The First Thread #2
Professional. We’re tracking financial records. This is professional.
I’m in trouble.
I need to check something in the archives.
That’s what I tell myself. That’s the excuse I use to put distance between us, because the laugh is sitting in my chest like something I swallowed wrong and I need to not be in a room with him right now.
Numbers don’t laugh. Numbers are safe.
Back in the archives. Alone this time—I sent Jing away, claimed I needed to concentrate. She looked hurt. I’ll deal with that later. Probably won’t deal with it at all.
I pull the supply manifests. Cross-reference them with the payment intermediary locations. Something’s been nagging at me since yesterday, a pattern I couldn’t quite see.
Now I see it.
The discrepancies in Wei’s supply chain. The ones I noticed days ago, the grain shipments that didn’t add up, the warehouse that shouldn’t exist.
The money flows through there.
Not from Wei—the pattern predates his current command by years. Someone using his infrastructure. His supply routes. His carefully maintained sloppiness.
“Third party,” I murmur. “Has to be.”
But which third party? Wei’s a blunt instrument. He’s not smart enough to set this up, and he’s not careful enough to hide it properly. Someone else built this. Someone with access to military logistics and the intelligence to use them.
I should tell Ren.
I don’t.
I’ve watched kings execute innocents on accusations. I’ve been hired by some of them. A name without proof is a weapon, and weapons don’t care who they hurt.
He’ll want evidence. I’ll give him evidence. Not suspicion.
This is the kind of information that gets innocent men killed. Or guilty men protected. I need to know which before I hand it over.
The records point to the warehouse. Same one the payment trail leads to.
I find Ren an hour later. “I found something. We need to see it.”
He doesn’t ask what. He just stands.
“The guards—” one of his attendants starts saying.
“Stay here,” Ren says. To the guards, not to me.
We go alone.
The merchant district smells like fish and smoke and human desperation.
I lead. He follows.
This should feel wrong. Emperor trailing through backstreets behind an assassin, stepping around puddles of something I don’t want to identify, passing vendors who don’t give us a second look because I made sure we both dressed for anonymity.
It doesn’t feel wrong.
It feels like something I’m not going to think about.
“The emperor is following me through an alley,” I say. “If anyone notices, my professional reputation will never recover.”
“Your reputation as an assassin?”
“I have standards.”
The warehouse looms at the end of a narrow street. Abandoned, officially. The kind of building that exists on paper only to be forgotten about, which makes it perfect for things that don’t want to be found.
We go in through a side door. The lock is expensive—too expensive for an abandoned building—and I deal with it in under a minute. Ren watches. I don’t explain.
Inside.
The smell hits first. Damp wood. Rot. And underneath, something else—old incense, the wrong kind, metallic and bitter. The kind they burn for gods you don’t want answering.
My skin prickles.
Ritual markings on the walls. Symbols in ash and something darker, something that smells like copper and bad decisions. Void worship. The deep kind, the old kind, the kind I haven’t seen in centuries.
“Not mercenaries,” Ren says quietly.
“No.” I trace one of the symbols with my eyes, not touching. “True believers.”
I shouldn’t recognize these markings. They predate most recorded history, belong to a faith that burned itself out before I was born. But I do recognize them. Something in my bones knows what they mean.
Old magic. Older than me.
I push the thought away.
“The Hungering King,” I say. “You’ve heard the stories.”
“Some.” His voice is careful. Watching me.
“Ancient. Powerful. Story goes he was a philosopher-king who lost his wife and didn’t take it well.”
“Didn’t take it well.”
“Made a deal with something older than gods.” I move through the space, cataloging. Evidence of recent use—disturbed dust, fresh ash in the braziers. Someone was here within the last few days. “Traded his humanity for the power to get her back. Failed. Kept the power. Lost everything else.”
“And now?”
“Now he’s apparently not a myth anymore.” I turn to face him. “He was a story for most of my centuries. A warning mothers told children about wanting too much.” I gesture at the walls. “Myths don’t pay in silver. Myths don’t fund assassinations.”
He’s listening. Really listening, the way he does—taking in everything, sorting it, filing it away.
“You know things,” he says. Not a question.
“I’m eight hundred years old. I know a lot of things.” Most of them useless. This might not be.
We search the rest of the warehouse. More symbols. More evidence of worship. A list of names—coded, but I recognize the cipher. Hunger Cult membership, probably. I take it.
When we leave, the streets are too quiet.
I know something’s wrong before my mind catches up.