Sun Cao
The morning drills were Sun Cao's favorite part of the day.
He moved through the sword forms with the precision of someone who'd practiced them ten thousand times—Rising Dragon, flowing into Falling Crane, flowing into Mountain Splits the River. His wooden practice sword cut the air with sounds like whispered secrets. Around him, the soldiers of Tianlei Fortress went through their routines, but Sun Cao trained apart, in the corner of the yard reserved for officers' children.
He was the only one who used it now.
Father would have been proud, he thought, completing the final form and holding the position for three breaths as Master Shen had taught him. Father would have said I'm ready for real steel.
But Father was four years dead, bones scattered at Yunlong Pass, where the bandits had overwhelmed his patrol. General Kai had brought his sword home, had spoken words of honor at the memorial, and had taken Sun Cao into his household as a ward. It was duty—the debt one commander owed another. Sun Cao understood duty. He understood it very well.
What he didn't understand was why duty felt so much like loneliness.
Movement caught his eye. Across the courtyard, Mei Ling was walking with the foreign boy—the white-haired one they'd pulled from the sea two months ago. She was teaching him something, demonstrating a hand gesture that made him laugh. In fact, it was a sound that Sun Cao had rarely heard from him before.
Her hand was on his arm. Casual. Easy. Familiar.
Sun Cao couldn't remember the last time she'd touched him like that.
"Four years," he thought, watching them disappear around a corner. Four years I've been here. I've trained every day. I have diligently studied every night. I have done everything correctly. And she chooses HIM?
Not jealousy. The feeling was more complicated than jealousy—hurt and confusion and a loneliness he didn't have words for. Sun Cao had never been good with words for feelings. His father had taught him that feelings were private, that a warrior's face showed nothing. So he kept them locked away, and they festered in the dark.
He returned to his form. Rising Dragon. Falling Crane. The mountain splits the river.
The movements were perfect. They were always perfect.
But perfection, he was learning, didn't mean anything to anyone but himself.
Jon
The courtyard was quiet in the afternoon heat.
Jon walked slowly, still rebuilding the strength that the storm and the fever had stolen. Mei Ling usually accompanied him on these walks, but today she had calligraphy lessons with Master Zhi—a makeup session for all the ones she'd missed while sitting at Jon's bedside. He'd insisted she go. She'd insisted on feeling guilty about it.
She's strange, Jon thought, not for the first time. Strange and kind and—
"You're the Westerosi boy."
Jon stopped. The voice came from his right, where a boy stood in the shadow of the armory. Older than Jon—twelve, maybe thirteen—with the lean build of someone who trained constantly. His face was handsome in a sharp-edged way, and his eyes held the particular emptiness of someone who'd learned to hide everything important.
"I'm Jon."
"I'm Sun Cao." The boy stepped into the sunlight, and Jon noted the quality of his clothes, the way he moved, and the calluses on his hands. He is a warrior's son, trained in the art of swordsmanship. "My father was Commander Sun Wei."
He waited. Jon realized he was supposed to recognize the name.
"I'm sorry," Jon said carefully. "I don't know who that is."
Something tightened in Sun Cao's jaw. A flicker of hurt, quickly suppressed. "He died at Yunlong Pass. Defending the empire from bandits. He was General Kai's friend."
"I see." Jon did see—saw the pain behind the formality, the desperate need for recognition. He'd felt that need for himself, in Winterfell, before he'd learned it would never be satisfied. "He sounds like an honorable man."
"He was the best man I ever knew."
Silence stretched between them. Jon waited, sensing there was more.
"You should know," Sun Cao said, his voice going flat, "the general accepted you into his ranks because of Mei Ling's influence." Don't mistake kindness for belonging. You're a guest here. Nothing more."
The words should have hurt. A month ago, they would have. However, Jon had endured so many years of being reminded of his place that he was no longer affected by yet another reminder.
"I understand."
Sun Cao blinked. He'd expected argument, Jon realized. He had expected defensiveness, anger, or some form of resistance that he could push against.
"Good," he said, but the word came out uncertain. "Just so we're clear."
"We're clear."
Sun Cao turned and walked away, his posture rigid with something that might have been disappointment. Jon watched him go, cataloging what he'd learned.
Another enemy, he thought. But no—that wasn't quite right. Sun Cao wasn't an enemy. He was something more complicated. Something wounded.
He was simply a person experiencing pain and unsure of how to express it.
Jon understood that too.
Mei Ling
She found Jon in the garden that evening, sitting on her mother's bench with his eyes closed.
"You met Sun Cao," she said, settling beside him.
His eyes opened. "How did you know?"
"Because he's been stomping around the fortress like an angry bear, and you've been quiet since this afternoon." She studied his face, looking for damage. "What did he say?"
"He introduced himself."
"Sun Cao doesn't 'just introduce himself.' He has speeches. Long ones about honor and duty and his father's memory." She mimicked his formal tone: "'My father, Commander Sun Wei, who died heroically at Yunlong Pass, would have wanted me to inform you...'"
The corner of Jon's mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "He was... direct."
"That's one word for it." Mei Ling pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. "He's not evil, you know. He's just... lost. Like a dog that's been kicked too many times."
You think everyone is good.
"Because everyone isn't bad. Not really. They're just hurt, or scared, or lonely." She looked at him sideways. "Even you."
Jon was quiet for a moment. "You see good in everyone. Even people who don't deserve it."
"Maybe." She shrugged. "Or maybe I just look harder than most people bother to."
She didn't ask what Sun Cao had said. She was learning that some questions hurt and that Jon would tell her things in his own time, or he wouldn't. Either way, pushing never helped.
Instead, she told him about her calligraphy lesson—how Master Zhi had made her write the character for patience fifty times, until her hand cramped and the strokes started to blur together.
Jon listened. He always listened.
And slowly, as the sun set over the Jade Sea, the tension in his shoulders eased.
Jon
Master Zhi's study smelled of ink and old paper, familiar scents now after weeks of lessons. Jon sat across from the scholar, watching as Zhi examined his hands with clinical precision.
"Extend your fingers."
Jon tried. The three on his right hand barely moved, locked in their crooked positions by scar tissue and poorly healed bone.
"Make a fist."
He couldn't. The fingers curled partway, then stopped, shooting pain up his arm.
"How did this happen?" Zhi asked.
Jon's voice came out flat. "Punishment. For trying to escape."
Zhi didn't flinch. He just nodded, turning Jon's hand over to examine the joints from another angle.
"They were broken and healed wrong. Deliberately, I think—the angles are too precise to be accidental." He released Jon's hand and sat back, his expression thoughtful. "The guards knew what they were doing. They wanted you damaged but functional. Enough to work, not enough to fight back."
Jon said nothing. There was nothing to say. The guards at Grazdan's compound had been efficient in their cruelty. They'd broken many slaves the same way.
"I can fix it," Zhi said.
Jon looked up.
"I'll need to re-break the fingers and set them properly. The procedure will hurt—considerably. But your hand will work better afterward. You'll be able to write properly. Hold a sword, if you ever need to."
Jon looked at his hand. The crooked fingers that had failed him so many times. That had made Mei Ling's calligraphy lessons an exercise in frustration, every character coming out malformed despite his best efforts.
He thought about the guards. The snap of bone. The laughter.
He should be afraid of more pain.
"Do it," he said.
The procedure was scheduled for three days later.
Jon spent those days trying not to think about it. He failed. His mind kept circling back to the compound, to the moment they'd grabbed his hand, to the sound each finger had made when it broke. The memories came in waves—sometimes during lessons with Zhi, sometimes in the garden with Mei Ling, and sometimes in the dark of his room when sleep wouldn't come.
You've survived worse, he told himself. This is healing, not hurting.
But his body didn't believe him. His body remembered.
The morning of the procedure, Zhi prepared a small medical room off the healing wing. Jon entered to find the scholar laying out tools with methodical care: splints, bandages, a leather strap, and small jars of medicines Jon couldn't identify.
"I can give you milk of the poppy," Zhi said, not looking up. "It will ease the pain."
Jon hesitated. The poppy would make him unconscious. Helpless. Vulnerable.
"No."
"The pain will be significant."
"I need to stay awake."
Zhi turned to look at him, and Jon saw understanding in those sharp old eyes. Not pity—Zhi didn't do pity—but understanding. He knew what Jon wasn't saying. I can't let myself be helpless. Not again. Not ever.
"As you wish."
The door opened behind Jon, and he flinched before he could stop himself. But it was Mei Ling, her face set in stubborn determination.
"I'm staying."
"Young mistress," Zhi began, "this is not—"
"I held his hand on the beach. I'll hold it now."
She looked at Jon, and he saw no fear in her eyes. No disgust at what was about to happen. Just that same fierce certainty she'd shown from the beginning.
"If you want me here," she added, softer. "If it would help."
Jon's throat closed. He nodded because he couldn't speak.
"Then I'm staying." She moved to stand beside the table where Jon would lie. "Let's get this over with."
Mei Ling
She'd thought she was prepared.
She wasn't.
The first finger was the worst—or maybe it just seemed that way because she hadn't known what to expect. Master Zhi positioned his hands with surgical precision, counted to three, and pulled.
The sound was wet and wrong. Jon's whole body went rigid, his back arching off the table. He bit down on the leather strap Zhi had given him, and a sound came from his throat—not a scream, not quite, but something close.
Mei Ling's stomach lurched. She wanted to look away, wanted to run, and wanted to be anywhere but here watching this boy she'd come to care about be hurt again.
But she didn't run.
She crossed the room and took his uninjured hand. His fingers clamped around hers with crushing strength.
"I'm here," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "You're not alone."
The second finger. The same terrible sound. Jon's eyes found hers and held, grey boring into brown like she was the only solid thing in a world of pain.
"I'm here," she said again. "Keep breathing. You can do this."
A tear escaped down his cheek. He couldn't help it. Neither could she—her own eyes were burning.
The third finger.
Jon squeezed her hand so hard she felt the bones grind together. But she didn't pull away. Didn't flinch. She just held on, keeping her eyes on his face while talking in a low, steady voice about everything and nothing—about the garden, the fish in the pond, and how the cherry blossoms would soon bloom; she promised to bring him there for a picnic when this was over and his hand was healed.
When it was done, Jon was pale as death and shaking. But he hadn't screamed. Hadn't begged. Hadn't broken.
"Well done," Master Zhi said, wrapping the splints with careful hands. "Braver men have cried."
"I've had practice," Jon whispered.
It wasn't a boast. Mei Ling heard the truth in it, the weight of all the pain he'd already survived. Her heart clenched in her chest.
What did they do to you? she wanted to ask. What kind of world hurts children like this?
But she didn't ask. She just kept holding his hand until his breathing steadied and his grip loosened and something like peace settled over his face.
"Thank you," he said, so quietly she almost didn't hear.
"Always," she said. "That's what friends do."
Jon
The weeks of recovery were harder than the procedure itself.
Jon couldn't use his hands. He couldn't use either hand: the right was splinted and immobile, while the left was wrapped in sympathy bandages after Mei Ling pointed out the deep bruises from where he had gripped her. He needed help with everything. Eating. Dressing. Even the simple act of turning pages in a book.
It should have been dark. Helplessness was a trigger, a doorway back to the compound where every moment of vulnerability had been exploited. The first few days, Jon felt the old panic scratching at the edges of his mind, waiting for the moment someone would take advantage.
But Mei Ling made it bearable.
She read to him. She read him adventure stories, poetry, and once, during a particularly bad night, a children's tale about a turtle who wanted to fly. She did voices for all the characters, exaggerated and ridiculous, until Jon found himself laughing despite everything.
She fed him badly. More soup ended up on his chin than in his mouth, and her attempts at using chopsticks on his behalf were disasters of epic proportion.
"You're terrible at this," Jon said after the third dumpling fell into his lap.
"You're a terrible patient! Stop moving!"
"I'm not moving!"
"You're breathing too much!"
"That's how breathing works!"
They dissolved into something that wasn't quite laughter but wasn't quite argument either. The dumpling sat forgotten between them, and Jon realized he hadn't thought about the compound in hours.
That was new. That was something.
She described the garden since he couldn't visit it. The cherry blossoms were starting to bloom, she told him—pink and white petals drifting down like snow, just like her mother had always said. She described the way the light fell through the branches in the morning, the way the fish rose to the surface when you sprinkled food on the water, and the way the bench felt warm in the afternoon sun.
"When your hands are better," she said one evening, "I'll take you. We can have a picnic."
A picnic. Such a simple, innocent thing. Jon tried to imagine it—sitting in the garden with Mei Ling, eating food that wasn't stolen or earned through labor, just existing in peace.
"I'd like that."
Late one night, when Mei Ling should have been in bed for hours, Jon asked the question he had been avoiding.
"Why do you stay?"
She looked up from the book she'd been reading by lamplight. "What?"
"Here. With me. Every day. You have lessons. Friends. A life. Why do you spend so much time in a sick room with a—"
"Don't say refugee. Or foreigner. Or whatever word you were about to use."
"I was going to say nobody."
"You're not a nobody." She set the book aside with more force than necessary. "You're Jon. That's enough."
"But why? I don't understand—"
"Because you're my friend." She said it with the simple conviction of someone stating an obvious truth. "You don't have to understand. You just have to believe me."
Jon didn't know what to say. He wasn't used to being valued just for existing. In Winterfell, his value had been measured against Robb's and found wanting. In Braavos, his value had been what he could steal. In Yunkai, his value had been what work could be extracted from his body.
No one had ever simply wanted him to be present.
"Thank you," he said finally. "Mei Ling."
"You're welcome. Jon."
She picked up her book and returned to reading, and the silence that followed was comfortable in a way Jon hadn't known stillness could be.
Jon
The whispers started the week his splints came off.
At first, Jon didn't notice them. He was too focused on the miraculous reality of his hands—his working hands, with fingers that bent properly and gripped firmly and held a brush without shaking. The characters he wrote were still clumsy, but they were his clumsiness now, not the clumsiness of broken bones.
But as he walked the fortress more freely, he began to hear things he hadn't heard before. Or maybe he'd heard them and chosen not to understand.
"The general's folly," a soldier muttered to his companion as Jon passed. "Taking in strays."
"White devil," another said, not quite quietly enough. "Hair like a ghost's. Cursed, probably."
"She'll tire of him soon enough. The young mistress always does."
Jon kept walking. Kept his face neutral. Kept the breathing technique that regulated his heartbeat active, because otherwise they'd see how the words cut.
The worst was the merchant's son—a boy about Jon's age, visiting the fortress with his father on trading business. He found Jon alone in the courtyard, practicing the simple calligraphy exercises Zhi had assigned.
"Is it true you're a slave?" the boy asked, his voice carrying to the soldiers nearby. "My father says slaves are less than dogs. Lower than oxen."
Jon set down his brush. "I was a slave," he said evenly. "I'm not anymore."
"Once a slave, always a slave. That's what my father says." The boy smiled, pleased with himself. "You can wash off the dirt, but the stain stays forever."
Jon could have fought him. He could have used the breathing technique to move faster than the boy could follow and could have put him on the ground before anyone knew what happened. The knowledge was there, waiting.
But fighting would prove them right. This would confirm everything that others thought about him: that he was violent, dangerous, and less than human.
So he said nothing. Just picked up his brush and returned to his exercises while the merchant's son laughed and walked away.
That night, he didn't go to dinner in his room. Didn't go to the garden. Just sat in the dark and tried not to feel anything at all.
Mei Ling
She found him the next day, and she knew immediately that something was wrong.
"What happened?"
"Nothing."
"Liar." She crossed her arms and waited. She'd learned that Jon needed time, space, and silence to stretch until the words found their own way out.
It took a while. But eventually, haltingly, he told her. The soldiers. The whispers. The merchant's son was among them.
Her response surprised both of them.
"Those—those idiots." Her voice shook with fury. "Who cares what they think? You're my friend. You're Master Zhi's student. You sat at my father's table!"
"That doesn't change what I am."
"What you were. You're not a slave now. You're not in chains. You're Jon."
"That's not how the world works, Mei Ling."
"Then the world is stupid." She said it with absolute conviction, the conviction of a ten-year-old who hadn't yet learned that belief wasn't enough to change things. "And I'm going to change it."
Jon almost laughed. She was so certain. It was as if a child could take on centuries of prejudice and win through sheer force of will.
But her certainty was infectious. Just a little.
"How?" he asked. "How would you change it?"
"I don't know yet. But I'll figure it out." She uncrossed her arms, her expression softening. "And until then, you have me. And Master Zhi. And my father cares about you, even if he doesn't show it. We are not concerned with your past. We care about who you are."
Who I am, Jon thought. He wasn't sure he knew anymore. But for the first time in a long time, he wanted to find out.
Sun Cao
He'd been watching Jon for weeks.
Not following him—that would be beneath Sun Cao's dignity. Just... noticing. The way he walked through the fortress. The way he spoke with Mei Ling. The way he sat in the garden where Sun Cao's own mother had sometimes brought him, before she died of fever and his father had sent him to live at Tianlei.
The foreign boy was getting stronger. That was obvious. His movements were less tentative, his posture less hunched. Sun Cao had heard about the procedure and overheard the servants whispering that the boy had refused poppy and endured the re-breaking without screaming, which spoke volumes about his strength.
That's not weakness, Sun Cao had thought, surprised. That's something else.
But strength didn't mean belonging. Strength didn't mean Jon had any right to claim a place in a fortress where Sun Cao had spent four years proving himself.
The challenge came to him fully formed, like a sword finally drawn from its sheath.
He approached Jon in the courtyard—publicly, where soldiers could see. This would ensure that Mei Ling hears about it.
"I hear you claim to be recovering well," Sun Cao said. "Perhaps you'd care to prove it."
Jon's grey eyes met his, and Sun Cao saw wariness there, but not fear. Good. I don't want him afraid. I want him to see.
"Prove it how?"
"A sparring match. Wooden swords. First clean touch wins."
A murmur ran through the watching soldiers. Sun Cao could feel their attention sharpening and he could feel the weight of expectations settling on his shoulders.
Jon was silent for a long moment. Then Mei Ling appeared—of course she appeared; she was always there now—her face worried.
"You don't have to do this," she said to Jon.
"Yes, I do." His voice was quiet but steady. "Not for me. For the place I'm building here."
He turned back to Sun Cao. "Tomorrow morning."
Sun Cao nodded. Something shifted in his chest—something that might have been respect, though he wasn't ready to call it that.
"Tomorrow."
Jon
He couldn't sleep.
The garden was silver in the moonlight, the cherry blossoms pale ghosts against the dark. Jon sat on the bench and tried to find the calm that Zhi's meditation exercises promised.
He found fear instead.
He was going to lose. He knew it with the certainty of someone who'd assessed his abilities honestly. Sun Cao was older, stronger, and better trained. He'd been practicing sword forms since he could walk. Jon had knowledge—Marcus's knowledge, techniques that could make his body do impossible things—but knowledge wasn't enough when your body was eight years old and still recovering from near-drowning and torture.
Why are you doing this?
The question circled in his mind, finding no answer. Pride? He had little left. Revenge? He was not really angry at Sun Cao. Did he feel the need to prove himself? To whom? For what?
He realized slowly that if I don't take action, I will always wonder if I could have succeeded. I'll always be the boy who backed down. Who let them see me as less?
It wasn't about winning. It was about showing up. About standing in the yard with a sword in his hand and saying, "I'm here." I'm not going away. I belong as much as anyone.
He didn't find peace. But he found something like acceptance.
Tomorrow he'd fight. He'd probably lose.
But he'd learn. That's what he did now. Survive. Learn. Grow.
The Duel
Morning came grey and cool, mist rising off the Jade Sea.
The training yard was more crowded than usual. Word had spread—the general's ward against the foreign boy, the ghost-child from the shipwreck. Soldiers lined the edges of the practice area, their faces carefully neutral but their eyes hungry for spectacle.
Jon stood at one end, wooden practice sword in hand. The weight was unfamiliar—he'd held swords before, in Winterfell and in memory, but never quite like this. His newly healed fingers ached with the grip.
Sun Cao stood at the other end. His posture was perfect, his sword held in the classical guard position. Confidence radiated from him like heat from a forge.
"First clean touch wins," someone announced—one of the older soldiers, acting as referee. "Begin on my mark."
Jon settled into something approximating a stance. He could feel Marcus's knowledge trying to guide his body, but understanding wasn't the same as skill, and his eight-year-old muscles didn't respond the way they needed to.
"Begin!"
Sun Cao moved.
The first exchange was brutally fast. Jon barely deflected the opening strike, the impact jarring his arms. Sun Cao flowed into a second attack, a third, each precise and powerful. Jon gave ground, desperately parrying, and—
Crack.
The wooden sword hit his ribs. Jon staggered, gasping.
"Point," the referee called. "Reset."
They returned to their starting positions. Jon's side throbbed where the blow had landed. Sun Cao's face showed nothing—not triumph, not contempt, just focus.
"Begin!"
This time, Jon tried to attack. He'd seen an opening, a small gap in Sun Cao's guard—but before he could exploit it, Sun Cao shifted, and suddenly Jon's sword was being guided past Sun Cao's shoulder, and Sun Cao's blade was at his throat.
"Point. Reset."
The soldiers murmured. Jon heard fragments: "I knew this would happen" and "I didn't even last ten seconds."
The third exchange. Jon tried something different—defensive, conservative, waiting for an opportunity. Sun Cao recognized the strategy immediately and punished it, driving Jon back with a flurry of strikes until one slipped through and caught him on the shoulder.
"Point. Reset."
Jon went down.
Not from the blow—it hadn't hit that hard—but from the accumulated impact of three defeats in less than a minute. His lungs burned. His hands were cramping around the sword.
He could yield. That was what Sun Cao expected. What everyone expected. The foreign boy had proven he wasn't a coward by showing up; now he could surrender with something like dignity.
But Jon had promised himself he would learn.
He stood up.
Sun Cao's eyes flickered with something—surprise, maybe, or uncertainty. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
"Begin!"
The fourth exchange took place. Jon lost.
He got up.
This marked the fifth exchange. Jon lost again.
He got up.
The sixth exchange was different.
Not because Jon won—he didn't. But because he learned. He'd been watching Sun Cao's patterns, the tells in his footwork, and the way he favored certain combinations. And this time, when Sun Cao attacked, Jon moved with the attack instead of against it. He got inside Sun Cao's guard—not far enough to score a touch, but far enough to force Sun Cao to genuinely work to beat him.
When it ended, Jon was on his back with Sun Cao's wooden sword at his throat. But Sun Cao was breathing hard, and his eyes held something that hadn't been there before.
"I yield," Jon said.
Sun Cao held the position for a moment longer. Then, slowly, he withdrew the sword and offered his hand.
Jon took it. Sun Cao pulled him to his feet.
"You're not as weak as I thought," Sun Cao said.
"Thank you. I think."
It wasn't friendship. But it wasn't hatred either.
Mei Ling
Mei Ling found him sitting on a water barrel, bruises blooming across his arms and torso.
"You lost," she said.
"I know."
"You were amazing."
Jon blinked at her. "I lost. Six times."
"You got up six times. And you scared him—I saw his face at the end. He expected you to give up after the first point. The second, at most." She grinned, bright and fierce. "You didn't give him what he expected. That's worth more than winning."
Jon didn't know what to say to that. In his experience, losing was losing. The reasons didn't matter.
But Mei Ling's certainty was infectious.
"Next time," she said, "you'll beat him."
"There's going to be a next time?"
"There's always a next time. That's how you get better." She hopped up onto the barrel beside him, her feet swinging. "And you will get better. I've seen you with Master Zhi. You learn faster than anyone."
Jon thought about the duel. About the sixth exchange, when he'd started to see the patterns. About the way his body had begun to understand what Marcus's knowledge was trying to teach.
Survive. Learn. Grow.
"Maybe," he said.
But he was almost smiling.
That night, Jon's whole body ached.
His ribs. His shoulders. His hands. Everything that Sun Cao had hit—which was most of him—throbbed with the deep pain of bruised muscle. He should have been miserable.
Instead, he felt something strange.
It wasn't exactly a feeling of happiness. Not pride. Something quieter than that. Something like... satisfaction. He'd fought. He'd lost. He'd gotten up. He'd learned.
He thought of Mei Ling's face after the duel—the fierce pride in her eyes, the certainty in her voice. You were wonderful.
He thought of Sun Cao's expression in that final exchange—the surprise, the grudging respect.
He thought of the soldiers watching, who'd expected him to break and had seen something else instead.
Maybe, he thought, I could belong here.
It was still a dangerous thought. But it was getting easier to think.
He fell asleep easily, for once. No nightmares. Just the memory of Mei Ling's proud smile and the ache of a body that had finally done something worth aching for.