Boiled ox-hide smells like stale sweat and old vinegar.

  Wei Tian sat on the edge of his narrow wooden bed, holding a thick, yellowed square of the material. The morning light filtering through the paper screen caught the dust motes hovering over his lap.

  He held a fresh bone needle in his right hand. He lined up the patch over the perfectly circular hole in the heel of his left shoe.

  He pushed. The needle dug into the stiff leather, groaned, and stopped.

  He applied a fraction more pressure. A purely mortal amount. The bone needle snapped cleanly in half, the sharp end ricocheting off his thumbnail and hitting the floorboards with a tiny tick.

  Wei Tian sighed. He picked up the broken piece.

  The door to the pavilion slammed open. It didn't just slide; it hit the ironwood frame so hard the paper screen tore near the bottom hinge.

  Xiao Mei stood in the doorway. She was carrying an absolute mountain of bamboo scrolls, loose parchment, and what looked like three different wooden training swords tucked awkwardly under her left arm. She was sweating despite the mountain draft. Her eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with the heavy, bruised purple of someone who hadn't slept in thirty-six hours.

  She dumped the entire load onto the low reading table. The table shrieked under the sudden weight. A small cloud of archival dust puffed into the air.

  "I got them," Xiao Mei gasped, bending over and resting her hands on her knees. She sucked in oxygen like a drowning swimmer. "I bribed the archive clerk with my entire month's stipend. I stole the scouting reports."

  Wei Tian looked at the mountain of bamboo.

  "That is a lot of wood," he observed.

  "It's the Iron Blood vanguard's combat profiles!" Xiao Mei dragged a hand through her messy hair, stepping toward the bed. She pointed a shaking finger at the pile. "Every stance. Every technique. Elder Shen Mu volunteered you to fight a Celestial-rank disciple. Do you understand what that means? They punch through solid granite for morning exercise. They drink boiling mercury."

  "Mercury is terrible for the digestive tract."

  "Wei Tian!" Her voice cracked, pitching up into a desperate squeak. "You have three days! Three!"

  She snatched one of the wooden training swords from the table and marched over to him. She shoved the hilt toward his chest.

  "Take it," she demanded.

  Wei Tian didn't take it. He held up the two pieces of his broken bone needle.

  "Did logistics send spare needles with the leather?" he asked. "This one was brittle."

  Xiao Mei stared at the broken needle. She stared at the hole in his shoe. A muscle in her left cheek began to twitch. It was a very fast, very uncontrolled twitch.

  "Do you want to practice?!" she yelled, thrusting the wooden sword closer.

  "No."

  "I stole the Iron Blood technique manuals! We can study his attack patterns! Do you want the opponent profile?!"

  "No."

  Xiao Mei dropped her arms. The wooden sword clattered against the floorboards. She looked like she was going to spontaneously combust. Her new Sage-layer qi flared erratically around her shoulders, leaking blue light into the dusty air.

  "Do you want to—"

  "Yes to the snacks," Wei Tian interrupted, pointing at a grease-stained paper bundle tucked precariously near the bottom of the scroll pile.

  Xiao Mei stopped breathing. She followed his finger.

  She had stopped by the kitchens this morning. She didn't know why. She was terrified, sleep-deprived, and fully expecting to sweep up the scholar's scattered remains in three days. But she knew he liked the burnt pork buns. So she had bullied the kitchen auntie into burning a fresh batch.

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  She reached into the pile. Pulled out the warm, greasy paper.

  She walked over and handed it to him. Her hands were trembling so badly the paper rustled loudly.

  Wei Tian unwrapped it. The buns were charred black on the bottom left side. Perfect.

  He took a bite. The rendered fat coated his tongue. He chewed slowly, savoring the bitter crunch of the burnt dough.

  "Excellent," he said.

  Xiao Mei collapsed onto the floor. She just dropped, her knees giving out, sitting cross-legged on the cold wood. She buried her face in her hands.

  "You're going to die," she mumbled into her palms. Her voice was muffled, thick with exhaustion. "You're going to stand on that stage, and a man named 'Blood-Drinker Luo' or something terrible is going to hit you so hard your spine shoots out of your chest. And I'm going to get flogged for not sweeping it up fast enough."

  Wei Tian swallowed.

  He looked down at the girl. She was a terrible spy. Shen Mu had planted her here to report on his failures, to find an excuse for his execution. Instead, she had spent her entire monthly allowance and risked severe disciplinary action to steal restricted combat files for a mortal who completely ignored them.

  He reached out and tapped the top of her head with his knuckles.

  "Don't worry about sweeping," Wei Tian said.

  Xiao Mei looked up. Her eyes were wet. "What?"

  "If he hits me that hard, I imagine the impact will vaporize the remains entirely. No sweeping required."

  She stared at him. She let out a long, ragged noise that was half-sob, half-hysterical laugh. She wiped her nose on her silver-trimmed sleeve, completely abandoning any pretense of sect dignity.

  "You are insane," she whispered.

  "I am eating a bun." Wei Tian took another bite. He picked up the broken needle again. "Now. I need a sharper tool. Or perhaps some wire."

  Xiao Mei didn't move for a long minute. She just sat on the floor, watching him unsuccessfully try to force the blunt end of the broken bone through the thick leather. The absolute, unshakeable mundanity of his focus was like a physical weight in the room.

  Eventually, she pushed herself up from the floor. She walked over to the table, grabbed a small iron letter-opener from beside his inkstone, and walked back.

  She snatched the shoe out of his lap.

  "Give me that," she muttered. She stabbed the letter-opener through the ox-hide, punching a clean hole. She threaded the coarse string through it with vicious, angry jerks. "You can't even sew. Useless."

  Wei Tian didn't argue. He leaned his back against the wall, stretching his legs out.

  He closed his eyes while she worked.

  He didn't sleep. He expanded his awareness, slipping the leash off his hearing just enough to let the mountain's acoustics bleed through the pavilion walls.

  The White Jade Sect was vibrating. Not a metaphor. The physical bedrock was humming with the collective, terrified pacing of three thousand disciples.

  Two peaks over, in the outer training grounds, instructors were screaming themselves hoarse, forcing juniors through evasion drills they knew wouldn't matter.

  In the high tower, Elder Shen Mu was crushing a piece of raw medicinal root between his molars. Wei Tian could hear the wet grinding sound. The elder's heart rate was elevated. He was terrified the Iron Blood vanguard would decide not to honor the tournament rules and just slaughter the sect instead. He was also deeply, profoundly smug that the mortal was going to die first.

  And in the central armory, deep underground, Bai Qian was quiet.

  Wei Tian focused on the armory.

  He heard the metallic slide of a sword being drawn from a scabbard. He heard the faint, icy hiss of her Saint Peak qi testing the edge of the blade.

  She wasn't resting. She wasn't holding emergency council meetings. She was inventorying the heavy siege weapons. She was preparing for the tournament to fail. She fully expected Mo Zheng to attack the moment the final match ended.

  She expected him to die. She had factored his death into her defensive strategy. The political shield would shatter, the Iron Blood Sect would claim their victory, and the real war would begin.

  Wei Tian opened his eyes.

  Xiao Mei tied off the last knot. She bit the string to sever it, spitting a piece of coarse thread onto the floor. She tossed the shoe back into his lap.

  The patch was ugly. The stitches were uneven and jagged.

  Wei Tian inspected it. He ran his thumb over the boiled leather. It was completely solid. It wouldn't wear through on the jade tiles of the arena.

  "Thank you, Xiao Mei," he said.

  She didn't look at him. She walked over to the table and began stacking the useless bamboo scrolls back into a pile. "I'll take these back before the archivist realizes I kept the originals."

  She hoisted the heavy stack. She paused at the door, her back to him.

  "They built the arena in the central courtyard," she said quietly. "The matches start at noon on the third day. Don't be late. Shen Mu will use it as an excuse to execute you before the fighting even starts."

  "I am never late," Wei Tian said.

  She stepped out into the cold wind. The torn paper screen flapped uselessly in her wake.

  Wei Tian sat alone in the room. He slipped his left foot into the shoe. He pressed his weight down on the heel. The cold draft from the floorboards didn't touch his skin. The ox-hide held.

  He looked at the grease-stained paper resting on the bed. He had one bite of the pork bun left.

  Three days.

  He picked up the last piece of the bun and ate it.

  He really, really didn't want to stand on that stage. It was going to be loud. People were going to shout. Blood would probably get on his clean white robe, which meant he would have to wash it, and the river water was freezing this time of year.

  He picked up his blue-covered book, finding his leaf bookmark.

  "At least my heel will be warm," he told the empty room.