As the others left with Dilaya, Lan continued through the courtyard house alone. The silence was the most discomfiting part of being back: she kept expecting to hear the laughter of maids as they hurried along the gardens with trays of tea and fruits, the soft-spoken instruction of her tutors mingling with chirps of cicadas beneath a summer sky, the strum of her mother’s woodlute as it unspooled a melody beneath the moon.
Now all their bones lay deep in the ground.
The mesh screens had been slashed, chunks of doors ripped out by swords. Save for the heavy wooden furniture, the entire place had been looted, shelves upturned and fragments of smashed porcelain glittering on the rosewood floors. Whatever trinkets and smaller items the Elantians had not taken, desperate Hin had scavenged later.
When Lan returned to the main courtyard, the air was rippling with the qì of Seals. Dilaya’s group had woven a strong Boundary Seal over the place, mixed with a variety of defensive Seals. The cooks had located the kitchens and started a fire, dusting off the clay pots and rooting through the supplies they had brought from Shaklahira to whip up a meal for everybody. Tables in the great dining room adjacent to the kitchens had been swept clean; someone had conjured Light Seals that drifted near the walls, bathing the place in a gentle glow. Soon, everyone was gratefully sipping on hot congee to warm their frozen fingers and toes while they waited for the sun to rise.
When the first light of day began to seep into the sky, there was a disturbance in the qì outside the gates of the courtyard. Lan pressed a hand to her chest, where Zen’s silver amulet rested against her heart. It had grown warm.
Zen.
She stood and made for the courtyard gates, swiping a fú for a light as she ran. Behind her, she heard Dilaya unsheathe Falcon’s Claw and Tai’s heavy footsteps as he, too, followed. Lan knew it was impossible: Zen had told her he would send the disciples and masters to her through a Gate Seal. This wasn’t him; the Seal on his amulet was only responding to the presence of his qì—
She burst through the front doors, lifting her fú high over her head. Light spilled across the snow-covered ground, reaching all the way to the forest of bamboo that had grown close around her house.
Nothing.
And then…movement. From here, she could make out silhouettes emerging from between the bamboo. Then someone familiar stepped into the light of her fú.
“Wow,” said the disciple, his cheeks glowing red with cold. “You weren’t lying when you told us you were a noble lady!”
“Chue?” Lan exclaimed. The kind-faced Archery disciple had been one of the first people to befriend her at the school.
Through the bamboo, she could see a group of people emerging. The dim lighting made it difficult to discern their faces, but that was before a familiar voice called out: “Lan’mèi! Lan’mèi!”
There was only one person she knew who still used martial titles to refer to their friends. Lan was about to respond when someone pushed past her.
It was the first time Lan had seen Tai sprint. The Spirit Summoner’s sleepy scowl had been replaced by an expression of utter disbelief, followed by sheer joy, his wavy locks trailing behind him as he barreled down the stone steps toward Shàn’jun. The Medicine disciple laughed as Tai scooped him into his arms, spun him several times, and kissed him.
Shàn’jun’s face, too, radiated happiness when they broke apart; his eyes glistened as he pressed a gentle hand to Tai’s cheeks before turning to Lan.
Lan flung her arms around her friend. “We thought you were gone,” she whispered to him, blinking back tears.
“Zen’ge saved me,” he said. “He saved everybody here.”
It was nearly surreal to see her friends and the other disciples from the School of the White Pines whole and hale andalive.Yet as Lan ushered them into the safety of her home and greeted her former classmates, she couldn’t help but glance behind them. In the darkness that led into the forest and away from the light of the lanterns, there was the faintest ripple of qì where a seam to the Gate Seal had just closed. Zen’s amulet grew cold against her skin.
Among the group were Master Nur of the Light Arts and the Nameless Master of Assassins. They were the only two masters who had survived the battle at Skies’ End, forDé’zihad tasked them with evacuating the disciples of the schoolthrough a back exit just before the Elantian invasion. As they made their way into the main courtyard, where the group from Shaklahira was gathered, Lan listened to them recount their journey.
The new additions to their party were introduced to the former Shaklahira court members, and very soon, the new arrivals were seated in the warmth of the dining room with bowls of congee and steaming dishes of tofu and salted cabbage soup. Tai and Shàn’jun sat close together, their hands intertwined, murmuring to each other. It had been a long while since Lan had seen such easy contentment on the Spirit Summoner’s countenance.
As dawn turned to day, they set about forming a battle plan. Dilaya had turned the living room and foyer into a war room: A map spilled over the long mahogany table where her mother’s guests had once gathered. Weapons brought from Shaklahira had been piled in a corner cabinet where the household’s brooms and mops had stood.
Lan played the star maps again for the two masters, who easily derived the location of the Azure Tiger: Erascius had returned to the Heavenly Capital already—perhaps by a Gate Seal easily conjured with his new powers.
They would move out at dusk, entering the city under cover of night. Lan would arrive first as a decoy, drawing the attention of Erascius and the Royal Magicians to her while teams led by Master Nur, the Nameless Master, and Dilaya infiltrated the Heavenly Palace and forced the surrender of the high governor.
“I will use the Godslayer against the Azure Tiger, to deal the greatest blow to the Elantian regime,” Lan said. She had not told them of the part of the strategy that involved Zen, his Demon God, and the army of demonic practitioners. If all went according to the plan Zen had drawn up, she wouldn’t have to;the scene would come off as another Mansorian binder of a Demon God losing control, unleashing demonic practitioning upon the Heavenly Capital—and she, Sòng Lián, would conjure the Godslayer to end it all. The savior of the people.
So the stories would go.
“Erascius is one of their highest-ranking Royal Magicians,” Lan continued. “The Elantians have been in a race against us to locate the Demon Gods. If we take down the one they have, we will force them to their knees and be in a position to force their surrender.”
When Lan finished, Taub, the School of the White Pines’ cook and Chue’s mother, let out a muffled sob. Tears streamed down her face as she held a few of the youngest disciples to her, gathering them about her páo and the rough-spun apron that was a near-permanent fixture.
“A kingdom free of conquest,” Taub whispered. “A land where my son and I may speak the tongue of our native clan and celebrate its customs without persecution.”
Lan was aware of Tai watching her through the gleam of his gold-rimmed eyes, Shàn’jun smiling gently by his side; her gaze sweeping farther out, she spotted Dilaya leaning against the trunk of a wilted willow, arm crossed over her chest and resting on the hilt of her sword. The matriarch of the Jorshen Steel clan gave Lan a nod of approval.
