The Winds of Tepr

"I was hoping you were dead."

The echo of it doesn't bounce so much as sink into the warehouse's wet wood and splintered silence. Lizi blinks once. The impulse to laugh rises in her chest—out of habit, out of the old rhythm of sparring with Hanae until both of them were breathless and grinning—but the laugh doesn't find its way out. The air is too thick with old blood and new caution.

"Well," Lizi says, spreading her hands a little, palms up, as if showing a bartender she's not cheating. "I've always been a disappointment."

Hanae doesn't smile. Her eyes narrow. "Don't do that."

"Do what? Live?"

"Turn everything into a tavern joke." Hanae steps forward into the thin stripe of light, and the angle of her cheekbones makes her look sharper than Lizi remembers. She used to have a softness to her face, a gentleness that didn't make her weak; it made her dangerous in a different way, the way a steady flame is more frightening than a spark. That softness is gone now, pared down by hunger or grief or purpose. Maybe all three. "You do it because if you laugh first, nobody can bruise you again."

Lizi's mouth tilts. She can't help it; it's a reflex like breathing or lying. "Haven't you heard? Pirates bruise for a living. It's practically a job perk. We get paid in liquor and concussions."

"Stop." Hanae's voice stays quiet, but it has iron in it. "I'm not a child you can charm with glittering teeth. This isn't a wharf."

"That's a new one. I remember you used to love my glittering teeth."

Hanae's gaze flickers, almost imperceptible. Lizi catches it anyway. There—a tiny crack. A ghost of the girl who used to sit with her on dock pilings, feet kicking over black water, both of them sharing stolen oranges and too-big dreams. Hanae used to listen to the sea the way other people listened to hymns. Lizi used to hum along. They were so close once that when one breathed, the other felt it like wind.

Now the breath between them is constrained, measured, watched.

Lizi shifts her weight. The floor creaks under her boots. "It's… good to see you, Hanae."

"Is it?" Hanae asks softly. "Or is it convenient?"

Lizi shrugs. "Everything is convenient if you're hungry."

"And who taught you to be hungry?" Hanae's eyes scan Lizi's coat, her boots, the way salt has chewed the edges of her cuffs. She sees fights there: the hard new creases across Lizi's knuckles, the faint white line on her neck that wasn't there when they last met. "Shan Xi? Or did you come to this city already starving?"

Lizi keeps her face smooth. "Captain Shan Xi taught me how to not drown."

"She taught you to drown other people."

"Same same." Lizi walks a small slow circle, never turning her back. Not because she thinks Hanae will stab her—though a year ago she wouldn't have bet against it—but because old instincts are hard to bury. "Either way, people end up wet."

Hanae's jaw tightens. "You always dodge when you're afraid to answer."

"And you always corner when you want blood." Lizi meets her gaze. "Look at you. You used to argue like a poet. Now you argue like a general."

"I learned from watching generals burn my city." Hanae says. "I learned from watching idealists get dragged to gibbets by their hair."

The warehouse seems to lean in, listening. There are footprints in the sawdust—new ones, hurried ones. Someone has been here recently. Hanae isn't alone in this city. Lizi feels that in the way Hanae holds herself, in the way her eyes keep flicking to the side door without being obvious.

Lizi keeps her voice light. "You should see the gibbets on a pirate island. We hang our enemies and then sell snacks under them. Very festive. You'd hate it."

"I do hate it." Hanae's mouth twists. "What are you doing here, Lizi? Don't tell me you missed my charming personality."

Lizi leans back against a crate that's half broken, and feels the splinters through her coat. "Maybe I did. Maybe I'm sentimental."

"You're not." Hanae says it like she's reading a ledger. "You didn't come inland to find me. You came because something pulled you here."

The temptation to say someone is a loud thing. Lizi feels it pressing behind her teeth. She swallows it down like bitter tea.

"I followed children into a trap," she says instead. "Which, I admit, is humiliating. But you know me. I've always had a weakness for being lured by tiny tyrants."

"You always had a weakness for lures, period." Hanae steps closer again. The space between them narrows to arm's length. "The sea lured you. Shan Xi lured you. Now some new distraction lures you. Do you ever choose anything for yourself?"

Lizi laughs, quick and a little jagged. "I chose to walk into a warehouse that smells like dead fish. That's something."

"Why?"

Lizi looks around at the wreckage, at the snapped loom, at the smear of blood on the boards. "Because someone I used to be thought this city mattered. I wanted to see if she was still alive."

Hanae studies her. "And?"

"And I find her standing there with a face like winter and a mouth that wants me dead." Lizi lifts her brows. "So… alive. Congratulations."

There it is again, that flicker. Hanae's throat works. She looks away for a heartbeat, like she is swallowing a knot. When she looks back, her voice is softer but not kinder.

"You left."

Lizi doesn't answer immediately. The word carries weight. It isn't accusation alone; it's confession too.

"I did," she says finally. "And I'm not going to pretend I didn't. I wanted... I—"

"You wanted to run."

Lizi tilts her head. "Maybe. But I ran toward something. Not away from you."

"You ran away from everything that couldn't keep up." Hanae's hands are loose at her sides, but Lizi sees the calluses now. She sees the faint bruises on Hanae's forearms that look like someone grabbed her hard. She sees fury harnessed, not spent. "Do you know how many people here remember you and the others? Like if they say your names three times in a dark alley, a pirate angel will drop out of the sky and cut their chains?"

Lizi's chest tightens. She makes a show of scoffing because if she doesn't, it will show.

"I'm hardly an angel," she says. "I'm short, ill-mannered, and I throw up if the liquor is cheap."

"They don't care." Hanae's eyes shine with something sharp. "To them you were proof that someone can climb out. That a girl from the Slump can take a blade and make the world bend."

Lizi remembers the Slump. The kilns. The soot that dyed her bones black. The way Hanae used to sing on rooftops so the children would stop crying long enough to sleep.

"That girl," Lizi says quietly, "died in a kiln."

Hanae's gaze hardens. "No. She grew up. She got tired of begging for scraps from a republic that sells promises and feeds us ash. She got tired of mourning people who can't defend themselves. She—"

"She joined a pirate queen and learned to cut throats better." Lizi finishes, voice dry. "Very inspiring. I should print it on leaflets."

Hanae opens her mouth to retort—

—and the sound of boots floods the alley outside.

A wave.

Hanae's whole body changes. Her spine straightens, her breath stills. Predator in a heartbeat. She lifts a finger, listening like a musician catching the first note of an incoming crescendo.

Lizi hears it too now: the clipped cadence of militia squads, the scrape of armor, the muffled cough of men who think their job is holy. Lantern light slides under the door in thin yellow bars, dragging shadows with it.

"How did they find us?" Lizi murmurs.

Hanae's eyes cut to her. "You tell me, pirate."

"I'm offended you think I'm that important." Lizi draws her knife. "But I'll admit, my luck has always been loud."

Hanae reaches behind a beam and pulls out a short spear with a broad hooked head—something made for dragging men off boats. She spins it once, testing the weight. "You should have stayed dead."

"And miss this reunion?" Lizi says, grinning despite herself. "Never."

The main door slams inward with a crack of wood. Three militia pour through, helmets lacquered black, the Baekjeon-kai crest painted in white on their breastplates. Their faces are hard with the confidence of men who outnumber their fear.

One sees Hanae and points. "There. The harmonist."

Another sees Lizi's coat and the gold-thread patch of the Blood Lotus and hesitates—just a flicker—before barking, "Pirate!"

A third raises his musket.

The warehouse goes from still to thunder.

Lizi moves first. She drops low, slides over sawdust, and throws a broken spindle like a dagger. It catches the musketeer in the throat before he can fire. He makes a wet surprised sound, hand flying up, blood blooming between his fingers. He falls backward into his comrades, clogging their entry like a toppled log.

"Still got your aim," Hanae snaps, thrusting her spear forward to pin another man to the doorway. He shouts, tries to wrench free, and Hanae twists the hook, tearing cloth and flesh. Lizi hears ribs pop. The man goes limp with a hiccuping gasp.

"You're welcome!" Lizi shouts, then ducks as a blade whistles past her ear. The second militia lunges. Lizi parries with her knife, then headbutts him hard enough to make his helmet ring like a bowl. He staggers. She kicks his knee sideways. The joint collapses in a spew of tendon and sound. He goes down screaming in the sawdust, clutching his leg.

Hanae sweeps her spear in a flat arc and cracks another militia across the jaw. Teeth scatter. He gurgles something that might be a prayer and collapses into a pile of spilled fish crates.

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Outside, more voices. More boots.

Hanae spits once onto the boards, a habit Lizi recognizes from when they were girls and a fight was about to get too large. "They brought a net."

"Good," Lizi says breathless. "I'm tired of fishing alone."

They fall into rhythm without talking, because whatever has broken between them, their bodies remember the old dances. Hanae's spear keeps distance, turns the doorway into a narrow throat where only one militia can enter at a time. Lizi darts through the gaps, low and fast, cutting tendons, slashing wrists, slipping between swings like smoke. She is smaller, but she bites higher than men expect.

A militia tries to flank through a side door. Lizi sees the shadow and throws herself across the gap, blade flashing. She opens his belly with a single vicious pull. His entrails spill warm and steaming onto the cold floor. He looks down. Then he falls.

Two more step over him.

"One of these days," Lizi pants, "we should talk instead of doing this."

Hanae blocks a sword strike with the spear shaft, the impact jolting her arms. She shoves the man backward and drives the hook into his throat. "Talking doesn't stop muskets."

"Neither does the Baekjeon-kai." Lizi ducks another swing, slams her shoulder into a man's ribs. He coughs blood. "You still believe in this republic of yours?"

"It's not mine." Hanae rips her spear free and catches a second militia by the ankle, yanking him to the floor. She plants a boot on his chest and stabs down through his collarbone. "That's the point. It's supposed to be everyone's."

"Everyone's" Lizi scoffs. She kicks a musket aside, slides to Hanae's flank as three more militia push in. "Sounds like a king with extra steps."

Hanae's eyes flash. "A king is a fist above your head. A revolution is the hand you choose to raise."

"And what happens when the hand is starving?" Lizi snaps, cutting a man's hamstring so he drops to his knees. "When the fist you 'raised together' starts choking you anyway?"

"Then you cut it off." Hanae says it like a vow. She slams the spear butt into a helmet, cracks the skull beneath. "You don't kneel to it."

"The monarchy kept Seop alive for centuries." Lizi hears herself say it, and hates that she says it. Hates the idea of kings. But she also hates empty promises. She's bleeding and breathing and arguing because she can't not. "A crown can be a weapon against an empire."

Hanae laughs once, sharp. "So can a torch. So can a song. So can a dockworker with a brick. We don't need a child on a throne to justify breathing."

"That 'child'—" Lizi starts, and stops, because the name rises again in her throat like a bird trying to fly out. She swallows it down hard. "—that symbol matters."

"Symbols matter until they start believing they're gods." Hanae takes a slash to the forearm, grunts, and responds by snapping the attacker's wrist with the spear hook. He howls and stumbles away, leaving blood smeared on the boards like red paint. "We made the republic to kill kings. Not babysit them."

Lizi wants to retort, wants to say that some kings are better than minister-butcherers, better than triunes who sell children to gunpowder.

But the militia surge is heavier now. They're flooding.

"Back," Hanae says.

They retreat deeper into the warehouse, stepping over bodies and broken crates. Lizi's breath comes sharp. Her sleeve is wet with someone else's blood and a little of her own from a nick she didn't feel.

From outside comes a barked order: "Fire!"

Hanae's eyes go wide. "Down!"

They drop behind a stack of barrels as musket fire erupts.

The sound is not loud so much as final. A whip crack of metal and powder that makes the air flinch. Barrels explode into splinters. A shot tears through a crate inches above Lizi's head, spraying her face with sawdust and bone bits she doesn't want to identify.

"Cowards!" she spits.

"They're militia," Hanae snaps. "Cowardice is their uniform."

Another volley.

Something punches Lizi in the side like a kicked mule. She slams into the floor. For a second she doesn't understand why her breath is gone. Then the pain arrives in full, hot bloom. She looks down and sees dark spreading through her coat under her ribs.

"Oh," she says stupidly.

Hanae is beside her instantly, dragging her behind a beam while another bolt of bullets chews the boards where she had been.

"You're hit."

"No," Lizi wheezes. "I'm just… suddenly very tired of your personality."

Hanae's mouth twitches despite herself. She presses her hand to Lizi's side, hard. Blood wells between her fingers.

"You walk on that?" Hanae asks.

Lizi tries to stand. Her legs agree for half a heartbeat, then betray her in a puddle of dizziness. She swears in three dialects. "Apparently not."

The militia push in again, bayonets glinting. They smell victory now. Their eyes are bright the way dogs' eyes are bright when they find a wounded deer.

Hanae does not hesitate. She wedges Lizi's arm over her shoulder, hauls her up like a sack of grain, and throws her weight under Lizi's ribs so the injured side stays high. Lizi bites down on a scream. Her vision blurs.

"Hold on," Hanae says into her ear, voice low, fierce. "You don't die on my floor."

"Your floor?" Lizi coughs a laugh. "Still territorial."

Hanae doesn't answer. She rips open a back panel in the wall—Lizi hadn't noticed it, but Hanae knows this place like it's part of her skeleton—and shoves them through into a narrow alley inhaling damp cold.

Behind them the militia shout, boots thundering, musket muzzles probing the hole.

Hanae runs anyway, half-carrying, half-dragging Lizi through the maze of lanes. She turns twice without looking. Lizi's head bumps against Hanae's shoulder, the old closeness turned brutal necessity.

They slide under a hanging walkway. A door opens just enough to admit them. Hands pull them in.

Warmth hits Lizi like a wall. A low-lit room, thick with bodies, blankets, confiscated food, crude maps pinned to the walls. The smell is sweat and smoke and stubborn life.

"You didn't tell me," Lizi winces, "how Aram is doing."

Hanae doesn't reply.

"Are you two," Lizi continues, oblivious, "still singing together?"

Hanae lowers Lizi to the floor, one knee down, breath still steady even now.

"Be quiet," Hanae says flatly.

Lizi tries to grin. Blood leaks down her chin.

"Nice," she murmurs. "You redecorated."

Then she collapses on the floor.

...

The sea is never silent for long, even when it tries.

At dawn the Seop coast lies under a pewter sky that can't decide whether to bless the day or spit on it. The horizon is a bruised line; the water below it is a sheet of hammered tin, restless, flexing its knuckles against the shore. A winter sun hangs low, pale and stubborn, throwing a thin blade of light across the waves.

Out of that grey, the fleet arrives.

Moukopl war-junks come first, wide-bellied and arrogant, their lacquered hulls painted with dragons whose teeth are real iron. Behind them prowl smaller escorts, lean cutters with oars like ribs.

From the flagship, banners unfurl.

The Moukopl standard snaps high, gold and black, a serpent devouring the sun. Beside it, for the first time in any sea the Empire claims to own, rises the Tepr wolf—white teeth on storm-blue cloth—stitched by hands that learned needlework only to bind wounds. The two banners fight for the same gust, slapping and twisting like dogs forced to drink from one bowl. They don't look friendly. They look inevitable.

On the foremost deck, Naci stands with her hands folded behind her back, the posture almost polite until you remember what those hands can do. Her Dragon-Tiger armor is wrapped in a slate-grey cloak to keep the salt from kissing it too eagerly. The sea wind tugs at her braids, tries to pull them into disorder. It fails. Even her hair has learned discipline.

Horohan stands half a pace behind. Her fur-lined coat makes her look broader, her face carved from the same cold that lives in the cliffs.

Admiral Bimen is there too. He watches the shoreline through a brass spyglass, jaw working as if chewing on a curse.

"Sandbars on the left," he growls. "And a reef that will eat clumsy hulls. You see that white froth? That's not friendly foam."

Naci leans slightly to look where he indicates. The shore is low here, a shallow bay cupped by dark pines and blunt stone ridges. Smoke rises inland in thin threads. Not from campfires. From watch posts. From fear.

"I see," she says.

Bimen lowers the glass. "I hope your teeth can find their throats."

Horohan snorts. "If we don't find them, we bite everything until we do."

Bimen huffs a laugh despite himself, a sound like gravel in a bucket. "You people make diplomacy sound like butchery."

Horohan's eyes flick sideways to him. "Because it is."

Naci doesn't smile. But something in her gaze warms for a moment. "Let's land."

Orders run down the decks in a roar of whistles and shouted cadence. Oars splash. Anchors groan. The first cutters surge toward the beach, their prows smelling for impact.

When the hull kisses sand, it is not gentle. Wood scrapes stone. Men curse in three languages. Ropes are flung, stakes hammered. The tide pulls at them.

Tepr riders leap over the sides before the ramps are down. They hit the surf knee-deep and laugh. Their horses—shipped cramped and furious—are herded down next, hooves skidding on wet planks, eyes rolling at the strange smell. A mare nearly bolts back into the water; her handler yanks her by the mane and barks something that might be a prayer or a threat. The mare chooses to live.

Behind them come the Banners.

Forty young warriors in dark wool, their boots wrapped tight against wet sand, each carrying a musket in a oiled canvas sleeve. Their faces are sharp with fatigue and the hungry pride of new things. They've trained on the steppe, firing into stumps and scarecrows and sometimes, when Naci was in a mood, into the open air just to make the sky flinch. None of that training included saltwater, slippery sand, or the way the sea wind steals powder smoke and hurls it back in your face.

Pomogr hops down last, landing badly, then pretending that was the plan. A couple of Banners grin. He glares at them and adjusts his coat with theatrical dignity.

"Laugh now," he calls. "Soon you'll be laughing while drowning, which is much harder to do gracefully."

A Banner boy with freckles and a thin moustache that has no business existing yet salutes him in mock seriousness. "We will drown in your honor, Uncle Pomogr."

"How kind. I prefer you drown in someone else's honor. Preferably the Emperor."

A ripple of chuckles goes through the line. Even Horohan's mouth ticks at the corner.

Naci steps onto the sand.

The shore is a different kind of steppe: flat, open, treacherous in ways you can't read by looking at grass. The air smells of brine and pine sap and something tarry—Seop industry, Seop desperation. Beyond the dunes, a thin strip of farmland lies dull and frost-dusted. Beyond that, low hills climb like a tired spine toward the interior. When she squints, she can see the faint haze of the main island in the distance, a stain on its surface that could be smoke, could be a city, could be a promise of bodies.

A Moukopl officer in tide-stained boots runs up, bows sharply. "Landing zone secure by imperial scouts, Dragon-Tiger General. No contact yet."

"Yet," Naci says.

She doesn't look at him again. Her eyes are on the dunes.

There, half-buried under tarps and reeds, squat shapes wait.

Borak, who landed the day before with a team of scouts, is perched on one, grinning. He jumps down to greet Naci, splashing through ankle-deep foam.

"Welcome to Seop," he says brightly, like she's arrived for a festival and not a siege. "Try not to step on any shells. They will humble you."

"My ego is already a dangerous size," Naci replies. "I would hate to inflate it further."

Borak laughs, a booming sound that makes two Moukopl marines flinch on instinct. Then he waves his arm grandly at the tarp-covered shapes.

"Check out what we found," he says. "Several inventions that will either win us or set us on fire in a more interesting way."

"Both outcomes are acceptable," Pomogr mutters.

Borak grins wider. "That's why I keep you around."

He yanks the first tarp free.

Under it sits a low, heavy frame of iron and layered wood, mounted on thick wheels shod with something that looks like whale bone. The frame holds a short, wide barrel that flares at the mouth like a bell. A winch and ratchet system sits beside it, all studded with rivets hammered by people who trust brute force more than mathematics.

Bimen's brow furrows. "That isn't a cannon..."

Borak pats the barrel affectionately. "It is a cannon."

He slaps a lever. The barrel yawns downward, showing a chamber stuffed with a fat, squat projectile wrapped in pitch-soaked cloth.

Horohan squints. "Is that… a jar?"

Borak nods. "A jar of powder and nailings. It fits in the barrel. We light it, we crank, and it lobs—" he points inland— "over your favorite walls."

A couple of Banners stare at it with the stunned awe of men seeing a new god. One whispers, "It's a musket for giants."

Another whispers back, "Shut up, you'll make it jealous."

Naci doesn't react yet. She walks around the engine slowly, boots sinking in damp sand. She runs her gloved fingers along the weld seams. The iron is still new enough to smell of forge smoke despite the salt.

"Stable?" she asks.

Borak's eyes sparkle. "Stable enough."

"Translation," Pomogr says, stepping closer. "It might fall apart and kill us."

Borak beams.

Naci laughs. "And what is the other one?".

Borak gestures to the second tarp. "This is a crane."

He whips the cloth away to reveal a tall, skeletal structure like a tripod married to a fishing rig. It has an arm that can tilt and a thick coil of rope threaded through pulleys. At the end hangs a hooked iron spike as long as a man's torso, with serrations like shark teeth.

Bimen whistles, low. "A scaling crane."

Naci nods once. "Where did you find them?"

Borak shrugs. "In the abandoned warehouse there," he says. "They were the only two finished engines, the rest was scrap."

Bimen folds his arms, gaze drifting inland. "Cities are far. And every mile between is a throat to cross. Their scouts will see these engines by noon."

"Let them," Naci says.

He looks at her. Her cloak snaps in the wind, revealing a slice of Dragon-Tiger scale. It catches the thin sun and throws it back like a dare.

"If they rush us here, we bleed on sand and lose our machines," Bimen warns.

"If they rush us here," Naci replies, "they rush into muskets on open ground. We do not give them walls to hide behind. We give them a plain and tell them to be brave."

Horohan's expression flickers toward Borak. "They will not be brave."

"Right," Naci says. "Bravery is for people who want songs. We want the city."

A Banner girl laughs nervously, then clamps his mouth shut when she realizes he laughed out loud. Naci doesn't look her way, but her voice lifts just enough for her to hear.

"Do not be ashamed of laughter," she says. "If you cannot laugh, you cannot breathe. If you cannot breathe, your musket will eat you."

The girl blushes. The line relaxes around her.

Naci turns then to the gathered commanders. "We move before full tide," she says. "Cut a road through the dunes to haul the canon and the crane on sledges."

"How far inland for the first camp?" Bimen asks.

"Far enough that their coastal batteries waste their anger on sand," Naci says. "Close enough that they smell us in their sleep."

Behind her, the Banners lift their muskets in one fluid motion, as if the weapons are limbs they were born with. The sea wind whistles through the barrels like a hungry flute.

The march inland begins.