Deep inside the Imperial City’s palaces, past courtyards where koi ponds have gone stagnant from neglect, past corridors where lacquered columns gleam as if they still have an audience to impress, a hall has been repurposed into something that pretends to be civilized.

  They call it a selection.

  No eunuchs stand at the thresholds with their practiced neutrality. No maids glide like ghosts with hot water and colder smiles. No lantern attendants fuss over wicks. No tea arrives to soften throats before speeches. The air is dry and heavy, as if the palace itself is holding its breath to avoid smelling the outside.

  Silence sits in the corners with its legs crossed. Dust hangs in the sunbeams that slip through high lattice windows, turning morning light into something almost solid. Incense has been burned here, but not recently. What remains is the stale sweetness of yesterday’s attempt at dignity, the burnt-out trace of prayer that forgot what it was praying for.

  In the center of the hall, someone has arranged a ring of cushions around a low table. The cushions are pristine, untouched, waiting like empty mouths.

  A folding screen has been dragged aside—fast, violently, without respect. It lies snapped on the floor like a fallen banner, its painted cranes cracked in half. One crane’s neck is broken in just the right place to look like it’s trying to flee.

  The heirs are already inside.

  They are younger siblings and cousins of the dead emperor—too many to count at a glance, all of them wrapped in silk that looks like funeral wrapping.

  A cousin with a split lip stands near a pillar, dabbing at blood with the edge of his sleeve. “An accident with a brush,” he says, voice brittle, but everyone sees the faint bruise on his cheek shaped like a knuckle.

  A younger prince—barely more than a boy—holds a chair leg in both hands. He has snapped it off with the sincere panic of someone who has never broken anything expensive in his life. He tries to stand tall anyway, chin lifted, chair leg angled like a ceremonial staff. The effect is almost heroic until his hands shake and the wood squeaks.

  Two siblings whisper near the broken screen, heads close, mouths moving quickly. Their alliance looks tender for half a heartbeat, and then one of them notices another cousin watching and immediately steps away. Their whispered pact lasts precisely the length of a blink.

  A few, the cynics, don’t bother to posture. They stare at the ceiling like it’s a sky and not a painted lie.

  “Pick a crown,” one says, hollow-eyed, voice soft. “It won’t stop the collapse.”

  Another—older—snorts without humor. “Pick a child,” he murmurs. “At least the child won’t understand why it’s hated.”

  “That’s not mercy,” someone else mutters, and then realizes they’ve spoken too loudly and pretends they were coughing.

  Spite breeds faster than rats in grain.

  An insult becomes a shove. A shove becomes a slap. A slap becomes a knife flashed briefly under a sleeve—just long enough for the metal to catch a sunbeam and announce itself like a rude guest. Someone lunges, misses, and the blade bites into a cushion. The cushion leaks its stuffing like white intestines.

  “Watch your hands,” one heir snaps. “Do you want to ruin the—”

  “The carpet?” another interrupts, incredulous, and laughs too loudly, as if volume can protect him from the fact that the empire is dying outside this room.

  Someone bites someone else’s ear. It looks like a drunk dog in a courtyard brawl. The bitten heir screams, palm to the side of his head, fingers coming away wet. The biter spits and grins with his mouth full of his blood.

  The palace does not react.

  That is the eerie part.

  They argue about legitimacy and bloodlines as if bloodlines are not currently leaking onto the floor. They invoke ancestors who would be embarrassed to see their descendants holding chair legs and chewing ears.

  The emptiness becomes the loudest participant.

  No servants means no witnesses. No witnesses means no rules.

  Several hands tighten around improvised weapons. Several alliances evaporate.

  It is in that tightening, that collective realization that a palace without servants is a palace without a spine, that the doors open.

  The panels slide apart with a clean whisper, like a blade leaving a sheath.

  Naci steps into the hall.

  She enters with a small knot of Banners—just enough bodies to make the air feel owned. They scan corners and angles the way predators scan tall grass. Their boots make soft, deliberate sounds on the polished floor, and the sound is somehow worse than a stomp would be.

  Naci is still in campaign grime. Dust clings to her cloak hem. Road has worked its way into the seams of her gloves. Her braids are practical, tight, and there is dried blood somewhere near the cuff of her sleeve that has been rubbed. Her face carries the quiet wrongness of fresh grief: not tears, not rage, but the blank steadiness of something that has already broken.

  A few heirs stiffen. Someone tries to speak like a politician—because some instincts are so deeply trained they survive even when the city is on fire.

  “Dragon-Tiger General—this is not—”

  He doesn’t get to finish his sentence.

  Naci raises her white musket and shoots him mid-word.

  In this enclosed space, it is a brutal, intimate crack that seems to punch the air itself. Smoke blooms. The heir’s mouth remains half-open as if he still intends to finish his thought. A red mist sprays the lacquered pillar behind him, and his body drops in a way that makes silk look suddenly cheap.

  For half a heartbeat, the room freezes, unable to decide whether this is real.

  Then panic explodes.

  Cushions overturn. Silk rips as people scramble, sleeves snagging on each other like drowning swimmers. Someone trips over the broken screen and falls hard, cracking teeth on the floor. Another heir tries to run and discovers the doors are now full of Banner bodies, as implacable as walls.

  The Banners fire in controlled rhythm.

  Shots come in measured intervals. A Banner reloads. Another covers. A third steps forward to finish anyone still moving.

  Survivors beg, bargain, accuse each other.

  “I’ll swear—”

  “He planned—”

  “I can be useful—”

  The young prince with the chair leg lifts it, trembling. “You can’t—this is treason—this is—”

  A Banner shoots him through the throat. The chair leg falls with a clatter.

  An heir dives behind the low table, panting, eyes wild. He grabs at a scroll case near the cushions. He yanks out a long roll of paper and tries to hold it up like a shield.

  One Banner looks at the scene, then mutters, almost conversationally, “He thinks paperwork stops bullets.”

  Then the Banner shoots him. The scroll jerks, paper fluttering with the impact.

  Naci keeps moving through them like a storm.

  She steps, aims, fires. Steps, aims, fires. The musket smoke curls around her face and slips away, unwilling to cling. The sound of each shot is followed by the wet punctuation of bodies meeting floor.

  A cousin with the split lip crawls toward a side door, leaving a wet trail that glistens in the sunbeams. He is dragging himself with one arm, the other limp. His lips tremble. He whispers, very small now, very human:

  “Mother—”

  Naci shoots him without looking.

  The last shot echoes off lacquer and stone and then dies, swallowed by the palace’s talent for pretending nothing important happened.

  Smoke hangs low. It tastes of saltpeter and silk. The dead are sprawled in unflattering poses.

  Naci lowers her musket. “Gather them,” she says.

  The Banners drag bodies by ankles and wrists, leaving streaks across polished floors. The heirs—royal blood, imperial perfumes, embroidered lineage—scrape like common sacks. Some still wear rings. A Banner starts to pry one free out of habit and gets a hard look from Borak.

  “Leave it,” Borak says.

  The Banner pauses. “It’s gold.”

  Borak’s stare could pin a bird in midair. “It’s evidence.”

  The ring is left.

  Outside, a courtyard waits. It is one of those palace courtyards designed for beauty: white stone, carefully placed pines, statues of mythical beasts frozen mid-snarl.

  War has spilled into court and is swallowing it. Bodies from the breach, from the inner wall collapse, from alley fights and panicked stampedes are already piled there—soldiers in lacquer armor, civilians in rough cloth, rebels with rope burns on their wrists. A tangle of dead that does not respect rank.

  The heirs are added to the heap like additional fuel.

  Someone sets down a broken screen beside the pile; its painted cranes go up first, their delicate wings curling into black lace. Broken furniture follows: chairs, tables, a carved bench meant for poetry readings. Old banners are thrown on—imperial silk catching fast, eager to be useful for once. The green and gold flame as if they have been longing for it.

  Fire rises. Heat slaps the courtyard. It turns breath into pain. The first crackle is almost cheerful; then flesh begins to cook.

  A Banner captain stands at the edge, face stiff. “Should there be prayers?” he asks, not because he believes, but because the empire has always had a script for endings and he can feel the lack of it like a missing tooth.

  Naci watches the flames climb. Statues glare down, unmoved.

  “The prayers,” she says flatly, “are the smoke.”

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  The captain blinks, then nods as if he has received a legal decree.

  A younger Banner, nose wrinkled, mutters, “That’s… poetic, Khan.”

  Naci doesn’t look at him. “Don’t mistake smoke for meaning,” she replies.

  A gust shifts the flame. For a moment, the fire leans the wrong way, toward the palace walls. Someone yelps, startled, and a few Banners shuffle back like children from a scolding aunt.

  Borak spits into the dirt.

  The smell goes everywhere. It crawls into stone.

  Naci turns away from the courtyard and walks into a smaller chamber nearby where a handful of surviving officials have been herded like nervous goats. They stand with hands folded, eyes flicking, sweat catching on powdered skin. Their loyalty is visible in the way they don’t ask questions out loud.

  Official Mo is there, his posture precise, his face calm. Old Ji stands like a welded blade beside him, jaw set so tight it could crack stone.

  Naci speaks with the patient clarity of someone explaining weather.

  “The Hluay infiltrated the palace,” she says.

  A court official swallows. “Infiltrated, Your—”

  “They kidnapped the heirs,” Naci continues, as if he did not interrupt.

  Old Ji’s lip twitches. It is not a smile. It is the face a soldier makes when he recognizes a tactic he hates and respects.

  Mo’s eyes lift a fraction, careful. “Kidnapped,” he repeats softly, testing the word like a brush on paper.

  Naci nods once. “Yes.”

  One official, too brave or too stupid, blurts, “But—how come there were no servants present.”

  Silence hardens. Borak shifts behind Naci; the sound of his boot on stone is a threat disguised as an accident.

  Naci doesn’t raise her voice. She simply looks at the man until the man remembers how much he likes having a head.

  “No servants,” Naci agrees. “No witnesses.”

  Mo inhales slowly, as if swallowing something bitter. “Then the decree will state,” he says, “that the Hluay’s agents—”

  “—slipped through the chaos,” Naci supplies. “Took advantage of the breach. Stole the heirs.”

  The officials nod too fast.

  “And we will retrieve them,” Naci finishes.

  A court official, voice trembling, asks, “With… what forces, Your Excellency?”

  Naci’s mouth curves faintly. “Mine.”

  It is absurdly convenient. It is neat. It gives the city a villain it already hates. It gives Naci a moral reason to keep marching. It gives grief something productive to chew on.

  Old Ji speaks for the first time, voice like iron dragged over stone. “You expect the city to believe the Hluay kidnapped every heir?”

  Naci meets his gaze without blinking. “I expect them to prefer it,” she says. “People like a story where evil looks foreign.”

  Old Ji’s nostrils flare. “This is—”

  “—governance,” Naci interrupts, and the word lands like a slap.

  Mo’s fingers twitch as if already holding a brush. “I will draft it.”

  Naci nods. “Good.”

  A toddler is brought in by a Banner whose arms are steady in battle and awkward in childcare. The child is three years old and sticky-handed, cheeks round, hair combed too severely into a topknot that looks like it hurts. He wears too much brocade—layers of imperial fabric that swallow his small body and turn him into a walking doll.

  He blinks at the officials with the startled suspicion of a creature who senses predators but cannot name them.

  He sees Naci and reaches out one hand, as if she is the only recognizable shape in a room of strange smells.

  Naci takes him without ceremony, lifting him onto her hip like he weighs nothing. Her arm is strong. Her grip is firm but careful, as if this soft skull matters more than any crown.

  The officials stare at the child like he is a talisman.

  Mo’s throat works. “This…,” he begins.

  Naci’s eyes flick. “He is blood,” she says simply. “That’s what you care about, yes?”

  The officials understand. Their faces shift from horror to relief so quickly it is almost insulting.

  Surviving court officials are herded into place. They line up in a hall that still smells faintly of the Emperor’s perfumes, as if the palace is trying to remember better days. Their knees bend when commanded. Their foreheads touch stone. Their bows are deep enough to be honest, because fear is the oldest etiquette.

  Ritual words are spoken by a priest whose voice keeps cracking, whether from age or from the effort of not screaming. He holds a scroll with hands that tremble. The old phrases—Mandate, Heaven, continuity—sound thinner than they used to, as if the words themselves have lost weight.

  The crown is brought forward. It is too heavy for a child. It has always been too heavy; adults simply pretend otherwise.

  Naci kneels to the child’s height. She places the crown gently, as if metal might bruise soft skull. The child’s eyes go wide. He wobbles slightly under the sudden burden and grabs at Naci’s sleeve instinctively.

  The hall holds its breath.

  The child looks up at Naci with absolute trust, which is the most terrifying thing in the room.

  “Is it done?” he asks, voice small enough to break bone.

  A court official makes a strangled sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh. Someone’s dignity slips and skitters across the floor.

  Naci’s expression softens for a heartbeat—just a flicker, like a flame sheltered in her palm.

  “Yes,” she answers softly.

  The priest announces the new Emperor’s name. Jinghe. The officials chant.

  After the crown settles, Naci stands.

  She doesn’t look like a regent. She looks like a commander standing in the aftermath of a battle and deciding what to do with the terrain.

  “I will serve as Prime Minister,” she says.

  A few officials flinch at the nakedness of it. Others look relieved; a clear hierarchy is comforting even when it is a noose.

  Naci gestures, and members of her circle enter or step forward, “and here are our new ministers.”

  Horohan comes first, her presence making the air colder. She does not bow properly. She does not smile. The court’s collective instinct is to shrink away from her, as if she might bite.

  “War authority,” Naci says.

  A whisper runs: barbarian tiger woman. It dies quickly when Horohan’s eyes drift over the room like a blade idly considering throats.

  Lanau steps forward next, shaman beads at her wrist, gaze sharp with the knowledge that belief is a weapon and she knows how to load it.

  “Spiritual affairs,” Naci says.

  Kuan appears, hands tucked behind his back as if he is at a festival instead of a palace coup. His eyes flicker over the officials with delighted contempt.

  Naci’s voice stays neutral. “Intelligence.”

  Kuan’s grin widens. “Internal harmony,” he laughs, savoring it.

  Official Mo’s eyelid twitches. Old Ji looks like he has bitten down on a nail.

  Borak steps up, posture straight, a smirk on his face.

  “Enforcement,” Naci says.

  Borak nods once.

  A court official, trying to sound brave, asks, “And what of… appeals?”

  Borak looks at him then points a finger at Lanau. “Appeal to your god,” he says. “If he’s listening.”

  Dukar follows, the machine’s careful hands. He looks too calm for the kind of violence that has brought him here.

  “Command and logistics,” Naci says.

  Dukar inclines his head slightly, then sighs.

  Jinhuang steps forward, her face composed but her eyes sharp.

  “Civil administration,” Naci says.

  Jinhuang’s smile is polite. “I will ensure the people understand,” she says, and the palace hears the unspoken ending: whether they want to or not.

  Fol moves next. Calm mask for violence.

  “Civic stability,” Naci says. “Public order.”

  Fol nods.

  Shi Min steps up last among the named. Her posture is impeccable.

  “Diplomacy,” Naci says.

  Shi Min bows with court precision.

  Old Ji remains where he is.

  Naci looks at him. “You stay,” she says.

  Old Ji’s jaw flexes. “Because I understand imperial bones.”

  “Yes,” Naci replies. “And because you hate me enough to be honest about it.”

  Old Ji doesn’t deny it. He simply says, “This palace is not your yurt.”

  Naci’s gaze is steady. “No,” she says. “It’s my weapon.”

  Official Mo stays as well, brush-hand steady, soul gagging but functional.

  Mo bows deeper than he needs to. “I will—”

  “—write legality,” Naci finishes, and her tone is almost kind. “Yes. You will.”

  Mo’s eyes lift. There is a question there—how far will you go?—but he does not ask.

  One old official mutters under his breath, barely audible, “This is… unprecedented.”

  Kuan hears him and leans in, cheerfully conspiratorial. “So was the first time someone put a crown on a man,” he whispers. “Everyone’s just improvising. Don’t take it personally.”

  The official blanches, unsure whether he has been threatened or comforted.

  Kuan wears no lacquer, no court silk. He wears steppe wool and a grin that looks freshly sharpened. He moves with the loose confidence of someone who has crawled through palace gutters and come out laughing, which, in Old Ji’s private taxonomy, counts as high treason.

  Old Ji watches him laugh and does not bother to hide it.

  “You,” he says, as if testing whether the word tastes bitter enough to be useful.

  Kuan turns toward him with bright interest. “Yes,” he says cheerfully. “Me.”

  Old Ji’s nostrils flare. “I did not think your kind survived the riots.”

  Kuan’s smile widens. “I survive everything. I just change hairstyles.”

  Mo’s brush pauses mid-hover above the inkstone. He does not look up. He says, mechanically, “We do not refer to officials as ‘kind.’”

  Kuan’s eyes drop to Mo. His expression turns reverent in the way only liars can manage. “Grandfather,” he says warmly.

  Mo corrects him without even thinking. “Official Mo.”

  “Of course,” Kuan says. “Grandfather Mo.”

  Mo’s eyelid twitches. “Official Mo.”

  Old Ji’s contempt sharpens. “He speaks too casually,” he tells Naci, as if she’s hired a clown to deliver plague.

  Naci does not turn. Her voice is flat, tired in the bones. “He is more useful than you,” she says. “So far.”

  Old Ji’s gaze does not leave Kuan. “He manipulated you. He is a former eunuch of the Eastern Bureau.”

  Kuan lifts a hand, as if accepting an introduction at a banquet. “Former,” he echoes. “Yes. I have retired. It was a thankless job, and the uniforms were ugly.”

  Old Ji’s fingers tighten on the table edge. “He knows the palace’s shame from the inside.”

  Kuan leans forward slightly, grin bright as spilled oil. “Everyone knows the palace’s shame now,” he says.

  Mo exhales through his nose.

  Naci finally turns.

  “Enough,” she says, and the room obeys. She nods to Mo.

  Mo’s throat works once. “Yes, Dragon-Tiger General.”

  Old Ji’s mouth curls. “Prime Minister,” he corrects, the words tasting like ash.

  Naci does not react to the correction. She gestures toward the table. “The hostages,” she says.

  Kuan, immediately helpful, adds, “The kidnapped heirs. Very tragic. Very enraging.”

  Mo wets his brush with care that borders on ritual. “Your intended decree,” he says carefully, “requests emergency powers to conduct a retrieval campaign—”

  The first lines are formal, clean: the reign-title Jinghe, invoked like an incantation. Mo writes about emergency conscription, careful to note exemptions, durations, limits.

  Naci reads over his shoulder and edits with the bluntness of a soldier using a sword as a pen. “No exemptions,” she says. “If you have arms, you have duty.”

  Mo’s brush trembles, almost invisible. “That will… cause unrest.”

  Naci’s eyes do not flicker.

  Mo tries again, the only rebellion he can afford. “If we set a limit—say, ninety days—”

  “Until retrieval is complete,” Naci cuts in.

  Mo swallows. His brush moves. Each stroke feels like carving bone.

  Old Ji leans forward, voice low and pleased. “Add resource requisitions,” he says. “Grain. Iron. Salt. Horses.”

  Mo writes them in.

  Kuan watches the decree appear like a snake uncoiling and hums softly. “Beautiful,” he murmurs. “Ink is such a polite poison.”

  Mo’s jaw tightens. “It is administration.”

  “It’s a spell,” Kuan says brightly. “You say the words, and men die somewhere they cannot even pronounce.”

  Old Ji’s eyes narrow. “Stop talking.”

  They work until midday.

  By the time the decree is finished, the paper looks ordinary—ink on parchment, seals ready. Mo dusts sand over the wet ink and says, softly, “It is done.”

  Naci takes the document, reads the opening lines, then nods once. “Send copies,” she says. “Every district. Every gate. Every temple. Make it the only story people can afford to believe.”

  Outside, the city already buzzes with rumor. Rumor is the capital’s true blood. It never stops moving.

  Within hours, banners are hung—new cloth over old stains. Proclamation boards appear at street corners where men once sold roasted chestnuts and now sell information for a crust. Heralds in cracked voices read the decree with practiced outrage, as if the words themselves are a funeral.

  “The Hluay infiltrated the palace—”

  “Kidnapped the heirs—”

  “Her Excellency, Prime Minister Naci, Dragon-Tiger General, vows to retrieve them—”

  Crowds gather. Faces are gaunt. Eyes are too bright. Some people shout. Some just stare, mouths slightly open, as if waiting for bread to fall out of the air.

  Naci stands on a temporary dais built from scavenged timber and court ceremony. Behind her, Banners hold positions like they are holding the city’s spine upright. She keeps her face composed, voice carrying, posture regal without effort.

  “We will get them back,” she says.

  The lie lands like a stone dropped into water. Exhausted people cling to it. Not because they trust her, not because they love her, but because it offers a direction. A lie with direction feels like hope if you’re hungry enough.

  By night, the campaign is already being named. Orders are already riding out. Men are already being counted. War begins with a stamp.

  ...

  Naci and Horohan’s bedroom in the Jade Palace is too large, too extravagant.

  Horohan hates it immediately.

  She hates the polished floor that reflects her like a ghost. She hates the curtains that fall like surrender. She hates the bed, huge and dressed in embroidered sheets that have never seen mud, never smelled like horse.

  Naci stands by the window, staring out.

  Night sits over Pezijil like a damp cloth. Fires still burn in pockets where the siege has bitten deep. The city’s glow is a sick lantern against the dark.

  Uamopak’s absence is a pressure in the room. No wingbeat. No shadow crossing lamplight. No jealous scream when Horohan’s hand finds Naci’s shoulder.

  Naci’s posture is straight, but something in it feels… off, as if one of her bones has forgotten its purpose.

  Horohan leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, because if she lets herself soften in this room, the room will win. “This place is cursed,” she says.

  Naci does not look back. “It’s a palace,” she replies.

  Horohan snorts. “Same thing.”

  Silence stretches.

  Horohan wants to say: What did you just do? She wants to say: You shot silk animals in a room with no witnesses. She wants to say: You are becoming what we vowed to destroy.

  But Naci’s grief is still fresh enough to shine. It is a raw thing, unhealed. Horohan knows wounds. She knows when to hit and when to hold pressure.

  Naci speaks without turning, voice smaller than it has any right to be. “Stay.”

  Horohan’s throat tightens. She forces her tone to remain steady. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Naci’s shoulders lift with one shallow breath, then drop. “Don’t let me be alone in here,” she says.

  Horohan pushes off the frame and crosses the room. Each step feels like walking into foreign territory. The bed looms like an altar.

  She sits, then reaches out and catches Naci by the belt and drags her down.

  Naci goes without resistance, like she has been holding herself upright on stubbornness alone.

  Horohan pulls her close. Firm.

  Naci presses her face into Horohan’s shoulder. Her hands shake once, fingers clutching fabric.

  Horohan holds her tighter. She murmurs, low. “I’m here.”

  Naci does not answer. She just breathes and cries, muffled.

  Horohan softly pushes Naci’s face up with one finger and they kiss.

  She tastes her salted tears and warmth and is reassured she’s still human.