The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis

Chapter 391: The Reincarnation of Li Xuejian (Part 3)

A minister with too much backbone for his own safety lifted his chin. "Highness... this is fear.""Yes," Li Xuejian said, pleased to find the truth on someone else’s tongue for once. "It’s the useful kind. It remembers the cost of pride. It buys time."

"Time for what?" another asked before wisdom could throttle him.

"For us to live," Li Xuejian said. "Preferably long enough for you to retire without seeing your grandchildren die on a hill that did not need a dead boy to make it important."

The old general who had taught him to sit a horse when he was five and to take a beating when he was seven coughed into his fist to hide a smile. "Orders taken," he said. "We’ll move before dawn."

Li Xuejian nodded. "Good. Take the long road so the spies have time to count. I want the rumor laid before the sun."

The young captain who asked too many questions opened his mouth once more. Li Xuejian stared him into the mercy of silence.

They bowed by rank. They left by rank. The door closed on the last pair of boots and the map looked stupid again under the lamplight, as if paper could be persuaded to lie for him.

He went to the window.

Baiguang lay silvered and quiet, roofs laid like scales, streets cut like veins, the river a black line with frost at the edges.

The palace yards had been swept to stone an hour ago; the sweepers’ tracks had filled; the snow fell the way it always fell—indifferent, competent, diligent.

Somewhere at the outer gate, a woman cursed him in a voice that would never matter again.

Somewhere in the mountains, a girl he had never met laughed in a kitchen and didn’t know that each breath she took would end worlds.

He put his forehead against the cold pane and let it bite him back to the calm he wore like armor. He watched his breath fog and clear, fog and clear. He counted the beats between.

Behind him, the door opened without a knock. Only one man had earned that. General Lu, scar down the left cheek, eyes like river stones, loyalty like a good boot—boring and exactly what you needed.

"You didn’t ask who will betray you," Lu said mildly.

"I already know," Li Xuejian said. He did. Different face this time. Same habit of smiling while he counted your steps to the cliff.

Lu grunted. "And the girl?"

"She will not come to Baiguang," he said. "Not first. Not if I make sure her path stays full of other enemies to love and kill."

"You sound like you believe in ghosts," Lu said.

"I do," Li Xuejian said. "I woke with one’s hand on mine."

Lu did not ask. Good man. "The envoys?"

"Choose two who can lose a fight without avenging their pride. We are going to offer peace, not prove we can still draw a blade."

Lu’s mouth did something that might have been a smile in a kinder life. "We have three or four of those. I’ll wake them gently."

"Wake them like a fire," Li Xuejian said. "I want them halfway to the river before the King hears I opened a door without asking."

"And when His Majesty calls you weak before the court tomorrow?" Lu asked.

Li Xuejian didn’t look away from the snow. "I will agree with him and then do exactly as I please."

"Good plan," Lu said, approving. "I like plans that don’t break when someone shouts."

"Go," Li Xuejian said, and Lu went.

He pulled the treaty language toward him and wrote without ornament. Plain words. Hard promises. No poetry.

He addressed one letter to Zhu Mingyu by name and left all titles off on purpose. He sealed it with wax that would make his mother scold him for the mess if she saw it. He sealed a second copy because paper burns and men forget.

When the envoys came, their hair still wet from snow, faces open enough to persuade him they might survive their task, he handed them the letters and the phrases they could repeat without giving more than they had to.

He told them which roads not to take, which inns not to sleep in, which hands not to shake for fear of rings with poison in the cuts. He told them to bow low enough to make pride blink. He told them to lie about the weather if they must.

He watched them tuck the letters into their coats like heat. He watched them go.

The door closed again. The brazier sighed. The candle beside his hand burned down to the collar in a slow collapse that always, always looked like a small surrender.

He took a fresh sheet and wrote three lines none of them would ever see: I am not afraid of you. I am afraid of what wanting you will do to nations that do not deserve to be broken. So I will keep you busy elsewhere. Forgive me for using your hunger against you.

He did not sign it. He burned it and watched the ash climb, fall, settle. He rubbed it between his fingers until it was nothing.

Outside, the snow thickened.

Somewhere beyond the river, two riders turned their horses’ heads toward Daiyu and the future.

Somewhere behind the inner walls, the King and Queen slept the sleep of people who could not imagine consequence. Somewhere far north and west, the mountain night held its breath around a single house and did not ask why.

Li Xuejian blew out the last candle with a single even breath and did not wait to see if the room missed it.

He walked back into the corridor’s cold with his coat open and his pulse even and the exact number of days between this night and the day a witch would be dragged from her life counted in his head like a prayer.

He had a year.

And he needed every moment before the Witch awoke and hell reigned across the land.