First Blood with the Blademistress
Three days of silence from the Crown Prince had me convinced I'd been discarded. Then at dawn's first light, a single line of military cipher appeared on my pillow:
"Cloudspire Courier Station. Hour of the Rooster."
The abandoned relay post stood skeletal in the fading light. Through its broken shutters, I saw her—a warrior-poison in human form. Black lamellar armor clung to her like a second skin, her face veiled in silver gauze that revealed only predator's eyes.
"Sit." Her voice was the whisper of a blade leaving its scabbard. "Your eunuch's robes don't fool me."
My hand flew to my dagger.
"If I wanted you dead," she chuckled, "you'd have never seen the blade." Moonlight caught the edge of her two-handed modao leaning against the wall—a weapon longer than I was tall.
"Ye Wuyin." She unpinned her veil with a flick. "Blademistress of the Modao Battalion."
The name struck like a war gong. The Modao—legendary frontier regiment where a hundred women entered and three walked out alive. Their commander had once ridden through enemy lines to decapitate a prince and parade his head on a pike.
"The prisoner you spared was mine." She tossed a blood-crusted scroll onto the table. "And this...is your mother's last testament."
The parchment burned my fingers. In familiar brushstrokes:
"If I don't return...investigate the Moon Case."
"Cooperate," Ye Wuyin murmured, "and you'll learn why your mother really died." Her thumb brushed the scar across her throat—a killing stroke survived. "Refuse, and you'll never know which courtier ordered her silenced."
The walls seemed to breathe around us.
"I want truth, not orders."
Her smile could have flayed flesh. "Then first, we make the Crown Prince...owe you a life."
Outside, a night heron cried—the sound like a blade being drawn across the throat of the world.
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