance a teacup on without spilling a drop. Fast or slow, his arm moved without the least tremor or bauble. Given a year with Tai-li, perhaps as little as three months and he would have defeated Ryzen in the contest staged for the honor of saving Falina.

  I stepped away and watched the young man slice the air over and over again, sweat dripping into his eyes and down his absurd purple robes. And not once did he pause to wipe it away. Not once did the sweep of his blade falter. The fates mocked me, surely. Tai-li possessed the dedication of a future master, if only he had the time to dedicate to his craft.

  “That is enough.”

  Tai-li broke out of his concentration and returned his sword to its sheath with a single motion. “Are we done, Isha?”

  “For tonight yes.” Tai-li looked over his shoulder in the direction of the fortress and clenched his jaw.

  “It’s not enough, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I won’t be able to save Falina myself, will I?”

  I shook my head. The young man deserved the truth. “You will not. But I have a plan in place for this already.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded at him. “Without a doubt. But you will have to trust me and do as I say.”

  Tai-li bowed from the waist and dropped his gaze to the forest floor. “I will do anything to save my princess.”

  “Then with your resolve and the blessings of heaven, I am confident we will return with her.”

  I cursed my own arrogant words from the prior night as we reached the fortress. Great metal walls rose up in a ziggurat shape before us. Smoke plumes puffed into the sky from various chimneys. And though I could see the glow from several different windows, they were too high up to scale a shear metal surface.

  “We’re fucking cursed, aren’t we?” Ryzen’s words expressed the sentiment in my heart, though I would not have framed them as he did.

  Hanari shrugged. I’d already shared my plan with her. And there was a fair chance it would still work, depending on what she discovered when she entered the fortress this day. I would not reveal Hanari’s nature to Tai-li or the others. Mortals could not be trusted with such knowledge, no matter how honorable or well-intentioned. Keeping her secret did not prevent Hanari from running ahead to scout.

  “Where is she going?” Huang asked and I hid my smile from him. He sounded like a love-sick pup worried his owners had left him for the day.

  “She will be fine.” I turned back to the others and sat down. “When she returns, we will plan in earnest.”

  Tia-li paced until I pointed to the ground across from me and told him to meditate. Huang had already folded himself down to sit and was breathing steadily. Ryzen was only partially my problem, so I did not tell him what to do. He stood watching for Hanari’s return while the rest of us calmed our minds and readied ourselves for battle.

  Enough time passed for me to show Tai-li how to clean his sword and care for it. It would not do for the weapon to come apart when the young man needed it, even if I did not intend to let him into the fight. It was better to be prepared and anyone who possessed as fine a blade as Tai-li’s should know how to maintain it.

  Ryzen made a sound in the back of his throat and I tilted my head to listen. Hanari was back. It had taken her the better part of the day, but she had come back safely. I’d worried because without her reconnaissance we would be assaulting the metal fortress blind.

  To my surprise, Hanari had brought a map with her, which showed the entire complex. And she’d brought bad news.

  “I couldn’t find the princess.” Tai-li moaned, but Hanari cut him off. “I’m certain she’s there, all of the men in the fort were talking about her. But there were too many places inside of that fort I needed passcodes or signs to breach.”

  Tai-li nodded and clenched his jaw. “So how are we going to assault this place?”

  I held up a hand and examined the map Hanari had made. Our path forward wasn’t clear to me yet, but with study, I knew I would pick a way through the weeds. The very notion lit a lantern in my mind.

  I pointed to the exterior of the fortress and the grounds around it. “How far away from the walls has the forest been cleared?”

  “Two hundred yards, more or less in some places.” Hanari shrugged, uncertain of what I was thinking.

  Life beneath a mountain had given me a perspective mortals seldom shared. They tended to think in terms of lines, planes, or levels connected by stairs. They’d cleared the forest from the fortress for a reason, to keep anyone from attacking them from using the trees as cover.

  But they had not spent any time building a moat or earthworks to foul siege engines. They did not believe an army would come for them. Their fortress was as secure a home as a turtle’s shell. So the answer was to draw them out.

  According to Tai-li, we had three days before he had to make his appearance before Falina’s captors. A margin of three days would be enough for my plan, if we could draw the defender’s attention away from our staging ground.

  “I want you to send your personal guards out to harry the fortress’s defenders.” I looked over at Tai-li. “They must not be caught or their identities compromised.”

  “But…” he looked me in the eye and lowered his head as he stifled his objection. “I will do as you suggest.” He stood and turned back to me. “Would you rather speak to them yourself?”

  “Please.”

  Tai-li whistled and four figures dropped from the trees around him. I’d tracked their movements with my hearing, but after days I’d begun to tune them out. For humans, they moved like ghosts. I was impressed.

  All four of them bowed to Tai-li and then one of the taller figured in black faced me. “What do you want us to do?”

  I explained that I wanted them to harry the defenders, to pull their attention away from the road leading up to the fortress and the forest where we’d camped. This place was a brigands’s hovel and so far, I’d not seen a single patrol out in the woods. They must have been watching from the windows arranged around the ziggurat’s base. If they saw what I planned to do over the next three days, our plan would fail before it began.

  I had to confirm one more detail with Tai-li. “You said you were to appear alone. How were you going to contact them? Would they accept a messenger?”

  Tai-li nodded and I smiled. This would most likely work.