1

Yuan Bo knelt patiently while his hostess prepared their tea.

He had come straight from the Gunpowder Road, as befitted the urgency of his journey to the Northern
Provinces, and so was somewhat indecorously dressed in travel-stained battle armour.

The heavy dingjia was assembled from rectangular plates of Celestial forged steel, riveted between layers of
green silk and fine leather and damasked in gold. Eyes fashioned from jade and jet studded the metal bands,
emitting a faint luminance independent of the paper lanterns festooning the small tearoom. Segmented plates,
like the scaled wings of his true form, flared from his shoulders and a long green cloak with a dusty hem trailed
across the tiled floor behind him.

His sword, Dragon’s Fang, he had left in the care of the Gate Warden of Nan-Li. His tall helm, with its elaborate
brow and stylised golden antlers, rested on the floor beside him.

Like a songbird circling the great falls of Kunlan, the kettle sang.

Steam rose to fill the room, misting the intricately carved rosewood panels and softening the lanterns’ glow.
Curtains of fine black silk rippled in the humid night air, masking the alcoves where skilled musicians played
gourd flutes and plucked at pipa strings. The melody had a flowing, freeform nature that Yuan Bo did not
believe he had heard before. Rises and falls in the prominence of individual instruments accompanied swift
changes in tempo, but in spite of the apparent disharmony it was not unpleasing on the ear.

With a serene expression on her face, his hostess poured clear, bubbling water from the kettle into the gaiwan
bowl. Her numinous features became clouded with steam, her brilliant white eyes dimming for a moment, like
the greater moon, Yueyin, behind the brooding of a midwinter sky.

Her name was Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon, Mistress of the North.

Never once blinking, she set the kettle on the table, picked up the gaiwan, and slowly poured its contents into
the tea pitcher.

The Storm Dragon was more properly attired for court in a long-sleeved cheongsam. A silver belt inset with a
large amethyst gem encircled her hips. Her fingers were ringed, each one picked out with a different precious
stone. A patterned jinguo scarf was wound indifferently around one arm.

Returning the empty gaiwan to the table, she picked up the tea pitcher. The ebb of one movement became the
flow of the next. Watching her was like watching the Jade River run its slow, unhurried course towards the
sea. One by one the two teacups were filled before, one by one, they were emptied again into the tea basin on
the opposite side of the table.

The steam in the air took on the scents of ginseng, goji berry, and jasmine, as Miao Ying picked up the tea
scoop, using a pair of chopsticks to slowly draw the dried leaves into the warmed gaiwan.

Up came the kettle again, hot water trickling from the spout to awaken the tea.
 2
Yuan Bo watched, saying nothing, as Miao Ying poured the first steep from gaiwan, to pitcher, to cups, to
basin. Tea was about more than mere nourishment. It was about finding tranquillity in inner peace.

He would not hasten it if Chi’an Chi itself marched on the palace of the Dragon Emperor in Wei-Jin.

Miao Ying poured fresh kettle water over the awakened tea leaves, this time closing the gaiwan lid and allowing
the tea precious time to steep.

With a long, tapering silver claw, she pressed the narrowest of gaps between the gaiwan and the lid, delicately
pouring its contents into the tea pitcher and, from there, filling both teacups. Only when it was done did Miao
Ying look up from her tea set to give the Jade Dragon her undivided attention.

Haughty and cold, as slow to wrath as she was to affection, it was said of Miao Ying that only the Celestial
Dragon Emperor, her father, had the power to make her smile.

She had no smile for her brother now.

‘I welcome you to Nan-Li, Jade Dragon.’

With a teacup held between both hands, she raised it in ceremonial fashion to present to Yuan Bo. Regardless
of age or rank (or imagined rank as tended to be the case with Miao Ying) a guest always drank first.

Yuan Bo tapped two fingers on the table, silently indicating his thanks, and then, also with both hands,
accepted the offered cup.

‘I thank you for your kind hospitality and welcome, Storm Dragon.’

He took a sip of the tea, the rich floral aromas in the steam coming together as flavours on his tongue, and
closed his eyes. The warmth travelled down his throat and spread throughout his chest. Human form, in his
view, allowed for no greater pleasure than that of drinking hot tea on a cool night.

‘A very fine tea,’ he said.

Miao Ying might have been sculpted from ice, but he felt nonetheless that she was pleased.

‘So tell me, brother,’ she said. ‘What brings the Administrator of the Celestial Court all the way to the Northern
Provinces?’

***
3
 4
The Crowman swept over therooftops of Nan-Li like a dark cloud hurrying across the sky on a furtive wind.
To the men and women of Nan-Li, fast asleep behind shuttered windows, he was a shadow, one whose
passing brought bad dreams and dulled the silver of the moon. Somewhere amongst the layered eaves of the
great city, a dog barked at the night. Its warning went unheeded however, as the coming of the Onyx Crow-
men bade humans to sleep and to sleep deeply.

At the gable edge, the Crowman dropped to his haunches, his brethren tucking themselves in amongst the
terracotta beasts decorating the roof ridge. The Onyx Crowmen were barely half the height of a Cathayan
man, but they were as strange as they were terrifying. Their backward-jointed legs were clad in black silk
pantaloons. The instruments of silent murder glittered dully from their belts. Their man-like upper bodies
were covered in black feathers. Their beaks were long and hard.

The Crowman looked over the fitfully dreaming city, his flat black eyes reflecting no light from the city’s
lanterns. He was not human, and the world he perceived was not the human world. He was a Feng Shi Bo,
conjured from the Elemental Winds of Yin by shadow-weavers of the Moon Empress. He saw in the four shades
of the Yin Elemental Winds, Amber, Iron, Amethyst, and Azure, his other senses preternaturally attuned to
secrets and lies. The Onyx Crowmen were the assassins and spies of the Celestial Court. They had not been
born and they could not die. They had no compassion. They had no fear. They answered only to the Moon
Empress and, in her continuing detachment from earthly affairs, the Jade Dragon

They were drawn to evil sorcerers like magpies to silver.

The building across from them was a three-tiered structure of hardwood and bamboo with a line of pink-
leafed maples in front. Its tiled roof sloped gently into upturned eaves. The shutters on the upstairs windows
had been left open to the night.

With a silent caw to his brethren, the Crowman threw himself from the edge. He spread his scruffily-feathered
wings, caught the Elemental Winds and sailed across the tree-lined street with something almost akin to
grace. The other Onyx Crowmen launched themselves after him, cawing in an unruly mob. No one saw. No one
heard. A pair of Jade Warriors, walking up the street at that moment with long qiang spears resting on their
shoulders, felt compelled to look aside and so saw nothing.

The Crowman tucked in his wings and, as the bank swallow flies at speed through the tiniest of holes to find
its nest, fell in through the open window. He hopped back upright, ruffling his feathers and squawking. He was
in a small, sparsely furnished bedroom. The other Onyx Crowmen flapped in after him, already busy turning
the tiny room upside down. They pulled drawers out of cabinets and threw their contents across the floor.
They shredded clothes and curtains, pulled up floorboards, crowing noisily over the secret things they found
buried in nooks, tearing them to pieces with their claws or slipping them guiltily into pockets to admire later.

The room’s single, sleeping occupant never stirred

Not until the Crowman ran a long, sharp talon across his throat.
 5
His eyes widened suddenly, his gurgle of surprise drowned beneath the ecstatic cawing of the Onyx Crowmen.

The Crowman cocked his head to one side, watching with vague curiosity as a colour he could not properly
perceive stained the dying man’s bedclothes and the darkness of Yin magic departed his soul.

One of the Onyx Crowmen gave a sudden croak.

The others froze in the middle of ransacking the room and swung their beaks towards him. The Crowman who
had spoken turned his beady black eyes towards whatever it was he had just sensed. The Onyx Crowman
flapped their wings boisterously and cawed.

Another sorcerer.

It seemed that their work in Nan-Li was not yet done.

***
6
 7
An army of the Great Deceiver, Chi’an Chi, marches on Nan-Li from the west,’ said Yuan Bo. ‘I have come to
offer my assistance.’

‘I know how to defend my own provinces, Jade Dragon.’ Miao Ying smoothed down the long sleeves of her
cheongsam and picked up her teacup. Her eyes were brother and sister storms in the rising cloud of steam.
‘If my civil servants come to me in despair of calligraphy brushes in need of sharpening then I will be sure to
send word to the Jade Court in Shang-Wu.’

The wrath of the Storm Dragon passed over Yuan Bo like mist.

He knew his siblings too well, and had heard every taunt under Heaven. Only the irreverent and endlessly
inventive Monkey King still had the knack of provoking him.

‘Is the wise stewardship of the Jade Dragon needed nowhere else in the empire?’ said Miao Ying.

‘In the south, Li Dao squabbles with the Monkey King over the Mountains of Heaven as he has since the
dawn of time. To the east, elves from beyond the Jade Sea prey upon the cities of the coast, while in the
west, Zhao Ming’s madness deepens further with every year that passes. Be assured, Miao Ying, there is no
region of the empire that could not benefit from my stewardship.’

‘Then perhaps you come to Nan-Li for the tea?’

Yuan Bo set his empty teacup on the table, the sleeves of his embroidered shirt bundling against the table
edges. ‘It is a very fine tea.’

Miao Ying took a considered sip, deftly changing the subject, though Yuan Bo was uncertain why. ‘Longjiang
tea grows only in the Celestial Mountains over Wing-Chang. It is said that only the Wu-Xing monks know
where to pick its leaves and the secrets of its fermentation.’

‘And the water?’ said Yuan Bo.

‘From the mineral springs of Shanlong.’

‘Good tea needs good water to rouse it. Without it, even the strongest tea will be weak and flavourless.’

Miao Ying gave her brother a hard look. ‘Yuan Bo, the Cuckoo Dragon,’ she said at length. ‘One nest is enough
for other Dragons, and yet he is unsatisfied with two. I must take your word on the qualities of good tea for it
has been many centuries since I have been free to venture even as far south as Wing-Chang.’

‘All know you are the favourite of the Celestial Dragon,’ Yuan Bo added, soothingly. ‘He entrusts you with tasks
he would give to no other.’

With the flicker of something unknowable in her eyes, Miao Ying picked up the kettle and began preparing
them both a second cup.

***
 8
Yong Wen marched the old man through the garrison’s open gate and threw him from the top step. The old
man’s name was Chao Ho. He wore his hair in a braided queue. His long moustache was grey. He was wearing
a black silk nightgown embroidered with golden dragons. He was Gate Master of Nan-Li, commander of all the
city’s Jade Warriors and a veteran of many wars.

And Yong Wen did not care.

A man who could sleep while the legions of Chi’an Chi despoiled sacred Cathay, who could allow his garrison
wither like a penjing tree starved of sun and water, deserved no such dignity.

He clapped dust from his hands as the grey-haired general tumbled down the polished stone steps. He landed
in a sprawled heap of similarly consequential old fools. Some had since recovered from the shock of their
eviction from the garrison and were kowtowing towards the Celestial Dragon Guard who stood with hands on
hips under the high arch of the open gate.

Yong Wen swept his gaze across the street, his expression stern behind the fantastical draconic visage of
his helmet visor. A small crowd of peasants had gathered in front of the garrison to see what was going on.
Others, rubbing their eyes and yawning, leant out of upstairs windows. One or two looked ready to rush the
gates which, Yong Wen conceded, was to their credit. The sight of esteemed uncles being pulled out of their
beds and cast into the street rightly offended the peasants’ sense of natural order.

‘What is the meaning of… of…?’

Gate Master Chao Ho had picked himself up, dusted himself off with all the dignity of a great general, but
found his hauteur faltering before Yong Wen’s disapproving gaze.

He was an officer of the Celestial Dragon Guard. His condemnation was but one step removed from that of the
Dragon Emperor himself.

His eyes never wavering from the humbled Gate Master, one hand resting lightly on the jewelled hilt of his dao,
he casually raised the other. ‘Wei Xi!’ he barked. The Celestial Dragon Guard so named took one step forward,
placed a scroll tied at each end with green ribbons into Yong Wen’s hand, then took another step back.

Yong Wen broke the scroll’s seal and unfurled it with a flourish.

An awed murmur passed through the watching peasants. Chao Ho, his face pressed to the ground, wept as in
a loud, clear voice befitting the words of the Jade Dragon, Yong Wen began to read.

***
9
 10
It was not the daemons approaching Nan-Li that troubled Yuan Bo. This close to the Warpstone Desert
and Cathay’s border with the uncivilized west, such things would happen. Greenskinned wolf-riders from
the hobgoblin Khanates would burn and pillage as far east as Po Mei and the Imperial Road to Wei-Jin.
Ogres hungry for human flesh and Cathayan gold often found their way into the Northern Provinces from the
Mountains of Mourn. And the spawn of Chi’an Chi too would, on occasion, spill into Cathay from the direction
of Bone Pass, for the Great Bastion made the empire’s northern border an impassable barrier to their kind.
That the Storm Dragon herself could be present in a city so woefully unprepared – this was what troubled
Yuan Bo.

He waited patiently while Miao Ying refilled his teacup.

‘You seem unconcerned,’ he said, once she was finished.

‘Do you believe I should be?’

‘By the daemons? Perhaps not. But the garrisons left empty, the guns uncrewed and unsupplied, the calls
for aid unsent and the countryside unwatched; these things should concern you.’ He sipped mildly at his tea.
He had learned millennia ago that it was difficult to take offence at a person’s words when obliged to wait on
them finishing their tea. ‘Or the sorcerer’s practicing in Nan-Li without the sanction of the Celestial Court.
This concerns me.’

Miao Ying looked scornful. ‘Perhaps the next visit for the Cuckoo Dragon should be to the High Court of
Fu-Chow. If he hopes to find cultists of Chi’an Chi then he may stand blindfolded in Dehong Square and throw
a dart.’

Yuan Bo frowned, but said nothing.

Even amongst the peasants, Miao Ying’s animosity towards the Eastern Provinces was the basis of a hundred
legends, and he knew better than to take anything from it. Even so, he found her reluctance to acknowledge
the threat to her own provinces strange.

‘Your offer of assistance is gratefully received, Jade Dragon, but it is unneeded. I must politely decline.’

Yuan Bo smiled serenely as he drank the last of his tea. ‘Then I must beg your forgiveness, Storm Dragon.’
The deep voice of a drum rumbled through the tearoom’s black silk curtains, like the faraway warnings of
thunder. He set down the empty teacup. ‘It did not occur to me that you might say no.’

***
 11
The army of Nan-Li marched west across country. Rank after rank of peasant spearmen in hemp clothing
and bamboo hats churned the green paddy fields to muddy bogs. Archers waded behind. Lightly armoured
horsemen rode at the flanks, the horses swatting at dragonflies with their tails. A few units of Jade Warriors
and Celestial Dragon Guard glittered amidst the homespun and the muck, but for the most part this was a
peasant army, drawn entirely from the populace of Nan-Li.

That the Jade Dragon had been able to raise so many, in so short a time, was an astounding organisational
feat irrespective of the average soldier’s quality.

In his lord’s absence, the leadership fell to Jingyi Bo, shugengan lord-general of Shi Long, proud son of the
Jade Dragon’s half-human descendants.

He was unsure which was the greater honour: to be led by the Jade Dragon in battle or to command in
his stead.

He rode to battle on a Cathayan war horse alongside the Zhangu war drum of Shang-Wu, the big-wheeled
carriage drawn by a pair of magnificently caparisoned oxen. The high vantage afforded him an unimpeded
view of what would soon become their battlefield. Partially flooded rice paddies stretched as far as the eye
could see, neatly partitioned by irrigation channels and dotted with peasant huts.

The enemy was not yet visible, but Jingyi Bo’s Dragon blood could sense their closeness, the way some
animals felt foreboding at the coming of a storm. If he looked long enough, he was certain he could see a faint
smudge of ethereal blue over the western horizon. A giddy flicker of unnatural pink lightning.

It would not be long now.

Jingyi Bo signalled to the crew of the Zhangu war drum to sound the order to form battlelines.

The Jade Dragon had performed a mighty feat in putting this army into the field.

All Jingyi Bo had to do was lead them to victory.

The Jade Dragon demanded nothing less.

***
12
 13
Oblivious to the fluttering heartbeat of the war drums, and to the disharmony it was inflicting on the musicians
in their curtained alcoves, Miao Ying poured them both a third cup of tea. The water began to run clear and,
with a frown, she set the gaiwan back on the table. This was the cue for polite guests to leave and, knowing
how his sister loathed putting on a cheongsam and playing hostess, Yuan Bo made to stand. But Miao Ying
pre-empted him, adding a pinch of fresh tea leaves and stirring them into the water with her chopsticks.

‘Stay,’ she said. ‘I insist.’ She topped up cup with dark red liquid. ‘You have not yet finished your tea.’

Yuan Bo narrowed his eyes. It was unlike Miao Ying to abstain from battle. Or to be so considerate a hostess.
Yuan Bo had not expected Nan-Li to welcome his help, his sister was too proud for that, but he could not help
but feel as though she was now deliberately keeping him from the battlefield. Had she also been responsible
for running down the garrison and allowing vile cults to prosper unchecked within her walls? Who else but a
Dragon, he wondered, had the authority to force a great city into meekly accepting its damnation? The only
question he could not answer was why.

As Miao Ying finished refilling his teacup, Yuan Bo tapped a finger on the table to indicate his thanks.
She cupped her own teacup in both hands and raised it to her lips, the hint of a smile in her changing,
storm-white eyes.

Keeping his own expression blank, Yuan Bo sipped calmly at his tea.

He had been starting to suspect, but now he was certain.

He set down his teacup, smoothing dry his black moustache under his fingers.

‘You are not Miao Ying.’

She glared at him in cold fury but then, in place of a denial, her lips parted for a bitter half-smile. An iridescent
shimmer rolled ahead of it, turning the cold, alabaster skin of her face to chromatic feathers and then back
again. ‘It was that insufferable tea ceremony wasn’t it?’ The voice was that of Miao Ying, but in every other
aspect of her tone and demeanour she had become a stranger wearing her skin. ‘A tea leaf out of place?
Inadequate solemnity in returning the pitcher to its place on the table?’

Yuan Bo shook his head.

‘Then what?’

‘Your performance was perfect, but you neglected to attend to mine.’ Yuan Bo tapped his middle and index
fingers together on the table. ‘This is how I thanked you for the first cup of tea. And this…’ He curled in his
middle finger and repeated the gesture with just one, ‘is how I thanked you just now. This is how one thanks
a tea host of lower station to oneself. The real Storm Dragon of Nan-Gau would never allow such an insult
to her pride.’

The thing that had been Miao Ying sighed.

 14
‘I was bored of this shape anyway.’

With a snarl, she hurled her full teacup at Yuan Bo.

He passed his hand across him and uttered a single syllable of power. The teacup vanished into thin air
before it struck him, reappearing from the exact same spot a moment later only this time flying in the opposite
direction. Miao Ying casually ducked her head to one side and the tea cup sailed past, smashing on the tiled
floor. The musicians abruptly stopped playing, their piece ending on a similarly brash and obtrusive note.

‘Not bad for an old man, but the next thing I throw won’t be a teacup.’

Yuan Bo quietly set down his own empty cup down. The royal tea set of Nan-Li had been old when the gods
worshipped in the west were still young. Every piece was priceless.

‘Do not think me old because it pleases me to be wise.’

Miao Ying gave a snarl and threw out her hand, blue fire spraying across the table from her fingertips. Yuan
Bo extinguished it with a gesture, incanting an arcane phrase under his breath and retaliating with a flurry of
ice that Miao Ying transformed into a shower of rainbows with a flick of the hand and patter of easy laughter.

‘It would seem we are well matched in magic.’

‘To you, perhaps.’

‘Let’s see if we can’t make things interesting.’

Miao Ying clapped her hands and the tearoom musicians stepped out from behind their curtains. Men and
women alike were garbed in silvery blue hanfu, their finery shifting in shape and colour as they moved,
adopting new forms for every different aspect of light and circumstance. Golden bird-masks concealed their
faces. All of them bore the unblinking, flame-wreathed eye of Chi’an Chi somewhere on their person, be it in
the form of a clasp, a broach, a ring, or a tattoo on the back of the hand, and in place of their gourd flutes and
pipa they had picked up short dao and crossbows.

Yuan Bo smiled. ‘You think this makes it even?’

‘I believe the word I used was interesting.’

‘Well then,’ said Yuan Bo, bowing to the circle of human cultists to thank them for their playing, pulling out
the creases from his sleeves. ‘As it is amusement rather than fairness you seek.’ In a flash, he was up, onto
his feet and over the table with such alacrity that he could only have moved himself with magic, but in truth it
was just speed. The table collapsed behind him, sawn in half by his passage, crushing the entire priceless tea
set as his beringed knuckles connected with Miao Ying’s jaw.

While she reeled, the cultists swept in.

 15
A women loosed a crossbow. Yuan Bo turned deftly, catching the iron bolt as it flew past and evading the
downward stroke of a cultist’s dao as he did so. Then he shifted his weight onto the ball of his leading foot,
rising like a crane into a half-turn, and stabbed the bolt into the side of the swordsman’s neck. Blood burbled
up from the mortal’s mouth. Yuan Bo cannoned him back into the crossbow-women with an open-handed
strike to the breastbone, leaving them both in a bloody sprawl at the far end of the tearoom. A second cultist
rushed at Yuan Bo from the left, his blow turning into a stumble as his blade passed through the empty air
where a Dragon was supposed to have been.

Yuan Bo flashed back across the wreckage of the tea table. He bent down on one knee, unhurried, and
retrieved his antlered helmet. He pulled it on over his head as he stood.

The cultists rallied together on the other side of the ruined table. They eyed him with well-earned, if
belated, fear.

Yuan Bo turned his attention to Miao Yang, who was massaging her wounded jaw. The humans were beneath
his contempt. ‘Who are you, daemon?’

‘Are you saying you don’t recognise me?’ Miao Ying spread her arms, tessellating bands of steel reaching
around her chest. Her white hair shortened and darkened, drawing itself up into a bun. Her features became
wind-ravaged. A forked beard sprouted from her chin and extended all the way down her armoured chest.
Zhao Ming, the Iron Dragon, stood before Yuan Bo in her place, his arms out wide, his eyes glowing like coal
embers buried in pits of sand. ‘You don’t recognise your own brother?’

‘Enough of these games.’

‘Is the correct way to address your better?’

The daemon’s form shifted again, shedding some of its newly acquired stature and once again becoming
female. She wore a porcelain mask divided into yin and yang, an aqueous luminescence shining through
the pale skin beneath. Her hair flowed strangely, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back like water
through the many stages of a river, and like the rivers of Cathay each strand had its own length, colour,
and character.

Strangest of all were her eyes.

They were cold and blue and utterly dead.

Yuan Bo stumbled back in shock.

He had never met the first daughter of the Celestial Emperor and Moon Empress, for she had been already
slain when Yuan Bo and his still-living siblings had first opened their eyes. It was said that she slept beneath
the Dragon River, guiding the souls of the dead to the Ten Courts of Shyish under the stewardship of her
Ancestral Monks. But he knew her appearance from the peasants’ fables.
 16
Shiyama, the Spirit Dragon of the Underworld.

‘It should have been me,’ she snarled. ‘The Celestial Court should have been mine, not yours.’

Yuan Bo shook his head furiously.

Lies. All lies.

This was no more Shiyama than it was Zhao Ming or Miao Ying before him.

He clenched his fists by his side and roared, beams of blue-white Azyrite energies piercing his flesh as the
might of the Meteor Wind suffused the form that the Dragon Emperor had taught him to wear. The cultists
recoiled from him, hands covering the eye holes in their golden bird masks as he glowed ever brighter.

He would show them what truth looked like.

The teahouse shook as the transformation took hold. The floor sagged and groaned. His body thickened,
lengthened, lengthened more, the magic lancing through his skin becoming a coat of emerald scales harder
than the finest dwarf-made armour. And still, he roared, his voice becoming so apocalyptically loud that the
cultists fell about the room with blood streaming from their eyes and ears. The tearoom’s delicate partition walls
snapped like rosewood matchsticks. The outer walls were made of brick and fared no better, his gargantuan
body exploding from the teahouse like a lizard emerging fully grown from an egg.

The cultists stood no chance at all. Their bodies were ground to pulpy smears of blood and skin and gold,
thrown out onto the street with no greater consideration or ceremony than the rubble of the teahouse that
went with them.

Yuan Bo drew a deep breath and let it all out in another calamitous roar, the fury of a Dragon ringing loud
across the rooftops of Nan-Li.

The battle’s outermost extents appeared to have made it as far as the city. Heavily armoured mortal
champions zipped around the tall pagodas of the administrative district on tentacled discs. Screaming
flocks of furies trailed after them, harrying the crane gunners and archers left manning the battlements and
gleefully swooping down on any peasant foolish enough to be caught alone in the street.

Borne aloft on the swell of his own magic, without the need for wings or spells, the Jade Dragon scoured the
familiar skyline for his enemy. He saw no sign, but in the chaos of a siege, a shape-changing daemon could
have been anywhere, as anyone.

‘Face me!’ he bellowed.

‘I will face you, Jade Dragon, but only when you expect it least. We are still having too much fun.’

Yuan Bo swung his colossal head around to where the voice had come from, trailing long, rope-like green
 17
moustaches, glimpsing the daemon at last as it hastily tried on and discarded a hundred different forms. For
the duration of a thought it was one of the howling furies. Then it was a feather, tossed this way and that on
the wind and the heat rising from the fires. A drift of smoke. A single iron ball amidst a volley of crane shot
blasted into the sky. Finally, it settled on the shape of a knight of Chi’an Chi in mirrored armour, its head
enclosed by a helmet adorned with blinking eyes. He stood upon a daemonic disk that appeared to have
lost its rider and saluted the Jade Dragon with a spear wreathed in blue fire. The disc gibbered as it turned,
sweeping its daemonic rider from the battlefield. Yuan Bo bunched his muscular, serpentine bulk to give
chase, only to hesitate at the last.

Why was the daemon making it easy for him, unless its intention was still to keep him from bolstering the
defenders of Nan-Li? Whatever mischief such a creature might cause if allowed to escape, the threat to Nan-
Li was real and it was before him now.

With a final, sky-breaking trumpet, Yuan Bo called on his fiercest agents to give chase. The Onyx Crowmen
rose up from the city like smoke from a sorcerous effigy consigned to the fire, crawling out of every nook,
alley, and sliver of darkness to heed their master’s call. Where they met the daemonic furies of Chi‘an Chi,
the shadowy cloud broke into squalling flocks, but enough of them broke free, screeching and cawing as they
flapped off in ragged-winged pursuit of the fleeing longma.

Satisfied that the Onyx Crowmen would serve the Dragon Emperor to the end, even if no one else could, the
Jade Dragon left the daemon to the mercy of their beaks and claws and turned west.

He had an army to destroy.

***
 18
A vengeful Miao Ying arrived in Nan-Li five days after the battle’s end. She marched directly from Snake Gate
where her armies had been engaged with the ever-belligerent Hung and was, at the risk of great understatement,
profoundly displeased with the manner in which her mortal officials had conducted her affairs in her stead.

Her first demand, on passing through the gates of a trembling Nan-Li, was for the head of her first minister.
A flurry of such demands was swift to follow, with no branch of the city’s bureaucracy obscure enough to be
spared her wrath. Her spree would have no doubt extended to agents of the Celestial Court too, had Yuan Bo
not been there to temper her wrath.

Only when there were enough heads on spikes to ameliorate her unhappiness, some two days after her return,
did she reluctantly accept the invitation of the Jade Dragon to join him on the battlefield.

The battle was long over, but General Jingyi Bo had camped the bulk of his army there in the aftermath.
Those peasants who had not drifted back to Nan-Li had been put to work repairing irrigation ditches and
replanting rice paddies. Others were busy hammering and sawing, constructing the temporary enclosures in
which Jingyi Bo was keeping his prisoners. Small units of Jade Horsemen had been combing the countryside
for days, still rounding up mortal survivors from the vanquished daemon host.

‘I am disappointed that it took you as long as it did to see through this imposter,’ said Miao Ying. This time it
was Yuan Bo dressed in courtly, emerald-coloured robes, leaving his sister to look weathered and massive in
a suit of meteoric silver armour fresh from the Great Bastion. The two Dragons walked side-by-side through
the flooded paddy, bowing the heads of the hard-working mortals like a divine wind through a field of grass.
As oblivious to the sea of peasants burying their faces in the mud as she was to their ruined finery, the Storm
Dragon went on: ‘I expect it from servants. I do not expect it from you.’

‘She was very convincing,’ said Yuan Bo, and smiled at her stormy expression. In his heart, however, he
remained troubled.

The daemon had masqueraded for weeks as a Dragon and had nearly succeeded in leading a great city to its
destruction. It had almost fooled him. Where had it fled to after the battle, he wondered? Whose shape had it
chosen to wear? The Onyx Crowmen had pursued it not north or west, but east, towards Wei-Jin and the very
heart of Imperial Cathay. How it had slipped the sharp eyes of the Onyx Crowmen, Yuan Bo did not know, but
though the Feng Shi Bo could see all lies they were incapable of speaking one of their own. The daemon was
gone. The thought of the discord it might sow in the Central Provinces filled him with a terrible unease.

‘I am also displeased that you saw fit to enter my province uninvited,’ Miao Ying went on.

‘I trust you will forgive the trespass,’ Yuan Bo murmured, only half attentive. ‘As the Dragon Emperor will no
doubt forgive the disaster that almost befell Nan-Li.’ He turned to her and smiled. ‘A modest token of contrition
to the Celestial Court will, I am sure, be more than sufficient.’

Miao Ying pursed her lips but for once, and wisely, chose to say nothing.

‘You are his favourite, after all.’

19
 20
They came at last to the wooden fortress that Jingyi Bo had raised over the paddy fields. The lord-general and
his Celestial Dragon Guard were outside, personally overseeing the internment of a fresh batch of captives.
A gaggle of Onyx Crowmen had perched on the walls and were watching. Death, they seemed to croak, in
words that only Yuan Bo had the trust of the Moon Empress to hear and understand. Death. Death. Death.
The beaten men had been strung together in a long line, their hands bound with coarse rope. Many were still
clad in their foul armour, despite the best efforts of the Jade Horsemen to pry off gauntlets and helms. The
mightiest champions of Chi’an Chi, Yuan Bo knew, often became inseparably fused with their armour. For this,
he was grateful. The menagerie of bizarre forms on display even amongst the lesser servants of Chaos was
disturbing enough as it was.

Jingyi Bo and the Celestial Dragon Guard dropped to their knees and bowed as the two Dragons approached.
The Jade Warriors, holding the rope at each end of the line of captives, merely averted their eyes, obliged by
their duty to remain standing. The Onyx Crowmen flapped their wings and cawed.

Yuan Bo nodded up to the walls in acknowledgement.

Miao Ying looked over the beaten warriors, a look of disdain on her face.

It was difficult, in a land that flourished under the benign rule of its immortal Dragons, to understand how men
could be seduced by the worship of Dark Gods.

‘Are we going to question th–’

A fine mist of bright red blood speckled her face.

Yuan Bo’s double-edged jian, Dragon’s Fang, had come down before anyone, least of all the minion of Chi’an
Chi whose head had just parted from his neck, had seen it leave its sheathe. The Jade Warriors and Celestial
Dragon Guard proceeded to fall on the captive warriors, executing them one-by-one with fierce blows from
halberds, swords, and spades. Yuan Bo was the Dragon Emperor’s regent, first amongst a mighty brood of
powerful, often fractious siblings, but he was also his executioner. Where his blade fell it was a message from
the Celestial Dragon Emperor that all who followed its foolish victim could expect the same fate.

It was useful, too, for his brothers and sisters to be reminded; that not only was he watching but that he, and
Dragon’s Fang, might visit from time to time.

‘A modest token of contrition,’ he reminded her. ‘Do not forget.’

Miao Ying bowed her head to him, her face still spattered with blood she had not troubled herself to wipe
away. Mending and cleaning were, after all, human affairs.

‘Yes, Jade Dragon.’

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