11. RIVALS ONCE

Aworld without Crow.

But there's still Ren. How long do I have before fire and death claim our camp? I don't know, have no markers of time or events out in the wilderness between me and where the battle is fated, deep in the Marshlands. All I can do is ride, unceasing, unsleeping, two days passing before reality sets in:

I'm no longer a warrior. Crow's constitution is closer to Qilin's, with some exceptions. The addition of certain . . . human anatomy was the first inconvenience; every bump in the road set my crotch aflame. Now my inner thighs burn like molten metal, forging me to the saddle. I'd say it's muscle fatigue, but that's implying I have muscles. I cough—and panic at the taste of blood. Nothing to be scared of. It's the consumption. The ache in my chest? Consumption, and not because his voice won't vacate my head.

Some people never leave.

On the third night, I finally pry myself out of the saddle and settle in a bush, needled by the cold. Shivering is torture. Sleep ushers in nightmares of a burned, faceless rider following me through the forest.

I wake, half-frozen, to angry caws from a murder of crows.

I hurry back to the road, avoiding the hoofprinted paths. Best not to run into anyone riding solo in this form.

I'm seeing double by day four.

Ugh. How did Crow get anywhere before?

He wasn't steamed, for one.

Did I think that, or Dewdrop? The woods are lifeless when I look to them. Then why do I feel followed? The sensation haunts me, and after six sleepless nights and six paranoid days, I buckle: I take the fork in the road that's been trodden.

Soon the trees are thinning, giving way to vegetable plots. Geese flap in the green. Huts appear next. I dismount outside one, a brush gate encircling its attached stable. Maybe I'll rest here. Recover my soundness of mind. A rustle at my back spins me around, but it's just a farmer, walking up the dirt path. Two baskets swing from the pole laid across his shoulders. He stops in his tracks at the sight of me, and the baskets sway forward.

I spread my hands. "Good sir. Forgive the imposition, but may I spend the night in your stables?"

The farmer doesn't speak, his eyes wide at my armor.

Rat-livers.I should have taken it off. He can't see that I'm on the verge of collapse. He just sees a soldier.

"I'm a courier, bound for Taohui." Motion tugs my gaze to the hut. A child stands in the now-opened doorway, holding a broom—no, a spear, its blade curved like a crescent. My throat tightens.

It's a miniature model of Cloud's glaive, Blue Serpent.

"Bà!" cries the child, and the farmer's face convulses. He shoos her, and my throat closes completely. I won't hurt you. But words are flimsy. Allegiances are stronger. What are the farmer's? If I guess wrong, he'll snatch up his child and run.

I'll just have to be right, then. "I serve Ren."

"Xin Ren?"

"Yes."

The man's expression changes like night to day; he kneels before I can stop him.

"Susu, come here! Kneel," the farmer instructs the child after she runs over, ignoring my protests. "Thank the servant of our great Xin's heavens-sent protector."

Father and daughter pay their reverences as if I were Lotus, or Cloud, or Ren herself. They have no idea who I really am, or what I've done.

I redouble my efforts to help them up.

"Our home is shabby and humble," the farmer says, finally getting to his feet. "But it'd be our greatest honor to shelter one of Xin Ren's people."

"The stables are a perfectly fine shelter."

I insist until the farmer relents. "Wait here," he says, then goes into his hut.

He returns with wine, rice cakes, and dried sausages.

Stomach gurgling, I glance to the child. Food is the first casualty in any war, and though Ren wouldn't requisition civilian grain lightly, our troops must eat. Feed them first, I'd have advised as Zephyr.

"I have food," I lie to the farmer, and then, knowing he won't rest until I've accepted something, I take the wine and ask for a blanket.

In the stables, I pack the wine jugs up with my armor and rub down my horse. Night falls. I huddle in the hay, clinging to my blanket. I'm cold, so cold. This body can't seem to shake the chill. My teeth chatter—and clamp down at the creak of the stable doors.

In the moonlit gap stands a ghostly form.

However Crow's eyesight was before, the steaming certainly hasn't helped it, and it's not until the child has walked closer, spear in her grip, that my racing heart slows. I've become as untrusting as Miasma.

The child stops three strides away from me, neither of us speaking for a silent second.

"Are you really Ren's?"

"I am."

"You know General Cloud?"

I know her, all right. Fought with her. Died for her. "Yes, we're . . ." friends. But I'm not sure Cloud would agree. "We've trained together."

"I want to be Cloud," says the child, jabbing her spear. "Yah!" She leaps onto a haybale. "I want to kill enemies." Her eyes flash, and for a heartbeat, I recall Ku at that same age, crouched by the clay soldiers on the straw mat of a street vendor.

I want to know war, says my recall-Ku, and the words feel new. Am I misremembering? Or did I disregard them?

It's not important. I banish the memory and gesture the child closer.

"You need one more thing if you're to be Cloud." I tie my blanket around her shoulders; it puffs behind her as she jumps down and stabs a haybale. "Go now, before your father finds you gone."

Alone again, I burrow into the hay at my back. Who am I? I came here to sleep, not to encourage foolish dreams of becoming a warrior. In fact, after I succeed in helping Ren to the North, uniting the three kingdoms in the process, the child should know more than war. She can be anything she desires. That's the future. I just won't get to see it, a choice I don't regret.

No regrets . . .

My eyes fall shut, darkness like night behind my lids. Shine of stars. Rush of water.

Wind streams by as I face the river, standing at the stern.

Black-robed arms fall on either side of me like the chains of a drawbridge, lowered.

"Is this how you plan on soothing your conscience?" His breath brushes my ear—my chest against his as I spin. "By playing nice with children?"

I shove him backward. "Go find someone else to bother."

"There's no one else I want." He glances at the stars, perfunctory, then back to me. "What do you see in the cosmos?" he asks, and his gaze is an all-consuming inferno. His voice is the opposite: light and graceful.

I silenced it forever.

I did, didn't I?I pinch my wrist. Painless. A dream. In the waking world, there is no Crow. I effectively killed him, and now I miss him. Does that make me a despicable person? Let me be despicable, then. Because none of this is real, I can be weak. I can toe the lake of regret without stepping in.

Yes, let me be despicable for a moment.

"I see many things in the cosmos," I answer Crow. "An arrow that you will take for me." My voice falls, barely louder than the river. "Your end."

"At your hands," Crow says, and my heart skips a beat. A guess, or does he know? Would he forgive me, if I told him my reasons are his? To ensure our lordess wins? I doubt it.

I'm just a monster for hoping so. "I'm sorry."

My breath catches as Crow closes in.

His fingers go under my chin.

"Don't be." His eyes are darker than the night, but I feel safe, falling through them. "I would have done the same."

I can't tell if my chin tilts up because of him, or by my own volition. His lips grace mine and—

I gasp against them.

I pull away, hand clapped over my neck. Blood spurts through my fingers nonetheless. Across from me, Crow holds a dagger, blade red like the slit on his neck.

His wound is a mirror image of mine.

I jerk awake. The dagger stays at my throat, its blade biting skin as I shrink back, into the haybales. Before me is a face at eye level. The dagger wielder's. A torch flames in her left hand. Two people stand behind her. Lotus and Cloud, I think for a groggy blink.

The reality couldn't be more different.

"What do we have here?" says the crouched bandit. "Another Marshlands refugee?"

Another.How many have they seen? Has Ren marched on Cicada already? Resting was a mistake. I should be on the road.

"Out of my way," I bark. "Or I'll peel your hide."

The bandits stare at me.

And snigger.

"I'd like to see you try," says their leader. "What are you, even?" Her gaze slides to my hands, inching to my broadbelt. My weapons—are gone. The bandit smiles. "Pretty bold for a refugee. An army deserter, then?" Her dagger presses closer. "Scared of death, Pretty One?"

No, but eager for yours—words that I bite off. I'm Crow, now. A strategist with consumption, facing not one but three bandits—if there aren't more outside. My attention expands. The stables are quiet. Horseless. The weapons of the two standing bandits are coated in blood. The farmer—his child—no, focus. How do I get out of this?

As I think, a draft wends through the stable doors. My answer. If I could just use it to bend the flame of the bandit's torch—if I could just burn her hand—

My connection snaps like a thread. I breathe harder, exhausted by even the failed effort, and the bandits laugh, mistaking it for fear. Maybe some of it is. I haven't felt this weak since I was an orphan, and I glare at the draft as it moves on without me, teasing at the bandit's hair. Her torch flame wisps—

Toward the hay behind my shoulder.

The bales ignite and I vault forward, past the bandit and the two others, rolling through the hay to smother my back, on fire. Then, to my feet. To the outside. The horses are tethered to the brush gate—the bandits' and mine. My relief swells, then drains.

The farmer lies face down past the gate.

The child is a few steps farther, spear broken.

No.I back away—in the wrong direction. Shouts, closing in. Forward. To the horses. I haul into the saddle just as a bandit reaches me, sword flashing up. Pain, at my hip—

I kick us into a gallop.

Hooves thunder in our wake. An arrow strikes an upcoming tree. I duck and urge the horse faster, to both our limits, until the trail behind me falls quiet.

The sky lightens.

My back burns as if it's still on fire. The rest of me is numb. Too numb. I can't feel my hip, soaked in blood. I pitch in the saddle—and off, crunching into the ground.

The horse trots on.

The heavens above me swirl, clouds hiding the sun.

Dead.They're all dead. Was it because of me? Did I lead the bandits to them?

So what if you did?says the voice in my head, the same reptilian voice that spoke in the steamer. Stop pretending to care about the peasants.

I'm not pretending, I think back at it.

Then care about the thousands who will die in Ren's war with Cicada.

She's right. I'm right, for the voice is mine. Keep riding, orders the strategist. I should listen to her. But I have no strength. Haven't for days. Breath by breath, I grow more numb and cold. Coherent thought becomes harder, and it takes me a while to form a blatantly obvious one:

I'm dying.Or rather, this body is dying. It's always been sickly, but now? Steamed? Burned? Cut by bandits?

It won't make it to Taohui.

So let go of it. Find another.

No. After all my troubles? Besides, I need Crow's identity to execute my stratagem. I can't let him go.

I won't.

Shivering, I reach within myself, going deeper than before—than ever—until I come upon something shrunken like a walnut. Past the shell, I sense my powers.

I manifest the walnut outside of myself and pry at it; the shell thickens, as if my powers don't want to be touched. But they're my powers; they will do my bidding. I slam the walnut back into my chest, where it bobs, and bring the brunt of my qì down on it.

A heartbeat.

My power blasts through me, obliterating my senses. Waves roar and dunes shift, west of the Westlands. A thousand voices sing. A sea of grass dances.

And then I can see through my own eyes again. Still on the ground, still cold, but my limbs feel stronger. I lift a hand, make a fist, then glance to the grass by the roadside and focus on a single blade. I try to bend it with the wind.

Nothing happens.

Above me, the heavens are silent. Within me, the walnut is gone—and my powers with it. Bringing this body back from the brink must have depleted me. A huff escapes me, disbelieving, then another huff verging on a laugh. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, Crow?"

"I'd like what?"

Ah. I must be dreaming again.

"To punish me even from the afterlife," I say, and shiver as a draft chills me.

"The afterlife, you say." The chill intensifies. "How odd. If this is the afterlife, I did not expect to see you here too."

He comes to lean over me, his face upside down.

I bite my cheek. The pain feels real. If this is real, then this Crow looking down at me can't be.

Real.

And he's not. As my vision clarifies, I see that he's not completely solid. More like half-transparent.

A ghost.Not quite. His body lives. An ejected spirit, then.

Whatever he is, he remains in this world.

He's not gone.

An emotion rushes through me, suspiciously close to joy, joy that I have no right to feeling. He was only gone because of me. And now my powers are gone because of him. Irritation staunches the joy even before Crow says, "No need to thank me, for saving you back there."

"Saving me?" What is he talking about?

"The bandits. The torch."

That was me. I bent the flame. Unless . . . well, my powers were weak. If it really was him . . .

"You set me on fire."

"You steamed me," Crow deadpans.

I try to sit up, struggling and failing.

Crow watches, impassive.

"I interrogated myself, up to my final moments. What, exactly, tipped off Miasma? Did I slip? How could Lotus figure out my ties to the South? Unless it wasn't her, but someone else. A strategist." He leans in, bringing the cold with him. "Or the heart of one in her."

Slowly, his eyes comb my face. "That last scene of our duet. You perceived my retreat. How would that be possible, if you weren't present at the original scene? No matter how I analyzed it, it didn't make sense. I thought I'd die without knowing.

"Then, after I thought I'd died, I saw you. One among the ghosts. You slipped right into my body and reanimated me." I finally manage to sit up and Crow says, "Tell me, Zephyr: Who else did you commandeer? The physician?"

I've always had to watch myself around Crow. Concealing my true abilities—and later, my identity—gave me an advantage. But now he's a spirit.

He can't hurt me.

"I did," I say before I can think better of it.

"You killed her."

"She would have died anyway. You said so yourself."

"So I did, as a strategist. We like to pretend we're certain of everything, don't we?"

"I don't pretend. I'm a god, Crow," I say, just to remind myself. "I know how this ends. All of this. Your Cicada wouldn't have united the three kingdoms."

Crow's smile is emotionless. "A god," he repeats, choosing to react to that and ignore the bit about Cicada. "I see your opinion of yourself hasn't changed, in the time we've been apart."

"I'm being serious."

"Prove it." Crow blinks, waiting. "You can't."

Bastard. Powers can be recovered—

After hundreds of years of recultivation.

So I'm temporarily powerless. That doesn't mean I'm not still a god. I'm in this body, after all.

"I know things about the spirit you can only guess at," I say to Crow. "Want to hear one? You're entirely dependent on me. Drift too far from this body, and you'll dissipate." I eye him. No reaction. He's already inferred as much. He must have been the presence I sensed in the woods, following out of sight but close by. "I'm right, and you know it."

"Say you are." Crow crouches by me. "Then my objective is simple: I'll just have to reclaim my body." He runs his fingers over my wound, and I gasp. I can feel him. Not in the flesh, but in spirit, his mortal qì to my divine. He digs his fingers in and—

A flash of images. Blood, in a handkerchief. A girl, embroidering a new, unsoiled one—

"In your sleep, you stayed lodged in my body," Crow murmurs, the vision fleeing as he lifts his hand. "But if you were to pass out . . ." His eyes rise to mine and I swallow, trying to hide how he's affected me. "Would your spirit leave?"

"Over your dead body."

"Just what are you going to do, Zephyr?" Crow asks, and my mind clears of his touch, the abrupt visions it caused, even the way blood seems to be flowing faster from my cut.

I'm going to the Marshlands, where Ren's battle of vengeance against the South is fated to unfold. I'm going there, and I'm going to Cicada as Crow.

I'm going to trick her into surrendering before the tide turns.

"I'm going back to Ren." The roads and rivers to Xin City and Taohui run concurrently for a stretch before they diverge east and west. Crow won't know truth from lie until I'm more than halfway to my destination.

If he believes the lie at all.I hold Crow's gaze. I wonder what my face looks like, as his. Because my insides are confused, but I've never seen Crow confused. He's never shown an emotion as imperfect as fear or anger or impatience.

He is the consummate strategist.

But so am I, and as I stare at the face of his spirit, at his slow, cold smile, I know it's a falsehood. We might have been rivals once, on opposite sides of a war, my lordess his enemy, and his lordess mine. Now that nuance is gone. Even if I weren't going to Cicada, I've stolen his body.

Even if our lordesses weren't, we would be enemies for eternity.