A Long Road Chapter 10 Ficbit – Street Justice

So far at least a dozen street toughs and shifty servants had ended up skidding into noisome alleys, falling down stairs, or tripping with someone else’s purse in their hands right in front of Haven’s Watch.

From the alacrity with which two of those men had been grabbed, the Watch had known they were trouble, they just hadn’t had anything to hold them on. Before.

…Which was so very odd, compared to how such things normally went in the Jianghu, that Wei Wuxian almost hadn’t slipped out of sight in time. He’d seen city justice; quick, brutal, and weighted toward the heaviest purses. Life in the sects was safer. There had to be evidence of a crime to bring before your sect leader… or, well, enough people willing to lie that there was. Which didn’t happen often, even in Lanling. People might be afraid to bring Jin Guangshan’s crimes before the man himself, but most of the time he ran his sect well. The Peacock seemed to have come out with a sense of honor, at least.

And he and shijie have a son now, and – I’ll probably never see him….

Blinking away that stab of grief, Wei Wuxian had lingered an instant longer as the Watch hauled one scarred tough away. Long enough to hear Vienne’s watery laughter in the wind. Light as a water-strider, a ghostly hand had brushed his cheek where he’d hidden, her worst resentment soothed with open glee.

It’s nice to have friends.

He yawned and stretched, feeling the last bits of sunlight leave the world; resentment freed from the hammer of bright yang energy, now seeping into night air. The crows were perched not far from here, huddled into a warm stable for the evening. Not far, but not near either. There was no need to catch mostly innocent birds in ghostly rage.