Chapter 8

In that year of war and chaos, I became Prince Wei’s assassin.

The first rule I learned was—

Military orders were absolute. Obey without question.

In the second year, Wu Zheng, the man who had saved my life, changed sides. Prince Wei wanted him dead. I caught him unguarded and killed him with a stroke from behind.

In the third year, a marquis’s legitimate daughter stormed into camp and lashed me with a barbed whip. Prince Wei frowned. “By military law, anyone who forces their way into camp must die.” Before his words had faded, I had acted.

In the fourth year, Prince Wei had gained more than half the realm. Standing on a pile of corpses, he laughed like a madman. “I’ve done many wrong things. I do deserve to die.”

I remembered what he’d said. Before military orders, rank made no difference.

The wind rose fiercely, filling the air with yellow sand.

The heavy reek of blood spread around us.

I looked down at the heaps of bodies. No armor. No swords or spears. Every one of them a civilian.

Prince Wei stood atop the corpses, laughing wildly. “More than half the realm is mine. I have no rivals left.”

“Anyone who opposes me will end up just like these lowborn wretches.”

He turned to me, smiling. “Xiaoqiao, tell me. Was I right?”

I had always been a woman of few words.

So he went on. “I know I’ve done many wrong things to reach this point. I deserve to die.”

I raised my eyes to him. He was no different from four years before.

Just as arrogant. Just as contemptuous of the world.

Back then, Wu Zheng had only just brought me to him. He had stood on a gun platform, looking down at me.

“Once you enter a military camp,” he said, “the first thing to remember is that you obey me alone. Military orders are absolute. Rank makes no difference.”

“Do you understand?”

I nodded. I understood.

Obedience had never been difficult for me.

Mother had said the secret to survival for poor people was to do whatever they were asked and never talk back.

Poverty left little room for pride. We couldn’t fight people who had money, power, and influence.

Only by obeying could we stay alive.

I had always lived by that rule.

But my sister-in-law had sold me to a brothel. The jewelry I’d worked so hard to save had almost been stolen. The man I loved had used my redemption money to save someone else.

After all that turmoil, I had finally come home, intending to tend the two fen of land Mother had struggled so hard to buy. Only to find it overgrown with weeds.

The entire village was rubble. Not a soul remained.

In despair, I tried to hang myself. Someone saved me.

His name was Wu Zheng. He said that if I followed him, my days would no longer be full of tears. There would be sweet soup every day.

He brought me to the camp and introduced me to Prince Wei.

With enemies invading from beyond the border, the princes from the imperial city had established camps along the frontier, fighting among themselves for the succession.

Prince Wei was one of them.

At first, he didn’t want to keep me.

But Wu Zheng thought well of me. He was a trusted confidant, and the prince was always willing to hear him out.

“We need someone suitable to get close to Wang Quan,” Wu Zheng said. “She could lure him with her looks.”

“A woman who isn’t even afraid of death. The hatred she feels over her village’s destruction could drive her.”

“She’s from Guangyi Village,” he added.

Only then did Prince Wei look at me.

Standing on the gun platform, he told me coldly to remember the rules of the camp.

Military orders were absolute. Obey without question.

I asked Wu Zheng, “Are Prince Wei’s words military orders?”

He said they were.

“Then from now on, I do whatever Prince Wei says?”

Wu Zheng smiled and handed me a chicken leg. “Yes.”

“What about what you say?”

“His Highness comes first.”

I nodded and took the chicken leg, but couldn’t eat.

“Guangyi Village wasn’t destroyed by bandits?” I asked.

When I had returned from Yifang House, the village had been ashes. I had assumed bandits or marauders were responsible. In such chaotic times, the authorities had no time to hunt them down.

Wu Zheng sighed. “Prince Ning’s doing.”

“There are rare medicinal herbs on the mountain above Guangyi. These days, those herbs are worth more than gold. Prince Ning wanted them. The villagers stood in his way and demanded payment. He refused, so he ordered the villagers killed and the village burned.”

“By the time we got there, the herbs had all been dug up, and the village was gone.”

“I went back to look for evidence of his crime so we could report him to the court. That’s when I found you. I couldn’t save the whole village, but at least I saved one person.”

I lowered my head and said nothing.

I had known since childhood that herbs grew on the mountain behind the village.

Father had fallen to his death there while gathering herbs after the rain. It had taken five years to find his bones. That day, Mother had sat outside the door holding what he’d left behind and cried all night.

Mother said poor people were born to suffer. There was never any sweetness in life.

Like those rare herbs worth more than gold.

They could save lives.

But not poor people’s lives.

“What do you need me to do?” I bit into the chicken leg and swallowed the bitterness in my heart with it.

If I was still alive, I had to keep going.

Until then, I hadn’t known where my path lay.

Now I did.

“I want you to get close to Prince Ning’s deputy general, Wang Quan. No one has more of the prince’s trust. If anything happens to him, Prince Ning’s camp will fall into chaos.”

“Wang Quan isn’t greedy and doesn’t drink to excess. His only weakness is women. Above all, he likes rescuing fallen women.”

“So I want you to enter a brothel, get close to him, and draw information out of him.”

I was puzzled. “Don’t I need to kill him?”

Wu Zheng seemed not to have expected the question.

He looked taken aback.

After a long moment, he suddenly laughed. “Well, Xiaoqiao. I was right about you.”

“A mere woman, yet not afraid to kill.”

He didn’t know I had already killed someone.

The man had been my lover at Yifang House. He’d taken the money I’d saved for my freedom and tried to use it to make a future for someone else.

He had wept and said he could give me his life.

So I took it with a knife.

Blood covered the floor. Yifang House was in uproar.

Yet as I breathed in the smell of blood, I had felt calmer than ever before.

That was when I realized the blood of someone I hated could soothe me.