Chapter 224: The General on the Steps
Cang Yuwen came down the keep steps without hurry, one hand loose on the hilt of the curved blade, savoring every second of it.
"They gave Northreach to me," he agreed, "because I asked for it. A boring posting on a boring road, everyone else said. Guard the grain, watch the bridge, die of old age." His smile widened. "I told them the road that feeds an army is exactly where a desperate enemy has to come. And here you are, Your Highness, dressed as a footsore private, walking up my hill in the dark. I do love being right."
"You always did." Xinhua’s voice was flat. "Even when you weren’t."
"Ah. Still sore about the Autumn Court." He pressed a hand to his chest, mock-wounded. "I beat your favorite general in front of the whole capital, and you’ve held it against me for years. That’s the trouble with you Wei children. You never learn to lose gracefully."
"My brother would call it losing to family."
"Your brother," Cang said, "is going to be Emperor. I picked the winning side. You picked the side that dresses princesses as spearmen and sends them to sneak through service gates." He spread his hands at the walls around them. "Which of us made the wiser bet?"
Xuan kept his head down under the borrowed helm, one more tired soldier in a column of tired soldiers, and let the two of them talk. Cang hadn’t looked at him once. To the general, he was furniture, a grey smudge in a grey uniform, and Xuan intended to stay furniture for exactly as long as it was useful.
’He doesn’t know me.’
[ He doesn’t know you, ] Mira confirmed, moving fast under the surface. [ He clocked her the second she walked in and hasn’t spared you a glance. That’s the only good news in this yard. He thinks he’s caught a princess and a squad of nobodies, and he’s too busy gloating to count us properly. Use it. ]
’How? He’s two realms above me. If this turns into a fight, I’m the smallest problem in this courtyard.’
[ Which is why we change what the fight’s about. Listen, because I’ve been reading this place since we walked in and I’ve got something.] Her tone sharpened to business. [ Northreach isn’t held by two thousand mortals. It’s held by him. Cang Yuwen is a mid-Golden Core, and a fortress this size runs on its commander’s authority and his personal wards. Kill him, and it isn’t a garrison anymore. It’s two thousand frightened men with no one to tell them what to do, on the night an army comes screaming out of the hills.]
’You want me to assassinate a Golden Core general.’
[ I want you to help her do it, and I’m making it worth your while. New objective, host, and I’m putting real weight behind it.] A panel flickered at the edge of his vision, terse and bright.
[ OBJECTIVE — Slay General Cang Yuwen, commander of Northreach. ]
[ Reward — Foundation Breakthrough Pill (Stage 1 → Stage 3). ]
Xuan read it behind his own eyes and something in his chest went very quiet and very interested.
’Stage one to stage three. In one pill.’
[ In one pill. You broke into Foundation nine days ago. This drags you two stages up the ladder the moment you swallow it, which in a war where everyone you meet outranks you is the difference between winning and being a cautionary tale. But you have to earn it first. He has to die.] A beat. [ And before you ask - yes, this also happens to be the whole plan. Kill the general, the fortress loses its spine, the gate opens easier, and the host walks in over a garrison that’s already lost its head. Two problems, one blade. I do good work.]
’You do,’ Xuan admitted. ’Now I just have to help a princess kill a man who beats her favorite general in front of crowds for fun.’
On the steps, Cang was still enjoying himself.
"I’ll be generous," he told Xinhua. "You’re worth more to your brother breathing than bled out on my stones. Kneel, order your little friends to drop their steel, and I’ll send you north in a nice carriage. Fight me, and I put you down in this yard and tell the histories you died bravely." He tilted his head. "You were always the kind sister. The clever one, the one everyone liked. Be clever now."
"You know the trouble with being the kind one, Yuwen?" Xinhua reached up, unhurried, and pulled the private’s helm from her head, and let her own face show plain in the torchlight for the first time. Two thousand men in that fortress, and every one near enough to see went abruptly quiet. "Everyone spends so long telling me how kind I am, they forget to ask what I’m kind about."
"And what’s that?"
"Ending things." She let the helm drop, and it rang on the stone like a bell. "You’ve spent years thinking of me as my brother’s soft sister. Let me correct the record before you die of it."
Cang laughed, delighted, and drew the curved blade an inch from its sheath.
"Oh, I have missed you. Very well, Your Highness. Let’s see what the kind one learned." His eyes swept the yard, and his voice cracked out flat and loud, all the play gone. "Seal the court! Ring the alarm! The Third Princess is inside our walls - take them alive if you can and dead if you can’t!"
Torches surged. Chains rattled as the inner gates slammed. Two thousand men came awake around them at once, and the curved blade cleared its sheath with a sound like a struck note, and Cang Yuwen’s banked power rolled out across the courtyard in a wave that pressed the air from Xuan’s lungs.
[ There it goes. ] Mira’s voice was flat and fast and entirely without fear. [ No more furniture, Xuan. Helm off. Blade out. He’s about to find out the tired little soldier at her shoulder is the reason her brother spent a legion in a ditch.]