one

She saw them before he did.

Indeed, he saw them first through her.

IF THE fog was her breath, a heavy cloak that she laid like a claim across the water—mine!—then the typhoon was her temper, the vicious lash of the winds and the dark deep howl that they rose up from, the chill still stare of the eye and then the fury again, worse than before.

All his life, Han had known that the typhoon was her temper. Once it had been because she was chained, and he had been inland at the limits of her reach: rising rivers and cascading rains, roofs ripped from houses and boats left far from water, old men sucking air through their teeth and saying it would be worse on the coast, if any fool were fool enough to be there.

Then she was free, and her temper was an eruption against him alone because she was not free after all, because he rode still in her head and could twist her out of true if never bend her truly to his will.

They were still trying to learn how to deal with each other, for this little time until they could each be freed; and she was still not free at all, because there was another power in these waters and they were not hers after all. She could not break those paltry humans in their eggshell boats when they dared to chance the open strait, because she was not allowed to.

And so she sent the typhoon, or else the typhoon came because she was so raging; and for weeks nothing did sail on the strait, because nothing could.

She sailed on the wind, as though to claim it for her own, storm-empress; he sheltered as best he could in rock-caves filled with curses. When she came to him, he said, Bring me a boat, and weather I can sail in, and ignored the fact that he didn’t know how to sail.

After the storm was over, she was still angry, and disturbed; she still rode the wind and glowered down on Taishu-island and its boats. He knew. He was in her head, and saw them packed like seeds in all the ports and harbors.

The storm’s wake had brought clear skies, strong seas and a steady, whipping wind. Almost, Han thought the dragon was abroad for the simple pleasure of it: soaring high and then plunging like a stone, stretching to cleave the sea as she struck, sinking deep and thrusting up again, she might have been a youngling at play, thrilling in the power and precision of her body, nothing more.

Almost.

Almost, he thought it was true. After so long in chains, small surprise if she chose to exult in freedom. Even if it was limited, circumscribed, deceptive.

But, when she was high, he knew she was looking down, seeing all those many boats that packed the harbors like great seeds afloat. Seeing how they all fared forth like seeds in the wind, boats on the water.

When she plunged, he knew this was yet one more attempt to assert herself, her authority, her possession of these waters.

When she struck the sea, he knew this was yet one more failure, one more spite, something to hate.

Some two things to hate, because the fleet was divided: she struck at one and could not hit it, she tried to rise up beneath the other and could not.

She tried to bring back the typhoon, he thought, to sink them all in open water, and could not do that either.

He ran up to the height of the Forge to watch the fleets go by, one on the one side and one on the other; and, of course, to wait for her.