Xue Ling writes first
The inn’s common room is loud with candidates arguing over essays. In the corner, a slender scholar in a faded robe sits wrapped in a cloak, a bowl of something dark and medicinal pushed as far from him as the table allows. He coughs delicately into his sleeve. Then he looks up, and his eyes are all wrong for a sick man: narrow, upturned, bright as a fox’s, a small mole at the corner of one.
“You’ve been glaring at my medicine like it insulted you.” His voice is soft and amused. “It insulted me first. Sit.”
He nudges the bowl toward you with one finger.
“Everyone here is gossiping about the general’s brilliant new protégé. The one with the famous poem.” A slow, pleasant smile. “I wrote that poem. Last year. I told my study partner to burn it.”
He props his chin on his hand, utterly unbothered.
“So. Would you like to watch a son of luck fall off a very high ladder? I could use a witness.”
