The moon over the northern road hangs low, pale and mean, watching a line of wagons creep through dead grass and churned mud. The Hluay supply train moves with the patient confidence of an army that believes the world is obliged to feed it: oxen straining, wheels groaning, lanterns hooded against the wind, guards slouching with spears and muskets like bored men babysitting sacks of grain.

  And in the shadow behind the last wagon, six strangers walk as if they own the night.

  Their cloaks are practical, patched, and smell faintly of smoke that has never quite washed out. Their boots make no sound on wet earth. Their eyes track the convoy the way hunters track a herd—measuring spacing, counting guards, noting which lantern swings too close to which straw bundle like a flirt begging to be punished.

  Qin “Laughing Coal” spits into the mud and whispers, “Look at them. Marching bread and salt like it’s a parade. If stupidity made heat, we wouldn’t need lamp oil.”

  Ruo and Ran—Reed-Twins—don’t answer. They don’t have to. Their silence is not shyness; it is calculation. Ruo’s gaze flicks to the wind-swept grasses, to the sag of the clouds, to the way smoke from the distant campfire leans east. Ran’s hand is already counting the small satchels at their belt by feel alone.

  Behind them, Gao Fire-Spark adjusts the strap of his pack and grins like this is a festival.

  “Do you think they’ll scream a lot?” Gao whispers, eager.

  Monk Black-Salt gives him the sort of look a priest gives a dog that has stolen a corpse. Prayer beads wrap his wrist; his head is shaved; his expression is serene enough to make even Qin lower his voice a fraction.

  “They will,” Black-Salt says calmly.

  “Good,” Gao says, delighted. “I hate when it’s quiet.”

  Lady Ash-Thread—Hui, if you survive long enough to earn the privilege—walks at the front without haste. Her ash-gray braid is tight as a rope. Her face is still, not cold exactly, but settled.

  She glances back at the squad as if counting them by instinct rather than sight.

  “Keep your drool in your mouth, Fire-Spark,” she says softly. “It’s wet tonight. Wet wood takes longer. You’ll disappoint yourself.”

  Gao’s grin doesn’t fade. “I can disappoint myself in many ways, Lady.”

  Hui hums, amused in the smallest possible way. “Try doing it silently.”

  At the rear of the line walks Jin Na.

  His remaining eye is sharp enough to slice. He carries no torch. He doesn’t need one. He has been navigating war for years; darkness is just another kind of map.

  He listens to his team bicker like a father listening to wolves argue over a bone. He doesn’t stop them. Noise, when controlled, is morale.

  “Remember,” Jin Na says, quiet enough that even Gao has to lean in, “we are not here to prove we are clever.”

  The Cinder Court does not do nobility.

  They drop into a shallow ditch as the convoy passes, letting the last wagon’s wheels slop mud close enough to splash their knees. A guard trudges by, yawning, spear balanced on his shoulder. His lantern throws a weak oval of light that wobbles on the ground.

  Gao inhales like he’s smelling stew. Qin clamps a hand over his mouth before he can say something enthusiastic.

  “Do not,” Qin whispers, “make that face.”

  Gao peels Qin’s fingers off his lips with exaggerated dignity. “I’m appreciating the artistry.”

  “There is no artistry in oxen,” Qin says.

  Hui’s eyes never leave the wagons. “Watch the second cart from the rear,” she murmurs. “The wheels are heavier. That’s powder.”

  Ruo’s gaze sharpens. “And the third from the front rides higher. Grain sacks.”

  Ran tilts his head, listening. “Hear that? Metal on metal. That’s spare musket parts.”

  Black-Salt rolls his beads once around his knuckles. “And the man in the red sash who keeps checking the sky. That’s the officer who knows he is going to die.”

  Jin Na’s mouth twitches. “We’ll try to make his knowledge accurate.”

  They shadow the convoy for another mile, just far enough that the lantern light never catches them, just close enough that they can hear the guards complain.

  “Why do we have to drag this all the way to East Line?” one guard grumbles.

  “Because Li Song says so,” another answers, as if that is a prayer and an insult in the same breath.

  “Li Song isn’t the one sleeping in mud,” the first says.

  Qin’s grin shows teeth. “They talk like men who think the war is just marching and paperwork.”

  Hui murmurs, “War is just marching and paperwork.”

  Ahead, the convoy’s destination reveals itself: a supply depot squatting near a river bend, fenced with sharpened stakes and arrogance. A low granary, a powder shed, a stable for spare mounts. A watchtower with two lanterns swinging like sleepy eyes. A cluster of tents where guards gamble and pretend the gods won’t notice.

  It is not a fortress. It doesn’t have to be. It is protected by the assumption that no one would dare.

  They crouch in the wet grass at the edge of the treeline and watch the depot breathe.

  Jin Na speaks like he’s reading a prayer book. “Wind is east. Humidity is high. Their lanterns are hooded. Their guards are tired. Their fence is meant to keep out wolves and peasants, not professionals.”

  Qin cracks his neck. “I hate professionals. They make my job too easy.”

  Ruo and Ran pull their satchels open and lay out their tools on a cloth: waxed cord, small clay pots sealed with pitch, packets of powdered resin and sulfur, a coil of slow match wrapped in oilskin, two tiny glass vials of something clear that makes the air feel colder when it’s uncapped.

  Gao watches them with reverence. “Beautiful.”

  Hui lifts a brow. “If you call it beautiful again, I’ll make you swallow it.”

  Gao beams. “That would also be beautiful.”

  Black-Salt sighs like he is tired of this century. “Children.”

  “Enough,” Jin Na says.

  He points with two fingers, laying the board out.

  “Hui, take Gao. North fence. Latrine fire first. Make them laugh. Then make them run.”

  Hui nods once. Gao almost salutes, remembers they are not in the army, does a little bow instead that looks like a joke.

  “Reed-Twins,” Jin Na continues, “powder shed and granary. Timing is everything. If you blow the powder too early, it warns the river road. If you burn the grain too late, they can salvage. You have six incenses from ignition to full panic.”

  Ruo and Ran nod together, eyes already elsewhere.

  “Black-Salt,” Jin Na says, “watchtower.”

  Black-Salt’s serene face doesn’t change. “As you command.”

  “And Qin,” Jin Na finishes, “you’re with me. We make sure the wagons don’t leave.”

  Qin grins, feral. “Finally. I was worried you’d make me do something civil.”

  They move.

  They slide through grass and shadow, bodies low, using the river’s hiss to cover their breath.

  Black-Salt approaches the watchtower like a pilgrim.

  A guard up there leans on the railing, squinting at the convoy rolling in. He yawns, adjusts his lantern, and misses the monk’s shaved head in the darkness below.

  Black-Salt climbs with the quiet confidence of a man who has climbed worse things than ladders. Halfway up, the guard glances down, startled.

  “Who—”

  Black-Salt’s hand clamps over his mouth. The other hand moves once, short and intimate. The guard’s eyes go wide. A warm spurt hits Black-Salt’s wrist. He murmurs something that might be a prayer or a complaint. The body slumps, heavy.

  Black-Salt drags the corpse down behind a crate, sets the lantern back on its hook, and looks out over the depot with calm approval, like a man checking his garden.

  At the granary wall, Ruo and Ran work in silence.

  They don’t light anything yet. They smear. They measure. A strip of oil-soaked cloth goes under a beam where dry straw meets old wood. A clay pot of pitch is wedged between sacks so that when it melts, it will pour like black honey into everything. A packet of powdered resin is dusted along a crack like seasoning. They pin a slow match to the underside of a plank, careful to keep it off damp ground.

  Ran whispers, barely audible, “Six incenses.”

  Ruo mouths back, “Five if the wind shifts.”

  They share a look that says: it won’t.

  On the north side, Hui crouches by the depot’s latrine trench. It is a sad ditch with a wooden plank over it. She pulls out a small packet and tosses it into the trench.

  Gao kneels beside her, eyes shining. “Are we really starting with shit?”

  Hui’s expression stays calm. “Why not?”

  “It’s poetic,” Gao says.

  “It’s funny,” Hui corrects. She strikes a flint once. A tiny flame kisses the packet. The smell that rises is immediate and offensive—oil, sulfur, and the undeniable truth of human waste.

  Gao claps a hand over his mouth, laughing silently so hard his shoulders shake.

  A guard nearby wrinkles his nose. “What in the—”

  Another guard laughs. “Someone’s ass caught fire.”

  They stroll over, amused. One pokes at the trench with a stick.

  The fire blooms suddenly—small, sharp, leaping up. It catches the plank. It throws a tongue of flame high enough to lick a canvas tent.

  The guards jump back, swearing.

  “What idiot—”

  “Bucket line!”

  “Stupid bastards—get water!”

  They run, dragging each other into a frantic, messy rush. The first wave of panic is almost comical: soldiers sprinting with buckets, tripping over rope, yelling at one another like this is an argument, not an emergency.

  Hui watches, expression unreadable. “Now,” she whispers.

  Gao nods, and for the first time his grin narrows into something focused. He slips along the fence, finds where a stake is loose—someone hammered it in too shallow—and uses a flat blade to pry it open just enough for a body to slide through.

  They move inside the depot’s edge like smoke wearing skin.

  Gao drops a clay pot under the stable trough. Hui places a small oilskin bundle beside the fodder stack.

  A guard turns the corner suddenly, bucket in hand, face flushed with effort. He sees Hui and freezes.

  “What—”

  Hui steps forward and smiles like a woman offering directions. “The fire’s over there,” she says, pointing, perfectly polite.

  The guard’s relief lasts half a heartbeat.

  Gao’s knife flashes from behind. The guard’s bucket hits the ground with a wet thud. Water spills uselessly into the mud as the guard collapses, eyes shocked, mouth working without words.

  Gao whispers, almost apologetic, “Wrong direction.”

  Jin Na and Qin are at the wagons now, where the convoy is rolling in and the drivers are distracted by the latrine chaos.

  “Hey!” Qin calls, strolling into lantern light like he belongs. His grin is wide, inviting. “Your fire’s in the wrong place.”

  A driver snaps, “Who are you?”

  Qin spreads his hands. “The man who’s about to save your life if you stop asking stupid questions.”

  Jin Na moves behind Qin with the economy of a veteran. He reaches up, unhooks the lead oxen’s reins, and leads them two steps sideways so the wagon’s wheel hits a hidden rut.

  Wood cracks.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The wagon tilts.

  The driver yells and hauls back. The oxen lurch. The whole line behind it shudders like a spine being kicked.

  “Gods—stop!” someone screams.

  Qin laughs, bright and ugly. “Stop? In war? That’s adorable.”

  A guard charges at him, spear out. Qin steps aside and grabs the spear shaft, using the guard’s momentum against him. The guard stumbles, face-first into the wagon’s side. Qin smacks him on the back of the head with the butt of the spear like scolding a dog.

  “Go to sleep,” Qin says.

  The guard goes to sleep.

  Jin Na slips under the wagon, places a small waxed packet against the axle, and slides out again like a man tying his shoe.

  Ruo and Ran ignite their slow matches at the exact same moment, flints striking in unison, tiny sparks like insects.

  Black-Salt, in the watchtower, sees the shift ripple through the camp like a change in weather. The bucket line breaks. Someone spots a body and screams a warning.

  He lifts a lantern and swings it once—left, right—a signal.

  Jin Na’s voice cuts low. “Out.”

  The Cinder Court withdraws as if pulled by the same thread.

  They slip through gaps in chaos, stepping over boots, under ropes, past shouting men who are too busy panicking at visible fire to notice the invisible hands that made it.

  Behind them, the first delayed ignition takes hold.

  The fodder stack goes up with a hungry roar, flames climbing dry straw like they’ve been waiting there all their lives. The stable catches. Horses scream, a sound that turns even soldiers’ guts to water. The granary begins to smoke—slow at first, then faster as pitch melts and runs into grain sacks like poison.

  Then the powder shed ignites.

  For a heartbeat nothing happens, a breath held.

  Then the night splits.

  The blast is not a neat cannon-boom. It is a god punching the earth. The shed erupts into a flower of white and orange. Wood and iron and men become pieces. The shock wave slaps tents flat. Lanterns explode. A wagon’s canvas catches and becomes a torch, the flames running along it like laughter.

  Screams rise—high, animal, angry, terrified. Men fall into the river trying to escape heat that chases them. Others try to form lines, shout orders, shoot muskets into smoke at enemies that are already gone.

  The convoy becomes a death-slowed serpent of burning wagons. Grain spills into mud and catches. Powder kegs rupture. A driver is thrown into the air and lands wrong, twitching.

  Gao watches from the tree line, face lit by the inferno, eyes wide with almost religious awe.

  Hui elbow-jabs him. “Don’t look like that.”

  Gao laughs, breathless. “It’s… it’s so—”

  “Ugly,” Hui says.

  “Perfect,” Gao says.

  Qin wipes soot off his cheek with the back of his hand and grins at Jin Na. “I think we exceeded expectation.”

  Jin Na’s one eye reflects fire. “Not really.”

  Black-Salt murmurs, watching the depot burn itself into history, “A thousand mouths. One meal. Gone.”

  Ruo and Ran stand shoulder to shoulder, listening to the crackle, measuring it the way a musician measures applause.

  Ran says quietly, “Six incenses.”

  Ruo answers, “Five and a half.”

  Jin Na turns away first. That is leadership—knowing when the spectacle is finished and the work is done.

  “Move,” he says.

  They disappear into the wet grass as the depot collapses behind them, a roaring beacon that is visible for miles. By dawn, Hluay soldiers find only ash, corpses, and the stench of burned grain. By noon, men at the front notice their meals are late. By nightfall, officers begin to blame each other. By the next week, hungry soldiers start to steal from villagers instead, and villagers learn what side “liberation” tastes like.

  ...

  In a tent that smells of ink and damp wool, Li Song receives a report.

  It is written cleanly, efficiently, without flourish. That irritates him most. Horrors deserve at least the courtesy of drama, and the messenger has offered only numbers and facts like an accountant counting out grief.

  He sits at a low table. Across from him stands Linh, whose only hand’s fingers drum lightly on the table edge, a quiet rhythm.

  Li Song clears his throat and begins to read aloud.

  “Riverbend Depot,” he says. “Burned. Powder shed detonated. Grain stores lost. Fodder lost. Stable destroyed. Estimated dead: one hundred and twenty-three. Missing: forty-seven.”

  Linh’s eyes narrow. “Missing?”

  Li Song’s mouth tightens. “Found in the river later,” he says. “Most without skin.”

  Linh’s jaw works once. “Continue.”

  Li Song reads on, voice steady.

  “Three supply wagons ambushed on the East Road. Axles sabotaged. Lantern oil used as accelerant. Two escorts recovered alive; both report ‘ghosts’ and ‘a monk’ and ‘a woman with gray hair’—”

  Linh exhales through his nose. “Superstition is what fear calls skill.”

  Li Song flips the page.

  “Second granary at Shun Pass,” he reads, “ignited from within. Fire spreads faster than expected, suggesting pitch placement and resin dusting. Watchtower guard found with throat cut. No signs of prolonged engagement.”

  Linh’s fingers stop drumming.

  “And,” Li Song says, and his voice betrays him just slightly now because even he respects scale, “four barges on the south canal. Burned while moored. Rope lines cut. One drifts into the others. Chain reaction. Supply loss severe.”

  Linh’s gaze lifts, sharp. “Who did this?”

  Li Song doesn’t look away. “Moukopl,” he says. “The Empire has begun hiring fire soldiers.”

  Linh’s lips press together. His anger is not loud. It is worse than loud. It is the anger of a man who believes something sacred has been touched with dirty hands.

  Fire is not just a tool in Siza belief. It is lineage. It is the Sun God’s element—purity, judgment, the light that reveals lies.

  Linh stands slowly. The tent’s lantern light gilds his burnt cheekbones, makes his shadow look like a blade.

  “They use my father’s weapon against me,” Linh says softly.

  He looks at Li Song, eyes bright with something old and feral.

  “Find them,” Linh says.

  Li Song inclines his head. “We will.”

  Linh’s voice drops lower, like a prayer spoken to a weapon.

  “I will purge them,” he vows.

  ...

  Naci stands at the edge of the encampment. Her cloak flaps like a black wing. A bundle of maps is tucked under one arm, and her other hand rests on her white musket.

  Horohan is beside her, arms crossed, hair tied back. Khanai prowls nearby with three cubs tumbling after her. They have begun to bite everything they love.

  “Look at them,” Horohan mutters as one cub clamps its teeth onto a boot strap and refuses to let go.

  Naci watches the cub drag itself backward, still attached to the strap, as if planning a siege. “They’re just like you,” she says.

  Horohan gives her a flat look. “Do not insult my children.”

  “They’re not your children,” Naci says.

  Horohan’s gaze slides to Khanai. “She says otherwise.”

  Khanai, as if hearing her name, snorts and headbutts Horohan’s thigh hard enough to bruise. Horohan reaches down and scratches the tiger’s ear with the tenderness she pretends not to possess.

  Across the camp, Dukar adjusts the girth strap on his horse with methodical calm. Puripal stands close enough that their shoulders brush. Ta walks past them with a bundle of supplies under one arm.

  Ta pauses, considers them both, then shakes his head. “I hate this family,” he says, and keeps walking.

  Jinhuang emerges from a yurt with Fol at her side.

  Fol’s hair is tied back with a strip of red cloth. Jinhuang’s braids are neat, but a few strands have escaped.

  Borak approaches them with casual menace. Behind him, his birds shift on their perches, feathers ruffling, eyes like coins of judgment.

  “You two,” Borak says, nodding at Jinhuang and Fol, “try not to die. It would ruin the mood.”

  Fol opens his mouth, then decides not to argue with a man who could send twenty talons to rearrange his face. Jinhuang replies instead, sweet as a sharpened spoon: “Thank you for your blessing.”

  Borak grins.

  A ripple runs through the camp as someone announces Bimen is leaving.

  He appears like a man emerging from a cave after surviving an avalanche: immaculate despite the dust, hair neatly bound, expression carefully arranged into the dignified neutrality of a bureaucrat who has seen too much. He wears Moukopl clothes again.

  Naci steps toward him. Her smile is bright, the kind she uses when she’s trying to make something sound like a gift instead of a threat.

  “Great Admiral Bimen,” she says. “Thank you for your company.”

  Bimen bows to Naci, formal. “You offered hospitality. It was… unexpectedly tolerable.”

  “High praise,” Naci says. “We will meet again in Pezijil soon.”

  Bimen’s gaze sharpens. There is a thousand-question war behind his eyes, and he asks none of them out loud. He only inclines his head. “If the world does not fall apart before then.”

  “It will,” Puripal says conversationally from behind Dukar. “But we’ll keep walking on the pieces.”

  Bimen looks at him as if deciding whether to laugh or strangle. He chooses neither. He turns back to Naci. “May your road be clear,” he says, which is the polite way of saying may you stop making history so messy.

  Naci’s smile doesn’t move. “May yours be boring,” she replies, which is the crueler blessing.

  Bimen leaves on a carriage with his small escort, disappearing into the swaying grass.

  As the camp resettles into its new shape, Naci lifts her chin and calls, “Kuan.”

  Kuan appears as if he has been waiting behind the air itself: fox-smile, eyes too bright, shamans’ ornaments clinking softly. He looks suspiciously innocent, which is how everyone knows he is guilty of something.

  Naci gestures toward the gathered riders, the Banners, the Yohazatz warriors who have followed them from Seop and back. “We are going to Qixi-Lo. We might need a shaman.”

  Kuan blinks, slow. “Might,” he says, as if the word is a joke. “Might need a shaman in the palace full of poison and prophecy and broken bloodlines. Who can say.”

  “Kuan,” Naci warns.

  He steps back, hands up. “No.”

  The refusal is so immediate it almost makes the wind pause.

  Horohan narrows her eyes. “No?” she repeats. “You refuse a march to an enemy court? You refuse watching Naci punch princes? Are you ill?”

  Kuan looks offended. “I am full of health. Radiant.”

  “Then why?” Naci asks, not unkind, but with the patience of someone who has executed men for less nonsense.

  Kuan’s eyes flick left. Then right. Then—too quickly—toward a yurt where a certain injured eagle-keeper has been pretending not to exist.

  Kuan clears his throat. “Someone has to—” he begins. “Someone has to… watch the camp. Protect the children. Keep the spirits from—”

  Horohan’s brow lifts slowly. “From what?”

  “From boredom,” Kuan says, desperate now. “Bored spirits become mischievous. Everyone knows that.”

  Horohan’s gaze stays on him, then slides deliberately to the yurt, then back. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t comment. She simply lets the silence do the stabbing.

  Kuan’s ears go slightly pink.

  Naci watches it all with a look of profound, cruel understanding. “So,” she says lightly, “the great shaman is afraid of leaving.”

  Kuan scoffs. “Afraid? I am a fearless fox.”

  Horohan’s voice is dry as old blood. “Foxes hide in burrows when they’re in love.”

  Kuan chokes. “That is slander.”

  Horohan turns away as if bored. “Fine. If the fox won’t come, we take Lanau.”

  Lanau, who has been standing nearby lifts her chin. Her shaman charms click at her belt like teeth.

  “I accept,” she says immediately, which is almost too quick, as if she has been waiting for an excuse to leave the camp before her clan can drag her into more conversations about marriage and “settling down” like she is a pot.

  Jinhuang exhales in relief. “Thank the sky.”

  Kuan looks wounded. “I could have done it.”

  Horohan looks him up and down. “You just refused.”

  “I refused… heroically.”

  “It’s called cowardice,” Ta mutters, walking past, and Kuan flips him off with the cheer of a man who has never been punished properly.

  Then Lizi steps forward.

  She is quieter now than she used to be, like a blade that has learned it does not need to brag. Her hair is tied back. Her coat is patched with Banner insignia that still looks strange on her, as if the cloth itself hasn’t decided whether to accept it. Her eyes flick briefly to Lanau—quick, hungry, not as subtle as she thinks.

  “I will come too,” Lizi says. “I’m a Banner.”

  Naci’s gaze holds her for a heartbeat. It is not suspicion exactly. It is the careful look of someone weighing a tool and a person at the same time.

  Horohan’s mouth twitches. “You’re very enthusiastic.”

  Lizi shrugs. “I get to stab people legally.”

  Ta snorts. “You already did that.”

  “Yes,” Lizi says. “But now it’s in my job description.”

  Lanau doesn’t look at her, but her fingers adjust a charm at her belt with faint, nervous precision. Lizi’s eyes soften, just a fraction, as if that movement is a prayer she recognizes.

  Naci nods once. “Fine,” she says. “Come.”

  The riders begin to gather. Horses stamp. Leather creaks. Eagles lift and settle, impatient.

  And then Tseren appears.

  He steps in front of Naci and Dukar like a man blocking an arrow with his body.

  “Do not die,” he says.

  Naci blinks. Dukar opens his mouth.

  Tseren points at them both. “Do not make me bury you.”

  “We won’t,” Naci says automatically, the way people say the weather will be fine while looking at storm clouds.

  Dukar nods. “We won’t.”

  Tseren’s gaze shifts to Horohan and Puripal.

  “And you two,” he says, voice turning sharper. “Do not die either.”

  Horohan lifts a brow. “Is that an order, Chieftain?”

  Tseren’s mouth twists. “Yes. And if you ignore it, I will punish you in the afterlife.”

  Puripal, who has faced poisonings and prisons and the kind of love that eats your soul, actually freezes.

  Tseren steps closer, eyes boring into him. “Do you understand me, boy?”

  Puripal swallows. “Yes,” he says quietly.

  “Good,” Tseren says. “Because if my children cry because of you, I will haunt you until you beg the gods for silence.”

  Horohan lets out a startled laugh, half delighted, half horrified. “Grief has made you terrifying.”

  Puripal watches him with something like shock, like a man realizing kindness can be a weapon too. When Tseren steps away, Puripal leans close to Dukar and murmurs, low enough no one else hears, “You are an imbecile for running from your parents.”

  Dukar’s mouth tightens, almost a smile, almost pain. “You haven’t seen my mother,” he murmurs back.

  Naci exhales once, sharp, and claps her hands.

  “Enough,” she calls. “If we stand here much longer, the steppe will grow roots around our ankles and claim us.”

  Borak mounts first, because of course he does, grinning like a man leaving for a hunt. His eagles rise in a flurry of wings, circling overhead, their cries slicing the morning.

  Horohan swings onto her horse with the ease of a predator. Lanau follows, sitting straight, eyes focused.

  Jinhuang mounts beside Fol.

  Ta climbs up more carefully, one hand briefly touching the bandage at his neck.

  Puripal and Dukar mount last.

  Naci rides at the front. The Banners and Yohazatz warriors fan out behind like a moving stormfront—fur, steel, leather, banners snapping in the wind.

  As they start moving, Kuan jogs alongside for a few steps, calling, “Bring me something from the palace!”

  Naci doesn’t look back. “Like what?”

  Kuan thinks fast. “A crown!”

  Horohan calls over her shoulder, “So you can put it on your lover’s head?”

  Kuan laughs, then slows, watching them go.

  He stays where he is, a quiet shape in the camp’s edge, hands still, head tilted toward the departing hoofbeats like he is listening to a song he is relieved not to sing anymore.

  The road stretches. Grass gives way to harder ground. The wind becomes sharper. The jokes keep coming anyway, because if people stop joking on the way to war, they start thinking.

  Ta squints at Lanau. “So you’re the shaman now.”

  Lanau glances at him. “’I’ve been for a while now.”

  Ta’s mouth quirks. “Great. If I die, tell my spirit I’m not apologizing to anyone.”

  Lanau says, perfectly calm, “Your spirit already knows.”

  They ride for days.

  They ride until the grass thins and the land starts to change—until the air begins to carry that faint, bitter tang of stone and incense and too many people packed into walls.

  Then the grass becomes stubble. The stubble becomes dust. The dust becomes sand that creeps into every seam of leather and every corner of the mouth, gritty as regret.

  Kamoklopr.

  It is not a desert that politely sits still and waits to be crossed. It is a living thing that crawls and exhales. Dunes swell like the backs of sleeping beasts, and when the wind shifts they move, slow and inevitable, as if the earth is rearranging its own bones to make sure no one gets too confident.

  Naci rides at the front, cloak wrapped tight, scarf over her mouth. The wind scours her cheekbones and tries to peel her skin off like fruit. She blinks sand from her lashes and keeps going.

  Behind her, the column stretches into a long, tense ribbon—Banners and Yohazatz warriors, horses and pack animals, eagles cutting circles above them like impatient gods.

  Borak’s birds hate the desert. Eagles are made for mountains and thermals and drama. Kamoklopr gives them flat heat and a lot of nothing.

  Uamopak swoops low and snatches a flapping scrap of cloth off someone’s pack, then drops it again as if offended by its lack of prey instincts.

  Borak looks up and clicks his tongue. “Stop stealing,” he tells Naci’s eagle.

  Uamopak shrieks back, which in eagle language might mean buy me something nice then.

  Lanau rides beside Puripal for a stretch, her charms clicking softly, her eyes narrowed as she scans the horizon.

  She wipes her mouth, tastes grit, and says hoarsely, “Is the desert always… like this?”

  Puripal glances at her. “Like what?”

  “Like it has personal hatred,” Lanau says.

  Dukar answers without looking away from the horizon. “Yes.”

  Puripal adds, conversational, “Kamoklopr once ate a whole army.”

  They ride through heat that presses against their skin like a palm. They ride through mirages that shimmer at the edge of sight—false lakes, false trees, false mercy. Sometimes a distant glint looks like a caravan; when they squint, it becomes only sunlight on stone, mocking them for hoping.

  The horses start to sweat in strange, patchy ways. Their nostrils flare, white-rimmed. Their eyes go too bright. Even the toughest steppe-bred beasts resent being asked to walk through a world with no grass and no forgiveness.

  They cluster on the lee side of a dune, where the wind is slightly less eager to sandblast their organs. Water skins are passed hand to hand.

  Naci measures each sip. She remembers the last time she sent an army through the desert.

  Tseren would have lectured her about logistics, about careful rationing and the way armies die from thirst before they die from steel. She hears his voice in her head anyway, and it makes her jaw tighten.

  Lanau kneels in the sand and presses two fingers to the ground as if checking a pulse.

  Ta watches, suspicious. “Are you listening to the dirt?”

  Lanau doesn’t look up. “Yes.”

  Ta’s mouth twitches. “And?”

  “The dirt says you’re annoying,” Lanau replies, still calm.

  Ta sits back, offended. “The dirt can mind its own business.”

  Behind them, Fol tries to offer Jinhuang his water skin. Jinhuang stares at it like it is both sweet and insulting.

  “I’m not porcelain,” she says.

  Fol smiles. “I know.”

  “I will take it,” Jinhuang says. She drinks, hands it back, and adds, quieter, “Thank you.”

  Lanau, without looking up from the sand, murmurs, “Don’t threaten him with a good time.”

  Horohan laughs, then coughs sand.

  When the stop is over, they ride again. The dune line rises and falls like waves frozen mid-crash, and the wind keeps dragging its claws over them.

  The smear thickens as they climb another rise. Green becomes palm crowns, clustered like hands raised in prayer. A darker line suggests stone walls, low and sprawling, and beyond that—glitter.

  The oasis sits like a secret bruise in the middle of Kamoklopr: life pressed into hostile emptiness by stubbornness and old engineering. Channels cut through the sand, guiding water like veins. Date palms tilt over it, their fronds whispering. Gardens cling to the edges like survivors. And in the center, rising out of the green like a crowned spine, Qixi-Lo sprawls.

  Naci doesn’t laugh. She stares at Qixi-Lo as if she is looking at an enemy she has already decided how to kill.

  Then she lifts a hand, palm forward, and the column slows behind her.

  “Stay sharp,” she says, voice low. “This city breathes lies.”

  They ride down into the basin, toward the green throat of the oasis and the pale stone teeth of Qixi-Lo waiting beyond.