She pointed to the back of the chasm, where she’d fought off the Irons in his vision. “Crack is right there, presuming you can see it, and it leads to a shallow cave. It’s tighter than the skin on a lizard, so you probably won’t fit. Found it during that last fight, and I squeeze in there every night to try and chase down some sleep.”

So hiding was no good. He could always walk out and pretend he’d gone looking for the Sword Sage’s disciple on his own. He was wearing Heaven’s Glory clothes, so they might believe him. But if anything went wrong, Yerin would have to face seven sacred artists on her own.

“All right,” he said, “consider this. You hide in the cave. I’ll go up there and talk to them, and I’ll see if I can lead them in the wrong direction. Where are they now?”

Yerin slowly stood, but she didn’t head for the cave. Her eyes were on the sky, and her hand on her sword. “First thing my master taught me about the sacred arts: when the time’s right, you shed blood. There’s no getting around it.”

Her words were so cool and matter-of-fact that they sent a chill through Lindon’s bones.

“The time isn’t right,” Lindon said desperately. He pulled the pile of purple banners out of his pack, rushing around the edges of the chasm to plant them in snow. “I have a boundary formation of my own. We can dig under the snow, hide there, and when they come down…”

Yerin took one unsteady step toward the wall, her weakness apparent. The wind snatched at the dangling shreds of her robes, and even that much force seemed likely to knock her to the ground. Lindon didn’t see how she could even remain standing, much less fight off seven attackers. He almost said so.

Then she leaped out of the chasm.

It looked effortless, as though she had simply begun a step at the bottom of a twenty-foot rock wall and finished the step at the top. He saw her from behind, her hair and her tattered robes blowing in the wind. Her red rope-belt stayed utterly motionless, which attracted his attention until she drew her sword.

Hurriedly he finished planting the seven banners and hiding them in snow. If she’d brought her weapon out, that meant…

A high, young voice rose above the wind, sending Lindon’s spirits even lower. He knew that voice.

“Your master would be proud of your courage, I can acknowledge that,” Elder Whitehall said. “And your skill is outstanding for someone of your age. Truly outstanding.”

“You sure you want to talk about age?” Yerin retorted. He could see her from below, and now he understood why she cut her hair so straight: no matter how the wind whipped or pulled it, not a strand covered her eyes. “The Heaven’s Glory School is lower than I suspected. Even dogs don’t send their pups to fight.”

Whitehall’s voice turned cold. “I’m not trading insults with a disciple. I’m not doing it. I’ve already lowered myself to come here personally, and even a blind man could see your path ends here. You can hardly stand, you clearly haven’t had a whole night’s sleep in weeks, and your robes are ruined. You must be freezing. But I’m here because I respect talent, I really do, and so does Heaven’s Glory.”

They need her, Lindon realized, and a range of new options opened before him. He had assumed they were only trying to eliminate Yerin, which left her with only two choices: run or fight. But they wanted her, which meant she had something to trade. She had leverage.

A head popped over the chasm as someone glanced down. Just an idle glance, but it was enough to doom Lindon.

Kazan Ma Deret looked down on him with a face first confused, and then drenched in self-satisfaction. “The Unsouled is with her,” he called back to Whitehall.

Lindon rubbed his aching jaw. Maybe meeting a messenger from the heavens had used up all the good luck in his life, because since his visit from Suriel, his fortunes seemed to have gone sour.

“…Wei Shi Lindon?” Whitehall said blankly. “What…why? How did he get here?”

“He’s with the Sage’s disciple,” Deret responded, without taking his eyes from Lindon. “This one humbly requests permission to treat him as an enemy.”

“Permission? I don’t care what happens to one or two Unsouled. If there were a hundred of him, I still wouldn’t care. Kill him, leave him there, carry him back on your shoulders, just don’t bother me while I’m working.”

Yerin tilted her scarred face toward him, though she kept staring off at what must be Whitehall. “Can you bury him alone?” she asked, which sunk his heart into his stomach even further. He could have pretended he wasn’t with her, or that she had kidnapped him. Now, he only had one option.

Lindon smiled up at Deret. “I don’t need any help putting down a dog.”

Red-brown bricks, Forged out of solid madra, condensed in the air behind the Kazan disciple. They fanned out like a bird’s tail as he hopped down into the chasm, landing lightly on his feet.

“Start begging now,” Deret said, “while you can.”

Lindon let out a breath of deep relief and moved his hand down to the wooden ward key in his belt. It had been even easier than he’d hoped.

The strings of a zither filled the air with haunting music, and a transparent avalanche fell from the cliff above. It was clearly fake to Lindon’s eyes, like a portrait overlaid on reality, but Deret screamed and covered his face with his arm.

“You forgot already?” Lindon said, and Deret turned toward the sound of his voice. The White Fox boundary distorted his senses, and the Iron hurled a Forged brick straight at the wall. “It’s only been one day, and I win again with the same trick. Don’t they say that even a dog remembers a beating?”

Deret roared, flinging another brick at the wall, once again missing Lindon wildly.

Above, the sky turned gold for an instant as a beam of destructive white-gold light flashed into existence. Elder Whitehall shouted to his disciples, and someone screamed. Seconds later, a thin line of blood trickled down into the chasm.

The white-gold light blasted past again, and this time Lindon felt the wave of heat on his face. Another man’s bloody shriek told him that Yerin was holding her own.

A nearby thunderclap drew his attention back to Kazan Ma Deret. The image inside the boundary wasn’t entirely clear to Lindon, and he certainly wasn’t going to drop the ward key for a more detailed look, but it seemed as though the Iron was contending with an army of razor-clawed crabs. He screamed and scratched at his face as though the illusions were drawing blood…

But he wasn’t using his bricks against the crabs. He may have fallen for the same trick a second time, but it wasn’t as though he’d forgotten. He knew it was a dream, and he only flung Forged madra in the hopes of hitting Lindon or destroying the formation.

What do I do with him? Lindon wondered.

Setting up the White Fox boundary had been a last-minute act of desperation, and Lindon hadn’t had time to come up with a real plan. Now that he was face-to-face with an enraged Iron, he realized that he didn’t know what to do.

Last time, he’d only needed to defeat Deret in front of Elder Rahm. Immobilizing him in the boundary was just as good as beating him senseless. Now…

Lindon couldn’t leave him here. The formation was fueled by vital aura, but even that would run out eventually. Before that, Deret had good odds of hitting one of the seven banners with his randomly thrown bricks. Besides leaving him, what else was there?