The Hall of Grand Design breathes incense and lacquer. Screens of pearly mica damp the spring light to a soft river-glow; beneath them, jade tiles catch each step like held breath. Eight years peel away from the moment he was crowned. Eight years build into the silk he now wears like mist.

Naci Khan bows until her braids touch stone. Her three warriors fold behind her. Ambassador Shi Min bends with the patient crease of a woman who knows which way to fall should the earth tilt.

The Emperor smiles, the way swans smile: with eyes, with the tilt of a throat. Feminine grace hangs from his sleeves. "Wind-Khan," he says, voice as light as brushwork, "it pleases us that the steppes send their weather in human shape."

Naci lifts her head enough to meet the hem of his robe with her gaze. "And it pleases the steppes that the river finds its banks, Majesty. Else we would all drown." Her mouth crooks.

Servants click forward as one, laying out the tribute. The smell of horse and frost rides in with the crates: shaggy-maned stallions from the salt flats, their breath wreathing like spirits; saddles fat with silver nails; lengths of felt thick as snowdrifts; a lacquered chest of crushed saffron and powdered rhubarb root; a cask the size of a small barrel, iron-hooped, that dulls the air around it. "Stone salt," Shi Min murmurs. "From under the desert."

"Tepr remembers," Naci says. "We bring you what the wind grows. Horses, hides, herbs that make old bones remember youth and young blood slow down before it spills. And this." She pats the iron hoop. The court pretends not to notice the way the guards shift.

"It is fitting," the Emperor answers, fingers steepled, face unreadable as glazed porcelain, "that the north sends strength while we embroider the world together."

He flicks two fingers. A scribe rolls a scroll down the length of his sleeve as if it grows there and reads an edict wrapped in thunder. Titles are scaffolds for ambition; names are the nails. "By our hand and seal, in recognition of her loyal guardianship of the northern marches, for cleaving the Tiger on ice and returning the roar to the wind, we name Naci Khan—Dragon-Tiger General of the Moukopl Empire."

The imperial drum sounds once. The sound walks the hall, steps onto Naci's shoulders, and becomes suddenly heavy. She bows deeper, chin to jade. Her warriors bow until backs creak. One warrior grins, because he cannot help himself, and another pinches his wrist without breaking posture.

"It is a long name," Naci says, rising a finger-width when the drum's echo fades, "and I am a short woman. I will have it shortened by deeds."

A laughter like rain moved by a clever breeze drifts from the court. The Emperor's smile gains a tooth. "Rise," he tells her. "We will not have our general collecting dust. Come; drink tea and accept our words as if they were sweet. Dog!" he calls, a word shaped like a whistle.

Yile enters as if the air had tailored itself for him. Quiet as a shadow that has practiced listening. He is plain today. Plain like a blade without jewels. He kneels, re-fills the brazier, tips the kettle with wrists slender enough to be mistaken for fragile. The steam laces the room in white silk; the tea breathes out plum-pit and chrysanthemum.

Naci watches him with a soldier's patience and a gambler's grin. The Emperor watches her watch Yile, the corners of his eyes crinkling as if he appreciates embroidery even when the pattern is barbs.

"Majesty," Naci says lightly, as the first cups find their saucers, "will the dog test the bowl before we honor the gods? I am still new to courtly flavors."

Shi Min inhales sharply, then turns it into a cough that praises the tea's aroma.

The Emperor's lashes descend. He says nothing; his left hand speaks instead—a flicker, a drop of the wrist. Yile does not blink. He touches his forehead to the rim, tips the cup, and lets the liquid wet his lower lip. He swallows the way a soldier swallows a humiliating order, with an economy that should not be beautiful and somehow is.

Yile tips the kettle, and steam twists like cloth wrung from a drowned god. He pours first for the unseen—the bronze tiger-bowl drinks; smoke sighs from its whiskers and writes prayers no one dares read aloud. Then he serves the living throne and the wind's general. Porcelain sings; iron thuds. The hall listens.

"My warriors and my ambassador grow thirsty watching divinity feast," Naci says, almost lazy, as if asking the river to flow downhill. "Humor them, if Your Majesty's sky is wide enough."

The Emperor inclines two fingers. Yile pivots in silence.

He stops first before the tallest of the three. Borak—Temej's brother—lifts his gaze. Freckles constellate his face as if the steppe threw stars at him and some stuck; green eyes flare with a boy's mischief in a man's bones. He smiles. Yile offers his cup. Borak takes it.

"For the Emperor," Borak says, beaming. "May your horses never cast a shadow you cannot ride." He drinks. The tea sets a red bloom across his freckles; he nods, satisfied.

Next, Fol. Early-twenties, black hair like lacquer poured over a bow, eyes deep brown and steady. Fol receives the cup with a swordsman's courtesy—no flourish, every gesture broken into clean lines. "Your Majesty," he says, voice low. He sips and lets the heat write discipline down his throat. Nothing in his face moves except the corner of his mouth acknowledging excellence.

Last, the youngest: Jinhuang. Only a year younger than Fol, yet she carries youth like a lit brazier, the edges dancing. Her hair is night caught in motion; her eyes—fierce amber, dangerous with light—could be cut into signet stones. She has learned to bow and forgets to mean it. Yile presents the cup. She accepts with both hands, but the wrists tilt, a tiger cub's curiosity flicking. "My thanks, Heavenly Majesty," she says brightly, "for letting me drink after the gods and the dog."

A ripple moves the court like wind. Borak chokes, then turns it into an especially sincere cough. Fol's eyes do not move, which is to say they move inward very quickly. Ambassador Shi Min discovers a blemish on her sleeve that requires desperate attention.

Naci turns her head by a degree. The look she gives Jinhuang is a quiet, ancestral thing, the look of an aunt who has pulled children out of wolf-muzzles and will not hesitate to tan hides. The promise in it is simple and entirely post-ceremonial.

The Emperor laughs, sudden and ringing. "Amber is an impertinent resin," he says, delighted. "It preserves what offends and makes it beautiful." He lifts his cup toward Jinhuang, who hides a grin in her drink and scalds her tongue for the privilege.

"Your Majesty must forgive a mouth that runs faster than its rider," Naci says, bowing just enough to cover a threat and an apology in the same breath.

Yile pours again for Naci without a sound. The steam films the world; behind it the Emperor's lashes lower, playful shadows.

"Dragon-Tiger General," the Emperor says, tasting the compound creature again. "How breathes our north?"

"Tepr gnaws," Naci replies, cup to lip, voice gone wind-flat. "Two moons back, Yohazatz raiders nosed near Kamoklopr—thirty riders. The dunes drank as they always do—thirstily, with poor manners. The survivors ran south and left their shadows behind. It is time, I think, to make a lesson of Regent Puripal the Backstabber, so his shadows stop teaching smaller men how to stand. An offensive will unteach them. If Your Majesty prefers thrift, we can spend Regent Nemeh for coin—he is a brother, and sibling mathematics solves many empires. A whisper into the right tent-rope, and a kingdom pulls itself down."

The Emperor listens with his fingers—the way he always does, lightly stroking porcelain as if reading script raised by heat. He nods. The nod holds approval and caution like twins in one cradle. "We enjoy your arithmetic," he says, "and the north's economy of blood. But the ledger has other ink at the moment."

He sets his cup down. "The Hluay knock at our southern gates. Their priests preach in pig-fat and stolen fire. They lift banners dyed in the smoke of burned cities. Linh crowns himself with ash; he calls terror a sacrament. He seeks to make the Seop revolution into his engine—powder and vision and the lies men prefer to the truth of taxes. They barter at our door. Yohazatz can be kept on the shelf; Hluay wants the pantry."

Naci tilts her head. "Then let me strike them from the north's shadow," she offers. "I can cross the deserts where your columns wilt, ride the salt flats, pluck the Hluay's match from Linh's fingers and hand it back to you in a pot of water. Debt is cheaper than fire."

A smile ghosts the Emperor's mouth, not quite kind. "And yet—every coin borrowed buys its lender a chair at our table. We have so few chairs we trust. Keep your throne of wind and bone: hold the north in your teeth, bite when it strays. That will be service enough."

"As my Emperor chooses," Naci says. She drinks and lets the heat sit in her chest. "If Puripal grows too tall, I will prune him for aesthetics, not obligation."

"Art improves empires," he agrees, amused. "And empires improve artists by not killing them too quickly."

When the court's laughter ebbs, the Emperor looks beyond Naci, beyond the pillars, as if the wall were canvas and the painted mountains could be stepped into. "Keep your riders restless," he says. "Train your eagles to prefer our eyes to others'. Let your powder not forget who first named it useful."

"Tepr remembers," Naci answers with a smile.

...

Night arranges itself like a conspiracy around the salt hummocks of Kamoklopr. A dead cart lies theatrically overturned; its wheel is pinned with three Yohazatz arrows for verisimilitude, feathers greased so they gleam under the star-wash. Jackals watch from a ridge, patient as auditors. A circle of stones cups a fire that does not smoke. Above, two eagles blink on their perch-frame—a traveling rook, talons wrapped around iron rings. They have eaten; they are listening.

Horohan stands where the false raid supposedly ended. Slender as a drawn brushstroke, she wears a sleeveless brigandine that moves like midnight over muscle. Eight winters have carved a new certainty into the set of her mouth; silver streaks ribbon her long black braids, a crown of lightning threaded into night. Her deep brown eyes are steady pools where storms file their petitions and leave with either verdict or funeral. The fur collar at her throat is faded, not replaced; she likes things that survive. Khatun of Tepr rests light on her like a blade laid across a lap—present, unsheathed, patient.

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Temej flanks her right, youthful once and now betraying time only by the wideness of his shoulders and the competence that has settled into his hands. Freckles spill across his face like a map of rivers; green eyes are bright as if the steppe light lives behind them. He wears a tunic patched at the elbows with eagle leather, a falconer's glove scarred into a second skin. On his left wrist a tether runs wrist-to-wrist with a hooded eagle bigger than memory—Sartak's get—its talons sheathed but wanting.

Pomogr stands like a complaint against mortality. Grizzled, beard salted to winter, gap-toothed smile as fierce as a torn banner. Lines crawl from the outer corners of his eyes like rivers seeking the sea; the gaze itself remains a knife that never learned mercy. One hip protests when he shifts.

Kuan emerges last from the well's shadow as if invited by a joke only he heard. Fox-like eyes gleam under a fringe of hair swept back and threaded with tiny bone bells that ring only when he lies (so, often). Eight years have sharpened him; the softness left his cheeks, leaving a cat's face and a scholar's wrists. A strip of silk wraps his throat, inked with characters that rewrite themselves when stared at.

Across the cleared sand, Puripal steps into the circle with the leisure of a man who owns the desert. Puripal, Regent by blood and knifework, dark skin weathered to a fine leather, he has pruned himself to essentials: no gleam but the eyes, no waste but the laugh. Eight years have drawn a ruler's map on his face and a small crack of kindness at the corner of his mouth that appears only when Dukar speaks. He wears no crown; the idea of crown walks beside him like a well-fed dog.

Dukar follows, tall, braid heavy down his spine, the fierce amber of his eyes banked and bright. Years have stacked on him like armor: less quick to speak, more exact when he does. There is a scratch at his throat. He keeps to Puripal's left, and the space between them says everything.

Ta brings up the rear. No longer the wide-eyed street cat, he stands lean and dangerous, birthmark bisecting his cheek like a predator's stripe.

No banners rise. One of Temej's eagles drops a rabbit at the well's rim and goes to wait in the sky for the applause it deserves.

Khanai pads from Horohan's shadow like winter given claws; Notso, Dukar's newly acquired big-hearted dog, lifts his head. The tiger's growl starts low, a snow-shelf thinking about falling; Notso answers with a careful chuff, ears half-up, half-wise, as if proposing terms: I am good, I am large, I am not food. Sand stills. Horohan snaps two fingers; Khanai's pupils narrow to coins and the rumble folds, not gone, merely banked. Dukar clicks his tongue; Notso sits, heroic and damp with patience, and looks anywhere but at the cat.

"On time," Puripal says, the desert polishing his consonants. "As promised: a raid that would insult us if we did not do it ourselves."

"It was very us," Kuan agrees. "Our horse-prints even contradict each other like old lovers." He winks without looking at Dukar. "Forgive my scholarship."

Dukar snorts. "You were funnier when you could be killed for it." He claps forearms with Horohan. The contact is brief, hard, real. "Khatun."

"Brother-in-law, Khan-Regent," she returns, lips quirking. "Backstabber sounds so inelegant when a man gets good at the front."

Puripal spreads his hands. "My back is a public square," he says. "Everyone meets there and complains."

"You chose a charming ruin," Puripal says, surveying the staged arrows. "Such dramaturgy. Tell me you at least fed the jackals when the curtain fell."

"They ate the props," Horohan answers.

Kuan leans over the fake blood splashed on the cart's edge, sniffs, and pronounces, "Beetroot. Honest, thrifty. If the Emperor licks it, he will think himself merciful."

Ta laughs. "He has people to lick for him."

They settle in a rough circle, ruined stones for thrones, a cloth spread with meat that used to be rabbit and bread that used to be soft. Temej lays out a sketched map on oiled hide, lines crisp and sure: supply spines, courier ribs, the Moukopl's tender organs marked with dots that resemble fly clusters over wounds.

Horohan begins with the ritual lie. "The Emperor asks after the north," she says. "Naci bows and drinks and is given titles and silver." She glances at Puripal; the corner of his mouth admits understanding. "He thinks the Yohazatz raid. We let him think."

"We did raid," Ta says, offended on behalf of accuracy. "Mostly our own horses, but they were very brave about it."

"They died bravely," Pomogr grunts. "Expensive bravery."

"I itemized it," Temej says, flicking a green-eyed glance up. "In triplicate."

Kuan groans. "He flirts with numbers. Make him stop."

Horohan leans on the map and the wind leans on her and loses. "Hluay gathers at the southern threshold. The Seop revolution threatens to take the yellow sea. The Emperor will not pull his eye from that fire to watch us sharpen knives in shadow."

Puripal's hand hovers above the hide. "We cannot let Hluay and the Seop marry," he says. "Two flames decide they are one, and the pot goes empty. Yanming is not a fool anymore. I wish we had killed him when we had him."

Kuan's bells give a tiny betraying chime. He smiles. "His dog pours tea very well."

Dukar's jaw tightens, then loosens. "I'll keep our cities quiet," he says.

"You always ruin the good parts," Ta mutters.

Pomogr taps the Kamoklopr edge with a blunt nail. "Emperor thinks Yohazatz gnaw from the north. Good. We gnaw—when I say gnaw." He looks at Temej. "Where do we bite so it bleeds the loudest for the least meat?"

Temej touches a dot where caravans neck-down to a miserly pass. "Here," he says. "The Moukopl call it the Needle's Ear. We cannot hold it. We can break it, then leave it to argue with itself." He draws an arrow to a river crossing. "And here. Flood from upstream; their granary floats toward the sea like humble carp."

"Steal the fish." Ta brightens. "I am good at stealing fish."

Horohan looks him over. "You are good at being loud."

"That is a strategy," Kuan offers. "Distraction by handsomeness." He pats Ta's shoulder; Ta tries not to preen.

Puripal studies Horohan as if she were a treaty written in difficult script. "Your Naci is happy drinking from the Emperor's saucer and letting us plan a war without her tongue?"

"She is not happy," Horohan says. "She is exact." A brief smile, humor like a knife pressed flat under silk. "She gave me the meetings because when the Emperor looks at her, he sees a storm he wants to name. It keeps his tea warm."

"And you?" Dukar asks, sharper than he means. "What do you see when you look at us?"

"Accounts," Horohan says simply. "Debts paid in full. Debts coming due." She meets Puripal's gaze. "No one owes me truth. But I will be paid in victory."

Pomogr chuckles. "Our Khatun charges interest."

Kuan squints at the horizon. "My ghosts say the Seop want a king who does not wear a crown. They will ally with anyone who lets them call fire rain. The Hluay give them sermons. We should give them rain."

Puripal considers, dark eyes narrowing against the glare. "We give Seop something they can betray," he says slowly. "A promise that costs them nerve. Two envoys. One ours, one yours, Khatun."

"I'll find one and you can find another," Horohan says.

Ta blinks. "I can do it," he says, late.

Pomogr rubs his hip. "What about the Needle's Ear?"

"We break it," Puripal answers. "Lightly." He shoots a look at Dukar.

They descend into detail. How many barrels of powder can be skimmed from the Seop exchanges without the counters noticing? Which garrison commander at the Needle's Ear prefers dice to duty?

At last the shade shrinks to a coin and the eagles tire of pretending patience. Horohan rolls the hide. "We meet again when Naci drinks," she says. "Unless the world burns faster than schedule."

"It usually does," Puripal says, rising. Sand powders his knees. He offers his wrist to Dukar; Dukar takes it.

"Send my niece word," Dukar adds, too casually. "That she should eat more. She forgets."

"Jinhuang eats men for breakfast," Pomogr says. "She is fine."

"Tell Naci," Puripal says to Horohan, "If she is offered a longer chain, ask what kennel it leads to."

Horohan's smile is almost kind. "She keeps her teeth."

They separate like raiders at dawn—no trail, only the memory of hooves and a well-stone still warm from brief conspiracies. Above them, the eagle finally cries, a long knifed note that says: hunger is a plan too.

...

Sea-light splits itself on iron and salt, then climbs the hull of the Red Cliff Survivor like a thief learning devotion. The ship looks forever on the verge of a fistfight—rails scabbed with old battles, twin masts wrapped in prayer rags that pretend to be flags. A bronze ram grins under her bowsprit; two swivel guns squat by the fo'c'sle capstan, nicknamed Left Aunt and Right Aunt because they shout advice no one asked for.

Shan Xi—the Blood Lotus—lounges on the larboard rail with a stick of candied ginger between her teeth and a knife pinning her hair in a red spill. The lotus tattoo on her throat peeks where her collar slips. Her eyes are temple-lantern calm. Her crew, a merry catastrophe of women, are playing knucklebones on the compass box with actual musket balls.

"Stop betting the ship's direction," Shan Xi says mildly.

"It's lucky, Captain," says Lizi. "North keeps winning."

"That explains the sunsets behind us," Shan Xi says. "Na'er, beat the wind closer. Nana, if the sky falls, catch it with something we can sell."

Auntie Fang (who is no one's aunt), all shoulders and earrings, salutes with a coil of line. Pei the Drummer rolls her sticks on the gunwale, finds the ship's heartbeat, and lays a rhythm that makes ropes remember how to obey.

They are near Seop seas now, where the water changes its mind without warning.

"Captain," says Lizi, scratching at a tar smear. "What do you call a monk, a goat, and a carp in a boat?"

"Dinner," Shan Xi says.

"No," Lizi protests. "It's—"

"Junk to windward!" shrieks Nana from the foretop. "Seop, with painted eyes and a grudge!"

The grudge arrives first: a whistling pot arcs from the junk's prow, spinning twine, then blossoms into nails against the Survivor's foremast. Wood spits. A prayer rag sighs into ash. Right Aunt clears her throat like an insult.

"Speak," Shan Xi says.

Right Aunt speaks chain. The first sweep shears the junk's foredeck of what it loves: men, buckets, a drum. The Seop beaters don't get to finish the war-song they were starting; the sea claps for them instead.

Pots burst again; one licks the deck with green flame. "You promised no more pet fires on the ship!" Na'er yelps, skittering it with a bucket. "They shed!"

"Promises are furniture," Shan Xi says, already moving. "We sit on them until they break." She snaps open her iron fan, the slats etched with tiny scripts that used to be prayer and now are instructions for pain. The fan catches a spray of grit; her other hand draws her dao. She is boringly precise when she begins to kill.

Grapnels bite into their rail. A Seop boarder lands, grinning a mouthful of gold, and gets his grin shortened at the hinge by Auntie Fang's belaying pin. Pei's drum hits a rhythm for boarding hearts—thock-THOCK, thock-THOCK.

Shan Xi crosses to the junk on a line thrown at the wrong time on purpose. She moves light. A fire lance kisses for her throat; she slides under it and opens the wielder from wrist to elbow, neat as gutting a festival carp. Blood paints the junk's eye.

"Captain!" Lizi, helpful as ever, punts a lit stink-pot back to its sender with a broom. It goes off in a disgruntled moan; Seop men stagger, crying, eyes skinned raw by sulfur tears.

A helmsman tries to bring the junk's nose around. Shan Xi's rope dart curves once, twice, as patient as a moon; the hook takes the man in the mouth and introduces the back of his skull to the tiller. The junk sighs and over-corrects. Left Aunt belches iron for the living and splinters for the dead.

"Don't bleed on the new deck!" Na'er scolds a Seop who cannot hear her anymore.

"The old deck is under the new deck," Pei points out.

"Then he can bleed historically."

A jar drops at Shan Xi's boots. Its wick is a whisper from heaven. She kicks it into the junk's open hatch; somewhere below, powder remembers what it wanted to be. The boom smacks the sea flat, then lets it heave back up in chunks.

The Survivor lists. A gnarl of chain rips the mainsail into screaming ribbons. A ball punches the starboard rail and slams in the planks.

"Damage?" Shan Xi says, as if asking about the weather.

"Foretop shorn, main like lace, starboard waist chewed, rudder sulking," Auntie Fang rattles off. "Pump sings a sad song. Also I hate the Seop."

"Same." Shan Xi glides back across the line as the junk, on fire in three different accents, spins to show its unhandsome side to the horizon. A few survivors kick for the grey fringe—fins write cursive behind them. Right Aunt is out of breath and therefore finally satisfied.

"Take trophies," Shan Xi says. "Nothing that screams. Throw back what we cannot feed."

"Captain," Lizi says, hopeful, "can we keep their drum? It survived us. That seems polite."

"Fine," Shan Xi says. "If it sings on our deck, I will drown it myself."

The Survivor rolls, wounded. The bilge pump coughs up its opinion. Pei drops her drumsticks, snatches a pump handle, sets a new rhythm—thock-CHUK, thock-CHUK—and women fall in, faces shiny with salt and triumph and the kind of fear that keeps good knees under you.

"We dock," Shan Xi decides.

All women grimace in unison, thinking their captain might have gotten hit in the head, but none dare ask.

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