The guards dragged them through yet another door and down a flight of stairs, though not the ones that led to the leatherworker's shop. These stairs were dank and slippery and the stink that rose up from below was foul. When they finally reached a level floor, Li could hear water. In feeble torchlight, he caught glimpses of shadowed vaults piled with crates and barrels. He and Tycho were likewise piled into a vault, one with rusty bars across its mouth. Someone produced rope, swiftly tied them hand and foot, and kicked them to the floor. Cold, damp stone slammed into his chest and chin. He tried to twist onto his back. A kick caught him high in the belly, knocking the air out of him.

For a long moment, all he could do was gasp for breath as the Hooded's guards, laughing and growling, filed out of the vault and slammed the barred door behind them. A lock clicked shut. Their voices moved away and everything was silent except for the sound of water-and Tycho's breathing. Li twisted around and sat up. A torch outside threw dancing light into the cell.

"Tycho?" he said.

The bard was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, his face flaming red. "What in the name," he slurred softly, "of all that is good and glorious and wise and intelligent were… you… doing? " He sat up and glared at him. "We were going to take the Hooded hostage so we could get the beljurils. We weren't going to try to kill him!"

Li glared right back at him. "The Hooded is Yu Mao," he spat.

Tycho's jaw dropped in disbelief. "What?"

"The Hooded is Yu Mao."

Li blew out his breath and hung his head against his chest. When the anger that had gripped him in the room above ebbed a bit, he looked up again and forced the words out. "He's my brother, Tycho. When you and Jacerryl described the Hooded last night, I started to wonder. The Hooded came to Spandeliyon only a bit before Brin and just after the Sow vanished. He covered himself entirely and spoke only to an interpreter. He sold Yu Mao's swords to Jacerryl. When I saw him upstairs and from the way he froze when you mentioned the Sow, I knew-"

"Wait." Tycho shook his head as if trying to clear it and looked at Li again. "Even if you're right, even if the Hooded is Yu Mao, you just tried to kill him! I thought you only wanted to find him!"

"I do. I did." Li clenched his jaw and heat sprang into his face. "I lied to you, Tycho," he said through his teeth. "I didn't tell you the whole truth. When I saw Veseene, she guessed that, but I couldn't tell her either. I swear I didn't think it would go this far. I thought I would learn what I needed to know from Brin and that I would leave Spandeliyon to find Yu Mao somewhere else."

In the shadows, Tycho's eyes were narrow. "So," he said coldly, "what is the whole truth? Why did you just try to kill your brother? "

"Because Tieh Fa Pan didn't see Yu Mao taken hostage by the pirates of the Sow." Li swallowed. "He saw him join them. Yu Mao betrayed the expedition's ship to the pirates. Fa Pan thought that he even organized the expedition's journey to Sembia just so the pirates would have a chance to take the ship. When the pirates attacked, all the members of the expedition except Fa Pan were sent below deck for their safety. Yu Mao murdered them."

The confession burned in his gut. Tycho's eyes had gone wide and he looked like he had something to say, but Li didn't let him speak; he plunged on. "When Fa Pan went to warn them that the ship had been boarded, Yu Mao attacked him, too. He was the one who wounded Fa Pan. He pushed him overboard to drown. He didn't know that he was spirit folk, though. From the water, Fa Pan watched Yu Mao celebrating with the pirates, laughing with Brin and embracing the pirates' sorceress-captain like a lover."

His voice failed him. Silence fell. After a time, Tycho asked softly, "Why?"

Li shook his head. "I don't know. Nobody knows. Fa Pan wrote that he asked Yu Mao the same thing and all Yu Mao said was 'You wouldn't understand.' Fa Pan suspected that he murdered the rest of the expedition-and tried to kill him, too-so that word of what he had done would never get back to Keelung." He closed his eyes for a moment. "If my father hadn't received Fa Pan's letter, the silk families of Keelung would just have assumed the expedition was lost and mourned them accordingly. They might have asked questions, but not many."

"But because Fa Pan lived long enough to send that letter," Tycho said, "they sent you."

"No." Li sighed. "My father sent me, Tycho. Rather than face the shame of explaining what his eldest son had done, he told Keelung the same lie I told you. Then he sent me west to find Yu Mao and, if he wasn't already dead, to kill him."

Tycho gasped. "Sweet chum, Li!"

"It had to be done, TVcho."

"You're talking about murdering your brother!"

"Better me than a stranger! Better me than no one at all." He twisted so Tycho could see his left arm. "That's why my father sent the Yellow Silk with me, TVcho. It's the honor of my family; it's the tradition that binds us together. I carry the greatest treasure of the Kuang with me. That's how important this is."

"Aren't there courts in Shou Lung? Doesn't your emperor dispense justice?"

"There are courts. There is justice. There's tradition, too. All three agree. What Yu Mao did must be punished."

Tycho pressed his lips together. "Punished in secret?" Li looked away.

"If I do what I have to do," he said quietly, "I will return to Keelung and I will tell my father the truth. To everyone else, I will tell a lie. When I die, I will stand before the Lords of Karma and pray to Fa Kuan, the Immortal of justice, and Chih Shih, the Immortal of lore and tradition, to intercede on my behalf because what I did was necessary."

This time Tycho didn't answer. Silence stretched out thin.

Finally, Tycho asked, "Are you certain the Hooded is really Yu Mao?"

Li nodded.

"Did he recognize your saber the way you recognized his butterfly swords? "

"It's called a dao, Tycho, not a saber," said Li. "Sabers are what the Tuigan barbarians use. And no, he couldn't have. He's never seen that particular dao before."

"Did he recognize you?"

Li hesitated. Had Yu Mao recognized him? With the hood obscuring his face, it was hard to tell anything. The moment had been so chaotic that any subtle signs would have been lost. Yu Mao certainly hadn't called out to him during their fight or after.

But I'm not some dao, new forged and plucked at random from a rack, Li thought. I'm his brother. "How could he not have recognized me?" he demanded.

"What if he's not Yu Mao? "

"But all of the signs…"

"I know," Tycho said quickly. "I know." He sighed and tilted his head back. "But if the Hooded is Yu Mao and he was friends once with Brin, they aren't friends anymore. Brin and the Hooded despise each other."

"Maybe they've had a falling out. If Brin knows the Hooded is Yu Mao, that would explain why he's after me-his rival's brother in his hands," Li said and added in Shou, "Honest folk aren't a bandit's only prey."

"There's no honor among thieves," Tycho replied in Common. "Li, do me a favor? Before you kill the Hooded, make sure you know who he is?"

"Kill the Hooded?" grunted a voice from outside their cell. Li twisted around sharply. The tall guard who had met Tycho in the leatherworker's shop-Cado, the Hood-ed's interpreter had called him-was standing on the other side of the bars. Two other guards were with him. All three had nasty looks on their face. "You go fishing with an unbaited hook, don't you?" asked Cado.

Li shot a glance at Tycho. The bard swallowed and managed a crooked grin. "Bind me," he said, "I don't even use a hook!" He squirmed up to his knees as the tall guard unlocked the cell and swung the barred door open. "Come to let us go?"