Chapter 19: Checkmate
We found the bodies two hours from Hekou.
Three of them. Sprawled across the road where it narrowed between two stands of birch, positioned as if they’d been walking east when something stopped them permanently. Qinghe uniforms.
The cross-hatched boot soles Gao Ren had identified at the burned village. One still had his hand on his sword. He’d drawn it halfway before whatever killed him finished the job.
Gao Ren crouched beside the nearest body and studied the wound. A single cut. Diagonal, from the left shoulder to the right hip, clean through leather armor and the ribs underneath.
“This wasn’t a fight,” Gao Ren said. “This was butchering.”
I made myself look. The blood was dark, hours old, already drawing flies in the afternoon heat. The second body had been killed the same way. One cut. The third had a puncture wound through the throat, precise enough to sever everything that mattered without disturbing the vertebrae.
Three men. Three strikes. Three kills without a single mark of resistance.
I thought about Commander Xu on her horse. The plain sword on her back. The way she’d dismounted and landed softly, her boots barely disturbing the dust.
No scars on her face.