12. A SALTED EARTH

Enemies for eternity.

Ride the horse. Stay awake. Hold on to the pain, when my mind goes slippery. Crow can follow me all he wants, but I stand by what I said: I'd sooner let this body perish than return it.

"With all due respect, you look haggard," Crow comments as I lead my mount to drink from the marsh. Since passing Bikong, tree cover has been sparse, but there are no troops to see us. They must be at the conflict between Ren and Cicada, farther south. How close is Ren to losing? I'm six days to Taohui. Will I make it? Am I feverish? The wound above my hip has finally stopped bleeding, but I'm scared to examine it. What can I do if it's infected?

The wine.The jugs, still strung to my saddle, are cracked. I hurl them, then grind my teeth. Crow's seen me arrogant, angry, flustered even, but never this temperamental, and it's not because of his body's qì. It's me.

So this is what it feels like to be desperate.

I brace for a jibe from him.

What he says is worse. "When was the last time you slept through the night?"

He has the audacity to sound concerned.

I mount the horse.

He follows. "You need rest."

"What I need is for you to be quiet."

To my surprise, Crow obliges. I ride in silence. Sunset. A night of cold sweat. A dawn of vomiting by the roadside, where I come to a grim realization: This body might fail me again, and I won't have any power to save it.

One more time, I take the road out of the wilderness.

Yichen is no hamlet, but a proper city. A line winds past its gates, hundreds of people seeking entrance. Most are refugees, their clothing tattered and browned by the earth they've walked. I've just never seen this many south—another sure sign that the Ren-Cicada conflict has erupted, displacing Marshland civilians looking to escape the fighting.

One physician stop. That's all you're allowed.I tether my horse outside the first storefront I happen upon and limp in, repelling patrons and drawing the physician.

"Heavens, young soldier!" He ushers me into the back room. "What misfortune befell you?"

"Her," Crow says as I say, "Bandits."

The physician clucks, sitting me down. "As I feared. You're my tenth this week. Let me see—ah."

He finds the sword wound first, the burns second. He peels off my robes; I see white as the fabric detaches. Partway through being treated, I start to cough. The physician ties off the last bandage and takes my wrist to read my pulse, and I can't help but think back to the last physician I met, possessed, and condemned to death. My coughs thicken.

Sighing, the physician releases my wrist. "You're awfully cold, young soldier. Dare I say cold as a corpse." Probably because I almost became one. "You also have the sequelae of many diseases." So it would seem. "And your pulse is startingly weak. A full recovery is still possible for someone of your age, but not if you're riding day and night and hunting down bandits." As if I'd be so valiant. "You ought to be resting."

The physician leaves me to prepare my prescriptions, and he speaks, the bane of my existence.

"Told you so."

I pull my ruined robes back on.

"I could have warned you about the body you were getting into," Crow continues, "if you'd given me the chance before steaming me."

"Oh, I knew exactly what I was getting into," I mutter through my teeth. "We suffered two weeks on a junk together, don't you forget."

"How could I? I remember every day. The way you played the zither so angrily, unable to unlock its potential despite your skill. Who were you? I wondered. Now I know." Crow bends down, nose to mine. "A petty little murderer."

He's lucky I can't punch a spirit. "Petty?"

"Clearly you're not planning on curing me, despite your claims of being a god."

"Curing you? I—" revived you, you ingrate. I breathe in, extinguishing the words. "That's not how it works." I think. Dewdrop never said anything about healing preexisting diseases, and now I can't even heal normal injuries. "Even if I could cure you, I wouldn't."

"See?" says Crow, sounding pleased. "Petty."

"You—"

The physician returns with the medicine not a second too soon, because every second I spend squabbling with Crow is one too many. No more talking to him, I think, reaching for my broadbelt to pay. I—

Have no money on my person.

"It's on the house," says the physician as I frown, patting myself down. "I could tell you're an empire soldier by the make of your boots." My eyes shoot to them, unable to see the difference. "Serve our prime ministress well," the physician says, and I nod, forcing a smile.

Back at my horse, I almost discard the medicine. But that would be petty, and sighing, I string up the parcels beside my armor and mount—

My legs give out, sending me back first into the street.

"Watch it!" a merchant cries.

"Look, Māmā, look!" A child points.

"Ouch," says Crow, crouching at my side. "That's a first, even for me. I hope you're not blaming my body."

"Oh, I am." I get up, dusting off my knees.

"Riding was never one of your strong suits."

"I improved, thank you for asking." I step into the stirrup once more. Come on now.

My leg trembles.

Rest, said the physician.

Rest, said Crow.

Easy for them to say, ignorant to fate. I start to pull myself up—then still. What if I tumble off again? Lose consciousness? The stakes have changed. I have a spirit following me, waiting to reassume his body. I step down from the stirrup, take the reins.

Walking never hurt me.

So long as I don't faint.

With the horse, I go down the main boulevard. A young noble dashes by, laughing as her suitor pursues her. The war has yet to touch them, but it will. So long as the kingdoms are split, they will fight. Violence will breach these walls, just like it breached Shangu, Dasan, city after city living in peace until it was ripped from them. Most people are like grass, bending with the wind, helpless to change its direction.

Crow and I are different.

Crow was different.

"Where are we going?" he asks, and as our eyes meet, I have to remind myself that he's not really here. Not with me. His spirit's presence doesn't negate the fact that I ended him. Not his life, but it's almost worse that I didn't.

I could have spared him the indignity of being my puppet.

"I'm here to stay," Crow says, and I blink.

"What?"

"By how intensely you're staring, I assume you're trying to memorize my face before it vanishes. But I assure you I'm here to stay. Now, where are we going?"

The insolence. I tear my gaze away. "There's no we."

"Duly noted. Where are you going?"

Ignoring him, I stop by a shop to pawn off my armor, using half the money to buy a clean set of robes. The other half . . .

"Could it be that you're heeding my advice?" Crow asks as we slow before an inn.

The physician's, not yours.But I will not debate with an almost-ghost.

Inside, diners pack the inn. Servers run to and fro; maids carry bowls and linens up to the mezzanine, inset with doors to rooms. A host seats me near a table of scholars.

"Did you hear?" one scholar says as my order is taken. "Miasma killed her strategist."

Reflexively, I lower my face.

"Heard," another says. "Word is she steamed him."

It's promising these rumors have spread. Now, if only I could hear rumors of Miasma succumbing to the growth in her head . . .

"That's old news," another scholar says with a dismissive wave of his chopsticks. "Miasma kills advisors all the time. Even her oldest one wasn't safe in the end." Excellent; Plum's dead. "Want to know what I heard from my cousin, the—"

"—youngest court official, smartest of her village?" The table chuckles. "We know, Kunming. Cut to the chase."

Kunming grumbles, then leans in. "The strategist was a Southern spy. A friend of our young queen's."

Our.They're loyal to Cicada.

The table grows solemn, giving Crow a moment of silence.

"A pity," one finally says, "for her to lose a trusted advisor in the face of Xin Ren's advance."

So it's started.Just as I feared. A server comes by with my bowl of congee; I stir it as the scholars continue talking. Thousands of casualties. A salted-earth campaign. The Southern lines pushed back across the Marshlands. Cicada trying to negotiate for peace, and Ren refusing to grant an audience. My stomach knots with every word. That's not Ren. Not Ren.

But it matches what the fate scrolls said. And Ren—she did order the messenger's execution. What if that's the Ren Cicada is now dealing with? A grieving queen?

And if it is?I shovel congee into my mouth. You're going to Cicada precisely to reverse this fate. Now eat. I force down spoonful after spoonful until the bowl is clean, then pay for both the meal and a room. I take to the stairs with the key.

Crow drifts beside me. "Do you still think she deserves to rule over the three kingdoms?"

Ignore him.

"Xin Ren." His voice curves up like a hook. "A lordess who reddens rivers over a personal grievance."

Don't be baited—

"I wonder who made it personal," I growl.

"You know best there was no emotion attached. It was all strategy. The best course of action. You'd have killed the enemy strategist too, in my shoes." Crow floats ahead, looking down at me as I climb. "Evidently, considering that you are in my shoes."

A door on the mezzanine opens before I can reply, releasing two girls hand in hand.

Giggling, they pass through Crow.

A timely reminder. As a god, only I can see and hear him. The girls descend the steps, and I hiss, "Ren's so-called weakness is also her strength. She feels other people's pain as if it were hers. She's a better person than your lordess."

"Xiaochan listens to counsel."

"Xiaochan," I repeat. That must be Cicada's diminutive—or what Crow would have me believe it is. He's too careful to slip like that. It must be a trap.

"It's good that she does," I say, pretending to fall for it. I reach for the door and suddenly Crow is in front of me.

"You're traveling to her, not Ren."

So he finally connected the dots. "Move."

"Make me."

We each hold our ground.

"Ren or Cicada, what does it matter?" I reach through Crow and unlock the door. "I told you; I'm a god. I know how this ends." Except that's no longer true; anything is possible without Plum. But Crow needn't know. "Neither of our lordesses will win the three kingdoms, according to fate. I'm trying to stop it."

"And why is that?" asks Crow, voice like silk. "Why not let Ren collect her victory in the Marshlands first? From what I overheard, it's as good as hers."

For now."No victory is costless," I say, voice as neutral as I can make it even as the vision of the fire blazes through my mind again. "Only Miasma will emerge from Cicada and Ren's conflict unscathed." Another lie, to make my greater point: "We have a common enemy, as you and your lordess seem to have forgotten."

I step into the room, stilling as Crow says, "Stratagem TwentyFour." Whispered words, just behind my ear. "Conquer Guo Through Yu."

My mouth thins.

Guo and Yu were two ancient states, living in the shadow of Jin, a bigger state that sought to control both but couldn't so long as they were united. So Jin started attacking Guo and gifting the spoils to Yu, turning allies into foes. In its final invasion of Guo, Jin obtained safe passage through Yu—and conquered Yu on the victory march back.

In this era, most would compare Cicada and Ren to Guo and Yu, the two smaller states, and Miasma to Jin. But I never believed in repeating history. With the Rising Zephyr Objective, I intended for Ren to be Jin. Defeat Cicada too early, and we expose ourselves to Miasma's undivided attention. But once Miasma falls, we will turn on the South our undivided attention. This has been my plan all along. Crow, deducing it, must have advised Cicada to kill me.

But he can't stop me now. Therefore, there's nothing to say—even less considering that Miasma's own body will take care of her, shifting up my plan to remove Cicada.

I'll spare Crow that knowledge as a kindness.

Silent, I take stock of the room. A bed, a table, two stools. A washbasin rests on a rack by the window. In the water, I study my new face, grimace as my fingertips meet the still-puffy skin. I look up to Crow's stare.

The water doesn't reflect him.

"Well?" he asks softly. "Is it to your liking?"

Don't be provoked. I turn from the basin and go to the bed.

Crow trails me. "I looked better before I met you." I sit and unwrap the robes I purchased. "You aged me."

Ink-black fabric spills into my lap.

Crow's color. It was the cheapest. Now I realize how it seems—that I bought it to spite him.

"Could you look away?" As soon as I ask, I wish I'd ordered him instead.

"Really, Zephyr? It's my body."

Scowling, I start undressing. My forearms are thin, my wrists vined with veins. They delve blue into the soft crooks of my elbows. There's no softness at my chest. That's all bone and skin and not so different from what little I had to work with as Qilin.

"If anything," Crow says as I inspect myself, "it's my qīngbái being compromised."

He's almost certainly being facetious; I've done so much worse than invade his privacy. But all the rationalization in the world can't stop the stone from forming in my throat. "Then don't watch," I say, but the stone grows when I find the scar behind my shoulder, where Crow took that arrow for me, and even though I know he saved me just so that I could burn Miasma's navy, my next words are choked. "Go haunt someone else."

"I'd never be disloyal to you."

Jaw clenched, I finish dressing.

I lie down; Crow remains sitting.

"Qilin." My gaze startles to him. "You signed the letter off as Qilin," Crow muses, my old name almost sounding pretty when he says it. I should be uneasy with all the small talk he's attempting, but I'm too tired to tell him to stop. "Why?" he asks, and he's free to waste his breath.

I just shouldn't be wasting mine with him. "It was my name as an orphan."

"I know," Crow says, and so much is embedded in those two words—my history with Ku and Crow's knowledge of it—that I squirm. "But you always seemed like someone who would disavow her origins. To sign your birth name on the letter . . ." He pauses, contemplative. "You must have thought I was going to die without ever knowing it. You meant it as a parting gift. How close am I?"

He stares at me, and I stare back. Disavow her origins . . . What gives him the sense?

Am I so transparent?

"Not close at all," I say. "I never would have expected you to die so pathetically, doomed by one lost navy. I'm surprised it cost you a finger. Must have hurt."

"Wouldn't you know, seeing that you cut off a finger yourself ?" Damn Crow and his comebacks. "And you took that arrow at Bikong too. You now know, intimately, all the pains I've gone through to save you. Does it tenderize your heart?"

"No."

"Not even a little?"

"Why are you talking to me, Crow?"

"Why can't I? It seems that only you can hear me." I plug my ears, which has Crow smiling. "So you were an orphan. But you also claim to be a god. Why, may I ask, are you here and not enjoying life in the heavens?"

"None of your business."

"Perhaps you're here as punishment."

Sounds from downstairs float up to us.

"Not this time," I finally say. "I'm here by choice."

"Whatever on earth is the reason?" Crow asks, and his shock almost sounds genuine, before he says, "Aha: me."

I swipe at him and he leans back, out of my reach—mostly. Another flash—a girlanda boy, laughing in a sunlit courtyard—that fades as my hand passes through his spirit and Crow says, "All choices have a price. So what did you pay to return, Zephyr?" he asks, and his gentleness throws me more than the brief vision.

A front. A fa?ade.He's trying to get me to lower my guard. And I won't lie, a part of me is tempted. I want to tell him, while he cares to play at niceties.

By tomorrow, he might not.

"Nothing," I say, nipping the want. "I paid nothing."

"I don't believe you. In the legends, there's always a payment. For your sake, I just hope it wasn't too great."

A front.

"Because you see, I read your letter. I found it quite moving."

A fa?ade.

"The words you wrote almost had me believing that your heart beat faster for me."

Our gazes lock. Maybe they've been locked this entire time. It's a moment without a beginning. It could have no ending.

I look away first. "Then you were the fool."

"I was. Alas." A sigh of a word. "Why did the world have to make a you when there was already a me?" Crow laments, and my breath catches in my throat.

"You said something similar, once."

"Did I?"

"In a dream," I admit, and wait for Crow to ask me how many times I've dreamed of him. When the silence holds, I glance back over to see his eyes closed, his face canted toward the ceiling. We're pretending, like we did in his cabin. He'd lain on the bed and I'd sat, beside him.

If I die, he'd said, you can play my funeral dirge.

But back then, at least, the future was a question. He hadn't killed me, and I hadn't killed him.

Blood hadn't yet salted the earth between us.

Sleep. I need sleep, not this useless reminiscing. I close my eyes, feel myself sink. But at the surface of unawareness, I can't surrender myself over. Thoughts pull at my mind—does Miasma have nightmares because of the ghosts—can ghosts touch dreams like gods—is Crow a ghost, or a spirit—will my powers come back—

Through it all, I hear laughter.

I see that unfamiliar girl, embroidering handkerchiefs. She was also in the courtyard, and the boy—

Looked like Crow.

My eyelids part. Crow is still sitting on the bed, his back near my right hand. I slide it closer.

My fingertips touch his spirit.

—"Here you go. I made it for you." The girl holds out an embroidered handkerchief to a younger Crow—

—and covers his eyes with her hands, this memory in a sunlit courtyard. "Found you, Senge!"—

—"Shuaimei," Crow greets, rising from his desk as the girl enters, in her midteens now, like Crow, but she's taller than him, and at least a ch taller than Cicada. She wears a handsome suit of armor, a sword sheathed at her hip.

"What are you doing here?" Crow asks, coming around the desk to meet her.

"To see you off, silly." She straightens the front of his robes. "Be careful up North. Watch your step, and watch your health."

"I will," says Crow, before a cough consumes him.

"See? Your body knows better than to lie to me." She grins as Crow blushes. Then her grin gentles. "I won't be able to write to you. So I made these for you to remember me by." She draws out a bouquet of handkerchiefs from her breastplate. "If something happens to you, I'll never forgive you."

Crow starts to reply, and I become him. We want to say nothing will happen to us, but that would be disrespectful to Shuaimei, who's been fighting pirates on the Southern rivers and seas since she turned thirteen. She knows the cost of war. Spies die all the time.

Lordesses too. "And if something happens to me . . ." She lifts her eyes to ours, and breathing becomes tricky. "I know the little cicada still has a lot of growing to do, but promise me you'll serve her as faithfully as you serve me, Senge."

-ge. A suffix that, like the -mei in Shuaimei, describes an age difference between close relationships. And here, the relationship is close, indeed: The girl presses her lips to ours, and my hand jerks away from Crow's spirit.

The scene fades.

Back to the inn. To its quiet. I try to slow my breathing as my thoughts gallop.

Shuaimei.

I've never met her, but I know exactly who she is.

A person who looms larger in the memory of the Southlands than even Cicada, its current lordess.

My pulse gradually returns to its feeble current, but my mind remains abuzz. Beyond my lids, the light changes, darkness falling.

I rise with the dawn.

Crow watches as I go to the basin. I act as if nothing is amiss, combing out my hair. It's softer than Lotus's. I catch my fingers lingering and yank the locks hard to the top of my head. The ponytail tumbles down my back.

My reflection shows a strategist. This body isn't without its flaws, but it's the role I play best. Or did. Cloud and I got captured because I failed to think four moves ahead. I was distracted, trying to be a warrior and Ren's swornsister.

I won't make the same mistake again.

I leave the inn and saddle up. Sunrise breathes over the horizon. I chew on dried ginseng for strength, riding through the day and night, not stopping until the sky is lilac and we've come to the Mica's eastern offshoot. The river flows, the water clear.

It runs red in a future where Cicada defeats Ren.

As Crow, I will see that it never happens. I trot down the bank and knock on the doors of a fisher's shack. They open to a woman's face. "You are . . . ?"

This far South, the customs are Southern. The fisher's accent is Southern.

"I'm a courier for Cicada," I say, and no more words are needed.

Soon I'm on the water with two oars in my hands and a heart full of regret for declining the fisher's offer to row. Crow smiles at me as I struggle, and my mood darkens. His smile is falser than I could have ever guessed. Even before he became a spy for the South, his heart belonged to another.

But I shouldn't act differently. If Crow finds out I know, he'll wonder how.

"This amusing to you?" I force myself to grunt.

"Very."

I keep on. The wind casts ripples over the river. The day is overcast, clouds piled like mountains.

"Brings me back to our morning on the Siming," says Crow. "If you hadn't killed me, I'd be sitting opposite you. You wouldn't have to touch the oars—"

"Because you'd row?"

"As any Southern gentleman would," Crow says, and I think of that younger Crow, softer, unscarred. Able, still, to blush. "It's all in the technique. I could have taught you. A shame." He settles back in the boat, and for a breath, I mourn the boy he was. "As much as I like myself, I have to say it dampens the mood a bit to be gazing at my own face. I'd much rather it be yours."

"I shudder to think of your prior courtship experiences if you find any hint of this romantic."

The words slip out of me, but Crow grins, detecting nothing strange to them. "Prior experiences . . . I can't seem to remember any."

"Keep lying," I say lightly, even as my mouth sours. It shouldn't. I already knew the untruth of Crow's sweet nothings. He killed me, for heaven's sake. I steamed him. To be jealous now? Of someone dead? My sobriquet might as well be Pickled Peacock. We ended each other before any third person. Nothing has really changed.

Nothing.

It's just . . . Crow's words. All of them burn now, whether he intends for them to or not. "I told you before," he says, "I like ruinous things. And you were the death of me. So, you win. You're all I can think of."

I may be ruinous, but not like Shuaimei. Losing her must have destroyed Crow. She's the reason why Crow's loyalty to Cicada is unshakable, why Crow will hate me more—if that's even possible—should harm befall her or the Southlands. It's a reckoning I can't avoid.

So bring it.

An hour later, a helmet bobs by in the water. A broken war flag drifts past next, camp of origin undiscernible.

A l or so down, bodies appear, strewn in the shallows.

I stop the boat on the east bank of the river—the bank closer to the South. Crow says nothing as I step out.

I walk. And walk. The plain turns to mud, and the mud tells a story: Camps, once standing, have been routed by attacks. Repeatedly, Cicada's troops have been pushed back. There is not a Southern soldier in sight for many l , and by the time I'm finally stopped, I'm far too close to the Southlands encampment.

"Halt!" The soldiers I face are more bandaged than armored. Barely a threat. I'm more focused on what's over their heads. Taohui. My knees weaken as I behold the forted city nestled in the misty foothills of the Diyu Mountains.

I've made it.

I'm not too late to save Ren.

"Declare yourself !" demand the soldiers, and I sigh.

"Crow." This is where they bow and welcome back their strategist, immediately. Or not. I guess their defeats are weighing on—

They encircle me, spears pointed.

"Intruder. You're a spy from Ren."

What nonsense is this? "Why don't they know you?" I snap at Crow.

"Who are you talking to?" bark the soldiers.

Rat-livers."No one."

"Zephyr, making an oversight?" Crow tsks. "I never thought I'd live to see the day."

You didn't, unless your definition of "live" extends to being a spirit.

"I've been planted deep in the North for over three years," Crow continues. "No one here has seen my face. But if you knew the code word . . ."

He trails off, his tone almost suggestive.

"Bastard."

"What did you say?" The soldiers, again.

"Nothing." In my head, I throw every profanity I know at Crow. Code word. He'd never tell me. His spirit might hold a helpful memory, but touching it now would be too suspicious, and admittedly, I don't want to.

Crow's past has distracted me enough.

"Take me to Cicada," I tell the soldiers. "Now. If you harm me, she'll chain you in the lake like her Fen pirate."

There. I know something only a Southlander would. They'll think twice before—

—binding me.

Crow laughs quietly.

"You'll regret this," I hiss as I'm hauled to the camp. "You don't know who I—"

A soldier moves in with a gag.

Ten hells.My nose is pinched when my mouth won't open, and I'm just about out of breath when I hear a voice.

"Senge?"

It's her. My lifesaver. The guards block my view of her, but I know her voice. Apparently, I also know her diminutive. Xiaochan, Crow let slip.

Little cicada.

But I trust the boy I saw more than the spirit staring at me now, waiting for me to speak. And speak I do. Two syllables. Not Shuaimei, for that would be wrong too. The suffix -mei—younger girl—can stay, but shuai means "general."

It also means "cricket."

I change it to chan, for cicada. "Hello, Chanmei."