“Have them start another fire,” he said. “The full length of Anlatun’s Way, from the southern border of the city to the north.”

The scribe, face intent, bent to the task, brushing the words over the parchment, holding the sheet in the air a moment to dry, rolling it quickly, tucking it into a bamboo tube, then slipping it into a chute running down the center of the Spear. It had taken Sioan half the night to ascend the ’Shael-spawned tower; the Emperor’s orders would reach the palace below in a matter of moments.

The command away, Sanlitun turned to his children once again. “Do you understand?” he asked.

Adare bit her lip. Kaden said nothing. Only Valyn stepped forward, squinting against the wind and the fire both. He turned to the long lenses cradled in their brackets against the low wall, lifted one, and put it to his eye. “Anlatun’s Way isn’t burning,” he protested after a moment. “The fire is still blocks to the west.”

His father nodded.

“Then why . . .” He trailed off, the answer in his dark eyes.

“You’re starting a second fire,” Adare said. “To check the first.”

Sanlitun nodded. “The weapon is the shield. The foe is the friend. What is burned cannot burn again.”

For a long time the whole family stood in silence, staring at the blaze eating its way east. Only Sioan refused a long lens. She could see what she needed to see with her own eyes. Slowly, implacably, the fire came on, red and gold and horrible until, in a straight line across the western end of the city, a new set of fires burst out, discrete points at first, spreading together until an avenue of flame limned the western edge of the broad street that was Anlatun’s Way.

“It’s working,” Adare said. “The new fire is moving west.”

“All right,” Sioan said abruptly, understanding at last what her husband wanted them to see, what he wanted them to learn; desperate, suddenly, to spare her children the sight and the knowledge both. “They have witnessed enough.”

She reached out to take the long lens from Adare, but the girl snatched it away, training it on the twin fires once more.

Sanlitun met his wife’s glare, then took her hand in his own. “No,” he said quietly. “They have not.”

It was Kaden, finally, who realized.

“The people,” he said, gesturing. “They were running away, running east, but now they’ve stopped.”

“They’re trapped,” Adare said, dropping her long lens and spinning to confront her father. “They’re trapped. You have to do something!”

“He did,” Valyn said. He looked up at the Emperor, the child’s hope horrible in his gaze. “You already did, right? An order. Before we got here. You warned them somehow. . . .”

The boy trailed off, seeing the answer in those cold, blazing eyes.