Akeha took one breath in, let it out. Moved on. “You’re a Tensor, running from the Protectorate. You have something they want. I’m thinking these three goons won’t be the last they send.” He repeated, “Do you want to live or not?”
The man considered this, his brows knitted. His complexion was glazed with blood loss, and there was a telltale tremble to his limbs, an uncontrollable spasm of the fingers.
This time, when Akeha held out his hand, the young man took it.
*
His name was Yongcheow, and he had recently come from Chengbee. He didn’t offer more, and Akeha didn’t ask. The blood loss left him leaning his weight on Akeha. Something was wrong with one of his ankles.
The moon illuminated the streets of packed dirt before them, sides clotted with debris. The ghost quarters of Jixiang had been optimistically carved out of a hillside, then abandoned when they became too heavy a load to bear. The lights of the city proper glowed below them.
As they navigated toward the living streets of the city, Yongcheow said, “You never told me your name.”
Akeha’s vault of false names was large and easily opened. It waited. He hesitated; an abyssal heartbeat passed. “It’s Akeha.”
“So I was right then. You are Sanao Akeha. The Protector’s fugitive son.”
Akeha didn’t answer.
“Why did you save me?” Yongcheow asked.
“You looked like you were in trouble.”
“I was. But you didn’t have to step in. You don’t know me, and I presume you weren’t lying about not being sent by the Machinists.”
Akeha frowned. He knew of the Machinists; he wanted nothing to do with them or their tendrils of rebellion. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“I do. It’s how I get into trouble.”
They walked farther in silence. Yongcheow’s steps had started to falter, each one heavier and slower. Akeha tightened his grip around the man’s slender waist. “Keep walking,” he said. On one hand, he was already braced to end the night burying another body. On the other, he really did not want to.
“You shouldn’t have killed those men,” Yongcheow said, breath clouding the air. His tone was gentle, not accusatory. It could have been from the blood loss.
“Would you have preferred I let them kill you?”
“Killing them wasn’t the only solution.”
“It was the least messy one.” And he did not like to be reminded of it, even if it kept the young man conscious and talking. “Sympathy for them is how you got into trouble.”
“You shouldn’t have killed them,” Yongcheow repeated, more softly.
Akeha did not respond.
As they started down the incline that would bring them into the parts of Jixiang that still lived, Yongcheow said, “Wait. Let’s go down that alley, please.”
The alley ended in a small grove of mountain dogwood, their short trunks twisted into ugly shapes. Yongcheow pulled away and stumbled magnetically toward one. Akeha followed closely, poised to catch him if something happened.
Gasping from the effort to stay focused, Yongcheow unstitched the bark of the tree where slackcraft had fused it over a hollow in the trunk. Concealed within was a cloth bundle. Unwrapped on the ground, it revealed several scrolls, a group of smaller bundles, and wooden treasure boxes. One of the boxes contained packets of powders and elixir drops. Yongcheow counted out a few of the latter and swallowed them.
Akeha studied the contents of the bundle. “Is this what they were looking for?”
Yongcheow nodded.
“And these.” Akeha pushed at the nestling scrolls. “The Machinists’ secrets?”
The man pressed a clumsy, urgent finger to Akeha’s lips, as if he hadn’t been on the constant lookout for soldiers following them. He flinched away in annoyance.
Still, in a burst of unearned trust, Yongcheow allowed Akeha to take custody of the cloth bundle. “My wounds are worse than I thought—” he began.
Akeha stopped him from finishing that thought. “I will help. But not here.” He pulled Yongcheow to his feet. “Come. We’ve delayed enough.”
Yongcheow swayed. “You’re a good person,” he said through soft lips, as Akeha held him firm.
Akeha looped an arm around him. “You’ll regret saying that.”
Chapter Thirteen
YONGCHEOW STAYED ON BOTH feet all the way to the eastern side of Jixiang, where the Flower Inn waited. The decorated yellow lanterns of the perfumed quarter lit the elbow-jostling street, where the passage of a bloodied man supported by another drew stares, but little comment.
Akeha wrestled his companion to the entrance of the inn, where they were met by the bulk of Ang, the inn’s doorkeeper. He looked the two over, arms crossed, and warned, “No trouble.”
“No trouble,” Akeha replied.
Akeha was a regular at the Flower Inn, and Ang had known him for years. He grunted and stepped aside.
“Send someone up with water,” Akeha said. “Two pails.”
Ang nodded.
Yongcheow barely made it up two flights of stairs and down the wooden corridor to Akeha’s room. Akeha released him onto the bed, where he remained seated, breathing very slowly. His clothes were heavy and stiff with drying blood. “Get undressed,” Akeha said. He sought out his medicine cabinet.
“Wait,” Yongcheow said. Akeha turned back, frowning. The other man pushed his hands against the hard surface of the bed to stay upright. “There’s something . . . you need to know.”
“What?”
“My confirmation, I didn’t . . . I didn’t get confirmed.” As Akeha’s frown deepened, he said, “I mean, I got confirmed, but I didn’t go to the doctors. Some—”
“I don’t care,” Akeha said.
He turned away: there was work to do. Cloths for bandages, herbs and powders for salves, bowls to mix them with. Akeha’s skill with forest-nature was self-taught and lacked the finesse to reknit a gash this deep. Needle and thread would help.
Broad-shouldered Amah was the one who brought the pails up. She glanced over at Yongcheow, his tunic off, compression bandages off, exposing a blood-thickened knife wound across the rib cage, and clucked. “Getting in trouble again?”
Akeha thanked her for the water.
“There’s still soup left over from dinner,” she said. “Do you want?”
He nodded. “Bring us two bowls later.”
The wound had to be cleaned, disinfected, pulled shut. Yongcheow leaned back, breath whistling through his teeth, as Akeha worked.
“So what is it you do?” he asked. “When you’re not rescuing people in need.”
Akeha threaded needle through flesh. “I’m a deliveryman.”
“You’re very good at killing people, for a deliveryman.”
Akeha said nothing. The work before him required focus.
“So what do you deliver? And for whom?”
“Anything. Anyone. I don’t ask. I don’t look. I do the job. It makes everything simpler.”
“Anyone?”
“No Protectorate. That’s my only rule.”
Yongcheow laughed, and Akeha halted as the man’s side shook, the torn edges of the wound shifting. “You’re a smuggler.”