Chapter 222: Three Days
"Six days from now," Xinhua said. "The host is already moving. It’s why I couldn’t wait for the new moon."
Xuan set his cup down. "That’s fast."
"It has to be. Right now Tianlong is still bolting the capital shut, counting which clans actually meant their promises and which just took his coin and smiled. His coalition isn’t a wall yet, it’s a pile of stones he’s stacking in a hurry, and a pile of stones has gaps." She tapped the water-map between them. "Give him a month and it sets into something I can’t crack. Give him six days and it’s still loose enough to pull one stone out and watch the rest wobble. Speed is the only advantage I own over a stronger man. I don’t intend to hand it back to him by being patient."
"So the army marches on Northreach openly, drawing every eye south," Xuan said, tracing it, "and somewhere in the noise, a much smaller and much quieter group makes sure the gates are open before the walls ever get tested." He looked up. "That’s where I come in."
"That’s where you come in. And before you ask - no, you won’t be doing it alone. I’m not sending my most expensive asset into a fortress by himself to prove a point." Her mouth curved. "I’m coming with you."
That gave him pause. "You. The Princess whose whole war ends the day she dies. Walking into an enemy fortress through a side door."
"The Princess whose whole war ends the day she’s boring." She said it lightly, but underneath it was iron. "Xuan, half of why my people follow me instead of buying into Tianlong’s promises is that I don’t sit safe behind them and spend their lives from a cushion. If I ask men to storm a wall for me, I had better be willing to be the one who opens the gate. Besides." A small, wicked smile. "I’m Golden Core, second stage. You’re going to want someone in there who can handle whatever your new sword can’t, and I promise you there will be something in Northreach your sword can’t."
He liked her more for it, and distrusted how much he liked her, and set both feelings aside for later.
"Then we should talk terms," he said. "Because I’m about to gamble my sect’s heir, which is me, and a good part of Skyedge’s strength on your war, and I don’t gamble for free."
"Name it."
He’d thought about this on the walk down, and the list came out fast and flat. "One. If this goes wrong and I die in that fortress, Skyedge and Frostmoon get your protection anyway - your written word, not a handshake, that you don’t let my father’s sect get ground under Tianlong’s boot as revenge for a plan I ran for you. Two. Chen Hao and the city he runs for me stay mine, war or no war, throne or no throne. You don’t nationalise my grain the day you win. Three." He met her eye. "When you take that throne, Skyedge sits at the table when the East is carved up. Not as a footnote. As a founder of the coalition that put you there."
Xinhua listened to all of it without a flicker, and when he finished she inclined her head like a merchant who’d heard a fair price.
"Granted, granted, and granted, and I’ll sign all three before we ride. You undersold yourself, honestly. I’d have gone higher." She refilled both their cups, sealing it in the small ritual of shared tea. "You’ll find I’m generous to the people who bleed with me, Xuan. It’s the ones who try to buy me I have no use for. Tianlong’s whole empire is built on purchase. Mine’s going to be built on debt of a better kind."
[ Well, that was almost frightening to watch, ] Mira murmured, sliding back into his skull now that the sealed hush around the meeting had lifted. She’d gone quiet the moment the guards sealed the floor and stayed dark through the whole of it, and her return came with the particular briskness of someone who’d been dying to comment. [ She gave you all three without blinking, which means all three were cheaper to her than keeping you happy. You didn’t fleece her. She let you win the small pot so you’d feel like a partner instead of a hired knife. That woman is very, very good, and I like her, and you should absolutely never fully trust her. ]
’Noted. On all counts.’
The ride back up the mountain took the rest of the morning, and by the time Xuan pushed into the Skyedge war room, Lin Zhen had already read the wind off his face.
"You’re going somewhere," his father said. "Somewhere I’m not going to like."
"A fortress called Northreach. In six days. To open its gates from the inside so the Princess’s host can take it and bait Tianlong into stripping his own capital." Xuan pulled out a chair. "I know. Say it."
Lin Zhen was quiet a long beat, the father and the patriarch warring across his face as they always did. "You broke into Foundation just some days ago. You have a sword you’ve swung twice. And you’re walking into an enemy stronghold in under a week."
"With the Princess herself, and a hand-picked team, not alone." Xuan kept his voice even. "Father, this is the fight. Not a duel, not a mine, the actual war we already committed two mountains to. If we win it standing at the back of the line, we get thanked and forgotten. If I’m the reason the first fortress falls, Skyedge stops being a regional sect nobody south of here can name." He leaned in. "I already made her put it in writing. When she takes the throne, we’re at the table. That’s worth the risk. You know it is."
Something in the old man’s shoulders gave, grief and pride braided as ever. "You’ll take Wei Tianming’s best. And you’ll write your name on the sect roster of the living before you go, so the wards know to expect you back."
"I will."
Qingyue found him on the stairs afterward, and she’d clearly already heard, because there was no surprise in her, only the wintered focus she wore when she’d decided something and was daring him to argue.
"I’m not coming with you into Northreach," she said. "Before you try to be noble about it. One person slipping through a side gate is a plan. Two is a courtship. I’d only slow the quiet part down." She lifted her chin. "So I’m riding with the host instead. Frostmoon marches under the banner, loud and proud, and I’ll be at the front of it when we come up on those walls. Which means the faster you get those gates open, the sooner I’m through them and standing next to you. Don’t keep me waiting on the wrong side of a wall, Xuan. I don’t have the patience for it."
"Wouldn’t dream of it." He caught her hand, briefly, and she let him. "Who’s marching, by the way? If we’re counting swords."
"More than you’d think." She counted them off. "Us. Frostmoon. Thunder Lotus came in three days ago, and Phoenix Mirror the day after - both of them sick of watching the Second Prince buy the empire wholesale. And the Heavenly Sword Pavilion, openly now, over their dead elder, exactly as your father guessed." Her mouth thinned. "Against us, everyone he’s bought. Cloud Veil and Ashvale of the great sects. Iron Cloud, Greenvein, and worse things than sects riding at the edges - Blood Fang was seen moving north, and nobody sane wants Blood Fang at their back." She held his eye. "This isn’t a skirmish anymore. Half the cultivation world is about to pick a wall and climb it."
[ She’s right, ] Mira said quietly, all the earlier humour gone. [ This is the big one, Xuan. Every name that meant anything at that tournament is about to be pointed at somebody. And you’re going to be the first one through the door.]
Xuan looked out the tall window, past the grey shoulder of the mountain, south toward a fortress he’d never seen with a war already grinding toward it.
"Six days," he said. "Then we find out if I’m as good as she thinks I am."
Behind him, the great bell of Skyedge began to ring the muster, calling the disciples to arms, and the sound rolled down the mountain and out over a continent that was, all at once and for the first time in a generation, going to war.