Nemeh crawls the way a man crawls when pride has been burned out of him and only nerves remain—elbows digging into sand, fingers clawing at nothing, mouth opening and closing around breaths that taste like blood and grit. The desert does not care. The sun sits above the battlefield like an indifferent judge. The wind keeps dragging little ribbons of sand over the bodies as if trying to tuck them in.

  His right arm hangs wrong. His ribs rise unevenly. Every time he inhales, a wet clicking sound answers from somewhere inside him.

  Naci stands a few strides away with her white musket resting against her thigh, eyes narrowed. She takes one step forward.

  Dukar beats her to it.

  He seizes Nemeh by the hair and hauls his head up so the prince’s face catches the light. Nemeh’s eyes try to focus. His lips move. Nothing dignified comes out, only a rasp that might be a curse or a plea. Dukar doesn’t bother to guess which.

  “Look,” Dukar says, loud enough for the line to hear. “Look at him.”

  The Yohazatz soldiers—what’s left of them—stand half-stunned in their loosened ranks. A few still clutch weapons out of habit. A few keep glancing toward the place where Dolma’s spirit had been, as if it might drift back and tuck courage into their spines again.

  Nothing comes.

  Without her, their fury feels uncoordinated, like an army that has forgotten why it’s angry.

  Dukar drags Nemeh a few feet, turning him as if presenting a carcass at a market.

  “This is your Khan,” he says. “This is the man who promised you songs. Look at the way he kisses sand. Look at the way he crawls like a worm and still thinks the sun owes him a crown.”

  Nemeh tries to bite him.

  It’s a pathetic attempt—teeth snapping at air a handspan short of Dukar’s wrist. Dukar watches it with mild curiosity, like someone watching a dog bark at thunder.

  He smiles.

  Then he slams Nemeh’s face into the sand.

  The impact makes a sound that is neither clean nor heroic. Nemeh’s nose breaks with a wet crunch. He chokes, gagging on sand and blood.

  Dukar lifts him again by the hair, not letting him fall. Not letting him escape into unconsciousness. Nemeh’s eyes roll wildly. A line of red drool slips from his mouth and stitches his chin to the sand.

  “Beg,” Dukar says.

  Nemeh makes a strangled noise that might once have been a laugh.

  Dukar’s free hand closes around Nemeh’s shattered arm. His fingers find the angle where bone wants to move and shouldn’t. He twists.

  Nemeh’s scream punches through the battlefield. It startles even the horses. A few riders shift in their saddles.

  Naci doesn’t move.

  Horohan’s hand flexes on her sword hilt, wanting to end a foul thing quickly. Borak’s gaze keeps sweeping the perimeter, as if expecting the desert itself to try something clever.

  Puripal rides closer at a slow walk, his horse stepping carefully over discarded weapons and bodies. He does not stop Dukar. He does not call him back.

  Dukar turns his head slightly, noticing Puripal’s approach without letting go of Nemeh.

  He jerks his chin.

  Puripal’s horse comes to a halt close enough that Nemeh can smell it—sweat, leather, dust, the hot animal stink of survival. The horse snorts, offended by the scent of blood. Its hoof stamps, impatient.

  Dukar shoves Nemeh forward.

  “Down,” he says.

  Nemeh’s knees buckle. He catches himself on his good hand, trembling. He lifts his head and looks at Puripal from under broken brows, and there it is—the ancient hatred, the one that has kept him warm for years. Even now, even dying, he tries to hold on to it like a banner.

  Dukar grabs his hair again and forces his face lower.

  Nemeh’s mouth hits the horse’s hoof.

  The hoof is caked with sand. It tastes like earth and manure.

  “Again,” Dukar says.

  Nemeh tries to jerk away. Dukar’s grip tightens. Nemeh’s lips press to the hoof again, then again, each time uglier, each time more desperate.

  The Yohazatz line has fully stopped fighting now. Even the men who still want to kill something have paused.

  Dukar raises Nemeh’s head enough for him to breathe, not enough for him to regain dignity.

  “Say it,” Dukar tells him. “Say who rules.”

  Nemeh’s throat works. His voice comes out as a broken rasp. “There is… there is—”

  Dukar shakes him once, sharp. “Clearer.”

  Nemeh coughs, blood spitting onto the horse’s fetlock. The horse flicks an ear like it’s being inconvenienced.

  “There is only one legitimate ruler of Yohazatz,” Nemeh forces out, each word dragged over broken pride like a knife over bone.

  Dukar looks at Puripal, eyes bright with fury and something like devotion.

  “Say his name,” Dukar says.

  Naci feels a shift in the air, the way a declaration can be a spear thrown without moving your arm. She has asked for the throne.

  Dukar does not look at her.

  Nemeh’s eyes lift toward Naci for a heartbeat. There is a flash of something there—spite, maybe. Or relief. Then Dukar yanks his head toward Puripal again.

  “Puripal,” Nemeh croaks. “Puripal Khagan.”

  A few Yohazatz soldiers bow reflexively, as if the words yank their spines. Others just stand there, faces blank, watching their world rearrange itself without asking permission.

  Naci keeps her face still. She keeps her hands steady on her musket. Inside, something cold settles.

  Subtle, she thinks. Very subtle.

  Dukar releases Nemeh and shoves him down into the sand again like a discarded tool.

  “We’re done here,” Dukar says to the Yohazatz line, voice carrying.

  No one cheers. No one dares.

  They march to Qixi-Lo.

  Nemeh is tied with a rope looped around his neck and under his arms so he can’t slip free even if he decides dying is preferable. The rope is knotted to a saddle pommel. Every time the horse steps forward, the rope pulls, and Nemeh is dragged through the sand on his side like a sack of meat.

  His face bounces against small stones. His breath comes in wet bursts. Occasionally his hands scrabble, trying to crawl even while being hauled, because the body is stubborn in its insistence that it might still matter.

  Dukar rides close enough to watch him suffer. Sometimes he tugs the rope shorter, just to make sure Nemeh cannot find a rhythm.

  Puripal rides ahead, quiet, letting the dust settle on his shoulders like a cloak. His eyes are distant, already in Qixi-Lo, already counting walls and crowds and what stories will need to be told.

  Naci rides beside him, her expression unreadable. Once, Borak leans in and murmurs something about water and rest. Naci answers without turning her head.

  “We rest when the story is finished,” she says.

  Palm trees, low and dark, rise against the sun. Green startling in the desert’s endless cruelty. And beyond the water, the white stone of Qixi-Lo rising, gleaming, too clean for what it has held.

  The gates stand open.

  Ta is there, blood on his boots, posture relaxed. Lanau stands beside him, hair wind-tangled, eyes sharp. Fol and Jinhuang flank them, both of them dust-coated and bright-eyed. Lizi stands a little apart.

  Between them, Dolma is bound in chains.

  Heavy iron links biting into wrists and ankles, collar locked, her arms pinned back so she can’t make a gesture that might be mistaken for a spell. Her head hangs. Her hair is matted with sweat. The air around her feels… quieter, like sound avoids her out of caution.

  Ta looks at Puripal’s group and raises his brows. “You brought a pet,” he says, eyeing the rope.

  Dukar dismounts and yanks Nemeh upright by the hair again. Nemeh sways, barely conscious, mouth half-open, sand crusted in his teeth.

  “Not a pet,” Dukar says. “A pest.”

  Fol’s expression flickers—disgust, satisfaction, something complicated. Jinhuang’s gaze drops for a fraction of a breath, then returns to Nemeh’s face with cold clarity.

  Lanau steps closer to Dolma, checking the chains, muttering to herself. “Stay,” she tells the bound woman softly, like talking to a storm. “Stay in your bones.”

  Dolma does not lift her head.

  High in a palace window, behind carved lattice, Kan watches.

  She is a shadow behind a shadow, the kind of presence that does not announce itself. The wound in her pulls when she breathes. Beneath her fine robe the scar tissue is swollen and angry, and the rot beneath it makes the air taste wrong, sweet and spoiled.

  She watches Puripal ride through the gate like a returning god. She watches Naci—tall, fierce, too calm. She watches Dukar drag Nemeh like a trophy. She watches Dolma in chains. She watches Ta standing like a door that does not open unless it wants to.

  Her fingers curl on the windowsill. Her nails bite stone.

  So, she thinks. The pieces gather.

  In the city, people spill into streets as news travels faster than feet.

  They gather in courtyards, markets, on rooftops. The air is thick with dust and whispers. Faces turn toward the palace like sunflowers toward a burning sun.

  Puripal rides out again.

  He chooses a wide square where the old banners hang. He climbs down from his horse and steps onto a low stone platform as if it was always meant for him. His voice carries without effort—a practiced command that makes people lean in.

  “People of Qixi-Lo,” he says.

  Behind him, Banners and Yohazatz warriors form a loose ring, letting their presence speak. Nemeh is dragged to the platform’s edge and left kneeling, head bowed because his neck cannot hold it up anymore.

  Puripal looks at him as if looking at a problem finally solved.

  “Khan Regent Nemeh,” he says, voice mild, “has attempted to assassinate me.”

  A murmur ripples. Some faces tighten. Others relax, because this story is easy to swallow.

  “He did it cowardly,” Puripal continues. “He did it badly. And he did it while claiming he acted for the good of our people, as men always do when they are about to make good of someone else’s corpse.”

  He lets his gaze drift over the crowd.

  “This is treason,” he says. “And the sentence is death.”

  Nemeh does not lift his head. He can’t. His breath wheezes. A thin string of blood runs from his nose and darkens the sand at his knees. If he wants to beg, his body has decided it has other priorities.

  Puripal’s mouth curves faintly, not kind.

  “All his life,” he says, “Nemeh longed to be a steppe warrior of legend. He wanted songs. He wanted mothers to hush their children with his name. He wanted to die in a way that made the world look at him.”

  A dark little laugh runs through the crowd, quickly smothered. Even here, even now, people know the taste of irony. It’s a staple food.

  Puripal lifts one hand, palm open, as if offering something.

  “Today,” he says, “I grant him his wish.”

  He turns slightly, gesturing toward the open stretch beyond the square where the sand is flat and the horses are already being gathered. Riders circle, tightening the ring. Hooves drum softly, impatient. The horses smell blood and fear and old steppe rituals. Their ears flick. Their eyes roll white at the edges.

  Puripal’s voice stays calm.

  “A steppe warrior’s death,” he says, “is not that of a blade. It is the sky itself remembering who belongs on top.”

  Dukar grabs Nemeh by the rope and drags him forward. Nemeh’s body folds, then is hauled again, limp as wet cloth.

  Puripal steps down from the platform and walks with them, the crowd surging at a safe distance like a tide afraid of drowning.

  They bring Nemeh to the open ground.

  The riders form a wide circle. One thousand hooves. Maybe more. Enough that the sand trembles with their collective impatience.

  Naci stands off to one side, musket in hand, watching. Her face is still.

  Puripal raises his arm.

  The riders begin to move.

  At first it is only a slow trot, a tightening spiral. Dust rises in pale sheets. The sound becomes a chant—hoofbeats in unison, the old language of steppe judgment.

  Nemeh tries to crawl. Of course he does. The body always tries to save itself.

  A horse’s hoof comes down near his hand, missing by a breath. The wind of it flips his fingers back. He jerks, gasping.

  The circle tightens.

  Another hoof lands on his calf. There is a wet crack. Nemeh’s mouth opens on a scream that doesn’t fully form.

  The sound becomes enormous. The dust becomes a wall. Shapes blur—legs, bellies, saddles, boots. The earth shakes under the pounding, a deep vibration that climbs into bones and makes teeth chatter.

  For a moment, Nemeh’s face appears between hooves, eyes wide, mouth open, a child’s expression in a man’s ruined body, and then it is gone under the next wave.

  The circle passes again and again, hooves striking flesh, crushing ribs, stamping the last stubborn breath out of him.

  When the riders finally peel away, the sand is darker where he was. Something unrecognizable lies flattened into the earth, already being covered by drifting dust as if the desert is eager to forget.

  Puripal lowers his arm.

  The dust hangs in the air in thick veils, clinging to eyelashes and lips. The horses wheel out of the circle one by one, flanks heaving, foam streaking their mouths, ears twitching at the lingering smell of crushed meat.

  The crowd that followed from the square stands in a ragged half-moon at the edge of the open ground. Some stare as if memorizing the sight for later nightmares. Some look away and pretend their hands aren’t shaking. A few whisper prayers with the same mouths that cheered thirty seconds ago.

  Puripal stands near the trampled patch, calm as a judge who has already washed his hands. His face is composed. The wind tugs at his hair, and for a moment he looks like a story someone wrote to frighten loyal sons into obedience.

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  Dukar sits his horse a little back. He looks satisfied in the way a man looks when he has finally stabbed a thought he’s been carrying for years.

  Naci watches them both.

  She watches Dukar’s posture, and she watches the angle of Puripal’s chin. She watches the way their soldiers shift, the way the Yohazatz warriors’ eyes keep sliding to Puripal and then away, like watching a wolf eat close to camp.

  It clicks in her mind with the cold finality of a latch closing.

  Oh.

  This is what they are doing.

  They are not only killing Nemeh. They are killing the last excuse the Yohazatz have had to pretend their bloodlust is leadership. They are making a spectacle of cruelty so obscene it becomes a weapon: look what your Khan does, look what your steppe becomes under him, look how you will be used. They are dressing Puripal in the mask of despot so she can arrive as salvation, white musket in hand, modern queen of wolves.

  Naci’s mouth tightens. There is a dry amusement in it, the kind that tastes like gunpowder. She has been outplayed before. She has also outplayed men who thought they invented lying.

  She lifts her white musket.

  Puripal’s gaze flicks to her, sharp. Dukar’s eyes narrow slightly, almost warning.

  Naci aims at the sky.

  The shot cracks like the world’s knuckle breaking.

  Birds explode upward from palms near the oasis. The crowd flinches in a wave; a few scream reflexively, because in Qixi-Lo loud sounds usually mean someone important is about to die.

  The smoke curls from the barrel, thin and pale in the sun, and Naci lets it drift between her and the crowd like incense at a funeral.

  “Enough,” she says.

  It is not a shout. It is a command.

  The murmurs shrink. The horses settle, ears pivoting toward her voice. Even the Banners behind her—people who have watched cities burn and still stood in formation—shift their attention, because when Naci speaks like this, history usually gets rearranged.

  She takes a step forward, boots sinking slightly into the churned sand, and turns so the crowd can see her face clearly.

  “For those who don’t know, my name is Naci,” she says, and lets the name land without decoration. “Khan of Tepr.”

  There is a ripple of recognition.

  Naci lifts her musket slightly, not threatening, simply making sure they remember she is not a woman who speaks without teeth.

  “You have just watched a man die the way our ancestors thought was holy,” she says. Her voice is steady, but there is a faint edge of disgust under it, like biting into spoiled meat. “Trampled until there is nothing left to mourn but the smell.”

  A few heads bow. A few mouths tighten, defensive.

  Naci lets her gaze sweep them.

  “I know what you tell yourselves,” she says. “That this is strength. That this is the steppe’s law. That to be merciless is to be free.”

  She nods toward the crushed patch of sand.

  “This,” she says, “is why the Moukopl look down upon us.”

  The words hit like a slap.

  A hiss runs through the crowd. A man in a red sash spits, angry. An old woman lifts her chin, offended by reflex, as if pride can replace bread.

  Naci does not soften.

  “You hate them,” she continues. “You should. They build palaces and call them civilization while they chain children and write poems about order.” She flicks a glance toward the palace walls in the distance, gleaming too clean for the sins inside. “But they are not wrong about everything.”

  She pauses, letting that sit in the throat like a bone.

  “You think they don’t laugh when they hear this?” she asks, voice sharpened. “When they hear that the great Yohazatz—who once rode like thunder—still solve politics by making a man into paste under horses?”

  A few people bristle, fists clenching. Someone mutters a curse. Someone else laughs nervously.

  “And the Hluay,” she adds, as if dropping an extra weight onto an already bruised pride. “Do you think they fear you? Do you think they see the steppe and tremble?” She lets out a short, mirthless breath. “They hate you. They despise you. They tell stories about you the way mothers warn children about wild dogs. Not because you are unstoppable—because you are predictable.”

  The crowd shifts. The name Hluay has a taste here: smoke, defeat, ambushes on lonely roads.

  Naci gestures to herself, then outward, making the motion inclusive without being kind.

  “Tepr and Yohazatz are alike,” she says. “We dress alike. We speak tongues that share bones. We keep shamans who argue with the sky. We love horses more than comfort. We count the same holidays. We sing the same old songs about grass and blood and the wind’s mercy.”

  A few faces soften despite themselves, recognizing the truth.

  “We have the same strength,” Naci says, voice growing. “The kind that topples empires when it is aimed correctly.”

  Her eyes flash, fierce.

  “But we are not the same in one thing,” she says.

  She taps the white musket with two knuckles.

  “The world changes,” Naci continues, and now her voice carries farther, riding the silence. “The west spits fire from tubes and kills horses at a hundred paces. The sea people build cannons that punch holes through ships like fists through wet cloth. Empires do not fall anymore because a brave man rides fast and screams louder than his enemy. They fall because someone understands powder. Logistics. Roads. Information. Because someone starves an army without ever meeting it.”

  She points toward the horizon—toward stone, toward walls, toward the idea of cities.

  “We shall swim or sink,” she says simply.

  A young man near the front opens his mouth as if to argue. Naci’s gaze pins him.

  “You think I enjoy this?” she asks. “You think I woke up one morning craving paperwork? I grew up on grass and blood too. I would rather wrestle a wolf than negotiate grain tariffs.”

  A few startled laughs pop out, then stop, because she is still holding a musket.

  “And yet,” she says, “wolves starve if they don’t learn where the herds move.”

  She turns slightly, letting her eyes land—briefly, pointedly—on Puripal.

  “And here is your problem,” she says.

  Puripal does not react. He has the discipline of a man who learned early that faces are armor. But his eyes narrow a fraction, a blade’s width.

  “Your Khan,” Naci says to the crowd, and the title sounds like an insult in her mouth. “He declared war on Moukopl eight years ago. He promised glory. He promised a steppe reborn.”

  Her gaze sweeps over the people.

  “And what did he do?” she asks. “Punctual raids. Little bites. Small dramatic gestures to keep you hungry. He takes blood here and there and calls it strategy. He keeps you at war without ever moving you toward victory.”

  A murmur rises—agreement, discomfort, confusion. Some warriors have the look of men remembering empty hands after raids: a few stolen sacks, a few dead friends, nothing that changes winter.

  Naci spreads her hands.

  “Where is the promise?” she asks, sharper now. “Where is the glory he sells you? Where are the roads, the forges, the powder mills? Where are the schools teaching your children to read enemy maps? Where are the ships so your raids become invasions and your invasions become borders?”

  She lets the questions hang like banners. Naci looks back to the crowd.

  “He is too cruel,” she says, and her voice dips into something almost tender. “Too uninterested in your future. He is a man who will feed you blood and call it supper until you forget what bread tastes like.”

  A low sound runs through the people, half rage, half fear, because the picture is uncomfortably accurate.

  Naci lifts her chin.

  “And I,” she says, “cannot rule beside him.”

  She pauses, letting the pause do its work.

  “We are water and oil,” she says. “We will never agree on what leadership means. He will rule by terror and legend. I will rule by building into the future.”

  The crowd expects the next thing. They expect the steppe answer: duel. Blood. The old ritual of proving rightness by whose heart keeps beating.

  Naci lets them expect it.

  Then she denies them.

  “I could challenge him,” she says, almost lightly. “We could duel. You could cheer. You could watch two leaders try to carve legitimacy out of each other’s bones.”

  A few warriors straighten, eager. A few elders grimace, tired.

  “But I have learned something,” Naci says, and her voice cools into steel. “Absolute rule is a knife that never stops cutting. Even when it means to protect, it eventually slips.”

  She lets that line sit. Somewhere near the palace gates, Dolma’s chained body lifts her head a fraction, listening.

  Naci continues, “Agreement matters. Consent matters. Even here. Especially here, where we pretend we don’t need it because we have horses.”

  A thin laugh escapes someone in the crowd. It sounds like pain.

  Naci’s gaze sharpens, but she does not punish the laughter. She uses it.

  “So,” she says, “we settle this the modern way.”

  The crowd goes still.

  Even Puripal tilts his head slightly, interest pricking through his composed mask. Dukar’s jaw tightens as if he tastes something unfamiliar.

  Naci raises her voice a notch.

  “A vote,” she says.

  The word drops like a stone into a pond. Silence ripples outward.

  “A what?” someone blurts, loud and incredulous, and the crowd snaps into whispers.

  Naci lets the confusion run for a heartbeat—lets it spread, lets it make the idea real.

  “Yes,” she says, and there is a faint, wicked satisfaction in her tone. “A vote. Not a duel. Not a massacre. Not a prophecy. A vote.”

  A man near the back laughs, harsh. “We are not Moukopl bureaucrats!”

  Naci’s eyes cut to him. “No,” she says, “you are worse. Moukopl at least pretend their cruelty is orderly.”

  A few people choke on laughter. A few scowl.

  Naci’s mouth curves.

  “You already vote,” she says. “You vote every time you follow a leader into winter. You vote every time you bring your sons to his fire and trust him not to waste them. You vote with your feet, with your loyalty, with your silence.”

  She lifts her musket slightly, not threatening, simply emphasizing.

  “I am asking you,” she says, “to vote with your words for once.”

  She gestures toward the assembled chiefs and shamans scattered through the crowd, their distinctive ornaments and stances marking them even without banners.

  “In three days,” Naci says, “every chieftain, every shaman, and one elder from each clan of the Yohazatz tribes will gather.”

  A few people exchange looks, skeptical. Someone mutters, “As if,” and gets elbowed.

  Naci’s gaze skims past them, unbothered.

  “You will choose,” she says. “Him, or me. Puripal, or Naci.”

  She looks directly at Puripal now. It is not friendly. It is not hatred. It is the cold stare of two storms assessing which will break the other first.

  Puripal’s eyes glint. His smile is slight, unreadable—approval, amusement, warning. Dukar’s fingers tighten on his reins. For a moment he looks like he wants to burst out laughing.

  ...

  By day the oasis city pretends to be stone and incense and law—white walls, shaded courtyards, officials walking like their paperwork is a form of religion. By night the palm fronds scrape together like conspirators, and the canals murmur as if they are reading secrets back into the dark. Every lantern flame is a small, nervous thing.

  Puripal enters one of the palace chambers alone.

  He chooses a room that looks too clean to be lived in: lacquered screens painted with cranes, a low table arranged with ceremonial neatness, cushions that have never known a desperate guest. The air smells faintly of sandalwood and old fear.

  He closes the door behind him and does not lock it.

  A few heartbeats later, Kan slips in.

  She does not make sound when she moves. She has spent her life learning how not to exist until she needs to. In torchlight she looks like a blade left too long in saltwater: pitted, stubborn, dangerous.

  Her gaze darts over the room in an instant—windows, corners, potential hiding places. It lingers on Puripal’s hands, as if imagining how easily they could be cut off from the rest of him.

  She sits opposite him with the careful grace of a woman who is trying not to pounce.

  Puripal pours tea.

  It is a ridiculous gesture, almost comical, like two children playing court while a city still smells of blood. His hands are steady, though. The tea makes a small, polite sound as it fills the cup. He slides it toward her.

  Kan does not touch it.

  “Did you invite me,” she says, voice thin, “to poison me?”

  Puripal’s mouth quirks. “If I wanted you dead tonight, I would not have chosen tea as the instrument.”

  The air between them tightens.

  Puripal folds his hands on the table like an administrator preparing to ruin someone’s life with a stamp.

  “Give up on becoming queen,” he says.

  Kan’s expression barely changes. Only her pupils dilate, the way they do when she tastes blood in her imagination.

  Puripal continues, tone almost gentle, which is worse than cruelty. “I am not warning you as your Khan or your brother. I am not ordering you. I am… telling you.”

  Kan’s fingers twitch once near her sleeve.

  “You tell me,” she says, “to give up the only thing we were made for.”

  Puripal exhales through his nose. “We were made for Mother’s convenience.”

  That lands like a slap. Kan’s jaw flexes.

  Puripal leans back slightly, eyes fixed on her face as if studying the set of her bones the way their mother used to study rivals.

  “Everything today was a performance. Dukar and I and Naci… we’re putting on a show for the tribes. We make me look like the worst possible answer, and we make her look like salvation.”

  Kan’s breath catches, sharp.

  Puripal’s gaze does not waver. “I plan to give the Yohazatz to Naci.”

  For a moment Kan does not react at all. Her face goes soldier-still, the way it did in that pavilion long ago when bodies toppled and her mother calmly pointed away from herself.

  Then something in her cracks.

  It is not loud at first. It is the small sound of a hinge failing.

  “You—” Kan begins. The word comes out broken.

  Puripal keeps talking, because if he stops, she will fill the silence with murder.

  “Leadership is a curse,” he says. “It rots you. It turns everything you love into a tool. It makes you look at people and see only uses. Mother knew that and she dressed it up like destiny. I’m done with it.”

  Kan’s laugh is a short, ugly thing. “Done.” She repeats it like he’s said a joke. “You’re done.”

  Puripal’s eyes soften a fraction, and that softness is so foreign on him it almost looks like a trick. “I should have been honest with you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  Kan’s head tilts, slow. Her voice rises, finally, from controlled to feral.

  “Our mother would be ashamed of you.” Kan’s eyes shine. “She broke the world to keep us alive. She taught you how to survive and you turn around and hand the throne away like a bored child giving away a toy.”

  Puripal’s expression barely shifts. “My mother has no more hold on me.”

  Kan’s lips part, incredulous. “You say that like it’s a virtue.”

  “It is,” Puripal says quietly. “For me. I am at peace with whatever she would have thought.”

  Kan’s hand disappears into her sleeve.

  Puripal’s eyes flick to it. He does not move.

  Kan lunges.

  The blade flashes in torchlight—thin, sharp, darkened at the tip. She aims for the soft place under his ribs.

  A hand clamps her wrist mid-strike.

  Then another.

  Ta hits first—barely a blur—catching Kan’s forearm and twisting. Dukar’s grip closes around her other wrist with a strength that feels like iron. The knife skitters, scraping the table, and stops inches from the tea cup.

  Kan snarls and thrashes.

  “Let go,” she hisses, voice cracking into something almost childlike. “Let go—he deserves—”

  Dukar’s eyes are amber and furious. “Enough,” he says, and his tone has the weight of command.

  Kan bucks harder. Ta grunts, half in exertion, half in disgust.

  “You are unbelievable,” Ta snaps at her. “I leave you alone with your brother and you immediately try to decorate the furniture with him.”

  Kan spits at him; it hits his sleeve. Ta looks down at it like offended royalty.

  Puripal’s gaze goes to the knife on the table.

  “Careful,” he says. “Don’t touch the blade. It might be poisoned.”

  Kan freezes for half a heartbeat at that. Her eyes flick to the tip, then back to him.

  “You assume,” she says, voice shaking with rage, “that I am stupid enough to poison a knife I might need to hold to throw in your throat?”

  Puripal’s mouth twitches. “Mother would have.”

  That line—small, offhand—hits Kan harder than the restraint. Her face folds. Fury and grief wrestle in her like dogs.

  She makes a sound that is not quite a sob and not quite a scream.

  Dukar loosens his hold just enough that she can breathe, but not enough that she can reach the knife again. Ta stays braced, ready to snap her arm if she forces it.

  Kan’s tears come hot and sudden, streaking through the grime on her cheeks. They do not soften her. They sharpen her.

  “She would have been ashamed of you,” she whispers again, but now it is aimed at all of them. “All of you. She would—”

  Puripal’s voice cuts through, quiet, almost tired. “Leave the palace, Kan. Before Naci finds you.”

  Kan’s eyes burn. “I am not afraid of her.”

  Ta snorts. “You should be.”

  Kan wrenches against Dukar’s hold one last time, then goes slack, suddenly exhausted by the sheer effort of staying alive.

  “Let her go,” Puripal says.

  Dukar hesitates. His grip tightens once—reflex, threat—then releases.

  Kan staggers backward. Her hands curl into fists. She looks at Puripal the way a starving animal looks at meat it cannot reach.

  “This isn’t finished,” she whispers.

  Puripal inclines his head slightly, as if acknowledging a report. “Nothing ever is.”

  Kan bolts.

  Her footsteps vanish into the palace corridors, swallowed by stone and night.

  Somewhere else in Qixi-Lo, chains scrape.

  Dolma is released.

  She emerges from her cell with her hair unbound, eyes hollowed by strain, skin too pale for the desert. She walks like someone who has been split in half and stitched back together poorly.

  Shamans gather in a low room beneath a courtyard where the water trickles all night. The air is thick with smoke and argument. They sit in a circle and glare as if glaring is governance.

  “We must vote,” one says.

  “I vote for no one,” Dolma replies immediately, voice flat.

  A younger shaman bristles. “You can’t refuse. The tribes—”

  “Watch me,” Dolma says. “I am done being a ladder for men who climb and then kick.”

  An older shaman leans forward, eyes narrowed. “If you refuse, you leave the decision to others.”

  Dolma’s smile is exhausted and cruel. “Good.”

  The circle erupts—insults, prayers, threats disguised as wisdom. Someone mentions Puripal’s name like it’s either salvation or rot. Someone mentions Naci like she’s a foreign storm that doesn’t belong in their sky.

  The door opens.

  Lanau steps in with Lizi at her shoulder.

  The room goes cold.

  “You are not Yohazatz,” a shaman snaps at once, as if the words are a ward.

  Lanau’s expression does not change. She wears her shaman’s beads and her Tepr braids, her eyes steady. “No,” she says. “I’m worse. I’m Tepr. We tend to always arrive where we’re unwanted.”

  Lizi shifts, hand resting near her belt out of habit, not threat. She says nothing. Her silence is a warning by itself.

  The Yohazatz shamans glare.

  Dolma lifts her chin. “Why are you here?”

  Lanau answers like she is offering a diagnosis. “Because you are arguing in circles. Because you keep talking about bloodlines as if blood itself is a qualification. Because you’re about to vote for a story instead of a leader.”

  A man in the circle sneers. “And you’ll tell us who to kneel to?”

  Lanau’s eyes flick over him. “No,” she says calmly. “You’ll kneel to whoever you choose. I’m only here to remind you that your choice will still feed your children or starve them.”

  One shaman laughs bitterly.

  Lanau continues, voice measured. “Puripal is Yohazatz royalty. Yes. He has the right blood. He also has the right talent for terror. He can keep the tribes afraid enough to obey, and he can keep enemies bleeding enough to feel powerful. If that’s what you want, vote for him.”

  A few faces tighten. No one interrupts.

  Lanau shifts her weight slightly. “Naci is not Yohazatz royalty,” she says. “But she is steppe incarnated. She knows horses and hunger and war. She also knows cannons and paper and roads. She has already won a war overseas without her own navy.” Her mouth twitches faintly. “Which is either genius or insulting luck, depending on how much you like her.”

  Dolma’s eyes narrow. “You praise her like a bard, and you are biased because she is your Khan. Do not try to manipulate us.”

  Lanau shrugs. “I praise her like someone who enjoys being alive. She is sharp. Charismatic. She surrounds herself with the best people because she knows she is not enough alone. That is not weakness. That is leadership.”

  A shaman nods. “She’s a conqueror.”

  Dolma’s jaw flexes. “She is not the heir.”

  Lanau’s gaze slides to Dolma, unwavering. “Noga was the heir,” she says softly. “He is dead. The place he should have filled is empty. And the ones who claimed it—his siblings—are petty. Rotten with feuds. They climbed each other like dogs in a pile until only one is left.”

  Dolma’s hands clench in her lap.

  Lanau’s voice remains gentle. “Naci beat Noga,” she says. “Fairly. Not with poison, not with sibling tricks. In war. If anyone has proven she can hold that kind of weight without falling into the same old Yohazatz blood-games… it is her.”

  The circle holds its breath.

  Dolma looks down at her own fingers, as if checking whether they still belong to her.

  Then she lets out a slow breath.

  “I will not vote for anyone,” she says again.

  A murmur rises—frustration, anger.

  Dolma lifts her head, eyes sharp. “But I will stop lying,” she adds. “If you want Noga’s place… the true one who can claim it is not any of the siblings. It is the woman who defeated him and didn’t need to devour her family to do it.”

  Lanau nods once, satisfied.

  ...

  On the day of the vote, the circle of chiefs, shamans, and elders gathers under a wide canopy near the oasis. The city watches from rooftops and alleys and behind lattice screens. Even the palm trees seem to lean in.

  Naci stands with her Banners behind her, posture composed, musket slung like a reminder.

  Puripal stands opposite, calm, beautiful.

  Names are spoken. Tokens placed. Hands raised. Voices counted.

  The result is almost unilateral.

  It lands on the crowd with a strange sound—like an old door finally opening.

  Naci is elected.

  For a moment, nothing moves. Then the murmurs start—some relieved, some resentful, some simply stunned that the world can change without a duel.

  Puripal steps forward.

  He could refuse. He could laugh. He could order his warriors to cut the circle down and declare the vote a joke.

  Instead he inclines his head.

  “I accept the decision,” he says, and the simplicity of it makes people suspicious. “The tribes have spoken.”

  Naci’s eyes narrow a fraction. Dukar’s jaw tightens. Horohan’s hand flexes near her sword.

  Above them, a shadow shifts.

  Kan drops from the roof like a vengeful prayer.

  She is not graceful or theatrical. She is pure hatred—hair loose, eyes wild, face gaunt with pain and fury. In her hand is a small vessel, sealed, something that catches the sun in a sickly gleam.

  She lands on Puripal’s shoulders from behind, legs locking around his neck like a trap.

  Puripal makes a sound—more surprise than fear.

  Kan laughs, wet and broken.

  Then she splashes the poison.

  It hits Puripal’s face in a bright, thin sheet. For a heartbeat it looks like water.

  Then his skin reacts.

  His scream is immediate.

  He claws at his face. The poison bites like a thousand hot needles. His eyes squeeze shut, then jerk open, flooded with tears that cannot wash it away.

  Kan rides him like a nightmare, shaking with ecstatic hatred. She lifts the remaining poison, arm cocked to throw—

  At Naci.

  Horohan moves.

  She is a white tiger in human skin: no hesitation, no debate, no mercy. Her blade flashes once, clean and brutal.

  Kan’s body jerks as the steel bites through her. Blood sprays, dark in the sun. Her eyes go wide—not in fear, but in disbelief, as if she cannot accept that the world would deny her ending.

  She slips from Puripal’s back, collapses to the sand in a shuddering heap, still trying to breathe through the hole Horohan has made in her.

  Her hand releases the vessel. It cracks on stone, the last of the poison hissing into dust like an angry spirit.

  For a heartbeat the whole crowd is silent.

  Then Puripal’s scream fills the air again, higher now, unbearable.

  Dukar launches forward, face gone pale. Ta is already moving, cursing, grabbing Puripal’s wrists before he can gouge his own eyes out. Naci’s boots pound the ground as she runs, musket forgotten. Horohan pivots, blade dripping, eyes snapping from Kan’s dying body to Puripal’s burning face.