15. SOUTHBOUND

If only they knew you.

If only Ren and Cloud really did. Then I'd tell Ren not to go south.

Tell her to chase down Cloud.

Instead, I have to play dead as Ren says, "Let me have a word with Cicada." I'd like to as well. What is she thinking, suggesting a detour? Crow would know, but my mind is Zephyr's. So is my heart, lurching when I hear Ren's voice again, over the din of the departing soldiers.

"His name was Crow, wasn't it?"

Cicada waits, for the last boot thuds to fade, for the hall to empty of everyone but Ren and Tourmaline, who I heard insisting on staying. "Yes," she then says.

The answer echoes through the quiet.

He must have meant a lot to you.I sense the words on the tip of Ren's tongue. It's a strength and a flaw, her ability to empathize with anyone.

"I know we both still have our doubts," she settles on. "Our losses too, from the last time we joined forces. You'd like to formalize the alliance. I understand why. But we can formalize it here in this hall." Yes. Thank heavens Ren has the sense. "As for the Marshlands, there's no need to cede them. They were once the South's, and so to the South they should return." Ren says it as eloquently as I always knew she would, had I reminded her of Cicada's outstanding request. "After our war against Miasma is won, I will oversee their transfer to you. You have my word."

And before the war is won, I will ensure that Ren's troops still have access to it, now that I'm Crow. It's perfect, I think, as Cicada's voice sounds.

"Unfortunately, I need more than your word."

Thump-thump.The heavy crash of armor.

What—

The coffin lid slides away to Cicada's face. "Are you okay?" she asks, helping me up.

I don't answer. Can't. Mind blank, I stare at Ren's and Tourmaline's bodies, heaped on the ground.

"I know, I know. I shouldn't have been so hasty. But we'll never get a chance like this again!" Cicada waves a hand excitedly, and I spy the tiny reed tube between her fingers. A dart shooter. Filled with needles, tipped in poison.

I suddenly feel poisoned as well.

Don't panic. Stay Cicada's strategist."The Marshlands—"

"Are most definitely ours now." Cicada's eyes gleam. "With Xin Ren as our hostage."

Hostage.Not dead. No relief fills me at the fact. "K—" Wrong. I cough. "November—she's with Xin Ren's people—"

"Precisely, so they won't think I have the nerve to capture their lordess. But they also won't hurt her, as they've already proved once." Cicada helps me out of the coffin. "Isn't it perfect? As far as her troops know, Ren agreed to come. And with a warrior like that for protection? What could possibly happen to her?"

With a slippered foot, she nudges Tourmaline, whose eyes are open. So are Ren's. They're immobile but conscious to witness the betrayal. "How long do you think it'll take for their troops to realize they didn't come with us willingly?" Cicada asks, and I taste bile.

Even if they realize it, Sikou Hai will assume everything is under control with me here as Crow.

"A while," I say, seeing no point to lying.

"Then let's go. Let's make it home before their armies come to their senses."

She clucks, and the two soldiers step forward to haul Tourmaline up. Cicada crouches by Ren and takes one of her arms. "Help, Senge!"

I should have killed her when I had the chance.

I should have wrung her neck.

But what can I do now?

I go to her as ordered and help her drag my lordess.

Shame on me, and shame on Crow for his choice in liege. Xiaochan listens to counsel? And I thought my lies were bold.

But try as I might, I can't sustain my anger at Crow. He promised Cricket he'd serve Cicada. What would I have done, if I'd reached Ren too late at Taohui and her dying wish was that I serve someone else? I don't know. I didn't reach Ren too late.

I succeeded—in making her Cicada's captive on this southbound boat.

Belowdecks, I relegate myself to the shadows while Cicada, lantern in hand, approaches the crate. Light falls over Ren in one hay-scattered corner. Tourmaline is in the other. Both are still slumped from the poison—refreshed as we'd crossed the Diyu Mountains—but it's wearing off. Tourmaline stirs, and Ren's eyes crack apart. She grasps at the bare hollow of her throat and Cicada says, "I believe you're looking for this."

She opens her hand; the pendant drops down, hung around her fingers.

Mine are crushed in my fists. I couldn't stop Cicada from taking the pendant or opening it, extracting from it a pearl of paper that she now unfolds.

"You really are a caricature of yourself, wearing this by your heart . . ." She holds up the sheet, fully spread. Free me from Miasma, it says, the words finished off with Xin Bao's seal.

"Is this why you're so committed?" Cicada asks Ren. "Because you're following an imperial edict?"

Silence.

Cicada refolds the decree and places it back into the pendant. "I'm told you only met your empress once." She clicks the two halves shut. "I'm sorry you couldn't see her before she died."

Everything stills.

It can't be true.Not according to fate—unless I've triggered a change. But why would Miasma kill her puppet? I look to Crow and he stares back at me, as if daring me to ask him. Damn you, Crow! I can't ask Cicada either. Xin Bao's status is either a fact I should know, or—

"A lie." Cicada smiles. "Xin Bao is alive, at least as of a week ago according to my spies." A servant sets a cushion before the crate, and Cicada sits. "I just wanted to see your reaction."

Ren's eyes close, a lifetime of relief to a single blink.

Another servant delivers a pot of tea and two cups. Cicada pours.

She pushes a cup through the bars.

"I last had this tea with Zephyr. I liked her. She was the one who told me I should speak and act my mind. She made it look so easy, even as she proceeded to be wrong on every count, including our alliance. She led you astray."

It's true. If not for me, Ren and Tourmaline wouldn't be on this boat, traveling away from the Marshlands just when my diagram to Miasma is spurring her to bear down.

"Maybe she meant to trick you like she tricked Miasma," Cicada muses, and fury pains my lungs.

"I am not Miasma." A dry rasp from Ren. Just those words, her first, and none in defense of Zephyr. Good, I think as the pain in my lungs mounts, forcing out a cough.

I don't deserve defending.

"No, you're not." Cicada drinks, and sets down the emptied cup. "You're worse. You hemmed and you hawed about taking your uncle's lands, and still they landed into your lap, through no effort of your own. Face the truth, Ren. Among the three of us, you're the dimmest, the least deserving. Need a reminder? Come here, Crow."

I've changed my mind; for Cicada, death would be too kind a punishment.

I emerge from the shadows, face bare. I'd planned on donning the advisor's mask, had Cicada not wrecked the re-alliance. In the light, I see her pleased expression. I absorb Ren's and Tourmaline's next, their reactions to me no longer muted by the poison.

"Soulless." The word cuts deeper than Cloud's worst, coming from Tourmaline. "You won't be reincarnated in the next life," she says to me, and if only she knew the price I've paid to return and win, though at this rate, a loss might be more likely. My nails dig into my palms.

Who cares about the next life if I can't have what I want in this one?

"Sit with that a bit," Cicada says to the two of them, rising to her feet. "The knowledge you were deceived by a corpse. Let's go, Crow."

"In a moment. Let my presence taunt them more."

Cicada nods, then departs first, leaving me with the lantern and the captives. She trusts Crow this much, at least.

Too bad she didn't trust him enough to listen.

But she was right on one thing: I was wrong. Not just about Cicada, but about the Rising Zephyr Objective. I squeeze my fists harder, warmth welling under my nails. I should tell Ren and Tourmaline who I am and save them—

"So the act is up." Ren's voice. "I was willing to let it pass the first time I noticed, but then, of course, your lordess had to make a point of it again and again."

The first time?My brow furrows. "Elaborate."

"I saw you flinch in the coffin."

First Cicada rendering me speechless, now Ren. "Why not leave when you realized the deception?"

I try to sound collected, but my breath hitches when Ren says, "Because Qilin was right. No matter how much I wish to make you and your lordess pay for Lotus's death, Qilin was right. We cannot march north without you on our side. And if the alliance is not to be and your lordess kills me now, then at least no one else will have to die for a dream doomed to fail."

The boat murmurs and creaks. The lantern at my feet sputters, light wavering. But not Ren. I thought I was leading her out of the shadows, but once again, she's leading me, just like she did at Thistlegate.

If she still believes in the Zephyr who came up with the Objective, then I must too.

It's not time to give up on this disguise yet.

I'll just have to think of a solution. I turn away, stiffening when Ren asks, "Did you ever care for her?

"When you came to her shrine," she says as I turn back, "you said it was to pay your respects. I thought then that you might have been a friend. Were you, or was it another act?"

"Of what difference is it to you?"

"I'd like to know Qilin had a friend while she was here in this world."

I did. I do. She's right next to you.But I keep my eyes on Ren as Crow, blithe smile and all. "I did care for her," I say, and on a whim, "I loved her. She was my sun. My air." Anything to make Crow cringe after the litany of lies he spewed in the coffin.

"She was my only equal in this realm," I wax on. "But it was not enough to save her." I crouch, meeting Ren's gaze through the bars. "I respected her because we were the same: We chose our kingdoms over each other."

Wait for me, Ren, to turn this around.

I won't let you down.

I lock myself into my cabin for the rest of the night, stewing in my thoughts. Cicada told me she'd take them as hostages, but can I trust her? Would she lie even to Crow? I can't know, can't check. I curse, and thunder rumbles. Is it my powers? No, still depleted. I seethe as the storm brews without my permission, the river growing as restless as my mind.

Cicada, restless too, returns to Ren like a cat who can't resist toying with a mouse.

"I'll give you a choice," she says to Ren as I assume my place beside my false lordess, my real one so excruciatingly close. "A finger to free your warrior."

"Done."

"Ren—" Tourmaline starts.

"I am not Miasma," Cicada speaks over her. "The South is above such barbaric tactics." I beg to differ; her treatment of the Fen pirate was hardly civilized.

Still, it's clear that Cicada prefers mind games. The rest of her remains opaque. How can she taunt Ren, then sound genuinely curious when she asks, "What's that?"

Ren holds up a mass of hay, woven. "Soles for shoes, I hope."

"Even your talents are disappointing."

Ren smiles, amused rather than affronted. "When my mother fell ill, we had no money. Only hay in the stables." She picks up a piece from the bottom of the crate and weaves it through. "I'd make shoes and try to trade them in for medicine."

"These pity stories might work on your followers, but not me." A second passes. "What was your mother ill with?"

"Typhoid."

"The epidemics never reached the Westlands."

"We'd left by then." I'm thinking Ren will leave it at that when she says, "My uncle had banished us." She even answers Cicada's nascent question. "It was over a prophecy, given to him by a wandering sage." She pulls on the hay strand, blending it down into the mass. "Someday, the sage said, I would betray the clan."

Cicada sniffs, but I focus. I already knew Ren was genuine about the alliance, enough to abandon the war of reprisal, to look past the betrayal, but will Cicada meet her halfway? "Is that why you fight for Xin Bao?" asks the Southlands queen. "To prove a prophecy wrong?"

"She's family."

"I didn't see Xin Gong lining up to save her."

"She's family," Ren repeats, a reason unconditional in its simplicity.

"So was your swornsister, Lotus," Cicada counters. "You surprised me, when you went on your rampage. Frustrating as it was, you almost had my admiration." She sighs. "And then you returned to being the Ren we all know."

"And who would that person be?"

"Oh, stop playing the fool."

"No, really: Who is this person everyone in the realm seems to know better than myself ?" Through the shoe, Ren weaves more hay. "I'm sure you know this feeling too, of being tugged in a hundred different directions, by a hundred different voices. They all live in your heart, and they are all at odds. In avenging Lotus, I thought I was listening to myself. And I was—but I wasn't listening to the people or to my late strategist, who make me a leader. But is a leader all that I am?" Ren's voice goes quiet. "I don't know. Can a person be more than one thing at once?"

Yes, I want to say. I was a strategist and a warrior—

And I failed as both.

"That's exactly your problem," Cicada says. "You think too much about other people."

"If a kingdom is made up of people, so is a person."

"So if you were doing something you believed to be right, but the world thought it evil, would you see it as evil?"

"Yes," says Ren without any hesitation. "You must too."

Cicada makes a face. "What makes you say so?"

"Because you said you're not Miasma, and Miasma doesn't care what the world thinks."

"It sounds like a freeing way to live."

"Maybe," concedes Ren. "I thought so, some days. Other days, she seemed like the least free person on earth."

"You know her well."

"Well enough. Did you know"—Ren lowers her voice, and Cicada leans in—"our parting words were that I'm only allowed to die to her sword? It's a glory she won't let anyone else claim, unless they want war." A beat. Cicada frowns, and Ren laughs. "A joke!"

To Ren, it might be a joke, but not to Cicada. Clearly this wasn't something she considered before she darted Ren, and I see an opportunity when Cicada says, "Are you sure it's just a joke? My strategist here did once caution me against stepping over Miasma to get to you."

Finally, a gift from Crow.

"What did he say would happen if you did?" asks Ren.

Cicada looks to me, and this is my chance. I take the leap and say, "She'll retaliate. She might even come south." May Cicada think twice—

"That's a worry you needn't have," Ren laughs again, and now I frown. Just lie, Ren! Cicada still appears unsure, and Ren goes on, "If you want to bet on it, you can write to her. Tell her you've taken me hostage. If Miasma doesn't come, I ask that you wear my straw shoes for a month."

Before my eyes, the tension in Cicada is defused. Ren's joking indeed. "And if Miasma does come knocking on my doors," says the Southlands queen, "I'll hand you over alive for her to steam."

"Or fry. Sometimes she likes frying."

Disdain crimps Cicada's lips—or is she suppressing a smile? When she leaves, I almost sense an air of reluctance. But Cicada and I also had interesting conversations, and it made no difference.

Ren is the difference. Only Ren could show her captor such sincerity. She is the sun in this dark, war-torn world, and I'll force Cicada to behold her.

I just need another plan, preferably one that works with Ren's strengths and not against.

By morning, the rains abate. We're due to dock at dawn on the banks of the Gypsum, west of the Southern Court, and on Cicada's orders, I send word for a carriage to be readied onshore to cover the remaining distance.

When I return belowdecks, Cicada is before the crate and Ren is holding up a pair of finished shoes. "For you."

"To gather dust in my bureau." But Cicada takes them, and for a change, Ren asks her a question.

"Why do you hold so much anger toward our empress?"

"Yours," Cicada says. "Not mine."

Ren waits.

"She's complicit in Miasma's crimes."

"She's only a child."

"She was a child." Cicada stands taller, head erect. "She didn't grow up. I did the day the Fen killed my sister."

While the Fen's incursions into the Southlands are no secret, Ren knows more than the average peasant. Behind every tree that dares to grow tall is a taller mountain, I'd once told her. Miasma was the Fen's. Now Ren's eyes soften, but Cicada has already swept away. "How dare she compare us," she mutters, and my thoughts churn as I follow. The Fen pirate attack is still an unhealed wound for Cicada. If I were to press on it . . . if she bled for a single, vulnerable moment . . .

It's a plan. Risky, but it just might work.

Crow will despise me for it.

"You've been quiet," he remarks after Cicada and I part to our respective cabins.

"As have you. Isn't this what you and your lordess have always dreamed of ? Ren brought low? Used for ransom?"

"Is it? Ah, right," says Crow. "You only have my body, not my thoughts."

He still thinks I got lucky with Chanmei. How easily I could shatter that assumption by telling him about Cricket.

But some of us have self-restraint. "A good thing I don't have your thoughts. It must be depressing, serving a lordess who doesn't respect you enough to listen."

"Is it a revelation to you that people can be surprising?"

"‘Surprising' is quite the euphemism."

"Not everyone is a chess piece, Zephyr, least of all the people we serve. I grew up with Cicada. I know her."

"Knew," I correct. "You knew Cicada. She grew up more, without you."

Crow's expression changes, a shift so minute, only a person fluent in his face would notice. I try not to, but it stays with me—the way I hit at a truth atop a deeper, more painful truth. Cicada grew up without Crow at her side.

Cricket also died without Crow at her side.

I didn't mean to remind him. Crow's to blame for starting the conversation, I tell myself as I enter my cabin and sit, reaching for the cup of tea on the table.

"The steam," Crow says.

"What of—"

I break off.

The rising vapor is tinged green.

My hand jerks away, knocking over the cup. Liquid pools, green as the glass bottle once offered to me on a palm.

The Elixir of Forgetting.

Remember yourself, Nadir had urged when I'd returned to the heavens after dying as Qilin.

Remember myself, and forget the mortals.

My gaze flashes up. "Come out!"

No one does.

"Come out! I know you're here!"

No response.

The boat sways around us.

I stand and look under the table. Under the bed. Between the blankets. I sit back down, chest heaving, and stare at the cup.

The spill is gone.

But it was there. I saw it. The trembling starts in my fingertips and crawls up my arms. The Masked Mother had promised me that my sisters wouldn't be able to stop me, but couldn't they have, just now? I'd have drunk the tea, if not for Crow—

Crow, who had no obligation to alert me. Maybe he didn't understand what he saw, but he saw enough. He knew the tea had been tampered with. Did he speak up to save his own skin from some supposed poison?

I should let him keep thinking that.

"Did you know what that was?" I hear myself ask instead. Crow waits, silent. I look to him. "A tea for forgetting."

"What would you have forgotten?"

If Nadir and Dewdrop are trying to stop me from changing fate and paying the Masked Mother's ultimate price for it? "Everything I'm trying to accomplish."

"I see." Crow glances to the overturned cup. "If only it hadn't spilled then."

His tone is light. His expression. It's so at odds with the moment that a laugh escapes me. Crow smiles, rueful, and I grow rueful too. Letting me drink the tea was Crow's only play in a game where I hold the pieces. He threw his one chance away. Would he do it again, knowing the tea's effects?

No, I think; then, as I stare into Crow's eyes, I grow uncertain.

Surely not.

Surely he'd let me drink the tea.

Right?

It doesn't matter. Not the choices Crow would or would not have made, with all the information, or what my sisters think. I hold my arms around myself until the trembling stops. Dewdrop. Nadir. If you can hear this, then for the last time—

I want this.

I don't regret my choice.

And if you really just tried to drug me to stop me—

Then I'd rather not have you for sisters.

We dock and travel by carriage, as planned. Cicada again darts Ren—"I've had enough of her righteousness"—and like before, I can't do anything to stop her.

That all changes tonight.

At the Southlands capital, Cicada has Ren and Tourmaline put into cangues. The wooden boards are yoked over their heads, their wrists slotted through the holes under their chins. I watch the mechanisms carefully, tempering my rage as rope is wrapped around their waists and Cicada leads them through the streets like animals, all the way to Nightingale Pavilion.

She's outdone herself, judging by the court's stricken faces when we step in.

"Tomorrow, we'll send word to Ren's troops that I've captured their lordess," Cicada declares from her dais. "We'll demand the immediate return of the Marshlands if they want her back alive. Any questions?

"Good," Cicada says when none are forthcoming. Her advisors clearly don't know what they're dealing with. I do, though, and tonight, after the feast "to commemorate the occasion," I will rip away Cicada's shell and remind her that at her core, she is still the girl I first met, desperately trying to prove her worth.

My mistake was not in underestimating her this time, but in overestimating her capabilities as a staid leader.

The feast begins at dusk. Partway through, I slip away, the revelry ambient as I delve into the courtyards. It's been half a year, but I remember where to turn, which galleries to take.

The path to my destination.

When I return, my robes are wet. I change into a dry set. The sky has darkened, as has Crow's silence.

I knew he'd wish, in retrospect, that I'd drunk the tea and forgotten.

The feast winds down, and Cicada rises. At her waist, she wears Ren's double swords like ornaments. Ren and Tourmaline, meanwhile, remain in their cangues.

Cicada walks to them. "I'll offer you one chance at freedom. Submit to me."

"I cannot," Ren says, "as your ally."

"Very well, then." Cicada takes the rope; I join her. "Perhaps you'll change your mind after seeing how we deal with enemies of the South. Guards, bring up the Xin warrior."

We leave the feast courtyard, Cicada leading Ren at the front, Tourmaline escorted at the rear, and I between them. I know where we're going—Cicada couldn't resist showcasing her prize captive to Zephyr either—and as we walk, I sidle up behind Ren. I make sure Cicada is focused on the path ahead, a path that eventually bends around a courtyard's wall. Before Tourmaline and the guards can clear the corner, I reach under the back of Ren's cangue.

Two pins fasten the wooden halves. I find the first and slide it out. The cangue loosens, and Ren breathes in. "What are you doing?"

"Quiet."

"Your lordess has not ordered me freed." She pulls away just as I reach for the second pin. Tourmaline and her guards round the corner behind us, and I shorten my strides, growing the gap between myself and Ren.

So close.The pin stabs into my fist. So close!

But not close enough. All too soon, we're at the final moon gate. The guards hold Tourmaline back, condemning the warrior to watch as Ren is tugged forward. A draft hugs us as Crow furiously circles Cicada. Undeterred, she unlocks the doors and pulls. The halves of stone open. Light from the lake beyond ripples over the Southlands lordess, who doesn't step through immediately.

Instead, she waits.

Has Crow succeeded? Dare I hope he has? Not everything has gone to plan. Will Ren be ready for what's to come?

Will one pin loosened be enough?

It will have to be, because Cicada was only waiting for Ren. "After you," she says, and follows in Ren's wake. I follow in Cicada's, my gaze on the back of her head as she descends the steps. Her emotions are hidden to me. Her thoughts. But I can sense the moment that both shift, as she notices the trail of wet footsteps leading out from the lake.

The lake that holds no pirate.