Rain ran down the edge of the blade onto Yan Tianxiong’s collar. He looked up along the black steel. Each breath took longer than the one before it. His hands lay open on the rock where he had dropped his broken weapon.
“Who are you?” he asked. “A wandering Martial Saint? Someone from Grand Desolation hiding his realm?”
“I’m Pei Jing.”
Yan mouthed the name. “There’s no Elder Pei in the Southern Leyline Ridge. No clan by that name.”
“A butcher’s apprentice,” Pei Jing said. “Cloudford Town.”
Yan opened his mouth again. Pei Jing could see him trying to fit a village from an old grain register to the man in front of him. He never got the words out. Pei Jing drew the blade across. The judge fell into the rainwater, and the broken grip of his cleaver rolled against his knee.
Pei Jing stood for a moment and listened to the waves. He thought of the children in the Cloudford square. Han’s disciple had counted four hundred and ninety-eight of them, then complained they were two short. The judge had brought the same book to the shelf. Pei Jing had closed the account with the men who came to collect it.
