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“No,” Jianzhu said, his teeth grinding together.
Though he couldn’t see underground, knowing the tunnel was there allowed Jianzhu to make various educated guesses with earthbending and knowledge of stonework to determine a path. They’d followed the network up the mountain on their eel hounds, forcing aside blocked passages and relying on the agility of their unusual mounts to see them through. Eventually the obstacles parted to reveal a great crater nestled in the heights, and in that bowl, waiting for them, was a village that neither of them had ever heard of before.
An entire settlement not on any map, out of reach of the law. Jianzhu’s rage was almost too great for him to swallow. He was a storekeeper who would never be rid of vermin, a servant who would never be able to polish the silver clean.
The town appeared to be abandoned. They rode through empty streets, between longhouses that made a mockery of the Four Nations with adornments either looted or crudely imitated from their places of origin. One particular scrap-quilted banner had been fastened together so that characters from multiple signs clumsily formed the syllables Hu and Jiang.
Hujiang. So that was the name of this dungheap.
“There’s our shirshu, sir,” Saiful said. He pointed down the street where a dark, foul-smelling mound blocked the way.
The beast lay in relatively dignified repose. Other than the flies buzzing around its face—or lack thereof—it was still whole. Any trophy hunters would have found very quickly that toxins still coursed through its dead body.
Professor Shaw would be upset though. Jianzhu would need to come up with a cover story and a convincing amount of hush money to keep the man’s anger from casting suspicion.
A brief scraping noise came from the house to his right. There was someone inside. Jianzhu dismounted and approached the darkened building.
“Sir?” Saiful whispered. “Going alone is a bad idea.”
Jianzhu waved him off. “Patrol the street.”
He slipped inside, contouring against the door frame rather than standing fully in the entrance, where he would be outlined by sunlight. Judging from the long tables and low backless stools, the building was some kind of inn or tavern. It made him furious again, that these outlaws had enjoyed enough peace in these mountains to build gathering places and sell each other wine.
Jianzhu walked around the tavern’s counter. He found the person who’d made the noise.
It was a man sitting on a pile of pillows. He was muscled and scarred like a fighter, though it would seem he’d fared poorly in his last outing. One of his legs was wrapped in cloth and splinted up to his hip.
The injured man stared at Jianzhu with the empty, wary expression of being caught out. Jianzhu noticed empty bottles within his arms reach, jars of half-eaten food. He pieced it together. The inhabitants of the settlement had evacuated some days ago, probably scared away by the shirshu. The ambush at the base of the mountain had been a rearguard, or a bunch of greedy opportunists who’d lagged behind. This man with the broken leg couldn’t make the journey down at all, so his companions had left him here to recover.
Jianzhu’s eyes went to a small, out-of-place vase. It had a moon peach blossom in it. “I’m looking for a girl,” he said to his recuperating friend. “She was here at some point. A very tall girl, taller than you or me. Pretty face, freckles, doesn’t speak much. Have you seen her?”
The man’s eyebrows twitched. It could have been an attempt to conceal the truth, or it could ha
ve been his memory sparking but failing to light.
“She would have been accompanied by a Firebender. Another girl, black hair, military bearing—”
Jianzhu caught the spear-hand strike aimed at his throat and redirected it into the nearby shelf, smashing the uprights. The man could add a broken wrist to his troubles. Jianzhu watched him seethe with pain.
The injured fighter tucked his bad hand under his good arm. “I am Four Shadows Guan,” he snarled with pride. “And I will tell you nothing. I know a man of the law when I see one.”
Jianzhu believed him. Once these types told you their professional name, there was no more rational conversation to be had. He would try one more tactic, a play on the daofei’s emotions.
He plucked the moon peach blossom from its vase and twirled the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “Times have changed,” he said. “In my younger days I remember tracking this small group around the edges of the desert, from watering hole to watering hole. The Band of the Scorpion, they called themselves. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen members.”
Jianzhu caught what he was looking for, the man snorting in derision at a brotherhood that small. Which meant his group was much larger.
“The funny thing was, when I caught up with them, I found out why they were moving so slowly,” he went on. “Two of their members had caught foot rot and couldn’t walk. The others fashioned litters and carried them through the desert, the whole time. The group would have escaped me if they had left their sick behind, but they chose to stay together. They chose brotherhood.”
He crushed the flower. “That’s what Followers of the Code used to be like. When I look at you, abandoned by your sworn brothers, I don’t see that tradition. I don’t see honor.”
Jianzhu let a flying gob of spit hit him in the face. “The brothers of the Autumn Bloom are willing to die for each other,” the man said, wiping his lips. “You would never understand. Our cause makes us—”
He paused, realizing that Jianzhu was manipulating him. Four Shadows Guan was smarter than he looked. He clenched his jaw and slammed back against his makeshift bedrest.
Jianzhu grimaced and rolled up his sleeves. So much for doing this the easy way.
He stepped into the sunlight and wiped his hands on a nearby saddle blanket that had been hung up to dry and forgotten.
