Gunpowder Magnolia

Please note that the chapter below is an early draft. Names and world-building details subject to change. Early chapters are available on my Patreon.

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There were so many things that Lanthe did not understand about life at court. Most of these briefly mystified and left her feeling like a fool. Then, sometimes, there was something that baffled her so profoundly that bafflement jumped right over into rage. One of these was when she returned to her quarters after the execution to the servant boy cheerfully informing her that he had packed for her.

“Why would I want that?” she demanded as the boy cowered. Traveling cross country was dangerous. Why would anyone, noble or commoner, want his equipment packed so that he didn’t know what was where? “And why under Heaven is there so much of it?” She gestured furiously at the overstuffed, over-embroidered saddle bags.

“I can carry them for you if you like, sir?” Dunyi stooped to pick up the bags.

“That’s not what I asked,” Lanthe growled. “I want to know what kind of idiot travels with all that excess. What’s in there?”

The boy quaked. “M-my orders were to make sure you would be properly attired while traveling and after you reached your destination.”

“Properly attired,” Lanthe seethed, but Tairo put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s alright, Luyang. Dunyi, I’m sure the captain would be very happy if you carried his bags to the stables for him.”

“Like hell, I would!” Lanthe snatched the bags from the boy and strode from the chamber under their ludicrous weight.

“He’s not trying to offend you, you know,” Tairo said as he jogged up to fall into step with Lanthe.

“I know,” Lanthe grumbled.

The earlier executions had just put her more on edge than she would have liked. Yelhwa could have had Lanthe over one of those blocks. Lanthe’s head could be in a pool of blood right now, eyes drying out in the sun. Beside Lanthe, Tairo shared her tension. There hadn’t been a chance to discuss the fumbled assassination attempt, but Tairo had certainly inferred the broad strokes of what had happened: Lanthe had failed to kill Yelhwa, and the two of them had reached an agreement to keep it covered. He was as aware as Lanthe was that it could have been her head rolling this morning.

When Lanthe and Tairo reached the palace stables, a familiar shape waited for them, light gray and spectacularly muscled.

“Cloud!” Tairo’s mood lifted like a seabird on an upswell.

“Lord Chang Tairo, Captain Luyang Lanthe.” The stable master bowed low. “The princess has ordered that your horses be restored to you. These two are yours, yes?”

Two? “Oh,” Lanthe said as she noticed the sand-colored mare in Cloud’s shadow. “You.”

“Is this not your horse, Captain?” the stable master asked. “I was told—”

“No, she’s mine,” Lanthe said. “Thank you, sir.”

Unlike Cloud, who pranced giddily on her front hooves and strained visibly toward Tairo, Fidget was indifferent to Lanthe’s approach. They had, after all, only known each other for a short time.

Fidget was characteristically skittish as Lanthe stepped forward and took her reins. As Lanthe tried to settle the horse with a hand to her neck, a stable servant approached with a much older and more welcome friend.

“Your glaive, Captain.”

“Thank you.” Lanthe was so grateful to have her favored weapon back that she forgot to be annoyed with the servants who took her saddle bags and secured them for her. Fidget had been outfitted in a new saddle and tack, lighter than the Ro riding gear Lanthe was used to. When Lanthe swung into the saddle, she found herself feeling oddly unsupported, her balance relying more on the subtle movements of her body than the structure of a robust Ro saddle.

As Tairo rode Cloud out of the stables, Lanthe nudged a reluctant Fidget to follow them and was relieved when the difficult bandit horse at least took that much instruction. In the courtyard outside the lavish stables, servants took Cloud and Fidget by their bridles and led Lanthe and Tairo to their places in the travel formation.

Before them, a row of Yao soldiers sat their mounts in perfect stillness, making Lanthe self-conscious of Fidget’s shuffling hooves. In front of the row of soldiers was a great horse-drawn carriage Lanthe could only assume belonged to the princess. However, when she leaned in the saddle to look further up the line, she saw another equally massive and ornate carriage further up the line where Yelhwa’s generals and their attendants sat mounted. When she turned to look back, a third splendid gold and lacquer carriage drew to stop a few rows behind her. And Lanthe understood. Anyone attacking the party on the road would only be able to guess which carriage they should target to take out the Princess of Yao.

As Lanthe watched, a male guard helped Lady Ingna and two other noblewomen into one of the carriages before climbing in after them. Six of Yelhwa’s ladies were mounted in elegant riding gear. One of them was Lady Suzu, with her bow and ludicrous bronze arrows on her back, Lady Mina with her sword and bow, and four other lower-ranked ladies, similarly armed with slender Yao swords and archery equipment. Then one of the nameless ladies turned just slightly, and Lanthe paused.

“Oh,” she murmured in understanding. Yelhwa was not in any of the three royal carriages. She was sitting astride a white horse in the attire of a guardswoman. Her long hair was plaited back without any of its usual ornamentation, and her distinctive godmarks had been adjusted with makeup—a dab of flesh-colored paint on the bridge of the nose to break the Kaisin line across her face and earthy red paint over the pink of the marks themselves to make their color more common.

Yelhwa’s eyes met Lanthe’s from between those false godmarks for just a moment and crinkled in a smile before she turned back to the front.

“Wait a moment…” Tairo said, a beat slower on the uptake. “Was that…?”

“Yes.”

Tairo shifted his weight minutely, and his excellent horse took the cue to shift casually closer to Lanthe and Fidget.

“Do you think this means… Does she expect to be attacked on the road?” Tairo asked. “In her own country?”

Tairo had kept his voice low, but Lanthe didn’t like how close they were folded in between Yao soldiers who might be listening in the relative quiet of the courtyard. Lowering one hand to her thigh where only Tairo would see it, she made the Ro military sign for “wait.” Their sound cover would be better once the hooves and carriage wheels were in motion all around them.

When the entire party was arrayed in the courtyard, Lanthe counted fifty riders: herself and Tairo, forty Yao soldiers, and eight ladies of Yelhwa’s guard. General Runkai addressed the group to explain that they would be taking the King’s Road to Berei Castle, which was the fastest and safest way. Given how loudly he talked about it, Lanthe very much doubted that was the way they were actually going.

Lanthe had seen the city of Kaisin first through the planks of her captors’ wagon, at the eye level of a child. Next, she had walked the streets as a madwoman, shunned and ignored by the people she passed. Riding through the city in a guard’s silk and light armor astride a horse was a third wholly different view of the city and its people. The beggar children were now beaming upward, lean faces bright through the grime. All the people who had passed her by when she was a common woman were now turned up in awe.

The crowds of Yao strained toward the princess’s entourage, even though, as far as they knew, there was no chance of glimpsing her legendary beauty. They could only marvel at the royal carriages—at the idea that she might be in one of them, sitting primly behind her veil.

As they rode, Lanthe was unsettled to realize that some eyes were on Tairo—and on her. Their blue godmarks and short hair clearly marked them as Ro, even in their Yao clothing, and from there, it was not hard for anyone who gossiped to infer who they were. Lanthe heard murmurs of their names—well, less of their real names than“General Chang’s first son” and “Mage Slayer”… “Mage Slayer”… “Mage Slayer”…

If only they knew how Lanthe had failed to live up to the title.

“Explain yesterday?” was the first thing Tairo said when they had passed beyond the city gates. 

As far as he knew, Lanthe had set out to kill Yelhwa according to General Inshu’s treacherous plan, then returned alive, having not killed Yelhwa, only for — other men to be dramatically executed for the crime Lanthe and Inshu hadn’t succeeded in committing. Explain yesterday…

“It’s a long story, my Lord.”

“It’s a long road, Captain.”

Years of travel by horse had acquainted them both with how close to ride in order to hear one another without being overheard. The cascade of hooves on dirt could drown voices at a fairly short distance. Being so near the crunch of wagon wheels, they could converse with the knowledge that no one else could hear. Fidget seemed calmer outside the confines of the city walls and let Lanthe pull her up close to Cloud without resistance.

“The king is alive, for one thing.”

“What?”

“Alive and very much devoted to his daughter.”

Speaking to Tairo without reservation was a blessed release. It felt like they had been living on opposite sides of a glass wall for the last few days, able to see and subtly signal to each other, but unable to speak.

“So… what does all this mean, Captain?” Tairo asked when Lanthe had gone into detail on the disasters of the previous day.

“It means we need more information,” Lanthe said. “We wait, and watch, and learn whatever we can.”

It wasn’t much in the way of a plan, but just watching the way their formation moved was informing Lanthe’s understanding of Yelhwa. When they had passed out of sight of the city and its fields, General Runkai led the party off the main road onto a narrower hoof beaten path.

“So, we’re not taking the main road?” Tairo said. He wasn’t the only one who appeared confused; the men in the row ahead of them were also exchanging questions.

“Of course, we’re not taking the main road,” Lanthe said. 

From Yelhwa’s disguise to the carriages, nothing about their party was what it first seemed. Why should their route be what it first seemed? None of Yelhwa’s ladies or high-ranked military men seemed surprised by the turn. The surprise came at the next fork when Lady Suzu rode ahead of her row to say something to General Runkai. The general looked taken aback, there was a brief exchange, then he led the caravan onto the narrower left fork.

“Lady Suzu?” Tairo called for her attention as she fell back to her row near the two Ro. “Where are we going?”

“To the border, Lord Tairo”—Suzu’s tone was only marginally less abrasive with Tairo than it was with Lanthe—“like Her Excellency promised.”

“We’re going through the hills, my Lady?” one of the Yao soldiers asked, looking vaguely ill.

“We are.”

“But my lady, that’s—”

“These are Her Excellency’s orders,” Lady Suzu said.

Lanthe didn’t know Yao’s geography half as well as she knew the layout of her own kingdom, but she knew that cutting through the western hills was a strange way to make for a fortress northwest of Kaisia. According to Lanthe’s shaky mental map, cutting through the western hills was as short as taking the main road—and a little shorter than the alternate road General Runkai had thought they were taking—but “hills” invariably meant uneven terrain, and they weren’t a purely military party of experienced riders. They had carriages with them full of hapless palace girls like Lady Ingna.

In Ro, the two threats on the road were common thieves and southern riders. A large, well-armed party like this had little to fear from thieves, and southern bandits preferred to attack in the open, where they could make full use of their horsemanship. Was that Yelhwa’s reason for taking this path? That southern bandits couldn’t exercise their tactics in the mountains? Lanthe frowned as she turned the thought over again. That didn’t make sense. Ro soldiers were at a disadvantage against southern barbarians on the open plains; these Yao could probably ride and shoot arrows as well as any barbarians.

Maybe Yelhwa felt that the hills were her only choice, with limited westward roads. General Inshu would be expecting Yelhwa to disseminate a fake route and plan a real one in secret. She had to deviate from the route she had discussed with her confidants on the off chance that Inshu had discovered it and passed the information on to other potential assassins. 

However, as the hills in question rose from the horizon, Lanthe understood the other soldiers’ misgivings. The first ill omen was a sweep of dark wings over the sun that made Fidget start and snort. Shielding her eyes with a hand, Lanthe looked to the sun to find scrubland eagles following them. Expecting food.

Yelhwa’s double subversion was a trade-off—the danger of assassins for the danger of treacherous terrain. As rock formations rose on both sides, the path narrowed, forcing the party into triple, then double file. The road grew rougher as it snaked up among the hills themselves. The ground was littered with rocks and fallen trees that had dislodged from the cliffs above. In places, Lanthe spotted the weather-worn remains of other wagons and carriages, abandoned by travelers who she could only hope had made it through the hills with their lives. That hope dwindled as she noted a bleached white ribcage down an embankment—all that remained of a horse that had fallen from the road and never gotten up.

At the very least, Lanthe supposed that these cliffs were a terrible place to set an ambush. Every place she looked, the walls seemed woefully unstable. If there was a safe place for a man to stand or set up a ballistic weapon above, how could anyone possibly climb to it without falling to their death several times over?

The carriages had to stop repeatedly so that soldiers could dismount and rush to clear the path. And even with the large rocks and branches out of the way, there were uneven places where men had to pile up behind the carriages and push along with the horses.

At the third stop, some of Yelhwa’s other ladies got out of the carriage immediately in front of Lanthe. Impatient and nervous that the sun was getting low, Lanthe jumped from Fidget’s back to help push. And damn it if she wasn’t starting to hate Yelhwa for choosing this path. Was slowing their progress this much really worth the relative safety?

A pair of tender bandaged hands appeared on the side of the wagon beside Lanthe’s, and a wave of lady’s perfume almost made her cough. Lady Ingna had come to push beside the men.

Fantastic, Lanthe thought wearily. Now, if the carriage unexpectedly rolled backwards, she was going to die shoving the silly little lady out of the way.

“Lady Ingna, don’t be stupid!” Lady Suzu snapped, and, for once, Lanthe was thankful for her callous sourness. “Get away from there.”

“Sorry.” Ingna backed away from the carriage. “I just wanted to help.”

“You can help by waiting, my Lady,” Suzu said. “The men will take care of the lifting.”

Ingna nodded, looking deflated.

“Hold onto my horse,” Lanthe said.

“Captain?”

“She’s not well-behaved.” Lanthe nodded to Fidget as her arms strained to support the carriage over a large rock protruding from the path. “Make sure she doesn’t run off, please?”

“Of course, Captain.” Ingna brightened slightly and went to take Fidget’s reins.

The southern mare had hardly stopped fussing since they started through the hills, but the unsettled horse was far less dangerous than a heavy carriage straining its delicate axles.

“One, two, three!” one of the Yao soldiers counted, and, with a last lift on “three,” the carriage’s back wheels finally lifted over the troublesome ridge in the road. “My Ladies, you’re safe to get back in.”

Lanthe took Fidget’s reins back from Ingna with a smile and a, “Thank you, my Lady.”

As Ingna scurried back to the carriage, Lanthe felt wrath above like the sweep of the eagles’ wings and looked up to find Lady Suzu frowning down at her.

“My Lady?”

“I understand you’ve been training with Lady Hyonang Ingna,” Suzu said with the crushing air of a disapproving auntie.

“Have I overstepped, my Lady?” Lanthe asked.

“We in the queensguard have our own methods of inducting and training new members,” Lady Suzu said. “We know what we’re doing.”

Lanthe strapped on a neutral expression and didn’t skeptically direct her eyes to Suzu’s ridiculous bronze arrows. “Of course, my Lady.”

“Don’t be so uptight, Lady Suzu,” Lady Mina said, riding up beside her surly companion. “We all started out like Ingna.”

“No, we didn’t,” Lady Suzu said. “We all started out during peacetime when there was time to be young, and foolish, and learn from it.” Her eyes had turned ahead to where Yelhwa rode by General Runkai and a pair of her guardswomen.

The path flattened out after that and grew wider—thankfully because the caravan kept moving even as daylight gave way to the purple of evening.

“Should we really be going on without the light?” Tairo voiced what it wasn’t Lanthe’s place to ask.

“It’s a full moon tonight,” Lady Suzu said, “and the princess wants us through the Spearshaft Ravine before we stop to make camp.”

“The Spearshaft Ravine?” Lanthe repeated.

“The narrow pass between mountains that separates this pathway from the open plains,” Suzu said, “a creation of ancient graphemancy. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“How far—” Lanthe started, then cut off as Fidget shied at something she couldn’t see and nearly stumbled into Cloud. “Sorry.” Lanthe tightened her reins, struggling to bring the mare under control. Fidget was getting worse as it grew darker. A few times, Lanthe had been worried her new horse might try to throw her from the saddle right off the steep drop alongside the road.

“You’ve been having a great deal of trouble with your horse, Captain,” Lady Suzu observed.

“She’s new,” Lanthe said.

“You got that mare from a southern bandit, didn’t you?”

“What?” How did Suzu know that?

“Southern-trained horses won’t willingly venture into closed areas like this.” Suzu nodded to the towering cliff to their right and the downward slope to their left. “Their riders only take them out in the open, and they instinctively fear attack by mountain lions from above. If you let one of our men take your mare, she may be better off. You can ride in one of the carriages.”

“Excuse me?” Do you take me for a woman? Lanthe almost demanded before remembering that, yes, Suzu did take her for a woman. She had seen her breasts. All the same, the suggestion rankled. Lanthe could calm the angriest and most frightened of soldiers; it was starting to bother her that a horse should be so different.

“We have two guards in each carriage at all times to protect the princess’s non-combatant ladies. You’re a bodyguard, yes?”

“Yes, my Lady.”

“So, you’d be more than competent to protect a few noblewomen?”

“Of course, ma’am. But my job is not to protect ladies of Yao. I’m supposed to be protecting Lord Tairo.”

“On that horse?” Suzu’s skepticism was scathing. “You really think you can control that mare in the chaos of an ambush?”

“Yes,” Lanthe said, although she wasn’t totally sure. She had never ridden Fidget in a battle or skirmish, and that was never a good place to be with a horse.

“Get in the carriage.”

Not quite willing to take direct orders from a handmaiden, Lanthe looked to Tairo.

He nodded. “Go on. I can protect myself from roadside robbers.”

Yelhwa was clearly expecting worse than robbers, but Tairo was right; mounted on Cloud and armed with his glaive, he stood as good a chance as any man here. Each time the party stopped, riders and carriage passengers would change positions. The women who had been mounted the longest would get into the carriages while those who got out of the carriages—those freshest from rest—would mount up, check their weaponry, and ride to the front of the group to subtly flank Yelhwa. As far as Lanthe could tell, only Lady Suzu and Yelhwa had remained mounted for the entire day. The men seemed to change out at random. At the next stop for a fallen tree branch, Lanthe dismounted and changed places with the male guard inside the nearest carriage.

The interior of the carriage was cloyingly perfumed and illuminated by a single tasseled lantern swinging from the ceiling.

“Oh, Luyang, I didn’t think you’d be joining us.” Mina beamed in the shuddering lantern light.

“Neither did I, my Lady,” Lanthe sighed as she settled on one of the cushioned seats and tried to find a place to rest her glaive where it wouldn’t scrape fine lacquer or puncture any silk cushions.

Other than Lady Mina, Lanthe recognized Lady Ingna, and two of Yelhwa’s lower-ranked attendants—Lady Seng and Lady Pinan—both armed with bows and full quivers.

“It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting much sleep tonight,” Lady Mina said over the rumble of the carriage wheels, “so it’s good that you’re here.”

“It is?” Lanthe said uneasily.

“Oh, yes.” Mina smiled. “The guard who was in here before was dreadfully dull, and we were all starting to bore each other.”

The guardswoman called Pinan nodded her agreement. “There are only so many rounds of name the poet you can play before it gets tiresome.”

“Oh,” Lanthe said. “I’m afraid I don’t know a single Yao poet, so I might be your dullest guard yet.”

“That’s nonsense, Mage Slayer,” Mina said with a conspiratorial smile that made Lanthe abruptly look away. “We both know you’re far from dull.”

And Lanthe was reminded that here was another woman who had seen her breasts. For a moment, she was tempted to open the carriage door and throw herself down the slope into the dark below.

“So, what do you do in your spare time, Luyang?” Mina said. “Apart from play lots of Sen?”

“Well, I’m a soldier, ma’am,” Lanthe said, “so I mostly train, and that’s all. Not exciting.”

“Surely, you must have other interests? A little lady friend back home?”

Lanthe’s brow furrowed. What kind of question was that? Mina knew perfectly well there was no lady friend.

“I haven’t been home in many years, my Lady. I don’t have a… I’m neither married, nor promised to anyone, nor… anything you’re suggesting.”

“Oh,” Mina said. “Her Excellency thought there might be a pretty farm girl.”

“She wha—why?” Lanthe flustered before she could stop herself.

“If I knew why Her Excellency thought every thought she did, I’d be running Yao.” Mina shrugged. “So, you don’t have a lady friend, but you must have some stories from the front.”

“Maybe too harrowing for the ears of noblewomen,” Lanthe said. Surely Ingna, who had scarcely been outside the city gates, did not want to hear about the time Lanthe had popped her own plague pustules so she would be able to hold a glaive against the approaching enemy. 

“Not the harrowing stories, then,” Mina pressed, not giving up. “Some of your victories as a captain.”

“I’ve been a captain less than three months.” Lanthe saw no reason to lie about her military background; Mina didn’t play the complex game that Yelhwa did. “I was promoted to the rank at Yansey, when your graphemancer killed my superior.”

“Oh, yes…” Mina’s smile dimmed. “Lord Peilen.”

And Lanthe saw an opportunity to shift the focus of the conversation from her and onto the ladies. “You knew him?”

“Not well,” Lady Mina said, “but he was always kind to me. He was a second cousin of Lady Seng’s.” She nodded to the lady seated beside her.

“Like I said, I don’t think you want to hear about my exploits in any detail.”

Lady Seng had gone pale, and Lanthe decided to probe more directly, cruel as it seemed. These were Yelhwa’s closest confidants other than maybe Lady Suzu. They shared her private chambers and knew as many of her secrets as anyone.

“I’m not in the habit of slaughtering old men, who can’t fight back,” Lanthe said. “To be honest, I was surprised to see such a man at Yansey. I imagine Princess Yelhwa had a good reason to send him there?” Lady Seng had looked away, and Lanthe applied pressure from a new direction. “Like she had a good reason to execute Lord Feywu?”

“We all know that Her Excellency has good reasons for everything she does,” Mina said immediately.

Ingna and Seng both nodded, though they wore their grief plainly on her face. Yelhwa had taken family members from all these women in the name of her indecipherable ambitions, yet they remained loyal to her. There had to be a reason.

“Is that hard to reconcile?” Lanthe asked. “You serve the princess, and you’ve had to see so many sacrificed to her goals. You must really believe in her vision. There must be something very special about it.”

“She will lead Yao into the light,” Mina said. “It’s hard to see if you haven’t known her a long time, but you will, Luyang. You will see.”

“See what?” Lanthe said. “Because right now, it looks like she’s led us into a death trap.”

“She knows what she’s doing.”

“You have a lot of confidence in her abilities as a field commander,” Lanthe said. “Have any of you actually been in the field with her?”

“We’ve trained,” Lady Mina said.

“You’ve trained?”

“Daily, Captain,” Lady Seng piped up. “Riding and archery.”

Lanthe had seen from the ladies’ ease in the saddle that the riding part, at least, was not an overstatement. She had spent a good portion of the day fixated on Yelhwa’s back, all the subtle ways the princess’s body moved with her horse—spine erect, hips rolling softly forward or back with the path’s incline. Lanthe had told herself that she was searching for weaknesses in Yelhwa’s form. After hours, though, she probably should have admitted that she was just mesmerized.

“But do you train for combat?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Hitting a target from the saddle is sport, not warfare.”

“Well—”

“Does Princess Yelhwa have any experience commanding troops outside of her war room?”

The ladies gave Lanthe surly looks but said nothing.

“The princess has studied all the great military theorists,” Mina said finally.

And Lanthe had to concede that she didn’t know how much a clever noble could learn from military writings—never having read any herself—but reading couldn’t possibly convey the difference between the smell of gun smoke, wood smoke, and burning bodies. It couldn’t teach you to gauge the steepness and integrity of varied terrain at a glance. It couldn’t prepare you for the taste of your comrade’s blood in your mouth and the weight of his body on your chest as you used his corpse as cover from arrows.

“With the king too ill to rule, Yelhwa is the only one who can save us.” 

“Save you from what, my Lady?” Lanthe asked.

“The coming war.”

“The only war I know of is the one your country intentionally started with mine two months ago.”

Mina was shaking her head. “This war started a long time ago, Captain Luyang. Her Excellency has been fighting it since she was a child.”

“What?” What under Heaven did that mean?

“She understands the threats upon us better than you or any general,” Mina said, “and she doesn’t make mistakes.”

Lanthe had just opened her mouth to respond when a boom like thunder shook the world. It was a sound Lanthe instantly recognized—and instantly made her blood go cold. Horses whinnied, and men shouted from somewhere behind their carriage, and Lanthe realized that the threat had never been from the cliffs above. Someone had followed them into the hills, and it was no force of bandits.

“What was that sound?” Lady Seng asked as Ingna put her hands to her ears.

“Canon fire.” Lanthe was on her feet, a hand on the inside door handle. 

“We’re under attack!” a voice called from outside. “Archers, draw!”

“Stay here.” Lanthe pulled the door open. “I’ll—”

BOOM!

Lanthe was pitched onto her head—on the carriage ceiling—and experienced a moment of stomach-dropping horror as she realized what had happened. A cannonball had knocked the carriage from the path down the slope.

Unable to do anything else, Lanthe held tight to the door handle with her right hand and tucked into a ball with her left arm over her head. The impact was terrible as the carriage hit rocky ground and rolled, crashing, down the slope. Several things hit Lanthe in the dizzying descent—wood, silk, wood again, a screaming human body—before the carriage smashed to a splintering stop. The final jolt broke the door handle off in Lanthe’s hand and sent her tumbling over rocks, dirt, and dead leaves.

Throbbing with a dozen fresh bruises, Lanthe uncurled to take stock of the situation. On a normal night, there would have been nothing to see but a wall of blackness, but the full moon cast the destruction in dramatic white and silver. The carriage had come apart as it rolled and finally hit a tree that broke it in half. An ornate wheel bounced past Lanthe and off into the darkness behind her as she struggled to her knees and scanned for movement.

At first, there was nothing. One horse lay broken and dead, still yoked to what remained of the carriage; the other must have broken free at some point. Lady Pinan was dead, a splintered plank jutting grotesquely through her body and her skull visibly indented. Lady Mina was probably dead as well, judging by the wound to her head and how still she was lying. Lady Seng was stirring and—

“Oh God!” Ingna let out a keening sob from where she had fallen in the leaves not far from Lanthe. “Oh, Heaven!”

But there was no time to weep over the dead.

“Cover!” Lanthe said over the sound of gunshots from the path above. “Lady Ingna, cover!”

Grabbing the hysterical girl by the arm, Lanthe bodily hauled her up the slope. As she dragged Ingna to what remained of the carriage, Lanthe registered that the slope down from the road was not nearly as steep here as it had been where Lanthe had gotten into the carriage. Good thing too. Had the carriage dropped from the road earlier, there would have been no bodies to recover. Only the bloody smears of women and horses. This area was also far more wooded than the terrain from earlier in the evening. A whole forest seemed to have clawed its roots into the comparatively forgiving incline and held the ground in place. That was good, Lanthe thought. The trees were somewhere to flee if the skirmish above went badly. The path was not visible from where the carriage had fallen, but Lanthe could hear shouts and gunfire as the Yao engaged the… Well, who were the Yao engaging? Who could have gotten all these guns and cannons to the middle of a country where firearms were illegal?

Lanthe’s free hand found her glaive where it had fallen in the leaf litter. The other survivor of the crash—Lady Seng—scrambled into place beside Lanthe, an arrow already nocked to her bowstring. She must have noticed what Lanthe had: a pair of dark figures were picking their way down the slope toward the carriage. Peering through a break in the boards, Lanthe caught the glint of moonlight off the familiar shape of a pistol.

“They have guns,” Lanthe whispered in bewilderment, “guns and cannons.” Meaning their attackers were neither Yao nor southerners.

“Of course, they have guns,” Lady Seng said. “They’re—”

A bullet blasted through the wood between Lanthe and Lady Seng. The guardswoman reacted fast, straightening up in signature Yao archery form, recurve bowstring drawn back to her ear. The flexibility of her spine allowed her to line up the perfect shot, and she loosed. Lanthe heard the arrow hit its mark in a thud and a cry of pain. Lady Seng was back behind the cover of the carriage, nocking another arrow before a gunshot cracked over her head.

“How many?” Lanthe whispered, wondering if she had missed one in her initial count but knowing better than to pop her head up to look when she could hear a hammer pulling back to shooting position.

“Three now, Captain.” 

“Three?” Lanthe said. “Then you should wait.” As an archer, Lady Seng’s advantage lay in how fast she could reload: two or three seconds to the fifteen it took to reload a flintlock pistol. “If you just listen for when—Wait!”

But Lady Seng had already straightened up, bow drawn—and her head burst apart.

“Oh,” Lanthe said as Lady Seng’s skull and brains splattered the dead leaves. It seemed that Yelhwa’s guardswomen really hadn’t trained for the field. At least not against firearms.

Ingna let out a bloodcurdling scream.

“Shh!” Lanthe hissed. “I need you to calm down, my Lady. Calm down and listen closely.” 

There was no way back to the road to help Tairo. Not uphill over loose ground against men with guns. The assassins themselves had had to descend carefully just to get into position to fire on the carriage; there was no way Lanthe was going to charge up at them, outnumbered and unsure which rocks would give beneath her boots and send her skidding downward. Tairo would just have to hold on until Lanthe found a slighter incline with fewer assassins on it. And in the meantime, she was going to keep her not-quite-promise to Lord Hyonang. She was going to get Ingna through this night alive.

“Are you hearing me, my Lady?”

When the moonlight caught Ingna’s face, the answer was clearly ‘no.’ Lanthe knew that blank look of pure terror, when tremors took over and panic washed out reason. It happened to many new soldiers, not just young ladies.

“Hey. Hey.” Lanthe took Ingna’s face between her hands. The contact was wholly improper, but this was the only way Lanthe knew to calm a panicking soldier. “Look at me. Look me in the eyes. That’s a good girl. Focus on my voice. I’m the only person here.” A bullet blasted the wood just behind Ingna, and she flinched between Lanthe’s hands, but Lanthe clutched her tight and held her gaze. “Focus on my voice,” she repeated calmly as though they had all the time in the world. “Who are you?”

“I-I’m Hyo-Hyonang Ingna.”

“That’s right,” Lanthe said. “Daughter of Hyonang Yinzo. Your father is in Ro waiting for you.”

“Wh-what?”

“When Princess Yelhwa sent your father away, she sent him to Fort Yansey. He surrendered to me, and I promised him something. Do you know what I promised?” 

“What?”

Another bullet hit the broken carriage, and this time, Ingna barely flinched. She was focused.

“I promised I would keep you safe. Now, do you want to make a liar of me?”

“No.”

“Do you want to break your father’s heart?”

“No!”

“Then, when I call “run,” you’re going to pick up your skirts and sprint that way as fast as you can.” Lanthe pointed westward toward what looked to her like flatter ground and better tree cover. “Can you do that, Hyonang Ingna?”

“Yes,” Ingna whispered, still shaking but full of conviction. “Yes. I can do that.”

“Good girl,” Lanthe said and tugged a silk cushion from beneath Lady Pinan’s corpse. Three gunmen left. Three shots Lanthe needed to ensure they all had to reload. Fifteen seconds should be enough to run for the cover of denser trees, even at Ingna speed.

Lanthe stuck the silk cushion up from behind the carriage, and two guns fired—bang-bang!—one bullet tearing through the fabric and the other clipping the top of the carriage nearby. One gun left. Dropping the cushion, Lanthe snatched a rock and flung it east into the trees. Bang! went the third pistol, and that was their cue.

“Run!”

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I hope you enjoyed this chapter of Gunpowder Magnolia! You can get early chapters + more serialized content from the world of Altima on my Patreon.