THE GENERAL

When I first knew Jae’le, the Animal Lord, he did not have a church, a priest, a home.

He would, eventually: a sprawling, intricate city built around rivers, a beacon of warmth and light after the wars, a city of safety, of beauty, of nature. He would have brothers and sisters as well, their relationships like the rivers and light he created.

But when I first met him, he was a killer, a murderer, a man who ate only the flesh of those he killed.

—Qian, The Godless