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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Tairo had always been a beat slower to wake than Lanthe. He was still coming to, stumbling, as rough hands hauled them both to their feet.

“We—um…”

“Surrender,” Lanthe said for him, seized by a sense of urgency as rough hands jerked her arms back. “We surrender.”

General Chang always said that a commander must read the collective energy of a group of soldiers. Not succumb to it, but note it, understand it, and respond wisely. Lanthe may never have learned to read written language, but she had learned to read soldiers, and the energy from these Yao put her on high alert. There was something anxious about them—excitement on the edge of wrath. Lanthe could feel it in the syncopation of their breath. In the over-alert way they watched her and Tairo, eager for a wrong move. In the way their hands jerked at her arms, the man on her left out of step with the one on her right, as though half-wanting to tear her in two. These men were itching to hurt something. Lanthe just needed to ensure that when that simmering inevitability boiled over into violence, it wasn’t on Tairo. He was the key game piece here. Her job was to make sure he reached the capital unhurt.

While two Yao held Lanthe still, a third unfastened her belt and patted her down for concealed weapons. The binding must have felt more or less like a man’s chest through her quilted armor because the hands didn’t linger on her breasts with any curiosity. Unwise, Lanthe thought. She would have searched a captive down to his undergarments, but she got the sense that these men weren’t particularly well-trained. There was a looseness and chaos to their movements that would have put them out of step in a line of Ro—or even in the ranks of the Yao who had attacked Yansey. These were not their country’s finest.

“There’s a hunting knife in my boot,” Lanthe told the man before her, then jerked her head back at Tairo. “His too.”

She would have kept quiet about the extra blades if she had been planning to escape. But cooperating here was part of the plan. The Yao capital was far from the border. Reaching it in disguise would have put unreasonable pressure on Lanthe and Tairo’s ability to conceal their accents. And when they were exposed as Ro, they would likely be killed for the deception. Crossing the border as themselves meant that capture was inevitable, but it also greatly increased their chances of survival. Once an enemy surrendered, Yao law prevented a low-ranking soldier from executing him. The captive had to face the judgment of a higher authority. And only Yao’s sitting ruler was a high enough authority to rule on the fate of General Chang’s son.

“Bring me their weapons,” one man ordered.

He was the shortest of the Yao, with a slightly squashed face and a bald patch marring his head of long black hair. His energy was different from the others’. Less excitable, sourer, but just as dangerous. His accent was more refined than the others’, and the crane crest on his uniform was more intricate—though the garment itself had seen better days. This had to be the commanding officer.

“Captain Gwalo,” one of the younger men said and presented Lanthe and Tairo’s weapons.

“Nice guns,” the doughy officer leered. “Especially this one.” He touched the barrel of Tairo’s finely gilt pistol, and Lanthe resisted a sound of exasperation. The two guns were functionally the same weapon; Tairo’s was just more finely decorated. But this Gwalo was clearly more interested in posturing for his underlings than responsibly inspecting any weapons. Like a child with a new toy, he lifted Tairo’s pistol and pointed it at Lanthe’s chest.

“Always wanted to hold one of these.”

Judging by the awkward sag in his wrist, the pistol was heavier than he had expected. A clumsy finger wandered over the trigger, and Lanthe met his eyes over the barrel.

Is that wise, soldier? was on the tip of her tongue. But she reminded herself that this imbecile was not one of her men. She couldn’t settle him with a stern gaze or a few sharp words. It was probably safer for her not to address him at all. Breaking eye contact, she bowed her head to the barrel of the gun and muttered urgently, “Lord Tairo.”

“Silence!” Gwalo snapped as Tairo groggily said, “What?”

“Don’t you have something you’d like to say to these—”

Gwalo shoved the barrel of the gun between Lanthe’s lips, crashing steel on her teeth. Her face muscles twitched around the intrusion, trying in part to wince but in larger part to snarl. She controlled the impulse, knowing that any display of emotion—be it fear or aggression—could set off men in a violent mood. Neither meeting Gwalo’s gaze nor shutting her eyes, she held the barrel impassively between her teeth as the taste of sulfur slowly permeated her mouth.

Did Tairo load his gun last night? she wondered behind her carefully dead expression. Would she have heard the click over the howl of wind and shuffle of horses? Had he thought to unload and secure the weapon before dropping off to sleep? If Gwalo did squeeze the trigger, would the bullet hit Tairo after blasting through the back of Lanthe’s head? Would her skull slow it enough that it didn’t kill him? Then, would Tairo even get through this mission without Lanthe? He couldn’t even stay awake through his own watch. How was he supposed to outsmart a usurper who had managed to convert or declaw all her detractors in a single year? Heaven willing, King Josan had a backup plan to remove Yelhwa.

“Heaven, they really are dumb brutes, aren’t they?” one of the Yao marveled at Lanthe, his tone as impressed as it was disgusted. “Look at that blank face. They don’t fear death at all!”

Meanwhile, Tairo had finally gotten his bearings. “Hold!” he commanded with a respectable echo of his father’s authority. “I’m Chang Tairo!”

All seven Yao stilled for a moment, eyes turning to Tairo. Metal scraped on Lanthe’s front teeth as the gun withdrew from her mouth. She resisted the urge to sag in relief and spit gunpowder saliva in the dirt, allowing herself a slow, silent exhale instead.

“You’re who?”

“I’m Chang Tairo, first son of Lord General Chang Shuro and heir to his title. I’m here to offer my surrender to Princess Kaisin Yelhwa.”

“Really?” Gwalo scoffed. “And who is this man?”

“This is my bodyguard, Captain Luya—”

“This is your bodyguard?” the Yao captain said in amusement. Which, Lanthe supposed, was fair; bodyguards were typically bigger than the people they were guarding.

“He’s my most loyal man,” Tairo recited from the script he had prepared. “I would have trusted no one else to keep my secrets and cross into Yao with me.”

“Oh?” Gwalo circled away from Lanthe. And when she craned her neck, she glimpsed the gun, still slick with her saliva, tracing the line of Tairo’s perfect jaw. “And why have you come to Yao, son of Chang?”

“My reasons are for Princess Yelhwa’s ears only. I believe, now that we’ve surrendered, we’re her prisoners, not yours.” Tairo also maintained a neutral expression with the gun poised to kill him, but the way he blinked—a little too rapidly—confirmed Lanthe’s fear: it was loaded. Damn it, Tairo!

“Indeed.” Gwalo narrowed his eyes. “But how do I know you are who you say you are?”

“Sir, he is very handsome,” one of the men muttered at Gwalo’s shoulder. “Isn’t that what General Chang’s first son is known for?”

“Lots of men have good skin and long godmarks”—Gwalo paused to scowl in thought as the rising light of morning illuminated more of Tairo’s face—“and… flawless, girlish bone structure.”

“I have my seal with me,” Tairo said, still unmoving before the gun. “In my uniform pocket.”

Gwalo nodded to his nearest man, who dug into Tairo’s front pocket and produced the ivory block in question. Lanthe was unsurprised that the Yao only eyed the seal in confusion and increasing suspicion. None of them were highborn, based on their accents. Much like Lanthe herself, they wouldn’t know a fine name from the dirt scratchings of a chicken. Gwalo made a show of appraising the carving, but she could see the indecision on his face. He might be affecting a noble’s accent—probably had noble blood in his veins, judging by the medium-length godmarks striping his ruddy cheeks—but he lacked a noble’s eye for authentic artistry.

“Show that to the first artisan you can find,” Tairo said when he saw the Yao captain struggling. “My word to Heaven, they will confirm its authenticity.”

“Shut up!” Gwalo jammed the pistol beneath Tairo’s chin with an ugly sneer. “I don’t need you to tell me anything! And I don’t take orders from any Ro, noble or not.”

With the gun directly under Tairo’s brain, Lanthe strained involuntarily against the hands on her arms. The Yao jerked her back violently—with intent to hurt—but the threat of violence didn’t matter anymore. Not as long as she drew the fire off of Tairo. Gwalo didn’t like a general’s son talking down to him; she would see how he liked it when a peasant did it.

“Are you an idiot?” Lanthe demanded. It wasn’t a tone she ever would have taken with a fellow captain or even a military inferior. To add insult, she took any formal polish out of her language, just so Gwalo was completely clear that an underclass man was speaking to him in this manner. “General Chang’s son is the most valuable prisoner you’ll see in the course of your irrelevant career. His fate belongs to a real noble, not to you.”

“Captain, what are you doing?” Tairo demanded in Central Ro, and the Yao looked between the two of them in confusion. Not good enough. Lanthe needed to draw all the attention off Tairo.

“You Yao call us uncultured,” she pressed as Gwalo stalked back around to face her, “but you seem too dense to understand the laws of your own–”

Gwalo seized her round the throat, which wasn’t the intimidating gesture he clearly intended. His grip was weak, and Lanthe’s quilted collar protected her from real strangulation. In rage, his face shook like a bowl of pudding disturbed by passing horses.

“I don’t know how things are done among barbarians,” he hissed foul breath into Lanthe’s face, “but this is Yao. And if I were a little peasant like you, I would rethink speaking that way to my betters.”

“Understood,” Lanthe said. “Show me my betters and I will.”

Gwalo punched her. Well, ‘punched’ was perhaps a generous overstatement; Lanthe was fairly certain her sweet mother had hit her harder when she toddled too close to the cookfire. When she didn’t react, Gwalo hit her again, this time in the gut, then again in the face. When the fourth blow barely rocked her head back, Lanthe let out a laugh.

That was when the other Yao joined in.

The fifth blow came from a younger soldier, who had probably worked more than a few days in his life and might even have made it through a screening process of some kind to enter the military. That one Lanthe felt from one ear to the other as it pitched her sideways and spilled a froth of darkness across her field of vision. Something hard–a forearm, probably–came down on the back of her head as a fist from the other direction slammed into her gut. The breath jolted from her body, and her knees hit the ground, followed by her hands.

“Wait! Hold!” Tairo was saying as Lanthe tried to wheeze the air back into her lungs. “He didn’t mean it! That’s not necessary!”

“Sh…” Lanthe grunted. Shut up, Tairo! she tried to growl in Central Ro. But before she could summon the breath, Gwalo’s boot came down on the side of her face. She buckled beneath the pressure deciding that the moment of resistance wasn’t worth breaking her neck.

“You may be the princess’s prisoner,” Gwalo said, sliding in and out of focus above Lanthe, “if you are who you say. But this mouthy one looks to me like a commoner. Which means he’s mine.”

“Regardless,” Tairo said, the urgency too audible in his voice, “he’s surrendering too. He has no weapons, so be a man and leave off. Please. You don’t need to hurt him.”

Lanthe cringed against the sandy soil. There were so many ways to get men to do what you wanted. What made Tairo think that politely asking in a nervous voice was the best one?

“You’re right.” Gwalo’s foot left Lanthe’s cheek. “I don’t.”

Just because Tairo was too naïve to anticipate what came next didn’t mean Lanthe was. She curled in on herself, protecting her head and hoping the best for her ribs before the stomping started.

Lanthe came to with the lurch of wagon wheels over uneven ground. When she opened her eyes, she found brown grass crawling by and ropes wound around her chest. She was tied back against something warm… Tairo, she realized when she moved her fingers and found his hands. The two of them were bound together, back-to-back.

Not remembering why she had been unconscious in the first place, Lanthe moved with the intention of testing the ropes. It was a mistake. Agony pierced her body from a dozen points, wrenching a groan from her throat.

“Oh, your bodyguard is awake, son of Chang.” Gwalo rode up beside the wagon. “He whimpers like a girl.”

“And you hit like an overcooked noodle,” she said in annoyance. Fortunately, she must have been slurring because Gwalo pulled up closer.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, sir,” Tairo said pointedly. “It was nothing.”

Gwalo looked unconvinced. He rode a stocky mare with a speckled coat and appeared to be the only one on horseback. He had brought only two men with him from the border contingent, and they proceeded on foot, leading Cloud and Fidget, who had been drafted to pull the wagon.

“You know, in traditional Yao, commoners stay where they belong.” Between Gwalo’s long godmarks, his eyes narrowed on Lanthe. “In the fields and the rank and file. They don’t get promoted to captain over men of better blood. The dirt doesn’t command the sky.”

Where Tenro would have risen to those words with violence, Tairo returned with his own proverb. “All the world’s gems come from dirt.” Proverb sparring with Tairo was far more foolish than lifting a sword against him. “Ro learned that a long time ago, and it’s how we pushed Yao’s armies this far south into a sliver of your ancient territory.”

“You think yourself better than us just because—”

“No, Captain,” Tairo said calmly, “I don’t.” And Lanthe made herself small, listening. This would be Tairo’s first attempt at selling the story he would ultimately use on Yelhwa. “I think that Ro is changing for the worse while Yao grows in power.”

“You what?” Gwalo stifled a snort.

“Your princess is extending the power of graphemancy outside the nobility, as Ro once extended the power of arms and high ranks. This is how you build a strong military and cultivate a great kingdom.”

“It’s how you destroy a great kingdom!” Gwalo spat.

“That’s not what I believe.” This, Lord Hyonang and General Chang had decided, was the most likely motivation Tairo might have for defecting to Yao. He was a known scholar and appreciator of old forms of calligraphy. And, though he had grown up with the warlike philosophies of Ro, he had always been ill-suited to the physical realities of battle. “I believe the changes Kaisin Yelhwa is implementing represent a revolution that will change war across the Ten Kingdoms forever. If Heaven speaks, this is what it sounds like. This is the turn of history, and I intend to be on the right side when the coin falls.”

Gwalo didn’t strike Tairo, but he looked at him with such poison that for a moment, Lanthe tensed in worry that he might.

“I won’t lay a hand on you, son of Chang,” Gwalo said, “but speak to me of the princess again, and I will cut off your guard dog’s fingers one at a time while you watch. Do we understand each other?”

“We do, sir. It won’t come up again.”

“Good,” Gwalo scowled and rode off ahead of the wagon.

“An overcooked noodle?” Tairo whispered when Gwalo was out of earshot.

With the Yao captain momentarily not a threat, Lanthe took stock of the surrounding scenery and found it utterly unfamiliar. The land here rolled like the waves on a windy Kailong bay, frozen in a moment and then draped in a coat of the saddest brown grass she had ever seen. Stiffly, she turned from one side to the other but found no hint of Ro’s greenery or the rocks of the Yao border. Just scraggly grass and dirt stretching to the horizon in all directions.

“How long have I been out?”

“A few hours,” Tairo kept his voice low. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she said shortly. “Never better.” In truth, she was deeply battered, but it seemed that no bones were broken. There was nothing of substance to complain about. She was still alive when those Yao had really wanted blood. “What did you say?” she murmured.

“What?”

“You got them to stop…” not only short of killing her but short of breaking bones when they had been so dangerously out of control. “What did you say?”

“A lot of things before one of them worked. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what was the one that worked?”

“I...” Tairo shook his head, his shaved head moving faintly against Lanthe’s. “At one point, I called your given name. They recognized it, and they stopped.”

“My name?” Lanthe furrowed her brow in confusion and regretted it when the movement disturbed a rather painful cut across her forehead.

“Luyang is a common enough family name that I suppose they didn’t think anything of it. But apparently, Luyang Lanthe, the Mage Slayer, is as wanted as any lord’s son right now.”

“They know?” Lanthe said in surprise. “The Yao know what happened at Yansey?”

“Mm,” Tairo grunted in affirmation. “And have for long enough that the guards out here recognized your name.”

“That’s troubling.” Lanthe supposed it had been almost half a month since the battle for Yansey. Rumors crossed borders with uncanny ease in a world where kingdoms obsessively spied on one another. But it was still unsettling to think that traitorous elements had been keeping an eye on Yansey—from within or nearby—without Ro knowledge.

“I guess, when the news reached Kaisia, the government placed a bounty on your head.”

“I must be wanted alive…” Lanthe reasoned, or Gwalo wouldn’t have bothered sparing her. Tairo didn’t say anything, which confirmed her next suspicion. “For public execution?”

“I won’t let it happen,” he said fiercely—which meant ‘yes’—“You know that.”

I know you’ll do your best, would have been the honest response, but Tairo needed to stay confident and focused on the work ahead. So, all she said was, “Yes, my lord.”

“And you’re sure you’re alright?” he said, probably misreading the tension in her voice as pain.

“I will be.”

The black eyes weren’t the worst Lanthe had ever had. The swelling was mild enough that she could still see out of her left eye and a sliver of her right. She was a bit worried about the abrasion Gwalo’s sand-covered boot had left on her cheek. The persistent stinging suggested that the skin had broken. If she didn’t wash the scrape before it started to heal, she risked getting sand stuck under the skin and causing infection.

“And they didn’t hurt you?” she asked to take her mind off the troubling sting. “Your arm didn’t get re-injured?” Lanthe didn’t know how the Yao princess would feel about it, but she personally found Tairo better-looking when he could hold a sword.

“No. I’m basically untouched,” Tairo said, and Lanthe relaxed the small amount she could with her torso full of spears.

“Spineless,” she muttered. The cowards would gleefully beat up a peasant but didn’t have the nerve to lay a finger on a man of status. Just in case, somewhere down the line, they got a scolding for it.

“I’m sorry I didn’t protect you.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “I took the fire on purpose. And we’d be lost if they messed up that pretty face.”

“I mean, I’m sorry I wasn’t smarter, or more tactful, or—”

“Ah. We’re also lost if you start acting too smart or tactful, remember?” Hyonang Yinzo, at least, was convinced that Princess Yelhwa would want a manipulable romantic partner. Lanthe lay her head back against Tairo’s shoulder and patted the back of his hand as best she could. “You’re doing well.”

“I don’t know about that.” Tairo sounded miserable. “Gwalo keeps threatening to mutilate you if I try anything.”

Lanthe breathed out a chuckle that quickly choked off as the movement sent pain shooting through her chest. It was Tairo’s turn to be annoyed.

“What part of that is funny?”

“You can’t help it, can you?”

“Help what?”

“Caring so much. So visibly.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Tairo asked.

“For my fingers, maybe, and your career as a military commander.” But it certainly made Tairo easy to manipulate, which was supposedly what Yelhwa wanted. “For our purposes, it might be fine.”

“You know, I resent being called too honest by the same idiot who just called our captor a noodle.”

It’s almost like we’re not good spies, Lanthe was tempted to say, and this whole mission was a terrible idea. But that, too, she kept to herself.

As they trundled on, clouds closed overhead and thunder joined the slow roll of the wagon wheels.

“It’s raining!” the youngest Yao exclaimed in artless delight. “Praise Heaven! I didn’t know it ever rained out here!”

“It’s rare,” his companion said with a glance at Lanthe and Tairo. “Could be an omen.”

“Rain is a good omen, Kagu,” Gwalo said sourly. “No Ro ever brought good fortune to Yao.”

As the rain picked up, drops plinked on the barrel of Lanthe’s gun where it lay bundled with the other confiscated weapons in the far end of the wagon. Tairo’s pistol was obscured under the blanket the Yao had wrapped haphazardly about the weapons.

“Did you tell them it was loaded?” Lanthe asked, sensing Tairo’s eyes turning in the same direction as hers.

“I did,” Tairo said quietly. “Gwalo would have had to either hand it over or take my instruction to safely unload it, so…” His head moved in a nod toward the weapons pile. So, they had ignored the danger.

“Is it pointed this way?” Lanthe asked.

“Hard to tell, Captain. The uneven road keeps shifting things around under that blanket.”

“Right.”

Lanthe started to clench her fists before realizing that Tairo would feel the tension and settled for clenching her jaw instead. She didn’t need Tairo to know how she was roiling.

He who controls the information controls the field, General Chang always said. And with uncertainties massing around the mission like miasma, Lanthe felt blind. The gun could go off with the next bump in the road, or the next. Captain Gwalo could fly into a petulant little fit and kill them at any moment. And if neither men nor bullets did them in before the capital, the darkness of uncertainty only got denser beyond that point.

Public execution. The thought kept floating to the surface of Lanthe’s mind, no matter how hard she tried to force it down. Death without a glaive in her hands. Death with a hundred eyes on her and a rope around her neck.

She needed to talk to Tairo about the possibility that she wouldn’t be able to help him after they reached the capital. Coming up with a contingency plan for him would help her take her mind off the prospect of nonexistence. But the rain had grown too heavy for them to speak without shouting. So, she just turned her burning cheek to the sky and closed her eyes against the sting. The good omen washed the dirt from her broken skin, reducing her risk of infection. She only wished it could wash away her doubts as easily.

The showers passed quickly, but the thirsty expanse of Yao barely changed through that first day of travel. In places, it was hillier, in places flatter, in places studded with rock formations, but always barren. It was the sort of land with only a few trees clutching its poor soil in place, preventing the southern desert from seeping in. The farms along the road were few and poor. Most of the people on the expanse seemed to be herders on horseback, leading their sheep and cattle in search of greener grass.

When it was time to eat, the younger of Gwalo’s men suggested that they stop at a village further up the hoof-beaten path and demand something from the farmers’ stores.

“We can’t do that anymore,” Gwalo said wearily. “How the princess expects to fight her war when we’re not even entitled to the support of the commoners…” He trailed off in a grumble, seemingly unwilling to commit to properly treasonous words.

Lord Hyonang had complained bitterly about all the high nobility Princess Yelhwa had disenfranchised and disrespected—demanding military service of their sons and giving their lands away to lesser men when they were less than compliant. Apparently, minor nobles like Gwalo had not escaped the indignity.

Disenfranchising the nobility seemed to Lanthe like a foolish way to run a country. It was the sort of behavior that worried her in Tenro. Integrity over diplomacy to the point of danger. Maybe Tenro should have been the one in this wagon with Lanthe on the way to seduce the princess. Maybe their foolhardy, ruthless energies would have made a good match. But King Josan and Lord Hyonang had both thought that a weak man would suit the princess’s tastes better, and so here Lanthe was, tied back-to-back with Tairo.

“Soldiers left to sleep in the fields like common filth,” Gwalo was muttering to himself.

“It’s not such a sacrifice for the glory of Yao, Captain,” another man protested. This one’s name was Kagu. Lanthe remembered him as the one who could actually punch. She hadn’t decided yet if he was her favorite or her least favorite.

“It looks like the princess’s men are busy erecting one of their schoolhouses ahead,” the younger soldier observed. “I’m sure the builders have something to spare.”

“Or we could be proper men of Yao and look after our own needs,” Kagu returned.

“Good point, Kagu,” Gwalo said with a hint of annoyance. “You and Rendai can go find us something to eat out on the plains.”

This sounded like a ridiculous proposal to Lanthe, but Kagu said, “Yes, sir,” seemingly unbothered.

He and Rendai unhooked Cloud and Fidget from the wagon, adjusted their tack for riding, and mounted up. Lanthe had thought these men clumsy on foot, their movements lacking discipline and power. In the saddle, they were transformed. She watched with fascination and a little envy as Kagu sank into Fidget’s saddle, and the two of them became one organism. For once, Cloud was more difficult than Fidget. Tairo’s good, loyal, Ro horse snorted and jerked faintly against the unfamiliar presence on her back. But after Rendai rode her in a few wide, calming circles around the wagon, she too settled.

“What is this?” Lanthe murmured as Cloud’s steps fell into rhythm with the subtle movements of her new rider.

“Treason,” Tairo hissed. “Mutiny.”

“I know,” Lanthe said honestly. “I’m feeling a little hurt.”

This was, of course, unreasonable. Horses responded to strong leadership, and no one mastered horses like the Yao.

The riders each carried a silk-strung bow and two quivers of red-fletched arrows—one across the back and one secured to the saddle behind the right hip.

“We’ll be back before sundown,” Kagu promised and galloped away with Rendai close behind.

As Lanthe watched them go, she realized where she had seen that effortless style of horsemanship before. And with the recognition, came a revelation as to how such soft people survived in such a harsh land. The Yao were descended from barbarians like the ones south of Ro. Yes, they had settled in this civilized era, grown complacent, and developed a love of arts and finery. But the hardy people who had founded their nation had been brutal, indomitable riders from the south. The first man to call himself King of Yao had grown up among wild herdsmen who rode wherever the wind and green grazing took them.

“They didn’t take our guns,” Lanthe observed as the riders vanished over the ridge with their stolen horses.

“Well, they don’t know how to use them,” Tairo said.

“They don’t need them,” Gwalo said indignantly.

Lanthe had scarcely seen a non-domesticated animal along their route so far. She had no idea how anyone was supposed to hunt game out here—without guns no less. Gwalo’s men returned within the hour bearing a sizable deer. The animal had been felled in two shots. One to the flank—presumably the one that had slowed it—and an impossibly perfect shot through the eye.

“No…” Lanthe whispered. “There’s no way.”

“They’re excellent mounted archers,” Tairo said. “Always have been.”

“And these people took a boat upriver to attack us on foot,” Lanthe said as Rendai slung the deer carcass from Cloud’s rump.

“To be fair, I think they saw their mage doing most of the work.”

“That is fair,” Lanthe said.

Gwalo allowed Lanthe and Tairo a share of the venison once it had cooked. Outside his undisciplined bursts of violence, he was a benevolent captor. To the point of incompetence, really. He rarely checked the security of the ropes, though Kagu periodically did this for him. He allowed the prisoners as many breaks as they asked to relieve themselves and then didn’t keep a close eye on them when they did.

Lanthe had always heard that Yao were fussier about modesty than their neighbors. She hadn’t expected this to extend to shyly averting their eyes while a prisoner took care of his business. In Ro, she had to tell her fellow soldiers that she had a deformity to justify the way she squatted to piss. Many men had suffered strange deformities from pox, making the excuse common enough to be believed and shameful enough that no one would ever press to verify. Apparently, no such cover was necessary in Yao, where it seemed that men were too ashamed to look at each other’s bodies at all.

“They are so lucky we’re not trying to escape,” Lanthe muttered after the dozenth time Gwalo had them tossed back into the wagon without double checking their restraints.

The land stayed rough over the next two days. Patches were slightly greener, and there, farms crammed together to squeeze every bit of sustenance from the halfway workable soil.

“Is all of Yao like this?” Lanthe asked Tairo. “Flat, and sad, and brown?

“It’s amazing that they scraped a kingdom out of such a place, isn’t it?” Tairo said.

“I suppose…” Lanthe certainly couldn’t imagine trying to farm on land like this, and she had been a good farmer in her childhood. “But they must have other lands–better lands–within their borders?” Ro had its rough patches too, like the southern plains that Yansey guarded, but the desolate stretches always ran out within a few days’ riding.

Tairo’s hair shifted against hers as he shook his head. “The land across the country is poor for most everything but grazing herds. They make some of their money from trade—being the only kingdom of the Ten that allows trade with southern herdsmen, but other than that… I suppose they have the one ocean port on Kailong Bay. But that has to compete for overseas trade with the Medyan port city at the mouth and the Ro port—well, you know the one. You grew up near there, didn’t you?”

“A day’s walk inland, my lord, but yes.”

As a child, Lanthe had had little context for the port city near her home nor the foreign ones that stood across the bay. She had never thought of the three ports as competing for trade across the Middle Sea. Why should she? Ro’s port was the largest, the busiest, the only one that mattered.

“I mean, if you’re committed to your skepticism and maintain that Sunsai never raised those ridges on the Yao border, this is why Ro never pressed further west. The land simply isn’t worth the effort. The modern-day capital is the only really attractive territory Yao has to offer, and Zengar’s successor decided that even Kaisia still wasn’t worth the bloodshed.”

“What’s special about Kaisia?” Lanthe asked. After so long staring at sad, brown land, it was hard to picture what a healthy Yao town would even look like—let alone a city.

“Kaisia is bounded by mines rich in gemstones to the south and mines rich in gold to the north. Also, it sits atop the only large spring in the region.”

“Oh.” Ro had many springs but few mines. Their steel came from either Medyan or the mountain kingdoms in the north. For the most part, they did not care for gems.

“It does make you respect the Yao, in a way,” Tairo mused with the creaking of the wagon. “Think about how sparse settlements became on the edge of Ro as the quality of the soil deteriorated. These people don’t have our resources. They never have. Yet here they are. Despite their reputation for softness.”

“Alright, my lord,” Lanthe said, unsettled by the wistful note in Tairo’s voice—a note she had never heard him fake successfully. “Hush and save some treason for the princess.”

It was noon on the third day when they reached Kaisia. The fields were the first sign that something was changing. The crops here were healthier than the struggling plots out in the grassland. Golden wheat whispered in the breeze in neat squares, sustaining a density of farmers Lanthe hadn’t seen in days. Bare feet and straw sandals slapped the earth as children ran to the roadside to watch the wagon go by, their eyes screwed up against the sun, rosy godmarks smudged with dirt and shining with sweat. Lanthe had marveled at the roadside like that once, mesmerized by passing soldiers. She nearly smiled at the children before remembering that these were enemy children—and baring her bloody teeth at them would probably just give them nightmares.

Gwalo shooed the gawkers off in annoyance when they had accumulated too densely for his liking. “Back, now!” He scolded. “Go on, brats! Scram!” And the little ones went scattering back through the wheat.

“That was mean, Captain,” Kagu said and nodded apologetically to a farmer woman as her sons ran to cower behind her skirt. “They’re just children.”

“Dirty children,” Gwalo said as though mud wouldn’t stick to him the same as it did a commoner.

A city rose from the wheat ahead—first its blood-red banners, then its outer wall of pale stone, as thick as Ro’s utilitarian walls but more ornate, trimmed with gold in places to match the wheat.

Lanthe didn’t know why she had thought that the Yao capital would be small. Ro’s capital, Jundao, was so vast that she hadn’t been able to close her mouth for a day after passing its stone gates. To her, Jundao had always been the pinnacle of human achievement, the hub on which the rest of the world turned. The idea of other such cities disrupted the balance of that wheel. It made the world too big to balance on the axle of Lanthe’s understanding, turned it from a wheel to a machine with many gears, rolling and snagging on one another.

“The soil is better here, and the vegetation hangs on year-round thanks to the spring,” Tairo said. “The native Yaosa uncovered it back when this place was still a lawless wasteland. The spring is the reason the first Yao dynasty set up a capital here after conquering the natives—long before any mines were discovered.”

Of course, Tairo understood this world of many wheels. Lanthe supposed that comprehending all those gears well enough to turn them was the business of kings and generals. Not a peasant soldier from Heba.

“Lie down,” Gwalo ordered as they neared the outer gates.

“Excuse me?” Tairo said.

“I said, lie down, general’s son. Folks in the capital aren’t fond of Ro. If you don’t want rocks thrown at you, you’ll stay low in that wagon and keep quiet.”

That was fair enough, Lanthe decided and tugged at Tairo, easing him into the bottom of the wagon with her. When they were down, Gwalo’s men pulled a cover over them, making them indiscernible from a pile of supplies. Lanthe let her head rest on the wood at a relatively comfortable angle and watched the fields pass through a crack between the boards.

“Do you think what he says is true?” she asked in a low voice beneath the blanket.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think the people of Kaisia would throw rocks at us? Or is Gwalo just trying to protect his bounty from higher-ranked officials who might take it from him?”

“Does it matter?” Tairo asked.

“Yes,” Lanthe said, but it was more to herself than Tairo, and he probably didn’t hear anyway as the wagon bumped over the packed road.

It mattered how the people in the princess’s capital felt. Their collective mood spoke to the health of her rule—especially knowing how she had alienated great swathes of the nobility. If the common folk weren’t on her side, what did she have in the way of support? If anti-Ro sentiment was significant in the heart of Yao, perhaps Yelhwa did have supporters in this incomprehensible military campaign she’d started. Gwalo’s men had been eager enough to beat on Lanthe, but had that been specifically because she was Ro? Or just the pent-up energy typical of ill-trained men stuck at an unrewarding post? While Gwalo wore his frustrations on his sleeve, his men were more reserved and harder to read. Did the common people of the capital really hate Ro enough to pelt them with rocks? Or were they more focused on the rule of this new maniac, who was dragging them into an unnecessary war?

Had she been a little less injured, Lanthe would have wanted to sit up and see for herself. But pulling Tairo’s weight up with her bruised body didn’t seem prudent, so she settled for observing the passing scenery through her little sliver in the side of the wagon.

Like any large city, Kaisia was a vibrant, garish tapestry of scents. The moment the wagon rolled through the gates into the shadow of Kaisia’s wall, the smells of human civilization overwhelmed Lanthe. Cooking smokes of all kinds—some cloying, some mouthwatering, some pulling at nostalgia too distant for Lanthe to name. The sizzling meats and incenses were subtly different from Ro’s—more lamb than pork, more jasmine than ginger, more orange than vinegar. Of course, in any city, the smell of urine was the same.

Lanthe’s view of Kaisia was strange as the wagon bumped from dirt to stone roads toward the palace. She didn’t see faces unless the people were far away, enjoying sweets in an open teahouse or pushing a cart down an adjacent road. Most people they passed were cut off at the shoulders, reduced to an outfit and a pair of hands. Street cooks’ hands dribbling blood as they cut meat for their customers, merchants’ hands exchanging a mixture of jade Yao-Bayin currency and the metal tower-shield pieces used in the rest of the Ten Kingdoms. The only Yao Lanthe saw up close in their entirety through that ground-level crack were small children. And it was there, at the eye-level of the children that the Yao capital became something bizarre. Something unprecedented.

First, it was a one-legged beggar boy, sitting before his coin bowl with a slate propped on the stump of his missing leg, mouthing his way through lines. Reading? Then Lanthe noticed three more common children—girls—clustered around a similar tablet, the eldest pointing to the characters and explaining them to her younger companions. Another pair of children practiced their characters in the dirt, sticks poised in their hands like brushes, black eyes bright with concentration.

Lord Hyonang and Captain Gwalo had both complained that Yelhwa was opening the art of Old Yao literacy to those outside the royal bloodline. Lanthe hadn’t imagined that initiative would have made its way down to the lowest members of society so quickly.

“Do you see them, Captain?” Tairo had turned his head sideways, toward the floor of the wagon, so that he was audible to Lanthe but not through the cover above. “There are so many.”

“Most of them won’t have the talent,” Lanthe said in an attempt to calm Tairo—or perhaps to calm herself. “They’re only commoners. Most of them will be like me.”

“You didn’t start young,” Tairo said. “That makes all the difference.”

Lanthe wanted to disagree but realized that he was right. Her eldest brother, Lantao, had walked three hours to school in the next town each morning when he was a boy. He had stopped after he could read well enough to help their father with the ledgers, which had barely taken him a season. Children of Lanthe’s breeding could learn characters—quickly—if their kingdom and community gave them the means. And these Yao youngsters scratching their characters in the sand weren’t just the sons of wealthy merchants and farmers. Beggar children with nothing else to call their own were on these streets clutching the same tablets as the children of the butchers, shop owners, and landlords.

“Sir!” A child so skinny and grimy Lanthe couldn’t say whether it was a girl or a boy ran up beside the wagon. “Sir! Riches for Yao?”

“We don’t have time,” Gwalo snapped with his usual callousness.

“Captain,” the voice Lanthe now knew well as Kagu’s protested. “It’s the royal order—”

“I said we don’t have time to slow down for every little rat and leech who needs a meal.”

“You heard him, boy—child? Whatever you are,” Kagu said briskly. “Keep up.”

“Thank you, sir!” the urchin chirped, and Lanthe heard their little feet speed up alongside the wagon.

“Now,” Kagu said, “show me fire.” A pause. “Show me sky.” Another pause. “And… show me, um… frog.”

“Frog?” Rendai chuckled from the other side of the wagon.

“Quiet, you,” Kagu said defensively. “I didn’t grow up with this any more than you did.”

“Was that right, sir?” the urchin asked, breathless.

“Hell if I know. Captain?” Kagu asked. “Did the strokes look good to you?”

“Sure,” Gwalo grumbled, as surly as Lanthe had ever heard him. “Whatever.”

“Wonderful.” Kagu’s voice warmed. “Here you are, then.” Something clinked and changed hands.

“Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

“Thank you for enriching your country,” Kagu said. “Glory to Yao.”

“Glory to Yao!” the little voice called back. As the wagon left the child at the roadside, Lanthe just glimpsed a jade coin clasped in grubby fingers.

That exceptionally dirty child was the first of more than a dozen to approach Gwalo’s party in the hopes of “enriching Yao.” Kagu tried to humor them all, though his captain slowed the wagon for no one. As another pair of ragged children called their thanks after the soldiers, the wagon hit a bump, and Lanthe remembered the shockwave that had breached Yansey’s gates.

Every one of these children was now a potential graphemancer.

“Heaven help us,” Tairo breathed at her back.

Perhaps, it wouldn’t be hard to feign investment in Tairo’s pretend reason for defection. Perhaps, this was the fighting force of the future.

The ground had smoothed to flat stone beneath the wagon when a voice barked “halt!” and they lurched to a stop. The cover jerked off the wagon, and Lanthe was momentarily blinded by the full sun. While her eyes were still adjusting, Gwalo’s men hauled her and Tairo from the wagon. Still tied together, the two Ro stumbled. They should have fallen but they knew each other’s movements through years of training together, fighting together, limping through fields of bodies together, and they stayed on their feet.

Even as Lanthe’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, she found that the world was still unusually bright. A pale stone wall loomed before them—taller than the city’s outer wall and utterly pristine. Four guards stood before a pair of golden doors. Palace guards, marked by their black headbands and crisp red uniforms. These guards held themselves better than the soldiers from the border. Their weapons were in better condition, their movements more disciplined.

“State your business,” one of them said.

“We captured the son of General Chang Shuro at the Ro border,” Gwalo said, and Lanthe found his wording a little amusing. As though there had been a struggle. “We’re here to turn him over to the judgment of Princess Yelhwa.”

“This is Chang Shuro’s son?”

“Yes, sir.”

The palace guard scoffed. “And I’m the King of Daraxes.”

“Yuhan,” another guard muttered to him, “look at his face.”

“What about it?”

“He is good-looking… incredibly so. Isn’t one of General Chang Shuro’s sons supposed to be legendarily handsome? The useless older one?”

“Excuse me!” Tairo said. “I can understand you!”

After a closer look at Tairo’s face and his seal, the guards’ skepticism seemed to wane. Their smiles faded to serious whispers, and one of them left, presumably to consult a superior.

“Wait here, Captain,” one of the remaining guards told Gwalo. “Once we have verified this man’s identity, you will have your reward and the thanks of Her Excellency, Princess Yelhwa.”

“Her Excellency?” Tairo murmured under his breath. Lanthe, who was less familiar with royal titles—especially Yao ones—took a moment to catch up. That title was usually reserved for a reigning king, never an interim ruler. Never a woman.

The head guard must have been fairly sure of Tairo’s identity already, because he motioned two of the others forward to cut Tairo from the ropes that bound him to Lanthe. She breathed a little easier as the rope across her chest slipped free, though her hands stayed bound behind her.

“But I see that you’ve brought two prisoners,” the guard called Yuhan said as his fellows cut the ropes around Tairo’s wrist and replaced them with manacles. “Not just the alleged Lord Chang Tairo.” His attention shifted to Lanthe. “Who is this man?”

“A criminal for execution.” Gwalo’s hands closed on Lanthe’s shoulders. “The Mage Slayer, Luyang Lanthe of Ro.”

“The Mage Slayer?” the palace guard repeated in surprise and turned to Tairo. “Is this true, Ro?”

“It is, sir,” Tairo said. “This is Captain Luyang Lanthe, my—”

“I understand that the Mage Slayer was wanted dead or alive?” Gwalo cut him off.

“He was,” Yuhan confirmed.

“Perfect,” Gwalo said with a little too much satisfaction. “We only kept him alive so that General Chang’s son would cooperate. I’ll see that this animal is taken to the prison square for public execution.”

“No! Wait!” Tairo shouted.

“Be still!” ordered one of the palace guards.

Tairo, only halfway into his chains, crashed the open end of the manacle into the nearest guard’s head. When the next guard tried to raise his spear, Tairo caught the shaft in the end of his chain, tangling it, and smashed an elbow across the man’s face. Considering that he had spent the last three days as stiff as she had and his arm was barely healed, Lanthe was proud of his speed. He might not be Tenro, but he was still Ro enough that it took three more guards to subdue him. Touchingly, he made a valiant attempt to get back up, even with five men on top of him.

“Luyang Lanthe stays with me!”

Heedless of Tairo’s protests, Yuhan nodded for Gwalo to take Lanthe away. She didn’t resist as the soldiers from the border threw her roughly back into the wagon. There would be a time for countermeasures, but it wasn’t now, restrained and surrounded by enemies.

“Wait!” she heard Tairo roaring as the wagon wheels ground into motion again. “Wait!”

They had planned for this eventuality on the road to the capital, as they had planned for many eventualities. But the genuine strain of panic in Tairo’s voice suggested that he hadn’t thought they would really take Lanthe away for execution. Lanthe, on the other hand, had been playing this scenario in her head for three days now.

She was calm as she lay on her back, watching the sky pass. Gwalo and Rendai had thrown her carelessly over the weapons pile before letting the momentum roll her further into the wagon. There had been a moment for her to eye the fall and angle her body where she wanted it to go, then a moment for her fingers to find what they needed. She didn’t just have a plan now.

She had Tairo’s gun.

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