The Winds of Tepr

The morning after the dragon's parade, the wind over the Tepr camp is a busy, scouring thing, carrying the scents of trampled thyme, cook-smoke, and the distinctive, sulfurous ghost of gunpowder. The practice ground has become a stage for a new kind of pedagogy, split neatly between two disciplines: one of controlled ruin, the other of fragile order.

On one side, Borak's voice booms like a rockslide, a constant, grounding counterpoint to the erratic, deafening cracks of matchlock fire. A dozen of the new Banners kneel and stand in a ragged line, their movements still self-conscious, their shoulders flinching in anticipation of the blast. The air around them shimmers with heat haze and the gritty, white smoke that coats their tongues and stings their eyes.

"Your pan is your lover's secret!" Borak roars at a young woman whose hands are trembling as she pours black powder. "Keep it dry! Keep it close! And for the love of all the spirits, do not look into it like it holds your future! Your future is down the barrel!"

A sharp crack punctuates his advice. The shot goes wide, kicking up a plume of dust twenty paces from the shredded, fly-blown sheep carcasses that serve as targets. The shooter, a boy named Batu, winces.

"Ha!" Borak barks, not unkindly. "You scared the wind, Batu! It moved your ball for you! Now, again! Slower! The match-cord is not a snake you are trying to strangle! A gentle kiss on the pan, that is all it asks!"

Batu's face flushes a deep, mortified crimson beneath the grime. He fumbles with his ramrod, the long metal stick clattering against the barrel of his musket with a sound of pure incompetence. The other Banners in his rank shift uneasily, their own confidence rattled by his very public failure.

"The wind has a sense of humor, boy," Borak continues, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial growl that somehow carries over the wind. "It laughs at hesitation. It mocks a trembling hand. Your enemy will not grant you a second chance to find your courage." He stomps over, his shadow falling over Batu like a benevolent mountain. He doesn't snatch the weapon away; instead, his massive, scarred hand closes over Batu's on the stock, his other guiding the boy's grip on the ramrod. "Feel it? The wood is alive. The metal is cold with patience. You are not its master yet."

Under Borak's steadying grasp, Batu's trembling stills. He rams the ball and wadding home with a firm, solid thump.

"Good," Borak rumbles, releasing him. "Now, the match. Think of it as a drowsy serpent. You do not startle it. You invite it to wake, just enough to taste the powder." He watches as Batu carefully blows on the smoldering end of the cord, the ember glowing a furious orange. "Now. Lower it."

The next shot is not Batu's. It comes from the far end of the line, where a woman named Sharai, her face a mask of serene concentration, touches her match to the pan. There is a fizzing hiss, a heartbeat of suspended time, and then the world seems to tear itself apart. The musket bucks in her hands like a living thing, and a plume of fire and smoke erupts from the barrel. The ball strikes a hanging sheep carcass with a wet, percussive thwack, spinning it on its rope and spraying a fine mist of pink vapor and bone fragments into the air.

The violence of it is both horrifying and magnificent. The sheer, brute force on display is a form of grandeur all its own.

"Ha! See!" Borak bellows, his eyes alight with a warrior's appreciation for clean, efficient destruction. "Sharai listens! Her argument is concise and very, very persuasive!"

He turns back to the line, his gaze sweeping over them. "This is not a bow," he declares. "A bow sings. This thing… this thing barks. It is a beast. It does not ask for your strength, only your nerve. It will turn the weakest among you into a giant-killer, and the bravest into a trembling child if you forget its temper."

He strides down the line, pointing at the grotesque, shuddering targets. "Look at them! That is not a clean kill. That is what happens when a promise written in powder is kept. You are not hunters anymore. You are architects of ruin. Remember that. Carry the weight of that noise in your soul."

A sudden, sharp crack from the center of the line is followed not by the whistle of a ball, but by a yelp of pain and a string of inventive curses. Pomogr's third son, Karegr, drops his musket, clutching his face. A bright spark from a poorly seated match has leaped from his pan, peppering his cheek with burning powder grains and setting a stray lock of his hair smoldering.

Borak is on him in an instant with a brutal, practical efficiency. He smothers the smoking hair with his bare palm, the sizzle of burnt hair adding a new note to the symphony of smells. "And that," he roars for all to hear, "is what happens when you court a serpent with clumsy hands! This weapon is as likely to bite you as it is the enemy! Respect it! Or it will sculpt you a new face, and not a pretty one!"

Karegr, tears of pain and humiliation in his eyes, nods shakily. Borak shoves a waterskin at him. "Wash it. And consider yourself blessed. The fire has kissed you and found you wanting. A valuable lesson, cheaply bought." A few nervous chuckles mix with the ringing in their ears.

As the line reforms, the process repeats itself—a ritual of loading, aiming, and unleashing controlled thunder. Each blast is a miniature storm, each puff of smoke a ghost released to haunt the field. The grass around the firing line is blackened and torn. The sheep carcasses are no longer recognisable as anything that once lived; they are now abstract sculptures of ruin, testament to the new, terrible grammar of power being learned here.

On the far side of the field, a world away from the percussion and violence, a different kind of instruction is underway. Here, the air smells only of dust and dried mutton. Horohan sits on a folded felt blanket, Khanai a mound of sleeping white fur at her side, her presence a silent enforcer of the peace she teaches. Before her, another dozen Banners sit cross-legged, their faces etched with a different kind of concentration. These are the ones deemed to have patient hands and calm eyes, tasked with learning the lexicon of rule.

They practice with pebbles and a large wooden bowl. Three pebbles for a dispute over a goat. Five for a contested water-right. A single, black stone for a accusation of theft that requires witness oaths.

"The law is not a spear," Horohan says, her voice calm and carrying. "It is a needle. It must stitch the tear without making a larger hole. You do not break spines to stop a fight. You break the rhythm of the fight."

Kuan lounges at the periphery of this civil lesson, a smirk playing on his lips. "And if the tear is wearing a knife and has very poor manners?" he calls out, earning a few stifled grins from the seated Banners.

Horohan does not look at him. "Then you use the needle to guide the knife into the ground. The principle is the same. Only the pressure changes."

A ripple of laughter, tight and nervous, passes through the seated Banners. Horohan allows it, a faint, almost imperceptible softening at the corners of her eyes the only sign she acknowledges the humor. She lets the silence settle again, a blanket over their amusement.

"The law begins before the knife is drawn," she continues, her gaze sweeping over them. "It begins in the grievance, in the whispered insult, in the goat that strays for the third time. Your duty is to hear the music beneath the shouting." She gestures to the bowl between them, its collection of pebbles looking like mundane river stones, yet charged with the potential to redirect lives. "These are your notes. Three pebbles for the goat. Not to punish the owner for his negligence, nor the claimant for his greed, but to compensate for the milk lost, to mend the friendship broken. The law is the loom on which the fabric of the camp is woven. You are not weavers of perfection, but of repair."

To demonstrate, she selects two Banners—a serious young woman named Borte and a lanky, earnest boy named Subei. "Borte, your best milch-goat has entered Subei's family enclosure and eaten the special wedding-feast herbs his mother was drying. You are furious. Subei, your mother is weeping. The feast is in three days. Begin."

Borte, entering the spirit of the exercise, draws herself up. "That creature is a plague on four legs! Its belly is a bottomless pit! The value of those herbs is worth two of her best kids!"

Subei, flustered, wrings his hands. "The fence was strong! Your goat is a demon! It must be possessed! My mother's honor is stained!"

Kuan, from his perch, chimes in, adopting a high, wavering voice, "Oh, the shame! The ancestors are blinking in confusion from the spirit world! The wedding soup will be bland! The marriage will be doomed!" This earns another burst of laughter, and even Borte fights a smile.

Horohan watches the performance, her expression unreadable. She does not interrupt. She lets the conflict breathe, lets the absurdity and the genuine frustration intertwine. Finally, she lifts a hand. The chatter dies.

"Now," she says, her voice a low, compelling force. "You are the needle. Not Borte, not Subei. You are the third thing. The truth is not that the goat is a demon, or that the fence was weak. The truth is that the herbs are gone, and a mother's peace is shattered. The law does not care for demons. It cares for consequences." She picks up five pebbles. "So. The price of the herbs. One pebble. The labor of the mother. One pebble. The insult to the family's preparation. One pebble. The cost of mending the fence, to be shared. Two pebbles." She drops them one by one into the bowl with a series of soft, definitive clicks. "The goat is not punished. The marriage is not doomed. The fabric is mended. Is it perfect? No. But the camp continues."

"But what of the black stone?" asks another Banner, a man with a thoughtful frown. "Theft. That is a knife before it is drawn."

"Indeed," Horohan agrees. "The black stone changes the music. It requires witnesses. Not one, but two, who must swear on the wind and the earth, whose words must align not like perfect twins, but like the two wings of a single bird. If their stories diverge, the stone is returned to the bowl, and the accusation falls apart. The law must be harder to prove a man a thief than it is to call him one. To brand a man a thief is to tear a hole in him that may never be mended. You must be certain. You must be sure enough that you would stake your own honor on it."

To illustrate, she has Kuan play the thief, accused of stealing a silver-chased dagger from Borak himself. Kuan, of course, milks it for all it's worth, protesting his innocence with florid oaths to forgotten gods. The Banners must question him, must weigh his slippery words against the imagined testimony of witnesses.

"You see?" Horohan murmurs as Kuan weaves a tapestry of lies and misdirection. "The truth is often a quiet child hiding in a room of shouting liars. Your task is not to shout louder, but to listen for the silence."

The exercise continues, a dance of words and intentions, a battle fought with pebbles and reason. It is a different kind of war, one of attrition against chaos, and the stakes are the soul of the society Naci and Horohan are building. The occasional, earth-shattering BOOM from the other side of the field is a constant reminder of what happens when this quieter war is lost.

Lanau moves between the two groups, her antlered headdress tilting as she observes the violent drills and the peaceful arbitration with equal, shamanic detachment. She carries a pouch of dried apricots and a demeanor that promises either reward or ritual humiliation. She pauses by the shooters, where Sarnai is struggling to seat his ramrod.

"Your spirit is fighting your hands, Sarnai," she intones. "The metal feels your fear. It becomes stubborn. Breathe out. Tell the rod it is a feather." Sarnai, sweating, obeys, and the rod slides home with a satisfying thunk. Lanau drops an apricot into his lap. "See? The spirits of iron appreciate confidence. And dried fruit."

She then drifts to the law-learners, where a heated debate is simmering between two Banners acting out the roles of vendors arguing over a strayed calf.

"He left the gate open!" one insists, jabbing a finger.

"The wind opened it! My knot was blessed by the old woman!" the other retorts.

Lanau listens for a moment, then stamps her foot twice on the hard earth—thump, thump. The sound is unnaturally sharp, cutting through the argument. "The drum of order has spoken," she announces. "The calf is confused, not criminal. It goes to the neutral pen for one moon. You will share the milk. And you," she adds, pointing to the more belligerent role-player, "will sing a boring song about proper knot-tying for the children tonight. The punishment must fit the dullness of the crime."

A wave of laughter breaks out again. Horohan hides a smile, her eyes meeting Lanau's in a flash of shared understanding. This is how it must be done. The new power, the terrifying, meat-shredding authority of the gun, must be hemmed in by the tedious, essential threads of justice and custom.

A stray goat, evidently unimpressed by the new world order, wanders into the law circle and begins to nibble with dedication on a scrap of parchment meant to be a ration ledger. For a moment, the Banners are too stunned to react. Kuan, of course, is delighted.

"Aha! An independent audit!" he crows. "The goat finds the proposed grain allocation… difficult to digest!"

The goat, as if in agreement, bleats loudly and consumes another clause.

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Horohan watches the scene, her expression unreadable. "See?" she says to her students, her voice dry. "The land itself will test your rulings. Now, someone please remove the chancellor before he passes judgment on the tax records."

As two Banners gently shoo the goat away, a faint, wet cough carries from the direction of the main tents. It's a sound that has become more common over the past weeks. A few heads turn subtly, then turn back. No one comments. On the face of a young Banner in the front row, a tiny, brown fleck of yesterday's sheep's blood still sticks to her cheekbone, a dark star against her sun-browned skin. She has not washed it off.

Naci stands between the two worlds, a silent arbiter. She has shed the glorious dragon armor for practical leathers, but its specter hangs about her still. Her gaze is a physical weight, shifting from the shooters to the lawmakers, filing away names, noting who flinches and who listens, who leads and who follows. She sees the girl with the blood-flecked cheek, sees the intense, focused stillness with which she listens to Horohan, and a single, quiet note is made in the ledger of her mind.

The wind shifts, blowing an acrid curtain of powder-smoke across the law circle. The Banners cough and wave it away, their eyes watering.

On the drilling field, Batu fires again. This time, the report is clean, and a distant sheep-carcass jerks, a new hole punched through its ribcage. Borak claps him on the back, a sound like a falling tree. "There! You see? You whispered to it, and it obeyed!"

On the felt blanket, Horohan places a final, white pebble in the bowl. "And this," she tells her circle, "is for a matter of life and death. A decision that cannot be unmade. It requires the agreement of three, and the blessing of the wind." She looks up, and her eyes find Naci's across the field. The message is silent, but clear: This, too, is a weapon. And it is now in their hands.

Kuan, following her gaze, smiles his knife-blade smile. "Let us hope," he murmurs to no one in particular, "that they learn to aim it as well as they do their muskets."

...

The afternoon sun, a pale gold coin in the vast mint of the sky, casts long, lean shadows from the ger tents. The cacophony of the drill field fades to a distant, rhythmic punctuation of pops and shouts as Naci guides her parents along a worn dirt path that skirts the camp's perimeter. To their left, the land falls away into a shallow bowl where herds of sheep and horses graze, a living tapestry of the tribe's wealth. To their right, the camp sprawls, a bustling, noisy organism of felt and fire.

Gani walks with a deliberate slowness, one hand occasionally pressing against her ribs as if to quiet the unruly tenant in her chest. Tseren matches her pace, his posture still that of a chieftain, but the set of his shoulders speaks of a weight borne for too long.

"The Banners learn quickly," Naci begins, her voice deceptively casual, as if commenting on the weather. "The steel takes to the fire better than I hoped."

"Fire can temper steel, or melt it into a useless puddle," Tseren replies, his gaze on the distant, smoke-shrouded figures. "Borak seems to be a good bellows. He knows the heat required."

"He does," Naci agrees. She stops, turning to face them. The wind toys with the loose strands of her hair, whipping them across a face that is suddenly, terribly serious. "When I cross the sea to Seop, half of them come with me. The best shots, the steadiest nerves. The ones who understand that a new world requires new teeth."

The statement hangs in the air, simple and monumental. The sea. Seop. These are not just places; they are concepts, vast and dangerous, that have never before been part of the Tepr's vocabulary of action.

Gani's eyes, sharp and knowing, narrow slightly. "And the other half? The ones with the pebbles and the bowl?"

"They stay," Naci says, and the word is a foundation stone. "They stay, and they govern."

The silence that follows is profound, broken only by the bleating of a goat and the ever-present wind.

"Govern," Gani repeats, the word a dry leaf in her mouth. "You would leave children to rule a camp of wolves and old rams?"

"They are not children. They are my handwriting on the land," Naci counters, her voice low but iron-clad. "But a hand can be stayed. A word can be corrected." She looks from her mother to her father, her gaze unwavering. "In my absence, your word will be law. Above the Banners. Above any clan chief who grumbles. You may reassign them. You may requisition what is needed for the camp's health. You may discipline any who forget that their power flows from this family. You will be the root from which my new tree grows."

Naci is not asking them to lead; she is conscripting their authority, their hard-won respect, to legitimize her radical experiment. She is borrowing their names to pay for her kingdom.

Gani lets out a sound that is half laugh, half cough, muffling the latter into a square of linen. When she lowers it, her eyes are glistening with a mixture of pain and a fierce, stitched-together humor. "So. We are to be the old, gilded cover on your new, bloody book. Use us properly, daughter. Tools rust when hidden."

"You are not tools," Naci says, and for a fleeting moment, the Khan vanishes, and it is only a daughter before her parents. "You are the bedrock. I can build nothing lasting on shifting sand. The clans will accept this from you. They would tear a Banner apart for the same command."

"We knew you would do this," Tseren says, his voice a soft rasp. The admission is quiet, but it carries the weight of years. "We made you study not just the bow, but the faces of the men who strung them. We made you listen to stories of empire not as tales, but as lessons. We were only waiting for you to admit it to yourself. A leader who sees only the next hill is a chief. A leader who sees the ocean… is a Khan."

He sweeps his gaze across the landscape, past the grazing herds, past the smoking forges, until it rests on the drill field. The scene compresses into a tiny, silent tableau: the white puffs of smoke, the jerking carcasses, the figures kneeling and rising in their deadly dance.

"They are afraid," he observes, not with criticism, but with the cold clarity of a man who has known fear on a thousand battlefields. "I can see it in the hunch of their shoulders. They are learning a magic that terrifies them. You are right. They need an old, familiar voice to tell them it is permissible to be terrified. That the fear is what will keep them alive."

He looks at Gani, and a lifetime of shared burdens and silent understandings passes between them in a single glance. Her slight, almost imperceptible nod is her seal on the contract.

"We will hold the steppe for you, Naci," Gani says, her voice firm now, the cough banished for the moment. "We will make the wolves and the rams bow to your pebbles and your bowls. But you…" She reaches out, her calloused hand gripping her daughter's wrist with surprising strength. "You must come back. A tree with a severed root is just waiting for the wind."

Naci places her hand over her mother's. The connection is brief, but electric with transferred power and unspoken love. "The wind and I have an understanding, Mother."

She turns, ready to descend back into the machinery of her ambition, but pauses, looking back at the two pillars of her life, now the appointed regents of her future. "The fever," she says, the word dropping like a stone. "It is in the camp. I have heard it."

Gani's smile is thin, a brave banner flying over a besieged fortress. "The fever is a fact, like the wind or the price of salt. We will manage it. You have given us enough to do without adding 'defeating the air' to our list."

Tseren gives a dry, rattling chuckle. "Go, daughter. Shape your war. We will tend your peace."

...

In the secluded courtyard of the Qixi-Lo palace, a single, stubborn lemon tree struggles against the desert's indifference, its branches offering a few pale, sour fruits. Here, Puripal kneels on a cushion, meticulously arranging a tea service of exquisite southern porcelain. His movements are a fluid, practiced ritual.

Dukar sits opposite him, his posture the solid, grounded counterpoint to Puripal's elegant precision. He is not drinking tea. Instead, he is methodically, tenderly, brushing the thick, coarse fur of Notso. The massive hound lies between them, a mountain of contented muscle, his wheezing breaths a baseline of peace in the courtyard. With each stroke of the bristle brush, a small cloud of dust and loose hair rises, catching the afternoon light.

Puripal watches this for a long time, his expression a mask of serene amusement that does not quite reach his eyes. He sets a cup of steaming jasmine tea before Dukar with a soft click.

"You know," Puripal says, "there are palace eunuchs in Pezijil who spend less time on their morning ablutions than you do on that dog. I begin to feel a distinct sense of neglect." A faint, wry smile touches his lips. "You spend more time with my dog than with me."

Dukar does not look up from his task, his fingers working a stubborn knot from behind Notso's ear. The hound groans in ecstasy. "You gave him to me," Dukar replies, his voice a gravelly rumble. "I treat him as your gift. With the reverence it deserves." There is no irony in his tone, only a simple, profound statement of fact.

Puripal's smile widens, a flash of genuine warmth breaking through the regal facade. "Stop flirting. It's undignified for a man of your station to seduce a Khan." He takes a sip of his own tea, the steam wreathing his face, which is so finely carved it seems to belong on a coin. "Besides, he drools on your boots. A strange form of reverence."

"It is a blessing," Dukar deadpans, finally looking up. His amber eyes, usually so fierce, are soft here, in this private space. "A hound's drool is good for the leather. It keeps the spirits of poor tannery at bay. My father told me so."

The moment is soft, almost fragile, a tiny island of domesticity in the vast, turbulent ocean of their lives. It is shattered by the frantic scraping of the courtyard gate.

Ta stumbles in, but it is not the usual, fluid entrance of the master scout. His movements are jerky, uncoordinated. He looks like a man who has not slept, his eyes wide and haunted, darting around the courtyard as if expecting an ambush from the lemon tree itself. He carries the scent of the drill field on him—acrid gunpowder and a faint, coppery tang of fear-sweat.

"The… the Moukopl," he blurts out, his voice cracking. "They are… have the… the noise…" He cannot form a complete thought. His hands, usually so steady, tremble at his sides.

Dukar is on his feet in an instant, the brush clattering to the tiles. In two strides he is before Ta, his hands gripping the younger man's shoulders. "Breathe. The noise cannot hurt you here."

"You did not hear it," Ta whispers, his gaze fixed on some middle distance, seeing not the courtyard but the shredded sheep, the white smoke, the invisible fist of the volley. "It is not a bow. This… this is a demon's cough. It kills from a distance without honor, without a face. It turns men into… into meat." A full-body shudder wracks his frame. "The Moukopl… they looked just like that. Calm. Then the world broke."

Puripal watches, his own cup forgotten. The horror of the new warfare has entered his sanctuary, carried on the trembling form of his brother..

"Dukar," he says, his voice quiet but firm.

Dukar understands. With a gentle but insistent pressure, he guides the shaking Ta to his own cushion and pushes him down until he is seated. Then, with a wordless command, he directs Notso. The great hound, sensing distress, lumbers over and, with a sigh of immense purpose, lays his massive, heavy head directly into Ta's lap, pinning him with warm, living weight.

Ta flinches for a second, then his hands, as if acting on a memory older than fear, rise and sink into the hound's thick fur.

"There," Dukar says, his voice dropping back into its familiar, gruff cadence. "A promotion. You are now the Deputy Minister of Dogs. Your first duty is to endure the blessing." He gestures to the drool already soaking into Ta's trousers.

A choked sound escapes Ta's throat, halfway between a sob and a laugh. He looks down at the slobbering, devoted creature in his lap, then up at the two men who are his anchor in a world coming apart at the seams. The sheer, absurd normality of the moment is a lifeline.

"The… the responsibilities are immense," Ta manages, his voice still unsteady, but a flicker of his old self returning.

"They are," Puripal agrees gravely, resuming his seat and pouring a third cup of tea. He pushes it across the low table toward Ta. "You must ensure his naps are uninterrupted, his ears are adequately scratched, and that he is protected from the existential dread of an empty food bowl. It is a burden, but we have faith in you."

The tight coil of panic in Ta's shoulders begins to loosen. His breathing, which had been shallow and rapid, deepens. He scratches behind Notso's ears, and the hound's leg thumps a rhythmic, comforting beat against the tiles.

The lemon-scented peace of the courtyard curdles with the sudden, sharp whistle of descending death. A shadow, swift and silent as a falling stone, sweeps across the sun-bleached tiles. Uamopak, Naci's prized eagle, lands on the courtyard's highest wall with a rustle of feathers that sounds like a banner unfurling. The great bird's talons, curved and black as iron hooks, scrape against the mud-brick. Its golden eyes, pitiless and ancient, fix on Puripal, seeing not a prince, but a focal point in its mapped world.

Notso lifts his head from Ta's lap and emits a low, uncertain growl, the sound a vibration felt in the bones. Ta's hands still in the hound's fur, his own recent trauma eclipsed by this new, primal intrusion.

Puripal does not startle. He sets his porcelain cup down with a precision that borders on the violent, the faint click absurdly loud in the sudden silence. His gaze meets the eagle's, a silent conversation passing between predator and king. He knows this bird. He knows what it carries. Tied to its jess is a slender cylinder of lacquered bamboo, dark as a starless night.

"Dukar," Puripal says, his voice devoid of its earlier warmth. It is the tone of a regent expecting a report from a disputed border.

Dukar is already moving. He approaches the wall with the respectful wariness one shows a sleeping volcano, his movements slow and deliberate. He speaks in a low, guttural murmur, a language of clicks and hums that is not quite Tepr, not quite Yohazatz, but something older, meant for calming wild things. The eagle watches him, unblinking. With infinite care, Dukar unties the cylinder, his thick, warrior's fingers surprisingly deft with the knot. The eagle shifts its weight, then, its message delivered, launches itself back into the sky with a powerful downbeat that stirs the dust of the courtyard and sends a pale lemon leaf spinning to the ground.

The spell is broken, but the air remains charged. Puripal takes the cylinder. It is cool and smooth in his hand. He retreats to the low table, the fragile world of tea and tranquility now feeling like a painted backdrop against the grim theater of statecraft. He dismisses the scribe who had been waiting in the shade of an archway with a flick of his wrist. What comes next is not for record-keepers.

With a quiet pop, he uncaps the tube. Inside, a scroll of vellum, tightly wound. He unrolls it, weighting its corners with his teacup and a smooth, grey river stone from a bowl of such stones meant for contemplation. The script that greets him is Naci's—sharp, angular, and brutally efficient. It needs no grand seal, no flourishes. Its power is in its stark proposition.

Dukar returns to his cushion, his presence a solid, watchful bulwark. He does not ask. He waits, his eyes on Puripal's face, reading the subtle shifts in the prince's expression as another man might read a battle standard.

Puripal reads it once. Then again, his lips thinning into a bloodless line. He finally looks up, his gaze finding Dukar's.

"She offers a trade," Puripal says, his voice flat. "Her ships and warriors for our strike on the Seop coast. And in return…" He pauses, the words tasting of ash and ambition. "She offers to remove Nemeh from the board."

Dukar's body goes rigid. The word is a blade drawn from its scabbard. "Ridiculous. And the stain will be on your hands, not hers. The steppe will see only a brother killing a brother."

Puripal's composure cracks, just for a moment. A flicker of raw, old pain crosses his face. "But I have tried so many times. Do you think I have not sent… quieter solutions? A skin of kumis that curdled in the bag before it reached his lips. An arrow in the night that found only his bracer. A groom with pockets full of silver who was found weeping, his confession torn from him by the camels who loved my brother more than coin." He lets out a short, bitter breath. "The man is unkillable by subtle means. He has the luck of the damned and the senses of the dune-fox. The desert already believes I am a patricide. This would simply be… confirming their favorite story."

He looks down at the letter, at the clean, cruel calculus of Naci's offer. It is a lever, precisely placed to move the world. He can almost feel the weight of the throne—the real, unchallenged throne—within his grasp. But the cost is a soul-deep corrosion.

"If I choose clean hands now," Puripal murmurs, his gaze distant, seeing a future of endless, grinding rivalry, of a kingdom perpetually divided, "will the steppe ever see them as clean? Or will they always see the ghost of blood, whether it is there or not?"

The question hangs in the air, unanswered. The grandeur of the offer—a united Yohazatz, a secure flank, a partnership with the rising power of Tepr—is eclipsed by the intimate horror of the price. It is the epic scale of empire crashing against the terrible, small silence of a brother's potential last breath.

"Who am I fooling?" Puripal suddenly bursts into laughter. "My hands were never clean in the first place!"