Chapter 56: The Second Cohort
I petitioned Fei Liao to delay the execution.
I wrote the petition at the second notch and walked it across the yard before drills.
The reasoning I gave was direct.
I suspected that there were more Qinghe soldiers hiding in plain sight inside the Pei clan, and the rolls did not show them, because I had been the hand that did not written them down upon the clan's arrival. What their motives were after all this time, I could not hazard to guess, or perhaps they saw their position advantageous in order to gain more information and feed it back to Qinghe. Again, I could not yet deduce the methods in which they could send information.
Regardless, I would sniff them out.
Shan Pei had shown me the southern hill technique for scent-reading clan kinship, and I had been working the principle in my own draws for quite some time now until I could replicate it. I would teach it to the four students as part of their early channel work. The exercise would double as an intelligence sweep of the Pei clan, run as cultivation practice, with the cohort none the wiser. Whatever defectors remained inside the clan would be marked by scent before the month was out. The blade would fall on Pei Yan only after every soldier she had brought through the gate had been named.
Fei Liao read the petition at the table. He took up his brush and wrote his answer on the back of the same paper and slid it across to me.
Granted. The condemned will be held until you, the Squad Captain, name the day. Your reasoning is sound. The Commander will be informed by the next courier. Fei Liao.I folded the paper and put it in my belt.