The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 347: The Man Who Was Loyal

He put iron into his eyes and said nothing.

"You made three mistakes," she went on. "First—you didn’t learn the scent of my house. Second—you walked into a city that eats men like you and assumed you would be the one doing the chewing. Third—" she set her palm on the table "—you believed a rumor about who holds the leash."

He tried for contempt. It sat poorly in a mouth that tasted of fear. "You’re not the leash."

"No," she agreed, soft. "I’m the wolf."

The room did not move. Even the flame seemed to go narrow with the sentence.

She lifted two fingers.

Yaozu’s shadow detached from the wall and took the not-quite-awake one to a second ring. It was far enough that the sounds of him trying to pull breath through his panic would feel like something that could happen to someone else.

"Your guild," Longzi said, finding the step again. "How many cells inside our walls."

"No guild," the prisoner shot back, too fast.

"Too slow," Yizhen corrected him mildly.

Deming set a small roll of leather on the table and untied it with the care of a man revealing tools he disliked needing.

It held nothing cruel.

Ink. Two sticks of sealing wax. A thin paintbrush cut to a point. An awl. A small weight. Implements of men who prove things, not break them.

He put the awl down where the prisoner could see it. Longzi didn’t look at it. Yizhen didn’t either. The point wasn’t threat. The point was inevitability.

Mingyu took the brush and tapped the table once, twice, three times, a drum call boiled down to bone. "One," he counted. "Where were you to deliver your measure. Two—who receives it. Three—what the measure meant to do next."

The prisoner stared at the water.

Xinying tipped the skin and poured a splash into a shallow bowl. Not enough to drink. Enough to wet his mouth if he could humble himself to ask. She didn’t offer it.

"Which one of you asks and which one of you cuts," the prisoner pushed, trying to find old stories and live inside them.

Yizhen leaned on the table until the grain imprinted his knuckles. "We don’t need stories," he said. "We need to see your handler’s face when he realizes you lived long enough to sell him out and set us on his trail."

That made something ugly flicker in the prisoner’s eyes, but he still kept his mouth shut. Not saying a single word that would help.

There were men who were loyal.

There were men who were afraid.

And there were men who understood that the people who hired them have a policy about failure that looked like a river with rocks in it.

"Shan," he said, and hated himself for saying it. "Warehouse ring south of the kilns. He changes roofs. He changes doors. The sign to know what building he is in is a broken rope coil. There are two coils if the floor is wet with blood."

"Foreign?" Longzi pressed.

"Paid by foreign coin, but he eats here, and speaks like he learned the language from a woman he didn’t deserve."

"Western," Yizhen translated, bored and pleased all at once. "Desert edges. Salt and lies. Not too far from the mountains."

"The name of the paying hand," Mingyu asked, almost polite. "Not the mouth that carries it. The hand."

The prisoner’s teeth bared in something that wanted to be a grin and was not. "You think I see hands at that level."

"Yes," Xinying said. "I think you get careless next to people you believe you can betray later."

A vein beat at the hinge of his jaw.

He looked at the floor like it might have an answer. He looked at the bowl. He looked at Longzi’s boots and decided he did not want to die with the soldier’s attention on him.

He looked at Yizhen’s hands and decided those hands could teach a man what fear does when it runs out of directions.

He looked at Xinying and decided two things at once.

The second thing won.

"Fei," he muttered. "Fei of the Western Road. Calls himself Factor when he’s being funny. Works out of the caravanserai at Seven Stones when he’s not pretending to be praying at the River Shrine. He had someone here. A—" he groped for the word "—patron. I never saw the face."

"Don’t worry. We will," Yaozu offered, from the corner, a harsh smile on his face. It promised pain and enjoyment.

Deming set wax near the torch and warmed it with the patience of a man who would rather be sanding a hinge.

He made no move to seal anything. He let the smell rise and fill the prisoner’s head with the memory of documents and consequences.

"We want routes," Longzi asked. "How you got in, how you were planning on getting out."

"We got in under the cloth wagons at the south gate the night the snow closed the east," he admitted. "Our exit was to be river, under kiln wall. A woman inside the palace was supposed to get word to the rope boy on the shift. The coin never reached him."

Aunt Ping’s broom landed in Xinying’s mind, neat and satisfying. She looked at Yaozu. He didn’t nod. He didn’t need to.

Mingyu’s fingers tapped the brush to the table again, a soldier’s cadence arranged into a ruler’s. "What did you think you were going to do with her."

The prisoner swallowed.

He hadn’t thought it through. They rarely did. Men like this counted fear instead of consequences. He found a lie and tried to dress it like truth.

"Trade," he croaked. "Send the King of Hell a piece. An ear. A finger. He would give up pieces of his kingdom for the rest."

Yizhen’s smile arrived with no heat at all. "You thought I would pay," he said, amusement edged like ice.

"You’d all pay," the man panted. "For her."