2. KILL THE MESSENGER

Agift from the North.

For a long time after opening the box, Ren stares down at it. She doesn't move, but her qì grows violent with emotion. A darkness wells between her lips, then drips out the corner of her mouth.

Blood.

"Lordess!" Aster and Tourmaline support her while I seize the box—dropping it when I see the contents.

Gods be damned.I dive for it, but it's too late. The box hits the ground and out bounces the head. It rolls, and everyone scrambles back, myself included. Ten hells. That thing must be diseased, with its shriveled skin and stringy hair clasped back—

—by my hair clasp. I recognize it before I can recognize my head in its abject state. My nose wrinkles.

To think I used to be fond of it.

Then a moan from Ren throws everything into focus. "Call the physician," I order one soldier. I turn to another, unluckier one. "You—collect the head."

The rest of us flock to Ren. Officials and generals—ours and the Westlands'—throng around her and start moving her toward the command tent.

I fall to the back of the retinue, where Tourmaline is.

"I thought we recovered the body," I whisper. Qilin's body, specifically, killed by an arrow that definitely was recovered; it's resting in my shrine as we speak.

"We did," Tourmaline whispers back.

"Without a head. You could have mentioned it."

"It seemed irrelevant."

Until now. Who sent it? Was it really Miasma, or is the messenger actually one of Cicada's and the South wants us to pin the head on the empire as well?

It was Miasma, Dewdrop thinks.

Oh, now you decide to help.

It's not helping if the answer makes no difference. It just proves my point from before. You're surrounded by enemies . . .

So, it was Miasma, I think to myself as Dewdrop drones on. How very like her.

At least it was my head she sent and not our empress's.

Inside the command tent, we sit Ren down. The physician arrives and reads her pulse. "The disturbance to your qì activated an existing injury—"

"Injury?" pipes up an official.

"Bruising at the chest from a blunt force," says the physician, and my chest pangs. That would be me. "It'll heal in time, but I'll write a prescription."

A servant delivers tea. Ren doesn't touch it. Her eyes are sheened, and my chest pangs again. I'm right here, I wish I could tell her. The head? It's rotted meat.

But that's not how the mortals see it. Warriors sever the heads of their enemies in this life to deny them peace in the next; even the aunties at Qilin's orphanage avoided burning corpses when they could to keep the body intact.

And Ren is painfully mortal. "I'll kill her." She looks up at us, and I'm reliving my nightmare as she says, "We'll march on the North by the week's end."

No one objects. Have they all fallen asleep? Miasma couldn't have sent a more obvious provocation! I could scream.

But I'm Lotus. Lotus would never question her lordess, and it's Sikou Hai who says, "You mustn't," his voice turning heads. Shock ripples through the ranks.

"Young Master Sikou!"

"Young Master Sikou! You're awake!"

He's masked now, but still unsteady as he walks forward. Aster rushes to him; he brushes her aside, proceeding alone toward the parting crowd.

He stops before Ren and bows. "Lordess."

"Please, at ease." Sikou Hai rises, and so does Ren, out of her seat. "Sikou Hai." A pregnant pause. "Forgive me."

She bows to him, and every breath stops.

"Your father and your brother." Ren's voice is pained. "We didn't manage to save them."

"Lordess, please," Tourmaline murmurs, causing the tent to parrot her. A superior bowing to her subordinate? It's improper, and Sikou Hai's silence is appropriately strained, the unmasked half of his face paler than when I approached him on the cliff.

"If you feel like you owe me," he finally says, "then listen. You mustn't march on the North."

At last, a voice of reason!

"The mountain routes that make it so hard to invade the Westlands also make it hard to transport supplies out of it. If we march to Miasma from here, she'll defeat us by stalling confrontation and starving out our soldiers."

Yes! Exactly as I'd have said it!

"I'm aware," says Ren. "But Miasma's message is an insult. A challenge. The realm will soon know if I rose to meet it or backed down."

"We won't back down." Sikou Hai goes to the map hanging at the rear of the tent. "We'll respond by taking Bikong."

What? No!

Sikou Hai taps the fort, then draws two fingers southward. "Your other swornsister, Cloud. She's stationed in the Marshlands capital right now. She'll have no issue transporting her troops up the Mica." He sweeps his hand back north, following the Mica River's eastern offshoot until it nearly converges with the Gypsum. Bikong sits under the pincer. Nominally a Marshlands fort, Miasma's outpost in reality. Sikou Hai knows this like any statesman would. "We will seize Bikong from Miasma without abandoning our position here," he declares, radiating confidence—until he sees my expression.

You fool! Bikong is a great prize—and a great risk. Miasma is no longer our only enemy. Cicada is set on reclaiming the Marshlands, the heart of which Cloud will leave unguarded to carry out this attack. Sikou Hai doesn't yet know the peril of that, but he should have known better than to strategize without me. I glare at him, and his gaze wavers, but the plan has been shared and Ren has latched on.

"It's decided." She strides to the front of the tent and stops, her back toward us. "We'll do as Young Master Sikou says. Send word of the objective to Cloud."

"Yes, lordess," answers an official, ledger already out.

"Send Lotus." Eyes turn to me, but not Ren's. Her gaze remains fixed forward as I say, "I'll carry the message."

"No."

"But—"

"Would you refuse an order from your queen?"

A beat.

We fall to our knees.

Queen.A title to match Miasma's, a title that seemed so out of reach just hours earlier. Perhaps I should thank my head for appearing, because something feels changed. The air is sharper, cooler, the day outside turned to dusk when Ren parts the tent flaps. "And send a message to Miasma."

The official looks up, brush poised, but Ren walks out and speaks to the waiting soldiers.

"Kill the messenger."

People change, Crow once said as he'd sat beside me, skipping stones over the lake.

People change.

I thought nothing could startle me more than my head today, but Ren, lordess of the commoners, killing innocent messengers? Is this the change Crow spoke of ? No—she's rattled. It's like the blood—a one-time eruption. No permanent damage has been done to her or anyone.

And no damage will. I race into the training field just as the chopping block is carried in by a group of soldiers. The other group, tasked with preparing the messenger for his beheading, is still on its way. Thank heavens. I wasn't sure if I'd beat them.

They can't witness what I'm about to say.

"New orders," I bark at the soldiers. "When the messenger arrives, put him into the prison barracks."

The soldiers blink.

"Do it!" I bellow.

"Yes, General Lotus!"

I leave the field before Miasma's minion can see me. Let him think the order has come from Ren. Let him think—

"What are you doing?"

Sikou Hai walks in behind me.

"I heard what you just said." He nears, and I see red. "We can't disregard Queen Xin's orders—"

I lift him off his feet by his neck. "You ruined everything!"

Sikou Hai gags.

Good, gag! Teach him a lesson, Peacock!

Zephyr!

Peacock!

"Zephyr, no!" Tourmaline yells, and I recoil. The haze of red scatters. Sikou Hai falls from my grasp.

"I—I'm sorry." My hands shake. "I—I don't know—"

—what got into me.Shamefaced, I glance to Tourmaline, but there's no judgment in her eyes. If anything, she looks contrite. She crouches by Sikou Hai as he coughs and says, "The name you heard was a mistake. I was confused—"

"He knows," I interrupt. "He knows I'm Zephyr."

"Yes, I'm her disciple," Sikou Hai chokes out.

Tourmaline looks to me; my silence confirms the partnership. She notably doesn't congratulate it. "Did you stop the execution?" she asks me, and nods when I nod. "Ren's not being herself."

"You can't always shield her," Sikou Hai says between gasps. "Eventually, you have to trust her."

"Eventually," I growl, "when I also trust her advisors. The advice you gave on the Marshlands—"

"Is better than marching on the North."

Is it? When we do march on the North, it must be with the assurance we can win. Defeat is not an option. From this perspective, sending Cloud to take Bikong wouldseem like the lesser evil.

It could also doom our entire mission.

"The Marshlands are vital to us," I say. Between the coup and the governorship, Ren seems to have forgotten Cicada ever asked for them back, and I have no intentions of reminding her. Until we can trust the South again—"We need them as both a buffer from the South and a launch point for our eventual northbound campaign."

"I know," says Sikou Hai.

"Losing the marsh would be akin to losing a limb."

"Why—" Sikou coughs. "Why would we lose . . ."

The marsh.

I watch as comprehension dawns, slow then quick. "Cicada wants the Marshlands," Sikou Hai says. "But she's our ally. She wouldn't take it by force. Unless . . ." His eyes probe mine. "The alliance has broken."

Is that true, Zephyr?ask Tourmaline's eyes, on me as well.

Sikou Hai, you really have ruined everything.This is not how I wanted to debrief everyone, but my disciple leaves me with no choice.

"Tourmaline. Ask Ren to send you to the Marshlands capital with a legion. Say it's to replace Cloud's forces, nothing else. Disguise yourselves as merchants." Stratagem Twenty-Two: Open the Door to Catch the Thief. "Let the Southlands come for the Marshlands thinking we've left it unguarded, then close in on them." Crush them! Lotus would say, but I force my fists to loosen. "Do it with minimal bloodshed."

We'll see who Cicada wants to ally with when we control her forces.

"One legion won't be enough to bring the South to heel," Sikou Hai says, sounding skeptical.

"That's why Cloud will fall back from Bikong to reinforce Tourmaline."

"She won't leave Bikong until she wins." Tourmaline's skepticism feels more like a betrayal.

"Sieges take time," Sikou Hai adds. "Why not tell Ren that the South has betrayed us and have more forces sent to the Marsh—"

"She'll want evidence!" I snap. "She'd trust an ally until we shattered that trust with evidence."

"You have such evidence," Sikou Hai infers, and I close my tired, aching eye, hating that he can be so right and so blind. Crow would never need the obvious stated.

He'd know my deepest fears with a single glance.

"If you want to tell Ren about the South, then do it," I say to Sikou Hai. "Force a confession out of the messenger. Have him say Cicada sent the head. See how Ren reacts."

No one argues with me after that.

Over the next week, the reports trickle in.

Cloud has moved her troops up the Mica.

Cloud has marched on Bikong.

Cloud has laid siege to the fort.

The mood in our camp lifts, and Ren approves Tourmaline's request to travel to the Marshlands capital. Only I remain tense. It takes six days for Cloud's messages to reach us from Bikong. As we rejoice, Cloud could be facing a fresh attack. Could be losing. Could be dying.

Is it not exhausting?asks Dewdrop when I pester after Cloud's status for the umpteenth time on my way to the barracks. To be worried over so many fickle humans?

Status.

Dewdrop sighs. Alive.

And Miasma's reinforcements?They could come from Dasan, or the empire capital, or both directions. That would spell disaster for Cloud. How many are on their way to Bikong?

You're a god too, you know.

Yes, I am. I draw up short of the barracks.

Why rely on Dewdrop when I have myself ?

That's not what I meant.Dewdrop flies after me as I go to the cliffs where I found Sikou Hai. What are you doing?

I sit on the rock. You said we could bend the rules in small ways.

The Masked Mother—

Has known I'm here since the coup. She hasn't called me back yet.

But when she does—

Lightning strikes. A hundred. A thousand.

No, Zephyr. You couldbe banished—for goodthis time, Dewdrop adds, and that silences me. It's true. Some banished gods are never heard from again.

No one knows what becomes of them.

If, in exchange for one more heartbeat on earth, I lose Dewdrop and Nadir forever . . .

A chill goes down my spine.

But is it forever if I don't die? Because gods can't, whereas Cloud can. Ren can.

They always die one after another in my nightmares.

I can't let that happen.

I raise my hands. I've summoned fog, according to Dewdrop, as Qilin. Manifested rain. Created winds. I've tried so hard to master Lotus's strength that I've neglected the strength I already have.

Closing my eye, I go within myself, mentally reaching for the well of power stored in my core. I reach deeper when I don't find it, past the memories—

—of being as light as a feather—

—everything at my fingertips yet to be mastered—

—I find a board among Nadir's things, a replica of a mortal's game. I don't care about the mortals, but I like this game, the rush of winning—by five points, eleven, nineteen. Other gods come to Aurora Nest, just to play me, and I beat them all—

—god after god—

—untilthey start to beat me, their losses turnedto wins through the centuries. Everyone has an eternity to surpass and be surpassed. No mark I make lasts—

—"Why try so hard?" a god asks as we drink together on the terraces above the clouds, and I begin to wonder it myself—

—Why indeed—

—if everything I do can be redone, undone, outdone—

—why not rest—

No. I won't rest. I reach even deeper, until I find my power. I channel it between my palms. An orb qì forms. I pull my hands apart, growing the orb, then send it out. It zooms over the Marshlands, and for a breath, I can see the plains, the rivers, the villages as if I'm also flying over them, as if I could soar straight to Cloud—

The sights vanish. The orb is still traveling; I just can't use it to see beyond ten l . An annoying limitation, but I don't need eyes to make a storm.

I send the orb shooting into the clouds over Dasan, a thousand five hundred l to the northeast.

Seconds later, the qì takes effect—over there, and back in me. I sway forward, hands splayed upon the stone. Sweat falls from my face, landing between my spread fingers the same way rain must be landing in the Mica River. I pant. Was it always this hard?

Doesn't matter; it's done. The rain won't let up. By tomorrow, the Mica will flood, pinning down any reinforcements Miasma tries to send from Dasan.

The rain has another use, if Cloud can see it. If she's any good at chess, she'd know the importance of terrain. Rivers give life.

They can also take.

End it quickly, I think to Cloud, wishing I could speak into her mind like Dewdrop. Don't let it become a war of attrition.

The moment it does will be the moment Cicada moves in on the marsh.

Six more days pass before Cloud's next report: Empire reinforcements from Dasan had their supply wagons trapped in the mud, halting their march. Meanwhile, forces led by Talon from the capital reached Bikong in the night and set up camp across the river from Cloud's tents; by dawn, both camps were swept away, Cloud's tents mere decoys, Cloud herself breaking the dams of the Mica upriver to unleash the flood. Army lost, Talon escaped behind the walls of Bikong, joining Miasma's other forces under siege.

In response, our camp throws a feast. As the revelry rises, I clench my wine goblet. Bikong hasn't yet surrendered. That means more reinforcements are to come. If only I knew the conditions on the ground. I turn to Ren. "Lotus wants to join Cloud at Bikong."

"Why? To steal all the glory from Cloud?" Ren teases.

Glory. I barely remember her. "Miasma is crafty," I push. "Cloud has no strategist."

"That's true. Sikou Hai's been asking to go—"

"No!"

Ren smiles at the outburst. "I told him he's not well enough for the journey."

And I'm going to tell him a thing or two about knowing his station. Since when did a disciple go in place of his mentor? I think darkly as an official steals Ren and her seat is overtaken by a drumstick-eating contest. I excuse myself and walk off to the barracks, dodging drunken soldiers, only to stop for one, slumped against a tree.

In the branches floats her dazed spirit.

Rat-livers.I squat before her, about to smack her cheeks when I remember how touching an unconscious Lotus and Sikou Hai almost sucked in my spirit. I rise, step back, and kick her leg. She snorts.

The tree is spiritless, when I glance back to it.

Warriors!I shake my head, resuming my walk. Drinking themselves silly, to the point of detachment—

Detachment.

That's it.

Zephyr . . ., warns Dewdrop, reading my intentions as I stride into my shrine, kneel before the altar, and fish under its fabric skirt, feeling past the box of Zephyr's last possessions, to the cloth bundle.

It unties to everything I've collected since becoming Lotus, starting with Crow's cloak. My face warms as I remember waking up to it settled over my shoulders. Focus. I move aside the cloak, then the sheets of calligraphy—all of the same phrase, my most recent attempts nearly indistinguishable from my old brushmanship—until I've uncovered the jugs of wine. Cloud gifted them to me before riding for the Marshlands.

What's the occasion?I'd asked, brow raised.

Lotus's birthday. It's in two months.

Now in two weeks. What have I accomplished in this time? Not nearly enough.

I uncork a jug, releasing the aroma of peaches. If Lotus could smell this, she'd be remembering the day she swore sisterhood with Ren and Cloud under the peach trees, her mind transported by the scent.

My mind stays in the shrine. I don't have Lotus's memories. I don't have anything at all, no prowess or influence. I thought I needed this body to help Ren, but it's become a prison. I take a glug, scrunch my face, then down the rest.

One jug empty.

A second joins it.

Soon, my body is heavy, warm, numb. This dulling of sensation and thought . . . how I relied on it in the heavens. Ping. The final jug falls out of my hand. I slump. The ceiling of the shrine spins and shrinks, a sliver between my closing eyelids.

When they reopen, I see myself from above.

Lotus's body, all sprawled out.

The wine spreads like blood on the ground.

I extend a hand. My hand. Fingers long and dexterous, immaterial and translucent. The form I favor as a god. My qì is so light, unburdened by matter.

It worked.

I drift out the shrine's entrance.

Zephyr!Dewdrop buzzes in agitation as I hover in the night, reacclimating to my spirit. Remember the consequences of a spirit straying too far from its body?

You said that regarding human spirits. I'm a god.

Still—

I summon a cloud and we soar.

Out of the Westlands, the basin flattens to marsh. The Mica snakes north, its banks lined with watchtowers, villages and cities asleep at this hour.

But a battle never sleeps, and I see the fires of Cloud's war camp first. Her tents are pitched half a l from Bikong itself.

The fort walls tower into the night, the battlements lit with torches.

When I joined Ren, she was a lordess on the run. We hid behind such ramparts. We never could have laid siege to them. That we now can is a feat to be proud of. But unease skitters through me. Never underestimate the defense, my chess master would say as she played the black stone, destined to go after white like night after day. Do so, and you'll lose.

Bikong is not unbreachable; there's just a cost to doing so. I see that cost already in the bloodstained field where Cloud led her charge. A graveyard of boulders and arrows extends from the walls. Ladders, crushed by the defenders, lie like blackened skeletons. A bigger skeleton burns—an assault tower that would have carried our soldiers. I hope everyone got out, but in Cloud's camp, stretchers are draped with people who look barely human. I avert my gaze from their faces. I made my most costly mistake when I saw a person instead of a pawn. I went back for Lotus, in Pumice Pass.

I failed to save her or myself.

Girding my heart, I float past the wounded, through the soldiers. Some shiver. A torch flickers. A tent flap moves. A horse whinnies, spooked. But otherwise, the camp carries on, as do I, in my search for Cloud.

I find her by her voice, strong and proud.

"Why should I believe you?"

She stands before a command tent at the edge of camp.

Before her kneels a man. "Because Miasma passed me over and gave the promotion to him," he answers.

A holler rises somewhere in the night past Cloud's cordon. "Ma Ying, you defector! Come out and fight me! Take the position of lieutenant fair and square!"

Defector. Or so he says. I've feigned defection too; I know an act when I see one. The man knelt before Cloud is an empire spy. The other person just outside camp? An accomplice to bolster the fa?ade.

But Cloud nods, permitting the man to rise, mount, and ride out to face his challenger. In front of the tents, under the eye of Cloud's soldiers, the two men charge. A single bout later, the challenger's head is dangling from the man's fist. He rides back with it and offers it to Cloud. "For you."

Cloud reaches out.

"Don't," I say reflexively, knowing very well that Cloud can't hear me. No mortal can when I'm a spirit, and any "exception" has boiled down to coincidence—the entrance of something or someone else causing a behavioral shift or, in Cloud's case, a lowered arm. She closes her hand around the pole of her glaive instead.

She sends the blade into the man's heart.

The soldiers stare. I stare too, queasily. Coincidence?

Unaffected, Cloud pulls out her blade, letting the man and his booty tumble to the ground.

"Dispose of them," she orders, departing with a sweep of her blue cloak.

I follow her, the glaive she calls Blue Serpent dripping blood as she walks past tent after tent, into one that's empty. Unlit.

Just coincidence.

The flaps fall shut, ensconcing us in darkness.

Cloud stands there, unmoving.

She pivots and thrusts, as if she can see me.