Chapter 808 — Her Own Needle

CHAPTER 808

Her Own Needle

The marsh was silent for ten breaths.

Shi Feng stood on the open edge of the island with his right arm loose at his side and the sleeve hanging open. Behind him, Hou Tieshou was breathing hard through his teeth. Jiao Lanyin knelt beside him with her bow half drawn. Yue Shaoan had his face turned up to the fog, sniffing hard.

“Bitter,” Yue Shaoan said suddenly. “Front! Front and left! Now!”

Three hisses came out of the dark.

Shi Feng didn’t swing the grey Sword. He turned his body a quarter, lifted his right arm and let the open sleeve meet the hisses.

The three needles went into the cloth and vanished.

The needles went into the sleeve with all their speed and all their poison, and the Quiet Sleeve Art at Major Success swallowed them, weight and sound and all. Nothing struck the wood, and none of his teammates cried out. Out in the fog, it sounded as if the three needles had flown into empty air and never landed.

So the thrower waited one more breath to listen.

She was a careful woman. She’d moved after every throw so far. But every other time, she’d heard her needles hit something. This time she heard nothing, and she had to know why.

That one breath was all Shi Feng needed.

He turned his wrist inside the sleeve and opened it again, along the same line the needles had come in on.

The three needles went back out the way they’d come. They carried their own speed, untouched, and their own poison, and the thrower’s own aim. They went into the fog in a neat row and disappeared.

For a heartbeat there was nothing.

Then a woman’s cry rang out across the marsh, sharp and high, about forty paces away.

“Hit!” Yue Shaoan squeaked. “She’s hit! I can smell blood! Her blood!”

“He sent them back,” Hou Tieshou said in a stunned voice, from the ground. “He caught her needles in his sleeve and sent them back to her!” He slapped the mud with his palm. “Use a man’s own way against him! Serves her right!”

Out in the fog, Shangguan Ruo spoke. Her voice wasn’t light and warm any more. It was tight with pain.

“…One in the shoulder,” Shangguan Ruo said. “You’re a cruel man, Brother Shi. That’s my own poison.”

“You know your own poison,” Shi Feng said, listening for movement beyond the cry. “Use your antidote and leave. Don’t throw again.”

There was a pause. Then a short, furious laugh.

“I’m not crushing my token for a needle,” Shangguan Ruo said. “And I’m not finished with—”

“You are,” Shi Feng said calmly. “Your four hunters can’t fight what they can’t see, any more than we can. And now I know where you are. Leave, and I won’t follow. Stay, and the next three I send back won’t go into your shoulder.”

The silence that followed was very long.

Something small hit the water ten paces in front of him and burst. Thick white smoke rolled out over the marsh, stinking of sulphur. Through it came the sound of five people splashing away northward, fast and not quietly at all.

“Birds startled by a bowstring,” Jiao Lanyin said coldly, and lowered her bow.

Yue Shaoan sniffed the smoke, coughed and sniffed again.

“They’re going,” Yue Shaoan said. “All five. They’re not stopping. Brother Shi, why aren’t you going after her? You could catch her!”

“Hou Tieshou needs me here,” Shi Feng said. “If I kill a hunter, our banner’s out. If I take her token, her four hunters come back for it, and we’re fighting in the dark while his leg gets worse.” He shook out his sleeve. “Let her run. She’s carrying her own needle in her shoulder. That’s enough for one night.”

He went back across the island and crouched beside Hou Tieshou.

The big man’s face was grey with sweat. The needle still stood in his thigh, and the grey colour had spread past his knee. Around the needle, the flesh had started to go soft.

“Hold still,” Shi Feng said.

He gripped the needle between two fingers and drew it out in one smooth pull. Hou Tieshou’s whole body jerked. He bit down on his sleeve and didn’t scream.

The needle came out black from the tip to the middle. Shi Feng wrapped it in a strip of cloth and put it in his ring.

“Why are you keeping that?” Yue Shaoan asked, horrified.

“Because I want to know what’s in it,” Shi Feng said.

Jiao Lanyin knelt by Hou Tieshou’s leg. She pressed two fingers above his knee, frowned, and pressed again higher up.

“It’s still spreading,” Jiao Lanyin said. “Taking the needle out didn’t stop it. It’s in the marrow. If it reaches the hip, he’ll never walk properly again.”

Yue Shaoan grabbed for Hou Tieshou’s token.

“Then crush it!” Yue Shaoan cried. “Crush it now! The wardens—”

Hou Tieshou knocked his hand away and closed his fist round the jade.

“No,” Hou Tieshou said hoarsely. “I said no.”

Shi Feng looked at the grey creeping up the big man’s thigh. Then he put his palm flat on Hou Tieshou’s leg, right over the wound.

“Keep your token,” Shi Feng said, pressing his hand carefully over the wound. “Lie back. I’m going to draw the poison out.”