Keng hesitated,

not wanting to say it,

as if to say it was a betrayal,

shouted it in the end:

“Hana! There was no advantage

to the kingdom from marrying Hana!”

“Not quite, but close.

Xau’s mistake was in seeking

to marry Hana in the first place.

Once that mistake was made,

it would have been still worse

to back down to Vihaz.”

The dragon turned aside,

flamed hugely, vaporizing snow.

“Difficulties Xau might have avoided

by separating sex from marriage.

Better to bed her than wed her,

whoring expected of a king.”

“He loved her!”

“A weakness.”

Darker gold in the dragon’s eyes.

“Love, friendship, affection,

all three are weaknesses.

Yet she who lacks all three

is worthless.”

The dragon’s eyes nearly black now.

“No other human I have ever

liked so well as your father.”

She stared at Keng,

laid her head flat on the snow.

“He is hurt, Princeling.”

“Hurt?”

“For the past three days,

he has been in pain.

I cannot tell the cause.”

A thickness in Keng’s throat.

“If you knew—three days?

Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I hoped he would recover.

He has not yet done so,

and you are very young.

You will need time

to prepare yourself, if he dies,

if I name you king.”

Keng shook his head,

as if that would push

her words away.

“I don’t want to be king.”

“Nor did he.”

The lesson forgotten.

Both of them silent.

THE IMPERIAL WAR: FOURTH BATTLE

A spring storm threatened,

the wind rising, moist, ominous

as the combined armies of Innis and Meqing

met the massed might of the Imperium.

The wind bent the grasses,

flattened the spring flowers,

flapped the bright silk banners.

The Emperor Tahj,

expecting the Horse King, Xau,

had sent no cavalry,

his fifty thousand soldiers

braced in broad ranks

behind a shield wall.

In front of the soldiers,

an angled line of iron-tipped stakes

anchored in earth.

Opposing them,

sixteen thousand foot soldiers,

seven thousand mounted horse lords,

plus six thousand of Xau’s own cavalry,

but Xau himself

nine hundred miles away

on the war’s far battlefront,

the army commanded instead

by Xau’s ally, King Donal.

(The Emperor Tahj himself also far away,

sprawled at his ease in his palace,

spying the field of battle

via the beast’s borrowed visions.)

King Donal raised his sword,

yelled “For Xau!”

charged at the forefront

of the cavalry.

The Imperial pikemen braced

behind their double bulwark

of shield wall and stakes;

the Imperial archers shot.

Riders and horses fell.

The cavalry wavered—

The Imperial archers shot again,

King Donal and the cavalry

neared the line of iron-tipped stakes,

faltered under a volley of arrows.

The horses balked—

Again, the Imperial archers shot,

and the cavalry scattered,

a chaotic mass of mounted men

turning, falling back—

(In his distant palace, Tahj smirked,

used the beast to relay his orders:

Tahj’s soldiers to rush

the retreating riders,

complete the rout.)

Tahj’s soldiers uprooted

the line of stakes,

sprinted forward with pike and spear—