Chapter 22: The Ridge of Remembered Pain

The path north was not a path at all, not in any way that a mapmaker would recognize. It was a suggestion, a scar of bare earth winding between boulders and bamboo thickets, and it climbed with the kind of relentless ambition that Siu-Bak usually associated with loan sharks. His legs burned. His stomach, still quiet from the old woman's bitter tea, had begun to stir again, a low growl that echoed...