Dust hangs over the training field of Qixi-Lo like old smoke. The banners of Yohazatz—yellow, brown, the Khan’s snarling sun—slap and crack in the wind. Boys and men stand in formation, leather creaking, sweat already darkening their collars. Whips coil at officers’ belts, horses stamp and snort.

  Ta stands in the last rank, in a borrowed cuirass that doesn’t quite close at his chest.

  “Too broad,” the armorer had grunted earlier. “For a bastard.”

  Now the word floats around him like a fly. Bastard. Half-blood. Sand-calf. The other recruits glance, smirk, then look away quickly when he catches their eyes. Ta’s face is relaxed, almost lazy, but his hands rest light on the spear shaft, like he’s already thinking where to put it if someone pushes too far.

  The drumbeat halts. Riders enter the yard, flanked by guards with tiger-hide capes. Third Prince Nemeh rides in front, armor polished to a blinding shine, braids threaded with gold wire. He looks like a painting of victory come to life, right up until he smiles.

  “Recruits!” Nemeh calls. “Congratulations. You have pledged your lives to Father, to Yohazatz, and to my very patient temper. Some of you were born to this.” His gaze skims the neat rows of noble sons near the front. “Some of you were born in stables.”

  The chuckle rolls across the field like a small wave.

  His horse sidesteps until he is right before Ta’s rank. He looks down, eyes lingering on Ta’s face with theatrical surprise.

  “Oh,” Nemeh says. “The stables sent their finest.”

  Ta lifts his head. “Horses don’t complain as much as your highness,” he says, conversationally. “And they also smell better.”

  For a heartbeat the yard goes utterly silent.

  One of the captains coughs sharply. “Bastard—”

  Nemeh’s hand snaps up; the captain’s mouth shuts with an audible click. The prince studies Ta like a curious insect. Then, slowly, he laughs.

  “You hear that?” he says to the assembled recruits. “The Khan’s bastard speaks. I was worried he neighs.”

  More laughter now, relieved, cruel. Nemeh leans in his saddle.

  “What is your name?” he asks.

  “Ta,” he answers.

  “Seventh!” Nemeh tilts his head. “Clearly the prettier faces were kept for the firstborns.”

  “Fancy names are for people who need them,” Ta says. “It’s easy to keep a face clean and proper when one lives in a palace with servants.”

  A few of the common soldiers snort; one actually laughs before slapping his own mouth. Nemeh’s eyes narrow, but there is an odd gleam there—interest, irritation, something else.

  “Step forward,” Nemeh says.

  Ta does. The armor pinches his shoulders. Their eyes are level now, almost the same height. Nemeh is older, sharper cheeked. Ta smells horse sweat, oiled leather, and the faint mint on the prince’s breath.

  “Hit him,” Nemeh says to the nearest sergeant. “I want to see if wit keeps his teeth in.”

  The sergeant hesitates. “Your highness, the Khan—”

  “Is not here,” Nemeh says, voice edged with frost. “I am.”

  The sergeant shrugs, pulls off his gauntlet, and swings.

  Ta moves first.

  His spear butt flicks up like a piston, cracking into the sergeant’s wrist. Bone pops; the man yells, dropping his whip. In the same motion Ta steps in, shoulder driving into the sergeant’s chest, and they both go down in a clatter of armor and dust.

  Silence. Then a murmur. Weapons half-drawn.

  Ta kneels on the sergeant’s ribs, his own breath blowing steady. “Permission to refuse the hit, highness,” he pants. “Sir.”

  The sergeant wheezes. “You broke—my—”

  Nemeh dismounts in one smooth motion, boots thudding. He walks over, hand resting on his sword hilt. The other officers watch, not breathing.

  “You’re quick,” Nemeh says. “And stupid. An interesting mix.”

  “I learned from my brothers,” Ta says.

  Nemeh’s smile thins to thread. “Get off him.”

  Ta stands. He expects the punch; Nemeh’s gauntleted fist slams into his cheekbone, white flash, the taste of iron. He staggers, spears clattering around him as nearby recruits flinch aside. The second blow drives into his gut, folding him over.

  “Bastard,” Nemeh says softly, close to his ear. “Remember your place.”

  Ta coughs, spits blood, straightens. His cheek is already swelling. He looks at Nemeh and smiles with most of his teeth.

  “Which place is that?” he rasps. “The part where I die for Yohazatz, or the part where I eat shit from men who can’t throw a proper punch?”

  The third blow doesn’t come. Nemeh stops, chest heaving, anger and consideration warring in his eyes. Slowly, he wipes his knuckles on Ta’s cuirass.

  “I will enjoy watching the border finish what I started,” he says. “Welcome to the army… bastard.”

  ...

  Qaloron Khan sits on his carved stone throne, furs draped over his shoulders, the Golden Scourge coiled beside him like a sleeping snake. Once, his voice could quiet a festival with a word. Now it is rougher, sanded down by years and by Aral?n’s absence. Servants stand with heads bowed; guards pretend to be statues.

  Nemeh paces in front of the throne, armor still dusty from the yard.

  “He struck a sergeant,” Nemeh says. “In open drill. He questioned command. If I let that stand—”

  “You punched him,” Qaloron interrupts. “Three times.”

  Nemeh’s jaw works. “He deserved more.”

  Qaloron’s gaze slides to the side where Ta stands between two guards. Ta’s lip is split, a bruise blooming on his cheek, but his posture is as relaxed as if he’s leaning in a tavern doorway. He is careful not to meet the Khan’s eyes for too long; there is something in those eyes that cuts deeper than fists.

  “You enjoy provoking your betters?” Qaloron asks.

  Ta shrugs, then remembers where he is and bows instead. “I enjoy breathing, Majesty. Sometimes that looks similar.”

  Qaloron almost smiles. Almost. “You are not subtle.”

  “I can learn,” Ta offers.

  “Can you learn to stop breaking my sergeants?” the Khan asks dryly. “They’re expensive.”

  A faint ripple of nervous laughter from the court. Nemeh bristles.

  “Father—”

  “Enough,” Qaloron says, and the word still has weight. “Nemeh, you’re not Aral?n or Noga. You don’t need to prove you’re harder than the stone under our feet. And hm F—Ta—” he hesitates in the name, lets the single syllable hang “—you are my son, like all the others, whether the priests like it or not. The world kills us quickly enough; I don’t need you doing it here.”

  Nemeh’s eyes flash. “So we coddle bastards now?”

  “We don’t coddle anyone,” Qaloron snaps. “We use them. The Moukopl don’t care whose mother birthed you when their cavalry cuts you in half.”

  “He goes to the border with you,” Qaloron decides. “He fights in your line. If he disobeys, you flog him. If he refuses the flogging, you send him back to me.” His mouth tightens. “Alive.”

  Nemeh bows stiffly. “As you command, Father.”

  Nemeh turns on his heel and stalks out. As the guards move to lead Ta away, Qaloron raises a hand.

  “Ta,” he says. “Step closer.”

  Ta does. The throne looms, carved with storms and blazing suns, all the things a man is supposed to be. Up close, Qaloron’s face is older than the statues; the lines around his eyes are carved deeper.

  “You are good with a spear?” the Khan asks.

  “And a bow,” Ta says.

  “That will be useful,” Qaloron murmurs. “On the border, the generals die first. Try not to stand too near them.”

  Ta hesitates. “Is that mercy, Majesty, or advice?”

  Qaloron’s mouth quirks. “They’re the same thing. Go.”

  ...

  Weeks later, Ta rides with Nemeh’s column along the low ridges that mark the edge of Yohazatz and Moukopl land. The sky stretches forever; distant mountains crouch like patient beasts. Dust clings to armor and eyelashes.

  “Remember,” one veteran mutters to him, “the Moukopl move like carts and think like eunuchs. They can’t outflank a drunk goat.”

  Ta squints at the empty plain. “Maybe they should hire the goat.”

  The men laugh, appreciative. Ta has discovered that if he makes them laugh, they forget to check his lineage as often.

  The scouts return with conflicting reports. Moukopl banners here, no there. A feint, a shadow, a wagon train that vanishes behind low hills. Nemeh is confident, almost bored.

  “We’ve danced this dance a dozen times,” he says in council that night. “They creep forward, we hit the flank, they run. Father’s worried about nothing.”

  The general in command of the vanguard—the Fourth Prince, Puripal—sits at the side of the fire, younger than Nemeh, his face thinner, eyes darker. He is quiet, listening more than speaking. Ta watches him from the edge of the tent, technically on guard duty, actually curious.

  Puripal chews dried meat as if he barely tastes it. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft.

  “If they are as stupid as we say,” he says, “why are we here at all?”

  “Because Father wants experience for you,” Nemeh answers, smiling. “Don’t overthink it, little brother. It’s just Moukopl.”

  Puripal’s gaze drifts to the map, to the blank spaces the scouts have not filled in. His fingers tap a nervous rhythm on his knee.

  ...

  It happens fast. Too fast for Yohazatz pride.

  At dawn, the vanguard rides out to meet a Moukopl line that seems thin, almost inviting. Ta trots in the rear ranks, bow over his shoulder, spear couched. The enemy banners ahead show the stylized wave of the Moukopl, the disciplined blocks of infantry with their long spears and square shields.

  “Easy coin,” someone mutters.

  The first volley of Moukopl arrows arcs overhead with mechanical precision. Men drop; horses rear. Before they can even curse, something else slams into the flank—cavalry, Moukopl cavalry, where there should be none.

  “They circled in the night,” Ta realizes aloud. “In the gullies.”

  No one listens; they’re too busy trying not to die.

  The trap snaps shut. The Yohazatz line buckles; shouts turn to screams. Nemeh’s banner wheels, trying to shore up one collapsing wing. Ta loses sight of him in the chaos—horses screaming, men dragged from saddles, the glint of Moukopl helmets like a river of metal.

  At the center, Puripal’s standard jerks and sways. The Fourth Prince rides at its heart, sword drawn, face pale but set. He shouts orders, trying to reform the broken line. For a moment, it actually works; the scattered riders cluster, shields overlapping, a knot of resistance in a sea of steel.

  Then a new banner appears opposite them. A white hawk on blue. Tun Zol Bazhin.

  Bazhin rides with the calm of a man who has done this too many times. His armor is practical, scarred; his eyes never stop moving. He gestures, and his unit surge forward, elite cavalry fanning around Puripal’s knot.

  The clash is brutal. Ta sees it in flashes—Puripal’s horse biting at a Moukopl gelding, Puripal himself cutting a man from the saddle, then taking a spear across the side. He sways but stays mounted. Moukopl close in, their curved blades a blur. One hooks his reins, another grabs his arm.

  They drag the Fourth Prince from his horse like a carp snagged from a river.

  “Fall back!” someone screams. “We’re broken! Fall back!”

  Ta’s own horse is dancing sideways, foam on its bit. Men push past him, some throwing down weapons, others trying to form a last feeble shield wall. The border that was supposed to be a simple hunt has turned into a slaughterhouse.

  Then he sees Puripal.

  They haul him onto a low ridge where Bazhin has made his temporary command. Puripal’s wrists are bound behind him; his armor is smeared with blood. He kneels because they force him to, but his back is straight. Bazhin says something to him; Puripal answers, shoulders stiff. A Moukopl soldier laughs and backhands him.

  Ta’s hands move without asking permission.

  He slips the bow from his shoulder. The string hums as he tests it, automatic. His fingers find an arrow in the quiver. The distance is long, but not impossible. He has hunted moving targets at greater range. He breathes once, twice.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “This is it,” a voice in his head says, and he isn’t sure if it is Nemeh’s, his own, or all his brothers at once. The bastard’s chance. Kill a prince. Break something of Father’s the way Father broke him.

  He nocks the arrow.

  Down on the ridge, Puripal lifts his head suddenly, as if a wind brushes his face.

  Their eyes meet across the chaos.

  Puripal’s eyes are not noble or heroic in that moment. They are tired. Shocked. The eyes of a boy who has done everything he was told, bled where he was ordered to bleed, and finds himself on his knees anyway.

  For a heartbeat Ta sees himself kneeling there instead. Same too-thin frame, same bruises under the armor, same question: what did I do wrong except exist?

  A Moukopl hand shoves Puripal’s shoulder; he staggers. He looks straight at Ta. Of course he can’t see him, not really, not in this churn of bodies and dust—but the gaze lands like a spear.

  Puripal’s lips move.

  Shoot.

  Ta’s fingers tighten. The word hits him harder than anything he has gone through.

  You want me dead that badly? he thinks, almost amused. Even tied up, you princes find ways to order me around.

  His mouth quirks for half a heartbeat. Then something inside his chest twists, ugly and sharp.

  If he kills Puripal now, Bazhin loses a prize. The empire loses leverage. A clean Yonhazatz death, yes—but also one less person who knows what this feels like. One less boy with eyes like a bruised sky. And one less son for Qaloron Khan.

  Ta exhales.

  The world narrows to the point of the arrow.

  His arm dips, just a fraction, almost like a flinch, almost like mercy, almost like cruelty.

  He looses.

  The bowstring sings. The arrow arcs, a thin dark line against the white sky. Time stretches, snaps.

  It hits Puripal below the chest, just above the line of his belt. He jerks, breath leaving him in a soundless shout. For a moment, Ta thinks he has missed entirely, that he has merely hurt, not spared, not saved, not anything.

  Blood blooms on Puripal’s tunic, dark and spreading. Bazhin’s men shout in alarm, dragging him behind a shield wall. Someone points in Ta’s direction; a scatter of arrows whistles past, close enough that one slices a line of fire across his forearm.

  Ta doesn’t move. The bow hangs used in his hand.

  On the ridge, Puripal crumples to his side, then is yanked back up, held between two soldiers like a cloth doll. Even at this distance, Ta imagines he sees it: the smallest curve at the corner of the prince’s mouth, not quite a smile, not quite anything at all.

  The battlefield roars around him—retreat horns, screaming horses, the crack of splintering spear shafts. The Moukopl press forward; Yohazatz riders break and run. Dust swallows the ridge, the prince, the general, everything.

  For a moment, Ta stands utterly alone, arrowless, staring into the place where Puripal was.

  The dust thickens, turning the world dull and red. A shout comes from his left; a shape looms; something heavy and iron-hard slams into the side of his skull. Stars explode behind his eyes. The ground rushes up to meet him, surprisingly gentle.

  The roar of battle thins to a hiss, then to a distant heartbeat, then to nothing.

  Darkness folds over him like a tent flap.

  The smell of burning doesn’t fade. It twists, becoming something sharper: boiled linen, bitter herbs, old blood.

  Ta’s eyelids flutter.

  The roar of battle is gone, replaced by low voices, the soft clink of ceramic, the rhythmic rasp of someone breathing too loudly nearby. His body feels heavy, wrong, as if he has been replaced by a sack of wet sand.

  “—think he’s moving—”

  “Hold him still, idiot, you’ll tear the stitches—”

  The voices swim at the edge of sense. Light presses against his closed eyes, a pale, stubborn glare.

  Ta drags in a breath that tastes of smoke and medicine and someone else’s skin.

  He forces his eyes open.

  He wakes up in the hospital.

  The world swims back in ragged pieces.

  Canvas instead of sky. Smoke instead of wind. The clink of glass, the soft groan of someone trying not to scream.

  Ta lies on something too soft to be a cot and too hard to be a bed. A band of fire wraps his throat, pulsing with every heartbeat. When he tries to swallow, knives scrape inside his neck.

  “Don’t move,” a voice orders. “Or do, if you want to discover new and exciting ways to bleed internally.”

  He turns his head anyway.

  Pragya and Pragati hover over him like annoyed vultures.

  “Where,” Ta croaks. It comes out like a frog dying in a well. He grits his teeth and tries again. “Where am I?”

  “You are in a very exclusive resort,” Pragya says solemnly. “The Bo’anem Auxiliary Butchery and Spa. All the nobles are dying to get in.”

  “Some are just dying,” Pragati adds.

  Ta blinks. Canvas walls, a row of rough pallets, the sour-salt stink of sweat and medicine. Outside, distant shouting mixes with the deeper roar of a city that hasn’t finished burning. His hand twitches toward his neck; a twin slaps it away.

  “Ah-ah,” she says. “You touch my stitches, I sew your fingers to your ear. Pragya’s policy.”

  Ta sucks in a slow breath, feeling the bandages tug. “You still haven’t answered,” he says. “Where am I? What happened?”

  The twins exchange a look. Pragati’s mouth tightens. Pragya’s flippant mask wobbles, just for a heartbeat.

  “You got shot,” Pragati says. “In the neck. By—”

  A shadow falls across him.

  “By me,” a new voice says.

  The twins straighten instinctively, bodies pulling to attention. Ta turns his head—carefully this time.

  She stands at the foot of the pallet, boots planted, arms loosely folded. Hair tied in a sleek knot, sword at her hip.

  “I am Admiral Kagawa Tomoe,” she says. “Formerly of the glorious Seop Republic Navy, currently of the ‘What fresh disaster is this?’ coalition. And yes, I am the one who put a hole in your neck. My aim is usually better.”

  Ta stares at her. His throat throbs. “You… shot me.”

  “In my defense,” Tomoe says, “you were walking with a lot of people trying to kill me. Also, the courtyard was on fire. Suboptimal conditions.”

  Pragya mutters, “You could just say ‘I’m sorry.’ It uses fewer words.”

  “I was getting there,” Tomoe says, without looking at her. Back to Ta: “I am sincerely sorry. Shan Xi would be… irritated, to say the least, if you died on my account.”

  At the mention of Shan Xi, the twins visibly relax. Ta’s brows draw together.

  “The Captain,” he repeats. “Where is she?”

  “Out,” Tomoe says. “Before she left, she told me to look after you and the twins.” Her mouth curves, not quite a smile. “So here I am, a decorated admiral reduced to hospital nanny.”

  “You were the one shooting us,” Pragya mutters.

  “Career paths are strange,” Tomoe agrees lightly.

  Ta lets his gaze travel over the tent, the rows of wounded, the flicker of lamps. There is a hitch in his chest that has nothing to do with stitches.

  “How,” he says slowly, “am I still alive?”

  Silence settles for a moment. Pragati looks at Tomoe. Pragya looks anywhere else.

  Tomoe exhales, rubs a thumb over a smudge on her bracer, then steps closer, boots whispering on the packed earth.

  “You’re alive,” she says, “because this city is very, very bad at letting children stay dead.”

  Ta’s fingers curl in the blanket. “That is not an answer.”

  “No,” Tomoe says. “It’s preamble. Humor me, I’m better with preambles than feelings.”

  She glances at the twins. “You two, go—uh—check on some other patients.”

  “There are no other patients on this pallet,” Pragya says.

  “Then be creative,” Tomoe says.

  Pragati gives Ta a brief, apologetic look. “We’ll be right outside,” she says, then grabs her sister by the sleeve and tows her away. Pragya’s protest fades behind the canvas flap.

  Tomoe and Ta are left in their own small circle of lamplight.

  “You remember the boy,” Tomoe says quietly. “Prince Yotaka.”

  His jaw clenches. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

  Tomoe nods slowly. “Shan Xi broke your little rescue party out of that mess. You were bleeding like someone had uncorked you. The shot had missed anything instantly fatal, but you were draining fast. They dragged you into an alley with about six minutes of privacy and zero supplies. And then Shan Xi…” She hesitates, lips pressing together.

  Ta waits. His heartbeat pounds in his throat, heavy, obscene.

  “She killed him,” he says at last. It’s not a question. He knew she would.

  Tomoe’s eyes flick to his, then away. “She decided the world could spare one prince more than it could spare one lunatic bastard who keeps lunging at firing squads,” she says. Her tone is light, but her shoulders are not. “We used his blood for a transfusion. The twins did the work.”

  For a moment, the tent seems to tilt. Ta’s fingers scrabble on the pallet, clutching rough fabric. He feels the bandage at his neck, the ache in his veins, the dull fatigue in his bones.

  “His… blood,” he says. The words are thick, sticky. “In me.”

  “On the bright side,” Tomoe says, because she doesn’t know how to stop, “you can now technically claim to be double royal. Think about the promotions. You bastard princes are really gaming the system.”

  She waits for the laugh that doesn’t come.

  Ta’s face goes still.

  “I am,” he says softly, “going to be sick.”

  “There’s a bowl.” Tomoe gestures to a clay pot by the bed.

  He doesn’t vomit, though his stomach threatens. He breathes, shallow and ragged, for a long moment. The tent noises seep back in around him: groans, whispered orders, the distant crash of a collapsing wall outside.

  “A child,” he says. “You killed a child to save me.”

  Tomoe’s jaw jumps. “Shan Xi killed him,” she corrects. “I… And he wasn’t exactly a toddler, if that eases your conscience at all. Old enough to be executed properly by his own Republic, as I recall.”

  “That doesn’t make it better,” Ta snaps. The flare of anger steadies him. “He was a prince. He was… He was just…” The words snarl together. “You poured his life into mine like wine into a dirty cup.”

  Tomoe looks at him for a long moment. Her gaze is level, tired, not unkind.

  “He was a prince,” she says at last. “The last symbol of a rotten monarchy. Everything you’ve been taught to hate since you learned your own father doesn’t like you. We know how bastards feel. We used to have a ton of them. You grew up knowing princes get fed while you get flogged. And now a prince’s blood runs in your veins. Poetry, if one is cruel.”

  Her smile is thin. “It seemed… appropriate, in a way.”

  Ta’s laugh is short, harsh. “Appropriate. I hate my own royal blood enough as it is. I’ve spent my life trying to forget. And now you’ve added more.” He presses his fingers hard into the blanket. “You should have let me die.”

  “Possibly,” Tomoe says. “But Shan Xi is very bad at doing the reasonable thing when someone she likes is bleeding in front of her.” She leans on the bedpost, watching him. “You despise princes. You despise royal blood. You despise the entire architecture of inheritance, titles, and bows, yes?”

  “Yes,” Ta snaps.

  “Then congratulations,” Tomoe says. “One of them died to save you. You can spit on his memory like all the others.”

  He stares at her. The fury gutters, then twists, taking a different shape.

  “You’re wrong,” he says.

  Tomoe arches a brow. “Wouldn’t be the first time. About what this time?”

  “About all princes,” Ta says. His voice roughens but doesn’t break. “About my hatred being neat, simple. There is one prince I am eternally indebted to.”

  Tomoe snorts softly. “Let me guess. Puripal. The Khan Regent. Shan Xi has told me about him too.”

  Ta ignores the jab. “He is the one I still haven’t properly apologized to,” he says. “For the arrow. For everything.”

  He drags his eyes back to Tomoe. There is a stubborn light in them now, fever-bright and unsmiling.

  “You talk about princes and servants,” he says. “About how their titles hook into us. You’re not entirely wrong. But that’s not all this is. There is something else. Something that doesn’t ask who was born in a palace and who in a back stall.”

  Tomoe sniffs. “You’re about to say something unbearably sentimental, aren’t you.”

  “Probably,” Ta says. “You can cover your ears.”

  He doesn’t wait for her.

  “Puripal is my kin,” he says. The word drops between them, heavier than blood. “Not by law, not by Father’s decree. By… whatever it was that passed between us on that field. By the way he looked at me and saw more than a useful bastard with good aim.”

  “Kiss the boot that kicked you,” Tomoe says.

  “No,” Ta says. “Something else. Something that doesn’t give a shit about thrones and banners.” He searches for the word, finds one that feels ridiculous and right. “Soulmates.”

  Tomoe actually recoils, as if he has thrown a bucket of cold water at her. “Oh, gods. You are worse than that stupid pirate.”

  “I don’t mean the stupid story kind,” Ta says, frustrated. “Not the ‘we were meant for each other and the stars approve’ kind. I mean the sort where you look at someone and it breaks the world into two pieces: them, and everything else.”

  She looks away, annoyed. “You are under the influence of heavy blood loss, narcotics, and pirate philosophy. Of course you think this is destiny. That is how they get you, you know. Princes. Khans. Admirals. They wrap duty around affection until you can’t tell where one ends and the other starts. You think you love them, and suddenly you’re volunteering to bleed for their banners.”

  Ta shakes his head, the movement small but firm. “If Puripal orders me to die for him, I refuse,” he says. “If someone tries to kill him, I’ll throw myself in the way.” His smile is crooked. “That’s the difference.”

  “That is not how differences work,” Tomoe says, but it comes out weaker than she intends.

  “He would do the same for me,” Ta says quietly. “He already tried. On that border, with his eyes.” He taps his chest, just above the heart. “We are tied up in something that doesn’t care about khans’ orders. If he had been here, and Shan Xi had knifed me for him, I think he would have screamed the same way I do now.”

  “Romantic,” Tomoe says. “Dangerous.”

  “Yes,” Ta says. “Things that make life worth not dying for, apparently.”

  He swings his legs over the side of the pallet.

  Pragya bursts back through the flap immediately, as if she has been waiting with her ear pressed to the canvas. “Absolutely not,” she says. “Lie down. You have more stitches than sense.”

  Pragati follows, eyes wide. “You stand, you open like a wineskin,” she warns. “We worked very hard to keep your blood inside. Don’t insult our artistry.”

  Ta plants his feet on the packed earth. The world lurches. Pain flares in his neck, his chest, the places where knives and bullets and hands have been. He grips the bedframe until his knuckles whiten, then pushes himself upright.

  Tomoe watches, arms still folded. “You are making an impressive argument for natural selection,” she says.

  “I have to go,” Ta says through his teeth.

  “Where?” Pragya demands. “The executions are over. The palace is semi on fire. The baths are closed.”

  “Wherever my kin is,” Ta says.

  He takes a step. His knees protest, but they hold. The twins dart in front of him, each grabbing an arm.

  “Lie down,” Pragya insists. “If you rip those sutures, I’m not sewing you again. I’ll just stuff rags in the holes and label you ‘leaky cargo.’”

  “Move,” Ta says, not loudly, but with a weight that makes them hesitate.

  Pragati searches his face. Whatever she sees there makes her swallow.

  He gently but firmly pushes them aside. No violence, no flourish. Just the steady insistence of a man who has decided, and will walk until the ground or his own body refuses him.

  He limps toward the door, bare feet whispering on the dirt.

  The twins look from his retreating back to Tomoe, indignant and alarmed.

  “Admiral,” Pragya says. “Are you not going to stop him? Shan Xi will flay us if he dies on the doorstep.”

  Pragati nods quickly. “You’re his watching officer. And ours. You said so.”

  Tomoe sighs, long and low, as if the air has to be dragged out of her lungs.

  “I could,” she says. “I could have him tied down. I could remind him that bleeding romantics like him feed empires more than they break them.” She looks at the twins, then at the canvas where Ta has just vanished. “Your ideology won’t change the world. Mine either. The world changes grain and coin, and nothing else.”

  Her fingers flex once at her side.

  “But,” she adds quietly, “I am sorry for shooting you in the neck.”

  She exhales, a rueful huff.

  “So I let you go,” Tomoe says. “Just this time.”

  ...

  Naci stands at the prow, boots braced, spyglass to her eye. Salt wind whips her braids back, snapping the Tepr beads like tiny bones. Behind her, the ship’s deck is a clutter of worlds that don’t belong together: Moukopl sailors hauling lines with drilled precision, Tepr riders trying not to look seasick beside their tethered horses, Banners oiling muskets on tarps while Horohan quietly terrifies a cluster of cabin boys just by existing.

  “Two days,” Bimen says at her shoulder. The admiral’s coat is buttoned to his throat, not a crease out of place despite the spray. “At our current speed. Faster if the wind decides to love me for once.”

  “The wind does love you,” Naci says absently, tracking the shape of the city as it slowly sharpens: ruined towers, the broken teeth of piers, a faint smear of fresh smoke. “It just loves watching you panic more.”

  Bimen makes a wounded noise. “The last time I panicked, Khan, it was because your people were standing on my gunwales shouting about boarding practice. I am entitled.”

  “Don’t complain,” Borak calls from a coil of rope, where he sits with Seop and Tepr Banners. “We’ve only sacrificed, what, three of your cannons to the sea spirits?”

  “Four,” corrects a Banner girl, not looking up from the map she’s annotating. “One, technically, was my fault. I slipped.”

  “That cannon jumped,” another’s voice floats from the same knot of people, dry as old parchment. “It heard Bimen’s battle plan and chose the ocean.”

  Bimen pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why did I agree to this coalition,” he mutters.

  “Because you like living,” Naci says. “And because you knew we’d come anyway.”

  She shuts the spyglass with a snap. Bo’anem is still just a dirty smudge, but the air feels different—tense, watching. The city is listening, and has not yet decided whether it wants to be saved, conquered, or simply left alone to finish burning.

  Borak sidles up, carrying something that looks like a demented bamboo spear with paper fins.

  “Signal flare’s ready,” he announces. “Loaded myself. Didn’t even blow anything up this time.”

  “That I saw,” Horohan mutters.

  Naci eyes the contraption. “It won’t set my flagship on fire, will it?” she asks, loud enough for Bimen to hear.

  “Your flagship?” Bimen repeats faintly.

  Borak pats the flare’s barrel like it’s a beloved goat. “It’ll behave,” he says.

  Naci jerks her chin toward the city. “Do it, then. I hope Sen is watching.”

  If she’s still alive, she’ll see.

  Borak plants the tube at an angle, wedges its base behind a cleat. The sailors give it a wide berth. One crosses himself with the quick, furtive gesture of men who don’t want their officers to see they still believe in gods.

  “On my mark,” Borak says, as if anyone else is involved. He fumbles a coal from the brazier, touches it to the fuse. The hiss is instant, eager.

  “Everyone not wanting to lose eyebrows, take three polite steps back,” Bimen advises, already doing so.

  The flare shrieks as it launches, a banshee scream that makes the nearest horses rear and the youngest Banners swear. It arcs up over the fleet, a thin needle of light, then bursts high above the gray water in a blossom of harsh blue-green, spitting silver cinders.

  Borak grins, teeth bright in his smoke-reddened face.

  Then they watch the horizon.

  The sea slaps at the hull. Rigging creaks. Naci folds her arms, eyes narrowed, counting heartbeats. Horohan drifts to her side.

  A few of the sailors are taking bets—two to one that no flare comes, three to one that it’s the wrong color, five to one that Borak’s tube was facing the wrong way and their message is currently informing a shoal of fish.

  Then, from the direction of the Slump—lower on the city’s flank, where the buildings sag and the roofs lean—a thin streak of light claws up into the sky.

  “There,” Horohan says sharply.

  The answering flare explodes not as a neat sphere but as a jagged, uneven crown of yellow and dirty green, spitting sparks that stutter instead of fall. It looks like it’s trying very hard to imitate a respectable firework and failing on principle.

  Bimen lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Well,” he says. “At least one of our beloved criminals survives.”

  “More than one,” Naci says.

  Because even as the embers of Sen’s flare are still winking out, another streak rises—not from the Slump, but from deeper in the city, closer to the palace district.

  This one climbs higher than the others, almost defiantly so, then bursts in a pattern Naci has seen only once before: on a different sea, over a different burning harbor, when the Blood Lotus cut a red wound through Moukopl harbors.

  The fire blossoms in layered petals of red and white, blooming then folding inward on itself. At the last moment, a second crack splits the core and a final spray of sparks whips out sideways, crooked, like a drunk starfall.

  Naci’s hand tightens on the rail.

  She remembers that odd, lopsided flower of fire above the Blood Lotus deck, Lizi leaning against the mast with a grin that had too much pain in it for a woman that young, saying, If we must announce ourselves, might as well make it pretty.

  “Admiral,” Naci’s tone is serious, “something strange just happened. Something that isn’t in any of my plans.”