The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 353: Try Again

"The master expresses his awe," the translator crooned. "He has never seen such a beautiful representation of the phoenix throne close enough to count the feathers."

Yizhen’s lashes made one shadow on his cheekbone. Then he smiled, a very small smile, the kind that made dockside boys change their minds about stabbing someone after dark. The kind that made grown men change their minds about stabbing someone ever.

"I like your translator," he says, pleasantly. "He makes your breath sound sweet. I wonder just how honest he is."

The Jackal gives him an insult for that, a very short, very ugly word.

"The master is humbled by your impression of him," the translator beamed. "And he assures you that everything I say has been approved by him first."

It would be funny if it weren’t stupid.

Xinying moved at last—not forward, not back.

Instead, she turned her head just enough to let her gaze pass over the table, down to the scrap where someone drew their courtyard wrong.

The wrong turn mattered more than the right one. It told you who walked it and who only guessed.

"You came a long way," Yizhen goes on, bored again. "By ship. The soles of your shoes say that you traveled by deck, not saddle."

A little flick in the Jackal’s eyes as he opened his mouth: Look at the clever dog, he can play fetch with his betters.

"The master says yes," came the translation from the other man. "Trade winds have been kind this season. He comes from too far away, beyond the oceans, an entirely different land than what we know."

Longzi’s weight shifted onto the balls of his feet. Yaozu lowered his chin enough to change the angle his shadow casts. Deming looked at the translator’s hands, not his face. He saw calluses that belonged to a pen, yes; but he also saw a faint scar between thumb and index finger... an old rope burn injury.

Men who translate for caravans sometimes pull knots when deals sour. After all, there was no such thing as showing mercy to the messenger.

Mingyu was the quiet span between two stones in a stream. He watched the way Xinying’s lashes rested. He counted the slow, even pulse in her throat. He waited for her next move.

Yizhen stepped sideways so the translator had to turn his head to keep both him and the Jackal in frame. The translator turned obediently. His robe rustled like fabric trying to hide.

"You had a man in our walls," Yizhen observes. "Unfortunately, he didn’t last the night." He tapped the wrong-year temple coin once. "I would hate to think your... Factor... was careless with his bookkeeping."

The Jackals words came fast, dismissive: I have ten more. One more or less doesn’t bother me. Try again. Maybe next time you’ll succeed in your fishing expedition.

"The master says his partners are many," the translator replied warmly. "If one falls, he regrets it, but trade endures."

Xinying breathed in. Breathed out. The Jackal’s eyes cut to her again, curious where her leash was clipped. He tried a joke that wasn’t one: One woman with many men. I wonder who this toy belongs to. Is it really the Emperor?

The translator’s mouth opens on automatic courtesy.

But before he could say anything, Xinying spoke first.

Her voice didn’t rise. It simply changed the way everyone heard it.

"If you aren’t going to translate properly," she said in perfect, clean English that belonged to water cutting stone, "then we have no use for you." She paused for a beat, the length of a falling leaf caught in the air. "And if I have no use for you, there is no reason for you to keep breathing."

The room stopped. The incense forgot to climb. Even the brass studs seemed to listen.

The translator’s pupils went wide. His mouth shut with a click his teeth. He did not bow. He did not breathe. His wrists decide to sweat.

Mingyu’s head turns very slightly toward her, not in surprise, because let’s face it. Nothing that she did anymore really surprised him. But he found himself finally able to breathe, knowing that someone he trusted spoke the language he didn’t understand.

He lifted two fingers at his side; a guard outside became air.

Deming didn’t move at all. Only his eyes shift to the translator’s throat, measuring where words live before they are allowed to become sound.

Longzi’s hand relaxes away from the hilt it wasn’t touching. Everything he needed was in the angle of the Emperor’s fingers and the way Xinying has just moved the board.

Yaozu’s shadow swelled and then thinned. He hated wasting a good tool, but he hated lies more.

The Jackal’s smile slipped like a mask caught on a nail. For the first time he looked directly at Xinying as if seeing a blade through silk.

Yizhen didn’t look away from the Jackal. He didn’t reward the translator with attention. He let his wife finish cutting the cloth the way it needed to be cut.

The translator swallowed. English words left him in a whisper that hoped to pass for wind: "Forgive—"

"Translate the next sentence without touching it," Xinying says in Daiyu. "Or you will never translate anything again."

The Jackal tries for charm now, but it was too late, too quick. English, syrup over knives: Beautiful. Dangerous. Who lets their women speak at tables?

The translator glanced at Xinying’s face, then at Yizhen’s, then at Mingyu’s. The court habit in his bones told him that there were rules about accuracy. The underworld habit told him that there were rules about survival.

This time... He choose wrong.

"The master says he is honoured to hear your voice," he lied, his voice steady out of sheer practice. "He asks your forgiveness for any slight."

"Yaozu," Mingyu said without looking.

Yaozu was already moving. He reached the translator not like a hawk—that would make noise—but like the night. He didn’t break a bone. Instead, he stole the air.

Two fingers to the places where breath chooses whether to stay.

"Try again," Yizhen recommends, almost bored.

The translator coughs, desperate and small. He tried English again, but it came out cracked: "He... said... who lets their women—"

"There," Deming murmurs, not to praise, but to mark truth re-entering the room.

"Translate it," Xinying instructs, still in Daiyu.

The translator obeyed. His voice shaking, but it didn’t distort. "He asked who lets their women speak at tables."