“Inclinations and deductions aside, I did, of course, come prepared. This cuff is made from a metal we call copper. Highly conductive of energy, which runs through the human body while we live. A type of qì.” He paused, glancing at her to make sure she followed. “The engraving on the cuff is a spell Ihave cast, which connects it to copper plates my soldiers wear. Should I die, the spell will cease to exist; my army will know I am gone. And those soldiers and other magicians I have stationed throughout Nakkar in the past day will destroy every last life in the city. And they will not stop. We will burn this land to its roots until there is nothing left.”
His words pierced Lan with cold. “Youmonster,” she whispered.
“I suppose that is what all without power might think of those with,” Erascius mused. “Your civilians, when they were slaughtered by what your people call ‘the Nightslayer.’ Your clans, when they were slain by your very own emperor. Your Imperial Army, when they were overtaken by us. It is the way of this world, Sòng Lián.”
She despised the way he pronounced her name—so nearly accurate that she wanted to rip out his tongue. She despised the way he spoke as though there was areasonbehind everything he and his people had done to her and hers. Most of all, she despised the way his words might have held a speck of truth.
Erascius’s eyes gleamed as he leaned closer to her.
“Well, my little singer? Will you play a tune for me today?”
He who makes decisions in the heat of emotion loses the war.
—General Haci Ulu Kercin of the Jorshen Steel clan,Classic of War
Her scent of lilies remained with him long after she was gone. It had been easy to conjure a Seal over the cut in his chest. Lan had aimed at his rib cage, at bone, and had dampened his connection to the Black Tortoise with the dagger known to temporarily sever demonic qì. The blade had come in contact with his qì, yet it hadn’t penetrated deeply enough to completely diminish it. Zen remembered training her with this very dagger, the feeling of her fingers in his as he’d brought the tip of it to his chest and told her not to miss.
She was the only one who didn’t need a blade to pierce his heart.
He crouched beneath the wall of a house, gulping down mouthfuls of cold night air. Head cradled in hands.
She hated him. Of course she did. He’d seen it in her eyes: hurt, fierce and unforgiving. He had wished never to see her cry, let alone be the reason she did. And he had wished never to hurt her.
Zen clenched his teeth and inhaled through them. He’dthought he had left everything behind, had thought he would be able to cut off his past and his emotions for the sake of the greater good—and gods, what evenwasthat anymore? But seeing her had been like cutting a wound open, over and over and over again. Kissing her had been a breath of air for a drowning man. And now the waters were closing in over his head and he was sinking.
He should never have come. What had he expected, seeking her out to ask for the Phoenix? He had betrayed her, had accidentally led the enemy to the home she’d come to love. Had killed the father she’d only just found.
A shift in the qì caught his attention, but it wasn’t the ominous press of metallic energies the Elantians gave off. No, it was a summoning. Someone was calling him, from the top of the Öshangma Light Mountain.
Zen stood. He could hear it, as faint as the whistle of wind: voices speaking his name.
Temurezen…Temurezen…
Gooseflesh pricked his skin.Aba,Zen thought.Amu.
Those were the voices of his parents. They spilled down with the faint moonlight that penetrated the clouds.
He followed the voices, pulled forward as though by an invisible line. Strange, how empty the streets had become in less than a half bell; the Elantian patrols were nowhere in sight, as though by some unseen command they had retreated for the night. There was also another strand of qì woven through the currents of the path he followed, like a weft in a tapestry. It was a qì all too familiar to him, one he’d sought to etch into his mind with the memories of a silver-bell laugh, a flash of silken black hair, a curve of bright eyes.
It wasn’t until he was past the clump of spruces and came upon the glimmering remnants of a Boundary Seal that Zenrealized something was wrong. The qì of the Seal lay strewn across the rocks like cobwebs. It had not been unlocked with the careful finesse of a practiced hand and a Counterseal—rather, it had been forced open and clumsily, violently torn apart where it would not yield.
That, and Zen now noticed another strand of qì cutting through the harmony of the night.
Metal.
No sooner had he identified it than energies exploded, cascading from the top of the mountain like an avalanche. In the eerie silence that had befallen Nakkar, Zen thought he heard someone screaming.
Lan.
He took off, air whistling past his ears, stars a blur overhead as he shot up the steps of the mountain. He could feel the qì coming to a crescendo; in that gale was a song, a familiar one that brought back memories. A village in the rain. A girl playing an ocarina, the light of stars reflecting in her eyes.
Zen crested the mountaintop. The sight nearly sent him to his knees.
By a cliff’s edge was Lan. Metal shackles snaked up her ankles and wrists, chained into the rock of the mountain. She played her ocarina, the light of the star maps casting the terror and tears on her face into sharp relief.
For a moment—just a moment—Zen stared at the star maps of the Four Demon Gods hovering above them. At the quadrant glowing vermilion, shimmering like flames imprinted in the sky. The great sweep of wings and tail that was the Crimson Phoenix.
And he noticed that the stars overhead had begun to coalesce with the ones in the star map.
