Chapter 18: The Mercy

Bao did not move. He lay on the rust-stained road and stared at the sky. The hilt of Hao Min's old sword was still in his hand. The blade was gone, nothing but red dust on his white robes and in the lines of his palm.

Hao Min stood over him. The disciples at the gate watched. The pilgrims watched. Sao watched from the flat rock where she had hidden during the fight.

"Kill him," someone whispered in the crowd. "He would have killed you."

Hao Min heard the words. He ignored them.

"Get up," he said to Bao.

Bao did not get up. "Finish it."

"No."

"You have won. Take the victory."

"Victory is not a throat." Hao Min crouched beside him. "Look at me, Bao."

Bao turned his head. Blood had dried on his upper lip. His eyes were red.

"Five years ago the Rust Circle took everything from me," Hao Min said. "My rank. My sword. My cultivation. I became what you see. For a long time I wanted the man who did it to pay. Then I wanted the sect to pay. Then I wanted the world to pay."

"So kill me and be done."

"I am done." Hao Min stood. "Killing you will not give me back what I lost. It will only make me into the kind of man the Iron Bone Sect believes I already am."

He pointed toward the temple gate.

"Go there. Register as ordinary. Tell them Hao Min sent you. They will not turn you away. The Ink Sect does not recruit, but it does not refuse people either."

"You want me to join the heretics?"

"I want you to live. It is the only revenge I have left."

Bao stared at him. Then, slowly, he sat up. He looked at the ruined sword hilt in his hand and threw it away. It landed in the orange dirt.

"You are a strange man," Bao said.

"I have been told."

Bao got to his feet. He walked toward the temple gate, unsteady, covered in dust and blood. The disciple with the calm eyes stepped aside and let him pass.

Sao came to Hao Min's side.

"He might come back stronger," she said.

"He might."

"He might lead an army here."

"He might." Hao Min looked at the temple. "But he will not be the same man who rode up that hill. The Rust Circle changes people. Sometimes it rusts their swords. Sometimes it rusts their certainty."

"And which did it rust in you?"

Hao Min thought about it. "Both. Eventually both."

He walked to the flat rock and sat down. His body was beginning to complain about everything he had done. The fever from the Eating Circle had never fully left him. His ribs ached from Bao's first duel. His hands were stained rust-red to the wrists.

Sao sat beside him.

"Are you going in?" she asked.

"No."

"You came all this way."

"I came to see the man who drew the circle. I have seen him." Hao Min looked at the courtyard. Ti Mo was still standing there, brush in hand. "That is enough."

"You could ask him questions."

"He does not answer questions. He draws circles and lets people figure out the rest." Hao Min almost smiled. "I have figured out enough."

The sun set. The temple lanterns were lit one by one. The smell of cooking rice drifted down the hill. Pilgrims wrapped themselves in blankets and talked in low voices about what they had witnessed.

One of the pilgrims approached Hao Min. It was the thin man with the scroll.

"Will there be more fighting?" he asked.

"No."

"Then why do you sit here?"

"Because I am not finished."

The pilgrim nodded as if this made sense. "I will write this down. The rust-eaten man who spared his enemy at the heretic's gate. It is a good story."

"It is not a story. It is just a choice."

"All stories are choices, seen from the outside." The pilgrim bowed and returned to his place.

Sao watched him go. "He will make you famous."

"Famous is a kind of target."

"Then be a moving target."

Hao Min almost smiled. "I intend to."

He watched the gate. Ti Mo did not move. The two of them stood at opposite ends of the courtyard, separated by dust and lamplight, bound by a circle neither of them had asked for.

Sao brought him rice and tea. He ate without tasting it. His mind was still full of the trace, the recognition, the feeling of being read by a man who had written the world.

"What did he feel like?" Sao asked.

"Like a mountain that had decided to notice a pebble."

"Did he seem angry?"

"No. He seemed amused. And tired." Hao Min set down his bowl. "I think he has seen many people copy his circle. I think I am the first one whose copy rusted blood."

"Why blood?"

"Because that is what I have the most of. Anger and blood." Hao Min looked at his stained hands. "I am trying to have less of both."

"You are doing poorly."

"I know. But I am doing. That is the improvement."

Sao laughed quietly. "You are almost wise."

"Almost is the best I can manage."

They slept in shifts. The temple gate stayed open all night. Nothing else came for them.