Chapter 4

After I unexpectedly received a golden leaf, the flatbread woman was so angry that she ignored me for two days.

I had no time to care. The filthy little creature now appeared at my stall every few days, silently gripping the edge and staring at the steaming soup pot. Whenever I had a quiet moment, I cooked something for her.

She wiped her mouth after eating and vanished without a word.

The morning after every visit, I found something strange where my stall had stood: oddly shaped flowers and herbs, foul-smelling pills, or a rusted iron sword.

The most outrageous gift was a blood-soaked, deathly pale woman.

I hurriedly enlisted the flatbread woman and carried her to a clinic.

Several days later, the stranger woke and pressed a dagger to her own throat, refusing to let anyone near.

Madness glimmered in her cold eyes. “After everything, what else do you people want from me?”

I wiped grease from my fingertips on my apron and stepped forward.

“My stall needs another pair of hands. Can you split firewood?”

She stared.

When I paid the considerable medical bill, embarrassment finally cracked her icy expression.

From that day on, my stall had a silent woodcutter.

Wu Yexue often gazed north. Since childhood, she had carried countless lives on her shoulders. Her family guarded the frontier, a mountain looming over the barbarians and shielding the people from decades of bloodshed.

Then the realm fell into chaos and treacherous officials seized power. The Wu family refused to join them and was destroyed.

Yexue escaped a mountain of corpses. One day, she meant to fight her way back to the northern frontier.

When she finished the story, she split several logs in half at the waist. Morning light gilded her hard profile. The fierce light in her eyes was the flame of revenge.

As her health improved, the flatbread woman found a chance to whisper, “I told you that little thief was no innocent. She’s asked about the Sword Sect several times.”

I wrapped wontons for the child and glanced at the neatly stacked firewood.

“If she succeeds in joining, that’s good for me too. And she has a name. Stop calling her some stray.”

“Bah!” The old woman pursed her lips. “Once she goes up the mountain, she’ll forget everything. What about all the money you spent?”

Yexue was a martial artist with an enormous appetite. She could eat three fist-sized buns at a sitting. Her old injuries also required medicine and nourishing soup.

The old woman counted how many bowls of wontons each prescription cost me.

I weighed my purse. She had a point. Soon I would not be able to afford meat for myself.

Emboldened, she said the county magistrate had admired her son’s calligraphy and invited him to a scholars’ banquet, but mother and son lacked money for a proper gift.

Then her voice sharpened. The richest landlord in town wanted a concubine, and even the matchmaker would receive five hundred coppers.

“If that girl called me godmother, I could marry her into his household in grand style—”

My cleaver struck the board with a bang.

Yexue rose.

The old woman fell silent, muttered that inviting a god was easier than sending one away, and fled to her cart.

Her last words reminded me of something.

I stirred the broth and met the child’s uncomprehending eyes. She rubbed her face, trying to tell me I looked unhappy.

I saw the bruise beneath her brow and softened.

“Fighting again?”

She nodded slowly.

I packed a bag of uncooked wontons. “Give these to him. Ask him not to hit so hard next time.”

She tilted her head, only half understanding.

The next day, Jing Tongzhou appeared carrying a large, bloody fish.