Plum blossoms, too, Mama had said, were symbols of courage and persistence, for the way they bloomed through the thickest winter snows.
That had been a lie. Winter was here again. Yet Mama was gone.
—
Lan jolted awake. She lay very still for a moment, trying to hold on to the dream slipping from her grasp. To her mother’s voice, which she hadn’t heard in twelve long cycles; to the name she’d had a lifetime ago.
The dream was dissipating like mist in the sun, but something remained: a song she’d heard in the space between sleep and wakefulness. The melody had beckoned to her like a phantom in the dark. As though someone were calling out to her.
Wind brushed her cheeks, grass tickled her feet, and the chirps of cicadas and hum of forest life surrounded her. The air was damp with the chill of morning dew and rain-soaked earth.
Overhead, bamboo leaves framed a sliver of sky caught in the liminal space between night and dawn, dark and light—a scene she struggled to place for several moments. She’d always awakened at sunrise to the low slatted ceiling of the Teahouse, the soft breaths of Ying by her side, the warmth of twenty or so other bodies clustered around.
Like a string snapping, the harmony of the forest broke. Memories of last night rushed back.
The Winter Magician, eyes as vivid as she remembered them from twelve cycles ago.
Madam Meng’s silhouette against the gauze screen, falling amidst embroidered patterns of flowers and mountains and laughing songgirls.
And Ying—
Lan sat up abruptly, her throat making a sharp noise as she drew in breath. The pain of the thought had her clap a hand to her breast—and she caught sight of the mangled flesh on her wrist beneath the torn sleeves of her páo. Her scar—herSeal—a pale slash of puckered flesh against the streaks of silver coating her veins. And then, atop it, a new Seal of black wreathed in crimson, the strokes rippling like fire.
The practitioner.
Zen.
The clearing was empty. Lan scrambled to her feet, her heart slamming against her chest as she looked around for any signs that he’d been here. That she hadn’t imagined what had happened last night. It felt too good to be true.
Lan wrapped her arms around herself. The fabric her fingers gathered was unfamiliar.
She looked down and realized she was still in his black coat, the sleeves hanging long from her shoulders. The practitioner had given it to her because the Angels had ripped her páo down the back seam.
She drew the coat tighter around her, thumbing the fine material—jin, a refined silk once used by Hin nobility. The make was Elantian, with a high collar and a pinched waist with loops that might have fit a sleek samite belt. She hesitated before dipping her head and touching her nose to the collar. Beneath the smells of grass and bamboo were hints of acrid smoke and incense…and an undoubtedly masculine scent.
“Good morning.”
Lan jumped. Zen stepped out from between the stalks of bamboo. He looked well rested and impossiblyclean,hair wet and combed into some semblance of style, skin scrubbed of sweat and dirt and as shiny as pale jade. Even without his long coat, he was a regal sight in a white shirt tucked into blackbreeches. He’d removed his boots, and his bare feet made no sound as he approached.
“Breakfast,” he said, holding out two orange persimmons as he approached. “We should move. My Gate Seal transported us to the Jade Forest. It’s a distance from Haak’gong, but I don’t want to risk Elantian scouts picking up our trail.”
Lan took one of the fruits. “Where will we go?” she asked. In the predawn light, the persimmon suddenly looked too bright, toonormal,next to the mangled mess of her arm. How was it that such beautiful, ordinary things could continue to exist at a time when her entire world had been upended?
Zen paused, his eyes flicking over her as though in assessment. “Northwest,” he said at last, “toward the Central Plains, where the Elantians’ grasp is weakest.”
The Central Plains. Lan had heard stories of the vast, sprawling lands constituting most of the Last Kingdom. The Elantians had easily conquered the more populated coastal regions; the central area remained a mystery for them and for most of the Hin, too. The Central Plains, along with the ShuBasinlands and the Northern Steppes, were described in the stories and myths as territories that the clans had once occupied—including the legendary Nightslayer’s Mansorian clan.
“Isn’t it haunted?” she blurted. Old Wei had spoken often of how supposedly, after the Ninety-Nine Clan Massacre, vast swathes of land had become haunted with the spirits of clan practitioners, from empty deserts that howled like mourning widows to fir forests where ghosts roamed.
Old Wei.
Another piercing pain spasmed through her chest. Lan squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.Focus. Focus on the task at hand.
Surviving.
“Indeed,” Zen said distractedly. He was strapping on his boots, and Lan caught the glimmer of a blade tucked into bindings on his shin. “Nothing I cannot deal with.”
She stared at him. “Is there anywhere else we can go? Is the cure for my armonlyto be found…out…out there in the Central Plains?”
