The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis Chapter 281: Just Say Yes

Behind Yizhen, Gaoyu had four n trussed like bundles on poles.

One had the bad idea of finding his feet. He t Shadow’s teeth without blood, just a noise that told the body to rember whose road this was. He rembered. He sat back down on his own bones.

"You left them alive?" I asked, cocking my head as I looked past Lin Wei’s shoulder.

"Only enough to write a na," Gaoyu shrugged, his eyes briefly looking over to Mingyu who had said silent until now. "If they’re slow about the ink, we’ll loosen their hands."

"No." The word was flat as Mingyu looked at the n. "Hands are for work. Tongues can do the writing. That way they aren’t dumb enough to go too greedy with knives." His tone was completely cold, and I knew that I wasn’t the only one dancing on a thin line of sanity.

Gaoyu grunted assent and kicked frost off his boot heel in a little circle that ant he was bored with rcy but would wear it for .

I looked back to Yizhen.

Up close, I could sll the road on him. The mud, the old clay, the sour edge of a bell rope, the faint kitchen-sweet that doesn’t belong under open sky. It was clear that he had not taken the ti to wash up.

He had not slept.

He had not given my son to anyone else’s arms even once.

"Gray Bridge," he said before I asked. "Bell hut. Monk’s robe as paper. Brand under it in uglier handwriting."

"Who?"

"Soone who thinks ’Baiguang’ is a country and not a direction. We’ll have the line between their teeth by evening."

"By afternoon," I corrected. "I don’t give the evening to n who use a coffin to move a child."

He inclined his head a finger’s width. Not agreent. Not disagreent. An acknowledgent that the knife’s edge had moved and he would stand where it was sharpest.

Lin Wei’s fingers spasd at the sound of a spear butt striking stone behind us.

I didn’t look to see which idiot had forgotten how to hold his weapon without noise. I put my other hand around the boy, under Yizhen’s arm, not to take him—he wouldn’t let go and I wouldn’t force him to.

It hit hard that my son was clinging to soone else for safety, but at the sa ti, I wouldn’t take that away from him.

"Let’s go back to the palace," I suggested softly. "No trumpets. No crowds. One corridor. One brazier. One bed."

"Where," Yaozu asked, already three steps into the order.

"My rooms," I said. "The east chamber. It’s warst."

Lin Wei made a small sound then.

It wasn’t a word so much as the kind of sound a wolf pup makes when it is scared. I smoothed his hair again and let my voice steady him the way his breath had steadied for .

"You are ho," I told him without softness. "You are ho, Wei. I can say it twice, or I can spend my ti taking heads so that you feel safer. It’s your choice."

His fingers tightened until I thought the silk on Yizhen’s robes would tear.

He didn’t cry. He simply nodded once, the way n do when they are too young to be n and have already been asked to be.

Yizhen’s eyes t mine over the top of the boy’s head. He didn’t offer the child. He didn’t keep him away.

He waited.

"He won’t let go," he said, and there was nothing in the words but the words.

"Then you’ll stay with us until he either let’s go or you have to go ho yourself," I answered. I didn’t lower my voice. This city gossips best when you whisper. I wanted the walls to hear clean.

A tiny thing flickered through his face—relief or acceptance or the finality of a choice made three roads ago when he bent to pick up more than he had intended.

It went as quickly as a shadow past a window.

"Boil water," I added, though he’d already said it to Gaoyu on the path. "The boy is cold."

Yaozu shifted his weight. "And the prisoners?"

"We’ll keep them," I said, letting the smirk on my face loose. "But we aren’t sending them to jail."

I looked at Gaoyu. "How about the south storehouse? I want them close enough to hear what happens when I’m finished with the nas and far enough that Wei doesn’t have to hear them make sounds they’ll regret."

Gaoyu’s mouth tilted in approval. "A better order. I approve."

I stepped to the side so Yizhen could pass through the gate without turning his shoulder.

n stepped back because they wanted to keep their fingers. Shadow rose and fell into place like dark water.

A woman in a straw cape carrying dried greens on a pole put her head down and tried to beco the ground. When we reached her, she lifted her chin and looked at my son.

Her mouth opened and closed. She bowed to his small back and then walked on. I didn’t stop her. Small decent gestures are cheaper than silver and worth more.

We crossed the threshold.

The iron bar that held the gate from falling too quickly was up; the wood slled like winter. The guard captain swallowed whatever speech he’d built while we were still a rumor and went to run it off in a different direction.

"Yaozu," I said without looking, "the n who sold a road to strangers will have a wife who suddenly buys new shoes or a mother who eats at twice in a week. Go into the markets. Find the shoes. Count teeth."

"Teeth?"

"at leaves a different truth in the mouth," I said. "You know that."

"I do," he said, and his voice was a smile he didn’t put on his face.

The east corridor was already warr.

Soone had lit the braziers without waiting to be told a second ti.

Good.

Linen went past us, white and clean over a girl’s arms. A boy with a basin nearly ran. He didn’t spill. I made a note to have him fed first at the kitchens for a week. Small rewards breed better habits than whips.

At the inner turn, a young physician knelt with a lacquer box. He had the careful hands of soone who’d never seen a winter road. He opened his mouth to list his credentials.

"Close it," I said. "You’ll wash. You’ll cut the paste out when I tell you and not before. If he sleeps, you’ll do nothing. If he eats, you’ll do nothing. If he screams, you’ll do nothing unless I move my hand like this." I flexed my fingers once. "Say ’yes, Your—’" I stopped because I had almost given him a title I wasn’t wearing. "Say ’yes.’"

"Yes," he said, and his throat bobbed like a frog’s in spring.