Multiple riders converge on Pezijil from different directions. The gates open and close. The riders’ eyes all have the same bright, wounded look. The look of men who have run hard enough that their bodies are begging for mercy and their minds refuse to grant it.

  A city clerk, stationed by the inner ring with a slate and a trembling hand, squints at the mess of them and mutters, “Again?”

  No one answers him. One rider slides off his horse too fast, knees buckling, and catches himself on the wall. A Banner grabs his elbow, just to keep him upright long enough to deliver the message.

  They are herded through streets.

  They are taken to the converted administrative hall—once a palace annex meant for gentle debates and delicate tea. Now it is a place that pretends ink can replace fire.

  Naci receives them at a long table that used to hold poetry scrolls and now holds maps. She stands. Her hair is braided tight, though the braid frays at the edges like it’s been gnawed. Her face is composed. They see the faint bruising under her eyes that festival lantern-light couldn’t fully disguise. Horohan stands a half-step behind her, as usual. Her presence changes the room’s temperature. Official Mo sits to one side with a brush poised over a ledger, posture rigid. Shi Min is there too, sleeves immaculate, eyes bright, expression neutral. Dukar is hunched over a stack of supply tallies, still wearing the faint exhaustion of someone who runs a city’s veins by hand. Kuan drifts near the hall’s pillars like an unwelcome thought that refuses to leave. Borak lurks by the door with two Banners, arms folded, gaze bored.

  The riders are brought in and made to kneel.

  One rider lifts his head and blurts, voice hoarse, “The map has cracked.”

  Mo’s brush pauses mid-air, a single drop of ink swelling at the tip like a held breath.

  Naci doesn’t blink. “Speak.”

  The rider swallows, looks down at the floor like it’s safer than looking at her. “Three powers,” he says. “Three claims.”

  Another rider—older, with a split lip that hasn’t stopped bleeding properly—leans forward. “Three kingdoms,” he says.

  Kuan’s mouth quirks. “How nostalgic,” he murmurs. “History is such a plagiarist.”

  Horohan flicks her eyes toward him, a warning without movement. Kuan shuts up. For a whole heartbeat.

  The riders begin to spill their reports, overlapping in their urgency, each trying to be the one whose news matters most. Names, roads, villages, banners sighted, messages overheard from captured couriers. It comes in fragments, like broken pottery you’re expected to assemble into a bowl before someone dies.

  Naci raises one hand.

  Silence falls with the obedience of trained bodies.

  “South,” she says. “First.”

  The rider with the split lip nods quickly. “Jin Na,” he says. “He’s consolidated the disconnected southern provinces. Fast. Ruthless.”

  Dukar’s gaze lifts from his ledgers. “How?” he asks.

  “Roads,” the rider says. “He reopened them. Cleared them. Put riders on them. He’s restoring grain distribution—taking storehouses that survived Hluay occupation and redirecting their flow. He’s appointing governors from surviving local elites.”

  Kuan chuckles softly. “He’s putting the old faces back on the wall so the wall looks familiar.”

  The rider swallows. “Yes. And he’s executing collaborationists publicly. He calls it restoring the true line.”

  Naci’s gaze stays steady. “And the child.”

  The rider hesitates. “He travels with him,” he says.

  “Legitimacy engine,” Kuan says under his breath, almost fond. “Naci taught him well.”

  The rider continues, voice picking up speed now that he’s begun. “Jin Na styles himself Regent of the South. Guardian of the True Mandate.”

  Mo’s brush finally touches paper again. He writes the title down as if pinning a snake to a board.

  Naci’s mouth twists. Not quite a frown. Not quite amusement. Something in between. “He’s smart enough not to use the Emperor as bait this time,” she says quietly, as if speaking to the map rather than the room.

  “What of Linh?” Shi Min prompts the riders.

  The riders glance at one another. One of them spits. Another rubs his hands on his trousers as if trying to wipe the memory away.

  “He is regrouping,” the oldest rider says. “In burned-over territories. He’s pulling remnants like splinters into a fist. And he has Shaghal’Tyn chieftains with him.”

  “How many?” Dukar asks.

  “Enough,” the rider replies, which is the kind of answer that annoys Dukar.

  “He preaches,” another rider says, voice strained. “He claims divine war. He says the flame withdraws only to gather itself. He purges doubters. Publicly. He calls them soft hearts who failed the fire. Officers who question the story get executed in front of their men.”

  Horohan’s nostrils flare. “Good,” she says, and the word is not mercy. It is tactical satisfaction. An enemy who eats his own throat saves you work later.

  “And Li Song?” Shi Min asks.

  “Li Song rebuilds logistics,” the rider replies. “Quietly. The tension between them is… controlled. But it’s there. Like a rope pulled too tight.”

  Mo’s brush pauses again, but he doesn’t look up. “A rope snaps,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

  No one disagrees.

  Naci lets the silence thicken, then taps the table with one finger. The sound is small. It still commands.

  “And us,” she says.

  The riders straighten unconsciously, as if her question is a test of loyalty rather than geography.

  “Pezijil is yours,” one says. “The Northern Wall spine is yours. You control the imperial heart.”

  He hesitates, then adds—because truth is a thing that sometimes escapes even cautious mouths—“But not its limbs.”

  Naci’s eyes narrow, not at the insult, but at the accuracy.

  “Our Banners are stretched,” another rider says. “The population is recovering but not reliable for conscription. People eat now, yes, but they remember hunger. They remember who fed them. They also remember who burned the heirs.”

  A quiet ripple passes through the officials. Not shock. Everyone knows what rumor does in this city. It grows fat on unspoken things.

  Naci’s gaze slides briefly toward Mo. Mo does not look up.

  Kuan, lounging by a pillar like sin in human shape, murmurs, “If they’re already whispering, at least whispering means their tongues are still attached.”

  Borak’s mouth curves. “We can fix that.”

  Shi Min’s eyes cut toward Borak like a drawn blade. “No,” she says, calm as a decree. “We cannot fix politics by making the city mute.”

  Borak’s grin doesn’t fade.

  Naci raises her hand again. The room stills.

  “I need Pezijil to thrive,” she says, “so it can fight.”

  The festival has ended, but its echo remains. Bits of colored cloth still hang from poles. A wrestling ring’s packed dirt is still visible in a square where clerks now queue with petitions.

  During the day, Naci is seen in streets that used to fear her. She rides past markets where fish vendors shout again. She nods at a wall being rebuilt and speaks to a foreman like she understands mortar. Children stare at her with awe.

  At night, she is in rooms like this one, with maps and decrees.

  The decrees are issued, sealed, distributed.

  Tax rates. Conscription quotas. Banner jurisdictions. Grain storage requirements. Road maintenance obligations. Curfew boundaries. Rules for “acceptable weapon carrying.”

  The Windmarks script becomes official for all administrative records in former Moukopl territory.

  Mo fights the impulse to sneer at the unfamiliar strokes. He has spent his whole life worshipping the old script as if it were order incarnate. Now order arrives in a different shape, and he has to decide whether to die for aesthetics.

  He chooses to live. He does it bitterly.

  Horohan, watching them bicker, murmurs to Naci, “He’s going to stab someone with a brush one day.”

  Naci’s mouth twitches. “Let him,” she replies softly. “It would improve morale.”

  Local elites are summoned.

  They arrive in carefully repaired robes, faces practiced in the old discipline of surviving regimes. They bow to Naci’s chair, then glance at the Banner guards as if counting the distance to death.

  Naci gives them choices. Cooperate and keep partial power. Resist and lose everything.

  Most cooperate. They smile. They present gifts. They swear loyalty with the delicate sincerity of people who have sworn it too many times to believe in it.

  Some don’t.

  Those ones do not last long.

  A merchant lord in lacquered boots refuses the grain storage requirement, calls it theft. The next morning his warehouses are “audited.” The day after that, he is removed from office and placed under “protective custody.” The day after that, he dies of “fever.” The city learns the lesson.

  A minor aristocrat tries to rally neighbors, whispers about Mandate, about legitimate regency, about Jin Na’s southern court. His tongue is found in a gutter.

  Dukar sits with ledgers that breed like insects. He has tallies for grain in, grain out, labor assigned, walls repaired, arrows fletched, horses shod. He cross-checks names until his eyes look like they have been sanded.

  Naci watches Dukar work and feels something in her chest twist.

  She did not grow up in palaces. She grew up under sky so wide it made lies feel small. She grew up watching steppe camps move when they needed to—no walls, no papers, just decisions and consequences. Now she sits in a dead empire’s ribs and learns, with cold clarity, how cages are built: one rule at a time, one stamped sheet at a time, one frightened cooperation at a time.

  She rubs her face, thumb catching on a healed split in her lip. When she speaks, her voice is low enough that only Dukar hears it over the scratch of brushes and the murmur of officials trying not to be seen as weak.

  “How do we go back?” Naci asks, exhausted.

  Dukar doesn’t look up from the ledger. He just turns a page, eyes scanning columns like he is reading a battlefield. “You can go back,” he says. “Whenever you want.”

  ...

  The restored ministry wing still smells like smoke. The hallways have been scrubbed, repainted, draped with fresh cloth—clean lines laid over old panic like bandages over rot. Lanterns hang where torches once dripped soot. New doors have been set into frames that are still chipped from kicks and forced entry. The empire is trying to look respectable again.

  Old Ji’s temporary quarters sit at the end of a corridor that used to belong to some minor bureau nobody respected until it became useful. Half the furniture is missing. The shelves are there, but bare in places where books used to be. A table has been repaired with crude pegs that don’t match the lacquer. The inkstone is new; the stain beneath it is not. Someone has put a potted plant in the corner. The plant looks exhausted.

  Two Banner guards stand outside, rigid and watchful, their armor too bright for the walls. Bimen walks past them like he belongs anywhere. His robes are plain, well-kept. His hair is neatly bound. His face is unchanged, and that unchangedness reads like insolence in a place where everyone has aged a decade in a season.

  Old Ji hears his steps and does not rise.

  He sits behind a desk that is not really his desk, in a chair that looks stolen from a waiting room. He has paperwork stacked in careful towers, each one tied with cord. His posture is correct. His eyes are not. They have the flat patience of a man who has been forced to watch the same tragedy performed by different actors and is now bored of pretending surprise.

  Bimen stops just inside the doorway.

  Long pause.

  Neither bows.

  Old Ji breaks the silence first.

  “You left,” Old Ji says.

  It is not accusation and not question.

  Bimen’s expression remains mild, almost polite.

  “I did,” Bimen replies.

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  Old Ji’s jaw tightens. His fingers, resting on the desk, curl just slightly as if they want to grip a blade instead of a brush.

  “The city was starving,” Old Ji says.

  Bimen looks past him at the potted plant in the corner, at its struggling leaves.

  “The city was already dead,” Bimen says. “I chose not to lie down beside it.”

  Old Ji’s eyes sharpen. “Some of us stayed to fight.”

  Bimen’s laugh comes out quiet. It is the laugh of a man who has heard too many heroic speeches delivered by men who will never pay for them.

  “You stayed to survive,” Bimen says. “There’s a difference. Fighting would have meant dying.” He tilts his head a fraction, and the movement is almost sympathetic. “You’re not dead, Ji. You’re just bitter.”

  Old Ji flinches—not because the words hurt, but because they are accurate enough to be disrespectful.

  His voice drops.

  “Sima is dead.”

  Bimen’s expression flickers.

  It is small. Almost nothing. A tightening at the corner of the eye, a pause in the breath. Something that could have been grief if he were a different man, then isn’t.

  “How?” Bimen asks.

  Old Ji studies him for a beat. Then he answers.

  “Executed,” Old Ji says. “The Khan did it herself. In front of the court. No trial. No witnesses beyond those who mattered.”

  Bimen nods slowly, as if confirming a suspicion he has been carrying like a stone in his pocket. His gaze drifts to the desk, to the stacks of paper, to the tidy cords that pretend they can bind chaos.

  “He always thought procedure would save him,” Bimen says. “Turns out procedure is just paper.”

  Old Ji’s mouth twists. “You didn’t like him.”

  Bimen’s lips barely move. “I didn’t dislike him.” He pauses. “He was a tool that believed it was a craftsman. The empire was full of them.”

  Old Ji’s eyes narrow. “And you were what?”

  Bimen looks at him. For the first time since he entered, his gaze sharpens.

  “I was the man who knew it was a tool,” Bimen says. “That’s all.”

  The potted plant in the corner trembles slightly as a draft slides through the broken window seam. It is a small movement. It feels like the room shivering.

  Old Ji leans back a fraction. The motion is controlled, but his shoulders betray him; they look heavier than they used to, as if they have been carrying the palace itself.

  “We’re the only ones left,” Old Ji says, and the bitterness in it is almost intimate. “From the old court.”

  Bimen’s mouth twitches. Not quite a smile.

  “You and me,” Bimen says. “And Kuan, if you count monsters.”

  Old Ji’s eyes harden. “I don’t.”

  Bimen’s gaze remains steady. “He counts himself,” he says. “That’s enough.”

  Old Ji looks down at his own hands on the desk. The fingers are stained faintly with ink, but the skin is thin now. Older. The hands of a man who has signed too many death sentences indirectly and is now living long enough to have to acknowledge it.

  “I won’t last much longer,” Old Ji says. The admission is casual. “You’ll be alone then.”

  Bimen examines him.

  “You say that like it’s a threat,” Bimen says. “It’s not. Solitude is a state of mind. I have often been surrounded on my ships and always felt alone, yet I was sometimes the lonely sailor of a raft and felt the whole world surrounding me.”

  Old Ji’s laugh is sharp, humorless. “You’ve always been good at making cowardice sound philosophical.”

  Bimen’s eyes lift slightly, as if amused. “And you’ve always been good at making survival sound like virtue.”

  The words sit between them.

  Old Ji exhales. The sound is controlled, but tired. He shifts again, because he cannot stand still too long.

  “Do you believe she has it?” Old Ji asks. “The Mandate?”

  Bimen does not answer immediately. He looks toward the window screens carved with dragons, now repaired, their lacquer newly polished. The dragons look bright and false. They look like theater.

  “The Mandate is a story we tell ourselves,” Bimen says, “so we don’t have to admit we’re ruled by whoever holds the grain.”

  Old Ji’s gaze sharpens. “That’s not an answer.”

  Bimen’s voice remains mild. “It’s the only honest one.”

  He pauses, as if deciding how much honesty the room can endure before it cracks.

  “The Yanming Emperor had the Mandate,” Bimen continues. “The Emperor before him had it. All of them did. And they still made every wrong decision that led us here.” His eyes drift briefly to the corridor outside, where Banner boots pass occasionally—quiet, disciplined, northern. “The Mandate didn’t save a single child from starving. It didn’t keep the walls standing. It created Hluay and Tepr.”

  Old Ji’s mouth tightens. His fingers tap once on the desk—an unconscious echo of old impatience.

  “So you’re saying it’s null,” Old Ji says.

  Bimen’s gaze returns to him. Calm. Unblinking.

  “I’m saying it was always null,” Bimen replies. “We just believed the story because we were inside it.”

  He gestures vaguely at the repaired walls, at the missing furniture, at the potted plant trying to convince itself this is a normal office.

  “Now we’re inside a different story,” Bimen says. “Ask me in twenty years if this one’s better.”

  Old Ji stares at him for a long moment. The look is something like hatred, but softened by exhaustion. Hatred takes energy. He has less of that now.

  Before he can respond, the room gains another presence without anyone announcing it.

  Kuan appears in the doorway like a stain that learned to walk.

  He does not knock. He never knocks. Knocking implies respect for boundaries, and Kuan treats boundaries as suggestions.

  His robe is simple. His hair is tied back. His eyes are bright in a way that makes even the lantern light feel unsafe. He leans against the doorframe with casual familiarity, as if this is his office too, as if the ministry wing is just another corridor for him to haunt.

  “Am I interrupting two old men mourning their empire?” Kuan asks.

  Old Ji’s expression curdles instantly, as if he has been offered spoiled tea.

  Bimen’s eyes simply narrow.

  “You’re the shadow who survived everything,” Bimen says.

  Kuan grins. “I’m the shadow who enjoyed everything,” he replies. “There’s a difference.”

  Old Ji’s voice goes flat. “You have nothing to contribute.”

  Kuan’s grin does not fade. It sharpens.

  “I have everything to contribute,” Kuan says. He pushes off the doorframe and steps into the room as if he owns the air. “I’m the reason Jin Na is running south instead of holding the capital. I’m the reason your child Emperor is a prop instead of a martyr. I’m the reason—”

  Bimen cuts him off, not unkindly. The interruption is quiet. It lands anyway.

  “You’re the reason any of this happened at all,” Bimen says.

  For a heartbeat, Kuan’s grin flickers.

  It is tiny, brief. Like a lantern guttering in wind.

  Then it returns, brighter, more practiced. He has always been good at patching cracks before anyone can see inside.

  “Someone had to break the toy,” Kuan says. His tone is light, almost cheerful, like he’s discussing a game. “The rest of you were too busy admiring it.”

  Old Ji’s eyes burn. “You’re proud of the destruction.”

  Kuan tilts his head, considering. Then he shrugs with a softness that almost reads as sincerity.

  “I’m proud of the space,” Kuan says. “What you build in it is your problem.”

  He laughs again—soft and genuine—and slips out before either of them can respond, like he has dropped a stone into the room and left them to listen to the ripples.

  Bimen watches him go, gaze following that disappearing grin until it vanishes into the corridor’s dimness.

  “That one will outlive us all,” Bimen says.

  Old Ji’s voice is tight. “That one shouldn’t outlive the week.”

  Bimen’s mouth twitches, and the expression is not quite humor. It is acceptance.

  “And yet.”

  ...

  Inside Kai Lang’s manor, a servant leads Jinhuang and Fol into a courtyard that has been left deliberately undecorated.

  Khulgana sleeps in a borrowed room down the hall.

  Beside Khulgana’s bed sits a basket.

  The fledgling inside the basket is a small, furious heartbeat wrapped in down. Even asleep, it makes tiny offended noises.

  Jinhuang and Fol sit under the open sky. Jinhuang’s hands keep finding each other. She twists her fingers together and then forces them apart, as if her own skin is too tight.

  Fol sits opposite her, posture steady, hands resting on his knees. He looks calmer than he should.

  A small moth flutters into the brazier’s light, circles once like it is thinking, then decides not to die for this and drifts back into shadow.

  The courtyard stays cold. Kai Lang is not present.

  Jinhuang stares at the brazier flame until her eyes sting.

  Her voice comes out low, as if speaking louder might wake the whole city.

  “Do you want to stay here?”

  Fol blinks once. He looks around the courtyard, at the bare stone, the clean lines, the intentional lack of welcome.

  “Here?” he repeats, like the word needs to be turned over to make sure it’s real.

  “At my mother’s,” Jinhuang says, and now the words start coming faster. “In Pezijil.” She inhales hard through her nose. “Khulgana could go to school. With books and teachers and children who aren’t learning to shoot arrows before they can write.”

  Fol’s gaze flicks toward the hallway where their daughter sleeps. His face shifts by a fraction—softening, tightening, both at once.

  Jinhuang continues before she can lose her nerve.

  “She’d be safe,” she says. “The city is safe now. Or safe enough.” Her hands twist together again. She forces them apart like she is separating meat from bone. “Not just her. We could raise many children easily, without ever worrying about how to feed them. And my mother would help.”

  Fol does not answer.

  He is quiet for long enough that Jinhuang feels panic crawl up her throat and try to become anger, because anger is easier to hold.

  “Say something,” she says, sharper than she intended.

  Fol’s eyes lift to her. His expression is still calm, but there’s something careful in it now.

  “I’m thinking,” he says.

  Jinhuang’s laugh comes out too small to be laughter. “You think too much,” she accuses, immediately regretting it.

  Fol’s mouth twitches. “I do,” he says simply.

  Jinhuang presses her lips together hard enough to stop herself from answering with something cruel. The courtyard is quiet enough that she can hear the brazier pop as resin in the wood catches and burns.

  Fol looks down at his scarred hands.

  Finally, he speaks.

  “I would go anywhere you want to go.”

  The words land gently.

  Jinhuang’s eyes glisten immediately, which infuriates her. Tears are embarrassing.

  “That’s not—” Jinhuang swallows. “That’s not an answer about place. That’s an answer about me.”

  Fol nods once.

  “Yes,” he says.

  Jinhuang’s throat tightens.

  “But what do you want?” she asks, voice thinner now.

  Fol considers, really considers. His gaze lifts to the courtyard wall, to the strip of sky visible above it. The sky here feels smaller than it should, framed by stone and tiled roofs like it’s being kept in a box.

  “I want you to be happy,” Fol says.

  Jinhuang’s breath catches, silent.

  “I want Khulgana to be happy too,” he adds.

  Silence sits with them.

  Jinhuang stares down at her hands. Her fingers are still twisting. She forces them still, palms flat on her knees, like she is disciplining herself.

  “What about Auntie?” she asks quietly. “Would she... Would she let us go?”

  Fol exhales through his nose, a small sound of weary amusement.

  “Horohan beat some sense into her skull,” Fol says.

  Jinhuang’s mouth twitches despite herself.

  “Now, I think she’d understand,” Fol adds. “I think she’d want us to choose. Not just obey.”

  Jinhuang nods slowly.

  She opens her mouth to say something else—something brave, something declarative, something that would make this decision real—

  —and a small voice interrupts from the doorway.

  “I want to go home.”

  Jinhuang whips around so fast her hair swings loose at the pin.

  Khulgana stands there, blanket dragging behind her like a cape. Her hair is a mess. Her eyes are wide, too awake for this hour, the way children look when they have heard something important and decided sleep is for lesser creatures.

  In her arms she holds the basket.

  The basket is nearly as big as her torso. The fledgling inside chirps sleepily, offended at being moved. How she carried both blanket and basket without spilling either is a mystery that will never be solved.

  Jinhuang stares at her daughter as if she has conjured herself out of the air.

  “You’re supposed to be asleep,” Jinhuang says.

  Khulgana blinks slowly, the infinite patience of a child explaining something obvious to an adult.

  “I woke up,” she says.

  Fol’s gaze sharpens, immediate, protective. “What did you hear?”

  Khulgana ignores him completely, which is either a sign of comfort or a sign she has inherited her grand aunt’s talent for selective attention.

  She looks only at Jinhuang.

  “I want to see my eagle fly,” Khulgana says, and the words are so simple they hurt.

  Jinhuang’s throat tightens. “It will fly here,” she says quickly. “Eagles fly everywhere.”

  Khulgana shakes her head with firm certainty, like a small judge delivering a verdict.

  She lifts one arm to gesture, nearly tipping the basket. The fledgling chirps louder, furious about being threatened with gravity. Khulgana adjusts automatically, like she has been handling predators her whole life.

  “The sky is small here,” Khulgana replies. “In Tepr, the sky is endless.” She nods once, satisfied with her own logic. “The eagle needs endless. I need endless too. I want to see my friends again. The tigers and the goats too, they must be lonely.”

  Jinhuang stares at her daughter.

  For a heartbeat, she sees the city’s walls the way Khulgana sees them—not as safety, not as civilization, but as limits. She sees the way the palace roofs cut the sky into pieces. She sees how easy it is to mistake a cage for a home when the cage is warm.

  She thinks of Naci’s Winter Fox story, the softened ending, the one where the fox survives by teaching others how to slip through thin spots. She thinks of the orchard’s heat. She thinks of the way people accept cages if they come with bread.

  Then Jinhuang slaps herself.

  Not hard—just a quick, sharp tap to her own forehead, as if trying to wake up. As if scolding her own brain for forgetting.

  Fol’s eyebrows lift.

  Jinhuang doesn’t look at him.

  She lunges forward and grabs Khulgana, basket and all, crushing her against her chest like she is trying to keep her from being taken by any empire, any story, any wall. The basket presses between them; the fledgling chirps in outrage, feathers ruffling like an insult.

  “Mama,” Khulgana protests, muffled. “The bird is squished—”

  Jinhuang’s voice breaks anyway.

  “We’re going back,” she says, and the words come out like a sob and a decision at once. “We’re going home.”

  Khulgana, still squashed, still dignified, answers with the satisfied certainty of someone who has just won an argument with the universe.

  Fol watches them, and for the first time in years, his shoulders drop like he's finally stopped carrying something.

  ...

  The Banner command post used to be a temple annex. You can still smell the old incense in the plaster when the sun warms the wall, like the building is trying to remember a gentler job. Now it smells of ink and tallow and human fatigue.

  Naci sits at a table that is too low for her knees and too high for her patience. The ledgers in front of her are stacked in neat, punishing rows. Columns of numbers march down the page like obedient soldiers, and she hates them more than she hates letters.

  She holds a brush like it’s an enemy’s dagger.

  Dukar tried to teach her how to read supply accounts properly. Naci listened for ten minutes and then started making decisions with her face instead of her brain.

  Now she is alone with the paper.

  The clerk beside her—young, terrified, recruited from some ministry that no longer exists—clears his throat like he wants permission to breathe. Naci doesn’t look up.

  Outside, the city settles: smoke from cookfires, spilled fermented milk, laughter scraped raw by grief.

  The doorframe darkens and Borak appears.

  Naci continues staring at the ledger as if the page might flinch first.

  “What,” she says, not looking up.

  Borak’s voice is flat. “I just remembered the prisoners.”

  Naci sighs through her nose. “We have many prisoners. Be specific.”

  “Hluay prisoners,” Borak says. “From Jin Na’s abandoned camp.”

  The brush in Naci’s fingers stops. A drop of ink swells at the tip like a black bruise, then falls onto the page and spreads.

  “When?” she asks, too calm.

  “Weeks ago.”

  Naci looks up slowly.

  “Weeks,” she repeats.

  Borak nods once. “Yes.”

  Naci sets the brush down with care. “Why am I only hearing about this now?”

  Borak does not blink. “I told you. You said, and I quote: ‘Not now, Borak, I’m busy organizing a festival. By the way, can you carry this stand over there?’”

  Naci stares at him.

  Borak stares back.

  “I don’t remember that,” Naci says.

  “You were very busy,” Borak replies, as if that explains anything.

  Naci rubs her face with one hand. The motion drags tiredness across her skin.

  “Where are they?” she asks.

  “Held at the Lion’s Den fort,” Borak says.

  She stands so fast the stool scrapes.

  “I need to see them.”

  Borak’s eyebrows lift. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Borak turns without ceremony.

  The clerk, pale, offers timidly, “Khagan—should I—should I—”

  Naci snatches the ruined ledger page, folds it once, and hands it back as if returning a dead bird.

  “Fix that,” she says.

  The clerk stares at the smeared ink.

  ...

  They ride south along the coast with the kind of speed that makes peasants stare and soldiers shift aside instinctively. A small Banner escort surrounds them, lacquered armor dull in the winter light, hooves striking stone and then packed dirt in a rhythm that sounds like a verdict being delivered at horse pace.

  Naci rides at the front, cloak snapping, her mare’s breath steaming. The cold air makes her split lip sting.

  The fort rises out of the gray landscape like a clenched fist.

  It is functional—garrisoned, supplied, repaired enough. Banner flags hang from the parapets. Smoke rises from cookfires inside, steady.

  The gate opens fast. Nobody here tests her patience. They remember what happened to the last man who made her wait.

  The acting commander meets her in the yard. He bows.

  “Khagan,” he says, voice tight. “We weren’t told—”

  Naci cuts him off by walking past him.

  “Take me to them.”

  The commander swallows, glances at Borak as if hoping the enforcer will translate her mood into something survivable, then hurries to lead them through the yard.

  The fort’s corridors are narrow and damp. Torches hiss. Boots echo.

  They reach the holding block.

  Borak hangs back a half step, posture loose, expression suggesting he is enjoying.

  The commander fumbles for keys. His hands shake just enough to be visible. He opens a first cell—Hluay soldiers inside, slumped, staring, bound in boredom and fear. Their eyes lift when Naci passes, and some part of them recognizes her the way prey recognizes a predator it has never seen before.

  She doesn’t stop.

  “How many?”

  Borak shrugs slightly. “A lot.”

  “What rank?”

  “Some officers,” he says. “Mostly soldiers. And two women.”

  Naci’s gaze slides sideways. “Two women.”

  Borak’s mouth twitches. It is not quite a smile. “Yes.”

  Naci narrows her eyes. “Hluay?”

  “Captured at Jin Na’s abandoned camp,” Borak repeats patiently, like she is slow and he is being charitable.

  “And why were they left?” Naci asks.

  Borak shrugs.

  She keeps walking until the commander hesitates at a door farther down.

  “This one,” Borak says behind her, almost pleasantly.

  The commander unlocks it and pulls the bar.

  The door opens.

  Inside, two women sit against the far wall.

  Meice and Amar.

  Their wrists bear rope marks—thin raw lines, some scabbed, some bruised, skin that remembers pressure and refuses to forget. Their posture is controlled, but the way they hold their shoulders says they have been tied too long, moved too little, forced to negotiate their own bodies like hostile territory.

  They are not in the grotesque configuration Borak found them in—whatever engineering Hui performed has been cut down to something transportable, something that doesn’t require explanation in front of soldiers with weak stomachs. But the evidence remains in the way Meice adjusts her sleeve, in the way Amar’s jaw sets like she is biting down on humiliation so hard it might break teeth.

  Meice looks up.

  Her eyes widen. Then narrow.

  Then she grins, bright and sharp, like she has found a new toy to poke.