It felt like half the City was in the Guard. The other half was shut up behind windows pasted over with steel plate, or wood boards, or stuffed high with stones and sealed with bits of wastepaper—whatever they could find. It wouldn’t stop a volley of demon Hellfire, but then again very little in the Lower City could. Ruyi hoped it made them feel safe, at least.

The streets were empty. There weren’t even Guards anymore—some were stacked on the walls or on watchtowers, but the bulk of them made a shield of flesh outside. It was Chen Qin’s idea, apparently; he chafed at the idea of being forced to defend a siege. The Guard were preparing to march. He wanted to ‘take the fight to them,’ to turn back the demons by force, and everyone else had to go along with it.

Jin was furious, but the Young Master was strangely insistent. “It doesn’t matter,” said Jin. “Once Father gets here, he’ll tell Chen to stand down. With that ass It’s an ego thing. It’s always an ego thing.”

Father… Ruyi winced. She tried not to think about it. She didn’t have time to think about it. This whole week she’d been scurrying from her Wards to her factories. Right now she was headed to Chrysanthemum Street one last time, to meet up with matron Chao. The tiny old lady was shouting over a mass of tarps, strings, poles, barrels, and mattresses, carried over the shoulders of dozens of nurses and attendants moving in seemingly all directions, sometimes bumping into each other.

“We’ll have it all in the warehouse by sundown,” said Chao with a weary smile. All the wrinkles in her wizened face drew up with it.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

Ruyi nodded. The matron studied her face. “Hey!” said Chao.

“What?”

“No frowning from you. Chin up. We’ll survive this and be better than ever. This’ll pass, you hear?” Chao smiled at her. A forced smile, but Ruyi appreciated it nonetheless.

Still—“That’s not what I was thinking about.”

“Talk to me,” said Chao.

Ruyi hesitated, looking over the mess of a scene. “I don’t know if now’s such a good time…”

Chao snapped her fingers, impatient.

“It’s just—the army. The Post didn’t say much, but my brother tells me he hears they lost almost a third of their troops in the Blue Mountains. They were ambushed—they even lost some of the higher-ups. Three Demon Kings went for my Father.”

“Ah.” Chao blinked. Then, hesitant, she lay an arm on Ruyi’s shoulder. “Hells, girl. I’m sorry.”

“They say he’s hurt,” said Ruyi. “Just… not how bad. I’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.”

She kept thinking about him as she ambled her way up the main road. She was past being frustrated at herself for caring so much. She accepted she couldn’t do anything about it. All she could do was to not let it stop her from doing what needed doing.

Above, archers had mounted wood-and-steel crossbows as big as carriages on the walls, loading them with spear-like arrows. She wondered what they were meant to take down. A copy of the Post fluttered by, unwanted. She’d read it earlier this week—it had said the demons were coming; it was rather hard to hide at this point. It also said there was no need to panic, and that the army’s retreat was a ‘tactical maneuver,’ that they were still ‘holding strong.’ It had an undertone of hysteria about it, as though the writer was trying their best not to panic.

She made her way to the newly built and named Factory Road, where open-faced warehouses gaped at each other in long rows. The atmosphere was different here. She felt hugged in alchemy heat, in the acrid smells of herbs and smoke. They’d all switched to brewing healing elixirs, stocking up for what might be a long siege.

She finished up her rounds. On her way back to the manor she saw the tops of cannons poking out over the lips of Lower City skyscrapers—rusted fossils glaring at the sky, wobbling on their stands, secured there by leather straps. She passed one where the boy manning it looked hardly older than Lin—a very young boy blinking at a very old weapon. Neither seemed fit for war.

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

She wasn’t so sure they could hold out long in a siege, if it came to that… and Jin seemed to think there were at least as many demons as humans… she hoped the Emperor had a plan to get Tingting out, if it came to that. She wondered where Sen was, if she had gone back with Mother, or if she was with the contingent the Villa had sent to defend the city. She worried about Jin, and Father too. She found it hard to fall asleep that night.

***

They wouldn’t let her on the walls the next day—she wouldn’t have been able to seem much on there anyways; they were bristling with archers. So she got up high on one of the Lower City skyscrapers, looked to the horizon, and waited.

Two hours past sunrise, the banners came into view, dots of gold over the green mountains. There were six of them. There had been nine divisions when they’d left.

They streamed down the mountainside, following the curves of the White River down. But Ruyi was watching the carriage at the front, pulling ahead of the rest—steel-plated, bearing the Emperor’s sigil and drenched in array markers. It could only be for Father.

She watched it barrel up to the walls, trailing a cloud of dust, then onto the main road in the Upper City. She pulled a scarf over her face and leapt, tracking it building-to-building until she saw it stop at the Healers’ Guild headquarters.

Jin was slated to go see him. She returned to the manor, and there paced back and forth across the entrance hall; she couldn’t seem to hold still. When Jin at last returned, she ambushed him.

“How is he?”

“In good spirits,” he said, shrugging off a coat. “He took a poisoned slash to the stomach, but they bound him up well. He’s on all kinds of elixirs—he wasn’t really there. He was so out of it he almost seemed happy, if you could believe it. He’ll heal.”

“Oh,” said Ruyi, and it felt like she could breathe again. “Oh. Good.”

“Do you want to see him?”

“He’s got an army to run,” she said bitterly. “I wouldn’t want to disturb him.”

“He won’t be running the army. Not for a few weeks, at least.” Jin hung up his coat on an old oak rack. “His second, a certain Lieutenant Huo, is promoted to interim general. He’s a very competent man. Seemed sharp enough. We’re in good hands.”

Ruyi didn’t care who was leading them. She wanted to be out there, she should be out there, with Jin, fighting. She was getting antsy and they hadn’t even sighted the enemy yet. “Maybe I can join in. Secretly, I mean.” At Jin’s skeptical look—“I won’t demonform, promise! And I’ll wear a mask.”

“Rue,” he said gently. “I won’t let anything happen to the city, or you. We have nearly thirty Venerables from the Temple and two dozen Sword Villa masters. Mother says she sent her best. We’re in good hands.”

She didn’t want to be in anyone’s hands. She didn’t trust anyone else to get it right. But she knew she would. It wasn’t a matter of safety—she just wasn’t made to sit here and do nothing. They needed her. She could make all the difference.

But she said none of it aloud. Jin’s jaw hadn’t fully relaxed the whole time he spoke, and his eyelids drooped with fatigue, then fluttered when he caught himself. He didn’t need to deal with her whining too.

“You’re right,” she sighed. “I trust you. Go get ‘em.”

***

Scouts said the demons would arrive by dusk. The civilians sought shelter.

Ruyi chose the skyscraper nearest to the front, a monstrosity of steel and wood which reminded her of a plant grown too far sideways and watched the sun set over the mountains. Massed in front of the walls was a heaving glut of humanity pretending at order. It was like a quilt knitted of four different yarns, strictly marked out from one another. The middle, the bulk, were the army in their dark blues, a thornbush of spears stretched out in shaggy lines. To the right, spread out to the east river, were the reds of the temple pressed in tight formation. To the left, taking the west, were the light-blue of the villa, each a dot seemingly out on its own, with no relation to the others. Then there was the white of the Guard in their V formations, manning the vanguard.

And at the very front of all of them was Jin. A tiny white dot staring out at the mountains; if she squinted she could see his hands clasped behind his back.

She didn’t understand why he had to be at the front. He was just one person—what could he do? And he was so far up they’d just target him. He should be behind the walls, where he could be safe. She’d told him as much, but he seemed to think he had to be out there. His men needed a leader, he said.

The idea was to fight them where they had the skies, with their crossbows and archers. If the fighting went sour they could always retreat.

She felt their qi like heat—mostly Foundation. Their nervousness was almost as tangible; it was the kind of nervousness that infects others around them, a low cloud of restless energy hung over them all, even her. She watched the mountains, waiting for the darkness to come.

The sun played games with her. As it set it gave the mountains long shadows, so it was impossible to make out dark from demon. Minutes passed, feeling so long it seemed impossible they were mere minutes; somehow they stretched to hours.

In all that time Ruyi was thinking of Mother, who wasn’t here, thank Heavens, of Tingting, who ought to be safe in her palace—the Emperor must have a plan to evacuate, right? She thought about Sen—was she one of those pale blue dots? Ruyi felt herself slowly unraveling up there. If Jin looked to be getting in trouble, she decided, she’d jump in. She didn’t care who saw.

The waiting went on, and on, and on, the skies changed colors, the lands lost their colors to the night, and still they stood.

Still no demons came.

What was going on?