Read Chapter 2: — THE DEEP WATER

The boat carried them south along the Grand Canal and then toward the Yangtze.

Tang spent most of the journey at the bow. Lin spent most of it pretending not to notice how often his master stared into the distance.

On the tenth day Tang finally explained the assignment in full.

Pirates had been striking merchant traffic around Zhenjiang, vanishing whenever patrols moved, then returning as soon as the waters were clear. That kind of luck was rarely luck.

“Someone in the administration is warning them,” Tang said.

“And I’m going aboard.”

“If we can place you among them.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then you come back alive.”

Lin looked at him.

Tang added, “That is an order.”

Three days later, Lin stood barefoot on the deck of a pirate vessel with a false beard glued to his face and a crudely painted demon tattoo across his chest.

His Japanese passed inspection.

His confidence nearly did not.

Through a crack in a cabin wall he saw Yagyu Ichiro meeting a canal official named Wu. A chest of jewels sat open between them.

Wu touched the treasure as if blessing it.

“Your information,” Yagyu told him in accented Chinese, “makes our work possible.”

“And your generosity,” Wu said, “makes mine worthwhile.”

Lin had his proof.

He was about to withdraw when a pirate voice came from behind him.

“Who are you?”

Lin turned without hesitation and answered in Japanese.

“One of yours. Bringing wine.”

The guard relaxed.

Yagyu opened the cabin door.

Lin offered the flask and, with two fingers hidden by the neck of the bottle, dropped in a pellet of sleeping powder.

Yagyu took it.

Lin walked away with his back sweating under the autumn wind.

He waited.

Then, impatient and afraid of losing the chance, he gave the signal to Tang’s men on shore.

He did not know that Yagyu had set the wine aside and poured tea instead.

That small failure would follow Lin Zuo for the next ten years.