Meeting with Lady Jin wasn't that simple, it turned out. Instead Old Qin had to talk to the doctor when he next came by half an hour later, who himself had to talk to a guard who would talk to his supervisor. In this way a chain was established of messengers.

  In the end it took a few hours before Wu Hao was finally led to the central meeting room in which he would see Lady Jin for the first time. Old Qin had tried to give him tips in the meantime, but Wu Hao was sceptical about several of them, specifically the ones that Old Qin claimed would charm any women he tried them on.

  But he'd also told Wu Hao to be on his guard. Lady Jin was not to be underestimated.

  "Lady Jin," the guard said, bowing. "I've brought you the boy, as you instructed."

  Wu Hao heard Lady Jin's reply, even without seeing her. "Good. Leave."

  "Yes, Lady Jin."

  As the guard's footsteps turned and left, fading into the distance, Wu Hao raised his head to look around the room.

  It was decorated better than any room Wu Hao had ever seen, though he had to admit that that didn't mean much. Luxurious carpets stretched across the stone floors, mixing the Jin clan's gold with occasional accents of white and red. Drapes hung from the sides of the room, which made the room feel enormous due to the walls being hidden from sight. Their emblem of two crossed sabers adorned every drape, and the eye was naturally led to a chair that seemed more like a throne in front.

  Hewn from stone, it was tall, raised on a platform so that the people sitting there could look down on their guests no matter how tall either of them were. Wu Hao's first thought upon seeing the woman sitting there, though, was that she didn't need any tricks to look down on anyone. A man could be taller than her by half and yet somehow still find himself feeling small in that room, trapped by her gaze.

  Jin Qinghe, titled Lady Jin, sat on the throne, not primly or properly, but with her legs crossed as she studied Wu Hao even as he studied her. She was wearing a long, flowing dress that pooled on the floor beneath her feet. In her right hand she carried a folded-up fan, though there was a glint of iron at its tip that suggested it might be a war fan, with a bladed edge.

  Perhaps Wu Hao might have expected a beauty showing the first signs of aging into motherhood, but that was not who she was. If she had crows' feet or any other burdens of age, they were so well-hidden that they were invisible to him. She looked to be about in her middle twenties, if that, which would make her anywhere between ten to fifteen years older than him, at the utmost.

  Her black hair was long enough to hang over the back of the chair, her lips were full, and her eyes were a fierce gold that was hard to look at.

  Faint traces of qi lingered throughout the room, and Wu Hao could smell perfume. Not thick, not cloying, the way a merchant's wife might use perfume, but a subtle scent of flowers and a touch of something else, carried throughout the room on eddies of flowing qi, turning quietly throughout the room.

  More important was that she was a second-grade martial artist, though he could feel that her power was more concentrated, that it rested on a deeper foundation than what he remembered from Uncle Bai. If he had to guess, she was roughly at the same place that Du Linglong or Ke Jiazhong were at, in terms of power. Maybe even more so. Maybe halfway into the first-grade, though he had nothing to base that on. She would be stronger than the cultist whose name he'd already forgotten again.

  And while it meant that she could probably kill him without any real effort, it did also mean that he could read her emotions.

  When she looked at him, she radiated a few things. Amusement dominated, though it sat supported by a different tangle of emotions that he was hard-pressed to recognize at all, tied into a bunch as they were. Compared to most of the people he'd recently tried to read, her emotions were more... complicated, in a word.

  There were also a few men standing around, each at least near the second-grade, and one man who was looking back at Wu Hao who felt like he was almost as strong as Lady Jin.

  "My Three-Seed Peaches," Lady Jin murmured, breaking the silence. She didn't speak loudly but her voice carried through the room easily. "How did they taste?"

  Wu Hao's mind went blank. He had prepared for questions of what gave him the audacity, or maybe threats to his life. He hadn't prepared for this.

  "Huh?" he asked.

  "It's a simple enough question. Are you an idiot, child? Answer me. How did they taste?"

  Sweet, really. Juicy, but just enough so that you wouldn't spill anything unless you were a real idiot.

  "Fine," he said.

  The fan tapped against her lips.

  "You're not very eloquent, are you?" she told him.

  Wu Hao told himself to resist a blush, but nonetheless his cheeks heated.

  "You're Wu Hao," she told him. "Or so they tell me."

  "I am," Wu Hao said.

  "Mm," she responded, and leaned back.

  Lady Jin tapped the fan against her lips again. This time it wasn't because she was smiling.

  "You will address me as Lady Jin," she said. Her voice sounded light, but Wu Hao wasn't stupid enough to think that meant anything. "Anything I consider a sign of disrespect, I will punish. I will overlook it this time, but the next time I shall not be so forgiving."

  Wu Hao growled something underneath his breath.

  "Punishments, should you be curious," Lady Jin said, "might include such things as running laps around the arenas until you collapse. The loss of food privileges. Solitary confinement."

  That was all? Wu Hao nearly grinned. That was baby stuff.

  "In worse cases, of course, we might be less forgiving. I have killed men before out of disrespect, and I suspect I will have to kill more of them in the future. If you should prove to be a sufficiently bad purchase, we might have to stop throwing good money after bad and cut you loose, as it were."

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  Wu Hao nodded.

  "I doubt it should come to that," she said. "But in either case, I trust I've made myself clear."

  "I understand," Wu Hao said. Death might even be preferable, frankly.

  "But, on the other hand, if there is to be punishment then to balance the scales there must also be reward, no?" Lady Jin.

  There. Now came the interesting part.

  "Access to the local library," she said. Her fan click-clacked again. "All the daily necessities, of course. Food and a room and robes and such. Cultivation aids. Ranging from the minor to the major. Access to our training grounds. All of these, at whatever branch you find yourself in - even this small outpost. It should have everything you want, I would imagine."

  This was just an outpost? The compound was the size of a small village. Wu Hao had been stunned by the sheer scale of the place. The garden had stretched into the distance.

  He realized that she knew that just as well as he did, probably, and that calling it an outpost was probably meant to push him to dream about what the main branch's headquarters might have been like in comparison. He knew that, but it didn't mean it didn't work on him.

  She tapped her lips, then focused on Wu Hao as she spoke about the last benefit.

  "And of course we will offer instruction, should you wish to pursue martial arts and prove talented," she added.

  Of course he wanted to pursue martial arts. What else was there in life? He'd tasted the joys of qi, however distant that was to him right now. There was nothing else he could do until he'd managed to reforge his core.

  He wouldn't be able to kill Father and destroy the Red Dawn Sect unless he had qi of his own. He'd need to at least be a first-grade martial artist for that.

  "Who would teach me?" he asked.

  "Whoever teaches the other third-grade martial artists," Lady Jin said. "At the moment that is Lei Zheqing. Private instruction may be arranged, should you prove to impress me enough. In that case I might dispatch a subordinate, perhaps. I don't have the time to be a teacher myself."

  Wu Hao nodded. Not a concrete promise, though, he noted.

  "I understand," he said.

  "I see some greed in your expression," Lady Jin said, amused. "Good. Without greed, man is nothing. Greed is what the clan is built upon, more than any force of arms."

  The qi swirled slightly as she shifted in her seat slightly, the first sign she'd given that she was human.

  "But all these benefits are only there if you put the work in," she told him, and the fan clacked shut again.

  Wu Hao breathed a few times, just to prevent himself from saying anything stupid.

  "What would you have me do?"

  "A while from now," she said, "we will be leaving for the main compound. There are things at play here that require my attention for now, but when they've been seen to, we will return to somewhere less... provincial."

  The lightness of her voice notwithstanding she managed to put an impressive amount of venom in that final adjective. Wu Hao hadn't known one word could imply so much disdain before.

  "By we, I mean me, my son, and our guards. You will come with us as well, although this is again conditional on what level of aptitude you show in the meantime. Am I clear?"

  "Yes, Lady Jin."

  She made no mention of Old Qin, though. Would he come with them? He wasn't sure the old man would agree to it, but he'd have to.

  "And in the meantime?" Wu Hao asked.

  "For now, you'll be a servant of my son. Do as he tells you. Not a word more, not a word less. You will be watched, so don't attempt anything stupid."

  A servant? Wu Hao bristled.

  "I am not a servant of any kind," he said. "I don't serve. I'm a martial artist."

  Lady Jin quirked an eyebrow.

  "Many do both," she said. "In any case, it doesn't much matter. He is the one who bought your debt with his own money. If not his servant, be his playmate, then. A confidant. I really don't care what you call it, as long as you remember your place in the hierarchy."

  Wu Hao scowled.

  "Yes, Lady Jin."

  "And teach him a little of that fire of yours," she ordered. "He's too timid by half. His saber lacks the edge it needs."

  What was that supposed to mean? He couldn't imagine the son of a woman this formidable to be lacking anything. Wu Hao imagined someone like Ke Jiazhong, if somewhat younger. Bratty, dressed perfectly, and demanding everything from everyone. Although at least Ke Jiazhong knew martial arts. From the sound of it, this boy didn't. Perhaps he was more of a Liu Zhiyi type, then.

  In either case, Wu Hao decided that he was going to have to make it clear to this boy that, regardless of his mother's words, the only way that he could get Wu Hao to obey any orders was to force him into it somehow, and good luck with that.

  "Yes, Lady Jin."

  He could feel her amusement prickle, like an ache deep in his chest.

  "How quickly you've lost your tongue," she said. "Although perhaps that's not so bad. Too often a genius manages to survive battles that would kill lesser men, only to ruin themselves by saying the wrong thing anyway."

  Wu Hao blinked, too surprised to even answer. Being called a genius kept feeling deeply, deeply weird. It was a compliment, he supposed, but somehow from Lady Jin it didn't have that same embarassing earnestness as Old Qin's.

  "Do you have any questions?" she asked, leaning back in her chair.

  "No, Lady Jin."

  He'd just have to go see what this fop son of hers was like.

  "Then there's only one final thing," Lady Jin said. "I have a little gift for you, you see."