The first thing they did was search me and my bag. They had me strip to my underclothes, and one especially large guard patted me down. I was bright red the entire time, frozen and terrified. I felt exposed and vulnerable. One of the other guards poured out my belongings on the table and sifted through them. The other three guards just watched. Two of them smoked long, hand-rolled tobacco cigarettes; the air in the room was thick and hazy. The guard searching me finally finished after what felt like an eternity. “He’s clear.”

“His bag is clear, too,” the other guard said. As he said it, I watched him slip all of my ink pens into his pocket. They were not even very good pens.

One of the smokers came forward and pointed first at me and then the table. I pulled my clothes on in frantic, jerking movements and sat down. My heart beat wildly in my chest, and the pulse of blood in my ears made it hard to hear what was said to me. Panicky sweat tickled the back of my neck. The Qin border guard sat across from me. He sat with an unruffled ease, his cigarette sleepily draped in his fingers. He took a draw on it and blew the smoke at me, then gestured at my scattered things. “You can put them away now.” I threw my things haphazardly into my pack. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“To cross the border.”

“No love for our Exalted Emperor?”

My head jerked up. “I…no, of course I…I am grateful for the life he grants me.” The words were a struggle to get out. There was a smattering of rough laughter. The blood drained from my face. I was scared, hopelessly scared. I was scared enough that my fingers went numb and clumsy. “I am here with my mentor, who is traveling to the City of Mages on personal business. I am traveling with him because my training is not yet complete,” I said very fast.

“What kind of personal business?” The guard spoke slowly, and his words ran together in a slight slur. At first I thought he was drunk. When I screwed up the courage to look directly at him, to face the terrible piercing sharpness of his Qin eyes, I saw that the left side of his face was viciously scarred. The scars pulled the corner of his mouth up in a perpetual grisly grin. They made it hard for him to speak clearly. They were desert scars, not battle scars. I ripped my eyes away quickly, partly out of shame for having seen the scars, and partly to keep the gifts at bay. An accidental reading would lead to nothing good for me.

“It’s personal.”

“Yes, you said. What kind of personal business?”

“It is not my business.”

There was a slight pause. He tapped the ashes from his cigarette. “I will not ask you again.”