The Heavenly Capital was nearly just as Lan remembered it from the times she’d visited with Mama in her childhood. Over the temples and pagodas and intricate rosewood fretwork of Hin buildings, the Elantians had hung their flags; here and there, they had erected their metal-and-stone structures.
At this bell, the streets were decently crowded, providing Lan cover as she wound through them. Walking felt laboriously slow, but using the Light Arts would have given her away immediately.
As she passed through streets ablaze with lantern light, Lan felt as though she had returned to a shadow of her old self—when the war had felt so distant and vast. Music and laughter drifted from the windows of winehouses that served as restaurants and entertainment hubs for the rich and the connected. Lan wondered which songgirl spun onstage tonight.
She turned to the roads that led directly to the Imperial Palace. She remembered it as a brightly lit building with multistory golden roofs that curved to the heavens themselves,vermilion pillars and walls encrusted with jade and lapis lazuli. Now a marble Elantian façade had been erected before it, its stone-and-metal pillars swallowing the original. Only the curving terracotta roofs still jutted out through the Elantian architecture, and those, too, had been cast entirely in silver.
A banner waved at her from one of the lampposts the Elantians had erected to lend their alchemical light to the city. Depicted on the banner, against a silver background, was a magnificent blue tiger intertwined with a white-armored, white-winged Elantian soldier. No, not a soldier, Lan realized, studying the figure’s face more closely. The high governor hadhad the arrogance to have his own face painted onto the banners.
The star maps had not lied: the Azure Tiger was here, in this city.
She lifted her gaze to the columns of identical blue banners lining either side of the road to the palace square.
A shock coursed through her.
The vast square beneath the palace was crowded with Elantian soldiers, their metal armor catching the early evening light as they milled about, drinks and food in hand courtesy of the vendor stalls set up around the periphery. A large fountain glittered in their midst, the lotuses and yuan’yáng ducks and cranes it had once been filled with replaced by a marble statue of the Elantian king.
Looking more closely, Lan spotted figures wearing metal bands on their wrists weaving through the crowds.
Royal Magicians.
Lan touched the hilt of her dagger. She and Zen had been right: Erascius had bound the Azure Tiger and he had returned to the capital city. What they hadn’t anticipated was that the high governor would host some form of festivities or a gathering tonight, of all nights. This was more forces than Lan andZen had prepared for: judging by the sheer number of people, it seemed as though all the Royal Magicians and soldiers stationed at nearby towns had been summoned to the capital city for tonight’s celebration.
Lan touched a hand to her clavicle, where the amulet Zen had gifted her lay cold. It was too late to make any changes to the plan. All she could do was wait.
The sky was almost completely dark now; beyond the city, over the distant mountains that rimmed the capital like guardians, storm clouds brewed. The Elantians’ alchemical lamps flicked on, casting a golden pool of light onto the square. At the very center, a path from the palace gates had been cleared.
By nightfall, Dilaya, Master Nur, the Nameless Master, and the disciples skilled enough to fight would have entered the city and likely be stationed somewhere in the vicinity, waiting for Lan to make the first move.
She touched her amulet again.
Zen was late.
Trumpets blared. In the square, a thunderous cheer arose as the palace gates drew open. Four lines of soldiers marched out, followed by a squadron of Royal Magicians suited in elaborate armor made of what Lan assumed to be the particular combination of metals each could wield.
Alloys,she thought. Magicians with the ability to control more than one metal—which rendered them exceptionally powerful.
Behind them, astride a magnificent black stallion, rode the high governor: a nondescript man of average height and build, his flesh made fair and soft with the luxuries that life had granted him. The jewels on his scepter flashed as he waved to the roaring crowd.
But Lan’s gaze sharpened as she caught sight of the person riding behind him.
Erascius’s blond-white hair had grown longer. A blue tiger’s head had been engraved on the front of his armor. He, too, held a scepter, his decorated solely with sapphires. The high governor was showing him off, anointing the binder of the Azure Tiger as the crown jewel of their empire.
The high governor’s parade had drawn to a stop; he was speaking. Metal plates around the square amplified his voice, and Lan caught snatches of Elantian words.
“…Blue Tiger…Demon God…in our power. Royal Magician Erascius…demonstrate its might.”
A show—they were going to put on ashow.
Lan’s hand went to her ocarina. Surely, Erascius knew the type of bargain he’d made and that frivolous use of the Demon God’s power endangered everybody. Tonight, the Elantians tested the gods.
Hurry, Zen.
Erascius dismounted and stalked to the edge of the fountain. The crowd fell utterly silent. For a moment, there was nothing but the whistle of wind through the streets, the collective breaths held as the magician lifted his arms.
Demonic qì pulsed from him, shattering the stillness. There were a few cries from the crowd—even people without a connection to qì would feel something of the overwhelming yin energies.
The water of the fountain was spiraling into the air, the streams unfurling toward the sky. Then they exploded into a hundred thousand droplets that shimmered like stars, gathering into the form of a great tiger the size of the entire palace. Its eyes glowed cerulean, and before the crowds who watched it with awe, it opened its maw and let out a roar that shook the entire city.
