Sòng Lián looked to her peoples, the survivors of a brutal conquest who carried with them their individual heritages. So much had been lost in war, in the iron rule of the imperial family throughout the dynasties, and yet so much still existed today, before her eyes. She remembered, then, the words of a boy beneath a soft fall of rain that had carried her tears away long ago.So long as we live on, we carry inside us all that they have destroyed. And that is our triumph; that is our rebellion. Do not let them win today.
It was a shame that neither of them would live to see it.
“Yes,” Lan said, recalling a phrase the masters at the School of the White Pines had used, a phrase to describe the multitudes of clans and cultures that bloomed in their kingdom. “The land of ten thousand flowers.”
—
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, like the calm before a storm. They talked through the details of the plan, dividing up the disciples and the masters to form teams of equal ability.
Lan left the strategizing to Dilaya and the masters. She needed a quiet place to practice conjuring the Godslayer with the new knowledge of the intent behind the Seal. As she searched for an empty chamber, she found herself breathing in, relishing the way the cold pierced her lungs. She’d missed this, the northern cold. The winters that swept over the lands, ferocious and unforgiving, taking the old and dying of the past cycle and birthing it anew when spring bloomed.
Snow like goose feathers.The northerners had such a saying. She remembered Mama outlined against the fretwork windows of their study, opening them to the winter air.Do not shy away, Lián’ér,she’d said.Breathe it in. This is the beauty and might of our kingdom, and we are children of this land. We must fight to protect it all.
Lan wiped a hand against her cheek. Unknowingly, her feet had brought her to her mother’s study. She stepped through the circular moon gate, remembering how her mother had ridden back that day on the tides of the end of the world. The snow had been falling thickly, and Lan had been in Mama’s study memorizing poems.
The study bore signs of violence. Its fretwork doors had been slashed and broken—
—pale-faced soldiers clad in metal stomping past—
—the shelves and rosewood desk had been overturned; row upon row of scrolls and paper tomes had vanished, likely looted by the Elantians and taken away to study—
—swords flashing as the men bore down upon her mother, alone with naught but a woodlute—
—splatters of faded blood in the floorboards and against the walls—
—her mother’s beating heart held in the hand of the Winter Magician. Blood, blooming as bright as poppies—
Lan cut off those memories. A gleam on the floor caught her eye. She knelt and picked up a piece of shattered porcelain. She recognized it intimately: the snow camellias glazed on the surface in blue, the inside still stained black after all these years. It was her mother’s favorite inkpot, and Lan had spent bells every day staring at it as she sat with her tutors in the study. It would not have had much value to those searching the place for food, clothes, or treasures to pawn off.
When she flipped it over in her hand, her breath caught. Engraved on the bottom in neat Hin calligraphy was an inscription—a dedication:
For Sòng Méi: may our threads meet one day where the snow camellias bloom.
Shen Tài’héng
She knew this calligraphy—had read books and essays written with it back at the school.Dé’zihad gifted this inkpot to her mother. And he had signed it with his truename, for“Dé’zi”—meaning “disciple of virtue”—was only a personal title. Once, it had been tradition for all Hin to take on personal titles when they crossed into adulthood.
“Tài’héng,” she whispered. The name of a father she had barely known.
She tucked the piece of inkpot into her belt, perhaps as a token of good luck. Then she sat down at her mother’s desk, marveling in the knowledge that her parents had once lived and loved in this house, that she had belonged to a family and had a home.
She closed her eyes and pulled the memory of the Godslayer Seal into the front of her mind. Going over each stroke felt like falling through dynasties and eras of time and history; now that she knew of the origins of the Demon Gods and the true intent of the Godslayer, the story of the Seal came to her slowly but fully.
It was late afternoon by the time she returned to the main courtyard. Taub and a few others were in the kitchens preparing supper; smoke wafted up into the twilit sky, and the courtyard was filled with the scent of tofu stew, steamed vegetables, and mántou dough buns. Lan sat with her friends and swapped stories of their childhoods, of their days at Skies’ End, of what they would do and places they would visit and things they would eat after all this was over.
When the sun hung above the distant horizon like a swollen mandarin and the air began to cool, Lan stood. The fire had grown low in the furnace; a Seal had been conjured in the kitchens to capture its heat, and most of the younger disciples were gathered around the warmth, napping. Shàn’jun had settled against a kitchen wall, leaning against Tai’s shoulder. The Spirit Summoner’s expression softened as he took the Medicine disciple’s hand in his; his eyes glimmered gold as he watched the fire.
In an adjacent room, Dilaya and a group of Shaklahiran warriors were bent over the map, still discussing strategy withMaster Nur and the Nameless Master. They looked up when Lan approached and fell silent when they saw her expression.
“Well,” she said, managing a smile to hide the sudden numbness in her chest. “It’s time.”
She was aware of when Shàn’jun and Tai came in the room to join them. The Medicine disciple’s face had paled. “Lan’mèi—”
“You know the plan,” she said to Dilaya, cutting off whatever Shàn’jun had meant to say. She dared not look at his face for fear that her heart might soften and she would grow afraid, or reluctant. “Infiltrate the Heavenly Palace, negotiate the Elantians’ surrender. If all fails on my end”—she drew a shaky breath—“eliminate the leadership of the Elantian government.”
“We will be right behind you, Sòng Lián,” said the Master of the Light Arts. He forced a smile as he looked around the room. “The time has come to see which of these disciples paid attention in my classes for so many cycles.”
“Better prepare yourself, old man,” Chue said, grinning. Beneath it, though, Lan could see an undercurrent of fear. “I’m young and limber and ready to beat you to the capital.”
