The time remaining had gone the way prep weeks tended to go when there was nothing left to fight about. Lin Zhen had picked the plan. Mira had told Xuan it was a good plan. There was nothing to do but execute it.

The final shape of the operation: eight people. Lin Zhen himself, Xuan, Wei Tianming, and five core disciples handpicked from the inner court. Against an estimated fifty defenders inside the mine — Han Ying at the top, two more guards brushing the lower edge of Foundation without crossing into it, senior patrollers with suppressed signatures, two watchmen per tower across three towers, the tunnel-mouth guards, the perimeter patrols, the overseers in the galleries, and a long tail of low-cultivation miners who could pick up a tool but would not last a real exchange.

The plan was tight enough that Mira had not tried to improve it. Eliminate the tower guards first, in three coordinated cuts across the perimeter. Take out the outer patrols next, two teams of two. Once the wall was theirs, slip inside and start working through the mine from the top down. One man stays outside watching the western road in case Blood Fang sends reinforcements. Elder Ren would push his own column up to the mine within forty-eight hours of the all-clear, to harden the defences, set new patrols, and make sure this time the silver kept moving in the right direction.

Han Ying was the piece Xuan was not going to discuss with anyone. The centipede had been quiet inside his skull for two weeks. The elder had eaten, drunk, written reports, scolded a patroller for a sloppy rotation, and slept the sleep of a man who had no reason to look at his own life from the outside.

Xuan was sitting in the middle of his room, legs folded, the window cracked enough for the night air to come through. The moon was high. Its light slipped past the sill in a long pale strip across the floorboards and laid itself across his shoulder and the cross of his folded hands. Marrow Dragon rested against the cushion beside him, sheathed, the weight of her familiar to him now after two weeks of drills.

[ Tomorrow is the day. ]

’Tomorrow we get one of them back. From there we see. If the first goes the way the maps say it should, the second mine becomes worth thinking about. We do not have to walk on it tomorrow. But we should not pretend it is off the table either.’

[ Han Ying may know things about the second mine. If he does, we will hear them inside his head before we hear them anywhere else. We should not write the option off. ]

’What do you think of the plan?’

[ It is a good plan. I am also glad we are not walking eighty disciples out of this valley. Anything can happen in the sect while we are gone, and anything can happen outside it. Elder Ren stays. Two of the other elders stay with him. Your mothers are inside the walls. The household will hold the time we are out. ]

He let her words rest on him. The moon had moved a finger’s-width across the boards while she had been talking. He had not noticed.

He opened his eyes for the first time in the conversation and looked out at the moon through the cracked window.

’I wonder if Lin Kai is going to walk out of his room tomorrow.’

[ That is on him now. You went to his door. You said what you went to say. The rest is in his hands. ]

’It is.’ He breathed out slow. ’Tomorrow we will know. I should sleep before we move.’

[ Sleep. ]

He uncrossed his legs, slid Marrow Dragon up onto the rack beside the bed where she had lived since the reforge, and lay down on his back. The moon kept its strip of pale across the floor and did its work without him watching.

Morning came in grey.

He was at the main gate of Skyedge an hour after dawn with Marrow Dragon at his hip, a travel pack he had not needed to put together because Lian had packed it for him the night before, and a face that had slept enough but not all the way through.

His father was already there.

Lin Zhen wore the heavy travel cloak he had not put on in over two years, his weapon across his back the way the old portraits in the inner pavilion showed him carrying it before the leg had gone bad. He stood square on the flagstones in front of the gate the way a man stood who was not going to bring the leg up as a topic this morning unless someone forced him to. Nobody was going to force him.

The five core disciples assembled in two files behind him. They were the best the inner court had left after the losses of the past two years — three men, two women, all of them at the top of Qi Refining, all of them long past the age where they would flinch at being looked at by a patriarch in travelling cloak. Their weapons were oiled. Their faces showed the practiced calm of cultivators who had run operations before.

Wei Tianming stood at Xuan’s left shoulder.

He was a step too far forward for his rank in the formation, and he was not going to step back because Xuan had not told him to. Inner disciple in a column of core disciples. The gap between the two ranks was wider than the word one made it sound. The core lines had years of methodical work and sect resources behind them. Wei had two months and Xuan’s name.

He was holding his shoulders the way a man held them when he did not want anyone to know they were tight.

Xuan let him stand where he was.

Lin Zhen turned his head a fraction toward his son.

"What are we waiting for, Xuan?"

Xuan kept his eyes on the gate of the sect, where the long stone path ran down toward the lower compound.

"I am waiting on someone. You could say."

His father did not answer. He did not need to. He had heard the word Xuan had chosen and the one he had not, and he was going to let the next thirty seconds tell him which his son had meant.

Footsteps came up the path.