Once Upon a Blade by Kailey Alessi

Author:Kailey Alessi [Kailey Alessi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Whumpy Printing Press
Published: 2023-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Lixin

After two days on the river, smoke rising from the city, Longwei reached the old capital. By that time he had another name to go by: Lixin. He hoped he would remember it.

Though, he couldn’t remember much. He was weak and shivery, wracked with a fever, and he swayed with each limping step.

He had the vague thought of needing a healer, but wasn’t sure how to find one.

Soon, thoughts of finding one fled as he found himself collapsed outside a stone building not far from the docks, not even inside the city walls. The whole place smelled of fish. But he was sure he smelled worse. If he turned his head over his right shoulder there was the clear stench of infection. His leg probably smelled the same. It was all swollen, the arrow still in his thigh. He wondered how hard it would be for it to get taken out at this point since everything around it was swollen.

Longwei—no, no, Lixin—wondered if perhaps he should just die. The rebels surely held the palace, and maybe they’d do better than his father. Why wouldn’t they? They’d formed because they were sick of famine, sick of not receiving any help for the flooding that had ruined their crops. His father just … hadn’t cared.

I can do better. I have to.

Long—Lixin tried to stand, reinvigorated by his resolve. The world seemed to fade out, his body not even real anymore. His vision went black. There was a loud noise, like someone dropping something heavy on the hard-packed dirt. Before he could figure out what that was and what had happened, he knew no more.

***

Voices faded in and out, a smoky sky no longer above him, but a rough, tiled roof. His eyes didn’t want to stay open, his body wanting to sleep and sleep. And perhaps die.

“What’s your name?” an old voice croaked; a woman’s voice.

“L-Lixin.” He wasn’t sure how he got the name out. Was that his name? It didn’t sound right.

***

“Do you know what this means?”

“Ignore it.”

“But—”

“It means if we don’t work quickly, we’ll be letting the crown prince die.”

***

There was a fierce stinging in his shoulder, and Lixin wanted to yell, to feel at what was doing this to him, but he could barely move. Wetness was on his forehead, a cloth, cold water, perhaps.

With his eyes cracked open a sliver, he saw he was in a room dimly lit by a couple of lanterns, and it had rough stone walls and wood floors, and screens with rents and tears in them. A closed window with colored window-paper was directly to his left, with no light peeking through, so it must have been night. A door. There was a door to his right, on the far end of the room. If he …

He still couldn’t move, and already sleep was dragging him back down.

Lixin—what was so odd about that name?—shivered, and the darkness took him again.

***

“Hold him down.”

Those words couldn’t be good.

There was a body resting on his upper half, thankfully avoiding the fire in his shoulder.

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