“Honestly I don't blame her for not giving me an answer,” I said to Noble Lion, sitting in a tavern in the ancestral district of the capital.

  Everything here was old, solid, and a little more wending than the rest of the city, everything having been built atop someone’s ancestral shrine or around some pivotal monument of history.

  Noble Lion favored this section of the city because much of the history had ties to his family in one way or another. And because it was easy to get lost in.

  “Still,” said my friend, loyally, gesturing with his cup but barely drinking, as was his custom, “it's not as if you have nothing to offer. You’ve a head on your shoulders. You must have if you’ve survived this past year. And you’ve never stopped moving up in the ranks.”

  I snorted at my most recent ‘promotion.’

  “Jumping from the lower ranks of one list to the very bottom of another,” I said, flicking the card that had been delivered to River’s estate across the table toward Noble Lion. I had been holding onto it like a totem of my mediocrity.

  ***Rank Up?***

  SPARROW

  RANK 7: Distinguished Knight → RANK 101: Clerk

  WORTH: 350 dan → 95 dan

  CLAN: Silver Falcon | STAR: Black | FATE: Fire-Water "Verge of Destiny"

  MANDATE: None

  BONDS: Windstopper | ALLIANCES: Shadow River, Noble Lion, White Stallion

  DISTINCTION: A good bureaucrat, capable of serving even the vilest of masters.

  “They only make me a nominally higher rank to keep actually talented men like you from ordering talentless bureaucrats like me around.”

  “Well technically you can give men like me orders, now. So that’s something.”

  I laughed at that and drained my cup.

  “What fool of a clerk would risk the ire of a general at the head of an army with the full force of his father’s Province behind him by giving you an order.”

  Noble Lion made a face at that, but I was too wrapped up in my own turmoil to really notice.

  “Rank or not, I’d be doing four times as well if I had just fled back to Iron Tower and kept my head down.”

  “Hm,” said Noble Lion.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “Any word from her?”

  “Same as always,” said Lion. “Flourishing up there in the Stallion Coast while the rest of us rot down here in the belly of the wolf. She’ll be protector of the province before the year is out. And she should be! She’s the only one who can keep all those would-be horse lords up there, in line.”

  “But…” I offered, topping him up before refilling my own cup.

  “But green’s not a good color on me,” he gestured to his robes, more casual than how he used to dress when we thought we were helping shape the Land Under Heaven in the Hall of Benign Virtue. He was in earth tones, with only small nods to his yellow star and Golden Lion clan. “I want the best for her, Sparrow. I really do. I also want the best for us. And it's been hard not seeing Stallion. I have half a mind to scurry back to Lion’s Reach myself just to be that much closer to her.”

  “So… why don’t you?”

  “Because what would happen to the Empire. Oh, I know it probably looks like I’m doing a poor job of standing up to Dreadwolf, but…”

  There was a flash in his eyes and I could tell there was more to it.

  “But what?”

  “Forget it. I’m probably boring you.”

  “Hey, anything to distract from my own marital prospects. Or lack thereof.”

  Noble Lion was quiet for a while, and then he leaned forward in his chair. “Hey, didn’t we come here to drink? What are we doing moping around?”

  “Well,” I said, “what are we drinking to, then? To love or to empire?”

  Noble Lion snorted. “Love? Hah! What good is love in a time when men are cutting each other up with halberds and possibly also consuming their souls. What good is love when a brute can strip an Empress naked before the court. What good is love when league and armies stand between… Bah, what good is love, in any case.”

  What good is love when whole clans are being exterminated and former Emperors are packed off to the north with their loved ones to await a knife in the dark.

  I didn’t say it. We were getting far too close to treason.

  “No, you can keep your love. I’ll drink to empire,” Lion finished.

  “To empire then,” I said, raising my cup.

  We bowed and both drained them.

  “So she won’t marry you, but she hasn’t left,” said Noble Lion after wiping his chin.

  “Ay, I thought we were drinking to empire.”

  “We are. Your empire. Personal empire.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I refilled us and chuckled.

  “I’m afraid my personal empire is shrinking due to a crippling lack of funds. Did you know a peasant, earning fifty dan for working his field, can feed two point one people at any given time. Two point one! It's a very carefully calculated number. I know because I oversee the clerks who calculate it.”

  Noble Lion made a face and shrugged, as if not really sure what to make of it.

  “That’s himself, a wife and maybe a baby, unless his wife is willing to weave sandals or hats or something to supplement his income. It’s astounding anyone in the Land Under Heaven has children ever.”

  “Yet they do,” said Lion, then after a moment he reached over and clapped me on the shoulder. “And you’re not a peasant! Far from it.”

  I snorted.

  “I’m two peasants, making enough to feed four-point-two people. If we only eat government issued millet. No tea. No wine. No meat. Just millet. So if River ever did agree to marry me and start a family, we’d be malnourished and miserable the moment a second child came along. And that’s if Dreadwolf’s men didn’t take half of just about everything.”

  “Wait, half??” asked Lion, nearly spitting his plum wine. “That can’t be right.”

  I nodded. “I’ve seen the numbers. By heaven, I calculated the numbers. No one else wanted to be the one to find out just how bad Dreadwolf really is. Fifty-six percent of payments going out and taxes coming in are ‘lost in transit.’ That’s obviously well above the typical ‘acceptable’ levels of corruption within the bureaucracy, according to my predecessor’s notes.”

  “It’s a wonder anyone tolerates it.”

  I opened my mouth to respond but checked myself. I was feeling rather bold on account of the wine, but not bold enough to start a rebellion. “If the people weren’t happy during the Yellow Scarves Rebellion, I’d imagine they’re not much happier now,” I said guardedly.

  After considering my words, letting them hang between us, Noble Lion managed a sly smile and said, “And yet you live in a mansion fit for an Empress Dowager.” It was a deft change in topic, for which I was grateful. I liked my body parts being intact. And my soul.

  I drained my cup again and topped us up.

  “River lives in a mansion,” I said. “I’m squatting. Technically an Imperial concubine is meant to earn just a bit more than you, General of the Multitude Riding a Four Horse Chariot. Ridiculous rank title by the way. But in actuality, a concubine could get nothing or they could get as much as one of the three excellencies depending upon how much the Emperor favors them.”

  “Well, your River must have been suitably interesting then. But don’t forget, Sparrow… She left that behind. For you.” Noble Lion gestured with his cup, and finding that I had overfilled it, took a small sip.

  I shrugged and took another sip of my own. I had been drinking a lot, and I felt myself hitting a wall. Looking up, Lion nodded as if willing me to accept the praise.

  “Oh, I’m in my cups and talking nonsense. You don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Sure I do. More than that, I want you to have to say it out loud so you can hear it.”

  I sighed again. “Seeing how much the concubines are actually getting paid now is one of the few perks of a senior agricultural clerk. I used to think that she saw my potential, despite my low rank. Now seeing how much ‘favor’ a child Emperor bestows upon his concubines, I’m thinking she knew she wasn’t giving up that much to be with me.”

  “But she did give up something,” said Noble Lion. “She’s not off trying to build her own empire. She’s building one with you. And she’s counting on you to keep rising. Your success is her success. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Oh, leave off. You’re not wrong. In fact, you’re always so damned right. Still, it doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Well, I guess we have no choice but to keep drinking until it does. I’m paying by the way.”

  “Oh, in that case, let's get another bottle.”

  ***

  It was on another particularly grim day in that grim year, in which a minister had worn his armor beneath his robes and drew a dagger on the steps of the palace in order to assassinate Dreadwolf, that I came home to a message from Noble Lion.

  I was tired. I had just watched the Demon cut the failed assassin to pieces – starting from the unarmored edges – so I was not terribly interested in another long night out.

  “Did you read it?” I asked River when she met me by the door with the scroll and a cup of tea.

  “It’s sealed,” she said.

  I gave her a sour look – that wasn’t an answer – but I opened the message just the same.

  “A time and place,” I said. “Little more.”

  “You must go.”

  “Oh, must I? Last time I was adamant about sticking my nose in state affairs, you told me not to. That was the day Snow Fox died and Uncle retired, if I recall. If I recall, you were right and I should have stayed out of it.”

  “Then I’ll be right again,” said River. “Hear what your friend has to say. If you don’t like what he offers, turn him down flat.”

  “And how do you know he will offer me anything?”

  A blank look. She always knew more than she let on. “Meet with Noble Lion,” she said with finality. It was settled when she took that tone, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to know more about her motivations.

  “Why the change of heart then? What happened to me being ‘a soldier without an army?’”

  “Sparrow. Just do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so.”

  “I thought it wasn’t for you to say, my lady?” I could still smell bile from the most recent failed assassin’s entrails, when the Demon finally worked his way to the center. I was in no mood to be ordered around.

  She turned on me, something slightly wild in her eyes. “Concubines of the Emperor used to be safe from the ravages of his masses. Handed out to lords as treats… maybe. But Dreadwolf has turned the Hall of Eternal Happiness into a common whorehouse… With not enough whores to go around.”

  I bit back a retort. Perhaps it had something to do with the relative scale of atrocities, but perhaps I realized that if we were splitting hairs between rape and torture, things had indeed gone too far. It was like River was reading my mind.

  “Girls are dying too, if that's the line you want to draw,” she continued. “The ones that are still alive wish they weren’t. How long can you stand by and watch? How long can any man?”

  That hurt but not as much as I would have thought. I knew where my lines were. I knew what was important to me. My own machismo wasn’t very high on that list. “I can stand by as long as I have to, River. As long as you are safe. As long as I have that, the rest of the world can eat itself for all I care.”

  “Well, then how long until he finds out about me? A concubine that slipped his net? One he hasn’t tried yet?” A manic laugh. “He won’t be able to resist.”

  “But if you were my wife-”

  “That’s your answer!? You think marriage would protect me? Hah! There’s not a single thing sacred to that man. In fact, it's just the opposite. Put my name on an official record and you’d be serving me up to the wolf on a platter. He’d sink his teeth into me just to show you that he could.”

  I growled, not because of her callous response, but because I knew she was right. “I would never…”

  “Meet with Lion. Decide what to do once you know more.” She spun and in a flurry of dark, satin robes she departed.

  I hated it when she was right. I hated it when she knew she was right, even before we had started arguing. But when she was right, she knew it, and the rest of the world did, too, that was really the worst. In fact, River may have been so right, in this instance, that she had struck upon a universal truth, and beat me over the head with it.

  She paused halfway down the hallway, framed by the rebuilt beams of the manner and said, “If the rest of the world is eating itself, how long before we’re the ones carved up and served.”