Chapter 8 - THE PRICE OF REVENGE
Duan showed him his mother first.
Not with smoke or glamour.
With memory.
The buried hall dissolved around Lu An in a wash of cold gold light, and suddenly he was standing inside his old house again. Rice steamed on the stove. Rain tapped the paper windows. His mother was younger, laughing softly as she tied her bracelet. His father sat cross-legged with a brush in hand, pretending to scold over crooked characters in Lu An’s lesson copy.
It was so exact that Lu An’s knees nearly gave way.
He could smell the soup.
He could hear the roof drip.
His mother looked up and smiled at him.
“An.”
That one word almost destroyed him.
He took a step.
Then another.
Something in the room was wrong.
Not obvious. Not monstrous.
Wrong in the way perfect lies are wrong.
His father’s inkstone had no crack in it.
But it should have. He had dropped it when Lu An was seven.
His mother’s sleeve knot was tied on the inside.
She always tied it outside because she said the inside knot scratched.
The memory was beautiful.
It was also assembled.
Lu An stopped.
His mother’s smile held.
“Come here.”
“No.”
The room darkened by a degree.
His father looked up from the brush. “Why not?”
Lu An felt tears on his face and hated that Duan had earned them.
“Because if you were truly them,” he whispered, “you wouldn’t want to be used like this.”
The walls split.
Rain became black threads.
His mother’s face opened at the jaw.
His father’s eyes filled with burial mud.
The vision tore away.
Lu An staggered back into the buried throne hall with a cry and saw that almost no time had passed.
Duan watched him, mildly curious.
“A pity. Some kneel faster.”
Lu An hurled the broken sword.
Duan twisted. The cracked blade sliced his cheek and buried itself in a pillar.
The small wound bled bright.
For the first time, the astrologer looked annoyed.
“That, boy, was unwise.”
From the floor beneath Lu An, bone hands erupted.
He slashed downward with the scripture knife and severed three at the wrists. Above him, Han Chi roared and broke one of the chains binding his left arm.
Xie Kang swore and lunged to pin him again.
Han Chi met him with a headbutt hard enough to stagger them both.
Shen Yue finally cut down the last palace dead and sprinted toward Lu An.
“Left!” she shouted.
He turned just in time to duck a bell-chain whip from Duan’s sleeve. The little bone bells struck the stone and burned black holes through it.
Not charms.
Weapons.
The buried king behind the throne drew another long, delighted breath.
“Break the final anchor!” Han Chi shouted.
Lu An’s eyes found it at last.
Not under the crown.
Under the throne.
A great circular seal had been carved into the floor beneath the vertebrae seat, filled with old blood turned almost black. Thick roots or veins ran from it into the pit behind the throne.
To reach it, he would have to cross the center dais.
Duan knew that too.
The astrologer moved to block him.
Shen Yue intercepted, catching the bell-chain on her bow stave. The weapon snapped in half in her hands. Duan drove an elbow into her throat and sent her crashing into a pillar.
Lu An ran.
Xie Kang broke free of Han Chi and came after him. The younger commander tackled Lu An near the first stair of the dais and they hit the stone hard. Lu An stabbed with the scripture knife. Xie Kang trapped his wrist and slammed it against the floor once, twice, until Lu An’s fingers almost opened.
“You think he deserves redemption?” Xie Kang hissed. “That man burned provinces.”
“I know.”
“He taught me to kill before mercy becomes a liability.”
“I know.”
“Then why stand with him?”
Lu An bared his teeth and drove his forehead into Xie Kang’s nose.
Because, he thought, the answer was no longer simple enough to fit into one sentence.
Because Han Chi was guilty.
Because Duan was worse.
Because a monstrous thing beneath the palace wanted the world reduced to hunger and obedience.
Because revenge was not the only truth left.
Xie Kang reeled back bleeding. Lu An tore free.
Han Chi reached them first.
The general had broken all but one of the chains around him, but blood soaked his side and one arm hung lower than the other.
Xie Kang rose smiling red through the mouth.
“So it ends here.”
Han Chi’s answer was a sword stroke.
Teacher and student collided at the foot of the throne.
This time there was no river, no troops, no room for maneuver. Their blades rang so fast Lu An could barely follow them. Xie Kang was still quicker. Han Chi still hit harder. But now there was something else in the general’s movements that had not been there at the Black River.
Finality.
He was not trying to win his son back.
He was trying to end him.
Duan recovered and raised his hand toward the crown.
Shen Yue, voice raw from the throat strike, snatched a fallen spear and hurled it.
The shaft struck Duan through the chest.
Not enough.
The astrologer looked down at the spearhead protruding from his robe with almost academic irritation.
Then he snapped the shaft off and kept chanting.
The crown above the throne descended a finger’s breadth.
The buried king behind it opened one eye.
Lu An sprinted up the dais.
He reached the blood-seal beneath the throne and drove the scripture knife down with both hands.
The blade entered halfway and stopped.
A shock ran up his arms so violent he thought every bone in his body had cracked.
The seal glowed.
Then pushed back.
He cried out and nearly lost his grip.
“Blood!” Duan shouted. “It requires blood!”
Of course it did.
Everything in the empire eventually demanded that.
Han Chi heard.
He disengaged from Xie Kang with a sudden savage turn, let the younger man’s saber cut across his ribs, and stumbled toward the dais.
Before Lu An understood his intent, Han Chi seized the boy’s wrist, opened the cut on his own side wider with one brutal motion, and smeared his blood over the knife hilt and the seal both.
“Now,” he said.
Lu An stared. “Why?”
“Because I owe too much already.”
Xie Kang roared and charged.
Han Chi turned to meet him.
The two men struck each other in the same instant.
Han Chi’s blade went through Xie Kang’s chest.
Xie Kang’s saber went under Han Chi’s shoulder and out behind him.
Both men froze.
The buried hall fell into one awful silence.
Xie Kang coughed blood and laughed weakly.
“You made me.”
Han Chi answered, very quietly, “Yes.”
Then he twisted the blade and ended it.
Xie Kang dropped.
Han Chi swayed once but did not fall.
Instead he faced Lu An across the glowing seal.
“If you still mean to kill me,” he said, voice failing at the edges, “do it after this world has a chance to breathe.”
Lu An looked at the man he had hated for so long.
At the blood running from him.
At Xie Kang dead by his feet.
At Shen Yue struggling upright. At Duan still chanting through impossible pain. At the crown lowering, lowering.
Then he drove the scripture knife all the way down.
The final anchor cracked.
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The buried king screamed.
And the palace began to come apart.
