The Winds of Tepr

The islands fall like beads snipped from a string.

From the southernmost rock—little more than a hill with delusions of grandeur—to the fat, terraced bulk of Ryogo, Naci and Bimen move in a rhythm that becomes its own kind of weather. War-junks creep into bays at dawn, teeth of their rams just breaking the surf. Banners disembark in tight ranks, muskets wrapped in oilcloth, sabers at their hips. Seop militias, used to imperial taxmen and sloppy press-gangs, learn in ugly, fast lessons what it means when Tepr drill meets desperate hunger.

Some cities resist: gunlines on sea walls, old Seop cannons hauled out like relics, one last, frantic belief that the Republic will send someone to help.

It doesn't.

Bimen's navy shells the sea-facing batteries until stone turns to dust. Naci's Banners hit the land side with powder wedges and disciplined volleys. When walls crack, the Banners pour through—not just Tepr now, but a living mosaic: scarred Seop dockhands with new-issue muskets; ex-militia in stolen armor; one very confused Moukopl artilleryman who defected for reasons involving unpaid wages and an ex-wife.

The wounded and half-broken they leave behind with local rebels, sewing garrisons out of whoever can still stand with a weapon and swear the right oaths. The Banners' numbers never seem to shrink; they shed and grow at once. Forty becomes eighty, then a hundred and twenty, then two hundred hardened shapes in dark wool and mixed accents.

"The Banners were never meant to be a family tree," Naci tells Bimen once, watching a Seop sailor show a Tepr boy how to brace on a ship's railing. "They're a harvest. Take the best and burn the rest."

"Very poetic," Bimen grunts, adjusting a chart. "You're terrifying when you're happy, did you know that?"

"Are you flirting with me?" Naci replies. "I'm a married woman, you know?"

By the time they turn north for the main island, the map of the southern archipelago looks different in every captain's mind: not a chain of imperial holdings, but a ladder. And the top rung is Bo'anem.

Naci stands at the prow of the flagship, cloak snapping, eyes narrowed toward a horizon the color of old steel.

Horohan is beside her, arms folded, expression hanging somewhere between boredom and anticipation.

On the horizon: sails. Dark smudges that resolve, slowly and then all at once, into the unmistakable profiles of war-junks—high prows, flared hulls, the arrogant tilt that says Imperial Navy even before you see the flag.

Sailcloth bellies in the wind. Gulls lift, circling.

Naci's jaw sets. "Reinforcements?" she asks.

She doesn't sound pleased.

Bimen's weathered face goes still.

"No," he says. "They shouldn't be. I didn't send for any. The Emperor is… busy." The way he says it makes "busy" sound like "bleeding out over the wrong map."

Horohan glances sideways. "Admiral," she says mildly, "if you are lying to us now, it will be very inconvenient. For you."

"I would never lie badly," Bimen snaps. "Look at their formation. Too tight. My crews are sloppier. In an endearing, veteran way."

The oncoming fleet flies Moukopl colors—gold serpent devouring the sun.

"Signal them," Naci says. "Let's see what they want."

The junks draw up at polite killing distance, close enough for voices to carry on the wind, far enough that a first volley would still be guesswork.

Bimen's flagship and the lead "imperial" junk drift toward each other, water hissing between their hulls. Lines are thrown, caught, tied; not boarding lines, not yet. Just a handshake of rope.

On the other deck, men stand in neat ranks. Their armor is a mix of imperial breastplates and plain leather. Naci knows she has spent weeks now watching real Moukopl sailors swear at waves, and these men are not them.

A gangplank thumps across the gap. Bimen insists on going first; Naci lets him, mainly because if he is going to get stabbed, it is better to know early.

He steps onto the others' deck with the proprietary limp of a man who considers every plank his personal responsibility. Naci follows, Horohan at her shoulder, three Banners behind. Muskets are respectfully shouldered. For now.

A small group approaches from the other side: officers, by the cut of their coats. And in front of them, walking like he owns the ocean, is a man Naci doesn't recognize—but Bimen does.

Li Song looks exactly like the sort of old general carved into victory arches and then inconveniently refuses to die. His hair is mostly white, his back straight, his gaze sharp. The sword at his hip is plain and ugly, the kind that's been used too often to bother shining.

"Little Bimen," he says, as if they last parted yesterday. His voice is roughened with smoke and shouting and something like reluctant fondness. "I told you if you ever sank one of my ships I'd come back and haunt you."

Bimen's mouth tightens. "I recall you pushing me out of the way of an exploding powder cart," he says. "You don't get to choose your hauntings."

He doesn't say mentor or traitor or the man I almost followed instead of the Emperor. He doesn't say currently leading a rebel god's pet army, are we. His eyes say some of it anyway.

Naci flicks him a glance. "Introduce us."

Bimen clears his throat. "Li Song," he says, to her. "Former general of the Western Armies. Rumored to be dead or gardening. Apparently neither. General, this is Naci Khan of the Tepr. Dragon-Tiger General of the Empire."

Li Song's gaze slides to Naci, assessing. There is no deference in it, but no contempt either. Just weighing.

"Steppe wolf," he says, inclining his head. "They're letting you on boats now."

"They tried to stop me," Naci replies. "They lost."

Horohan snorts.

She doesn't notice, because she is watching something else: not Li Song, but the massed sailors behind him. Their grip on the lines. The way their feet are set. The curses they mutter under their breath when the wind shifts.

Wrong. All wrong.

Naci stores that, like a stone in a pocket.

"And you are here why?" she asks Li Song. "The Emperor finally grew a spine and sent help after all?"

"If he did, he forgot to tell me," Bimen mutters under his breath.

Li Song's smile is brief, humorless. "We are a detached squadron from the Northern Bureau," he says. "Tasked with reinforcing the blockade around Seop and preventing certain undesirable elements from slipping through." His eyes flick to the Banners, then back. "Imagine my surprise when I find half the Tepr steppe sailing under Moukopl colors."

"Not half," Horohan says. "Barely a quarter. You haven't seen half."

"Yet," Naci adds.

Li Song laughs once. It sounds less like mirth and more like someone acknowledging a good thrust.

In the shadow of the foremast, half-hidden by stacks of coiled rope and a cluster of officers, Hluay Linh stands still as a carved saint.

The eagle skull of his staff is wrapped in canvas, disguised as just another pole. He has smeared extra ash over his burned flesh and drawn his hood low. To most eyes, he is another shabby Shag'hal-Tyn hanger-on.

But his one good eye, dark and fever-bright, is fixed on Naci the way a starving man looks at a fresh enemy.

"It's her," he whispers, though no one is close enough to hear. "The woman in the peach garden."

The dream that Mihin showed him 8 years ago is still engraved in his mind:

Linh descends the grand staircase of the central palace. Loyal warriors flank him, their armor reflecting the sunlight. The crowd parts before him, eyes wide with awe and reverence. He raises his arms, the symbol of his dominion clear to all who witness.

The banners wave majestically, but a shadow looms ominously in the corner of his vision. His eyes follow the movement, momentarily distracted by the grotesque sight of the emperor's lifeless body hanging from a peach tree.

But as Linh turns his head, a figure materializes beside the emperor's corpse—a woman, a Northern Barbarian, her presence commanding and terrifying. Her arms are crossed defiantly, fiery eyes glaring with an intensity that cuts through his triumphant vision. She stands tall, exuding a raw, unyielding power that disrupts the perfection of his imagined future.

"Who the hell are you?" Linh demands, his voice echoing with a mix of fear and anger.

The woman's eyes never waver, her stance unbroken. "I am the storm that will unravel your destiny, the shadow that will consume your light. Your victory is built on betrayal, and now, I will ensure it crumbles."

Li Song, without looking back, says very softly, "You stay behind the mast."

Linh drags his gaze from Naci to the old general's back. "We should kill her," he hisses. "Now."

"And how do you propose to do that?" Li Song murmurs, still outwardly engaged in small courtly pleasantries with Bimen and Naci. "With half-trained sailors in stolen boots? She is on Bimen's flagship surrounded by her elites. We are overextended, far from support, with our own ships full of northerners who think oars are decorative."

Linh's burned lips twist.

"Prophecies don't wait for convenient moments," he says.

"That is why generals do," Li Song replies. "If you attack her now and fail, the story of you dying on some pointless plank will not inspire many future rebels."

Back at the center of the deck, Naci tilts her head.

"These sailors," she says. "They don't smell right."

Li Song raises an eyebrow. "We bathed before coming, I assure you," he says. "Out of respect for your foreign sensibilities."

"The last time you people bathed was when it rained," Bimen mutters.

Naci ignores them both. Her gaze sweeps the railings, the rigging, the small stupid details that win wars.

"The knots are wrong," she says. "Moukopl sailors tie their reef lines with a double twist. And that helmsman is standing as if he's seasick."

A flicker passes over Li Song's face. Just for a breath. Annoyance, maybe. Or admiration.

Bimen stiffens.

"Naci," he says quietly. "Whatever this is, we don't have time. Bo'anem is ahead. The Seop are watching. If we get tangled in someone else's drama out here, they will slam the harbor shut and rain fire on us from three directions."

"Someone else's drama is on my deck," Naci replies. "And wearing your flag. You vouched for this man."

Bimen closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them, there's a headache in them that did not come from the sun.

"Li Song saved my life," he says. "Twice. He taught me half of what I know about killing people professionally. I owe him."

"You also owe me," Naci says. "And the Banners. And every steppe mother who let her child ride this far because you said the path was clear."

Bimen grimaces. "I'm not asking you to marry him," he snaps. "I'm saying we can let him pass. For now. There will be time to sort out who is stabbing whom on what continent after we take Bo'anem."

"Will there?" Naci asks. "He is clearly not obeying your Emperor. He has not announced which god he serves. He sails under false colors. That makes him pirate, traitor, or both. I have a system for dealing with those."

Horohan's hand rests casually on the hilt of her saber. "She does," she says. "It's very efficient."

Li Song's gaze moves between them.

"Is there a problem, little Bimen?" he asks. "Your wolves seem restless."

Bimen exhales. "General Li, Naci Khan has concerns about your… crew."

"Do they not look ferocious enough?" Li Song says lightly. "I told them to scowl more and not to spill anything during the inspection."

"There won't be an inspection," Bimen says quickly. "Because we are civilized people."

"There will be an inspection," Naci says at the same time because polite fiction has its limits. "If you are what you say you are, you will not mind if my officers walk your decks. Check your manifests. Speak to your men."

Li Song's smile thins. "And if I do mind?" he asks.

"Then you have something to hide," Naci says. "And I have a navy."

On the Hluay flagship, Linh's fingers tighten around his staff.

"Do not let her board," he breathes.

Li Song's jaw flexes once.

He bows slightly to Naci.

"I am under orders from the Northern Bureau," he says. "My ships carry sensitive materiel and personnel. I cannot allow foreign inspection. Even from… allies of circumstance." His eyes flick to Bimen in apology that is not quite contrition. "I trust the Admiral here will vouch that I am not in the habit of sabotaging my own side."

Bimen's lips part. He looks at Naci, at Li Song, at the hard, suspicious lines of his own sailors watching from their rails.

He sees the cliff he's standing on. There is no way off it that doesn't break something.

Naci nods once. "He has vouched," she says. "And I accept his recommendation."

Bimen exhales in visible relief.

"In part," Naci adds.

Bimen's relief dies a small, unhappy death.

"We are in contested waters," Naci goes on. "You fly Moukopl colors in my theatre. You refuse inspection. So we will do this the old way. We will see how your crews stand when people are trying to cut them in half."

Li Song's eyes gleam. "You propose a… test," he says. "How barbarian of you."

"I propose clarity," Naci says. "You can turn back toward the Moukopl mainland and leave Seop to those already bleeding on it. Or you can come closer and see what happens when you lie to my face."

"Big talk for someone on my deck," Li Song murmurs.

Horohan smiles, all teeth. "You're on our sea," she says.

Wind tugs at banners while a gull shriek.

Linh, behind the mast, is coiled so tight his burned muscles shudder.

"We should retreat," one of his Shag'hal-Tyn murmurs. "Our aim was Seop, not picking fights with every madwoman between here and the horizon."

"Nahaloma put her in our path," Linh hisses. "You think he will show us such kindness twice?"

Li Song hears enough to know the argument. He answers both of them, voice calm.

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"If we fight," he says, "we bleed men and ships we cannot replace. If we run now, we live to try another angle. Prophecy or not, my Regent, even gods need hulls."

He raises his voice again, to Naci.

"We are under orders," he repeats. "But I see your point. Very well. We will not interfere with your operations. We will turn back after we…" His mouth twitches. "…conduct our own maneuvers."

It is almost plausible.

Naci watches his face. Watches his sailors. Watches the small flinch in Bimen's jaw when Li Song says orders.

She has been trusting her instincts since she could sit a horse. They have not failed her yet.

"Horohan," she says. "Signal the fleet. Stand ready."

Horohan's smile widens. "Gladly."

Li Song sees the decision harden. He sighs, almost fondly, like a man watching a storm he had hoped would miss his house.

"So be it," he says.

He steps back, sharp and clear. "Beat to quarters!" he roars.

The ship explodes into motion. Drums hammer. Men run for lines and weapons. The gangplank judders as someone hauls it back.

Bimen swears energetically.

"Back!" he barks at his men. "Back to our ship, now!"

Naci doesn't argue. She moves, light and precise, leaping the last stretch as the plank lurches away. A spray of arrows hisses overhead; Banners on the flagship's rail answer with musket drums.

Naval battles are not Naci's native element. She prefers honest ground. But she learns quickly, and she has very simple principles.

Hit first. Hit harder. Make sure your people know where not to stand.

The allied fleet fans out, junk keels cutting the water, oars beating. Horns blare. Drums echo answers.

Across the chop, Li Song's command ship swings to present its broadside. Cannon muzzles yawn. But the reports are ragged; some guns are slow, others flash late, one misfires entirely, belching a gout of useless smoke. Inexperienced crews. New-installed artillery. Naci notes every weakness.

"Close the distance," she orders. "Banners to boarding stations. Muskets ready."

The Banners grin. They have been practicing boarding for weeks—planks, grapnels, the sacred art of not falling between hulls when everything is on fire.

On Li Song's deck, Meice is already bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Finally," she tells Amar over the roar of preparation. "I was beginning to think we sailed all this way just to practice knots."

"I hate knots, but you hate them even more," Amar agrees, checking the edge on her curved knife. Her eyes glitter; Yohazatz blood has a strange relationship with imminent death. "You throw things at people who tie them."

"Exactly," Meice says. "Now I can throw things at people on purpose."

Around them, Siza and Shag'hal-Tyn warriors are strapping on mismatched armor, checking stolen swords, muttering prayers not learned in any Moukopl shrine. They are good. Hard. Blooded. But this is not their sea, and those are not their ships.

"Remember," Li Song bellows, moving up the line. "You are Moukopl today. That means you pretend you're better than everyone else while doing exactly what I say."

It gets a ragged laugh. It loosens shoulders.

Then the first Bimen-led junk slams its hull alongside, with all the subtlety of a fist meeting a mouth. Grapnels fly, biting wood. Planks crash down. Banners surge, muskets spitting fire into the defending ranks, then dropping to draw sabers and axes as the range closes.

The first clash is pure, shrieking chaos.

Meice meets it like she was born to swim in it.

A Banner lunges at her with a bayonet. She sidesteps, grabs the musket barrel, wrenches it up and away. Her elbow slams into his throat. He falls, gagging, and she plants a bare heel on his chest to shove off into the next opponent.

"These are not militia," she calls to Amar, over the din. "Heads up!"

Amar is already moving, lean as a starving fox. A Banner swings too wide; she steps under the blade and stabs him cleanly under the ribs, in and out, no fuss. Blood sprays her wrist. She doesn't flinch.

"They move like Yohazatz," she shouts back.

On the flagship, Naci watches the mêlée from the foredeck, eyes narrowed. Banners advance in tight, ugly phalanxes—three muskets fire, three reload behind them, lines overlapping in a murderous dance. Every time the Hluay press, the Banners absorb, bend, then snap back with drilled precision.

These opponents fight well. Their footwork is tribal too, not Moukopl.

"They're good," Horohan observes, almost appreciative. She blocks a stray arrow with the flat of her saber as if batting a stubborn fly. "Not good enough."

Naci lifts her arm. "Second wave!" she calls. "Hit their flanks."

On Li Song's deck, the tide is turning—and it's not the friendly kind.

He fights like a demon. Banners come at him two at a time; he parries, sidesteps, uses their momentum to put them in each other's way. His sword is always in the right place.

"Back to the mast!" he roars to his people. "We're not winning this."

Linh stays in the shadow of the cabin, teeth bared, staff useless in this press. Every time a Banner dies, he feels the world tilt half an inch closer to the sun. Every time one of his own goes down, the tilt goes the other way.

Meice takes a glancing blow to the shoulder; it opens her skin like paper. She snarls, grabs the offending Banner by the belt, and throws him into the path of his comrades like an improvised barricade.

"Remind me," she pants at Amar, "why we aren't letting these people kill our prophet for us."

"Because their Emperor killed my people first," Amar growls, opening another Tepr man's thigh with brutal efficiency. "And because Linh promised me paradise."

"Good answer," Meice says, and headbutts someone.

But it's not enough.

The Banners are too many, too drilled, too high on momentum. One by one, Li Song's ships are boarded, overrun, or forced to sheer off under a hail of shot. A fire starts on a cutter—the kind of fire that does not care who started it. Flames lick up rigging and leap to the next sail.

Li Song sees it.

"This is done," he snaps, parrying a thrust with a clash that numbs his arm. "Signal withdrawal!"

"We can still—" Linh begins.

"We can still drown out of stubbornness," Li Song cuts in. "Or we can live to build another fleet. Choose."

He whistles sharply, a pattern he used to use to call cavalry back from a charge. The surviving Siza sailors know it by now. They break contact where they can, shoving off boarding planks, cutting grapnels with frantic hacks. A few Banners, too eager, find themselves dropping into the widening gap between hulls and vanish under the churning foam.

On Meice and Amar's section of the deck, a Banner sergeant presses them hard, saber whistling. Meice's injured arm is slowing. Amar's breath comes harsh. The sergeant feints high, stabs low—Meice only just manages to drag Amar out of the path.

"Retreat!" Li Song's voice cuts over the roar. "All decks, fall back! Abandon to longboats! Go!"

Meice bares her teeth. "I hate running," she snarls.

"Shut up," Amar replies, grabbing her uninjured arm and yanking. "Become faster so it's over sooner."

They bolt for the rail, ducking and shoving through the press. Behind them, Banners shout triumph and curses. Ahead, boats bob, wild and tempting, lashed to the side.

Meice kicks one loose and drops into it, landing with enough force to make the hull complain. Amar follows, knife still in hand. Three more Hluay tumble after them. Oars bite water. The boat swings away just as a Banner's musket cracks; a splinter explodes where Meice's head was, showering her with wet wood.

"Rude!" she yells back, without looking.

Across the choppy water, other boats are doing the same. Some don't make it; a junk caught between two allied warships takes a full broadside, its side turning into flying lumber. Men spill into the sea, screaming, their voices thin above the roar.

Li Song is one of the last off his flagship. He shoves Linh into a longboat with a grip that brooks no argument.

"Complain later," he tells him. "Row now."

Linh glares, soaked and furious and humiliated. "She was right there," he says, voice raw. "The wolf queen!"

"We reframe," Li Song says. "She has teeth. Good. I'd be disappointed if the White Mother chose a soft enemy. This just means the story lasts longer."

He glances back once at Naci's flagship, its Dragon-Tiger pennant snapping triumphantly.

"Besides," he mutters, half to himself, "the next time we meet her, we won't be pretending to be anyone else."

On the Heaven's Mandate's deck, the battle noise slumps into that awkward quiet that comes after you stop killing people but before the bodies are moved.

The disguised fleet is peeling away—what's left of it. Three junks limp toward the Moukopl mainland, sails ragged, sides scorched. Others list, dead in the water, smoke curling from their guts. More are simply gone, sunk or drifting, masts jutting like broken teeth.

Horohan leans on the rail, breathing hard, a smear of someone else's blood on her jaw.

Bimen stands a little apart, watching the retreating silhouettes with an expression like salt in an old wound.

"You let them escape," he says to Naci, not quite accusing, not quite neutral.

"Chasing them inland would cost us days. Men. Powder. Bo'anem is ahead." Naci replies.

Bimen rubs his hands over his face. They come away streaked with powder and sweat.

"Li Song will not forget this," he says quietly.

"Good," Naci answers. "Neither will I."

She turns to him fully. The wind tugs at her braids, flinging drops of other people's blood from the leather ties.

"You knew he was a traitor," she says. "You said nothing until he was pointing guns at our hulls."

"He was supposed to be dead," Bimen growls. "Retired. Gardening. When I heard he became one of the leaders of the Siza rebellion, I couldn't believe it. But they're not the problem right now. Bo'anem is the problem. The Seop are watching us. The Empire is watching them. If we start settling old academy debts in the middle of this sea—"

"This isn't about your academy debts," Naci cuts in, voice like ice. "I asked if those were your reinforcements. You said no. That was true. I asked who he was. You told me his name and his rank. But you omitted the most important part."

"I am sorry I did not deliver a full dossier in the middle of a moving deck," Bimen snaps. "Next time I will bring a scribe."

Horohan steps between them, not quite physically, but in presence. "Enough," she says. "You can settle this quarrel with a duel after we take the city."

Naci's eyes stay on Bimen's. "Everyone will remember who actually got them there," she says.

...

Lizi leans against the table, one hip braced, the other carefully not. The bandages under her coat pull when she forgets and stands up too straight; the wound aches with a persistent, mean-minded throb. It is better than the numbness was.

She prods a wooden pin stuck in the map over the palace district. "So," she says, "we agree this place is the ugliest building in the city and must therefore be destroyed first."

"It's not ugly," Yotaka protests, automatically. "It's… the wrong decorations."

He sits cross-legged on a crate, in borrowed worker's clothes that cannot quite hide the straightness of his back. Someone has cut his hair neater. He looks less like a half-dead prince and more like a very stubborn apprentice who keeps accidentally standing like royalty.

"The old royal palace," he continues, tapping the map lightly. "Black jade steps. Cedar eaves. The glass lantern gallery—"

Hanae cuts in. "They put a senate in it."

She sits opposite Lizi, elbows on the table, ink on her fingers. Her hair is tied back in a knot that has given up halfway through the day. The shamisen-bridge talisman lies beside her hand, polished by habit. Around them, a half-dozen anarchists lurk in the room's edges: a tanner's daughter with burns up both arms, a former law clerk with ink-stained cuffs, an old woman whose knitting needles have been replaced by awl and wire.

Map pins bristle across the palace sketch—gatehouses, patrol routes, the new black wagon yard.

"We agree on the target," says Jorin, the gap-toothed one with a laugh like a cough. "We do not agree on the method. So far we have: 'set it on fire,' 'blow it up,' 'usually we improvise,' and 'ask the sea for help.'"

"We could do both." Lizi spins a pin between her fingers. "Blow it up, then set the rubble on fire. Very therapeutic."

"That just gives them an excuse to declare permanent martial law," the ex-clerk mutters. "They're already calling us arsonists. We don't have enough powder for a real breach."

"We know where the Triumvirate sleeps?" Lizi asks.

"Not all in the same bed, tragically," Hanae says. She flips a page of notes. Her handwriting is a disciplined scrawl. "Miju has taken the west wing, old royal apartments. Tomoe keeps to the east, near the docks entrance. Yorin practically lives in the accounts hall. Of course."

Yotaka stares at the little inked palace like it's a ghost. "The west wing has a service stair," he says slowly. "Hidden behind a lacquer panel with cranes. It leads from the old nursery to the private audience veranda. The guards never used it; they thought it was beneath them to learn servant ways."

"Useful," Hanae says at once.

"Absolutely not," Lizi says at the same time. "He is not going back in there."

Yotaka lifts his shoulders. "We need a path," he says, very patient. "I have one."

Lizi glares, but her mouth twitches.

The tanner's daughter, elbow-deep in a bowl of nails and twine, says, "We can get a skeleton crew of us close. But that place is crawling with militia now. We need noise somewhere else. Something that makes the Triunvirate look away. Or at least blink."

"Pirates," Lizi says immediately. "They're good at noise."

"Flattering," Hanae says. "You think Shan Xi will shell the senate for you."

"As a matter of fact, yes, I think she will. She'll shell anything for principle," Lizi says. "Or for fun. Or because someone looked at her crew wrong."

Hanae chews her lip. "My runners say the militia flooded the slumps after your little prison party. Harbor's a choke point. Getting a message through there is not… simple."

"I know the harbor," Lizi says. "I can slip through. I did slip out to find you."

"You can barely slip into your coat without bleeding," Hanae shoots back.

Yotaka raises a tentative hand, as if this is a very strange classroom. "What about paper?" he suggests. "We could flood the city with broadsheets saying the pirates are already inside the palace kitchen. The Baekjeon-kai are terrified of embarrassment. They might pull troops back just to check the pantries."

"That's not how troops work," mutters the clerk, wounded on a professional level. "But terrorizing their image… might do something."

"It won't pull Miju out of her office," Hanae says. "But it could muddy orders. Make them twitchy. Twitchy officers make mistakes."

"See?" Lizi nudges Yotaka's boot with her own. "Dangerous brain. We should wrap it in wool."

"We're not putting a hat on the prince," Hanae says. "It would attract attention."

"He's not—" Yotaka starts, then gives up with a sigh. "I'm right here."

"Yes," Hanae says. "That's the problem."

Jorin clears his throat. "We are drifting," he says. "The plan needs a structure."

"Anarchists needing structure," Lizi mutters. "The world really is ending."

They argue for another ten minutes: columns of scribbled points on the table, arrows connecting "pirates?" to "mass strike?" to "blow up their latrines instead?". Lizi contributes three different ideas involving explosives and one involving goats. Hanae vetoes the goats.

"Fine," Lizi sulks. "No goats. Authoritarians."

In the end they have something like this: Hanae's people will prepare a leaflet storm accusing the Baekjeon-kai of hoarding food and smuggling gold off-island; Yotaka will sketch the palace interior from memory, marking the crane panel, the nursery passage, the guard rotations as best he remembers. Lizi will not go alone to the harbor; she will take two allies who know the sewer grates, and she will absolutely, under no circumstance, get shot again.

She agrees to all of this, lying smoothly and transparently.

"We move in three days," Hanae says, capping her ink. "If we haven't reached Shan Xi by then, we go without her. The Baekjeon-kai are tightening curfew every night. We don't get more time."

Lizi pushes away from the table, stretching carefully. The bandage pulls. She makes a face.

Yotaka notices. "You should rest," he says. "I'll help."

"Absolutely not," Lizi says, "it is way past your bedtime already!"

Hanae watches them, something small and fierce tightening under her ribs. This is dangerous, she thinks. Not the plan. The feeling: of being almost not alone.

She is about to say something mocking and self-protective when the floorboard under her feet shivers.

It's subtle. Barely there. A tremor like a giant clearing its throat.

Then comes the sound.

Boots. Not the uneven shuffle of a patrol—Hanae has that rhythm learned down to the limp—but a heavier, more deliberate march. Dozens of boots. The sound echoes up through the beams, through the very bones of the building.

The room stills.

The tanner's daughter sets her bowl down very gently while Jorin swears softly.

Hanae is already moving. She crosses the room in three strides and flips up a hanging rug, revealing the narrow slit that serves as their alley window. Cold grey light slants in. She presses her cheek to the stone, peering out.

The alley below is filling like a trough.

Militia flood in from both ends, helmets lacquered black, Baekjeon-kai crest stark white on breastplates. They move with purpose, shields up, spears out, muskets slung ready.

"Company," Hanae says, voice flat.

"How many?" Jorin asks.

"Too many," she says. "Block both exits. Roof runners—now."

The safehouse erupts into controlled chaos. People grab bundles pre-packed for exactly this nightmare: leaflets to burn, codes to carry, the bare minimum of food and weapons. The old woman curses and begins unrolling the hidden ladder that leads to the back wall.

Lizi limps to the weapons rack and pulls down her knife, the curved blade glinting even in the dim. Her side complains; she ignores it.

"You," Hanae snaps, pointing at her. "Crawl into a hole and don't come out until the shouting stops."

"I thought anarchy was against giving orders," Lizi says, fastening her belt.

"Congratulations, you've discovered our hypocrisy," Hanae says.

Hanae rips a musket down from the wall and checks the priming. "He's not front line," she says. "He goes out with the second wave if we break. Out the back, through the dye-ditch, north to the backup den. That was the plan."

"That was the plan if a patrol stumbled on us," Lizi says. "This is…"

As if to underline the point, a horn blows outside. Not the harsh bark of a curfew call, but a long, rising note that Hamane has only heard at executions and parades.

Her mouth goes dry.

"Positions!" she snaps. "Jorin, Mapo, with me on the main floor. Nets on the stairwell. Smoke bombs in the kitchen. If they're here in this number, they won't risk burning the building yet. They want whoever's inside."

"The harmonist," the clerk says quietly.

"Good," Hanae says. "They get me. They don't get him."

She jerks her chin at Yotaka. He hesitates, then nods once, sharply.

Lizi steps in front of the prince, putting herself between him and the door without thinking about it. "If you die now," she mutters, "I am going to be very annoyed."

"If I die now," Yotaka says, "we can all agree the monarchy has finally accomplished something useful."

Lizi stares at him.

"Okay," she says. "We're adding gallows humor to your training. Very advanced."

The first blow hits the front door.

The wood shudders, dust trickling from the frame. Someone outside shouts an order; the accent is inner-city, clipped and cruel. A battering ram thumps again, again. Each impact sends a jolt through the floor.

Mapo lights a fuse with shaking hands. The little clay bombs in the stairwell begin to spit and smoke.

Hanae stands in the center of the room and breathes once, slowly. She feels every inch of the safehouse in that breath: the weight of the beams, the looseness of the back wall panel, the way sound travels in the stairwell. It calms her the way plucking a string used to.

"Remember," she tells them, voice level. "They are many. We are clever. They have orders. We have reasons. We make them pay for every step until we can't. Then we vanish."

"You always have such comforting speeches," Lizi says.

"I save the inspirational ones for when we're not already screwed," Hanae replies.

The door explodes inward in a rain of splinters.

Militia surge through the gap—too quickly, too confidently. The first three hit the hidden tripwire and vanish down the short drop to the cellar with a chorus of surprised yells and a crash of armor. Smoke bombs burst at their feet, filling the lower half of the room with a choking, acrid fog.

"Welcome to the reading room," Jorin snarls, dropping a weighted net from the balcony. It slams down over the second rank of militia, tangling spears and limbs. Mapo's clay bombs hit the net a moment later, bursting in flares of nasty white light. Men scream, clawing at blinded eyes.

Lizi darts in the space between them, low and fast, knife a quick, vicious punctuation. She cuts tendons wherever they present themselves: backs of knees, wrists, the vulnerable inside of elbows. Her side burns with every twist. She grins into it, teeth bared.

Hanae moves with a spear taken from the rack. The spear's butt cracks a jaw; the hook yanks a shield down so Jorin can smash its owner in the nose with a chair.

For a moment—a long, diamond moment—it feels like they might actually hold.

Then the militia adapt.

Those behind drag the netted men out of the way, stepping over their screaming comrades without looking down. A sergeant in a black-lacquer helm barks a sharp order. The next rank comes in with shields locked tight, muskets braced over the rim. They fire in controlled bursts into the smoky gloom: not at targets they can see, but at places those targets must be.

Plaster explodes from the wall near Lizi's head. A bullet slams into the table's edge, gouging a splintered crater.

"Upstairs!" Hanae shouts. "Fall back!"

They retreat in unlovely, stumbling coordination, covering each other, dragging the injured. Mapo takes a ball in the leg and goes down with a howl; Hanae hauls him up with a grunt and half-throws him at the stairs. Lizi grabs Yotaka's sleeve and yanks him toward the back passage.

They spill onto the upper landing. Smoke follows like a living thing, coiling around banister posts.

"That's more militia than this quarter's supposed to have," Jorin gasps, leaning against the wall, sweat streaking the soot on his face. "They bring their cousins to a street fight?"

Hanae's answer is cut off by a new sound.

Boots again. But not the trampling chaos of men forcing a house. This is slower. More deliberate. The measured rhythm of someone who expects the world to move out of the way.

It comes up the front steps. Into the shattered doorway. Across the blood-slick floor.

Silence spreads behind it. Even the militia seem to pull back, instinctively making space.

Hanae steps to the edge of the balcony and peers down through the thinning smoke.

The figure that enters the safehouse is not armored like the rest. No lacquered helmet. No clattering breastplate. She wears a long, dark coat over simple trousers, the Baekjeon-kai armband stark on her sleeve. A katana hangs at her hip, plain and lethal. Her hair is braided back tight, no ornament. Her face is calm.

Hanae has seen that face before, from the crowd below the execution scaffold. She has seen it on posters, in leaflets, in nightmares where the rope keeps swinging.

Baek Miju steps over a fallen militiaman without looking down. Her gaze sweeps the room once, sharp and assessing, and then lifts to the balcony.

Her eyes find Hanae's.

It feels like being pinned to a page.

Lizi, panting, follows Hanae's stare. Her hand tightens on her knife hilt.

Below, Miju's mouth curves—not into a smile, not really. More like the memory of one, weaponized.

"The harmonist," she says, voice carrying cold and clear through the ruined safehouse. "And the Little Prince. We've been looking for you."

She rests her hand, almost casually, on the katana's hilt.

"Shall we talk?"