“Well?” she shouted. “How smart are you now, eh? Are you going to come back for a try now that we’re all tired and worn out?”

Lao Bingyi didn’t look worn out, and neither did Wei Jintai or Khanh. Instead there was something about them that shone, something that tugged at the back of Chih’s head, down between their shoulders. They imagined that it was what dogs felt when they looked at wolves, a sort of terror that something that looked so much like them was capable of such towering fury and destruction.

“Truce,” came a thin and hollow voice from the trees. “Truce to take back our brothers who you have defeated.”

“Why?” asked Khanh curiously. “The Hollow Hand let their fellows lie where they’d fallen.”

“We will fulfill our promise to our fallen and let them fulfill their promise to us,” came the terrible voice again, and Chih shuddered. Somewhere above them, Almost Brilliant held herself apart. She would observe, and if Chih didn’t walk off this mountain path, she would fly on, to Betony Docks, to the Sisterhood outpost at Leung, all the way back to Singing Hills if she had to. What happened here would be marked, no matter what came.

“What idiots,” Lao Bingyi said furiously. “The Hollow Hand counted sorcerers among their number who could raise the dead and make them walk. What bad imitations you are, bad imitations of fools who died long ago.”

Their group withdrew from the road, Lao Bingyi and Khanh watching intently, Wei Jintai bristling as if she still wanted to fight. In the middle of their calm cold shock, Chih could see that Wei Jintai’s knuckles were split. The blood dripped from her clenched fist to fall onto the road. She shifted from foot to foot, and Chih thought she might have returned to the fight if Sang hadn’t been hanging on to her arm.

The men who came from the forest to collect their fallen moved something like shadows and something like spiders. They threw the fallen, some very still, some still groaning, over their shoulders, and then they were gone into the forest. With their departure, something shifted. The very air seemed to grow lighter, and in the trees, a greenfinch called, a series of melodic chirps followed by a husky trill. The world righted, and Chih took a long breath as Wei Jintai blinked and glanced over at her sworn sister’s terror. Suddenly it was impossible to imagine her chasing an enemy into the brush to finish him off as she threw her arms around Sang’s shoulders.

“Oh, they’re gone now, you must not be afraid,” Wei Jintai said anxiously, and Sang knuckled a few tears out of her eyes and pushed Wei Jintai back.

“I’m not afraid, I’m terrified,” she said. “Those assholes were the Hollow Hand? Why did they attack us?”