Winter’s advance reduced as she continued down the Queensroad, and soon the rains that had abandoned the city joined those shadowing her as her constant companion. So she kept to the planked and cobbled road, relying on the cloak her friend had given her to stay warm and dry. When she reached a bridge, she asked its keeper which stream it crossed and, after a display of money and passport, she continued west. Soon she came upon a camp, its inhabitants men with sunken eyes and rusted knives. An altercation later, they were on the ground, and she was waiting for her shadows to put away bow and sword. When they did, she continued onwards to a house on a lake, which had pens sunk into its waters. Knocking opened the house, and she was forced to converse, telling the owner the scrytive’s name, apologizing for losing his letter to rain and mud, and revealing who she was. The owner said he’d gotten a windsong three days before so he knew. He offered her shelter, but inside the house were comfortable fires and happy faces so she refused, received permission to climb the hill on the other side of the lake, and left. Halfway up the hill - there was a path but it was muddy so she didn’t follow it - a tree root caught her foot, and she fell face first into rot and susurration. For a long time she lay there, letting the rain settle into her hair, the wind into her bones. She could stay here, wait for spring to come, for sun and warmth to bring back the green, and she could not go back. But she’d left people behind: the loyal one who’d hired her, the beautiful one who’d dressed her, the hidden one who’d fed her, the wise one who’d listened, the inquisitive one she’d saved. They would each come here, one by one, and find the flowers growing out of her back and be sad. That would not do, so she rose and resumed her climb. By the time she reached the scrytive’s cabin, the moon was peering out from behind the clouds. She opened the door, left her dagger on the table, dumped her wet and muddy clothes on the floor then fell into bed.

  Knives, red and black, whirled and spun under a sun that ate darkness while two eyes, one gold, one brown, one angry, one terrified, watched her grab a knife and sent it hurtling towards a bare throat. A child screamed.

  When she woke up, she wasn’t alone.

  The archer stood over her, long curved knife in hand. “Where’s your rifle?” he asked in her language.

  There was a fire in the hearth. Mei turned over to let it warm her back.

  “It is clearly not on her person.” The other voice bore the Emperor’s diction. “We should have made her brother the priority.”

  “Zi, you know the Imperial position.”

  “Which isn’t here, in the backwoods of this lawless land.”

  Mei slept. When she was hungry, she woke. Getting out of bed, she passed the archer and his sister at the table and opened the larder, where she found wrapped packets of hardtack and awrock jerky. She ate both, drank water from the basin, then went back to sleep. The next time she woke, her rising roused the archer who said something to her, but she ate, drank, and went back to sleep. The third time she woke, morning had frozen itself to the cabin windows, and the archer’s sister was struggling to get the fire going again. After watching for some time, Mei took the flint and stone, lit her food wrappings, and used those to revive the fire. Then she ate, drank, went back to sleep.

  She awoke to find a bush hare the archer had shot on the table. As he and his sister ate the few mouthfuls it had, Mei dressed, picked up the nearly empty water basin, and went outside. Without rain, the path was walkable so she followed it down to the lake, which she rounded until she found a brook. As she refilled the basin, she noted that her clothes weren’t as muddy as they should be, though whoever had cleaned them hadn’t been very thorough. As she worked to remediate this, she watched the lights from the house across the lake glitter. She could go there, accept kindness and comfort and happiness, but that would fill the hole that had formed in her since Latia Arena and defeat the purpose of coming out here because, if she’d stayed in Bradford, her friends would have helped.

  When the basin was full, Mei picked it up, lugged it back up the hill, placed it next to the fire, ate, drank, went back to sleep.

  When Mei woke, the archer’s sister tried to ask her a question on her way to the larder, which Mei found only half full. She glanced at the table where food wrappers and a handful of bones lay. Charlie had said that he’d stocked food here to last him weeks, but that didn’t account for three stomachs. Mei would have to hunt.

  Ignoring the apologies, Mei got dressed, found some rope, grabbed the dagger Magdala had given her, and headed out into the waxing light. The forest rose around her, chattering in rustling leaves and creaking branches, but there was nothing animal, not nearby. There were signs however, twigs with nibbled ends, holes with missing roots, three-toed hoofprints pointed south. Not long ago these woods teemed with game escaping to warmer lands, but now only the stragglers were left, and they would be hungry, desperate. So Mei went east towards the Queensroad where the hunters would have been thickest. As she did, she encountered fewer and fewer signs of past passage and more and more signs of current living. Once she found day old scat, she climbed the nearest unmolested doak tree, waited for the archer’s sister to join her, then settled in, dagger in hand.

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  Back in Tuqu, at this time in the season, Mei would have exchanged autumn’s bounty for cords of wood, jars of vegetables, and enough lard to last her and Huan until New Year’s when they sold their stock of fireworks. Sourans, at least the rich and noble kind, did things differently. Francesca had talked at length about Winter Solstice and the circuit of balls she wanted to attend, which she’d assured Mei were small affairs, nothing like the Harvest Ball. Regardless, neither Tuquese nor Souran typically spent the winter alone in a cabin in the woods.

  Below her, a low bellow sounded, and six deer, their slim forms hidden under shaggy fur, their heads adorned with thorn like antlers, pushed through the leafless undergrowth. The largest and most dangerous one had a long scar down its left flank and used its antlers to prod its fellows forward when they tarried too long over a meal. Scar’s eyes were always watching, the ground, the tree trunks, but never the branches because in this part of the world, there were no predators who ambushed such large prey from on high.

  Mei had chosen her perch well. Her tree drew two deer, both of which stripped off the bark with their teeth and began chewing. Mei waited until one had eaten its fill and stepped away before dropping onto the other, sinking her blade into the base of its neck, and shouting as loud as she could. In response, Scar bellowed and put itself between Mei and its herd, who bounded away. Pulling her blade free, Mei watched Scar watch her, let its eyes fill with her bloody dagger and hands. Then it blinked and bounded after its fellows.

  Quieter than a whisper, Black Tiger landed next to Mei. “I can’t determine whether that was courage or foolishness.”

  “Neither.” Mei looked around. “Loud noises scare them, and the herd is more important than the one.” But Scar would remember this. It would check the trees next time.

  “That is true for humans as well. What are you looking for?”

  “A branch.” A dagger made a terrible axe. “To carry it back.”

  “Ah.” Black Tiger drew her sword, ran up the tree trunk and cut. She landed at the same time as a large branch. “Is this sufficient?”

  Mei readied her rope. “Yes.”

  Neither of them spoke until they’d gotten the deer back to the cabin when the archer asked Black Tiger where they’d gone. Ignoring them, Mei took off her clothes, ate her food, drank her water, and went back to bed.

  Savory smells woke her, and she got up to find that the cabin was now a butcher’s shop with hanks of meat hanging from the rafters. Outside, smoke obscured the window, while inside Black Tiger had exchanged her sword for a ladle.

  “Li Mei, you’re awake.” Black Tiger kept stirring the pot bubbling in the fireplace. “I must show my gratitude for your hunting.”

  Mei stared. “You’re cooking.”

  “Soldier’s stew.” Black Tiger took a pinch of dried green leaves out of a little jar and tossed it into the pot. “You’ll have to be satisfied with my culinary skills; my brother’s go no further than smoking meat.”

  Which explained what was happening outside. Mei wrapped her blanket around her then sat at the table. “He doesn’t have to.”

  “I believe it’s how he shows deference to the superior hunter. It’s done.” Black Tiger took a bowl, filled it with stew, placed it in front of Mei. “I am impressed with the spices here. Your scrytive friend has good taste.”

  So they’d shadowed her to Charlie’s apartment. “Why are you here?”

  “A question with many answers.” Black Tiger filled a bowl for herself and sat at the table. “We’re here in this country because, between your brother and yourself, the Empire considers you the greater threat. We’re here in this forest because we didn’t see you in the audience at Lord’s Heir Dwayne’s examination. And I’m here in this cabin because you are a kind person who warms and feeds her enemies, and I cannot stand to be indebted to you.”

  Mei looked into her stew. “Is Huan dead?”

  “No.”

  Mei looked up. “Why not?”

  “Most immediately because we went after you, not him. More generally, certain people felt that killing him risked spurring you to take revenge against the Empire.”

  “I can’t hurt the Empire.” Mei looked down again. “And I wouldn’t.”

  “If we’d killed Li Huan that night on the rooftops, you would not have hunted us down and left our corpses cooling in the street? Or worse, we made us kill you and inspire a High General’s daughter and a mage with the Queen’s backing to come after us?”

  “I wouldn’t now.”

  “I see.”

  Mei ate her stew. Before Huan had shredded their relationship, the same rage she’d felt under Latia Arena would have found his killer and put a bullet in their heart. Maybe. Magdala had stopped Mei last time she’d been moved to kill. Maybe that memory would have held her back.

  Now, Huan’s death was inevitable. He was up against both Imperial and Royal forces, both powerful, both implacable, both of which he’d spat venom into their eye. Mei had nearly killed Huan herself because her brother didn’t think about who he was hurting, only himself.

  But if the woman sitting across from her had said she’d kill him, Mei would have stopped her.

  This was too much. Mei finished her stew, gave thanks, then went back to bed.

  When she woke up, the fire was banked, the larder full, and the cabin was empty. Outside there were voices, ones she hadn’t heard in a long time. She grabbed her blanket, rushed to the door, opened it.

  “Oh!” Magdala turned her knock into a wave. “Hi, Mei. We’re here.”

  Rifled at the Scaled Tower next February, although recent happy developments may interfere with that.