Sister Sayewa did not care if he was a mage or an apprentice. She dictated translations and expected him to take it down for her.

The demons and their Bloods, the Celestials, the rituals - all the spiritual discourses she delved in made his head swim. His fingers had not been that ink-stained since Master Jiang had taught him how to hold the brush.

She also took him to market in place of a beast of burden, offering a brusque "It will clear your mind" for an explanation. What she meant was for them to leave Tien Lyn and Yu to their sorrow and bliss.

He did not mind: waiting for Yu to die was heart-wrenching, and Sayewa's company proved surprisingly pleasant. Having had avoided faeries all his life, Xi did not expect the priestess' mind to be so comfortingly ordered. He even took to humming the hymns along with her and picking the prettiest of the flowers that she shed all over the place. The only thing that frustrated him was how easily he fell back into obeying someone displaying authority, instead of taking charge himself.

He was moping over it, threading the crowd in Sayewa's wake, hugging a heavy shopping basket, when a booming sound startled him and the rest of the crowd into a stand-still.

A soldier on the high platform in the centre of the market beat the drum with a grim determination. The red-and-black banners slithered up the walls, and the smoke plumes puffed up from the towers, smearing the azure sky with black.

Sayewa grabbed the basket from Xi's hands. "To the gates. I will find you there!"

Xi rushed through the market, that swirled back to life, against the flow, egged on by the unstoppable beat of the drum, and the chorus of 'demons!' The panicked crowd screamed the terrible word at the tops of the lungs, spat it out, whispered it under their breath, screeched hysterically, asked in disbelief, but no matter how uttered, it came out the same.

Demons!

He saved his breath, nearly crushing his teeth into dust to avoid repeating it after everyone else. The drum's beat turned into a song in his head, we have waited too long, too long, too long!

But, Ancestors, what was he supposed to do? Slit Yu's throat? Spirit his mother away against her will? Waiting sounded wise, until it was not.

The heavy city gates were being shut under the supervision of a stout captain. The higher the station, the wider the girth, that's how it worked in Tarkan.

Seeking to overcome the deficiencies of his small stature, Xi used to swim in the Jade Sea and climb the solitary pillars of stone that rose out of it near Sutao daily. But a few weeks as Sayewa's scribe mellowed him out, so he struggled for breath by the time he came to a skidding stop in front of the man in charge. "I am Chong Xi, the war mage!"

The captain finished yelling at a blank-faced pikeman. It was a good, thorough cussing, inquiring extensively into the soldier's ancestry, then casting a shade of doubt on the paternity of his descendants in nearly as many details.

Once satisfied with his berating of the pikeman, the captain gave Xi a sour look. "Well, why aren't you on the walls yet, war mage? Should I excrete an Imperial Edict and a golden seal to conscript you?"

Xi took the narrow steps two at a time, ignoring the pain of the broken breath in his side. Something about the mages coming straight from the tit nowadays streamed in his wake accompanied by the relieved laughter of the pikeman.

At the top of the wall was a narrow passage between the crenellations, broiling with activity. Jostled out of the way, Xi pressed his face to the closest embrasure and saw nothing but dust. But there was a lot of it, some distance away.

"Is that the demons?" he asked dumbly, of no one in particular.

A bowman squatting next to him said, "Aye, that's them. What are you, demon-fodder? You're a mite small to last long."

"I am a war mage!" Ancestors, if I repeat it enough times, I'll start believing it myself.

The old soldier's smile was lopsided and hardly merry. "That's what I said, demon-fodder. Who taught you?"

"Rustam Bei." Also known as the war mage who forgot to mention that the infantry considered them demon bait. And why would not they? It made a perfect sense that the war mages would be the first ones targeted. It was a safe bet that the more experienced soldiers traded for a place as far from a mage as possible.

The archer bobbed his head, his lips pursed, his brows raised in a grimace that spelled recognition and approval. "Ru-storm we used to call him, aye, fought with him at the Prayer Beads. Now, that was a war mage worth his keep. We sure can use all the lightning you can conjure."

"My understanding—-" Xi squeezed the hairpin in his fist till the carved jade imprinted itself on the inside of his palm. The man was not looking to discuss dogma with him, curse it! "That is, lightning is not my strong suit. But I will not fail you, I promise."

"Promise things to girls," the archer quipped, then yelled to his comrades, "Look, fellas, we got ourselves a mage!"

"Ancestors help us!" someone called back. It did not sound like a prayer.

Xi ignored their laughter and sat down preparing to meditate before the battle, but the archer tapped him on the shoulder. "Psst, they are two days out at least. The land's so flat down there, you can see your dog two weeks after it ran away from the tower."

Clearly, he was destined to go into his first battle with the bloom of embarrassment painted on his cheeks. Afraid, he thought wistfully, why can't I just be afraid like everyone else?

He should have been more careful of what he wished for. The first vestiges of fear prickled his consciousness when demons became a dark core in the nimbus of dust. The darkness grew, advancing steadily at them from the desert. The inevitability of their arrival became as palpable as the weight of the studded vest he now wore, and then fear became dread. He kept it at bay the best he could through mediation, sleeping less and less in the following three nights.

Even better than meditation, whenever they both were free from standing their watches on the wall, Sayewa kept insisting on dictating to him. He wrote automatically, doggedly holding on to his focus. Her voice calmed him, but the words about the dragons and rajas slipped past his consciousness.

Disengaged as he was for the sake of his magic, he did notice the conflict brewing between Sayewa and Yu on one side, and his mother - on the other. When the faery paused, scanning the scroll with unseeing eyes for too long, he could not stay impartial any longer. He got off his mat and took the scroll away from her. "Is something wrong? Apart from the demons advancing towards us?"

Sayewa brushed the flowering strand of hair back. "Yu hoped your presence would help your mother to come to terms with the ritual. It did not. She is afraid to let him go, and until she does, he lingers. It is an impossible situation."

"What kind of a ritual?" Xi asked.

"Your mother owns a vorpal weapon, that also draws in some of the owners' qi. Yu and I believe that we could infuse it with what still remains in him to greatly strengthen the weapon. It will make your mother formidable when fighting against the demons."

Expressionless as her voice was, Xi did not believe for a moment she was unaffected. The profusion of crimson flowers opened up and wilted in her hair.

He caught one in mid-air and plucked its petals, one by one. "Will Yu die?"

"Yu is already dead."

"Not in my mother's eyes."

"Hence our disagreement."

Her tone could not have been milder, and the air around her smelled pleasantly of jasmine, but something in the way she looked at him made Xi want to run and reason with his mother at once. Maybe it was the impact of the four eyes focused on his two, maybe it was something else, an emotion he could not identify. How his mother resisted this penetrating gaze and the aura of calm authority, he could not fathom. Alas, if Tien Lyn defied Sister Sayewa, he would stand as much chance as a newborn kitten against a dragon, so he took the only wise course of action, "I am afraid I can't help you."

"I did not ask you to, Chong Xi. I asked you to record the translation of the 'A Word on the Ancient Days of the Principality of Daghrajan.'" She did not look at all disappointed, but he felt like a black slug on a gleaming lotus flower. It was so much easier to be a hero when all you had to do was to bury demons alive.

"Daghrajan it is then," Xi sighed, resuming his place, brush poised, the half-destroyed flower tucked in his sleeve. Men grew white hair arguing with the faeries, they said. And those who said it, had not even met Sister Sayewa.

***

The fourth morning from the day when they'd locked the city-gates brought those tragic days in the ancient Daghrajan back to life.

The distant army came so close that Xi could pick out the riders from the milling mass. Camels and infantry, human, for the most part, formed its centre - just like in the chronicles - with the demon cavalry weaving along the flanks. The banners hang limply in the still air, but there was plenty of foreign colour beside the banners invading the valley of the Generous River.

In Daghrajan, Blood rode striped horses with wicked horns; in the Jade Sea they mounted the sea serpents.

The Blood that came to Tarkan rode bone-white lizards, with egrets' graceful necks and throats puffing up into unexpected balls of crimson. The Blood had the familiar look captured on the temple walls across the Empire: heavily muscled torsos topped with narrow snouted faces, flowing manes, copper and bronze colouring, and the glitter of shiny metals they favoured for both their armour and adornments.

From the wall, Xi could not see their claws, but he would doubtlessly get his chance soon enough. He shivered.

"Well," the stout captain said, "the girls are going to sing and dance for us now."

That was one way of putting it. Xi did not know that singing and dancing could be used to induce terror until he heard the wild booming of the drums and saw the demons leap into air, with screams that tore the skies. The chill of the night reached up from the valley floor to the wall, dimming their spirits even in the bright sunshine. There was beauty in the demonic promise of ravaging, a certain morbid allure. Xi broke off the spell ready to burst from his lips with an effort.

The captain walked the length of the wall, giving out clouts and crude jokes in equal measure.

Xi had no jokes to offer, and could not bring himself to hit anyone, but as he listened in, he understood the harmony the demons sang. Tentatively at first, then more forcefully, he took it apart, then shattered it.

The men closest to him burst into nervous chuckles, then the wave of laughter spread along the wall. Xi could not hold back a smirk - take that, demons!

"Idiot boy!" the captain barked, his face flooding with scarlet rage. "They were enjoying touching those dullards, eating up them shaking in their boots! Now they are ready for business, and they know we have a mage."

"I am a mage, not a mind reader," Xi muttered.

"Ancestors, why me?" the Captain spat. "Don't improvise! Just do what all the other---"

What he thought Xi should do got drowned out by a collective gasp. While he was busy starting into the captain's glowering orbs, everyone else looked up to the sky.

The golden bird sped down from the mountains, radiant in the sun.

Thank you, my enigma! He could not leave Tarkan to find her without risking desertion charges, but he knew she would come. And she could not have picked the better moment.

Fenghuang made a slow circle, showing off her wings and her size. She sang, "Those who come with swords, die on the swords!" again and again. Her voice, a single voice, sounded louder than the war-song of the entire demon horde.

The soldiers basked in Fenghuang's golden glow.

She let them cheer for a long rapturous moment, before landing on the tower above the gates. From there, she gave Xi an affectionate look. 'Twas my pleasure, beloved.

The wings as huge as fenghuang's buffeted his heart down into the pit of his stomach, and back up into his throat. He gulped forcing it down, struggling against sudden dizziness.

What's wrong? She looked down at him from the tower-top, a woman's face nestled in the golden aureole as cold and as beautiful as she had ever shown him.

Cloud-and-rain love, Zijun had said, but it fell short. Moon-and-pearl, he tried, silver-and-ice-water...

The fenghuang peel of laughter jingled in his mind. You need not be a poet where a mage suffices, beloved.

The captain groaned. "There are fifteen mages in the Empire. Fifteen! All good, respectable people. And I got a boy with a magic bird and a hairpin."

"You are wrong," Xi told him, shaking off the lovelorn spell. He straightened up as much as he could, till his shoulder blades cracked, spreading out the invisible wings. "There are sixteen war mages in the Empire."

Sixteen was the supremely unlucky number, but he would take it and make his own. Chong Xi, the Sixteenth War Mage.