Servants Play

1

The waystation smelled of charred wood, copper, and the unmistakable, metallic rot of Ghost Valley qi.

​Zhou Zishu stepped over the threshold, his boots making no sound against the ash-covered floorboards.

The Emperor had sent him south because this was not a standard raid. The ghosts had broken the ancient treaty, tearing through three towns in as many days. They were not pillaging; they were searching. And they were tearing the countryside apart to find their target. This of course, could not stand. As such he was sent to figure out what, or who, they were looking for and being it back to the palace.

Zishu's cold, assessing gaze swept the ruined courtyard. It was empty of life, save for one corner where the shadows seemed to tremble.

​His hand rested lightly on the hilt of his flexible blade as he approached the collapsed shrine. Huddled in the darkest recess, half-buried under a scorched piece of tapestry, was a man.

​He was entirely the wrong sort of person to be in a place like this. He had sharp features, a delicate constitution, and was paler than a mother's milk.

He was also shivering violently, his arms wrapped around his own chest, taking shallow, ragged breaths. His clothes were a bright pink, maple leaves embroidered throughout.

He was either rich, or had an obscene amount of time in his hands. Neither of which fit the town Zishu had come from.

"Look at me," Zishu commanded. His voice was not unkind, but it carried the absolute, chilling authority of a man used to being obeyed.

​The survivor flinched, hard. He slowly raised his head, but, Zishu noted, did not look him in the eyes. They seemed to settle at his shoulders but it was enough, and Zishu's eyes instantly went to work, cataloging the damage.

The ghosts favored crude butchers' blades and serrated claws. They left their victims in pieces. But the injuries on this man told an entirely different, deeply unsettling story. The silk of his inner robes was torn, revealing stark, dark bruising in the distinct shape of large fingerprints clamped violently around his biceps. When the man swallowed, he winced, and the shifting collar exposed a mottled ring of purple and black encircling his throat.

​Strangulation and restraint, Zishu noted, his eyes narrowing. Not a fight. A subjugation. "Who did this?" Zishu asked, crouching down to be at eye level. "Which faction of the Valley?" The man's breath hitched but he didn't speak.

"Did you see a weapon? A mask? Was it the Lustful Ghost's division?"

"I cannot say..." His voice was a ruined, agonizing scrape of sound, undoubtedly from the hands that had been wrapped around his windpipe. "It was so dark. There was so much smoke, I couldn't see their faces, they just came out of nowhere—"

​He was spiraling, flooding the air with a breathless, endless stream of sensory details. Zishu watched him impartially. To an ordinary guard, this looked like a standard, pathetic panic attack from a soft civilian who had gotten unlucky with a sadistic grunt.

Zhou Zishu was the Emperor's chief interrogator. He knew how the human mind broke under terror. Victims stuttered. They went mute. They fixated on the glint of a blade or the color of a boot.

​They did not recite a perfectly fluid, unbroken monologue of vague horrors that entirely bypassed every tactical question asked.

​He's managing me, Zishu realized, a sudden spark of genuine irritation flaring beneath his ribs. The terror in the man's eyes was absolutely real—his hands were shaking too hard to be faked, and the pain in his chest was obvious. But the words themselves were a meticulously constructed smokescreen.