If I’d had any time to do it, I would have cursed at my misfortune in getting attacked again, and at the Zarian who were doing it. But I couldn’t spare the attention. I barely even noticed what the people around me were doing. The formations around the camp held all of my focus.

Trying to repair formations suffering damage from attacks on the fly would be a hellish challenge even for an experienced formations master. Even reinforcing them wasn’t easy. A little like trying to repaint a chalk drawing, in acidic chalk, while someone kept splashing water all over it. While you were tied to your spot and couldn’t move. In reality, I couldn’t go haring off all over and outside the base to work on the formations.

But I could tell that my efforts helped. The formations were well-done, poured in stone deep into the earth and into reinforced plates inlaid with conductive metals. They buckled under the assault and the overflow of qi from other, failing formations, but the basis held, and there was enough redundancy that the system didn’t break down. It wouldn’t stand up to a concentrated barrage for long, but while the attackers were content to stay back, it held.

Slowly, the strain started to lessen, and I finally raised my head to look up and take in the situation. The ballistas on the gate had scored hits on the hostile spirit beast a few times, judging by the bloody gashes in its side. One of the tusks was half broken off. It was stumbling backward, and after it shook its head and roared again, it turned and staggered back into the shelter of the thickest patch of trees.

I set down my chisel and pen, let out a deep breath, and took a step away from my workplace, closer to the walls. Aston moved with me. After a moment of hesitation, I jumped onto the low battlements where Lei and Elia were standing. Elis was beside them, still a little more closely guarded by soldiers from my detail.

“You think it’s over?” Lei asked, sounding doubtful.

“Of course not,” Elia said. She glanced at her brother. “They want Elis, don’t they? Maybe they’ll try talking now?”

I frowned, glancing outside, where I could feel several powerful cultivators moving. “They’re Zarian. We’re still at war. They’re not going to just stop by to chat with us.”

As if to give the lie to my words, a cultivator stepped out onto the path. He wore dark robes, and while he kept his aura veiled, I was pretty sure he was in the seventh stage.

We waited in tense silence as he moved closer. A few other cultivators followed after him, but they kept to the trees, so I didn’t get a good look at any of them. The other one strolled in a manner that tried just a little too hard to project relaxation and confidence. I focused on his presence in my qi senses. He was definitely a spirit-child. Although I couldn’t tell which spirit or even how strong they were. It probably wouldn’t be anyone I’d recognize, anyway. Although I’d be surprised if it wasn’t a follower of Jideia.

He stopped some distance from the gate and let the silence drag on for a few moments, apparently for dramatic effect. Then he spoke. “Imperials! Your defense has been commendably strong. But you should know you have little hope of standing us off. You can take heart, though. This does not need to come to a pitched battle.”

He’d spoken in Zarian. I glanced at the others. They should all understand the language at least to some degree, though I knew Lei hadn’t put much effort into studying it, and he was frowning at the enemy cultivator. Elia leaned over to whisper to him.

After a moment of consideration, I turned, and waved at the most senior of the officers gathered below us, a female one-star general with gray-streaked hair and a wicked-looking axe in her hand, to approach. The woman landed on the battlements and bowed.

“If they don’t know I’m here yet, it’s probably better not to tell them,” I said. “You should answer him. Ask him to elaborate, if you would.”

“Of course, Your Highness.” The officer hesitated. “I should get back down. May I contact you telepathically for further instructions?”

“Of course, General.” I made a mental note to learn her name.

She rejoined the rest of her staff and stepped up behind the gate, climbing one of the half-towers at its sides, which would give her a good view of the situation and also allow them to see her.

“What do you mean, Zarian?” she called out. “Clearly, you and your strike force have come here to attack us.”

The other spirit-child smiled. “Your little outpost does not concern me much, Imperial. We are not part of the Dominion’s armed forces. Instead, I have been sent here to deal with a domestic matter. We are chasing a wanted criminal. If you hand him over, we will have no reason to squander our strength against your walls.”

I felt the officer’s touch, and sent her a message back. ‘Ask him about this criminal.’

She nodded minutely. “A criminal? What sort of crimes has this man you’re chasing committed?”

“Treason against the state,” the Zarian answered after a momentary pause. “You do not need to know this, but I can tell you. Also incitement to sedition and espionage.”

I whistled silently. A glance at Elis showed him grinding his teeth, but he remained silent. I smiled at him for a moment. That Zarian could be lying through his teeth, or more likely, has been sent on thin pretenses to eliminate Elis. It’s not like we have any way to check what they’re telling us.

But if this was as ugly as the picture was shaping up to look like to me, I could understand why Jideia’s faction, or others, hadn’t wanted a truth-teller strolling around in the middle of it.

I gave the general another short message, and she followed my directions. “The man in question is not a Zarian citizen. Furthermore, he has appealed to the Empire for sanctuary. I’m afraid we cannot give him up just like that, especially given your nation’s record of gross miscarriage of justice.”

The Zarian’s face tightened, more at the last part than at hearing that we wouldn’t give Elis up. “That’s unfortunate,” he replied. “I might prefer to avoid bloodshed, but I am perfectly able and willing to use force to back up our demand.” His eyes swept over the wall. “By the way, you should give up the pretense. I can feel there is a powerful spirit child hiding within your camp. Perhaps even …” he trailed off, but I didn’t like the look on his face.

“Who is that, Elis?” I asked quietly.

The young man stepped closer and pulled a face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t met him before, personally. I imagine he is one of Aralo’s — that’s the new Security Director, in case you didn’t know — helping hands. Although it might be just as accurate to call him a hound of the Temple. This has to be one of the armed groups they sponsor.”

I grimaced. I’d read about this in one of the reports Aiki had shown me. Apparently, it had recently become fashionable for young nobles, or rather people from the Dominion’s leading patrician families, to enroll in that sort of group. I got the impression they were somewhere in the uncomfortable middle ground between a knightly order, a political militia or armed group dedicated to their faction, like the Nazi’s SA before they came to power, and an unofficial security apparatus of the state. Or ‘security’, as these things go. Anyway, a number of the people facing us now were clearly such talented (if perhaps lacking in good judgement) nobles, but many of them, on the other hand, clearly had spirit ancestry. Which no doubt helped explain why they were all pretty strong.

After thinking about it for a moment, I decided not to reveal my presence. They might have realized I was here already, but if not, there was no reason to show myself. Who knew what they might get up to if they thought they could take me out here.

‘Tell them no again. Warn them off,’ I ordered the officer.

“Who might or might not be in our camp is no concern of yours,” she responded promptly. Not that it made up for our time of deliberation beforehand. “I am warning you, we will not give in to such high-handed demands from an agent of our enemy. I suggest you turn around and leave. Clearly, you were sent out to hunt down a lone person, not assault an Imperial base. If you persist in this, though, we are more than capable of making you leave the hard way.”

She was probably right in that assessment, I reflected, although the level of force they’d assembled to chase Elis certainly suggested they weren’t taking this lightly. Clearly, whoever gave his orders wanted to be perfectly sure that they could bring him in, even if he got help from the Sun.

The Zarian’s face hardened. “If you insist on being difficult,” he said in a tone that had finally crossed into being openly derisive. “The hard way it is, then. You have only yourself to blame. Or your hidden master.”

The others finally left the sparse shelter of the trees and moved into position for an attack, forming a half-circle around the camp. The theatrics made me snort. It was pretty obvious these weren’t professional soldiers. Trying to intimidate your enemy in this way might make sense if you were chasing some ‘undesirables’ or cowing rebellious elements, but it was pretty out of touch for a regular battle between units of enemy nations.

They didn’t mess around for long, though. After they’d assembled and allowed us a moment to bask in their presence, they attacked.

This time, I wouldn’t be able to man the wards against them. Their first attack made that abundantly clear. They straight up blew away the outermost layer of the protective wards, and scrambled all of our alarm and perimeter marking formations in the process. The inner shield held, luckily, but I could sense how much strain it had to withstand.

“Return fire!” the general bellowed before it had ended, and started by sending a large spear of ice at the previous speaker herself.

The Zarian evaded that with a quick sidestep, and returned one of his own. By this point, the rest of the fighters joined the attacks, and the space between the camp and the attackers turned into a chaotic melange of different qi-based attacks. What felt like half of the trees in the vicinity went up in flames or were simply ripped apart.

I glanced at the Lighters, who had taken their positions behind the walls, as well. Their officers were directing them to make concentrated attacks on targets as the shifting battlefield allowed. As I watched, one squad managed to nail one of the Zarian spirit-children, overwhelming his qi shield with their weapons, and blowing him back with a chemical grenade. They didn’t manage to follow it up effectively, though, given the way their line of fire was being blocked by the earthen wall another Zarian had put up. When their opponent came back into sight, he was already healing, probably from a pill he’d taken.

I flinched as I sensed the qi shield finally break. An electric tingle swept over us, then the Zarian’s attacks started crashing into the wall and its defenders. Aston grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back deeper into the camp. I instinctively tried to struggle at first, but I didn’t manage to budge him a centimeter. Elia and Lei followed, though the guards at least allowed them to move under their own power.

“What about the soldiers from those ships?” Lei asked.

That was a very good question. They had to have noticed what was going on here.

“They’re coming up,” Aston answered. “Parts of the enemy force are turning to face them.”

It wasn’t a large fleet, and the cultivators on board the ships weren’t that strong, but this definitely swung the odds more in our direction.

Elis appeared at the edge of the battlements. “Aren’t you going to fight?” he called to us.

“My bodyguards would get violent if I tried,” I replied. “You should probably get back, too.”

He shook his head. “They’re here for me. I’m going to be showing them why that’s a bad idea.”

I sighed but nodded. I couldn’t stop him from fighting, and even if I could, I would probably respect his decision. Unlike Elia, he was in the middle of the fifth stage, so he could actually do some good here. Especially if he had some abilities from his bloodline that were suited to combat.

I didn’t have to ponder that question for long. Just after Elis returned, I could sense a large attack shooting out from his position towards two of the Zarian fighters. It was a combined technique using fire and light qi that looked a bit like a solar flare. The plasma burned through his enemies’ shields in a matter of seconds, and with a number of Lighters suddenly focused on them, they disappeared into a conflagration.

I sent a bit of my own qi up into a technique that would act as a mirror and reflect light so I had a good view of the battlefield. I caught the soldiers from the ships anchored off the nearby coast as they started their attack. Steam erupted over the battlefield as the water they brought mixed with the fires already smoldering in several places. But I didn’t need to see everything to understand what was happening. The attacks on the camp let up, which was a good thing considering the walls were barely holding together even in the strongest spots. Our own soldiers didn’t let the opportunity go to waste, but redoubled their own attacks on the Zarian.

I caught Elis using his attack technique three more times before he stopped, visibly panting. About a quarter of our Lighters had been killed, and a somewhat smaller percentage of the regular soldiers. But the Zarian seemed to have fared at least as badly. The walls might not be much, but they offered at least some protection, and the attackers had been caught between two forces.

I wondered if they would fight to the bitter end. For a moment, it seemed like it. But then I realized that they were actually concentrating again, not just to shore up their defenses, but they were only attacking enough to provide themselves cover fire. Then qi started to swirl around them.

I began to bark out orders to take cover, and lost my view of the field as two guards moved in front of me. But it didn’t matter, because the wave of qi crested the next instant, and with it came a faint sensation I’d sensed often enough now. As if space was being warped and stretched slightly before it snapped into place. When I got a view of the battlefield again, it only confirmed what my other senses told me. The Zarian were gone.

Elis jumped down from the wall and ambled in our direction, still a bit pale, but with a smile on his face. He must be feeling very relieved.

“Well, that was an adventure,” he commented lightly. “I apologize for the interruption of our conversation, Princess.”

I nodded, not bothering to hide the fact that I was watching him closely. “Maybe now that we have some time to talk, you can tell me why they wanted you so badly, Elis.”

He shrugged, but I could see the tension still simmering under the surface. “I suppose these sorts of people don’t like who they consider traitors.”

I narrowed my eyes, looking at him thoughtfully. “You were one of them?”

He pulled a face. “No. But they thought I would be. And I might have encouraged that. I was seriously considering it.” He sighed. “They’re quite eager to recruit spirit-children and ‘build a community’ for them. But anyway, that was before I realized how they treated those they didn’t want or get to join their club.”

Elia frowned. “I didn’t know you where that comfortable in the Dominion, Elis.”

He snorted. “That’s nothing. By the time you took Blue Valley City back, I was one of the best unofficial players in the intelligence game, and even not insignificant in the broader political landscape in the north of the Dominion.”

I whistled. It certainly sounded like we had a lot to talk about.