Plain girls are invisible girls.

  Kan repeats the phrase in her head as she walks, balancing a tray of tea and a leather scroll-case on one hip. Her robe is good cloth but dull color—muddy green instead of jewel tones. Her hair is braided simply, no bells, no jade pins. She looks like a servant who eats well.

  The women’s quarter hums around her: perfume and incense, laughter that sharpens like knives when doors slide shut. Every doorway is a mouth. Every curtain might have teeth.

  She passes [ ] Consort’s rooms first. The silk curtain parts just enough for a hand heavy with bangles to appear.

  “Little Kan,” a voice purrs. “Come in.”

  Kan steps sideways, just enough that the tray doesn’t wobble. Inside, LLLLS Consort lounges on cushions like a painted cat, attendants fanning her with peacock feathers.

  “You run errands for your mother today?” she asks.

  “I carry for the Inner Household,” Kan says. Neutral. It can mean anything.

  }}}ss smiles. “Tell your mother we hear she’s begging the Khan for a new pavilion. So ambitious.” She twists a silver ring from her finger—a coiled dragon biting its tail—and drops it onto Kan’s tray, between the tea cups. “A poor widow like me has no need of trinkets. Perhaps she does.”

  Kan bows. The tray tilts; tea ripples but does not spill. “I’ll remember,” she says.

  “Good girl,” Lolllls murmurs, already dismissing her with a flick of her eyes.

  Two corridors later, another door opens as Kan passes. Smoke rolls out: thick incense, sweet and cloying. Consort Ger?s stands framed there, sleeves too long, smile too large.

  “Little bird,” Ger?s says. “You grow taller each month.”

  “Only when I stand up,” Kan replies before she can stop herself.

  Ger?s laughs as if that were charming instead of impudent. “Ask your brothers if they want sweetcakes,” she says, gliding closer. “I always have more than your mother gives you.”

  Her nails brush Kan’s wrist, light and sticky. She tucks a small paper packet under the tray cloth—sweets or powder or both.

  Kan nods, bows, pockets everything in movement so smooth it looks like clumsiness. She is twelve and already a letter box for other war.

  In her shoe, pressed flat against her arch, the folded note scratches with each step.

  She does not think about it right now.

  She reaches her mother’s chambers and taps the door with her toe.

  “Enter,” comes the answer, sharp and bored.

  Mother sits before a bronze mirror, hair half-braided, half-spilling down her back like ink. A maid kneels behind her with a comb; Mother’s hand rests on the edge of the table, still as carved lacquer.

  The room is immaculate: cushions at right angles, scrolls stacked by height, incense burner aligned perfectly with the window frame. Only one thing is out of place—a bowl on the floor, crushed herbs smeared around it, as if she knocked it over and did not bother to hide the evidence.

  Kan slides the door shut with her heel, steps over the herbs, and kneels to present the tray and scroll.

  Mother doesn’t look up. “What did the +++++ Consort say?” she asks, eyes on her own reflection.

  Kan recites, word for word: the tone, the ring, the “poor widow”, the new pavilion.

  Mother listens with the attentiveness she only uses for politics.

  “She said ‘perhaps’ or ‘surely’?” Mother asks.

  “‘Perhaps,’” Kan answers. “‘Perhaps she does.’”

  Mother’s mouth curves, pleased—at her own accuracy, at her rival’s clumsiness, at Kan’s memory. Hard to tell. She finally turns her head enough to glance at her daughter.

  “Good,” she says. “Your ears work.” She stands, silk shifting. “Eyes up.”

  Kan lifts her chin. Mother steps closer, fingers catching Kan’s collar. She adjusts it, tugging the cloth tight around Kan’s throat until it presses against the pulse.

  “You are my eyes,” she says. “Eyes do not blink when they’re being watched.”

  The fabric digs into Kan’s skin. She swallows, forcing her voice steady. “Yes, Mother.”

  As Mother’s hand drops, Kan sees it: a faint bruise circling her wrist, yellowing at the edges. Thumb-shaped, maybe. Or bracelet-shaped. Or door-shaped. The palace has many things that can bruise a woman.

  Kan’s fingers twitch on the tray. Before she can stop herself, she reaches out, hand rising toward that shadow.

  Mother catches her halfway. Her grip is iron around Kan’s small hand, squeezing until knuckles pale.

  “Save your mercy for people who can afford it,” Mother says.

  Then, almost as an afterthought, she releases the hand and pats Kan’s cheek with two fingers. The gesture could almost be tenderness, if not for the precision.

  “You do well,” she says. “One day you will live because you listened.”

  Kan bows her head so Mother won’t see her expression. “I listen,” she says. “I always listen.”

  Mother smiles at her reflection. “I know,” she says.

  Kan slides one foot back into her shoe, feeling the folded paper press against her skin like a secret oath.

  ...

  The training yard shimmers under the midday sun.

  Dust puffs with each step. Camels grumble from their pens beyond the low wall. The clang of steel against steel wraps around the place like a second sky.

  Aral?n moves through it like the point of a spear.

  He faces an older guard, both of them stripped to shirts and practice armor. Sweat glistens on Aral?n’s shoulders; his braid sticks damply to his neck. The guard circles warily, blade held cautious.

  “Again,” Aral?n says.

  The guard lunges, going for a safe line—thigh, not throat. Aral?n parries, turns, slides. His sword kisses the man’s ribs, exactly where the armor gaps. Not deep enough to maim. Deep enough to sting.

  “Yield,” Aral?n says.

  The guard grimaces, drops to one knee, taps his chest in acknowledgment. “Prince.”

  Aral?n nods. That should be enough.

  When the guard starts to rise, Aral?n’s arm snaps out. A second strike raps the man’s helmet, ringing it like a bell. Not lethal. Humiliating. Dust kicks up as the guard stumbles.

  A few of the watching soldiers exchange looks: respect, resentment, a hint of fear. Aral?n sees it, feels it, and something inside him relaxes.

  The guard spits blood into the dirt and bows his head properly this time. Aral?n does not bow back.

  When the practice matches are over, the others drift toward the shade, voices low, gossip already fermenting.

  Aral?n stays.

  He runs through a sequence again and again: cut, parry, shift, thrust, pivot, return. His palms are raw, blisters torn open earlier now oozing. He does not stop. The rhythm eats his thoughts.

  He doesn’t notice the soft laughter at the yard entrance until a melon rolls into his peripheral vision, bouncing once and bursting in a wet explosion of pulp.

  “Careful, you killed it,” Kan says.

  Puripal trips after the runaway fruit, skidding in juice, arms flailing. He lands on his backside with a splat, robes now decorated with orange and seeds.

  Aral?n turns, sword still in hand. His first instinct is sharp: What are you doing here? It almost makes it to his mouth.

  Instead he exhales and lowers the blade.

  “You ambushed a melon and lost,” he says. “Impressive.”

  Puripal squints up at him, hair askew. “Kan pushed it,” he complains.

  Kan lifts her hands. “Gravity pushed it,” she says. “I merely encouraged the process.”

  Aral?n’s mouth twitches, betraying him. He plants the sword point in the dirt and crouches in front of Puripal, hands sliding under the boy’s arms to haul him up. Puripal squeaks as his feet leave the ground. Aral?n spins him once, just enough to make him yelp and giggle.

  “Little cat,” Aral?n says, setting him down. “If you’re going to steal, steal better fruit. This one surrendered too easily.”

  Puripal beams, then glances at the busted melon with theatrical regret. “Waste,” he sighs.

  “Not entirely,” Aral?n says.

  He scoops up his dagger, kneels by the ruined melon, and saws off the least-sandy chunks. They retreat to a strip of shade against the wall, sitting cross-legged, sharing sticky orange wedges off the blade tip.

  “What did Mother teach you today?” Aral?n asks lightly, as if asking about games.

  Puripal brightens obediently. “That flinching is weakness,” he recites. “And that sweet things are safest when you control them.”

  Juice dribbles down his wrist as he speaks. He doesn’t seem to notice.

  Aral?n’s jaw tightens for half a heartbeat. He cuts a too-large piece and pops it into his own mouth, chewing like he can grind the words down.

  “Mother does like her sayings,” he says.

  “She gave me a new one,” Puripal adds proudly. “She said I’m her knife.”

  Kan rolls a melon seed between thumb and forefinger. “And she said I was her eyes,” she says. “Does she have a full set now? Knife, eyes, shield, disappointment…”

  Aral?n snorts. He reaches out and, with thumb still sticky with juice, smears a streak of orange across Kan’s forehead, right above her brows.

  She yelps. “Aral?n!”

  “There,” he says. “Now you look fierce.”

  “I look like you missed my mouth,” she says, trying not to smile as she wipes at it.

  “That too,” he concedes.

  He leans back against the warm wall, watching them chew. For a moment, the yard shrinks to shaded stone, the taste of fruit, his siblings’ breathing.

  “Flinching is normal,” he says suddenly.

  Puripal blinks. “Mother says—”

  “I know what Mother says,” Aral?n cuts in. He lowers his voice, so even the wind would have to strain to carry it. “I say: flinch when you must. Just don’t do it in front of the foxes.”

  Kan’s fingers still. Puripal studies his brother’s face with solemn dark eyes, then nods once as if this is a law he can work with.

  Aral?n lifts his dagger again, looking at Kan. “Cipher time,” he says. “If ‘sun’ is one dot and ‘moon’ is two, what is ‘eclipse’?”

  Kan squints, melon forgotten. “Three dots, crossed out,” she says after a moment. “Because someone is in the way.”

  Aral?n grins—real, unarmored pride. “See?” he says. “You’re sharper than half these men. Don’t tell them; it will upset their swords.”

  Before Kan can bask properly, a shout cuts across the yard.

  “Prince Aral?n!” a senior officer calls, tone edged. “If you’re done playing nursemaid, the men are waiting for a real fight.”

  The word “nursemaid” carries. So does the muttered “consort’s pet” that follows, barely disguised as a cough.

  Aral?n’s eyes go flat. He stands, the warmth draining from his posture like water from a cracked cup.

  “Stay in the shade,” he tells Kan and Puripal. “Eat.”

  He walks back into the center of the yard, shoulders back, face blank. The next bout starts. His strikes are sharper now, hitting a touch too late to be training and a touch too early to be murder.

  Dust rises, and the men give ground without realizing why.

  ...

  Evening cools the stone of Mother’s chambers, but the air inside is still thick.

  The brazier glows low, embers banked. Shadows pile in the corners. Outside, the palace quiets; inside, nothing ever truly sleeps.

  Aral?n steps in, sweat drying sticky on his back. He smells of dust and iron. His knuckles are scraped raw.

  Mother doesn’t ask if he is hurt.

  “Close the door,” she says.

  He does.

  She hands him a folded cloth without looking. His sword is already half out of its scabbard before he realizes that’s what she wants. He draws it fully and begins wiping the blade, careful, thorough.

  “Your father spoke your name today,” Mother says.

  Aral?n’s head jerks up before he can stop it. Hope flashes across his face—quick, bright, treacherous.

  He masks it an instant later, but she sees. She always does.

  “What did he say?” he asks, trying for casual and landing somewhere near hoarse.

  “That you hit harder than some generals,” she says. “That you don’t whine as much when you’re cut.” Her lips curve. “He is not poetic, but praise is praise.”

  Aral?n’s fingers tighten on the cloth. He nods once.

  Mother moves around him, circling slow, straightening his shoulder mantle, tugging at a strap, adjusting him like armor on a rack.

  “The Heir is weak because he thinks the world will love him,” she murmurs. “He believes smiles are gifts instead of knives. We cannot afford that.”

  Aral?n keeps his eyes ahead. “No,” he says. “We can’t.”

  “You understand,” she says. “That is why you are mine.”

  She stops in front of him and presses a dry kiss to his forehead. It leaves no mark, but he feels it like an imprint.

  “You are my shield,” she says.

  He swallows. “Yes.”

  As she steps back, her gaze catches on a bruise blossoming along his ribs, visible where his shirt has torn. Purple and green, a soldier’s flower.

  She reaches out and presses her thumb into it. Hard.

  Pain spikes. His body wants to flinch, to twist away. He doesn’t move.

  “Did it hurt?” she asks.

  “No,” he says, through clenched teeth.

  “Good response,” she murmurs.

  Near the doorway, Kan and Puripal hover, half-shadow, half-eavesdroppers. Mother’s eyes flick toward them, pinning them like insects.

  “You will keep them alive too,” she says to Aral?n. “Even if you have to teach them how to kill.”

  Aral?n lets out a slow breath. “Yes, Mother,” he says.

  Kan and Puripal exchange a look. They both stand a little straighter.

  The brazier pops, sending up a brief spurt of sparks before settling back into its quiet burn.

  ...

  Rain drums a patient rhythm against the palace eaves.

  Puripal is half-asleep on a nest of cushions beside Kan. His head rests in her lap; her fingers work through his hair, weaving small, precise braids. Each twist seems to smooth a crease from his face.

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  “You missed a bit,” he mumbles.

  “I did not,” she says. “I am creating an asymmetry. It keeps assassins confused.”

  He snorts, eyes closed.

  The door-panel slides aside with a soft wooden sigh.

  Mother steps in.

  She shuts the door herself, with the same care one uses for sealing jars. Her robes whisper around her ankles, dark green tonight. In her hand she carries the lacquer box Puripal has seen twice before. Both times it meant something in the palace changed shape.

  Tonight, it looks heavier.

  Puripal sits up. Kan’s fingers freeze in his hair.

  Mother sets the box down between them as if placing a toy between children.

  “Open it,” she says.

  Puripal flips the latch and lifts the lid.

  Inside, three glass vials lie in velvet. They are no longer than his smallest finger, stoppered tight, liquid inside clear as rain.

  He leans closer, fascinated. They look like captured raindrops. Or tears.

  Kan’s shoulders go rigid. She has seen the box before too.

  Mother lifts one vial between thumb and forefinger. Her nails are immaculate, lacquered a deep, bloodless red. She uncaps it with a twist.

  On the side table, a cup of tea steams gently.

  She tips the vial.

  One drop falls.

  The surface of the tea clouds, swirling pale, then clears again, perfectly innocent. No smoke, no smell. Just a faint ring where the surface broke.

  “See?” Mother says. “No smell. No taste. A polite death.”

  Puripal’s voice comes out smaller than he intends. “For rats?”

  Mother smiles. It’s almost kind, if you don’t know her. “For foxes,” she says.

  She takes his hand, palm up, and places the vial in it.

  His fingers close around the glass, trembling. He hopes she won’t notice. Of course she does.

  “Mother—” Kan begins.

  Mother moves without looking. Her hand snaps out, catching Kan’s jaw. Not a slap; a grip. Her thumb digs into the hinge, fingers braced behind the ear, a hold that can turn a head whichever way she wants.

  “You will not ruin this with feelings,” she says.

  Kan’s eyes flash. Then she swallows whatever she was going to say. Mother releases her, wipes her hand on her own sleeve as if dusting off flour.

  She turns back to Puripal, voice softening, dropping into that low rhythm she uses for lessons and threats.

  “Tomorrow your father marries 70785 Consort’s niece,” she says. “Her family’s guests will come fat with hope. They bring their sons, their uncles, their precious bloodlines. They are coming to bury us.” Her mouth curves. “So we bury them first.”

  Rain ticks louder. Somewhere a gong marks an hour that will not matter.

  Puripal’s breath hitches. The vial is a weight in his palm.

  Mother reaches out with two knuckles and brushes his cheek, almost tender.

  “You are clever,” she says. “You are quiet. You are mine. That is why you will do this.”

  His throat closes. He does not nod, but something inside him does.

  Mother makes him repeat the instructions like a bedtime rhyme.

  “Three drops per jar,” she says.

  “Three drops per jar,” he echoes.

  “Stir clockwise. Smile. Bow. Serve.”

  He swallows. “Stir clockwise. Smile. Bow. Serve.”

  “Again,” she says, until the words sink under his skin, until he hates the sound of his own voice and still cannot stop.

  The door slides open without warning.

  Aral?n stands there, hair damp from the rain, training clothes clinging to his shoulders. His eyes flick to the vials, to Mother’s face, to Puripal’s clenched fist.

  He takes it in like a battlefield: positions, weapons, casualties not yet fallen.

  He steps onto the mat, closing the door behind him.

  “You’re late,” Mother says.

  “Training ran long,” he answers. His tone might as well be describing the weather.

  He kneels opposite Puripal and holds out his hand. Puripal hesitates, then sets the vial in his palm as if confessing.

  Aral?n lifts it to the lamp, rolls it gently. The liquid clings, then slides.

  “Too much and it curdles in hot wine,” he murmurs. “It clouds. They see it.”

  Mother’s eyes sharpen. Pride, suspicion, calculation—her usual trinity. “You’ve seen this before,” she says.

  “I remember Grandfather liked to test his cups,” Aral?n replies. “His tasters died quickly.”

  Mother’s smile is thin. “You’ll watch him,” she says.

  Aral?n’s jaw tightens. “Yes.”

  He caps the vial and returns it to Puripal, their fingers touching a fraction too long.

  Puripal looks up at him, eyes wide, pleading without words. Take it. Take it away. Take me away.

  Aral?n reaches out and taps two fingers against Puripal’s forehead, right between his brows.

  “Little cat,” he says quietly. “Do what you must. Then come back to us.”

  He does not take him away.

  ...

  Puripal stands where his tray fell, eyes blown wide, lips parted. Bodies topple in slow motion around him. His hands hang at his sides, fingers crooked like claws, palms smeared with wine and blood.

  “Puripal,” Kan snaps.

  He doesn’t turn.

  She grabs his wrist and yanks. His skin is clammy, the bones too small under her fingers. He stumbles, nearly tripping over a dying man’s outstretched hand.

  She drags him behind the nearest pillar. A fat merchant slams into stone where Puripal’s head was half a heartbeat ago, bounces off, and goes down holding his nose.

  “Breathe,” Kan hisses, pressing Puripal back into the cool wood. “Look at me.”

  His gaze keeps sliding past her, drawn back to the open space: the toppled tables, the convulsing bodies, the way a girl in blue kicks twice and then stops.

  “Puripal.” She plants both hands on his cheeks, forcing his face up. “Eyes. Here.”

  He blinks, finally seeing her. His pupils are huge; she can see herself, tiny and distorted, in them.

  “I—” he starts. The word frays.

  “Later,” she says. “Right now, breathe.”

  He obeys the way he always obeys orders from people who sound more certain than he feels. Air shudders in and out of him.

  The crowd thickens; nobles shove nobles, guards shove everyone. A consort screams, “My son! My son!” at a pitch that could slice bone.

  Aral?n appears out of that riot like the edge of a blade.

  He doesn’t push people aside; they move when he comes, as if some buried part of them recognizes a predator. His shirt is splashed. His jaw is clenched so tight a muscle jumps near his ear.

  He steps into their shadow, back to the pillar, arms braced on either side of them. His body shields both Kan and Puripal from the worst of the stampede—a human wall between them and boots and knives and blind panic.

  “Fish-pond route,” he says to Kan, low and sharp. “Now.”

  She nods. Of course. The note in her shoe. The mirror-route.

  Aral?n glances down at Puripal. “Can you walk?” he asks.

  Puripal nods, once.

  “Good. You can fall apart later. Stay between us.”

  They move.

  Kan takes point, sliding along the pavilion’s perimeter, staying close to the carved pillars. Puripal clings to her sleeve with one hand. Aral?n guards their rear, one palm on Puripal’s shoulder, the other on his sword hilt.

  On the dais, Qaloron is half-risen from his seat, eyes wild, spittle clinging to his beard. Consort clutches at his sleeve with both hands, her painted face streaked where kohl has run.

  “My son!” she screams. “Find my son!”

  Kan follows her gaze.

  Third Prince Nemeh is on his knees near the base of the dais, one hand on the carpet, the other on his own stomach, as if making sure his insides are still inside. Naturally, he hasn’t touched the wine. He is pale under his tan, eyes enormous. A smear of someone else’s vomit streaks his sleeve. One of his older sisters clings to his arm, hair coming loose, sobbing into his shoulder.

  “Mother,” Nemeh breathes.

  ????? turns toward him at last. For one heartbeat she is just a woman seeing her child alive. Relief breaks across her features—

  Then she coughs.

  It’s small at first, almost dainty. Her fingers flutter toward her throat as if to tuck in a stray necklace.

  Another cough. This one deeper. She doubles over, grip on Qaloron’s robe tightening enough to tear threads.

  “Get her a cup!” someone shouts.

  A servant pushes forward with water, eyes wide, hands shaking. ????????????????????????? reaches, misses, grabs the girl’s arm hard enough to bruise. The girl yelps as ?σｔ?? drags herself closer to Qaloron, lips already darkening.

  She convulses. Her nails rake strips of fabric from the Khan’s robe. Then her body goes slack, head lolling back at a wrong angle. For a moment she hangs from his sleeve like a broken ornament.

  Qaloron jerks away with a roar, flinging her off. She hits the dais with a heavy, ugly thud and rolls, silks tangling. Her eyes stare at the pavilion roof, still elegant, furious, and utterly empty.

  “Mother!” Nemeh’s voice cracks.

  He lunges forward. A guard catches him around the chest. Two more grab his sister as she tries to throw herself onto the corpse. They both thrash.

  “Let me go!” Nemeh snarls, high and wild. “Let me—”

  His gaze snags on something beyond the dais.

  Kan sees it land in Nemeh’s expression: not understanding, not yet, but something raw and born of a child whose mother just died shrieking.

  Hatred hasn’t learned its name yet, but it’s there.

  “Move, move, move,” a guard bellows. “Make space for the healers—”

  “What healers?” another snarls. “They’re all dead or—”

  “Shut up and drag that one out before the Khan sees—”

  Mother stands by the dais as if she is the only person in the hall not surprised by any of this.

  Where her rival’s body sprawls, Mother’s gaze does not linger. She is watching Consort Ger?s instead, studying the woman’s shock and horror like a general reading a battlefield.

  Ger?s is shrieking, clutching her youngest daughter, who is wailing into her jewels. Behind them, lanky Second Prince Noga stands slightly apart. His face caught halfway between boy and man. His hands hover uselessly at his mother’s back, not quite daring to touch her.

  Mother’s eyes slide past him as if he were furniture.

  Ger?s pitches herself toward Qaloron now, grabbing his sleeve, screaming something about betrayal, about her children, about curses. Her voice cracks on Noga’s name.

  Qaloron shoves her off with the same disgust he used on STTTT’s corpse. “Guards!” he roars. “Search the kitchens! Find the dogs who did this! Bring me their heads!”

  His gaze roves the room for someone to point at.

  Mother steps forward first.

  “This is an insult to the Khan,” she says, voice clear and controlled. “To the whole clan of Arin. We must tear it up root and branch. Search the wine merchants. The servants’ quarters. The guard barracks of the household.”

  She points—precisely, away from herself, toward the lower tables on the side of the pavilion, toward the servants who pour for her rival.

  ...

  Night air presses cool fingers against hot faces. The screams and shouts from the pavilion come muffled now, filtered through walls and corridors. They sound like a city having a bad dream.

  Kan and Puripal crouch behind a clump of reeds at the pond’s edge. The water is black glass, disturbed only by the occasional lazy swirl of a carp just under the surface.

  Puripal is silent.

  Not quiet. Silent.

  His shoulders are hunched, arms wrapped loosely around his knees, fingers slack. His eyes are fixed on some patch of moss near his toes, not blinking enough.

  It scares Kan more than the screaming did.

  Aral?n kneels in front of them, breath still fast from the run.

  “Little cat,” he says.

  Puripal doesn’t react.

  “Puripal,” Aral?n tries again, sharper.

  Slowly, like his neck has rusted, Puripal lifts his head.

  His pupils are blown wide. His face is dusted with dried spray from someone else’s cough. His lips move, but no sound comes out.

  Aral?n reaches forward and clamps his hands down on Puripal’s shoulders, firm and grounding. Puripal makes a sound, small and raw.

  Aral?n pulls him into a hug.

  For a heartbeat it’s too tight, like he’s trying to compress his brother into something small enough to fit behind his ribs. Puripal makes a choked noise, and Aral?n eases just enough to let him breathe.

  “You did what Mother told you,” Aral?n says into his hair.

  Puripal’s reply is cracked glass. “I killed them all.”

  Aral?n doesn’t lie. He doesn’t say no. They both know whose hands poured what.

  He pulls back slightly, enough to see Puripal’s hands. They’re streaked with wine and vomit.

  “Give me,” Aral?n says.

  Puripal frowns, confused. Aral?n takes his wrists gently but firmly and guides them into the pond. The water is cold enough to sting. Puripal flinches, then leaves his hands there, fingers curling.

  Aral?n scoops up water with his own palms and lets it pour over the small hands, rubbing lightly. Red and brown swirls thread out into the pond, spiraling away. A carp surfaces, bumps its blunt nose against Puripal’s knuckles, then retreat with a flick of tail, as if offended by the taste.

  “See?” Aral?n says quietly. “Stupid fish.”

  Kan huffs something like a laugh and a sob combined.

  Aral?n keeps rinsing until the skin shows through again, wrinkled from the chill.

  “Your hands are still yours,” he says. “Remember that.”

  Puripal stares at them, turning them palm up, palm down, as if seeing them for the first time.

  “They don’t feel like mine,” he says.

  “They are,” Aral?n says. “Mother used them. That’s what happened.”

  Kan leans in, pressing her shoulder against Aral?n’s arm. She’s smaller than she wants to be in that moment, but there is nowhere else to put herself.

  “What happens now?” she whispers.

  Aral?n looks over their heads toward the palace. From here, he can see the upper balconies lit like rows of teeth, hear the faint carry of orders barked, the ring of steel.

  ...

  Dawn finds the palace gate lined with guards.

  The stone is cold even through sandals. Breath smokes in the air. Parrots in gilded cages above the entryway are not yet covered; they hop from perch to perch, feathers puffed, muttering their morning complaints.

  Puripal stands just inside the gate, Kan at his side. Aral?n is behind them, a solid heat at their backs, one hand resting on Puripal’s head. His fingers curl in the boy’s hair, a weight and a warning: stay.

  Outside the gate, the world is pale and wide and empty in the early light.

  Mother walks toward it in shackles.

  They’ve dressed her in plain garments for the journey—no embroidery, no jewels. The iron cuffs at her wrists and ankles clink with each step. Two guards flank her, but they might as well be escorting a statue. She moves with the same measured grace she used walking into the pavilion yesterday.

  She does not scream. She does not beg. Her hair is braided neatly. Her spine is straight.

  Ger?s is nowhere to be seen. Third Prince Nemeh is probably curled in his bed. Kan can feel his hatred from here, like a draft.

  Second Prince Noga stands a little distance away under one of the archways, half in shadow. His hands are folded into his sleeves, his posture modest. When his eyes flick to the gate, to Mother, to the three siblings, they are wide and soft, not yet the eyes of the man who will one day burn cities.

  Mother’s gaze roves the small gathering. It passes over Noga without pausing. It skips the guards. It lands, finally, on her children.

  Just once, she lets it stay.

  Puripal feels the look like a hand on his throat and a cloak around his shoulders at the same time.

  She smiles, a tiny curve of mouth that no one but them would notice. When she speaks, her voice is soft enough that it rides under the guard captain’s orders and the parrots’ squawks.

  “Live,” she says. “That is all that matters.”

  Puripal’s lips part. His body jolts forward, instinct to run to her, to grab her robe, to demand… something. A different sentence. A different ending.

  Kan’s hand clamps onto his sleeve, fingers digging in so hard it hurts. She doesn’t look up at him; her eyes are fixed on Mother, jaw locked.

  Aral?n’s hand presses a fraction harder on Puripal’s head. From the outside, it looks like a casual touch. From the inside, it feels like an anchor.

  Mother turns before he can wrench free.

  She walks through the gate.

  The shackles clink. The guards’ boots thud. The parrots shriek and hop, shouting nonsense phrases they’ve been taught: “Long live the Khan!” “Obey!” “Good boy!”

  She does not look back.

  Puripal watches until the curve of the road eats her, until the last flash of her dark braid disappears.

  Something in his chest closes like a fist.

  Later, the palace hums with a different kind of noise: gossip, fear, the frantic rearranging of alliances. Servants scrub the pavilion floor until their hands bleed. New banners go up. Old ones are packed away.

  Puripal sits alone in a small storeroom far from the main halls. Dust motes spin in the slanting light from a high window. The smell of old cloth and cedar oil wraps the space.

  The lacquer box rests in his lap.

  It is the same one Mother set between them like a toy. Someone—Aral?n, probably, or Kan—retrieved it from her chambers before the guards sealed them.

  Puripal opens the lid.

  Inside, nestled in velvet, are three indentations where vials once lay.

  Now there are sugar-plums instead.

  Perfect spheres rolled in fine white sugar, shining faintly. They smell of rose and honey, of festivals and reward days and the rare times Mother smiled because it was tactically useful.

  He picks one up between thumb and forefinger. For a moment, he just looks at it.

  Then he puts it in his mouth.

  The sugar crunches delicately between his teeth. Syrup spreads over his tongue, cloying and rich. He chews slowly, forcing himself to taste it all.

  Sweetness sits on his tongue like ash.

  Outside, the parrots in their gilded cages shriek at the sunrise. Guards have forgotten to cover them again, or perhaps they never meant to. The birds rattle their bars, wings beating uselessly, calling out all the phrases they’ve ever learned.

  “Poison!” one squawks. “Poison, poison!”

  Another cackles, “Good boy! Clever boy! Drink, drink!”

  Puripal doesn’t cry.

  He lets the sugar dissolve. He swallows.

  He listens to the parrots, to the clank of distant drills, to the murmur of consorts, to the footsteps of guards marching in patterns not of his making.

  ...

  It takes a whole second for Dukar’s brain to register the words he has just heard.

  His expression doesn’t change at first. He just stares at the sky where Temej’s flare is blossoming, jaw slack, the reflected light turning the wetness at the corners of his eyes into tiny shards of green.

  Then his breath hitches. Once. Twice.

  Puripal watches that breath like a man waiting to see if a bridge will hold or fall.

  He keeps his eyes on Dukar’s profile, not the firework. It’s easier than looking at the history in his mind: a boy holding a lacquer box and watching families die; a prisoner in Moukopl chains, wounded by his stepbrother’s arrow; a young Khan Regent calculating exactly how much blood it costs to be taken seriously in Qixi-Lo.

  All of that lives in his chest like rusted machinery. The only person who ever climbed inside and tried to understand how it turned was Dukar.

  And the only thing that ever truly broke between them was this: when Puripal didn’t tell him everything.

  Mother taught him people are tools, knives, shields. She never taught him that people could be places to put your fear down. Even with Dukar pressed against him in quiet tents and loud palaces, there was always a little wall of secrets: which names he’d memorized, which knives he’d buried, which death warrants he’d already signed.

  He receives Naci’s letter in his memory, where she is drawing a line from Nemeh’s pride to her parents’ throats. We give him a chance to strike first. We give ourselves a reason to answer. Puripal reads the letter and agrees. While the son is standing right in front of him.

  He knows he should have told Dukar before.

  Instead, he is saying it now, after the fact, under a pretty sky, like a punchline.

  Puripal’s fingers curl loosely. If he walks away, he thinks, I deserve it. The thought is almost calm. He has Ta now, after all. Now he knows. Ta will never leave.

  That’s what Puripal tells himself as he throws this last test into Dukar’s lap like a knife, hilt-first.

  “By all the dead gods,” Ta says, “you have no sense of timing.”

  Puripal blinks. “I—”

  “No, shut up,” Ta says, stepping between him and Dukar so fast Notso gives a startled bark and skitters out of the way. Ta’s hand jabs the air, stitches pulling under his bandages. “You choose now? Fireworks, tears, reunion, dog, everything finally not horrible for five heartbeats, and you think, ‘You know what this needs? A confession about how I helped murder your parents.’”

  “It wasn’t murder,” Puripal says weakly. “It was–”

  “I get it! A strategic matricidal and patricidal provocation, yes, thank you, that sounds better,” Ta snaps. “Truly, your word choices are half the problem.”

  Sen makes a faint choked noise that might be a laugh, might be a plea for them to stop.

  Dukar is still frozen, watching them as if his soul has stepped three paces out of his body to listen.

  Ta jabs a finger at Puripal. “You,” he continues, “you don’t get off the hook by saying ‘he should have guessed.’ That is not what trust is. You don’t drop ‘by the way, I helped your sister line your parents up in front of Nemeh’s sword’ like you’re commenting on the weather.”

  “It’s not quite how it happened,” Puripal protests, then stops himself, because that is not the point and he knows it.

  Ta barrels on. “Maybe Dukar would have wanted to share thoughts about it,” he snarls. “Maybe he’d like to decide, I don’t know, whether using his parents’ throats as a fuse for your war is something he’s fine with in advance. Maybe he would have said ‘yes, do it,’ maybe he would have said ‘no, find another way,’ maybe he would have punched you, which you clearly need sometimes—but at least it would have been his choice.”

  Puripal stares at him, genuinely stunned. “You’re… angry with me.”

  “Yes!” Ta yells. “Obviously! Being your kin does not mean I carry your brain for you.”

  He takes a breath, chest hitching. “I would die for you,” he says, quieter. “I already almost did. I would kill for you, obviously, that’s half my hobbies. But I will not nod along like a trained hawk every time you decide someone’s life is acceptable collateral, especially when that someone is his family.”

  He jerks his chin toward Dukar without breaking eye contact with Puripal.

  For a moment, the only sounds are Notso’s anxious whines and the distant echo of harbor drums.

  Puripal’s throat works. His instinct is to explain, to justify, to fold the messy sharp edges of his decisions into neat shapes. The words don’t come.

  Instead, what comes is realization.

  He thought that once he heard “kin” out loud, once he admitted what they truly were to each other, he would finally have what he’d never had: a loyal, unyielding fighter on his side in every argument.

  Instead he has… this. A man who will stand between him and the world, and also between him and his own worst impulses, teeth bared in either direction.

  A real ally, not a puppet.

  It is terrifying.

  It is, possibly, the only thing worth having.

  Dukar clears his throat.

  It is a small sound, but it cuts through their standoff like a blade.

  “Ta,” he says hoarsely. “Enough.”

  Ta turns to him, still bristling. “But he—”

  “Enough,” Dukar repeats. His eyes are clearer now, shock edged with something steadier. He steps in, lays a hand on Ta’s shoulder. “Let me talk.”

  Ta’s mouth works, then clamps shut. He mutters, “Fine. But if he says ‘it was necessary’ I’m biting him.”

  “Get in line,” Dukar says.

  He gives Ta a brief, grateful squeeze, then steps past him until he’s standing directly in front of Puripal.

  For a moment, neither moves.

  The firework overhead is fading, leaving a smear of color across the clouds. In the distance, Naci’s answering flare still burns, a crooked blossom trying to hold the sky together.

  Puripal looks like he’s about to be executed. Shoulders squared, hands at his sides, face composed in the careful way he wore at court when he was prepared to bleed.

  “I should have told you,” he says quietly. “Before. When it was still a plan, not a… fact. I know. I was a coward.”

  Dukar exhales. “Yes,” he says. “You were.”

  Puripal actually flinches. Ta makes a small triumphant noise, which Dukar ignores.

  “But,” Dukar adds, “you’re my stupid, silly, idiot, dumb, baby coward.”

  He steps in and pulls Puripal into his arms.

  Puripal stiffens, then melts, fingers clutching at the back of Dukar’s coat as if afraid he’ll be pushed away at any second.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says into Dukar’s shoulder. “For not telling you. For thinking you wouldn’t follow me knowing. For… everything.”

  Dukar huffs, a sound halfway to a laugh. “You really think very poorly of me,” he says. “I grew up with Mother. You think I wasn’t prepared for this?”

  Puripal pulls back enough to look at him. “Prepared?”

  Dukar’s eyes are wet but steady. “It has always been my parents’ duty to die for our sake,” he says. “That’s what being theirs means. Mother raised us on that story. Father confirmed it every time.” He shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve been bracing for this since forever.”

  He lifts a hand and cups Puripal’s jaw. “But because I am not shattered,” he says softly, “does not mean you get to decide alone which stones to drop on my head. Especially if you thought, even for a moment, that telling me would hurt.”

  Puripal swallows. “I did,” he admits. “I thought you would hate me.”

  “I might have,” Dukar says frankly. “For a while. And then I would have either come back or killed you, depending on how good your apology was.”

  Ta raises his hand. “For the record, I would have helped with both options.”

  “Obviously,” Dukar says.

  He leans his forehead against Puripal’s. “I do appreciate,” he murmurs, “that you told me now. That you’re trying. That you’re… growing. Keep going that way. Until we can’t find anything left between us that’s hidden.”

  There’s a long, quiet beat.

  Puripal opens his eyes again, something almost like wonder in them. “Do you… hide anything from me?” he asks, tentative, like a child testing a river with his toes.

  Dukar hesitates.

  He clears his throat, squares his shoulders, and meets Puripal’s gaze with the solemnity of a man delivering catastrophic news.

  “Yesterday,” Dukar says, “when everyone was asleep, I ate the last pieces of dried meat we had. All of them. In one sitting. In… frustration.”