A Banner squad moves through. Their boots are still dusty from the breached streets, their coats still carry the smell of smoke that never quite leaves Pezijil’s skin anymore.

  The Banner captain—broad-shouldered, face tight, eyes flat with a soldier’s arithmetic—steps forward. He does not bow. He does not need to.

  He reaches for Kai Lang.

  Not violently yet. Just a hand extending, fingers ready to close like a shackle.

  Fol intercepts like a door slammed shut.

  He moves fast, clean—no flourish, no speech. He puts his palm to the captain’s chest and holds him there, stopping the whole squad for the length of a breath. The captain’s coat is coarse beneath Fol’s hand. Under it, a ribcage rises and falls, patient and annoyed.

  “No,” Fol says, controlled.

  The Banner captain does not even look at Fol properly. His gaze slides past him, past Kai Lang, past the hall’s expensive silence, toward the doorway where Naci stands.

  He waits for the real order.

  Jinhuang stands near the side of the hall, Khulgana in her arms. The toddler’s head rests against her shoulder, face turned toward the doorway, eyes wide and bright.

  The Banner captain straightens slightly, the smallest hint of respect. “Khan—Prime Minister,” he corrects himself.

  Naci’s gaze lands briefly on Fol’s hand pressed to the captain’s chest. It does not soften.

  “She is under arrest,” Naci says.

  Fol’s jaw tightens. “For what?”

  “For display,” Naci answers, flat and practical, as if discussing the placement of sentries. “One day. Clean room. Better treatment than anyone else.”

  Kai Lang’s eyebrows lift a fraction—an aristocratic flinch that almost qualifies as laughter. “How generous,” she says, voice smooth.

  Naci’s mouth twitches like she almost appreciates the line. “Signal management.”

  Fol stares at her as if she’s begun speaking a language he refuses to learn. “Signal management,” he repeats, like the syllables taste rotten.

  Naci continues, unmoved. “Pezijil must see it. And Jin Na must see it.”

  Horohan’s expression barely changes, but the air around her sharpens anyway. She looks at the Banner captain’s hand near Kai Lang like she is imagining how easily it could be broken.

  Naci turns her head slightly, addressing Fol and the room at once. “Liwei’s rebels are being rounded up too,” she says. “Only a portion will get condemned. Politics needs a sacrificial animal to look serious.”

  Somewhere in the courtyard outside, a muffled shout rises—someone protesting, someone pleading. A sound like a chair scraping. A sharp cry cut short. The manor’s walls are thick, but they cannot keep out the city’s new rhythm.

  Kai Lang’s lips curl. “Ah,” she murmurs. “The empire bleeds and you decide to teach it theatre.”

  Naci’s gaze does not leave Fol. “Theatre keeps the audience seated,” she says.

  Fol’s hand remains on the Banner captain’s chest, but his fingers flex, betraying the pressure in him. “They don’t deserve punishment,” he says. “They fought our enemy. The Moukopl court starved the city. Liwei tried to cut the rope—”

  Naci’s response lands like a musket butt on a table.

  “I am the Moukopl Empire,” she says.

  Jinhuang’s face goes blank, stunned, as if someone has shifted the floor beneath her feet without warning. Dukar’s mouth tightens, a flicker of disgust crossing his face before he swallows it down. Horohan’s gaze cuts to Naci—sharp, incredulous, pained—but she says nothing. Her silence is not agreement. It is restraint, the kind people mistake for loyalty until it kills them.

  Kai Lang studies Naci with something like amusement and something like horror. “How efficient,” she says softly. “The barbarians don’t even bother to pretend they’re servants anymore.”

  Naci doesn’t take the bait. She flicks her eyes to the Banner captain. “Do it,” she says.

  The captain’s chest rises against Fol’s palm. He speaks without looking away from Naci. “As ordered.”

  Fol does not step aside. He shifts his stance, widening it, turning his body into a barrier. “No,” he says again, louder now.

  The Banners move to seize him.

  Fol hits first. He knocks one soldier’s arm aside, hooks a wrist, twists hard enough to force a grunt. He drives an elbow into a breastplate seam and sends a man stumbling into a lacquered pillar.

  A Banner swings a baton—short, heavy. Fol ducks, catches the arm, tries to use the momentum. For a moment it looks like he might make it costly.

  Then two soldiers grab his shoulders from behind. Another catches his legs. Fol kicks, violent and desperate now, because he realizes what Naci knows and what the Banners were trained to embody: the machine will keep moving unless someone jams it with bone.

  He almost does. A heel catches a soldier’s knee with a crack that makes someone hiss a curse. A fist slams into a jaw; teeth click. Fol’s breath comes hard.

  But trained men do not fight bravely. They win.

  They twist Fol down.

  His chest hits polished wood. The impact forces air out of him in a harsh sound. His cheek presses to the floor, and for a heartbeat he sees his own reflection in the shine: distorted, furious, pathetic.

  A Banner kneels between Fol’s shoulder blades and pins him with weight. Another clamps his wrists. A third holds his head still, thumb pressing behind his ear as if adjusting a stubborn hinge.

  Fol’s voice comes out muffled. “Naci—”

  Jinhuang takes one step forward, as if she might intervene, then stops. Her arms tighten around Khulgana. Her face looks like someone watching a door close on a room she used to live in.

  Naci walks closer, unhurried. She stops beside Fol like a commander inspecting a misbehaving recruit. She crouches to his level—knees bending, cloak pooling around her boots.

  “This is the second time,” she says quietly, so Fol hears it and the Banners hear it and the house hears it too. “You refuse my order.”

  Fol’s eyes are bright with fury. “Because it’s wrong.”

  Naci’s expression barely shifts. “There will not be a third,” she says.

  Fol tries to lift his head. The Banner’s hand presses him back down.

  Naci holds his gaze a moment longer. There is something in her eyes—grief, perhaps, or exhaustion—but it does not soften her. It only sharpens the line of her decision, like sorrow ground into a blade.

  Then she stands.

  The Banners release Fol just enough to prove they can. He remains on the floor, wrists sore, breath ragged, dignity dented. The captain steps around him without apology, like stepping around a fallen chair.

  Kai Lang lifts her chin as the soldiers approach again. “I can walk.”

  They take her. She is guided with firm hands, as if escorting a guest to a carriage. It is almost respectful, which makes it more humiliating.

  Jinhuang watches, stunned, as her mother is led away through the manor’s front doors into a world of smoke and soldiers. Fol pushes himself up on one elbow, face flushed, eyes furious. He looks at Naci as if he is trying to remember the woman who once laughed in grass and spoke of freedom like it was air.

  Khulgana shifts in Jinhuang’s arms, small body going rigid.

  She sees her father on the ground, her grandmother being led away, and Auntie Naci orchestrating that violence.

  The toddler’s fear is simple and sharp. She clutches Jinhuang’s collar with tiny fingers and goes quiet.

  ...

  Governor Mo’s new office complex sits in the Imperial City like a freshly bandaged wound: clean on the surface, still pulsing underneath. The buildings are administrative bones—courtyards boxed by white walls, corridors that echo, doors that close with the certainty of verdicts. Someone has scrubbed the blood from the stones, but the water in the gutters still runs faintly pink when the light hits it right.

  Kai Lang is escorted through it.

  Outside the complex, other rebels are pushed into cramped rooms—shared straw, shared coughs, shared shame that stinks. Men and women who once shouted slogans now count cracks in plaster and try not to look at each other’s wrists where rope burns bloom like bruised bracelets.

  A Banner guard shoves a man into a room and says, with bored irritation, “Try not to die.”

  The man spits back, “Tell your Khan—”

  A baton taps his teeth.

  Kai Lang gets a different corridor.

  It is not announced as a privilege. It is offered as if it is merely the natural order of things—like nobles should not share straw with commoners, even in disgrace. That is the insult. Not the arrest. The performance of mercy.

  Her room has a bed with an actual mattress. A small table. A lamp that burns steady. A basin of clean water that smells faintly of boiled herbs. The window is barred, of course, but the bars are polished, which feels like a joke.

  A guard stands outside the door, posture relaxed. He leans too comfortably against the wall, eyes forward.

  Kai Lang looks at him once and says, sweetly, “If you’re going to pretend you’re not guarding me, at least do it with conviction. You look like a dog trying not to drool.”

  The guard’s jaw tightens. He does not answer.

  Kai Lang steps into the room and sets her hands on the table. The wood is smooth, expensive, unscuffed. She runs her fingertips along the grain as if reading it like a text. Then she laughs—soft, humorless.

  “A day,” she murmurs to herself. “One day. A little theatre so the city claps on cue.”

  She knows the math. She is not na?ve. She knows she will be released soon, returned to her manor with a story pinned to her sleeve: arrested, questioned, proven useful. She knows this is for show.

  Knowing does not prevent bitterness.

  She sits, draws a letter opener from her sleeve—an elegant thing, silver handled, once used to slice open invitations and polite threats. She studies it a moment, then begins to sharpen its edge against the underside of the table with slow, patient strokes.

  Shhk. Shhk. Shhk.

  The sound is quiet. Intimate. Like a prayer whispered through teeth.

  A clerk—a young man with ink stains on his fingers and the haunted look of someone who has been promoted too quickly—peeks in with a bundle of papers. He freezes when he sees the blade.

  Kai Lang doesn’t look up. “It’s for philosophy,” she says mildly.

  The clerk swallows. “For… philosophy.”

  “Yes,” she says, sharpening a little harder. “If I am going to live under barbarians who learned bureaucracy, I should have something sharp enough to cut through their logic.”

  The clerk backs out. The door closes. Outside, the guard clears his throat as if trying to cough up his discomfort without admitting it exists.

  Kai Lang sets the letter opener down, now wicked at the edge, and rests her hands in her lap like a lady waiting for tea. Her face is calm. Her eyes are not.

  Pezijil is quieter in some streets now—not peaceful, but managed. Proclamations are nailed to walls in neat columns, their ink still wet, the Windmarks strokes beside official Moukopl script like a scar stitched onto old skin. Ration points operate under armed watch. Patrol routes cross and recross like thread pulled tight.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  A Banner captain barks orders; a scribe repeats them into wax; a runner carries them away. The whole thing has the rhythm of a machine that has learned to pretend it is a community.

  Jin Na strolls beside Naci with one hand behind his back, posture too relaxed for a city that is still smoldering. He looks like a man walking through a battlefield he expects to win eventually, even if not today. His single eye misses nothing. His ruined side drags slightly when he moves; the damage is old enough now to have become part of his silhouette.

  He pauses at a corner where rebels—hands bound, faces hollow—are being led past a line of soldiers. Some protest. Some plead. Some stare straight ahead like they’ve already left their bodies.

  A Banner officer reads names from a slate in a voice that tries to sound like law rather than vengeance.

  Jin Na watches it like a craftsman watching another craftsman work.

  “Efficient,” he says.

  Naci does not smile. “Necessary,” she replies.

  Jin Na’s mouth quirks. “Necessary is a word we use when we don’t want to say useful.”

  “Then call it useful,” Naci says. “I don’t blush.”

  They pass a proclamation board where a new decree is being posted. The paper flutters. The ink smells sharp. It announces emergency measures with the cheerful tone of a knife explaining itself.

  Jin Na leans in just enough to read. His lips move silently over the lines. Then he looks at Naci again.

  “You’re not slouching,” he says, polite as poison.

  Naci’s gaze holds his. “Neither are you,” she answers.

  Jin Na’s attention drifts to a patrol moving in clean formation, to ration queues that do not devolve into brawls, to the fact that a city that starved for four years is now being told exactly when it may eat and is obeying because obedience is easier than thinking.

  He does not admire justice. He admires competence.

  “I see your message,” he says softly.

  Naci doesn’t ask which one. She keeps walking.

  Jin Na follows, cane tapping stone, each sound a punctuation mark.

  They reach their war council in a lacquered chamber. A large map sprawls across a table, held down at the corners by weights shaped like lions. Someone has placed an incense burner in the center.

  Old Ji sits with his back straight. He wears heavy court robes that cannot disguise the soldier beneath. His hands rest on the table like they would rather be on a sword. His expression suggests he has never forgiven the world for requiring talk.

  Dukar stands rather than sits. His eyes scan the map, fingers tapping lightly at supply lines and river crossings as if he can feel the terrain through ink.

  Jin Na takes a seat with the ease of a man who assumes any chair is his until proven otherwise.

  Naci stands at the head of the table, hands behind her back, gaze on the map like it is a living animal she intends to tame.

  Old Ji speaks first, because old soldiers don’t waste time pretending debate is fun.

  “The coast,” he says, voice flat. “South of Pezijil, all the way to Gu town. The Hluay must not be allowed to build a navy.”

  Jin Na’s one eye flicks toward him, interested.

  Old Ji continues, finger pressing down on a strip of land marked with ports and river mouths. “If they secure harbors, if they restore southern sea connection, they can feed their siege, reinforce it, move men faster than our roads allow. We retake the coast immediately. Secure ports. Reopen supply. Reconnect to the south.”

  He looks up at Naci, daring her to argue.

  Naci does not flinch. “They can’t out-navy Seop,” she says.

  Old Ji’s mouth tightens. “Do not underestimate desperate men with shipwrights.”

  “I’m not,” Naci replies. She leans over the map and traces an inland route with two fingers, moving like a blade along arteries. “I’m saying we should bait them. Push them toward the coast. Make them commit men to ports and shipyards. Make them stretch their logistics thin like wet hide. Then we come from inland.”

  Old Ji’s brows knit. “And let them take the coast while we—”

  “While we make them heavy,” Naci says. “Let them build a fleet they cannot feed. Let them stack wood and tar and pride where our cavalry can cut their roads. Horses don’t need docks. We do better where the land is wide and the routes are ours.”

  Jin Na chuckles softly. “Steppe logic applied to imperial geography,” he murmurs. “Very rude.”

  Dukar finally speaks, voice calm, cutting through ideology with numbers.

  “We can’t chase two fronts without fodder,” he says. “Remount cycles are already strained. Horses need grain. Winter stores will be tight if we keep moving the way Old Ji wants.” His finger taps a river line. “River crossings here—if the Hluay burn bridges, we lose days building pontoons. Courier relays are working, but only if we keep the corridor secured. Siege-engine denial matters too. If they bring cannons inland, we can easily dismantle them.”

  Old Ji stares at Dukar as if he hates being impressed. “So you suggest patience,” he says, accusing.

  Dukar doesn’t take the bait. “I suggest timing,” he replies. “Patience gets men killed if it’s lazy. Timing gets men killed if it’s wrong. Choose the kind of killing we can afford.”

  Jin Na’s cane taps once against the floor, amused. “Listen to you,” he says. “You talk like a butcher.”

  Old Ji’s lip curls. “War is butchery.”

  “And administration is cooking,” Jin Na answers lightly.

  Naci’s eyes stay on the map. “We take inland choke points first,” she says. “Starve their coastal ambitions from the inside. When they finally crawl to ports for breath, we close the jaw.”

  Old Ji’s fingers flex, wanting something simpler. “And if they don’t bite?”

  Naci looks up, and her gaze is bright with the kind of confidence that has convinced men to die smiling.

  “Then we make them,” she says.

  Jin Na watches her for a beat, then says, almost conversational, “You enjoy this.”

  Naci’s mouth twitches. “I enjoy winning.”

  Old Ji snorts, disgusted at the honesty. “Enjoyment is how you lose,” he mutters.

  Naci turns slightly toward Jin Na, and the shift in her tone is almost friendly—almost.

  “I want your Cinder Court to shine,” she says. “In the coming operations.”

  The words land sweet as honey and sharp as poison: admiration dressed as invitation, a polished compliment that also sounds like a hand pushing someone closer to the fire.

  ...

  Late comes. The corridors glow with lantern light trapped in lacquered walls. The air smells of perfumed oil, of flowers that never saw real dirt, of money spent to make stone feel soft.

  Naci and Horohan’s bedroom waits like a staged confession.

  Too large. Too clean. Too quiet. The bed is draped in pale silk that looks like it has never known sweat, never known panic, never known a woman laughing so hard she coughs. Curtains hang heavy as surrender. Even the brazier is polite, its heat measured, its flame trained.

  Naci steps into it with boots still faintly dusty, like a thief who keeps forgetting to take off her guilt at the door.

  She does not call for servants because she has made a point of not having them near her bed. The palace hates this. It was built to witness. It was built to listen. It was built to wrap power in hands that do not belong to the powerful.

  Horohan is already inside.

  She sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, hair loose, face lit by lamplight that makes her cheekbones look sharp enough to cut paper. She has not changed into silk. She refuses the palace’s fabric the way a wolf refuses a collar. Her tunic is plain, her belt is real leather, her knife is where it always is.

  When Naci enters, Horohan’s gaze does not soften.

  Naci pauses, the door still half-open behind her, and tries something that would have worked if they were younger and less haunted.

  “Well,” she says lightly, “this room looks like it’s about to propose marriage to itself.”

  Horohan’s eyes narrow. “Close the door.”

  Naci closes it.

  The latch clicks. The sound is too final for a bedroom.

  Horohan moves before words have a chance to become excuses.

  She crosses the space with a speed that belongs to battlefield instincts. Her hand catches Naci’s wrist.

  Naci’s mouth opens—half surprise, half amusement—and Horohan is already turning the joint, already stepping in, already using Naci’s momentum. Naci’s arm folds behind her back. Shoulder pinned. Spine pressed toward the wall.

  The impact is controlled violence: hard enough to make the palace’s painted birds seem to flinch, precise enough that it doesn’t injure what Horohan still refuses to destroy.

  Naci hits the wall with a grunt that could be laughter if you squint.

  “Oho,” she breathes. “Is this a kinky prank? Should I—”

  Horohan leans in close enough that Naci can smell the day on her.

  “I’m not joking,” Horohan says, voice low and cold.

  Naci tilts her head against the wall as much as the lock allows, eyes glittering. “Neither am I,” she replies, still trying to make it a game. “But you always do this before you—”

  “Shut up.” Horohan’s grip tightens, just a fraction. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The question is not about the hold. It is about everything else.

  Naci’s smile flickers. Her ribs still ache when she breathes too deep. Grief sits behind her eyes like a second skull. For a moment she looks tired in a way that no crown can fix.

  Then she chooses the answer that has become her armor.

  “I’m doing what we planned,” she says, calm as a decree. “Since we married. Rule the empire that threatened us.”

  Horohan’s jaw works once, like she is chewing on something bitter.

  “We planned to survive,” Horohan hisses. “We planned to keep Tepr from being eaten. We planned to stop people from putting hooks through our mouths and calling it order.”

  Naci’s gaze shifts, not quite meeting Horohan’s, as if looking directly at accusation might make it contagious. “It’s the same thing,” she says.

  “No.” Horohan’s voice sharpens. The word cracks like a whip. “It’s not. You don’t get to smear the same paint over two different corpses and call them twins.”

  Naci exhales through her nose. “You’re being dramatic.”

  Horohan laughs once—short, humorless, the kind of laugh that belongs to someone witnessing a friend walking toward a cliff with confidence.

  “You shot children,” Horohan says. “You burned them like trash. You made a baby Emperor into a charm you can wave at starving people so they don’t bite you.”

  Naci’s mouth tightens. “I saved the empire from falling into chaos.”

  “You made more chaos,” Horohan snaps.

  Naci tries to turn her wrist, testing the lock. Horohan adjusts instantly, like she knows Naci’s body as well as her own blade.

  Horohan speaks faster now, the words boiling out because holding them has started to hurt more than saying them.

  “You’re losing our Tepr way,” she says. “You’re losing the part of you that knew the sky doesn’t belong to anyone. You’re wearing silk and play with a crown. You’re turning our people into tools. You’re using fear like reins and you’re pretending you’re still riding for freedom.”

  Naci’s eyes flash. “Freedom is expensive.”

  “Mercy is expensive,” Horohan throws back. “You used to say that like it was a warning. Now you say it like it’s a joke.”

  Naci’s breath comes shallow.

  “You think I don’t know what I’m becoming?” Naci murmurs. “You think I don’t feel the palace trying to crawl into my bones?”

  Horohan’s face shifts—just a hair—caught between anger and something that looks too close to pleading.

  “Then stop,” Horohan says, and the simplicity of it is almost obscene. “Stop. Before you forget what the grass smells like. Before you start calling it ‘terrain’ and nothing else. Before you become the kind of monster you swore to destroy.”

  Naci’s gaze lifts, finally meeting Horohan’s fully. There is heat there, but it is not the warm kind. It is the kind that comes from a forge.

  “And what do you want me to do?” Naci asks softly. “Step down? Walk out into the city and tell them, ‘Sorry. The empire is too heavy for my hands. Please continue starving politely until someone kinder conquers you’?”

  Horohan’s throat tightens. “I want you to remember you’re human.”

  Naci’s smile returns—thin, sharp. “Humans die.”

  Then she moves.

  She shifts her weight low, steps into the wall instead of away from it, uses the angle of her shoulder to take pressure off the joint. Her heel hooks behind Horohan’s ankle. Her hip turns. The lock breaks—not because Horohan is weak, but because Naci knows how to be relentless when she decides something is necessary.

  In a heartbeat, Horohan’s grip is compromised. Naci’s elbow drives back—not striking, just forcing space. Naci’s hand snakes up, catches Horohan’s wrist, mirrors the hold.

  Horohan snarls, tries to twist free—

  —and Naci flips her, pins Horohan instead.

  Horohan’s back hits the wall. Not as hard, but hard enough that the lamp flame trembles.

  Naci leans in, forearm across Horohan’s collarbone, body close in a way that could be intimacy if the room were not full of knives.

  Horohan’s eyes burn. “So this is it,” she says, voice low. “You can’t answer me without taking control.”

  Naci’s breath brushes Horohan’s ear. “I answered,” she says. “You just didn’t like it.”

  Horohan’s hands press against Naci’s arm, testing strength. She could fight out. They both know she could. They both know what would happen if she did.

  Naci’s voice drops, almost gentle, which is somehow worse. “I will do whatever it takes to stay on top,” she says. “Because if I’m not on top, someone worse will be.”

  Horohan’s laugh is a cracked thing. “That’s what they all say.”

  Naci’s eyes flick to the silk curtains, to the bed like an altar, to the polished floor that has never known mud. A pulse of something—disgust, maybe—passes through her.

  Then she releases Horohan abruptly, as if letting go is its own punishment.

  Horohan stumbles a half-step, catches herself, breath tight.

  Naci straightens her collar as if adjusting a uniform after a minor scuffle in a hallway. She does not look at Horohan’s face for long.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Naci says.

  Horohan’s voice shakes. “You don’t have time to be human.”

  Naci pauses at the door.

  For a heartbeat, it looks like she might turn back, say something human, admit something soft.

  Instead she says, without facing her, “Get some sleep.”

  Then she leaves.

  The latch clicks again. The palace breathes like a satisfied beast.

  Horohan stays standing in the middle of the room, hands trembling, chest rising and falling like she has just fought for her life.

  ...

  South of Pezijil, near the Lion’s Throat and the conquered city of Gu, the Hluay camp tastes like salt and wet wind and discipline.

  Canvas tents line up in neat rows. Fires burn low, shielded against the breeze. Men move with purpose. And beyond the neatness, the pyres burn.

  Yohazatz bodies are piled on wood like offerings nobody asked for. Flesh cooks. Fat pops. Smoke rises thick and greasy, curling into the night as if the dead are trying to crawl back into the sky through the only exit left.

  Soldiers walk past the pyres without looking, because looking makes you human and humans are expensive.

  Li Song is looking anyway, and he is furious enough to make the air around him feel sharp.

  He stands with his hands clenched, hair tied back, armor splattered with mud that has dried into a crust. His eyes are cold, but his voice is hot when he speaks.

  He turns on the Shag’hal-Tyn general beside him like a blade swinging toward a throat.

  “Where were you,” Li Song demands, “when Tepr cavalry arrived?”

  The Shag’hal-Tyn general, Arangs Lurj, is a broad man with a face carved by wind and war. His armor bears dents that look like they were earned honestly. His expression does not change when Li Song yells; he has been shouted at by better men.

  He gestures vaguely westward, where darkness hides other battlefields.

  “Fighting,” the general replies. “Yohazatz hit the west line. We held. We bled. We did not run away.”

  Li Song’s mouth twists. “You let them enter the city.”

  The general’s laugh is short and ugly. “Only a fraction enters,” he says, blunt. “Your siege lasts four years. Everyone inside is hungry, stupid, tired, and ready to believe in miracles. You keep your ring tight, and then you leave a hole in your own logic.”

  Li Song’s eyes narrow. “Explain.”

  The general points with two fingers, like outlining a lesson on a board.

  “The North Khan runs multiple fronts,” he says. “She has men. She has generals. She can strike here and there at once. Only a fraction was inside Pezijil. You could have sealed the city tighter. I assume they came from the sewers. The Imperial City is as large as a real city, of course it would have its own sewers system that leads outside. You could have crushed their insertion. Trap them in their own stink and kill them before they find daylight.”

  Li Song’s jaw tightens; his first bitter loss in decades.

  The general’s gaze slides, cutting, to where Linh stands near the edge of the campfires.

  Linh is half-shadow and half-scar in the flickering light. One arm. One eye. A stick planted in the ground. His burned side makes his posture asymmetrical. His face is turned toward the pyres, but he seems not to be seeing them. His attention is elsewhere—inside his own vision, inside his own myth.

  “A stupid prophecy,” the general says plainly.

  Li Song’s anger hesitates, then changes shape. It cools. It becomes calculation again, because Li Song is the kind of man who can swallow rage and turn it into strategy without choking.

  His eyes flick from Linh to the pyres to the distant silhouette of the sea.

  “This war,” Li Song murmurs, almost to himself, “is no longer about walls.”

  The general snorts. “It’s about men who let stories steer them into mistakes.”

  Linh does not truly listen to the generals arguing.

  Their words wash around him like wind around a statue. He stands with his stick planted, fingers gripping it too tightly. The eagle-skull handle catches firelight and throws it back in pale flashes, bone pretending to be holy.

  The pyres crackle behind him. Heat pushes at his burned skin, and he flinches without meaning to, jaw clenching as if the flame is a personal insult.

  Amar stands close. Her presence is strange comfort. She looks at Linh with eyes that do not worship him, which is perhaps why he can breathe around her.

  For a moment, the shouting fades. The world narrows to the orange pulse of firelight and Amar’s voice.

  She asks him softly, almost casually, as if asking about weather:

  “Why don’t I kill you?” she asks. “Like you could have killed me when you learned that I was not the amber eyed demon in your dreams.”

  The question lands between them like a coin dropped into a well. It is simple. It is sharp.

  Linh’s throat works. His one eye flicks toward her, then away, then back.

  “Because,” Linh says, voice low, “you’re the only thing in this camp that understands me.”

  Behind them, the pyres keep burning, and the smoke makes their intimacy look like sacrilege.