The Winds of Tepr

The tannery district does not smell like a place where humans should exist.

It smells like a god's latrine: piss and lye and rotting flesh, hides slung over poles like flayed flags, vats breathing steam that eats the inside of your nose. The cobbles sweat with it. Every step is a slow argument with slime.

Shan Xi moves through it like she owns the deed.

Her coat is bound tight, braid dark with damp, boots wrapped in rags to dull the sound. Behind her, a ribbon of pirates and local rebels winds through the alleys, a single organism with too many knives. Lantern-light never settles on them for long; it glances off cheekbones and steel and then thinks better of staying.

"On my list of worst smells in the world," one pirate mutters, hand over his mouth, "this is now number two."

"Number one?" another whispers.

"You."

A third pirate snorts. Shan Xi lifts two fingers without looking back.

"Quiet now," she says. Her voice is low, clear, instantly obeyed. "The city is listening."

Ta ghosts near the front, a half-step to her left, wrapped in a Seop cloak that doesn't quite hide the desert in his bones. He moves the way smoke does. His eyes slide over every doorway, every roofline.

Sen is exactly where she shouldn't be: near the centre of the column, trying to look inconspicuous while carrying an invention taller than she is.

The "spider" is strapped to her back, legs folded, its line-thrower arm jutting over her shoulder like a bored crane. Coils of tarred rope hang from her belt, clinking softly against powder gourds.

Temej's voice echoes in her memory — do not go — and she ignores it.

"I am officially not here," she whispers to the pirate beside her. "If Temej asks, you have never seen me."

The pirate eyes the enormous brass contraption on her spine. "He's going to be thrilled when he doesn't see you."

"Precisely," Sen says.

They turn down a narrow lane where leather strips hang from crossbeams, brushing their heads like limp, greasy hair. Vats squat under the beams.

"Don't fall in," Shan Xi says softly. "We don't have time to fish you out and explain the smell to your relatives."

A pirate at the back mutters, "What if my relatives already smell like this?"

"Then don't make them nostalgic," Shan Xi replies.

They pass a paddock where hides are pegged out to dry, each one a stiff, pale sheet.

Ta glances up as they cross an open stretch. On the rooftop above, a militia lookout stands with his back to them, hood up against the damp, musket resting on the parapet. The man yawns, entirely unaware of how short his future is.

Shan Xi follows Ta's gaze. She doesn't lift her hand. The pirate nearest the wall slips away, runs the stair like a shadow, and a moment later the lookout is gently tipped forward, over the edge, into the hides.

The sound is small: a thud, a breath knocked out, the faint wet noise of steel finishing a sentence. The hides ripple once, then go still.

No one speaks.

"Scouts were right," Ta murmurs, as they approach a bend that opens onto a broader road. "Black wagons use this street."

Shan Xi nods. Ahead, the alley widens, sloping down toward Salt-Grief intersection. Between sagging warehouses, there is a suggestion of space: a wider road where wheels can move. The murmur of wooden rims and iron on stone is already drifting up, faint, like thunder in another valley.

She raises her hand. The column flattens against the walls, pirates pressing into shadows, rebels ducking behind stacked hides and empty salt-barrels. Sen kneels behind a vat, trying not to inhale.

One of Shan Xi's crew — Uto, tall and bony, with a scar that runs from ear to ear like a misplaced smile — squints toward the intersection and murmurs, "Hear that? That's the sound of poor planning in expensive boots."

"Spider," Shan Xi says.

Sen nearly levitates in her excitement. She shrugs the contraption off with the care of a priest placing a relic. The brass body thunks softly against the cobbles; she braces the legs, adjusts the angle with frantic little tugs.

"What precisely are you doing?" Ta asks, watching with wary fascination.

"Giving gravity a friend," Sen whispers. "Quietly."

She cracks a tiny pot of resin, smears it along the line-thrower's track. A small fuse protrudes.

Shan Xi crouches beside her. "On my mark," she murmurs. "You miss, you're the new projectile."

Sen beams. "Motivational leadership. I approve."

The wagons appear in pieces: first the bobbing glow of lanterns, then the clatter of hooves, then the squared black shapes, like coffins on wheels. Each wagon has slatted vents at the top, barred windows at the back, and Baekjon-kai militia riding alongside — helmets lacquered dark, chestplates painted with the white tri-stroke crest.

The convoy moves with the confidence of people who believe the city belongs to them.

Shan Xi waits until the first wagon's horses are almost under their alley mouth.

"Now," she says.

Sen lights the fuse. The spider spits.

The bolt launches with a sharp, delighted crack, line hissing behind it. It sails across the street, passes under the lead wagon's harness, strikes the opposite warehouse, and bites deep with a thunk.

"Good spider," Sen whispers.

Pirates on both sides yank the ropes. The line tightens across the cobbles — a trap under the horses' bellies.

The first wagon's lead horse hits the line mid-stride. It screams, forelegs tangling, and goes down hard, dragging its partner with it. The wagon lurches, veers, and tips onto one wheel, then over entirely. The second wagon slams into it, unable to stop. Boards crack. Men curse. A driver cartwheels off the box, vanishing under spinning wheels.

The night erupts.

"Now," Shan Xi says again, and the pirates pour out of the alleys.

They slide into the chaos like they were poured there, blades finding seams between armor plate. A pirate hooks a guard's ankle with a rope-dart, yanking him off his horse and into a tannery vat. The guard vanishes with a splash so foul even the pirates wince.

"Lucky man," Uto observes, kicking a dropped musket aside. "He dies sterilized."

Ta moves with a different rhythm. He is not here for the joy of blood; he is here to amputate a piece of the Baekjon-kai. His knives are short, unadorned, and his face does not change as he uses them. Thrust under ribs. Slice across hamstring. Catch a wrist, twist, turn a sword into a useless extension of someone else's panic.

A guard takes a swing at Shan Xi, sword chopping toward her collarbone. She steps in instead of back, letting the blade glance off the shoulder of her coat, and headbutts him. The crack is audible. He staggers; she rams her knife up under his jaw, then shoves him aside like an empty barrel.

"Don't chip the coat," she says mildly, to his corpse. "It's my favorite."

Musket fire barks at close range — one, two shots from militia who still remember their training. A pirate's chest erupts, red blooming on his shirt; he topples backward into a heap of hides. Another pirate screams, clutching a shattered arm.

Shan Xi doesn't look. There is a wagon door to open.

"Sen!" she barks.

Sen is already at the nearest overturned wagon, spider abandoned, hands fumbling at the iron lock. "It's jammed!" she hisses. "The impact wedged it. Poor engineering. I'm insulted."

"Be less insulted and more useful," Shan Xi says, parrying another blow and kicking the attacker in the knee hard enough to make something pop.

Sen yanks a small powder charge from her sash. "Everyone loves a shortcut," she mutters, cramming it into the lock's seam. She lights the fuse with a quick breath of flame.

"Cover!" she says, and for once people listen fast.

The blast is sharp, a contained crack that punches the lock out and showers them with hot shards. Smoke billows, bitter and greasy. The wagon door hangs askew.

Inside, faces crowd the gap: hollow-eyed, bruised men and women blinking at freedom like it's another trick. They're shackled in pairs, chains running down the bench.

Shan Xi grabs the nearest prisoner by the collar and hauls him toward the light. "Who else?" she demands. "Where is your prize bird?"

The man flinches. His eyes are sunken, skin paper-thin over his jaw. "The Voice is dead," he misunderstands, voice shredded. "They say… terrorists killed her. Trying to free the boy."

Shan Xi's grip tightens.

"The prince?" she presses. Behind them, a militia man screams as Ta opens his throat, a spray arching across the stones.

"Gone," the prisoner gasps. "Taken from the Pit. Yesterday? Night before? Time…" He swallows.

"Lies," another prisoner rasps from the shadows. "Miju's people talk. They want us to fear ghosts and foreign gold. They call him a Moukopl puppet now. 'Returned prince,' they say. 'Traitor-boy.'"

Shan Xi's lip curls. Of course Baek Miju is already painting.

A militia sergeant, pinned to the ground by Uto's boot, spits blood. "First Consul says the brat runs with terrorists," he snarls. "You think this, this—" he jerks his chin at the chaos around them— "isn't proof?"

Uto grinds her boot harder. "You talk a lot for someone so close to the sewer," she says cheerfully.

Shan Xi looks down at the sergeant. "Is there an order?" she asks. "On the boy."

The man bares his teeth. "Kill on sight. Him and anyone who hides him. We'll hang him from the same hook as your singer whore."

For a heartbeat the world tightens around that word.

Shan Xi's smile is sudden and vicious. "Good news," she says. "You won't live to see that propaganda."

She doesn't waste steel on him. She flicks her hand; a pirate obliges with a short, efficient stab. The sergeant's words cut off mid-breath. Blood spreads, mixing with tannery runoff.

"Cut chains," Shan Xi orders. "Take who can move."

Ta is already working down the row of shackles, picking locks with a bent nail and a concentration that makes his brow furrow. One woman's eyes meet his; she mouths something in a dialect. He doesn't understands, just snaps her chain and moves on.

Sen wipes soot from her lashes, watching rescued prisoners stumble into the alley.

A bugle shrills from deeper in the city: high, sharp, the sound of reinforcements waking. Shouts answer it, the distant clatter of more boots, more guns.

Uto glances toward the sound. "Company, Captain."

"Then the party's over," Shan Xi says. "Spider stays. Wagons burn."

Sen gasps. "You can't just—"

Shan Xi is already moving, grabbing her collar and dragging her away from the beloved contraption. "You can build a new one," she says. "You can't build a new head."

A pirate heaves a torch into the splintered wagon. Dry wood catches greedily; smoke claws at the night, thick with pitch and old fear.

"Move!" Ta snaps, as a musket ball smacks into the wall near his ear, scattering plaster.

They withdraw the way they came. Pirates fall back by pairs, covering each other's retreat. A wounded man is slung over a shoulder, swearing.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They duck back into tannery alleys just as the first militia reinforcements crash into the intersection, faces shocked at the overturned, burning wagons. One slips in blood and goes down. Another gags at the smell.

Sen fishes a thumb-sized clay ball from her pouch and rolls it behind them into a vat as they pass.

"Little present," she says, under her breath.

Three heartbeats later, the vat erupts. It belches, sending a wave of hot, stinging liquid and fumes across the road. Militia scream, clawing at their faces as the tannery brew finds eyes and mouths. Pirates howl with laughter even as they run.

"Chemical warfare," Uto wheezes. "We are very modern now."

"You're very revolting," a rebel pants.

"Thank you," she says.

By the time they reach the safehouse, everyone smells worse. Which is an achievement.

The door bangs open. Shan Xi pushes through first, scanning automatically for threats that aren't hers. Ta and Sen follow, herding the rescued like a tide.

More pirate voices surge: "Who did you bring?" "Any word from Salt-Spine?" "Did you see the black wagons?" "Is it true they're moving nobles into the inner quarter?"

"Medic corner, go," Na'er snaps, pointing to a cleared space where someone has laid out thread and boiled needles. The rescued shuffle that way, some walking, some carried.

Shan Xi's gaze cuts across the room, hunting for a specific height, a specific swagger, the flash of a familiar smirk.

"Where is she?" she asks, voice suddenly hard. "Lizi."

No one answers immediately. People are busy doing important things like not dying. The silence that follows her question spreads anyway, a small, nervous ripple.

A young pirate, soot on her cheeks, scratches her ear. "Last I saw," she says carefully, "Lizi went alone. To the dye warehouse. Before the shooting started."

Another one contradicts without meaning to. "No, she came back here. I think. Did she? I—"

Shan Xi strides across the room to the corner where Lizi's bedroll had been unrolled earlier that week. It's empty now, blanket rumpled, a jacket folded on top. There are specks of dried blood on the boards and the faint, stubborn scent of orange peel and tar.

Shan Xi closes her eyes for a heartbeat. When she opens them again, the room feels five degrees colder.

Ta watches her, reading more on her face than she intends to show.

"It seems," Shan Xi says slowly, "that while I was collecting strangers from wagons, my own people have been playing games of hide-and-seek without informing me."

"It's a very big city," Sen offers weakly.

Shan Xi turns her head just enough to look at her. Sen wilts.

Ta steps forward.

"I'll look," he says.

Shan Xi's eyes pin him. "You've walked alleys enough for one night."

"Then I won't be surprised," Ta replies.

Shan Xi considers him for a long breath. The safehouse hums around them: groans, clink of metal, hushed arguments over routes and rations. Outside, a patrol's boots crack on wet stone, distant enough to ignore, close enough to remember.

"Second tide," she says finally. "If you're not back by then, I assume the Triumvirate has stolen you, and I start planning a theft."

Ta's mouth curves, not quite a smile. "If they steal me, you'll probably find me arguing with their accounting."

"Don't flirt with the enemy," Shan Xi says. "That's my job."

He inclines his head, a tiny bow that manages to mock and respect at the same time. Then he pulls his cloak tight and slips toward the back door, into the narrow seam of alley.

The door shuts behind him with a soft thud. The fog outside swallows him almost immediately.

Shan Xi watches the empty doorway for a moment longer, thumb rubbing at an old scar on her palm.

...

The training hall of the Emergency Security Council is a long, bare box of stone, high in the administrative quarter. It has no banners and no windows big enough to be decorative. Skylights slit the ceiling instead, letting in a harsh, white light that falls in rectangles across the sanded floor. Dust motes drift in the beams like slowly drowning insects.

This is not a place built to impress. It is built to sharpen.

Baek Miju stands barefoot in the center of the hall with a katana in her hand.

The blade is live. There are practice swords stacked neatly against the far wall, but she has ignored them in the same way she ignores most advice. Her hair is tied back in a knot that has not moved all morning. A dark training jacket hangs off her frame in a way that makes her look narrower than she is. She has stripped off her official tunic and left it folded on a bench, as if she can take authority on and off like a second skin.

Kagawa Tomoe circles opposite her, naginata held at an easy slant.

The polearm is taller than she is, blade a graceful crescent that glints when it catches the light. Tomoe wears a sleeveless gi, arms bare and corded, the scars on her shoulders like truncated stories. Her hair is tied back in that practical sailor's knot she never abandoned when she swapped decks for council chambers. She is barefoot too. Her movements are precise, hips low, like someone who has learned to keep balance on bad seas.

At the far end of the hall, Seo Yorin sits on a low chair behind a narrow table, papers stacked in regimented towers at her elbows.

She does not wear training clothes. Her robe is immaculate, slate-grey silk with a faint pattern of abacus beads woven into it, sleeves tied back with cords to keep them clear of ink. A single white orchid in a porcelain cup leans toward her shoulder like it wants to hear her secrets. She has placed her seat outside the practice ring, but close enough that a misjudged swing could reach her if she chose to test it.

"I remind you," Yorin says mildly, without looking up from the decree she is annotating, "that I have not signed the budget for replacing any of you."

Tomoe grins. "Then we shall avoid dying today."

Miju's eyes do not leave Tomoe's stance. "You keep talking," she says. "Your guard is slipping."

Tomoe pivots, weight coiling. "Then make me pay for it, First Consul."

The title is new enough that it still hangs in the air like incense.

Miju lunges.

Steel sings. Tomoe's naginata sweeps down in a defensive curve, shaft cracking against katana with a satisfying, hollow sound. The jolt runs up both their arms, a shared electric line.

"You've extended the curfew again," Tomoe says, breath steady, as she disengages and steps sideways. "Third night in a row. Outer wards from dusk. Inner city from the ninth bell. Dock quarter sealed outright." She feints low, then swings high, naginata blade whistling. "The harbor is a sulking child. It hates being put to bed so early."

Miju ducks under the arc, blade flashing up toward Tomoe's exposed ribs. The naginata twists, parries. Sparks flicker where steel kisses steel.

"The harbor will stay sealed," Miju replies, voice calm despite the clash. "Until I am sure no more royalist rats are sailing in under our noses. The merchants can sleep with their coin for once. It will be good for their blood pressure."

"You are murdering my logistics," Yorin remarks, still writing. "Tariffs are down thirty-one percent since we began confiscating ships at whim. You may be pleased to know the confiscations do not show up as income. Confiscated things have a tendency to vanish."

"Then make them reappear in some other column," Miju says, as she catches the naginata with a sliding parry and twists it to one side. "Call it 'national purification.' The streets are calmer already."

"The streets are quieter," Tomoe corrects, stepping in, shaft driving toward Miju's chest. "Calm is something else. The Slump isn't… It does not sound happy."

Miju shifts her weight, slips around the thrust, and lets Tomoe's own momentum pull her half a step off line. "The Slump never sounds happy. It is part of its charm."

Tomoe's heel skids in the sand, just enough. Miju's blade taps her wrist, a sharp kiss of warning. Tomoe grunts, resets her grip, swings the naginata's butt-end low. Miju jumps, barely clearing it. The pole sweeps under her feet, stirring dust.

"We have arrested twenty-three printers this week," Yorin notes, flicking sand off the edge of the page as it drifts down. "And closed fourteen presses. The ink shortage alone will spare us three slanderous broadsheets a day."

"See?" Miju says. "My policies bear fruit. Bitter, glorious fruit."

Tomoe's jaw tightens. "Your censorship is strangling reports I need. Fleet movements. Harbor whispers. If every sailor who hears a rumor thinks he will be dragged to an interrogation pit for repeating it, they will simply stop talking."

"They will stop talking to you," Miju corrects. "They will still talk. To each other. To their fear. To the walls. And we will listen to the walls."

She steps in again. The katana flicks toward Tomoe's throat in a narrow, efficient line. Tomoe jerks her head back. A stray hair falls, severed cleanly.

"Speaking of walls," Yorin says, "the proclamations about Shin Aram are… effective." She selects a new sheet with two fingers, as if plucking a card from a deck. "Public grief is averaging high. Anger is pointed the correct direction eight times out of ten. The remaining two are being… managed."

Tomoe's eyes flash. "Managed how?"

Yorin shrugs one slim shoulder. "A careless accusation here. A convenient arrest there. You know the pattern. People do not stay angry at abstractions, Admiral. They stay angry at faces."

Miju's mouth curves around the edge of her next breath. "Terrorist cells," she says, echoing the official phrasing. "Foreign agents. Moukopl gold buying Seop children. The story practically writes itself."

Grand words, Yorin thinks, watching the two of them collide again. But the ink is mine.

Tomoe catches Miju's next strike on the haft of the naginata and shoves hard, using the length of the weapon to force distance. "You are eager," she says, "to speak of foreign gold."

Miju ducks the returning sweep, comes up close under the reach of the spear, too close for comfort. Tomoe has to choose between pulling back or taking a cut; she retreats, teeth clenched.

"Rumors of a returned prince are moving faster than our proclamations," Tomoe continues. "Sailors swear they saw him on the seawall. Slump women say he walked out of a fire. Dockhands say pirates carried him like a saint."

Yorin taps an abacus bead with the end of her brush. "Thirty-seven reported sightings in the past two days," she says. "Unless the boy has learned to split like a cell, most of them are lies."

"Lies have teeth," Miju says. She steps aside, letting Tomoe's naginata graze her sleeve, and slashes down. Tomoe barely gets her weapon up in time. The impact jars her shoulders.

"We already issued the order," Miju goes on. "Yotaka to be killed on sight, along with anyone who shelters him." Her eyes gleam like obsidian. "Kill the rumor, kill the symbol."

Tomoe meets her gaze over crossed weapons. "Kill a child," she says, blunt as a mast. "In the name of a republic we built to protect children from kings."

Miju's weight presses forward, relentless. "Do not insult us both by pretending he is only a child."

"He is a child," Tomoe repeats.

"He is a banner," Miju snaps. "You of all people should understand that. A flag is not dangerous until someone raises it. We have seen what happens when people gather under the wrong cloth."

There is a flicker in Tomoe's eyes. The memory of a square. A scaffold. A boy behind a curtain.

She grinds her teeth. "We could capture him. Put him on trial. Show the city we fear no ghosts."

"And what then?" Miju asks, twisting the katana, forcing the naginata aside. "Give him a platform? A stage? Let him tilt his head and look wounded while fools project their regrets onto his face? No." She disengages, steps away, blade lowered but not relaxed. "We do not put symbols on trial. We burn them to ashes."

"Dramatic," Yorin murmurs, making a note in the margin: prince – puppet messaging / accelerate.

Tomoe snorts. "So we add infanticide to our list of accomplishments. We've already taken murder, censorship, theft—"

"Order," Miju corrects again, almost bored. "Narrative control. Asset requisition."

Tomoe's smile is humorless. "You can lacquer any word if you try hard enough."

"You prefer chaos. I know." Miju lifts the katana into guard again. "You like your battles loud and honest. Lines on beaches. Cannons singing. You distrust knives in alleys because you can't see where they're coming from."

Tomoe slides her front foot forward, naginata point dipping slightly. "At least beaches don't pretend they are something else."

"Beaches also don't invade," Yorin says. "Ships do. And the Moukopl's fleet is not in our harbors for decorative effect."

Tomoe's expression tightens for a different reason now. "Do we have confirmation?"

"Grain shipments from Ryogo ceased three days ago," Yorin replies, eyes scanning a report. "Our agents say Moukopl war-junks and unfamiliar banners were sighted off the southern coast of Yoto. And this—" she lifts another scroll, "—came from our last courier out of Ryogo before the lines closed."

She does not open it yet. She likes Miju focused when she delivers bad news. And nothing focuses Miju like being hit.

"Later," Miju says curtly, as if she has read Yorin's mind. "We finish."

Tomoe's mouth curls. "How very optimistic."

They clash again.

This time Tomoe presses the attack, using the naginata's reach to keep Miju on the back foot. The crescent blade carves arcs in the air, each one a potential decision. Her steps are sure, feet whispering across sand.

She ducks under a sweeping cut, rolls forward, comes up inside Tomoe's guard. For a heartbeat they are chest to chest, eyes inches apart. Miju's breath is slow, deliberate. Tomoe's is faster, but steady.

"The emergency decree is the republic," Miju says softly. "The old constitution is a poem. Pretty. Useless against artillery. We are writing a new one in real time, with real ink, before the Moukopl do it for us."

Tomoe's jaw works. "You are tightening your grip so hard, Miju, you are going to find you are holding a handful of dust."

"Dust can be shaped," Miju says, and then she slams the hilt of her sword into Tomoe's sternum.

The impact knocks the wind out of the admiral. She staggers back two steps, naginata dipping. Miju could follow, could open her throat, but she stops, blade hovering.

Yorin clears her throat delicately. "Try not to damage each other's lungs," she says. "I am still calculating the cost of replacing the last general."

Tomoe sucks in air, regaining her stance. "You killed the last general," she says to Miju.

"He died of an unfortunate misunderstanding with a mob," Miju replies. "I merely… arranged the misunderstanding."

Tomoe bares her teeth in something not entirely unlike a grin. "You're going to find one day that you can't choreograph all your mobs."

The hall door slides open with a clatter.

All three women turn instinctively toward it. For an instant, the tension in the room tightens, blades angling, muscles coiling. The messenger on the threshold realizes too late that he has just walked into the teeth of predators mid-feeding.

He freezes, tray in hand, scroll balanced on it like an offering. Sweat beads at his hairline, then runs, tickling his ear. Behind him, the corridor's cool air seems suddenly very attractive.

Miju lowers her sword—not much, but enough that the messenger can breathe again without tasting steel.

"You have news," she says.

"Yes, First Consul." His voice cracks on the title. He swallows. "From Ryogo."

"Come," Yorin says, gesturing with the tip of her brush. "Before my colleagues decide you are an intruder."

He shuffles forward, bowing awkwardly while keeping the scroll steady. Tomoe rests the butt of the naginata on the floor, the blade still up, a tall, efficient threat. Miju wipes her katana on a folded cloth, as precise about cleaning as she is about killing.

Yorin breaks the seal and reads fast. Her expression, usually so controlled it might as well be lacquered, shifts fractionally.

"Speak," Miju says. "Don't ration it out like sugar."

Yorin glances at her, then at Tomoe. "Ryogo's southern forts are gone," she says. "The outer ring has… 'collapsed under sustained bombardment by siege engines.' The Moukopl fleet under Great Admiral Bimen has established a blockade. An allied land force under—" she ticks the name off the parchment with visible distaste, "—Dragon-Tiger General Naci, Khan of Tepr, has landed east of the city. Our correspondent estimates the city has enough grain for three months at best under rationing. Two, if the refugees from the countryside keep coming."

Tomoe's fingers tighten on the naginata shaft. "Naci," she says slowly. "The barbarian bitch from the Emperor's court."

"The same," Yorin confirms.

Miju steps closer, hand open for the scroll. Yorin passes it over without protest. Miju reads, lips moving once or twice silently.

"So." She lowers the parchment. "The Moukopl push through the south instead of wasting more ships on our northern reefs."

Tomoe's gaze goes distant, seeing coasts and currents. "The Emperor uses Naci as a pet wolf," she says. "Send the Tepr first. Let them bleed on Seop walls. If they fail, he blames them. If they succeed, he takes the credit and the city." Her mouth curls. "Not bad for this baby face."

Yorin taps the table. "Ryogo is our largest southern port," she says. "If it falls, the entire Yoto grain network falls with it. Prices in Bo'anem will spike. Bread riots become more likely. Riots require soldiers. Soldiers require rations. Rations require..." She spreads her hands. "Ryogo."

The messenger shifts awkwardly, eyes flicking between them. "The commander requests instructions," he says. "He says the regiments are pinned on the inner walls and requests… reinforcement or permission to stage a breakout."

Tomoe lifts the naginata back onto her shoulder. "We can't reinforce," she says. "Our northern fleet is already stretched patrolling for these supposed 'pirate incursions.' The south coast is days away. By the time we arrive, the city will be ash or ours or theirs. Or all three."

"Our dear soldiers will not appreciate being told to die," Yorin notes, dry. "They are very attached to their own legend."

Miju folds the scroll neatly, once, twice, until it sits between her fingers like a small, sharp fact.

"We cannot spare ships," she says. "We cannot spare grain. So we spend Ryogo."

Tomoe's eyes narrow. "Spend how?"

"As a warning," Miju says. "We tell the capital that Ryogo is under attack by Moukopl imperialists and their Tepr mercenaries. We emphasize the savagery of the siege. The foreign engines. The barbarian horses. We wrap it in Aram's blood and Yotaka's treachery. 'You see?'" Her voice drops into the cadence of a proclamation. "'While we mourn our Voice, while terrorists and royalist puppets sow chaos in our streets, the imperial serpent coils around our southern throat. Only a strong hand on the tiller can see us through. Only unity under the Triumvirate can save Seop.'"

Tomoe's jaw flexes. "There are real men and women on those walls," she says. "Not just numbers and slogans. Sailors I've drunk with. Officers who've written me. Children who think our soldiers are heroes."

Miju meets her gaze without flinching. "Heroes die," she says. "That is their function. Otherwise they are just men."