2. The Rules of Blood

The horse carried him through the darkness like a creature born of shadow and instinct. Jirgal rode low against its neck, one hand tangled in the coarse mane, the other gripping the stolen bow. Behind him, the torches had scattered into constellations of confusion. Shouts echoed across the hunting ground, first hailing the missing prince, then sharpening into alarm. A horn blew twice, the signal for an unscheduled halt. The hunters were no longer chasing prey. They were searching for one of their own.

Jirgal allowed himself a thin, mirthless smile. Let them search. The forest was vast, and he had learned long ago that the steppe taught lessons city nobles could never grasp. Darkness was not an enemy. It was a cloak.

He rode for another hour, pushing the horse as hard as he dared. The animal was strong, a fine Manchu-bred mount with deep chest and steady gait, but it had been ridden hard already that evening. When he came upon a narrow stream winding through a stand of willows, he dismounted and led the horse into the cold water. The current would mask their scent and confuse any trackers. He walked upstream for half a li before emerging onto a rocky bank where the hoofprints would leave no trace.

Only then did he allow himself to stop and examine his spoils.

The dead man's bow was a masterpiece. Layers of horn and sinew laminated over a bamboo core, its draw weight perhaps eighty pounds. The arrows were equally fine, fletched with eagle feathers and tipped with broadhead points designed to open a killing wound. In the saddlebag he found a flint and steel, a small knife for eating, a silk scarf that smelled of sandalwood, and a folded piece of paper sealed with red wax. He broke the seal and squinted at the characters in the dim moonlight.

It was a personal letter, written in elegant Manchu script. Jirgal could only make out fragments—his Manchu was rudimentary, picked up in army camps—but he recognized the name "Dorgon" and the phrase "tribute to the Regent." The signature was a single character: "Wen."

He tucked the letter into his tunic. It might be worth nothing. It might be worth everything.

A sound cut through the night. Not a horn this time, but something older and more primal. A leopard's hunting scream, raw and jagged, somewhere to the east. Jirgal's horse snorted and stamped, eyes rolling white. He calmed it with a murmured word and pressed his palm flat against its muzzle, feeling the velvet warmth of its breath.

"Easy," he whispered. "Easy. We are not their prey tonight."

But even as he said it, he knew it was only half true. He might have turned the tables on one hunter, but the Golden Garden was not a single man. It was a system. A tradition. A web of power that stretched from this dark forest all the way to the vermilion walls of the Forbidden City. Killing one prince changed nothing. To survive, he needed more than a bow and a horse. He needed knowledge.

He needed to understand what he was fighting.

Dawn came slowly, painting the eastern sky in shades of grey and dull rose. Jirgal had found a hiding place in a rocky outcrop overlooking a shallow valley. From here he could see the hunting lodge in the distance, a sprawling complex of tiled roofs and walled courtyards tucked into a fold of the hills. Smoke rose from its chimneys, and even at this hour he could hear the faint strains of music. A flute, perhaps, or a zither. The nobles were still celebrating their sport.

He watched for an hour, cataloguing details with a scout's patience. Guards at the main gate. Servants moving between outbuildings. A steady stream of riders coming and going along the main road. No sign of a search party in this direction. They were still combing the eastern forest, where he had left the prince's body.

Then he saw something that made his stomach clench.

Two servants emerged from a side gate carrying a bundle wrapped in white cloth. They walked to a cart that waited near the kitchen gardens and heaved the bundle onto the growing pile. Another bundle followed. Then another. Jirgal counted six in total before the cart was loaded and driven away toward a ravine beyond the compound.

He knew what those bundles contained. The last batch. The ones the tall man had called slow and weak. Men like Wu and Xiao Lin, who had ridden in the carriage with him and believed they were going to guard a merchant. Men who had probably died terrified and alone, hunted through these same trees while nobles laughed and placed wagers.

Jirgal closed his eyes. He had seen death before. He had seen entire companies of soldiers wiped out by Mongolian cavalry, had held dying friends in his arms while their blood soaked into foreign soil. But this was different. This was not war. This was murder dressed in silk and ritual, and the men who committed it would face no consequences. They would return to their mansions in Beijing, attend court audiences with the young emperor, and sleep soundly on pillows embroidered with their family crests.

Because they were Manchu. Because they were nobles. Because they had power, and power was its own justification.

He opened his eyes. The cold knot in his stomach had hardened into something else. Something like resolve.

He waited until mid-morning, when the household settled into its daily rhythm, before making his approach. The wall around the hunting lodge was tall but old, its stones softened by centuries of rain. He found a section where the mortar had crumbled and climbed over with the ease of a man who had scaled fortress walls under arrow fire. He dropped into a narrow alley between the kitchen and the stables, his boots landing silently on packed earth.

The servant's robe he had stolen from a washing line was a poor fit—too short in the arms, too wide in the shoulders—but in the shadowed corridors of the compound, no one looked twice at a man carrying a bundle of firewood. He kept his head down and his gait unhurried, just another anonymous servant in a household that employed hundreds.

The lodge was larger than it had appeared from the hillside. A maze of interconnected courtyards, each one more ornate than the last. Jirgal navigated by instinct, following the flow of servants carrying trays and wine jugs toward the main hall. He needed to find the records. A hunting club that lasted for generations would keep records. Rosters of members, lists of hunts, tallies of kills. Evidence.

He found the steward's office on the northern side of the second courtyard. It was a modest room compared to the opulence around it, furnished with plain wooden cabinets and a single desk cluttered with ledgers. The steward himself was absent—called away to deal with the commotion in the forest, Jirgal guessed—and the door was unlocked.

He slipped inside and began to search.

The ledgers were organized by year, their spines marked with Manchu script and the imperial reign names. He found the most recent volume and opened it on the desk. The entries were written in a neat, meticulous hand. Dates, times, locations. Names of participants, written in full with their official titles. Prince Aisin Gioro. Duke Gūwalgiya. Minister Borjigit. The flower of Manchu nobility, generation after generation.

And then the tallies.

*Autumn, 8th year of Kangxi. Three deer. Two boar. One fox. Two partridges.*

Deer. Boar. Fox. Partridges.

Jirgal stared at the words, his mind refusing to comprehend them. Then, slowly, the truth settled over him like a shroud. These were not animals. They had never been animals. The ledgers were coded, the true meaning hidden beneath a veneer of legitimate hunting records. But the code was thin, almost transparent. *Deer* for adult men. *Boar* for those who fought back. *Fox* for the clever ones who almost escaped. *Partridges* for the young, the small, the ones who should have been protected.

He turned the page. More entries. Years of entries. The hunting club had been operating for decades, maybe longer. Hundreds of victims. Thousands, if the older ledgers held similar records.

His hands trembled as he turned another page. The entries for the current year continued. And there, at the bottom of the latest entry, he found a note that made his blood run cold.

*Three deer. Special procurement by Zhaogetu. One veteran, one scholar, one laborer. For the Regent's entertainment.*

The Regent. Oboi.

Jirgal had heard the rumors in the city. Everyone had. The four regents who ruled the empire were locked in a bitter power struggle. Oboi had emerged as the dominant figure, crushing his rivals through a combination of political maneuvering and outright violence. The co-regent Suksaha had been executed just months ago, his entire clan wiped out in a purge that had shocked even the jaded court. And now Oboi was consolidating his power, eliminating anyone who might oppose him.

The Golden Garden was not just a hunting club. It was a tool of political terror. A way for Oboi's faction to reward loyalists, eliminate enemies, and forge bonds of shared guilt among the nobility. Every man who participated in a hunt became complicit. Every man who killed for sport became bound to the Regent by blood.

Jirgal closed the ledger. He did not need to read more. What he held in his hands was enough to bring down a dozen noble houses. Enough to expose a conspiracy that stretched to the highest levels of imperial power.

But who would believe a disgraced Han soldier carrying a stolen ledger? Who would even listen?

The door opened.

Jirgal spun, his hand reaching for the knife at his belt. But the man standing in the doorway was not a guard. It was Zhaogetu.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Zhaogetu's face was unreadable, his eyes flicking from Jirgal to the open ledger on the desk. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and utterly devoid of the false warmth he had shown the night before.

"I told you to run, soldier. Why did you not run?"

"Because running would not save me," Jirgal said. "It never has."

Zhaogetu stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He moved with the careful deliberation of a man who knew that one wrong move could mean death. "You killed the Third Prince. Do you understand what you have done? His father is Prince Aisin Gioro Hūnggali, a cousin of the late emperor. He has already ordered every available guard to search the forest. If they find you, they will not kill you quickly."

"They will not find me."

"No," Zhaogetu agreed. "They will not. Because I have been covering your tracks since midnight. I told them the Third Prince fell from his horse and was dragged into the ravine. That the body was mauled by leopards before we could recover it. My story will not hold forever, but it has bought us time."

Jirgal stared at him. "Us?"

Zhaogetu's composure cracked, just for a moment. Something flickered in his eyes—fear, or perhaps shame. "Did you think I chose this life? That I wanted to be a procurer for murderers? When I was a captain in the Banners, I had honor. I had purpose. But after the wars ended, the Regent's men came to me with an offer I could not refuse. Serve as steward to the Golden Garden, supply them with suitable prey, and my family would be protected. Refuse, and they would be destroyed. My wife. My daughters. My aged mother. You do not say no to Oboi."

"So you became a slaver," Jirgal said flatly. "A provider of human game."

"Yes." The word was barely a whisper. "I became a slaver. I recruited soldiers who had no families, vagrants who would not be missed, criminals who deserved their fate. I told myself it was better that I chose them than someone else. That I could at least be merciful in my selection. But there is no mercy in this. There never was."

He reached into his sleeve and withdrew a folded document. "This is a petition. Signed by twelve officials who oppose Oboi's regency. It was to be presented to the Kangxi Emperor in secret, but Oboi's spies discovered it before it could reach the throne. The men who signed it are marked for death. One of them is Censor Zhang, a man who once saved my life during the Shunzhi campaign. He is hiding in the city, waiting for a chance to flee south. The Golden Garden plans to hunt him in three days."

Jirgal looked at the petition, then at Zhaogetu. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I am a coward," Zhaogetu said. "I have been a coward for years. But even cowards reach a limit. When I saw you in the alley last night, I knew you were different. You survived the wars. You survived the purge. And now you have survived the hunt. The Regent's faction has grown too powerful. If someone does not stop them, the emperor himself will be next."

A bitter laugh escaped Jirgal's throat. "You want me to save the emperor? I am a Han soldier. The Manchu court has never cared whether I lived or died."

"No. I want you to save yourself. And in doing so, perhaps save us all." Zhaogetu met his eyes. "Take the ledger. Take the petition. Find Censor Zhang in the city and help him escape. If he reaches the southern provinces, he can rally support among the loyalist governors. The emperor is young, but he is not weak. He is waiting for an opportunity to move against Oboi. Give him that opportunity."

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. Voices, raised in agitation. Zhaogetu stiffened.

"They are searching the compound now," he said. "I can hold them off for a few minutes. There is a postern gate behind the kitchen gardens. Take it and follow the stream east. It will lead you to the canal road. From there, you can reach the city by nightfall." He pressed a small pouch into Jirgal's hand. "Silver. Enough to buy passage south. And this."

The object was cold and heavy. An iron tally, shaped like a tiger, broken in half. The other half, Jirgal knew, would be held by the gate guards. It was a military pass, the kind used by couriers on urgent imperial business.

"How did you get this?"

"I stole it from the Regent's own courier three months ago. I have been waiting for the right moment to use it." Zhaogetu's smile was thin and desperate. "It seems that moment is now."

The voices were closer. Someone was shouting orders. Zhaogetu pushed Jirgal toward the door.

"Go. And Jirgal—if you see my family in the city, tell them I died with honor. It will be a lie, but it is the only comfort I can give them."

Jirgal hesitated. He had trusted Zhaogetu once before, and that trust had led him to this nightmare. But there was something in the steward's eyes now that had not been there before. Not hope, exactly. More like the desperate clarity of a man who has finally decided to do the right thing, even if it costs him everything.

He nodded once, then slipped through the door.

The kitchen gardens were empty. He found the postern gate exactly where Zhaogetu had described it, a narrow iron door hidden behind a trellis of withered vines. The lock was old and rusted, easily forced with the hunting knife. He pushed through and emerged onto a muddy path that wound down toward the stream.

Behind him, the compound erupted in noise. Shouts. Running footsteps. The clash of weapons. Then a single cry, sharp with pain, abruptly cut short.

Jirgal did not look back.

He ran along the stream bed, splashing through the cold water, until the sounds faded into the distance. Then he ran further, driven by something deeper than fear. The ledger was heavy in his tunic, the petition a burning ember against his chest. He had started the night as prey. He had become a hunter. Now he was something else entirely.

A courier. A messenger. A loose thread in a tapestry of power that was beginning to unravel.

The sun climbed higher, burning off the morning mist. By noon, Jirgal reached the canal road and fell in with a caravan of salt merchants heading toward Beijing. His stolen robes and military bearing earned him suspicious looks, but the iron tally silenced all questions. An imperial courier on urgent business was not to be delayed.

As the city walls rose on the horizon, Jirgal thought about Zhaogetu. About the ledger. About the thousands of names recorded in those pages, the thousands of lives reduced to entries in a hunting log. And he thought about the young emperor, hidden away in his palace, surrounded by enemies who wore the faces of loyal ministers.

He did not know if Zhaogetu was still alive. He did not know if Censor Zhang could be found. He did not know if a single stolen ledger could topple a regime.

But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.

He was done running.

Somewhere in the Forbidden City, a boy emperor waited. And somewhere in the shadows, a hunter was about to become the hunted.

The city gates opened before him. Jirgal rode through, into the crowded streets of Beijing, carrying a weight that no one could see. And behind him, in the forest where the Golden Garden still burned with torchlight and fury, a tall man in a sky-blue robe stared at the body of his steward and swore an oath of blood.

The hunt was not over.

It was just beginning.