“You did what?!” Erhi jumped to her feet, then sat back down immediately. She mumbled to herself.

“Told you,” Batu said, lounging on a carpet and picking at a bunch of grapes.

“What did he do?” Munokhoi narrowed his eyes. “Did he…”

I smiled and glanced back. “I’m calling her Dog.” The energy from the Spirit Realm had faded, and I couldn’t see Dog anymore. Though I’d noticed that she distorted the light around her, like a candle or a desert mirage.

I leaned against the merchant’s doorway. There was once a real door here, judging by the rusted hinges and sturdy wooden frame, but now the merchant covered the hole with a tarp. Erhi, Batu and the merchant Bet all huddled around a fire with an iron grate resting over it. Munokhoi, however, nestled himself in the corner furthest from the door, eyes darting from the merchant’s only window to the door and back to the window.

“She isn’t after you, Munokhoi,” I said. “As long as you do as you’re told.”

Munokhoi’s eyes locked on me.

“I-will-just-please-don’t-let-her-hurt-me-please-I-swear.” He took a deep breath and scurried over to me, on his knees. “Please-lord-I—”

“Eternal Blue Sky,” Batu said. “Your babbling is indecipherable.”

“I got the gist,” I said.

Dog nudged me forward, sticking her snout through the doorway and sniffing at the little pieces of chicken cooking on the iron grate.

“Dog, sit,” I said. “Wait for me. I’ll whistle when I need you. And don’t hurt anyone.”

She retreated.

I dropped down, careful not to put pressure on my fractured wrist. “Erhi.”

“Yes?” Erhi shuffled closer to me. “Yes, Kublai?”

“Can you heal injuries?”

“I can,” she said. “It takes a long time, though. If we’re in the First Capital or the Split-Skull Forest, it’ll take less, but still.”

“That’s fine.” I offered her my wrist. “We’ve got all night to recover.”

Batu sat up. “Recover for…?”

“I’m a lord now, brother,” I said. “I have to meet my competition.”

“The Council of Lords.” Bet nodded. “Are they expecting you, my lord?”

“I hope so,” I said. “That would give them some time to prepare something interesting.”

“Interesting,” Erhi guffawed, her soft hands caressing my wrist. “Interesting enough to break more than a wrist?”

I moved closer to her. “Interesting enough to break the Council.”

Bet waved his hands in the air and placed them over his ears. “My lord. You mustn’t say such things. They’ll hear.”

“From him?” I pointed at Munokhoi.

Munokhoi shook his head so vigorously it caused a slight breeze.

“They don’t need people like him,” Bet said. “My lord, I can’t hear this kind of talk.”

“Why? You’re only listening.”

“That’s just as bad as speaking, in the eyes of…” He pursed his lips. “That’s just as bad as speaking. May I retire?”

I nodded. “Can you spare a bed for my brother?” I glared at Munokhoi. “And a dark corner for the former captain. And Munokhoi, if you even think of running, please discuss your escape with the night-hound sleeping outside.”

“Of course,” he said. “Come, please.”

Munkhoi jumped to his feet, but Batu didn’t. Batu stretched out, like a cat in the sun, nestling by the fire and picking at the hot vegetables on the fire.

“I want to see the magic,” he said. “I’ve never seen magic.”

“Never?” I smirked.

“That time you made the village fisherman’s daughter’s dress…” He cleared his throat. “…‘disappear’ doesn’t count. That wasn’t real magic, magical though it may have been.”

Strands of blue light spiraled around my wrist, like vines growing around a branch. After Erhi started it, it seemed to have a mind of its own. I flicked at the light with my other hand.

“They can’t feel it,” she said. “This light is made of tiny spirits, all weaving through your arm to heal it, like needles stitching cloth together.”

“You don’t strike me as the type to sew,” I said.

Her hands travelled up my arm, beyond my injury. “I wasn’t always a seer, you know.”

“And what were you before?”

“I don’t remember, mostly,” she said. “I get flashes, but… all I ever see is the inside of some kind of palace.”

“You were a princess?” Batu chuckled. “No wonder my brother likes you. That’s exactly his type.”

I felt the spirits digging into my wrist. It felt like ants crawling over my bones. “She’s pretty too.”

She blushed, and the flowers in her hair opened up a little, as if they’d hiccupped. “Princess? I don’t know. But that doesn’t matter anymore. The past is the past. I’m the seer of the Split-Skull Forest now. That’s all.”

“No.” I put my hand on her cheek. “That’s the past too. You’re something else now.”

She shuffled closer, and her voice sunk low. “What am I now?”

“At the very least,” I said, “you’re the woman with her hand on my thigh.”

She pulled it back sharply. “Sorry.”

I caught her finger and dragged it back to where it was. “Don’t be.”

She bit her lip. “I wasn’t—”

Batu bit into an ear of corn with a crunch. “So, these little spirits. Do you keep them in jars or something?”

I glared at him.

“What?” Batu sucked at the corn in his teeth. “They have to come from somewhere.”

I kept my eyes on Erhi. “I suggest you go there and visit them, brother.”

“Don’t be ridic—” Batu paused. “Oh.” He shrugged, got to his feet with a groan and walked down through the corridor.

It was just Erhi and I in the room. We sat alongside the fire, and it crackled as the breeze tickled it. Erhi smelled of lavender and cinnamon. She wore her usual skirt, but it revealed more thigh than it had before. The fire’s light danced along her cheek, up to her forehead and down to her slightly parted lips.

“Where were we?” Erhi said.

I slipped my hand down onto her thigh. “Here.”

Her legs inched open a little and her breath quickened. “Kublai.”

I flashed a smile.

“Wait,” she said, drawing closer. “Wait. The spirits still have work to do.”

I shifted closer to her, and her breath brushed against my mouth. “So do we.”

She glanced down, then back up to me and smiled.

My nose grazed hers. I dug into her thigh with my left hand, and brought my right up to her neck, spirits still glowing around my wrist. Her lips brushed mine, and I pressed the issue. Her tongue danced on mine, and her hand inching up my thigh.

I ran a finger down her neck, over her shoulder, and down her side until I reached the knot of her skirt. She giggled as I slipped it loose. I kissed her again. She gasped as I cupped her breast, but that didn’t stop her hand from squeezing my crotch.

I pulled her tunic up and over her head. She unbuckled my belt and tossed my sword and satchel into the corner. It fell with a distant clank, but I could barely hear it over her heavy breathing. We gazed at one another, both of us naked before the fire. I put my hands around her waist and pulled her closer.

She grinned. I laid her down on her back. Her grin widened into a moan. I grabbed hold of her hips as I entered her. Her legs wrapped around my back, and she ground her hips against me as we fell into a rhythm. I bit her neck and our rhythm sped up. She gasped “yes” into my ear, in quick, urgent bursts. Her nails dug into my back, and with one final thrust, I finished inside her.

I fell beside her, out of breath. I held up my once-broken wrist, and the spirits seemed to have finished their work. “So…” I pursed my lips. “Where do you keep the spirits?”

She giggled. “That’s a trade secret.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Name one secret you’ve ever kept.”

“If I named it, then I wouldn’t have kept it.”

She spun her finger along my chest. “I call them from the Spirit Realm, and they answer. Just like the map tells the Spirit Realm where to spit you out, I tell the Spirit Realm where to spit them out.”

“No jars?”

“I don’t think they have jars in the Spirit Realm.”

“That’s a pity,” I said. “They mustn’t have pickled onions either then.”

“They have night-hounds,” she said. “Speaking of which…”

“I’m keeping Dog.”

“But—”

I put my thumb on her lips. “I’m keeping Dog.”

She bit my thumb. “Fine.”

“What do night-hounds eat?”

She gave me a flat look. “People, mostly.”

“Noted.” I pursed my lips and went silent.

“Oh no.” She nestled into me. “I haven’t known you long, but I know when you get that look, you’re going to do something irresponsible.”

“Irresponsible?” I said. “Since when is feeding your dog the scummiest lords of the land ‘irresponsible’?”

She laughed before she closed her eyes and slept. With my mind filled with new plans, I allowed my lids to fall and slept.

I woke to Bet shouting “Carrots! Cabbages! Tomatoes! Fresh, fresh, fresh!” outside. Erhi and I had found a blanket before we went to sleep, but we’d awoken with another on top of us. She nestled into my chest and I was tempted to stay, but there was a city to take. I slipped out from under her, but she woke up.

She squinted at the sunlight leaking in through the window. “Where’re you going?”

I pulled on my boots. “I don’t know yet.”

“But I assume you know how you’re finding out.”

“He’s sleeping in the other room.” I grabbed my satchel and my blade and walked towards the corridor. “It’s time he thanked me for saving his life.”

Munokhoi was curled in the corner of a storage room. Seeds and bags of soil lined the walls, along with little pots with labels scrawled on their bases. This room had more windows than the rest, but thick iron bars made the light cast a checkered pattern on the dirt floor. Bet had given the former captain of the guard a blanket, to his credit.

I kicked him awake. “Wake up.”

Munokhoi grumbled something and pulled the blanket tighter around his body.

“Don’t make me call the night-hound.”

He spun around and glared at me. “It’s the daytime. The night-hound can’t—”

“It won’t be day forever,” I said. “Get up. We have things to discuss.”

He sat up and stretched. “What?”

“You’re going to tell me everything about the Council of Lords. Their habits, hobbies, routines. I want to know where they like to spend their evenings and where they make decisions.”

“I don’t know everything.” Munokhoi rubbed his eyes. “But I know most things.”

“Let’s start simple.” I sat down, crossed legged. “Who is on the Council?”

“Lords Changhan, Altan, Batbayar…” Munokhoi counted them on his fingers. “Oktai. And Lady Khulan.”

“Altan and Changhan aren’t on the Council anymore.”

“Batbayar, Oktai and Lady Khulan then.”

“Go on.”

“Batbayar likes to be left alone, most of the time, but he drinks too much too often, and when he does, he enjoys the company of women at a whorehouse called the Silver Sunrise.” Munokhoi had started to huddle close to me and whisper, as if gossiping in an alleyway with another guard. Good. He probably wasn’t lying then. “Batbayar controls a few cities in the south, but his most prestigious holding is the city of Erdenet. I’ve only been there once, but it’s nice, if you keep away from the tigers.”

“Tigers?”

“They stroll through the streets like stray dogs.” Munokhoi pointed to the scars on his forearm. “I made the mistake of going on a walk and eating a turkey leg at the same time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I control it.”

“When you control… it.” Munokhoi narrowed his eyes. “Oh. I almost forgot you were some kind of idiot.”

“One of us is,” I said. “And I’m willing to bet it’s the one who spent the night caressing a bag of soil.”

He sighed. “On to Lord Oktai. He’s nervous, careful. Paranoid, actually. He had guards check every single person in any place he went, and never touched money because he thought it was bad luck or that a witch could smell him on the money. I mean, it’s for good reason evidently. He recently came back from the country all bandaged up.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. He always struck me as odd, but then again, Altan and Changhan seemed the most ordinary among the Council and they’re, well… dead?”

I nodded.

“Figures,” he said. “You don’t seem like the overly merciful type.”

“You said you guarded Lady Khulan personally?”

“I did. She’s… dangerous. There were rumors that she was the wife of a lord once, but poisoned him and took his seat on the Council.”

“Are they true?”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “She pushed him off a bridge.”

“I’ll be sure to avoid those around her.”

He rolled his eyes. “And let me guess, you’re going to take her cities too?”

I smiled. “It’s nice that we’re getting to know each other.”

“Well, you’re not the one with an invisible spirit dog breathing down your neck,” Munokhoi said. “Lady Khulan’s a gambler. She likes the dice. But she also owns almost all the gambling establishments on the continent. Well, every gambling establishment bigger than two men in the shade with some money on the line. This merchant is the only one she doesn’t own.”

“Hence the name.” I guffawed. “Bet.”

He nodded. “Those people you can hear. They aren’t buying cabbages. They’re placing their bets for the cockfights and wrestling matches. He might look small time, but he’s actually enough to threaten Lady Khulan’s interests in the First Capital.”

“And that’s why you were harassing Bet in particular?”

Munokhoi looked down at his knees. “Lady Khulan sent me away after I tried to kiss her. I thought that if I take out her biggest competition…”

“She’d reconsider you,” I said. “Both as a guard and as a man.”

He nodded.

“Tell me about…” I leaned forward and lowered my voice to a whisper. “The one who sits above the Council.”

Munokhoi froze. “I don’t know… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You might be a cunt, but you’re not necessarily an ignorant one.”

“I can’t.”

“No one ever seems to be able to.” I drew my dagger from my belt and stuck it in the dirt. “Until I ask them more… politely.”

Munokhoi swallowed. “I can’t say anything about him.”

“Him.”

“That,” he said, quickly. “But I will say that Lady Khulan is dangerous for one reason in particular. She has the ear of someone, in particular.”

“You’ve seen her speak into this ear?”

“Not with my own eyes, no. When I was a young captain, one of my men saw them together once…”

“What happened to him?”

“I would say that they burned out his eyes, but that would be a lie.”

“What did they do?”

“They say that when you hear a wind howling in the palace of the First Capital…” Munokhoi swallowed. “They say he’s still there, in the dungeons, clawing out his own eyes.”

“I’m finding your love for Lady Khulan more and more… bizarre.”

“It’s not her.” He balled his hands into fists. “It’s…”

I nodded. “Him.”

“Where do they meet?” I said. “And when?”

“At night. Always at night. That’s why they released the night-hound. It’s to keep the unwanted ears away from those who don’t like to be heard.” He pursed his lips. “And where… that’s a complicated question.

“They have a court, of course, but… I’ve never escorted anyone directly to it. They always instructed me to escort them to a brothel, or to a garden, or a graveyard.”

“They met in public places?” I shook my head. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Right. I stood by the exits for hours. No one came, no one left. Of course back then I was a personal escort, so they made the night-hound ignore me, but now… well, I wouldn’t be singing like a bird for you if I hadn’t seen what that thing’s done to other people who it didn’t ignore.”

I picked up the dagger and drew a circle in the dirt, with a little square in the center. “The square is the court. The circle is the First Capital borders. Draw.” I held out the dagger to him.

He reached out to take it, but pulled back.

“You’re welcome to try and use it to stab me,” I said, “but know that if you do, your man in the palace dungeons will have a friend soon after I take the city.”

He took the dagger and started drawing in the dirt. “Here’s the brothel, near the border. And here’s the garden, on the left. And here’s the graveyard, at the bottom.”

“What did they look like?”

“Like… a brothel.” He gave me a flat look. “And a garden. And a graveyard.”

“So the whorehouse that Lord Batbayar frequents is exactly like this brothel? Describe them.”

He closed his eyes. “Well, the whorehouse is… disgusting. Whores hang their washing on the windows, and sometimes you get a flash of a man’s ass cheeks when you’re arriving. It smells, too. The building looks new, but it’s aging quickly. But the brothel looked old, like it was… old. There’re a few buildings like that in the city.

“The garden looks old too. It has statues from the days of the First Empire. I took Lord Oktai to one statue in particular, with a hidden door at its base. It had a dragon curling around a boy with a spear. It had a lot of moss caked on it too.

“And the graveyard looked like no one had been buried there in a hundred years. They didn’t even use a marker back in the days of the First Empire. I heard it was because dragons cremated everyone then. The graveyard is just a plot of land, some patches of grass, and another statue of a dragon—”

I burst out laughing. “Seriously?”

Munokhoi narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“It’s glaring, Munokhoi.”

He folded his arms. “Well, I’m glad you picked it up. I was, of course, just testing your intellect myself, to see if you could actually take the city from—”

“I’ll spell it out for you.” I took the dagger back and pointed at the three little symbols we’d made in the dirt. “The brothel looks old. The garden has old statues. The graveyard is from the time of the First Empire. Hah.” I drew a line from the brothel to the court, from the garden to the court, and from the graveyard to court. “They’re tunnels of some kind, made by the royals of the First Empire.”

Munokhoi smirked a little, but suppressed it as soon as he realized. “That’s silly.”

“Sillier than wealthy, powerful people spending their evenings underground, alone?”

“I… They could’ve been writing letters.”

“To who? The whores in the brothel or the dead in the graveyard? I’m sure Lord Batbayar enjoyed writing to the flowers from the garden too.”

“Fine.” He stuck his finger in the dirt. “They apparently entered here, here, and here, and then, what, walked all that way? It’s at least an hour long walk. And that’s if you’re a young, virile man like myself. Batbayar had us stop halfway up the stairs and fan him one summer, and this was entering someone’s house. Four steps. I don’t think he’s up to hobbling around the First Capital for secrecy’s sake.”

I paused. It did seem strange. And the fact that Changhan and Altan weren’t in the First Capital like the others complicated things. Unless…

The map. The First Empire made the map. They could’ve made something similar and placed them inside the brothel, the garden and the graveyard.

Munokhoi clicked his fingers in my face. “Are you… okay?”

I slapped his hand out of my face. “It’s good that you’re concerned about my well-being.” I pulled the dagger out of the dirt and sheathed it. “Because my well-being is directly tied to yours.”

He swallowed.

I jumped to my feet and offered him a hand up. “Don’t be so grim. I have no intention of dying before you.”

He took my hand. “And I had no intention of helping you.”

“Yet here we are.” I dusted myself off.

Munokhoi glanced at his feet.

“Meet me outside in five minutes.” I turned and strode off to find Batu.

Batu had fallen asleep in another room, on what seemed to be a bench with a thin blanket and pillows sprawled around him. He was hugging a cabbage when I flicked his cheek.

He gasped awake, then narrowed his eyes at the sunlight. “Morning already? I was just…” He yawned. “…getting to good part of a dream.”

I offered him a hand. “Get up and we can get to the good part of this realm too.”