The attack came on an ordinary evening, which Yuan would later decide was somehow the worst part of it.
He'd been walking back from the training grounds with two guards Jian had insisted on assigning him, cutting through the narrow garden path that ran along the eastern wall because it was faster than the main corridor and he'd grown tired, over the last several days, of being escorted everywhere like something fragile. The guards flanked him a respectful distance back, close enough to matter, far enough that Yuan could almost pretend, for a few minutes at a time, that his life hadn't turned into something requiring supervision.
The first sign of trouble was the silence. No birds. No distant clatter of the kitchens. Just the wind moving through the hedges and the sound of his own footsteps on the gravel path, too loud, too alone.
"Something's wrong," he said, more to himself than to the guards, and that was as far as he got before the first man dropped from the wall above them.
