One more day, the captain said, we only need to hold one more day. He said it for ten days straight, so Xi's credulity was wearing thin. The reinforcements started to take on a mythological aspect as the days grew one into another, the tiring, cold days.

His first impressive displays of power gave way to a far less glorious task of probing the base of the walls for the tunnels that the demons's underlings dug with the persistence of moles. Xi collapsed them one by one, sometimes with his invisible opponents inside, their deaths bringing back the unpleasant memories of the light going out of the eyes of his first kill, the demon in the mountain village.

I am a war mage, I kill the enemies of the Empire.

He resumed his search of the holes in the solid ground, while the demons's energies and the bolts flew at him with an unerring precision. Qi attacks bounced off his shield, and the bolts bounced off the stone showering him with dust, but it tired him out worse than a migraine.

The unexpected whiff of flowering meadows touched his nostrils, making him smile despite the fatigue. Sayewa was on the wall. She sauntered over, ignoring the bombardment and squeezed his shoulder. "It is my shift, Chong Xi."

They took turns, the faery, Fenghuang and him, so the defenders were never without magic, be it his hsin or their elemental. The very first day of the siege, Sayewa scoffed at the captain who commanded her to the healing tents.

"Young man," she told the grizzled veteran, "I will not sing to the wounded so that the demons could devour men in good health. I am the Sister of the Five Seasons, and I am here to kill the demons."

Xi half-expected the captain to yell "Why me!" and pull his hair, but he bowed low to the faery.

Sister Sayewa then blessed Captain Shang and promised him 'the best healer in the Empire at the tents'. That was how Xi learned his superior's name, because prior to that the captain did not deign to introduce himself.

Now Sayewa dismissed him from where he at least felt useful, and he shuffled through the darkening streets, keeping his head down just like everyone else in the azure city turned ash-grey.

One got used to the new order of things, even to being surrounded by the contorting faces of the hurt and the dying. Those were plentiful in Tarkan, both among the defenders, and those spared the time on the walls. The jaws of the demon hunger gnawed on the city to make the easiest chores became torturously hard. Xi had not heard children's laughter for days, let alone that of the adults.

He probably was the happiest person at the healing tents, because he loved seeing his mother, no matter what.

"Son!"

Tien Lyn hurried towards him mindful of the wounded laid out on the ground. She was cutting the bandages, the chore that was perilously close to its end, since they were running out of garments to slice, even the robes of the officials confiscated after internal strife nearly as ferocious as the one that raged outside the city walls.

She hugged him, but he gently disengaged himself, muttering, "Sorry." His tired mind sagged under the burden of her concern, distorting the reality for him. "Is Yu... awake?"

His mother smiled happily, "Yes." She had all but carried her lover to the tents at the start of the siege, but the days of healing did him good: the medics no longer mistook the healer for a corpse during his euphoric trances. Or maybe they just memorized his red hair.

Xi sat down to wait for her to fetch the healer, and reflexively run his fingers through his hair. It grew out about an inch, and he will soon have to tie it back.

"How're the gates?" the passing surgeon asked him.

Xi slouched. "Still holding."

"Not great?" Yu asked coming up, only slightly leaning on Tien Lyn.

"Their tunnelling..." Xi rubbed his forehead, "every time I collapse their abominable digs, it weakens the walls. Sayewa knits them together with vines, but it's only a matter of time..."

Yu turned to Tien Lyn, "We cannot delay the Ritual, my love."

She shook her head, shiny eyes on him, crazy with hope. "No, no! Yu, when the gates go down, there will be demons coming in. They won't expect you, it's your chance to extend your life, don't you understand? Ancestors, they are demons, Yu, it's the will of the Heavens!"

"Demon or human, it does not matter," Yu whispered, gathering Tien Lyn to him, and looking at Xi over her hair. The same demand reflected in his eyes that Sayewa made of Xi earlier.

Reason with your mother.

Except Xi did not think his mother was wrong. They were killing demons, all of them, what difference did it make if Yu did it by draining their qi to boost his own?

"No," he mouthed to Yu.

His stubble started to itch uncontrollably, and just as he sank his nails into the base of his skull to scratch, a single precise hit shattered his shield to pieces. The attack dropped him to the ground, gasping for breath, wriggling like a worm driven out of the soil by rains.

"Oh, Xi," Yu cooed, "you must be exhausted! My love, could you find water if you cannot find anything to eat for the boy?"

Xi saw his mother's face screw up in alarm and she went off running. If there was a grain of rice left in the city, she'd fetch it. He glared at Yu with hatred, the only thing he could do.

"Rustam Bei trained me once as well," Yu explained, pressing into Xi's chest with his pointy knees for a good measure.

"I have your attention, I trust? Perfect.

Yes, I have revived a little with healing, but I will not prey on anyone. I swore it... if I do, I am a danger to your mother first and foremost. The Heavens did favour me in that I now see what I can give in the ritual. The weapon will protect her better than I ever could."

He moved off, and, blessedly, started lifting Xi's fatigue as well. Still too weak to argue, he listened.

"When the walls fall down, Chong Xi, I want you to forget the fighting, forget the Empire, forget whatever tales Sayewa and Rustam filled your head with. Grab your mother, haul her to your golden bird, and carry her away to safety."

He grabbed Xi by the shoulders, his fingers no less pointy than his knees. "Promise me, Xi."

Xi started shaking, unable to cope with the man's emotions any longer. Through chattering teeth, he managed, "Why, why... you all think I can convince mother? She left me for you. You are the only one... who can influence her."

"You are wrong. Please, talk to her." Yu pleaded with the same fervour Tien Lyn had done a few minutes ago. Xi hated him.

"I will! Just for Heavens' sake let go of off me!" He did not add 'demon' but the qi blow that shattered his shield scared the living daylight out of him. That shield held against the Horde for hours!

Yu moved off. "So, you are empathic through touch then, Xi?"

It was no use to lie. The healer knew. Xi relaxed on the ground, breathing in the air free of emotional tension. "Probably. Particularly when you are screaming your feelings into my mind." His fatigue was melting away, the scent of the spring grass filling his nostrils, blissfully refreshing.

"And you can sense when the demons are latching on you?" Yu persisted. Ancestors, when would his euphoria kick in?

Xi nodded. As if in response to his uncharitable plea, Yu sagged down with the fatigue he took away from him, but the healer was not done talking, even if his words stayed barely above a whisper. "When I am gone, you must intercept and absorb the blasts the demons throw at you. Fortify yourself with them. You must learn this before one of them figures out how to break your defences."

"But... how?" Xi realizes he was scratching at the stubble on his skull and jerked his hand away. He forced his face to a neutral expression. Warmages do not look petulant or confused.

Yu's pupils dilated with unnatural pleasure as the healing took hold of him, "I am not a mage, I cannot tell you how. I can only tell you that you can." Then he stretched on the ground, smiling at something too beautiful for him to ignore.

Xi watched him enviously until his mother returned with a chipped bowl of a hot liquid that one might have had a drip of meat broth in it. Someone boiled the bark of a desert shrub with it, and its pungent flavour obscured everything else. But it was hot, and it tricked his guts into thinking he was eating.

"Mother, Yu will do whatever you ask, but it will destroy him," Xi said between slurps. "He'll become a predator."

Tien Lyn sighed and cradled Yu's head into her lap. She had a tormented look of someone trying to explain to a madman that the sun rises in the East. "He is different, Xi, he had always been different."

"That's nearly all gone. He'll fill up with what he takes... Mother, ask him, but listen to his answers this time. Please?"

Her tears made tiny mounds in the gray dust. "Go sleep, Xi. The night is falling."

"Mother--"

She tossed her head up, mouth pinched, eyes tired. "Do you need a lullaby?"

He was tempted, as a matter of fact. To fall asleep to his mother's voice again, and wake up with his head as empty as a reed whistle, to not know a demon from a human any longer, or gray from azure.

"I'll have to meditate for a while, mama. I... I love you." I love you too, he meant.

The jumble of the others' feelings he'd picked up, and his own worry about the tunnels frustrated his efforts to set his mind in order. He backtracked further and further, to the simplest logical statements from the earliest years of his training, but they won't branch up and carry him upwards towards understanding.

Instead, in his tired mind's eyes, he saw the dirt collapsing... he'd done it all day, why can't he get a break from it at night? It made no sense. He tried again, this time with a mantra, not logic.

Modest yet cruel was Empress Mei.

"No crueler than the circumstances demanded, or any other who wore the Radiant Crown," Sister Sayewa said behind him, startling him. Had he muttered under his breath?

Xi lifted his head, "Is it time?"

"For your shift? No. But, yes, it is time. Your mother agreed to let Yu and I perform the Ritual, and she wants you to be there." She helped Xi up to his feet.

"Why didn't I notice you enter?" He did not sense emotions from her touch either, just a cool smoothness of the plum tree bark that now covered her hand.

"I was quiet," Sayewa said.

She was not just quiet, she was mute, frozen, even when she moved. The strands of hair that used to drop blooms in a colourful avalanche, the living skin that grew scales or fur patches on a whim - all of it was replaced by the grey bark and black-grass of the steppes.

Dead grass.

And Xi would not let go of her hand.

He wished their walk together was longer, but the house was so tiny, it was over in just a few steps.

His mother lifted her head from Yu's chest when they entered his bedroom, and touched his lips with her fingers. Yu kissed them, his own wrapped around the vorpal weapon. Lying on top of her lover as she was, Tien Lyn must have had the metalwork of the pistol push into her belly, the metal dragon mane, and the maw that opened up as the muzzle.

There were not many pistols left in the Empire nowadays. Save for the legendary pair that belonged to Zha Yao and put him on the Radiant Throne, the contraptions proved as unreliable as they were pricey. The vogue had passed, and the aristocracy returned to swords and axes to show off their skill and status. The pistol Xi looked on was one of the Benevolent Emperor's pair, the sacred relic of his reign. Deserving Du, the Empire's First Knight, and the Governor of the Middle Province carried the second one as the token of the Emperor's trust.

Leaving the fabled pistol in Yu's hands, Tien Lyn slunk off to the farthest corner, and Xi hurried to join her, leaving Sayewa as much room as she might need to perform the Ritual.

Xi put his arms around his mother and braced his mind against her inner turmoil, but the half-forgotten peace she used to radiate when he was a child descended on him instead. Despite the solemnity of the hour, it gladdened him.

Meanwhile, Sister Sayewa started singing. She hardly needed the space they left her, standing motionless over Yu as dark as she had been since she came for Xi.

When serving human needs with their healing spells or war incantations, the faery sang in Shen, but Sayewa did not bother with a translation. She sang in the Radiant Tongue, the faeries dialect, one that was never taught to anyone but the Son of Heavens. Frankly, Xi did not think that the current Emperor, Zha Yao, was conversant in it, though his predecessor, Wo Jia was praised by the faeries for his knowledge.

Xi strained to hear any resemblance to Shen, but all Sayewa's words remained completely foreign. She wanted it that way, he realized.

Smokeless flame lit the outlines of Yu's body, starting to eat away at it, leaving no trace of either flesh or ash behind. The fire did not burn with the normal red-and-orange colour, but entirely crimson. Yu's face remained serene, not giving away anything other than contentment. Xi hoped it was not an act for his mother's sake.

Yu's hands still rested on Zha Yao's pistol, over his body's core. The moment Xi set his eyes on the weapon, he could not take them away. The fire would not be ignored, however. It reflected in the pistol's dark metal, tinting it red. Black-and-scarlet, those were Zha Yao's colours... but it also was not, Xi decided. The Emperor gave the pistols away. Deserving Du then separated the pair, giving one to Tien Lyn.

Now, the pistol was taking on a life of its own, much of it red, like Yu's hair, and crimson like a demon's qi.

The fire reached the hands that held it, and the stomach upon which it rested from the periphery of the no longer existing body.

Sister Sayewa never faltered in her song, every word ringing true.

The fire rose to a man's height -and to a shape of a man, the shape of Yu to be precise- straightened, reached for Tien Lyn one last time across the room, then funnelled into the pistol's muzzle.

Yu was no more.

The room felt dark. Tien Lyn prayed wordlessly on Xi's shoulder. Sister Sayewa's last word before the silence, tajinyu, embedded itself into Xi's memory. She kneeled before the mat, plucked a single red bloom that sprouted at her temple, and replaced the pistol with it.

"It is for you to wield, Tien Lyn," she said extending the pistol to Tien Lyn. "While you hold it, Yu's claim remains on you, so no other demon may take your qi.

The pistol Gracious Judgment no longer needs black power to fire. It will strike the spark with the qi of the one you aim it at, and as before it will always kill, so you still carry judgment with you."

Tien Lyn bowed low and took the Gracious Judgment from Serene Sister. The metal of the nozzle had never lost the crimson tint that illuminated it during Yu's burning.

Sister Sayewa bowed back and closed her hands over Tien Lyn's. "Exercise care. All magic that flows from qi becomes harder to control as you unleash it."

His mother swallowed back tears, "I know. But thank you for repeating his warning... And... do heed it as well."

The Sister remained serene when Tien Lyn embraced her, but Xi was not fooled. He grew up among those who controlled their feelings, and he was adept at seeing the concealment of emotions. There was an undercurrent Xi wanted to understand and could not.

He did not get a chance to question either woman, though, because the familiar noise of the huge wings came from the courtyard and went without to meet Fenghuang.

The golden bird was a tight fit in the courtyard, but she tried her best to tilt her head to one side, and meet his eyes with her crystalline one. "You were not on the wall at your appointed hour," she started, plucking a singed feather from her wing.

"Sister Sayewa performed the Ritual," he said and touched the golden feathers in an apology. The Fenghuang rubbed his head gently with her beak instead of a response. He doubted that Captain Shang would be as forgiving if he lived still. "I will go on duty right away."

"Climb on, Xi."

Behind him, Sister Sayewa called up, "Could you see the Imperial troops coming yet, Fenghuang?"

"No," the bird said.

"Then I shall have to memorize every text I have not committed to memory yet and burn the scrolls. We cannot let any of our knowledge to fall to the Horde. Make my apologies to Captain Shang, Xi."

Xi cringed, imagining the exchange. "When Tarkan falls, the ravaging and the fires will take care of it."

"I will not leave it to chance, Chong Xi. Those accounts are the only hope for Sutao, even if Tarkan is lost."

The conviction in her voice gave Xi heart. He looked at his mother. "Yu asked me to make sure you escape the fall of Tarkan. But if I am to ask Fenghuang to carry someone from the fallout, I think it should be Sayewa with the knowledge she would carry."

"Yes," Tien Lyn agreed, "whatever promise you gave Yu, I release you from it. Please, make sure Sayewa returns to Sutao with Fenghuang."

Fenghuang did not take her eye away from Xi.

"Please," he repeated after his mother, "I am sworn to the Emperor, and I will fight to the last, so promise me—"

"I promise that I will carry Sayewa to safety when the time comes. Until then, I fight by your side, Xi. Climb on, before the walls go down without you there."

Xi obeyed.

Fenghuang jumped up into the air from the confinement of the courtyard, and just as they soared up into the sky, her thoughts brushed his mind, "I will come back for you, beloved."

His heart made another one of those strange flips in his chest, and he whispered 'thank you' instead of arguing.

When the walls would come down, he either would not live through it to see the golden silhouette in the sky speeding to his rescue, or would not be able to accept it in an honourable fashion, but the smallest glimmer of hope was welcome today.