For a long time I felt as if I was in a bottomless void, I was lost to the world, my body a dead weight against the temple pillar. I felt a cold stream of qi spread through me driving the weariness from my bones and muscles.

  I awoke with a gasp, the world snapping back into focus. The sun had already descended, it had been at least a dozen hours based on the placement of the moon. The room was lit dimly by candlelight. Standing over me, his face an impassive mask, was Steward Feng.

  He stated, his voice flat. “You have rested long enough.”

  The implication was clear. He had spent hours pouring his own formidable energy into my recovery, a fact he acknowledged with the same emotional investment as a blacksmith noting he had tempered a piece of steel.

  “Lord Feng…” I began, my voice still hoarse. “... is favored by the Dragon Throne, He serves as the Son of Heaven's counterweight to the Chancellor and the Frontier armies. He is in no danger of execution. We have some time.”

  “Time,” the Steward repeated, and for the first time, a flicker of something raw and hot broke through his icy composure. “The Master sits in a cage, and you speak of time?”

  “The Master's honor is stained. His name is whispered in the same breath as ‘treason.' And the architect of this insult sips wine in his manor, protected by the Chancellor's shadow.” His voice was a guttural snarl. He uncoiled.

  His motion was a blur. The air itself seemed to scream as his open palm slammed into the chest of the stone immortal. There was no loud crack, but a deep, resonant BOOM that shook the very foundations of the temple. The thousand-pound stone statue was obliterated. It exploded into a cloud of gravel and dust that boiled outward, filling the hall with a choking haze.

  The dust settled. Where the serene visage of the Lao Zi had sat for centuries, there was now only a pile of rubble.

  Steward Feng stood in the center of the devastation, his hand still outstretched, not a single speck of dust on his immaculate silk robes. He lowered his arm and turned to face me. The incandescent fury was gone, locked away behind his cold, impassive mask. He was once again the Steward.

  I stared, my heart hammering against my ribs. But the fear was clarifying. My mind finally began to work once more.

  “We cannot strike the snake's head,” I said, my voice steady “Not yet. So we take its fangs and its eyes.” I rose to my feet, my gaze unwavering. “Song's power in Chang'an is built on his network of recruited masters. Men like the Jin brothers and Zhou Mo. They are his eyes, his ears, and his enforcers. Without them, he is blind and deaf.” I held his gaze. “You are more than a match for any of them. Hunt them. Bleed him, one cut at a time. It will distract him while I strike a killing blow.”

  “Individually they are nothing to be concerned about, but there are several which together may prove… a challenge” The Steward considered my plan, weighing the merits. He gave a single, reluctant nod. “Very well. It will be done.”

  He turned to leave, then paused, his gaze falling upon the cloaked girl who had been watching from the doorway, her face pale. Lord Feng's daughter, my now-working mind concluded. The resemblance was uncanny, now that I had a chance to look at her clearly. Xiao Qi pulled the girl away to the relative warmth of the main hall.

  “She will remain with you. See that she is protected.” Steward Feng looked back at me, his eyes as cold as a grave. “She is the Master's crown jewel. If she comes to any harm while under your watch, I can ensure you suffer much longer than Lei Bao did.”

  He vanished into the shadows, leaving me with his chilling promise.

  I stood before the rubble of Lao Zi, the scent of shattered stone thick in the air.

  A thousand-pound statue. One blow.

  Something in my mind broke.

  The image came unbidden: My Fiancée's expectant expression, the expression she would have when she knew I knew the right thing to do.

  For months I'd been tiptoeing around history. Afraid of ripples. Afraid that one wrong move would cascade through twelve hundred years and erase that smile and leave me shackled to that weight. I had been so careful.

  So goddamn careful.

  And for what?

  I looked at the rubble. Last month, a man deflected crossbow bolts with a folding fan.

  This was not my world. And I'd been guarding a door that led nowhere.

  The laugh that escaped my throat was ugly. Cracked. It echoed off the temple walls and I couldn't stop it. The cosmic joke finally landed and it was hilarious and horrible and I was laughing so hard my ribs hurt, tears streaming down my face as twelve months of careful restraint shattered like the statue at my feet.

  And yet this world had injustice that I'd scared myself into shying away from resolving.

  There was Chenguang and the wandering poor. Song sipping wine in his manor while Layla bled on a courtyard floor.

  I looked down and I could see my hands trembling.

  I drove the Qi within me to my throat and let out another laugh, louder, clearer, that shook the tiles on the roof.

  Xiao Qi was right to question freedom in a world where it was scarier than slavery. I've seen the people close to me suffer, in prison or in prisons of this world's own making.

  A self perpetuating system? A cyclical system? Fine. They had their enforcers of the status quo.

  I had twelve hundred years on the status quo to make this world my own.

  And I was done holding back.

  "...Officer Zhang?"

  Wei Jin's voice cut my laughter short. I heard genuine concern.

  I turned my head to greet him, words already forming on my tongue. I'd tear it all down, set fire to the plains and burn this corrupt corpse of a society down.

  Then I saw his face.

  And it brought with it unbidden, the Silver armored Captain who died at Black Wind Ridge. Gao's contorting body at Black Wind Ridge.

  The grandiose speech died in my throat.

  Wei Jin was looking for someone to talk to. I took a deep breath.

  Then I thought of a possibility that made my hot human blood run cold. She'd been badly injured and I had very little medical knowledge by which I could stem the tide of fate.

  "Is Layla..." I started, my voice trembling despite my efforts to keep it steady.

  "Lady Layla is ready to burn her MaiShenQi" he said.

  However much dread I'd been feeling instantly turned into relief and glee.

  I smiled "That's great right?"

  Wei Jin took a few paces forward until he stood alongside me and his gaze looked past the broken statue.

  "Is it really?" He asked while lost in thought. "She'd have been safer in the Jade Grotto had you not intervened."

  I could tell he didn't mean that as a jab at me personally and so I didn't take it that way.

  "You're right to be worried" I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It's not quite the freedom I'd envisioned, but its a step in the right direction. A step worth celebrating."

  Wei Jin looked over at me and after a moment he nodded.

  "To think that the order we serve is one that protects men like Song and crushes people like her." He mused. "It should have been you who was by her side when Lady Layla was freed"

  I shook my head. "She'd have preferred it to be you. You were the one she wrote to, I just happened to be there."

  For a long moment He stared straight at me. Then he spoke again. "I admit I still find your methods distasteful..." I waited expectantly "...But if what you are looking to do is to build a kinder place for people like her. Let me know what I can do."

  "I'd be glad to have you" I said earnestly. "I will do my best, but I am one man. My plans have consequences I cannot always foresee. I need a man of integrity to watch my back, and to tell me when my path strays too close to the shadows we fight."

  I held out a hand.

  Wei Jin gave a sharp nod. He grabbed my hand with his own in a tight grip. A pact was forged and I knew then that I would no longer sabotage my own progress.

  Then to my surprise: "What next Captain?"

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