The Winds of Tepr

Curfew has dropped over the city like a lid. Lanterns are out in most windows; a few stubborn slits of light leak around shutters where people gamble with their lives and their eyesight. Patrol drums boom from the inner wards, the sound rolling across rooftops like distant artillery.

Ta keeps to the tannery alleys, where the stench of piss and rotting hides is strong enough to make even militia think twice about lingering. His boots squelch in gutters of grey slurry. Fog from the river mixes with the vapors from the vats, turning the air into a damp, poisonous soup.

"Lizi," he mutters under his breath, as if the name might come running if he says it too loud. "Come on, pirate. You're supposed to be the loud one."

He stops at a corner where three alleys meet. Children once played knucklebones here. Tonight the square is empty except for a new thing: a wooden frame hastily hammered together, ropes dangling from its crossbeam.

Two nooses. No bodies yet. Those will come with morning.

At the base of the frame, a proclamation has been pasted. Shin Aram's face looks out from the paper: hair wild with wind, eyes alight, mouth open mid-song. The woodblock artist has added martyr's radiance around her head, halo lines like sunrays.

Below, in neat official script:

ASSASSINATED BY FOREIGN-BACKED TERRORISTS
THE VOICE HAS FALLEN. THE REPUBLIC MUST STAND.

Ta grimaces.

A door creaks somewhere above. He melts against the wall, half in shadow, hand on the knife tucked in his sleeve. A woman leans out just long enough to shake a basin of dirty water into the alley. It splashes near his feet, warm, carrying the faint smell of boiled greens. She doesn't see him.

He moves on.

Every time he thinks he catches a glimpse of her—short figure, cropped hair, the arrogant slope of a pirate's shoulders—it's someone else. A dock girl. A boy with a bundle of kindling. A drunk leaning on a wall.

He hisses between his teeth, frustrated, and kicks a loose stone. It skitters down the alley and plops into a trough of black water, vanishing without even a splash.

A patrol turns the corner ahead: four militia, lacquered helmets, the Baekjon-kai crest stark white on their breastplates. Ta slides into a reeking doorway, pressing himself flat between hanging strips of stiffened leather. The hides brush his cheeks like damp, greasy fingers. He holds his breath.

The soldiers pass, boots loud in the narrow space. One man coughs, swears about the smell. Another giggles nervously.

"First Consul says we fill it by dawn," he says. "Easy. Plenty of traitors. They breed in the Slump."

"Maybe we'll catch that little prince," another says. "Imagine the bonus."

Their voices recede. Ta lets his breath out slowly, resisting the urge to shout a detailed opinion of their mothers' morals.

He slips back into the alley and keeps moving.

He doesn't find Lizi.

…

The safehouse is quieter than it was before the raid. The dead pirate has been taken to whatever counts as a burial. The militia prisoner is gone too, taken care of in a manner no one bothered to describe aloud. Lanterns burn low, wick ends red and stubborn.

Shan Xi stands over the map with her hands braced on the table, shoulders slightly hunched in a way that looks, on anyone else, like fatigue. On her it looks like the moment before a wave breaks. A new bruise shadows the line of her jaw where a musket butt found her earlier; it blooms purple against the salt-and-sun brown of her skin.

Puripal enters, as if he owns the doorway. Dukar trails half a step behind.

"Captain," Puripal says. The word comes out edged, a courtesy blade that has seen use. "We need to speak."

Shan Xi doesn't look up at once. She finishes tracing a street with her fingertip, following ink that marks patrol routes, then taps it twice as if confirming a thought.

"Make it interesting," she says. "I've just spent an hour listening to men argue about how to ration dried fish. My standards have collapsed."

Dukar closes the door behind them, cutting out the murmur from the other room. When he speaks, his voice is calm, but it carries the steadiness of someone who has rehearsed this argument on the walk over.

"Stop sending Ta out," he says. "No more errands. No more raids. No more 'small looks around the corner.'"

Shan Xi lifts her head slowly. Her eyes catch the lantern light and harden.

"I'm not sending him anywhere," she says. "He goes."

"On your missions," Puripal replies. "At your request."

"On my missions," she corrects. "At his insistence."

She straightens, rolling her shoulders once. A faint pop echoes in the quiet room. "You think I drag your little desert rat out by the scruff and fling him at patrols? I say, 'I'm going to do something inadvisable,' he is already packing rope. If you have a complaint, it is with his ears, not my orders."

Puripal's jaw tightens. "You outrank him."

"In what?" Shan Xi asks.

"You have experience," Dukar says. "Weight. Gravity. When you say 'come,' people follow. That is power whether you pin a medal to it or not."

Shan Xi snorts. "Ah. So we have arrived at the topic of power. How novel. I thought perhaps we would spend this lovely evening discussing embroidery methods."

Puripal steps closer to the table. His fingers brush the edge of the map, not touching any of the drawn lines, as if respecting an enemy's territory.

"Ta follows you because he trusts you," he says.

Shan Xi looks at him properly now. It is the kind of look that makes men think of storms. "You were both there when we told you about the prince. Your grand strategy said 'wait.' My crew said 'now.' Ta chose a side. I didn't shove him. I opened a door. He ran through it."

Puripal's mouth curls. "You opened that door in front of someone who has never seen a door he didn't want to kick."

"That," Shan Xi says, "is not my fault. That is good taste."

Dukar exhales. "You two are going to argue semantics until the city falls. The point is: he's exhausted. He's shaking. He smells like a tannery threw up on him. If he keeps chasing every shadow you whistle at, he'll die on some nameless corner and none of us will even know which gibbet they hung him on."

Shan Xi's expression shifts, almost imperceptibly. A muscle tightens at the corner of her jaw. For a moment, the mask of captain slides, showing something rawer underneath.

"He came back." she says. "He found nothing."

Puripal seizes the moment. "May we have a different conversation. About this prince."

She steps away from the table, crossing to a crate that serves as a seat. She drops onto it with a loose-limbed grace that looks careless and is not. "Let me guess," she says. "This is the part where you explain that your monarchy is different because you feel bad about it."

Puripal smiles thinly. "My monarchy is not different. That is precisely why it exists. I don't pretend it's a blessing."

She looks him up and down, taking in the braid in his hair, the clean lines of his coat, the faint scuffs on his boots that somehow fail to make him look less princely. "You," she says, "are everything I despise about crowns, compressed into one convenient, well-spoken package. You walk into a room and the air rearranges itself to flatter you. You talk about sacrifice with hands that have never pulled a net."

"My hands have pulled many things," Puripal says mildly. "Including blades out of my own flesh. Don't assume upbringing is a shield against pain."

"I don't care about your pain," Shan Xi says. "I care that people kneel when you appear, even here, where we are supposedly inventing something better. You talk about 'the war' like it is a chessboard with nice clear squares. The rest of us are fighting in the mud, and your first solution is always 'hold back, wait, make a calculation.'"

"That's called strategy," Puripal says. "You might try it. It occasionally saves lives."

"It occasionally lets other people die tidily out of sight," Shan Xi counters. "You are very tidy. So is your crown. They keep telling themselves their bloodline is special so they don't drown in the commoner blood under their hulls."

Dukar rubs a hand over his face.

"You knew I hated kings before you signed on," Shan Xi says to him. "Don't act surprised now that I've started stabbing one with words."

"I am not surprised," Dukar says. "I am… concerned that you're aiming the knife at the one royal currently on our side instead of the ones who want us all swinging from the seawall."

Puripal lifts his palms. "Let her stab," he says. "I've survived worse tutors."

Shan Xi narrows her eyes. "Do you know what the first king I ever saw did?" she asks. "He boarded my aunt's boat with twelve guards. He walked through fish guts in boots that cost more than our hull. He ate our best catch and paid with a speech about 'peace under his rule.' Then he had my uncle flogged for not bowing correctly."

She shrugs, a small, hard movement. "Ever since, crowns smell like rotten fish to me. Fancy, expensive rotten fish. You included."

Puripal's smile thins further. "And yet," he says, "you work with Naci. Who is, last I checked, Khan of somewhere."

"That is different," Shan Xi says instantly.

"Of course it is," Puripal says. "She rides horses instead of palanquins and yells more. Completely different animal."

Shan Xi glowers. "Naci clawed her power out of men's throats. She didn't inherit it from a king's bed. She took it from people who thought she was a decorative daughter. She took it to protect women who would never see a throne except as a shadow. That matters."

"So lineage is the problem," Puripal muses. "Not authority itself."

"Lineage that assumes consent," Shan Xi says hotly. "Men sitting on chairs made of other people's backs. Naci gained her chair because other backs pushed her up, not because a god wrote her name in gold on some genealogy scroll."

Dukar winces. "She isn't wrong," he says quietly.

Puripal laughs—a short, incredulous sound. "And the Republic?" he asks. "The leaders are all women, I've heard. No throne in sight. Are they less monstrous because their fathers and husbands beat them?"

Shan Xi's jaw works. She looks away, toward the wall where a damp patch spreads like a map of another country.

"I know them," she says, after a moment. "All three."

Puripal blinks. "Personally?"

"Personally," Shan Xi repeats. "Tomoe used to chase my ships off the tariff lanes when she was still calling herself an admiral instead of a glorified policeman. Yorin funded one of my more unfortunate ventures under the table and then collected interest with a smile like a knife. Miju…" She shakes her head, lips twisting.

Dukar studies her. "And you… sympathize with them?"

Shan Xi snorts. "I don't sympathize. I understand the shape of their rage." She taps her own chest. "I have some of the same scars. Men told them they were too small, too soft, too female to hold power. So they sharpened themselves on that insult until they could cut a country. Now they're just… cutting everything."

"Hatred of men does not excuse hanging children," Dukar says softly.

"No," Shan Xi says. "It explains the path, not the destination."

"Which brings us back," Puripal says, "to why you're so determined to save Yotaka."

Shan Xi freezes.

The room seems smaller suddenly. The map on the table, the lantern's circle of light, the damp patch on the wall, the smell of stale tea—all of it closes in.

"I am determined to save a child from a gibbet," she says. "That doesn't require political explanation."

"It does when you're risking crews, alliances, and a city on it," Puripal says, not unkindly. "You don't throw yourself at walls for symbols. You've said that yourself."

Shan Xi opens her mouth to retort. The usual words gather: He's leverage. He's a bargaining chip. He's a way to split the republic. He's a potential puppet, a knife to hold at the Triumvirate's throat.

She hears herself thinking them and feels the falseness like gristle between her teeth.

She shuts her mouth again.

Memory surfaces instead: a too-thin boy on her deck, hair still smelling of palace soap and terror, clutching the rail with white-knuckled hands while the sea tried to throw him back. Lizi's hand on his shoulder, firm, teasing. The way he said thank you to the cook for burnt porridge. The way he flinched at raised voices even when they weren't aimed at him.

"He is…" Shan Xi begins, then stops. The word she wants feels dangerous.

Innocent.

There it is. Stupid, fragile, absurd.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"He is… not rotten yet," she says instead. "He is soft in a way this city has not managed to beat out of him. He apologizes when he breathes wrong. He tries to help without knowing how. He is a child."

Puripal's gaze is steady. "Many children are," he says. "You don't storm prisons for all of them."

"If I could, I would," Shan Xi snaps.

Shan Xi clenches her hands around an invisible railing. Salt and wind phantom around her fingers.

"I saw him," she says, the words spilling faster now that she's started. "Because he ended up on my deck shaking like a leaf and still tried to stand straight. Because he listened when Lizi yelled at him about knots. Because when we told him what kings do, he looked sick instead of proud. Because he asked if there was a way to stay on the ship and never be king of anything ever again."

Silence drops, heavy.

There it is: her foolishness, laid out like entrails on a butcher's block.

She laughs once, a low, self-directed sound.

"I want him to stay that boy," she admits. "I want to steal him from both stories—your monarchy and their republic. Hide him on some forgotten island where he learns to fish and swear and never has to sign death warrants with his father's handwriting."

She lifts her eyes to Puripal. "I don't care if he's 'king' or 'symbol' or 'tool.' I'd rather he be none of those things. I want him… unclaimed."

Puripal swallows. His face is very still. "The world does not usually grant that," he says quietly.

"I know," Shan Xi says. "Believe me, I know. I am not an idiot."

She hears the lie as she says it and snorts again.

"Fine," she corrects herself. "I am an idiot who knows she is an idiot. I hate crowns. I know kings rot things by existing. And still, here I am, throwing women at walls for a boy whose birth comes with its own gravity. I want him to be free of it, and in doing so I'm making his gravity worse."

Puripal exhales slowly. "If he lives," he says, "people will pull at him. Monarchists, republicans, foreign kings. They will all want his name on their flag. You cannot keep him a child."

"I know," Shan Xi says. "But I can at least keep him from being a corpse they march behind."

Puripal's mouth quirks despite himself. "Spoken like a true… something. I'm not sure which political faction that belongs to."

"The 'leave children alone' faction," Shan Xi says. "Very underrepresented."

Dukar sighs. "We're all hypocrites," he says. "You hate kings and you're saving one. I hate empires and I'm working for one. Puripal hates being his mother and every day he looks more like her when he manipulates people."

"Rude," Puripal murmurs.

"True," Dukar says.

Shan Xi rubs her face with both hands, then drops them. The bruises on her knuckles stand out, purple against skin.

"I will talk to Ta," she says. "I won't forbid him. I'm not his king either. But I'll… make the door less inviting."

Puripal nods once. "That's all I ask. If he dies, I want it to be for something he chose with clear eyes, not because he got caught in the wake of your personal crusade."

Shan Xi bares her teeth. "Everything is someone's crusade," she says. "Yours. Mine. Theirs." She jerks her chin toward the inner city, where the Triumvirate sits in their ink-stained tower. "At least mine involves fewer speeches."

"Debatable," Dukar says. "You give some very long speeches about how much you hate speeches."

She points at him. "Careful, desert man. I like you, but I will throw you at a sea wall."

Puripal's laugh, this time, is genuine. "At least promise you'll throw us in the same direction," he says. "If we're going to be idiots together, we might as well coordinate."

Shan Xi sighs and looks back down at the map.

"I don't know how to fix any of this," she says, almost to herself.

"None of us do," Dukar says. "We just keep choosing, badly, with the information we have."

...

On the Moukopl northern border, the city of Fuxiang is no longer a city. Its gatehouse stands like a broken tooth, blackened brick weeping tar where the pitch pots overflowed. The banners on its walls are gone, replaced by Hluay's black sun.

Hluay soldiers move through the smoking streets in workmanlike silence, boots crunching on shattered tiles. They are not an army in the romantic sense; they are a demolition crew. Storehouses are emptied. Granaries are marked with a smear of charcoal—SPARE, TAKE, BURN—depending on Linh's whim and the locals' compliance.

Villagers watch from doorways, faces grey with ash and fear. Some kneel when Linh passes. Some spit after he does, very quietly.

And some join him.

Siza levy-men in faded Moukopl greens stand now in Hluay red sashes, their old belts cut and re-knotted. Moukopl deserters in half-armor hover at the edges, eyes darting, half expecting a trap. Linh does not care where a sword learned to swing. He cares that it swings in the correct direction today.

The Yohazatz, when they can be found, are not offered that choice.

On one side street a group of them kneel, wrists bound, their braids hacked short. An old woman straightens as Linh approaches, back like a bent bow suddenly taut.

"We fed your dogs when you came as merchants," she says, voice clear despite the dust. "We let your priests sit by our fires. This is how you bless us?"

Linh's expression does not change. He lifts his hand. The Sun Guard move in, blades coming down with a practiced, clean efficiency that suggests they have had a lot of practice. Red joins the black on the cobbles.

Amar watches from the shadow of a half-collapsed arch, Meice a solid presence at her shoulder. Amar's fists are clenched so tight her nails cut her palms. The new Siza clothes Linh gave her feel heavier than armor.

Meice does not look away from the killings. Her face is unreadable, the same look she gives a tavern brawl she's not yet decided to join.

"You told me he was the enemy of your enemies," Amar says, voice low and shaking. "You didn't say he was ours too."

"I told you he was the only road out of the pit you were in," Meice answers. "I did not say where the road ends."

Amar makes a sound that is not quite a laugh and not quite a sob. "Very comforting."

"Don't confuse 'true' with 'comforting,'" Meice says. "It saves time."

Linh does not look at them. His eagle-skull staff taps once on the stone as he turns away, already thinking of the next city, the next garrison to pull down like rotten scaffolding.

Behind the column, Li Song rides slowly on a tired bay gelding that should have been retired three campaigns ago. The old general's beard is more white than black now; his armor is mostly memory. He wears a plain travel coat, dust-stained, and carries no visible weapon.

He watches the executed Yohazatz with a face like a worn-out map, lines etched deep.

"You disapprove," says the rider beside him—a young Hluay officer with a zealot's bright, empty smile.

"I am too old to disapprove," Li Song replies. "I merely take notes on how many enemies you are making while killing the ones you already had."

The officer flushes, unsure if he is being insulted. Before he can decide, a courier gallops up, face slick with sweat, clutching a bamboo tube of dispatches.

"For the Heavenly Regent," he pants. "From the north. The Winged Tigers have engaged Hluay forces at Yao Gorge."

Li Song's brows lift. "Again? Well. Let us see what tune Old Ji is trying to conduct now."

He nudges his horse forward toward Linh, dust rising around him in lazy eddies. Behind him, Fuxiang continues to burn.

…

The gorge is a stone throat choked with mist. Pines cling to its edges, their roots wound deep into rock. The Moukopl have chosen their ground well: the Hluay advance must funnel here, between two sheer cliffs, under the teeth of guns.

General Jin Na sits his horse on a ledge above the main path, jaw clenched. His armor is immaculate, grey lacquer unchipped, helmet crest trimmed. Below him, three wings of Winged Tigers wait in formation, muskets held with the careful, loving precision that new weapons evoke.

Old Ji stands at Jin Na's side, hands tucked into his sleeves, expression as mild as an accountant watching ledgers balance.

"Remember," Jin Na calls down to his men. "First volley at two hundred paces. Second at one hundred. Then we ride. Do not think of them as men. Think of them as demons."

The Winged Tigers shift, eager. They have rehearsed this.

The Hluay vanguard appears in the gorge's mouth like a dark stain spreading across paper. Infantry first, shields up, banners low. Behind them, carts laden with supplies and something else—large shapes draped in canvas.

Jin Na narrows his eyes. "They bring baggage into a kill-funnel," he mutters. "Fools."

"Or bait," Old Ji says calmly.

Jin Na snorts. "We hold the high ground, Excellency. Let them bait the sky."

He raises his arm. Flags flash; drums thrum; the Winged Tigers move like a single machine. Their muskets level, barrels glinting dully in the mist.

Two hundred paces. The first volley cracks out, a line of fire and smoke. Hluay shields shudder. Men fall. The column ripples, staggers, then closes.

"One hundred," Jin Na says. "Again."

The second volley hits harder. Gaps open in the Hluay line, bodies dropping like felled saplings. Behind them, the canvas-draped carts jolt under impact but keep rolling, pushed by those still standing.

"Now," Jin Na roars, exultant. "Now we ride. Break them before they reach the bend."

Winged Tigers slam spurs into flanks. The formation pours down the slope like molten iron, hooves eating distance, muskets slung, sabers coming free.

That is when Linh's trap springs.

The first cart in the column slews sideways and overturns, not from impact but by design. The canvas tears away, revealing not supplies but stacked jars, lashed together with rope and tar. The broken jars spill their contents into the gorge: thick oil, black as ink, flooding across the stone.

Torches fly from the Hluay ranks, arcs of orange against grey.

The world goes bright.

Flame races along the poured oil in a hungry sheet, a low, rushing roar. The gorge becomes a furnace. The front rank of Winged Tigers plows straight into the fire. Horses scream as their legs vanish in orange, flesh bubbling, armor heating like pans on a stove. Men tumble, aflame, rolling and beating at themselves, only to smear the burning oil further.

The second rank tries to halt. Momentum betrays them. More horses skid into the inferno, iron shoes sparking on stone; more riders fall. Those who wrench their mounts away slam into the gorge walls or each other, formation shattered in an instant.

From the cliffs above, Hluay archers step into view, silhouettes against the smoke, bowstrings taut.

"Loose," Linh's voice echoes, thin and precise. "Target men without flames first. We don't waste arrows."

Arrows hiss down, piercing grey lacquer, finding gaps in armor with cruel accuracy. Winged Tigers who manage to drag themselves clear of the fire stagger under the new hail, stumbling, dropping. The gorge chokes on smoke and screams.

Jin Na watches from his ledge, horror dawning too late. The clean lines of his plan are gone, erased in soot.

"Pull back," he gasps. "Signal retreat. Sound the—"

Old Ji lays a hand on his arm, grip surprisingly strong. "It is too late for a retreat, General," he says quietly. "You may shorten the obituary, but you will not change it."

Below, the third rank finally senses the scale of the disaster and wheels away, riders yelling, horses rearing. Hluay drums pound from the far end of the gorge. More troops pour in, hugging the walls, using the burning patch as a barrier that separates Winged Tigers from each other.

They fall in pockets, in clumps, in twos and threes, brave and disciplined and utterly outmaneuvered.

By nightfall, the gorge belongs to the sun banners.

Old Ji writes the report himself.

He writes: The enemy commander demonstrates sophisticated understanding of fire as maneuver tool. At the bottom he signs, as always: Ji, humble servant of order.

…

Linh reads the report in a commandeered pavilion two nights later, oil-light turning the brush strokes into crawling black worms. Outside, the latest frontier town crackles softly as it finishes dying.

He sits on a folding stool, eagle-skull staff propped beside him. Meice leans against a tent pole, one ankle crossed over the other, polishing her knuckles with a scrap of cloth, as if violence leaves residue only she can see. Amar perches on a rolled-up carpet, watching the flames lick the town's roofs through the tent flap, her face lit in alternating gold and shadow.

Li Song stands to one side, arms folded, expression sour and thoughtful.

"'Pest control,'" Linh reads aloud, lips twitching. "General Lu's charming phrase returns. 'Winged Tigers under Jin Na performed adequately but were outmatched by the enemy's use of environmental hazards.' Hmm."

"Is that the part where they caught fire," Meice asks, "or the part where they fell over each other like drunken goats?"

"Both, apparently," Li Song says. "Though I suspect they will call the goats 'regrettable but understandable casualties' in the final version."

Amar makes an involuntary noise. It might be a laugh. It might be something else. "You turned them into torches." She says very quietly.

Linh folds the report with neat precision. "They tried to stop me," he replies. "Nahaloma burned them."

"Of course," Meice mutters. "Heaven lit the oil. Your hands are spotless."

Linh ignores the jab. He sets the report aside. "Damn Ji is learning," he says. "He used the correct words: 'outmatched.' He did not blame demons or bad luck. He will adjust."

Li Song snorts. "He will try. Old Ji adjusts like a stone adjusts to rain. Slowly. And with much complaining."

"You know him well," Amar says, tilting her head.

"He trained me," Li Song says. "Back when I worked with the Northern Bureau. He taught me that numbers do not lie, only the men who add them." He scratches his beard. "Naturally, I spent twenty years proving him wrong."

Meice smiles faintly. "And this Jin Na?"

Li Song's mouth twists. "He was my lieutenant. A good one. Very clean lines. Very sharp formations. Very little imagination."

"So," Amar says, "the frontier cities burn. The Winged Tigers learn to roast in their shells. The peasants flock. The deserters kneel. Congratulations. You're very terrifying." She spreads her hands. "What now?"

Linh lifts his gaze from the report to the crude map pinned to the tent wall. It shows the Moukopl Empire in uneven strokes: heartland, rivers, coasts, the long, jagged line of the northern frontier where their banners now spread like rust.

He taps north, where the imperial capital lies, a tiny painted sun.

"We have taken the ribs," he says. "The heart will come when it is ready. But…" His finger traces eastward, to a stitched coastline and the line of little painted ships that mark the Moukopl navy. Beyond that, the sea is a blank wash of blue. Linh inclines his head. "The tide flows there. The White Mother wants saltwater."

Meice folds her arms. "There's a small problem," she says. "We don't own the sea." She jabs a finger at the painted ships. "These people do. And they're not exactly keen on being set on holy fire."

Amar nods vigorously. "We don't have a navy," she says. "We barely have boats that float. The last time I tried to stand on a deck, I vomited."

Li Song chuckles, a dry, papery sound. "The girl is correct," he says. "The Hluay do not have a navy. They have fishermen with delusions of grandeur and a few river barges. And the Moukopl blockade around Seop is not ornamental. Little Bimen has his teeth sunk deep into that tide."

"Bimen?" Amar asks.

"Little Bimen," Li Song laughs with the arrogance of an old man who watched everyone important when they were still falling off horses. "He commanded the eastern fleet back when he was just discovering that boats go forward if you shout at them loud enough."

Meice's brows shoot up. "He's the Grand Admiral of the Moukopl navy and boss of the Southern Bureau. But he's also a huge whimp. You know him?"

"I saved his career twice and his life once. In return he called me an insufferable fossil and ignored half my advice. Which is why he's famous now, and I'm just a forgotten legend." Li Song explains.

Linh looks amused. "You retired yourself, General. Do not blame others for your desire to nap."

"I took a nap," Li Song says. "The empire set itself on fire while I was sleeping."

Amar stares at the map, at the little painted ships. "So even if we burn every fort between here and the capital," she says slowly, "we can't reach Seop because the sea is a wall. And the man who built that wall learned to shout at boats from you."

"Roughly," Li Song agrees. "Also, Old Ji and whatever general he hasn't roasted yet will be sending him lovely letters about how I've defected to the divine lunatic. They will ask him to sink anything I touch."

Meice squints. "You and Old Ji don't… get along?"

Li Song makes a face. "He thinks I'm a crude hammer who hits problems until they admit they're solved. I think he's a quill that mistakes ink stains for victories. Our conversations over the years have been… rich, in vocabulary. The last time we spoke he called my strategy 'an insult to basic arithmetic.' I suggested he go outside and meet a tree."

"Sounds cordial," Meice says dryly.

"We respect each other's competence," Li Song says. "We merely think the other should be in a different line of work. Preferably far away."

"Which leaves us with," Meice says, counting on her fingers, "a divine mission toward a coastal city we can't reach, a god who hates boats, an empire trying to kill us with metal sticks, and a navy commanded by your ungrateful student who probably wants your head mounted on his prow." She spreads her hands. "Excellent. Flawless plan."

Linh's lips twitch. "We are not obliged to take the obvious road," he says. "The god enjoys detours."

Li Song clears his throat. "As it happens," he says, "Little Bimen owes me more than professional respect." His eyes go distant for a moment, seeing some other sea, some other battle. "There was a storm off Baokou twenty years ago. A typhoon. He lost three ships before sunrise. Nearly lost the flagship on the reef. I took a patrol boat through water that wanted to eat us and towed him clear. He vowed then that if I ever needed a favor, I could call."

Amar leans forward. "What kind of favor would help us here?"

"The kind where he pretends not to see something very inconvenient passing under his guns," Li Song says. "Once."

Meice snorts. "You think he'll honor a drunk promise from decades ago, when old Ji is hissing in his ear about traitors and holy wars?"

"He's a good boy," Li Song says. "Also, Bimen and Old Ji hate each other almost as much as Ji and I do. If Ji tells him to sink me, he will be sorely tempted to do the opposite out of spite."

Meice tilts her head. "You propose to walk a fleet past the empire's teeth on the assumption that personal grudges will hold their aim."

"Have you met your species?" Li Song asks blandly. "Personal grudges move more armies than logistics ever has."

Amar chews her lip, thinking. "Even if Bimen looks the other way," she says, "we still need ships. And sailors. And people who don't vomit at the concept of waves." She eyes Meice. "Can you swim?"

"I can drown very convincingly," Meice says. "Does that help?"

"Not strictly," Amar says. "But it's nice to know."

Linh looks back at the map, at the blank blue. His fingertip rests where Seop would be, if anyone in this tent had seen it.

"The sea is a moat," he says. "Moats are not obstacles; they are invitations to learn carpentry."

Meice stares. "Did you just say we need to… build a navy?"

Linh shrugs, a small, precise motion. "Or steal one. Burn one that is in the way and take the survivors. There are many options."

Li Song sighs. "If you try to steal Bimen's fleet, he will shoot you, favor or no favor. The man loves his ships more than his own liver." He taps the map, finger landing near a smaller coastal mark. "There is a minor port here—Khou. The garrison is lazy, the ships are old, the officers corrupt. The kind of place that would sell their own grandmother's teeth for the right purse."

"Finally," Meice says. "A problem in my language."

Amar gives her a sideways look. "You speak 'corruption'?"

"I speak 'bribery' and 'threats,'" Meice says. "Dialect is easy to pick up."

Linh nods once. "We increase pressure on the frontier," he says. "Idiot Ji and Jin Na will keep throwing Winged Tigers at us, because they have nothing else. While they bleed numbers inland, we take Khou quietly. We build or steal enough hulls to make Bimen notice." His eye gleams. "Then we see whether his gratitude outweighs his orders."

Amar looks from the burning town outside, to the ink-stained map, to the half-mad man claiming divine mandates, to the tired old general who taught his enemies too well, to the mercenary who fights like falling masonry.

Linh picks up Old Ji's report again, studies the neat characters that describe his own atrocities with bureaucratic calm.

"Ji writes that the empire is facing 'a scourge sent by heaven as punishment for decadence,'" he says. "He is not sure whether he means me or his own generals."