The wind in Tepr never asks permission. It comes low over the grass like a stalking animal, dragging the smell of horses and woodsmoke and old blood across the camp. It tugs at felt walls, snaps at drying strips of meat, worries the prayer ribbons until they fray. It finds every gap in every seam. It slips into nostrils and sleeves and the soft hollows behind ears as if it is counting who is alive.

  Yile learns this the hard way.

  He wakes with his face pressed into a fur that is not his. For one confused breath he thinks he has died and returned to a palace that smells like rancid butter. Then something warm and wet nudges his cheek, and a thick, indifferent tongue drags across his eyebrow.

  Yile bolts upright with a noise that, in the Imperial City, would have been described as “undignified” and punished by silence.

  A goat stares at him from the yurt doorway, chewing calmly on the end of his sleeve.

  Across the hearth, Kuan sits cross-legged, already awake, already grinning, a fox in human skin with a kettle balanced over the coals. He watches Yile as if he has arranged this sunrise personally.

  “Good morning, Your Excellency,” Kuan says brightly. “Your new chamberlain brought you breakfast.”

  “It is eating me,” Yile says, voice hoarse with sleep and outrage.

  “It’s tasting you,” Kuan corrects. “Big difference. You should be flattered. In the palace, the animals only pretended not to.”

  Meicong, half-dressed and braiding her hair with the brisk efficiency of someone who has been cold since birth, leans over and flicks the goat’s ear.

  “Shoo,” she tells it.

  The goat blinks, chews harder, and remains exactly where it is, as immovable as a minister.

  Meicong shrugs. “He likes you.”

  Yile looks down at the sleeve—now damp, frayed, and decorated with a neat row of teeth marks like a signature.

  “Why,” he says slowly, as if asking the spirits to account for themselves, “is there livestock in my sleeping space?”

  Kuan pours something into a wooden cup. The liquid is pale and froths at the edges like it’s angry about being contained.

  “Because you are in Tepr,” Kuan says. “Where privacy is a rumor and warmth is a communal resource.”

  He hands the cup to Yile with the solemnity of a priest offering sacrament.

  Yile takes it on reflex. The smell hits him a heartbeat later—sour, sharp, alive. Fermented mare’s milk, strong enough to peel paint off a palace column.

  Yile’s face does something complicated. It tries to be polite and fails.

  “What is this,” he manages.

  “Luxury,” Kuan says. “Drink. It will make your bones stop complaining.”

  “My bones,” Yile says, “are not complaining. They are begging to be returned to the Earth.”

  Meibei, already outside the yurt and already laughing, sticks her head back in. Her hair is tied up with a strip of cloth; her eyes look clearer here, like the sky has scrubbed something clean.

  “Is he still fighting the milk?” she asks.

  Meicao, crouched near the doorway sharpening a knife on a stone, doesn’t look up. “He will fight everything until it surrenders,” she says. “It’s how he survived the past eight years.”

  Yile’s fingers tighten around the cup. The froth quivers.

  Kuan’s grin softens by a fraction—just enough to remind Yile that the joke is not the whole truth. Then Kuan ruins the moment by adding, cheerfully, “Also, if you don’t drink it, Lanau will. And then she’ll tell everyone her teacher has weak students.”

  “Lanau,” Yile repeats, seizing the distraction like a drowning man grabbing driftwood. “Your student who hates you.”

  “I wouldn’t say hates,” Kuan says. “That would imply passion.”

  “She respects your competence,” Meicong says, deadpan, “and does not respect you as a person.”

  “Exactly,” Kuan says. “That’s basically love, in shaman terms.”

  Outside, the camp is already awake. Children shrieking. Dogs barking. The steady thunk of an axe finding wood. The occasional metallic ring of a spear butt on stone as a Banner’s sibling practices drills out of habit, like a prayer.

  Today the noise is doubled. The Korelen-?rukai tents and the Axi-?rukai tents have swollen into a temporary city. Fol’s parents have arrived with enough siblings to start their own province, and Lanau’s clan has arrived with cousins who are essentially a migrating weather system.

  The promised wedding—Fol and Jinhuang’s—hangs over all of it like a banner that keeps refusing to be raised. They have waited for Naci’s return to do it properly, and the waiting has turned into its own ceremony: endless arguments about bride gifts, songs half-rehearsed, elders practicing blessings on anyone who stands still too long.

  Yile, who once attended banquets where people died politely behind screens, watches a boy sprint past carrying a pot that sloshes something dark and steaming.

  He flinches. “What is that?”

  Meicong glances. “Blood soup.”

  Yile’s stomach tries to leave his body.

  Meicong adds, helpfully, “Don’t worry. It’s not yours.”

  Kuan takes his own swallow of mare’s milk, smacks his lips, and says, “See? Progress. Yesterday you would have asked which animal.”

  Yile glares at him.

  Kuan’s eyes glitter. “And the answer would have been: ‘whichever one insulted the cook.’”

  A shadow falls across the yurt entrance. Fol appears, breathless, hair wind-tossed, cheeks red with the cold and excitement. He looks like the steppe itself.

  “Jinhuang’s aunties are arguing again,” Fol says by way of greeting. “They’re calling my mother’s beadwork ‘stingy.’”

  From outside, a woman’s voice rises like a hawk’s scream. “Stingy? My beads are older than your sense!”

  Another voice answers, offended and delighted. “Your beads are older than your teeth, you fossil!”

  Fol rubs his face. “Jinhuang says if they keep going she’ll marry me without witnesses and then everyone can argue with themselves.”

  “She would,” Meibei says, admiration bright. “She has the eyes of someone who has survived court.”

  Yile’s gaze flicks toward Fol. “Is that… allowed?” he asks, genuinely unsure.

  Kuan puts a hand over his heart. “In Tepr, love is allowed. Also theft. Also punching. It’s a very free country.”

  Meicao’s knife stops for a heartbeat. Her eyes go distant, remembering other countries where love was a liability and theft was survival and punching was the only language anyone spoke. Then she looks back down and continues sharpening, sparks tiny as stars.

  Meicong stands and grabs her coat. “Come,” she tells Kuan. “Before Lanau decides to break your ribs.”

  Kuan rises, stretching like a cat.

  He looks at Yile and points at the cup still trembling in his hands. “Drink it,” he says. “If you vomit, do it outside. The goat will judge you.”

  “I already feel judged,” Yile mutters.

  “You should,” the goat seems to say, chewing his sleeve with slow satisfaction.

  They spill out into the camp.

  The world is wide and brutal and bright. The steppe rolls to the horizon in pale grass and hard sky. Smoke columns rise from dozens of fires. Women scrape hides, laughing and cursing, their hands red with honest work. Men lift heavy poles to repair a wind-torn shelter. Children chase one another with sticks pretending to be spears, their squeals carrying the old joy of war games that become real too soon.

  Near the main fire, Tseren sits on a low stool with Jinhuang perched beside him, a bright knot of braid and fur. He looks older than in the stories—shoulders a little stooped, hair grayer—but his eyes are sharp. They follow everything, always calculating, as if even peace is a battlefield that can surprise you.

  Jinhuang leans into him, murmuring something. He nods, then laughs, a deep sound that makes nearby children glance over, reassured by the simple fact that he is still here.

  Lizem and Kelik stand a few steps away, speaking quietly, hands busy with bread dough. Their faces hold the kind of grief that has learned to wear daily clothes. They have lost Gani and keep working anyway, as if refusing to let the world stop just because it has taken someone irreplaceable.

  Tseren notices Yile and lifts a hand.

  “Ah,” he calls. “The palace ghosts.”

  Yile stiffens instinctively at the word ghost, but Tseren’s smile is too warm to be a threat. It feels… wrong, in a way that makes Yile’s throat tighten.

  Kuan sweeps into a bow that is both respectful and theatrical. “General,” he says. “Still alive. How inconvenient for your enemies.”

  Tseren snorts. “They tried,” he says simply. “They failed. Sit. Eat.”

  Yile hesitates, because “sit” in the palace is always a test of rank and “eat” is always a trap. Then Jinhuang catches his eye and gives him a small nod that somehow carries the authority of Naci herself.

  He sits.

  A bowl is shoved into his hands—hot broth, fat shining on the surface, chunks of meat. A smell like iron and onion and smoke.

  Yile stares at it like it might speak.

  Meicong crouches beside him and murmurs, “Chew. Pretend it’s Sima.”

  Yile actually laughs—one short, startled sound. It feels like pain and relief at once.

  Kuan leans close. “See?” he whispers. “He laughs. He’s learning. Soon he will threaten people with goat curses like the rest of us.”

  “Don’t encourage him,” Meicao says, appearing behind them like a quiet blade. “He will become insufferable again.”

  “I was never insufferable,” Yile says automatically, then stops, because even he can hear the lie.

  Kuan beams.

  Across the camp, Lanau stands on a low rise, her cloak snapping, hair braided with little bones that click when she moves. She is surrounded by Axi-?rukai cousins—loud, curious, and armed with the kind of familial cruelty that counts as affection.

  “Teacher,” Lanau calls, voice carrying. “Stop feeding the exile and come teach me something useful.”

  Kuan cups his hands around his mouth. “I am teaching him to survive soup!”

  Lanau’s expression doesn’t change, but her eyes narrow. “If he dies of soup,” she calls back, “I will carve that on his grave.”

  Karegr appears near Lanau’s group, stiff in his Banner coat, trying very hard to look like a heroic figure from a song. His siblings cluster behind him, similar faces, similar posture—people raised to fight. They are laughing about something, unaware of the ocean that ate their father.

  Karegr holds out a small carved charm toward Lanau—bone, carefully etched. A gift. His fingers are steady. His eyes are not.

  Lanau glances at it like it is a dead insect. “No,” she says.

  Karegr’s face does something brave and doomed. “It’s… for protection,” he says. “For your work. For—”

  Lanau cuts him off without raising her voice. “I am already protected by my own competence.”

  One of her cousins cackles. Another says, loudly, “She said your bone is useless!”

  Karegr flushes. He tries to recover with dignity, which in Tepr is a losing battle.

  Kuan strolls past him and claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he says. “She rejects everyone.”

  Lanau’s eyes flick to Kuan. “Keep walking,” she says sweetly.

  Kuan keeps walking.

  Yile watches all this with the stunned attention of someone observing a foreign ecosystem where the predators are related to you.

  A shout erupts near Fol’s family. Someone has brought out the bride-gifts to rearrange them, and now Fol’s little brothers are trying on ceremonial belts like they are armor.

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  One of Fol’s sisters points at Yile. “Is that the eunuch?” she asks loudly, curiosity sharp as a knife. “Does he still have his palace voice?”

  Yile goes very still.

  Kuan answers before Yile can decide whether to flee or stab someone with a spoon. “He has many voices,” Kuan says proudly. “Some of them are even his.”

  Fol’s sister squints. “Can he sing?”

  “Not anymore,” Yile says, honest. The last time he sang was in a cell, to keep himself from breaking.

  The girl tilts her head. “Then what use is he?”

  Meicong snaps, “He is useful for making Kuan shut up.”

  The camp laughs, and the laughter rolls like thunder, not unkind.

  Yile’s chest aches. It’s not the old ache of court humiliation. It’s something new: the ache of being seen too plainly, of being included without ceremony, of being teased like he belongs.

  He looks down at his soup.

  The fat glistens. The meat is real. The heat on his hands is undeniable.

  He lifts the spoon and eats.

  Kuan watches him from the corner of his eye, satisfied.

  Meibei and Meicao trade a glance over the rim of their bowls—an unspoken agreement that this rough, loud place is both cruel and kinder than anything they knew in Behani’s streets. Meicong’s mouth quirks, pleased to see Yile not shatter.

  Tseren leans back and looks toward the horizon, eyes narrowing. The wind shifts. The dogs lift their heads. The camp’s noise dips for a heartbeat, like the steppe itself is listening.

  Then, from far off—cutting clean through smoke and laughter and the clatter of bowls—comes the high, wild cry of eagles.

  Tseren is the first to stand.

  He rises from his low stool so quickly his knees protest, one hand braced on the edge of the firepit. The broth in his bowl trembles, fat rippling. For a heartbeat he looks like a man about to charge an enemy line alone.

  Jinhuang grabs his sleeve. “Grandfather—”

  “Quiet,” he says, not unkindly, eyes fixed on the horizon. His voice has the old command in it, the one that once moved men in armor.

  Lanau, perched on a little rise like a hawk waiting to be bored, shades her eyes with a palm. Her cousins cluster behind her, suddenly silent. Karegr’s siblings drift closer, scanning the sky as if expecting their father to ride in on an eagle’s back, laughing at them.

  Yile, still holding his bowl like it might betray him, flinches at the noise and then realizes—too late—that everyone is looking outward, not inward. He has time to feel stupid before Kuan leans into his ear and whispers, bright with malicious delight, “If you faint, I will tell everyone it was the milk.”

  “I will not faint,” Yile hisses.

  “If you do, please do it elegantly,” Meicong murmurs from his other side, not looking up.

  The eagles cry again.

  And then the Banners appear.

  They come as the aftermath of a war deciding to walk into your morning and sit down uninvited. Horses first—lean, lathered, heads high, nostrils flaring as if they still smell smoke. Then riders: cloaks torn, braids crusted with salt, armor scuffed and patched and darkened in places that are not mud.

  A line of blue-and-white Banner cloth flaps in the wind, edges frayed. Behind it, a small swarm of eagles wheels, riding the air like it owes them tribute.

  At the center of the moving knot is Naci.

  She sits on her white mare like she was born to do it and also like she is tired of being born. Her cloak hangs in strips. Her hands are wrapped in new bandages. Her eyes, when they find the camp, sharpen—then soften by a degree so small only people who love her would catch it.

  Horohan rides at her flank, posture straight as a spear. Borak rides on the other side, grinning. Temej’s arm is bound to his chest, his good hand tight on the reins. Sen rides behind them on a smaller horse that looks personally offended to be carrying a Seop girl with a satchel of metal parts.

  Dukar is there, too—face bruised, expression half-bored, half-feral. Puripal rides close enough that their knees almost touch.

  Ta rides slower, one hand braced on his saddle horn as if the world still wobbles. His neck is still wrapped. Lizi rides with him, hood down, hair wind-tangled, gaze scanning the camp as if searching for something she forgot to breathe for.

  Pragya and Pragati bring up the rear with a few other Banners. They sit stiffly, as though the horses might explode. Their eyes are too big, their faces too pale.

  And, trailing behind the riders with the air of a man escorting himself to his own trial, comes Bimen.

  He sits in a small carriage pulled by two irritated steppe ponies, his robe cleaner than everyone else’s by sheer stubbornness. His mouth is set in the tight line of someone who has spent too long pretending he isn’t impressed by barbarians who keep winning.

  The camp surges.

  People run. Fol’s siblings scatter like startled birds, then reverse and sprint toward the arriving riders again, shrieking names. Lanau’s cousins begin shouting greetings and insults at the same time, which in Tepr is an entire love language.

  Jinhuang is already moving before her brain catches up. She launches herself downhill, hair flying, and nearly collides with Naci’s horse. Naci swings down one-handed—grimacing faintly at the pull of stitches—and catches Jinhuang around the shoulders.

  For a beat, they hold each other with the fierce stillness of people confirming reality.

  “You’re late,” Jinhuang says into her aunt’s coat, voice thick.

  Naci huffs something like a laugh. “I had to rearrange an archipelago,” she murmurs. “You know how it is.”

  Jinhuang pulls back, eyes wet and bright. “I do not,” she says. “I have never rearranged an archipelago. I rearranged your desk once and you threatened to exile me.”

  Naci’s mouth twitches. “You deserved it.”

  Fol arrives half a heartbeat later, skidding in the grass. He looks like he wants to hug Naci, Jinhuang, and the entire horse at once. He settles for grabbing Jinhuang’s hand and squeezing until her knuckles go pale.

  “You’re alive,” he tells Naci, as if accusing her.

  “So are you,” Naci says. “I see the steppe hasn’t eaten you yet. A tragedy.”

  Fol beams anyway.

  Nearby, Meibei and Meicao watch the reunions with a careful stillness. Meicong steps forward and claps Temej on the shoulder hard enough to make him grunt.

  “You look worse,” she says.

  Temej squints at her. “So do you.”

  “That’s affection,” Kuan calls, wandering closer as if he owns the ground. “Don’t interrupt it.”

  Bimen chooses that moment to step down from his carriage.

  He adjusts his sleeves with rigid dignity, lifts his chin, and then—

  His eyes land on Kuan.

  Then on Yile.

  Kuan raises a hand in a cheerful wave. “Admiral.”

  Yile, in a rare moment of poor judgment, nods politely.

  Bimen’s face does something extraordinary. His composure fractures in a way that looks almost physical, like ceramic under stress. A sound escapes him that might be a gasp, might be a curse, might be a prayer.

  “You,” Bimen says, pointing a trembling finger. “You are dead.”

  Kuan puts a hand over his heart. “I get that a lot.”

  Bimen’s finger shifts to Yile, as if hoping one of them is a hallucination he can swat away. “And you— You were—”

  Yile opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. He settles on honesty, which is still new enough to feel dangerous.

  “I was enslaved,” he says simply. “Then I left.”

  Bimen stares. His gaze flicks to Naci as if demanding an explanation for why the universe has become so poorly managed.

  Naci, still holding Jinhuang by the shoulders, looks pleased in the slow, predatory way she looks when a plan has worked or a man has been mildly humiliated.

  “Oh,” she says. “You know them.”

  “You know them?” Bimen squeaks, the sound scandalous on him. “Those are— Those are national disasters. Those are— That is Kuan and Yile of the Eastern—”

  “Former,” Kuan says brightly. “I am currently of the ‘Northern What-Do-You-Mean-I-Can-Own-My-Own-Bones’ Bureau.”

  Yile’s mouth tightens. “Stop talking,” he murmurs to Kuan.

  Kuan keeps talking. “And this is Yile. He’s learning soup.”

  Bimen looks as if he might faint.

  Meicong, passing behind him, murmurs, “Elegantly, please,” and keeps walking.

  In the midst of the chaos, Lizi finds Lanau.

  It isn’t dramatic at first. It’s just… magnetism. Two people in a moving crowd turning without thinking and colliding as if the world has been nudging them into the same line all along.

  Lanau’s eyes lock onto Lizi’s face. For a heartbeat her expression stays carved-still, as if she refuses to give joy the satisfaction of being seen.

  Then she steps forward and grips Lizi by the front of her coat.

  “Idiot,” Lanau says, voice flat. “You smell like salt and poor decisions.”

  Lizi’s laugh breaks out, surprised and relieved. “I missed you too.”

  Lanau’s grip tightens. She drags Lizi closer, forehead almost touching hers, as if checking for fever. “Did you bring trouble back with you?” she asks.

  Lizi glances toward Naci, toward the bloodied Banners, toward the eagles wheeling like gossip. “No,” she says.

  Lanau’s eyes narrow. “Liar.”

  Lizi’s smile turns sharp. “Okay. Yes.”

  Lanau releases her with a shove that is half-affection, half-threat. “Good,” she says. “I was getting bored.”

  Karegr notices Lanau smiling—actually smiling—and looks like someone has punched him gently in the chest. He straightens, hope flaring, and then catches sight of the way Lanau’s hand lingers on Lizi’s sleeve.

  Hope collapses again, quieter this time.

  He doesn’t have time to examine it.

  Because Naci’s gaze is already searching, already finding, already turning toward him and his siblings.

  Pomogr’s children are gathered near the edge of the camp, instinctively close together. Karegr’s siblings—tall, fierce, bright-eyed—watch the returning Banners with hungry expectation.

  They do not see their father.

  They keep waiting for him to step out of the line with a laugh, to clap Borak on the back, to lift one of them into the air as if they’re still small.

  Naci’s horse snorts. Naci’s fingers curl.

  She dismounts and walks toward them.

  The crowd, sensing something heavier than reunion, quiets in ripples. Even the children hush as if they have been taught by instinct that some news requires space.

  Karegr straightens. “Khan,” he says, trying to sound like a Banner and not like a son.

  Naci stops in front of him.

  Her eyes move over their faces. Her mouth opens, closes once. When she speaks, her voice is steady, but it has a thin fracture running through it like ice over deep water.

  “Pomogr is dead,” she says.

  Silence drops like a curtain.

  For a heartbeat, Karegr does not understand. Words can be too small for what they carry.

  Then his youngest sister makes a sound—high, broken—and folds at the knees. Another sibling catches her. The rest of them stand frozen, as if their bodies have forgotten what grief looks like from the outside.

  Karegr’s face goes blank. He blinks once, very slowly.

  “How,” he asks.

  Naci holds his gaze. She does not offer a soft lie. She does not wrap it in poetry. That is not mercy here.

  “He boarded a ship to take the harbor,” she says. “It was a trap. He bought us time with his life.”

  Karegr’s jaw tightens hard enough to crack teeth. “He—” The word won’t form properly.

  Naci’s hand lifts, hesitates, then lands on his shoulder with the weight of command and kin. “He died doing his work,” she says. “And so did others.”

  She looks past him, to the gathered Banner families, to the empty spaces among the returning riders. Names hang in the air unspoken, like spirits waiting to be fed.

  “We will say them tonight,” Naci adds. “Over fire. Where the wind can carry them.”

  Karegr swallows. His eyes glisten once, furious at the betrayal of his own body.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise—including his own—he bows.

  Not deep. Not graceful. But real.

  “Thank you,” he says, voice scraped raw. “For bringing him back in words.”

  Naci’s hand squeezes his shoulder once, hard. Then she turns away, because if she looks too long she will start bleeding where everyone can see.

  Tseren chooses that moment to reach them.

  He has pushed through the crowd with the unstoppable focus of a man who once led charges. He stops in front of Naci and Dukar as if the world has narrowed to just their faces.

  For a heartbeat he simply stares.

  Then his composure breaks like a dam.

  He pulls Naci into his arms with a force that makes her grunt, then grabs Dukar too, crushing them both against his chest. His breath leaves him in a strangled sound. Tears spill down his weathered cheeks without shame.

  “You came back,” he says, as if accusing them. “You came back.”

  Dukar’s arms wrap around him awkwardly, then tighter. Naci’s hand, usually so sure, presses against his back like she is trying to steady him.

  Tseren’s voice cracks. “Your mother—” he starts, and the word mother turns the air colder.

  Naci’s spine stiffens. Dukar’s face goes very still.

  Tseren’s eyes squeeze shut. “Gani is gone,” he says.

  The sentence lands without drama. It doesn’t need any. It is heavy enough on its own.

  Naci’s breath stops for a beat. Dukar’s fingers flex, then clutch harder as if holding Tseren upright will keep the world from tilting.

  Tseren pulls back just enough to look at them, eyes red-rimmed.

  Dukar’s mouth opens. Nothing comes.

  Puripal appears at Dukar’s shoulder without sound, as if drawn by the scent of grief. Horohan moves to Naci’s other side, her hand hovering near Naci’s elbow—close enough to catch her if she sways, not so close it looks like pity.

  Naci’s jaw tightens. “Where?” she asks.

  Tseren wipes his face with the back of his hand, furious at the tears. “There is a cairn,” he says, nodding toward a low hill where the grass grows thinner. “Lizem and Kelik helped me. We didn’t have… we didn’t have what she deserved. But we have stone. And wind.”

  Naci nods once. Dukar nods too, a smaller echo.

  They don’t speak as they walk.

  The camp parts for them instinctively. Even Kuan falls silent, his grin fading into something older. Yile watches them pass with wide eyes, learning another lesson: freedom means you get to keep your grief.

  At the cairn, the stones are stacked carefully. A strip of cloth is tied around one rock, fluttering—Korelen-?rukai colors, faded already by weather.

  Tseren kneels first, hands pressed to the cold stone. Naci kneels beside him. Dukar follows. Horohan stands behind them like a guard at a shrine. Puripal stands too, hands clasped behind his back, face unreadable, but his eyes lower with something like respect.

  No one says grand words. The wind says enough.

  Tseren speaks anyway, because he cannot help himself. “She would be furious if you didn’t eat,” he mutters, voice thick. “She always said grief is not an excuse to neglect the living.”

  Naci’s mouth trembles once. “She also said she’d haunt anyone who cried at her funeral,” she says, voice low.

  Dukar snorts, wet-eyed. “We should be careful,” he murmurs. “She was very good at haunting even while alive.”

  Horohan’s lips twitch. “If she appears,” she says softly, “I will fight her. Respectfully.”

  Puripal glances at her. “Do you fight ghosts often?” he asks.

  Horohan’s smile is thin. “Only the ones who threaten my wife.”

  For a heartbeat, laughter almost happens. It doesn’t, quite. But the edge of it makes the grief less suffocating.

  They stand. They touch the cairn once. Then they return to the camp, because the living are waiting, and Tepr is merciless about hunger.

  By the time they come back, the fires are bigger. Pots are boiling. Meat sizzles.

  Pragya and Pragati sit near a fire with Sen, who is showing them something made of wire and bone and looking far too pleased with herself. The twins look exhausted, eyes shadowed, but when Sen makes a crude joke about using Windmarks to write insults on arrows, Pragya’s mouth twitches. Pragati exhales something like a laugh.

  Ta notices and looks relieved. Lizi bumps his shoulder lightly, wordless.

  Bimen, still pale from seeing Kuan and Yile, is handed a bowl by a laughing child.

  He accepts it as if it might explode.

  He takes one cautious sip.

  His eyes widen.

  “This is… good,” he says, scandalized.

  Kuan leans in. “Welcome to barbarian superiority,” he whispers.

  Bimen glares. “If you tell anyone I said that,” he hisses, “I will personally petition the gods to strike you.”

  Kuan grins. “They already tried.”

  And then, because the steppe cannot leave anything private, Tseren decides to be helpful.

  He claps his hands loudly, still damp-eyed, and announces to the entire camp like he is declaring a battle plan, “And tomorrow—since everyone is alive and the spirits are watching—Jinhuang and Fol will finally marry!”

  Silence.

  Then chaos.

  Jinhuang, who is mid-bite, freezes with meat between her teeth. Her eyes go wide with a horror usually reserved for ambushes.

  “Grandfather,” she says very carefully, voice trembling with murderous love, “I was going to announce that.”

  Tseren beams at her, utterly sincere. “I announced it for you,” he says, as if this is kindness.

  “You stole my announcement,” Jinhuang says, standing so fast her bowl nearly tips. “That was mine. I was saving it. I had— I had a speech.”

  Fol turns red all the way to the tips of his ears. One of his brothers shrieks, “SPEECH! SPEECH!” and begins banging a spoon on a pot.

  Meicong covers her mouth with her hand and shakes with silent laughter. Meibei laughs openly. Meicao’s eyes soften by a fraction, as if this ridiculousness is proof the world hasn’t fully ended.

  Naci, still raw from the cairn, closes her eyes and exhales through her nose like she is trying not to burst out laughing and failing.

  Dukar leans toward Puripal and murmurs, “You see? Ruling is hell.”

  Puripal murmurs back, “This is not ruling. This is a siege.”

  Tseren, oblivious, keeps talking. “We will do it properly,” he declares. “With gifts and songs and—”

  Jinhuang points at him, shaking. “You,” she says. “You are banned from speaking at my wedding.”

  Tseren gasps, offended. “I am the elder!”

  “You are a menace,” Jinhuang snaps.

  Fol, trying to salvage something, lifts his hands. “We can— We can still—” He looks at Jinhuang, earnest. “Do you still want—”

  Jinhuang’s anger cracks. She looks at him, and her expression does something softer and fiercer at once.

  “Yes,” she says, voice quieter. “I want.”

  Fol’s shoulders sag with relief so intense it’s almost comic. He laughs once, breathless. “Good,” he says. “Because I already told my mother to start arguing with your aunties again, and she’s been warming up for days.”

  From across the fire, an aunt shouts, “Your mother argues like a goat with pride!”

  Another aunt shouts back, “Better than arguing like a fish with bad breath!”

  Bimen closes his eyes. “This,” he mutters, “is worse than the Imperial Court.”

  Kuan slaps his back. “And healthier,” he says.

  The feast swells anyway. Bowls are refilled. Bread is torn and shared. Someone starts a song that is off-key and everyone joins in regardless. People cry without hiding it. People laugh in the same breath. Children fall asleep in piles like dropped laundry. Eagles perch nearby, solemn judges of the celebration, occasionally screaming as if to remind everyone that the sky is also part of the family.

  At some point, Naci lifts her bowl.

  “Pomogr,” she says simply.

  The camp answers, rough and unified, “Pomogr.”

  Then she adds, quieter, “Gani.”

  Tseren’s hand trembles. Dukar’s throat tightens. Horohan’s gaze goes distant. Even Puripal lowers his head, as if paying respect to a woman he only knows through the shape she carved into her children.

  “Gani,” the camp echoes, and the wind takes the name and runs with it.

  Jinhuang, still sulking, leans into Fol’s side. Fol squeezes her hand like a vow.

  Lanau and Lizi sit close enough that their shoulders touch. Lanau pretends not to notice. Lizi pretends not to be grateful.

  Bimen eats three bowls of stew and then stares into the fire as if reconsidering his entire worldview.

  Kuan watches him and whispers to Yile, delighted, “He’s converting.”

  Yile snorts softly, then surprises himself by leaning closer to the warmth, to the noise, to the living.

  The night deepens. The camp hums. The grief does not vanish, but it learns to sit at the edge of the circle without swallowing the whole flame.

  And when the last pot is scraped clean and the laughter has softened into tired murmurs, someone—Tseren, triumphant—announces again, “Tomorrow.”