17. A SMALL PRICE

Water.

Becomes fire, down my nose. Stop breathing. Golimp—but my assailant isn't tricked. He yanks me up and I gasp—then choke. My hands scrabble at the chains, pulled taut across my throat. Air—I need—air—

My limbs start to lose feeling.

My spirit, loosening . . .

No.If only I were stronger—or had a weapon—

There is one.I release the chains. Left side. I reach up.

I slam my palm to his neck, driving in Cicada's dart.

The chains slacken, enough for me to grab them. I splash for the slab and lash the pirate back to it.

For several seconds neither of us speaks. We're both panting too hard. My lungs ache as if they'll never fill again. But even if I were on my last breath, I'd save a word just for him.

"That desperate, Crow?"

The pirate raises his head.

He stares at me through his bangs, running like ink over his eyes. Not Crow's eyes. But for a flicker, I see his dark lashes. His delicate jaw. His lips, dewed with water.

Lips that part. "She could have died."

His voice cracks the illusion. Even if it's his soul, somehow vested in the pirate's body, this voice is most definitely not Crow's. It's rougher. Rawer. Or maybe I'm finally hearing Crow's true emotions.

"She could have died," I repeat after him, allowing him this concession. "But she didn't."

"You put her in danger."

"So what if I did? She's not my lordess."

"And November? Ku?" The name spills out of him like poison. "Not your sister, is she?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Crow stares at me, cold and silent, and I harden. "Ren moved to save Cicada without batting an eye. How's that for benevolent?"

A scoffing breath leaves him. "How benevolent can yours really be when her strategist is a thief ? Coward? Monster?"

The water trembles between us with every hurled word.

"Go on," I say when it finally stills. "I will always welcome more sobriquets."

Crow holds my gaze, his chest rising and falling. He bows his head. His voice, when he speaks again, is low.

"You're not human."

My heart stings as if struck.

The sting dulls to a throb.

No, I'm not. Nor will I ever be.

I gave that up by coming back to Ren.

"How many times do I need to tell you, Crow?" I crouch before him in the water and crook a finger under his chin.

"I'm a god." A reminder to him, and to myself. I've seen more sights than Crow will in his lifetime. With a single gust, I've killed thousands. The words of a mortal are nothing to me. My existence does not begin and end at the place where my finger meets his chin, my skin on his . . .

My skin. On his.

Something in me keens. He's real. I can feel him. His breath, on my face. The pirate's body is but a bridge; Crow stands at the end of it. My thoughts stutter off. What was I going to say? What was the point I was trying to make?

I release him.

"I'm a god." Weak. "I'm a god," I repeat more fiercely, "so take it from me: Entering a body is easier than leaving."

"Maybe I won't leave," Crow says, flint-tongued.

"Suit yourself." I rise. "Stay for as long as you like."

Turning from him, I stride through the lake, ignoring the part of me that yearns to be in his physical presence for one more second, even if all he has for me is hatred.

Walk faster.

Don't look back.

It'll all be worth it, in the end.

I reach the steps and climb them, almost at the top when a familiar draft kisses my skin. I glance to my right and there he floats, moonlight limning his spirit.

"That was fast." I look back to the lake. The pirate is still chained to the slab. Is that blood I see on the stone behind his skull, or just a shadow? "What did you do to him?"

"What he deserved for killing my lordess's sister."

His voice is matter-of-fact, neither cold nor impassioned, but because I know what Cricket meant to him, I can hear the underlying emotion, a bottomless ocean that makes his fury at me seem shallow in comparison.

"Cicada shouldn't have kept him alive to torture," I finally say. "It's only because she did that I had a weapon for my strategy."

Crow doesn't speak. I wonder if he agrees. Perhaps our visions for the empire weren't so different. If the two of us still lived—him as Cicada's Crow and I as Ren's Qilin—perhaps we could have worked together. Perhaps—

I didn't need to kill him.

As an emotion, remorse is both useless and craven, and when Crow says, "I kindly ask that you refrain from voicing whatever it is that you're thinking," I'm grateful that he's not like Dewdrop. I'd never be able to meet his eye again if he could read my precise thoughts.

"Don't presume to know me." I reach out to push the stone door.

"I don't." Two soft words. "Or should I say, I won't anymore." One softer sigh. "Indeed, I respected you once."

My palm stops before the door.

Resist—

"Once?"

"What you showed today wasn't strategy." I nail my gaze to the door as Crow says, "It was a gamble. Your ‘weapon' could have very likely killed your own lordess. That he didn't, you owe to nothing but luck. Your fate seems to be blessed with a lot of it for your risks to pay off."

Fate? A mirthless smile contorts my mouth. Crow doesn't know the first thing about it. As for risk? "Didn't your mentors teach you, Crow? All strategy is risk." I push open the door and walk through the moon gate without a backward look. "You're just upset that I was willing to risk your precious Chanmei."

Courtyard after courtyard I pass through, all the way to the one that servants showed me to upon my arrival as Crow.

I stop outside his rooms, waiting for his draft to join me.

"If I were you, I wouldn't scorn luck. Because understand this: I have a war to win, and no sacrifice is too big. So pray, Crow." I seize the bamboo doors. "Pray that your lordess is lucky enough to survive all my strategies to come."

Moonlight floods the room, illuminating the wet robes I changed out of earlier, piled in the corner. I should change out of these robes as well, but first I wait for Crow.

He doesn't enter.

I close the doors. Wait some more.

Crow remains outside.

I pace to the bed, sit—shoot up when I remember whose bed it is.

My hands curl shut.

Not human?Not a problem. I prefer being a god. Not strategy? I'll show Crow strategy.

But whatever I'm feeling burns through me quick. When I defected to Miasma, Crow didn't bat an eye. He understood me. He was the only person in the realm who did. But today, he looked at me like I was a stranger.

Like we weren't the same.

I'm at the doors before I realize what I'm doing. What am I doing? I should cherish this reprieve, my first in weeks. I turn away—then freeze.

What if he's gone?

What if he's seeking out another body?

Shck.The doors open, my arms spread wide between them, and for a breath, I'm just relieved to see him, still here as a spirit.

Then the silence bears down. Just days ago, Crow might have asked me if I needed something, insouciant and flippant.

Now he stares at me, his eyes matte and lifeless.

I slam the doors shut. Of course he's still here. He's bound to me. Earlier? Was a fluke. The pirate's body must have caused it; the monks did torture his qì for months. The rattle of bamboo quiets, and I shiver. Change into dry robes.

Get some sleep.

But I don't move. I stand there, against the door.

Words lump in my throat.

I never would have really hurt Cicada.I just wanted Ren to save her.

Never?Crow would probably say. Is that a promise?

Yes.

Why lie, Zephyr?asks my mind-Crow, and I swallow.

You lied too. You never told me about Cricket.

Omission is not lying.

What was she really like?

Why don't you find out? You're in my room. Go on, have a look through it.

No. Why am I even talking to you? Leave me.

Mind-Crow obeys before I can withdraw the order.

Moonlight shifts across the floor in the passing minutes. Maybe hours. At last, I step away, my robes no longer dripping, just sodden. Teeth chattering, I walk to the desk and sit.

I open a drawer.

In it are a bundle of handkerchiefs, neatly folded.

I glance to the doors; Crow is still outside them.

I look back to the handkerchiefs.

I pull one out, embroidered with magnolias.

I already knew Cricket was a girl of many talents, but it's another matter to feel it, each stitch neat under my fingertips. This one handkerchief is nicer than the others of Crow's I've seen. To remember me by, Cricket said, but Crow didn't need mementos for that. He carried her in his heart. She's the person who never left for him.

An honor I once thought mine.

The handkerchief balls in my fist. Then I scoff. Even before I learned about Cricket, I'd dealt away our future. What use would our past have been?

I refold the handkerchief and place it back with the others, then open another drawer, gathering the necessary supplies. I light the candle, grind the ink, dab the brush.

I write, because the alternative is trying for sleep, and I don't want to face Crow in my dreams. I accomplished what I wanted. Crow's resentment? It's a small price.

I've already paid more to win.

But Crow doesn't have to make the same choices, and I write this for him. The night wears on. A cough begins deep in my lungs.

Blood flecks onto the paper.

Crow doesn't speak to me the next day.

Or the next.

About time I had some peace and quiet. Coughing, I walk down the open gallery, stopping to look at the scene framed between two columns.

In the courtyard, Cicada moves through a parry while Ren watches. Her wrists are in chains, same as yesterday, when Cicada took her to the Southlands shipyards in what was ostensibly a show of might. But I was present. I heard the words exchanged, two allies discussing navy strength and infantry readiness. I don't need to be by Ren to know that she must now be giving Cicada pointers on how to wield her sword, Virtue.

Under everyone's noses, she's gone from being a hostage to wearing the guise of one.

See how my risk has paid off, I almost say to Crow, then remember we're not on speaking terms. A blessing we're not; two servants float down the gallery at that moment. They stop to bow at me, their lowered eyes peeking to the courtyard when I don't relieve them at once.

"I heard our queen owes the Xin lordess a life debt," one whispers to the other when I finally let them pass.

"But she's still a prisoner."

"I know. The grudges of royalty . . . how frightful."

Thanks to me, word of Ren's altruism that night has traveled. If Cicada has spies, it'd be foolish to assume Miasma doesn't. Why not use them? Stratagem Thirty-Three—Sow Lies in Enemy Fields—is best done with the enemy's own resources. If my diagram of Ren's disorderly camps wasn't credible enough for her, then let her spies send the reports.

Ren is being held hostage.

Their troops in the Marshlands remain divided.

It won't be long at all, now, before I lure the tiger from its lair.

My other pieces move as the week goes on, starting with Sikou Hai. After he arrives at the Marshlands front lines with Ku, he writes to me in a lengthy treatise that, if intercepted, would detail the breakdown of negotiations with Cicada and Ren's kidnapping. But I'm the intended recipient, and I take out another sheet of paper, marked with the chess game that Cloud and I played. Only Sikou Hai has the copy, given to him by me at Taohui.

I lay the game over his letter, reading the words in the diagonals of white stones.

Ren. Captured. Part. Of. Your. Plans.

I knew he'd think this way. Good thing it now is.

Cloud. Last spotted. West.

Now this, I didn't predict. But I should have. Cloud hasn't abandoned Ren. She awaits her at our home base, is behind her, just like Ren imagined when she yelled Cloud, now!

I fold up the letter and burn it to be safe. Crow made the same calculation, when he wrote to Cicada. Do not let down your guard. The head may have fallen, but the wind may not blow in the direction we thought. He was smart to destroy the message, especially if his mail was being monitored like Plum's. But does he now regret not sending it?

Coughing, I clear my head of Crow's regrets and go to bed as he watches, silent. He disappears when I close my eyes, only to reappear across from me in the rowboat. Koi streak the water. The sun shines over the mountains on the horizon, and I ask Crow every question too shameful to voice in the light of day.

Do you regret knowing me?

Liking me, if you ever did?

If you really asked Cicada to spare me, why?

Through it all, Crow rows on without answering, until I realize I'm the spirit, invisible across from him.

In the morning, my throat is sore, my head is hot, and Crow—

Is fainter.

Everything else is clear, which makes sense, because everything else is real. Only Crow is a spirit. Either I'm losing the power that allows me to see his qì—

Or his spirit is fading from this world, like Lotus's.

The former. It has to be the former.I stare at him, waiting for him to sharpen. When he doesn't, I wait for him to comment on the staring, but of course he stays silent. I hate him for it. I assure you I'm here to stay, he'd said before.

The irony if that turned out to be a lie too.

"Senge!" The name pierces my mind, as if it's been reiterated several times. I look up, and Cicada folds her arms in the doorway. "There you finally are."

"Forgive me. What were you saying?"

"I just decoded the latest reports from our spies in the North. Miasma has mobilized her troops. We can't yet tell their exact target, but it seems like they're aiming for—"

"The Marshlands," I say, and Cicada frowns.

"Are you extrapolating, or certain?"

"Certain." I'm the hand guiding Miasma's movements.

"What was the rest of the report?" I ask, keeping Crow in my peripheral vision. Fainter. Definitely fainter.

"There've been no more Xin rebels. Plum was demoted and is under Miasma's watch—"

"Plum is alive." Cicada's nod upends my world. My board. My pieces go rolling.

Falling.

Plum is alive. Alive.

She did not die.

A miracle? No. There's only one explanation: "Miasma treated her wounds."

"Three days after interrogating her."

"What caused the change in heart?"

"The report didn't say." Cicada peers at me. "Why? Is Plum a problem?"

Yes, but not one that makes sense to any advisor, general, or soldier. "No," I say, and start to cough.

"Do I need to call the physician?"

"No. Now that Miasma is on the move, we must respond. Go call the court. Go," I insist. After Cicada does, I pull on my robes and put my hair into a ponytail, a habit regained on the road. Ally with the South. We've done that, again. Establish a stronghold in the West. We've done that too.

March on the North.

The moment I've visualized day in, day out since devising the Rising Zephyr Objective has finally arrived, but I can't savor it, my mind too fragmented.

Crow is fading. Plum is alive.

Focus. Only Plum matters.I failed to end her, but it's not too late. I'll kill her as Crow, I think, before a new fit of coughing overtakes me. I clutch the desk for support until it passes, then wipe the blood from my mouth.

I won't let her survive as fate's chosen victor.

Outside, the day is tauntingly bright, the open corridors filled with advisors all streaming in the same direction. I let the flow pull me in. Miasma is the immediate threat, Plum the farreaching one. How do I deal with the two of them? Together? Separately? Which first? My thoughts quicken, slowing only for a name, caught on a strand of wind.

"Qilin?"

I turn, and Ren's face smooths with disappointment.

"My offense," she says from between the two guards escorting her. "I mistook you for another from the back."

You didn't, some brazen part of me wants to say, because as I stare at my lordess, I realize what I have to do.

To deal with Plum, I must leave Ren.

I won't be able to march north with her.

"No offense taken," I say, nodding at the guards to proceed. They lead Ren past me, and I breathe out, shoulders settling, more coughs emerging.

But then comes Tourmaline.

"I saw how you stood by that night." She falls into step beside me, chained but guardless. No guard, I imagine, wants that honor. "You let the pirate attack your lordess."

She's right. I did. If I were Crow, I'd live up to her insult of soulless. And Crow I will stay; I vowed at Taohui not to tell Tourmaline who I am, as a strategist. Now I reaffirm that decision, but as a friend.

It'd be selfish, to reunite with any of them—Tourmaline, Cloud, Ren—when I'll be saying goodbye again.

"Zephyr deserved better than you," Tourmaline says.

I walk on without replying, only coughing.

We file into Nightingale Pavilion.

"I'll get to the point," Cicada starts once we're convened. "Miasma has mobilized her troops—"

"Lordess—Queen, if I may—" An advisor clears his throat and glances to Ren. "Should we really be discussing this in front of our hostage?"

"Ah, yes," Cicada says. "You reminded me."

She descends the dais and strides down the walk, unsheathing the sword concealed in her skirts. Advisors flinch; eyes dart to the table, still here, that Cicada cut when Zephyr and Crow last visited as Miasma's delegates. Sunlight glints off the table's three remaining corners as Cicada stops before Ren, who holds out her hands, pulling the chains tight.

Virtue slices through them.

Cicada turns to the advisor. "She's our ally."

"As our queen was saying," I pick up while the court flounders, grasping for an anchor. I'll cast them one. "Miasma has mobilized her troops. Her aim is the Marshlands. Our troops already there will defend against her attack as a united front. Unbeknownst to her, however, we'll also have our own offensives, starting with one out of the South."

The court murmurs. An offensive out of the South. The South is known for its defense, not its offense.

Precisely why Miasma won't expect it. "And another prong out of the West," I finish, eliciting a collective breath.

"West and South offensives?"

"Yes. While the empire is preoccupied with the Marshlands, our Southern and Western prongs will target the capital. Secure Xin Bao, and we win."

Advisors confer with each other. It's true in theory—capturing the leader is the most basic of all stratagems, but—

"The terrain out of the West is ill-suited for an offensive," one pipes up.

"It'll be difficult," says Ren, diplomatic.

"It will," I assent. "But it can be done."

It must be done. The court mutters. A three-front war. They'll think I'm being overcautious, covering all my territorial bases. What they don't realize is that the Western prong's true objective will not be the capital.

I have my own demon to slay, out West.

Plum.

I will right my wrong of not ending you first.

"I will go west," I announce, "and join up with forces from Xin City in the Xianlei Gorge. Sikou Hai and November will face Miasma in the Marshlands. Ren and Cicada will lead the charge out from the South." That's the safest prong. Ren must make it North unharmed. I entrust her to you, Tourmaline. My gaze sweeps over the sun-dappled court. "Speak now, or hold your objections."

No words come.

Then Tourmaline steps forward. "Who will lead the forces out of Xin City?"

"Your queen's swornsister. Cloud." As I say so, I look to Ren. She doesn't want to speak lesser of Cloud, but she also isn't so prideful as to swallow her reservations.

"Respectfully," she demurs, "I don't know if Cloud still stands with me."

"She does," Cicada counters before I can. "Stone may split," she goes on, "but sisterhood never will."

Ren meets her gaze, then glances to Tourmaline. Something in the warrior's expression must vouch for Cloud, because Ren at last nods and Cicada lifts her chin.

"Let the order be sent to all parties."

"We march at the week's end," I finish.

The court doesn't argue, awed by the maneuver's magnitude. Only I can see its rough edges. With more time, I could have refined it, but Plum. Crow. I glance to him again and can't tell if he's fainter than this morning. Not my concern. Success is within my grasp so long as I can end Plum, my one variable—

Of two.

"This is it, isn't it?" Cicada joins me as the others leave, and I glance to her, the girl who wants Xin Bao dead. But after is after. Like Ren, I must also believe in the sincerity of the alliance.

"Yes." By tomorrow, I'll be on the road. If all goes well—if Ren secures Xin Bao and Miasma is defeated and I end Plum—I might not see Cicada again. Ever. She doesn't know that, but she does know that this is our last day together before the war is won.

What would Crow do or say, if this was farewell for now?

I have a guess. It's a risk, but I'll risk it to be convincing. "Can you take me to her?"

A pause, as fragile as the breeze that meanders in.

Cicada starts walking.

I follow her, to a courtyard complex like all the others. Only the placard on the door marks it as an ancestral hall. We stop at the threshold, and in the dim beyond, I see name plaques gleaming on the altar, with the most recent deaths at the front. Cicada's grandmother, then mother, then sister.

Leaders who lived and died for their kingdom.

"I'm sorry." Cicada's voice is quiet.

"I am too. I wish I'd been there." My throat twinges at the words. I know how it felt to be shown Ren's and Cloud's fates from a realm away. Crow must have felt worse, trapped in the North and hearing about Cricket's death after it had already happened.

My pain right now is but a fraction of his.

I take a breath, and walk in.

Before the plaques of the deceased are the usual offerings of incense and peaches.

Less usual is the chessboard, inscribed with Cricket's name.

This time, I wish my throat didn't twinge.

"Before you go . . ." Beside me, Cicada stares at the board with a complicated expression. "Can we play a game?"

Playing is a risk, bigger than finishing Crow's sentences or asking to see Cricket's memorial.

But as I said, all strategy is risk. "Get the board."

I've seen Crow play just once. His opponent was Miasma. It's dangerous to think you've won when you've actually lost, he'd told her. Only now does it strike me that he could have been talking about me. I thought I'd outsmarted him, but he'd outsmarted me.

Now I sit across from Cicada. A part of me wishes I could be sitting across from him. It's my only admittable regret—that I never challenged Crow to a single game of chess—and I snuff it out as I lift the lid to my pot of stones.

White.

Cicada doesn't initiate a swap. Just like Cloud, I think almost fondly before sharpening my thoughts. Crow lost on purpose to Miasma, but Cicada is his true lordess.

I won't go easy on her.

We play our openings. Midgame. Late. Stones fill the board. Black and white, staking out their territory.

I win by eleven points.

I clear my stones. When I'm done, I look up to find Cicada's head bowed, the stones on her side untouched.

Tears drip onto them.

Rat-livers.Was I wrong? Could it be that Crow also had a habit of losing on purpose to Cicada? How distasteful, if so. "Chanmei . . ." I start, trailing off as she lifts her head.

"Thank you, for playing me as you would have her."

"O-of course."

Cicada's head bows again; she wipes at her eyes with the heels of her hands. "You know, for those few weeks after I heard you—" She swallows. Were steamed. "I really thought I'd lost you too."

Too.

Outside the sun shines, painting the floor in light. Birds trill. The board scrapes, as I push it away. I scooch forward, put my arms around Cicada, and hold her.

Her tears seep into my shoulder.

Over hers, I see Crow, even more faded in the sun. My gaze shifts downward. Looking at him would make my next words gloating, and I've gloated enough. In this moment, I want to be sincere—as sincere as one can be while wearing another's skin.

"Chanmei, ah," I say, stroking her hair. "Remember something: I'm not that easy to kill."