Read Chapter 1: — THE BLADE

At sunset, the training yard of the Northern Office lay under a wash of copper light.

Tang Xiao stood with his blade lowered, a man in his thirties who already looked older than that. A few white hairs showed at his temples. The corners of his eyes were cut by lines earned from too many nights awake and too many mornings spent pretending the previous night had not mattered.

Across from him stood Lin Zuo, fifteen, slim enough to look scholarly until he moved.

“Ready?” Tang asked.

Lin answered in Japanese.

Tang’s mouth tightened. “You enjoy irritating me.”

“You told me to practise until I stopped translating in my head.”

“I told you to sound convincing undercover. I did not tell you to become unbearable at breakfast.”

Lin grinned.

Then Tang attacked.

Steel rang. Their sabres flashed through the fading light. Lin was fast, inventive and far too pleased with himself. He slipped inside Tang’s guard, lunging for an opening that seemed to appear at the ribs.

The opening was bait.

Tang turned his wrist and drove the pommel into Lin’s chest.

The boy stumbled back, coughing.

“If that had been the edge,” Tang said, “you would be dead.”

“Then it’s fortunate you like me.”

“On a real assignment, nobody owes you a second attempt.”

That took the smile from Lin’s face.

Tang sheathed his sabre.

“We leave before dawn. Zhenjiang. Canal officials are suspected of feeding information to river pirates. The pirates are said to include Japanese raiders. Their leader may be Yagyu Ichiro.”

Lin had heard the name.

“So that’s why you made me learn Japanese.”

“That is why.”

Tang looked as though he wanted to say something else. He did not.

That night he crossed the capital alone and entered a small house through a side lane.

A woman with a persistent cough greeted him. A boy of six ran barefoot from the next room.

“Father!”

Tang caught him and lifted him as if the weight of the child could restore something the court had taken away.

The boy’s name was Zheng.

Tang gave him a wooden imitation of his own sabre. Four characters had been carved into the blade: Peerless in Service.

“When I’m older,” Zheng said, “I want to be Jinyiwei like you.”

Tang’s expression changed.

“Why?”

“Because everyone fears you.”

Tang looked at his wife.

Later, after Zheng slept, Tang told her he was leaving for Zhenjiang.

“Dangerous?” she asked.

“Enough.”

The Jinyiwei expected its covert men to live as if they had no parents, no wives, no children. Attachments made leverage. Tang had broken that rule years ago.

“If I do not return—” he began.

She covered his mouth with her hand.

“You have told me what to do.”

“Tell me again.”

“I take Zheng away from the capital. I use another name. I tell no one who his father was.”

Tang nodded.

He held her until the lamp burned low.

In the morning, he left his family before sunrise.

He would never see them again.