Chapter 16: The Nameless Hills

The temple appeared on the highest hill like a scab on green skin. It was old, half-rebuilt, and surrounded by circles that Hao Min could feel rather than see. The air around it tasted of ink and rain.

Pilgrims crowded the road leading up to the gate. Some carried scrolls. Some carried empty hands. All of them looked like people who had nowhere else to be. A few had the blank-eyed calm of the desperate. Others had the bright hope of converts. A woman in torn clothes clutched a blank book to her chest and wept as she walked.

Hao Min stopped at the bottom of the hill.

"I will not go in," he said.

"Why not?" Sao asked.

"Because I am not a pilgrim. I am a soldier. Soldiers do well at thresholds."

He found a flat rock near the road and sat down. From there he could see the temple gate. He could see disciples moving in the courtyard. He could see a man in black robes sitting with his back to the wall, apparently asleep.

Hao Min's chest tightened.

He had seen that figure before, five years ago, from much farther away. A man in black robes who had drawn a circle in the dirt and changed the world. Hao Min had not seen his face then. The distance and the dust and the terror had made everything a blur.

Now he could see him clearly.

Ti Mo looked tired. His hair was darker blond with white at the temples. His eyes were closed. His brush rested on his knee. He looked like a foreign scribe who had decided to rest in the sun.

Around him, other disciples moved with the speed and balance of people who still had qi. One young man crossed the courtyard in three strides that should have taken six. A woman carrying a stack of scrolls leaped lightly over a stone that Hao Min would have had to walk around. They were cultivators, some of them, but they moved like servants. The Ink Sect did not wear its power on its sleeve.

"That is him?" Sao whispered.

"Yes."

"He does not look like a heretic."

"He does not look like anything." Hao Min watched the man breathe. "That is the frightening part."

They waited. The sun crossed the sky. Pilgrims came and went. A disciple brought Ti Mo tea. He drank it without opening his eyes fully. Another disciple tried to show him a scroll. He waved it away.

"What are we waiting for?" Sao asked.

"Bao."

A pilgrim nearby overheard the name. He was a thin man with a scroll under his arm. "The Iron Bone Sect?" he asked.

"Do not concern yourself," Hao Min said.

"They are enemies of the Ink Sect. That concerns all of us." The pilgrim looked toward the temple. "Will they attack the temple?"

"No. They will attack me. The temple is incidental."

"That is not reassuring."

"It was not meant to be." Hao Min looked at the man. "If you are afraid, go inside. The gate is open."

The pilgrim hesitated, then shook his head. "I came to see stories become real. A fight at the founder's gate is a story. I will stay."

"You may regret it."

"I have regretted many things. Missing a story is worse than any of them."

Sao watched the pilgrim move to a safer distance. "These people are strange."

"They are readers. They collect moments. It is not so different from what you do with coins."

"I steal coins. I do not worship them."

"That makes you more honest than most pilgrims."

Sao snorted. "You are strange too."

"I know."

The afternoon wore on. More pilgrims gathered, sensing that something was about to happen. Some left. More arrived. The hill became a theater with an empty stage.

Hao Min used the time to prepare his circle. He drew it in the dirt around the flat rock, then erased it and drew it again. Each iteration was faster and cleaner. Sao watched without comment.

"You are nervous," she said finally.

"No."

"You keep redrawing the same circle. That is what nervous people do."

"It is what prepared people do." Hao Min did not look up. "Nervous people fidget. Prepared people practice."

"You are doing both."

Hao Min stopped. He looked at his hands. They were steady, but she was right. There was a tightness in his shoulders that had not been there before.

"Bao has fourteen men," Hao Min said. "I have one circle and a thief. The odds are not in my favor."

"They were not in your favor at the second duel either."

"No. But then I only had to defeat one man. Today I must defeat an idea."

"What idea?"

"That the Iron Bone Sect can erase what happened at the Nameless Hills." Hao Min drew the circle one last time. "They cannot. I am the proof."

Sao nodded. "Then let us make sure the proof survives."

"That would be preferable."

She went still. "Bao is coming here?"

"Tao said the Iron Bone Sect sent eight riders. Bao would not send riders without following. He needs to see me fall with his own eyes." Hao Min looked at the road behind them. "He will be here by dusk. With more men. Maybe a dozen. Maybe two."

"And you will fight them at the temple gate?"

"No. I will let them come to me. And I will show them what the Rust Circle really does."

He spent the afternoon preparing. The dirt around the flat rock was soft and rich with rust from the road. Hao Min drew circles within circles, practicing the largest Wide Circle he had ever attempted.

Sao helped by collecting rust flakes from every orange stone nearby. She mixed them with water from her flask until the paste was thick as porridge.

"This is the biggest one yet," she said.

"It needs to be. I do not know how many will come."

"And if it is not enough?"

Hao Min looked up at the temple. Ti Mo had not moved. Probably still resting, brush on his knee, while the world arranged itself around him.

Hao Min thought of the siege. Not with fear this time. With understanding. The man who had drawn the circle that broke him was just a tired foreigner sitting against a wall. The power that had erased Hao Min's life came from someone who looked like he would rather be resting than fighting.

That was the most terrifying thing Hao Min had learned. Power did not look powerful. It looked ordinary. It looked like permission to let the world change.

"Then I die at the feet of the man who broke me," Hao Min said. "There are worse endings."

Sao snorted. "You are strange."

"You have said that before."

"It remains true."

The sun touched the western hills. Hao Min felt the warmth in his chest grow sharper. He stood and faced the road.

Dust rose in the distance. Horses. Many of them.

Bao had arrived.