The pigeon had not flown all the way to Tianzhao.

Yuncheng will keep the rhythm of celebration for a few more days after the Skyedge convoy cleared the south gate. Lanterns burned along the river district. Wine stalls held the prices of bad wine high and the prices of good wine higher. The criers paid by the tournament office kept walking the same circuit, announcing the bracket result twice an hour as if anyone in the city needed reminding.

Slowly, the city remembered it had work to do.

The high-poled banners came down from the arena dome. The cushions of the upper tiers were rolled and shouldered out the eastern gate by the porter guilds that had been waiting two weeks for the contract. The fruit-sellers at the corners of the outer ring went back to selling fruit instead of paper flags. The ribbon merchants packed their carts. The bookmakers tallied their loss columns with the grim cheerfulness of men who knew the next tournament was already on the calendar.

Farmers returned to the fields. Miners returned to the mines. The drunks returned to the lanes the drunks always returned to.

A great many young men, however, did not return to anything.

They wandered the lanes of Yuncheng with the unfocused, dreaming gait of boys who had spent days watching swords carve impossible lines through polished stone and had now decided the rest of an ordinary life was a betrayal of their souls.

Half of them would forget the urge by the third week. The other half would not forget it for the rest of their lives, and in the small workshops and inn kitchens of the city, a great many parents lowered themselves onto stools to hear the same conversation in different words.

"Mother, I want to go to Skyedge."

"Father, I want to study with a sword."

"Grandfather, did you see what the Young Master did to the Pavilion?"

It was the name on every breath in Yuncheng that week. Skyedge Sword Sect, which had entered the tournament with a "crippled boy" and a household scandal on its back, had walked out with the Crown of the principal bracket, the secondary bracket also taken by another of its sons, and the prestige of being the sect that had broken the Great Sects seven-generation streak on a polished stone in front of fifteen thousand witnesses.

Without setting a single foot in the recruitment hall, Lin Xuan had run a recruitment drive he could not have planned if he had tried. Mira’s scouting had been good for hand-picked talent. This was something else. This was a flood gathering at the foothills of a sect that had been hemorrhaging students for three years.

The sect that had been bleeding had, in the space of a few days, found a tourniquet.

————————————————————— 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

In the eastern wing of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion residence, Yan Wuji stood in front of an open window with his outer robe down to the waist.

The seven thin lines of Falling Stars travelled across his chest at the angles a Beidou map drew when someone bothered to draw it. They had healed pale and even. He had refused the more expensive of the Pavilion’s healing pastes precisely so they would.

He turned his head a fraction at the sound of the door.

The elder at the threshold was old enough that the bow cost him something. Yan Wuji rose to meet him. Both bowed.

"Young Yan Wuji."

"Elder."

"Your father has read the full account of the final." The old man’s voice carried the careful neutrality of an envoy who had been instructed to carry one tone and one tone only. "He sent me ahead of the Pavilion delegation with a message. You fulfilled the Heart Demon Oath. You did not refuse the kneeling, so your father will not punish you for the loss."

Yan Wuji inclined his head a degree.

"He asks you to take from this a lesson he does not believe the Pavilion has been teaching you well enough. You cannot walk in the world believing you walk above it. There will always be a man stronger somewhere. There will always be a man you have not seen yet. He hopes the seven lines you are now wearing will be a more honest teacher than any elder of ours has been."

Yan Wuji took the seven lines in without raising a hand to them.

"Understood, Elder."

The elder bowed and was gone.

When the door closed, Yan Wuji crossed back to the window and pressed his palm flat to the wood of the sill. The wood took the imprint of his hand and gave back its own slow warmth. He held there for a count he did not count, his attention drifting past the rooftops of Yuncheng toward the south road, which had already swallowed a Skyedge convoy and would not be returning it for quite a time.

He did not need to count the lines on his chest. He could feel them when he breathed.

He intended to keep being able to feel them for as long as the body let him.

—————————————————————

The pigeon had not flown all the way to Tianzhao.

No one with court training trusted a bird with a message that could hang a First Wife, wound a regional patriarch, and give a prince another knife to hold. The bird had flown three streets north, crossed the tiled roof of the old grain office, and settled on a narrow wooden perch beneath a shuttered balcony where no honest household kept birds.

Zhao had been waiting there.

He took the pigeon in one hand before it had finished folding its wings, untied the slip from its leg, checked the seal, and tucked the message into his sleeve without opening it. The bird was released again a breath later, empty-legged, free to continue north as if it still carried something worth chasing.

The pigeon was never meant to reach Tianzhao.

It was only meant to reach Zhao.

Elder Zhao had ridden the wind north toward Tianzhao at the speed of a Foundation Establishment elder who had been told the message in his sleeve could not wait for a courier. The bandage along his ribs had been re-tied tighter for the flight. His sleeves snapped behind him in the open air the way an old envoy’s sleeves snapped when he had been sent on errands that had to be finished before sundown.

The message was twofold.

One: a sealed slip from a woman of a regional sect who needed the same help she had asked for two years ago and was, evidently, willing to spend the same coin.

Two: a report on a boy who had refused a prince and was, evidently, the son his father had raised him to be after all.

Zhao reached the spires of Tianzhao at the angle the sun had reached the western range, and folded his descent into the inner courtyard of the western residence of the Second Prince without breaking the polite arc the imperial guards demanded of returning envoys. He crossed the corridor to the audience chamber with two pieces of bad news in his sleeve and the lighter weight of one piece of good.

The audience chamber held one occupant.

Prince Wei Tianlong did not so much sit on the throne at the back wall as drape himself across it. His outer robe lay open from the collar to the sash, an indolent V of bare chest the lines of which had been carved by training that did not show in court but showed in the practice yard. His hair was long and unbound. His irises caught the lamp at the gold of an animal’s eye seen through trees. One leg lay out across the arm of the throne. The other was bent under him in the careless half-fold of a man who had decided protocol was for envoys.

He did not rise when Zhao bowed.

"Zhao."

"My prince."

"You took your time."

"I came as fast as the air permitted, my prince."

The prince waved a hand once and the gesture meant deliver the message. Zhao delivered.

He passed the sealed slip across the dais. He recited, from memory, the report on Lin Xuan — the visit to the residence, the refusal of the offer, the polite door that had been closed without anger but had been closed all the same. He noted, because Zhao had been trained to note, that the boy had said nothing about which house he intended to support. He had simply declined to be enrolled in any.