“Ow! Almost Brilliant, get down!”

Almost Brilliant hopped onto their shoulder, but her claws pricked straight through the cloth in her haste.

“There’s a hall by the river, built out onto the water. There’s wounded there, and children and the elderly.”

“Right,” Chih said, nodding. “That’s where we’re going. Sang—”

“Of course I’m going,” said Sang, growling to hide the fear in her eyes. “I can’t swing a sword, but I’m not useless.”

Almost Brilliant guided them in a wide circuit around the fighting, keeping them to the fringes of the trees until they emerged by the river.

The Huan River ran fast here, throwing up waves like horse heads, thundering and flecked with foam. The hall they had seen from above was built on a support of ancient logs, the porch a good ways above the water and connected to land by a long wide staircase and a winding ramp. Even as Chih approached with the sounds of the battle in their ears, they noted that it was a gorgeous structure, tiled with celadon, with shutters elaborately woven from willow withes.

As they hurried up the stairs, Chih laughed suddenly.

“What?” asked Sang.

“This is Ku Dynasty work,” Chih said a little giddily. “No nails, it’s all just joined together. It’s amazing, really…”

Sang groaned.

“Talk about it with Lao Bingyi later. She can probably tell you all about the builder who tried to cheat his fees.”

At the top of the stairs, there was a pair of doors carved with a pattern of betony flowers. They barely shook as Sang pounded on them.

“Let us in, we’re here to help,” she cried.

There was a scrabble behind the doors, the sound of running feet, and then a half-grown boy unbarred the way to let them in.

“Come on,” he said urgently. “Come on, this way.”

They helped him bar the doors behind them, and then he led them across the large building to the rear, where perhaps thirty people sheltered. As Almost Brilliant had promised, it was the wounded, the young, and the elderly, those most likely to suffer during fighting, those least likely to be capable of defending themselves. There were also a half dozen wounded, stretched out groaning on the ground or lying troublingly still.

Moving among them was a gray-haired man supporting himself with a cane. He gave Sang and Chih a sharp glance as they came in, and then he handed Sang an armful of scrap fabric and pointed her towards the jugs of water.

“Clean and bandage,” he said firmly. “If you don’t know how, you’ll learn quickly. And cleric, the children, please. Be very sure that you keep them behind the flower line.”