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Mulan, General and Ghost Bride
Previous Parts Here

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This is so far passed ridiculous. It’s insanity.

“How did this happen?” Mulan demands. “How did you two even meet?”

“Well, we weren’t always at war, were we?” Shilong asks.

“Shut up,” she says. The fact that she’s talking to the equivalent of a prince, even a foreign one, would mean more to her if he wasn’t turning her best friend into a traitor. “We’re at war now. Liu Guo, he can’t be that good.”

Shilong is giving her a bitchy look that has her hand twitching towards her sword again. Liu Guo’s lips twitch. “Actually–”

For heaven’s sake. “You shut up too.”

“If neither of us are allowed to talk, I don’t see how we’re going to achieve anything here,” Shilong says.

Mulan’s eyes narrow.

Liu Guo hesitates then grips her shoulder. She’s this close to asking Jinhai to take over and kick his ass. She can’t do it, but she bets he could. Or at least get in a decent hit or two. He’s still here, staring, but he’s being weirdly silent right now. “Shilong and I met a long time ago, Mulan. It’s not like we could have predicted this.”

“People have been predicting war between us and Temujin for twenty years, so I think you could have,” she says. “What exactly is going on? Clearly some people know, otherwise those soldiers wouldn’t have taken you.”

Shilong grimaces. “Great, she’s smart.”

She doesn’t even try and say she’s a man. Somehow, that’s now a secret so unimportant as to be entirely inconsequential.

“They were ordered to take me alive,” he says. “They didn’t know why. You’re not the only one hiding in plain sight.”

“Liu Guo!” Shilong snaps. “What are you doing?”

“I trust Mulan,” he says, which does make her want to kill him a little less. “Temujin knew that if he took me hostage, Shilong would stop running and return home. He’s been hiding from his father almost since the beginning, with different allies under different aliases, sometimes as one of his father’s officials or soldiers but mostly not. He has a lot of support, as much as Temujin hates it. I’m not just being selfish with this. If Temujin gets his hands on Shilong, he’ll kill him, and this war will be that much harder to win.”

She frowns. Temujin has other sons, and Shilong isn’t the oldest, but he’s the most well known. He has the largest amount of public support, as far as she’s aware. If Temujin were killed, power would not seamlessly pass to Shilong, but he’s still the obvious answer, the one the others would have to kill or overcome. Which shouldn’t really mean much as far as the war goes, except apparently Shilong isn’t loyal to his father, a fact not well known enough for her father to hear of it, which means it truly is a secret.

If Shilong is interested in ending the war, for Liu Guo or for some other reason, then him taking power is in their best interest. And he must be interested in ending the war, otherwise Liu Guo would not be so at ease with him. Killing Temujin then would not just weaken their enemies, but potentially end the war. If Temujin finds him, he’ll kill him, and if Shilong’s divided loyalties become public knowledge beforehand, that support base will crumble, which means he can’t do something sensible like hide out with the emperor or really anyone with the power to protect him in case it looks like favoritism.

“Your entire plan on ending the war hinges on him not getting caught before we can kill his father and you’re still risking all of that to meet up with him?” she demands.

Shilong blinks once, then twice, and his voice is much warmer when he says, “You are smart.”

“I have to know he’s alright,” Liu Guo says. “He has to keep moving around, I’m never sure, things are already – please. It’s not that simple.”

No, it’s not. For this plan to stop being an inch away from disaster, they’d need someone they can trust not to use Temujin’s son for their own gain. They’d need someone smart enough and powerful enough to keep him safe. Someone with enough ties to the emperor to do damage control should the worst happen, but far enough removed that to be housed by them would not be seen as an instant betrayal by Temujin’s people.

Mulan grimaces.

She’s going to have to write her father.