Yan held his breath. The wind snapped the torn strips of his coat against his ribs. He scarcely felt it. His heart was beating two hundred times a minute.
He knew the man holding Sun.
Yan remembered the quiet herb gatherer from intake, the man with the heavy cleaver who walked with his head down. He’d watched him take hold of the chain with the other thirty conscripts. When the Blood-Thunder dais discharged, the hall had filled with blue-white fire. The searchers had reported no survivors.
Yet here he stood. No burns. The same coat and cleaver.
“You were on the chain,” Yan managed. “We checked the hall. How did you get out?”
Pei Jing let go of Sun. The body fell against the wet shale.
Yan had spent seven years in Cloud Mist learning what was owed to a senior and what could be demanded of a junior. None of that would keep him alive here. He couldn’t run with his left calf broken. He needed Ling to hear him. The frost sword could cross the pass in under a second.
“Die!” he screamed.
