Ordinarily Zen would never have risked revealing his identity for a songgirl indentured at some high-class bordello in an Elantian stronghold. But common songgirls did not kill Elantian soldiers in the blink of an eye. Zen had felt it from downstairs: the shockwave of qì that had ripped through the Teahouse, detectable only by trained practitioners. It had been a qì full of shadows and darkness, of yīn energies without balance.
