The Winds of Tepr

A circle, imperfect but undeniable, forms around the two figures. Tepr lancers and Yohazatz camel-riders alike disengage, pulling back, their own mortal struggles forgotten in the face of this primal contest. Two escorts from each side hover at the edge of the ring, their weapons held ready, but no one raises a bow or a musket. This is a thing apart. To interfere would be a sacrilege against the brutal gods of combat.

In Gani's hands are the tools of the steppe, worn smooth by use: a curved sabre, its edge gleaming with a practical malice, and a short, brutal hook-lance, its point designed to find the soft junctures in a camel's armor. Her reins are looped around her left elbow, freeing her hands, a testament to her trust in the black stallion, Erghën, who stands like a sculpture of patient power, his breath pluming in the dusty air.

Nemeh is an icon of borrowed glory. In his right hand, Altan Kherem, the Golden Scourge, seems to drink the pallid light, its length a line of incandescent promise. In his left, a hooked parrying dagger, its curve a mirror to the cruelty in his eyes. Beneath him, his camel dances, a nervous, trained killer, its head bobbing, its powerful knees lifting in a subtle, threatening rhythm, a motion drilled into it to shatter the ribs of any horse that comes too close.

There are no words. The silence between them is louder than the battle's faded roar. It is Nemeh who breaks it, not with a sound, but with motion.

He erupts forward, a blur of white and gold. It is not a feint. It is a killing line, pure and simple. Altan Kherem flashes down in a shimmering arc meant to split Erghën's chest from neck to belly, to spill the legend's heart onto the dust and break the spirit of the Tepr in one, brutal stroke.

Gani flows. She slides her body low along Erghën's neck as the golden sword whistles past, a hair's breadth from the stallion's hide. Her left hand thrusts the hook-lance upward. The hardened steel point jabs hard into the thick, muscular neck of the camel, a vicious check that makes the beast snort and jerk its head away, disrupting the perfect geometry of Nemeh's strike. In the same fluid motion, her right hand whips the sabre across, at the vambrace guarding Nemeh's sword arm. The steel screams, and a long, bright scratch appears on the polished leather.

Nemeh recoils, not from pain, but from insult. The camel, stung and confused, sidesteps. Seizing the momentum, Nemeh's dagger hand darts out like a serpent's tongue. The hooked blade aims for the practical, leather strap of her stirrup. It snags, bites, and he yanks back, hard. It is a dirty, brilliant move, meant to unhorse her, to drag her down into the churning hooves.

For a heart-stopping second, the leather groans, taut. Then Erghën surges. The stirrup leather, strong as it is, tears free with a sharp crack. Gani is thrown off-balance, but her knees are fused to the horse's sides. As Nemeh leans into his pull, suddenly meeting no resistance, Gani's heel presses a silent cue into Erghën's flank.

The stallion pivots on its hind legs, a breathtaking display of agility and strength, moving not away from the danger, but laterally, off the direct killing line. They are now angled, presenting a narrower profile, the failed stirrup leather flapping like a wounded bird.

...

The Yohazatz center, maddened by smoke and the loss of their leader to single combat, smashes against the berm like a bloody tide. There is no room for a third volley. The distance is closed.

"Second line, fire! First line, stab!" Lanau's voice is a raw, torn thing, but it carries.

The result is a cacophony of point-blank destruction. A dozen muskets roar simultaneously, their flashes setting the tunics of the frontmost camel riders ablaze. The lead balls punch through leather and bone at near-zero range, creating temporary, gory voids in the press. But before the smoke can clear, the first line of Banners, those who had fired moments before, now reverse their muskets. They have no bayonets, so they use what they have: the butt of the stock becomes a club, the long barrel a crude spear, jammed into the faces and chests of the camels and riders pushing over the berm.

It is butchery. A young Banner, his face a mask of terror and determination, swings his musket like an axe, the stock connecting with a camel's knee with a sickening crack. The beast collapses, throwing its rider into the press of Tepr, who descend on him with knives and gun-butts. Another uses the weapon's length to hook a rider's leg, yanking him from the saddle to be trampled by his own mount.

Lanau, her sword ready, parries a swinging scimitar and buries her dagger in the attacker's armpit. She shoves the body aside, her eyes scanning her disintegrating line. "Where is Konir, for fuck's sake?!" she shouts to a file leader, her voice cracking. But there is no response.

On the right flank, Tseren's horse-archers execute their deadly ballet. They have harried Nemeh's sweeping wedge, stinging it, drawing it away from the main engagement. Now, they break into a feigned retreat, a chaotic, inviting scatter, luring the frustrated Yohazatz riders forward onto what looks like solid, clean ground.

It is a trap. The ground gives way. Another freshly cut ditch, camouflaged with loose turf, opens beneath the lead camels. Dozens of beasts and riders plunge into the trench, their momentum their undoing. A ragged cheer goes up from the Tepr archers, a brief, bright sound of vindication.

It is cut short.

From the chaos of the falling vanguard, a single camel, a monstrous beast maddened by pain and the smell of blood, does not fall. It leaps. Its powerful hind legs propel it from the back of a falling comrade, a living projectile. It explodes from the wall of the ditch like a boulder launched from a siege engine, clearing the edge and landing amidst the cheering archers.

The impact is catastrophic. Riders and horses are bowled over, bones snapping. The camel, its rider gone, spins in a blind, destructive frenzy, its great bulk and flailing limbs a weapon of mass ruin.

...

Behind the lines, in the relative quiet of the aid tent, a different war is waged. The air is thick with the smell of blood, vomit, and the sharp, clean scent of medicinal herbs. Here, Keliz and Lizem work alongside elders and other non-combatants.

Keliz's hands, which have kneaded dough, woven cloth, and gently cradled her children, will not stop shaking. She tries to bind the shattered leg of a young lancer, but the bandage slips, stained crimson. She sees not a boy, but a symbol of the desecration she cursed. Every wound seems a judgment.

Lizem watches her from across a prone, moaning body. Without a word, she finishes tying off a tourniquet on her own patient and moves to Keliz's side. She doesn't take over. Instead, her firm, steady hand closes over Keliz's trembling ones, forcing them to complete the knot.

"Look at him," Lizem says, her voice low but fierce. She doesn't mean the wound. She turns Keliz's head, forcing her to meet the eyes of the boy on the stretcher. His face is pale, beaded with sweat, his eyes wide with the terror of a life not yet lived. "His name is Bata. He is an Orogol from the White Rock Valley. His mother taught him to sing the cloud-hymn. My daughter tasked him and his two brothers to deliver mooncakes to the widows for new years. Can you see him."

Keliz's gaze locks with the boy's. The abstraction of her curse meets the concrete reality of a single, terrified life. The philosophical horror of the corpse-smoke collides with the immediate, human need to stop this child from bleeding out. Her hands, under Lizem's, still tremble, but they finish the binding. She does not speak forgiveness to Gani, or absolution for herself. But in the quiet, desperate act of saving one boy named Bata, she chooses, for this moment, the living over the dead. The war outside the tent would be won or lost by violence. The war inside was being decided by a single, steadying hand.

...

The wind, that fickle and impartial arbiter, makes its choice.

It seizes the grey-green plumes of corpse-smoke, which have until now crawled and pooled, and hurls them forward with renewed malice. The banks coalesce into a solid, choking wall, driving deep into the heart of the Yohazatz center.

The effect is instantaneous and catastrophic. The camels, already pushed to the brink of their endurance, break. This miasma of death and chemical rot is an assault on their very nature. They balk en masse, throwing their heads wildly, their great bodies shuddering. Riders are thrown from saddles as mounts spin and buck, blind and terrified. Those who keep their seats bend double, coughing, their eyes streaming tears that cut clean tracks through the grime on their faces. The relentless drumbeat, the anchor of their advance, is swallowed by the sounds of retching and animal panic.

On the berm, Tseren sees it. His strategist's mind recognizes the gift. It is not a miracle; it is a meteorological coincidence, a twist of fate he must seize or forever regret.

He raises a red-painted lance, its color a dull smear in the foul air, and swings it in a wide arc toward the enemy's left seam, where their line is now thinned and disorganized. The signal is passed down the line. From the lee of the second berm, the reserve lancers—his final, uncommitted hammer—kick their horses into a surge. It is a controlled, powerful thrust into the gap, a blade aimed at the enemy's buckling spine.

Lanau watches the lancers go, her own section of the line still locked in its bloody, grinding stalemate. The wind has brought a reprieve, but her front is a shattered mess. The Yohazatz here are too entangled to retreat, fighting with the desperate fury of cornered animals. She cannot advance with the reserves without exposing her flanks and overextending into a pocket that could be pinched off.

"Trim the line!" she barks, her voice hoarse. "Conform to the berm! No forward pace! Hold the ground you stand on!" Her warriors obey, shuffling back half a step, tightening their formation, turning their wall of bodies into a denser, more defensible knot.

As the gale whips her hair across her face, she finds herself muttering phrases, pleas to the spirits of the air. She traces a swift, hidden sigil in the blood on her vambrace. She pours every ounce of her will into a silent, fervent command: More. Push harder. Scour them clean.

Nothing happens.

The wind continues its work, oblivious to her desperation. No spirit answers. The old magic, if it ever existed, is deaf to the screams of this new, gunpowder-scarred world.

And as she watches the reserve lancers carve into the enemy flank, a sobering truth settles over her. She looks out at the field before her position. The pits, their gruesome work done, are full. The earth is a churned morass of blood and entrails, the hidden stakes now grim monuments protruding from the carnage.

If the Yohazatz center regains its nerve, if another wave consolidates and comes again, there is nothing left between them and the heart of the Tepr camp but courage, and courage is a finite resource. The wind has given them a chance, but it has also exposed their final, terrifying vulnerability: there is no clean ground left to die on.

...

The world has shrunk to the diameter of a sword's reach. Within the circle, time seems to warp, each heartbeat stretching into a small eternity. The only sounds are the hard, panting breaths of the combatants, the scuff of hooves on churned earth, and the ring of steel.

Nemeh attacks again, Altan Kherem a blur of sun-golden fire. He does not swing wildly; each stroke is a killing line, economical and terrifyingly fast. Gani meets the blow with her sabre, and the sound is not a clang but a shriek of tortured metal, a high, sharp note that pierces the battle's dull roar. A shower of orange sparks pinwheels into the space between them, illuminating for an instant the stark hatred in his eyes and the cold focus in hers.

He feints high, a glittering sweep at her head meant to draw her guard. As she parries, he reverses the motion with impossible speed, the golden blade dipping and slashing sideways. It is not aimed at her, but at Erghën. The tip of Altan Kherem traces a thin, crimson line across the stallion's noble cheek.

Erghën does not shy. He roars, a sound of pure, outraged fury that echoes across the field. Instinctively, he strikes out with his front hooves, massive hammers of bone and sinew meant to crush the camel's skull. Jaran rears back, avoiding the worst, but the disruption is enough.

Gani channels the stallion's rage. She feels the tremor of his outrage travel up through the saddle, into her legs, through her core. It is a raw, primal power. She lets it flow, guiding it, focusing it. As Erghën strikes, she leans into her own counter-cut, the sabre whistling in a low, deadly arc. Nemeh, recovering from his own strike, cannot fully parry. Her blade shears through the layered leather and silk at his shoulder, opening a seam of flesh from collar to deltoid. Blood, dark and immediate, wells up, soaking the brilliant fabric.

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The pain is a catalyst. With a guttural cry, Nemeh hurls himself from his camel, using the animal's bulk as a shield. Gani slides from Erghën's back in the same moment. The two war-trained beasts, now free of their riders, circle each other, snorting and screaming, a deadly ballet of their own, but the focus is now on the ground.

They are foot to foot, the dust of the steppe settling on their blood-slicked weapons. Nemeh touches his wounded shoulder, his fingers coming away red. He looks at them, then at her, and a strange, beatific smile splits his face, a crack in the mask of the fanatic. It is more terrifying than any snarl.

"You do not even see it, do you?" he says, his voice a breathless, intimate thing. "You fight for a demon. You breathe her poison. You are the instrument of the defiler. You think this is for your tribe? This is for her and her alone."

Gani adjusts her grip on the sabre, her other hand holding the hook-lance low, its point hovering like a serpent's head. Her breathing is even, controlled. There is no rage in her eyes, only a depth of purpose as vast and cold as the night sky.

"I fight for my daughter," she replies. The words are simple, unadorned. They carry no grand ideology, no claim to divinity or destiny. They are a statement of fact, as solid and unshakeable as the earth beneath their feet. It is an answer that renders his entire cosmology, his entire reason for being, irrelevant.

A memory unfolds in the sun-drenched heart of the Jabliu camp, a moment preserved in amber, sharp and clear against the fog of war. The air is thick with the scent of roasting mutton and dust, and the buzz of flies is a constant, lazy hum. It is the day of the Summer Gathering, and Grandpa Tarun, a man whose beard seems to be made of spun silver and whose laughter once shook the very felt of the ger, is preparing to lead the ceremonial ride. His ceremonial headdress, a magnificent construction of polished wolf skull, eagle feathers, and threads of woven silver, rests on a carved stand outside his tent, a symbol of lineage and power.

Eight-year-old Naci, a scab-kneed whirlwind of cunning and audacity, views the headdress not with awe, but as a problem in need of a solution. Grandpa Tarun had, just that morning, chastised her for trying to saddle a fully grown warhorse by herself. The injustice of it burns in her small chest. Justice, in Naci's world, is a swift and creative thing.

With the solemn focus of a master strategist, she executes her plan. She retrieves from the midden heap a goat skull, picked clean by scavengers and bleached white by the sun, still holding a few stubborn tags of gristle and a potent, funky odor. With a length of frayed rope, she fashions a crude, lopsided crown. The swap is executed with a thief's precision. The magnificent wolf-skull headdress is hidden under a pile of saddle blankets; the reeking goat skull takes its place of honor.

The reveal is a masterpiece of horror. Grandpa Tarun, beaming, reaches for his headdress. His fingers close not on cool, polished bone and soft eagle down, but on coarse, sun-baked bone and something sticky. He lifts the goat skull. A stunned silence falls over the assembled elders, broken only by the relentless buzz of the flies now investigating this new, fascinating prize. Tarun's face cycles through confusion, dawning comprehension, and finally, a sort of appalled respect.

But it is Gani who reacts. Her rage is a physical force, a sudden thunderstorm in the clear summer day. She moves not like a mother, but like a vengeful spirit whose authority has been spat upon. Her face, usually a mask of composed strength, is a thunderhead. She sees not a prank, but a desecration of tradition, an insult to her father, a liability that could unravel the delicate threads of respect that hold a tribe together.

"NACI!" The name is a whip-crack. She crosses the ground in three strides, her hand rising, not to slap, but to truly strike, to knock the defiance clean out of her daughter's small, insolent body.

But before the blow can fall, a smaller figure plants himself firmly between them. Dukar, only twelve, his face pale but set with a courage that belies his years, spreads his arms wide, a tiny, human shield.

"No, Mother!" he shouts, his voice trembling but clear. "You'll break her!"

Gani pulls the blow at the last second, her hand stopping a hair's breadth from Dukar's forehead. She is breathing heavily, her chest heaving. "Move, Dukar. This is beyond a child's mischief."

"It's just a smelly bone!" Dukar insists, his lower lip quivering but his stance unwavering. "Grandpa's isn't even dead, look!"

Gani's furious gaze shifts from her son's terrified, brave face to her daughter. Naci stands there, not cowed, not weeping. Her chin is lifted, her eyes blazing with a triumphant, unrepentant fire. A slow, mischievous grin spreads across her face, and then she laughs. It's not a nervous giggle, but a full-throated, joyous sound that seems to mock the very concept of consequences.

"His head looked too small for the big one," Naci declares, her logic impeccable and utterly deranged. "This one fits better. And it smells more interesting."

The laughter is the final straw, yet it is also the key that unlocks a strange, fierce pride in Gani's heart. Looking at her daughter—wild, brilliant, untamable—she sees the shadow of the woman she herself had been forced to bury. Gani, the daughter of a chieftain, whose own ambitions had been neatly folded away and stored in a chest with her wedding silks. She was shaped to be a support, a pillar, not the tent-pole itself. And here was Naci, a sapling already growing into a storm-worthy tree, refusing to be pruned.

The anger drains from Gani's face, replaced by a look of such complex intensity it makes Dukar shuffle nervously. She lowers her hand.

"You insolent, impossible, magnificent little monster," Gani says, her voice now a low, wondering murmur. "You would trade a wolf for a goat and call it an improvement. You would shame your grandfather before the entire tribe and laugh in the face of your mother's wrath."

Naci's grin widens. "The goat was braver. It ate Old Më's favorite rug before Father cooked it."

Dukar, sensing the shift, cautiously lowers his arms. "She has a point about the rug," he ventures, ever the diplomat.

Gani ignores him, her eyes locked on Naci. "And what, little monster, do you think should be the price for such an act?"

Naci puffs out her chest, the picture of absolute, ludicrous conviction. "There is no price," she announces to the world, the flies, and her stunned family. "Because I am going to be Khan. And Khans can swap any skulls they want."

The air stills. Even the flies seem to pause. It is a statement so audacious, so blasphemous, it should be met with laughter or another wave of fury. The law, the tradition, the unbroken law of men—all of it stands against this childish proclamation.

But Gani does not laugh. She does not scold. She does not say, 'The Khan must be a man.'

Instead, she kneels. Right there in the dust, amidst the smell of roasting meat and rotting goat, she kneels so she is eye-to-eye with her daughter. And then, she does something she rarely does: she smiles. It is a fierce, wild, proud smile that transforms her entire face.

"You will," Gani says, her voice thick with a terrifying, absolute love. "You will be the greatest Khan the world has ever known. You will make the wolves bow to the goats and the eagles pluck their own feathers for your crown. You will be a tempest."

She opens her arms. Naci, for once momentarily speechless, steps into the embrace. Gani holds her tight, this small, furious engine of ambition, this daughter of her stifled dreams.

Naci pulls back slightly, her large, serious eyes searching her mother's. "Mother?" she asks, her voice small for the first time. "Whatever happens? You will be on my side?"

Gani's embrace tightens. She makes a vow.

"I will be your shield, your sword, and your shadow, my daughter," Gani whispers into her hair. "If the world stands against you, I will kill the world. If the sky falls on you, I will die holding it up. There is no 'whatever happens.' There is only you, and me, and the throne we will build for you from the bones of anyone who says you cannot have it."

In that moment, a stray musket ball, fired by a panicking Banner from the berm, finds its unintended mark, and shakes Gani out of her reverie. It strikes Nemeh's banner-holder, the young man who had stood proudly with the standard of the Golden Scourge. The pole clatters to the ground, the silk folding in on itself like a dying flower. The man dies without a sound.

Neither duelist flinches. Neither looks. Their world is the other's eyes, the other's blade. But the circle of spectators, Tepr and Yohazatz alike, seems to press inward a step, the space constricting. The air grows tighter, heavier. The death of the banner is an unspoken signal. The ceremony is over. Only the killing remains.

The air itself seems to curdle around Nemeh. The wound on his shoulder is a throbbing, secondary thing, a mere echo of the festering rage that has fully possessed him. His eyes, locked on Gani, are no longer human. They are portals to a singular, consuming obsession.

"The stallion was his," he snarls, the words a guttural incantation. The statement is not about a horse. It is about a legacy, a myth, a place in the song of the steppes that he believes was stolen from him.

Then, he does the impossible.

From a pouch at his belt, his fingers flash, sprinkling a dark, granular powder along the length of Altan Kherem. With a sharp crack of flint on steel, he strikes a spark against the golden blade. The powder ignites.

It is not a simple flame. It is a sorcerous, hungry fire that wreathes the legendary sword in a sheath of violent, white-hot light. Instead of consuming the metal; it adores it, licking up the blade with a sound like tearing silk, casting a hellish, dancing glare that banishes the gloom of the smoke-choked field. He whirls the blazing sword in a sun-wheel, a circle of pure, annihilating energy that forces Gani back a step, the heat blistering the air between them.

The fire is too strong. Gani's sabre is useless; to parry would be to see the steel melt and splash onto her flesh. She does not hesitate. She lets the sabre fall from her hand, a discarded tool. Both of her hands now grip the stout oak haft of the hook-lance. It is a weapon for hamstringing camels, not for facing a demigod of fire. But its length is her only hope.

She sets the butt in the earth and angles the point, creating a barrier of wood between her and the advancing inferno. She gives ground like a hunter backing away from a sudden wildfire, buying inches and seconds, her eyes calculating the rhythm of his blazing arcs.

From the berm, Tseren watches, his heart a frozen stone in his chest. He sees the supernatural fire. He sees his wife, weaponless but for a peasant's tool, being driven back. The sanctity of the duel doesn't matter to him. It's his wife who is fighting.

"Now!" he roars, his voice cracking. "Archers! Loose at the fanatic!"

A flight of arrows, a sudden, dark swarm, streaks across the circle towards Nemeh's back.

What happens next etches itself into the memory of every witness, a moment of such terrifying prowess it feels like watching a legend walk. Nemeh turns in a second. His left hand flashes. It moves with a speed that defies belief, plucking arrows from the air. One, two, three—they are snatched, the shafts splintering in his grip as if he were swatting flies. It is a feat spoken of in the epics, attributed only to the hero Noga in his prime.

But there are too many. A fourth arrow grazes his thigh, a fifth thuds into the meat of his shoulder, near Gani's first cut. He staggers, a grunt of pain forced from his lips. The fiery wheel of Altan Kherem falters for a heartbeat.

It is all the opening Gani has. She lunges, the hook-lance driving forward to maim or disarm him. But Nemeh is still a force of nature. Wounded, hindered, he is still stronger, faster. He twists, the blazing sword deflecting the lance-point with a shower of sparks and burning wood-shavings. The move brings him inside her guard.

The world slows to a crawl.

Gani sees the fire in his eyes, a mirror to the fire on his sword. She sees the triumphant, ecstatic hatred there. She has no sabre to parry. The lance is too long, too clumsy.

Nemeh reverses his grip on Altan Kherem. The motion is brutally efficient. The fiery blade, a spear of condensed sunlight and hatred, punches forward.

It pierces the leather of her armor as if it were parchment. It shears through rib and muscle and vital things within. The sound is a wet, shocking tear, horribly intimate.

Gani freezes, impaled. A tremor runs through her. Her eyes, wide, meet Nemeh's. There is no surprise in them. Only a final, profound clarity. She does not cry out. The only sound is a soft, choked exhalation, the last breath leaving her lungs around the cold, hard truth of the steel within her.

"Tepr ends with you, Khan." Nemeh murmurs in her ear.

...

The news of Nemeh's invasion had hit the Tepr camp like a physical blow, a tremor of panic and grim resolution. But in Kuan's quiet corner, nestled between a patch of luminous ghost-cap mushrooms and a drying rack of less-friendly-looking fungi, a different kind of storm was arriving. It came on wings.

Uamopak, Naci's formidable eagle, descended from the sky not with a burst of air, his talons outstretched like grappling hooks. He landed on a nearby post with a thud that shook the entire structure, his fierce eyes pinning Kuan in place. Tied to his leg was a message tube of lacquered bamboo, sleek and ominous.

"A delivery from our tempest-in-chief," Kuan murmured to the nearest mushroom, which waggled slightly in the wind. "She never sends greetings. Only earthquakes."

He untied the tube with careful fingers, offering the eagle a strip of dried meat, which was ignored with a regal disdain that reminded him unnervingly of Naci herself. Unrolling the tight scroll within, his eyes, usually alight with whimsy or botanical curiosity, began to move across Naci's sharp, commanding script. The casual smile on his face slowly solidified, then cracked, then vanished entirely.

His breath caught. The world seemed to tilt.

…Nemeh's invasion was of my and Puripal's doing. The word of our departure for Seop was a seed we planted…

He read it again. And a third time. The words did not change. They only grew more monstrous, more brilliant, more utterly, terrifyingly Naci.

…My parents may die. But you cannot. I need you to go to Pezijil. Get Jinhuang and Fol back. Their vacation is over.

The simplicity of the calculus was breathtaking. She had baited the trap with her own homeland, with her own parents' lives. If Tseren and Gani won, they became the legendary defenders of the steppe, and Nemeh was killed. If they fell, they became martyrs, and Naci returned not just as a daughter seeking vengeance, but as a righteous avenger with the perfect reason to crush Nemeh under a wave of moral outrage. It was a win-win situation carved from the bones of her own parents.

A sound escaped Kuan's lips. It started as a disbelieving puff of air, then grew into a low chuckle, which escalated into a full-bodied, helpless laugh that shook his frame. He laughed until tears welled in the corners of his eyes, clutching the scroll as if it were the only thing keeping him from floating away into the sheer, sublime absurdity of it all.

"Oh, you magnificent, demoniac little girl," he wheezed, addressing the absent Khan. "You have looked upon the chessboard and decided to sacrifice your king and queen not out of desperation, but for a more advantageous opening. You have graduated from ambition to a form of political artistry that is frankly terrifying."

He laughed at the sheer, audacious cruelty of it, a plan so cold it could freeze the steppe in high summer. He laughed because the alternative was to scream.

Wiping his eyes, he stood, the laughter dying into a shaken, wondering silence. His gaze drifted across the camp, to where Lanau was already drilling the home Banners, her face a mask of fierce, loyal determination. A fresh wave of mirth, tinged with genuine fear, bubbled up.

"Oh, poor Lanau," he said to the sky. "When she finds out I've vanished on another 'mushroom-gathering expedition' right before the apocalypse… she is going to kill me. She will use my own intestines to string her bow. She will plant my skull and grow furious little turnips."

Then, his mind turned to the destination. Pezijil. The Imperial City. The heart of the Moukopl beast. A fresh, different kind of laugh escaped him, this one drier, more ironic.

"Well, little sister," he said to the empty air beside him. "It seems we are going shopping in the world's most dangerous market once again. I do hope you're prepared for the ambiance. The politics are tedious, but the pastries are divine. Do you want to say ´hi´ to Yile on the way?"

From the deepening shade between his drying rack and a large basket of wool, a figure detached itself. Meicong seemed to simply step out of the nothingness, her small form as quiet and sharp as a shard of obsidian. Her arms were crossed, and her face was set in a spectacular, world-class pout, her lower lip pushed out so far it could have served as a shelf for his mushroom samples.

"No," she said, the single word dripping with such profound, petulant finality that it seemed to chill the very air.

Kuan's smile widened. "The poor boy! He would be so happy to see you!"