The long, scarred wooden table in the mess hall was a far cry from the jade-inlaid banquet halls of the South. Instead of fine wine, there were cracked clay mugs of bitter mountain ale; instead of roasted pheasant, there were large, steaming platters of the very "scraps" Hye had joked about.
Chinua sat at the head of the table. She was still in her blood-stained leather, her hands finally scrubbed clean, but her eyes remained dark with the hollow exhaustion of a commander who hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. To her right, Hye tore into a piece of dark meat with a predatory gusto that made the Prince of Buyant visibly flinch.
"Eat," Chinua commanded. Her voice was low, yet it carried easily over the rhythmic clatter of the hall. "In Hmagol, we do not waste what the mountain provides. Especially not when our sisters worked through the night to prepare it."
Bakasi was the only one who didn't hesitate. He reached out, took a jagged piece of bone, and began to eat with a focused, silent intensity. He didn't look at the meat; he looked at Chinua.
"Your soldiers," Bakasi said, gesturing with a greasy hand toward the hundreds of Magoli warriors eating in the shadows of the hall. "They don't talk. Even the wind in this valley is louder than your army."
"That's because they are counting," Hye interjected, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Seven days, Prince. Seven days of silence is a long time to think about what happens on the eighth."
Chinua leaned forward, the flickering torchlight casting long, wolf-like shadows across her face. "Tell me, Bakasi. If the crossroads of Zasra fall, will Nocho stand with the Black Wolf, or will you hide behind your silk curtains and hope the tide misses your door?"
The room went deathly quiet. The other two princes stopped chewing, their eyes darting between the young woman and the defiant prince.
Bakasi set his bone down with a deliberate clack against the wood. "Nocho has no silk left to hide behind. Zasra took our weavers; Biyla took our grain: Ofleisia took our salt. If you bring the fire, General... I will bring the oil."
Chinua's lips thinned into what might have been a smile—or a snarl. "Good. Because when we march, there will be no room for spectators. You either carry a torch, or you become the fuel."
After the unfavorable dinner, the heavy oak door of the guest quarters slammed shut, muffling the rhythmic clack-thud of the Magoli sentries in the corridor. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of old parchment and the frantic, sour sweat of the Nocho envoys.
"Have you lost your mind, Prince?" the eldest envoy, Rish, hissed as he paced the small stone room. He looked as though he had aged ten years during the dinner. "Oil? You told her you would bring the oil for her fire? You spoke to the Eastern General as if she were a common tavern brawler!"
Bakasi didn't look at him. He sat on the edge of a narrow wooden cot, methodically unwinding the leather wraps from his forearms. "She is a brawler, Rish. She's just a brawler who happens to have ten thousand spears behind her."
"She is a monster who chops heads before her appetizers!" the second envoy squeaked, his hands trembling so violently he had to tuck them into his silk sleeves. "Did you see her armor? That wasn't chicken blood, My Prince. That was the lifeblood of the North! And you... you sat there and challenged her. If she had taken offense, our heads would be on those platters right now!"
Bakasi finally looked up. His eyes were cold, reflecting the same obsidian light he had seen in Chinua's. "That is why you will always be envoys, and never kings," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
He stood up, towering over the two older men. "Did you see the other two princes? Gaaki of Buyant was vibrating like a plucked string. Kaarm of Zhongqiu couldn't even meet her gaze. Do you know what she saw when she looked at them? She saw sheep waiting for a shepherd. She saw weaknesses to be exploited."
Bakasi stepped closer to Rish, poking a finger into the old man's chest. "When she looked at me, she saw a wolf. She saw someone who understands that Zasra and Biyla have already hollowed us out. We have nothing left to lose, Rish. She knows that a man with nothing to lose is the only one she can trust in a fight."
"But the risk—" Rish stammered.
"The risk was staying silent!" Bakasi roared, his voice cracking like a whip. "If I had acted like those two cowards, she would have marched through Umusa to get to us. Now? Now she will march beside us. I didn't offend her; I gave her a reason not to kill us."
He turned back to the window, looking out at the dark, jagged silhouette of Salran Hill. Below, the campfires of the Magoli army looked like a fallen galaxy, thousands of points of light flickering with a hunger that the South was not prepared for.
"She doesn't want your respect, Rish. She doesn't want your fancy words or your bowing. She wants to know that when the 'Seven Days' are over, the roads will be open."
Bakasi touched the hilt of his short sword, the metal cold against his palm. "Go to sleep. Tomorrow, we start drawing the maps of the junctions. And if you so much as smudge a line out of fear... I'll show you exactly how 'offensive' I can really be. Besides, I will take full responsibility."
The air in the guest quarters felt thin, as if the cold mountain wind were sucking the oxygen out of the room. Rish, the elder envoy, gripped the edge of the small wooden table until his knuckles turned as white as the limestone dust outside.
"Taking responsibility?" Rish's voice was a jagged whisper, his eyes darting toward the door as if the Magoli sentries could hear his very thoughts. "Prince, if the King of Biyla finds out we have offered his road junctions to the Black Wolf, he won't just 'invade' us. He will erase Nocho from the maps. We were sent here to observe, to listen... not to hand over the keys to our neighbor's throat!"
"Which is exactly why we are here in Pojin, and not in the capital of Ntsua-Ntu," Bakasi countered, his voice steady and low. He stood by the window, watching a single Magoli scout ride out into the darkness—a ghost moving through the valley. "If we had traveled to the capital, every spy from Biyla to the West Sea would have seen our banners. The moment we stepped into the Royal Court, our intention would have been a headline in every palace in the South."
"But to make a decision of this magnitude without the King's final word..." the second envoy stammered, his face pale. "We must send a messenger back. We must wait for the king's seal."
"There is no time for seals!" Bakasi snapped, turning from the window with a sudden, predatory grace. "The 'Seven Days of Silence' has already begun. By the time a messenger reached my father and returned, Chinua would already be halfway to the Payapasa border. If we wait, we aren't allies—we are obstacles."
Bakasi stepped into the center of the room, the flickering candlelight making him look older than his years. "This mission was a secret within the royal family for a reason. My father knew the risks when he sent us north. He knew that if this failed, he would have to disown us to save the kingdom."
He leaned in close to Rish, his shadow looming large and jagged against the cold stone wall. "If the day comes that Biyla marches on our gates because of what I have done tonight, I will not hide behind my father's robes. I will stand at the gate alone and take the full weight of his steel. But I will not let Nocho die a slow, suffocating death because we were too afraid to pick a side."
"You are gambling with our lives," Rish whispered, his voice trembling.
"I am gambling with my life," Bakasi corrected him sharply. "You are just the witnesses. Now, get the parchment. We have exactly six days left to draw a map before our heads are served on a plate at the wolf's dinner."
"What about the other two princes?" the second envoy stammered. "That man—that scholar—said we must all agree."
Bakasi smirked, a predatory glint in his eyes as he stared at the heavy oak door. "I bet you another ten chicken heads," he said, "that before this candlelight burns down halfway, their envoys will show up with the major road junctions of Zasra."
As soon as the sentence left his lips, a soft, tentative knock tapped against the wood of the door.
The silence that followed was absolute. The betrayal had begun.
On the far end of the Eastern Military camp, far from the prying eyes of the Southern royals, Hye was doubled over, vomiting into a small wicker basket. After he had cleared his stomach, he still felt the phantom texture of the "scraps" he had deliberately eaten to intimidate the envoys.
"I can't believe that to prove your point, you actually made us eat chicken feet and heads," Hye complained, wiping his mouth. He caught a flash of memory—the half-closed, glassy eyes of a steamed chicken head staring back at him from the platter—and he retched again.
Chinua tapped gently on Hye's back, her expression unreadable. "Young lady," she said, using their old familiar teasing tone despite the gravity of the week, "when we are low on food and there is nothing left to eat but the dead skin on your fingers, you will wish you had a single chicken head to suck the brain from."
She handed him a bowl of clean water. Hye took it, rinsed his mouth, and looked up at her with watery eyes.
"Why pick Nocho?" he asked, his voice returning to its usual steady rasp. "Why focus on the smallest one?"
"Nocho is the smallest of the three," Chinua said, her gaze drifting toward the southern horizon. "They are surrounded by Biyla, East Tanggolia, and Oflesia. They have everything to lose. Because of the heavy taxes levied by the larger kingdoms, their treasury runs dry every year. I don't feel for their king or their princes... I feel for the people."
She paused, her voice dropping an octave. "Khawn-" She paused for a bit. "Khawn was sold in Nocho as a slave at the age of four. His parents had nothing left to feed him. I am not just taking their roads, Hye. I am taking their chains."
"I see—" Hye sighed, his stomach finally settling. "Now, my General, please go bring me some decent food. This young lady's brain will not work if there is no food in the stomach."
Chinua looked at Hye, and for the first time in many long, dark days, a soft chuckle escaped her lips.
Seeing her laugh, Hye looked up at her, a genuine warmth returning to his tired eyes. "I like it when you smile, Chinua. Your laughter keeps me in check. It tells me that after all the darkest corners I have dragged you through, you have not lost your soul."
"We are soulmates, Hye," Chinua said quietly, sitting down beside him on the cold ground. She stared into the flickering orange heart of the candlelight. "Therefore, one of us must never lose their soul. If one falls, the other must pull them back."
She grew silent, her gaze fixed on the dancing flame. "Do you think Ozumeg would accept our one coin? Or will the sins we carry in our hearts be too heavy for the scale of purity?"
Hye reached out, taking her hand into his. His own hands were smooth, the skin of a man who fought with maps and ink, and as he closed his fingers, he felt the jarring reality of hers. Chinua's hand was rough, a landscape of hard callouses and old scars—the hand of a woman who had held a thousand spears and guided them all to their mark. The contrast was a silent reminder of the price she paid every day for their survival.
"We will find out when we stand on the scale," Hye said, his voice heavy with the truth of their lives. "But don't be afraid, my friend. I will stand right beside you and hold your hand just like now. And if we must burn in hell... then at the very least, we will not be burning alone."