5. DUET

Go.I close my eye, sensing the air as it's sliced open.

Focusing, I bend the currents.

The arrow curves around a soldier's shoulder and flies past the whipping post, through the flaps of Crow's tent. It thuds into the main pillar, and as my qì quivers, I catch sight of his head, turning toward the tent's entrance.

Then the air around the arrow stills, breaking my qì's connection. The scene disintegrates before I can glimpse his face.

His cheek, almost grazed.

I release a breath.

And double over, pain clawing my chest. My powers exact their toll, just like when I summoned the rain, and memories of heaven flood me, ending with my final game as a god. I'd lost to a deity I'd once beaten.

After they'd left, I'd thrown the board.

Now, catching my breath, I sneer at the person I was.

I'd never leave a game on a loss.

This time, I cross the plain with just the bow. The enemy soldiers point their spears again, but soon, a general gallops up on a stallion.

"You! Did you shoot that arrow?"

"Yes." I hold up the bow—visual proof is more impactful—and the general's gaze cuts to the soldiers.

"Check her for weapons, then take her to him."

Done and about to be done. The front lines part. Finally. I stride for the opening.

"Ze-Lotus!"

Cloud.She's behind me when I turn, my false name stilted in her mouth.

There's nothing stilted about her glare. Just what in the hells are you doing? it says. Get back here! She voices none of it, not wanting to alert the enemy that I've come without orders.

Let's keep it that way. "Wait for me," I call to her, then walk forward, past the shields.

Trust me, for a turn.

Soldiers escort me through the camp, into the tent.

In the center, he stands.

"Hello, Lotus. We meet again."

I saw him from above, as a spirit, but it's different, so different, confronting him in the flesh. Firelight from the braziers falls over us both. His face is underlit, the planes of his cheeks and forehead shadowed. If only I could clear the shadows like I would a mask. I'm suddenly seized with the urge to do just that—to draw him into the light, out of these pretenses, and put my lips to his ear. Yes and no, Crow.

We meet again, but not as Crow and Lotus.

But I don't act on whims, and neither does Crow. "Any particular reason for sending this?" He holds up the letter, and though I've been waiting for him to ask, I'm caught off guard. It's his manner. His tone, so blasé, as if the letter is just a piece of paper. I expected . . . more.

Fool of me to. He's a strategist, like myself. Emotions are a liability. Of course he'd hide them. I should look to his actions. They speak more than his words. I'm in his tent.

I have his attention.

"I wanted to meet with you," I say, lightening my own tone. "I seem to have succeeded."

Crow regards me carefully. It's nothing like the last time we met face-to-face, by the lake. Why would it be? Crow's forces are here to break the siege. This can only end with one victor, one loser.

"Indeed you have," he at last grants. "Did Zephyr give this letter to you too?"

Too.What else did I, as Zephyr, supposedly give to Lotus? Then I remember another time I felt this pinned. In the dark of the stables, cornered by Crow, I'd claimed that Zephyr had told me his name. He doubted me then—still doubts me, by the lilt of his voice—and I untense. He cares, enough to have an opinion on what Zephyr would or would not share.

I have more than an opinion. "No. She didn't."

"I didn't think so," Crow murmurs.

"We found it with her body." The head of which Miasma collected first. Surely Crow knew of her revolting actions. He is her strategist. An enemy who holds a secret pertinent to this siege. Ask him—

"Tell me, then." Crow speaks before I can. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

"I challenge you to a duet."

"Still two on one zither?"

Mmm, Dewdrop thinks, as if the prospect is delicious.

I'll squash her right after I squash my rival. "One zither each," I say to Crow, willing my face to cool.

"A proper duet." Crow lets the words hang for an uncomfortably long second. "If my memory isn't failing me, you weren't eager to play during our last encounter."

"I've been practicing since. I liked it."

His stare is cryptic.

I was cryptic too, the night I sat at his zither as Lotus. I left him wanting, left him wondering how a warrior like myself could unlock the instrument's qì with just one note.

Now's your chance to findout, I think to Crow. Can you resist it?

I know I wouldn't.

"Bring them," he finally says, eyes never leaving mine as the guards depart, carrying out his order. They return with two zithers. I recognize the first as Crow's. Midnight wood. Strings white as snow. He takes it to a table at one end of the tent. I take the second zither to the opposite.

We sit.

Since we last played, I've been thinking over a dilemma. Zithers are a conduit for the truth in one's heart. Why would a strategist agree to a duet if they're at risk of leaking secrets that could end wars or incite them?

The answer I arrived at solidifies when I meet the challenge in Crow's gaze. We each have secrets, and he's betting on his skill that he can access mine first. A strategist's duet is no different from a warrior's duel in this respect. Both parties stand to injure themselves.

Neither backs down.

Crow raises his arms, black sleeves cascading. "What topic shall we play about?"

"This siege."

"Hmm." My heart tremors at the syllable. "I'd like to play about you," Crow says, and plucks. The open note travels through me, and I with it. Back in time and place. My hands—Lotus's—are under Crow's.

We played this very note, by the lake.

Focus.This scene is safe. I play as well, and the space between us swirls, air gone to water. Mist curls—fronds of qì, taking on color. The night appears. The two of us, bent over the same zither. The lake shines behind us, liquid moonlight, as the music rises.

An image within an image.

It changes as we play on. Crow and Lotus disappear, replaced by a hut. My breath stops. Thistlegate?

It's not. The image clarifies, and I see the pig carcasses, strung from the thatched roof. What—?

Lotus. She's from a family of butchers, Cloud once told me. Relief—I haven't leaked my identity—turns into bewilderment. I shouldn't have these memories. I don't remember these memories.

How, then, can my music be conveying my thoughts?

Something's wrong, Dewdrop thinks. Stop playing. This—

Crow plucks another note—two. They vibrate, like rubbed stones. A question sings in the resulting harmonic.

Zephyr—

I can't leave empty-handed.

I play my response, throwing my notes. The image ripples. Changes. I see Lotus and myself—as Zephyr, in Qilin's body—crossing a river together. Cloud is up ahead. Tourmaline brings up the rear, and Ren—she's beside me, between Lotus and Zephyr, just like the old times—

Before my eyes, Zephyr starts to fade.

Quickly I play louder, faster. The image changes to the siege. I strike the zither and Bikong ignites. Arrows soar and our soldiers rush the walls. Smoke blooms and blood spills—enemy blood. Fight back, my music says, or we will slaughter you.

Crow's hands fall to the strings, his notes aggressive, so unlike his previous play. His music dominates mine, and in the siege I've painted, empire reinforcements pour in.

So they're on their way. What's taking so long? I play more troops of our own onto the field, play in Cloud's determination to take Bikong, my notes high and taunting. Crow responds with an equally taunting trill, strings aggravated under his nails. The music crescendos—

A cough.

From Crow. He coughs again, his bottom lip glossed with blood, and my focus fractures. The sieges between us melts. Another night replaces it, lit not by warfare, but by the moon. It shines silver on the dried riverbed—and on us. My hair is down and loose, my white robes exchanged for black to match Crow's. We come together, my hands on his face, my mouth on his. A memory of mine, and not Lotus's.

It's also a memory of Crow's. It's unclear, in fact, whose heart it's stemming from, and for a beat, it matters not. My transitions soften as the Crow of that night, played to life, pulls me closer, and my stomach clenches, recalling how it felt to lose my balance. My incisors, sinking in. The taste of blood and—

In the scene, Crow pulls away.

Our hands still on the strings, in the present.

Firelight flickers. Movement, in a tent absent of it. Our zithers are silent.

I remember that night. I remember everything we played into existence, except for the last scene. It wasn't Crow who pulled away, breaking the kiss.

It was me. Lotus wouldn't know this, but I do.

Why did the memory change? I think to the other scenes we played. The siege. The troops. Not memories, but wishes, still true and from the heart, just not yet happened. Perhaps Crow wishes he'd been the one to retreat from me, that night in the riverbed—

Retreat.

My gaze hits his. His thoughts are as unknowable as ever. But his actions—his lack of action, it speaks. The lack of a decisive attack. The lack of more reinforcements. The siege goes on when they could relieve it.

They don't intend to.

They will retreat. They will retreat, and Cloud won't be able to resist pursuing them north, just like she couldn't resist pursuing Leopard. She will abandon the Marshlands. Tourmaline.

Her own safety.

I rise from my zither. Step back from it. Crow stands too. He senses something amiss. A dissonance. His eyes see Lotus; his mind says it's fine to let me walk out of here; I wouldn't know the discrepancy between the played memory and the real one. But his intuition disagrees, and whereas an ordinary strategist would default to reason, Crow has never been ordinary.

He listens to intuition. "Seize her."