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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General Chang had reset Captain Arza’s board of battalion pieces. Red Yao pieces stood menacingly at the border, Ro pieces traveling west from the capital and other fronts to intercept them. Soon everything would be in place for a clash of kingdoms. But the piece that occupied Lanthe was the smallest—a pebble marked in blue, representing the wagons of provisions Tenro’s battalion would need to make the rest of the journey to the Yao border. Each day she sat with the Chang family and Hyonang Yinzo, the pebble drew closer to Yansey like a flaming arrow toward a powder keg. When it hit, everything would burst into motion at once. And despite all her misgivings about their plan, Lanthe found herself longing for its arrival. Once she was moving, maybe action would blast away the doubt.

Lanthe had found some comfort returning to training with the other soldiers. The burn in her muscles helped her channel this nameless anxiety through the day. But when night fell, she faced the dark and fear that no force of arms could fight back. Not because it was formless, but because its form shouldn’t frighten her. She loved Tairo. She loved Tenro. She loved her kingdom. Yet it was the same terrible progression every night: she lay down with her thoughts squirming through the labyrinth of the mission to come—fearing all the ways it might go wrong, fearing what it meant for it to go right. Then, as logic packed away those fears with a soldier’s mantra—face that when it comes, face that when it comes—the fear changed form to something stranger. Walls closing her in. The shape of a man braced above her, hands on either side of her head, lips at her ear…

And it didn’t seem to matter that neither Tairo nor Tenro realistically represented a prison. She would wake in panic and pace the room until dawn.

Tenro surely wasn’t the first or only person to notice the circles under her eyes. He was just the one with the rank to pull her from training one morning and comment on it.

“Lanthe,” he said when she fell from the line of jogging soldiers. “You don’t look well.”

Since it wasn’t a question, Lanthe didn’t respond. She would have had to struggle for the breath to do so anyway. Here at the end of the twelfth lap around the fortress, even experienced soldiers had to work hard for each step.

“Put that down.” Tenro nodded to the sacks of rocks across her shoulders. “Walk with me.”

Lanthe dropped the extra weight and felt momentarily like she was floating.

Tenro’s hand on her shoulder brought her back down. “I wanted to ask if you’re doing alright. You look like you haven’t been sleeping.”

“I haven’t,” she said between heavy breaths.

“Neither have I.” Tenro’s hand stayed on her shoulder and squeezed slightly. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Lanthe shook her head. “I’m afraid… it’s a problem without a solution.”

“Don’t I know it.”

He was talking about King Josan’s plan to assassinate Princess Yelhwa. Of course, he was, Lanthe reminded herself with a shake of her head. He knew nothing of Lanthe’s sex or what his father had offered.

“At least you get to be there with him,” Tenro said in a strained voice.

“What?”

“When Tairo goes into that viper’s nest to carry out this lunacy, you get to protect him.”

“I will protect him, Lord Tenro,” Lanthe said seriously. “At the cost of my life. You know that.”

“Can you protect him from utterly incompetent leadership?”

“I…” Lanthe faltered, uncomfortable with the darkness crossing Tenro’s features. “I don’t—”

“I swear by Heaven, this weak dynasty will be the ruin of Ro.”

“Lord Tenro!” Lanthe looked around to make sure no one had heard. They were alone on the ground outside Yansey’s wall, the jogging troops having left them far behind and the encampment still a ways ahead. “You really shouldn’t—”

“I know, I know,” he growled in annoyance. “I shouldn’t say such things. But what should a man do in my position, seeing the degradation of his country’s ideals? What is the state of Ro that we send assassins after a young female ruler? That we degrade a general’s son with the task? That we pollute our ranks with the untested and unworthy bureaucrat spawn just to appease their deep-pocketed fathers? Are we foppish perfumed weaklings, damn it, or are we Ro?”

“Lord Tenro—”

“What?” He turned on Lanthe as if defying her to contradict him.

“I know I don’t understand much of politics, but I worry when you say these things…” She paused, digesting her own honesty and thought, Heaven, what is wrong with me? How could she worry so earnestly—so lovingly—for Tenro and not want to marry him? A wife was entitled and expected to worry about her husband. A wife could even counsel her husband when it came to matters of diplomacy. Here, a soldier at the shoulder of her superior, Lanthe could only beg, “Please be careful.”

“I am being careful,” Tenro’s snapped. But his bearing changed as he took in the anxiety on Lanthe’s face. The line of his brow softened. “Careful and unkind.”

“Unkind?” Lanthe repeated in confusion.

“I shouldn’t have pulled you from training to burden you with this,” Tenro sighed. “It’s just that my father would never tolerate it, and my brother… well… It’s not what he needs to hear, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Lanthe agreed. Their pace had slowed as they neared the gap in the wall and the hearing of other soldiers. “I would say that you’re not being unkind at all, Tenro. You’re being a good brother.”

“Just not a good superior. I can’t speak my mind with my peers. So here I am, taking advantage of your position and goodwill, assuming that, out of friendship, you won’t repeat my treasonous words to anyone over my head.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t.” Even assuming a soul in Ro would take a farmer’s word over a guardlord’s. Lanthe took a breath, “But I will ask you to please think carefully about what you say—and to whom—when you’re angry. I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

“Maybe trouble is exactly what Ro needs,” Tenro said darkly, “if this is the path it’s on.

“I don’t know about that.”

“Then, what do we do, Lanthe? How do we fix this?”

That was the delusion of a lord’s son, wasn’t it? That the world was his to fix? Maybe it was. Maybe that was within an aristocrat’s power. Just not Lanthe’s.

“Lord Tenro…” It really wasn’t Lanthe’s place to advise a guardlord on anything so heavy, but he had asked. And he looked so distressed. “I don’t disagree with you—about the king’s plan, or the new postlords, or any of the things that seem to be bothering you. I just don’t think you’ll do this country any favors by saying things that end your career before it begins.”

“You’re right.” Tenro’s gaze hardened as they reached the gap in the wall.

“I am?”

“Here, I’ve been fussing like a noblewoman about my words, trying to be a diplomat with these brats. But since when do Ro make their points by talking?”

The slap to the back was so unexpected that it sent Lanthe stumbling—right into the man rounding the corner out of the fort. Insomnia had made Lanthe foggy, and she didn’t quite manage to catch herself before colliding with the taller soldier. Not just a soldier, she realized as she registered the fine cape, sharp chin, and sharper sneer.

Postlord Eng.

“Watch where you’re going, peasant!” the young noble snapped. And Lanthe’s heart dropped—not for herself, but for Eng.

“What was that tone, Postlord?” Tenro demanded, and Lanthe looked back at her friend in surprise. He had intended the collision, hadn’t he? He had set Eng up.

“Oh—Apologies, Guardlord,” Eng stammered as he registered Tenro at Lanthe’s shoulder. “I—”

“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Captain Luyang.”

“I will do no such thing, Guardlord. He ran into me,” Eng said like an indignant child arguing his case to his mother against a sibling. “And lords don’t apologize to commoners.”

“Postlord Eng, you are aware that Ro was brought to its breadth and glory on the backs of peasant soldiers?”

“Who were then refined to lines of surpassing quality,” the postlord shot back, “our lines.”

“That’s right.” Tenro smiled. “Surpassing quality. I think we should have a demonstration of that quality, since you refuse to apologize.”

“What, sir?”

“Real men don’t stand around talking about their quality, Post Marshal. I will see you in the training yard.”

Postlord Eng blanched. “Y-you… you want me to fight you, Guardlord? I…” He swallowed his words from the cusp of shaming himself. Lanthe couldn’t judge him too harshly. A fight with Tenro wasn’t a fate she wished on anyone.

“No,” Tenro said lightly. “I want you to fight him.”

It took Lanthe a moment to register that Tenro was pointing at her. She blinked in surprise but managed to keep her expression neutral. Postlord Eng took in Lanthe—her modest stature and the circles under her eyes—and sniffed in disdain.

“You insult me, Guardlord Chang.”

A chuckle bubbled from some dark place in Tenro. “Do I? Then we’re even. Your presence here insults me every day.”

When Eng had skulked off to the training yard, Lanthe turned to Tenro.

“Is this necessary, my lord?”

“King Josan authorized the little popinjay for a command position without him ever seeing active combat. He needs a little humility knocked into him, and it won’t land if it’s me.”

“Will it land if I do it?”

“It will only land if you do it. Besides, you’ve been agitated. And there’s no cure for an unsettled mind like a nice bloody fight.”

There, he had a point. Although—“Bloody?” Lanthe repeated, disconcerted.

“Figuratively speaking. You don’t have to kill him.” Tenro flashed her a grin. “I just thought we were friends.”

“You’re terrible.”

“No. Eng Binan is terrible,” Tenro said. “And you get to prove that in front of everyone—unless, of course, you’d rather get back at me by losing.”

Lanthe couldn’t do that, and Tenro knew it perfectly well. No Ro with a sense of dignity could lose a fight on purpose. Lanthe was functionally Tenro’s game piece here. Now that he had maneuvered her where it suited him, she could only do what she was made to do: fight as hard as she knew how.

The soldiers had just finished their laps and paired off for weapons drills when Tenro called them into a circle.

“Troops, observe! Second Lieutenant Githya, Second Lieutenant Suya,” he addressed Lanthe’s officers as the men assembled. “Hold onto your captain’s equipment. He’s going to duel.”

“Heaven, Captain!” Githya said under his breath as he unfastened the cape from Lanthe’s shoulders and Suya took the sword and pistol from her hips. Suya radiated worry in his stoic way, but Githya looked impressed. “You challenged a postlord to a fight?”

“I most certainly did not,” Lanthe grumbled under her breath.

“Then… he challenged you?”

“Not exactly.”

Some of Tenro’s men had pushed to the front, curious to see Postlord Eng fight the mage slayer they’d heard so much about. The men of Yansey, Heaven bless their hearts, looked on without worry. Even the best fighters like Ensai, who knew Lanthe’s shortcomings well, didn’t appear overly nervous on their captain’s behalf. Lanthe thought this was a bit optimistic of them. The Yao attack must have really inflated their ideas of her prowess in battle.

Tairo slipped his way through the uniformed bodies to Lanthe, his face glowing with sweat from the run. He had rejoined training to the extent that he could with his injured arm—all of it except glaive and spear drills, which required both hands.

“What under Heaven is going on, Captain?” he asked.

“Nothing to worry about,” Lanthe said as Githya and Suya stepped back with her cape and weapons. “Your brother just got... opinionated.” She spoke under her breath so Tenro wouldn’t hear. Tairo didn’t bother.

“Since when does he need you to fight his battles for him?”

Tenro’s dark eyes flicked momentarily to Tairo, but he didn’t engage his brother.

“Captain Luyang,” he said instead, “you are the lower-ranked officer. Choose the weapon.”

Reluctantly, Lanthe detached from Tairo and considered the rack of blunt training weapons. She was best with the glaive, spear, and staff. The longer weapons made up for her limited reach, favored her low center of gravity, and maximized her control of leverage. If she wanted the win, she should choose a polearm.

She wasn’t sure why her fingers closed on the sword. Maybe it was reflexive politeness; as the intruder in this game of nobles, she should at least meet the aristocrat on his turf, with the aristocrat’s weapon of choice. Maybe it was to give Eng a chance of winning; she couldn’t deliberately lose, but with a sword, she stood a chance of losing legitimately. Maybe it was that talk in the camp seemed to have inextricably connected her to the sword since she had used one to kill Yao’s graphemancer. And that felt wrong to her. Anyone could cut down a mortally wounded old man. If people were going to envision the mage slayer with a sword, she should at least prove she could wield one competently.

When she turned from the rack, Tenro was smiling at her, clearly reading the choice as confidence rather than courtesy.

“Luyang has chosen the sword, Postlord Eng. Lucky for you.”

Eng glowered but didn’t talk back.

The crowd fell silent and took up position as Eng drew a blunt sword from the rack. Soldiers of Ro reflexively knew how to form a regulation five-horse-diameter circle around a pair of fighters. If Lanthe or Eng went out of bounds, a wall of men would put them back in the ring.

Eng gave the practice sword a few experimental swings, and, blunt as it was, the metal sang. At twenty-one, Eng still had a boyish elasticity to his movements that most men lost when they heaped on their adult muscle. Only exceptional fighters like General Chang retained that speed into their later years—and that was because he had never left the field. Nothing like the threat of death for keeping reflexes young.

“Your form is beautiful, Postlord,” Lanthe said as they stepped into the circle together.

“Of course, it is,” he spat back. “I’ve trained with the best swordmasters in all of Ro.”

Not an idle threat, by any means. But a swordmaster couldn’t kill a lord’s son. Skill didn’t grow as sharp without survival somewhere in the balance.

On Tairo’s command, the fighters faced each other and bowed—well, Eng bobbed more than bowed, but the slight didn’t bother Lanthe. She focused on his stance as they both readied their weapons.

The quality of Eng’s training was evident in the way he held himself. Back straight, chin up, weight distributed just so. Beautiful as a statue—and as breakable with the right application of force. Since he had chosen a defensive stance, Lanthe decided it would be polite to humor him and attack.

She tested the waters first, feinting toward her opponent to see his reaction. Eng was confident—or stupid—enough to play his whole hand. He stepped forward to meet her thrust in an over-enthusiastic parry and followed up with a barrage of lightning strokes. Everything in his arsenal. The sheer speed might have caught Lanthe off guard, but she recognized Tairo’s favorite form in Eng’s movements and anticipated each cut as it came. Deflecting the last stroke in the sequence, she retreated out of striking range and let him follow her.

There was a reason Ro soldiers ran laps in full gear every day before and after training. By the time a Yao or Angtei man started to tire, the Ro was just getting warmed up. Lordlings, with their days full of calligraphy and tactical theory, missed out on those grueling hours of physical exertion. Lanthe didn’t need to overpower Eng. She just needed to outlast him.

She let him pursue her across the breadth of the circle, deflecting the few thrusts that came close enough to warrant defense, occasionally feinting just hard enough to make him react. He lacked the experience to tell a feint from a true threat, and he burned himself up defending from imaginary attacks.

“I thought farmers’ sons were supposed to be hardy!” he growled, and speech betrayed how hard he was working for each breath. “Do you do anything but dance, little man? Come at me!”

Given the invitation, Lanthe obliged.

Eng met her blade at the angle she had expected, and she pressed into the collision aggressively as if to lock hilts with the younger man. The bait—the chance to bring his size to bear—was too enticing for Eng to think twice. He threw his weight into the point of contact—just as Lanthe pivoted back, disengaging.

All that fearsome momentum pitched Eng forward toward the ground. His reflexes served him well, and he kept his feet under him instead of plunging face-first into the dirt. Still, by the time he regained his balance, Lanthe’s practice blade was at the back of his neck.

Yield, corpse, she would have said to one of her men. You didn’t speak that way to a lord, so she said nothing and let her blade rest there, silent.

She might not be willing to fight badly on purpose, but she would give Eng Binan this chance to salvage the situation. If he maintained his speed and form, he could overcome her. Then, he could hand her the victory out of courtesy. This was the best way for him to save face, demonstrating both his skill and strength of character.

Come on, kid, she willed Eng as his eyes swiveled round to meet hers. Be a man. Show me grace. Please. Please, don’t let me make an enemy of a noble.

But Eng’s swordmaster had done him a disservice. Clearly, he hadn’t trounced the boy enough that he learned to take a defeat with grace. Snarling, Eng turned, knocking Lanthe’s blade from his neck, and attacked.

Humiliation had turned him from a boy to a storm. A rain of steel and gnashing teeth. But storms were mostly noise, and Lanthe had yet to meet one she couldn’t weather. Eng’s beautiful form had broken. He was no longer making the most of his power, and his wrath was easily parried. Lanthe would have had a time keeping pace with his rage for any length of time. But each swing was sloppier than the last, and it wasn’t long before he started presenting openings too obvious to let slide.

And now, Lanthe was genuinely angry with Eng Binan—for his arrogance, for his bad form, for squandering a perfectly good opportunity for martial and moral victory. Tenro was right. If Eng was going to stay in the military, he needed to learn and fast. Shifting out of the way of a particularly wild underhanded slice, Lanthe let Eng’s blade swing skyward—then exploded past his guard to slam the flat of her sword into his exposed gut.

The blow took the breath and all the fight out of Eng. He hit the dirt hard and lay there gulping for air, eyes wide. He would be fine. His quilted armor had cushioned him against serious injury, but Lanthe’s victory was decisive. In a real battle, the postlord would be in two pieces—or perhaps just sliced to the spine with a blade stuck between his vertebrae. Lanthe was feeling frayed, and the finish hadn’t been her finest work.

Before Tenro or anyone on the sidelines could comment, Lanthe dropped into a bow, palms to the ground. “Thank you for engaging me, my lord.”

With her head down, she registered that the crowd was unusually quiet. It wasn’t until she rose that she saw why. General Chang had stepped out onto the command platform to look down on the scene. In a quiet hurry, a few soldiers helped Eng to his feet to salute along with everyone else.

“Is there a quarrel here?” General Chang wasn’t asking Lanthe or Eng. His gaze had settled on Tenro.

“Not anymore, sir,” Tenro said.

“So, this has been a training demonstration?”

“In a way,” Tenro said as Tairo shot him a dark glance.

Lanthe was under no delusion that her performance had exemplified good swordsmanship. But it had gotten the job done. And for an audience of Ro, that was all that mattered.

“Well, Tenro,” General Chang said, “if you’re giving the troops a demonstration, why don’t you show them the strength of your own house? Why don’t you step in the ring with Luyang?”

Past the icy bolt of dread, Lanthe understood what Chang Shuro was doing. This was a subtle way of softening the point Tenro had just made—if not reversing it entirely. Tenro said a peasant had the same value as a lord’s son. But Lanthe had half a decade of practical experience on Postlord Eng, and their audience knew it. If Tenro got in the ring and beat Lanthe—which was the only possible outcome of this match—it would show that, given the same level of experience, a lord’s son was still something special.

Lanthe knew that the general was neither slighting her nor disagreeing with Tenro. Heaven help him, he was trying to protect his son from his own inflammatory actions.

“Of course, sir,” Tenro said, and Lanthe resigned herself to a brief and brutal thrashing. Then, “Perhaps, a triple,” he said, “since they’ve just seen a regular duel. Brother?” He turned to Tairo. “Join us?”

Chang Shuro’s expression was stone, but Lanthe imagined she saw something tighten in his jaw. Tenro had thrown Tairo’s dignity into the balance. If the general objected, it was as good as saying his first son was too weak to step into the ring with his twin. And Tairo, of course, could not refuse.

Pale and a little too tense, he yanked a sword from the rack. “Fine.”

The Ro triple was a different beast from the duel. With three fighters in play, there were no rules about who could attack who. More than a contest of skill, it was a strategy game, usually played by the sons of lords. Of course, for Lanthe and Tairo, there was only one strategy. She met his eyes, and that was all the communication they needed to affirm the obvious: they were in the fight together until Tenro was out. Neither of them could win a one-on-one engagement with him. If they worked together, they stood a chance. It wasn’t a betrayal and Tenro wouldn’t take it as one. The deeper insult would be to get in the ring with him and not fight their absolute best.

To that end, Tenro cast his eyes to Lanthe’s weapon. “Captain, put that down and get a damn spear.”

In the triple, each man chose his own weapon. With only one arm available, Tairo’s only choice was the sword, which was his best weapon anyway. Tenro chose a crescent glaive.

As soon as the three had bowed in, Lanthe and Tairo shifted to the edges of the circle to pin Tenro in the middle. As a tactician himself, raised on the same methods as Tairo, Tenro was unsurprised and seemingly happy to let his attackers close from both sides. If anything, the prospect of a doubly difficult fight excited him. And an excited Tenro was almost as dangerous as an angry one.

Bracing her spear in position, Lanthe breathed deeply. knowing she would need the air as soon as the combat began. Unlike Postlord Eng, Tenro wouldn’t wear out over the course of a single fight. She looked across their opponent at Tairo, and her gaze said: hang back. Stay out of range until you see an opening.

A beat of stillness.

Then Tenro made a telltale shift toward Tairo. The sooner Tenro could pick off one opponent, the better off he would be. The best move was to target the weak link first, but Lanthe wasn’t going to let him.

The moment Tenro’s attention tipped toward Tairo, she was on full offensive, thrusting hard enough to break through a normal man’s guard and kill him. The trouble was that Tenro wasn’t a man. With a glaive in his hands, he became a demigod. The incomprehensible whir of lacquer and steel around his body deflected Lanthe’s every thrust, no matter how tricky or ferocious. But her first clash with him at least served its purpose. It kept the majority of his attention off Tairo, so the swordsman could do his work.

Foreigners likened fighting Ro to fighting buffalo, an impenetrable wall of muscle, horns, and weight. Tairo fought more like a bird, flitting and striking. His attacks were devastating for their precision, not the heft behind them. In the face of an onslaught, he folded easily, hollow bones and pretty feathers crumpling. That meant that the work of locking horns was down to Lanthe. Having spent her childhood carrying water and pushing a plow behind oxen, she could take Tenro’s force and push back. Until she managed to create an opening, Tairo’s only job was to stay clear and keep Tenro contained to the circle’s center.

Tairo tracked his brother on feather-light feet, eyes intent. If there was an opening for a sword to slip in, he would see it. The fact that he was staying clear meant that Lanthe wasn’t doing enough—despite the burn in her arms. She needed to press Tenro harder, consume more of his movement before the superior fighter used up all her energy. She met his glaive with a vertical block and charged inside his guard. She knew partway through the maneuver that she’d made a mistake. He had let her in too easily. Deliberately.

Tairo took the bait too, and descended on his brother for the stab. Lanthe didn’t realize Tenro had let go of his weapon with one hand until the give threw off her trajectory and she felt his free hand at the base of her skull. As Tairo fell through the rest of the missed attack, Tenro hauled Lanthe forward by the back of her neck.

Lanthe’s head met Tairo’s into a world-breaking crack.

Her mind blacked for a heartbeat, but her body had trained enough years to move without her mind. She had a handful of Tenro’s sleeve, which she had grabbed in a useless effort to slow her momentum toward Tairo. The fistful of fabric was an anchor in space, even as the world spun into darkness.

More on muscle memory than conscious thought, Lanthe spun out of the collision, putting herself behind Tenro and locked an arm around his neck—or tried to. He was broad and tall, and tightening the headlock meant going up on her toes, sacrificing all her balance.

Her vision cleared and, over Tenro’s shoulder, she could see Tairo staggering from the impact. He looked as though he might topple over, but he still had hold of his sword. There was still a chance.

“Now, Lieutenant!” she called as Tenro jerked against her and, with her full weight hauling back on his neck, moved to resume his stance. Fully off the ground, she threw a leg clumsily around Tenro’s right arm, pulling the glaive back down, buying Tairo one more moment. “Now!”

Tairo rallied—too late. Tenro turned, yanking Lanthe along with him as if she weighed no more than his cape, and whipped the flat of his glaive across his brother’s face. Tairo went down, his sword thudding to the dirt. Both physically and according to the sparring rules, he was out of play.

Lanthe was on her own.

Sportingly—or perhaps just to free both hands—Tenro cast his glaive aside. Lanthe’s arm was locked firmly around his throat now. There should have been nothing left for him to do but drop his weight backwards on her and hope the impact broke the hold before he passed out. Instead, his hands went to the arm across his throat, and Lanthe couldn’t understand his logic. Tenro was strong, but surely he didn’t think he was going to pry her off. Iron fingers snaked beneath the sleeve of her quilted armor to dig into her bicep—and suddenly, it was like a molten arrow had plunged between her muscles. Tenro’s first two fingers had found her half-healed spear-wound while his thumb had found a pressure point in her upper arm. Lanthe jerked, all feeling in her right arm lost in the burn.

Before Lanthe could readjust the hold, Tenro’s left hand had hauled at her wrist, forcibly breaking the headlock. She knew what was coming next. But there was little she could do except brace herself as he threw her over his shoulder onto her back. She hit hard. And, for the second time that fight, the world darkened. But Lanthe couldn’t let shock or blindness slow her down. She rolled on instinct and felt Tenro’s knee drop hard where she had just been.

Now that they were both weaponless, the duel had come down to which fighter could knock out or pin the other first. Lanthe rolled clear of Tenro’s limbs and made to scramble to her feet, but she had underestimated how fast he would move. In a blue blur, he was on her. A knee slammed into her chest as she came up, knocking her back to the dirt. And he was over her, fist cocked, surging in for the kill.

But Lanthe could feint too. On her back, she coiled both knees to her chest, ready to kick. Tenro knew she favored her right leg and batted that knee aside, only to catch her left foot in the ribs. It wasn’t a perfect hit. He had angled his body slightly and Lanthe’s heel slid off his uniform, but the half-missed kick had thrown Tenro’s punch off course and bought her time to line up her own blow. As his punch clipped her ear, she twisted at the waist, whipping her elbow across his face—hard enough to put another man out cold. It didn’t throw the general’s son off for a moment. He retained control of the momentum as the blow sent them both rolling. Over and over. Struggling for the upper hand.

When Lanthe’s back hit the ground again, there was cold metal at her throat—Tairo’s practice sword. Tenro must have snatched it up as they rolled across the circle. Darkness pulsed at the fringes of Lanthe’s vision, turning the world shadowy. Her heart was beating hard—too hard—as she looked up at Tenro.

A smile split his face. He had won both victories—the physical one visible to everyone and the moral one visible to the politically savvy. Even as he handily defeated Lanthe, she still came off better than Tairo and Eng Binan, both nobles, one of them with equivalent experience to her own. With his brutal control of the ring, Tenro had still proved his point that a peasant was no less than a lord’s son.

“I win.” He touched her cheek. And suddenly, the gesture was too tender. No longer brotherly, no longer platonic. Lanthe became a woman under his calloused body. And her mind splintered. All her fears collapsed into a bolt of mortal panic unlike anything she had ever felt on the field or off it.

She didn’t know how she had gotten Tenro on his back or his blood on her knuckles. She came back to herself straddling him, driving her fist into his face a fourth, fifth, sixth time before—

“Captain!” Tairo and Githya lay hands on her, hauling her back. “What are you doing?”

Like a mad dog, she lunged against them to hit Tenro again, and it was only when Suya wrapped his massive arms around her waist that she finally pulled back… and realized what she had done. What had she done?

The soldiers stood in deathly silence all around—until someone let out a congenial laugh. It took Lanthe a moment to realize that it was Tenro.

“Alright, Luyang, point taken,” Tenro grinned through the blood and pulled himself to his feet. “I won’t let my guard down around you again.” He spat a lump of blood into the dirt. “The mage slayer is full of lessons today!”

His smile put everyone back at ease. Everyone except Lanthe. And General Chang, who stood atop the platform with a troubled tension to his posture.

“Captain Luyang,” his voice cut through the murmurs of confusion, “my sons, have your officers clean you up. Then—” He paused, eyes moving to the watchtower where the bell had struck the arrival of riders in the distance. “Then prepare to ride for Yao. It seems your supplies have arrived.”

With the fort and outlying camp scrambling to ready for departure, none of the soldiers had time to contemplate Lanthe’s bizarre outburst. Well, none except her own officers, who accompanied her to her chamber.

“That was…” Tairo, who still seemed a little dazed, struggled for the word… “interesting, Captain Luyang.”

“It was terrible.” Lanthe had never felt total panic like that before. Even under Paru’s body amid a rain of Angtei arrows, even lying on a pallet thinking she might die of plague. “Something is wrong with me.”

“What do you mean wrong with you?” Tairo asked.

“I don’t know. What’s wrong with someone who’s offered everything he ever wanted and suddenly, it’s the most terrifying thing in the world? He knows who he is… Why doesn’t he want it?”

Tairo eyed her in confusion. “What...? What man are we talking about? Is it me?”

“So, he hit your heads together pretty hard, huh?” Githya said.

“Why would I be talking about you?” Lanthe asked.

Tairo rubbed the bruise on his cheek as it bled from pink to purple. “I’m given the chance at command, to serve these men. I’m given a chance to serve Ro with my assets, and I can’t…”

“Feel happy?” Lanthe said. “Feel grateful? Feel anything you should?”

“Alright,” Githya seemed to discern that neither captain nor first lieutenant was in possession of all their faculties and took command. “Suya, go with Lord Lieutenant Tairo. Make sure he doesn’t fall or anything. I’ll go with Captain Luyang—with your permission, sir?”

“Fine. Yes.” Lanthe scrubbed a hand over her face. “Very good.”

“Captain, really…” Githya ventured when they were alone. “What the fuck was that?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Lanthe shook him off and rushed to gather her equipment for the journey.

“Has that man wronged you?” The offer was implicit in the question. “Because—”

“No,” Lanthe interrupted before he could make an offer that constituted treason. Because I’ll cut his throat for you was written all over Githya’s half-wild features. “If anyone did wrong, it was me.”

“Weird things are happening,” Githya observed astutely, “between you, and the general, and his boys.”

“Weird, sure. Not antagonistic,” Lanthe said. “If Lord Tenro bore me any ill will, he wouldn’t have let me hit him so many times.”

“Let you?”

“No enemy soldier would have gotten that many punches in before he snapped their neck.” She could still feel the multitude of punches thrumming in her knuckles as she yanked the straps of her roll tight. “He took the beating for his own reasons, on principle.”

“What principle?”

“It’s complicated,” she said wearily.

Githya smiled. “This is why you come off like a lord’s son, you know, Captain Luyang. It’s not your cape or your accent. It’s that you understand all these strange power games between nobles.”

“Understanding the games doesn’t make a man a noble.”

Power made a man a noble. The power of command, political immunity, literacy, the blessing of Heaven to exert his will on the world. Lanthe wasn’t a player in any of these games. She was a little cannon for lords like Tenro to point where they pleased.

“Captain?” Githya said, and Lanthe realized that she was scowling at her own bruised fists. “Are you sure you’re not angry about… something?”

“No,” she said sharply. “Anyway, what are you still doing here? I’ve got both arms. Go, help Lord Tairo with his things.”

A servant summoned Lanthe and the twins to the war room for a final meeting before they set off. Lanthe was there first, closely followed by Tenro. Someone had dabbed the blood from his face, but the damage was still glaring. Lanthe had split his lip in two places and blacked his eye—like a boy in a schoolyard scrap. The sight would have been funny had it not made Lanthe’s gut curl in shame.

“Lord Tenro,” she said immediately, “I didn’t—”

“Lanthe…” His voice was devoid of all his usual wrath. Almost fragile. “Are you angry with me?”

“No, sir! No!”

“Then I don’t understand. Why did you come at me like I just ate your firstborn son? I’ve never seen you in that kind of blind battle rage—even in the middle of actual battle. What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Lanthe said in agony. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” He smiled. “I mean, a guardlord knows better than to celebrate prematurely, right? I can’t act like I didn’t deserve a good punch in the teeth—or six.”

“Alright, but that’s not why you lay there and took it,” Lanthe said. “You had to make your point about the scrappy common soldier. You just—” used me to make it, she wanted to say before realizing how bitter it sounded.

Tenro laughed outright this time. “Heaven, Lanthe! Who do you think you’re talking to? You think I’d lose a fight on purpose? Even to prove a point?”

Lanthe honestly didn’t know. In some ways, her bull-headed friend seemed to have gotten more political and measured in all his decisions. In other ways, he seemed more reckless than ever. She wasn’t sure she liked the combination.

“I’m just curious what point you had in mind?” he said with a meaningful look at Lanthe. “Especially after you just told me to be more careful?”

“I didn’t have a point in mind. I was just…” Panicked. A trapped animal, mad with fear. If the general wanted her to marry one of his sons, she would have to do it. If the king wanted her to help Tairo kill Princess Yelhwa, she would have to do it. If Ro demanded she throw away her morals and her happiness, she would have to do it. Nothing she had in her heart was going to change any of it.

She hung her head, ground her knuckles into her hairline. “I’m sorry.”

Then, to her utter horror, Tenro’s hands wrapped around hers and gently guided them down. “Hey. Sorry for what?”

For not wanting you. For not wanting your brother. For agreeing with your father’s plans. For not agreeing with them. For being unable to do anything about any of it.

When Lanthe said nothing aloud, Tenro’s thumb brushed her cheek. “You haven’t had enough sleep.”

Lanthe twitched just slightly away from the touch, then held still.

“I suppose not, sir. That’s probably it.”

Though Heaven knew, Lanthe had gone days without sleep before and never slid into madness during training. The terror was this—Tenro’s hand on her face, slipping slowly forward so that his thumb touched her ear and his fingers brushed the shaved hair at the base of her neck.

What was he doing?

Unable to breathe, Lanthe looked up into that bruised, oddly caring expression. He didn’t know what she really was. As far as he knew, she was a man like any other under his command. So, what under Heaven was he looking at her with that softness in his eyes?

“I’m fine.” She pushed from him abruptly—and a little harder than she meant to. “My lord. I’ll be fine.”

“Of course.” Tenro’s hand hung in the air for a moment where Lanthe’s face had been before curling into a fist. He pressed his split lips together, looking faintly ashamed at himself. “I’m sorry.”

Lanthe shook her head, though she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Nothing to be sorry about, sir.”

When they had all gathered in the war room, the general did not acknowledge the fight in the training yard. He simply restated the plan and went over logistics before dismissing his sons to join the troops. He would see them both off formally at the gates according to Ro tradition. Lanthe was not entitled to a formal farewell, but he kept her behind.

It wasn’t her place to speak first, but her underslept anxious tongue rushed to say, “About Lord Tenro, sir, I—”

“Oh, Tenro’s recovered from plague and an arrow to the face.” The general waved a hand. “I’m not worried about him. But I do worry that I’ve unsettled you.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve never seen you quite the way you were in the training yard. I’ve seen you in panic and in determination, Luyang. I’ve never seen you in rage.”

Rage? Lanthe looked up at him in surprise. Was that what he thought? “General, I’m not angry with your son.”

“Rage rarely fires at the right target. I realize this is my fault.”

Lanthe shook her head, mute because she couldn’t fathom what he meant. She wasn’t angry—with Tenro or with anyone. And if she was, how could General Chang possibly blame himself? When he had given her nothing but accommodations and opportunities?

“I believe you haven’t slept a full night since I told you of the king’s plans for Yao. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Lanthe said, although he didn’t have that quite right. She had slept—albeit fitfully—after the general’s arrival. She had not slept at all since the offer of marriage.

“I’ve put you in a difficult position,” he said, “but there is a reason I involved you. I need you in Yao with Tairo—you over anyone else.”

“Sir?”

“There are great domesticable animals, happy to be herded. The tiger, when you pen it in too tightly, rages.”

Sober, Lanthe would never laugh in the general’s face. After a week of little sleep and a few blows to the head, she chuckled weakly. “I’m no tiger, sir, if that’s what you’re implying. Surely, I’m a wild dog at best.”

“Then I’m still happy to have you in Yao—for Tairo’s sake, and Ro’s. This mission calls for someone a shade wild.”

“If only you could send Lord Tenro.”

“If only I wasn’t under rather annoying orders to control him more carefully.”

Lanthe tilted her head. Chang was trying to tell her something. Something he couldn’t quite voice out of loyalty to the king.

“I’ve made this clear to Tairo, but I want to make it clear to you as well: rank still exists for spies, and your rank has not changed. In Yao, you will pose as Tairo’s bodyguard, but you will remain his superior. Ultimately, this mission is yours to carry out.”

“I don’t know that it’s my place to—”

“I’m making it your place, Luyang. Because damn it… soldiers like you are too few these days. Soldiers of principle. Soldiers who can think on their feet in strange times.”

Lanthe swallowed. “I’m… not sure I understand, sir.”

It wasn’t General Chang’s fault, of course. He couldn’t say outright what he was implying. She just needed it implied again. To be absolutely sure.

“We’ve planned to the king’s specifications the best we can, but you and I both know that the best laid plans must be flexible in practice. The king has ordered that we remove Princess Yelhwa from power. How this order is executed… that’s up to you now, Captain. From now on, you are not a game piece on the board of kingdoms. You are a player.”

Lanthe breathed out and felt an invisible weight on her shoulders shift. It didn’t lift—if anything, it grew heavier—but it had changed subtly, allowing for movement. Life. Her mind started turning. Perhaps, this mission didn’t need to involve seduction. Perhaps, Lanthe could limit the amount of danger centered on Tairo. Perhaps, the plan didn’t need to go how King Josan envisioned it at all.

“My only order is this: see that my son comes home safe. See that you both come home safe.”

“My word to Heaven, General. May I die before I break it.”

“And who knows…” Chang smiled. “Perhaps, you’ll even return from Yao with an answer to my other question.”

The question of marriage.

Some mad part of Lanthe found the courage to ask, “Even if the answer is ‘no’?” Maybe in her heart, she knew that if she didn’t ask, she would implode before she ever reached Yao.

“Of course,” the general said. “That is the difference between a question and an order, isn’t it?”

“I… yes, sir.” Lanthe just hadn’t really dared to think that ’no’ was a possible answer.

“I’ve given all the orders I have for you. On the road ahead, there are no more commands. Only questions and puzzles. How you solve them is up to you. What happens next… it’s all up to you. Are you ready?”

And the answer to that was yes. This was a kind of weight Lanthe could adjust for. A kind of weight she could bear. Like she had adjusted to bear command of Yansey. Lanthe didn’t realize she had started crying until she opened her mouth and her voice shook with it.

“Yes, sir. Thank you…” For the chance to protect Tairo properly. To protect Ro properly. To protect her own integrity. “Thank you.”

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