Fate's Attendant 1.18

Rather than carry the storage chest with them, Kang Lian collected the few pieces of good clothing left and wrapped them in a bundle, which she then tied to her back. The knots looked well-practiced to Hong Fei, and he wondered if Little Ruyun’s idea to flee to the south hadn’t been entirely discounted by her mother.

Once the knife was wrapped in a shawl and placed within easy reach on her belt, Kang Lian nodded to let him know she was ready to depart. Hong Fei had looked for reluctance or regret in the woman’s movements, but there’d been none. She simply took her daughter’s hand, followed him out into the hall, and stayed behind him as they went down the stairs

In the lobby, she placed the room’s key under the sleeping landlord’s nose. He snorted but didn’t wake up, and likely wouldn’t until the second the bell, at least. The scent of wine was that strong on him.

Kang Lian shook her head, glad to be rid of the place, and turned to follow Hong Fei out the door, but the swordsman was gazing pensively outside. She went to see what had him troubled, yet the way was clear.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There were people out front before,” he replied. “Wait here.”

Hong Fei stepped into the courtyard and let his eyes rove across the area. All was still except for the wind blowing across the adjacent rooftops. He heard it faintly howl. In the distance, a chicken squawked and was silenced.

The swordsman loosened the scabbard on his belt, then checked to ensure his knife was ready to draw. It was the same one he’d taken from the imperial soldier he’d killed.

There were doors ahead in the alley; people lived in those residences. Hong Fei approached the closest and knocked, but no one answered. The same was true for the door on the opposite side, and the windows normally left open for air and light were covered with wooden shutters, like there was a storm approaching.

Hong Fei walked backward through the courtyard toward where the Kang family waited. His heart settled when he arrived there safely. An ambush seemed immanent, but no crossbowmen had appeared on the rooftops. That would’ve been difficult to manage, alone as he was.

I better make sure, he thought. Then whispered, “Little Ruyun, run upstairs to peer through your room’s window. Tell me if you see anyone gathered on the nearby rooftops.”

Kang Lian grabbed hold of her daughter’s shoulder before the girl could run off. “The window doesn’t face that way,” she said, her voice low and tight with worry.

Hong Fei quickly glanced toward her, then back to the courtyard. “What about your neighbors? Do you know one well enough to look through their window?”

“There’s an empty room,” Little Ruyun whispered. “We could take the key from the landlord.”

Kang Lian wondered at how her daughter had grown so bold. They’d need to have a conversation—but later, after the approaching trouble was weathered. So, she reluctantly nodded and approached the sleeping landlord. The key box was out of reach, however, and the door leading to the area behind the counter was locked.

Little Ruyun came to stand beside her. She gestured asking for help up and over the counter. When her mother hesitated, the girl mouthed, “What can he do? We’re leaving anyway.”

And that was the truth, wasn’t it? The emboldening truth. The two of them worked for a Yu retainer now, one with a measure of status. The landlord would be a fool to cause trouble.

“Be careful,” Kang Lian mouthed, helping her daughter up.

Little Ruyun stepped lightly onto the counter and quietly back down onto the ground on the other side. Moments later, she handed over the key box to her mother. The girl then unbarred the door to the reception area and made her escape that way.

The Kang family ran together up the stairs.

Hong Fei waited, managing the fear and anticipation rising in him. These are patient people, he thought of the likely ambushers. Careful people. All they should know is that a swordsman visited Kang Lian, and yet these are the lengths they go to. Something’s not right.

He caught a glimpse of movement ahead. One of the doors in the alley had cracked open, and a moment later, a white number 1 poked out. There was also the edge of someone’s head; they were wearing a gray cap.

Hong Fei’s eyes narrowed in consideration. He pulled essence into his meridians, readying himself fully. He waited and waited until he heard the sound of slippers and bare feet running down the stairs behind him.

Panting, Kang Lian came to him. She reported, “There’s no one on the rooftops.”

Little Ruyun nodded in agreement, her hand on her mother’s arm.

Hong Fei nodded. The information they brought back simplified things immensely, and he began to step into the courtyard, then stopped himself. A glance showed Kang Lian and Little Ruyun watching him, still panting from running up and down the stairs. The realization that violence was immanent was sinking in, and their faces were turning pale and uneasy.

“You’re associated with me now, and anything I do will reflect on you,” he said. “The blood I spill will be blood you spill. Do you understand?”

Slowly, Kang Lian nodded. Her hand trembling, she gripped the hilt of the knife she wore and pulled it out. “What—what do you want me to do now?”

Little Ruyun’s eyes were opening wide. She clutched her mother’s arms. “You can’t—”

“Easy now,” Hong Fei said. “What you can do is find the key to the front door and lock it behind me. When I come back, you’ll know it’s me when I say…” He paused to think of an appropriate passphrase. The edges of his lips turned up. “When I say, ‘Auntie Ling believes it’s safe.’ ”

“What?” Kang Lian asked, confused.

“Say it for me,” Hong Fei urged her.

“Auntie Ling believes it’s safe,” she replied.

Hong Fei stepped outside. He waited until he heard the door close and the lock turn, then he strode toward where he’d seen the number 1 appear. Along the way, he pulled the scabbard from his belt.

The door had cracked open not long ago, but appeared locked when he gently pressed against it. The construction was poor, yet still strong enough to resist anything but a mighty blow. Hong Fei would rather save his limited essence for when it truly mattered, so he moved to the window instead.

The shutter’s hinges were on the outside and rusted. It wouldn’t take much strength to pull the whole arrangement free.

A pair of eyes came to peer through a crack then quickly retreated. Briefly, Hong Fei had seen the same color white as the 1 from earlier. He grabbed a hold of the shutter and pulled it loose from the window. The wood was badly rotted; it tore like paper in his hand. On the other side, three men yelled. One of them did have a number 1 floating above him.

The man rushed toward Hong Fei while swinging a club overhead, yet the arc was high and the weapon smashed against the top of the window.

“Idiot,” Hong Fei taunted, and the men inside yelled again, warning of the swordsman.

His opponents rushed out into the alley from the residences nearby, including the man with the grey cap and club. When he went to leave through the door, however, Hong Fei jumped in through the window. He came up from a roll on the other side and ran to crack the man along the back of the head—a flat swing to keep Fortune’s Favor from catching on the ceiling.

When the man went down, Hong Fei stepped over him to shut and bar the door. A moment later, he drove his knife into him. The number 1 disappeared, and Hong Fei felt a cool energy flowing into the area above and between his eyes.

Someone smashed the door with a heavy weapon. Hong Fei retreated a handful of steps and watched as the wood splintered. A woman with a rock knife attempted to use the distraction to slip through the window, but he spotted her and closed the distance with a touch of essence.

He knocked her across the top of the head with his scabbard, then followed with his own knife across the side of her neck. Hong Fei left her there to bleed out and block the window.

In the dark, he took in his surroundings—a single large bed for the whole family, two chests for storing their worldly possessions, no hearth, and a set of stairs leading up. A frightened middle-aged man with a drooping mustache peered down at him. He scrambled away as soon as he was seen.

Hong Fei rushed the stairs, only to find the man huddled with the rest of his family—two related families it seemed from the way they resembled each other. The layout of the room was the same as the one below, including the shuttered window.

Peeking through it, Hong Fei counted eight people down below—some armed with rock knives and others with clubs. Three of them had a white 1 floating above their heads. His breath caught when he realized two of the numbered individuals were the Yang brothers. They were supposed to have left the city in disgrace, yet here they were.

And the numbers were new to them. They hadn’t possessed them before. Something had caused the change. What? Why? How? Hong Fei would have to think about those questions later.

Yang Xin carried a rock club, and he was using it to smash through the residence’s door. The thing looked like too much for an ordinary man to carry.

The alley was only a little over a zhang across, and his opponents were clustered around the door. If he dropped down just a little farther away, they’d all be on one side of him. A man good with the sword might hold off a throng that way, and the same was true for the stairway up.

Stairs or alley? he wondered.

The fear on the family’s faces made the decision for him. There wasn’t much room on the battlefield for gallantry, at least not in the kind of fighting Hong Fei was used to, so when the opportunities came, as few as they were, he made room for them as best he could.

Out the window he dropped, coiling essence through his legs. His knife slashed to cut a throat at the edge of the crowd. Another opponent fell from a stab to the kidney. Then, Hong Fei’s opponents realized his presence, and they turned on him.

Hong Fei’s arms warmed as a trickle of essence flowed into them. He kept pace with the attacks coming at him; his sword wove from parry to parry. His rhythm found, he subtly tangled his opponents’ weapons so that they interfered with each other.

A rough-looking man with a shard of stone knotted into his beard stumbled, and Hong Fei cracked open the side of his head. The strike came from the military arts, a sharp staccato beat in the otherwise natural flow.

Hong Fei broke the elbow of the woman who stepped into his place. She dropped screaming. There were four on the ground now, and his opponents were forced to step over the bodies of the dead and the injured.

Like a miser, Hong Fei doled out essence only when it was needed. He’d been rapidly climbing to the fourth tier of Body-Forged, but that level of cultivation didn’t provide the necessary energy for a long drawn-out fight, especially when the more dangerous opponents remained fresh.

The Yang brothers had hung back, waiting for the Dustborn to tire Hong Fei out. The other numbered stood with them—the three 1s clustered and murmuring to each other. Yang Xin rested the stone club on his shoulder; he seemed to be panting slightly.

Hong Fei knew that the brothers were Body-Forged at approximately the third tier. The cultivation of the other numbered man would be a mystery until the man joined the fight. The fellow would’ve looked like a kindly uncle if not for his squashed nose and the scar running down the middle of his face, like someone had tried to split his head open.

An opponent came too close, and with a wave of Fortune’s Favor, Hong Fei deflected the club to create an opening for him to enter into the man’s space. In close now, he stamped on the man’s foot, kneed him in the groin, and then, when his opponent couldn’t help bending over in pain, smashed his head.

The remaining two Rock Knives at the front glanced at each other, then backed away toward their bosses.

Hong Fei regulated his breathing so that it was deep, but didn’t appear labored. He held his head high, as if the alley belonged to him and these Rock Knives were unwanted guests. He eyed them with disdain, so that the fighters in front continued to hesitate.

The unknown number 1’s voice was gravely when he said, “Don’t let him rest. Keep going.”

A man and a woman, a club and a knife. Hong Fei rushed them first—the tip of his scabbard leading. Fortune’s Favor slipped past the man’s club to strike him in the windpipe, and he started to go down, clutching his throat and his eyes bugging.

The woman stabbed with her knife, but Hong Fei was already moving aside. His vine-like steps curled around the falling man, and using him as an obstacle, he won himself the space to make the rest of the fight pointless. The knife’s reach couldn’t compare to a sword’s.

Truthfully, it was more like a club, since Hong Fei was striking with the scabbard, but the general point remained true.

“Go on,” the split-faced boss hissed from behind.

The woman’s eyes were wide in fear, but she came forward with her knife lagging so that she could extend into the strike later. A tactical mistake, trading reach for power, when reach was already at a disadvantage. Hong Fei struck her along the side of her head before she could even get close. When she didn’t go down, he hit her twice more.

Her body slumping, Hong Fei narrowed his eyes at the Yang brothers. “I have some questions for you.”

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ToC | Next Chapter >

Characters Mentioned in this Chapter 

• Yang Jian and Yang Xin, the gambling ring’s leaders 

• Kang Lian, Little Ruyun's mother

• Kang Ruyun, daughter to Kang Lian