Read Chapter 4: — NO SECOND ATTEMPT

Tang caught the child with one arm and stopped Yagyu’s sword with the other.

They collided shoulder to shoulder.

Yagyu struck him in the back.

Tang kicked him away.

A black throwing dart flashed through the air.

Tang turned his head just enough for it to graze his cheek.

He barely felt the cut.

That was the danger.

Lin arrived moments later and saw Yagyu limping toward Tang again. He fired a concealed wrist-bolt. It sliced Yagyu’s forehead instead of entering his skull.

Yagyu fled on Tang’s horse.

Lin dropped beside his master.

The blood from Tang’s cheek had already turned dark.

“Poison,” Lin whispered.

Tang knew.

Within minutes his hands began to shake.

The two children Yagyu had threatened stood nearby, unwilling to leave the man who had saved them.

Tang looked past them at the rain beginning over the river.

“Do not cry,” he told Lin.

“I’m not.”

“You are terrible at lying.”

Lin pressed both hands to the wound although he knew pressure could not stop poison already in the blood.

“I’ll get a physician.”

“You’ll listen.”

Tang pushed his sabre into Lin’s hands.

“If you find Yagyu again, finish it.”

“I swear.”

“There is something else.”

Lin bent closer.

“I have a son.”

For a second Lin thought the poison had confused him.

The Jinyiwei rule was explicit. Men doing Tang’s work were not supposed to have families.

“I broke the rule,” Tang said. “I would do it again.”

“What is his name?”

Tang tried to answer.

“Zheng…”

His body convulsed.

Black blood reached his lips.

Lin caught his hand.

“Master?”

Tang’s fingers loosened.

The rain began in earnest.

Lin remained on his knees until the ground around him became mud.

He was fifteen years old and had just lost the closest thing to a father he had ever known.

Later, the court celebrated the operation. Officials were arrested. Pirates were killed or captured. Lin was promoted.

None of it mattered.

He searched for Tang Xiao’s hidden family and found, two months too late, the rented house where a woman and child had lived.

They were gone.

Ten years passed.

Lin rose through the Jinyiwei until he inherited Tang’s former office.

He learned to speak less, smile rarely and trust regret as if it were a form of discipline.

Two duties remained unfinished.

Find Tang’s son.

Kill Yagyu Ichiro.

Then a memorial arrived from Zhenjiang.

Piracy had returned.

Canal accounts no longer balanced.

And ordinary people had begun offering silver to a river god.

Lin volunteered before the order was finished being read.