The next morning, my thoughts refused to leave the Mongols.
Good thing Rong Xu decided to visit today.
"Ah," he said as soon as he stepped into the room, "General Renshu has already told you about the trouble, hasn't he? They're moving slowly, but they're coming. Once they cross into our borders… it's likely to turn into a massacre. The route they're taking runs through villages that won't be able to resist."
"Can we do nothing?" I asked. "Do you have any plans?"
Rong Xu rubbed his chin. "We only learned of their movement recently. A dozen strategies come to mind—ambushes, harrying their supply lines—but the best option seems to be wearing them down in small groups."
He paused. "But the Mongol tribes are cautious; that's why they move so slowly. I doubt hit-and-run tactics would be effective."
Rong Xu sighed and turned his eyes on me. "Colonel Gao Ming mentioned that your answer to your first assignment showed a strategic mind. He thinks you should put it to use here."
"Did he actually say that? He never told me—" I started.
"Of course he didn't. He never says things plainly." Rong Xu laughed. "That's why people like him have lieutenants."
By afternoon he left. My injuries and the recent kidnapping had made Renshu decide to let anyone who wished to visit me know where he lived, which was oddly generous of him. Rong Xu's first complaint had been about how dark and ominous the place looked, Bao Qin agreed, teasing that Renshu was stuck in his teenage emotions. I
After lunch I went to my room. Bao Qin wanted me to practice moving my limbs again, but my mind had already wandered elsewhere. I sat on the bed and opened the map Rong Xu had brought: an old, battered chart of China and its neighbors, all rivers and mountain ranges neatly inked, edges frayed with age. Apparently it had belonged to the previous colonel.
"What to do…" I murmured, tracing the inked lines.
The Mongol force came from the north, deliberate and steady. Their conservation of energy suggested a calculated campaign; word had it they would dedicate over sixty percent of their army to this front. By sheer numbers we would be crushed.
Renshu said our soldiers were stronger on a one to one basis, but the Mongols had superior weaponry and a capacity for speed we could not match. Our men were too valuable; we could not afford a head-on clash.
The only hope was deception.
I stared at the map until the black lines blurred. If we could not match them in strength, perhaps we could weaken them—slow them—without direct confrontation. The river on the Mongols' path threaded through the plain like a silver artery. If it were tainted… it could sap their vigor.
Poisoning a water source was not a novel thought; anyone desperate enough would have considered it. But what type of poison? Anything pungent or discolored would be noticed. I needed something odorless, tasteless, and slow-acting—something that would leave the Mongols groggy and unreliable rather than collapsing all at once and leaving behind obvious traces.
The name came to me like a memory: Ku-Tu poison. It had roots in Bharat—my Bharat—grown from a plant called Nux vomica. I remembered my mother speaking of it in a tone that always made my stomach twist: not myth, not gossip, but hard, practical knowledge.
Ku-Tu was colorless and, at low doses, tasteless. It worked by slowly weakening muscles and the nervous system—dizziness, headaches, creeping fatigue—symptoms that could be written off as exhaustion or bad water. In larger doses it could be fatal, but carefully administered, it would ruin an army's efficiency without sparking immediate suspicion.
It fit perfectly.
My pulse quickened. If we could introduce Ku-Tu into the river upstream of the Mongol path, their troops would suffer increasing lethargy. Scouts would flag poor morale; the cavalry would falter. We would not have to meet them in open battle. We could bide our time, strike when they were disoriented, and save our soldiers from needless slaughter.
Only one problem remained, supply. Ku-Tu did not grow here. It was native to Bharat and perhaps the southern fringes of China near Bharat, but it was rare and specialized. We would need a great deal of it to poison a river effectively—and I had no idea who in this country knew it, or how to get the quantities required without alerting anyone.
I scooted the map to the side and breathed, tasting the thin winter air in my lungs. Dinner would come soon; so would Renshu. He would ask about my plan. Would I tell him what I was thinking? Could I convince him that using a poison tied to my homeland would be the clever misdirection we needed?
"Background," Renshu had said when he first mentioned me. "Use your background." At the time I had been tangential, thinking of languages and customs. But now the truth of it dawned with a cold clarity: my lineage—the murderous efficiency my mother had taught me, the knowledge of poisons and subtlety—was not something to hide. It was a tool.
The art of killing without suspicion, of letting life slide into sleep, those were not tricks reserved for assassins alone. They were strategic options in a desperate war.
My mother had trained me in ways that were ugly and precise: how to set a scene so a death looked like an accident, how to read the small muscle twitches of someone concealing intent, how to blend a toxin with a life.
All of it felt grotesque to think of using, yet if I could secure Ku-Tu—if I could make them drink—then perhaps the villages along the route would not be burned in a day of slaughter. Perhaps I could save lives.
There were practicalities, of course. Ku-Tu was stable in water, which suited the plan. Its symptoms—fatigue, muscle weakness, a slow dread—could be missed by commanders who expected the weariness of a long campaign.
The river's flow ran from China into their camp, meaning an upstream dosing could carry downstream without immediate detection. Better still, if we used a poison associated with Bharat, suspicion might not fall directly on us.
My fingers traced the river's line, following its meanders until they vanished off the map. For two months I relaxed, procrastinated under the weight of fear and the ache of my own recovery. Now the urgency returned like a tide, pulling my chest tight. I had to work. I had to turn theory into plan.
I closed my eyes and thought of my mother's voice and the flat, precise lessons that had made me dangerous. I had always resented that part of my heritage. Now it felt like an inheritance I could not refuse.
Whatever came next, I would not be idle. I would not let numbers alone decide the fate of villagers and soldiers. I had a plan, a poison, and a river. The rest—convincing men, finding supply, hiding intent—would be work for the morning.
For now, I slept with the map beneath my hand and the river's line etched in my dreams.