On the evening after the scouting visit, Red Mist Valley shut its doors. Pine boards covered the herb stalls. The mule carts were locked behind the stockade, and the barges sat still in the canal. Sulfur mist drifted over the wet stones outside Old Cauldron Workshop.
No smoke had come out of the chimney for more than thirty-six hours. To the men in the gambling dens, that meant Gui was dead. Someone had seen Wu Xiao at the south gate with a travel pack and a Cloudford pass. Qian Tong had made no public announcement, but in the tea cellars, word went around. Sixty low-grade stones for the cauldron. Thirty for the formula books.
Four hours before the attack, Pei Jing sat behind the brick fire wall with the Black Mountain Whetstone between his feet. He drew the Cloud-Splitter across it a hundred times on the left and a hundred times on the right. Then he checked his needles, his wards, and the gaps between the racks.
He put the cleaver away and stood by the viewing slit.
Fifteen minutes before the third watch, five figures emerged by the drainage canal. Scarface Meng led them, his iron cleaver wrapped in oiled hemp so it wouldn’t knock against his buckle. An eye patch covered the ruined eye. The scar ran into his gray beard. Li came behind with both spiked gloves wrapped around his mace.
