Hong Fei knew better than to give an order that wouldn’t be followed, and he was certain from the look in Auntie Ling’s eyes that she wouldn’t return to protecting the rescued captives. “Come on, then,” he said, gesturing. “Let’s go see what my mischief has wrought.”

  The badger snorted. She pointed toward his hands again.

  He nodded in reply, and sent both essence and qi into them to increase the speed of their healing and minimize the risk of scarring. Medicine or a spell would’ve obviously been better, yet a warrior made do with the resources at their disposal.

  Another reason to strive for Qi Blossoming, Hong Fei thought. His family had only three spells at that realm and one was for tending wounds. Heavens bless the matriarch for her wisdom in acquiring that spell.

  Apparently satisfied with Hong Fei’s efforts to help his hands, Auntie Ling rumbled in her chest, then nudged him aside so that she could jog ahead. Her ears swiveled forward as she seemed to catch the sound of flames crackling. In the distance, the tunnel flickered and glowed with a wavering, orange light.

  The pair stopped at the entrance to the meeting room. It was like the space had been transformed into an enormous hearth, the table burning at its center. The desks in the corner had fared better since the dampness in the wood had meant they only smoldered.

  Spears made of the same speckled rock he’d seen earlier littered the floor, as did needles of iron as thick as a finger and the length of an arm. From the way the debris lay, it seemed that the first trap on Metal Tiger’s door had triggered the trap on Earth Tiger’s, which then set off the trap on the iron door, causing an explosion that flung more metal and stone shrapnel outward, as well as the wall of flame. It seemed that Hong Fei had managed to disable all three traps with the one throw.

  Fortunately, there appeared to be vents in the ceiling. The smoke escaped the chamber that way.

  Hong Fei drew on more of his essence and qi to infuse his skin. Once he was somewhat protected against the heat, he stuck to the edges of the room while making his way around to Metal Tiger’s bedroom. He found the door split down the center, with a good chunk of the wood having fallen into the room itself.

  Auntie Ling surged past him and muscled through the doorway before he could enter. A breath later she froze, blocking the way. Hong Fei tamped down his annoyance—the badger had meant well—and looked past her to see what had given her pause.

  Immediately, his eyes were drawn to the shelves on the wall opposite the door. A series of five skulls were on display, ranging in color from pinkish-white to deep ivory. Each had a word inscribed on the forehead in black paint.

  Hong Fei gritted his teeth. The skull at the top was labeled “duchess.” The rest were: “war hero”, “sect disciple”, “promising swordsman”, and “bandit chief.”

  Auntie Ling offered an unhappy bark. She came closer to sniff at the skulls.

  Looking around, Hong Fei saw that it was a bedroom as he’d expected. The quality of the furnishings was a step above the others, however. There was a bear skin rug on the floor with the head still attached, for example, and the desk was made of mahogany carved with images of tigers hunting.

  Atop the desk was a jade vase containing a bundle of wild lilies, writing tools, and… a martial manual. Hong Fei recognized the title: “A Treatise on the Hougal Sword.”

  There was a copy in the Hong family’s library. They’d gotten it directly from the author who’d fought alongside Hong Fei’s father and mother in the war at the empire’s western border. His parent’s assessment was that the manual was decent but flawed. The author had injected too much of himself into the ideas, distorting the Hougal’s approach to the sword.

  Hong Fei flipped through the pages and saw Metal Tiger’s sarcastic notes written in the margins. Whoever they were, they didn’t read the manual to learn from it. On the contrary, they apparently took pleasure in dissecting the flaws and mocking the author.

  “The trouble with the traps was worth it,” Hong Fei whispered himself.

  Of course, the manual itself was worthless, yet the accompanying insights into Metal Tiger’s thinking were a treasure. They foretold what Hong Fei or other retainers from the House of Yu might encounter when fighting the warrior.

  Hong Fei checked the drawers and found two more manuals, similarly annotated. There was also an assortment of personal items, a few of which were of value—a knife with a jeweled hilt, a hair pin carved from antler, and an animal collar made of leather and studded with gold. None of the pieces matched each other in style; they’d all clearly been taken from Metal Tiger’s opponents.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The loot went into Hong Fei’s pouch, while the sword manuals were safely tucked inside his robes. As for the skulls, he took only the one belonging to the duchess so that he could return it to her family.

  Hong Fei examined the room a second time to make sure nothing valuable was left behind, then he strode across the way to the Earth Tiger’s bedroom. A handful of iron needles were embedded in the door, and they’d done the work of cracking the stone reinforcing it.

  The door required both Hong Fei and Auntie Ling working together to shove it open. Inside, the room was… tidy. One might even call it ordered, and it took the pair several moments of critically examining the details to register why: the sheets were tucked under the straw mattress just so; the rug’s borders lined up with the streaks in the marble beneath it; and the surface of the desk was completely level, even though the floor wasn’t. The Earth Tiger had apparently adjusted the height of the stone under each of the legs.

  A disciplined mind, Hong Fei thought. Perhaps compulsively so.

  Paintings of mountains hung on each of the walls. They were simply drawn and yet evocative of the majesty represented in them; one could feel the ancient bones jutting from the earth. Hong Fei noted how none of the artwork was signed. The odds were good that Earth Tiger was the painter.

  Are they an engraver too? he wondered and went to check the bed.

  The edges of his lips turned up in satisfaction. A series of four slats had supported the mattress. Hong Fei recognized the likenesses of Blue Fist and Scarlet on two of them. The third appeared to be of an older man with smug expression on his face, and the fourth was of a tiger. Leaning in, he saw the words “destroy fate” in the tiger’s eyes.

  Hong Fei checked and found the same words tucked into each of the other engravings: in the swirl of Blue Fist’s robes, hidden among Scarlet’s hair, and within the skull necklace worn by the person who must be Metal Tiger. Hong Fei memorized the man’s face.

  Nothing else in the room appeared to be of value. Which is strange, Hong Fei thought. Why trap the door, then? Unless it’s simple orneriness. Or a desire to protect what’s one’s own.

  He scanned the room, letting the details assemble into a sense for the person who stayed here. Private, particular, sensitive, and… His eyes went to the engravings. They’re not above mischief. No. Those engravings must’ve taken time and effort, even if magic was used to help create them. That’s maliciousness, a feeling of being better than the others. Hong Fei shook his head. But why share the idea of engraved bed slats with a Rock Knife like Big Ox? I don’t understand the reasoning for that. Could it have been a joke? Or did Big Ox and Earth Tiger know each other?

  Hong Fei felt his scalp tighten and the hairs along his arms rise. A prior relationship would’ve made it simple for the Tiger Masks to move into Ruby Swift City. The Rock Knife Gang could’ve been a ready partner for them.

  Once again, he checked to make sure nothing was missed, and when the second search didn’t turn up anything else, he said, “One more door, then we take the prisoners and flee.”

  Auntie Ling backed out of the bedroom. The flames consuming the table had died down some, but the heat was still present. She eyed the iron door warily.

  When Hong Fei joined her, he saw there were several sigils that hadn’t been present previously. The lines forming the magical patterns were furrowed, as if something that had once been buried in the iron had burst forth. He brought a hand close to touch one, but quickly withdrew it. The metal was hot.

  “We’ll get the bear fur,” Hong Fei suggested. “That ought to work.”

  In response, Auntie Ling ran toward Metal Tiger’s bedroom and returned shortly thereafter with the bear’s head in her mouth and dragging the rest of the rug behind her.

  Hong Fei helped her lift it up—Auntie Ling standing on her back legs—and the pair used the rug as protection between them and the hot metal. Both wrinkled their noses at the scent of singed fur, then ignored the smell to focus on pushing the door open.

  Both man and badger dug their heels into the floor, straining. The metal groaned in answer, then with a crack the hinges came loose. The door fell flat onto the ground, and suddenly they were through.

  Auntie Ling recovered by dropping to all fours, while Hong Fei stumbled at first then let the motion carry him into a roll across the door’s surface to come up to standing on the other side.

  A painting of a snarling tiger greeted him. It was nearly twice his size and drawn in bold lines, a different style than the images of mountains in Earth Tiger’s room. The creature looked to be a breath away from pouncing. Hong Fei felt like it was watching him.

  Behind him, Auntie Ling growled in warning. Something in the room beyond had alarmed her.

  Hong Fei was in a foyer, the painting hung from a wide pillar in between two arches leading to the same chamber on either side of it. The heavy scent of blood permeated the place.

  Auntie Ling went to the right. Hong Fei drew his sword, padded left, and paused, his heart going cold. There was just enough flickering light from the fire behind them to see a portrait of Duke Yu across the way, the style the same as the tiger painting. Surrounding it in a circle were smaller images of the duchess, their children, and their grandchildren.

  In the chamber itself, four wooden wheels crouched in the darkness across from each other, every one with a corpse strapped to it. The dead appeared to have been left to bleed out into a series of stone channels leading to a pool of blood centered between them.

  Auntie Ling snarled, her teeth bared.

  Hong Fei agreed with her. “The Tiger Masks are devils.”

  He went to the bodies and confirmed none were alive. Then, when he flooded his eyes with essence and knelt by one of the channels, he saw that none of the blood had dried or clung to the stone walls. Something was keeping it “fresh”, at least for now.

  The entire chamber was heavily shadowed, but with his empowered eyes, he spotted a pair of alcoves built into the chamber’s wall. From closer of the two came the glint of firelight on metal.

  Is that a ring? he wondered.

  ten chapters ahead. :)