The cave mouth was dark and silent and looked exactly like the kind of place you didn't walk into without a plan.
Mukai stopped. "We need to think about this."
"There's no time." Moto was already studying the entrance.
"There's no time," Najo agreed, beside him.
"If we go in blind we'll get taken apart one by one-"
"Then we go in loud," Moto said. "Fast and loud, before they can organise."
"That's not a plan, that's just running at the problem."
"Sometimes that's the plan."
Sheu said nothing. She stood slightly behind Mukai and her expression agreed with him completely, but she kept it off her tongue.
Inside the cave, four assassins were watching the argument on a small mounted screen, the recording device at the entrance having picked them up the moment they arrived at the treeline.
Kangetsu had his chin in his hand. "They've been at this for three minutes."
"The loud one will come in first," Sifiso said.
"Obviously," said Kangetsu.
Alicia watched with the faint amusement of someone who had seen this before. "Let him."
Outside, Moto turned to face the group. "Look-"
The hand came out of the ground.
It was enormous - earth and rock shaped into a fist that erupted from the cave's threshold and closed around Moto before anyone had time to process what they were seeing. It dragged him toward the entrance in one smooth pull.
For a half-second, nobody moved.
Mukai's eyes found the thin seam of moisture running along the rock face beside him - a trickle from some crevice in the stone, barely anything. He pulled it out and shaped it fast, cold and sharp, and flung it.
The water dagger hit Moto's bound hands just before the earth swallowed him.
Then he was gone. The cave sealed behind him like it had never opened.
Najo took a step forward.
"Don't." Mukai's voice came out harder than intended. "That's exactly what they want. If all of us go in, Sukai dies."
The entrance was dark and still. Somewhere inside it, Moto had a water dagger he'd have to figure out how to use with his hands tied behind his back.
Najo stared at the cave wall. His jaw worked.
They waited.
Inside, the assassins brought Moto in and stood him in the middle of the room. He looked around immediately - measured, quick - before they'd finished tightening the rope.
Sukai was in the far corner. Alive.
"Hey," Sifiso said, leaning toward Kangetsu. "Isn't that the kid you threw out of the portal earlier?"
Kangetsu considered this. "Maybe. I'm not great with faces."
Sifiso stared at him. "An assassin must have a photographic memory. You are a liability."
"Sure, Sensei."
Alicia stood. The room adjusted around her the way rooms do around certain people, and she crossed to Moto and looked at him with the focused attention of someone doing an assessment.
"Who are you?"
Moto said nothing. His eyes moved to the idea board on the far wall - faces, most of them crossed out. In the centre, uncrossed: the King. Mukai. Sukai.
Sifiso stepped forward. "Answer her."
Moto looked at Alicia.
"Nobody cares who you are," he said. "You're a group of nobodies riding another man's name to intimidate people. The lives you've taken were wasted. That makes me sick."
"You take that-"
"Wait." Alicia raised a hand. Sifiso stopped. She looked at Moto with something that had shifted - still assessing, but interested now. "What's making you so pissy?"
"How can you even ask me that?" The anger was rising in his voice despite him. "You make a living off killing. For money."
"Would you prefer we join the army?" Alicia tilted her head. "Kill for your King instead? Sounds less lucrative."
Moto lunged. Kangetsu yanked the rope and he hit the ground, and when he looked up a knife was level with his face, Kangetsu crouched over him with a smirk that suggested he was having a good time.
Alicia looked down at Moto from where she stood.
"It's not just the money. It's what it buys. Some of us here never had families. Others are trying to feed theirs. Everyone has a reason." She glanced at Kangetsu. "Except him. He's just here for the love of it."
Moto looked up at Kangetsu with open disgust. Kangetsu winked.
"What about the ones left behind?" Moto said, turning back to Alicia. "The ones who never have peace because of what you took from them?"
"Peace?" Alicia said.
She laughed. Around the room, the others laughed.
The sound of it did something to Moto's face that he couldn't quite keep off it.
Alicia's expression shifted - not unkind, exactly, but the way an adult looks at a child when they're about to say something the child isn't ready to hear and is going to say it anyway.
"Did I touch a nerve? Listen. This world is already coming apart at the seams, and the only person strong enough to hold it together is long dead. Not even my father could do it - and he wouldn't want to. War predates the Hwange itself. It's only a matter of time before everyone's greed and hatred stirs the pot again." She let that sit. "When it does, my misfits offer military aid to whoever's winning. We survive either way."
Moto said nothing.
Alicia watched him process it - watched the certainty in his face meet something it hadn't expected and begin to work around it. She found it genuinely interesting, the way you find it interesting watching someone's face the moment they stop being sure.
"So," she said. "What say you, hero?"
He still didn't answer.
"Let me leave you with one more thing to think about," she said, settling back. "When a flood is coming - do you pray to the gods, or do you build a boat? And if you have to kill your neighbour for supplies..." She opened her hands. "As long as you're alive."
Around the room, murmurs of agreement. Someone brought her chair. She spun back into it with the ease of someone very comfortable in a room they control.
"Put Douglas on the call."
"Roger."
She crossed her legs and waited for the transmission to connect.
In the castle, King Douglas had been stopped by Ginimbi's hand on his arm.
"One life," Ginimbi said, "is not worth the nation's stability."
Douglas looked at the old man for a long moment.
Then the screen lit up.
Alicia's face appeared. "I didn't think you were still using child soldiers, Douglas."
"What are you talking about?"
She leaned sideways in her chair, unhurried, and the camera angle shifted to show Moto sitting bound on the floor behind her.
The King went still. He had left Moto at the mansion. The cave was six clicks past the border.
Beside him, Ginimbi's eyes narrowed to slits. His mind arrived at the same place a half-second later - if Moto was there, Najo was nearby.
"What is he doing?" Ginimbi said quietly.
The smoke was already filling the room on screen - thin, creeping out from Moto's skin in slow threads, spreading low across the floor while Alicia's attention stayed on the transmission. His hands moved behind his back, small and careful. The water dagger found the rope. Found the gap under the door to Sukai's room.
Alicia caught the smell. She turned.
Sifiso was already moving toward Moto. Moto's foot came down on the flint in the floor.
The spark caught.
The transmission cut.