The Phoenix Ascent

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‘Your saber looks sharp,’ Zhu said.

‘I’m sure you say that to all the royal guards,’ the woman said, holding the saber to his throat.

She had confronted him while they were alone in his study. He was housed in the royal palace and could summon the royal guard for help. Except she was the royal guard.

‘Your elixir,’ she said. ‘Is it here?’

He looked past her pointed saber and noticed the lamellar armor under her thin robes. Hundreds of laced bronze scales, sharp and angular, like her face.

‘I have more than one elixir,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty good, you know. Plague, persuasion, passion, forgetting. And you could … ask without the saber.’

‘The saber speeds things up.’ She pressed it against his skin.

‘Look, if you’re here for the immortality elixir, I’ll tell you what I tell everyone else: it doesn’t work.’

Zhu knew that once you were in the crosshairs of the royal guard, your life was over. They were the dynasty’s most formidable intelligence agency, charged with specialized tasks that ranged from subverting revolutionary factions to personally guarding the crimson-robed emperor. Men would disappear for questioning and never return.

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