Minh's horse had strong opinions. From their first day together, the beast was adamant that the less time he spent in the saddle, the better. Today started well: the stallion cooperated as far as not sticking his long nose up into the sky, out of Minh's reach when he put the reigns and the bridle on.

Minh viewed the horse suspiciously. "What are you planning, Warlock?"

The horse widened his eyes, all innocence besmirched, and snorted. Minh shook his head. No way, no way the horse had just tried to imply that, perhaps, if he, Minh, did not call him Warlock—

"Bah, I had to name you something—"

Minh jumped out of the way to avoid the glistening black shoulder from grinding his rib cage into the mudbrick wall. The prized horses had better quarters than the soldiers, despite being next to useless in the swampy terrain and dropping off like flies this far South. No wonder he used to beat the Shen nine times out of ten!

The tail caught him on the forearm like a whip.

"Ouch, I didn't know you cared. Fine, seven out of ten." Minh rubbed the rising welt, wincing. "And once we find Xi, you can sort it out with him about not telling me your name."

Warlock nearly pulled the reins out of his hands, determined to leave the stable right bloody now.

"Don't be an arse!"

The well-timed fart eliminated all doubts on the kind of rapport they had.

"Good one. Very good. Now, with this out of the way, let's hope I tightened the girth—"

They locked eyes. Warlock's fluttering eyelashes belonged on a courtesan.

Minh caught the stirrup, took his best guess on which way his adversary would prance, and planted himself onto Warlock's wide back. He barely even slid towards the curved neck and the lovingly braided mane —

"Whore's moonblood, what's with all the ribbons? You have more admirers than I do."

Warlock farted again, possibly satisfied with their progress thus far.

"Good horse," Minh cajoled trying to imitate the gentler voices of the northerners. Half the time they talked to their generals like he would to babies. "Well-trained, fully-broken, pricey, handsome horse..." That's what they'd told him anyway. Based on his experiences, he did not fancy meeting a cheap, not yet gentrified equine.

Pretending to respond to Minh's gushing, Warlock took off down the narrow tracks out of the camp.

Minh smiled and waved at the sentries. From a distance, it could have looked like he was in control, not vice versa. The horse let him cling to this delusion for a mile, before veering off into a rice paddy.

To Minh, this paddy was just as verdant as the neighbouring ones, but Warlock felt differently about it.

"Onward, Warlock... onwards! The Evershining Empire prides itself on its roads, you skinny buffalo!"

The horse snapped its powerful teeth at Minh's left thigh, making him squirm in the saddle.

"We will never see Xi again if you keep stranding us in the middle of nowhere," Minh threatened the beast pointing his head in the right direction.

Warlock took off again, and for a time all was good. Emboldened by his success, Minh kept in the same vein. "That's right, that's the way we ride to see Xi. You miss him, I bet. Me? Not so much. I still have not finished his letter.

"Whore's moonblood, I did not know they had that much paper in the Empire, let alone ink. It is so long... I swear on my grandfather's ashes, I saw verses in at least three places. Verses, Warlock, verses!

"Then there are pages and pages about Celestials, faeries and dragons. What does he need a dragon for? He's already flying on a magic bird. Cursed mage!"

Minh forgot himself in his frustration and pulled on the reigns. The trained stallion dashed forward like a stone from a sling. Minh also went airborne, with considerably less poise than a pebble.

Just before kissing the mud, Minh managed to gather his limbs in to brace against the impact.

A small army of crabs beat a hasty retreat as he smashed into their ditch, splattering most of the Southern Luitong with the sticky pungent silt. He sat up groggily, inspecting his body for damages, and watched the imprint of his shoulder fill up with water. The crabs will be happy with the improvements to their realm's terrain.

Warlock returned to poke the velvety nose into his chest.

"The joke's on you." Minh bent every joint, trying to guess at the size of the future bruises from the red bumps on his skin. "Your pretty coat will get dirty." He was only telling horse the bitter truth: the cursed mud dried amazingly fast. Already the right side of his own head was framed in the crunchy ringlets of silt-and-hair.

The horse, annoyed by all the delays, caught the collar of Minh's shirt in its teeth and tried to pull him up. Just the finishing touch he needed to complete the ruination of his formerly respectable garment!

The sun stood high, most of the Shen would be up by now, so the entire garrison would be on hand to witness his glorious return from the morning ride. "It doesn't get better than that," Minh muttered and climbed back on his gifted horse.

Dry mud that caked Minh's cheek cracked up when he grinned at the camp sentinels. Warlock acted meeker than a fuzzy duckling trotting towards the stables, and he could finally release the reins from his cramping hands. He occupied them with plucking the broken-off mud-crust pieces, blackening the rims of his toe-nails. Well, it's not like he'd bothered with the manicures anyway...

***

Wu Twins waited for him by the stables.

Each scale of their armour was polished to a blinding shine; their teal cloaks flowed off their shoulders without a single crease; and the scarlet-and-black ribbons of the Son of Heavens might have come from the loom a moment ago, the colours were so bright and clean.

If Minh looked at them long enough, he'd start believing that dust avoided touching the Shen out of reverence.

The expression on their lordly faces grew identically impenetrable as Warlock clip-clopped down the wooden walkway.

"I trust your ride was enjoyable, Lord Maeng." Wu-the-sister started, and Wu-the-brother echoed: "Your horsemanship is improving, I am told."

Minh's smile sent a long crack all the way up to his ear. He resisted the urge to sink his black-rimmed nails behind it and scratch. "Exhilarating! We raced the wind and trampled stars under hoof. Point me to a rainbow, my lords, and I shall get to its other side before it fades from Heavens."

The twins shrugged in unison.

"Pity that we won't see this feat."

"The Emperor's orders came for you."

Minh struggled to keep his face straight. When he was the Emperor's age, he commanded a squad of three clay soldiers, as many twigs as he cared to include into his navy, and half-a-dozen cousins. He did not share these thoughts with the knights. With the exception of Xi, Shen took offence at everything. And Xi is not here to keep my neck out of the noose.

Minh slipped eel-like off Warlock's back, the only trick that came naturally to him when it came to horses. Behind his back, the groom made soothing noises, commiserating with Warlock like Minh would have with a ravaged maiden. Minh's eyes rolled skywards on their own accord, but the twins walked fast, so he put the cursed horse out of his mind and marched on.

Wu led him to the offices, where Wu-the-sister closed the door behind them, admitting no one but Minh.

Wu-the-brother took the Imperial edict and the seal out of a carved chest.

"Lord Maeng," Wu-the-sister said, lighting up a lantern with a snarling dragon, "you are ordered to recruit a hundred or more of those among your people who show promise as sailors, and lead them to Kushan."

The twins fixed him with the identical cold stares.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything.

"Oh." Minh prostrated himself before the lamp - the aspect of the Emperor or whatever other Shen nonsense - then lifted his head to ask. "Kushan?"

Wu-the-brother deposited the Imperial writ into his waiting hand. "It is a city in the North, where the Prodigious River enters the Jade Sea."

"You were wise to learn to ride, Lord Maeng," the sister added, with that cultured absence of expression. Minh chose to interpret it as a compliment.

In his mind's eyes, Minh saw himself pulling Warlock up to a spectacular stop at an arm's length from Xi. He'd vault out of the saddle to toss away the reins and wipe the surprised smile off Xi's lips with a kiss: You did say 'if you ever wished to travel North'...

***

North was vast.

Minh's small troop had passed a thousand cities and ten thousand villages. Every time another one came into view, Minh lost a shred of hope. It always came as a surprise to him that he did, so sure he had been that he had none left to lose. Apparently, like the magic ginseng roots, hopes regrew while he was not looking.

There got to be a way to find one man in this endless crowded land. Xi was a cursed mage after all, and how many men zipped across the sky on the backs of magic birds?

So far Minh had seen none.

Golden wings did not flap over his head. Not one slim man walking down the street lifted his head to reveal the hooked nose weighing it down, and the set of dreamy eyes to draw attention away from it.

On the brighter side, Minh and Warlock struck a truth for the time being. The horse devoured miles of dusty roads without taking detours through the fields, leaving only love-sickness and saddle sores for him to agonize over under the starry skies.

Then the nights grew darker, longer and colder, the verdant hills gave way to the forested valleys, and the road joined the river so wide he could not see the other shore.

Minh bought blankets and jackets and still lost a dozen men to whooping cough and fevers. How getting frozen into an icicle made a man burn with fever in the afternoon was beyond Minh. He pondered the paradox, delaying each swallow for as long as he could on the account of the feral cats clawing the insides of his throat, when a cry came from the front of the column.

Pressing knees into Warlock's sides, Minh overtook the troops easily, beating all but the outriders to the bluff of a long hill. The sheer drop was devoid of vegetation, pale-yellow in hue, the highest terrace among many stepping their way down to the floor of the floodplain. The banks and the islands bristled with the carcasses of the ships being built. More houses cramped in between the protruding wooden bones than he felt was wise. The humans in Shen's beloved multitude crisscrossed the shipyard.

Further down, as far as the eye could see, the rippling green of unconstrained water became blue, punctuated by the whitecaps here and there.

Finally, the Jade Sea.

Minh forced his eyes away from the panoramic view, and his mind - from Xi's voice trying and failing to describe what the sea was like. That voice used to cloak him like the soft wool he wore now.

Despite telling himself that Xi wouldn't be in Kushan, Minh's heart galloped fooled by even superficial likeness of the passersby. He scolded himself, resolving to listen to the severe-looking woman with a lilting accent that took charge of him and his party. She introduced herself as Captain Zyed, and said something about getting to work...

"The Empire is building all these monsters in secret?" Minh asked incredulously, gawking at the activity. The skeletons of the ships loomed huge over his head. They seemed impossible to conceal.

"Yes, precious. Do you like my girls? I hear you sail little boats on small rivers." Coins and bells weaved into her skinny graying braids jingled as the woman tilted her head to judge his reaction.

Minh studied the frames. "I'll tell you when I see a ship. Right now they look like dragon's ribs."

The woman guffawed. "The sooner you join us in constructing, the sooner we'll unfurl the sails for the One Who Rules the Winds to fill them."

Her eyes stayed on him, expecting protestations, but Minh rolled up his sleeves. "Let's see if you can teach me as fast as I can learn." There was no better way to understand the huge floating castle than building one with his own hands.

Zyed instructed him to seek her out once he found accommodations for his men.

He called after her, "Captain, how do you manage to keep all this hidden from the demons's spies?"

The Captain pointed up at the other bank.

A dark figure silhouetted against the icy-blue northern sky, moving through its powerful forms.

A mage! A cursed war mage!

Minh snapped his jaws shut before his heart could leap out of his throat and ran across the narrow bridge on its own. Making hasty excuses to those he bumped out of his way, he carried the wily organ over safely caged inside his chest.

The mage was about the right height, but even before Minh could make out his face, he knew it was not Xi. The man's shoulders were too wide, his bearing - far too commanding. But Minh stubbornly kept going. There were sixteen mages in the Empire, so at the very least this one could tell him where the demon-hells Xi was.

Minh slowed down to give himself a few heartbeats to calm his breath. His chances, he felt, were better if he did not fly at the mage with his eyes aglow, screaming in excitement. Despite not being Xi's, the mage's wide-set eyes bore the achingly familiar half-absent expression. The man did not look like a Shen. A guess stilled Minh's breath - maybe he was finally in luck. Maybe he came upon a man who had to know where Xi was.

"Master Rustam Bei, I beg forgiveness for approaching you without invitation, but I wish to inquire of the whereabouts of your grandson, Chong Xi. He left a valuable horse in my care, and—"

The air run out. Curses, he should have taken in a deeper breath before gambling like that.

The mage filled in the pause. "Chong Xi travelled beyond my understanding on a quest of uttermost importance, Lord... Lord Maeng, I presume?"

Minh's throat spasmed. "Is he... dead?"

"I do not know," Rustam Bei replied. "Keep the horse."

With a deflated feeling in his chest, Minh mixed with the workmen crowd. Cursed Shen, they could talk for hours about things no sane man could understand when sober and write a thousand poems about moss when drunk, but ask them an important question - and they run out of words.