For a moment, she couldn’t move, caught by her surprise. It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that Wailun might also have suffered pressure from their parents and others to be a certain way. That maybe she did love her in her own, flawed way.

Wailun left her with the scent of juniper in her nostrils and with the storm behind her shuttered heart briefly calm.

Rain soaked her hair in the courtyard as she came back to herself. Coral was still kneeling beside her and miraculously, they were not dead yet.

“Now,” Coral said. “Now try.”

Without even thinking, Nisong pressed her hand into the dead body’s chest. Flesh became incorporeal. She set the shards into their places and withdrew. The man sat up, awaiting a command, his flesh animated once more. He was a pitiful thing, the gaping wound in his belly weeping fluids. But Nisong didn’t have the time to sew that shut, to refine him, to make him any more complex.

“Destroy the attackers. Protect the constructs.”

He moved to obey.

She went to the next body, and then the next, centering herself around the scent of juniper. She didn’t dare waste time by watching the battle, though Coral gave her small updates. Frond stood over them, heading off attackers that made it past their initial defenses. Once she thought she felt the rush of air from the swing of a sword. There wasn’t time to worry about it, because if she stopped she would die. They would all die.

“Hurry,” Coral said into her ear. “We need more.”

How could she hurry when she needed to concentrate? Nisong dared a glance at the battle and quailed. The constructs she was creating had helped, but she wasn’t moving quickly enough. Bodies littered the paved courtyard. She made brief eye contact with a woman in a torn soldier’s jacket, her face a fierce grimace. Nisong’s stomach flipped.

The woman rushed at them.

Frond stepped to meet her without hesitating, blocking her sword with his knife, pushing her back to give them space to work. Nisong’s breath caught as the woman sliced at Frond, heedless of his counterattacks. He was too slow, too timid. She tore her gaze away: watching wouldn’t help him.

Nisong took Coral’s hand and pressed the pouches of shards into her palm. “You have to pull one from each pouch and hand them to me when I need them.”

Coral’s brow furrowed. “But what if I make a mistake and—”

“Please. Or we’ll die.” And then Nisong turned away before there were any further protestations and plunged her fingers into another chest.

Coral worked alongside Nisong, their hands moving in unison. Reach for more shards, place them inside a body, give the command. The shambling constructs marched into battle, small pieces of them falling by the wayside.