Chapter 59: Last Rites
I sat across from Fei Liao at the garrison building at the first notch, with the lamp between us and the three names written on a slip of paper between the lamp and the edge of the table. Outside the wind was moving through the bare willows along the river, and the cold of the early morning had not yet lifted. Fei Liao had a cup of hot water in his hands which he had not yet drunk, and I had refused the cup he had offered me.
"Pei Cheng first," Fei Liao said.
"The half-Pei?"
"He has the most to lose. Kinship pulls at a man even when he denies it, and a man with something to lose breaks faster than one who does not."
"And if he breaks?"
"Then the other two hear him break, and the room changes. If he does not, we move to Pei Wu."
"The cleanest of the three."
"Cleanest, and hardest to read. But if Wu speaks, he speaks operational. The agents like him are the ones the planners trust with the details."
"Pei Lan last, then."