We had been at the sect for two months, and the Outers were growing restless. Most had learned to breathe. Those six who hadn’t were avoiding the rest of us. And, I had to admit, we were avoiding them in turn, as if failure were contagious. But I noticed that even as the ambitious Outers pulled away, the ranks of the servants opened to embrace them. It was a strange dynamic, I thought. The sect took its servants from their failed disciples, a move that surely must lead to resentment. And there were flashes of bitterness here and there, notably in the way the servants rejected any attempt to call them brother. But they served with obvious pride, and if they were any more afraid of the Inners than any sensible mortal would be, I’d yet to see it.

  One day when we’d performed our kitchen tasks well enough that even Biming’s perpetual grimace had lightened, I dared to ask about it. He glanced up from inspecting the mushroom basket I’d brought to him. “What would I resent?” he asked, voice flat.

  His expression didn’t invite further inquiry, but I’d started this, so I pushed forward. “You came to pursue immortality. But after failing the foundation trials, the sect won’t let any of us keep trying. Doesn’t staying as a servant feel like—”

  “Failure?” He settled back on his heels. “Obviously. Every day.” He pointed towards the inner section of the sect, where the immortals made their residences. “Xu Qing. We grew up in the same neighborhood of the same city. We came to the sect together, determined that we would pursue immortality at all costs. When I see him now, I see a man who looks better than he did twenty years ago. A man who can lift boulders, skate across the earth, and who speaks words that shake the very stones. Me?” He sighed. “I’ve received compliments for my spicing of the meat, I suppose. It’s difficult to look at him. We don’t talk anymore. It’s not that I’m angry at him or that he’s contemptuous of me. We just don’t have anything to say.”

  “Then why stay? If it’s so hard?”

  He looked back to me and shrugged. “Why not? The sect didn’t fail me, young Zhou. I failed myself. And as a servant of Seven Striking Thunder, I receive better pay than anywhere but in the Imperial Palace. We are permitted to return to the city once a quarter, and I have a great deal of savings to spend there.” He grinned. “Who needs to be immortal when you can live like a king for a fortnight, four times a year? It’s enough for me, and that is why I am here, in the kitchen, and not with my friend. It was not enough for him.”

  It sounded so simple. And yet, a part of me knew that simple was very different from easy. It hurt to give up on a goal. But it hurt to pursue one, as well. I had cause to know – the pills Yuanshu supplied kept my skin from scarring after the knife lessons, but they did nothing to stop the pain of being sliced to ribbons every day. Not to mention the agony of the morning yang treatments; it was never as bad as the first day but I still dry heaved from the pain at least two days out of five. I had certainly had thoughts of giving up. “Are you happy with the road you’ve chosen?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Is anyone?” He shook his head. “I don’t spend much time thinking about what might have been, boy. But I will tell you this: if you mean to look for resentment, look first to your brothers. Now is the time when disciples become restless. They will be looking for ways to distinguish themselves. And to reduce the competition. Don’t worry about me. Keep your wits about you.” He looked at the basket and sniffed. “And take this to the potboys. Tell them it’s fine to go into the stew. A good job.”

  He wasn’t wrong. There had been three challenges between Outers in the last week – one initiated by Zhuzhu. He won, handily. The other two were between disciples I knew very little of. One contest had ended with the challenger beaten into unconsciousness. The other had ended in the death of the challenged disciple.

  I want to say it was an accident but I don’t know that I could convince my heart of it. We had all watched that fight. We’d had to, as it took place during breakfast just three days ago. I’d have thought the two men were evenly matched; neither of them had stood out to me as notably talented. When the challenger had sauntered across the pavilion to say some extraordinarily unkind things about the other disciple’s background and family, I’d yelled encouragement with the rest, demanding that he take up the matter of honor. It had seemed like a simple contest, a way of two disciples to test themselves.

  The duelists had bowed to one another and a volunteer had shouted the commencement. We cheered when the challenged disciple moved first, running to close in with the challenger. He was a large man with a long reach, and the challenger was tall but not as heavily muscled. I’m sure that his strategy had been to get in close and overwhelm the other man with his greater weight.

  Instead, the challenger’s hands blurred with a series of brutal strikes as he ducked under the longer reach. The sounds of impact were meaty and rapid, a staccato beat that made me wince. Zhuzhu made a sound under his breath that was difficult to interpret, but his eyes were locked on the fight, shining with fascination.

  The challenged disciple staggered, the momentum of his charge broken. He swayed, dazed and gasping. “Move,” I whispered, trying to will him to throw himself to one side, to do anything to evade the follow-up that was surely coming. “Move or concede, you fool.”

  He might have done the latter, if he’d been given the chance. But the challenger closed in, teeth bared, and struck his throat with all his power. The disciple fell backwards, writhing, choking on whatever damage had been done there. I couldn’t help but look for Ju Jing. He sat not far away, and unlike most of the disciples, he continued to calmly eat his breakfast. By this time, I knew him well enough to recognize that he was paying attention – his head was cocked so that his ears could pick up as much of the fight as possible – but I supposed that he saw no reason to feign sight by turning in that direction.

  I searched the faces around me. None were as calm as Ju Jing seemed to be; some disciples wore their fear openly. Others seemed to be enjoying themselves. All stared in silence as the fallen disciple struggled for breath.

  I rose to my feet. Zhuzhu glanced at me. “Laoshu?”

  “I’m going to get the apothecary. He’s seriously hurt.”

  “Yeah,” Zhuzhu admitted, “But—”

  I didn’t stop to listen to the rest. Out of the corner of my vision, I noticed the cant of Ju Jing’s head change just a little, his attention slipping towards me as I ran out of the pavilion and to Yuanshu’s building.

  The apothecary had been in the middle of grinding flowers when I arrived, the inner cauldron of the jade mortar stained with a purple so bright that it emitted its own light. Without looking up he asked, “Who is injured?”

  I gasped out the basics. Yuanshu asked no questions, just swept a small bag into his hands and ran. I followed, but the healer was much faster than he looked. His feet skated across the ground, the mist forming slides of water beneath every step to carry him along. I was left behind.

  By the time I arrived at the pavilion, the disciple was dead. Yuanshu knelt by his body. The challenger stood off to one side, given an obvious space by all the Outers. He waited, tense, his fists clenched. The skin on the knuckles of one hand had split. It seeped blood. I couldn’t remember if that was the hand that had dealt the killing blow.

  I eeled my way through the ring of observers to Yuanshu. “Is there nothing—”

  He shook his head. “Without breath, the spirit abandons the body with speed. Even if I were to catch the soul and bind it back to the flesh while some technical life existed, it’s hard to say how much of the personality would return.” He reached out to close the man’s dark and staring eyes, and then nudged closed his mouth, which had frozen in an empty, useless gape.

  Yuanshu stood as if his joints pained him. He approached the challenger, who froze before him, a rabbit paralyzed by an approaching wolf. A peculiar way to see the unassuming healer, but in that moment we all felt the same. The whole group of Outers—myself included—took a deep breath and held it. Technically, challenges were allowed. Technically, we had only been told to refrain from murder the first few days, and nothing had happened to Ju Jing for breaking even that gentle boundary. But the air was still heavy with anticipation and I realized that how the next minute progressed would change our experience as disciples considerably.

  Yuanshu gave the challenger a slow up and down look, and when his gentle gaze came to rest on the other man’s face, he said, “You’re Younger Brother Ling, are you not?”

  “I—yes, Older Brother. I didn’t mean to…”

  “Didn’t you?” It was mild. Nonjudgmental, I would have said, except I felt as if I could feel something darker, scornful, in the undertones. But perhaps I was just projecting my own complicated feelings about the healer.

  Either way, Ling didn’t answer. He flushed and looked away. Yuanshu reached for his wounded hand, and from his small bag, he took a tiny ceramic jar. He opened it and slathered some pale green salve on Ling’s split knuckles. He put the jar away, studied Ling in silence for almost a full minute, long enough for Ling to visibly squirm under his gaze and a few of the watching disciples to have to finally take the breaths they had been holding.

  The faint gasps seemed to break whatever contemplation Yuanshu had been indulging in. He pivoted, returned to the body.

  “Brother Zhou Hou.” I stiffened. “As you summoned me, you can help me carry the body to the corpse house for preparation.”

  We had a corpse house? I couldn’t argue. I wasn’t even sure if this was an implicit rebuke for having called the apothecary. I made a hasty bow, then went to grab the disciple’s feet. A sudden memory tried to intrude—my father’s strong shoulders, cold and stiff beneath my hands as I grunted and heaved, dragging him over the dirt—but I pushed it away. This was not the time or place to look weak.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The disciples parted for us. Outside their loose, murmuring circle were the cinnamon robes, and as we stepped past, they began to move in, calling for chore groups as if it were any other day.

  Yuanshu said nothing as we carried the corpse through the misty streets of the sect. We met no one, which was unusual for this time of morning. But I knew that even cultivators had their superstitions, and spending time among the dead was bad luck. Touching them was even worse; what if in their shock and confusion after passing, they believed that it was you who had caused their demise and haunted you? Some cultivators wore masks and chose death names to wear when killing opponents so that angry ghosts couldn’t find them.

  I hadn’t killed anyone and maybe my false name would protect me, but I would leave offerings at the tiny sect shrine, nonetheless. My luck wasn’t good enough to test. “Here we are,” Yuanshu said.

  The corpse house was a misnomer; it was a corpse cave, carved into a rock wall, with walls of stone carved from the mountain itself. They looked heavy, and I recognized the sigils carved into them as talismans of protection, warding, and...gathering? And those were just the symbols I knew. There were hundreds more, spells far beyond my meager comprehension. And as massive as they were, the doors opened without hesitation or sound as we approached.

  Inside, the temperature dropped. Within three paces I could see my own breath in the air and the interior was lit by glowing blue stones instead of oil lamps. The eerie light illuminated walls carved with more talismanic symbols. This was not a temple to honor the dead.

  It was a place to contain them.

  Yuanshu guided us to a stone slab and we placed the dead disciple gently upon it. There were a half-dozen slabs just like this one but they were all empty. The house itself was barren of all life but our own. I fought the urge to wipe my hands on my outfit. “What do we do now?”

  Yuanshu raised his eyebrows. “We? Nothing. Your part is done. I’ll attend to the alchemical preparations and one of the brothers versed in the arts of quieting the unjust dead will see to spiritual matters. Unless you wished to stay and learn how to prepare a body?”

  Involuntarily, I took a step back. He smiled a sharp-edged smile. “I thought not. Then I release you to your lessons. But, Brother Zhou?”

  “Yes, Older Brother?” I fought to keep my voice even.

  It may even have worked, because there was no increase of his amusement as he said, “Our arrangement? I would like you to assist me after dinner. If you have the time, of course.”

  I ground my teeth. As if I had a choice. “Of course, Older Brother. It would be an honor.”

  We watched each other in silence. Perhaps he, like I, was waiting for the charade to drop. But I wasn’t going to be the one to do it. Eventually, he turned away. “My thanks.”

  He made a peculiar picture as I retreated back towards the hazy light of the sect; bent over the corpse, his mouth moving as if he were speaking to it. Tenderly, I thought. It was not a comforting thought.

  *

  In the immediate aftermath of the disciple’s death, the Outers were quiet. I attended the breathing class instead of knife lessons that day; it was easier to slip into after the teaching had begun. And I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to put Kai in front of me with a knife. Not after that. I couldn’t help but notice that the class was more crowded than it had been for a week. Even Zhuzhu was here for the first time since he’d been released from it.

  When I arrived and settled into the back row, he immediately left his place and came back to stand beside me. It attracted more attention than I wanted, but I made myself smile at him. “Breathing, huh?”

  “Breathing,” he agreed. Correct breathing was a part of us now. I could feel the difference and it was hard to even remember how it had been to breathe incorrectly for the entirety of my life until recently. Like my body considered it a bad dream, best forgotten.

  Instead of the basics, we returners were given exercises that he said would help us better channel our breath during the use of martial and spiritual arts. Each set of breaths were intense, but brief, and paired with basic martial stances. There was time to talk between each repetition.

  Zhuzhu, as I suspected, didn’t waste it. “So? What happened?”

  “We took him to the corpse house.”

  “What’s it like?”

  A memory of the cold air sent a shiver down my spine. “Creepy. It’s carved into the rock, covered in protective spells. To keep the ghosts from getting out, I’d bet.”

  A tension I hadn’t noticed in Zhuzhu lifted. “Good.” It was low and fervent.

  I couldn’t help my surprised snicker. “You’re afraid of ghosts?”

  He glowered. “Not afraid! But wary, yes. I will test myself against man, demon, or spirit beast without hesitation. But an angry ghost cares nothing for muscle or skill. They can whisper in your ear and stop your heart. They are no fit opponent for a warrior.”

  I thought about what Wai Kai, the spirit turtle, had spoken up in the dark beneath the mountain. “What about necromancers? You might have to face one of those in battle one day.”

  Zhuzhu shuddered. He spit to the ground to one side to ward away trouble. “Forbidden arts, practiced by cowards.”

  I didn’t press the matter. Instead, I nodded, and tucked the knowledge of this unexpected weakness away for further contemplation. Not that I was planning to become a necromancer...but I had no illusions that I could face Zhuzhu head on if it came to it. If he decided one day that I was ‘worth’ fighting, I’d need every trick I could muster.

  But it wasn’t Zhuzhu who would be my immediate problem. We parted after the class and no sooner had he disappeared around a corner did a group of disciples appear around me, materializing out of the fog as if they’d heard the talk of ghosts. My heart hammered in my chest even as one of them stepped forward, his features resolving from their misty blur to that of a fellow Outer. I only vaguely recognized him; I thought his name was Peng Da. Or perhaps Sing Da? It didn’t matter. For me, his most relevant name in this moment was Trouble.

  He tilted his head up and sniffed at me, eyes narrowed and derisive. “I’m challenging you, Mouse.”

  I eyed the circle of watchers warily. “Just you or is this just a beatdown in disguise?”

  Apparently, this offended him. He stiffened and spat out, “I have honor, unlike a commoner brat like yourself. I challenge you. Do you accept? Or,” he sneered, “are you going to run off to your ox of a friend and beg his protection?” There was a certain relish in the way he said it.

  Ah. That was what this was about. I hadn’t impressed anyone. But Zhuzhu was a threat. And I wagered that this fellow, Sing or Peng Da, thought he could get under his skin by beating up his friends. He might even be right; Zhuzhu would take it as a personal affront.

  None of which helped me right now, and wouldn’t even help me afterwards. I eyed Peng (or Sing) Da. I thought he was taking classes with one of the Inners who focused on staves, but he wasn’t carrying one right now. And, tucked inside my outfit, I carried the small but wicked knife Jian had gifted me. But could I use it? I was in this sect to kill a man. This was the moment where I had to consider whether I could kill more than one.

  I met his eyes and took a defensive stance. “I accept your challenge.” A pleased hiss went up from the circle; Da just nodded. I didn’t reach for the knife immediately; the basic stances and moves Jian had been teaching me were not primarily about the blade. They were about understanding space and movement and applied equally well bare-handed. If I could keep the knife as a surprise, I would.

  One of his friends took the role of caller. I gave them a quick look, but none of them appeared interested in interrupting. They just watched, eyes gleaming in the mist. They expected to see my humiliation. Maybe even my death.

  I was going to do my best to show them something else.

  He lunged forward the second the call bounced off the walls. He had long arms and a wicked reach. I dodged to the left, spun around to threaten his flank. There was an opening there but I let it pass this time. I wanted to see what I was facing. I’d only fought Kai before.

  It became quickly clear that he was no Kai. The demon-blooded disciple was inhumanly fast and trusted his own body to do whatever he demanded of it. Every time Kai struck at me, his knives scored my skin. I hadn’t realized just how fast Kai was until I faced someone who was, like me, only human.

  I danced around him, surprised at how slow he was. How much he revealed with every strike, especially as he got increasingly frustrated. That was useful. His face twisted as I ducked out of the way of another blow. “Mouse! Fight me or run away!”

  Chu-chu-chu. Several disciples made the mocking sounds, mouse squeaks on all sides. “I’m not running away,” I snapped. My eyes darted to the restless circle, then back to his flushed face. Using the tone I’d used to drive my brother to tantrums during bouts of childhood mischief, I sing-songed, “It’s not my fault you can’t land a punch. C’mon, brother. This was your idea! Maybe you want to concede? I’ll pretend it never happened.”

  Turns out it worked on more brothers than those of blood. Da snarled and leapt forward, his long arms swinging with more enthusiasm than skill. It was faster than before, but Kai would have made a contemptuous tch at how easy it was to predict. I wove like a snake through the furious strike and finally responded with blows of my own. My hands were the fangs of the snake, blunted by my will but precise. I hit his kidney with two fast blows. He staggered, tried to twist to face me. I slithered around him, pummeling his lower back and the tender organs there.

  Da howled in pain and rage, spun in a tremendous windmill punch that I was betting wasn’t written down in any handbook of martial arts. What it lacked in elegance, it made up for in fury. I didn’t quite get out of its way; my shoulder went numb from even a glancing blow and I hissed as my hand wavered out of stance.

  His eyes were burning as he advanced to take advantage of my moment of weakness. “I was just going to send a message,” he wheezed, “but you’ve pissed me off.”

  I shook my arm to get some feeling back. “Have you tried a letter? Seems like it’d be less trouble for all of us.” I needed him angry and unthinking, so I added, “Or is writing just a little too hard for you?”

  With a bellow of rage, he lunged forward. I slid to one side—he was expecting it, this time.

  But he wasn’t expecting for me to dive to the ground and kick his knee from the side with both of my feet. It was messy. It was dirty fighting. And it worked. There was a crunch I felt through the soles of my shoes and as I flipped myself up to my feet, Da went down to the paving stones with a scream of pain.

  I closed in and settled my heel on his throat. Perhaps we were both thinking of the dead disciple when he froze under the touch, his eyes going so wide they bulged. I leaned forward, making it clear how much pressure I wasn’t using in this moment. “Concede.”

  His mouth worked. My hand crept towards the knife’s hiding place. If he could power through the broken knee and keep fighting then he was out of my league. I’d have to use deadly force.

  Our eyes met. I don’t know what he read in mine. But in his, I saw anger, humiliation...and fear. He swallowed hard; I felt it under my toes. “I concede,” he said.

  I withdrew immediately. There was a flicker of something in a few faces around us. More faces now, I noticed, than there had been at the start. But surprise, I recognized. Relief. And, in a few...disappointment. Those I marked. They would be problems.

  For now, I bowed to Da. “Thank you for the opportunity to test my strength against a worthy opponent. It was a good fight and I learned much from your skill.” I extended my hand. “Allow me to accompany you to the apothecary, Brother?”

  He weighed his options, then took my hand. From the muscle twitching in his jaw, we were not by any means friends, but I hadn’t humiliated him when I could have. We’d see if he’d view that as honor...or weakness.

  For now, he allowed me to bear the slightest part of his weight as he limped towards the apothecary. And as we passed through the watchers, I caught the whispers here and there as assumptions were adjusted.

  Looks like the Mouse has fangs of his own.