Sleep did not come for Brass Bell, as she teetered on the edge of a decision, huddled in the dark. Finally, she rose up, drew one of her matching daggers and strode over towards the sleeping form of Sparrow.

  She paused, faltered, and finally, she sheathed it.

  “I wouldn’t have let you, you know,” came the voice from behind her.

  Brass Bell let out a sigh, cursing inwardly. She had thought River asleep. Any way she had run this scenario, she had hoped she wouldn’t have to face the other woman.

  “I know,” Bell said finally. “But I can’t do nothing.”

  “So. What will you do now?” asked River.

  Brass Bell thought about this a moment, then finally pulled one dagger, scabbard and all, out of her sash.

  She crossed the clearing to sit before River, who, if she felt any fear at the approach, betrayed none of it.

  “This was my great-grandmother’s knife,” Brass Bell said, looking down at one of her gleaming archaic daggers. “And her great-grandmother’s before her. It’s called ‘Justice,’ and it took a lot of lives over the centuries. I like to think they were people that deserved to die. The other one…” Bell pulled its mate from her belt, as well, holding the matched set in her hands. “The other was forged sometime thereafter, toward the end of the warring states period, when the land was in chaos. The matriarch who forged it named it ‘Necessity.’ I want you to have this. And if he ever goes too far, like he did tonight…”

  Brass Bell weighed the two daggers in her hands. She took one last look at them, the old, matching bronze blades carefully maintained, the wood and leather of the sheaths and handles replaced again and again throughout the years. Then she held one of them out to River.

  After bowing slightly to accept the gift, River inspected it and asked, “Which one is this?”

  “You decide,” said Bell, “but I hope you use it when the time comes.”

  Brass Bell strode off toward the road, past the still cooling body of the old man. She paused once more.

  “He doesn’t have a Mandate does he?” she asked. “Surely he would have used something when he was screaming your name down by the creek.”

  River didn’t respond immediately. When she did, all she said was, “Goodbye, Brass Bell.”

  “Goodbye, River.” Brass Bell nodded, as if that were all the answer she needed. “I mean this in the best way… I hope our paths never cross again. I wouldn’t like to face you as an enemy.”

  NECESSITY

  TYPE: Straight Dagger

  WEAPON RANK: 32nd

  LORE: Forged by a matriarch of the Tan Ox clan, the dagger represents doing what is needed, not what is necessarily right, and was used extensively in the dark days before the Great Ancestor unified the warring states into the Land Under Heaven.

  LAST KNOWN OWNER: Brass Bell

  ***

  River came to me shortly before dawn and placed her head upon my chest. Feeling me stir, she asked if I was awake.

  “I am,” I said.

  “Do you think me a monster?” she said finally.

  I blinked at that, letting the words sink past my grogginess, then snorted bitterly. “No more a monster than the rest of us.”

  Another long pause where nothing but the chirping of crickets and other creatures of the night could be heard, quieting as the first rays of light shone through the black spars of tree trunks. I was fully awake now, aware that River was working towards something, but dreading where she would end up. When she did speak again, I knew why she had struggled so long with putting it to words, but beyond that, the workings of her mind, as always, were as mysterious as the deepest ocean currents.

  “When we make it to your father’s keep, I would understand if you set me aside.”

  I turned to her – as best I could with her head upon my chest – trying to read her. “Why would you say something like that?”

  “Why?” She pressed up from me to look me in the eye. “You saw what I just did back there. You saw what I did to your Uncle’s family! And still you ask why I shouldn’t be around you? Sparrow I have no control over my Mandate. There’s no rhyme or reason as to why the demons come for some and leave others.”

  “You saved us River.”

  “Don’t make it out to be more than it was. I killed dozens of people tonight, most of them innocent.”

  “They weren’t all-”

  “They were innocent. At least some of them. We let the deep shadows of night get the better of us. Your uncle's family was nothing more than an old man trying to make the best of his twilight years. Maybe he adopted a family. Maybe they adopted a grandfather. Either way, they weren’t bandits. They weren’t assassins. They stayed up all night so they could throw a feast for us. And in hard times too. And what did I do?”

  “What did we do?” I corrected.

  “We slaughtered them, Sparrow. Poor, innocent, noncombatants. Women, Sparrow.” Her face fell into her hands and she let out a strangled moan. “Sparrow. I killed children!”

  My next words died on my tongue. My reactions had been so instinctive. I was saying anything to protect her from the guilt that swirled around inside her like a miasma. I would say anything to draw the line between people like us, and people like the Demon. But in the end, could I really disregard the deaths of innocent children? Could I really justify that kind of evil? Did intentions and guilt and circumstance matter so much? Or were the only things that mattered deeds and their impact?

  I could almost feel the evil emanating from the knife at my hip, and I knew I deserved it.

  I remained silent for long enough that River spoke again before I could formulate a response. “I told you that the Gray Dowager found me and gave me my name. But I never told you how she found me.”

  I shook my head at that, still struggling to follow her line of logic. “You mentioned it…”

  “At the risk of making you think even less of me… could I tell you now?”

  I grimaced at that, but nodded her onward.

  She pulled her legs up to curl into a ball, her back to a tree as she looked to the first sliver of dawn as if it were a lifeline. Her eyes, just barely visible in the gloom, had a faraway look to them.

  “I was told that it began with rumors of flood and pestilence along the Blue River.”

  She started slowly at first, falteringly. Compared to the last tale she had told me, I could tell that this one had not been practiced. She might not have ever spoken it aloud before. But even so, she went on.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “The calamity struck near enough to Oxfields that people were saying it was a sign from Heaven, that the Emperor had lost favor from above. So, naturally, the Gray Dowager was determined to quell these rumors, lest they turn into talk of rebellion. She, with her entire retinue and who knows how many soldiers, rode out to the little village where the disaster was said to have started, and she found exactly what they said she would: bloated, rotting corpses, not a woman or child left alive, and not a single man left to bury them. But there was one thing she wasn’t expecting to find…”

  I already guessed what it was, but I did not interrupt.

  “A small nameless child with the name of a man who would never touch her again. The Gray Dowager named me for the river of shadows that she alone knew I could call upon, and she took me in. I was fourteen at the time, but only a few years younger than the Emperor himself. She raised me, she trained me, and she groomed me for the Imperial harem, along with so many other powerful young women that others were calling calamities.”

  I had questions at that. River had glossed over the fact that her Mandate had been triggered by a man who had touched her in some way. And as a young girl, no less. I knew now was not the time to ask. Maybe the time to ask about that was ‘never.’

  “Disaster struck less often throughout the land, as the number of Imperial concubines grew. It became a source of both power and wisdom for the Emperor, as I have said. But what I didn’t say when I first spoke of the Gray Dowager, was that the budding beauty of so many of these girls had once been a curse, before it became a part of the Land Under Heaven’s salvation.”

  Her eyes had been glazed over but now she looked up at me. I could see that tears poured freely down River’s cheeks, though her voice remained strong.

  “But I never, Sparrow, called upon that power again. No matter what happened within the palace. I let them wonder what calamity I could cause. The truth was so horrid, there was no way their imaginings could be any worse. I slaughtered my own village, Sparrow. I killed my own family. I used to have a little brother…”

  She took a long breath and I knew the next words out of her mouth would be a condemnation. If she spoke again, she would sentence herself for her crimes, here and now, and there would be nothing I could do or say to save her from herself.

  For the ones who had died at the hands of her demons… there was no saving them, now. There was no bringing back the two young men I had cut down in error — simple peasants sent to slaughter pigs for a feast, not me and my allies for some reward. But River teetered on the edge of the abyss and I had to draw her back at any cost. Or we might both fall over.

  “You killed no one, River.”

  She looked up at me, confused and slightly annoyed, as if I hadn’t been listening to all she had just said.

  “A young girl trying to save herself is no murderer. A woman trying to protect herself when others failed to… that’s no great calamity. You did what you had to do in order to survive. Whatever else happened as a result? Lay it at the feet of the ones who forced you to protect yourself. Either the ones who attacked you or the ones who failed to prevent such an attack on a girl of only fourteen.”

  “But I cannot ignore my own part in it.” She spoke it like a mantra.

  “Your part? The threads of fate were spun the moment those bandits attacked, perhaps even earlier than that. The man that attacked you tonight made damned sure you knew what he intended to do, to you and to all those women. And you did everything in your power to stop him before you called upon your Mandate. In the end, you made a choice for all of them, the same way you made the choice for yourself and for Brass Bell.”

  “But I did call upon my Mandate! I knew there was no stopping the destruction it would cause and I called upon it anyway.”

  “You had to. It wasn’t even a choice. Everyone was dead one way or another and you chose the way that would take the bastards down.”

  She blinked at that.

  I took a breath. I was on her side. I was here to help her, not argue with her.

  “Brass Bell and the other seers in Lion’s conspiracy talk about forks of destiny. This wasn’t one of them. The warlords had a chance to work together and stop this madness from ever happening, but instead they chose personal gain and infighting and chaos, the kind of chaos that allows rebels and bandits like that to exist.” I gestured through the darkness to where Uncle’s silent manor stood. “The Marshal had a chance to secure the Emperor and stabilize the Land Under Heaven long before Dreadwolf came, but he was too stupid or too stubborn. Maybe both. I had a chance to stop Dreadwolf in the palace and let Noble Lion put the country back in order before something like this could happen, but I was too weak. If you want to assign blame, look to any of those forks in destiny. But given the situation on that riverbank, you did the only thing you could do. You want to understand why the river runs red, don’t look to every twist and turn it takes along the way, look to the source.”

  “I can’t do that! I can’t look past the bodies of families and say ‘my hands were bound,’ ‘A man in a meeting hall should have stopped this,’ ‘My destiny is beyond my control.’ The fact remains that wherever I go, people die, children die, and if my presence were to harm you Sparrow…”

  “I accept the risks.”

  That brought her up short. “What? Just like that?”

  I nodded. “I accept the risks.”

  “How can you? How can you accept those risks knowing what I am?”

  “How can I not?” I was on my knees now, pulling myself toward her where she had curled herself into a ball on the forest floor, a sliver of sunlight between us. “River, if you were to leave me like this, you would destroy me more utterly than all the demons of the abyss could ever hope to. If you were to go away, or to end your existence… rather than spare the world your fury, you would unleash mine. The Philosopher gave me a prophecy, but now I finally know what it means. With you, River, I could bring order to the chaos, but without you I would be nothing more than a villain, perhaps greater even than Dreadwolf or the Demon. You want to look to the rivermouth rather than the spring? Fine. Without you, I can’t muster my father’s armies, Noble Lion never has the impetus he needs to forge out of Frozen Bay, and Dreadwolf’s reign of terror continues on unimpeded. Without you, River, there may be no hope for the Land Under Heaven. Without you, this happens at every village and manor. But with you…”

  She snorted a bitter laugh at that, “You speak as if it were possible for us to create something together. You’re wrong, Sparrow. I’m no creator. I am destruction. Nothing more.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said, flat out.

  “Oh?”

  I grasped her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Someday, you and I will forge a kingdom together, River. You’re the most brilliant person I have ever met, and one day, you’ll realize that we’re all hopeless without you.”

  She laughed then. It was not a petty, bitter laugh, nor the polished, practiced laugh of a court lady. It was an honest laugh, despite the tears, like the sun peaking over the horizon, through the dark stands of trees and the curtains of fog. It warmed the earth as it dawned, and it warmed my heart.

  “Besides,” I said, when I realized she was back from the brink, “I told you, one day, I would marry you and give you a family.”

  Her smile faded as she sniffed and wiped at her eyes.

  “You can’t say things like that, Sparrow.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” again she was silent for a while, as if choosing her words carefully, or perhaps choosing if she would even speak again on the matter. In the end, she said, simply, “You can’t make promises that you have no way of keeping.”

  ***

  In the morning, we would return to the manor to reclaim our horses, Windstopper’s oxcart, and gather provisions for the remainder of our journey to Iron Tower. In the fresh light of dawn, I would see that my nightmare of a mistake had been a reality, and I would finally accept that I had made a horrible miscalculation in misjudging both Uncle and then one of my allies. In the daylight, I could have thought it all a dream, if the Youngest Brother Blade hadn’t hung at my hip opposite the Son-of-Heaven Saber, reminders of both my greatest act of nobility and my most heinous crimes.

  With morale so low, it was a good thing we were only a two-day’s ride to Iron Tower. Despite the oxcart being filled with provisions from Uncle’s kitchens, a dozen or so clucking chickens and two very lucky and very confused pigs, the final stretch home was bleaker than any other so far. We talked little, but looked often to one another for strength.

  We were finally in the Plains of the Falcon proper, with flat lands stretching out in all directions, only distant hills showing silver and bronze in the mists at the edge of the horizon, but it gave me no joy to see my homeland as it was.

  The land was razed. The grasses that would have rippled like waves were trampled, destroyed, and burnt to ash. The villages and hamlets that should have dotted the horizon were now no more than wisps of smoke on the wind. The people that should have been working the land, collecting the last of the harvest and preparing the earth for winter were nowhere to be seen.

  In the end, we quit even the road. With the tower itself looming in the southeast, there was no need to stick to any track, so we made the final approach, to that last bastion of my father, as the bird flies.

  Before we reached it, the screaming of horses brought us up short.

  One moment, the land was empty for as far as the eye could see, save for that tower of metal splitting the sky, and the next we were surrounded by a tornado of silver and white, dust and horse-sweat, armor and shimmering spear-tips.

  These were things I hadn’t known I had been longing for.

  ***SPARROW’S BAND MISSION REPORT: FLIGHT TO IRON TOWER***

  SUCCEEDED Primary Objective: Reach Iron Tower to assemble the Silver Falcon clan for war against Dreadwolf.

  SUCCEEDED Secondary Objective: Defend our lady.

  SUCCEEDED Bonus Objective: Windstopper survives and is capable of joining the ensuing fight.

  SUCCEEDED Bonus Objective: Sparrow survives and is capable of joining the ensuing fight.

  FAILED Bonus Objective: Brass Bell survives and is capable of lending her aid to the ensuing fight.

  Enemy Slain: 43 | Enemy Captured: 0 | Losses: 0

  Overall Grade: D (Pyrrhic Victory)