Like the night before, she could not sleep. She slipped from the hut and walked behind it, until she felt the ground shifting beneath her feet. She stopped and listened to the night sounds of the swamp. Croaking frogs, the drone of insects and distant splashing filled the night with noise.

That was all she heard and her heart sank, like it did everytime she listened. She heard nothing, not during meditation, not during practice, not even in her dreams.

Perhaps he truly was gone.

The sun was gone and the stars in the sky burned above her; the snow sparkled on the ground far below her. Above and below, it all seemed the same.

How strange that she had been to two heavens and yet this was the closest she had ever felt to the gods.

Was this the view on the night of her birth? Was this the same sky that her mother and father looked at on their last night? Was the army already burning its way up the mountain; a fiery dragon at the command of the Emperor?

For the first time in her life, she was beholden to no destiny. She had no strings, she could not be moved by manipulation. From now on, her choices – and her mistakes - would be her own to make.

Such power frightened her because there was nothing to anchor her now.

Dirge knew her thoughts, knew her uncertainty. The air became a thing alive and not with spirits. The wind mourned around her, tearing at her clothes for all the lives lost here, screaming and pounding its fists against her chest. Then it left her, fleeing at another's presence.

There was the sound of steps on stone. Dawn Star stood beside her. She had a blanket wrapped around her and a blanket in her hand. "You must be cold."

"No." Wu did not feel cold in the way Dawn Star meant the word. She felt the air, but it didn't freeze her skin. At the same time, she was as frozen inside as the ice that slicked the stones.

"What are you thinking?"

"Of how grateful I am to be alive." And that was true. If she were not alive, liars, usurpers, and murderers would walk free and unpunished. She added, "Of how grateful I am that we are all alive."

"I keep looking at you expecting to see a ghost," Dawn Star said, laughing to hide her nervousness.

"No ghosts here," she said lightly. It was true, she had cleared Dirge of all its ghosts, except the ghosts of memory.

"What…what was it like?" Dawn Star asked.

She knew what her friend meant. She wished the words that came out were comforting but they could not be while the heavens were in chaos. "Without the Water Dragon's help, I would most likely be insane by now."

Her heart twisted, hoping that Zu would be stronger than she was. He must be.

They stood there, not speaking about what loomed between them.

It had been a conversation between worlds, one that took a moment and an eternity and in that eternity the Water Dragon had given her the knowledge she thought she had wanted – but hadn't.

That is what had disoriented her when she had landed alive – and cold, something she had not felt in awhile – on the stones of Dirge. She had almost been stepped on by the horse demons that had come through after her, but even while they burned the cold air around them, even while she fought them one two three out of existence, she was thinking only one thing.

Dawn Star was Master Li's daughter.

Each of the group had reacted in their own way with Lian's being the most vocal and angry. But Dawn Star had let the news fall on her and over her like a shroud. Even now her hands tightened in frustration and anger.

It wasn't fair. It just wasn't, but she had forced herself to say those words because it would have been equally unfair to hide the truth from her friend.

Wu forced the words out because she had to know. "What would you like me to do tomorrow?"

Dawn Star stared over the edge. A movement of her foot pushed a clod of snow into the darkness below them. "I don't know. I think if he'd bothered to look beyond his ambition then he'd have seen me. I was just as much a cog in his plans as if I had been a part of Lord Lao's furnace."

Wu smiled wryly. She'd broken that too. "That's why I'm asking you what you want. If anyone deserves a say in his fate, it is you."

"You have a greater stake in all this. It was not me that he … that he killed." Dawn Star still was having troubles reconciling Sun Li, the scheming prince, with Master Li, their doting master. "I will leave it up to you."

Of course. Freedom from strings meant more responsibility, not less.

It was some time before Dawn Star said, "To imagine that Zu saved me from the Assassins. That is why he seemed so familiar to me."

Wu froze at his name and put ice in her voice to hide her emotion. "I don't know why he didn't tell me when he had the chance."

Dawn Star nodded. "I think it was because he was keeping us safe. We were drawing enough attention to ourselves and imagine if Lian or Death's Hand had found out at the wrong time. I am a rival after all…"

Dawn Star's joke did not have the effect she wanted. Death had also killed Wu's sense of humor. "I had told myself that I was going to raise an army in the child's name – take the Empire for him or her – if I hadn't been able to save Master Li. Now look at us. He's raised an army against his daughter and his student."

"He still doesn't know," her friend reminded her.

"If I see him, shall I tell him?"

After a moment, she said, "I do not expect that it will change his mind, but perhaps…there is always hope."

Wu's mouth tightened. Hope was a precious commodity; she didn't waste it on impossibilities.

"I'll be in the tent," her friend said eventually and Wu listened as her steps crunched away in the snow.

When had it changed between them, she wondered. There had been a time when she would have felt comfortable telling her friend anything and now it felt like she could tell her nothing. But the thought that she would be disappointed in her kept her silent.

So many things had changed since Two Rivers, but if given the choice now, she would not go back to that time. No, not even if it meant her fellow students and all the villagers were still alive. She would not willingly return to being a puppet.

Yet she had been so certain of her loyalty on that bridge in the Imperial City, dressed as someone else, eating noodles with Zu. Why hadn't Master Li known that? Why hadn't he known that she would have followed him - supported him - no matter what? He must have known that old tools could still have their uses in a new Empire - if they weren't misused or broken beforehand.

Now she had gone through a torturous reforging at the hands of the Water Dragon. The goddess, even Wu herself, did not know what kind of tool she had been rendered.

And Master - no, not her master anymore, - Sun Li would have to contend with her.

Let Sun Li come. Let him call armies against her. Let him come and see what she was. Unmovable, unfeeling and unafraid; she was the ice of Dirge now.

She waited for the lamps in the tent to extinguish one by one. Finally, when she had only the light of the stars to guide her, she walked across the icy stones.

She had had another reason to stand at the edge of the abyss, listening in the dark. If she were to hear Zu's voice anywhere, it would have been here and it would have been now.

But she had only heard the wind, nothing more.