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I asked.
    “If the Son of Heaven sees fit,” he said. He smiled. “But I would like that. Fourth Princess will need someone to protect the empire, am I correct?”
    I grinned. “How do you know I will not protect it myself?” I picked up a twig and held it between us. It smoldered for a moment, curls of smoke rising from its bark, before it bloomed with a tiny flame.
    He chuckled. “The barbarians will flee before your burning twigs. I am serious, though. Even the most blessed emperor will take comfort in knowing that he has a shield.”
    The stronger the prayer, the more the prayer demanded of the body. The imperial family did not often call on the Five Gods because the strongest prayers left us vulnerable, and so were not to be used except in times of need, and then not all of us were as powerful as geomancers of legend. Imperial Father was very talented. I was not so much.
    “That proverb,” I said. “It was the Hung-ying Emperor who said that.”
    “My father is fond of it,” said Jing-lung.
    “Do you know any more?”
    “Proverbs? I can see if I remember…”
    Jing-lung was no scholar, and his brief attempts at poetry made me laugh, but he was good company, and my time in the steppes was not so boring because of him. When summer ended and we packed the tents to return to the capital I was sad, not because I would never see him again—as the son of a general he was likely to visit the palace from time to time—but because we would no longer be able to talk freely. I watched him ride ahead of me on the trip home. I wanted to remember how the long braid of his hair swayed against his back.
    We next met at the Black Turtle Festival, when I and my maids went out into the wind-swept city to watch the fireworks and eat lotus cakes. Sek-fung padded alongside us for protection, a clear sign that we were a party of nobility. It was the start of winter, so we bundled ourselves well in our fine things, though it rarely snowed in the capital.
    Mung-laan saw him first, recognizing him from our sojourn to the north, and she giggled when she told me that a bunch of young fellows were teasing that fine soldier, trying to get him to come over and speak to me. I saw Jing-lung shake his head, but when his friends realized that he had my attention, they gave him a push.
    Unable to escape, he walked up to me and bowed. “Greetings to Fourth Princess.”
    “Please rise,” I told him.
    “Is Fourth Princess enjoying the festival?”
    “The fireworks and the dances are very pretty. But I have yet to taste the lotus cakes.”
    My heart beat as I considered my words. Could I ask? Would Imperial Father hear of it? I heard giggling behind me. Mung-laan. If Imperial Father asked her of course she would tell him. But, I was very valuable to the Emperor right now, and if I was to be heir, I should not be shy about speaking to the men who would be in my army. Moreover, Imperial Father had approved of Jing-lung and rewarded him with silver taels for his performance out on the steppes.
    “I am on my way to Madame Wu’s,” I asked. “I hear her staff rib the crust of the lotus cakes so that they resemble the shell of the Black Turtle herself. Would you like to join me?” I asked.
    The silence behind me gave me a perverse joy. Mung-laan had not expected me to be so forward. Jing-lung’s fellows were equally stunned.
    “Of course, Fourth Princess.”
    Jing-lung was so formal—he had to be—but when I looked in his eyes I saw how happy he was.
    I still remember eating the lotus cake with him and learning that he had yet to marry, though at twenty he was certainly old enough. He said he was a younger son and his father busy. He didn’t mind that he was still unwed.
    And a part of me was foolish enough to wonder if I could ask Imperial Father. But Jing-lung’s family was not prominent enough. I knew now that General Syun-hoi was in charge of the training barracks in the south, a quiet but responsible position with little chance of