Yerin raised one finger. “I said I’d shepherd you on the path out, and I will. Once we’re free and clear. But I’m not popping the lid off this barrel yet.”
While he searched for words, she patted him on the shoulder.
“If it eases you any, I’m starting to trust you,” she said. “A little.”
Nervously, Lindon had thrown together an appropriate story to explain why he was hobbling in to the school in the early morning with a battered sister disciple, but no one asked for an explanation. One man cursed at the Unsouled for getting in his way, a few passersby expressed sympathy, and a girl reassured them kindly that the Sword Disciple would “see heaven’s punishment come soon.”
No one questioned them further than that. These days, coming home wounded was more common than not.
When Lindon reached his room, he knew he couldn’t stay long, but he was overwhelmed with the desire to simply collapse on the floor. “When Elder Whitehall comes back, this is the first place he’ll check,” Lindon said. His jaw had begun to ache again, and every word sent itchy needles dancing inside his face. “We should be gone before that happens, if that’s agreeable to you. I have an idea where…”
He trailed off as Yerin stumbled past him, clumsily tugging off one shoe as she made her way toward his bed. “We’re not drawing swords in this state,” she said. “We’ll die. Need rest.”
Halfway through taking off the second shoe, she slumped face-first onto the bed. In seconds, she was snoring.
At first, Lindon wondered how she could possibly sleep with the threat of death hanging over them. And she had taken his bed. He slipped off his pack, leaving it next to the door, and reached for her shoe. He had intended to pull it off and put it next to the other, but that was the last thing he remembered.
When he came to, Samara’s ring was in the sky again, and his neck ached from a night spent in an impossible position. He had collapsed on his side, his head jammed up against the side of his bed, Yerin’s fingers dangling in his face.
For a few seconds, he tried to remember how they had gotten here. He recognized Yerin from Suriel’s vision, but the events of the previous day were a blurry haze in his mind.
When the fog cleared and he recalled where he was, fear shot him bolt upright. He had aided an enemy of the Heaven’s Glory School. He’d fought an elder, killed an Iron disciple. Even the Patriarch of the Wei clan would have to pay with his life for such an offense, and here Lindon was sleeping in his room as though nothing had happened. He needed to move. He’d staggered to his feet before he stopped again.
Move where?
He couldn’t leave the valley without Yerin, and he couldn’t go home. His clan would turn him over to Heaven’s Glory for a bent halfsilver chip.
He calmed himself, gathering his thoughts, taking a long look at his situation. Given that Heaven’s Glory would hunt him as soon as Whitehall returned, then Lindon had to treat this place like enemy territory. He and Yerin had stayed here too long already.
But she had her own conditions, and may she rot in the Netherworld for them. She wouldn’t leave the valley until she got what she wanted, and he couldn’t leave without her. He needed her guidance to escape Sacred Valley, and her strength to survive whatever waited outside. Even a Heaven’s Glory elder had been crippled with only a few hours outside of the school’s territory, so an Unsouled would be lucky to last ten seconds. He needed her.
She lay on his bed, her stolen white robes bulky, the blood-red rope tied at her waist looking tight and uncomfortable. She was defenseless, scars all over her skin, some of them fresh.
Though it burned him, he put away thoughts of abandoning her or tricking her into guiding him out. She cared enough about her master’s legacy to stay on the mountain with an entire school hunting her; nothing he could say would change her mind. He wasn’t happy about it, but he could respect resolve like that.
Lindon slid the door open a crack, peeking out. Samara’s ring lit empty gardens and iced rainstone buildings. No one watched his door, at least as far as he could tell.
Whitehall must not have made it back yet, or else he hadn’t spread the word about Lindon. So Lindon still had time to use his identity as a Heaven’s Glory disciple. At the least, he should be able to find out where the Sword Sage’s body was.
He reached for his pack.
“Where you going?” Yerin asked. Her voice was vague and bleary, as though she hadn’t bothered to wake up before speaking.
Lindon glanced back. She was adjusting her sword-belt, moving the hilt around from where it had been poking her in the ribs. “Give me two seconds, and I’ll find out where they’re keeping your master. Until Whitehall comes back, I’m still a disciple.”
He looked like he’d just returned from a fight on behalf of the school—his white disciple’s clothes were stained with blood and dirt, he was scraped and bruised from his head down to the soles of his feet, and his spirit had only just started to recover. The elder should believe any story he spun, if they swallowed the idea that someone at the Foundation level had been allowed to fight the Sword Disciple.
She squinted at him, rubbing the side of her head with one hand. “Don’t bother yourself. I know where he is.”
Lindon froze in his doorway, his frustration returning. “Then why are we here? Let’s pick up your master and leave.”
“Need to harvest his Remnant,” she said, stretching. “I was aiming to steal the gear from the school, but they kept me too busy. This is two steps closer than I ever got before.”
Lindon stared at her. Harvest his Remnant.
“Are you a Gold?” Everyone knew the final step into Gold was harvesting a Remnant and binding it to your physical body, which made you more than mortal. That was why Gold was the pinnacle, a qualitative leap beyond Jade.
Of course, according to Suriel, Gold was just the beginning.
“Not yet,” Yerin answered him. “Taking in the Remnant is the difference between what you all call Jade and what you call Gold. It’s like an heirloom, passed from master to disciple.”
A brief stricken look passed across Yerin’s face, and Lindon reminded himself that she had just lost her master. For some, that could be a bond even closer than blood.
Lindon stepped back and let the door close, and she straightened in apparent surprise. “Thought you were leaving.”
“If we know where we’re going, there’s no need. Now, how about a plan. I’m guessing the gear you need is a spirit-seal?”
Yerin’s eyes moved between him and the door. “Well, that’s pleasing. I thought you’d make an excuse to leave, go warn the elders.”
Lindon wrestled down his irritation. She had forced him into helping, and now she still doubted him?
“We’re both traitors. They won’t treat me any better than you.”
“Crack the door, but don’t walk out. Just peek.”
If Lindon had to play more of her games, he might try to strike out on his own after all. “Why?”
She didn’t answer, waiting for him to open the door. With a sigh, he did. The night still reigned.
“No one’s there,” he said.
“Drop a knee,” she responded.
Feeling like a fool, Lindon knelt in his own doorway. Then he saw what had been invisible to him head-on: a flat shimmer in the air, floating at eye height, like a sword hammered out of pure force. His throat caught. Earlier, if he had taken more than a single step out, it would have sheared through his skull.