13. EMPTY FORT

Chanmei.

The first time I ever visited Crow in the capital, I saw him murmur a name in his sleep. Too quick for me to decipher, but even then, I knew it wasn't my name. I will never haunt him like Shuaimei. Cricket. Crow's first lordess and older sister to Cicada, his lordess of the present, whose diminutive must be Chanmei by induction.

"Hands off him!" Cicada shouts, and the soldiers release me. I face her as she descends from the litter.

She reaches me in five strides. "You're alive. You're alive. You're alive—"

Smack.My head whips to the side, my right cheek on fire.

"How dare you scare me like that!" Cicada lowers her hand and I blink, stunned speechless, as Crow's gaze flames in the corner of my watering vision. Being slapped is apparently a better fortune than I deserve; he yearned for me to say Xiaochan and blow my cover. Well, lesson learned. Even as a spirit, he will do his utmost to defeat me.

Indeed, Crow, the two of us can't coexist in this world.

And we don't. Crow can glare at me to his heart's content, but only I can say "Gentler, please" to Cicada with a wince. "I really was steamed."

"Thanks to who, I wonder," Crow says, voice dark.

"I don't care if you were steamed or roasted," Cicada snaps at me. "For two weeks, I thought you were dead. Two weeks. Couldn't you have ridden faster?" Before I can reply, her hand rises again and my eyes flinch shut.

The second slap doesn't come.

"You're bleeding." I open my eyes to see Cicada frowning at my waist. I look down myself, surprised to feel a wetness in the black fabric. "And your face is ice-cold. Summon the phy—"

"Wound's dressed," I interrupt. "I saw a physician on the road here." I save the details of how I'm dying from a dozen other ailments. I'm sure Cicada knows, as the childhood friend Crow once spoke of—or was that Cricket? Focus. Cicada is oblivious to Crow's spirit; whatever they had was no sworn siblinghood like Cloud's, Ren's, and Lotus's. I am Cicada's strategist before I am anything else, and as a strategist I now say, "There's no time, Chanmei. I can wait, but the war won't."

Cicada's demeanor instantly shifts. "You're right. Come."

She leads me through the Southlands camp, and as we walk, I remember who she is: an actor who's had to put on many faces to survive in a court that worshipped her sister. Would it hurt her to know Crow did too? Or does she already know?

Focus.

We enter the command tent. "Advisors," Cicada says, "look who's returned."

Blank stares. I'm wondering if it's my hair, still in its high ponytail, when an old advisor blanches.

"G-ghost!"

My gaze jerks to Crow. He smiles, and a vein in my temple twitches. Of course they're not referring to him.

They're referring to me, the spy Miasma allegedly killed.

"I'm very much alive," I say to the advisors, who flinch. The ghost speaks. Then, slowly, questions start to bubble. How did Miasma find out? What ordeals did I undergo, and how do I live to tell them?

"He must have turned," the old advisor says. "He's been sent back as their spy, in exchange for his life."

"Say one more word and I'll take your life to pay for everything he's suffered," Cicada snaps. She faces the rest. "Crow is the reason Miasma hasn't exterminated us yet, or have you all forgotten that?"

"Miasma isn't the one at our doorstep," someone argues. "Ren is."

"Who we could still be allied with," another mutters, "instead of Miasma—an ‘ally' who doesn't even reply to us in a time of need. It's as if she thinks we sent spies!"

"Well, we did," mutters another advisor.

"So? Did she have proof ? Did she?" the advisor asks, gaze wheeling to me.

"No," I say, because it's true. Crow never confessed. Any evidence was circumstantial. The least I can do is acknowledge this feat even if it goes unappreciated. The advisors resume their bickering, and Cicada's hands fist. These same men pleaded with her to swear fealty to Miasma when I came to her court as a Northern delegate.

Spineless bunch. "We can salvage the situation," I speak over them. "I'm here to tell you how."

I stride to the hanging map; the tanned hide is poxed with Ren's encampments, denoted by red flags. The war is but a week old, and Ren has already regained all of the Marshlands, backing Cicada into Taohui. Soon, she'll have nowhere to retreat but across the Diyu Mountains, into the Southlands, and who's to say Ren won't invade that too? To the advisors in this tent, the war is all but lost.

But I've seen the fates, the fires, the loss that's converted to a win. And now I see how.

Ren's fatal weakness lies in the layout of her camps. Only I discern it.

I, and Crow.

"No." It leaves him as a whisper, laced with horror. He knows exactly what I'm about to do: Steal the victory that Cicada doesn't even realize is in her jaws.

"At this hour," I say to everyone in the tent, "we need to remember who the real enemy is."

"Don't listen to her," Crow says to Cicada. "This fight is not over. Ren's camps—"

"We need to make peace with Xin Ren," I say, not bothering to raise my voice over Crow's. "More than that, we need to rebuild trust. Restore the alliance. Even if we could win against Ren, our battered army will have to face fresh empire troops."

As I speak, Cicada paces to the throne-like chair set before the map. She sits, tapping her fingers on the arm.

"Ren," she seethes. "Who would have known that she'd be capable of such bloodshed?"

"It's to be expected," I say, "given her swornsister's death."

"She should blame Miasma for it!" Cicada explodes, then takes a deep breath, reining in her emotions. "We've already tried suing for peace. November crossed enemy lines this morning with our latest bid."

For a second, I can't speak. "What did you send her with?"

"A wooden replica of General Lotus's body," chimes in an advisor.

Spineless and good-for-nothing.

"I heard Miasma only sent Ren the head," Cicada explains, seeing my expression. "I'd want my own swornsister interred whole."

If that were your swornsister, you wouldn't want her in the ground at all.

But Crow wouldn't say those words, and Cicada sighs when I don't reply. "We'll wait to hear her report when she returns."

"If she returns," mutters an advisor. "Her sister was Ren's strategist."

"We don't speak of that in this court," Cicada snaps.

"It seems relevant. What if she defects?"

Toad.Ku and I have our history, but I won't stand for strangers slandering her. Would Crow? It's too early to know. Don't risk it. I hold my tongue as Cicada rises.

"I'll only say this once." Her gaze falls steely on the advisor. "I trust November with my life." She looks to the others. "She would never surrender to Ren, but the next person to insinuate as much can, because I won't have them in my camp."

Her conviction is as deep as a Northern winter, and grudgingly, I commend Cicada as her advisors shiver, their detractions frozen within their lips. A part of me will always be bitter that she's replaced me as Ku's protector, but wasn't I a replacement too? A sound comes from outside the tent, and Cicada's gaze lifts. "That must be her."

Before I can prepare myself, Ku is striding in. She stops, stares at me, and I stare at her. My sister—or so I thought for eight years. What if she can also see Crow's spirit like she saw Qilin's? "Is it safe?" Ku asks, and I don't know how to answer.

"It's safe," Cicada says.

Ku rushes for me, body rocking into mine. She hugs me tight, and my mind empties. My arms—my hands—what do I do with them?

Just follow Ku's lead.Clearly, she loves Crow. And I am Crow. My arms go around her, my mouth opens. I—

I don't know what to call her either.

I grow aware of Crow's cold stare. He won't give up Ku's pet name now, not when I just told his lordess to surrender when they should fight on. But silence won't do. My arms tighten around Ku. "Look who's gotten tall."

I hope my voice is steadier than my heart.

"She's been asking about her mentor every day," says Cicada, a smile in her voice. "Haven't you, Xiaoqiu?"

Xiaoqiu.Little autumn. Autumn for November, Ku's sobriquet. Crow was Ku's mentor.

I internalize one fact after another.

"Enough with this," an advisor breaks in. "What did Xin Ren say?"

"No truce." Ku lets go of me, facing the men. "Xin Ren said she spared me on account of her old strategist. A legion under Sikou Hai was marching toward us when I left."

The advisors moan, but I'm relieved, so relieved that Ku's refusal to say my name hardly stings. As long as a glimmer of the Ren I know still lives, I'll lead her back to herself.

"So we have our answer," says an advisor, patting at his brow with a handkerchief. "We must retreat."

The others murmur in consensus.

Cicada's eyes flash. "And cede Taohui too?"

"There's no other option!"

I won't gloat. I won't. It takes a seasoned strategist to see that all is not lost. Ku isn't there yet, and I dispatched the person who is.

"I have a plan," I say as the temperature rises in the tent, but the advisors only shake their heads.

"It's too late to do battle, strategist. Xin Ren's almost upon us and we have nothing but a city of civilians at our backs."

"I have a plan," I repeat, "to make Ren lay down her arms without spilling a drop of blood."

Silence.

Smug, Cicada looks to her council. "Don't act so shocked. No ordinary person could have fooled Miasma for so long."

Would have been longer, had I not involved myself.

"Tell us what to do, Senge," Cicada says, and all eyes are on me, but I only feel Crow's. They bore into me as I lure his lordess away from a war she would have won.

"There's nothing for you to do. I'll deal with Ren myself."

"With what?" demands an advisor. "With our wounded soldiers?"

"No. With a zither, and just a zither."

As servants set up the instrument atop the fort's walls, I glance to Crow. Only he was present when Cicada pulled me aside before I could cross the short l between us and Taohui.

She showed me a letter from Miasma.

Ah! The terrors of Charity Ren! I'm sorry to hear she's giving you so much trouble. One would think she'd be easy to deal with, now that I've done you the favor ofkilling her swornsister. But not every army is equipped to squash a fly, no?

Unfortunately, the situation at the capitalis fraught, withrebels and spies afoot. Famine persists and I have no grain to spare either. You'll have to understand, then, why I'm unable to come to your aid. I shall wish nightly instead for your swift and decisive victory over our shared foe.

Your Prime Ministress, Miasma

"I've had to keep this from every white-head in my court," Cicada had said under her breath. "The mockery! The disrespect! And this was before I received reports of what she'd done to you!"

I'd nodded along, focused on the date. Fate had said Miasma would fall not long after the physician. Now it'd been two weeks. Was she going to die or not? Then there was the matter of Cicada. I'd planned on removing her after saving Ren. Was this the moment? We were alone in the tent. I had no weapons, but I had my hands. But kill Cicada, and her advisors would take over. They'd be harder to control. Best to have Cicada's help in defeating Miasma, as I'd conceived in the Rising Zephyr Objective.

"She can keep her troops," I'd said to Cicada, voice calm, as if I hadn't just considered her murder. "And she can keep this letter. Does the camp have a pigeon to spare?"

While the bird was being procured, I'd drawn a diagram on the back of Miasma's letter, labeling it as Ren's camps. Among the empire's many advisors, there had to be one theory-literate enough to spot the golden opportunity and urge Miasma not to sit and wait, as she had in Dasan, but to attack. To drive her troops southward, into the Marshlands, and take advantage of our divided front.

By then, we'll be united as one.

Crow had watched while I'd sent the letter. He knew exactly what I was doing: Stratagem Fifteen, Luring the Tiger Out of Its Lair, all the better so that we could defeat it. We'd defeat Miasma, then we'd turn on Cicada as he'd predicted.

He doesn't need to speak now for me to know how it feels to be unseen, unheard, unheeded.

I wait for the servants to leave, wait until it's just me and Crow, alone on the ramparts.

I go to stand beside him.

So, Miasma.I should ask him about her even if he refuses to answer. Hells, I could even ask about Xin Bao, useless as she is.

It'd still be more useful than what actually comes out of my mouth: "Like I said, Cicada wasn't fated to win."

"Don't, Zephyr." Crow leans his crossed elbows on the battlements, gaze forward. "Has anyone told you that you're very bad at comforting people?"

"I'm only stating the facts."

"You must really take me for a fool if you think I can still trust a single word of yours."

I can't trust your words either.My mind flashes to Cricket, and I sound alarmingly mopey when I mutter, "It's the truth."

Control your emotions.

"How's this for a truth?" Finally, Crow looks at me, his attention bruising. "Ren would have died first. The incoming battle would have been won by us, if not for your interference."

There's nothing to refute. It's all true. I should be proud it is, but under the heat of Crow's gaze, my pride shrivels. "I'm just looking out for my lordess, same as you."

"How can I look out for Cicada, Zephyr? How?" demands Crow, so forcefully that I almost step back. Almost. I won't be cowed by a spirit with no body, no form, no breath behind his words. He can't touch me. Can't physically hurt me.

Then why does his anguish scorch?

"You're still here," I offer, voice small.

"Yes." His is acid. "As a spirit. The playing field is a little unfair, wouldn't you say?"

"You didn't play fair either."

Crow blinks. A grin bitters his lips. "You can't still be wounded that I called the soldiers on you."

"I came to you as a strategist."

"No, Zephyr." He says my name like a punishment. "You came to me disguised as someone else. You knew my secrets when they should have died with you at Pumice Pass. Now you're here, in my body, speaking with my mouth. Let's talk about unfair odds, shall we?"

"So you're giving up?" I shouldn't be goading him on, but I can't seem to help it. "The strategist I respected wouldn't have settled for anything less than total victory."

"Where was that respect when you shut the steamer's lid?"

When I don't reply, Crow turns away, facing the battlements again.

See?chides the voice. That's what you get for straying from the objective. Who cares about his feelings? Ask about Miasma now—

"You may think you're a god incarnate, Zephyr, but in reality, you're just a cheat."

Cheat.He's figured out how I arrived at the diminutive Chanmei. He's going to accuse me of looking into his spirit, then tell me all the ways I'm not like Cricket, and I'll have to pretend not to care—no, not pretend. I don't care.

I don't.

But then Crow says, "You might have all those advisors believing that you're about to accomplish Empty Fort, but it's a legendary stratagem for one reason: No one living has successfully turned away an army from an empty fort. But you will, because you have a cheat. In fact, here it comes. Look."

Crow's eyes remain on the horizon, and at first, mine remain on him, his words cutting me long after he's gone silent.

Good. That's what I need—a constant reminder that nothing exists between us but hurt. I look to the horizon too. Smeared with mist, then dust. A growing haze.

Legions of troops ride out from it, led by a figure in black.

Sikou Hai.I identify him by his mask, a burst of gold covering half his face.

Just as I can see him from this distance, he can also see me—a lone figure atop the battlements, bare of soldiers and banners. Down below, the gates are wide open. A trick, he'll be thinking. Soldiers are inside, lying in ambush. Or—the fort is actually empty and it's as Crow said: a last resort that only exists in legends. Cataloged as a stratagem of desperation, Empty Fort precedes only Stratagem Thirty-Six:

Retreat When All Else Fails.

But it won't come to that. I'm here with my favorite weapon.

I touch the zither strings, aware of Crow's missing finger, but not worried. I've made music with more unfamiliar hands.

The first notes emerge, supple and resonant.

I play the song Sikou and I composed by the lake, when I was Lotus. We had no audience. Now twenty thousand troops listen, but only one person will understand the significance.

Sikou Hai. Your mind must be racing. The setup was enough to make him pause, but this song—it means something to him.

It'll compel him to approach, and him alone.

Sure enough, he pulls away from the ranks. I can only imagine the soldiers' reactions. A literati like him, riding out undefended? He's asking to be killed.

Little do they know that a strategist can stomach risk as well as any warrior.

Sikou Hai stops his horse in Taohui's shadow.

"Greetings!" he calls up to me, his voice carrying over the music. "We have not met, but I assume you're one of Cicada's strategists?"

"I will haunt you in this life and the next," Crow vows to me.

"Be my guest," I say under my breath, then call down to Sikou Hai, "I am. Won't you come up to talk?"

I can imagine my disciple's thought process. At this range, I could have already shot him. Whatever my intentions, it's not to kill him.

He dismounts and takes to the steps. I continue playing, the notes trilling as his head appears at the landing, then more of him. My fingers stop.

Don't stare.

"I do believe that's my cloak," Crow says.

I wish I could deny it, but he's right. The black cloak I saw from afar is made of feathers, closer up.

Why is Sikou Hai wearing it?

"You steal everything, don't you?" Crow goes on.

"You—"left that behind for me, I'll remind you. But I can't reply, because Sikou Hai is here. He clears the last of the steps, and what he's wearing becomes the least of my concerns.

"Where did you learn that song?" he asks me, and I'd planned on saying From you. Don't you recognize your mentor? But as the wind rises, I chill. The last time, I told them who I was. Sikou Hai. Tourmaline. Cloud. I told them everything, and look at the result. Sikou Hai should have dissuaded Ren from this campaign. Did he try and fail? Or did he learn nothing from my mentorship, short as it was, and let his queen do as she pleases?

"I don't believe the song is important," I finally say. To know my identity, he must earn it.

Sikou Hai frowns. "Actually—"

"You've brought twenty thousand troops before the city walls. Do you aim to defeat us?"

"If there's an army to defeat."

I hold Sikou Hai's gaze; his is steady.

"He's not bad," says Crow.

As if I'd mentor just anyone.

"You're right," I say to Sikou Hai. "We have no forces behind us. The city is for your taking. But do you want it?"

"Your meaning?"

"Tell me what you truly think of Xin Ren's campaign against our queen, and I'll tell you how I know the song."

I've put Sikou Hai in a bind. To speak ill of his lordess in front of me, the enemy, is to betray Ren. He won't do that. But a wise strategist knows when to walk the line.

"We should still be allies," he finally answers.

Five words. Not outright treason, but as close as I need it to be.

"I picked my disciple well," I say, rising from my zither. "Miasma tried to kill me. So did Crow, this body's previous owner. Pity for him, I killed him first."

"Crow. Cicada's spy." I nod, and Sikou Hai steps toward me. "You tortured the song out of Zephyr."

"What? No!" I say while Crow sniffs, as if torture is beneath him. The hypocrite. He'd have used any means to crack the mystery of Lotus, had Miasma spared me. "I'm Zeph—put away that knife, you fool!"

Sikou Hai advances another step, blade in his hand.

"Listen—" I back up. "Listen: This is a lost battle. Ren's camp formations are atrocious—covering an area too large to be properly defensible, and packed too close together. You're lucky no one from the South has realized it yet, but once they do, they'll attack the way that I once attacked Miasma—with fire. They'll be aided by the westward wind, set to move in tomorrow." And I'll be powerless to avert it. "Ren's loss of the Marshlands will be final."

As will the loss of her life.

A shadow of a bird wings over us. My eyes stay on Sikou Hai, his person unmoving—

His eyes suddenly glassy.

Heavens spare me.

"Rising Zephyr—" He steps toward me and I back up more.

"Don't." Being cried on is one indignity I refuse to suffer. "I'm alive, so treat me that way."

"I—I'm sorry." Sikou Hai swipes at his eyes. "It's just—we saw the head and Ren—she's fine!—but she wouldn't eat. And Tourmaline—"

"What happened to Tourmaline?"

"She's fine too," Sikou Hai says, quick as my tone is sharp. I stare him down. "When you didn't return or, well, reappear as someone else, I suspect she thought she could recall your soul with another body as a host."

Another body as a host.

"Her own," I hear myself say.

"Cloud stopped her."

Tourmaline.The steadiest of us, driven to such ends because she knew I was Zephyr. And Ren—on this rampage because she didn't know. To the very end, I was Lotus to her. Should I have chosen differently? Would that have led to less suffering?

Stop. They're all alive. That's what matters.Sikou Hai is relying on me, and Crow is watching me.

I can't show weakness in front of them.

"Name my sobriquets," I order my disciple.

"P-pardon?"

"Name them."

"R-rising Zephyr." Sikou Hai's voice stabilizes. "Fate Changer. The Dragon's Shadow. Tactician of Thistlegate."

"One more: God Among Strategists." Sikou Hai rapidly nods. "And as a god, I've returned. I'm back here, today, to end this war." I take my disciple by the elbow. "Together, you and I will bring Ren into Taohui to meet with Cicada."

"She won't come. Not for a peace talk."

I can feel Crow's eyes on me, judging me for my choice of lordess. But Ren spared Ku.

Ren will listen.

"I brought you up here, didn't I?" I walk Sikou Hai down the battlement stairs. "Trust me that I can bring Ren in."

"And then?" asks Sikou Hai. "How will we convince her?"

"Leave it to me."