Dawn lays frost on peach petals. It turns the koi pond into a sheet of lacquer, black and flawless, reflecting the garden pavilions. The inner garden is built to suggest eternity. The palace always pretends it’s eternal.

  The Yanming Emperor walks alone among peach trees as the morning sun rises.

  At last, he stops beneath one of them. Its limbs are thick, well-grown, shaped by years of careful pruning. Beautiful.

  A breeze passes. Petals drift down, slow and aimless. One lands on his sleeve like a blessing that missed its target.

  He brushes lichen from the bark with the side of his sleeve, annoyed at its persistence. The motion is oddly tender. The lichen flakes away, pale and dry.

  He takes out a cord—simple, strong, utilitarian. Not ceremonial. He has worn enough ceremony to last several lifetimes.

  He rehearses the knot once.

  His fingers know how to tie men into formations, how to tie treaties into traps, how to tie words into laws. And yet the cord trembles between his hands. The loop is imperfect. He frowns at it like it has disappointed him personally.

  He unties it again, quick and irritated. He does not like his own trembling.

  From somewhere beyond the garden walls, a bell rings. The sound wavers and then steadies.

  “You were supposed to stay,” he whispers, voice low, almost conversational. “You were supposed to be faithful.”

  He looks up at the branch again, measuring it with his eyes.

  “And you still want to leave.”

  A koi stirs beneath the lacquer surface, a slow ripple breaking perfection. The Emperor’s mouth twitches—something that could be a smile if the world were kinder.

  “Even fish,” he says softly, “have the sense to keep their mouths shut.”

  The morning sun creeps higher. Light spills through the blossoms and lands on his face.

  For a heartbeat, it makes him look even younger. Then the breeze shifts, the branch-shadow slides, and the light moves on.

  The shadow returns, settling over him like a familiar robe.

  He loops the cord over the branch. His hands are steadier now.

  He sets the stool under the branch with the care of a man arranging a final offering. He steps up. The wood creaks, insulted to be part of history.

  He looks out once more, as if trying to memorize beauty.

  “My garden,” he murmurs, and it is not pride so much as grief. “My poor, loyal garden. You bloom even when the world burns.”

  Light catches on a peach blossom and turns it briefly into fire. He watches it with a quiet awe, as if the sun has remembered him for a heartbeat.

  “Look,” he whispers, as if the garden might miss its own face.

  He draws one careful breath and lets his eyes travel, slow and grateful, across what is still here.

  “Petals fall without shame.

  Sunlight sits on water

  and the koi carry it.

  The mountains keep their blue silence,

  patient.

  With gentle wind threading through blossoms

  like a mother’s hand through hair,

  never asking permission.

  If this moment were all the world,

  it would be enough.”

  He swallows, throat tight, and touches the bark once—warm where the sun has kissed it.

  “It is,” he says, very softly, “so unbearably beautiful.”

  He slips the noose over his head. For a moment he closes his eyes and simply breathes, tasting peach and frost.

  He pushes the stool.

  Wood skitters. The rope snaps taut. His body drops, and the garden—faithful, indifferent—keeps blooming.

  ...

  Naci lifts herself through the opening with a controlled strength that makes it look effortless, though her boots slip once on wet brick. She catches herself without sound and disappears into the storehouse—previously the Eastern Bureau’s office—above.

  The room is dim. Shelves sag under rotting ledgers. A desk has been overturned, as if someone once tried to barricade themselves against reality with paperwork. The air is stale and dry enough to feel luxurious.

  Naci stands up fully, coated in filth like a second armor. Sewer water darkens her cloak hem; grime streaks her hands. She looks less like a liberator and more like a demon that crawled out of the city’s intestines to claim its heart.

  She listens.

  Outside, distant noise—riots, drums, the constant hungry breath of a city being held down. Inside this storehouse: silence.

  She turns as the first of her vanguard climbs out behind her, one by one, shadows becoming bodies.

  Her voice stays low.

  “No looting,” she says. “No shouting. No hesitation.”

  The Banners answer with silent nods. Teams peel away through back doors and broken windows, dispersing into the narrow alleys like poured ink.

  A sentry at a nearby corner turns, hearing something—too late.

  A crossbow bolt takes him under the jaw. He makes one wet sound, drops, and the alley swallows his body.

  Two palace runners sprint past the storehouse, scroll cases slapping their hips. They don’t see Naci’s vanguard emerge behind them like a shadow.

  A Banner steps from a doorway, catches the first runner by the collar, pulls him into darkness. A muffled crack. The second runner has time to turn and open his mouth—

  A knife slides into his throat.

  He collapses against the wall, hands fluttering, eyes wide with surprise that seems almost offended.

  Sealing gates. Taking watchtowers. Cutting the city’s narrative arteries before they can carry panic upward.

  The Jade Palace is taken fast.

  A guard at a side corridor catches sight of unfamiliar cloth and reaches for his horn.

  A musket fires with the barrel wrapped to dampen the report. The shot is a dull cough.

  The guard’s face becomes an empty place. He crumples without ever making the sound he meant to make.

  Two more guards turn a corner into a Banner shield line and learn, in half a second, that training does not matter when the enemy is already inside your lungs.

  Bureaucrats are corralled.

  They spill out of offices clutching scrolls, seals, account books—little talismans of authority held up like shields.

  “By whose order—” one begins.

  Another clerk, face blotched with terror, squeaks, “This is the Jade Palace! You can’t—”

  They bind wrists with rope. They herd officials into a hall lined with painted screens depicting ancient victories.

  Then Shi Min appears.

  She is already inside Pezijil’s “safe corridors,” positioned exactly where an ambassador should be. Her robe is clean. Her hair is pinned with a precision that suggests she can stab someone with etiquette alone. She carries a satchel of seals and prepared documents like weapons.

  She steps over a fallen guard without looking down, as if corpses are just inconvenient furniture.

  When she sees Naci enter—filth-streaked, eyes steady—Shi Min inclines her head in a greeting that manages to be both respectful and impatient.

  “You’re late,” Shi Min says.

  Naci’s mouth twitches. “I came through the city’s backside.”

  Shi Min’s gaze flicks briefly to the grime on her cloak hem. “Yes. I can smell your route.”

  Behind them, a bureaucrat makes a noise that might be a sob or a protest. Shi Min turns her head slightly and smiles at him with professional warmth.

  “Do not worry,” she tells the man. “This is temporary.”

  The man stares at her. “Temporary?”

  Shi Min nods. “Everything is temporary,” she says. “Especially your objections.”

  She faces Naci fully.

  “We are here for relief,” she says.

  A Banner in the background drags a body by the ankles. The corpse’s head bumps softly on marble, like a poorly wrapped gift.

  She gestures to a trembling clerk clutching a brush so tightly his knuckles are white. “You,” she says. “Rewrite the notices. Every sign. Every proclamation.”

  The clerk swallows. “W-what do I write?”

  Shi Min doesn’t hesitate. “Write ‘emergency stabilization.’ Write ‘relief corridor.’ Write ‘imperial reinforcement.’”

  The clerk begins, brush scratching paper. His hand shakes so much the first character looks like a dying spider.

  ...

  In a side chamber whose windows are screened with silk to keep smoke from staining the furniture, Sima sits with his hands folded as if he is waiting for a lecture to begin. Old Ji paces. Official Mo stands near a brazier that has no warmth left to offer. A handful of remaining aides hover like paper cranes caught in a draft—too proud to collapse, too afraid to fly.

  A junior clerk speaks without lifting his eyes. “Dragon-Tiger General Naci has—”

  Old Ji snaps, “Do not give her my Emperor’s title.”

  The clerk swallows and corrects himself. “The… Tepr Khan has entered the Jade Palace district with armed force. She claims she is here to coordinate relief and secure the Emperor’s person.”

  Sima’s mouth curves, not quite a smile. “Claims,” he repeats, savoring the syllable like a bitter herb. “A legal word. At least we still have those.”

  Old Ji stops pacing. The muscle in his jaw works, slow and violent. “A foreign blade in the empire’s ribs,” he says. “A cavalry knife shoved between our plates while we’re busy choking on rebels and Hluay.”

  Sima’s voice stays polite. “Illegitimate governance in barbarian clothing,” he corrects. “Not a blade. A costume.”

  Mo finally speaks. His disgust arrives quieter than theirs, and somehow more personal. He gestures toward the stack of orders on the low table.

  “And she writes badly too,” Mo says, as if describing an indecency in a temple.

  Old Ji’s lip curls. “Ink isn’t the problem, Mo.”

  Shi Min stands near the door, posture straight, hands tucked into her sleeves with an ambassador’s stillness. She has been waiting for her moment to translate catastrophe into something the palace can swallow.

  “Ministers,” she says softly. “If you reject her story, you must propose a better one that keeps the city from collapsing.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Old Ji’s eyes flick to her, sharp. “You are Tepr’s ambassador.”

  Shi Min does not deny it. “I am Pezijil’s reality problem,” she replies, almost cheerfully. “And reality is currently climbing through the drains.”

  Sima’s gaze studies her. “You came to coordinate relief,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “And to keep her narrative clean,” Sima adds.

  Shi Min’s mouth does not move, but something in her eyes admits the truth. “Narratives are the only supply line left that hasn’t been burned,” she says. “If you want to keep any part of this empire standing, you will need words that can carry weight.”

  Old Ji snorts. “We have weight. We have soldiers.”

  “Do we?” Shi Min asks. She nods toward the window. “Your soldiers are spread on three fronts. Your Emperor is missing. Your city has been starving for years..”

  Sima’s fingers tap once on the table. “Her act is treasonous insertion,” he says, calm as a judge. “If we accept her ‘coordination,’ we accept that the palace can be seized by anyone with enough horses and a sufficiently sincere face.”

  “And if we refuse,” Shi Min says, “we accept that the palace can be seized by the Hluay with enough time and sufficiently large stones.”

  Old Ji’s laugh has no humor. “Better an enemy at the gate than a vassal in the bedroom.”

  Mo mutters, “At least the Hluay write properly.”

  Shi Min glances at him. “At least the Hluay will execute you with beautiful calligraphy, yes.”

  “Don’t speak to me like this, daughter.” Mo spits.

  A silence settles.

  ...

  Naci convenes the hearing in a hall whose walls are painted with immortals. The immortals look down at the assembled officials with serene faces, as if the chaos below is none of their concern. Someone has dragged a table into the center and laid out seals, ink, and a bowl of water to wash hands. The bowl is already pink.

  Naci sits without ceremony. Her cloak is still stained from the sewer—dark streaks dried into the fur like the city tried to mark her as its own. Behind her stand Banners in plain armor, spears upright, eyes flat. A clerk kneels at her right with wax tablets. A Moukopl scribe sits at her left, sweating, trying to keep up in a script that suddenly feels slow.

  Shi Min stands one step behind Naci’s shoulder, the way a shadow stands behind a body.

  Sima is brought in with his hands bound. He does not stumble. He looks around the hall as if he is attending court.

  Old Ji and Mo stand among a cluster of captured officials. They are not bound—yet—but they are surrounded by men who do not need rope to make a cage.

  Naci’s voice is calm. Not soft. Calm. The most terrifying register of authority.

  “This is a restoration hearing,” she says. “We establish order. We identify treason. We secure Pezijil.”

  Sima lifts his chin. “You establish occupation.”

  Naci’s eyes do not blink. “I establish continuity.”

  Sima gives a small, precise laugh. “Continuity? You crawled out of the city’s waste and call it continuity?”

  A few Banners shift, offended on behalf of sewage. Shi Min’s mouth twitches, then smooths back into diplomacy.

  Naci gestures slightly. The Moukopl scribe begins to write. The Windmarks clerk begins to scratch.

  Sima continues, voice tightening, the way a rope tightens when pulled. “You are a usurper. You are foreign force dressed in imperial colors. You claim relief and bring an army. You claim loyalty and execute ministers. You speak the Emperor’s name like a charm while stepping on his law.”

  Old Ji’s eyes burn with something like approval. Mo watches as if he cannot decide whether to be proud or sick.

  Sima’s gaze pins Naci. “If you want truth, here it is: the palace would rather burn than accept your order.”

  Naci leans forward just slightly. The movement makes the hall feel smaller.

  “Then it will burn,” she says, “and I will rebuild it.”

  Sima opens his mouth, perhaps to spit another perfect sentence, but Naci lifts a hand, and the gesture is not dramatic. It is administrative.

  “Prime Minister Sima,” she says. “You have refused a lawful emergency coordination. You have incited disobedience in the inner court. You have attempted to fracture the chain of command while the city is under siege.”

  Sima’s eyes flash. “Chain of command? Under whom? You?”

  Naci’s tone stays level. “Under whoever holds the city,” she replies. “Which is me.”

  She turns her head to the Windmarks clerk. “Read the order.”

  The clerk rises, steps forward carefully through the hall’s scattered debris, and unrolls a parchment. His voice is steady.

  “By authority of the Dragon-Tiger General, acting in defense of Pezijil and the Imperial household,” he reads, “Sima is found guilty of treason—”

  Sima interrupts, sharp. “Treason requires a sovereign.”

  The clerk continues, obedient. “—and is sentenced to death. Sentence to be carried out immediately.”

  The words hang in the hall like smoke.

  Sima’s face shifts. Not fear. Not yet. Something like disbelief—the shock of a man used to arguments and delays and procedures realizing that the procedure has been replaced by a sword.

  Old Ji takes one involuntary step forward. Mo’s hands clench, then release.

  A Banner executioner approaches with a short, heavy blade meant for work. Sima is pushed to his knees. He keeps his spine straight, even now, as if posture might be a legal defense.

  He looks up at Naci. “You will not be loved,” he says.

  Naci’s expression does not change. “Love is not on the schedule,” she replies.

  The blade falls.

  The sound is duller than people expect. Blood splashes the water bowl, turning the surface into a disturbed mirror. The immortals on the wall keep smiling.

  For half a breath, there is no noise but dripping.

  Shi Min flinches when a streak of red lands on her sleeve. She looks down at it, blinks once, then exhales through her nose.

  Immediately, she turns to a pale palace clerk who has been frozen with horror.

  “Which office holds the Prime Minister’s keys?” she asks, brisk as if arranging chairs for a banquet.

  The clerk stares at her, mouth opening and closing.

  Shi Min adds, patient, “The keys. For the cabinets. For the seals. We can mourn later. We cannot lose documents.”

  The clerk finally croaks, “T-the Western Bureau archive—”

  “Good,” Shi Min says. “Get them. Before someone decides grief is an excuse to steal.”

  Old Ji’s face is stone. Mo looks at the blood on the floor like it is an ink spill that cannot be corrected.

  Naci’s gaze sweeps the room. The surviving officials avoid her eyes. Even those who hate her understand the new rule: correctness does not protect you. Only submission does.

  She gestures once toward Old Ji and Mo, not a command—yet. More like a bookmark.

  “Return them to their quarters,” she says. “And secure the Emperor.”

  The Banners move. The council is broken without needing another word.

  ...

  After the hearing, Naci walks.

  No escort close enough to count as company. Just a shadow at a distance—one Banner, quiet, careful, keeping space as if he knows she will bite if crowded.

  The garden is oddly intact. Peach trees still stand in neat rows. Blossoms still fall in slow, careless spirals, landing on stone paths that have seen more blood than weddings.

  The siege noise is muffled here.

  Naci’s boots crunch lightly on gravel. Her breath fogs in front of her. The air smells like sweetness.

  She finds the Emperor.

  He hangs from a peach tree branch the way a fruit might hang if fruit were made of silk and regrets. His robe is neat. The stool lies tipped in the grass.

  For a moment, Naci stands still.

  She did not love him. She barely knew him as a boy or as a man. She knows him as a symbol that fed on her people.

  She steps closer, eyes narrowing.

  The tableau sits here in petals and death, so exact it feels staged—fruit and corpse sharing the same branch, beauty and rot braiding together without shame.

  Naci’s gaze flicks to the peach blossoms drifting down. One lands on the Emperor’s sleeve and sticks to the fabric as if trying to decorate him.

  She does not remove it.

  ...

  Uamopak drops out of the air like a torn banner—one moment a living wedge of sky, the next a heavy, spinning ruin that hits palace stone with a sound too wet to be noble. Feathers burst outward in a white halo. Blood follows, bright and obscene against the pale slabs.

  For half a heartbeat, nothing moves.

  The garden is still full of blossoms. The peach tree still cradles the Emperor’s corpse with patient indifference. The sun still shines like it has never once been held accountable for anything.

  Naci’s ears go wrong.

  The cheers from the square, the crack of muskets, the screams beyond the walls—everything folds inward, muffled, as if the world has decided to drown her in silence.

  Her knees hit stone hard enough to bruise through armor. Her hands, still slick with sewer-filth and court-blood, reach for the eagle as if grabbing him can rearrange reality.

  Uamopak’s body is warm, heavier than memory ever warned her it would be. The bullet’s work is final and stupid—one small piece of metal that has decided it can argue with a sky-bird and win. Naci gathers him against her chest. His wings splay awkwardly, refusing the posture of a symbol. He is just a dying animal now, eyes half-lidded, beak parted like he wants to scold her for letting this happen.

  Naci presses her forehead into his feathers.

  Her breath catches. Her throat makes a sound that would embarrass her if she were listening—something between a sob and a laugh, the sort of noise people make when they discover grief is not elegant.

  She whispers into him, not loud enough for the garden to overhear.

  A steppe lullaby, half-remembered from childhood nights when the wind screamed outside the yurt and Gani’s hand pressed her hair flat. The tune is simple, almost stupid. It is made to calm children and horses and frightened gods.

  “Fly,” she murmurs, voice broken. “Fly when the sky goes dark. Fly when the sheep smells bad. Fly—” her mouth trembles, and the next syllable comes out like a bite, “—and if there is a sky beyond this one, tell it I am coming.”

  Linh steps back.

  He stands near the peach tree’s shadow, his one good eye wide, breath too fast, the musket-staff still warm in his remaining hand. The shot’s recoil has jolted him; the burn-scored half of his body trembles with the effort of existing. For a second, his confidence—so carefully rebuilt from visions and worship—wobbles under the weight of what he has actually done.

  He missed.

  “Stay back,” Amar hisses from behind him.

  She bolts fast like an arrow.

  She is small compared to the men in armor around her, but her smallness is not softness. It is compact violence. Her hair is tied tight; her eyes are bright with a devotion that has nowhere left to go except into murder. She has watched Linh build himself into a sun out of hate and hope, and she has decided she will be his shadow if that is what keeps him shining.

  She sees Naci on her knees. She sees the opening.

  In Amar’s mind, the world simplifies into one clean line: end the threat, save the father, finish the prophecy the correct way.

  She moves.

  Fast. Low. Silent until the last step, when her foot skids on blood and peach petals.

  Her blade comes up—curved steel aimed for the hinge of Naci’s neck.

  Dukar arrives like an answer that has been waiting behind a door.

  He crashes into Amar’s path with no flourish, shoulder-first. Steel meets steel with a crack. Amar’s strike is caught. Dukar’s blade bites her edge and shoves it aside. His free hand slams into her wrist, twisting until her fingers spasm. Her knife jerks, skitters across stone, and stops against a fallen peach branch.

  Amar recoils, snarling.

  Dukar does not snarl back. His fury is controlled, stored behind amber eyes. He stands between her and Naci with the posture of a man guarding a doorway that leads to something sacred and fragile.

  “Don’t,” he says, voice low, “touch my sister.”

  Amar lunges again.

  Dukar turns it aside. A short exchange—three beats, quick, brutal, the kind of fight that never becomes a performance because there is no room. Amar is vicious, all speed and conviction. Dukar is heavier, controlled.

  He shoves her back hard enough that she stumbles into the peach tree’s shadow and catches herself on the trunk. The Emperor’s corpse swings slightly above her, as if disapproving. Amar looks up for half a second, disgusted, then spits on the ground.

  Behind them, Linh’s breathing stutters. He grips his musket-staff like it is the only thing holding him upright.

  “Amar,” he snaps, voice cracking. “Enough.”

  Amar’s head turns toward him, eyes shining with offended loyalty. “She—”

  “I said,” Linh repeats, louder now, and the word tries to become divine, “enough.”

  He cannot afford to lose her here. He cannot afford to lose time. The city is breaking and he can feel it in the air—like pressure changing before a storm.

  And as if the world hears his thought and decides to mock him, the sound beyond the palace walls changes.

  It deepens.

  It swells into a roar so heavy it feels like the ground is trying to roll over.

  Mass cavalry.

  Impact.

  Horohan’s charge hits the Hluay siege lines outside the walls like a god deciding to kick an anthill out of boredom.

  The palace garden does not see it directly, but it hears it: the scream of horses, the crack of splintering timber, the shouted curses of men who thought they were safe behind engines and rope and distance.

  Outside, the Hluay camp becomes a kicked hive.

  Firepots roll, spilling fat flame. Siege crews scatter, trampled under hooves that do not pause to ask about politics. Ropes snap. Traction engines tilt as if trying to crawl away. Men scream with the high, surprised voice of people discovering that their modern weapons can still be interrupted by something primitive and fast.

  Horohan leads it like she is the answer to every question asked by cowardice.

  Her hair whips behind her; her face is calm. She rides into the chaos with Tepr–Yohazatz cavalry at her back. Their lances punch through shield lines. Their horses barrel through crews. The charge is apocalyptic.

  A Hluay sapper tries to raise a pike; a horse hits him and he folds, disappears beneath hooves. A siege engineer reaches for a crank; a rider’s blade takes his arm off mid-reach and the crank keeps turning anyway.

  Somewhere in the mess, a Tepr rider shouts, laughing, “Look! The mighty Hluay—running!”

  Another answers, “They’re not running. They’re tactically escaping like rats!”

  Li Song’s response is the opposite of panic.

  He holds just long enough.

  He positions disciplined blocks, orders archers to fire in measured volleys, uses the remains of siege engines as barricades. He does not try to win the field—he tries to prevent total collapse while buying time for one thing that matters to him more than glory:

  Get Linh out of the city. Now.

  “Withdraw!” Li Song orders, voice cutting through chaos. “To the breach! Keep formation! Leave the engines!”

  An officer hesitates. “General—”

  Li Song turns his head slightly. His eyes are cold. “Engines can be rebuilt,” he says.

  Their retreat begins, while within the Imperial City, the chase begins.

  Amar grabs Linh’s sleeve and hauls him away from the peach garden with ferocity. Linh’s stick scrapes stone.

  They move through shattered corridors where servants’ bodies lie folded like discarded cloth. Through smoke that smells of incense and burning hair. Past officials who stare, not sure whether to kneel or flee, and choose the safest option: freeze.

  Lanau appears above them.

  She takes command of Banner shooters on rooftops and alley mouths, her voice snapping crisp orders.

  “Two volleys—low. Don’t hit civilians. Don’t hit our own. Hit their feet. Slow them.”

  A Banner archer squints down through smoke. “How am I supposed to hit feet in smoke?”

  The Banners adjust, flowing through unfamiliar stone like water forced into new channels. They aim to clamp down, tighten the net, turn corridors into funnels.

  Arrows hiss. One bites into a pillar beside Amar’s head. She flinches, snarls, and drags Linh harder.

  A musket cracks somewhere. A bullet chips stone near Linh’s stick, sparks jumping like angry insects. Linh curses.

  “Of course,” he spits, breath ragged. “Of course she’s here. How—how is she here?”

  He cannot conceive of the sewer passage. He cannot conceive of anyone arriving before him after four years of siege.

  Amar hisses, “Stop talking.”

  “I’m not talking,” Linh snaps. “I’m thinking aloud.”

  “That’s talking.”

  “You should help me thinking!”

  “It sounds like whining,” Amar says.

  Lanau breaks off from the shooters and runs back toward the peach garden as soon as she judges Linh’s path slowed enough to be hunted by others. She moves fast, skirts catching on rubble, eyes flicking to every shadow.

  She reaches the garden and stops.

  The sight hits her like a fist.

  Naci is still on her knees, Uamopak’s body in her arms. Blood streaks her hands and forearms. Feathers cling to her face. Her breath shakes. Her shoulders look too small under the weight of her own legend.

  Lanau approaches carefully, as if stepping toward a wounded animal that might bite out of grief.

  “Naci,” she says, voice low.

  Naci lifts her head. Her eyes are wet.

  “They shot him,” Naci whispers, and it sounds stupid because of course they did. She swallows hard. “Lanau… make them pay.”

  Lanau’s throat tightens. She kneels beside her, hands hovering over the eagle’s feathers, unsure whether touch will comfort or offend.

  “Call them,” Naci insists, voice rising, cracking. “Call the ancestors. Call the wind. Call the grass. Like Dolma. Please.”

  The word please lands wrong. Naci does not say please.

  Lanau closes her eyes.

  She tries.

  She reaches inward, searching for that familiar thread of the steppes—wind, horse-sweat, eagle-cry, the old chorus that answers the gifted.

  Lanau opens her eyes again. Her face is pale.

  “I can’t,” she says, and tears burst out of her eyes like a torrent. “We are too far.”

  Naci’s mouth opens, but no sound comes. Her hands tighten around Uamopak.

  Somewhere nearby, Dukar shouts an order, and the world insists on moving.

  Li Song reaches Linh and Amar amid the running battle.

  “Here,” Li Song snaps to an officer. “Shield them. Move. Don’t look back.”

  Linh stumbles, tries to twist his head, tries to see the peach garden again as if sight can undo what he did.

  “I—” he starts.

  Li Song cuts him off. “Move.”

  Meice appears through smoke like a ghost with a knife belt, eyes sharp, hair dusted with ash. She glances once toward the palace corridors where Hui and Qin have been seen.

  Then she turns to Li Song. “I couldn’t get my revenge on them,” she says.

  Li Song does not smile. “Next time,” he replies.

  Outside the walls, Horohan’s cavalry still tears at the Hluay like wolves at a wounded ox. Inside, Banners tighten their grip on palace corridors, sealing doors, posting sentries, turning the Jade Palace district into a new kind of fortress.

  And in the peach garden, under blossoms that keep falling like the world’s cruel confetti, Naci stays kneeling.

  Uamopak’s body lies heavy in her arms.

  His blood dries on her skin.

  The Emperor’s corpse sways above them both.

  Naci’s face tilts up toward the sky for a moment, as if expecting the wind to answer her grief with something more than silence.

  Nothing answers.