I burst through the moon gate into a tableau of brutality. Layla was bound by her hands to the stone platform of her own courtyard, a broken doll of simple plum-colored silk. Two thin stalky servants stood over her, their wooden staves rising and falling with a grim, practiced rhythm. The owner of the Jade Grotto stumbled in behind me.

  “Stop! In the Vice-Director's name, I said to stop!” he shrieked, but his words were lost in the thud of my armored boots on the stone.

  Rage burned away the last of my exhaustion. My jiàn cleared its scabbard.

  The two servants froze at the sight of my armor and my sword. One raised his staff to ward me off. I didn't parry. I sidestepped his clumsy swing and my blade separated hand from arm. He crumpled to the ground, clutching his bleeding stump. The second man stared for a fraction of a second, his mouth agape in shock, before turning to flee. He took two steps before my sword sliced through the back of his knee, sending him to the ground screaming.

  I turned, the bloody tip of my sword coming to rest in the soft hollow of the whimpering owner's throat.

  “Explain why I shouldn't gut you where you stand,” I snarled, my voice a dangerous rasp that didn't sound like my own.

  “He said to discipline her!” the man blubbered, tears and snot running down his face. “Vice-Director Song! He said she had forgotten her place! That she needed a… a firm reminder!”

  I turned the blade to the servant with the leg wound. "Then why were these killing blows?" I knew beating too was a skill that was practiced; scratching skin or fatal blows was a matter of discretion.

  "Master Song…" the servant began, and by then I'd heard enough. I knocked him out with a backhand pummel to his jaw. A discipline that went too far, when a JianMin needed to die by accident.

  A ragged gasp came from the floor. I whirled around. Layla was pushing herself up with one arm, her face pale and beaded with sweat, her backside covered in torn flesh and blood, her leg bent at an unnatural angle.

  She gritted out, her eyes fixed on the shadows near the pavilion roof. “He's still here. One of Song's men. I sent Rana for help…”

  From the shadows, a figure detached himself and landed as silently as a cat in the center of the courtyard. He was a man in his thirties, dressed in fine, yellow robes, a single, heavy-bladed, literally golden dāo held in a two-handed grip.

  “So you be the Sergeant Wei Jin she was calling out for” the man said, his voice calm and arrogant. “I am Xiahou Qing of the Golden Dao. Your experience as a soldier is worthless against martial mastery like my own. Do not get in the way.”

  I lunged.

  My body, pushed past all reasonable limits, moved on instinct alone. The world narrowed to the space between us, a dance of death under the cold summer sky.

  Xiahou Qing's eyes widened as our weapons clashed and I sent him a few steps back with a burst of Qi greater than his own. He hadn’t expected the force of Qi at all and I didn’t give him the chance to stabilize and stepped forward to capitalize on his surprise.

  Xiahou Qing twirled his Golden Dao defensively in a golden flash of intricate patterns. I couldn’t follow its path and stopped my advance. He was skilled, powerful, and fresh.

  I was none of those things. He probably had greater Qi reserves than me, but Xiao Kai had regularly lent me more total volume with which my meridians were already accustomed. I could bring more to bear in short, powerful, rationed bursts.

  I also had a full suit of black lacquered steel.

  His first blow, a heavy cleaving strike aimed at my shoulder and neck. I turned slightly so it struck my laminar pauldron. The impact was a jarring shock that radiated down my arm, but the steel held. The dāo scraped off with a shower of sparks, leaving only a deep gouge in the lacquer. I simultaneously stepped forward in a slashing cut towards his torso.

  “What the hell have they been feeding you on the frontier?” He exclaimed. Not a good sign, since I couldn’t match his capacity to retort mid combat.

  He was faster, more skilled, but he had to find the gaps in my armor, my neck, my joints, the back of my knees. I gave him no such openings, pressing him relentlessly, trading taking meaningless hits to my body for aggressive offensive opportunities. His Golden Dao form was formidable, but like most martial artists his experience was intended for an unarmored opponent. In the small space of the Jade Grotto he had no room to maneuver.

  Every strike from me was empowered by anger, every parry sending chips flying from our blades. His golden Dao was not as soft as gold, just a regular steel covered in expensive golden foil.

  Panic began to edge into his expression. Or so I thought.

  At last, for once in this wretched timeline I felt I had the upper hand against a practitioner. I had to end this, Layla was still exposed, a broken bird on the flagstones. I couldn't defeat him and get her to safety. But he held on with frustrating tenacity, my killing blow never managing to land despite getting closer and closer with each swing.

  That was a fatal mistake. I stepped forward, as he raised his dao for a downward swing, shoved him with my left shoulder timed with a stomp of my lead foot for force transfer. At this range I didn't have the space to use my jian, so I brought my left elbow up to strike him as he was pushed backwards into optimal strike range.

  The motion caused my old chest wound to shock me with the unexpected feeling of strained muscle.

  Xiahou Qing took an extra step back so my elbow didn't connect.

  I pivoted and rotated to thrust with my jian. For a fraction of a second, my chest wound slowed my hand.

  My thrust slowed and the Golden Dao slashed upwards towards my unprotected armpit.

  It was a shame most Chinese armors had this weakpoint. There was a major artery there. I braced myself to bleed out alongside my friend on the cold floor.

  CLANG

  A straight Dao blocked the rising Golden Dao. I turned to see Wei Jin in the courtyard, covered in dripping sweat and breathing like he'd sprinted through a marathon.

  "Wei Jin?!" I exclaimed. "What?!" echoed a confused Xiahou Qing.

  Everyone paused. "Wait… then who are you?" The man with the Golden Dao asked, his confidence not diminished one bit.

  It was then that the courtyard gate burst open.

  “Master!”

  Xiao Qi stood there, his face pale. Behind them was Layla's pípá player, Rana, and an unfamiliar cloaked, slender figure about Xiao Qi's age, her face hidden in shadow.

  Xiahou Qing saw the reinforcements, and a flicker of frustration crossed his face. He disengaged with a powerful shove, creating space. “You wouldn't dare fight me one at a…” he snarled, preparing for a new assault.

  But he never got the chance to finish that sentence. Steward Feng strode purposefully through the moon gate and impatiently slammed his palm into Xiahou Qing's chest before he could react, sending him rocketing into the back wall and breaking him against it.

  Xiahou Qing's eyes went blank with incomprehension. A fine mist of blood erupted from his lips. He crumpled at the base of the wall, a broken puppet whose strings had been cut.

  The Steward did not even glance at the body. He turned and fixed his eyes, cold voids of absolute fury, on me. He took a deliberate step forward, his presence a wave of suffocating power.

  “You,” he said, his voice as cold and unforgiving as a winter tomb. “You have made a mess, Scholar Zhang. Your recklessness has cost the Master his freedom.”

  Before I could form a reply, his hand shot out. It was not a strike. His fingers closed around the armored gorget at my throat with a grip like forged iron. The world tilted as my feet left the ground. He lifted me, all one hundred and eighty centimeters and fifty jīn of armored man, with one hand, as effortlessly as one might lift a lantern. I hung there, helpless, my sword clattering to the flagstones.

  He held me a foot off the ground, his eyes boring into mine.

  “The Master is in chains,” he hissed, his voice a quiet storm of chilling rage. “And you are the reason.” He brought my face inches from his own. “So you will fix it”

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  Enjoying the... politics? Well I'd consider checking out The Autumn Queen next!