My voice, sharp and commanding in the narrow, snow-filled alley, cut through the tense silence. "Put down the box! We need every hand we can get now!"

  The broad-shouldered Brother holding the chest hesitated, his eyes flicking towards Auntie Ying for confirmation. She nodded, her gaze never leaving the advancing enemy. "Do as he says. The box is worthless if we are all dead."

  With a soft thud, the Brother set the heavy chest down in the snow and drew his own heavy saber, its polished steel a grim mirror in the faint, swirling light. I drew my own blade. It was not the simple jiàn I had carried before. This sword, forged from the precious, high-grade steel of my own design, was a thing of stark, lethal beauty. The steel was a dark, matte grey that seemed to drink the light, devoid of any ornamentation.

  I stepped forward, placing my wounded body between the advancing disciples and the cowering merchant. My injury was a dull, insistent fire in my side, but the cold adrenaline of the fight pushed it to the back of my mind.

  The disciple, seeing me as the only immediate obstacle between him and his primary target, charged without a word. The knife-thrower drew a long, wicked-looking dagger and lunged, aiming a vicious stab at my heart.

  I took a deep breath, planting my feet in the snow. This was it.

  My left hand brought the black steel cane up in a desperate, rising block. The disciple's dagger slammed into it with a solid, metallic thunk, the impact jarring my wounded side and sending a jolt of agony up my arm. But the cane held, its superior steel easily deflecting the blow. In that same instant, I reached inward, not with thought, but with pure, desperate instinct, pulling on that tiny ember of warmth I had been so carefully cultivating. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, an ember seemed to flare into a warm emanation that surged from my center, a thin stream of power flooding down my right arm and into the dark steel of my sword.

  The blade itself seemed to come alive. The disciple, surprised by my block, tried to parry my counter-attack with his dagger.

  There was a high, metallic scrape that echoed in the silent alley.

  My blade, empowered by the barest of qigong, sheared clean through a hairline crack my cane had just created in the disciple's dagger. The attack continued, its momentum only slightly slowed, and bit deep into the man's shoulder. He screamed, a sound of shock as much as pain, and stumbled back, his arm ruined, out of the fight.

  The cost, however, was immediate and immense.

  The violent exertion and the unfamiliar surge of energy were too much for my still healing body. A blinding, white-hot agony exploded in my side. I felt a sickening pop of torn stitches, and a sudden, wet warmth spread beneath my robes as my wound tore wide open. I let out a choked gasp, my strength vanishing as the world momentarily blurred at the edges.

  As the wounded disciple stumbled back, I gritted my teeth against the wave of agony. With an underhand toss, I sent my dark-steel jiàn spinning through the air.

  "Brother! Take it!"

  The broad-shouldered Brother caught the sword out of the air. He had seen it cut through a dagger like wood. A grim, appreciative nod was his only reply as he turned to face one of the advancing disciples, his own heavy saber now seeming crude and clumsy by comparison. The alley erupted into a maelstrom of steel. Auntie Ying engaged a skilled disciple, her blade a flickering silver light. The fight was now an even three-on-three.

  Auntie Ying was incredibly strong, a cut above Xiao Kai if I was not mistaken. Precise and experienced, her movements were clean and smooth, her sword humming as it cut through the air. But in turn her opponents were top-tier, each as strong as Lei Bao had been. The injured man joined in, using his offhand to throw daggers at her as she deflected with the flat of her blade.

  The Brothers fought as a unit and their opponents desperately avoided contact with the black jiàn in the broad Brother's hand, but even so they soon found themselves holding shorter blades than they had started with. Given time, I was confident they would win.

  But I was not watching them. My eyes were fixed on the true threat. I turned to face 'Shadowless Hand' Gao, holding my black steel cane in a two-handed grip, its tip pointed directly at his chest like the blade of a sword.

  "'Shadowless Hand,' right?" I gasped out, a grimace of pain mixing with a defiant grin. "It would be my honor to face you."

  Gao, who had been watching the melee with the calm detachment of a master, turned his full attention to me. He looked at my bleeding side, at the cane I was holding, and a cold, humorless laugh escaped his lips.

  "You?" he said, his voice dripping with condescending pity. "You are bleeding out in the snow, leaning on a walking stick. You mistake the throes of death for courage."

  He took a single, gliding step forward. A palpable pressure filled the alley as his qi flared, billowing his robes around him, a flicker that made the snowflakes dance and deviate.

  "But if you are so eager to die, I will oblige."

  He raised his right hand, his palm open and facing me. The air crackled with contained energy. He was preparing the same palm-force technique that had shattered a man against a wall.

  From his perspective, it was a contemptuous, dismissive gesture, more than enough to extinguish the last spark of my life. With an explosive surge, he started to close the twenty-pace gap between us in two strides.

  He had no idea he was staring down the barrel of a gun.

  My free hand shot out for the handle of my cane. It was not a handle, but a disguised lever. I saw Gao's face, but One-Eyed Xiong's visage didn't slow my hand. I yanked back the lever. There was a sharp, mechanical click, and a loud scrape of flint striking steel inside the mechanism. Then, the world exploded.

  A deafening BOOM ripped through the alley, a physical, concussive wave of sound so immense it felt like the sky was tearing apart. It was a sound no one here had ever heard before. An orange blossom of fire erupted from the tip of my cane, momentarily illuminating the alley in a hellish, flickering light. The recoil was a brutal, physical thing. The cane slammed back into my shoulder with the force of a battering ram, throwing me off my feet. I landed hard in the snow, the impact sending a wave of agony through my reopened wound, and my vision whited out for a second time that night.

  Ten paces away, 'Shadowless Hand' Gao didn't fly back; he staggered, a look of pure, uncomprehending shock on his ascetic face. It was as if an invisible giant had struck him in the chest. His pristine grey robes were suddenly shredded, blossoming with a half-dozen dark, rapidly spreading crimson flowers. The hail of small steel balls had torn through him, shredding muscle, bone, and organs.

  The world held its breath. The deafening roar of the shot echoed off the high walls and faded, leaving a ringing silence and the thick, acrid smell of burnt powder. The three-on-three melee had frozen, every fighter stunned by the impossible thunder, clutching their ears, doubled over, their weapons on the floor.

  Gao looked down at his chest, at the ruin of his body. He looked up at me, his eyes filled not with hate, but with utter, cosmic disbelief.

  He was dying, but his immense inner strength granted him a final few seconds of life. He saw me, a broken heap on the ground. He saw the terrified Merchant Zhu. And his eyes fell upon Auntie Ying, who, recovering from the shock, had already moved, her professional instincts screaming at her to protect the key witnesses. She placed herself squarely between Gao and me with Zhu further behind me.

  He could not reach me. He could not reach the merchant. But in a final, terrible flash of clarity, he saw it. Sitting in the snow, now unprotected, was the iron-bound chest. The reason for all of this.

  With a final, guttural roar that was more blood than sound, Gao slammed his already qi-fueled left hand into the ground, using the force to throw himself forward and struck not at a person, but at the box. His other shadowless palm slammed into the lacquered wood and iron.

  The iron-bound chest exploded in a shower of shattered timber, torn leather, and a sudden, swirling blizzard of paper. Ledgers, letters, and manifests were blasted into shreds that floated around the snowy alley, where they were instantly scattered by the wind like the snowflakes they resembled.

  The light in Gao's eyes extinguished. He crumpled to the ground, a still, silent heap in the falling snow, dead.

  Every movement was a fresh torment. I dragged myself through the bloody snow, leaving a dark, smeared trail behind me, my eyes fixed on the scattered remains of the evidence box. Most of it was lost, shredded into useless confetti by the sheer force of Gao's final strike or already dissolved into pulp in the wet snow. But not all of it.

  My trembling fingers closed around the hard, leather-bound spine of a ledger, its cover miraculously intact. I pulled it towards me. Another was just within reach, its pages bent but not destroyed. Then I saw it: a single, folded letter, its wax seal cracked but still holding, lying half-buried in a drift of snow.

  I grabbed it, pulling the three precious items to my chest. My strength gave out completely. I clutched the ledgers and the letter as if they were my own life, and then, the darkness took me to the sound of clashing steel.