The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 340: Simple Math

The rope cut clean grooves in his wrists by the time Yizhen tested the knot for the third time with a lazy flex that looked like a twitch.

He kept his mouth slanted into that half-smile men mistook for surrender.

Across from him, Xinying was leaning against a post, her lashes low, and her posture untidy in a way only a very tidy woman could make look natural.

They had decided without words to let the net close.

He could still taste the powder they’d blown across the lanterns. It was sweet at first, then warm, then the little stutter at the heart that told him the mix had been made by someone who’d watched too many throats drop open.

It was effective, if you were catching merchants.

Definitely not enough if you wanted monsters.

The warehouse smelled of salt and mule hair.

Crates stacked to the rafters made crooked alleys. Four crossbows sat on a beam like fat birds; men below pretended they offered certainty.

The floor had been swept in a hurry, as if someone believed neatness could hide how quickly this room had been chosen.

"On your feet," the scar-jawed leader barked at him earlier.

Yizhen had made a show of staggering, letting them shoulder him onto the straw. They dragged Xinying in after their hands might have been careful, but their eyes were greedy.

One of them whispered "his woman" with the relief of a man who thought he understood leverage.

He’d enjoyed that.

Now the lantern nearest Xinying popped sap and hissed. Her eyes didn’t move. She was listening—not to footsteps, but to breath.

Counting.

Sorting.

Assigning.

"Still alive?" Yizhen murmured toward her without turning his head.

"Mmh." She didn’t open her eyes. "Eight here. Two above. One behind the back wall who thinks he can hold his water forever."

"Ten coins say he can’t."

"Keep your coins," she breathed. "We’ll need change."

The sounds of bootsteps approached them as the leader crouched into view, his knees apart the way men trained on stables always stood.

He wore a soldier’s coat with the insignia cut off, and the way the cloth fell told Yizhen exactly how recently the badge had been removed.

"Yan Luo," the man grinned, enjoying the name like a sweet he’d stolen. "King of Hell down from his throne. Thought you’d be taller."

"And I thought you’d be smarter," Yizhen returned. "I guess we are both bound to be disappointed."

A ripple of rough laughter rolled through the room. It came from the wrong places—the ones who needed to impress their paymaster, not the ones who’d done hard work. Good to know.

The leader’s gaze slid to Xinying, curious about the woman who had been seen in a compromising position with the King of Hell.

"Pretty thing for a lord of rats," he mused. "Heard the King kept no attachments. Then you turned up."

"Lucky me," she murmured.

That earned her a small, pleased smirk. He mistook it for a flinch.

"Word is you’re worth double," a woman’s voice snapped from the darkness behind them. "Him for the guild. You for the client."

She stepped around a crate wearing a leather coat with boots that had walked foreign roads, and a braid wound so tight it couldn’t have been comfortable. The way she checked her men without blinking told Xinying this one had given orders across borders.

New guild, then. Not Daiyu’s. Not smart enough to stay home.

"Client?" Yizhen echoed lightly. "Which port sold their spine this week?"

No one answered, which was answer enough.

The leader jerked his chin; a boy no older than eighteen hustled forward with a ledger. He had ink on his thumb and a scar on his ear that didn’t belong to violence. This one had been a scribe before someone told him knives could be better than books.

"You’ll write," the leader told Yizhen. "Ports. Names. Schedules. You hand me the map; I hand your woman back with most of her pretty left."

"Mmm." Yizhen considered the straw as if it contained wisdom. "Tempting."

The woman with the braid crouched toward Xinying, head tilted. "What are you? Do you even have a name worth learning?"

There was that foreign curl on the vowels again—west, maybe.

The hills beyond the trade road. Not Baiguang. A farther wind.

Xinying let her eyes lift half a finger’s width. "Do you need one?"

The braid-woman’s mouth thinned. "You’ll have value with or without a name. With, you die softer."

"I prefer simple math," Xinying breathed. "You have a room, a rope, and a rumor. I have a city. Check the sums."

The leader laughed at that, over-loud, to paper over the way the line landed. "I like her," he announced to no one in particular. "She’ll be fun."

"Careful," Yizhen drawled. "My woman tends to make fun end in expenses."

"You’ll learn to control your tongue," the leader snapped. "And your temper."

"I keep both sharp," Yizhen replied. "They last longer that way."

The boy with the ledger looked between them, nervous.

He would make a joke soon; boys always did... almost as if to announce to the room that they were men.

It was better to let him.

People talked most when they’re trying to prove how much they know.

"Your under-city will be ours by spring," the boy blurted, bravado falling out of him like coins from a ripped pocket. "You think you own the docks. You own shadows that learned to move only because we let them. The guild coming in will teach your rats manners."

"What’s its name," Xinying asked, her voice as mild as rice porridge.

The braid-woman cut the boy a look that would have shut a mouth twice his age. Too late.

"We don’t waste breath on names," she clipped. "We waste blades."

Yizhen smiled as if she’d complimented his knife. "You waste a lot of things," he murmured. "That coat, for instance."

The leader ignored that. "Write," he ordered again, voice roughening. "Or we start our work on her."

"She doesn’t like to be rushed," Yizhen warned softly. "You’ll get more from her if she’s fed and warm."

"We can warm her," someone snickered from the rafters.

Xinying turned her head and looked exactly where the laugh had come from. She didn’t smile. She didn’t frown. She just looked. The rafters swallowed the rest of the man’s humor.

The braid-woman pulled a stool close and sat, not trusting her knees to hold patience upright. "You’re Yan Luo, the King of Hell, the man who makes the world around you nervous," she pressed. "You don’t get to be patient. Don’t forget, we have you now, we know you and who you are. If you want, we can unlearn you and let the vultures find your body in the morning."

"Learned me how?" His tone sharpened by a hair.

"By buying your roads from the people who cleaned them," she returned. "Your loyalty costs coin. Your men cost less. Your city costs nothing if you take its teeth first."

Yizhen filed the cadence away. That wasn’t Daiyu swagger. That was foreign math spoken by someone who’d watched empires die from thirst.

"You think you’re speaking to the right king," Xinying murmured.

The leader threw her a grin. "We’re not here for kings. We’re here for kings’ mistakes."

Her head tipped in a clean line that could have been humor and could have been the beginning of a cut. "Then you should have stayed at home."

He leaned closer, breath hot with wine. "You’re the leverage, honey. You’ll teach the King of Hell when to sit, when to talk, and when to shut his mouth. That’s all."