“You want me to kill him,” this time I did stagger before Lion, “tonight? That’s hardly enough time to…”

  “There’s already a plan. Everything’s already in motion. We’re just missing a single piece,” Noble Lion said.

  I passed a hand over my brow, mind spinning. River had told me to hear what Lion had to say. She didn’t say anything about assassinating the Prime Minister. But if I were to trust that she already knew what Lion was planning – and that was getting less and less likely by the moment – then… I looked up.

  “Wait, I’m the missing piece?”

  “Lions, leopards,” said Brass Bell, speaking up once more. “These things don’t just fly through your window without raising alarm. But a sparrow…”

  I snorted.

  “You’re the only one of us who hasn’t challenged him,” the mayor of Moon’s Reflection went on. “In fact, most of us thought you a little too helpful in paving his way to power to invite you here tonight, but Lion vouches for you. You held back your allies from confronting him on more than one occasion. You serve in his bureaucracy and never speak out. You never rebel, not even in small ways. You delivered Noble Lion’s surrender...”

  That was too much. I erupted. “I’m an agricultural clerk, not his headsman! And a low level one at that! It's all I can do to make sure that some of the people in the Land Under Heaven get what they need to survive. And delivering Noble Lion’s surrender? When, by Heaven, did I do that?”

  “Tonight,” said Celestial Master, smiling benevolently. “In two hours.”

  “‘Begone from the capital by dawn,’” Yuan Shao quoted, grinding his teeth, “‘but leave that shiny sword of yours with me.’”

  Brass Bell shot a sympathetic look at Lion then went on. “Dreadwolf’s own words. It's the perfect opportunity to enter into his presence armed.”

  My mind was still spinning, but there was one horrific thing to which it kept coming back. “And the Demon? I’m told he doesn’t leave his master’s side. If you think I’m about to fight him myself-”

  “Mountain steeds. For his cavalry,” said Snow Leopard, his voice a rasping whisper, as if he were accustomed to complete silence when he spoke.

  “Horses are one of the Demon’s few interests,” Brass Bell elaborated. “He insists on picking out his unit’s mounts himself so they don’t fall too far behind his Red Hare.”

  “And the rest of the Gray Wolf guard?” I asked. “He has at least eighty other elites surrounding him day and night.”

  “He’ll be understaffed tonight,” said Celestial Master. “A wine merchant from the Skylands will get lost and ask directions at the gatehouse of his estate. The goods will be confiscated and taken to the barracks. His personal guard may be full of elite fighters, but they are not disciplined enough to resist such temptation.”

  “So it’s all figured out then. Anyone could just walk right up to him and end it.”

  “Anyone who’s presence wouldn’t alarm him,” said Camel King, voice like tumbling rocks. “One of his loyal ministers would suffice. Perhaps someone close enough to Lion to plausibly accept his surrender, but too cowed by Dreadwolf to truly plot against him.”

  “And I, of course, fit this splendid picture you just painted?”

  Camel King shrugged and fixed me with a glare, “Looks that way.”

  I snorted. “You’re all forgetting one thing,” I said, remembering something River had told me a long time ago, before a particularly strange evening. “His Mandate. The moment I draw that sword he could squash me like a bug, or incinerate me, or tear my heart from my chest. I don’t know. His Mandate could be anything, but you can bet that it's powerful if he’s been able to carve a path from Wolf’s Hollow to the capital.”

  At this point I was basically pleading with Noble Lion. But he was looking at Ghostcaller. They all were, in fact, looking toward the old woman in rags. So I did, as well.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “It is said about Dreadwolf, that he was born under the Silver Star, and his first reading upon his naming was Windy Lake, the 61st hexagram known as Inner Truth. He is said to know one’s intentions by merely looking them in the eye…”

  “Sounds like exactly the thing that would keep me from agreeing to assassinate him,” I grumbled.

  “This is a lie,” Ghostcaller rasped.

  “What?”

  “He lied about having a Mandate,” said Noble Lion, “Why wouldn’t he? He’s willing to break every other law and tradition we hold sacred. If a rising young warlord were to fail to manifest a Mandate from Heaven, what better way to keep from being written off and cast aside than to come up with a vague, unprovable gift from the stars. Even better if that gift makes people think twice about crossing him.”

  “Let me guess,” I said to Ghostcaller. “A ghost told you this?”

  Ghostcaller’s wrinkled old eyes twinkled, but she didn’t respond.

  “What if he really does have this Mandate and I’m left standing in front of him with a naked sword?”

  “There is a flaw,” said Celestial Master, sharing a significant look with Ghostcaller, “in every power of prophecy or divination. There is, in fact, a fatal flaw in any gift from Heaven. Summon waves of fire, and it takes only rain to render one useless. Summon walls on a whim and one will be a great defender but never a conqueror of new lands…”

  Noble Lion shuffled uncomfortably.

  “...I can read the future in the stars, but the future is ever changing. Thousands of decisions will teeter on the edge of the last. My own mortal intellect limits the number of permutations I can consider.”

  “I hear,” Ghostcaller spoke up, again chilling my bones, “the unrecorded history of the dead, but my vision is skewed by events that shaped the world and the people who lived through them. My ability to entertain hypotheticals is as limited as any peasant.”

  “The rule of Heaven demands balance.” Celestial Master picked the thread back up. “It does not give ultimate power without ultimate weakness. A wielder of True Sight, such as Dreadwolf claims to be, can only ever know what the person in front of them intends to do now, given the many factors that brought them to this place and time. Should you feel him call upon an aura, you will deliver the sword as a gift, as intended. The moment he reads your eyes, you will have already decided not to kill him. But should you feel nothing, know he cannot read your intentions, and you can slay him without fear of his pre-empting you.”

  “But it won’t come to that,” said Noble Lion, grasping my arm. “He doesn’t have the gift from Heaven. He cannot. The moment we faced him on the docks I was the same as you. I didn’t know what he could level against me.”

  “He had us overpowered by force of arms. There was no need to call upon an aura,” I said.

  “I thought the same thing,” Noble Lion shook me with excitement, “But then I learned what gift he claimed. If his power was insight, there would have been no better time to call upon it, there, standing before all of his greatest rivals, who were even then deciding whether to fight or to submit. If he had a Mandate, he would have called upon it then. Yet I felt nothing from him.”

  “And if we’re wrong…” Noble Lion made to speak but I cut him off. “Oh, I know the way Celestial Master speaks, it sounds like a foregone conclusion, but if I mis-play it or there’s some scenario we haven’t accounted for. What then?”

  “You run,” said Noble Lion. “You get out of there as fast as you can. You flee to Iron Tower and marshal your father’s forces. You don’t die in the street like a dog, you live to rally the full strength of the Silver Falcon clan and we don’t go down without an honest fight.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  “I will go into exile willingly, knowing that we did everything possible to minimize the ravages of Dreadwolf, and the only way to save the country is through full-scale war. Besides,” Noble Lion smiled, “if there must be war, there’s no way I’d rather fight than with you on my left and Stallion on my right. Before all is said and done, history will remember us as the Three Kings of the North.”

  Camel King cleared his throat – a sound like boots crunching on gravel – and Snow Leopard eyed us warily.

  “Oh, leave off you two,” said Noble Lion. “I would have said Three Kings of the Northeast but it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. No one wants your northwest territories.”

  Camel King looked to Snow Leopard, who shrugged as if to say, “good enough for me.”

  I began to form a vision, a dream really, of the falcon, the stallion, and the lion forming a powerful foundation in one corner of the kingdom, while the leopard and the camel held the frontier opposite us. Coalitions east of the capital passes and to the west. Beneath us, well-respected spiritual leaders held the center, while the people flourished under Heaven. There was only one problem, and that was the wolf splitting it all right down the middle.

  I gave my answer but I must have been mumbling because Lion didn’t hear me.

  “What?”

  “I said! Give me the damned sword!”

  ***CONSPIRATOR’S MISSION BRIEFING: ASSASSINATE THE PRIME MINISTER***

  Primary Objective: Kill Dreadwolf if he wields no Mandate.

  Secondary Objective: If he does, deliver the sword and leave without raising alarm.

  Bonus Objective: Survive.

  Fail Condition: Dreadwolf lives AND Sparrow is known for an assassin.