First off a huge apology for dropping off the edge of the earth and not updating for so very long. Life and the end of the academic year got in the way to a rather big extent. The second part here is rather longer than I originally thought, but it seemed to fit better as a two-parter rather than a stretched-into-three-parter. As always, Bioware owns nearly everything, and reviews are always welcome.

Part Two

The morning she meant to go to the fortress she woke before the dawn. She stole outside, and into the soft humid gloom, the executioner's token clamped between her hands. She had stared at it in the stifling confines of her room, run her fingers over it and over it, until she had learned the sharp edges of it. Out here it seemed unchanged, cold and heavy, all hard lines against her hands.

It was her way in and she needed it and she needed to go.

When the sun sank, she thought. When the darkness came. When the night combed its way over the city. When she could make her way to the pagoda in the Necropolis quickly and quietly.

"Dawn Star said you were up already," Zu said, and something inside her twisted painfully.

Briefly she wondered if she had ever truly meant to take herself away without framing fears into words, without saying anything at all. She turned and summoned a smile, edged and raw, and she knew he would see through it. "I couldn't sleep."

"I would speak with you, if you do not mind."

She lifted her head and smiled. "You don't usually ask."

"No." He hesitated, his gaze on the ground, and his hands wrapped around each other. "This is different. May I join you?"

She nodded, and when he did, he sat cross-legged, his face closed-off and cold.

"The fortress," he said. "I do not think this is a good idea."

"You're telling me this today?" she asked. She shook her head. "Then what else would you have me do?"

"I don't know. I do know that I have seen men and women walk into that place's walls and return changed."

"I won't," she snapped, louder than she intended.

"Jen Zi," he said, and suddenly, terribly, she wondered when he had last used her name, or if he had, ever. "There are shadows in that place that you cannot imagine."

"Then tell me. Help me."

"If you go there," he said, his voice roughening. His head lifted, his gaze finding hers. "Something will happen."

"Yes. It will. I will work my way through them all until I find my answers."

"You're so young. It's easy to say such things."

"Then help me," she said again, hearing the frayed note in her own words. "Tell me what to do. How to appear. How to speak."

"Vanity," he said.

"Vanity. The assassins?"

"Yes. Not in the way you would think. Not jewels, or bright cloth, or silk, or wealth. The beauty of their determination. Their accomplishments." His mouth twisted, and he added, "In the way their bodies change as they become assassins."

"I don't plan on being there that long," she said, and she knew he could hear it as well, the way her voice was faltering.

"If you truly mean to do this, may I offer some advice?"

"That's…not what I thought you were going to say."

"What did you think I was going to say?"

She shrugged, and said, "Something about how I must be completely insane by now."

A smile ghosted across his mouth, gone as quickly. "They will be suspicious regardless."

"But?"

"Take yourself and your sword and nothing else. Find new clothes. Dress simply. No jewels, no ribbons, nothing in your hair."

"I don't usually," she said. "I mean, yes. I'm listening."

"Show them you mean what you say. There is no quicker way."

"I can do that."

"You don't know what you're speaking of," he said harshly.

"Then tell me," she snapped, closing her fingers around the token until the edges of it bit into her skin. "What terrible things did you do?"

"Too many things."

"You're giving me threats and half truths."

"You want to hear about the men and women I've killed? The men and women I've ruined?"

His voice was rising, sharply and angrily, and she cut across him. "Zu. I didn't mean…I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm sorry for, but I am."

"No," he said, softer. "You asked for help and I gave you none."

"Oh, I don't know. I certainly plan on giving Dawn Star the hundred and six hair ribbons I own now."

His head tilted, and he stared at her for a long moment, searchingly. "That day in the swamps," he said. "You were not what I expected. You still aren't."

"What did you expect?"

"A student."

"I was."

"Arrogant, talented."

"Again," she said, and smiled.

"But not just such things." He was still looking at her, looking at her as if he was searing the memory of her into his thoughts.

"Zu," she said, her voice wavering. "I'm coming back."

"Yes. I know you are."

The day meandered towards its close, and she dragged the whetstone down the blade of her sword. Dragged it down over the dragon pattern and towards the hilt again and again until she could see herself, trapped, floating in it.

"He's not here," Dawn Star said behind her, the words shaking, as if she did not believe her own voice. "Zu, I mean. I can't find him. He wasn't there when we ate. He's not…he didn't say anything to you?"

"It's fine," she said.

"It's not."

"No."

"Jen," Dawn Star said, and caught her wrist.

"We've talked about this. I go. Just me. There's nothing sensible in me pulling any of you along with me."

"Jen," Dawn Star said again.

She turned away, reaching for the simple black lacquered pins. She swept her hair up and twisted the heavy weight of it at the nape of her neck, a single uncomplicated knot. "They're expecting one recruit. I'll find you afterwards. I know it's a terrible thing to ask."

"It is." Pointedly, Dawn Star added, "Do you know where he is?"

She swallowed, the inside of her mouth sandy. "No," she said, knowing it was half a lie, mostly a lie, a thought that she could not quite acknowledge.

"What if you never come out?"

"I'll come out."

"What if?"

"Then you go the palace," she said fiercely. "Somehow you go to the palace. Make Silk Fox take you there. You'll go there and you'll ask things of the emperor and you'll find Master Li."

"Ask the emperor," Dawn Star said, and smiled faintly. "Of course."

"I'm coming back," she said, and wrapped her arms around Dawn Star's shoulders, pulling her close, their embrace suddenly frantic. "I will."

Somehow she wrenched herself away, and somehow she made herself march through the city's undulating streets. She was clad as he had suggested, a grey tunic over grey leggings and black boots, the clothes almost shapeless and caught against her waist by her sash. Her sword at her side and a pouch with a tiny clutch of coin. The token, pressed hard into her palm. In the seething silence of the Necropolis, she made her way up the steps and towards the pagoda. It slanted high and dark above, cutting the fading sunlight. As she had been told, she opened the door and crossed the floor, her feet dragging long marks in the dust. She pressed the token into the small indentation above the scooped hollow of the alcove and waited, hearing the shuddering rumble beneath her feet.

The darkness breathed here, she thought. It breathed from the walls and into the assassins who had told her where to go and who to answer to, and two days enmeshed in this strange shadowy cage, she found herself running errands for Master Gang. The others she glided past and talked only if there was no other option. Sometimes they spoke to her, and she answered briefly and tersely. She ate with them, wordlessly, and trained with them as silently. Some of them commended her on her speed and her agility and her skill, and she made sure to note their names and their faces for when they came for her, later, when she might least expect it. Her sword went everywhere with her, the great hall and the mines, the slave chambers and the soul extraction room, and she battled her thoughts and made herself listen and nod and say the right words.

They gave her a room, a tiny curve-walled cell that mercifully had a door, and a heavy lock. They gave her parchments and scrolls, and ordered that she read through them, and be tested.

The tenth night, she stumbled into the room shaking with exhaustion, and shouldered the door closed. As clumsily, she shoved the lock into place and fumbled for the small oil lamp. The flame danced, licking over the pallet and the deep pitted gouges above the door and Zu, where he sat against the wall.

"Are you trying to scare me?" she demanded, whisper-quiet.

"No."

He had changed, she thought, and tried to quell the sudden lurch of her heartbeat. He was dressed like they were, black sleeveless armour and black tunic, dark enough to swallow the lamplight, dark enough to deepen the shadows beneath his eyes. He knew this place, she thought, and that awareness clawed its way under her skin. He had been taught here, he had learned how to fight here, how to move and melt into the shadows.

"Zu," she said, his name rolling heavy and uncertain off her tongue. "Are you still you?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Why are you here?"

"You cannot do this alone."

"You might have said something before."

"How?"

Conceding, she nodded. "You know what I have to do."

It was not a question, and he dipped his head, acknowledging. "A spirit shard for a golem. And not a simple golem. One of their jade golems."

She thought of the smothering press of the air in the extraction chamber, the walls green and thick with moss and the frame beneath the high pillars. Straps fixed to wood and the leather there all sodden and stiff with blood. "They're using slaves. Killing them outright for the golems."

"Their brutality is growing more efficient."

"Is there another way? I mean," she said, struggling suddenly with the words, with the knowledge of it. "I don't want to kill a slave. And I really don't want to give them a spirit shard that will work."

"The corruption here runs deep," he said. "But there might be. There are graves below this place. Places where the dead lie."

The silence surged, uncomfortable now, febrile and uncertain. Finally, she sat, sinking onto the floor near him, her shoulders sliding against the wall. The oil lamp chimed against the floor, tracing marigold lines across her boots. She thought she could hear the fortress around them, rippling with it all, the energy of the golems as they bided and the restless spirits and the dreadful awareness of the assassins who worked them.

"Zu," she said.

He must have heard the terrible desperation smoking through her voice. "If you mean to go through with this, there are things I must tell you."

Ten days buried in the darkness of this fortress and before she could think otherwise, she closed the distance between them, her back still against the wall, her arm against his. She closed her fingers around the back of his wrist, corded with muscle and scarred. "Tell me," she murmured.

"It was when Dirge was burning," he said, each word low and barely breathed-out, as if he was wrestling with them, wrestling the memory of it. "Most of us were sent there. I was not. I stayed, as did some others, and the order came through. Treachery had happened, the emperor betrayed. We were sent to kill Sun Li's wife and child and all his household."

She swallowed. Nothing, she knew, nothing could be said to this, to this knowledge, this secret, this memory that he had kept knotted up inside for far too long. Instead, she looked at him, silently and not censuring.

"She had given birth," Zu said, his eyes glassy with the distance of recollection. "Sun Li's wife, lying there. We had been ordered, and we could not question the wisdom of it. Better a coward than one who dares question the emperor." Bitterly, he added, "Which is what I was that day. I hesitated, and they killed her. The order was wrong, the order had to be wrong, and I did nothing."

"Zu," she said, helplessly.

"They killed her before I thought to do anything."

"What did you do?"

"I killed them," he said simply. "All of them. One by one until the room was full of them. And I took the child and I ran. And for a long time I have wondered what kind of creature gives an order like that. And what kind of creature obeys."

"The child was Master Li's?"

"Yes. She was."

She sucked in a sharp breath. Too many thoughts assailed her, too many possibilities, blade-edged and painful. "Why wait until now?"

"I did not know what you would do."

"You don't trust anyone," she said mildly.

"That's not true," he said, growling the words out.

She felt herself smiling slightly. "You told me about this place. I thought…I don't know what I thought."

He blinked, slowly, as if he was shaking himself out of the prison of his own words. "What do you think now?"

"I think I want you to stay there. If you want to."

"I want to," he said, the words almost a sigh.

"What if they find you?"

"They won't."

"You're sure?"

"No," he said.

She found herself laughing, quietly, the sound halfway to a sob. "So," she said thickly. "What do we do after this?"

"Not this," he said wryly. "Ever again."

"Fair enough. Then we'll leave, and we'll wander, and I'll make you laugh."

"Really," he said, his dark gaze shifting and finding hers.

"Yes, at least once."

Something in his face changed, softening. Wordlessly, Zu curled his hand beneath hers, his fingers grazing the inside of her wrist. The oil lamp trembled, sputtering as it ran dry. The shadows rushed up and closed over them both, over the way their hands were laced together.

She woke to the expected sound of footsteps, and lanternlight under the door, and the needling awareness that her neck was horribly stiff. She moved, her shoulder bumping Zu's before she froze. "You're still here," she said, her voice sandy with sleep.

"You thought I wouldn't be?"

"I thought you'd vanish into the wall or whatever it was you did last time."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "I cunningly came in through the door, if you must know."

"That's not nearly as exciting." She was stalling, and she knew it, throwing up words between them as if they could stop her having to stand and go and pretend to be one of them again. "Yes," she said eventually. "These graves. Where the dead lie. Below the mines?"

"Yes," he said, and nodded. "I will meet you there."

"Very well." Almost awkwardly, she reached up to her hair, heavy and sweat-damp and in need of a decent soaking. She shoved the plain black pins in firmly at her nape. "Did you," she said, and almost lost her nerve. Eschewing patience, and decorum, and all the other tidy, simple things she had thought of once, she said, "Did you sleep well?"

"Not really," Zu said, and one side of his mouth sloped up. "But that was more to do with the floor, and the place we are in, and not to do with you."

"I'm flattered," she retorted mildly. She uncoiled upright, wincing when her muscles twinged in protest.

She discovered the corridor outside already busy with apprentices as they wound their way to their masters for the day's tasks. Others lit the huge hanging lanterns that threw splotches of yellow light against the polished dark floors. The air was heavy, she thought, a miasma dense with the shadows, with the whispers, with the way the assassins padded through the silences. She ate with the others as she had the past ten days, scooping up rice and wordlessly reaching for the water pitcher.

In the mines there was the restless spirit of Zeng Sai, shouting out his rage against her, against the Spirit Monk that she was. When he fell, the ephemeral edges of him breaking apart, she set about the terrible business of gathering the rest of him, the years-polished bones locked in the damp earth.

"I'm sorry," Zu said, quietly. "I had to know. I had to be sure."

She hesitated. "What do you mean?"

"They say the horsemen of the plains were defeated by the people of Dirge. Your people. If that was true, then Zeng Sai should have felt it in you, your heritage."

"You thought I," she said, the words drying up.

"I'm sorry."

"You thought I might not be what I say I am. Even now?"

Impassive, he said nothing.

"I have never been anything other than what I have said. Why you would," she said, and drew in a shuddering breath. "Forgive me. I need to go. There are – I have things to do."

She marshaled her nerves and used the extractor, and once it was finished, she stared, sickened, at the blade-sharp shard it left behind. Five more days slithered past. She saw Zu only once, and desperately tried to shove the thought from her mind, that he had been found, caught, dragged out somewhere and killed. Master Gang's relentless orders filled her days, and when finally she scythed Master Shin's feet out from under him and watched him bleed out on the floor of the great hall, she found herself too numb to dredge up a reaction. As promised, she hauled the body into the golem press and as mechanically, she showed Master Gang the evidence of it, of this brisk, insidious treachery.

In the suffocating silence of her room, she stared blindly up at the darkness, kept awake by the unceasing churn of her own thoughts.

The emperor and Death's Hand and too many golems, their empty eyes watching. The assassins and what they meant and who they belonged to. Death's Hand, murmured with reverence by the assassins, their heads bowing when they framed the name, or the title, whichever it was. The way of things, all jarred out of order, and the Water Dragon and her restless dead. She clamped one hand around the amulet and willed her thoughts flat and blank and eventually, sleep claimed her.

The cautious slide of footsteps woke her, and then the scrape of someone's fingers against the door. She rolled upright and hissed, "Who is it?"

"Me," Zu answered, as quietly.

"Is it safe?"

"Here?" he responded wryly.

She snorted. She unlatched the door and gestured him inside before she reached for the lamp. She turned, and his unexpected proximity startled her. The flame caught and flared, lapping over his hands and the scar that crossed his face.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"Hiding."

"That's less than helpful."

"This place is full of tunnels, rooms. Old corners even the assassins forget."

"That's slightly more helpful." She stepped away from him, still not liking the black tunic on him, the red lotus symbol emblazoned across his chest, rippling when he moved. A flower, perhaps, or a hand or flames, red petals or red fingers uncoiling upward.

"I am to meet Grand Inquisitor Jia tomorrow."

"Then you are nearing the end of your goal."

"Don't do that," she said, more angrily than she meant to.

"What?"

"Speak like it doesn't matter. Sound like it doesn't matter."

"It does matter," Zu snapped. "It matters too much to put it into the right way of sounding. Or would you prefer that I think your chances are small, even now? Would you prefer that I tell you that however it goes with Jia, if you go up against Death's Hand, you will fail?"

Obstinate as rock, she flung back at him, "I won't fail."

"Then be fast. Be fast and be clever and do not engage Death's Hand."

"What is he," she said. "What is he, that he makes even you speak of him like this?"

"I don't know what he is."

She exhaled sharply, some of the tension seeping from her shoulders. Helplessly, she shrugged. "Do you want to sit down?"

"When I can pace instead?" The strain around his eyes softened slightly. He turned, as if he was going to sit against the wall again, but she shook her head.

"Just sit here," she said quietly. She sank onto the edge of the pallet and waited, wordlessly.

For long moments he stayed standing before he gave in, sitting beside her, his gaze pinned on the door. "There are things you need to know."

"More riddles?"

"No," he said. "Get what you need from Jia. Whatever evidence you need to convince Silk Fox. Get it and go. Do not stay for Death's Hand. Leave when you can."

"Zu." She looked at him, his face as unreadable as his voice. "Why so insistent?"

"Can't I be concerned?"

"It sounds like," she said, and shook her head. "I'm sorry. I've spent too long talking to Master Gang. I keep looking for layers and layers under those layers."

"Which is why you need to leave, and as soon as you can."

"I was rebuked yesterday for not having markings yet."

He went rigid, his hands clenching hard against each other. "What did you say?"

"I lied and said I'd have them in time."

"Not the sharpest response."

"You'd prefer that I was on my way down to get my first set of scars, would you?" She bit at the inside of her cheek. "I am so sorry. I don't know why I said that."

"It's this place."

"Yes," she said, for something to say, something to fill the emptiness between them. "It is."

"Jen," he said, his voice running across hers. "Tomorrow…"

"Later today, I suppose."

His mouth shifted into a half-smile, lopsided as he looked at her. "Yes."

"What were you going to say?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"I don't either," she said, and found herself almost laughing, her throat constricting with it. "Was it like this when you were trained?"

"You mean, did I spend my time sneaking into other people's rooms, or..?"

"You really do discover a sense of humour at the strangest times." She relaxed back against the pallet slightly, her elbows taking her weight. "And there are easier ways to say that you don't want to talk about it."

"It was different. I was young, then. For a time I thought I wanted what this place offered. What it meant."

She looked up at him, at the angles of his profile. "Did you ever think it would come to this?"

"Knowing every possible step is something gifted to the greatest masters and not to me, I think." He turned, his eyes settling on hers. "I did wonder if I would ever come back here, and why I might."

"And why have you?" She shook her head. "Ignore me. I'm talking because I don't know what else to do."

"No," Zu said, softly. "I'm here because you need to be here. Because this is the only way."

Without thinking – almost without thinking, without wondering too much – she caught his wrist and tugged. He ended up beside her, the black tunic rumpling. The pallet was narrow, and she wriggled back slightly. He opened his mouth as if he thought he should say something, and she shook her head. In response, something in his gaze eased, dark and thoughtful.

"I'm supposing you don't have anywhere to go right now," she said.

Crookedly, he smiled. "No. Not that I know of."

She looked at him, at the scar that tracked the length of his face, descending from his cheekbone and cutting into his mouth. She felt the pulsing silence of the fortress around them, the quiet impatience of the night as it ticked away.

"We're burning what you're wearing," she said. "As soon as we get out of here."

"You don't like it?" he asked, drily.

"It's not the best you've looked."

"I'm flattered."

"Don't be," she told him, and when she lifted her gaze to his face again, she froze. He was looking at her searchingly, hungrily, the way she had been looking at him, the way she had tried not to look at him. He said her name again, and she felt his breath on her lips. She flattened her hand against his chest, over the red splash of the lotus symbol. Wordlessly he covered the back of her hand with his, holding her there, holding her against the slow thump of his heartbeat.

"I have to go," she said. "Soon."

"Not yet."

"No," she said. "Not yet."

Together they lay there, listening to the fortress and the shadows, clinging to each other, and clinging to what they had not said.

Grand Inquisitor Jia was smaller than she had thought, small and wiry and imbued with the unsettling, stone-grey determination of the fortress. The woman moved like poured oil, fast and vanishing and always an inch away from the arc of her sword. Close to furious, she tightened her grip on the hilt and threw herself forward again. The point of her sword dug against Jia's shoulder, the woman jolting away in response.

As fast, she twisted, the flat of the blade striking hard against Jia's forearm, shoving her back. Another pivot had her inside the woman's guard, and she slammed the sword into the woman's chest, angling the blade up and under the curve of her ribcage. Afterwards, she climbed the stone steps, each one smooth and slippery and gleaming. She was aware of the rush of water, spilling and rushing either side of the carved throne.

Jia's words roiled in her head, the venomous promise that Death's Hand would be here soon, that he would come, and that he would be given the last Spirit Monk because she had had the audacity to come here.

She saw the amulet fragment first, ragged at the edges and glinting. She dropped it into the pouch at her waist and turned, her gaze searching the shadows between the high pillars until she found Zu, his shoulders against the stone and his eyes on her.

"I wondered where you were."

"Did you," he responded in the same wry tone.

She was three steps down when she saw his face change, when he shouted for her to move, his voice rough with something very close to panic. Obstinately, she whirled back, her hand dropping to her sword hilt.

Death's Hand, and the sudden, impossible sight of him – of him, of it, of whatever it was behind black encasing armour – froze thought and breath.

She had time to note his swords, and the coiled way he was walking, each footfall soft and almost silent against the steps, his armour wet and ribboned with water. He had come through the rock and through the glassy spill of the water and she could not muster locked muscles to move.

He kicked her, throwing her back, and she felt it, the absurd steely strength in him, in whatever he was. Her shoulders hit first, her head jolting hard against the floor. She scrabbled onto her side, breath coming in wheezing gulps. His shadow slanted over her, and madly she rolled away. Another kick landed solidly against her chest, and she gritted her teeth against the shocking pain of it.

Awkwardly, she scrambled upright, aware of him moving, turning, following her. She stumbled, and when hands closed on her arm, she tried to wrestle away.

"I've got you," Zu snapped. "Come on."

Somehow she did, leaning desperately against the sheltering press of his shoulder. She pushed herself faster, one arm latched around his waist, aware of how he was half carrying her, of how her feet were sliding. Zu said her name, the words strangled and thick, and then he was pushing her, pushing her ahead of him, through the high stone pillars.

She turned, aware of the sawing pain in her chest, the dizzying recognition of cracked ribs and exhaustion.

She saw Zu first, and Death's Hand, his swords dipping, shearing through empty air. Zu darted away, and she wanted to scream at him to pull his staff over his shoulder, to move faster, to do something.

Zu spun again, and as relentlessly, Death's Hand followed him, both blades biting hard against one of the pillars, yanking out dust and bit of stone. He rolled away, and she saw the rigid, frantic set to his shoulders. Backstepping, he ducked another scything sweep of the swords.

She felt it beneath her feet, the shifting of the stone, the pillars as they shuddered and abruptly, she understood. Fiercely she grasped her sword and hurled herself back towards the pillars. Death's Hand moved faster, his momentum spinning his right-hand sword until the blade was buried in Zu's chest.

She snarled Zu's name, his name or something like it, the sound torn apart by anger.

She was paces away when the pillars crumbled, the appalling din of it swallowing her footsteps and her heartbeat and the unsteady roaring in her head. The sword dropped from her hand, ringing hard against the floor. She found the edge of the nearest stone piece, rough and thick with dust and wrapped her hands around it. Two heaving wrenches did not move it, and nor did a third or a fourth and too quickly she lost count. She tried another, and another, until the dust was coating the inside of her mouth and clinging to the corners of her eyes. Somewhere behind she heard footsteps, running and rapid, and then the shouts of the assassins, their voices swimming amid the dust.

She turned, reaching for the sword, bleeding fingers wrapping around the hilt, and knew she would carve her way through them.

The night was nearly spent by the time she bolted through the tavern archway. She was shaking, her tunic clinging to sweat-damp shoulders. Her sword was a mess, slicked with blood and slammed back into its sheath because she did not know what else to do with it. Her thoughts were worse, upended and torn open and she kept seeing it, seeing him.

She stumbled through the courtyard and into the lamplit gloom of the corridor. Her hand thumped against Dawn Star's door before she had time to consider otherwise, her fingers trembling.

The door slid wide, followed by Dawn Star, a long-bladed knife in one hand. "Jen," she said, and blinked. "You're – you're here. Come in."

She was barely into the soft, warm dark of the room before the words rushed from her mouth. "I'm fine," she lied. "I'm fine. I had to – there were a lot of them, in the end. The whole fortress. Gone."

"How?"

"The assassins and their golems," she said. She twisted her hands against each other. "Can we talk later?"

Carefully, Dawn Star said, "If you'd like."

"Can you," she said, and clutched at her sword hilt again. "I'd really like a bath."

Dawn Star smiled, softly. "Alright. I'll rustle up some help."

She trailed after Dawn Star, half-listening as she ousted the tavern-keeper's servants too early, as she asked for hot water and the use of the bigger bath chambers. Afterwards, she peeled off her clothes and left them there, heaped and blood-splashed. She felt the fortress in her thoughts, the silence of it, the way he had moved through the shadows there. She sat in the welcome heat of the bath and stared at her own hands, indistinct beneath the shimmer of the water.

"Lean forward," Dawn Star murmured.

Numbly, she obeyed. She was aware of Dawn Star moving, and then the sensation of her hands, gathering her hair away from her neck. The drag of the comb, and then the sudden rush of warm water. Dawn Star repeated the motions again and again until her hair was soaked clean, straggling her shoulders.

"Talk to me," Dawn Star said, as softly.

She opened her mouth, licked at cracked lips and wondered how she could say it. What she had seen. What she had done. What she had lost. "The emperor," she said, almost silently. "He is as corrupted as Death's Hand. As all of the empire is."

"What else?" Dawn Star said. She sat on the edge of the bath, her robes rustling around her. "Not the politics."

"You're very astute. Did you know that?"

"And you're terrible at evading."

She stared at nothing and said, "Zu is dead."

"What?"

"He was there. He was there with me. He helped me."

"Jen," Dawn Star said, her voice wavering.

"He saved me," she said, as flat. "Death's Hand was there, and he pushed me away and that was it."

"I'm so sorry."

"I tried," she said. "I mean, I couldn't."

Dawn Star leaned over the edge and wrapped an arm around her, her sleeve wicking up water, her hand finding Jen's shoulder. "I know."

"Death's Hand. He came through the rock. Through the water. I don't know. I wanted," she said, and her throat closed up.

"I think I understand," Dawn Star said, very gently.

She turned her head against Dawn Star's shoulder. Her eyes were dry and gritty, so she closed them. Mercifully, Dawn Star said nothing else, only handed her soap and afterwards, dry robes. Palest green, she found herself noticing, brushing her bare ankles and couching the damp weight of her hair. At the door to her room, Dawn Star hovered, but she shook her head, and made herself say something about wanting to sleep.

In the room, the air was heavy and stale. She left the oil lamp burning, and she stared at the bright point of its flame until it was all she could see, all that she allowed her thoughts to frame.

"Cracked rib," Dawn Star said. Her fingers slipped higher, and Jen flinched again. "You should have said something yesterday."

"I wasn't thinking."

"I know. Anything else?"

"More bruises than I've ever had at any one time."

Dawn Star smiled, fleetingly. She passed across a folded length of cloth, and said, "Wrap it tight as you can bear it until the pain eases."

"It's fine." She hesitated. "Thank you. For being here."

Dawn Star smiled, the angles of her face softening. "I was so worried. We all were. There was so much we didn't know."

She wound the cloth around her ribs, exhaling at the sudden, aching pressure. She was too aware of Dawn Star's silence, of the words that she should have said, of the name she should have said. She reached for her tunic and eased it on, her fingers absently knotting the collar closed.

"He knew," she said, eventually, whisper-quiet. "I know that. Now I know that. He knew he wasn't leaving."

"You don't know that."

"Yes," she said. "When we talked, he only ever said that I would leave. He never said anything about himself, and I never let myself notice. Foolish."

"Not foolish."

"Blind."

"Keep thinking up as many words as you want. I can keep thinking up ways to tell you otherwise."

For a brief, surging moment, she was furious, the anger bristling under her skin. Furious at herself, for all the times she had hidden behind words as if they were barriers, borders, for all the times she had pretended that there would always be other moments.

Focus, she thought. Focus and stillness and she needed to banish it, this rushing anger that had its hooks in her.

Carefully, she pulled herself up onto the wide window sill, her breath hitching slightly. Dawn Star joined her, sitting opposite, her knees drawn up.

"So it seems we'll have even more to ask the emperor," Dawn Star said, almost wryly.

"A lot more."

"And Death's Hand?"

"Before I kill him," she said fiercely, "I will know what he is."

The days unraveled, and she crossed and recrossed too many paths, into the palace and out through the empty coldness of death. Through the biting winds of Dirge, and out through the blood of soldiers and assassins. Through dreams, and out through the remembered burning homes of Two Rivers until she dragged herself awake.

And at the centre of everything, Master Li.

In dreams and between heartbeats she tore her thoughts apart trying to see it, some sign of it, some tiny barely-there signal that would show her how he had done it. How he had kept it wrapped inside himself for so many years, the truth of himself and his brothers and how so very patiently he had waited.

To learn, but not too much. To see, but not too clearly. To succeed, but not entirely.

She remembered Dirge and the dragon fountains, and the white blaze of the water there. The shocking change when the Water Dragon sent her through the last gateway, and she had breathed, properly, deeply, the air dragging sharp and chill across her tongue. The way Dawn Star had dreamed it, somehow, had known, and had ordered the others into the flyer and through the steep treacherous peaks until they had found the monastery.

She remembered huddling in furs and trying to pull apart the tents at the same time, the wind snatching at cape and gloves and her hair while she muttered something about never wanting to be so cold again. And how Dawn Star had smiled, and said something back about how surely this place with all its snow and its cold was her heritage, hers, so should she not be completely at ease here? Helplessly and despite herself, she had laughed, the sound of it swallowed by the wind.

She remembered the Water Dragon, beautiful and robed in rippling blue, her words heavy with distance, with time, with something very like sadness. She remembered shoving back the terrible urge to ask about the dead, and where they might be.

The days ran away from her until she stood inside the coiling passageways of the Imperial Palace once again, amid the scent of incense and ink. Dawn Star beside her and Sky and Princess Lian behind them both and she could hear the others, impatient to move forward, impatient to demand answers.

"You're ready," Dawn Star said, and it was half a question.

"I'm terrified," she answered, and heard Dawn Star's gulping, uneven laugh in answer.

"I don't think you're the only one."

Master Li was faster than she remembered, each motion sinuous and practiced and she fought to match him. She sought his face, sought to find him somewhere in his own eyes, and failed. Already, she thought, already he had killed her once, and she felt the ferocity in each measured strike that cracked hard against her forearms and the flats of her hands.

Snake-quick, he was past her again, his foot lashing out. The blow buckled her leg, and she staggered. Close to frantic, she wrestled with her footing. Another strike sent her sidewards, and as fast, his hand curled around her wrist, clamping hard.

She felt the magic first, and then the rushing sound of it, ice or rock or both as it crackled out and encased her.

She opened her eyes to greyness, and part of her wondered how far this illusion might stretch, how deep his shackles went. His voice filled her head, and desperately she pushed it aside. At her feet she saw water, grey and empty as the dome of what she supposed was the sky above.

A prison, she understood. A prison carved out of Master Li's thoughts, locking her in place here and in the palace and however much she glared at the lapping water or the air above, she saw nothing. For too long she walked, her feet soaking, sometimes turning in circles, sometimes shouting out to Master Li, sometimes ignoring the ripple of his voice in her head. She thought sometimes that she heard the others, Dawn Star's voice quiet with determination, Whirlwind confused and Sky cajoling him on and it was ridiculous since she was almost certain she was alone.

The water lapped at her ankles. Obstinately, she pushed on, her gaze fixed on the horizon. She walked until she thought the line between sky and water changed, until she found herself staring at a pillar, the twisting figures of dragons chasing each other through the stone.

Between breaths, the air stirred and shifted. Her sword rattled clear and she spun, the blade arcing until it settled under Zu's chin.

Painfully, she swallowed. "Are you trying to scare me?"

"No," he said, quietly.

"Are you," she said, and gripped the hilt. She bit back the awful urge to laugh, or scream. "Are you you?"

"It's not a trick," he said. "Your master has not conjured me. I know you're trapped."

He was not quite there, she thought. The angles of his shoulders were blurred, and even standing this close, she could not feel him breathing.

"Death's Hand," she said, before she could think better of it. "I set him free."

He exhaled sharply, or seemed to, his shoulders sinking slightly.

"He was Prince Kin."

"The brother," Zu said.

"I wasn't going to," she said, and heard her own voice thicken. "I wanted – I wanted everything else but that. I wanted him dead, and not quickly. It was in Dirge. It felt – when I spoke to him, I spoke to Sun Kin." She lowered her sword. Desperately, she asked, "How is it that you are here?"

The line of his mouth softened slightly. "I thought you might need the help."

"I think you might be right. He's too strong."

"No," Zu said fiercely. "He's not. You think he is, but he can't be."

"The last time I fought him," she said, and her voice ran dry.

"I know."

"How?"

"I'm not even sure," he answered. "I've stayed. Waited. Sometimes I heard."

"Heard?"

"You."

Words, she thought. Words were all that remained, strung out between them, shaped in air and as tremulous. "We found the Water Dragon."

"Is there nothing you have not accomplished?"

"Yes. Too much," she snapped, and wondered if he could read it in her face, the fortress, and how she had left it. She sheathed her sword and heard the solid sound of the blade snicking home in the scabbard, the gush of the water over her feet. "This is very strange."

Zu's smile returned, the slightest movement of his mouth. "Yes, it is. And we must send you back to yourself."

"That simply."

"You're arguing with me."

"A little." She laid one hand against his chest, feeling the strangeness of skin and bone and muscle that was not properly there. Not quite so chill as she thought he would have been, not as warm as he had been before. "There's so much that I wanted," she said.

To say, she thought. To do. To give in to, she thought, and she tried to swallow past the constriction in her throat.

"You will leave here."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant," he said, his voice rough and cutting across hers.

She let herself look at him, slowly and searchingly and as if she might lock the silence and the strangeness and him into her thoughts. "Alright," she said. "How do we do this?"

Zu turned, flattening one hand against the pillar. His fingers trailed the spines of the carved dragons. "Like this. Together."

She pressed her hand beside his until the stone bit into her skin.

"I give it to you," he said, softly, and she felt it, the small beginnings of change in the water and in the damp grey air. "All that I am. All that I was."

Absurdly, she found herself smiling. Gently, she said, "Because you've done this before and know it will work?"

"No," he said. His fingers curled over hers, barely there and cold. "Because I am sure of this and I am sure of you."

End.