Ouz woke before dawn. A few nights on the road had taught his body not to trust warmth for long. It took more than one good night to forget cold ground and broken sleep.
For a few breaths he lay still under the blanket and listened. The inn had not woken yet. No boots in the hall. No voices below. Only wind pressing at the walls, old timber shifting under the cold, and now and then the shutter giving a small rattle when a gust struck it. The room still held some of yesterday’s heat.
He sat up, rubbed a hand once over his face, and let his eyes adjust. The chair was still braced under the door handle. His weapons were where he had left them. Nothing had moved.
By the time he went downstairs, the common room still belonged more to the staff than the guests. One lamp burned low. The fire had been stirred back to life but had not yet fully caught. The innkeeper stood behind the counter with a cup in one hand and a face that suggested mornings were an offense personally aimed at him. One kitchen boy carried wood. Another rubbed sleep from his eyes.
Ouz stopped near the counter and glanced once toward the kitchen. “Anything ready?”
The innkeeper looked up. “Too early.” He took another sip from his cup, saw Ouz had not moved, and added, “If you want broth and scraps from last night, that I can do cheap. If you want breakfast, come back when the kitchen knows what day it is.”
Ouz grunted once and let it go. He had not expected food this early. The answer was enough. The man had asked nothing and offered nothing beyond it. He turned and stepped back outside.
The cold met him at once. The city had not yet reached full motion, but the day had already begun gathering itself. Smoke rose in thin lines from chimneys. Somewhere farther off a cart wheel knocked over stone and wood in a steady rhythm. A pale strip of light showed behind the roofs. The sun had not cleared them yet. Ouz crossed to the stable first.
Torug lifted its head when he entered. The horse snorted once, more in complaint than alarm. Good eyes. Steady stance. No sign of poor handling through the night. Ouz checked the hooves, ran a hand over the neck, felt the warmth of the living body under the coat, and looked over the tack where it had been hung.
“You made it through, old man,” he muttered.
Torug flicked an ear.
The bow and quiver remained secured to the saddle where he had left them. He did not take them yet. This was not for hunting.
He left the stable yard on foot and headed for the edge of the city.
Before sunrise, Tie-Men was easier to read. Porters moved through the side lanes with baskets slung from poles across their shoulders. A woman threw yesterday’s filth from a threshold into the gutter and chased it with water. Two men rolled open a storefront while arguing over numbers. Near the outer streets the crowds thinned enough that Ouz could choose his direction without having to force his way through.
He kept walking until houses gave way to patches of hard ground and winter grass beyond the nearest spread of buildings. There he found what he wanted. A strip of open land broken by stones, low brush, and old cart scars. No one close enough to matter. He started running.
The tablet had warned him. The next morning his body had proved it. The heaviness under the skin, the drag in his limbs, the sense that something in him had settled wrong when his Tín slipped out of balance. Ouz did not like taking orders from a thing he did not trust. That changed nothing. The work still had to be done. So he ran.
He kept the pace even. Fast enough to work, slow enough to hold. Cold air scraped his throat and chest. The ground rose and dipped under him. Gravel shifted under his boots in places. He let his stride shorten where it needed to and lengthen again when the terrain eased. By the time he finished the distance he wanted, sweat had broken under his clothes despite the morning chill.
After that came the rest of it. Squats first. Push-ups after. He counted in his head and let the numbers carry him. The last sets were slower. His arms shook near the end. His legs burned harder on the second half than they had during the run. He did not stop until the count was done. Only when he finally straightened did he let himself breathe hard.
The city behind him had fully woken while he worked.
By the time he walked back, the roads outside the inn district were already filling. Handcarts rattled past. Food steam rolled out from stalls. Men with ledgers tucked into their belts moved with the hurried look of people already late to something that mattered. More riders had appeared too, some leading pack animals, some mounted, some dressed plainly, others wrapped in richer fabric meant for display as much as warmth. Ouz took it in as he walked.
Today he understood more than yesterday. This was North Tie-Men. The mountain beyond was Tie-Men Mountain. Somewhere beyond that wall of stone lay South Tie-Men. Between the two stood the fortress holding the only real pass. One throat through the mountain. One hand around it.
That mattered. It meant anyone going south in number had to show themselves somewhere. Traders. Drovers. Messengers. Licensed merchants. Soldiers. Rich men paying their way through. The fortress might not open its gate to just anyone, but caravans preparing for the road had to leave signs in the city long before they moved.
That was what he began looking for now. He saw one yard stacked with bundled cloth and travel chests. Another with mule tack laid out for inspection. A third where two wagons were being fitted with new iron rims. Men shouted inventory at each other from platform to platform. Ouz slowed once near an open yard where workers were loading sealed crates under the eye of a sharp-faced clerk.
He stepped close enough to speak to one of the laborers carrying rope. “These loads going south?”
The man hitched the rope higher on his shoulder and jerked his chin that way. “South Tie-Men.”
Ouz let his gaze run once over the yard, the stacked goods, the men already moving like they belonged there. “Need another hand?”
The laborer barked out a laugh before the answer had fully formed. “You looking for work?”
Ouz gave him nothing back but his face.
The man snorted. “No caravan’s taking a stranger off the street. You know nothing, or you’re pretending. Either way it’s bad business.”
Ouz let his gaze move to the loaded crates, then back to the laborer. He stayed where he was. No question followed. No argument either. Just silence.
The man shifted the rope on his shoulder, gave Ouz a crooked look, and kept talking. “Goods go missing, the trader answers. Trouble at the pass, the trader answers. One fool talks to the wrong official, the trader answers. Men on a road like this are tied to someone. Blood, village, account book, years of service. Nobody takes a loose stone and drops it into the load for fun.”
That was clear enough. Trust. Responsibility passed upward. Chains of blame. A fortress that squeezed the road hard enough to make every merchant fear what a stranger might cost him. Ouz moved on. There was nothing more to learn here on an empty stomach.
By the time Ouz stepped back inside, the common room had changed. Morning had settled in for real now. Steam rose from bowls. Cups knocked against wood. Men with sour faces were already acting like they had been awake for hours. A few tables were occupied, though many still stood empty. Ouz took one near the side.
A serving girl came over with a bowl, a plate, and a clay cup. She was young and quick in the eyes, and she looked at people like they often gave her reasons not to be bored. She set the food down before him. Thick stew, bread, pickled greens, and tea.
“Normally,” she said, lowering her voice a little, “if someone haggles with Muin, he gives them broth heavy enough to drown the meat and keeps the tea for people he likes.”
Ouz’s eyes dropped to the meal, then back to her.
She smiled at that. “I brought yours. So today you get fed properly.”
She lingered a moment, like she expected something back. Thanks, surprise, a clumsy joke she could carry to the kitchen. Ouz gave her none of it and picked up the spoon.
Her smile thinned into something amused rather than disappointed. Then she turned and went.
The food was hot and filling. That mattered more. Midway through the meal, Ouz glanced up and caught her looking over from near the kitchen with another serving girl beside her. They were whispering. When they noticed his eyes on them, one covered her mouth and laughed. The first only smiled and turned away.
Ouz finished the tea and stood. He had not come here to be noticed. The mountain still stood between him and the south. Somewhere beyond it the boys were still waiting. Back in the room, he closed the door behind him and laid out his weapons one by one.
Ten throwing knives. The hand knife he had taken long ago, back at the fort from Rauk. The first real blade he had kept for himself. One hand axe. One short sword. The bow and arrows remained with Torug’s saddle below.
He picked up each weapon in turn and let his hands judge what his eyes had already begun to suspect. Too much use in too little time. Edge wear. Small chips. Tiny bends in what should have been cleaner lines. The sword had never been special to begin with. The axe carried marks from impacts harder than it had been made to take. The throwing knives varied because they had come from different dead men and different levels of workmanship.
He had killed too many people recently for steel to come through untouched. That left him with a simple question. Spend coin now or pay for neglect later. He gathered the weapons and went back out.
By then the city was fully awake. More of it had opened itself to view, and more of it had started lying about what it was. He kept his eyes moving while he walked.
He saw which caravan yards looked orderly enough to belong to merchants who would never hire him. He saw which ones looked smaller, meaner, more willing to break rules if the price were right. He saw which streets drew more patrols. Which ones led toward records, storage, and tax houses. Which ones drifted toward craft districts. By midmorning he had enough of a feel for the place to stop walking blindly and begin choosing.
He found the first smithy by noise before he found it by sign. Hammer on iron. Bellows breathing. A sharp mineral smell in the air. He stepped inside, looked over what had been laid out for sale, and felt displeasure before he could have explained it clearly.
The blades looked wrong in small ways. Not one thing. Several. A short sword whose balance sat dead in the hand after the first shift of grip. A knife with a handle wrapped badly enough that it would twist once sweat got under the palm. A hatchet with its head seated in a way that made Ouz doubt the first hard strike. He picked up one piece, another, and put them back.
No one came over. The men inside were not idle. They simply did not care. A glance had told them what he was to them. Not a rich buyer. Not a regular. Not worth leaving current work for. So Ouz left.
The second smithy was different. He noticed it before stepping in. Better organization. Finished pieces stored with some care instead of dumped together. Apprentice work kept apart from better stock. The sound inside came in cleaner rhythm too. Not faster. More certain.
A young smith’s assistant came over almost at once, wiping one hand on his apron as he approached. “Looking for something in particular?”
Ouz set the weapons down one by one instead of answering at once. “These need work.”
The assistant’s expression changed as the pile grew. Ten throwing knives. A hand knife. The axe. The short sword. “Planning for a war?” he asked with a grin.
Ouz let the question hang and gave him the same flat look he had worn since laying the weapons down.
The grin thinned without fully leaving his mouth, but his eyes dropped back to the weapons. He picked up the hand axe first and turned it under the light. “This hit something harder than it was meant to. Stone, maybe. Or a shield rim. There are hairline cracks starting here.” He showed Ouz the place with a thumbnail. “You could force more use out of it. I wouldn’t.”
He set the axe down and took up the short sword. “This one’s old and cheap. No insult meant. It did its work, but it was never made for a long life. I can clean it up. Straighten what wants straightening. Freshen the edge. Still won’t promise when it decides to die in your hand.”
He moved to the throwing knives. A few he placed to one side. The rest to another. “These I can fix without trouble. These.” He tapped the second group. “I wouldn’t pay to save. Bad iron. Poor temper. One hard correction and they may crack while I’m doing you the favor.”
Ouz looked from the salvageable knives to the others the assistant had already given up on. “How much?”
“If you want everything repaired anyway, a hundred copper.” The assistant pointed at the smaller, better pile. “If you want only the sensible work, seventy. I’ll make it sixty-seven.”
Ouz glanced around the shop before asking, “And if I bought replacements?”
The assistant’s face brightened a little. He stepped away and came back with pieces in hand. A new short sword. Two hand axes. A set of ten throwing knives in fitted carry loops. He laid them out one by one.
“Sword is six hundred. We can talk a little on that. Throwing knives with the carry rig are four hundred and twenty. Without the rig, three hundred. The axes are two hundred. No bargaining there. Good work costs what it costs. If you want sword, scabbard, belt, and shoulder hang, add eighty.”
Ouz did the count in his head. He had enough for it now. What he did not have was any clear sense of how far enough would carry him.
The assistant watched him do the count and tried to read the result from his face. “Forgive the question,” he said after a moment, “but you don’t look like a soldier, and I’d remember your face if you were local. Here for the war?”
Ouz gave a short grunt that passed for agreement.
The assistant nodded, as if that matched whatever guess he had built. “If you’re registering, do it after South Tie-Men. Better yet, wait until Kara-Koram if you mean to reach the border proper. They pay better when the danger’s real. New men get issued something eventually, but I wouldn’t trust your life to eventually.” He touched the old axe with the tip of one finger. “Your hand knife’s solid. Keep that. If you leave this axe here as scrap, I can shave a little off the rest.”
“How much?”
“If you leave the axe, sword becomes five sixty. Throwing knives with the rig, four hundred.”
Ouz considered the steel again. New weight. Cleaner edges. Better confidence in the hand. “Eight fifty,” he said.
The assistant snorted softly. “No.”
Ouz pulled out nine strings of copper and set them on the counter. “Nine hundred.”
The assistant looked at the money. “Let me ask.”
He carried the offer toward the back where an older smith worked under better light. The two men spoke quietly. The older one glanced toward Ouz only once before giving a short nod.
The assistant came back. “My master accepts. If you leave the rest of this junk here, he’ll include the belt, scabbard, and shoulder hang.”
Ouz gave him a brief look and started changing the gear there in the shop. The assistant took the old pieces aside with the quiet efficiency of someone who knew even worn steel still had uses. The new sword sat better at Ouz’s side. The throwing knives rode better too once fitted into the new carry. The difference was immediate enough to be worth the coin, even if he disliked spending it.
He set the hand knife on the counter last. “This one too.”
The assistant took it, looked it over longer than he had looked over the others, and raised his brows slightly. “Good piece. Needs care, not rescue.” He set it down gently. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll have it ready.”
“How much?”
The assistant shrugged. “Call it part of the sale.”
Ouz held his eyes on him a moment, looking for the trick in it, and found nothing worth worrying about. “Tomorrow, then,” he said.
The assistant gave a short nod. “Tomorrow.”
Ouz left the shop. Not long after that he passed a leatherworker selling armor. He stepped inside because the pieces in the doorway looked respectable from a distance. Up close they disappointed him.
A seller approached at once and began speaking before Ouz had asked anything. “Best reinforced work in North Tie-Men. You won’t find better for the price. This one here has internal metal support. Twelve hundred copper.”
Ouz put a hand to it, pressed once, and moved on.
The next was brigandine pattern. Better coverage. Eight hundred.
Another was lighter, cheaper, and not worth the weight it asked to be carried. Four hundred.
None of them sat right in his mind. The cheap ones gave too little. The better ones asked too much while still falling short of what armor ought to be. Steppe armor had taught him one standard. Hermit’s old kit had taught him another. Some left the joints too open. Some trusted poor leather over places that ought to have taken real force. Others were simply too heavy for what little confidence they bought.
He left without bargaining. Not because he lacked the coin, but because too much of it still belonged to roads he had not seen yet.
By noon he had bought a skewer of hot meat and vegetables from a street stand for four copper and was eating it while walking through one of the busier trade lanes. He had just turned past a side street when movement caught his eye.
Two men. One of them had another man half-hooked under the neck and shoulder, dragging him with more force than friendliness required. The second walked close beside them. The dragged man was talking even while being hauled.
Liujingting.
Ouz saw the face, recognized it, and almost kept moving. What stopped him was not concern. It was the way no one else seemed to see anything worth noticing. No turned heads. No pause in conversation. No one slowing down. The three men slipped into the side lane without drawing a second look.
Ouz slowed with the skewer still in hand and angled that way.
At the mouth of the alley he heard voices farther in. He followed them to the next turn and found a narrower crossing lane beyond. There he stopped, set his shoulder against the wall, and listened while chewing the last of the food.
Liujingting was pleading.
“…I’m telling you, the game was crooked.”
One of the men answered, “Crooked? You were the one who came to us talking about quick hands and easy silver.”
“And you lost every bit of it,” the other said.
A smack followed. Open hand or fist, Ouz could not tell from sound alone.
“You’ll pay it all back,” the first man said. “Every coin.”
“Tomorrow,” Liujingting said quickly. “I swear it. Let me work tonight and I’ll make enough.”
A laugh came from one of the debt men. “If we kill you here and sell what’s on you, maybe that counts too.”
“Now be fair,” Liujingting said. “If you kill me, you lose an asset.”
“You’re not an asset.”
“I’m deeply undervalued, which is different.”
Another hit. Harder.
Ouz bit down, tore off another mouthful, and kept listening.
One of the men said, “Until we say the debt’s paid, you work for us, or you strip what’s on you here, or you die and save us the argument. Choose.”
Liujingting made a pained noise. “Your terms lack poetry.”
Ouz pushed off the wall and started back toward the first alley mouth. This was not his business. A fool losing coin at crooked games still counted as a fool losing coin. He had taken only a few steps when noise broke behind him.
Scramble of feet. A body hitting stone. Fast movement.
Ouz turned.
Liujingting burst out of the alley in a panic, eyes wide, hands pulling at the air in front of him as if he meant to drag himself forward by force alone. One look at Ouz and recognition flashed.
“Hey. You. Friend. Help me. Please.”
The men behind him were faster. One slammed into Liujingting from behind and both went to the ground almost at Ouz’s feet. The second debt collector came out at a slower pace, breathing harder but smiling in a way Ouz disliked on sight.
Liujingting looked up from the ground and grabbed at Ouz’s trouser leg. “Please.”
The approaching man asked, “You know him?”
Ouz looked down at Liujingting. A day ago he had been a nuisance in an inn. Now he was a fool with gambling debt. Ouz saw no reason to take that weight onto himself. He shook his head once. “No.”
Liujingting stared at him. “Come on. We met yesterday.”
Ouz tilted his head a fraction. “You told a story.”
“That counts as acquaintance.”
“Not enough.”
The debt man came close enough to smell of stale wine and old anger. He smacked the half-eaten skewer from Ouz’s hand. It hit the street and fell into wet dirt. “Then leave,” the man said.
Ouz looked down at the skewer in the mud. Four copper gone to mud. He looked back up. One corner of his mouth moved. “You should’ve hit him instead.”
The man frowned just before Ouz drove his forehead straight into his nose. The crack was clean.
The debt man reeled backward with both hands flying up. At the same time the one who had tackled Liujingting got off the ground and lunged in with a wild punch. Ouz slipped under it without needing Death’s Awareness to help. Too slow. Too open. He drove one fist into the man’s ribs, another into the stomach. Air left the debt man in a broken grunt. He folded forward. Ouz brought a downward punch into the jaw and sent him to the stones.
The first man came again from the side, one hand reaching to grab cloth.
Ouz turned with him, caught the arm, and pulled while sweeping the legs. The debt man hit hard. Ouz dropped onto his chest before he could recover and hammered two fast punches into the face, then drove in two more before the man could turn away. The hands that tried to rise in defense stopped rising after the third blow. The fourth was for the skewer.
The alley went quiet except for Liujingting’s breathing.
Ouz took the nearest money pouch, opened it, and counted out four copper before tossing the rest back onto the man’s chest. Then he rose and started walking.
Behind him, Liujingting looked from the bodies to Ouz and back again as though trying to decide which was less believable. Then he scrambled up and hurried after him. “Wait.”
Ouz did not stop.
“Wait, wait, where are you going?”
No answer.
Liujingting caught up and fell into step beside him, still half out of breath. “You fight much better than you look.”
Ouz kept walking.
“I mean that kindly. Also with great personal relief.” Liujingting looked at the new sword, the altered carry, the knives. “New steel too. Or newer than yesterday, at least. I notice these things.”
Still no answer.
“Thank you, by the way. For a moment there I thought I was about to die, or worse, spend a week earning money for men without imagination.”
Ouz glanced at him once. “I didn’t do it for you.”
Liujingting spread his hands. “Motives are a scholar’s hobby. Outcomes are what save lives.”
Ouz returned his eyes to the street.
Liujingting kept talking. “Long road, I’d guess. You carry it in the way you look at exits before faces. If I had to guess further, I’d say you didn’t come to North Tie-Men for trade. Southbound, perhaps. Borderward. Samrajya side.”
At that Ouz gave him a sharper look.
Liujingting smiled faintly. “Not magic. Smell.”
Ouz frowned and turned his wrist, testing the smell of the cloth.
“Don’t take it harshly,” Liujingting said. “You smelled like blood, filth, road sweat, horse, cold iron, and something worse I couldn’t name. When did you last bathe?”
That made Ouz stop. He set his jaw. “Know a bathhouse?”
Liujingting brightened at once. “My finest skill, aside from storytelling under hostile conditions, is knowing the best bathhouses, inns, and women in every city worth entering.”
Ouz started walking again. “Then show me the way.”
Liujingting did.
The bathhouse stood off a busier street behind a carved entrance screened from direct view. Clean front. Good wood. Not the kind of public wash place Ouz might have chosen on his own from the street. At the desk inside sat a man with the tired look of someone whose work required too much contact with wet strangers.
Liujingting smiled broadly. “Banjian, my friend. Fortune favors me. We meet again.”
Banjian did not smile back. “Don’t call me a friend. What do you want?”
Liujingting swept an arm toward Ouz. “Today this excellent establishment shall rescue my noble but unpleasantly scented companion from the consequences of travel.”
He stopped halfway through the flourish, clearly realizing he did not know Ouz’s name.
Ouz ignored that and asked Banjian, “Entry price?”
“Fifteen copper,” Banjian said. “Twenty if you want tea and massage. Forty if you want bathing, tea, massage, and your clothes washed and dried.”
Ouz considered it. Before he answered, Liujingting put down fifteen copper of his own. “Simple service for me.”
Ouz weighed the rest a moment longer. Warm water, clean clothes, time indoors, and no need to trust a stable yard basin with a rag and luck. He put down forty.
Banjian accepted both amounts and signaled to an attendant. A worker came over, collected their outer weapons for holding, and handed each of them a polished wooden token marked with a number. Ouz took the token without taking his eyes off the man carrying his things away. Face, shoulders, gait. He fixed it all in memory.
Liujingting noticed. “Relax. This place steals only from men too drunk to count.”
Towels were brought. Soap fruit paste sat in a wooden bucket beside the wash room, with the hotter soaking chamber beyond it. The whole place ran with the smooth, practiced rhythm of somewhere that had long ago learned how much coin cleanliness could draw from travelers, clerks, minor officials, and merchants tired of the road.
Ouz scrubbed until the dirt came away in gray streams. Sweat, smoke, old blood traces, and road stink finally began leaving his skin. The soap fruit carried a faint clean scent he did not know and did not mind. When he moved into the hot bath after that, the first touch of real heat across his back almost hurt.
Liujingting, in the tub beside his, kept talking. “By the way, what do I call you?”
Ouz had been hoping silence might kill the man if starved long enough. It had not. “Chanyu,” he said.
Liujingting smiled. “Strong name. Memorable. Very good. So, Chanyu, are you truly heading toward the Samrajya border?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I’m going that way too. War breeds stories. Soldiers pay for them. Officers pretend not to, but they do. Chaos is excellent for my profession.”
Ouz closed his eyes and leaned back into the heat. “If you stay quiet, I might start believing you have hidden depths.”
Liujingting laughed softly. “Answer my question and I’ll need fewer words.”
Ouz opened one eye. “Yes. I’m going south.”
“There. See? Honesty saves time.”
“For a man who talks this much, you understand little about saving time.”
Liujingting seemed almost proud of that. He really did manage silence after that. For nearly two minutes. After that he began again, though more as background noise than direct assault. While attendants worked oil into his shoulders and arms in the next room, while fresh tea was brought, while the damp weight of travel finally left Ouz’s muscles one layer at a time, Liujingting narrated the truth of his debt or something close enough to truth for a storyteller to love it.
It had not, according to him, been simple gambling. He had been approached. Flattered. Told his quick hands and quicker eye would make him useful in a shell game built to strip drunk merchants and vain junior clerks of their money. Only later had he realized the game’s operators and his new friends were one and the same. By the time realization arrived, so did the debt. Money he never truly held had still somehow become money he owed.
“You see,” Liujingting said while blowing steam off his tea, “I’m not a degenerate. I’m a victim of coordinated stupidity.”
Ouz looked at the cup in his hand. He did not remember Liujingting paying for anything beyond the wash.
“Charm is a kind of currency,” Liujingting said. He lifted the tea a little, almost like a toast, then took a sip. “But back to my tragedy.”
Ouz drank without comment.
Liujingting sighed. “There was greed too.”
“That part I assumed.”
Liujingting accepted that with a grave nod. “A fair wound.”
When the bathhouse had done with them, Ouz’s clothes came back clean and properly dried. He dressed in cloth that no longer carried the road in every fold. His skin smelled of soap fruit instead of blood and smoke. For the first time since leaving the camp in the forest, he no longer felt like the journey was clinging to him from the outside.
They stepped back into the street together. Liujingting stretched, looked pleased with life again, and said, “Well then, Chanyu. Thank you for the alley. Truly. I hope I see you again in Kara-Koram.”
Ouz looked at him.
Liujingting smiled. “That surprised you.”
“A little.”
“You expected me to attach myself to you like a burr.”
“I expected something.”
Liujingting placed a hand against his chest. “Wounded. I know when gratitude should end before it starts smelling like strategy.”
With that he bowed in a theatrical half-motion, turned, and walked away into the crowd.
Ouz watched him go. For a moment he stood there, mildly suspicious of the ease of the parting. Then another thought struck him. Quick hands. Shell games. A man who lived by story and distraction.
Ouz checked his money. Still there. He checked again more thoroughly, one pouch after another. Nothing missing.
He looked once more in the direction Liujingting had gone, but by then the storyteller had already vanished into North Tie-Men, swallowed whole by the same city that had laughed at him the night before.
Ouz exhaled once through the nose and started back toward the inn.
The day still had work left in it. He needed his hand knife tomorrow. He needed more of the city in his head than he currently had. He needed a road through the mountain, or around the rules guarding it.
But under all that sat a smaller thought, one he did not bother pushing away. Liujingting talked too much. Still, for a man who had every reason to steal, he had left with only his own skin. That counted for something, though Ouz had not yet decided what. Men like that usually survived by being underestimated.