The head maid’s wooden clogs clicked against the stone porch with sharp, haughty arrogance.
Inside the dimly lit shed, Kaelen slipped out of his hammock without a sound, landing on the bare floorboards while keeping his meridians completely dormant. He crossed the room to Mina’s cot in four swift strides.
Mina was already awake, her brown eyes wide with apprehension after hearing the maid’s venomous voice through the cedar wall planks.
“Brother?” she whispered, her hands trembling. “Is that First Madam’s maid?”
“Do not speak,” Kaelen murmured, crouching beside her pillow.
From his sleeve, he produced a small, flat paper packet. Inside rested a brittle, gray lozenge pressed from dried mountain cold-mint and bitter camphor. It was a common throat medicine used by street singers in Ashford to numb swollen vocal cords before a performance.
“Tuck this under your tongue,” Kaelen instructed in a whisper. “Do not chew it. Let the cold juice pool under your jaw.”
Mina nodded obediently. She placed the gray lozenge under her small tongue.
Within five seconds, the intense camphor extract constricted the small blood vessels in her mouth and neck. A superficial, harmless chill washed through her wrists. Her pulse, which had been beating strong and warm after the Frost-Cleaving Pills, instantly turned sluggish, weak, and erratic to the touch.
Kaelen pulled the wool blanket up to her chin, rumpled her brown hair, and dusted a pinch of white chalk powder across her cheeks.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered. “Breathe through your teeth. Groan if she touches you.”
Outside, Barnaby’s voice boomed across the yard like a cracked brass bell.
“Verbal orders mean nothing here, girl!” the old keeper barked, slamming his broom handle against the porch rail. “I don’t care what the First Madam’s dressing room sent you to fetch! Show me an official clan writ with the red crane seal, or take your perfume back to the inner court!”
“Step aside, you one-armed dog!” the head maid shrieked. “Do you think First Madam needs a writ to check on a dying child? Push past him, fool!”
The wooden latch rattled violently, and the heavy cedar door banged open against the stone wall. Evelyn’s personal maid swept into the shed, her lilac silk skirts rustling with fury.
She held an ivory-ribbed silk fan firmly against her nose, her painted eyebrows arched in disgust. Behind her, the sullen servant hauled the heavy brass-bound ebony medicine case across the threshold.
“Filth,” the maid spat, glaring at the bundles of drying sage and the iron stew-pot on the cold brazier. “An absolute pig sty. How anyone with Vance blood can sleep in this garbage is beyond me.”
Her cold eyes landed on Kaelen, who sat slumped on a three-legged stool by the cot looking haggard and dull-eyed.
“Good evening,” Kaelen mumbled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Please don’t speak too loudly. The vibration rattles my kidney meridian.”
Act frail, cough twice, and let the camphor do the lying, Kaelen thought placidly. If she thinks we’re both half-dead, she leaves in two minutes and my nap timer stays spotless.
The head maid curled her lip in contempt, not even deigning to reply to the third son.
She marched directly to the cot where Mina lay beneath the rough blankets.
Mina let out a weak, pathetic whimper. Her eyes remained closed, her skin looking dead-white beneath the chalk dust. Her small body gave a faint, involuntary shudder.
“Open the case,” the head maid commanded the servant.
The servant dropped to his knees, flipping open the brass latches to reveal rows of silver diagnostic needles and porcelain sample dishes. Evelyn’s maid pulled on a pair of white silk gloves and pressed two slender fingers against Mina’s left wrist.
Kaelen watched from the stool, his hands folded loosely inside his frayed cotton robe.
Beneath the maid’s gloved fingertips, the cold-mint extract did its work. The constricted radial artery made Mina’s pulse feel like a dying thread scraping over ice, her wrist skin completely devoid of surface warmth.
The maid held her fingers on the pulse point for ten long seconds before a slow, cruel smile curved her painted lips.
“Good,” she murmured under her breath, her eyes glittering with dark satisfaction. “The ice has reached the bone marrow. The pulse is brittle as dried reed.”
She dropped Mina’s small hand back onto the wool blanket like a soiled rag, stripped off the silk gloves, and tossed them onto the floorboards.
“The physician will be pleased,” the maid said, turning toward the door. “Her condition is deteriorating right on schedule.”
“Will... will First Madam send medicine?” Kaelen asked in a trembling, hopeful voice. “Some warming ginseng broth, perhaps?”
Evelyn’s maid stopped at the doorway and gave Kaelen a look of cold, mocking pity.
“Warming broth?” she laughed sharply. “Why waste good ginseng on firewood? Wrap her in blankets, Third Young Master, and keep her breathing until the winter solstice. That’s all the family asks of you.”
She gestured sharply to the servant. “Pack the case. We return to the rear pavilion at once.”
The servant snapped the box shut, scrambled to his feet, and hurried after the head maid onto the gravel path.
The sharp clicking of her wooden clogs faded into the twilight.
Barnaby stepped into the doorway, his ash-wood ladle gripped in his single hand.
“Vipers,” the old man growled, spitting through the doorframe into the dirt. “Heartless, venomous vipers. They look at that poor girl as if she were a dead pig waiting for the butcher’s hook.”
Mina sat up on the cot. She spat the gray cold-mint lozenge into a porcelain saucer, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
“The taste is terrible,” Mina said, making a face. “It tastes like chewing on a pine needle dipped in lime.”
“It saved your life, little sister,” Kaelen said, his voice entirely devoid of its usual slacker deadpan.
He stood up, walking to the open window.
Dusk had turned into full night. The moon was a sliver of cold silver hanging above the black ridge of the western mountains. Through the pine branches, the warm lanterns of the Vance inner compound glowed like predatory eyes.
Behind Kaelen’s eyelids, the grey slate pulsed with quiet light.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Abstinence: 18 Hours, 00 Minutes] [Current State: True Fallow State] [Current Multiplier: 19x (Stage 1: Mortal Tally)] [Next Milestone: 19 Hours (20x Ready)]
Eighteen hours.
He had nineteen times the baseline multiplier ready to cash. But Kaelen had no intention of breaking his streak for a fight.
He did not need Qi to hunt. He needed ears.
“Barnaby,” Kaelen said softly. “Lock the front latch. Keep Mina inside the back alcove. If anyone knocks, tell them she has taken a sleeping draught.”
Barnaby’s single eye narrowed. “Where are you going, boy?”
“For an evening walk,” Kaelen replied. “My legs are cramped from sitting.”
He reached behind the tool rack and picked up his three-foot bamboo rod. The hookless fishing line hung from the tip, tipped with a heavy lead casting sinker wrapped in oiled leather to muffle the sound.
He slipped through the back window into the deep shadows behind the drying shed.
The night was cold and clear.
Kaelen moved along the perimeter of the inner manor with the effortless silence of an owl.
He did not channel a single wisp of energy through his meridians. Had he used Qi footwork or spiritual sense, the perimeter formation arrays set up by the manor elders would have chimed an alarm within three breaths.
Instead, he relied entirely on mundane stealth.
He stepped only on the dry stone footpaths between the cabbage patches. He ducked beneath the hanging eaves of the outer granaries, keeping the prevailing wind in his face so the guard hounds in the kennel would not catch his scent.
Within ten minutes, he reached the high stone wall surrounding Madam Evelyn’s rear pavilion.
The pavilion was a luxurious two-story timber mansion with curved cedar eaves and lacquered red pillars. Warm yellow candlelight spilled from the second-story study window. A fragrant aroma of burning aloeswood and spiced wine drifted into the courtyard.
Kaelen crouched beneath the shadow of a large decorative rockery.
He looked up at the second-story eaves. The cedar rain gutter projected six inches past the tiled roof.
Kaelen flicked his wrist.
The lead sinker at the end of his silk fishing line flew upward in a graceful, silent arc. The weighted leather ball looped over the bronze drain bracket, wrapping twice around the metal bar before locking tight.
Kaelen tested the line with his weight. The silk held firm.
Using the knotted cord and the rough stone masonry of the wall, Kaelen walked his cloth slippers up the brickwork. He reached the tiled ledge beneath the second-story window, pulling himself flat against the cedar shingles.
The carved wooden lattice of the study window stood open two inches to let out the incense smoke.
Kaelen pressed his ear against the gap.
Inside the warm room, the clinking of porcelain cups was clearly audible.
Madam Evelyn Vance sat in a high-backed armchair of carved ironwood, draped in a luxurious gown of crimson fox fur. Across from her sat a tall, gaunt man in a high-collared magistrate’s robe stamped with the iron crest of the provincial court.
Magistrate Vane-Locke’s personal envoy.
On the tea table between them rested a silver scroll case sealed with crimson wax.
“My head maid returned from the herb shed twenty minutes ago,” Evelyn said, her voice smooth, cultured, and ice-cold. “The girl’s pulse is brittle as frozen glass. The frost has settled deep into the fourth meridian branch.”
The magistrate’s envoy let out a thin, raspy chuckle.
“Splendid,” the envoy said, tapping his long fingernails on the table. “Magistrate Vane-Locke was concerned that the mountain cold snap might kill the vessel before the fruit was ripe.”
“The vessel is sturdy,” Evelyn replied coldly. “Claire Vance’s bloodline runs strong in her veins. Her natural pure yin marrow has absorbed twelve years of mountain frost. The cold does not kill her; it condenses.”
The envoy leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with greedy anticipation.
“The magistrate has been stuck at the peak of Iron Bone Early for eight long years,” the man whispered. “His bones have reached the bottleneck. He needs a pure Yin-Marrow Core to melt the marrow impurities and step into Iron Bone Mid-Stage. When the girl turns thirteen on the winter solstice, her marrow will reach its absolute peak of condensation.”
“And the magistrate’s promise?” Evelyn asked, raising an eyebrow.
“The magistrate never forgets his debts, First Madam,” the envoy assured her. “Bring the girl to the garrison fortress on the solstice. Magistrate Vane-Locke will name Cassian Vance as sole hereditary heir to the Vance Barony.”
Evelyn smiled with venomous satisfaction. “And my second son, Garrick?”
“Garrick will receive exclusive imperial rights to smuggle twenty thousand tons of black-iron ore past the provincial tax gates every year,” the envoy replied. “A fortune in silver.”
“A fair exchange,” Evelyn murmured, sipping her tea. “A useless, motherless girl in exchange for the barony and a mountain of silver.”
“And what of the third son?” the envoy asked casually. “Kaelen?”
Evelyn waved her hand with complete disdain.
“Three years ago, Briggs shot him through the shoulder with corpse poison on the high road,” Evelyn sneered. “We thought he would die in a ditch, but the boy is a stubborn cockroach.”
“Still, his meridians are completely ruined,” she added with a wave. “He spends all day sleeping in a hammock and reading cheap mortal romances. He is a brainless invalid. When we take the girl, he will not even have the strength to lift his head.”
The envoy laughed loudly. “A perfect harvest, then. In two months, on the winter solstice, our carriage will arrive at the back gate.”
On the cold cedar roof outside the window, Kaelen lay perfectly still.
The moonlight caught the cold, sharp glint in his dark eyes.
A human pill ingredient, Kaelen thought, his breath coming slow and cold. They poisoned my meridians three years ago just to clear the field. They let Mina suffer twelve years of agony so an imperial magistrate could harvest her bones like a cabbage.
The fury in his chest was not hot. It was as cold and sharp as diamond.
Magistrate Vane-Locke is an Iron Bone Early monster, Kaelen analyzed with icy clarity. A single strike from an Iron Bone expert would shatter every bone in my body. Rushing in with a blade would only get Mina killed.
He closed his eyes, his mind working like an abacus.
You do not fight a warlord with a wooden sword when you can buy his supply wagons, Kaelen thought. Vane-Locke wants a barony for Evelyn’s sons. Garrick wants silver. Cassian wants the heir’s seat.
He wouldn’t give them a single scrap.
Silently, Kaelen reeled in his hookless fishing line, slipped back through the dark herb paths to the shed, and lay down in his hammock until the first gray light of dawn. Behind his closed eyelids, the stone tablet chimed softly.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Abstinence: 24 Hours, 00 Minutes] [Current State: True Fallow State] [Current Multiplier: 25x (Stage 1: Mortal Tally)] [Next Milestone: 25 Hours (26x Ready)]
He had sixty days until Mina’s thirteenth birthday on the winter solstice. Before he could crush an Iron Bone Early magistrate, he would bleed Deacon Vane’s Ghost Market for a mountain of Spirit Stones and bankrupt Evelyn’s sons down to their last copper bit.