The Dragon Republic
The Dragon Republic
R.F. Kuang
The searing follow-up to 2018’s most celebrated fantasy debut – THE POPPY WAR.In the aftermath of the Third Poppy War, shaman and warrior Rin is on the run: haunted by the atrocity she committed to end the war, addicted to opium, and hiding from the murderous commands of her vengeful god, the fiery Phoenix. Her only reason for living is to get revenge on the traitorous Empress who sold out Nikan to their enemies.With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance…The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.
THE DRAGON REPUBLIC
R. F. Kuang
Copyright (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Rebecca Kuang 2019
Maps by Eric Gunther, copyright © Springer Cartographics 2017, 2019
Cover illustration © JungShan
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
R.F. Kuang asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008239855
Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008239879
Version: 2019-07-11
Dedication (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
To
Contents
Cover (#u3d97691c-1b55-5702-bc0b-541356c89ca7)
Title Page (#u28e028fe-1b8c-553f-b68b-f8b00aa75732)
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Arlong, Eight Years Prior
Part I
Chapter 1 (#u3ce53616-c3b9-5e8e-99cf-6a72b5723e53)
Chapter 2 (#uc6cbb9e8-aac1-5f89-a464-c4d3c063dfc6)
Chapter 3 (#u93915fd8-dc28-5d97-bcd1-ed6194fd78f9)
Chapter 4 (#u94bdaf6d-6626-5c36-9f8d-cb4376756e3d)
Chapter 5 (#u0e106e93-42e9-5bc9-b357-77596349914e)
Chapter 6 (#u2f6f7b2e-ee34-5d85-a8d2-cd2e0a25adc0)
Chapter 7 (#ucba39a37-d1c9-5723-a48d-5c39a2f07194)
Chapter 8 (#u335709b7-7afe-5118-93a2-0074e4a84062)
Chapter 9 (#u5ffa1d5c-91b2-5578-add6-b408117f45c1)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part II
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part III
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Dramatis Personae
Acknowledgments
Also by R. F. Kuang
About the Publisher
Maps (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
ARLONG, EIGHT YEARS PRIOR (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
“Come on,” Mingzha begged. “Please, I want to see.”
Nezha seized his brother by his chubby wrist and pulled him back from the shallows. “We’re not allowed to go past the lily pads.”
“But don’t you want to know?” Mingzha whined.
Nezha hesitated. He, too, wanted to see what lay in the caves around the bend. The grottoes of the Nine Curves River had been mysteries to the Yin children since they were born. They’d grown up with warnings of dark, dormant evils concealed behind the cave mouths; of monsters that lurked inside, eager for foolish children to stumble into their jaws.
That alone would have been enough to entice the Yin children, all of whom were adventurous to a fault. But they’d heard rumors of great treasures, too; of underwater piles of pearls, jade, and gold. Nezha’s Classics tutor had once told him that every piece of jewelry lost in the water inevitably wound up in those river grottoes. And sometimes, on a clear day, Nezha thought he could see the glimmer of sunlight on sparkling metal in the cave mouths from the window of his room.
He’d desperately wanted to explore those caves for years—and today would be the day to do it, when everyone was too busy to pay attention. But it was his responsibility to protect Mingzha. He’d never been trusted to watch his brother alone before; until today he’d always been too young. But this week Father was in the capital, Jinzha was at the Academy, Muzha was abroad at the Gray Towers in Hesperia, and the rest of the palace was so frazzled over Mother’s sudden illness that the servants had hastily passed Mingzha into Nezha’s arms and told them both to keep out of trouble. Nezha wanted to prove he was up to the task.
“Mingzha!”
His brother had wandered back into the shallows. Nezha cursed and dashed into the water behind him. How could a six-year-old move so quickly?
“Come on,” Mingzha pleaded when Nezha grabbed him by the waist.
“We can’t,” Nezha said. “We’ll get in trouble.”
“Mother’s been in bed all week. She won’t find out.” Mingzha twisted around in Nezha’s grip and shot him an impish smile. “I won’t tell. The servants won’t tell. Will you?”
“You’re a little demon,” Nezha said.
“I just want to see the entrance.” Mingzha beamed hopefully at him. “We don’t have to go in. Please?”
Nezha relented. “We’ll just go around the bend. We can look at the cave mouths from a distance. And then we’re turning back, do you understand?”
Mingzha shouted with delight and splashed into the water. Nezha followed, stooping down to grab his brother’s hand.
No one had ever been able to deny Mingzha anything. Who could? He was so fat and happy, a bouncing ball of giggles and delight, the absolute treasure of the palace. Father adored him. Jinzha and Muzha played with him whenever he wanted, and they never told him to get lost the way Jinzha had done so often to Nezha.
Mother doted on him most of all—perhaps because her other sons were destined to be soldiers, but she could keep Mingzha all to herself. She dressed him in finely embroidered silks and adorned him with so many lucky amulets of gold and jade that Mingzha clinked everywhere he walked, weighed down with the burden of good fortune. The palace servants liked to joke that they could always hear Mingzha before they saw him. Nezha wanted to make Mingzha stop to remove his jewelry now, worried it might drag him down under waves that already came up to his chest, but Mingzha charged forward like he was weightless.
“We’re stopping here,” Nezha said.
They’d gotten closer to the grottoes than they had ever been in their lives. The cave mouths were so dark inside that Nezha couldn’t see more than two feet past the entrances, but their walls looked beautifully smooth, glimmering with a million different colors like fish scales.
“Look.” Mingzha pointed at something in the water. “It’s Father’s cloak.”
Nezha frowned. “What’s Father’s cloak doing at the bottom of the river?”
Yet the heavy garment lying half-buried in the sand was undeniably Yin Vaisra’s. Nezha could see the crest of the dragon embroidered in silver thread against the rich cerulean-blue dye that only members of the House of Yin were permitted to wear.
Mingzha pointed to the closest grotto. “It came from in there.”
An inexplicable, chilly dread crept through Nezha’s veins. “Mingzha, get away from there.”
“Why?” Mingzha, stubborn and fearless, waded closer to the cave.
The water began to ripple.
Nezha reached out to pull his brother back. “Mingzha, wait—”
Something enormous burst out of the water.
Nezha saw a huge dark shape—something muscled and coiled like a serpent—before a massive wave rose above him and slammed him facedown into the water.
The river shouldn’t have been deep. The water had only come up to Nezha’s waist and Mingzha’s shoulders, had only been getting shallower the closer they moved to the grotto. But when Nezha opened his eyes underwater, the surface seemed miles away, and the bottom of the grotto seemed as vast as the palace of Arlong itself.
He saw a pale green light shining from the grotto floor. He saw faces, beautiful, but eyeless. Human faces embedded in the sand and coral, and an endless mosaic studded with silver coins, porcelain vases, and golden ingots—a bed of treasures that stretched on and on into the grotto as far as the light went.
He saw a blink of movement, dark against the light, that disappeared as quickly as it came.
Something was wrong with the water here. Something had stretched and altered its dimensions. What should have been shallow and bright was deep; deep, dark, and terribly, hypnotically quiet.
Through the silence Nezha heard the faint sound of his brother screaming.
He kicked frantically for the surface. It seemed miles away.
When at last he emerged from the water, the shallows were mere shallows again.
Nezha wiped the river water from his eyes, gasping. “Mingzha?”
His brother was gone. Crimson streaks stained the river. Some of the streaks were solid, lumpy masses. Nezha knew what they were.
“Mingzha?”
The waters were quiet. Nezha stumbled to his knees and retched. Vomit mixed into bloodstained water.
He heard a clink against the rocks.
He looked down and saw a golden anklet.
Then he saw a dark shape rising before the grottoes, and heard a voice that came from nowhere and vibrated his very bones.
“Hello, little one.”
Nezha screamed.
PART I (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_8090c0fb-46ba-5388-a8df-a48a8ade5c7d)
Dawn saw the Petrel sail through swirling mist into the port city of Adlaga. Shattered by a storm of Federation soldiers during the Third Poppy War, port security still hadn’t recovered and was almost nonexistent—especially for a supply ship flying Militia colors. The Petrel glided past Adlaga’s port officers with little trouble and made berth as close to the city walls as it could get.
Rin propped herself up on the prow, trying to conceal the twitching in her limbs and to ignore the throbbing pain in her temples. She wanted opium terribly and couldn’t have it. Today she needed her mind alert. Functioning. Sober.
The Petrel bumped against the dock. The Cike gathered on the upper deck, watching the gray skies with tense anticipation as the minutes trickled past.
Ramsa drummed his foot against the deck. “It’s been an hour.”
“Patience,” Chaghan said.
“Could be that Unegen’s run off,” Baji said.
“He hasn’t run off,” Rin said. “He said he needed until noon.”
“He’d also be the first to seize this chance to be rid of us,” Baji said.
He had a point. Unegen, already the most skittish by far among the Cike, had been complaining for days about their impending mission. Rin had sent him ahead overland to scope out their target in Adlaga. But the rendezvous window was quickly closing and Unegen hadn’t shown.
“Unegen wouldn’t dare,” Rin said, and winced when the effort of speaking sent little stabs through the base of her skull. “He knows I’d hunt him down and skin him alive.”
“Mm,” Ramsa said. “Fox fur. I’d like a new scarf.”
Rin turned her eyes back to the city. Adlaga made an odd corpse of a township, half-alive and half-destroyed. One side had emerged from the war intact; the other had been bombed so thoroughly that she could see building foundations poking up from blackened grass. The split appeared so even that half houses existed on the line: one side blackened and exposed, the other somehow teetering and groaning against the ocean winds, yet still standing.
Rin found it hard to imagine that anyone still lived in the township. If the Federation had been as thorough here as they’d been at Golyn Niis, then all that should be left were corpses.
At last a raven emerged from the blackened ruins. It circled the ship twice, then dove straight toward the Petrel as if locked on a target. Qara lifted a padded arm into the air. The raven pulled out of its dive and wrapped its talons around her wrist.
Qara ran the back of her index finger over the bird’s head and down its spine. The raven ruffled its feathers as she brought its beak to her ear. Several seconds passed. Qara stood still with her eyes shut, listening intently to something the rest of them couldn’t hear.
“Unegen’s pinned Yuanfu,” Qara said. “City hall, two hours.”
“Guess you’re not getting that scarf,” Baji told Ramsa.
Chaghan yanked a sack out from under the deck and emptied its contents onto the planks. “Everyone get dressed.”
Ramsa had come up with the idea to disguise themselves in stolen Militia uniforms. Uniforms were the one thing Moag hadn’t been able to sell them, but they weren’t hard to find. Rotting corpses lay in messy piles by the roadside in every abandoned coastal town, and it took only two trips to scavenge enough clothes that weren’t burned or covered in blood.
Rin had to roll up the arms and legs of her uniform. Corpses of her stature were difficult to come by. She suppressed the urge to vomit as she laced on her boots. She’d pulled the shirt off a body wedged inside a half-burned funeral pyre, and three washes still couldn’t conceal the smell of charred flesh under salty ocean water.
Ramsa, draped absurdly in a uniform three times his size, gave her a salute. “How do I look?”
She bent down to tie her boot laces. “Why are you wearing that?”
“Rin, please—”
“You’re not coming.”
“But I want to—”
“You are not coming,” she repeated. Ramsa was a munitions genius, but he was also short, scrawny, and utterly worthless in a melee. She wasn’t losing her only fire powder engineer because he didn’t know how to wield a sword. “Don’t make me tie you to the mast.”
“Come on,” Ramsa whined. “We’ve been on this ship for weeks, and I’m so fucking seasick just walking around makes me want to vomit—”
“Tough.” Rin yanked a belt through the loops around her waist.
Ramsa pulled a handful of rockets from his pocket. “Will you set these off, then?”
Rin gave him a stern look. “I don’t think you understand that we’re not trying to blow Adlaga up.”
“Oh, no, you just want to topple the local government, that’s so much better.”
“With minimal civilian casualties, which means we don’t need you.” Rin reached out and tapped at the lone barrel leaning against the mast. “Aratsha, will you watch him? Make sure he doesn’t get off the ship.”
A blurry face, grotesquely transparent, emerged from the water. Aratsha spent most of his time in the water, spiriting the Cike’s ships along to wherever they needed to go, and when he wasn’t calling down his god he preferred to rest in his barrel. Rin had never seen his original human form. She wasn’t sure he had one anymore.
Bubbles floated from Aratsha’s mouth as he spoke. “If I must.”
“Good luck,” Ramsa muttered. “As if I couldn’t outrun a fucking barrel.”
Aratsha tilted his head at him. “Please be reminded that I could drown you in seconds.”
Ramsa opened his mouth to retort, but Chaghan spoke over him. “Everyone take your pick.” Steel clattered as he dumped out a chest of Militia weapons onto the deck. Baji, complaining loudly, traded his conspicuous nine-pointed rake for a standard infantry sword. Suni scooped up an Imperial halberd, but Rin knew the weapon was purely for show. Suni’s specialty was bashing heads in with his shield-sized hands. He didn’t need anything else.
Rin fastened a curved pirate scimitar to her waist. It wasn’t Militia standard, but Militia swords were too heavy for her to wield. Moag’s blacksmiths had fashioned her something lighter. She wasn’t yet used to the grip, but she also doubted the day would end in a sword fight.
If things got so bad that she needed to get involved, then it would end in fire.
“Let’s reiterate.” Chaghan’s pale eyes roved over the assembled Cike. “This is surgical. We have a single target. This is an assassination, not a battle. You will harm no civilians.”
He looked pointedly at Rin.
She crossed her arms. “I know.”
“Not even by accident.”
“I know.”
“Come off it,” Baji said. “Since when did you get so high and mighty about casualties?”
“We’ve done enough harm to your people,” said Chaghan.
“You did enough harm,” Baji said. “I didn’t break those dams.”
Qara flinched at that, but Chaghan acted as if he hadn’t heard a word. “We’re finished hurting civilians. Am I understood?”
Rin jerked out a shrug. Chaghan liked to play commander, and she was rarely in a state to be bothered. He could boss them around all he liked. All she cared about was that they got this job done.
Three months. Twenty-nine targets, all killed without error. One more head in a sack, and then they’d be sailing north to assassinate their very last mark—the Empress Su Daji.
Rin felt a flush creep up her neck at the thought. Her palms grew dangerously hot.
Not now. Not yet. She took a deep breath. Then another one, more desperate, when the heat only extended through her torso.
Baji clamped a hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”
She exhaled slowly. Made herself count backward from ten, and then up to forty-nine by odd numbers, and then back down by prime numbers. Altan had taught her that trick, and it mostly worked, at least when she took care not to think about Altan when she did it. The fever flush receded. “I’m fine.”
“And you’re sober?” Baji asked.
“Yes,” she said stiffly.
Baji didn’t take his hand off her shoulder. “You’re sure? Because—”
“I’ve got this,” she snapped. “Let’s go gut this bastard.”
Three months ago, after the Cike had first sailed out from the Isle of Speer, they’d faced a bit of a dilemma.
Namely, they had nowhere to go.
They knew they couldn’t return to the mainland. Ramsa had pointed out, quite astutely, that if the Empress had been willing to sell the Cike out to Federation scientists, then she wouldn’t be happy to see them alive and free. A quick, furtive supply trip to a tiny coastal city in Snake Province confirmed their suspicions. All of their faces were plastered on the village post boards. They’d been named as war criminals. Bounties were out for their arrest—five hundred Imperial silvers dead, six hundred alive.
They’d stolen as many crates of provisions as they could and hurried out of Snake Province before anyone saw them.
Back in Omonod Bay, they’d debated their options. The only thing they could all agree on was that they needed to kill the Empress Su Daji—the Vipress, the last of the Trifecta, and the traitor who had sold her nation to the Federation.
But they were nine people—eight, without Kitay—against the most powerful woman in the Empire and the combined forces of the Imperial Militia. They’d had few supplies, only the weapons they carried on their backs and a stolen skimmer so banged up that they spent half their time bailing water out of the lower decks.
So they’d sailed down south, past Snake Province into Rooster territory, tracing the coastline until they reached the port city Ankhiluun. There they had come into the employ of the Pirate Queen Moag.
Rin had never met anyone she respected as much as she did Moag—the Stone Bitch, the Lying Widow, and the ruthless ruler of Ankhiluun. She was a consort-turned-pirate who went from Lady to Queen when she murdered her husband, and she’d been running Ankhiluun as an illegal enclave of foreign trade for years. She’d skirmished with the Trifecta during the Second Poppy War, and she’d been fending off the Empress’s scouts ever since.
She was more than happy to help the Cike rid her of Daji for good.
In return, she demanded thirty heads. The Cike had returned twenty-nine. Most had been low-level smugglers, captains, and mercenaries. Moag’s primary income stream came from contraband opium imports, and she liked to keep her eye out for opium dealers who didn’t play by her rules—or at least line her pockets.
The thirtieth mark would be harder. Today Rin and the Cike intended to topple Adlaga’s local government.
Moag had been trying to break into the Adlaga market for years. The little coastal city didn’t offer much, but its civilians, many with lingering addictions to opiates since the days of Federation occupation, would gladly spend their life savings on Ankhiluuni imports. Adlaga had held out against Moag’s aggressive opium trade for the past two decades only because of a particularly vigilant city magistrate, Yang Yuanfu, and his administration.
Moag wanted Yang Yuanfu dead. The Cike specialized in assassination. They were a matchmaker’s dream.
Three months. Twenty-nine heads. Just one more job and they’d have silver, ships, and enough soldiers to distract the Imperial Guard long enough for Rin to march up to Daji and wrap flaming fingers around her throat.
If port security was lax, wall defense was nonexistent. The Cike passed through Adlaga’s walls with no interference—which wasn’t hard to do, considering the Federation had blown great holes all across the boundary and none of them were guarded.
Unegen met them behind the gates.
“We picked a good day for murder,” he said as he guided them into the alleyway. “Yuanfu’s due in the city square at noon for a war commemoration ceremony. He’ll be out in broad daylight, and we can pick him off from the alleys without showing our faces.”
Unlike Aratsha, Unegen preferred his human form when he wasn’t calling down the shape-shifting powers of the fox spirit. But Rin had always sensed something distinctly vulpine in the way he carried himself. Unegen was both crafty and easily startled; his narrow eyes were always darting from side to side, tracking all of his possible escape routes.
“So we’ve got what, two hours?” Rin asked.
“A little over. There’s a warehouse a few blocks down from here that’s fairly empty,” he said. “We can hunker down to wait in there. Then, ah, we split pretty easily if things go south.”
Rin turned toward the Cike, considering.
“We’ll take the corners of the square when Yuanfu shows up,” she decided. “Suni in the southwest. Baji northwest, and I’ll take the northeast.”
“Diversions?” Baji asked.
“No.” Normally diversions were a fantastic idea, and Rin loved assigning Suni to wreak as much havoc as possible while she or Baji darted in to slit their target’s throat, but during a public ceremony the risk to civilians was too great. “We’ll let Qara take the first shot. The rest of us clear a path back to the ship if they put up resistance.”
“Are we still trying to pretend we’re normal mercenaries?” Suni asked.
“Might as well,” Rin said. They’d done a decent job so far of concealing the extent of their abilities, or at least silencing anyone who would spread rumors. Daji didn’t know the Cike were coming for her. The longer she believed them dead, the better. “We’re dealing with a better opponent than usual, though, so do what you need to. At the end of the day, we want a head in a bag.”
She took a breath and ran the plan once more through her mind, considering.
This would work. This was going to be fine.
Strategizing with the Cike was like playing a chess game in which she had several massively overpowered, unpredictable, and bizarre pieces. Aratsha commanded the waters. Suni and Baji were berserkers, capable of leveling entire squadrons without breaking a sweat. Unegen could transform into a fox. Qara not only communed with birds, she could shoot out a peacock’s eye from a hundred meters away. And Chaghan … she wasn’t quite sure what Chaghan did, other than irritate her at every possible turn, but he seemed capable of making people lose their minds.
All of them combined against a single township official and his guards seemed like overkill.
But Yang Yuanfu was used to assassination attempts. You had to be, if you were one of the few uncorrupt officials left in the Empire. He shielded himself with a squadron of the most battle-hardy men in the province wherever he went.
Rin knew, based on Moag’s reports, that Yang Yuanfu had survived at least thirteen assassination attempts over the past fifteen years. His guards were well accustomed to treachery. To get past them, you’d need fighters of unnatural ability. You needed overkill.
Once inside the warehouse, the Cike had nothing to do but wait. Unegen kept watch by the slats in the wall, twitching continuously. Chaghan and Qara sat with their backs against the wall, silent. Suni and Baji stood slouched, arms crossed casually as if simply waiting for their dinners.
Rin paced the room, focusing on her breathing and trying to ignore the twinges of pain in her temples.
She counted thirty hours since she’d ingested any opium. That was longer than she’d gone for weeks. She twisted her hands together as she walked, trying to force the twitching to go away.
It didn’t help. It didn’t stop the headache, either.
Fuck.
At first she’d thought she only needed the opium for the grief. She thought she would smoke it for the relief, until the memories of Speer and Altan dulled to a faint ache, until she could function without the suffocating guilt of what she’d done.
She thought guilt must be the word for it. The irrational feeling, not the moral concept. Because she’d told herself she wasn’t sorry, that the Mugenese deserved what they got and that she was never looking back. Except the memory loomed like a gaping chasm in her mind where she’d tossed in every human feeling that threatened her.
But the abyss kept calling for her to look in. To fall inside.
And the Phoenix didn’t want to let her forget. The Phoenix wanted her to gloat about it. The Phoenix lived on rage, and rage was intricately tied to the past. So the Phoenix needed to claw apart the open wounds in her mind and set fire to them, day after day, because that gave her memories and those memories fueled the rage.
Without opium the visions flashed constantly through Rin’s mind’s eye, often more vivid than her surrounding reality.
Sometimes they were of Altan. More times they weren’t. The Phoenix was a conduit to generations of memories. Thousands upon thousands of Speerlies had prayed to the god in their grief and desperation. And the god had collected their suffering, stored it, and turned it into flames.
The memories could also be deceptively calm. Sometimes Rin saw brown-skinned children running up and down a pristine white beach. She saw flames burning higher on the shore—not funeral pyres, not flames of destruction, but campfires. Bonfires. Hearth fires, warm and sustaining.
And sometimes she saw the Speerlies, enough of them to fill a thriving village. She was always amazed by how many of them there were, an entire race of people that sometimes she feared she’d only dreamed up. If the Phoenix lingered, then Rin could even catch fragments of conversations in a language she almost understood, could see glimpses of faces that she almost recognized.
They weren’t the ferocious beasts of Nikara lore. They weren’t the mindless warriors the Red Emperor had needed them to be and every subsequent regime had forced them to be. They loved and laughed and cried around their fires. They were people.
But every time, before Rin could sink into the memory of a heritage she didn’t have, she saw on the fading horizon boats sailing in from the Federation naval base on the mainland.
What happened next was a haze of colors, accumulated perspectives that shifted too fast for Rin to follow. Shouts, screams, movement. Rows and rows of Speerlies lined up on the beach, weapons in hand.
But it was never enough. To the Federation, they must have seemed savages, using sticks to fight gods, and the booms of cannon fire lit up the village as quickly as if someone had held a light to kindling.
Gas pellets launched from the tower ships with terribly innocent popping noises. Where they hit the ground they expelled huge, thick clouds of acrid yellow smoke.
Women fell. Children twitched. The warrior ranks broke. The gas did not kill immediately; its inventors were not so kind.
Then the butchering began. The Federation fired continuously and indiscriminately. Mugenese crossbows could shoot three bolts at a time, unleashing an unceasing barrage of metal that ripped open necks, skulls, limbs, hearts.
Spilled blood traced marble patterns into white sand. Bodies lay still where they fell. At dawn, the Federation generals marched to the shore, boots treading indifferently over crushed bodies, advancing to slam their flag into the bloodstained sand.
“We’ve got a problem,” Baji said.
Rin snapped back to attention. “What?”
“Take a look.”
She heard the sudden sound of jangling bells—a happy sound, utterly out of place in this ruined city. She pressed her face to a gap in the warehouse slats. A cloth dragon bobbed up and down through the crowd, held up on tent poles by dancers below. Dancers waving streamers and ribbons followed behind, accompanied by musicians and government officials lifted on bright red sedan chairs. Behind them was the crowd.
“You said it was a small ceremony,” Rin said. “Not a fucking parade.”
“It was quiet just an hour ago,” Unegen insisted.
“And now the whole township’s clustering in that square.” Baji squinted through the slats. “Are we still going by that ‘no civilian casualties’ rule?”
“Yes,” Chaghan said before Rin could answer.
“You’re no fun,” Baji said.
“Crowds make targeted assassinations easier,” Chaghan said. “It’s a better opportunity to get in close. Make your hit without being spotted, then filter out before his guards have time to react.”
Rin opened her mouth to say That’s still a lot of witnesses, but the withdrawal cramps hit her first. A wave of pain tore through her muscles; it started in her gut and flared out, so sudden that for a moment the world turned black, and all she could do was clutch her chest, gasping.
“Are you all right?” Baji asked.
A wave of bile rose up in her throat before she could respond. She heaved. A second swell of nausea racked her gut. Then a third.
Baji put a hand on her shoulder. “Rin?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted for what seemed like the thousandth time.
She wasn’t fine. Her head was throbbing again, and this time the pain was accompanied by a nausea that seized her rib cage and didn’t let go until she was doubled over on her knees, whimpering.
Vomit splattered the floor.
“Change of plans,” Chaghan said. “Rin, get back to the ship.”
She wiped her mouth. “No.”
“I’m telling you you’re not in any state to be useful.”
“And I’m your commander,” she said. “So shut up and do as I say.”
Chaghan’s eyes narrowed. The warehouse fell silent.
Rin had been wrestling Chaghan for control over the Cike for months. He questioned her decisions at every turn; he took every chance he could to make it very clear that he thought Altan had made a stupid decision naming her commander.
And Rin knew, in all fairness, he was right.
She was dreadful at leadership. Most of her attack plans over the past three months had boiled down to “everyone attack at once and see if we come out all right on the other side.”
But command ability aside, she had to be here. Had to see Adlaga through. Since they’d left Speer her withdrawals had only been getting worse and worse. She’d been mostly functional during their first few missions for Moag. Then the endless killings, the screams, and the flashbacks to the battlefield kept setting her anger off again and again until she was spending more hours of the day high than she did sober, and even when she was sober she felt like she was still teetering on the brink of madness because the fucking Phoenix never shut up.
She needed to pull herself back from the precipice. If she couldn’t do this basic, simple task; couldn’t kill some township official who wasn’t even a shaman, then she would hardly be able to stand up to the Empress.
And she couldn’t lose her chance at revenge. Revenge was the only thing she had.
“Don’t you jeopardize this,” Chaghan said.
“Don’t you patronize me,” she retorted.
Chaghan sighed and turned to Unegen. “Can you watch her? I’ll give you laudanum.”
“I thought I was supposed to return to the ship,” Unegen said.
“Change of plans.”
“Fine.” Unegen twitched out a shrug. “If I have to.”
“Come on,” Rin said. “I don’t need a wet nurse.”
“You’ll wait in the corner of the crowd,” Chaghan ordered, ignoring her. “You won’t leave Unegen’s side. You’ll both act as reinforcements, and barring that, you will be the last resort.”
She scowled. “Chaghan—”
“The last resort,” he repeated. “You’ve killed enough innocents.”
The hour came. The Cike dissipated, darting out of the warehouse to join the moving crowd one by one.
Rin and Unegen blended into Adlaga’s masses easily enough. The main streets were packed with civilians, all caught up in their own miseries, and so many noises and sights came from all directions that Rin, unsure of where to look, couldn’t help but feel a constant state of mild panic.
A wildly discordant mash of gongs and war drums drowned out the lute music from the front of the parade. Merchants hawked their wares every time they turned a corner, screaming prices with the sort of urgency that she associated with evacuation warnings. Celebratory red confetti littered the streets, tossed out in handfuls by children and entertainers, a snowfall of red paper flecks that covered every surface.
“How do they have the funds for this?” Rin muttered. “The Federation left them starving.”
“Aid from Sinegard,” Unegen guessed. “End-of-war celebration funds. Keeps them happy, keeps them loyal.”
Rin saw food everywhere she looked. Huge cubes of watermelon on sticks. Red bean buns. Stalls selling soup dumplings dripping with soy sauce and lotus seed tarts lined the streets. Merchants flipped egg cakes with deft movements, and the crackle of oil under any other circumstances would make her hungry, but now the pungent smells only made her stomach turn.
It seemed both unfair and impossible that there could be such an abundance of food. Just days ago they had sailed past people who were drowning their babies in river mud because that was a quicker and more merciful death than letting them slowly starve.
If all this came from Sinegard, then that meant the Imperial bureaucracy had possessed food stores like this the entire time. Why had they withheld it during the war?
If the people of Adlaga were asking that same question, they didn’t show it. Everyone looked so happy. Faces relaxed in simple relief because the war was over, the Empire was victorious, and they were safe.
And that made Rin furious.
She’d always had trouble with anger, she knew that. At Sinegard she’d constantly acted in furious, impulsive bursts and dealt with the consequences later. But now the anger was permanent, an unspeakable fury imposed upon her that she could neither contain nor control.
But she also didn’t want to make it stop. The anger was a shield. The anger helped her to keep from remembering what she’d done. Because as long as she was angry, then it was okay—she’d acted within reason. She was afraid that if she stopped being angry, she might crack apart.
She tried to distract herself by scanning the crowd for Yang Yuanfu and his guards. Tried to focus on the task at hand.
Her god wouldn’t let her.
Kill them, encouraged the Phoenix. They don’t deserve their happiness. They didn’t fight.
She had a sudden vision of the marketplace on fire. She shook her head frantically, trying to tune out the Phoenix’s voice. “No, stop …”
Make them burn.
Heat flared up in her palms. Her gut twisted. No—not here, not now. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Turn them to ash.
Her heartbeat began to quicken; her vision narrowed to a pinprick and expanded again. She felt feverish. The crowd suddenly seemed full of enemies. In one instant everyone was a blue-uniformed Federation soldier, bearing weapons; and in another they were civilians once again. She took a deep, choking breath, trying to force air into her lungs, eyes squeezed shut while she willed the red haze to go away once more.
This time it wouldn’t.
The laughter, the music, the smiling faces standing around her all made her want to scream.
How dare they live when Altan was dead? It seemed horrifically unfair that life could keep on going and these people could be celebrating a war that they hadn’t won for themselves, when they hadn’t suffered for it …
The heat in her hands intensified.
Unegen seized her by the shoulder. “I thought you had your shit under control.”
She jumped and spun around. “I do!” she hissed. Too loud. The people around her backed away from her.
Unegen pulled her toward the edge of the crowd, into the safety of the shadows under Adlaga’s ruins. “You’re drawing attention.”
“I’m fine, Unegen, just let go—”
He didn’t. “You need to calm down.”
“I know—”
“No. I mean right now.” He nodded over her shoulder. “She’s here.”
Rin turned.
And there sat the Empress, borne like a bride on a palanquin of red silk.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_f78c3260-e4cb-50fa-9aea-0b30abcb2c12)
The last time Rin had encountered the Empress Su Daji, she had been burning with fever, too delirious to see anything but Daji’s face—lovely, hypnotic, with skin like porcelain and eyes like moth’s wings.
The Empress was just as arresting as ever. Everyone Rin knew had emerged from the Mugenese invasion looking a decade older, jaded and scarred, but the Empress was as pale, ageless, and unmarked as ever, as if she existed on some transcendent plane untouchable by mortals.
Rin’s breath quickened.
Daji wasn’t supposed to be here.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Images of Daji’s body flashed through her mind. Head cracked against white marble. Pale neck sliced open. Body charred to nothing—but she wouldn’t have burned immediately. Rin wanted to do it slowly, wanted to relish it.
A slow cheer went up through the crowd.
The Empress leaned out through the curtains and raised a hand so white it nearly glimmered in the sunlight. She smiled.
“We are victorious,” she called out. “We have survived.”
Anger flared inside Rin, so thick she almost choked on it. She felt like her body was covered with ant bites that she couldn’t scratch at—a kind of frustration bubbling inside her, just begging her to let it explode.
How could the Empress be alive? The sheer contradiction infuriated her, the fact that Altan and Master Irjah and so many others were dead and Daji looked like she’d never even been wounded. She was the head of a nation that had bled millions to a senseless invasion—an invasion she’d invited—and she looked like she’d just arrived for a banquet.
Rin barged forward.
Unegen immediately dragged her back. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think?” Rin wrenched her arms out of his grip. “I’m going to get her. Go rally the others, I’ll need backup—”
“Are you crazy?”
“She’s right there! We’ll never get a shot this good again!”
“Then let Qara do it.”
“Qara doesn’t have a clear shot,” Rin hissed. Qara’s station in the ruined bell towers was too high up. She couldn’t get an arrow through—not past the carriage windows, not past this crowd. Inside the palanquin Daji was shielded on all sides; shots from the front would be blocked by the guards standing right before her.
And Rin was more concerned that Qara wouldn’t shoot. She’d certainly seen the Empress by now, but she might be afraid to fire into a crowd of civilians, or to give away the Cike’s location before any of them had a clear shot. Qara might have decided to be prudent.
Rin didn’t care for prudence. The universe had delivered her this chance. She could end this all in minutes.
The Phoenix strained at her consciousness, eager and impatient. Come now, child … Let me …
She dug her fingernails into her palms. Not yet.
Too much distance separated her from the Empress. If she lit up now, everyone in the square was dead.
She wished desperately that she had better control over the fire. Or any control at all. But the Phoenix was antithetical to control. The Phoenix wanted a roaring, chaotic blaze, consuming everything around her as far as the eye could see.
And when she called the god she couldn’t tell her own desire apart from the Phoenix’s; its desire, and her desire, was a death drive that demanded more to feed its fire.
She tried to think of something else, anything other than rage and revenge. But when she looked at the Empress, all she saw were flames.
Daji looked up. Her eyes locked on to Rin’s. She lifted a hand and waved.
Rin froze. She couldn’t look away. Daji’s eyes became windows became memories became smoke, fire, corpses, and bones, and Rin felt herself falling, falling into a black ocean where all she could see was Altan as a human beacon igniting himself on a pier.
Daji’s lips curved into a cruel smile.
Then the firecrackers set off behind Rin without warning—pop-pop-pop—and Rin’s heart almost burst out of her chest.
Suddenly she was shrieking, hands pressed to her ears while her entire body shook.
“It’s fireworks!” Unegen hissed. He dragged her wrists away from her head. “Just fireworks.”
But that didn’t mean anything—she knew they were fireworks, but that was a rational thought, and rational thoughts didn’t matter when she shut her eyes and saw with every blast of sound explosions bursting behind her eyelids, flailing limbs, screaming children—
She saw a man dangling from the floorboards of a building that had been rent apart, trying to hold on with slippery fingers to slanting wooden planks to not fall into the flaming spears of timber below. She saw men and women plastered to the walls, dusted over with faint white powder so she might have thought they were statues if she couldn’t see the dark shadow of blood in an outline all around them—
Too many people. She was trapped by too many people. She sank to her knees, face buried in her hands. The last time she’d been inside a crowd of people like this they’d been stampeding away from the horror of the inner city of Khurdalain—her eyes shot up and darted around, searching for escape routes, and found none, just unending walls of bodies packed together.
Too much. Too many sights, the information—her mind collapsed in on itself; bursts and flickers of fire emitted from her shoulders and exploded in the air above her, which just made her tremble harder.
And there were still so many people—they were crammed together, a teeming mass of outstretched arms, a nameless and faceless entity that wanted to tear her apart—
Thousands, hundreds of thousands—and you wiped them out of existence, you burned them in their beds—
“Rin, stop!” Unegen shouted.
It didn’t matter, though. The crowd had formed a wide berth around her. Mothers dragged their children back. Veterans pointed and exclaimed.
She looked down. Smoke furled out from every part of her.
Daji’s litter had disappeared. She’d been spirited to safety, no doubt; Rin’s presence had been a glaring warning beacon. A line of Imperial guards pushed through the crowded street toward them, shields raised, spears pointed directly at Rin.
“Oh, fuck,” Unegen said.
Rin backed away unsteadily, palms held out before her as if they belonged to a stranger. Someone else’s fingers sparking with fire. Someone else’s will dragging the Phoenix into this world.
Burn them.
Fire pulsed inside her. She could feel the veins straining behind her eyes. The pressure shot little stabs of pain behind her head, made her vision burst and pop.
Kill them.
The guard captain shouted an order. The Militia stormed her. Then her defensive instincts kicked in, and she lost all self-control. She heard a deafening silence in her mind, then a high, keening noise, the victorious cackle of a god that knew it had won.
When she finally looked at Unegen she didn’t see a man, she saw a charred corpse, a white skeleton glistening over flesh sloughing away; she saw him decompose to ash within seconds and she was struck by how clean that ash was; so infinitely preferable to the complicated mess of bones and flesh that made him up now …
“Stop it!”
She heard not a scream, but a whimpering beg. For a split second Unegen’s face flickered through the ash.
She was killing him. She knew she was killing him, and she couldn’t stop.
She couldn’t even move her own limbs. She stood immobile, fire roaring out of her extremities, holding her still like she’d been encased in stone.
Burn him, said the Phoenix.
“No, stop—”
This is what you want.
It wasn’t what she wanted. But it wouldn’t stop. Why would the Phoenix’s gift include any inkling of control? It was an appetite that only strengthened; the fire consumed and wanted to consume more, and Mai’rinnen Tearza had warned her about this once but she hadn’t listened and now Unegen was going to die …
Something heavy clamped over her mouth. She tasted laudanum. Thick, sweet, and cloying. Panic and relief warred in her head as she choked and struggled, but Chaghan just squeezed the soaked cloth harder over her face as her chest heaved.
The ground swooped under her feet. She loosed a muffled shriek.
“Breathe,” Chaghan ordered. “Shut up. Just breathe.”
She choked against the sick and familiar smell; Enki had made this for her so many times. She fought not to struggle; pushed down her natural instincts—she had ordered them to do this, this was supposed to happen.
That didn’t make it any easier to take.
Her legs buckled beneath her. Her shoulders sagged. She swooned into Chaghan’s side.
He dragged her upright, slung her arm over his shoulder, and helped her toward the stairs. Smoke billowed in their path; the heat didn’t affect Rin, but she could see Chaghan’s hair curling, crinkling black at the edges.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
“Where’s Unegen?” she mumbled.
“He’s fine, he’ll be fine …”
She wanted to insist on seeing him, but her tongue felt too heavy to form words. Her knees gave way entirely, but she didn’t feel herself fall. The sedative worked its way through her bloodstream, and the world was a light and airy place, a fairy’s domain. She heard someone yell. She felt someone lift her and place her on the bottom of the sampan.
She managed a last look over her shoulder.
On the horizon, the entire port town was lit up like a beacon—lamps illuminated on every deck, bells and smoke signals going up in the glowing air.
Every Imperial sentry could see that warning.
Rin had learned the standard Militia codes. She knew what those signals meant. They’d announced a manhunt for traitors to the throne.
“Congratulations,” Chaghan said. “You’ve brought the entire Militia down on our backs.”
“What are we going to—” Her tongue lolled heavy in her mouth. She’d lost the capacity to form words.
He put a hand on her shoulder and shoved. “Get down.”
She tumbled gracelessly into the space under the seats. She opened her eyes wide to see the wooden base of the boat inches from her nose, so close she could count the grains. The lines along the wood swirled into ink images, which she tilted into, and then the ink assumed colors and became a world of red and black and orange.
The chasm opened. That was the only time it could—when she was high out of her mind, too out of control to stay away from the one thing she refused to let herself think about.
She was flying over the longbow island, she was watching the fire mountain erupt, streams of molten lava pouring over the peak, rushing in rivulets toward the cities below.
She saw the lives crushed out, burned and flattened and transformed to smoke in an instant. And it was so easy, like blowing out a candle, like crushing a moth under her finger; she wanted it and it happened; she had willed it like a god.
As long as she remembered it from that detached, bird’s-eye view, she felt no guilt. She felt rather remotely curious, as if she had set an anthill on fire, as if she had impaled a beetle on a knife tip.
There was no guilt in killing insects, only the lovely, childish curiosity of seeing them writhe in their dying throes.
This wasn’t a memory or a vision; this was an illusion she had conjured for herself, the illusion she returned to every time she lost control and they sedated her.
She wanted to see it—she needed to dance at the edge of this memory that she did not have, skirting between the godlike cold indifference of a murderer and the crippling guilt of the deed. She played with her guilt the way a child holds his palm to a candle flame, daring to venture just close enough to feel the stabbing licks of pain.
It was mental self-flagellation, the equivalent of digging a nail into an open sore. She knew the answer, of course, she just couldn’t admit it to anyone—that at the moment she sank the island, the moment she became a murderer, she had wanted it.
“Is she all right?” Ramsa’s voice. “Why is she laughing?”
Chaghan’s voice. “She’ll be fine.”
Yes, Rin wanted to shout, yes, she was fine; just dreaming, just caught between this world and the next, just enraptured by the illusions of what she had done. She rolled around on the bottom of the sampan and giggled until the laughter turned to loud, harsh sobs, and then she cried until she couldn’t see anymore.
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_3cd6483b-be85-5563-820c-c2ad03f04b4d)
“Wake up.”
Someone pinched her arm, hard. Rin bolted upright. Her right hand reached to a belt that wasn’t there for a knife that was in the other room, and her left hand slammed blindly sideways into—
“Fuck!” Chaghan shouted.
She focused with difficulty on his face. He backed up, hands held out before her to show that he held no weapons, just a washcloth.
Rin’s fingers moved frantically over her neck and wrists. She knew she wasn’t tied down, she knew, but still she had to check.
Chaghan rubbed ruefully at his rapidly bruising cheek.
Rin didn’t apologize for hitting him. He knew better than that. All of them knew better than that. They knew not to touch her without asking. Not to approach her from behind. Not to make sudden movements or sounds around her unless they wanted to end up a stick of charcoal floating to the bottom of Omonod Bay.
“How long have I been out?” She gagged. Her mouth tasted like something had died in it; her tongue was as dry as if she had spent hours licking at a wooden board.
“Couple of days,” Chaghan said. “Good job getting out of bed.”
“Days?”
He shrugged. “Messed up the dosage, I think. At least it didn’t kill you.”
Rin rubbed at dry eyes. Bits of hardened mucus came off the sides of her eyes in clumps. She caught a glimpse of her face in her bedside mirror. Her pupils weren’t red—they took a while to adjust back every time she’d been on any kind of opiates—but the whites of her eyes were bloodshot, full of angry veins thick and sprawling like cobwebs.
Memories seeped slowly into the forefront of her mind, fighting through the fog of laudanum to sort themselves out. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to separate what had happened from what she’d dreamed. A sick feeling pooled in her gut as slowly, her thoughts formed into questions. “Where’s Unegen …?”
“You burned over half his body. Nearly killed him.” Chaghan’s clipped tone spared her no sympathy. “We couldn’t bring him with us, so Enki stayed behind to look after him. And they’re, ah, not coming back.”
Rin blinked several times, trying to make the world around her less blurry. Her head swam, disorienting her terribly every time she moved. “What? Why?”
“Because they’ve left the Cike.”
That took several seconds to sink in.
“But—but they can’t.” Panic rose in her chest, thick and constricting. Enki was their only physician, and Unegen their best spy. Without them the Cike were reduced to six.
She couldn’t kill the Empress with six people.
“You really can’t blame them,” Chaghan said.
“But they’re sworn!”
“They swore to Tyr. They were sworn to Altan. They have no obligation to an incompetent like you.” Chaghan cocked his head. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you that Daji got away.”
Rin glared at him. “I thought you were on my side.”
“I said I’d help you kill Su Daji,” he said. “I didn’t say I’d hold your hand while you threatened the lives of everyone on this ship.”
“But the others—” A sudden fear seized her. “They’re still with me, aren’t they? They’re loyal?”
“It’s nothing to do with loyalty,” he said. “They are terrified.”
“Of me?”
“You really can’t see past yourself, can you?” Chaghan’s lip curled. “They’re terrified of themselves. It’s very lonely to be a shaman in this Empire, especially when you don’t know when you’re going to lose your mind.”
“I know. I understand that.”
“You don’t understand anything. They aren’t afraid of going mad. They know they will. They know that soon they will become like Feylen. Prisoners inside their own bodies. And when that day comes, they want to be around the only other people who could put an end to it. That’s why they’re still here.”
The Cike culls the Cike, Altan had once told her. The Cike takes care of its own.
That meant they defended one another. It also meant they protected the world from one another. The Cike were like children playing at acrobatics, perched precariously against one another, relying on the rest to stop them from hurtling into the abyss.
“Your duty as commander is to protect them,” Chaghan said. “They are with you because they are scared, and they don’t know where else they can go. But you’re endangering them with every stupid decision you make and your utter lack of control.”
Rin moaned, clutching her head between her hands. Every word was like a knife to her eardrums. She knew she’d fucked up, but Chaghan seemed to take inordinate delight in rubbing it in. “Just leave me alone.”
“No. Get out of bed and stop being such a brat.”
“Chaghan, please—”
“You’re a fucking mess.”
“I know that.”
“Yes, you’ve known that since Speer, but you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. You’re trying to fix everything with opium and it’s destroying you.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I just—it’s always there, it’s screaming in my mind—”
“Then control it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” He made a noise of disgust. “Altan did.”
“But I’m not Altan.” She couldn’t hold back her tears. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? I’m not as strong as him, I’m not as smart as him, I can’t do what he could do—”
He laughed harshly. “Oh, that much is clear.”
“You take command then. You act like you’re in charge already, why don’t you just take the post? I don’t fucking care.”
“Because Altan named you commander,” he said simply. “And between us, at least I know how to respect his legacy.”
That shut her up.
He leaned forward. “That burden’s on you. So you will learn to control yourself, and you will start protecting them.”
“But what if that’s not possible?” she asked.
His pale eyes didn’t blink. “Frankly? Then you should kill yourself.”
Rin had no idea how to respond to that.
“If you think you can’t beat it, then you should die,” Chaghan said. “Because it will corrode you. It will turn your body into a conduit, and it will burn down everything until it’s not just civilians, not just Unegen, but everyone around you, everything you’ve ever loved or cared about.
“And once you’ve turned your world to ash, you’ll wish you could die.”
She found the others in the mess once she finally recovered the physical coordination to make her way down the passageway without tripping.
“What is this?” Ramsa spat something onto the table. “Bird droppings?”
“Goji berries,” Baji said. “You don’t like them in porridge?”
“They’ve got mold on them.”
“Everything’s got mold on them.”
“But I thought we were getting new supplies,” Ramsa whined.
“With what money?” Suni asked.
“We are the Cike!” Ramsa exclaimed. “We could have stolen something!”
“Well, it’s not like—” Baji broke off as he saw Rin standing in the doorway. Ramsa and Suni followed his gaze. They fell silent.
She stared back at them, utterly lost for words. She’d thought she knew what she was going to say to them. Now she only wanted to cry.
“Rise and shine,” Ramsa said finally. He kicked a chair out for her. “Hungry? You look horrific.”
She blinked at him. Her words came out in a hoarse whisper. “I just wanted to say …”
“Don’t,” said Baji.
“But I just—”
“Don’t,” Baji said. “I know it’s hard. You’ll get it eventually. Altan did.”
Suni nodded in silent agreement.
Rin’s urge to cry grew stronger.
“Have a seat,” Ramsa said gently. “Eat something.”
She shuffled to the counter and tried clumsily to fill a bowl. Porridge slopped out of the ladle onto the deck. She walked toward the table, but the floor kept shifting under her feet. She collapsed into the chair, breathing hard.
No one commented.
She glanced out the porthole. They were moving startlingly fast over choppy waters. The shoreline was nowhere in sight. A wave rolled under the planks, and she stifled the attendant swell of nausea.
“Did we at least get Yang Yuanfu?” she asked after a pause.
Baji nodded. “Suni took him out during the commotion. Bashed his head against the wall and flung his body into the ocean while his guards were too busy with Daji to fend us off. I guess the diversion tactic worked after all. We were going to tell you, but you were, ah, incapacitated.”
“High out of your mind,” Ramsa supplied. “Giggling at the floor.”
“I get it,” Rin said. “And we’re heading back to Ankhiluun now?”
“As fast as we can. We’ve got the entire Imperial Guard chasing us, but I doubt they’ll follow us into Moag’s territory.”
“Makes sense,” Rin murmured. She worked her spoon through the porridge. Ramsa was right about the mold. The greenish-black blotches were so large that they almost rendered the entire thing inedible. Her stomach roiled. She pushed the bowl away.
The others sat around the table, fidgeting, blinking, and making eye contact with everything except her.
“I heard Enki and Unegen left,” she said.
The statement was met with blank stares and shrugs.
She took a deep breath. “So I suppose—what I wanted to say was—”
Baji interrupted before she could continue. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“But you—”
“I don’t like being lied to. And I especially hate being sold. Daji has what’s coming for her. I’m seeing this through to the end, little Speerly. You don’t have to worry about desertion from me.”
Rin glanced around the table. “Then what about the rest of you?”
“Altan deserved better than he got,” Suni said simply, as if that much sufficed.
“But you don’t have to stay here.” Rin turned to Ramsa. Young, innocent, tiny, brilliant, and dangerous Ramsa. She wanted to make sure he’d remain with her, and knew it’d be selfish to ask. “I mean, you shouldn’t.”
Ramsa scraped at the bottom of his bowl. He seemed thoroughly disinterested in the conversation. “I think going anywhere else would get a little boring.”
“But you’re just a kid.”
“Fuck off.” He dug around his mouth with his little finger, picking at something stuck behind his back molars. “You’ve got to understand that we’re killers. You spend your life doing one thing, it’s very hard to stop.”
“That, and our only other option is the prison at Baghra,” Baji said.
Ramsa nodded. “I hated Baghra.”
Rin remembered that none of the Cike had good track records with Nikara law enforcement. Or with civilized society, for that matter.
Aratsha hailed from a tiny village in Snake Province where the villagers worshipped a local river god that purportedly protected them from floods. Aratsha, a novice initiate to the river god’s cult, became the first shaman in generations who succeeded in doing what his predecessors had claimed. He drowned two little girls by accident in the process. He was about to be stoned to death by the same villagers who praised his fraudulent teachers when Tyr, the Cike’s former commander, recruited him to the Night Castle.
Ramsa came from a family of alchemists who’d produced fire powder for the Militia until an accidental explosion near the palace had killed his parents, cost him an eye, and landed him in the notorious prison at Baghra for alleged conspiracy to assassinate the Empress, until Tyr pulled him out of his cell to engineer weapons for the Cike instead.
Rin didn’t know much about Baji or Suni. She knew they had both been students at Sinegard once, members of Lore classes of years past. She knew they’d been expelled when things went terribly wrong. She knew they’d both spent time at Baghra. Neither of them would volunteer much else.
The twins Chaghan and Qara were equally mysterious. They weren’t from the Empire. They spoke Nikara with a lilting Hinterlander accent. But when asked about home, they offered only the vaguest utterances. Home is very far away. Home is at the Night Castle.
Rin understood what they were trying to say. They, like the others, simply had no other place to go.
“What’s the matter?” Baji asked. “Sounds like you want us gone.”
“It’s not that,” Rin said. “I just—I can’t make it go away. I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“I’m scared I’ll hurt you. Adlaga won’t be the end. I can’t make the Phoenix go away and I can’t make it stop and—”
“Because you’re new to this,” Baji interrupted. He sounded so kind. How could he be so kind? “We’ve all been there. They want to use your body all the time. And you think you’re on the brink of madness, you think that this moment is going to be when you finally snap, but it’s not.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it gets easier every time. Eventually you learn to exist on the precipice of insanity.”
“But I can’t promise I won’t—”
“You won’t. And we’ll go after Daji again. And we’ll keep doing it, over and over, as many times as it takes, until she’s dead. Tyr didn’t give up on us. We’re not giving up on you. This is why the Cike exists.”
She stared at him, stricken. She didn’t deserve this, whatever this was. It wasn’t friendship. She didn’t deserve that. It wasn’t loyalty, either. She deserved that even less. But it was camaraderie, a bond formed by a common betrayal. The Empress had sold them to the Federation for a silver and a song, and none of them could rest until the rivers ran red with Daji’s blood.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then just shut up and stop being a little bitch about it.” Ramsa pushed her bowl back in front of her. “Eat your porridge. Mold is nutritious.”
Night fell over Omonod Bay. The Petrel spirited down the coast under the cover of darkness, buoyed by a shamanic force so powerful that within hours it had lost its Imperial pursuers. The Cike spread out—Qara and Chaghan to their cabin, where they spent almost all of their time, secluded from the others; Suni and Ramsa onto the front deck for night watch, and Baji to his hammock in the main sleeping quarters.
Rin locked herself inside her cabin to wage a mental battle with a god.
She didn’t have much time. The laudanum had nearly worn off. She wedged a chair under the doorknob, sat down on the floor, squeezed her head between her knees, and waited to hear the voice of a god.
She waited to return to the state in which the Phoenix wanted utter command and shouted down her thoughts until she obeyed.
This time she would shout back.
She placed a small hunting knife beside her knee. She pressed her eyes shut. She felt the last of the laudanum pass through her bloodstream, and the numb, foggy cloud left her mind. She felt the curdling clench in her stomach and gut that never disappeared. She felt, along with the terrifying possibility of sobriety, awareness.
She always came back to the same moment, months ago, when she’d been on her hands and knees in that temple on the Isle of Speer. The Phoenix relished that moment because to the god it was the height of destructive power. And it kept bringing her back because it wanted her to believe that the only way to reconcile herself with that horror was to finish the job.
It wanted her to burn up this ship. To kill everyone around her. Then to find her way to land, and start burning that down, too; like a small flame igniting the corner of a sheet of paper, she was to make her way inland and burn down everything in her path until nothing was left except a blank slate of ash.
And then she would be clean.
She heard a symphony of screams, voices both collective and individual, Speerly or Mugini voices—it never mattered because wordless agony didn’t have a language.
She could not bear how they were numbers and not numbers all at once, and the line kept blurring and it was awful because as long as they were numbers it wasn’t so bad but if they were lives, then the multiplication was unbearable—
Then the screaming solidified into Altan.
His face splintered apart along cracks of skin turned charcoal, eyes burning orange, black tears opening streaks across his face, fire tearing him open from the inside—and she couldn’t do anything about it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried …”
“It should have been you,” he said. His lips blistered, crackled, fell away to reveal bone. “You should have died. You should have gone up in flames.” His face became ash became a skull, pressed against hers; bony fingers around her neck. “It should have been you.”
Then she couldn’t tell if her thoughts were his or her own, only that they were so loud they drowned out everything in her mind.
I want you to hurt.
I want you to die.
I want you to burn.
“No!” She slammed her blade into her thigh. The pain was only a temporary respite, a blinding whiteness that drove out everything in her mind, and then the fire would be back.
She’d failed.
And she’d failed last time, too, and the time before that. She’d failed every time she tried. At this point she didn’t know why she did it, except to torture herself with the knowledge that she could not control the fire raging in her mind.
The cut joined a line of open wounds on her arms and legs that she’d sliced open weeks before—and kept sliced open—because even though it was only temporary, pain was still the only option other than opium that she could think of.
And then she couldn’t think anymore.
The motions were automatic now, and it all came so easily—rolling the opium nugget between her palms, the spark of the first flicker of flame, and then the smell of crystallized candy concealing something rotten.
The nice thing about opium was that once she’d inhaled it, everything stopped mattering; and for hours at a time, carved out into her world, she could stop dealing with the responsibility of existence.
She sucked in.
The flames receded. The memories disappeared. The world stopped hurting her, and even the frustration of surrender faded to a dull nothing. And the only thing that remained was the sweet, sweet smoke.
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_65fdad9e-83ad-58da-bdf6-4bcfdef656ac)
“Did you know that Ankhiluun has a special government office dedicated to figuring out how much weight the city can sustain?” Ramsa asked brightly.
He was the only one of them who could navigate the Floating City with ease. He hopped ahead, effortlessly navigating the narrow footbridges that lined the sludgy canals, while the rest inched warily along the wobbly planks.
“And how much weight is that?” Baji asked, humoring him.
“I think they’re approaching maximum capacity,” Ramsa said. “Someone’s got to do something about the population, or Ankhiluun’s going to start sinking.”
“You could send them inland,” Baji said. “Bet we’ve lost a couple hundred thousand people in the last few months.”
“Or just have them fight another war. Good way to kill people off.” Ramsa skipped off toward the next bridge.
Rin followed clumsily behind, blinking blearily under the unforgiving southern sun.
She hadn’t left her cabin on the ship for days. She’d taken the smallest possible daily dose of opium that worked to keep her mind quiet while leaving her functional. But even that amount fucked so badly with her sense of balance that she had to cling to Baji’s arm as they walked inland.
Rin hated Ankhiluun. She hated the salty, tangy ocean odor that followed her wherever she went; she hated the city’s sheer loudness, the pirates and merchants screaming at each other in Ankhiluuni pidgin, an unintelligible mix of Nikara and western languages. She hated that the Floating City teetered over open water, roiling back and forth with each incoming wave, so that even standing still, she felt like she was about to fall.
She wouldn’t have come here except out of utter necessity. Ankhiluun was the single place in the Empire where she was close to safe. And it was home to the only people who would sell her weapons.
And opium.
At the end of the First Poppy War, the Republic of Hesperia sat down with delegates from the Federation of Mugen to sign a treaty that established two neutral zones on the Nikara coastline. The first was at the international port of Khurdalain. The second was at the floating city of Ankhiluun.
Back then Ankhiluun had been a humble port—just a smattering of nondescript one-story buildings without basements because the flimsy coastal sands couldn’t support any larger architecture.
Then the Trifecta won the Second Poppy War, and the Dragon Emperor bombed half the Hesperian fleet to smithereens in the South Nikan Sea.
In the absence of foreigners, Ankhiluun flourished. The locals occupied the half-destroyed ships like ocean parasites, linking them together to form the Floating City. Now Ankhiluun extended precariously from the coastline like an overreaching spider, a series of wooden planks that formed a web of walkways between the myriad ships anchored to shore.
Ankhiluun was the juncture through which poppy in all its forms entered the Empire. Moag’s opium clippers sailed in from the western hemisphere and deposited their cargo in giant, empty husks of ships that served as repositories, from which long, thin smuggling boats picked it up and poured through branches of tributaries spreading out from the Murui River, steadily infusing the Empire’s bloodstream like seeping poison.
Ankhiluun meant cheap, abundant opium, and that meant glorious, peaceful oblivion—hours upon hours when she didn’t have to think about or remember anything at all.
And that, above all, was why Rin hated Ankhiluun. It made her so terribly afraid. The more time she spent here, locked alone in her cabin while she drifted on Moag’s drugs, the less she felt able to leave.
“Odd,” said Baji. “You’d think we’d get more of a welcome.”
To get to the city center, they’d passed floating markets, garbage piles strewn along the canals, and rows of distinctive Ankhiluuni bars that had no benches or chairs—only ropes strung across walls where patrons could hang drunk by their armpits.
But they had been walking for more than half an hour now. They were well within the heart of the city, in full view of its residents, and no one had intercepted them.
Moag had to know they were back. Moag knew everything that happened in the Floating City.
“That’s just how Moag likes to play power politics.” Rin stopped walking to catch her breath. The shifting planks made her want to vomit. “She doesn’t seek us out. We have to go to her.”
Getting an audience with Chiang Moag was no easy affair. The Pirate Queen surrounded herself with so many layers of security that no one knew where she was at any given time. Only the Black Lilies, her cohort of spies and assistants, could be counted upon to get word directly to her, and the Lilies could only be found at a gaudy pleasure barge floating in the center of the city’s main canal.
Rin looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. “There.”
The Black Orchid wasn’t so much a ship as it was a floating three-story mansion. Garishly colorful lanterns hung from its sloped pagoda roofs, and bawdy, energetic music drifted constantly from its papered windows. Each day starting at noon, the Black Orchid crawled up and down the still canal, picking up patrons who rowed out to its decks in bright red sampans.
Rin dug around in her pockets. “Anyone got a copper?”
“I do.” Baji tossed a coin toward the sampan boatman, who guided his vessel toward the shore to ferry the Cike onto the pleasure barge.
A handful of Lilies, perched lightly on the second-story railing, waved insouciantly at them as they approached. Baji whistled back.
“Stop that,” Rin muttered.
“Why?” Baji asked. “It makes them happy. Look, they’re smiling.”
“No, it makes them think you’re an easy target.”
The Lilies were Moag’s private army of terribly attractive women, all with breasts the size of pears and waists so narrow they looked in danger of snapping in half. They were trained martial artists, linguists, and uniformly the most obnoxious group of women Rin had ever met.
A Lily stopped them at the top of the gangplank, her tiny hand stretched out as if she could physically stop them from boarding. “You don’t have an appointment.”
She was clearly a new girl. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Her face bore only small dabs of lipstick, her breasts were just little buds poking through her shirt, and she didn’t seem to realize she was standing in front of a handful of the most dangerous people in the Empire.
“I’m Fang Runin,” said Rin.
The girl blinked. “Who?”
Rin heard Ramsa turn his snicker into a cough.
“Fang Runin,” she repeated. “I don’t need an appointment.”
“Oh, love, that’s not how it works here.” The girl tapped slim fingers against her impossibly narrow waist. “You’ve got to make an appointment, and we’re booked up days in advance.” She peered over Rin’s shoulder at Baji, Suni, and Ramsa. “Also, it’s extra for groups larger than four. The girls don’t like it when you share.”
Rin reached for her blade. “Look here, you little shit—”
“Back up.” Suddenly the girl was holding a fistful of needles she must have concealed in her sleeve. Their tips were purple with poison. “No one touches a Lily.”
Rin fought the sudden urge to slap the girl across her face. “If you don’t move aside this second, I’ll shove this blade so far up your—”
“Well, this is a surprise.” The silk sheets over the main doors rustled, and a voluptuous figure emerged on deck. Rin stifled a groan.
It was Sarana, a Black Lily of the highest distinction and Moag’s personal favorite. She’d been Moag’s go-between with the Cike since they landed at Ankhiluun three months ago. She possessed an unbearably sharp tongue, an obsession with sexual innuendo, and—according to Baji—the most perfect breasts south of the Murui.
Rin hated her.
“Fancy seeing you here.” Sarana approached, cocking her head to the side. “We thought you weren’t interested in women.”
She had a way of shimmying when she spoke, accentuating each word with a shake of her hips. Baji made a choking noise. Ramsa was staring unabashedly at Sarana’s chest.
“I need to see Moag,” Rin said.
“Moag’s busy,” Sarana replied.
“I think Moag knows better than to keep me waiting.”
Sarana raised her finely drawn eyebrows. “She also doesn’t like to be disrespected.”
“Must I be blunt?” Rin snapped. “Unless you want this boat going up in flames, you go get your mistress and tell her I want an audience.”
Sarana feigned a yawn. “Be nice to me, Speerly. Else I’ll tattle.”
“I could sink your barge in minutes.”
“And Moag would have you shot full of arrows before you could even get off the boat.” Sarana gave her a dismissive wave. “Get going, Speerly. We’ll send for you when Moag is ready.”
Rin saw red.
The fucking nerve.
Sarana might have thought it an insult, but Rin was a Speerly. She’d single-handedly won the Third Poppy War. She’d sunk a fucking country. She hadn’t come this far just to banter with some stupid Lily whore.
Her hands shot out and grabbed Sarana by the collar. Sarana moved for her hairpiece, which was no doubt poisoned, but Rin slammed her against the wall, wedged one elbow against her throat, and pinned her right wrist down with the other.
She leaned forward to press her lips against Sarana’s ear. “Maybe you think you’re safe now. Maybe I’ll just turn and walk away. You’ll brag to the other bitches how you scared the Speerly off! Lucky you! Then one night, when you’ve turned off the lanterns and rolled up the gangplank, you’ll smell smoke in your quarters. You’ll run out onto the deck, but by then the flames will be burning so hot you can’t see two feet in front of you. You’ll know it’s me, but you’ll never be able to tell Moag, because a sheet of fire will burn all your pretty skin off, and the last thing you’ll see before you leap off the ship into boiling-hot water is my laughing face.” Rin dug her elbow deeper into Sarana’s pale throat. “Don’t fuck with me, Sarana.”
Sarana patted frantically at Rin’s wrists.
Rin tilted her head. “What was that?”
Sarana’s voice was a strangled whisper. “Moag … might make an exception.”
Rin let go. Sarana collapsed back against the wall, frantically fanning her face.
The red haze ebbed from the edges of Rin’s vision. She closed a fist and opened it, let loose a long breath, and wiped her palm against her tunic. “That’s more like it.”
“We’re here,” Sarana announced.
Rin reached up to remove the blindfold from her face. Sarana had made her come alone—the others were more than happy to stay on the pleasure barge—and her naked vulnerability had kept her twitching and sweating during their entire journey through the canals.
At first she saw nothing but darkness. Then her eyes adjusted to the dim lights, and she saw that the room was lit up with tiny, flickering fire lamps. She saw no windows, no glints of sunshine. She couldn’t tell whether they were in a ship or in a building; whether nighttime had fallen or if the room was simply sealed so well that no outside light could get in. The air indoors was much cooler than outside. She thought she could still feel the rocking sea beneath her legs, but only faintly, and she couldn’t tell if it was real or imagined.
Wherever she was, the building was massive. A grounded warship? A warehouse?
She saw blocky furniture with curved legs that surely had to be of foreign origin; they didn’t carve tables like that in the Empire. Along the walls hung portraits, though they couldn’t have been of Nikara men; the subjects were pale-skinned, angry-looking, and all wearing absurdly shaped white wigs. A massive table, large enough to seat twenty, occupied the center of the room.
On the other side, flanked by a squadron of Lily archers, sat the Pirate Queen herself.
“Runin.” Moag’s voice was a gravelly drawl, deep and oddly compelling. “Always a pleasure.”
In the streets of Ankhiluun, they called Moag the Stone Widow. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, more handsome than pretty. They said she was a prostitute from the bay who’d married one of Ankhiluun’s many pirate captains. Then he died under circumstances that were never properly examined, and Moag rose steadily through the ranks of Ankhiluun’s pirate hierarchy and consolidated a fleet of unprecedented strength. She was the first to ever unite the pirate factions of Ankhiluun under one flag. Until her reign, the disparate bandits of Ankhiluun had been at war with one another in the same way the twelve provinces of Nikan had been at war since the death of the Red Emperor. In a way, she had managed to do what Daji never could. She’d convinced disparate factions of soldiers to serve a single cause—herself.
“I don’t think you’ve ever been to my private office.” Moag gestured around the room. “Nice place, isn’t it? The Hesperians were unbearably annoying, but they knew how to decorate.”
“What happened to the original owners?” Rin asked.
“Depends. I assume the Hesperian Navy taught their sailors how to swim.” Moag pointed to the chair opposite her. “Sit.”
“No, thanks.” Rin couldn’t bear sitting in chairs anymore. She hated the way that tables blocked her legs—if she jumped or tried to run, her knees would slam against the wood, costing her precious escape time.
“Have it your way, then.” Moag cocked her head to the side. “I heard Adlaga didn’t go well.”
“Got derailed,” Rin said. “Had a surprise encounter with Daji.”
“Oh, I know,” Moag said. “The whole coastline knows about it. You know how Sinegard has spun this, right? You’re the rogue Speerly, traitor to the crown. Your Mugenese captors drove you mad, and now you’re a threat to everyone you come across. The bounty on your head has been raised to six thousand Imperial silvers. Double if you’re alive.”
“That’s nice,” Rin said.
“You don’t seem concerned.”
“They’re not wrong about anything.” Rin leaned forward. “Look, Yang Yuanfu is dead. We couldn’t bring back his head, but your scouts will confirm everything as soon as they can get to Adlaga. It’s time to pay up.”
Moag ignored that, resting her chin on her fingertips. “I don’t get it. Why go to all this trouble?”
“Moag, come on—”
Moag lifted a hand to cut her off. “Talk me through this. You have power beyond what most people could dream of. You could do anything you want. Become a warlord. Become a pirate. Hell, captain one of my ships if you want to. Why keep picking this fight?”
“Because Daji started this war,” Rin said. “Because she killed my friends. Because she remains on the throne and she shouldn’t. Because someone has to kill her, and I’d rather it be me.”
“But why?” Moag pressed. “No one hates our Empress as much as I do. But understand this, little girl: you’re not going to find allies. Revolution is fine in theory. But nobody wants to die.”
“I’m not asking anyone else to risk it. Just give me weapons.”
“And if you fail? You don’t think the Militia will track where your supplies came from?”
“I killed thirty men for you,” Rin snapped. “You owe me any supplies I want; those were the terms. You can’t just—”
“What can’t I do?” Moag leaned forward, ringed fingers circling the hilt of her dagger. She looked deeply amused. “You think I owe you? By what contract? Under what laws? What will you do, take me to court?”
Rin blinked. “But you said—”
“‘But you said,’” Moag mocked in a high-pitched voice. “People say things they don’t mean all the time, little Speerly.”
“But we had an agreement!” Rin raised her voice, but her words came out plaintive, not dominant. She sounded childish even to her own ears.
Several Lilies began to titter into their fans.
Rin’s hands tightened into fists. The residual opium kept her from erupting into fire, but still a haze of scarlet entered her vision.
She took a deep breath. Calm.
Murdering Moag might feel good in the moment, but she doubted even she could get out of Ankhiluun alive.
“You know, for someone of your pedigree, you’re incredibly stupid,” Moag said. “Speerly abilities, Sinegard education, Militia service, and you still don’t understand the way the world works. If you want to get things done, you need brute force. I need you, and I’m the only one who can pay you, which means you need me. Complain all you want. You’re not going anywhere.”
“But you’re not paying me.” Rin couldn’t help it. “So fuck you.”
Eleven arrowheads pointed to her forehead before she could move.
“Stand down,” Sarana hissed.
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Moag examined her lacquered nails. “I’m trying to help you, you know. You’re young. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you. Why waste it on revenge?”
“I need to get to the capital,” Rin insisted stubbornly. “And if you won’t give me supplies, then I’ll go elsewhere.”
Moag sighed theatrically, pressed her fingers against her temples, and then folded her arms on the table. “I propose a compromise. One more job, and then I’ll give you everything you want. Will that work?”
“What, I’m supposed to trust you now?”
“What choice do you have?”
Rin chewed on that. “What kind of job?”
“How do you feel about naval battles?”
“Hate them.” Rin didn’t like being over open water. She’d only agreed to jobs on land so far, and Moag knew that. Around the ocean, she was too easily incapacitated.
Fire and water didn’t mix.
“I’m sure a healthy reward would change your mind.” Moag rummaged in her desk, pulled out a charcoal rendering of a ship and slid it across the table. “This is the Heron. Standard opium skimmer. Red sails, Ankhiluuni flag, unless the captain’s changed it. He’s been coming up short in the books for months.”
Rin stared at her. “You want me to kill someone based on accounting errors?”
“He’s keeping more than his fair share of his profits. He’s been very clever about it, too. Got an accountant to fudge the numbers so that it took me weeks to detect. But we keep triple copies of everything. The numbers don’t lie. I want you to sink his ship.”
Rin considered the rendering. She recognized the ship build. Moag had at least a dozen skimmers just like it sitting in Ankhiluun’s harbor. “Is he still in the city?”
“No. But he’s scheduled to return to port in a few days. He thinks I don’t know what he’s done.”
“Then why don’t you get rid of him yourself?”
“Under regular circumstances I would,” said Moag. “But then I’d have to give him the pirate’s justice.”
“Since when does Ankhiluun care about justice?”
“The fact that we’re independent from the Empire doesn’t make us an anarchy, dear. We’d hold a trial. It’s standard procedure with embezzlement cases. But I don’t want to give him a fair trial. He’s well-liked, he has too many friends in this city, and punishment by my hand would certainly provoke retaliation. I’m not in the mood for politics. I want him blown out of the water.”
“No prisoners?”
Moag grinned. “Not a high priority.”
“Then I’ll need to borrow a skimmer.”
Moag’s smile widened. “Do this for me and you can keep the skimmer.”
This wasn’t optimal. Rin needed a ship with Militia colors, not a smuggling vessel, and Moag might still withhold the weapons and money. No—she had to take it for granted Moag would cheat her, some way or another.
But she had no leverage. Moag had the ships, she had the soldiers, so she could dictate the terms. All Rin had was the ability to kill people, and no one better to sell it to.
She had no better options. She was strategically backed into a corner, and she couldn’t think her way out.
But she knew someone who could.
“There’s something else I want,” she said. “Kitay’s address.”
“Kitay?” Moag narrowed her eyes. Rin could watch the thoughts spinning in her head, trying to determine if it was a liability, if it was worth the charity.
“We’re friends,” Rin said as smoothly as she could. “We were classmates. I care about him. That’s all it is.”
“And you’re only asking about him now?”
“We’re not going to flee the city, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh, you’d never manage that.” Moag gave her a pitying look. “But he asked me not to tell you where to find him.”
Rin supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. It still stung.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I still want the address.”
“I gave him my word I’d keep it a secret.”
“Your word means nothing, you old hag.” Rin couldn’t suppress her impatience. “Right now you’re just dithering for the fun of it.”
Moag laughed. “Fair enough. He’s in the old foreign district. A safe house at the very end of the walkway. You’ll see Red Junk Fleet symbols on the doorposts. I’ve posted a guard there, but I’ll tell them to stand down if they see you. Shall I let him know you’re coming?”
“Please don’t,” Rin said. “I’ll surprise him.”
The old foreign district was still and silent, a rare oasis of calm in the never-ending cacophony that comprised Ankhiluun. Half these houses were abandoned—no one had lived here since the Hesperians left, and the remaining buildings were used only to store inventory. The bright lights that littered the rest of Ankhiluun were absent. This place lay uncomfortably far from the open central square, where Moag’s guards had easy access.
Rin didn’t like that.
But Kitay had to be safe. Tactically, it would be a terrible idea to let him get hurt. He was a remarkable reserve of knowledge. He read everything and forgot nothing. He was best kept alive as an asset, and Moag had surely realized it since she’d put him under house arrest.
The lone house at the end of the road floated a little ways off from the rest of the bobbing street, tethered only by two long chains and a hazardous floating walkway made of badly spaced planks.
Rin stepped gingerly over the planks, then rapped on the wooden door. No response.
She tried the handle. It didn’t even have a lock—she couldn’t see a keyhole. They’d made it impossible for Kitay to keep visitors out.
She pushed the door open.
The first thing she noticed was the mess—a sprawl of yellowing books, maps, and ledgers that littered every visible surface. She blinked around in the dim lamplight until she finally saw Kitay sitting in the corner with a thick tome over his lap, nearly buried under stacks of leather-bound books.
“I’ve already eaten,” he said without looking up. “Come back in the morning.”
She cleared her throat. “Kitay.”
He looked up. His eyes widened.
“Hello,” she said.
Slowly he set his books to the side.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
Kitay stared at her for a long moment before waving her inside. “Fine.”
She shut the door behind her. He made no move to get up, so she picked her way through the papers toward him, taking care not to step on any pages. Kitay had always hated when anyone disturbed his carefully arranged messes. During exam season at Sinegard, he’d thrown temper tantrums whenever someone moved his inkwells.
The room was so cramped that the only empty space was a patch of floor against the wall right beside him. Taking care not to touch him, she slid down, crossed her legs, and placed her hands on her knees.
For a moment they simply stared at each other.
Rin wanted desperately to reach out and touch his face. He looked weak, and far too thin. He had healed some since Golyn Niis, but even now his collarbone protruded to a frightening degree, and his wrists looked so fragile she might snap them with one hand. He had grown his hair out in a long, curly mess that he’d bunched up at the back of his head, which pulled at the edges of his face and made his cheekbones stick out more than they already did.
He didn’t remotely resemble the boy she’d met at Sinegard.
The difference was in his eyes. They used to be so bright, lit up with a feverish curiosity about everything. Now they were just dull and blank.
“Can I stay?” she asked.
“I let you in, didn’t I?”
“You told Moag to keep your address from me.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “Yes. I did do that.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. She knew him well enough to know that this meant he was furious with her, but after all these months, she still didn’t know precisely why.
No—she did, she just wouldn’t admit that she was wrong about it. The one time they’d fought about it, really fought about it, he’d slammed the door shut on her and hadn’t spoken to her until they reached dry land.
She hadn’t let herself think about it since. It went into the chasm, just like every other memory that made her start craving her pipe.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m under house arrest. How do you think I’m doing?”
She looked around at the papers splayed out across the table. They littered the floor, pinned down with inkwells.
Her eyes landed on the ledger he’d been scribbling in. “She’s kept you busy, at least?”
“‘Busy’ is a word for it.” He slammed the ledger shut. “I’m working for one of the Empire’s most wanted criminals, and she’s got me doing her taxes.”
“Ankhiluun doesn’t pay taxes.”
“Not taxes to the Empire. To Moag.” Kitay twirled the ink brush in his fingers. “Moag’s running a massive crime ring with a taxation scheme that’s just as complicated as any city bureaucracy’s. But the record-keeping system they’ve been using so far, it’s …” He waved his hands in the air. “Whoever designed this didn’t understand how numbers work.”
What a brilliant move on Moag’s part, Rin thought. Kitay had the mental dexterity of twenty scholars combined. He could add impossibly large sums without blinking, and he had a mind for strategy that had rivaled Master Irjah’s. He might be grumpy under house arrest, but he couldn’t resist a puzzle when presented with one. The ledgers may as well have been a bucket of toys.
“Are they treating you all right?” she asked.
“Well enough. I get two meals a day. Sometimes more, if I’ve been good.”
“You look thin.”
“The food’s not very good.”
He still wouldn’t look at her. She ventured to place a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry Moag’s kept you here.”
He jerked away. “Wasn’t your decision. I’d do the same if I’d taken myself prisoner.”
“Moag’s really not so bad. She treats her people well.”
“And she uses violence and extortion to run a massively illegal city that has been lying to Sinegard for twenty years,” said Kitay. “I’m worried you’re starting to lose your sense of scale here, Rin.”
She rankled at that. “Her people are still better off than the Empress’s subjects.”
“The Empress’s subjects would be fine if her generals weren’t running around trying to commit treason.”
“Why are you so loyal to Sinegard?” Rin demanded. “It’s not like the Empress has done anything for you.”
“My family has served the crown at Sinegard for ten generations,” said Kitay. “And no, I’m not helping you with your personal vendetta just because you think the Empress got your stupid commander killed. So you can stop pretending to be my friend, Rin, because I know that’s all you came for.”
“I don’t just think that,” she said. “I know it. And I know the Empress invited the Federation onto Nikara land. She wanted this war, she started the invasion, and everything you saw at Golyn Niis was Daji’s fault.”
“False accusations.”
“I heard it from Shiro’s mouth!”
“And Shiro didn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”
“Daji doesn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”
“She’s the Empress,” Kitay said. “The Empress doesn’t betray her own. Do you understand how absurd this is? There’s literally no political advantage—”
“You should want this!” she yelled. She wanted to shake him, hit him, do anything to make that maddening blankness in his face go away. “Why don’t you want this? Why aren’t you furious? Didn’t you see Golyn Niis?”
He stiffened. “I want you to leave.”
“Kitay, please—”
“Now.”
“I’m your friend!”
“No, you’re not. Fang Runin was my friend. I’m not sure who you are, but I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Why do you keep saying that? What did I ever do to you?”
“How about what you did to them?” He grabbed for her hand. She was so surprised that she let him. He slammed her palm over the lamp beside him, forced it down directly over the fire. She yelped from the sudden pain—a thousand tiny needles, pressing deeper and deeper into her palm.
“Have you ever been burned before?” he whispered.
For the first time Rin noticed little burn scars dotting his palms and forearms. Some were recent. Some looked inflicted yesterday.
The pain intensified.
“Shit!” She kicked out. She missed Kitay but hit the lamp. Oil spilled over the papers. The fire whooshed up. For a second she saw Kitay’s face illuminated in the flame, absolutely terrified, and then he yanked a blanket off the floor and threw it over the fire.
The room went dark.
“What the hell was that?” she screamed.
She didn’t raise her fists, but Kitay flinched away as if she had—his shoulder hit the wall, and then he curled toward the ground with his head buried under his arms, raw sobs shaking his thin frame.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know what …”
The throbbing pain in her hand made her breathless, almost light-headed. Almost as good as it felt when she got high. If she thought about it too hard she would start crying, and if she started crying it might tear her apart, so she tried laughing instead, and that turned into tortured hiccups that shook her entire frame.
“Why?” she finally managed.
“I was trying to see what it was like,” he said.
“For who?”
“How they felt. In the moment that it happened. In their very last seconds. I wanted to know how they felt when it ended.”
“It doesn’t feel like anything,” she said. A wave of agony shot up her arm again, and she slammed her fist against the floor in an attempt to numb out the pain. She clenched her teeth until it passed.
“Altan told me about it once,” she said. “After a bit you’re not able to breathe. And then you’re gasping so hard you can’t feel it hurt anymore. You don’t die from the burning, you die from lack of air. You choke, Kitay. That’s how it ends.”
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_1642893a-4b52-544d-974f-d08370d0d420)
“Try some ginger rock,” Ramsa suggested.
Rin gagged and spat until she was sure her stomach would expel nothing else, and then pulled her head back over the side of the ship. Remnants of her breakfast, a phlegmy, eggy mess, floated in the green waves below.
She took the shards of candy from Ramsa’s palm and chewed while fighting the urge to dry-heave. For all their weeks at sea, she’d still never gotten used to the constant sensation that the ground was swirling beneath her feet.
“Expect some choppier waves today,” Baji said. “Monsoon season is kicking up in the Omonod. We’ll want to avoid going upwind if this keeps up, but as long as we have the shore as a breakwater we should be all right.”
He was the only one of them who had any real nautical experience—he’d worked on a transport ship as part of his labor sentence shortly before he’d been sent to Baghra—and he flaunted it obnoxiously.
“Oh, shut up,” Ramsa said. “It’s not like you do any real steering.”
“I’m the navigator!”
“Aratsha’s the navigator. You just like the way you look standing at the helm.”
Rin was grateful that they didn’t have to do much maneuvering themselves. It meant they didn’t have to bother with a crew of Moag’s hired help. They needed only the six of them to sail up and down South Nikan Sea, doing minimal ship maintenance while blessed Aratsha trailed alongside the hull, guiding the ship wherever they needed to go.
Moag had lent them an opium skimmer named Caracel, a sleek and skinny vessel that somehow packed six cannons on each side. They didn’t have the numbers to man each cannon, but Ramsa had devised a clever workaround. He’d connected all twelve fuses with the same strip of twine, which meant he could set them all off at once.
But that was only the last resort. Rin didn’t intend to win this skirmish with cannons. If Moag didn’t want survivors, then Rin only had to get close enough to board.
She folded her arms on the railing and rested her chin on them, staring down at the empty water. Sailing was far less interesting than staking out enemy camps. Battlefields were endlessly entertaining. The ocean was just lonely. She’d spent the morning watching the monotonous gray horizon, trying to keep her eyes open. Moag hadn’t been certain when her tax-evading captain would sail back to port. It could be any time from now to past midnight.
Rin didn’t understand how the sailors could stand the terrible lack of orientation at sea. To her, every stretch of the ocean looked the same. Without the coast to anchor her, one horizon was indistinguishable from the next. She could read star charts if she tried, but to her naked eye, each patch of greenish blue meant the same thing.
They could be anywhere in Omonod Bay. Somewhere out there lay the Isle of Speer. Somewhere out there was the Federation.
Moag had once offered to take her back to Mugen to survey the damage, but Rin had refused. She knew what she would find there. Millions of bodies encased within hardened rock, charred skeletons frozen in their last living acts.
How would they be positioned? Mothers reaching for their children? Husbands wrapping their arms around their wives? Maybe their hands would be stretched out toward the sea, as if they could escape the deadly thick sulfurous clouds rumbling down the mountainside if they could just get to the water.
She had imagined this too many times, had painted a far more vivid image of it in her mind than reality was likely to be. When she closed her eyes she saw Mugen and she saw Speer; the two islands blurred together in her mind, because in all cases the narrative was the same: children going up in flames, the skin sloughing off their bodies in large black patches, revealing glistening bone underneath.
They burned for someone else’s war, someone else’s wrongs; someone they had never met had made the decision they should die, so in their last moments they would have had no idea why their skin was scorching off.
Rin blinked and shook her head to clear it. She kept slipping into daydreams. She’d taken a small dose of laudanum last night after her singed palm hurt so much she couldn’t sleep, which in retrospect was an awful idea because laudanum exhausted her more than opium did and wasn’t half as fun.
She examined her hand. Her skin was puffy and furiously red, even though she’d soaked it in aloe for hours. She couldn’t make a fist without wincing. She was grateful she’d only burned her left hand, not her sword hand. She cringed at the thought of grasping a hilt against the tender skin.
She moved her thumbnail over the center of her palm and dug it hard into the open wound. Pain lanced through her arm, bringing tears to her eyes. But it woke her up.
“Shouldn’t have taken that laudanum,” said Chaghan.
She jerked upright. “I’m awake.”
He joined her by the railing. “Sure you are.”
Rin shot him an irritated glare, wondering how much effort it would take to toss him overboard. Not very much, she guessed. Chaghan was so terribly frail. She could do it. They wouldn’t miss him. Probably.
“You see those rock formations?” Baji, who must have sensed an impending screaming match, edged his way in between them. He pointed toward a series of cliffs on the distant Ankhiluuni shore. “What do they look like to you?”
Rin squinted. “A man?”
Baji nodded. “A drowned man. If you sail to shore during sunset, it looks like he’s swallowing the sun. That’s how you know you’ve found Ankhiluun.”
“How many times have you been here?” Rin asked.
“Plenty. Came down here with Altan once, two years ago.”
“For what?”
“Tyr wanted us to kill Moag.”
Rin snorted. “Well, you failed.”
“To be fair, it was the only time Altan ever failed.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said. “Wonderful Altan. Perfect Altan. Best commander you’ve ever had. Did everything right.”
“Excepting the Chuluu Korikh,” Ramsa piped up. “You could call that a disaster of monumental proportions.”
“To be fair, Altan used to make some really good tactical decisions.” Baji rubbed his chin. “Before, you know, that string of really bad ones.”
Ramsa whistled. “Lost his mind near the end, he did.”
“Went a little crazy, yeah.”
“Shut up about Altan,” said Chaghan.
“It’s a pity how the best ones snap,” Baji continued, ignoring him. “Like Feylen. Huleinin, too. And you remember how Altan started sleepwalking at Khurdalain? I swear, one night I was walking back from taking a piss and he—”
“I said shut up!” Chaghan slammed both hands against the railing.
Rin felt a noticeable chill sweep over the deck; goose bumps were forming on her arms. There was a stillness in the air, like the space between lightning and thunder. Chaghan’s bone-white hair had begun to curl up at the edges.
His face didn’t match his aura. He looked like he might cry.
Baji lifted his palms up. “All right. Tiger’s tits. I’m sorry.”
“You do not have the right,” Chaghan hissed. He pointed a finger at Rin. “Especially you.”
She bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the reason why—”
“Why what?” she asked loudly. “Go on, say it.”
“Guys. Guys.” Ramsa wedged his way between them. “Great Tortoise, lighten up. Altan’s dead. All right? Dead. And fighting about it won’t bring him back.”
“Look at this.” Baji handed Rin his spyglass, directing her attention to a black point just visible on the horizon. “Does that look like a Red Junk ship to you?”
Rin squinted into the eyepiece.
Moag’s Red Junk fleet comprised distinctive opium skimmers, built narrow for enough speed to outrun other pirates and the Imperial Navy, possessing deep hulls to transport huge amounts of opium and distinctive battened sails that resembled carp fins. On the open seas they disguised all identifying marks, but when they docked in the South Nikan Sea, they flew the crimson flag of Ankhiluun.
But this ship was a bulky creation, large and squat, much rounder than an opium skimmer. It had white sails instead of red, and no flag in sight. As Rin watched, the ship cut a ridiculously sharp turn in the water toward them that should have been impossible without a shaman’s help.
“That’s not Moag’s,” she said.
“That doesn’t make it an enemy ship,” said Ramsa. He peered out at the ship with a spyglass of his own. “Could be a friendly.”
Baji snorted. “We’re fugitives working for a pirate lord. Do you think we have a lot of friends right now?”
“Fair enough.” Ramsa slammed the spyglass shut and shoved it in his pocket.
“Just open fire,” Chaghan suggested.
Baji shot him an incredulous look. “Look, I don’t know how much time you’ve spent at sea, but when you see a foreign warship with no identifying marks and no indication of whether or not it’s brought a support fleet, the response is usually not to just open fire.”
“Why not?” Chaghan asked. “You said it yourself. It can’t be a friendly.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s looking for a fight.”
Ramsa’s head swiveled back and forth between Chaghan and Baji as they spoke. He looked like a very confused baby bird.
“Hold fire,” Rin told him hastily. “At least until we know who they are.”
The ship was close enough now that she could just make out an etching of characters on the sides of the ship. Cormorant. She’d been over the list of Red Junk ships harbored at Ankhiluun. This wasn’t one of them.
“Are you seeing this?” Ramsa was peering through his spyglass again. “What the hell is this?”
“What?” Rin couldn’t tell what was bothering Ramsa. She couldn’t see any armored troops. Or crew of any uniform, for that matter.
Then she realized that was precisely what was wrong.
She couldn’t see anyone on board at all.
No one stood at the helm. No one manned the oars. The Cormorant was close enough now that they could all see its empty decks.
“That’s impossible,” said Ramsa. “How are they propelling it?”
Rin leaned over the side of the ship and yelled. “Aratsha! Hard right turn.”
Aratsha obeyed, reversing their direction faster than any oared ship would be able to. But the foreign ship veered about immediately to follow their course, cutting an absurdly precise turn. The ship was fast, too—even though the Caracel had Aratsha propelling it along, the Cormorant had no trouble following their pace.
Seconds later it had almost caught up. It was pulling in parallel. Whoever was on it intended to board.
“That’s a ghost ship,” Ramsa whimpered.
“Don’t be stupid,” Baji said.
“They’ve got a shaman, then. Chaghan’s right, we should fire.”
They looked helplessly at Rin to confirm the order. She opened her mouth just as a boom split the air, and the Caracel shook under their feet.
“You still think it’s not hostile?” Chaghan asked.
“Fire,” she said.
Ramsa ran belowdecks to light the fuse. Moments later a series of booms rocked the Caracel as their starboard-side cannons went off one by one. Blazing metal balls skimmed over the water, scorching bright orange trails behind them—but instead of blowing holes into the sides of the Cormorant, they only bounced off metal plating. The warship barely shook from the impact.
Meanwhile the Caracel lurched alarmingly to starboard. Rin peeked over the edge—they’d taken damage to their hull, and though she knew nearly nothing about ships, that didn’t look survivable.
She cursed under her breath. They’d have to row one of the lifeboats back to shore. If the Cormorant didn’t dispose of them first.
She could hear Ramsa’s footsteps moving frantically around belowdecks, trying to reload. Arrows sailed over her head, courtesy of Qara, but they thudded ineffectively into the sides of the warship. Qara had no target—the warship had no crew on deck, no archers. Whoever it was didn’t need archers when they had a row of cannons so powerful they could likely blow the Caracel out of the water in minutes.
“Get closer!” Rin shouted. They were outgunned, outmaneuvered. The only chance they had at winning was to board that ship and smoke it out. “Aratsha! Put me on that ship!”
But they weren’t moving. The Caracel bobbed listlessly in the water.
“Aratsha!”
No response. Rin climbed on the railing and bent to look overboard. She saw an odd stream of black, like a smoke cloud unfurling underwater. Blood? But Aratsha didn’t bleed, not when he was in his watery form. And the cloud looked too dark to be blood.
No. It looked like ink.
A projectile shrieked overhead. She ducked. The salvo landed in the water in front of her. Another burst of black emanated from the site of impact.
It was ink.
They were firing the pellets into the water. This was intentional. Their attackers knew the Cike had a water shaman, and they had blinded Aratsha on purpose because they knew what he was.
Rin’s chest tightened. This was no random attack. The warship had targeted them, had prepared for what they could do. This was a calculated ambush planned well in advance.
Moag had sold them out.
Another series of missiles whistled through the air, this time headed for the deck. Rin crouched down, braced for the explosion, but the impact didn’t come. She opened her eyes. A delayed explosive?
But no fiery explosion rocked the boat. Instead a cloud of black smoke shot out of the projectiles, unfurling outward with a terrifying rapidity. Rin didn’t bother trying to run. The smoke covered the entire deck within seconds.
It wasn’t just a smokescreen, it was an asphyxiate—she tried to suck in air but nothing went through; it was like her throat had closed up, as if someone had pinned her to the wall by the neck. She staggered back, gagging. She could taste something in the air—something sickly sweet and terribly familiar.
Opium.
They know what we are. They know what makes us weak.
Suni and Baji dropped to their knees, utterly subdued. Wherever Qara was, she’d stopped shooting. Rin could just make out Ramsa’s and Chaghan’s limp forms through the smoke. Only she remained standing, coughing violently, clutching feebly at her throat.
She had smoked opium so many times, the phases of the high were familiar to her by now. It was only a matter of time.
First there was the dizzying sensation of floating, accompanied by an irrational euphoria.
Then the numbness that felt almost as good.
Then nothing.
Rin’s arms stung like she’d plunged them inside a beehive. Her mouth tasted like charcoal. She tried to conjure up enough spit to wet her throat and barely managed a repellent lump of phlegm. She forced her eyes open. The sudden attack of light made them water; she had to blink several times before she could look up.
She was tied to a mast, her arms stretched above her. She wiggled her fingers. She couldn’t feel them. Her legs were also bound, tied so tightly that she couldn’t even bend them.
“She awakens.” Baji’s voice.
She strained her neck but couldn’t see him. When she swiveled her head around she suffered a sudden attack of vertigo. Even tied down, she felt like she was floating. Looking up or down gave her the terrible sensation of falling. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Baji? Where are you?”
“Behind you,” he said. “Other side of the … the mast.”
His words came out in a barely intelligible drawl.
“The others?” she asked.
“All here,” Ramsa piped up from her other side. “Aratsha’s in that barrel.”
Rin sat up straight. “Wait, could he—”
“No go. They sealed the lid. Good thing he doesn’t need to breathe.” Ramsa must have been wiggling his arms, straining the rope, because she felt her bindings tighten painfully around her own wrists.
“Stop that,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Whose ship is this?” she asked.
“They won’t tell us,” Baji said.
“They? Who are they?”
“We don’t know. Nikara, I’m assuming, but they won’t talk to us.” Baji raised his voice to shout at a guard who must have been standing behind her, because Rin couldn’t see anyone. “Hey, you! You Nikara?”
No response.
“Told you,” said Baji.
“Maybe they’re mutes,” Ramsa said. “All of them.”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Baji said.
“They could be! You don’t know!”
That wasn’t remotely funny, but Ramsa devolved into a fit of giggles, leaning forward so that the ropes strained painfully against all of their arms.
“Can you all shut up?” Chaghan’s voice. It came from several feet away.
Rin peeked her eyes open for a split second, just long enough to take in the sight of Chaghan, Qara, and Suni bound to the mast opposite her.
Chaghan was slumped against his sister. Suni was still unconscious, head drooped forward. A thick pool of saliva had collected beneath his open mouth.
“Why, hello,” said Ramsa. “Good to see you, too.”
“Shut your damn mouth,” Chaghan grumbled, before he devolved into a string of curses that ended with “Damned Nikara swine.”
“Are you high?” Ramsa let out a shrill cackle. “Tiger’s tits, Chaghan’s high—”
“I’m … not …”
“Quick, someone ask him if he’s always constipated or his face just looks that way.”
“At least I’ve got both eyes,” Chaghan snapped.
“Oh, ‘I’ve got both eyes.’ Nice one. At least I’m not so skinny a pigeon could knock me over—”
“Shut up,” Rin hissed. She opened her eyes again, trying to take stock of their surroundings. All she could see was the ocean receding behind them. “Ramsa. What do you see?”
“Just the ship’s side. Little bit of ocean.”
“Baji?”
Silence. Had he fallen asleep again?
“Baji!” she shouted.
“Hmm? What?”
“What can you see?”
“Uh. My feet. A bulkhead. The sky.”
“No, you idiot—where are we headed?”
“How the fuck should I know—wait. There’s a dot. Yeah, that’s a dot. An island, I think?”
Rin’s heartbeat quickened. Speer? Mugen? But both were a several-weeks journey away; they couldn’t be anywhere close. And she didn’t remember any islands near Ankhiluun. The old Hesperian naval bases, maybe? But those were long abandoned. If the Hesperians had come back, Nikara foreign relations had changed drastically since she’d last checked.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Not really. Hold on.” Baji was silent for a moment. “Great Tortoise. That’s a nice ship.”
“What do you mean, that’s a nice ship?”
“I mean, if that ship were a person, I would fuck that ship,” said Baji.
Rin suspected Baji wouldn’t be much help until the opium wore off. But then their vessel took a sharp turn to port, putting Rin in full view of what turned out to be, indeed, a very nice ship. They had sailed into the shadow of the largest war vessel she had ever seen: a monstrous, multidecked war junk, with several layers of catapults and portholes, and a massive trebuchet mounted on top of a deck tower.
Rin had studied naval warfare at Sinegard, though never in depth. The Imperial Navy’s own fleet had fallen into disrepair, and the only people sent to naval posts were the bottom-feeders of each class. Still, they’d learned enough about naval crafts that Rin knew this was no Imperial ship.
The Nikara couldn’t build vessels like this. It had to be a foreign battleship.
Her mind pored sluggishly over possibilities. The Hesperians hadn’t taken sides in the Third Poppy War—but if they had, then they would have allied with the Empire, which meant …
But then she heard the crew shouting commands to each other, and they were in fluent Nikara. “Halt. Ready to board.”
What Nikara general had access to a Hesperian ship?
Rin heard shouting, the sound of groaning wood, and heavy footsteps moving about the deck. She strained harder against the ropes, but all that did was chafe at her wrists; her skin stung like it had been scraped raw.
“What’s happening?” she screamed. “Who are you?”
She heard someone order a salute formation, which meant they were being boarded by someone of higher rank. A Warlord? A Hesperian?
“I think we’re about to be handed off,” Baji said. “It was nice knowing you all. Except you, Chaghan. You’re weird.”
“Fuck you,” Chaghan said.
“Wait, I’ve still got a whale bone in my back pocket,” said Ramsa. “Rin, you could try igniting just a little bit, burn through the ropes and then I’ll get it out—”
Ramsa droned on, but Rin barely heard what he was saying.
A man had just walked into her field of vision. A general, judging from his uniform. He wore a half mask over his face—a Sinegardian opera mask of cerulean-blue ceramic. But it was his tall, lean build that caught her gaze, and his gait: confident, arrogant, like he expected everyone around him to bow before him.
She knew that stride.
“Suni can handle the main guard, and I’ll commandeer the cannons, implode the ship or something—”
“Ramsa,” Rin said in a strangled voice. “Shut. Up.”
The general crossed the deck and paused in front of them.
“Why are they bound?” he asked.
Rin stiffened. She knew that voice.
One of the crew hastened over. “Sir, we were warned not to let their hands out of sight.”
“These are our people. Not prisoners. Unbind them.”
“Sir, but they—”
“I don’t enjoy repeating myself.”
It had to be him. She’d only ever met one person who could convey so much disdain in so few words.
“You’ve bound them so tight their limbs will suffer blood loss,” the general said. “If you deliver them damaged to my father, he will be very, very angry.”
“Sir, I don’t think you understand the nature of the threat—”
“Oh, I understand. We were classmates. Weren’t we, Rin?” The general knelt down before her and pulled off his mask.
Rin flinched.
The boy she remembered was so beautiful. Skin like porcelain, features finer than any sculptor could carve, delicately arched eyebrows that conveyed precisely that mixture of condescension and vulnerability that Nikara poets had been trying to describe for centuries.
Nezha wasn’t beautiful anymore.
The left side of his face was still perfect, somehow; still smooth like the glaze on fine ceramic. But the right side … the right side was mottled with scars, crisscrossing over his cheek like the plates of a tortoise shell.
Those were not natural scars. They looked nothing like the burn scars Rin had seen on bodies destroyed by gas. Nezha’s face should have been twisted and deformed, if not utterly blackened. But his skin remained as pale as ever. His porcelain face had not darkened, but rather looked like glass that had been shattered and glued back together. Those oddly geometric scars could have been drawn over his skin with a fine brush.
His mouth was pulled into a permanent sneer toward the left side of his face, revealing teeth, a mask of condescension that he couldn’t ever take off.
When Rin looked into his eyes, she saw noxious yellow fumes rolling over withering grass. She heard shrieks that dwindled into chokes. And she heard someone screaming her name, over and over and over.
She found it harder and harder to breathe. A buzzing noise filled her ears, and black spots clouded the sides of her vision like ink drops on wet parchment.
“You’re dead,” she said. “I saw you die.”
Nezha looked amused. “And you were always supposed to be the clever one.”
CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_e265b009-69be-5707-a8fc-a7b770320a11)
“What the fuck?” she screamed.
“Hello to you, too,” said Nezha. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
She couldn’t do anything but stare at him. It seemed impossible, unthinkable, that he was really alive, standing before her, speaking, breathing.
“Captain,” Nezha called. “The ropes.”
Rin felt the pressure around her wrists tighten briefly, then disappear. Her arms dropped to her sides. Blood rushed back into her extremities, sending a million shocks of lightning through her fingers. She rubbed her wrists and winced when skin came off in her hands.
“Can you stand?” Nezha asked.
She managed a nod. He pulled her to her feet. She took a step forward, and a dizzying spell of vertigo slammed into her like a wave.
“Steady.” Nezha caught her arm just as she lurched toward him.
She righted herself. “Don’t touch me.”
“I know you’re confused. But it’ll—”
“I said don’t touch me.”
He backed away, hands out. “It’ll all make sense in a minute. You’re safe. Just trust me.”
“Trust you?” she repeated. “You bombed my ship!”
“Well, it’s not technically your ship.”
“You could have killed us!” she shrieked. Her brain still felt terribly sluggish, but this fact struck her as very, very important. “You fired opium onto my ship!”
“Would you rather we fired real missiles? We were trying not to hurt you.”
“Your men bound us to the mast for hours!”
“Because they didn’t want to die!” Nezha lowered his voice. “Look, I’m sorry it came to that. We needed to get you out of Ankhiluun. We weren’t trying to hurt you.”
His placating tone only made her angrier. She wasn’t a fucking child; he couldn’t calm her with soothing whispers. “You let me think you were dead.”
“What did you want, a letter? It’s not like it was terribly easy to track you down, either.”
“A letter would have been better than bombing my ship!”
“Are you ever going to let that go?”
“It’s a rather large thing to let go!”
“I will explain everything if you come with me,” he said. “Can you walk? Please? My father’s waiting for us.”
“Your father?” she repeated dumbly.
“Come on, Rin. You know who my father is.”
She blinked at him. Then it hit her.
Oh.
Either she’d been hit by a massive stroke of fortune, or she was about to die.
“Just me?” she asked.
Nezha’s eyes flickered toward the Cike, lingering briefly on Chaghan. “I was told you’re the commander now?”
She hesitated. She hadn’t been acting much like a commander. But the title was hers, even if in name only. “Yes.”
“Then just you.”
“I’m not going without my men.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”
She stuck her chin out. “Sucks, then.”
“Do you seriously think any of them are in a state for an audience with a Warlord?” Nezha gestured toward the Cike. Suni was still asleep, the puddle of drool widening under his mouth. Chaghan stared open-mouthed at the sky, fascinated, and Ramsa had his eyes squeezed shut, giggling at nothing in particular.
It was the first time Rin had ever been glad she’d developed such a high tolerance for opium.
“I need your word you won’t hurt them,” she said.
Nezha looked offended. “Please. You’re not prisoners.”
“Then what are we?”
“Mercenaries,” he said delicately. “Think of it that way. You’re mercenaries out of a job, and my father has a very generous offer for your consideration.”
“What if we don’t like it?”
“I really think you will.” Nezha motioned for Rin to follow him down the deck, but she remained where she stood.
“Feed my men while we’re gone, then. A hot meal, not leftovers.”
“Rin, come on—”
“Give them baths, too. And then take them to their own quarters. Not the brig. Those are my terms. Also, Ramsa doesn’t like fish.”
“He’s been operating out of the coast and he doesn’t like fish?”
“He’s picky.”
Nezha muttered something to the captain, who adopted a face like he’d been forced to sniff curdled milk.
“Done,” Nezha said. “Now will you come?”
She took a step and stumbled. Nezha extended his arm toward her. She let him help her to the edge of the ship.
“Thanks, Commander,” Ramsa called behind them. “Try not to die.”
The Hesperian warship Seagrim loomed huge over their rowboat, swallowing them completely in its shadow. Rin couldn’t help but stare in awe at its sheer scale. She could have fit half of Tikany on that warship, temple included.
How did a monstrosity like that stay afloat? And how did it move? She couldn’t see any oars. The Seagrim appeared to be just like the Cormorant, a ghost vessel with no visible crew.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a shaman powering that thing,” she said.
“If only. No, that’s a paddle-wheel boat.”
“What’s that?”
He grinned. “Have you heard the legend of the Old Sage of Arlong?”
She rolled her eyes. “Who’s that, your grandfather?”
“Great-grandfather. The legend goes, the old sage was staring at a water wheel watering the fields and thought about reversing the circumstances; if he moved the wheel, then the water must move. Fairly obvious principle, isn’t it? Incredible how long it took for someone to apply it to ships.
“See, the old Imperial ships were idiotically designed. Propelled by sculls from the top deck. Problem with that is if your rowers get shot out, you’re dead in the water. But the paddle-wheel pushers are on the bottom deck. Entirely enclosed by the hull, totally protected from enemy artillery. A bit of an improvement from old models, eh?”
Nezha seemed to enjoy talking about ships. Rin heard a distinct note of pride in his voice as he pointed out the ridges at the bottom of the warship. “You see those? They’re concealing the paddle wheels.”
She couldn’t help but stare at his face while he talked. Up close his scars weren’t so unsettling, but rather oddly compelling. She wondered if it hurt him to talk.
“What is it?” Nezha asked. He touched his cheek. “Ugly, isn’t it? I can put the mask back on, if it’s bothering you.”
“It’s not that,” she said hastily.
“What, then?”
She blinked again. “I just … I’m sorry.”
He frowned. “For what?”
She stared at him, searching for evidence of sarcasm, but his expression was open, concerned.
“It’s my fault,” she said.
He stopped rowing. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it was.” She swallowed. “I could have pulled you out. I heard you calling my name. You saw me.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Yes, you do. Stop lying.”
“Rin. Don’t do this.” Nezha stopped rowing to reach out and grasp her hand. “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you.”
“You should.”
“I don’t.”
“I could have pulled you out,” she said again. “I wanted to, I was going to, but Altan wouldn’t let me, and—”
“So blame Altan,” Nezha said in a hard voice, and resumed rowing. “The Federation was never going to kill me. The Mugenese like to keep prisoners. Someone figured out I was a warlord’s son, so they kept me for ransom. They thought they might leverage me into a surrender from Dragon Province.”
“How’d you escape?”
“I didn’t. I was in the camp when word got out that Emperor Ryohai was dead. The soldiers who had captured me arranged to trade me back to my father in exchange for a safe exit from the country.”
“Did they get it?” she asked.
He grimaced. “They got an exit.”
When they reached the hull of the warship, Nezha hooked four ropes to the ends of the rowboat and whistled at the sky. Seconds later the boat began to rock as sailors hoisted them up.
The main deck hadn’t been visible from the rowboat, but now Rin saw that soldiers were posted at every corner of the ship. They were Nikara in their features—they must have been from Dragon Province, but Rin noticed they did not wear Militia uniforms.
The Seventh Division soldiers she had met at Khurdalain wore green Militia gear with the insignia of a dragon stitched into their armbands. But these soldiers were decked out in dark blue, with a silver dragon pattern visible over their chests.
“This way.” Nezha led her down the stairs to the second deck and down the passageway until they stopped before a set of wooden doors guarded by a tall, spare man holding a blue-ribboned halberd.
“Captain Eriden.” Nezha stopped and saluted, though according to uniform he should have been the higher rank.
“General.” Captain Eriden looked like a man who’d never smiled in his life. Deep frown lines seemed permanently etched into his gaunt, spare face. He dipped his head to Nezha, then turned to Rin. “Hold out your arms.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Nezha.
“With all due respect, sir, you are not the one sworn to guard your father’s life,” Eriden said. “Hold out your arms.”
Rin obeyed. “You’re not going to find anything.”
Normally she kept daggers in her boots and inner shirt, but she could feel their absence; the Cormorant’s crew must have removed them already.
“Still have to check.” Eriden peered inside her sleeves. “I’m to warn you that if you dare to so much as point a chopstick in the Dragon Warlord’s direction, then you’ll be shot full of crossbow bolts faster than you can breathe.” His hands moved up her shirt. “Do not forget we also have your men as hostages.”
Rin shot Nezha an accusing glare. “You said we weren’t hostages.”
“They aren’t,” Nezha said. He turned to Eriden, eyes hard. “They aren’t. They’re our guests, Captain.”
“Call them whatever you like.” Eriden shrugged. “But try anything funny and they’re dead.”
Rin shifted so that he could feel the small of her back for weapons. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
Finished, Eriden wiped his hands off on his uniform, turned, and grasped the door handles. “In that case, I’m to extend you a welcome on behalf of the Dragon Warlord.”
“Fang Runin, isn’t it? Welcome to the Seagrim.”
For a moment Rin could only gape. She couldn’t look at the Dragon Warlord and not see Nezha. Yin Vaisra was a grown version of his son without scars. He possessed all the infuriating beauty of the House of Yin—pale skin, black hair without a single streak of gray, and fine features that looked like they had been carved from marble—cold, arrogant, and imposing.
She’d heard endless gossip about the Dragon Warlord during her years at Sinegard. He ruled the richest province in the Empire by far. He’d single-handedly led the defense of the Red Cliffs in the Second Poppy War, had obliterated a Federation fleet with only a small cluster of Nikara fishing boats. He’d been chafing under Daji’s rule for years. When he’d failed to appear at the Empress’s summer parade for the third consecutive year, the apprentices had speculated so loudly that he was planning open treason that Nezha had lost his cool and sent one of them to the infirmary.
“Rin is fine.” Her words came out sounding frail and tiny, swallowed up by the vast gilded room.
“A vulgar diminutive,” Vaisra declared. Even his voice was a deeper version of Nezha’s, a hard drawl that seemed permanently coated in condescension. “They’re fond of those in the south. But I shall call you Runin. Please, sit down.”
She cast a fleeting glance at the oak table between them. It had a low surface, and the high-backed chairs looked terribly heavy. If she sat, her knees would be trapped. “I’ll stand.”
Vaisra raised an eyebrow. “Have I made you uncomfortable?”
“You bombed my ship,” Rin said. “So yes, a little.”
“My dear girl, if I wanted you dead, your body would be at the bottom of Omonod Bay.”
“Then why isn’t it?”
“Because we need you.” Vaisra drew out his own chair and sat, gesturing to Nezha to do the same. “It hasn’t been easy to find you, you know. We’ve been sailing down the coast of the Snake Province for weeks now. We even checked Mugen.”
He said it like he’d meant to startle her, and it worked. She couldn’t help but flinch. He watched her, waiting.
She took the bait. “What did you find?”
“Just a few fringe islands. Of course, they had no clue of your whereabouts, but we stayed a week or so to make sure. People will say anything under torture.”
Her fingers tightened into fists. “They’re still alive?”
She felt like someone had taken a bar to her rib cage. She knew Federation soldiers remained on the mainland, but not that civilians were still alive. She’d thought she had put a permanent end to the country.
What if she hadn’t? The great strategist Sunzi cautioned to always finish off an enemy in case they came back stronger. What would happen when Federation civilians regrouped? What if she still had a war to fight?
“Their invasion is over,” Vaisra reassured her. “You made certain of that. The main islands have been destroyed. Emperor Ryohai and his advisers are dead. A few cities on the edges of the archipelago remain standing, but the Federation has erupted into frothy madness, like ants pouring out of a hill once you’ve killed the queen. Some of them are sailing off the islands in droves, seeking refuge on Nikara shores, but … well. We’re getting rid of them as they come.”
“How?”
“The usual way.” His lips twitched into a smile. “Why don’t you sit?”
Reluctantly, she drew the chair out as far from the table as she could and sat at the very edge, knees locked together.
“There,” Vaisra said. “Now we’re friends.”
Rin decided to be blunt. “Are you here to take me back to the capital?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“Your services.”
“I’m not murdering anyone for you.”
“Dream a little bigger, my dear.” Vaisra leaned forward. “I want to overthrow the Empire. I’d like you to help.”
The room fell silent. Rin studied Vaisra’s face, waiting for him to burst into laughter. But he looked so terribly sincere—and so did Nezha—that she couldn’t help but cackle.
“Is something funny?” Vaisra asked.
“Are you mad?”
“‘Visionary,’ I think, is the word you want. The Empire is on the verge of falling apart. A revolution is the only alternative to decades of civil warfare, and someone has to start the ball rolling.”
“And you’d bet on your odds against the Militia?” Rin laughed again. “You’re one province against eleven. It’ll be a massacre.”
“Don’t be so certain,” Vaisra said. “The provinces are angry. They’re hurting. And for the first time since any of the Warlords can remember, the specter of the Federation has disappeared. Fear used to be a unifying force. Now the cracks in the foundation grow day by day. Do you know how many local insurrections have erupted in the past month? Daji is doing everything she can to keep the Empire united, but the institution is a sinking ship that’s rotted at the core. It may drift for a while, but eventually it will be dashed to pieces against the rocks.”
“And you think you can destroy it and build a new one.”
“Isn’t that precisely what you want?”
“Killing one woman is not the same thing as overthrowing a regime.”
“But you can’t evaluate those events in a vacuum,” said Vaisra. “What do you think happens if you succeed? Who steps into Daji’s shoes? And whoever that person is, do you trust them to rule the Twelve Provinces? To be any kinder to people like you than Daji was?”
Rin hadn’t thought that far. She had never bothered to think much about life after she’d killed Daji. Once she’d gotten Altan’s revenge, she wasn’t sure that she even wanted to keep living.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she said.
“Then think of it this way,” Vaisra said. “I can give you a chance to take your revenge with the full support of an army of thousands.”
“Would I have to take orders?” she asked.
“Rin—” Nezha started.
“Would I have to take orders?”
“Yes,” Vaisra said. “Of course.”
“Then you can fuck off.”
Vaisra looked confused. “All soldiers take orders.”
“I’m not a soldier anymore,” she said. “I put in my time, I gave the Empire my loyalty, and that got me strapped to a table in a Mugenese research lab. I’m done taking orders.”
“We are not the Empire.”
She shrugged. “You want to be.”
“You little fool.” Vaisra slammed his hand against the table. Rin flinched. “Look outside yourself for a moment. This isn’t just about you, it’s about the future of our people.”
“Your people,” she said. “I’m a Speerly.”
“You are a scared little girl reacting from anger and loss in the most shortsighted way possible. All you want is to get your revenge. But you could be so much more. Do so much more. Listen to me. You could change history.”
“Haven’t I changed history enough?” Rin whispered.
She didn’t care about anyone’s visions for the future. She’d stopped wanting to be great, to carve out her place in history, a long time ago. She’d since learned the cost.
And she didn’t know how to say that she was just so tired.
All she wanted was to get Altan’s revenge. She wanted to put a blade in Daji’s heart.
And then she wanted to disappear.
“Your people died not because of Daji but because of this Empire,” Vaisra said. “The provinces have become weak, isolated, technologically inept. Compared to the Federation, compared to Hesperia, we are not just decades but centuries behind. And the problem isn’t our people, it’s their rulers. The twelve-province system is an antiquated, inefficient yoke dragging the Nikara behind. Imagine a country that was truly united. Imagine an army whose factions weren’t constantly at war with one another. Who could possibly defeat us?”
Vaisra’s eyes glimmered as he spread his hands across the table. “I am going to transform the Empire into a republic—a great republic, founded on the individual freedom of men. Instead of Warlords, we would have elected officials. Instead of an Empress, we would have a parliament, overseen by an elected president. I would make it impossible for a single person like Su Daji to bring ruin upon this realm. What do you think of that?”
A lovely speech, Rin thought, if Vaisra had been talking to someone more gullible.
Maybe the Empire did need a new government. Maybe a democracy would usher in peace and stability. But Vaisra had failed to realize that she simply did not care.
“I just finished fighting one war,” she said. “I’m not terribly interested in fighting another.”
“So what is your strategy? To roam up and down the coastline, killing off the only officials who have been brave enough to keep opium outside their borders?” Vaisra made a noise of disgust. “If that’s your goal, you’re just as bad as the Mugenese.”
She bristled. “I’ll kill Daji eventually.”
“And how, pray tell?”
“I don’t have to tell you—”
“By renting a pirate ship?” he mocked. “By entering into losing negotiations with a pirate queen?”
“Moag was going to give us supplies.” Rin felt the blood rushing to her face. “And we would have had the money, too, until you assholes showed up—”
“You’re so terribly naive. Don’t you get it? Moag was always going to sell you out. Did you think she would pass up that bounty on your heads? You’re lucky our offer was better.”
“Moag wouldn’t,” Rin said. “Moag knows my value.”
“You’re assuming Moag is rational. And she is, until it comes to great sums of money. You can buy her off with any amount of silver, and that I have in abundance.” Vaisra shook his head like a disappointed teacher. “Don’t you get it? Moag only flourishes while Daji is on the throne, because Daji’s isolationist policies create Ankhiluun’s competitive advantage. Moag only benefits as long as she operates outside the law, while the rest of the country is in such deep shit that it’s more profitable to operate inside her boundaries than without. Once trade becomes legitimized, she’s out of an empire. Which means the very last thing she wants is for you to succeed.”
Rin opened her mouth, realized she had nothing to say, and closed it. For the first time, she did not have a counterargument.
“Please, Rin,” Nezha interjected. “Be honest with yourself. You can’t fight a war on your own. You are six people. The Vipress is guarded by a corps of elite soldiers that you’ve never gone up against. And that’s not to mention her own martial arts skills, which you know nothing about.”
“And you no longer have the advantage of surprise,” said Vaisra. “Daji knows you are coming for her, which means you need a way to get closer to her. You need me.”
He gestured to the walls around them. “Look at this ship. This is the very best that Hesperian naval technology can offer. Twelve cannons lined on every side.”
Rin rolled her eyes. “Congratulations?”
“I have ten more ships like it.”
That gave her pause.
Vaisra leaned forward. “Now you get it. You’re a smart girl; you can run the calculations yourself. The Empire does not have a functioning navy. I do. We will control this Empire’s waterways. The war will be over in six months at worst.”
Rin tapped her fingers against the table, considering. Could they win this war? And what if they did?
She couldn’t help but balance the possibilities—she’d been trained too well at Sinegard not to.
If what Vaisra said was true, then she had to admit this was the perfect time to launch a coup. The Militia at present was fragmented and weak. The provinces had been decimated by Federation battalions. And they might switch sides quickly, once they learned the truth about Daji’s deception.
The benefits of joining an army were also obvious. She’d never have to worry about her supplies. She’d have access to intelligence she couldn’t get on her own. She’d have free transportation to wherever she wanted to go.
And yet.
“What happens if I say no?” she asked. “Are you going to compel me into service? Make me your own Speerly slave?”
Vaisra didn’t take the bait. “The Republic will be founded on freedom of choice. If you refuse to join, then we can’t make you.”
“Then maybe I’ll leave,” she said, mostly to see how he would respond. “I’ll go into hiding. I’ll bide my time. Get stronger.”
“You could do that.” Vaisra sounded bored, like he knew she was just pulling objections out of her ass. “Or you could fight for me and get the revenge you want. This isn’t hard, Runin. And you’re not really considering saying no. You’re just pretending to think because you like being a little brat.”
Rin glared at him.
It was such a rational option. She hated that it was a rational option. And she hated more that Vaisra knew that, and knew she’d arrive at the same conclusion, and was now simply mocking her until her mind caught up to his.
“I have more money and resources at my disposal than anyone in this empire,” Vaisra said. “Weapons, men, information—anything you need, you can get it from me. Work for me and you will want for nothing.”
“I’m not putting my life in your hands,” she said. The last time she had pledged her loyalty to someone, she’d been betrayed. Altan had died.
“I will never lie to you,” said Vaisra.
“Everybody lies to me.”
Vaisra shrugged. “Then don’t trust me. Act purely in your own interest. But I think you’ll find it clear soon enough that you don’t have many other options.”
Rin’s temples throbbed. She rubbed her eyes, trying desperately to think through all the possibilities. There had to be a catch. She knew better than to take offers like this at face value. She’d learned her lesson from Moag—never trust someone who holds all the cards.
She had to buy herself some time. “I can’t make a decision without speaking to my people.”
“Do as you like,” Vaisra said. “But have an answer for me by dawn.”
“Or what?” she asked.
“Or you’ll have to find your own way back to shore,” he said. “And it’s a long swim.”
“Just to clarify, the Dragon Warlord does not want to kill us?” Ramsa asked.
“No,” said Rin. “He wants us in his army.”
He wrinkled his nose. “But why? The Federation’s gone.”
“Exactly that. He thinks it’s his opportunity to overthrow the Empire.”
“That’s actually clever,” Baji said. “Think about it. Rob the house while it’s on fire, or however the saying goes.”
“I don’t think that’s a real saying,” Ramsa said.
“It’s a little more noble than that,” said Rin. “He wants to build a republic instead. Overthrow the Warlord system. Construct a parliament, appoint elected officials, restructure how governance works across the Empire.”
Baji chuckled. “Democracy? Really?”
“It’s worked for the Hesperians,” said Qara.
“Has it?” Baji asked. “Hasn’t the western continent been at war for the past decade?”
“The question isn’t whether democracy could work,” Rin said. “That doesn’t matter. The question is whether we enlist.”
“This could be a trap,” Ramsa pointed out. “He could be bringing you to Daji.”
“He could have just killed us when we were drugged, then. We’re dangerous passengers to have on board. It wouldn’t be worth the risk unless Vaisra really did think he could convince us to join him.”
“So?” Ramsa asked. “Can he convince us?”
“I don’t know,” Rin admitted. “Maybe.”
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. She wanted Vaisra’s ships. His weapons, his soldiers, his power.
But if things went south, if Vaisra hurt the Cike, then this fell on her shoulders. And she couldn’t let the Cike down again.
“There’s still a benefit to going it on our own,” said Baji. “Means we don’t have to take orders.”
Rin shook her head. “We’re still six people. You can’t assassinate a head of state with six people.”
Never mind that she’d been perfectly willing to try just a few hours ago.
“And what if he betrays us?” Aratsha asked.
Baji shrugged. “We could always just cut our losses and defect. Run back to Ankhiluun.”
“We can’t run back to Ankhiluun,” Rin said.
“Why not?”
She told them about Moag’s ploy. “She’d have sold us to Daji if Vaisra hadn’t offered her something better. He sank our ship because he wanted her to think that we’d died.”
“So it’s Vaisra or nothing,” Ramsa said. “That’s just fantastic.”
“Is this Yin Vaisra really so bad?” Suni asked. “He’s just one man.”
“That’s true,” said Baji. “He can’t be any scarier than the other Warlords. The Ox and Ram Warlords weren’t anything special. It’s nepotism and inbreeding all around.”
“Oh, so like how you were produced,” said Ramsa.
“Listen, you little bitch—”
“Join them,” Chaghan said. His voice was hardly louder than a whisper, but the cabin fell silent. It was the first time he had spoken all evening.
“You’re debating this like you get to decide,” he said. “You don’t. You really think Vaisra’s going to let you go if you say no? He’s too smart for that. He’s just told you his intentions to commit treason. He’ll have you killed if there’s even the slightest risk you’d go to anyone else.” He gave Rin a grim look. “Face it, Speerly. It’s join up or die.”
“You’re gloating,” Rin accused.
“I would never,” said Nezha. He’d been beaming the entire way down the passageway, showing her around the warship like some ebullient tour guide. “But glad to have you on board.”
“Shut up.”
“Can’t I be happy? I’ve missed you.” Nezha stopped before a room on the first deck. “After you.”
“What’s this?”
“Your new quarters.” He opened the door for her. “Look, it locks from the inside four different ways. Thought you’d like that.”
She did like it. The room was twice as large as her quarters on her old ship, and the bed was a proper bed, not a cot with lice-ridden sheets. She stepped inside. “I have this all to myself?”
“I told you.” Nezha sounded smug. “The Dragon Army has its benefits.”
“Ah, that’s what you call yourselves?”
“Technically it’s the Army of the Republic. Nonprovincial, and all that.”
“You’d need allies for that.”
“We’re working on it.”
She turned toward the porthole. Even in the darkness she could see how fast the Seagrim was moving, slicing through black waves at speeds faster than Aratsha had ever been capable of. By morning Moag and her fleet would be dozens of miles behind them.
But Rin couldn’t leave Ankhiluun like this. Not yet. She had one more thing to retrieve.
“You said Moag thinks we’re dead?” she asked.
“I’d be surprised if she didn’t. We even tossed some charred corpses in the water.”
“Whose bodies?”
Nezha stretched his arms over his head. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.” The sun had just set over the water. Soon the Ankhiluuni pirate patrol would begin to make its rounds around the coast. “Do you have a smaller boat? One that can sneak past Moag’s ships?”
“Of course,” he scoffed. “Why, do you need to go back?”
“I don’t,” she said. “But you’ve forgotten someone.”
By all accounts Kitay’s audience with Vaisra was an unmitigated disaster. Captain Eriden wouldn’t let Rin onto the second deck, so she was unable to eavesdrop, but about an hour after they brought Kitay on board, she saw Nezha and two soldiers dragging him to the lower level. She ran down the passageway to catch up.
“—and I don’t care if you’re pissed, you can’t throw food at the Dragon Warlord,” said Nezha.
Kitay’s face was purple with anger. If he was at all relieved to see Nezha alive, he didn’t show it. “Your men tried to blow up my house!”
“They tend to do that,” Rin said.
“We had to make it look like you’d died,” Nezha said.
“I was still in it!” Kitay cried. “And so were my ledgers!”
Nezha looked amazed. “Who gives a shit about your ledgers?”
“I was doing the city’s taxes.”
“What?”
Kitay stuck his lower lip out. “And I was almost done.”
“What the fuck?” Nezha blinked. “I don’t—Rin, you talk some sense into this idiot.”
“I’m the idiot?” Kitay demanded. “Me? You’re the ones who think it’d be a good idea to start a bloody civil war—”
“Because the Empire needs one,” Nezha insisted. “Daji’s the reason why the Federation invaded; she’s the reason why Golyn Niis—”
“You were not at Golyn Niis,” Kitay snarled. “Don’t talk to me about Golyn Niis.”
“Fine—I’m sorry—but shouldn’t that justify a regime change? She’s hamstrung the Militia, she’s fucked our foreign relations, she’s not fit to rule—”
“You have no proof of that.”
“We do have proof.” Nezha stopped walking. “Look at your scars. Look at me. The proof’s written on our skin.”
“I don’t care,” Kitay said. “I don’t give a shit what your politics are, I want to go home.”
“And do what?” Nezha asked. “And fight for whom? There’s a war coming, Kitay, and when it’s here, there will be no such thing as neutrality.”
“That’s not true. I shall seclude myself and live the virtuous life of a scholarly hermit,” Kitay said stiffly.
“Stop,” Rin said. “Nezha’s right. Now you’re just being stubborn.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “Of course you’re in on this madness. What did I expect?”
“Maybe it’s madness,” she said. “But it’s better than fighting for the Militia. Come on, Kitay. You know you can’t go back to the status quo.”
She could see it in Kitay’s eyes, how badly he wanted to resolve the contradiction between loyalty and justice—because Kitay, poor, upright, moral Kitay, always so concerned with doing what was right, couldn’t reconcile himself to the fact that a military coup might be justified.
He flung his hands in the air. “Even so, you think I’m in a position to join your republic? My father is the Imperial defense minister.”
“Then he’s serving the wrong ruler,” said Nezha.
“You don’t understand! My entire family is at the heart of the capital. They could use them against me—my mother, my sister—”
“We could extract them,” Nezha said.
“Oh, like you extracted me? Very nice, I’m sure they’ll love getting abducted in the middle of the night while their house burns down.”
“Calm down,” Rin said. “They’d still be alive. You wouldn’t have to worry.”
“Like you’d know how it feels,” Kitay snapped. “The closest thing you had to a family was a suicidal maniac who got himself killed on a mission almost as stupid as this one.”
She could tell he knew he’d crossed the line, even as he said it. Nezha looked stunned. Kitay blinked rapidly, refusing to meet her eyes. Rin hoped for a moment that he might cave, that he’d apologize, but he simply looked away.
She felt a pang in her chest. The Kitay she knew would have apologized.
A long silence followed. Nezha stared at the wall, Kitay at the floor, and neither of them dared to meet Rin’s eyes.
Finally Kitay held out his hands, as if waiting for someone to bind them. “Best get me down to the brig,” he said. “Don’t want your prisoners running around on deck.”
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_e81ed1cb-e319-5700-bfb1-d884f35f870a)
When Rin returned to her private quarters, she locked the door carefully from the inside, sliding all four bolts into place, and propped a chair against the door for good measure. Then she lay back on her bed. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, to make herself internalize a brief sense of security. She was safe. She was with allies. No one was coming for her.
Sleep didn’t come. Something was missing.
It took her a moment to realize what it was. She was searching for that rocking feeling of the bed shifting over water, and it wasn’t there. The Seagrim was such a massive warship that its decks mimicked solid land. For once, she was on stable ground.
This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She had a place to be and a place to go. She wasn’t drifting anymore, wasn’t desperately scrambling to put together plans she knew would likely fail.
She stared up at the ceiling, trying to will her racing heartbeat to slow down. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong—a deep-seated discomfort that wasn’t just the absence of rolling waves.
It began with a prickling feeling in her fingertips. Then a flush of heat started in her palms and crept up her arms to her chest. The headache began a minute after that, searing flashes of pain that made her grind her teeth.
And then fire started burning at the back of her eyelids.
She saw Speer and she saw the Federation. She saw ashes and bones blurred and melted into one, one lone figure striding toward her, slender and handsome, trident in hand.
“You stupid cunt,” Altan whispered. He reached forward. His hands made a necklace around her throat.
Her eyes flew open. She sat up and breathed in and out, deep and slow and desperate breaths, trying to quell her sudden swell of panic.
Then she realized what was wrong.
She had no access to opium on this ship.
No. Calm. Stay calm.
Once upon a time at Sinegard, back when Master Jiang had been trying to help her shut her mind to the Phoenix, he’d taught her techniques to clear her thoughts and disappear into a void that imitated nonexistence. He’d taught her how to think like she was dead.
She had shunned his lessons then. She tried to recall them now. She forced her mind through the mantras he’d made her repeat for hours. Nothingness. I am nothing. I do not exist. I feel nothing, I regret nothing … I am sand, I am dust, I am ash.
It didn’t work. Surges of panic kept breaking the calm. The prickling in her fingers intensified into twisting knives. She was on fire, every part of her burned excruciatingly, and Altan’s voice echoed from everywhere.
It should have been you.
She ran to the door, kicked the chair away, undid the locks, and ran barefoot out into the passageway. Stabs of pain pricked the backs of her eyes, made her vision spark and flash.
She squinted, struggling to see in the dim light. Nezha had said his cabin was at the end of the passage … so this one, it had to be … She banged frantically against the door until it opened and he appeared in the gap.
“Rin? What are you—”
She grabbed his shirt. “Where’s your physician?”
His eyebrows flew up. “Are you hurt?”
“Where?”
“First deck, third door to the right, but—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish before she started sprinting toward the stairs. She heard him running after her but she didn’t care; all that mattered was that she get some opium, or laudanum, or whatever was on board.
But the physician wouldn’t let her into his office. He blocked the entrance with his body, one hand against the doorframe, the other clenched on the door handle.
“Dragon Warlord’s orders.” He sounded like he’d been expecting her. “I’m not to give you anything.”
“But I need—the pain, I can’t stand it, I need—”
He started to close the door. “You’ll have to do without.”
She jammed her foot in the door. “Just a little,” she begged. She didn’t care how pathetic she sounded, she just needed something. Anything. “Please.”
“I have my orders,” he said. “Nothing I can do.”
“Damn it!” she screamed. The physician flinched and slammed the door shut, but she was already running in the opposite direction, feet pounding as she neared the stairs.
She had to get to the top deck, away from everyone. She could feel the pricks of malicious memory pressing like shards of glass into her mind; bits and pieces of suppressed recollections that swam vividly before her eyes—corpses at Golyn Niis, corpses in the research facility, corpses at Speer, and the soldiers, all with Shiro’s face, jeering and pointing and laughing, and that made her so furious, made the rage build and build—
“Rin!”
Nezha had caught up with her. His hand grasped her shoulder. “What the hell—”
She whirled around. “Where’s your father?”
“I think he’s meeting with his admirals,” he stammered. “But I wouldn’t—”
She pushed past him. Nezha reached for her arm, but she ducked away and raced through the passageway and down the stairs to Vaisra’s office. She jiggled the handles—locked—then kicked furiously at the doors until they swung open from inside.
Vaisra didn’t look remotely surprised to see her.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we’ll need some privacy, please.”
The men inside vacated their seats without a word. None of them looked at her. Vaisra pulled the doors shut, locked them, and turned around. “What can I do for you?”
“You told the physician not to give me opium,” Rin said.
“That is correct.”
Her voice trembled. “Look, asshole, I need my—”
“Oh, no, Runin.” Vaisra lifted a finger and wagged it, as if chiding a small child. “I should have mentioned. A last condition of your enlistment. I do not tolerate opium addicts in my army.”
“I’m not an addict, I just …” A fresh wave of pain racked her head and she broke off, wincing.
“You’re no good to me high. I need you alert. I need someone capable of infiltrating the Autumn Palace and killing the Empress, not some opium-riddled sack of shit.”
“You don’t get it,” she said. “If you don’t drug me, I will incinerate everyone on this ship.”
He shrugged. “Then we’ll throw you overboard.”
She could only stare at him. This made no sense to her. How could he remain so infuriatingly calm? Why wasn’t he caving in, cowering in terror? This wasn’t how it was supposed to work—she was supposed to threaten him and he was supposed to do what she wanted, that was always how it worked—
Why hadn’t she scared him?
Desperate, she resorted to begging. “You don’t know how much this hurts. It’s in my mind—the god is always in my mind, and it hurts …”
“It’s not the god.” Vaisra stood up and crossed the room toward her. “It’s the anger. And it’s your fear. You’ve seen battle for the first time, and your nerves can’t shut down. You’re frightened all the time. You think everyone’s out to get you, and you want them to be out to get you because then that’ll give you an excuse to hurt them. That’s not a Speerly problem, it’s a universal experience of soldiers. And you can’t cure it with opium. There’s no running from it.”
“Then what—”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “You face it. You accept that it’s your reality now. You fight it.”
Couldn’t he understand that she’d tried? Did he think it was easy? “No,” she said. “I need—”
He cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
Rin’s tongue felt terribly heavy in her mouth. Sweat broke out over her body; she could see it beading on her hands.
He raised his voice. “Are you contradicting my orders?”
She took a shuddering breath. “I—I can’t. Fight it.”
“Ah, Runin. You don’t understand. You’re my soldier now. You follow orders. I tell you to jump, you ask how high.”
“But I can’t,” she repeated, frustrated.
Vaisra lifted his left hand, briefly examined his knuckles, and then slammed the back of his hand across her face.
She stumbled backward, more from the shock than the force. Her face registered no pain, only an intense sting, like she’d walked straight into a bolt of lightning. She touched a finger to her lip. It came away bloody.
“You hit me,” she said, dazed.
He grasped her chin tightly in his fingers and forced her to look up at him. She was too stunned to feel any rage. She wasn’t angry, she was only afraid. No one dared to touch her like this. No one had for a long time.
No one since Altan.
“I’ve broken in Speerlies before.” Vaisra traced a thumb across her cheek. “You’re not the first. Sallow skin. Sunken eyes. You’re smoking your life away. Anyone could smell it on you. Do you know why the Speerlies died young? It wasn’t their penchant for constant warfare, and it wasn’t their god. They were smoking themselves to death. Right now I wouldn’t give you six months.”
He dug his nails into her skin so hard that she gasped. “That ends now. You’re cut off. You can smoke yourself to death after you’ve done what I need you for. But only after.”
Rin stared at him in shock. The pain was starting to seep in, first a little sting and then a great throbbing bruise across her entire face. A sob rose up in her throat. “But it hurts so much …”
“Oh, Runin. Poor little Runin.” He smoothed her hair out of her eyes and leaned in close. “Fuck your pain. What you’re dealing with is nothing that a little discipline can’t solve. You’re capable of blocking out the Phoenix. Your mind can build up its own defenses, and you just haven’t done it because you’re using the opium as a safe way out.”
“Because I need—”
“You need discipline.” Vaisra forced her head up farther. “You must concentrate. Fortify your mind. I know you hear the screaming. Learn to live with it. Altan did.”
Rin could taste blood staining her teeth when she spoke. “I’m not Altan.”
“Then learn to be,” he said.
So Rin suffered alone in her quarters, with the door bolted shut, guarded from the outside by three soldiers, at her own request.
She couldn’t bear lying on her bed. The sheets scratched at her skin and exacerbated the terrible prickling that had spread across her body. She wound up curled on the floor with her head between her knees, rocking back and forth, biting her knuckles to keep from screaming. Her whole body cramped and shivered, racked with wave after wave of what felt like someone stamping slowly on each of her internal organs.
The ship’s physician had refused to give her any sedatives on the grounds that she would just trade her opium addiction for a milder substance, so she had nothing to silence her mind, nothing to quell the visions that flashed through her eyes every time she closed them, a combination of the Phoenix’s never-ending visual tour of horrors and her own opioid-driven hallucinations.
And, of course, Altan. Her visions always came back to Altan. Sometimes he was burning on the pier; sometimes he was strapped to an operating table, groaning in pain, and sometimes he wasn’t injured at all, but those visions hurt the most, because then he would be talking to her—
Her cheek still burned from the force of Vaisra’s blow, but in her visions it was Altan who struck her, smiling cruelly as she stared stupidly up at him.
“You hit me,” she said.
“I had to,” he answered. “Someone had to. You deserved it.”
Did she deserve it? She didn’t know. The only version of the truth that mattered was Altan’s, and in her visions, Altan thought she deserved to die.
“You’re a failure,” he said.
“You can’t come close to what I did,” he said.
“It should have been you,” he said.
And under everything, the unspoken command: Avenge me, avenge me, avenge me …
Sometimes, fleetingly, the visions became a terribly twisted fantasy where Altan was not hurting her. A version where he loved her instead, and his strikes were caresses. But they were fundamentally irreconcilable because Altan’s nature was the same as the fire that had devoured him: if he didn’t burn everyone around him, then he wasn’t himself.
Sleep came finally through sheer exhaustion, but then only in short, fitful bursts; every time she nodded off she awoke screaming, and it was only by biting her knuckles and pressing herself into the corner that she could remain quiet throughout the night.
“Fuck you, Vaisra,” she whispered. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
But she couldn’t hate Vaisra, not really. It may have just been the sheer exhaustion; she was so racked with fear, grief, and rage that it was a trial to feel anything more. But she knew she needed this. She’d known for months she was killing herself and that she didn’t have the self-control to stop, that the only person who might have stopped her was dead.
She needed someone who was capable of controlling her like no one since Altan could. She hated to admit it, but she knew that in Vaisra she might have found a savior.
Daytime was worse. Sunlight was a constant hammer on Rin’s skull. But if she stayed cooped up in her quarters any longer, she would lose her mind, so Nezha accompanied her outside, keeping a tight grip on her arm while they walked along the top deck.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
It was a stupid question, asked more to break the silence than anything, because it should have been obvious how she was doing: she hadn’t slept, she was trembling uncontrollably from both exhaustion and withdrawal, and eventually, she hoped, she would reach the point where she simply fell unconscious.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“About what?”
“Anything. Literally anything else.”
So he started telling her court stories in a low murmur that wouldn’t give her a headache; trivial tales of gossip about who was fucking this Warlord’s wife, who had really fathered that Warlord’s son.
Rin watched him while he spoke. If she focused on the most minute details of his face, it distracted her from the pain, just for a little bit. The way his left eye opened just slightly wider than his right now. The way his eyebrows arched. The way his scars curled over his right cheek to resemble a poppy flower.
He was so much taller than she was. She had to crane her head to look up at him. When had he gotten so tall? At Sinegard they had been about the same height, nearly the same build, until their second year, when he’d started bulking up at a ridiculous pace. But then, at Sinegard they had just been children, stupid, naive, playing at war games that they had never seriously believed would become their reality.
Rin turned her gaze to the river. The Seagrim had moved inland, was traveling upstream on the Murui now. It moved upriver at a snail’s pace as the men at the paddle boards wheeled furiously to push the ship through the sludgy mud.
She squinted at the banks. She wasn’t sure if she was just hallucinating, but the closer they got, the more clearly she could make out little shapes moving in the distance, like ants crawling up logs.
“Are those people?” she asked.
They were. She could see them clearly now—men and women stooped beneath the sacks they carried over their shoulders, young children staggering barefoot along the riverside, and little babies strapped in bamboo baskets to their parents’ backs.
“Where are they going?”
Nezha looked faintly surprised that she had even asked. “They’re refugees.”
“From where?”
“Everywhere. Golyn Niis wasn’t the only city the Federation sacked. They destroyed the whole countryside. The entire time we were holding that pointless siege at Khurdalain they were marching southward, setting villages ablaze after they’d ripped them apart for supplies.”
Rin was still hung up on the first thing he’d said. “So Golyn Niis wasn’t …”
“No. Not even close.”
She couldn’t even fathom the death count this implied. How many people had lived in Golyn Niis? She multiplied that by the provinces and came up with a number nearing a million.
And now, all across the country, the Nikara refugees were shuffling back to their homes. The tide of bodies that had flowed from the war-ravaged cities to the barren northwest had started to turn.
“‘You asked how large my sorrow is,’” Nezha recited. Rin recognized the line—it was from a poem she’d studied a lifetime ago, a lament by an Emperor whose last words became exam material for future generations. “‘And I answered, like a river in spring flowing east.’”
As they floated up the Murui, crowds of people lined the banks with their arms outstretched, screaming at the Seagrim.
“Please, just up to the edge of the province …”
“Take my girls, leave me but take the girls …”
“You have space! You have space, damn you …”
Nezha tugged gently at Rin’s wrist. “Let’s go belowdecks.”
She shook her head. She wanted to see.
“Why can’t someone send boats?” she asked. “Why can’t we bring them home?”
“They’re not going home, Rin. They’re running.”
Dread pooled in her stomach. “How many are still out there?”
“The Mugenese?” Nezha sighed. “They’re not a single army. They’re individual brigades. They’re cold, hungry, frustrated, and they have nowhere to go. They’re thieves and bandits now.”
“How many?” she repeated.
“Enough.”
She made a fist. “I thought I brought peace.”
“You brought victory,” he said. “This is what happens after. The Warlords can hardly keep control over their home provinces. Food shortages. Rampant crime—and it’s not just the Federation bandits. The Nikara are at each other’s throats. Scarcity will do that to you.”
“So of course you think it’s a good time to fight another war.”
“Another war is inevitable. But maybe we can prevent the next big one. The Republic will have growing pains. But if we can fix the foundation—if we can institute structures that make the next invasion less likely and keep future generations safe—then we’ll have succeeded.”
Foundation. Growing pains. Future generations. Such abstract concepts, she thought; concepts that wouldn’t compute for the average peasant. Who cared who sat on the throne at Sinegard when vast stretches of the Empire were underwater?
The children’s cries suddenly seemed unbearable.
“Couldn’t we give them something?” she asked. “Money? Don’t you have stacks of silver?”
“So they could spend it where?” Nezha asked. “You could give them more ingots than you could count, but they’ve got nowhere to buy goods. There’s no supply.”
“Food, then?”
“We tried doing that. They just tear each other to pieces trying to get at it. It’s not a pretty sight.”
She rested her chin on her elbows. Behind them the flock of humans receded; ignored, irrelevant, betrayed.
“You want to hear a joke?” Nezha asked.
She shrugged.
“A Hesperian missionary once said the state of the average Nikara peasant is that of a man standing in a pond with water coming up to his chin,” said Nezha. “The slightest ripple is enough to put him underwater.”
Staring out over the Murui, Rin didn’t find that the least bit funny.
That night she decided to drown herself.
It wasn’t a premeditated decision so much as it was an act of sheer desperation. The pain had gotten so bad that she banged on the door to her room, begging for help, and then when the guards opened it she ducked past their arms and ran up the stairs and out the hatch to the main deck.
Guards ran after her, shouting for reinforcements, but she doubled her pace, bare heels slamming against the wood. Splinters lanced little shreds of pain through her skin—but that was good pain because it distracted her from her screaming mind, if only for half a second.
The railing of the prow came up to her chest. She gripped the edge and attempted to pull herself up, but her arms were weak—surprisingly weak, she didn’t remember getting that weak—and she sagged against the side. She tried again, hoisted herself far enough that her upper body draped over the edge. She hung there facedown for a moment, staring at the dark waves trailing alongside the Seagrim.
A pair of arms grasped her around the waist. She kicked and flailed, but they only tightened as they dragged her back down. She twisted her neck around.
“Suni?”
He walked backward from the prow, carrying her by the waist like a little child.
“Let go,” she panted. “Let me go!”
He put her down. She tried to break away but he grabbed her wrists, twisted her arms behind her back, and forced her down into a sitting position.
“Breathe,” he ordered. “Just breathe.”
She obeyed. The pain didn’t subside. The screaming didn’t quiet. She began to shake, but Suni didn’t let go of her arms. “If you just keep breathing, I’ll tell you a story.”
“I don’t want to hear a fucking story,” she said, gasping.
“Don’t want. Don’t think. Just breathe.” Suni’s voice was quiet, soothing. “Have you heard the story of the Monkey King and the moon?”
“No,” she whimpered.
“Then listen carefully.” He relaxed his grip ever so slightly, just enough that her arms stopped hurting. “Once upon a time, the Monkey King caught his first glimpse of the Moon Goddess.”
Rin shut her eyes and tried to focus on Suni’s voice. She’d never heard Suni talk this much. He was always so quiet, drawn into himself, as if he were unused to being in full occupation of his own mind that he wanted to relish the experience as much as possible. She’d forgotten how gentle he could sound.
He continued. “The Moon Goddess had just ascended to the heavens, and she was still drifting so close to Earth that you could see her face on the surface. She was such a lovely thing.”
Some old memory stirred in the back of her mind. She did know this story after all. They told it to children in Rooster Province during the Lunar Festival, every autumn when children ate moon cakes and solved riddles written on rice paper and floated lanterns in the sky.
“Then he fell in love,” she whispered.
“That’s right. The Monkey King was struck with the most terrible passion. He had to possess her, he thought, or he might die. So he sent his best soldiers to retrieve her from the ocean. But they failed, for the moon lived not in the ocean but in the sky, and they drowned.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why did they drown? Why did the moon kill them? Because they weren’t climbing to the sky to find her, they were diving into the water toward her reflection. But it was a fucking illusion they were grasping, not the real thing.” Suni’s voice hardened. It didn’t rise above a whisper, but he might as well have been shouting. “You spend your whole life chasing after some illusion you think is real, only to realize you’re a damned fool, and that if you reach any further, you’ll drown.”
He let go of her arms.
Rin turned around to face him. “Suni …”
“Altan liked that story,” he said. “I first heard it from him. He told it whenever he needed to calm me down. Said it would help if I thought of the Monkey King as just another person, someone gullible and foolish, and not a god.”
“The Monkey King is a dick,” she said.
“And the Moon Goddess is a bitch,” he said. “She sat there in the sky and watched the monkeys drowning over her. What does that say about her?”
That made her laugh. For a moment they both looked up at the moon. It was half-full, hiding behind a wispy dark cloud. Rin could imagine she was a woman, coy and devious, waiting to entice foolish men to their deaths.
She placed her hand over Suni’s. His hand was massive, rougher than wood bark, mottled with calluses. Her mind spun with a thousand unanswered questions.
Who made you like this?
And, more importantly, Do you regret it?
“You don’t have to suffer alone, you know.” Suni gave her one of his rare, slow smiles. “You’re not the only one.”
She would have smiled back, but then a wave of sickness hit her gut and she jerked her head down. Vomit splattered the deck.
Suni rubbed circles on her back while she spat blood-speckled phlegm on the planks. When she was done, he smoothed her vomit-covered hair out of her eyes as she sucked in air in great, racking sobs.
“You’re so strong,” he said. “Whatever you’re seeing, whatever you’re feeling, it’s not as strong as you are.”
But she didn’t want to be strong. Because if she were strong then she would be sober, and if she were sober she would have to consider the consequences of her actions. Then she’d have to look into the chasm. Then the Federation of Mugen would stop being an amorphous blur, and her victims would stop being meaningless numbers. Then she would recognize one death, what it meant, and then another, and then another and another and—
And if she wanted to recognize it, then she would have to be something, feel something other than anger, but she was afraid that if she stopped being angry then she might shatter.
She started to cry.
Suni smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “Just breathe,” he murmured. “Breathe for me. Can you do that? Breathe five times.”
One. Two. Three.
He continued to rub her back. “You just have to make it through the next five seconds. Then the next five. Then on and on.”
Four. Five.
And then another five. And those five, oddly enough, were just the littlest bit more bearable than the last.
“There you go,” Suni said after maybe a dozen counts to five. His voice was so low it was hardly a whisper. “There, look, you’ve done it.”
She breathed, and counted, and wondered how Suni knew exactly what to say.
She wondered if he had done this before with Altan.
“She’ll be all right,” Suni said.
Rin looked up to see who he was talking to, and saw Vaisra standing in the shadows.
It couldn’t have taken him long to respond to the soldiers’ calls. Had he been there the entire time, watching without speaking?
“I heard you came out to get some air,” he said.
She wiped vomit off her cheek with the back of her hand. Vaisra’s gaze flickered to her stained clothing and back to her face. She couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered.
“Will you?”
“I’ll take care of her,” Suni said.
A brief pause. Vaisra gave Suni a curt nod.
After another moment Suni helped her up and walked her back to her cabin. He kept one arm around her shoulders, warm, solid, comforting. The ship rocked against a particularly violent wave, and she staggered into his side.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry,” Suni said. “And don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
Five days later the Seagrim sailed over a submerged town. At first when Rin saw the tops of buildings emerging from the river she thought they were driftwood, or rocks. Then they got close enough that she could see the curving roofs of drowned pagodas, thatched houses lying under the surface. An entire village peeked up at her through river silt.
Then she saw the bodies—half-eaten, bloated and discolored, all with empty sockets because the glutinous eyes had already been nibbled away. They blocked up the river, decomposing at such a rate that the crew had to sweep away the maggots that threatened to climb on board.
Sailors lined up at the prow to shift bodies aside with long poles to make way for the ship. The corpses started piling up on the river’s sides. Every few hours sailors had to climb down and drag them into a pile before the Seagrim could move—a duty the crew drew lots for with dread.
“What happened here?” Rin asked. “Did the Murui run its banks?”
“No. Dam breach.” Nezha looked pale with fury. “Daji had the dam destroyed to flood the Murui river valley.”
That wasn’t Daji. Rin knew whose handiwork this was.
But did no one else know?
“Did it work?” she asked.
“Sure. It took out the Federation contingents in the north. Holed them up long enough for the northern Divisions to make mincemeat out of them. But then the floodwaters caught several hundred villages, which makes several thousand people who don’t have homes now.” Nezha made a fist. “How does a ruler do this? To her own people?”
“How do you know it was her?” Rin asked cautiously.
“Who else could it be? Something that big had to be an order from above. Right?”
“Of course,” she murmured. “Who else would it be?”
Rin found the twins sitting together at the stern of the ship. They were perched on the railing, staring down at the wreckage trailing behind them. When they saw Rin approaching, they both jumped down and turned around, regarding her warily, as if they knew exactly why she had come.
“So how does it feel?” Rin asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chaghan said.
“You did it, too,” she said gleefully. “It wasn’t just me.”
“Go back to sleep,” he said.
“Thousands of people!” she crowed. “Drowned like ants! Are you proud?”
Qara turned her head away, but Chaghan lifted his chin indignantly. “I did what Altan ordered.”
That made her screech with laughter. “Me too! I was just acting on orders! He said I had to get vengeance for the Speerlies, and so I did, so it’s not my fault, because Altan said—”
“Shut up,” Chaghan snapped. “Listen—Vaisra thinks that Daji ordered the opening of those dikes.”
She was still giggling. “So does Nezha.”
He looked alarmed. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing, obviously. I’m not stupid.”
“You can’t tell anyone the truth,” Qara cut in. “Nobody in the Dragon Republic can know.”
Of course Rin understood that. She knew how dangerous it would be to give the Dragon Army a reason to turn on the Cike. But in that moment all she could think of was how terribly funny it was that she wasn’t the only one with mass murder on her hands.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell. I’ll be the only monster. Just me.”
The twins looked stricken, but she couldn’t stop laughing. She wondered how it had felt, the moment before the wave hit. The civilians might have been making dinner, playing outside, putting their children to bed, telling stories, making love, before a crushing force of water swept over their homes, destroyed their villages, and snuffed out their lives.
This was what the balance of power looked like now. People like her waved a hand and millions were crushed within the confines of some elemental disaster, flung off the chessboard of the world like irrelevant pieces. People like her—shamans, all of them—were like children stomping around over entire cities as if they were mud castles, glass houses, fungible entities that could be targeted and demolished.
On the seventh morning after they’d left Ankhiluun, the pain receded.
She woke up without a fever. No headache. She took a hesitant step toward the door and was pleasantly surprised at how steady her feet felt on the floor, how the world didn’t whirl and shift around her. She opened the door, wandered out onto the upper deck, and was stunned by how good the river spray felt on her face.
Her senses felt sharper. Colors seemed brighter. She could smell things she hadn’t before. The world seemed to exist with a vibrancy that she hadn’t been aware of.
And then she realized that she had her mind to herself.
The Phoenix wasn’t gone. She felt the god lingering still at the forefront of her mind, whispering tales of destruction, trying to control her desires.
But this time she knew what she wanted.
And she wanted control.
She’d been victim to the god’s urges because she’d been keeping her own mind weak, dousing away the flame with a temporary and unsustainable solution. But now her head was clear, her mind was present—and when the Phoenix screamed, she could shut it down.
She requested to see Vaisra. He sent for her within minutes.
He was alone in his office when she arrived.
“You’re not afraid of me?” she asked.
“I trust you,” he said.
“You shouldn’t.”
“Then I trust you more than you trust yourself.” He was acting like an entirely different person. The harsh persona was gone. His voice sounded so gentle, so encouraging that she was suddenly reminded of Tutor Feyrik.
She hadn’t thought about Tutor Feyrik in a long time. She hadn’t felt safe in a long time.
Vaisra leaned back in his chair. “Go on, then. Try calling the fire for me. Just a little bit.”
She opened her hand and focused her eyes on her palm. She recalled the rage, felt the heat of it coil in the pit of her stomach. But this time it didn’t come all at once in an uncontrollable torrent, but manifested as a slow, angry burn.
A small burst of flame erupted in her palm. And it was just the burst; no more, no less, though she could increase its size, or if she wanted to, force it even smaller.
She closed her eyes, breathing slowly; cautiously she raised the flame higher and higher, a single ribbon of fire swaying over her hand like a reed, until Vaisra commanded her, “Stop.”
She closed her fist. The fire went out.
Only afterward did she realize how fast her heart was beating.
“Are you all right?” Vaisra asked.
She managed a nod.
A smile spread over his face. He looked more than pleased. He looked proud. “Do it again. Make it bigger. Brighter. Shape it for me.”
She reeled. “I can’t. I don’t have that much control.”
“You can. Don’t think about the Phoenix. Look at me.”
She met his eyes. His gaze was an anchor.
A fire sparked out of her fist. She shaped it with trembling hands until it took on the image of a dragon, coils undulating in the space between her and Vaisra, making the air shimmer with the heat of the blaze.
More, said the Phoenix. Bigger. Higher.
Its screams pushed at the edge of her mind. She tried to shut it down.
The fire didn’t recede.
She started to shake. “No, I can’t—I can’t, you have to get out—”
“Don’t think about it,” Vaisra whispered. “Look at me.”
Slowly, so faintly she was afraid she was imagining it, the red behind her eyelids subsided.
The fire disappeared. She collapsed to her knees.
“Good girl,” Vaisra said softly.
She wrapped her arms around herself, rocked back and forth on the floor, and tried to remember how to breathe.
“May I show you something?” Vaisra asked.
She looked up. He crossed the room to a cabinet, opened a drawer, and pulled out a cloth-covered parcel. She flinched when he jerked the cloth off, but all she saw underneath was the dull sheen of metal.
“What is it?” she asked.
But she already knew. She would recognize this weapon anywhere. She had spent hours gazing upon that steel, the metal etched with evidence of countless battles. It was metal all the way through, even at the hilt, which would normally be made of wood, because Speerlies needed weapons that wouldn’t burn through when they held them.
Rin felt a sudden light-headedness that had nothing to do with opium withdrawal and everything to do with the sudden and terribly vivid memory of Altan Trengsin walking down the pier to his death.
A harsh sob rose in her throat. “Where did you get that?”
“My men recovered it from the Chuluu Korikh.” Vaisra bent down and held the trident out before her. “I thought you might want to have it.”
She blinked at him, uncomprehending. “You—why were you there?”
“You’ve got to stop thinking I know less than I do. We were looking for Altan. He would have been, ah, useful.”
She snorted through her tears. “You think Altan would have joined you?”
“I think Altan wanted any opportunity to rebuild this Empire.”
“Then you don’t know anything about him.”
“I knew his people,” Vaisra said. “I led the soldiers that liberated him from the research facility, and I helped train him when he was old enough to fight. Altan would have fought for this Republic.”
She shook her head. “No, Altan just wanted to make things burn.”
She reached out, grasped the trident, and hefted it in her hands. It felt awkward in her fingers, too heavy at the front and oddly light near the back. Altan had been much taller than she, and the weapon seemed too long for her to wield comfortably.
It couldn’t function like a sword. It was no good for lateral blows. This trident had to be wielded surgically. Killing strikes only.
She held it away from her. “I shouldn’t have this.”
“Why not?”
She barely got the words out, she was crying so hard. “Because I’m not him.”
Because I should have died, and he should be alive and standing here.
“No, you’re not.” Vaisra continued to stroke her hair with one hand, though he’d already smoothed it behind her ears. The other hand closed over her fingers, pressing them harder around the cool metal. “You’ll be better.”
When Rin was sure she could stomach solid food without vomiting, she joined Nezha abovedeck for her first actual meal in more than a week.
“Don’t choke.” Nezha sounded amused.
She was too busy ripping apart a steamed bun to respond. She didn’t know if the food on deck was ridiculously good, or if she was just so famished that it tasted like the best thing she’d ever eaten.
“It’s a pretty day,” he said while she swallowed.
She made a muffled noise in agreement. The first few days she hadn’t been able to bear standing outside in the direct sunlight. Now that her eyes no longer burned, she could look out over the bright water without wincing.
“Kitay’s still sulking?” she asked.
“He’ll come around,” Nezha said. “He’s always been stubborn.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“Have a little sympathy. Kitay never wanted to be a soldier. He spent half his time wishing he’d gone to Yuelu Mountain, not Sinegard. He’s an academic at heart, not a fighter.”
Rin remembered. All Kitay had ever wanted to do was be a scholar, go to the academy at Yuelu Mountain, and study science, or astronomy, or whatever struck his fancy at the moment. But he was the only son of the defense minister to the Empress, so his fate had been carved out before he was even born.
“That’s sad,” she murmured. “You shouldn’t have to be a soldier unless you want to.”
Nezha rested his chin on his hand. “Did you want to?”
She hesitated.
Yes. No. She hadn’t thought there was anything else for her. She hadn’t thought it mattered if she wanted to.
“I used to be scared of war,” she finally said. “Then I realized I was very good at it. And I’m not sure I’d be good at anything else.”
Nezha nodded silently, gazing out at the river, pulling mindlessly at his steamed bun without eating it.
“How’s your … uh …” Nezha gestured toward his temples.
“Good. I’m good.”
For the first time she felt as if she had a handle on her anger. She could think. She could breathe. The Phoenix was still there, looming in the back of her mind, ready to burst into flame if she called it—but only if she called it.
She looked down to discover the steamed bun was gone. Her fingers were clutching nothing. Her stomach reacted to this by growling.
“Here,” Nezha said. He handed her his somewhat mangled bun. “Have mine.”
“You’re not hungry?”
“I don’t have much of an appetite right now. And you look emaciated.”
“I’m not taking your food.”
“Eat,” he insisted.
She took a bite. It slid thickly down her throat and settled in her stomach with a wonderful heaviness. She hadn’t been so full for such a long time.
“How’s your face?” Nezha asked.
She touched her cheek. Sharp twinges of pain lanced through her lower face whenever she spoke. The bruise had blossomed while the opium seeped out of her system, as if one had to trade off with the other.
“It feels like it’s just getting worse,” she said.
“Nah. You’ll be fine. Father doesn’t hit hard enough to injure.”
They sat awhile in silence. Rin watched fish jumping out of the water, leaping and flailing as if begging to be caught.
“And your face?” she asked. “Does it still hurt?”
In certain lights Nezha’s scars looked like angry red lines someone had carved all over his face. In other lights they looked like a delicately painted crosshatch of brush ink.
“It hurt for a long time. Now I just can’t feel anything.”
“What if I touched you?” She was struck by the urge to run her thumb over his scars. To caress them.
“I wouldn’t feel that, either.” Nezha’s fingers drifted to his cheek. “I suppose it scares people, though. Father makes me wear the mask whenever I’m around civilians.”
“I thought you were just being vain.”
Nezha smiled but didn’t laugh. “That too.”
Rin ripped large chunks from the steamed bun and barely chewed before swallowing.
Nezha reached out and touched her hair. “That’s a good look on you. Nice to see your eyes again.”
She’d shorn her hair close to her head. Not until she’d seen her discarded locks on the floor had she realized how disgusting it had become; the scraggly tendrils had grown out greasy and tangled, a nesting site for lice. Her hair was shorter than Nezha’s now, close-cropped and clean. It made her feel like a student again.
“Has Kitay eaten anything?” she asked.
Nezha shifted uncomfortably. “No. Still hiding in his room. We don’t keep it locked, but he won’t come out.”
She frowned. “If he’s that furious, then why don’t you let him go?”
“Because we’d rather have him on our side.”
“Then why not just use him as leverage against his father? Trade him as a hostage?”
“Because Kitay’s a resource,” Nezha said frankly. “You know the way his mind works. It’s not a secret. He knows most things and he remembers everything. He has a better grasp on strategy than anyone should. My father likes to keep his best pieces around for as long as he can. Besides, his father was at Sinegard before they abandoned it. There’s no guarantee he’s alive.”
“Oh” was all she could say. She looked down and realized that she had finished Nezha’s bun, too.
He laughed. “You think you can handle something more than bread?”
She nodded. He signaled for a servant, who disappeared into the cabin and reemerged a few minutes later with a bowl that smelled so good that a disgusting amount of saliva filled Rin’s mouth.
“This is a delicacy near the coast,” Nezha said. “We call it the wawa fish.”
“Why?” she asked through a full mouth.
Nezha turned it over with his chopsticks, deftly separating the white flesh from the spine. “Because of the way it shrieks. Flails in the water crying like a baby with a rash. Sometimes the cooks boil them to death just for fun. Didn’t you hear it in the galley?”
Rin’s stomach turned. “I thought there might be a baby on board.”
“Aren’t they hilarious?” Nezha picked up a slice and put it in her bowl. “Try it. Father loves them.”
CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_8496e632-1cde-5ddb-86a0-cb40554da299)
“If you have an open shot at Daji, take it.” Captain Eriden jabbed the blunt end of his spear at Rin’s head as he spoke. “Don’t give her a chance to seduce you.”
She ducked the first blow. The second whacked her on the nose. She shook off the pain, winced, and readjusted her stance. She narrowed her eyes at Eriden’s legs, trying to predict his movements by watching only his lower body.
“She’ll want to talk,” Eriden said. “She always does, she thinks it’s funny to watch her prey squirm before she kills it. Don’t wait for her to say her piece. You’ll be deathly curious because she’ll make you, but you must attack before your chance is gone.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Rin panted.
Eriden directed another flurry of blows at her torso. Rin managed to block about half of them. The rest wrecked her.
He withdrew his spear, signaling a temporary reprieve. “You don’t understand. The Vipress is no mere mortal. You’ve heard the stories. Her face is so dazzling that when she walks outside, the birds fall out of the sky and the fish swim up to the surface.”
“It’s just a face,” she said.
“It is not just a face. I’ve seen Daji beguile and bewitch some of the most powerful and rational men I know. She brings them to their knees with just a few words. More often with just a look.”
“Did she ever charm you?” Rin asked.
“She charmed everyone,” Eriden said, but didn’t elaborate. Rin could never get anything but blunt, literal answers from Eriden, who had the dour visage and personality of a corpse. “Be careful. And keep your gaze down.”
Rin knew that. He’d been saying it for days. Daji’s preferred weapon was her eyes—those snake’s eyes that could ensnare a soul with a simple look, could trap the viewer into a vision of Daji’s own choosing.
The solution was to never look her in the face. Eriden was training Rin to fight solely by watching her opponent’s lower body.
This turned out to be particularly difficult when it came to hand-to-hand combat. So much depended on where the eyes darted, where the torso was pointed. All motion on oblique planes came from the upper body, but Eriden chided Rin every time her eyes strayed too far upward.
Eriden lunged forward without warning. Rin fared slightly better blocking the next sequence of attacks. She’d learned to watch not just the feet but the hip—often that pivoted first, set into motion the legs and feet. She parried a series of blows before a strong hit got through to her shoulder. It wasn’t painful, but the shock nearly made her drop her trident.
Eriden signaled another pause.
While Rin doubled over to catch her breath, he drew a set of long needles out of his pocket. “The Empress is also partial to these.”
He flung three of them toward her. Rin hopped hastily to the side and managed to get out of the needles’ trajectory but landed badly on her ankle.
She winced. The needles kept coming.
She waved her trident madly in a circle, trying to knock them out of the air. It almost worked. Five clattered against the ground. One struck her on the upper thigh. She yanked it out. Eriden hadn’t bothered to blunt the tips. Asshole.
“Daji likes her poison,” Eriden said. “You’re dead now.”
“Thanks, I got that,” Rin snapped.
She let the trident drop and bent over her knees, sucking in deep draughts of air. Her lungs were on fire. Where had her stamina gone? At Sinegard, she could have sparred for hours.
Right—up in a puff of opium smoke.
Eriden hadn’t even broken a sweat. She didn’t want to look weak by asking for another break, so she tried distracting him with questions. “How do you know so much about the Empress?”
“We fought by her side. The Dragon Province had some of the best-trained troops during the Second Poppy War. We were almost always with the Trifecta on the front lines.”
“What were the Trifecta like?”
“Brutal. Dangerous.” Eriden pointed his spear toward her. “Enough talk. You should—”
“But I have to know,” she insisted. “Did Daji fight on the battlefield? Did you see her? What was she like?”
“Daji’s not a warrior. She’s a competent martial artist, they all were, but she’s never relied on blunt force. Her powers are more subtle than the Gatekeeper’s or the Dragon Emperor’s were. She understands desire. She knows what drives men, and she takes their deepest desire and makes them believe that she is the only thing that can give it to them.”
“But I’m a woman.”
“All the same.”
“But that can’t make so much of a difference,” Rin said, more to convince herself than anything. “That’s just—that’s desire. What is that next to hard power?”
“You think fire and steel can trump desire? Daji was always the strongest of the Trifecta.”
“Stronger than the Dragon Emperor?” A memory resurfaced of a white-haired man floating above the ground, beastly shadows circling around him. “Stronger than the Gatekeeper?”
“Of course she was,” Eriden said softly. “Why do you think she’s the only one left?”
That gave Rin pause.
How had Daji become the sole ruler of Nikan? Everyone she’d asked told a different story. All that anyone in the Empire seemed to know for sure was that one day the Dragon Emperor died, the Gatekeeper disappeared, and Daji alone remained on the throne.
“Do you know what she did to them?” she asked.
“I’d give my arms to find out.” Eriden tossed his spear to the side and drew his sword. “Let’s see how you do with this.”
His blade moved blindingly fast. Rin staggered backward, trying desperately to keep up. Several times her trident nearly slipped out of her hands. She gritted her teeth, frustrated.
It wasn’t just that Altan’s trident was too long, too unbalanced, clearly designed for a taller stature than hers. If that were the problem, she would have just swallowed her pride and swapped it for a sword.
It was her body. She knew the right motions and patterns, but her muscles simply could not keep up. Her limbs seemed to obey her mind only after a two-second lag.
Simply put, she didn’t work. Months of lying prone in her room, breathing smoke in and out, had whittled her muscles away. Only now had she become aware of how weak, how painfully thin and easily tired she’d become.
“Focus.” Eriden closed in. Rin’s movements became increasingly desperate. She wasn’t even trying to get a blow in herself; it took all her concentration to keep his blade away from her face.
She couldn’t win a weapons match at this rate.
But she didn’t have to use her trident for the kill. The trident was only useful as a ranged weapon—it kept her opponents at a far enough distance to protect her.
But she need only to get close enough to use the fire.
She narrowed her eyes, waiting.
There it was. Eriden struck for her hilt—a low, reaching blow. She let him flip the weapon out of her hands. Then she took advantage of the opening, darted into the space created by their interlocking weapons, and jammed her knee into Eriden’s sternum.
He doubled over. She kicked in his knees, dropped down onto his chest, and splayed her palms out before his face.
She emitted the smallest hint of flame—just enough to make him feel the heat on his skin.
“Boom,” she said. “You’re dead now.”
Eriden’s mouth pressed into something that almost resembled a smile.
“How’s she doing?”
Rin twisted to look over her shoulder.
Vaisra and Nezha emerged on the deck. Eriden pulled himself to a sitting position.
“She’ll be ready,” he said.
“She’ll be ready?” Vaisra repeated.
“Give me a few days,” Rin said, panting. “Still figuring this out. But I’ll get there.”
“Good,” Vaisra said.
“You’re bleeding.” Nezha pointed to her thigh.
But she barely heard him. She was still looking at Vaisra, who was smiling more widely than she’d ever seen him. He looked pleased. Proud. And somehow, the jolt of satisfaction that gave her felt better than anything she’d smoked in months.
“You’ll accompany the Dragon Warlord into the Autumn Palace for the noon summit,” Eriden said. “Remember, you’ll be presented as a war criminal. Do not act like he is your ally. Make sure to look afraid.”
A dozen of Vaisra’s generals and advisers were in the stateroom, seated around an array of detailed maps of the palace. Rin sat on Vaisra’s right, sweating slightly from the constant attention. The entire plan centered on her, and she had no room to fail.
Eriden held up a pair of iron handcuffs. “You’ll be bound and muzzled. I’d get used to the feel of these.”
“That’s no good,” Rin said. “I can’t burn through metal.”
“They’re not completely metal.” Eriden slid the handcuffs across the table so that Rin could take a closer look. “The link in the middle is twine. It will burn through with minimal heat.”
She fiddled with the handcuffs. “And Daji won’t just have me killed? I mean—she’ll know what I’m there to do; she saw me try at Adlaga.”
“Oh, she’ll likely suspect us of treachery the moment we dock in Lusan. We’re not trying to ambush her. Daji likes to play with her food before she eats it. And she especially won’t want to get rid of you. You’re too interesting.”
“Daji never strikes first,” Vaisra said. “She’ll want to milk you for as much information as she can, so she’ll try to take you somewhere private to talk. Feign surprise at that. Then she’ll likely make an offer nearly as tempting as mine.”
“Which will be what?” Rin asked.
“Use your imagination. A place in her Imperial Guard. Free rein to scour the Empire of any remaining Federation troops. More glory and riches than you could possibly dream of. It’ll all be a lie, of course. Daji has kept her throne for two decades by eliminating people before they become problems. Should you take a position in her court, you will simply be the latest on her long list of political assassinations.”
“Or they’ll find your body in the sewers minutes after you say yes,” said Eriden.
Rin looked around the table. “Does no one else see the gaping flaw in this plan?”
“Pray tell,” Vaisra said.
“Why don’t I just kill her on sight? Before she opens her mouth? Why even take the risk of letting her talk?”
Vaisra and Eriden exchanged a glance. Eriden hesitated a moment, then spoke. “You, ah, won’t be able to.”
Rin blanched. “What does that mean?”
“We just went over this,” Vaisra said. “Once Daji sees you, she’ll know you’re there to kill her. And she’ll very strongly suspect my own intentions. The only way to get you into the Autumn Palace and close enough to attack without putting the rest of us in danger is if you’re sedated first.”
“Sedated,” Rin repeated.
“We’ll have to give you a dose of opium while Daji’s guards are watching,” Vaisra said. “Enough to pacify you for an hour or two. But Daji doesn’t know about your increased tolerance, which helps us. It’ll wear off sooner than she expects.”
Rin hated this plan. They were asking her to enter the Autumn Palace unarmed, high out of her mind, and completely unable to call the fire. But no matter how she turned it over in her mind, she couldn’t find a loophole in the logic. She had to be defanged if she was to get close enough to get a hit.
She tried not to let her fear show as she spoke. “So am I—I mean, will I be alone?”
“We cannot bring a larger guard to the Autumn Palace without arousing Daji’s suspicion. You will have hidden but minimal reinforcements. We can get soldiers in here, here, and here.” Vaisra tapped at three points on a map of the palace. “But remember, our objective here is very limited. If we wanted an all-out war, we would have brought the armada up the Murui. We are only here to cut the head off the snake. The battles come after.”
“So I’m the only one at risk,” Rin said. “Nice.”
“We will not abandon you. We will extract you if it goes badly, I promise. Successful or not, you’ll use one of these escape routes to get out of the palace. Captain Eriden will have the Seagrim ready to depart Lusan in seconds if escape is necessary.”
Rin peered down at the map. The Autumn Palace was hopelessly large, arranged like a maze within a conch shell, a spiraling complex of narrow corridors and dead ends, with twisting hallways and tunnels constructed in every direction.
The escape routes were marked with green lines. She narrowed her eyes, muttering to herself. A few more minutes and she’d have them memorized. She’d always been good at memorizing things, and now that she was off opium she was finding it easier and easier to focus on mental tasks.
She cringed at the thought of giving that up, even for an hour.
“You make this sound so easy,” she said. “Why hasn’t anyone tried to kill Daji before?”
“She’s the Empress,” said Vaisra, as if that were explanation enough.
“She’s one woman whose sole talent is being very pretty,” Rin said. “I don’t understand.”
“Because you’re too young,” Eriden said. “You weren’t alive when the Trifecta were at the peak of their power. You don’t know the fear. You couldn’t trust anyone around you, even your own family. If you whispered a word of treason against Emperor Riga, then the Vipress and the Gatekeeper would be sure to have you destroyed. Not just imprisoned—obliterated.”
Vaisra nodded. “In those years, entire families were ruined, executed, or exiled, and their lineages wiped from history. Daji oversaw this all without blinking an eye. There is a reason why the Warlords still bow down before her, and it’s not just because she is pretty.”
Something about Vaisra’s expression gave Rin pause. Then she realized it was the first time she had ever seen him look scared.
She wondered what Daji had done to him.
Someone knocked on the door just then. She jumped in her seat.
“Come in,” Vaisra called.
A junior officer poked his head in. “Nezha sent me to alert you. We’ve arrived.”
Near the end of his reign, the Red Emperor built the Autumn Palace in the northern city of Lusan. It was never meant to be a capital or an administrative center; it was too far removed from the central provinces to properly govern. It served merely as a resort for his favorite concubines and their children, an escape for the days when Sinegard became so scorching hot that their skin threatened to darken within seconds of stepping outside.
Under the Empress Su Daji’s regime, Lusan had been a place for court officials to harbor their wives and families safely away from the dangers at court, until it turned into the interim capital after Sinegard and then Golyn Niis were razed to the ground.
As the Seagrim sailed toward the city, the Murui narrowed to a thinner and thinner stream, which forced them to move at a slower and slower pace until they weren’t sailing so much as crawling toward the Autumn Palace.
Rin could see the city walls from miles off. Lusan seemed to be lit from within by some unearthly afternoon glow. Everything was somehow golden; it was like the rest of the Empire had dulled to shades of black, white, and bloody red during the war, and Lusan had soaked up all the surrounding color, shining brighter than anything she had seen in months.
Close to the city walls Rin saw a woman walking down the riverbank with buckets of dye and heavy rolls of cloth strapped to her back. Rin knew the cloth was silk from the way it glimmered when it was unrolled, so soft that she could almost imagine the butterfly-wing texture on the backs of her fingers.
How could Lusan have silk? The rest of the country was garbed in unwashed, threadbare scraps. All along the Murui, Rin had seen naked children and babies wrapped in lily pads in some effort to preserve their dignity.
Farther downriver, fishing sampans glided up and down the winding waterways. Each boat carried several large birds—white creatures with massive beaks—hooked to the boats on strings.
Nezha had to explain to Rin what the birds were for. “They’ve got a string around their necks, see? The bird swallows the fish; the farmer pulls the fish out of the bird’s neck. The bird goes in again, always hungry, always too dumb to realize that everything it catches goes into the fish basket and that all it’ll ever get are slops.”
Rin made a face. “That seems inefficient. Why not just use a net?”
“It is inefficient,” Nezha agreed. “But they’re not fishing for staples, they’re hunting for delicacies. Sweetfish.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
Rin already knew the answer. Why not hunt for delicacies? Lusan was clearly untouched by the refugee crisis that had swept the rest of the country; it could afford to focus on luxury.
Perhaps it was the heat, or perhaps because Rin’s nerves were already always on edge, but she felt angrier and angrier as they made for port. She hated this city, this land of pale and pampered women, men who were not soldiers but bureaucrats, and children who didn’t know what fear felt like.
She simmered not with resentment so much as with a nameless fury at the idea that outside the confines of warfare, life could go on and did go on, that somehow, still, in pockets scattered throughout the Empire there were cities and cities of people who were dyeing silk and fishing for gourmet dinners, unaffected by the single issue that plagued a soldier’s mind: when and where the next attack would come.
“I thought I wasn’t a prisoner,” said Kitay.
“You’re not,” said Nezha. “You’re a guest.”
“A guest who isn’t allowed off the ship?”
“A guest whom we’d like to keep with us a little longer,” Nezha said delicately. “Can you stop glaring at me like that?”
When the captain announced that they had anchored in Lusan, Kitay had ventured abovedeck for the first time in weeks. Rin had hoped he’d come up for some fresh air, but he was just following Nezha around the deck, intent on antagonizing him in any way possible.
Rin had tried several times to intercede. Kitay, however, seemed determined to pretend she didn’t exist by ignoring her every time she spoke, so she turned her attention to the sights on the riverbank instead.
A mild crowd had gathered around the base of the Seagrim, made up mostly of Imperial officials, Lusani merchants, and messengers from other Warlords. Rin surmised from what snatches of conversation she could hear from the top deck that they were all trying to get an audience with Vaisra. But Eriden and his men were stationed at the bottom of the gangplank, turning everyone away.
Vaisra had also issued strict orders that no one was to leave the ship. The soldiers and crewmen were to continue living on board as if they were still out on open water, and only a handful of Eriden’s men had been permitted to enter Lusan to purchase fresh supplies. This, Nezha had explained, was to minimize the risk that someone might give away Rin’s cover. Meanwhile, she was only allowed on deck if she wore a scarf to cover her face.
“You know you can’t keep me here indefinitely,” Kitay said loudly. “Someone’s going to find out.”
“Like who?” Nezha asked. “My father.”
“You think your father’s in Lusan?”
“He’s in the Empress’s guard. He commands her security detail. There’s no way she would have left him behind.”
“She left everyone else behind,” Nezha said.
Kitay crossed his arms. “Not my father.”
Nezha caught Rin’s eye. For the briefest moment he looked guilty, like he wanted to say something that he couldn’t, but she couldn’t imagine what.
“That’s the commerce minister,” Kitay said suddenly. “He’ll know.”
“What?”
Before either Nezha or Rin could register what he meant, Kitay broke into a run at the gangplank.
Nezha shouted for the closest soldiers to restrain him. They were too slow—Kitay dodged their arms, climbed onto the side of the ship, grabbed a rope, and lowered himself to the riverbank so quickly that he must have burned his hands raw.
Rin ran for the gangplank to intercept him, but Nezha held her back with one arm. “Don’t.”
“But he—”
Nezha just shook his head. “Let him.”
They watched from a distance, silent, as Kitay ran up to the commerce minister and seized his arm, then doubled over, panting.
Rin could see them clearly from the deck. The minister recoiled for a moment, hands lifted as if to ward off this unfamiliar soldier, until he recognized Defense Minister Chen’s son and his arms dropped.
Rin couldn’t tell what they were saying. She could only see their mouths moving, the expressions on their faces.
She saw the minister place his hands on Kitay’s shoulders.
She saw Kitay ask a question.
She saw the minister shake his head.
Then she saw Kitay collapse in on himself as if he had been speared in the gut, and she realized that Defense Minister Chen had not survived the Third Poppy War.
Kitay didn’t struggle when Vaisra’s men marched him back onto the boat. He was white-faced, tight-lipped, and his madly twitching eyes looked red at the rims.
Nezha tried to put a hand on Kitay’s shoulder. Kitay shook him off and made straight for the Dragon Warlord. Blue-clad soldiers immediately moved to form a protective wall between them, but Kitay didn’t reach for a weapon.
“I’ve decided something,” he said.
Vaisra waved a hand. His guard dispersed. Then it was just the two of them facing each other: the regal Dragon Warlord and the furious, trembling boy.
“Yes?” Vaisra asked.
“I want a position,” Kitay said.
“I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Kitay snapped. “I want a position. Give me a uniform. I won’t wear this one anymore.”
“I’ll see where we can—”
Kitay cut him off again. “I’m not going to be a foot soldier.”
“Kitay—”
“I want a seat at the table. Chief strategist.”
“You’re rather young for that,” Vaisra said drily.
“No, I’m not. You made Nezha a general. And I’ve always been smarter than Nezha. You know I’m brilliant. I’m a fucking genius. Put me in charge of operations and you won’t lose a single battle, I swear.” Kitay’s voice broke at the end. Rin saw his throat bob, saw the veins protruding from his jaw, and knew that he was holding back tears.
“I’ll consider it,” Vaisra said.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Kitay demanded. “You’ve known for months.”
Vaisra’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you. I know how much pain you must feel—”
“No. No, shut the fuck up, I don’t want that.” Kitay backed away. “I don’t need your fake sympathy.”
“Then what would you like from me?”
Kitay lifted his chin. “I want troops.”
The Warlords’ summit would not commence until after the victory parade, and that stretched over the next two days. For the most part Vaisra’s soldiers did not participate. Several troops entered the city in civilian clothes, sketching out final details in their already extensive maps of the city in case anything had changed. But the majority of the crew remained on board, watching the festivities from afar.
Every now and then an armed delegation arrived aboard the Seagrim, faces shrouded under hoods to conceal their identities. Vaisra received them in his office, doors sealed, guards posted outside to discourage curious eavesdroppers. Rin assumed the visitors were the southern Warlords—the rulers of Boar, Rooster, and Monkey provinces.
Hours passed without news. Rin grew maddeningly bored. She’d been over the palace maps a thousand times, and she’d already trained so long with Eriden that day that her leg muscles screamed when she walked. She was just about to ask Nezha if they might explore Lusan in disguise when Vaisra summoned her to his office.
“I have a meeting with the Snake Warlord,” he said. “On land. You’re coming.”
“As a guard?”
“No. As proof.”
He didn’t explain further, but she suspected she knew what he meant, so she simply picked up her trident, pulled her scarf up higher over her face until it concealed all but her eyes, and followed him toward the gangplank.
“Is the Snake Warlord an ally?” she asked.
“Ang Tsolin was my Strategy master at Sinegard. He could be anything from ally to enemy. Today, we’ll simply treat him as an old friend.”
“What should I say to him?”
“You’ll remain silent. All he has to do is look at you.”
Rin followed Vaisra across the riverbank until they reached a line of tents propped up at the city borders as if it were an invading army’s. When they approached the periphery, a group of green-clad soldiers stopped them and demanded their weapons.
“Go on,” Vaisra muttered when Rin hesitated to part with her trident.
“You trust him that much?”
“No. But I trust you won’t need it.”
The Snake Warlord came to meet them outside, where his aides had set up two chairs and a small table.
At first Rin mistook him for a servant. Ang Tsolin didn’t look like a Warlord. He was an old man with a long and sad face, so slender he seemed frail. He wore the same forest-green Militia uniform as his men, but no symbols announced his rank, and no weapon hung at his hip.
“Old master.” Vaisra dipped his head. “It’s good to see you again.”
Tsolin’s eyes flickered toward the outline of the Seagrim, which was just visible down the river. “So you didn’t take the bitch’s offer, either?”
“It was rather unsubtle, even for her,” Vaisra said. “Is anyone staying in the palace?”
“Chang En. Our old friend Jun Loran. None of the southern Warlords.”
Vaisra arched an eyebrow. “They hadn’t mentioned that. That’s surprising.”
“Is it? They’re southern.”
Vaisra settled back in his chair. “I suppose not. They’ve been touchy for years.”
No one had brought a chair out for Rin, so she remained standing behind Vaisra, hands folded over her chest in imitation of the guards who flanked Tsolin. They looked unamused.
“You’ve certainly taken your time getting here,” Tsolin said. “It’s been a long camping trip for the rest of us.”
“I was picking up something on the coast.” Vaisra pointed toward Rin. “Do you know who she is?”
Rin lowered her scarf.
Tsolin glanced up. At first he seemed only confused as he examined her face, but then he must have taken in the dark hue of her skin, the red glint in her eyes, because his entire body tensed.
“She’s wanted for quite a lot of silver,” he said finally. “Something about an assassination attempt in Adlaga.”
“It’s a good thing I’ve never wanted for silver,” said Vaisra.
Tsolin rose from his chair and walked toward Rin until only inches separated them. He was not so much taller than she was, but his gaze made her distinctly uncomfortable. She felt like a specimen under his careful examination.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Rin.”
Tsolin ignored her. He made a humming noise under his breath and returned to his seat. “This is a very blunt display of force. You’re just going to march her into the Autumn Palace?”
“She’ll be properly bound. Drugged, too. Daji insisted on it.”
“So Daji knows she’s here.”
“I thought that’d be prudent. I sent a messenger ahead.”
“No wonder she’s getting antsy, then,” Tsolin said. “She’s increased the palace guard threefold. The Warlords are talking. Whatever you’re planning, she’s ready for it.”
“So it will help to have your support,” Vaisra said.
Rin noticed that Vaisra dipped his head every time he spoke to Tsolin. In a subtle fashion, he was bowing continuously to his elder, displaying deference and respect.
But Tsolin seemed unresponsive to flattery. He sighed. “You’ve never been content with peace, have you?”
“And you refuse to acknowledge that war is the only option,” said Vaisra. “Which would you prefer, Tsolin? The Empire can die a slow death over the next century, or we can set the country on the right path within the week if we’re lucky.”
“Within a few bloody years, you mean.”
“Months, at the most.”
“Don’t you remember the last time someone went up against the Trifecta?” Tsolin asked. “Remember how the bodies littered the steps of the Heavenly Pass?”
“It won’t be like that,” Vaisra said.
“Why not?”
“Because we have her.” Vaisra nodded toward Rin.
Tsolin looked wearily in Rin’s direction.
“You poor child,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
She blinked, unsure what that meant.
“And we have the advantage of time,” Vaisra continued quickly. “The Militia is reeling from the Federation attack. They need to recuperate. They couldn’t marshal their defenses fast enough.”
“Yet under your best-case scenario, Daji still has the northern provinces,” Tsolin said. “Horse and Tiger would never defect. She has Chang En and Jun. That’s all you need.”
“Jun knows not to fight battles he can’t win.”
“But he can and will win this one. Or did you think you would defeat everyone through a little intimidation?”
“This war could be over in days if I had your support,” Vaisra said impatiently. “Together we’d control the coastline. I own the canals. You own the eastern shore. Combined, our fleets—”
Tsolin held up a hand. “My people have undergone three wars in their lifetime, each time with a different ruler. Now they might have their first chance at a lasting peace. And you want to bring a civil war to their doorsteps.”
“There’s a civil war coming, whether you admit it or not. I only hasten the inevitable.”
“We will not survive the inevitable,” Tsolin said. True sorrow laced his words. Rin could see it in his eyes; the man looked haunted. “We lost so many men at Golyn Niis, Vaisra. Boys. You know what our commanders made their soldiers do the evening before the siege? They wrote letters home to their families. Told them they loved them. Told them they wouldn’t be coming home. And our generals chose the strongest and fastest soldiers to deliver the messages back home, because they knew it wasn’t going to make a difference whether we had them at the wall.”
He stood up. “My answer is no. We have yet to recover from the scars of the Poppy Wars. You can’t ask us to bleed again.”
Vaisra reached out and grabbed Tsolin’s wrist before he could turn to go. “You’re neutral then?”
“Vaisra—”
“Or against me? Shall I expect Daji’s assassins at my door?”
Tsolin looked pained. “I know nothing. I help no one. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”
“We’re just going to let him go?” Rin asked once they were out of Tsolin’s earshot.
Vaisra’s harsh laugh surprised her. “You think he’s going to report us to the Empress?”
Rin thought this had seemed rather obvious. “It’s clear he’s not with us.”
“He will be. He’s revealed his threshold for going to war. Provincial danger. He’ll pick a side quick enough if it means the difference between warfare and obliteration, so I will force his hand. I’ll bring the fight to his province. He won’t have a choice then, and I suspect he knows that.”
Vaisra’s stride grew faster and faster as they walked. Rin had to run to catch up.
“You’re angry,” she realized.
No, he was furious. She could see it in the icy glare in his eyes, in the stiffness of his gait. She’d spent too much of her childhood learning to tell when someone was in a dangerous mood.
Vaisra didn’t respond.
She stopped walking. “The other Warlords. They said no, didn’t they?”
Vaisra paused before he answered. “They’re undecided. It’s too early to tell.”
“Will they betray you?”
“They don’t know enough about my plans to do anything. All they can tell Daji is that I’m displeased with her, which she already knows. But I doubt they’ll have the backbone to say even that.” Vaisra’s voice dripped with condescension. “They are like sheep. They will watch silently, waiting to see how the balance of power falls, and they will align with whoever can protect them. But we won’t need them until then.”
“But you needed Tsolin,” she said.
“This will be significantly harder without Tsolin,” he admitted. “He could have tipped the balance. It’ll truly be a war now.”
She couldn’t help but ask, “Then are we going to lose?”
Vaisra regarded her in silence for a moment. Then he knelt down in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked up at her with an intensity that made Rin want to squirm.
“No,” he said softly. “We have you.”
“Vaisra—”
“You will be the spear that brings this empire down,” he said sternly. “You will defeat Daji. You will set in motion this war, and then the southern Warlords will have no choice.”
The intensity in his eyes made her desperately uncomfortable. “But what if I can’t?”
“You will.”
“But—”
“You will, because I ordered you to.” His grip tightened on her shoulders. “You are my greatest weapon. Do not disappoint.”
CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_ebbaea2b-2a04-547e-bb58-8ad71336f9ef)
Rin had imagined the Autumn Palace as composed of blocky, abstract shapes, the way it was represented on the maps. But the real Autumn Palace was a perfectly preserved sanctuary of beauty, a sight lifted straight out of an ink brush painting. Flowers bloomed everywhere. White plum blossoms and peach flowers laced the gardens; lily pads and lotus flowers dotted the ponds and waterways. The complex itself was an elegantly designed structure of ornamented ceremonial gates, massive marble pillars, and sprawling pavilions.
But for all that beauty, a stillness hung over the palace that made Rin deeply uncomfortable. The heat was oppressive. The roads looked as if they were swept clean hourly by unseen servants, but still Rin could hear the ubiquitous sound of buzzing flies, as if they detected something rotten in the air that no one could see.
It felt as if the palace hid something foul under its lovely exterior; beneath the smell of blooming lilacs, something was in the last stages of decay.
Perhaps she was imagining it. Perhaps the palace was truly beautiful, and she just hated it because it was a coward’s resort. This was a refuge, and the fact that anyone had hidden alive in the Autumn Palace while corpses rotted in Golyn Niis infuriated her.
Eriden nudged the small of her back with his spear. “Eyes down.”
She hastily obeyed. She had come posing as Vaisra’s prisoner—hands cuffed behind her back, mouth sealed behind an iron muzzle that clamped her lower jaw tightly upward. She could barely speak except in whispers.
She didn’t have to remember to look scared. She was terrified. The thirty grams of opium circulating through her bloodstream did nothing to calm her down. It magnified her paranoia even as it kept her heart rate low and made her feel as if she were floating among clouds. Her mind was anxious and hyperactive but her body was slow and sluggish—the worst possible combination.
At sunrise Rin, Vaisra, and Captain Eriden had passed under the arched gateways of the nine concentric circles of the Autumn Palace. Servants patted them down for weapons at each gate. By the seventh gate, they had been groped so thoroughly that Rin was surprised they hadn’t been asked to strip naked.
At the eighth gate an Imperial guard stopped her to check her pupils.
“She took a dose before the guards this morning,” Vaisra said.
“Even so,” said the guard. He reached for Rin’s chin and tilted it up. “Eyes open, please.”
Rin obliged and tried not to squirm as he pulled her eyelids apart.
Satisfied, the guard stepped back to let them through.
Rin followed Vaisra into the throne room, shoes echoing against a marble floor so smooth it looked like still water at the surface of a lake.
The inner chamber was a rich and ornate assault of decorations that blurred and swam in Rin’s opium-blurred eyesight. She blinked and tried to focus. Intricately painted symbols covered every wall, stretching all the way up to the ceiling, where they coalesced in a circle.
It’s the Pantheon, she realized. If she squinted, she could make out the gods she had come to recognize: the Monkey God, mischievous and cruel; the Phoenix, imposing and ravenous …
That was odd. The Red Emperor had hated shamans. After he’d claimed his throne at Sinegard, he’d had the monks killed and their monasteries burned.
But maybe he hadn’t hated the gods. Maybe he’d just hated that he couldn’t access their power for himself.
The ninth gate led to the council room. The Empress’s personal guard, a row of soldiers in gold-lined armor, blocked their path.
“No attendants,” said the guard captain. “The Empress has decided that she does not want to crowd the council room with bodyguards.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Vaisra’s face. “The Empress might have told me this beforehand.”
“The Empress sent a notice to everyone residing in the palace,” the guard captain said smugly. “You declined her invitation.”
Rin thought Vaisra might protest, but he only turned to Eriden and told him to wait outside. Eriden bowed and departed, leaving them without guards or weapons in the heart of the Autumn Palace.
But they were not entirely alone. At that moment the Cike were swimming through the underground waterways toward the city’s heart. Aratsha had constructed air bubbles around their heads so they could swim for miles without needing to come up for air.
The Cike had used this as an infiltration method many times before. This time, they would deliver reinforcements if the coup went sour. Baji and Suni would take up posts directly outside the council room, poised to spring in and break Vaisra out if necessary. Qara would station herself at the highest pavilion outside the council room for ranged support. And Ramsa would squirrel himself away wherever he and his waterproof bag of combustible treasures could cause the most havoc.
Rin found a small degree of comfort in that. If they couldn’t capture the Autumn Palace, at least they had a good chance of blowing it up.
Silence fell over the council room when Rin and Vaisra walked in.
The Warlords twisted in their seats to stare at her, their expressions ranging from surprise to curiosity to mild distaste. Their eyes roved over her body, lingered on her arms and legs, took stock of her height and build. They looked everywhere except at her eyes.
Rin shifted uncomfortably. They were sizing her up like a cow at market.
The Ox Warlord spoke first. Rin recognized him from Khurdalain; she was surprised that he was still alive. “This little girl held you up for weeks?”
Vaisra chuckled. “The searching ate my time, not the extraction. I found her stranded in Ankhiluun. Moag got to her first.”
The Ox Warlord looked surprised. “The Pirate Queen? How did you wrestle her away?”
“I traded Moag for something she likes better,” Vaisra said.
“Why would you bring her here alive?” demanded a man at the other end of the table.
Rin swiveled her head around and nearly jumped in surprise. She hadn’t recognized Master Jun at first glance. His beard had grown much longer, and his hair was shot through with gray streaks that hadn’t been there before the war. But she could find the same arrogance etched into the lines of her old Combat master’s face, as well as his clear distaste for her.
He glared at Vaisra. “Treason deserves the death penalty. And she’s far too dangerous to keep around.”
“Don’t be hasty,” said the Horse Warlord. “She might be useful.”
“Useful?” Jun echoed.
“She’s the last of her kind. We’d be fools to throw a weapon like that away.”
“Weapons are only useful if you can wield them,” said the Ox Warlord. “I think you’d have a little trouble taming this beast.”
“Where do you think she went wrong?” The Rooster Warlord leaned forward to get a better look at her.
Rin had privately been looking forward to meeting the Rooster Warlord, Gong Takha. They came from the same province. They spoke the same dialect, and his skin was nearly as dark as hers. Word on the Seagrim was that Takha was the closest to joining the Republic. But if provincial ties counted for anything, Takha didn’t show it. He stared at her with the same sort of fearful curiosity one displayed toward a caged tiger.
“She’s got a wild look in her eyes,” he continued. “Do you think the Mugenese experiments did that to her?”
I’m in the room, Rin wanted to snap. Stop talking about me like I’m not here.
But Vaisra wanted her to be docile. Act stupid, he’d said. Don’t come off as too intelligent.
“Nothing so complex,” said Vaisra. “She was a Speerly straining against her leash. You remember how the Speerlies were.”
“When my dogs go mad, I put them down,” Jun said.
The Empress spoke from the doorway. “But little girls aren’t dogs, Loran.”
Rin froze.
Su Daji had traded her ceremonial robes for a green soldier’s uniform. Her shoulder pads were inlaid with jade armor, and a longsword hung at her waist. It seemed like a message. She was not only the Empress, she was also grand marshal of the Nikara Imperial Militia. She’d conquered the Empire once by force. She’d do it again.
Rin fought to keep her breathing steady as Daji reached out and traced her fingertips over her muzzle.
“Careful,” Jun said. “She bites.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Daji’s voice sounded languid, almost disinterested. “Did she put up a fight?”
“She tried,” Vaisra said.
“I imagine there were casualties.”
“Not as many as you would expect. She’s weak. The drug’s done her in.”
“Of course.” Daji’s lip curled. “Speerlies have always had their predilections.”
Her hand drifted upward to pat Rin gently on the head.
Rin’s fingers curled into fists.
Calm, she reminded herself. The opium hadn’t worn off yet. When she tried to call the fire, she felt only a numb, blocked sensation in the back of her mind.
Daji’s eyes lingered on Rin for a long while. Rin froze, terrified that the Empress might take her aside now like Vaisra had warned. It was too early. If she were alone in a room with Daji, the best she could do was hurl some disoriented fists in her direction.
But Daji only smiled, shook her head, and turned toward the table. “We’ve much to get through. Shall we proceed?”
“What about the girl?” Jun asked. “She ought to be in a cell.”
“I know.” Daji shot Rin a poisonous smile. “But I like to watch her sweat.”
The next two hours were the slowest of Rin’s life.
Once the Warlords had exhausted their curiosity over her, they turned their attention to an enormous roster of problems economic, agricultural, and political. The Third Poppy War had wrecked nearly every province. Federation soldiers had destroyed most of the infrastructure in every major city they’d occupied, set fire to huge swaths of grain fields, and wiped out entire villages. Mass refugee movements had reshaped the human density of the country. This was the kind of disaster that would have taken miraculous effort from a unified central leadership to ameliorate, and the council of the twelve Warlords was anything but.
“Control your damn people,” said the Ox Warlord. “I have thousands streaming into my border as we speak and we don’t have a place for them.”
“What are we supposed to do, create a border guard?” The Hare Warlord had a distinctly plaintive, grating voice that made Rin wince every time he spoke. “Half my province is flooded, we haven’t got food stores to last the winter—”
“Neither do we,” said the Ox Warlord. “Send them elsewhere or we’ll all starve.”
“We’d be willing to repatriate citizens from the Hare Province under a set quota,” said the Dog Warlord. “But they’d have to display provincial registration papers.”
“Registration papers?” the Hare Warlord echoed. “These people had their villages sacked and you’re asking for registration papers? Right, like the first thing they grabbed when their village started going up in flames was—”
“We can’t house everyone. My people are pressed for resources as is—”
“Your province is a steppe wasteland, you’ve got more than enough space.”
“We have space; we don’t have food. And who knows what your sort would bring in over the borders …”
Rin had a difficult time believing that this council, if one could call it that, was really how the Empire functioned. She knew how often the Warlords went to arms over resources, trade routes, and—occasionally—over the best recruits graduating from Sinegard. And she knew that the fractures had been deepening, had gotten worse in the aftermath of the Third Poppy War.
She just hadn’t known it was this bad.
For hours the Warlords had bickered and squabbled over details so inane that Rin could not believe anyone could possibly care. And she had stood waiting in the corner, sweating through her chains, waiting for Daji to drop her front.
But the Empress seemed content to wait. Eriden was right—she clearly relished playing with her food before she ate it. She sat at the head of the table with a vaguely amused expression on her face. Every once in a while, she met Rin’s eyes and winked.
What was Daji’s endgame? Certainly she knew that the opium would wear off in Rin eventually. Why was she running out the clock?
Did Daji want this fight?
The sheer anxiety made Rin feel weak-kneed and light-headed. It took everything she had to remain standing.
“What about Tiger Province?” someone asked.
All eyes turned to the plump child sitting with his elbows up on the table. The young Tiger Warlord looked around with an expression equal parts bewildered and terrified, blinked twice, then peered over his shoulder for help.
His father had died at Khurdalain and now his steward and generals ruled the province in his stead, which meant that the power in Tiger Province really lay with Jun.
“We’ve done more than enough for this war,” Jun said. “We bled at Khurdalain for months. We’re thousands of men down. We need time to heal.”
“Come on, Jun.” A tall man sitting at the far end of the room spat a wad of phlegm on the table. “Tiger Province is full of arable land. Spread some of the goodness around.”
Rin grimaced. This had to be the new Horse Warlord—the Wolf Meat General Chang En. She’d been briefed extensively on this one. Chang En was a former divisional commander who had escaped from a Federation prison camp near the start of the Third Poppy War, taken up the life of a bandit, and assumed rapid control of the upper region of the Horse Province while the former Horse Warlord and his army were busy defending Khurdalain.
They had eaten anything. Wolf meat. Corpses by the roadside. The rumor was that they had paid good money for live human babies.
Now the former Horse Warlord was dead, skinned alive by Federation troops. His heirs had been too weak or too young to challenge Chang En, so the bandit ruler had assumed de facto control of the province.
Chang En caught Rin’s eye, bared his teeth, and slowly licked his upper lip with a thick, mottled black tongue.
She suppressed a shudder and looked away.
“Most of our arable land near the coastline has been destroyed by tsunamis or ash fall.” Jun gave Rin a look of utter disgust. “The Speerly made sure of that.”
Rin felt a twist of guilt. But it had been either that or extinction at Federation hands. She’d stopped debating that trade. She could function only if she believed that it had been worth it.
“You can’t just keep foisting your refugees on me,” Chang En said. “They’re cramming the cities. We can’t get a moment’s rest without their whining in the streets, demanding free accommodations.”
“Then put them to work,” Jun said coldly. “Have them rebuild your roads and buildings. They’ll earn their own keep.”
“And how are we supposed to feed them? If they starve at the borders, that’s your fault.”
Rin noticed it was the northern Warlords—the Ox, Ram, Horse, and Dog Warlords—who did most of the talking. Tsolin sat with his fingers steepled under his chin, saying nothing. The southern Warlords, clustered near the back of the room, largely remained silent. They were the ones who had suffered the most damage, lost the most troops, and thus had the least leverage.
Throughout all of this Daji sat at the head of the table, observing, rarely speaking. She watched the others, one eyebrow arched just a bit higher than the other, as if she were supervising a group of children who had managed to continually disappoint her.
Another hour passed and they had resolved nothing, except for a halfhearted gesture by Tiger Province to allocate six thousand catties of food aid to the landlocked Ram Province in exchange for a thousand pounds of salt. In the grander scheme of things, with thousands of refugees dying of starvation daily, this was hardly a drop in the bucket.
“Why don’t we take a recess?” The Empress stood up from the table. “We’re not getting anywhere.”
“We’ve barely resolved anything,” said Tsolin.
“And the Empire won’t collapse if we break for a meal. Cool your heads, gentlemen. Dare I suggest you consider the radical option of compromising with each other?” Daji turned toward Rin. “Meanwhile, I shall retire for a moment to my gardens. Runin, it’s time for you to head off to your cell, don’t you think?”
Rin stiffened. She couldn’t help but shoot a panicked glance at Vaisra.
He stared forward without meeting her eyes, betraying nothing.
This was it. Rin squared her shoulders. She dipped her head in submission, and the Empress smiled.
Rin and the Empress exited not through the throne room but by a narrow corridor in the back. The servants’ exit. As they walked Rin could hear the gurgling of the irrigation pipes beneath the floors.
Hours had passed since the council began. The Cike should be stationed within the palace by now, but that thought made her no less terrified. For now she was operating alone with the Empress.
But she still didn’t have the fire.
“Are you exhausted yet?” Daji asked.
Rin didn’t respond.
“I wanted you to watch the Warlords at their best. They’re such a troublesome bunch, aren’t they?”
Rin continued pretending she hadn’t heard.
“You don’t talk very much, do you?” Daji glanced over her shoulder at her. Her eyes slid down to the muzzle. “Oh, of course. Let’s get this off you.”
She placed her slim fingers on either side of the contraption and gently pulled it off. “Better?”
Rin kept her silence. Don’t engage her, Vaisra had warned her. Maintain constant vigilance and let her speak her piece.
She only needed to buy herself a few more minutes. She could feel the opium wearing off. Her vision had gotten sharper, and her limbs responded without delay to her commands. She just needed Daji to keep talking until the Phoenix responded to her call. Then she could turn the Autumn Palace to ash.
“Altan was the same,” Daji mused. “You know, the first three years he was with us, we thought he was a mute.”
Rin nearly tripped over a cobblestone. Daji continued walking as if she had noticed nothing. Rin followed behind, fighting to keep her calm.
“I was sorry to hear of his loss,” Daji said. “He was a good commander. One of our very best.”
And you killed him, you old bitch. Rin rubbed her fingers together, hoping for a spark, but still the channel to the Phoenix remained blocked.
Just a little longer.
Daji led her behind the building toward a patch of empty space near the servants’ quarters.
“The Red Emperor built a series of tunnels in the Autumn Palace so that he could escape to and from any room if need be. Ruler of an entire empire, and he didn’t feel safe in his own bed.” Daji stopped beside a well and pushed hard at the cover, bracing her feet against the stone floor. The cover slid off with a loud screech. She straightened and brushed her hands on her uniform. “Follow me.”
Rin crawled after Daji into the well, which had a set of narrow, spiraling steps built into its wall. Daji reached up and slid the stone closed over them, leaving them standing in pitch darkness. Icy fingers wrapped around Rin’s hand. She jumped, but Daji only tightened her grip.
“It’s easy to get lost if you’ve never been here before.” Daji’s voice echoed around the chamber. “Stay close.”
Rin tried to keep count of how many turns they had taken—fifteen, sixteen—but soon enough she lost track of where they were, even in her carefully memorized mental map. How far were they from the council room? Would she have to ignite in the tunnels?
After several more minutes of walking, they resurfaced into a garden. The sudden burst of color was disorienting. Rin peered, blinking, at the resplendent array of lilies, chrysanthemums, and plum trees planted in clusters around rows upon rows of sculptures.
This wasn’t the Imperial Garden—the layout of the walls didn’t match. The Imperial Garden was shaped in a circle; this garden was erected inside a hexagon. This was a private courtyard.
This hadn’t been on the map. Rin had no clue where she was.
Her eyes flickered frantically around her surroundings, seeking out possible exit routes, mapping out useful trajectories and planes of motion for the impending fight, making note of objects that could be weaponized if she couldn’t get the fire back in time. Those saplings looked fragile—she might break a branch off for a club if she got desperate. Best if she could back Daji up against the far wall. If nothing else, she could use those loose cobblestones to smash the Empress’s head in.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?”
Rin realized Daji was waiting for her to say something.
If she engaged Daji in conversation, she’d be walking headfirst into a trap. Vaisra and Eriden had warned her many times how easily Daji would manipulate, could plant thoughts in her mind that weren’t her own.
But Daji would grow bored of talking if Rin stayed silent. And Daji’s interest in playing with her food was the only thing buying Rin time. Rin needed to keep the conversation going until she had the fire back.
“I guess,” she said. “I’m not one for aesthetics.”
“Of course you’re not. You got your education at Sinegard. They’re all crude utilitarians.” Daji put her hands on Rin’s shoulders and slowly turned her about the garden. “Tell me something. Does the palace look new to you?”
Rin glanced around the hexagon. Yes, it had to be new. The lustrous buildings of the Autumn Palace, though designed with the architecture of the Red Emperor, did not bear the stains of time. The stones were smooth and unscratched, the wooden posts gleaming with fresh paint.
“I suppose,” she said. “Is it not?”
“Follow me.” Daji walked toward a small gate built into the far wall, pushed it open, and motioned for Rin to follow her through.
The other side of the garden looked like it had been smashed under a giant’s heel. The midsection of the opposite wall was in pieces, as if it had been blown apart by cannon fire. Statues were strewn across the overgrown grass, limbs shattered, lying at grotesque and awkward angles.
This wasn’t natural decay. Wasn’t the result of failure to keep the grounds. This had to be the deliberate action of an invading force.
“I thought the Federation never reached Lusan,” Rin said.
“This wasn’t the Federation,” Daji said. “This wreckage has been here for over seventy years.”
“Then who …?”
“The Hesperians. History likes to focus on the Federation, but the masters at Sinegard always gloss over the first colonizers. No one remembers who started the First Poppy War.” Daji nudged a statue’s head with her foot. “One autumn day seventy years ago, a Hesperian admiral sailed up the Murui and blasted his way into Lusan. He pillaged the palace, razed it to the ground, poured oil over the wreckage, and danced in the ashes. By that evening the Autumn Palace had ceased to exist.”
“Then why haven’t you rebuilt the garden?” Rin’s eyes darted around the grounds while she spoke. A rake lay in the grass about half a yard from her feet. After all these years it was certainly blunt and covered in rust, but Rin might still use it as a staff.
“So we have the reminder,” Daji said. “To remember how we were humiliated. To remember that nothing good can come of dealing with the Hesperians.”
Rin couldn’t let her eyes linger on the rake. Daji would notice. She carefully reconstructed its position from memory. The sharp end was facing her. If she got close enough, she could kick it up into her grasp. Unless the grass had grown too long … but it was just grass; if she kicked hard it shouldn’t be a problem …
“The Hesperians have always intended to come back,” Daji said. “The Mugenese weakened this country using western silver. We remember the Federation as the face of the oppressor, but the Hesperians and Bolonians—the Consortium of western countries—are the ones with real power. They are who you ought to be afraid of.”
Rin moved just slightly so her left leg was positioned close enough to kick the rake up. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Daji said sharply. “I know what Vaisra intends to do. I know he intends to go to war. I’m trying to show you that it’s the wrong one.”
Rin’s pulse began to race. This was it—Daji knew her intentions, she needed to fight, it didn’t matter if she didn’t have the fire yet, she had to get to the rake—
“Stop that,” Daji ordered.
Rin’s limbs froze suddenly in place, muscles stiffening painfully as if the slightest movement might shatter them. She should be springing to fight. She should have at least crouched down. But somehow her body was arrested where she stood, as if she needed the Empress’s permission to even breathe.
“We are not finished talking,” said Daji.
“I’m finished listening,” Rin hissed through clenched teeth.
“Relax. I haven’t brought you here to kill you. You are an asset, one of the few I have left. It would be stupid to let you go.” Daji stepped in front of her so that they stood face-to-face. Rin hastily averted her eyes. “You’re fighting the wrong enemy, dear. Can’t you see it?”
Sweat beaded on Rin’s neck as she strained to break out of Daji’s hold.
“What did Vaisra promise you? You must know you’re being used. Is it worth it? Is it money? An estate? No … I don’t think you could be swayed by material promises.” Daji tapped her lacquered nails against painted lips. “No—don’t tell me you believe him, do you? Did he say he’d bring you a democracy? And you fell for it?”
“He said he’d depose you,” Rin whispered. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Do you really believe that?” Daji sighed. “What would you replace me with? The Nikara people aren’t ready for democracy. They’re sheep. They’re crude, uneducated fools. They need to be told what to do, even if that means tyranny. If Vaisra takes this nation then he’ll run it into the ground. The people don’t know what to vote for. They don’t even understand what it means to vote. And they certainly don’t know what’s good for them.”
“Neither do you,” Rin said. “You let them die in hordes. You invited the Mugenese in yourself and you traded them the Cike.”
To her surprise, Daji laughed. “Is that what you believe? You can’t trust everything you hear.”
“Shiro had no reason to lie. I know what you did.”
“You understand nothing. I have toiled for decades to keep this Empire intact. Do you think I wanted this war?”
“I think that at least half of this country was disposable to you.”
“I made a calculated sacrifice. The last time the Federation invaded, the Warlords rallied under the Dragon Emperor. The Dragon Emperor is dead. And the Federation was readying itself for a third invasion. No matter what I did, they were going to attack, and we were nowhere near strong enough to resist them. So I brokered a peace. They could have slices of the east if they would let the heartland remain free.”
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R.F. Kuang
The searing follow-up to 2018’s most celebrated fantasy debut – THE POPPY WAR.In the aftermath of the Third Poppy War, shaman and warrior Rin is on the run: haunted by the atrocity she committed to end the war, addicted to opium, and hiding from the murderous commands of her vengeful god, the fiery Phoenix. Her only reason for living is to get revenge on the traitorous Empress who sold out Nikan to their enemies.With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance…The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.
THE DRAGON REPUBLIC
R. F. Kuang
Copyright (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Rebecca Kuang 2019
Maps by Eric Gunther, copyright © Springer Cartographics 2017, 2019
Cover illustration © JungShan
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
R.F. Kuang asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008239855
Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008239879
Version: 2019-07-11
Dedication (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
To
Contents
Cover (#u3d97691c-1b55-5702-bc0b-541356c89ca7)
Title Page (#u28e028fe-1b8c-553f-b68b-f8b00aa75732)
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Arlong, Eight Years Prior
Part I
Chapter 1 (#u3ce53616-c3b9-5e8e-99cf-6a72b5723e53)
Chapter 2 (#uc6cbb9e8-aac1-5f89-a464-c4d3c063dfc6)
Chapter 3 (#u93915fd8-dc28-5d97-bcd1-ed6194fd78f9)
Chapter 4 (#u94bdaf6d-6626-5c36-9f8d-cb4376756e3d)
Chapter 5 (#u0e106e93-42e9-5bc9-b357-77596349914e)
Chapter 6 (#u2f6f7b2e-ee34-5d85-a8d2-cd2e0a25adc0)
Chapter 7 (#ucba39a37-d1c9-5723-a48d-5c39a2f07194)
Chapter 8 (#u335709b7-7afe-5118-93a2-0074e4a84062)
Chapter 9 (#u5ffa1d5c-91b2-5578-add6-b408117f45c1)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part II
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part III
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Dramatis Personae
Acknowledgments
Also by R. F. Kuang
About the Publisher
Maps (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
ARLONG, EIGHT YEARS PRIOR (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
“Come on,” Mingzha begged. “Please, I want to see.”
Nezha seized his brother by his chubby wrist and pulled him back from the shallows. “We’re not allowed to go past the lily pads.”
“But don’t you want to know?” Mingzha whined.
Nezha hesitated. He, too, wanted to see what lay in the caves around the bend. The grottoes of the Nine Curves River had been mysteries to the Yin children since they were born. They’d grown up with warnings of dark, dormant evils concealed behind the cave mouths; of monsters that lurked inside, eager for foolish children to stumble into their jaws.
That alone would have been enough to entice the Yin children, all of whom were adventurous to a fault. But they’d heard rumors of great treasures, too; of underwater piles of pearls, jade, and gold. Nezha’s Classics tutor had once told him that every piece of jewelry lost in the water inevitably wound up in those river grottoes. And sometimes, on a clear day, Nezha thought he could see the glimmer of sunlight on sparkling metal in the cave mouths from the window of his room.
He’d desperately wanted to explore those caves for years—and today would be the day to do it, when everyone was too busy to pay attention. But it was his responsibility to protect Mingzha. He’d never been trusted to watch his brother alone before; until today he’d always been too young. But this week Father was in the capital, Jinzha was at the Academy, Muzha was abroad at the Gray Towers in Hesperia, and the rest of the palace was so frazzled over Mother’s sudden illness that the servants had hastily passed Mingzha into Nezha’s arms and told them both to keep out of trouble. Nezha wanted to prove he was up to the task.
“Mingzha!”
His brother had wandered back into the shallows. Nezha cursed and dashed into the water behind him. How could a six-year-old move so quickly?
“Come on,” Mingzha pleaded when Nezha grabbed him by the waist.
“We can’t,” Nezha said. “We’ll get in trouble.”
“Mother’s been in bed all week. She won’t find out.” Mingzha twisted around in Nezha’s grip and shot him an impish smile. “I won’t tell. The servants won’t tell. Will you?”
“You’re a little demon,” Nezha said.
“I just want to see the entrance.” Mingzha beamed hopefully at him. “We don’t have to go in. Please?”
Nezha relented. “We’ll just go around the bend. We can look at the cave mouths from a distance. And then we’re turning back, do you understand?”
Mingzha shouted with delight and splashed into the water. Nezha followed, stooping down to grab his brother’s hand.
No one had ever been able to deny Mingzha anything. Who could? He was so fat and happy, a bouncing ball of giggles and delight, the absolute treasure of the palace. Father adored him. Jinzha and Muzha played with him whenever he wanted, and they never told him to get lost the way Jinzha had done so often to Nezha.
Mother doted on him most of all—perhaps because her other sons were destined to be soldiers, but she could keep Mingzha all to herself. She dressed him in finely embroidered silks and adorned him with so many lucky amulets of gold and jade that Mingzha clinked everywhere he walked, weighed down with the burden of good fortune. The palace servants liked to joke that they could always hear Mingzha before they saw him. Nezha wanted to make Mingzha stop to remove his jewelry now, worried it might drag him down under waves that already came up to his chest, but Mingzha charged forward like he was weightless.
“We’re stopping here,” Nezha said.
They’d gotten closer to the grottoes than they had ever been in their lives. The cave mouths were so dark inside that Nezha couldn’t see more than two feet past the entrances, but their walls looked beautifully smooth, glimmering with a million different colors like fish scales.
“Look.” Mingzha pointed at something in the water. “It’s Father’s cloak.”
Nezha frowned. “What’s Father’s cloak doing at the bottom of the river?”
Yet the heavy garment lying half-buried in the sand was undeniably Yin Vaisra’s. Nezha could see the crest of the dragon embroidered in silver thread against the rich cerulean-blue dye that only members of the House of Yin were permitted to wear.
Mingzha pointed to the closest grotto. “It came from in there.”
An inexplicable, chilly dread crept through Nezha’s veins. “Mingzha, get away from there.”
“Why?” Mingzha, stubborn and fearless, waded closer to the cave.
The water began to ripple.
Nezha reached out to pull his brother back. “Mingzha, wait—”
Something enormous burst out of the water.
Nezha saw a huge dark shape—something muscled and coiled like a serpent—before a massive wave rose above him and slammed him facedown into the water.
The river shouldn’t have been deep. The water had only come up to Nezha’s waist and Mingzha’s shoulders, had only been getting shallower the closer they moved to the grotto. But when Nezha opened his eyes underwater, the surface seemed miles away, and the bottom of the grotto seemed as vast as the palace of Arlong itself.
He saw a pale green light shining from the grotto floor. He saw faces, beautiful, but eyeless. Human faces embedded in the sand and coral, and an endless mosaic studded with silver coins, porcelain vases, and golden ingots—a bed of treasures that stretched on and on into the grotto as far as the light went.
He saw a blink of movement, dark against the light, that disappeared as quickly as it came.
Something was wrong with the water here. Something had stretched and altered its dimensions. What should have been shallow and bright was deep; deep, dark, and terribly, hypnotically quiet.
Through the silence Nezha heard the faint sound of his brother screaming.
He kicked frantically for the surface. It seemed miles away.
When at last he emerged from the water, the shallows were mere shallows again.
Nezha wiped the river water from his eyes, gasping. “Mingzha?”
His brother was gone. Crimson streaks stained the river. Some of the streaks were solid, lumpy masses. Nezha knew what they were.
“Mingzha?”
The waters were quiet. Nezha stumbled to his knees and retched. Vomit mixed into bloodstained water.
He heard a clink against the rocks.
He looked down and saw a golden anklet.
Then he saw a dark shape rising before the grottoes, and heard a voice that came from nowhere and vibrated his very bones.
“Hello, little one.”
Nezha screamed.
PART I (#u9d03339c-b976-5374-aa01-1664d7c07d1d)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_8090c0fb-46ba-5388-a8df-a48a8ade5c7d)
Dawn saw the Petrel sail through swirling mist into the port city of Adlaga. Shattered by a storm of Federation soldiers during the Third Poppy War, port security still hadn’t recovered and was almost nonexistent—especially for a supply ship flying Militia colors. The Petrel glided past Adlaga’s port officers with little trouble and made berth as close to the city walls as it could get.
Rin propped herself up on the prow, trying to conceal the twitching in her limbs and to ignore the throbbing pain in her temples. She wanted opium terribly and couldn’t have it. Today she needed her mind alert. Functioning. Sober.
The Petrel bumped against the dock. The Cike gathered on the upper deck, watching the gray skies with tense anticipation as the minutes trickled past.
Ramsa drummed his foot against the deck. “It’s been an hour.”
“Patience,” Chaghan said.
“Could be that Unegen’s run off,” Baji said.
“He hasn’t run off,” Rin said. “He said he needed until noon.”
“He’d also be the first to seize this chance to be rid of us,” Baji said.
He had a point. Unegen, already the most skittish by far among the Cike, had been complaining for days about their impending mission. Rin had sent him ahead overland to scope out their target in Adlaga. But the rendezvous window was quickly closing and Unegen hadn’t shown.
“Unegen wouldn’t dare,” Rin said, and winced when the effort of speaking sent little stabs through the base of her skull. “He knows I’d hunt him down and skin him alive.”
“Mm,” Ramsa said. “Fox fur. I’d like a new scarf.”
Rin turned her eyes back to the city. Adlaga made an odd corpse of a township, half-alive and half-destroyed. One side had emerged from the war intact; the other had been bombed so thoroughly that she could see building foundations poking up from blackened grass. The split appeared so even that half houses existed on the line: one side blackened and exposed, the other somehow teetering and groaning against the ocean winds, yet still standing.
Rin found it hard to imagine that anyone still lived in the township. If the Federation had been as thorough here as they’d been at Golyn Niis, then all that should be left were corpses.
At last a raven emerged from the blackened ruins. It circled the ship twice, then dove straight toward the Petrel as if locked on a target. Qara lifted a padded arm into the air. The raven pulled out of its dive and wrapped its talons around her wrist.
Qara ran the back of her index finger over the bird’s head and down its spine. The raven ruffled its feathers as she brought its beak to her ear. Several seconds passed. Qara stood still with her eyes shut, listening intently to something the rest of them couldn’t hear.
“Unegen’s pinned Yuanfu,” Qara said. “City hall, two hours.”
“Guess you’re not getting that scarf,” Baji told Ramsa.
Chaghan yanked a sack out from under the deck and emptied its contents onto the planks. “Everyone get dressed.”
Ramsa had come up with the idea to disguise themselves in stolen Militia uniforms. Uniforms were the one thing Moag hadn’t been able to sell them, but they weren’t hard to find. Rotting corpses lay in messy piles by the roadside in every abandoned coastal town, and it took only two trips to scavenge enough clothes that weren’t burned or covered in blood.
Rin had to roll up the arms and legs of her uniform. Corpses of her stature were difficult to come by. She suppressed the urge to vomit as she laced on her boots. She’d pulled the shirt off a body wedged inside a half-burned funeral pyre, and three washes still couldn’t conceal the smell of charred flesh under salty ocean water.
Ramsa, draped absurdly in a uniform three times his size, gave her a salute. “How do I look?”
She bent down to tie her boot laces. “Why are you wearing that?”
“Rin, please—”
“You’re not coming.”
“But I want to—”
“You are not coming,” she repeated. Ramsa was a munitions genius, but he was also short, scrawny, and utterly worthless in a melee. She wasn’t losing her only fire powder engineer because he didn’t know how to wield a sword. “Don’t make me tie you to the mast.”
“Come on,” Ramsa whined. “We’ve been on this ship for weeks, and I’m so fucking seasick just walking around makes me want to vomit—”
“Tough.” Rin yanked a belt through the loops around her waist.
Ramsa pulled a handful of rockets from his pocket. “Will you set these off, then?”
Rin gave him a stern look. “I don’t think you understand that we’re not trying to blow Adlaga up.”
“Oh, no, you just want to topple the local government, that’s so much better.”
“With minimal civilian casualties, which means we don’t need you.” Rin reached out and tapped at the lone barrel leaning against the mast. “Aratsha, will you watch him? Make sure he doesn’t get off the ship.”
A blurry face, grotesquely transparent, emerged from the water. Aratsha spent most of his time in the water, spiriting the Cike’s ships along to wherever they needed to go, and when he wasn’t calling down his god he preferred to rest in his barrel. Rin had never seen his original human form. She wasn’t sure he had one anymore.
Bubbles floated from Aratsha’s mouth as he spoke. “If I must.”
“Good luck,” Ramsa muttered. “As if I couldn’t outrun a fucking barrel.”
Aratsha tilted his head at him. “Please be reminded that I could drown you in seconds.”
Ramsa opened his mouth to retort, but Chaghan spoke over him. “Everyone take your pick.” Steel clattered as he dumped out a chest of Militia weapons onto the deck. Baji, complaining loudly, traded his conspicuous nine-pointed rake for a standard infantry sword. Suni scooped up an Imperial halberd, but Rin knew the weapon was purely for show. Suni’s specialty was bashing heads in with his shield-sized hands. He didn’t need anything else.
Rin fastened a curved pirate scimitar to her waist. It wasn’t Militia standard, but Militia swords were too heavy for her to wield. Moag’s blacksmiths had fashioned her something lighter. She wasn’t yet used to the grip, but she also doubted the day would end in a sword fight.
If things got so bad that she needed to get involved, then it would end in fire.
“Let’s reiterate.” Chaghan’s pale eyes roved over the assembled Cike. “This is surgical. We have a single target. This is an assassination, not a battle. You will harm no civilians.”
He looked pointedly at Rin.
She crossed her arms. “I know.”
“Not even by accident.”
“I know.”
“Come off it,” Baji said. “Since when did you get so high and mighty about casualties?”
“We’ve done enough harm to your people,” said Chaghan.
“You did enough harm,” Baji said. “I didn’t break those dams.”
Qara flinched at that, but Chaghan acted as if he hadn’t heard a word. “We’re finished hurting civilians. Am I understood?”
Rin jerked out a shrug. Chaghan liked to play commander, and she was rarely in a state to be bothered. He could boss them around all he liked. All she cared about was that they got this job done.
Three months. Twenty-nine targets, all killed without error. One more head in a sack, and then they’d be sailing north to assassinate their very last mark—the Empress Su Daji.
Rin felt a flush creep up her neck at the thought. Her palms grew dangerously hot.
Not now. Not yet. She took a deep breath. Then another one, more desperate, when the heat only extended through her torso.
Baji clamped a hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”
She exhaled slowly. Made herself count backward from ten, and then up to forty-nine by odd numbers, and then back down by prime numbers. Altan had taught her that trick, and it mostly worked, at least when she took care not to think about Altan when she did it. The fever flush receded. “I’m fine.”
“And you’re sober?” Baji asked.
“Yes,” she said stiffly.
Baji didn’t take his hand off her shoulder. “You’re sure? Because—”
“I’ve got this,” she snapped. “Let’s go gut this bastard.”
Three months ago, after the Cike had first sailed out from the Isle of Speer, they’d faced a bit of a dilemma.
Namely, they had nowhere to go.
They knew they couldn’t return to the mainland. Ramsa had pointed out, quite astutely, that if the Empress had been willing to sell the Cike out to Federation scientists, then she wouldn’t be happy to see them alive and free. A quick, furtive supply trip to a tiny coastal city in Snake Province confirmed their suspicions. All of their faces were plastered on the village post boards. They’d been named as war criminals. Bounties were out for their arrest—five hundred Imperial silvers dead, six hundred alive.
They’d stolen as many crates of provisions as they could and hurried out of Snake Province before anyone saw them.
Back in Omonod Bay, they’d debated their options. The only thing they could all agree on was that they needed to kill the Empress Su Daji—the Vipress, the last of the Trifecta, and the traitor who had sold her nation to the Federation.
But they were nine people—eight, without Kitay—against the most powerful woman in the Empire and the combined forces of the Imperial Militia. They’d had few supplies, only the weapons they carried on their backs and a stolen skimmer so banged up that they spent half their time bailing water out of the lower decks.
So they’d sailed down south, past Snake Province into Rooster territory, tracing the coastline until they reached the port city Ankhiluun. There they had come into the employ of the Pirate Queen Moag.
Rin had never met anyone she respected as much as she did Moag—the Stone Bitch, the Lying Widow, and the ruthless ruler of Ankhiluun. She was a consort-turned-pirate who went from Lady to Queen when she murdered her husband, and she’d been running Ankhiluun as an illegal enclave of foreign trade for years. She’d skirmished with the Trifecta during the Second Poppy War, and she’d been fending off the Empress’s scouts ever since.
She was more than happy to help the Cike rid her of Daji for good.
In return, she demanded thirty heads. The Cike had returned twenty-nine. Most had been low-level smugglers, captains, and mercenaries. Moag’s primary income stream came from contraband opium imports, and she liked to keep her eye out for opium dealers who didn’t play by her rules—or at least line her pockets.
The thirtieth mark would be harder. Today Rin and the Cike intended to topple Adlaga’s local government.
Moag had been trying to break into the Adlaga market for years. The little coastal city didn’t offer much, but its civilians, many with lingering addictions to opiates since the days of Federation occupation, would gladly spend their life savings on Ankhiluuni imports. Adlaga had held out against Moag’s aggressive opium trade for the past two decades only because of a particularly vigilant city magistrate, Yang Yuanfu, and his administration.
Moag wanted Yang Yuanfu dead. The Cike specialized in assassination. They were a matchmaker’s dream.
Three months. Twenty-nine heads. Just one more job and they’d have silver, ships, and enough soldiers to distract the Imperial Guard long enough for Rin to march up to Daji and wrap flaming fingers around her throat.
If port security was lax, wall defense was nonexistent. The Cike passed through Adlaga’s walls with no interference—which wasn’t hard to do, considering the Federation had blown great holes all across the boundary and none of them were guarded.
Unegen met them behind the gates.
“We picked a good day for murder,” he said as he guided them into the alleyway. “Yuanfu’s due in the city square at noon for a war commemoration ceremony. He’ll be out in broad daylight, and we can pick him off from the alleys without showing our faces.”
Unlike Aratsha, Unegen preferred his human form when he wasn’t calling down the shape-shifting powers of the fox spirit. But Rin had always sensed something distinctly vulpine in the way he carried himself. Unegen was both crafty and easily startled; his narrow eyes were always darting from side to side, tracking all of his possible escape routes.
“So we’ve got what, two hours?” Rin asked.
“A little over. There’s a warehouse a few blocks down from here that’s fairly empty,” he said. “We can hunker down to wait in there. Then, ah, we split pretty easily if things go south.”
Rin turned toward the Cike, considering.
“We’ll take the corners of the square when Yuanfu shows up,” she decided. “Suni in the southwest. Baji northwest, and I’ll take the northeast.”
“Diversions?” Baji asked.
“No.” Normally diversions were a fantastic idea, and Rin loved assigning Suni to wreak as much havoc as possible while she or Baji darted in to slit their target’s throat, but during a public ceremony the risk to civilians was too great. “We’ll let Qara take the first shot. The rest of us clear a path back to the ship if they put up resistance.”
“Are we still trying to pretend we’re normal mercenaries?” Suni asked.
“Might as well,” Rin said. They’d done a decent job so far of concealing the extent of their abilities, or at least silencing anyone who would spread rumors. Daji didn’t know the Cike were coming for her. The longer she believed them dead, the better. “We’re dealing with a better opponent than usual, though, so do what you need to. At the end of the day, we want a head in a bag.”
She took a breath and ran the plan once more through her mind, considering.
This would work. This was going to be fine.
Strategizing with the Cike was like playing a chess game in which she had several massively overpowered, unpredictable, and bizarre pieces. Aratsha commanded the waters. Suni and Baji were berserkers, capable of leveling entire squadrons without breaking a sweat. Unegen could transform into a fox. Qara not only communed with birds, she could shoot out a peacock’s eye from a hundred meters away. And Chaghan … she wasn’t quite sure what Chaghan did, other than irritate her at every possible turn, but he seemed capable of making people lose their minds.
All of them combined against a single township official and his guards seemed like overkill.
But Yang Yuanfu was used to assassination attempts. You had to be, if you were one of the few uncorrupt officials left in the Empire. He shielded himself with a squadron of the most battle-hardy men in the province wherever he went.
Rin knew, based on Moag’s reports, that Yang Yuanfu had survived at least thirteen assassination attempts over the past fifteen years. His guards were well accustomed to treachery. To get past them, you’d need fighters of unnatural ability. You needed overkill.
Once inside the warehouse, the Cike had nothing to do but wait. Unegen kept watch by the slats in the wall, twitching continuously. Chaghan and Qara sat with their backs against the wall, silent. Suni and Baji stood slouched, arms crossed casually as if simply waiting for their dinners.
Rin paced the room, focusing on her breathing and trying to ignore the twinges of pain in her temples.
She counted thirty hours since she’d ingested any opium. That was longer than she’d gone for weeks. She twisted her hands together as she walked, trying to force the twitching to go away.
It didn’t help. It didn’t stop the headache, either.
Fuck.
At first she’d thought she only needed the opium for the grief. She thought she would smoke it for the relief, until the memories of Speer and Altan dulled to a faint ache, until she could function without the suffocating guilt of what she’d done.
She thought guilt must be the word for it. The irrational feeling, not the moral concept. Because she’d told herself she wasn’t sorry, that the Mugenese deserved what they got and that she was never looking back. Except the memory loomed like a gaping chasm in her mind where she’d tossed in every human feeling that threatened her.
But the abyss kept calling for her to look in. To fall inside.
And the Phoenix didn’t want to let her forget. The Phoenix wanted her to gloat about it. The Phoenix lived on rage, and rage was intricately tied to the past. So the Phoenix needed to claw apart the open wounds in her mind and set fire to them, day after day, because that gave her memories and those memories fueled the rage.
Without opium the visions flashed constantly through Rin’s mind’s eye, often more vivid than her surrounding reality.
Sometimes they were of Altan. More times they weren’t. The Phoenix was a conduit to generations of memories. Thousands upon thousands of Speerlies had prayed to the god in their grief and desperation. And the god had collected their suffering, stored it, and turned it into flames.
The memories could also be deceptively calm. Sometimes Rin saw brown-skinned children running up and down a pristine white beach. She saw flames burning higher on the shore—not funeral pyres, not flames of destruction, but campfires. Bonfires. Hearth fires, warm and sustaining.
And sometimes she saw the Speerlies, enough of them to fill a thriving village. She was always amazed by how many of them there were, an entire race of people that sometimes she feared she’d only dreamed up. If the Phoenix lingered, then Rin could even catch fragments of conversations in a language she almost understood, could see glimpses of faces that she almost recognized.
They weren’t the ferocious beasts of Nikara lore. They weren’t the mindless warriors the Red Emperor had needed them to be and every subsequent regime had forced them to be. They loved and laughed and cried around their fires. They were people.
But every time, before Rin could sink into the memory of a heritage she didn’t have, she saw on the fading horizon boats sailing in from the Federation naval base on the mainland.
What happened next was a haze of colors, accumulated perspectives that shifted too fast for Rin to follow. Shouts, screams, movement. Rows and rows of Speerlies lined up on the beach, weapons in hand.
But it was never enough. To the Federation, they must have seemed savages, using sticks to fight gods, and the booms of cannon fire lit up the village as quickly as if someone had held a light to kindling.
Gas pellets launched from the tower ships with terribly innocent popping noises. Where they hit the ground they expelled huge, thick clouds of acrid yellow smoke.
Women fell. Children twitched. The warrior ranks broke. The gas did not kill immediately; its inventors were not so kind.
Then the butchering began. The Federation fired continuously and indiscriminately. Mugenese crossbows could shoot three bolts at a time, unleashing an unceasing barrage of metal that ripped open necks, skulls, limbs, hearts.
Spilled blood traced marble patterns into white sand. Bodies lay still where they fell. At dawn, the Federation generals marched to the shore, boots treading indifferently over crushed bodies, advancing to slam their flag into the bloodstained sand.
“We’ve got a problem,” Baji said.
Rin snapped back to attention. “What?”
“Take a look.”
She heard the sudden sound of jangling bells—a happy sound, utterly out of place in this ruined city. She pressed her face to a gap in the warehouse slats. A cloth dragon bobbed up and down through the crowd, held up on tent poles by dancers below. Dancers waving streamers and ribbons followed behind, accompanied by musicians and government officials lifted on bright red sedan chairs. Behind them was the crowd.
“You said it was a small ceremony,” Rin said. “Not a fucking parade.”
“It was quiet just an hour ago,” Unegen insisted.
“And now the whole township’s clustering in that square.” Baji squinted through the slats. “Are we still going by that ‘no civilian casualties’ rule?”
“Yes,” Chaghan said before Rin could answer.
“You’re no fun,” Baji said.
“Crowds make targeted assassinations easier,” Chaghan said. “It’s a better opportunity to get in close. Make your hit without being spotted, then filter out before his guards have time to react.”
Rin opened her mouth to say That’s still a lot of witnesses, but the withdrawal cramps hit her first. A wave of pain tore through her muscles; it started in her gut and flared out, so sudden that for a moment the world turned black, and all she could do was clutch her chest, gasping.
“Are you all right?” Baji asked.
A wave of bile rose up in her throat before she could respond. She heaved. A second swell of nausea racked her gut. Then a third.
Baji put a hand on her shoulder. “Rin?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted for what seemed like the thousandth time.
She wasn’t fine. Her head was throbbing again, and this time the pain was accompanied by a nausea that seized her rib cage and didn’t let go until she was doubled over on her knees, whimpering.
Vomit splattered the floor.
“Change of plans,” Chaghan said. “Rin, get back to the ship.”
She wiped her mouth. “No.”
“I’m telling you you’re not in any state to be useful.”
“And I’m your commander,” she said. “So shut up and do as I say.”
Chaghan’s eyes narrowed. The warehouse fell silent.
Rin had been wrestling Chaghan for control over the Cike for months. He questioned her decisions at every turn; he took every chance he could to make it very clear that he thought Altan had made a stupid decision naming her commander.
And Rin knew, in all fairness, he was right.
She was dreadful at leadership. Most of her attack plans over the past three months had boiled down to “everyone attack at once and see if we come out all right on the other side.”
But command ability aside, she had to be here. Had to see Adlaga through. Since they’d left Speer her withdrawals had only been getting worse and worse. She’d been mostly functional during their first few missions for Moag. Then the endless killings, the screams, and the flashbacks to the battlefield kept setting her anger off again and again until she was spending more hours of the day high than she did sober, and even when she was sober she felt like she was still teetering on the brink of madness because the fucking Phoenix never shut up.
She needed to pull herself back from the precipice. If she couldn’t do this basic, simple task; couldn’t kill some township official who wasn’t even a shaman, then she would hardly be able to stand up to the Empress.
And she couldn’t lose her chance at revenge. Revenge was the only thing she had.
“Don’t you jeopardize this,” Chaghan said.
“Don’t you patronize me,” she retorted.
Chaghan sighed and turned to Unegen. “Can you watch her? I’ll give you laudanum.”
“I thought I was supposed to return to the ship,” Unegen said.
“Change of plans.”
“Fine.” Unegen twitched out a shrug. “If I have to.”
“Come on,” Rin said. “I don’t need a wet nurse.”
“You’ll wait in the corner of the crowd,” Chaghan ordered, ignoring her. “You won’t leave Unegen’s side. You’ll both act as reinforcements, and barring that, you will be the last resort.”
She scowled. “Chaghan—”
“The last resort,” he repeated. “You’ve killed enough innocents.”
The hour came. The Cike dissipated, darting out of the warehouse to join the moving crowd one by one.
Rin and Unegen blended into Adlaga’s masses easily enough. The main streets were packed with civilians, all caught up in their own miseries, and so many noises and sights came from all directions that Rin, unsure of where to look, couldn’t help but feel a constant state of mild panic.
A wildly discordant mash of gongs and war drums drowned out the lute music from the front of the parade. Merchants hawked their wares every time they turned a corner, screaming prices with the sort of urgency that she associated with evacuation warnings. Celebratory red confetti littered the streets, tossed out in handfuls by children and entertainers, a snowfall of red paper flecks that covered every surface.
“How do they have the funds for this?” Rin muttered. “The Federation left them starving.”
“Aid from Sinegard,” Unegen guessed. “End-of-war celebration funds. Keeps them happy, keeps them loyal.”
Rin saw food everywhere she looked. Huge cubes of watermelon on sticks. Red bean buns. Stalls selling soup dumplings dripping with soy sauce and lotus seed tarts lined the streets. Merchants flipped egg cakes with deft movements, and the crackle of oil under any other circumstances would make her hungry, but now the pungent smells only made her stomach turn.
It seemed both unfair and impossible that there could be such an abundance of food. Just days ago they had sailed past people who were drowning their babies in river mud because that was a quicker and more merciful death than letting them slowly starve.
If all this came from Sinegard, then that meant the Imperial bureaucracy had possessed food stores like this the entire time. Why had they withheld it during the war?
If the people of Adlaga were asking that same question, they didn’t show it. Everyone looked so happy. Faces relaxed in simple relief because the war was over, the Empire was victorious, and they were safe.
And that made Rin furious.
She’d always had trouble with anger, she knew that. At Sinegard she’d constantly acted in furious, impulsive bursts and dealt with the consequences later. But now the anger was permanent, an unspeakable fury imposed upon her that she could neither contain nor control.
But she also didn’t want to make it stop. The anger was a shield. The anger helped her to keep from remembering what she’d done. Because as long as she was angry, then it was okay—she’d acted within reason. She was afraid that if she stopped being angry, she might crack apart.
She tried to distract herself by scanning the crowd for Yang Yuanfu and his guards. Tried to focus on the task at hand.
Her god wouldn’t let her.
Kill them, encouraged the Phoenix. They don’t deserve their happiness. They didn’t fight.
She had a sudden vision of the marketplace on fire. She shook her head frantically, trying to tune out the Phoenix’s voice. “No, stop …”
Make them burn.
Heat flared up in her palms. Her gut twisted. No—not here, not now. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Turn them to ash.
Her heartbeat began to quicken; her vision narrowed to a pinprick and expanded again. She felt feverish. The crowd suddenly seemed full of enemies. In one instant everyone was a blue-uniformed Federation soldier, bearing weapons; and in another they were civilians once again. She took a deep, choking breath, trying to force air into her lungs, eyes squeezed shut while she willed the red haze to go away once more.
This time it wouldn’t.
The laughter, the music, the smiling faces standing around her all made her want to scream.
How dare they live when Altan was dead? It seemed horrifically unfair that life could keep on going and these people could be celebrating a war that they hadn’t won for themselves, when they hadn’t suffered for it …
The heat in her hands intensified.
Unegen seized her by the shoulder. “I thought you had your shit under control.”
She jumped and spun around. “I do!” she hissed. Too loud. The people around her backed away from her.
Unegen pulled her toward the edge of the crowd, into the safety of the shadows under Adlaga’s ruins. “You’re drawing attention.”
“I’m fine, Unegen, just let go—”
He didn’t. “You need to calm down.”
“I know—”
“No. I mean right now.” He nodded over her shoulder. “She’s here.”
Rin turned.
And there sat the Empress, borne like a bride on a palanquin of red silk.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_f78c3260-e4cb-50fa-9aea-0b30abcb2c12)
The last time Rin had encountered the Empress Su Daji, she had been burning with fever, too delirious to see anything but Daji’s face—lovely, hypnotic, with skin like porcelain and eyes like moth’s wings.
The Empress was just as arresting as ever. Everyone Rin knew had emerged from the Mugenese invasion looking a decade older, jaded and scarred, but the Empress was as pale, ageless, and unmarked as ever, as if she existed on some transcendent plane untouchable by mortals.
Rin’s breath quickened.
Daji wasn’t supposed to be here.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Images of Daji’s body flashed through her mind. Head cracked against white marble. Pale neck sliced open. Body charred to nothing—but she wouldn’t have burned immediately. Rin wanted to do it slowly, wanted to relish it.
A slow cheer went up through the crowd.
The Empress leaned out through the curtains and raised a hand so white it nearly glimmered in the sunlight. She smiled.
“We are victorious,” she called out. “We have survived.”
Anger flared inside Rin, so thick she almost choked on it. She felt like her body was covered with ant bites that she couldn’t scratch at—a kind of frustration bubbling inside her, just begging her to let it explode.
How could the Empress be alive? The sheer contradiction infuriated her, the fact that Altan and Master Irjah and so many others were dead and Daji looked like she’d never even been wounded. She was the head of a nation that had bled millions to a senseless invasion—an invasion she’d invited—and she looked like she’d just arrived for a banquet.
Rin barged forward.
Unegen immediately dragged her back. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think?” Rin wrenched her arms out of his grip. “I’m going to get her. Go rally the others, I’ll need backup—”
“Are you crazy?”
“She’s right there! We’ll never get a shot this good again!”
“Then let Qara do it.”
“Qara doesn’t have a clear shot,” Rin hissed. Qara’s station in the ruined bell towers was too high up. She couldn’t get an arrow through—not past the carriage windows, not past this crowd. Inside the palanquin Daji was shielded on all sides; shots from the front would be blocked by the guards standing right before her.
And Rin was more concerned that Qara wouldn’t shoot. She’d certainly seen the Empress by now, but she might be afraid to fire into a crowd of civilians, or to give away the Cike’s location before any of them had a clear shot. Qara might have decided to be prudent.
Rin didn’t care for prudence. The universe had delivered her this chance. She could end this all in minutes.
The Phoenix strained at her consciousness, eager and impatient. Come now, child … Let me …
She dug her fingernails into her palms. Not yet.
Too much distance separated her from the Empress. If she lit up now, everyone in the square was dead.
She wished desperately that she had better control over the fire. Or any control at all. But the Phoenix was antithetical to control. The Phoenix wanted a roaring, chaotic blaze, consuming everything around her as far as the eye could see.
And when she called the god she couldn’t tell her own desire apart from the Phoenix’s; its desire, and her desire, was a death drive that demanded more to feed its fire.
She tried to think of something else, anything other than rage and revenge. But when she looked at the Empress, all she saw were flames.
Daji looked up. Her eyes locked on to Rin’s. She lifted a hand and waved.
Rin froze. She couldn’t look away. Daji’s eyes became windows became memories became smoke, fire, corpses, and bones, and Rin felt herself falling, falling into a black ocean where all she could see was Altan as a human beacon igniting himself on a pier.
Daji’s lips curved into a cruel smile.
Then the firecrackers set off behind Rin without warning—pop-pop-pop—and Rin’s heart almost burst out of her chest.
Suddenly she was shrieking, hands pressed to her ears while her entire body shook.
“It’s fireworks!” Unegen hissed. He dragged her wrists away from her head. “Just fireworks.”
But that didn’t mean anything—she knew they were fireworks, but that was a rational thought, and rational thoughts didn’t matter when she shut her eyes and saw with every blast of sound explosions bursting behind her eyelids, flailing limbs, screaming children—
She saw a man dangling from the floorboards of a building that had been rent apart, trying to hold on with slippery fingers to slanting wooden planks to not fall into the flaming spears of timber below. She saw men and women plastered to the walls, dusted over with faint white powder so she might have thought they were statues if she couldn’t see the dark shadow of blood in an outline all around them—
Too many people. She was trapped by too many people. She sank to her knees, face buried in her hands. The last time she’d been inside a crowd of people like this they’d been stampeding away from the horror of the inner city of Khurdalain—her eyes shot up and darted around, searching for escape routes, and found none, just unending walls of bodies packed together.
Too much. Too many sights, the information—her mind collapsed in on itself; bursts and flickers of fire emitted from her shoulders and exploded in the air above her, which just made her tremble harder.
And there were still so many people—they were crammed together, a teeming mass of outstretched arms, a nameless and faceless entity that wanted to tear her apart—
Thousands, hundreds of thousands—and you wiped them out of existence, you burned them in their beds—
“Rin, stop!” Unegen shouted.
It didn’t matter, though. The crowd had formed a wide berth around her. Mothers dragged their children back. Veterans pointed and exclaimed.
She looked down. Smoke furled out from every part of her.
Daji’s litter had disappeared. She’d been spirited to safety, no doubt; Rin’s presence had been a glaring warning beacon. A line of Imperial guards pushed through the crowded street toward them, shields raised, spears pointed directly at Rin.
“Oh, fuck,” Unegen said.
Rin backed away unsteadily, palms held out before her as if they belonged to a stranger. Someone else’s fingers sparking with fire. Someone else’s will dragging the Phoenix into this world.
Burn them.
Fire pulsed inside her. She could feel the veins straining behind her eyes. The pressure shot little stabs of pain behind her head, made her vision burst and pop.
Kill them.
The guard captain shouted an order. The Militia stormed her. Then her defensive instincts kicked in, and she lost all self-control. She heard a deafening silence in her mind, then a high, keening noise, the victorious cackle of a god that knew it had won.
When she finally looked at Unegen she didn’t see a man, she saw a charred corpse, a white skeleton glistening over flesh sloughing away; she saw him decompose to ash within seconds and she was struck by how clean that ash was; so infinitely preferable to the complicated mess of bones and flesh that made him up now …
“Stop it!”
She heard not a scream, but a whimpering beg. For a split second Unegen’s face flickered through the ash.
She was killing him. She knew she was killing him, and she couldn’t stop.
She couldn’t even move her own limbs. She stood immobile, fire roaring out of her extremities, holding her still like she’d been encased in stone.
Burn him, said the Phoenix.
“No, stop—”
This is what you want.
It wasn’t what she wanted. But it wouldn’t stop. Why would the Phoenix’s gift include any inkling of control? It was an appetite that only strengthened; the fire consumed and wanted to consume more, and Mai’rinnen Tearza had warned her about this once but she hadn’t listened and now Unegen was going to die …
Something heavy clamped over her mouth. She tasted laudanum. Thick, sweet, and cloying. Panic and relief warred in her head as she choked and struggled, but Chaghan just squeezed the soaked cloth harder over her face as her chest heaved.
The ground swooped under her feet. She loosed a muffled shriek.
“Breathe,” Chaghan ordered. “Shut up. Just breathe.”
She choked against the sick and familiar smell; Enki had made this for her so many times. She fought not to struggle; pushed down her natural instincts—she had ordered them to do this, this was supposed to happen.
That didn’t make it any easier to take.
Her legs buckled beneath her. Her shoulders sagged. She swooned into Chaghan’s side.
He dragged her upright, slung her arm over his shoulder, and helped her toward the stairs. Smoke billowed in their path; the heat didn’t affect Rin, but she could see Chaghan’s hair curling, crinkling black at the edges.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
“Where’s Unegen?” she mumbled.
“He’s fine, he’ll be fine …”
She wanted to insist on seeing him, but her tongue felt too heavy to form words. Her knees gave way entirely, but she didn’t feel herself fall. The sedative worked its way through her bloodstream, and the world was a light and airy place, a fairy’s domain. She heard someone yell. She felt someone lift her and place her on the bottom of the sampan.
She managed a last look over her shoulder.
On the horizon, the entire port town was lit up like a beacon—lamps illuminated on every deck, bells and smoke signals going up in the glowing air.
Every Imperial sentry could see that warning.
Rin had learned the standard Militia codes. She knew what those signals meant. They’d announced a manhunt for traitors to the throne.
“Congratulations,” Chaghan said. “You’ve brought the entire Militia down on our backs.”
“What are we going to—” Her tongue lolled heavy in her mouth. She’d lost the capacity to form words.
He put a hand on her shoulder and shoved. “Get down.”
She tumbled gracelessly into the space under the seats. She opened her eyes wide to see the wooden base of the boat inches from her nose, so close she could count the grains. The lines along the wood swirled into ink images, which she tilted into, and then the ink assumed colors and became a world of red and black and orange.
The chasm opened. That was the only time it could—when she was high out of her mind, too out of control to stay away from the one thing she refused to let herself think about.
She was flying over the longbow island, she was watching the fire mountain erupt, streams of molten lava pouring over the peak, rushing in rivulets toward the cities below.
She saw the lives crushed out, burned and flattened and transformed to smoke in an instant. And it was so easy, like blowing out a candle, like crushing a moth under her finger; she wanted it and it happened; she had willed it like a god.
As long as she remembered it from that detached, bird’s-eye view, she felt no guilt. She felt rather remotely curious, as if she had set an anthill on fire, as if she had impaled a beetle on a knife tip.
There was no guilt in killing insects, only the lovely, childish curiosity of seeing them writhe in their dying throes.
This wasn’t a memory or a vision; this was an illusion she had conjured for herself, the illusion she returned to every time she lost control and they sedated her.
She wanted to see it—she needed to dance at the edge of this memory that she did not have, skirting between the godlike cold indifference of a murderer and the crippling guilt of the deed. She played with her guilt the way a child holds his palm to a candle flame, daring to venture just close enough to feel the stabbing licks of pain.
It was mental self-flagellation, the equivalent of digging a nail into an open sore. She knew the answer, of course, she just couldn’t admit it to anyone—that at the moment she sank the island, the moment she became a murderer, she had wanted it.
“Is she all right?” Ramsa’s voice. “Why is she laughing?”
Chaghan’s voice. “She’ll be fine.”
Yes, Rin wanted to shout, yes, she was fine; just dreaming, just caught between this world and the next, just enraptured by the illusions of what she had done. She rolled around on the bottom of the sampan and giggled until the laughter turned to loud, harsh sobs, and then she cried until she couldn’t see anymore.
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_3cd6483b-be85-5563-820c-c2ad03f04b4d)
“Wake up.”
Someone pinched her arm, hard. Rin bolted upright. Her right hand reached to a belt that wasn’t there for a knife that was in the other room, and her left hand slammed blindly sideways into—
“Fuck!” Chaghan shouted.
She focused with difficulty on his face. He backed up, hands held out before her to show that he held no weapons, just a washcloth.
Rin’s fingers moved frantically over her neck and wrists. She knew she wasn’t tied down, she knew, but still she had to check.
Chaghan rubbed ruefully at his rapidly bruising cheek.
Rin didn’t apologize for hitting him. He knew better than that. All of them knew better than that. They knew not to touch her without asking. Not to approach her from behind. Not to make sudden movements or sounds around her unless they wanted to end up a stick of charcoal floating to the bottom of Omonod Bay.
“How long have I been out?” She gagged. Her mouth tasted like something had died in it; her tongue was as dry as if she had spent hours licking at a wooden board.
“Couple of days,” Chaghan said. “Good job getting out of bed.”
“Days?”
He shrugged. “Messed up the dosage, I think. At least it didn’t kill you.”
Rin rubbed at dry eyes. Bits of hardened mucus came off the sides of her eyes in clumps. She caught a glimpse of her face in her bedside mirror. Her pupils weren’t red—they took a while to adjust back every time she’d been on any kind of opiates—but the whites of her eyes were bloodshot, full of angry veins thick and sprawling like cobwebs.
Memories seeped slowly into the forefront of her mind, fighting through the fog of laudanum to sort themselves out. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to separate what had happened from what she’d dreamed. A sick feeling pooled in her gut as slowly, her thoughts formed into questions. “Where’s Unegen …?”
“You burned over half his body. Nearly killed him.” Chaghan’s clipped tone spared her no sympathy. “We couldn’t bring him with us, so Enki stayed behind to look after him. And they’re, ah, not coming back.”
Rin blinked several times, trying to make the world around her less blurry. Her head swam, disorienting her terribly every time she moved. “What? Why?”
“Because they’ve left the Cike.”
That took several seconds to sink in.
“But—but they can’t.” Panic rose in her chest, thick and constricting. Enki was their only physician, and Unegen their best spy. Without them the Cike were reduced to six.
She couldn’t kill the Empress with six people.
“You really can’t blame them,” Chaghan said.
“But they’re sworn!”
“They swore to Tyr. They were sworn to Altan. They have no obligation to an incompetent like you.” Chaghan cocked his head. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you that Daji got away.”
Rin glared at him. “I thought you were on my side.”
“I said I’d help you kill Su Daji,” he said. “I didn’t say I’d hold your hand while you threatened the lives of everyone on this ship.”
“But the others—” A sudden fear seized her. “They’re still with me, aren’t they? They’re loyal?”
“It’s nothing to do with loyalty,” he said. “They are terrified.”
“Of me?”
“You really can’t see past yourself, can you?” Chaghan’s lip curled. “They’re terrified of themselves. It’s very lonely to be a shaman in this Empire, especially when you don’t know when you’re going to lose your mind.”
“I know. I understand that.”
“You don’t understand anything. They aren’t afraid of going mad. They know they will. They know that soon they will become like Feylen. Prisoners inside their own bodies. And when that day comes, they want to be around the only other people who could put an end to it. That’s why they’re still here.”
The Cike culls the Cike, Altan had once told her. The Cike takes care of its own.
That meant they defended one another. It also meant they protected the world from one another. The Cike were like children playing at acrobatics, perched precariously against one another, relying on the rest to stop them from hurtling into the abyss.
“Your duty as commander is to protect them,” Chaghan said. “They are with you because they are scared, and they don’t know where else they can go. But you’re endangering them with every stupid decision you make and your utter lack of control.”
Rin moaned, clutching her head between her hands. Every word was like a knife to her eardrums. She knew she’d fucked up, but Chaghan seemed to take inordinate delight in rubbing it in. “Just leave me alone.”
“No. Get out of bed and stop being such a brat.”
“Chaghan, please—”
“You’re a fucking mess.”
“I know that.”
“Yes, you’ve known that since Speer, but you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. You’re trying to fix everything with opium and it’s destroying you.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I just—it’s always there, it’s screaming in my mind—”
“Then control it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” He made a noise of disgust. “Altan did.”
“But I’m not Altan.” She couldn’t hold back her tears. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? I’m not as strong as him, I’m not as smart as him, I can’t do what he could do—”
He laughed harshly. “Oh, that much is clear.”
“You take command then. You act like you’re in charge already, why don’t you just take the post? I don’t fucking care.”
“Because Altan named you commander,” he said simply. “And between us, at least I know how to respect his legacy.”
That shut her up.
He leaned forward. “That burden’s on you. So you will learn to control yourself, and you will start protecting them.”
“But what if that’s not possible?” she asked.
His pale eyes didn’t blink. “Frankly? Then you should kill yourself.”
Rin had no idea how to respond to that.
“If you think you can’t beat it, then you should die,” Chaghan said. “Because it will corrode you. It will turn your body into a conduit, and it will burn down everything until it’s not just civilians, not just Unegen, but everyone around you, everything you’ve ever loved or cared about.
“And once you’ve turned your world to ash, you’ll wish you could die.”
She found the others in the mess once she finally recovered the physical coordination to make her way down the passageway without tripping.
“What is this?” Ramsa spat something onto the table. “Bird droppings?”
“Goji berries,” Baji said. “You don’t like them in porridge?”
“They’ve got mold on them.”
“Everything’s got mold on them.”
“But I thought we were getting new supplies,” Ramsa whined.
“With what money?” Suni asked.
“We are the Cike!” Ramsa exclaimed. “We could have stolen something!”
“Well, it’s not like—” Baji broke off as he saw Rin standing in the doorway. Ramsa and Suni followed his gaze. They fell silent.
She stared back at them, utterly lost for words. She’d thought she knew what she was going to say to them. Now she only wanted to cry.
“Rise and shine,” Ramsa said finally. He kicked a chair out for her. “Hungry? You look horrific.”
She blinked at him. Her words came out in a hoarse whisper. “I just wanted to say …”
“Don’t,” said Baji.
“But I just—”
“Don’t,” Baji said. “I know it’s hard. You’ll get it eventually. Altan did.”
Suni nodded in silent agreement.
Rin’s urge to cry grew stronger.
“Have a seat,” Ramsa said gently. “Eat something.”
She shuffled to the counter and tried clumsily to fill a bowl. Porridge slopped out of the ladle onto the deck. She walked toward the table, but the floor kept shifting under her feet. She collapsed into the chair, breathing hard.
No one commented.
She glanced out the porthole. They were moving startlingly fast over choppy waters. The shoreline was nowhere in sight. A wave rolled under the planks, and she stifled the attendant swell of nausea.
“Did we at least get Yang Yuanfu?” she asked after a pause.
Baji nodded. “Suni took him out during the commotion. Bashed his head against the wall and flung his body into the ocean while his guards were too busy with Daji to fend us off. I guess the diversion tactic worked after all. We were going to tell you, but you were, ah, incapacitated.”
“High out of your mind,” Ramsa supplied. “Giggling at the floor.”
“I get it,” Rin said. “And we’re heading back to Ankhiluun now?”
“As fast as we can. We’ve got the entire Imperial Guard chasing us, but I doubt they’ll follow us into Moag’s territory.”
“Makes sense,” Rin murmured. She worked her spoon through the porridge. Ramsa was right about the mold. The greenish-black blotches were so large that they almost rendered the entire thing inedible. Her stomach roiled. She pushed the bowl away.
The others sat around the table, fidgeting, blinking, and making eye contact with everything except her.
“I heard Enki and Unegen left,” she said.
The statement was met with blank stares and shrugs.
She took a deep breath. “So I suppose—what I wanted to say was—”
Baji interrupted before she could continue. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“But you—”
“I don’t like being lied to. And I especially hate being sold. Daji has what’s coming for her. I’m seeing this through to the end, little Speerly. You don’t have to worry about desertion from me.”
Rin glanced around the table. “Then what about the rest of you?”
“Altan deserved better than he got,” Suni said simply, as if that much sufficed.
“But you don’t have to stay here.” Rin turned to Ramsa. Young, innocent, tiny, brilliant, and dangerous Ramsa. She wanted to make sure he’d remain with her, and knew it’d be selfish to ask. “I mean, you shouldn’t.”
Ramsa scraped at the bottom of his bowl. He seemed thoroughly disinterested in the conversation. “I think going anywhere else would get a little boring.”
“But you’re just a kid.”
“Fuck off.” He dug around his mouth with his little finger, picking at something stuck behind his back molars. “You’ve got to understand that we’re killers. You spend your life doing one thing, it’s very hard to stop.”
“That, and our only other option is the prison at Baghra,” Baji said.
Ramsa nodded. “I hated Baghra.”
Rin remembered that none of the Cike had good track records with Nikara law enforcement. Or with civilized society, for that matter.
Aratsha hailed from a tiny village in Snake Province where the villagers worshipped a local river god that purportedly protected them from floods. Aratsha, a novice initiate to the river god’s cult, became the first shaman in generations who succeeded in doing what his predecessors had claimed. He drowned two little girls by accident in the process. He was about to be stoned to death by the same villagers who praised his fraudulent teachers when Tyr, the Cike’s former commander, recruited him to the Night Castle.
Ramsa came from a family of alchemists who’d produced fire powder for the Militia until an accidental explosion near the palace had killed his parents, cost him an eye, and landed him in the notorious prison at Baghra for alleged conspiracy to assassinate the Empress, until Tyr pulled him out of his cell to engineer weapons for the Cike instead.
Rin didn’t know much about Baji or Suni. She knew they had both been students at Sinegard once, members of Lore classes of years past. She knew they’d been expelled when things went terribly wrong. She knew they’d both spent time at Baghra. Neither of them would volunteer much else.
The twins Chaghan and Qara were equally mysterious. They weren’t from the Empire. They spoke Nikara with a lilting Hinterlander accent. But when asked about home, they offered only the vaguest utterances. Home is very far away. Home is at the Night Castle.
Rin understood what they were trying to say. They, like the others, simply had no other place to go.
“What’s the matter?” Baji asked. “Sounds like you want us gone.”
“It’s not that,” Rin said. “I just—I can’t make it go away. I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“I’m scared I’ll hurt you. Adlaga won’t be the end. I can’t make the Phoenix go away and I can’t make it stop and—”
“Because you’re new to this,” Baji interrupted. He sounded so kind. How could he be so kind? “We’ve all been there. They want to use your body all the time. And you think you’re on the brink of madness, you think that this moment is going to be when you finally snap, but it’s not.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it gets easier every time. Eventually you learn to exist on the precipice of insanity.”
“But I can’t promise I won’t—”
“You won’t. And we’ll go after Daji again. And we’ll keep doing it, over and over, as many times as it takes, until she’s dead. Tyr didn’t give up on us. We’re not giving up on you. This is why the Cike exists.”
She stared at him, stricken. She didn’t deserve this, whatever this was. It wasn’t friendship. She didn’t deserve that. It wasn’t loyalty, either. She deserved that even less. But it was camaraderie, a bond formed by a common betrayal. The Empress had sold them to the Federation for a silver and a song, and none of them could rest until the rivers ran red with Daji’s blood.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then just shut up and stop being a little bitch about it.” Ramsa pushed her bowl back in front of her. “Eat your porridge. Mold is nutritious.”
Night fell over Omonod Bay. The Petrel spirited down the coast under the cover of darkness, buoyed by a shamanic force so powerful that within hours it had lost its Imperial pursuers. The Cike spread out—Qara and Chaghan to their cabin, where they spent almost all of their time, secluded from the others; Suni and Ramsa onto the front deck for night watch, and Baji to his hammock in the main sleeping quarters.
Rin locked herself inside her cabin to wage a mental battle with a god.
She didn’t have much time. The laudanum had nearly worn off. She wedged a chair under the doorknob, sat down on the floor, squeezed her head between her knees, and waited to hear the voice of a god.
She waited to return to the state in which the Phoenix wanted utter command and shouted down her thoughts until she obeyed.
This time she would shout back.
She placed a small hunting knife beside her knee. She pressed her eyes shut. She felt the last of the laudanum pass through her bloodstream, and the numb, foggy cloud left her mind. She felt the curdling clench in her stomach and gut that never disappeared. She felt, along with the terrifying possibility of sobriety, awareness.
She always came back to the same moment, months ago, when she’d been on her hands and knees in that temple on the Isle of Speer. The Phoenix relished that moment because to the god it was the height of destructive power. And it kept bringing her back because it wanted her to believe that the only way to reconcile herself with that horror was to finish the job.
It wanted her to burn up this ship. To kill everyone around her. Then to find her way to land, and start burning that down, too; like a small flame igniting the corner of a sheet of paper, she was to make her way inland and burn down everything in her path until nothing was left except a blank slate of ash.
And then she would be clean.
She heard a symphony of screams, voices both collective and individual, Speerly or Mugini voices—it never mattered because wordless agony didn’t have a language.
She could not bear how they were numbers and not numbers all at once, and the line kept blurring and it was awful because as long as they were numbers it wasn’t so bad but if they were lives, then the multiplication was unbearable—
Then the screaming solidified into Altan.
His face splintered apart along cracks of skin turned charcoal, eyes burning orange, black tears opening streaks across his face, fire tearing him open from the inside—and she couldn’t do anything about it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried …”
“It should have been you,” he said. His lips blistered, crackled, fell away to reveal bone. “You should have died. You should have gone up in flames.” His face became ash became a skull, pressed against hers; bony fingers around her neck. “It should have been you.”
Then she couldn’t tell if her thoughts were his or her own, only that they were so loud they drowned out everything in her mind.
I want you to hurt.
I want you to die.
I want you to burn.
“No!” She slammed her blade into her thigh. The pain was only a temporary respite, a blinding whiteness that drove out everything in her mind, and then the fire would be back.
She’d failed.
And she’d failed last time, too, and the time before that. She’d failed every time she tried. At this point she didn’t know why she did it, except to torture herself with the knowledge that she could not control the fire raging in her mind.
The cut joined a line of open wounds on her arms and legs that she’d sliced open weeks before—and kept sliced open—because even though it was only temporary, pain was still the only option other than opium that she could think of.
And then she couldn’t think anymore.
The motions were automatic now, and it all came so easily—rolling the opium nugget between her palms, the spark of the first flicker of flame, and then the smell of crystallized candy concealing something rotten.
The nice thing about opium was that once she’d inhaled it, everything stopped mattering; and for hours at a time, carved out into her world, she could stop dealing with the responsibility of existence.
She sucked in.
The flames receded. The memories disappeared. The world stopped hurting her, and even the frustration of surrender faded to a dull nothing. And the only thing that remained was the sweet, sweet smoke.
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_65fdad9e-83ad-58da-bdf6-4bcfdef656ac)
“Did you know that Ankhiluun has a special government office dedicated to figuring out how much weight the city can sustain?” Ramsa asked brightly.
He was the only one of them who could navigate the Floating City with ease. He hopped ahead, effortlessly navigating the narrow footbridges that lined the sludgy canals, while the rest inched warily along the wobbly planks.
“And how much weight is that?” Baji asked, humoring him.
“I think they’re approaching maximum capacity,” Ramsa said. “Someone’s got to do something about the population, or Ankhiluun’s going to start sinking.”
“You could send them inland,” Baji said. “Bet we’ve lost a couple hundred thousand people in the last few months.”
“Or just have them fight another war. Good way to kill people off.” Ramsa skipped off toward the next bridge.
Rin followed clumsily behind, blinking blearily under the unforgiving southern sun.
She hadn’t left her cabin on the ship for days. She’d taken the smallest possible daily dose of opium that worked to keep her mind quiet while leaving her functional. But even that amount fucked so badly with her sense of balance that she had to cling to Baji’s arm as they walked inland.
Rin hated Ankhiluun. She hated the salty, tangy ocean odor that followed her wherever she went; she hated the city’s sheer loudness, the pirates and merchants screaming at each other in Ankhiluuni pidgin, an unintelligible mix of Nikara and western languages. She hated that the Floating City teetered over open water, roiling back and forth with each incoming wave, so that even standing still, she felt like she was about to fall.
She wouldn’t have come here except out of utter necessity. Ankhiluun was the single place in the Empire where she was close to safe. And it was home to the only people who would sell her weapons.
And opium.
At the end of the First Poppy War, the Republic of Hesperia sat down with delegates from the Federation of Mugen to sign a treaty that established two neutral zones on the Nikara coastline. The first was at the international port of Khurdalain. The second was at the floating city of Ankhiluun.
Back then Ankhiluun had been a humble port—just a smattering of nondescript one-story buildings without basements because the flimsy coastal sands couldn’t support any larger architecture.
Then the Trifecta won the Second Poppy War, and the Dragon Emperor bombed half the Hesperian fleet to smithereens in the South Nikan Sea.
In the absence of foreigners, Ankhiluun flourished. The locals occupied the half-destroyed ships like ocean parasites, linking them together to form the Floating City. Now Ankhiluun extended precariously from the coastline like an overreaching spider, a series of wooden planks that formed a web of walkways between the myriad ships anchored to shore.
Ankhiluun was the juncture through which poppy in all its forms entered the Empire. Moag’s opium clippers sailed in from the western hemisphere and deposited their cargo in giant, empty husks of ships that served as repositories, from which long, thin smuggling boats picked it up and poured through branches of tributaries spreading out from the Murui River, steadily infusing the Empire’s bloodstream like seeping poison.
Ankhiluun meant cheap, abundant opium, and that meant glorious, peaceful oblivion—hours upon hours when she didn’t have to think about or remember anything at all.
And that, above all, was why Rin hated Ankhiluun. It made her so terribly afraid. The more time she spent here, locked alone in her cabin while she drifted on Moag’s drugs, the less she felt able to leave.
“Odd,” said Baji. “You’d think we’d get more of a welcome.”
To get to the city center, they’d passed floating markets, garbage piles strewn along the canals, and rows of distinctive Ankhiluuni bars that had no benches or chairs—only ropes strung across walls where patrons could hang drunk by their armpits.
But they had been walking for more than half an hour now. They were well within the heart of the city, in full view of its residents, and no one had intercepted them.
Moag had to know they were back. Moag knew everything that happened in the Floating City.
“That’s just how Moag likes to play power politics.” Rin stopped walking to catch her breath. The shifting planks made her want to vomit. “She doesn’t seek us out. We have to go to her.”
Getting an audience with Chiang Moag was no easy affair. The Pirate Queen surrounded herself with so many layers of security that no one knew where she was at any given time. Only the Black Lilies, her cohort of spies and assistants, could be counted upon to get word directly to her, and the Lilies could only be found at a gaudy pleasure barge floating in the center of the city’s main canal.
Rin looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. “There.”
The Black Orchid wasn’t so much a ship as it was a floating three-story mansion. Garishly colorful lanterns hung from its sloped pagoda roofs, and bawdy, energetic music drifted constantly from its papered windows. Each day starting at noon, the Black Orchid crawled up and down the still canal, picking up patrons who rowed out to its decks in bright red sampans.
Rin dug around in her pockets. “Anyone got a copper?”
“I do.” Baji tossed a coin toward the sampan boatman, who guided his vessel toward the shore to ferry the Cike onto the pleasure barge.
A handful of Lilies, perched lightly on the second-story railing, waved insouciantly at them as they approached. Baji whistled back.
“Stop that,” Rin muttered.
“Why?” Baji asked. “It makes them happy. Look, they’re smiling.”
“No, it makes them think you’re an easy target.”
The Lilies were Moag’s private army of terribly attractive women, all with breasts the size of pears and waists so narrow they looked in danger of snapping in half. They were trained martial artists, linguists, and uniformly the most obnoxious group of women Rin had ever met.
A Lily stopped them at the top of the gangplank, her tiny hand stretched out as if she could physically stop them from boarding. “You don’t have an appointment.”
She was clearly a new girl. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Her face bore only small dabs of lipstick, her breasts were just little buds poking through her shirt, and she didn’t seem to realize she was standing in front of a handful of the most dangerous people in the Empire.
“I’m Fang Runin,” said Rin.
The girl blinked. “Who?”
Rin heard Ramsa turn his snicker into a cough.
“Fang Runin,” she repeated. “I don’t need an appointment.”
“Oh, love, that’s not how it works here.” The girl tapped slim fingers against her impossibly narrow waist. “You’ve got to make an appointment, and we’re booked up days in advance.” She peered over Rin’s shoulder at Baji, Suni, and Ramsa. “Also, it’s extra for groups larger than four. The girls don’t like it when you share.”
Rin reached for her blade. “Look here, you little shit—”
“Back up.” Suddenly the girl was holding a fistful of needles she must have concealed in her sleeve. Their tips were purple with poison. “No one touches a Lily.”
Rin fought the sudden urge to slap the girl across her face. “If you don’t move aside this second, I’ll shove this blade so far up your—”
“Well, this is a surprise.” The silk sheets over the main doors rustled, and a voluptuous figure emerged on deck. Rin stifled a groan.
It was Sarana, a Black Lily of the highest distinction and Moag’s personal favorite. She’d been Moag’s go-between with the Cike since they landed at Ankhiluun three months ago. She possessed an unbearably sharp tongue, an obsession with sexual innuendo, and—according to Baji—the most perfect breasts south of the Murui.
Rin hated her.
“Fancy seeing you here.” Sarana approached, cocking her head to the side. “We thought you weren’t interested in women.”
She had a way of shimmying when she spoke, accentuating each word with a shake of her hips. Baji made a choking noise. Ramsa was staring unabashedly at Sarana’s chest.
“I need to see Moag,” Rin said.
“Moag’s busy,” Sarana replied.
“I think Moag knows better than to keep me waiting.”
Sarana raised her finely drawn eyebrows. “She also doesn’t like to be disrespected.”
“Must I be blunt?” Rin snapped. “Unless you want this boat going up in flames, you go get your mistress and tell her I want an audience.”
Sarana feigned a yawn. “Be nice to me, Speerly. Else I’ll tattle.”
“I could sink your barge in minutes.”
“And Moag would have you shot full of arrows before you could even get off the boat.” Sarana gave her a dismissive wave. “Get going, Speerly. We’ll send for you when Moag is ready.”
Rin saw red.
The fucking nerve.
Sarana might have thought it an insult, but Rin was a Speerly. She’d single-handedly won the Third Poppy War. She’d sunk a fucking country. She hadn’t come this far just to banter with some stupid Lily whore.
Her hands shot out and grabbed Sarana by the collar. Sarana moved for her hairpiece, which was no doubt poisoned, but Rin slammed her against the wall, wedged one elbow against her throat, and pinned her right wrist down with the other.
She leaned forward to press her lips against Sarana’s ear. “Maybe you think you’re safe now. Maybe I’ll just turn and walk away. You’ll brag to the other bitches how you scared the Speerly off! Lucky you! Then one night, when you’ve turned off the lanterns and rolled up the gangplank, you’ll smell smoke in your quarters. You’ll run out onto the deck, but by then the flames will be burning so hot you can’t see two feet in front of you. You’ll know it’s me, but you’ll never be able to tell Moag, because a sheet of fire will burn all your pretty skin off, and the last thing you’ll see before you leap off the ship into boiling-hot water is my laughing face.” Rin dug her elbow deeper into Sarana’s pale throat. “Don’t fuck with me, Sarana.”
Sarana patted frantically at Rin’s wrists.
Rin tilted her head. “What was that?”
Sarana’s voice was a strangled whisper. “Moag … might make an exception.”
Rin let go. Sarana collapsed back against the wall, frantically fanning her face.
The red haze ebbed from the edges of Rin’s vision. She closed a fist and opened it, let loose a long breath, and wiped her palm against her tunic. “That’s more like it.”
“We’re here,” Sarana announced.
Rin reached up to remove the blindfold from her face. Sarana had made her come alone—the others were more than happy to stay on the pleasure barge—and her naked vulnerability had kept her twitching and sweating during their entire journey through the canals.
At first she saw nothing but darkness. Then her eyes adjusted to the dim lights, and she saw that the room was lit up with tiny, flickering fire lamps. She saw no windows, no glints of sunshine. She couldn’t tell whether they were in a ship or in a building; whether nighttime had fallen or if the room was simply sealed so well that no outside light could get in. The air indoors was much cooler than outside. She thought she could still feel the rocking sea beneath her legs, but only faintly, and she couldn’t tell if it was real or imagined.
Wherever she was, the building was massive. A grounded warship? A warehouse?
She saw blocky furniture with curved legs that surely had to be of foreign origin; they didn’t carve tables like that in the Empire. Along the walls hung portraits, though they couldn’t have been of Nikara men; the subjects were pale-skinned, angry-looking, and all wearing absurdly shaped white wigs. A massive table, large enough to seat twenty, occupied the center of the room.
On the other side, flanked by a squadron of Lily archers, sat the Pirate Queen herself.
“Runin.” Moag’s voice was a gravelly drawl, deep and oddly compelling. “Always a pleasure.”
In the streets of Ankhiluun, they called Moag the Stone Widow. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, more handsome than pretty. They said she was a prostitute from the bay who’d married one of Ankhiluun’s many pirate captains. Then he died under circumstances that were never properly examined, and Moag rose steadily through the ranks of Ankhiluun’s pirate hierarchy and consolidated a fleet of unprecedented strength. She was the first to ever unite the pirate factions of Ankhiluun under one flag. Until her reign, the disparate bandits of Ankhiluun had been at war with one another in the same way the twelve provinces of Nikan had been at war since the death of the Red Emperor. In a way, she had managed to do what Daji never could. She’d convinced disparate factions of soldiers to serve a single cause—herself.
“I don’t think you’ve ever been to my private office.” Moag gestured around the room. “Nice place, isn’t it? The Hesperians were unbearably annoying, but they knew how to decorate.”
“What happened to the original owners?” Rin asked.
“Depends. I assume the Hesperian Navy taught their sailors how to swim.” Moag pointed to the chair opposite her. “Sit.”
“No, thanks.” Rin couldn’t bear sitting in chairs anymore. She hated the way that tables blocked her legs—if she jumped or tried to run, her knees would slam against the wood, costing her precious escape time.
“Have it your way, then.” Moag cocked her head to the side. “I heard Adlaga didn’t go well.”
“Got derailed,” Rin said. “Had a surprise encounter with Daji.”
“Oh, I know,” Moag said. “The whole coastline knows about it. You know how Sinegard has spun this, right? You’re the rogue Speerly, traitor to the crown. Your Mugenese captors drove you mad, and now you’re a threat to everyone you come across. The bounty on your head has been raised to six thousand Imperial silvers. Double if you’re alive.”
“That’s nice,” Rin said.
“You don’t seem concerned.”
“They’re not wrong about anything.” Rin leaned forward. “Look, Yang Yuanfu is dead. We couldn’t bring back his head, but your scouts will confirm everything as soon as they can get to Adlaga. It’s time to pay up.”
Moag ignored that, resting her chin on her fingertips. “I don’t get it. Why go to all this trouble?”
“Moag, come on—”
Moag lifted a hand to cut her off. “Talk me through this. You have power beyond what most people could dream of. You could do anything you want. Become a warlord. Become a pirate. Hell, captain one of my ships if you want to. Why keep picking this fight?”
“Because Daji started this war,” Rin said. “Because she killed my friends. Because she remains on the throne and she shouldn’t. Because someone has to kill her, and I’d rather it be me.”
“But why?” Moag pressed. “No one hates our Empress as much as I do. But understand this, little girl: you’re not going to find allies. Revolution is fine in theory. But nobody wants to die.”
“I’m not asking anyone else to risk it. Just give me weapons.”
“And if you fail? You don’t think the Militia will track where your supplies came from?”
“I killed thirty men for you,” Rin snapped. “You owe me any supplies I want; those were the terms. You can’t just—”
“What can’t I do?” Moag leaned forward, ringed fingers circling the hilt of her dagger. She looked deeply amused. “You think I owe you? By what contract? Under what laws? What will you do, take me to court?”
Rin blinked. “But you said—”
“‘But you said,’” Moag mocked in a high-pitched voice. “People say things they don’t mean all the time, little Speerly.”
“But we had an agreement!” Rin raised her voice, but her words came out plaintive, not dominant. She sounded childish even to her own ears.
Several Lilies began to titter into their fans.
Rin’s hands tightened into fists. The residual opium kept her from erupting into fire, but still a haze of scarlet entered her vision.
She took a deep breath. Calm.
Murdering Moag might feel good in the moment, but she doubted even she could get out of Ankhiluun alive.
“You know, for someone of your pedigree, you’re incredibly stupid,” Moag said. “Speerly abilities, Sinegard education, Militia service, and you still don’t understand the way the world works. If you want to get things done, you need brute force. I need you, and I’m the only one who can pay you, which means you need me. Complain all you want. You’re not going anywhere.”
“But you’re not paying me.” Rin couldn’t help it. “So fuck you.”
Eleven arrowheads pointed to her forehead before she could move.
“Stand down,” Sarana hissed.
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Moag examined her lacquered nails. “I’m trying to help you, you know. You’re young. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you. Why waste it on revenge?”
“I need to get to the capital,” Rin insisted stubbornly. “And if you won’t give me supplies, then I’ll go elsewhere.”
Moag sighed theatrically, pressed her fingers against her temples, and then folded her arms on the table. “I propose a compromise. One more job, and then I’ll give you everything you want. Will that work?”
“What, I’m supposed to trust you now?”
“What choice do you have?”
Rin chewed on that. “What kind of job?”
“How do you feel about naval battles?”
“Hate them.” Rin didn’t like being over open water. She’d only agreed to jobs on land so far, and Moag knew that. Around the ocean, she was too easily incapacitated.
Fire and water didn’t mix.
“I’m sure a healthy reward would change your mind.” Moag rummaged in her desk, pulled out a charcoal rendering of a ship and slid it across the table. “This is the Heron. Standard opium skimmer. Red sails, Ankhiluuni flag, unless the captain’s changed it. He’s been coming up short in the books for months.”
Rin stared at her. “You want me to kill someone based on accounting errors?”
“He’s keeping more than his fair share of his profits. He’s been very clever about it, too. Got an accountant to fudge the numbers so that it took me weeks to detect. But we keep triple copies of everything. The numbers don’t lie. I want you to sink his ship.”
Rin considered the rendering. She recognized the ship build. Moag had at least a dozen skimmers just like it sitting in Ankhiluun’s harbor. “Is he still in the city?”
“No. But he’s scheduled to return to port in a few days. He thinks I don’t know what he’s done.”
“Then why don’t you get rid of him yourself?”
“Under regular circumstances I would,” said Moag. “But then I’d have to give him the pirate’s justice.”
“Since when does Ankhiluun care about justice?”
“The fact that we’re independent from the Empire doesn’t make us an anarchy, dear. We’d hold a trial. It’s standard procedure with embezzlement cases. But I don’t want to give him a fair trial. He’s well-liked, he has too many friends in this city, and punishment by my hand would certainly provoke retaliation. I’m not in the mood for politics. I want him blown out of the water.”
“No prisoners?”
Moag grinned. “Not a high priority.”
“Then I’ll need to borrow a skimmer.”
Moag’s smile widened. “Do this for me and you can keep the skimmer.”
This wasn’t optimal. Rin needed a ship with Militia colors, not a smuggling vessel, and Moag might still withhold the weapons and money. No—she had to take it for granted Moag would cheat her, some way or another.
But she had no leverage. Moag had the ships, she had the soldiers, so she could dictate the terms. All Rin had was the ability to kill people, and no one better to sell it to.
She had no better options. She was strategically backed into a corner, and she couldn’t think her way out.
But she knew someone who could.
“There’s something else I want,” she said. “Kitay’s address.”
“Kitay?” Moag narrowed her eyes. Rin could watch the thoughts spinning in her head, trying to determine if it was a liability, if it was worth the charity.
“We’re friends,” Rin said as smoothly as she could. “We were classmates. I care about him. That’s all it is.”
“And you’re only asking about him now?”
“We’re not going to flee the city, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh, you’d never manage that.” Moag gave her a pitying look. “But he asked me not to tell you where to find him.”
Rin supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. It still stung.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I still want the address.”
“I gave him my word I’d keep it a secret.”
“Your word means nothing, you old hag.” Rin couldn’t suppress her impatience. “Right now you’re just dithering for the fun of it.”
Moag laughed. “Fair enough. He’s in the old foreign district. A safe house at the very end of the walkway. You’ll see Red Junk Fleet symbols on the doorposts. I’ve posted a guard there, but I’ll tell them to stand down if they see you. Shall I let him know you’re coming?”
“Please don’t,” Rin said. “I’ll surprise him.”
The old foreign district was still and silent, a rare oasis of calm in the never-ending cacophony that comprised Ankhiluun. Half these houses were abandoned—no one had lived here since the Hesperians left, and the remaining buildings were used only to store inventory. The bright lights that littered the rest of Ankhiluun were absent. This place lay uncomfortably far from the open central square, where Moag’s guards had easy access.
Rin didn’t like that.
But Kitay had to be safe. Tactically, it would be a terrible idea to let him get hurt. He was a remarkable reserve of knowledge. He read everything and forgot nothing. He was best kept alive as an asset, and Moag had surely realized it since she’d put him under house arrest.
The lone house at the end of the road floated a little ways off from the rest of the bobbing street, tethered only by two long chains and a hazardous floating walkway made of badly spaced planks.
Rin stepped gingerly over the planks, then rapped on the wooden door. No response.
She tried the handle. It didn’t even have a lock—she couldn’t see a keyhole. They’d made it impossible for Kitay to keep visitors out.
She pushed the door open.
The first thing she noticed was the mess—a sprawl of yellowing books, maps, and ledgers that littered every visible surface. She blinked around in the dim lamplight until she finally saw Kitay sitting in the corner with a thick tome over his lap, nearly buried under stacks of leather-bound books.
“I’ve already eaten,” he said without looking up. “Come back in the morning.”
She cleared her throat. “Kitay.”
He looked up. His eyes widened.
“Hello,” she said.
Slowly he set his books to the side.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
Kitay stared at her for a long moment before waving her inside. “Fine.”
She shut the door behind her. He made no move to get up, so she picked her way through the papers toward him, taking care not to step on any pages. Kitay had always hated when anyone disturbed his carefully arranged messes. During exam season at Sinegard, he’d thrown temper tantrums whenever someone moved his inkwells.
The room was so cramped that the only empty space was a patch of floor against the wall right beside him. Taking care not to touch him, she slid down, crossed her legs, and placed her hands on her knees.
For a moment they simply stared at each other.
Rin wanted desperately to reach out and touch his face. He looked weak, and far too thin. He had healed some since Golyn Niis, but even now his collarbone protruded to a frightening degree, and his wrists looked so fragile she might snap them with one hand. He had grown his hair out in a long, curly mess that he’d bunched up at the back of his head, which pulled at the edges of his face and made his cheekbones stick out more than they already did.
He didn’t remotely resemble the boy she’d met at Sinegard.
The difference was in his eyes. They used to be so bright, lit up with a feverish curiosity about everything. Now they were just dull and blank.
“Can I stay?” she asked.
“I let you in, didn’t I?”
“You told Moag to keep your address from me.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “Yes. I did do that.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. She knew him well enough to know that this meant he was furious with her, but after all these months, she still didn’t know precisely why.
No—she did, she just wouldn’t admit that she was wrong about it. The one time they’d fought about it, really fought about it, he’d slammed the door shut on her and hadn’t spoken to her until they reached dry land.
She hadn’t let herself think about it since. It went into the chasm, just like every other memory that made her start craving her pipe.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m under house arrest. How do you think I’m doing?”
She looked around at the papers splayed out across the table. They littered the floor, pinned down with inkwells.
Her eyes landed on the ledger he’d been scribbling in. “She’s kept you busy, at least?”
“‘Busy’ is a word for it.” He slammed the ledger shut. “I’m working for one of the Empire’s most wanted criminals, and she’s got me doing her taxes.”
“Ankhiluun doesn’t pay taxes.”
“Not taxes to the Empire. To Moag.” Kitay twirled the ink brush in his fingers. “Moag’s running a massive crime ring with a taxation scheme that’s just as complicated as any city bureaucracy’s. But the record-keeping system they’ve been using so far, it’s …” He waved his hands in the air. “Whoever designed this didn’t understand how numbers work.”
What a brilliant move on Moag’s part, Rin thought. Kitay had the mental dexterity of twenty scholars combined. He could add impossibly large sums without blinking, and he had a mind for strategy that had rivaled Master Irjah’s. He might be grumpy under house arrest, but he couldn’t resist a puzzle when presented with one. The ledgers may as well have been a bucket of toys.
“Are they treating you all right?” she asked.
“Well enough. I get two meals a day. Sometimes more, if I’ve been good.”
“You look thin.”
“The food’s not very good.”
He still wouldn’t look at her. She ventured to place a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry Moag’s kept you here.”
He jerked away. “Wasn’t your decision. I’d do the same if I’d taken myself prisoner.”
“Moag’s really not so bad. She treats her people well.”
“And she uses violence and extortion to run a massively illegal city that has been lying to Sinegard for twenty years,” said Kitay. “I’m worried you’re starting to lose your sense of scale here, Rin.”
She rankled at that. “Her people are still better off than the Empress’s subjects.”
“The Empress’s subjects would be fine if her generals weren’t running around trying to commit treason.”
“Why are you so loyal to Sinegard?” Rin demanded. “It’s not like the Empress has done anything for you.”
“My family has served the crown at Sinegard for ten generations,” said Kitay. “And no, I’m not helping you with your personal vendetta just because you think the Empress got your stupid commander killed. So you can stop pretending to be my friend, Rin, because I know that’s all you came for.”
“I don’t just think that,” she said. “I know it. And I know the Empress invited the Federation onto Nikara land. She wanted this war, she started the invasion, and everything you saw at Golyn Niis was Daji’s fault.”
“False accusations.”
“I heard it from Shiro’s mouth!”
“And Shiro didn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”
“Daji doesn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”
“She’s the Empress,” Kitay said. “The Empress doesn’t betray her own. Do you understand how absurd this is? There’s literally no political advantage—”
“You should want this!” she yelled. She wanted to shake him, hit him, do anything to make that maddening blankness in his face go away. “Why don’t you want this? Why aren’t you furious? Didn’t you see Golyn Niis?”
He stiffened. “I want you to leave.”
“Kitay, please—”
“Now.”
“I’m your friend!”
“No, you’re not. Fang Runin was my friend. I’m not sure who you are, but I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Why do you keep saying that? What did I ever do to you?”
“How about what you did to them?” He grabbed for her hand. She was so surprised that she let him. He slammed her palm over the lamp beside him, forced it down directly over the fire. She yelped from the sudden pain—a thousand tiny needles, pressing deeper and deeper into her palm.
“Have you ever been burned before?” he whispered.
For the first time Rin noticed little burn scars dotting his palms and forearms. Some were recent. Some looked inflicted yesterday.
The pain intensified.
“Shit!” She kicked out. She missed Kitay but hit the lamp. Oil spilled over the papers. The fire whooshed up. For a second she saw Kitay’s face illuminated in the flame, absolutely terrified, and then he yanked a blanket off the floor and threw it over the fire.
The room went dark.
“What the hell was that?” she screamed.
She didn’t raise her fists, but Kitay flinched away as if she had—his shoulder hit the wall, and then he curled toward the ground with his head buried under his arms, raw sobs shaking his thin frame.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know what …”
The throbbing pain in her hand made her breathless, almost light-headed. Almost as good as it felt when she got high. If she thought about it too hard she would start crying, and if she started crying it might tear her apart, so she tried laughing instead, and that turned into tortured hiccups that shook her entire frame.
“Why?” she finally managed.
“I was trying to see what it was like,” he said.
“For who?”
“How they felt. In the moment that it happened. In their very last seconds. I wanted to know how they felt when it ended.”
“It doesn’t feel like anything,” she said. A wave of agony shot up her arm again, and she slammed her fist against the floor in an attempt to numb out the pain. She clenched her teeth until it passed.
“Altan told me about it once,” she said. “After a bit you’re not able to breathe. And then you’re gasping so hard you can’t feel it hurt anymore. You don’t die from the burning, you die from lack of air. You choke, Kitay. That’s how it ends.”
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_1642893a-4b52-544d-974f-d08370d0d420)
“Try some ginger rock,” Ramsa suggested.
Rin gagged and spat until she was sure her stomach would expel nothing else, and then pulled her head back over the side of the ship. Remnants of her breakfast, a phlegmy, eggy mess, floated in the green waves below.
She took the shards of candy from Ramsa’s palm and chewed while fighting the urge to dry-heave. For all their weeks at sea, she’d still never gotten used to the constant sensation that the ground was swirling beneath her feet.
“Expect some choppier waves today,” Baji said. “Monsoon season is kicking up in the Omonod. We’ll want to avoid going upwind if this keeps up, but as long as we have the shore as a breakwater we should be all right.”
He was the only one of them who had any real nautical experience—he’d worked on a transport ship as part of his labor sentence shortly before he’d been sent to Baghra—and he flaunted it obnoxiously.
“Oh, shut up,” Ramsa said. “It’s not like you do any real steering.”
“I’m the navigator!”
“Aratsha’s the navigator. You just like the way you look standing at the helm.”
Rin was grateful that they didn’t have to do much maneuvering themselves. It meant they didn’t have to bother with a crew of Moag’s hired help. They needed only the six of them to sail up and down South Nikan Sea, doing minimal ship maintenance while blessed Aratsha trailed alongside the hull, guiding the ship wherever they needed to go.
Moag had lent them an opium skimmer named Caracel, a sleek and skinny vessel that somehow packed six cannons on each side. They didn’t have the numbers to man each cannon, but Ramsa had devised a clever workaround. He’d connected all twelve fuses with the same strip of twine, which meant he could set them all off at once.
But that was only the last resort. Rin didn’t intend to win this skirmish with cannons. If Moag didn’t want survivors, then Rin only had to get close enough to board.
She folded her arms on the railing and rested her chin on them, staring down at the empty water. Sailing was far less interesting than staking out enemy camps. Battlefields were endlessly entertaining. The ocean was just lonely. She’d spent the morning watching the monotonous gray horizon, trying to keep her eyes open. Moag hadn’t been certain when her tax-evading captain would sail back to port. It could be any time from now to past midnight.
Rin didn’t understand how the sailors could stand the terrible lack of orientation at sea. To her, every stretch of the ocean looked the same. Without the coast to anchor her, one horizon was indistinguishable from the next. She could read star charts if she tried, but to her naked eye, each patch of greenish blue meant the same thing.
They could be anywhere in Omonod Bay. Somewhere out there lay the Isle of Speer. Somewhere out there was the Federation.
Moag had once offered to take her back to Mugen to survey the damage, but Rin had refused. She knew what she would find there. Millions of bodies encased within hardened rock, charred skeletons frozen in their last living acts.
How would they be positioned? Mothers reaching for their children? Husbands wrapping their arms around their wives? Maybe their hands would be stretched out toward the sea, as if they could escape the deadly thick sulfurous clouds rumbling down the mountainside if they could just get to the water.
She had imagined this too many times, had painted a far more vivid image of it in her mind than reality was likely to be. When she closed her eyes she saw Mugen and she saw Speer; the two islands blurred together in her mind, because in all cases the narrative was the same: children going up in flames, the skin sloughing off their bodies in large black patches, revealing glistening bone underneath.
They burned for someone else’s war, someone else’s wrongs; someone they had never met had made the decision they should die, so in their last moments they would have had no idea why their skin was scorching off.
Rin blinked and shook her head to clear it. She kept slipping into daydreams. She’d taken a small dose of laudanum last night after her singed palm hurt so much she couldn’t sleep, which in retrospect was an awful idea because laudanum exhausted her more than opium did and wasn’t half as fun.
She examined her hand. Her skin was puffy and furiously red, even though she’d soaked it in aloe for hours. She couldn’t make a fist without wincing. She was grateful she’d only burned her left hand, not her sword hand. She cringed at the thought of grasping a hilt against the tender skin.
She moved her thumbnail over the center of her palm and dug it hard into the open wound. Pain lanced through her arm, bringing tears to her eyes. But it woke her up.
“Shouldn’t have taken that laudanum,” said Chaghan.
She jerked upright. “I’m awake.”
He joined her by the railing. “Sure you are.”
Rin shot him an irritated glare, wondering how much effort it would take to toss him overboard. Not very much, she guessed. Chaghan was so terribly frail. She could do it. They wouldn’t miss him. Probably.
“You see those rock formations?” Baji, who must have sensed an impending screaming match, edged his way in between them. He pointed toward a series of cliffs on the distant Ankhiluuni shore. “What do they look like to you?”
Rin squinted. “A man?”
Baji nodded. “A drowned man. If you sail to shore during sunset, it looks like he’s swallowing the sun. That’s how you know you’ve found Ankhiluun.”
“How many times have you been here?” Rin asked.
“Plenty. Came down here with Altan once, two years ago.”
“For what?”
“Tyr wanted us to kill Moag.”
Rin snorted. “Well, you failed.”
“To be fair, it was the only time Altan ever failed.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said. “Wonderful Altan. Perfect Altan. Best commander you’ve ever had. Did everything right.”
“Excepting the Chuluu Korikh,” Ramsa piped up. “You could call that a disaster of monumental proportions.”
“To be fair, Altan used to make some really good tactical decisions.” Baji rubbed his chin. “Before, you know, that string of really bad ones.”
Ramsa whistled. “Lost his mind near the end, he did.”
“Went a little crazy, yeah.”
“Shut up about Altan,” said Chaghan.
“It’s a pity how the best ones snap,” Baji continued, ignoring him. “Like Feylen. Huleinin, too. And you remember how Altan started sleepwalking at Khurdalain? I swear, one night I was walking back from taking a piss and he—”
“I said shut up!” Chaghan slammed both hands against the railing.
Rin felt a noticeable chill sweep over the deck; goose bumps were forming on her arms. There was a stillness in the air, like the space between lightning and thunder. Chaghan’s bone-white hair had begun to curl up at the edges.
His face didn’t match his aura. He looked like he might cry.
Baji lifted his palms up. “All right. Tiger’s tits. I’m sorry.”
“You do not have the right,” Chaghan hissed. He pointed a finger at Rin. “Especially you.”
She bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the reason why—”
“Why what?” she asked loudly. “Go on, say it.”
“Guys. Guys.” Ramsa wedged his way between them. “Great Tortoise, lighten up. Altan’s dead. All right? Dead. And fighting about it won’t bring him back.”
“Look at this.” Baji handed Rin his spyglass, directing her attention to a black point just visible on the horizon. “Does that look like a Red Junk ship to you?”
Rin squinted into the eyepiece.
Moag’s Red Junk fleet comprised distinctive opium skimmers, built narrow for enough speed to outrun other pirates and the Imperial Navy, possessing deep hulls to transport huge amounts of opium and distinctive battened sails that resembled carp fins. On the open seas they disguised all identifying marks, but when they docked in the South Nikan Sea, they flew the crimson flag of Ankhiluun.
But this ship was a bulky creation, large and squat, much rounder than an opium skimmer. It had white sails instead of red, and no flag in sight. As Rin watched, the ship cut a ridiculously sharp turn in the water toward them that should have been impossible without a shaman’s help.
“That’s not Moag’s,” she said.
“That doesn’t make it an enemy ship,” said Ramsa. He peered out at the ship with a spyglass of his own. “Could be a friendly.”
Baji snorted. “We’re fugitives working for a pirate lord. Do you think we have a lot of friends right now?”
“Fair enough.” Ramsa slammed the spyglass shut and shoved it in his pocket.
“Just open fire,” Chaghan suggested.
Baji shot him an incredulous look. “Look, I don’t know how much time you’ve spent at sea, but when you see a foreign warship with no identifying marks and no indication of whether or not it’s brought a support fleet, the response is usually not to just open fire.”
“Why not?” Chaghan asked. “You said it yourself. It can’t be a friendly.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s looking for a fight.”
Ramsa’s head swiveled back and forth between Chaghan and Baji as they spoke. He looked like a very confused baby bird.
“Hold fire,” Rin told him hastily. “At least until we know who they are.”
The ship was close enough now that she could just make out an etching of characters on the sides of the ship. Cormorant. She’d been over the list of Red Junk ships harbored at Ankhiluun. This wasn’t one of them.
“Are you seeing this?” Ramsa was peering through his spyglass again. “What the hell is this?”
“What?” Rin couldn’t tell what was bothering Ramsa. She couldn’t see any armored troops. Or crew of any uniform, for that matter.
Then she realized that was precisely what was wrong.
She couldn’t see anyone on board at all.
No one stood at the helm. No one manned the oars. The Cormorant was close enough now that they could all see its empty decks.
“That’s impossible,” said Ramsa. “How are they propelling it?”
Rin leaned over the side of the ship and yelled. “Aratsha! Hard right turn.”
Aratsha obeyed, reversing their direction faster than any oared ship would be able to. But the foreign ship veered about immediately to follow their course, cutting an absurdly precise turn. The ship was fast, too—even though the Caracel had Aratsha propelling it along, the Cormorant had no trouble following their pace.
Seconds later it had almost caught up. It was pulling in parallel. Whoever was on it intended to board.
“That’s a ghost ship,” Ramsa whimpered.
“Don’t be stupid,” Baji said.
“They’ve got a shaman, then. Chaghan’s right, we should fire.”
They looked helplessly at Rin to confirm the order. She opened her mouth just as a boom split the air, and the Caracel shook under their feet.
“You still think it’s not hostile?” Chaghan asked.
“Fire,” she said.
Ramsa ran belowdecks to light the fuse. Moments later a series of booms rocked the Caracel as their starboard-side cannons went off one by one. Blazing metal balls skimmed over the water, scorching bright orange trails behind them—but instead of blowing holes into the sides of the Cormorant, they only bounced off metal plating. The warship barely shook from the impact.
Meanwhile the Caracel lurched alarmingly to starboard. Rin peeked over the edge—they’d taken damage to their hull, and though she knew nearly nothing about ships, that didn’t look survivable.
She cursed under her breath. They’d have to row one of the lifeboats back to shore. If the Cormorant didn’t dispose of them first.
She could hear Ramsa’s footsteps moving frantically around belowdecks, trying to reload. Arrows sailed over her head, courtesy of Qara, but they thudded ineffectively into the sides of the warship. Qara had no target—the warship had no crew on deck, no archers. Whoever it was didn’t need archers when they had a row of cannons so powerful they could likely blow the Caracel out of the water in minutes.
“Get closer!” Rin shouted. They were outgunned, outmaneuvered. The only chance they had at winning was to board that ship and smoke it out. “Aratsha! Put me on that ship!”
But they weren’t moving. The Caracel bobbed listlessly in the water.
“Aratsha!”
No response. Rin climbed on the railing and bent to look overboard. She saw an odd stream of black, like a smoke cloud unfurling underwater. Blood? But Aratsha didn’t bleed, not when he was in his watery form. And the cloud looked too dark to be blood.
No. It looked like ink.
A projectile shrieked overhead. She ducked. The salvo landed in the water in front of her. Another burst of black emanated from the site of impact.
It was ink.
They were firing the pellets into the water. This was intentional. Their attackers knew the Cike had a water shaman, and they had blinded Aratsha on purpose because they knew what he was.
Rin’s chest tightened. This was no random attack. The warship had targeted them, had prepared for what they could do. This was a calculated ambush planned well in advance.
Moag had sold them out.
Another series of missiles whistled through the air, this time headed for the deck. Rin crouched down, braced for the explosion, but the impact didn’t come. She opened her eyes. A delayed explosive?
But no fiery explosion rocked the boat. Instead a cloud of black smoke shot out of the projectiles, unfurling outward with a terrifying rapidity. Rin didn’t bother trying to run. The smoke covered the entire deck within seconds.
It wasn’t just a smokescreen, it was an asphyxiate—she tried to suck in air but nothing went through; it was like her throat had closed up, as if someone had pinned her to the wall by the neck. She staggered back, gagging. She could taste something in the air—something sickly sweet and terribly familiar.
Opium.
They know what we are. They know what makes us weak.
Suni and Baji dropped to their knees, utterly subdued. Wherever Qara was, she’d stopped shooting. Rin could just make out Ramsa’s and Chaghan’s limp forms through the smoke. Only she remained standing, coughing violently, clutching feebly at her throat.
She had smoked opium so many times, the phases of the high were familiar to her by now. It was only a matter of time.
First there was the dizzying sensation of floating, accompanied by an irrational euphoria.
Then the numbness that felt almost as good.
Then nothing.
Rin’s arms stung like she’d plunged them inside a beehive. Her mouth tasted like charcoal. She tried to conjure up enough spit to wet her throat and barely managed a repellent lump of phlegm. She forced her eyes open. The sudden attack of light made them water; she had to blink several times before she could look up.
She was tied to a mast, her arms stretched above her. She wiggled her fingers. She couldn’t feel them. Her legs were also bound, tied so tightly that she couldn’t even bend them.
“She awakens.” Baji’s voice.
She strained her neck but couldn’t see him. When she swiveled her head around she suffered a sudden attack of vertigo. Even tied down, she felt like she was floating. Looking up or down gave her the terrible sensation of falling. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Baji? Where are you?”
“Behind you,” he said. “Other side of the … the mast.”
His words came out in a barely intelligible drawl.
“The others?” she asked.
“All here,” Ramsa piped up from her other side. “Aratsha’s in that barrel.”
Rin sat up straight. “Wait, could he—”
“No go. They sealed the lid. Good thing he doesn’t need to breathe.” Ramsa must have been wiggling his arms, straining the rope, because she felt her bindings tighten painfully around her own wrists.
“Stop that,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Whose ship is this?” she asked.
“They won’t tell us,” Baji said.
“They? Who are they?”
“We don’t know. Nikara, I’m assuming, but they won’t talk to us.” Baji raised his voice to shout at a guard who must have been standing behind her, because Rin couldn’t see anyone. “Hey, you! You Nikara?”
No response.
“Told you,” said Baji.
“Maybe they’re mutes,” Ramsa said. “All of them.”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Baji said.
“They could be! You don’t know!”
That wasn’t remotely funny, but Ramsa devolved into a fit of giggles, leaning forward so that the ropes strained painfully against all of their arms.
“Can you all shut up?” Chaghan’s voice. It came from several feet away.
Rin peeked her eyes open for a split second, just long enough to take in the sight of Chaghan, Qara, and Suni bound to the mast opposite her.
Chaghan was slumped against his sister. Suni was still unconscious, head drooped forward. A thick pool of saliva had collected beneath his open mouth.
“Why, hello,” said Ramsa. “Good to see you, too.”
“Shut your damn mouth,” Chaghan grumbled, before he devolved into a string of curses that ended with “Damned Nikara swine.”
“Are you high?” Ramsa let out a shrill cackle. “Tiger’s tits, Chaghan’s high—”
“I’m … not …”
“Quick, someone ask him if he’s always constipated or his face just looks that way.”
“At least I’ve got both eyes,” Chaghan snapped.
“Oh, ‘I’ve got both eyes.’ Nice one. At least I’m not so skinny a pigeon could knock me over—”
“Shut up,” Rin hissed. She opened her eyes again, trying to take stock of their surroundings. All she could see was the ocean receding behind them. “Ramsa. What do you see?”
“Just the ship’s side. Little bit of ocean.”
“Baji?”
Silence. Had he fallen asleep again?
“Baji!” she shouted.
“Hmm? What?”
“What can you see?”
“Uh. My feet. A bulkhead. The sky.”
“No, you idiot—where are we headed?”
“How the fuck should I know—wait. There’s a dot. Yeah, that’s a dot. An island, I think?”
Rin’s heartbeat quickened. Speer? Mugen? But both were a several-weeks journey away; they couldn’t be anywhere close. And she didn’t remember any islands near Ankhiluun. The old Hesperian naval bases, maybe? But those were long abandoned. If the Hesperians had come back, Nikara foreign relations had changed drastically since she’d last checked.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Not really. Hold on.” Baji was silent for a moment. “Great Tortoise. That’s a nice ship.”
“What do you mean, that’s a nice ship?”
“I mean, if that ship were a person, I would fuck that ship,” said Baji.
Rin suspected Baji wouldn’t be much help until the opium wore off. But then their vessel took a sharp turn to port, putting Rin in full view of what turned out to be, indeed, a very nice ship. They had sailed into the shadow of the largest war vessel she had ever seen: a monstrous, multidecked war junk, with several layers of catapults and portholes, and a massive trebuchet mounted on top of a deck tower.
Rin had studied naval warfare at Sinegard, though never in depth. The Imperial Navy’s own fleet had fallen into disrepair, and the only people sent to naval posts were the bottom-feeders of each class. Still, they’d learned enough about naval crafts that Rin knew this was no Imperial ship.
The Nikara couldn’t build vessels like this. It had to be a foreign battleship.
Her mind pored sluggishly over possibilities. The Hesperians hadn’t taken sides in the Third Poppy War—but if they had, then they would have allied with the Empire, which meant …
But then she heard the crew shouting commands to each other, and they were in fluent Nikara. “Halt. Ready to board.”
What Nikara general had access to a Hesperian ship?
Rin heard shouting, the sound of groaning wood, and heavy footsteps moving about the deck. She strained harder against the ropes, but all that did was chafe at her wrists; her skin stung like it had been scraped raw.
“What’s happening?” she screamed. “Who are you?”
She heard someone order a salute formation, which meant they were being boarded by someone of higher rank. A Warlord? A Hesperian?
“I think we’re about to be handed off,” Baji said. “It was nice knowing you all. Except you, Chaghan. You’re weird.”
“Fuck you,” Chaghan said.
“Wait, I’ve still got a whale bone in my back pocket,” said Ramsa. “Rin, you could try igniting just a little bit, burn through the ropes and then I’ll get it out—”
Ramsa droned on, but Rin barely heard what he was saying.
A man had just walked into her field of vision. A general, judging from his uniform. He wore a half mask over his face—a Sinegardian opera mask of cerulean-blue ceramic. But it was his tall, lean build that caught her gaze, and his gait: confident, arrogant, like he expected everyone around him to bow before him.
She knew that stride.
“Suni can handle the main guard, and I’ll commandeer the cannons, implode the ship or something—”
“Ramsa,” Rin said in a strangled voice. “Shut. Up.”
The general crossed the deck and paused in front of them.
“Why are they bound?” he asked.
Rin stiffened. She knew that voice.
One of the crew hastened over. “Sir, we were warned not to let their hands out of sight.”
“These are our people. Not prisoners. Unbind them.”
“Sir, but they—”
“I don’t enjoy repeating myself.”
It had to be him. She’d only ever met one person who could convey so much disdain in so few words.
“You’ve bound them so tight their limbs will suffer blood loss,” the general said. “If you deliver them damaged to my father, he will be very, very angry.”
“Sir, I don’t think you understand the nature of the threat—”
“Oh, I understand. We were classmates. Weren’t we, Rin?” The general knelt down before her and pulled off his mask.
Rin flinched.
The boy she remembered was so beautiful. Skin like porcelain, features finer than any sculptor could carve, delicately arched eyebrows that conveyed precisely that mixture of condescension and vulnerability that Nikara poets had been trying to describe for centuries.
Nezha wasn’t beautiful anymore.
The left side of his face was still perfect, somehow; still smooth like the glaze on fine ceramic. But the right side … the right side was mottled with scars, crisscrossing over his cheek like the plates of a tortoise shell.
Those were not natural scars. They looked nothing like the burn scars Rin had seen on bodies destroyed by gas. Nezha’s face should have been twisted and deformed, if not utterly blackened. But his skin remained as pale as ever. His porcelain face had not darkened, but rather looked like glass that had been shattered and glued back together. Those oddly geometric scars could have been drawn over his skin with a fine brush.
His mouth was pulled into a permanent sneer toward the left side of his face, revealing teeth, a mask of condescension that he couldn’t ever take off.
When Rin looked into his eyes, she saw noxious yellow fumes rolling over withering grass. She heard shrieks that dwindled into chokes. And she heard someone screaming her name, over and over and over.
She found it harder and harder to breathe. A buzzing noise filled her ears, and black spots clouded the sides of her vision like ink drops on wet parchment.
“You’re dead,” she said. “I saw you die.”
Nezha looked amused. “And you were always supposed to be the clever one.”
CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_e265b009-69be-5707-a8fc-a7b770320a11)
“What the fuck?” she screamed.
“Hello to you, too,” said Nezha. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
She couldn’t do anything but stare at him. It seemed impossible, unthinkable, that he was really alive, standing before her, speaking, breathing.
“Captain,” Nezha called. “The ropes.”
Rin felt the pressure around her wrists tighten briefly, then disappear. Her arms dropped to her sides. Blood rushed back into her extremities, sending a million shocks of lightning through her fingers. She rubbed her wrists and winced when skin came off in her hands.
“Can you stand?” Nezha asked.
She managed a nod. He pulled her to her feet. She took a step forward, and a dizzying spell of vertigo slammed into her like a wave.
“Steady.” Nezha caught her arm just as she lurched toward him.
She righted herself. “Don’t touch me.”
“I know you’re confused. But it’ll—”
“I said don’t touch me.”
He backed away, hands out. “It’ll all make sense in a minute. You’re safe. Just trust me.”
“Trust you?” she repeated. “You bombed my ship!”
“Well, it’s not technically your ship.”
“You could have killed us!” she shrieked. Her brain still felt terribly sluggish, but this fact struck her as very, very important. “You fired opium onto my ship!”
“Would you rather we fired real missiles? We were trying not to hurt you.”
“Your men bound us to the mast for hours!”
“Because they didn’t want to die!” Nezha lowered his voice. “Look, I’m sorry it came to that. We needed to get you out of Ankhiluun. We weren’t trying to hurt you.”
His placating tone only made her angrier. She wasn’t a fucking child; he couldn’t calm her with soothing whispers. “You let me think you were dead.”
“What did you want, a letter? It’s not like it was terribly easy to track you down, either.”
“A letter would have been better than bombing my ship!”
“Are you ever going to let that go?”
“It’s a rather large thing to let go!”
“I will explain everything if you come with me,” he said. “Can you walk? Please? My father’s waiting for us.”
“Your father?” she repeated dumbly.
“Come on, Rin. You know who my father is.”
She blinked at him. Then it hit her.
Oh.
Either she’d been hit by a massive stroke of fortune, or she was about to die.
“Just me?” she asked.
Nezha’s eyes flickered toward the Cike, lingering briefly on Chaghan. “I was told you’re the commander now?”
She hesitated. She hadn’t been acting much like a commander. But the title was hers, even if in name only. “Yes.”
“Then just you.”
“I’m not going without my men.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”
She stuck her chin out. “Sucks, then.”
“Do you seriously think any of them are in a state for an audience with a Warlord?” Nezha gestured toward the Cike. Suni was still asleep, the puddle of drool widening under his mouth. Chaghan stared open-mouthed at the sky, fascinated, and Ramsa had his eyes squeezed shut, giggling at nothing in particular.
It was the first time Rin had ever been glad she’d developed such a high tolerance for opium.
“I need your word you won’t hurt them,” she said.
Nezha looked offended. “Please. You’re not prisoners.”
“Then what are we?”
“Mercenaries,” he said delicately. “Think of it that way. You’re mercenaries out of a job, and my father has a very generous offer for your consideration.”
“What if we don’t like it?”
“I really think you will.” Nezha motioned for Rin to follow him down the deck, but she remained where she stood.
“Feed my men while we’re gone, then. A hot meal, not leftovers.”
“Rin, come on—”
“Give them baths, too. And then take them to their own quarters. Not the brig. Those are my terms. Also, Ramsa doesn’t like fish.”
“He’s been operating out of the coast and he doesn’t like fish?”
“He’s picky.”
Nezha muttered something to the captain, who adopted a face like he’d been forced to sniff curdled milk.
“Done,” Nezha said. “Now will you come?”
She took a step and stumbled. Nezha extended his arm toward her. She let him help her to the edge of the ship.
“Thanks, Commander,” Ramsa called behind them. “Try not to die.”
The Hesperian warship Seagrim loomed huge over their rowboat, swallowing them completely in its shadow. Rin couldn’t help but stare in awe at its sheer scale. She could have fit half of Tikany on that warship, temple included.
How did a monstrosity like that stay afloat? And how did it move? She couldn’t see any oars. The Seagrim appeared to be just like the Cormorant, a ghost vessel with no visible crew.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a shaman powering that thing,” she said.
“If only. No, that’s a paddle-wheel boat.”
“What’s that?”
He grinned. “Have you heard the legend of the Old Sage of Arlong?”
She rolled her eyes. “Who’s that, your grandfather?”
“Great-grandfather. The legend goes, the old sage was staring at a water wheel watering the fields and thought about reversing the circumstances; if he moved the wheel, then the water must move. Fairly obvious principle, isn’t it? Incredible how long it took for someone to apply it to ships.
“See, the old Imperial ships were idiotically designed. Propelled by sculls from the top deck. Problem with that is if your rowers get shot out, you’re dead in the water. But the paddle-wheel pushers are on the bottom deck. Entirely enclosed by the hull, totally protected from enemy artillery. A bit of an improvement from old models, eh?”
Nezha seemed to enjoy talking about ships. Rin heard a distinct note of pride in his voice as he pointed out the ridges at the bottom of the warship. “You see those? They’re concealing the paddle wheels.”
She couldn’t help but stare at his face while he talked. Up close his scars weren’t so unsettling, but rather oddly compelling. She wondered if it hurt him to talk.
“What is it?” Nezha asked. He touched his cheek. “Ugly, isn’t it? I can put the mask back on, if it’s bothering you.”
“It’s not that,” she said hastily.
“What, then?”
She blinked again. “I just … I’m sorry.”
He frowned. “For what?”
She stared at him, searching for evidence of sarcasm, but his expression was open, concerned.
“It’s my fault,” she said.
He stopped rowing. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it was.” She swallowed. “I could have pulled you out. I heard you calling my name. You saw me.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Yes, you do. Stop lying.”
“Rin. Don’t do this.” Nezha stopped rowing to reach out and grasp her hand. “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you.”
“You should.”
“I don’t.”
“I could have pulled you out,” she said again. “I wanted to, I was going to, but Altan wouldn’t let me, and—”
“So blame Altan,” Nezha said in a hard voice, and resumed rowing. “The Federation was never going to kill me. The Mugenese like to keep prisoners. Someone figured out I was a warlord’s son, so they kept me for ransom. They thought they might leverage me into a surrender from Dragon Province.”
“How’d you escape?”
“I didn’t. I was in the camp when word got out that Emperor Ryohai was dead. The soldiers who had captured me arranged to trade me back to my father in exchange for a safe exit from the country.”
“Did they get it?” she asked.
He grimaced. “They got an exit.”
When they reached the hull of the warship, Nezha hooked four ropes to the ends of the rowboat and whistled at the sky. Seconds later the boat began to rock as sailors hoisted them up.
The main deck hadn’t been visible from the rowboat, but now Rin saw that soldiers were posted at every corner of the ship. They were Nikara in their features—they must have been from Dragon Province, but Rin noticed they did not wear Militia uniforms.
The Seventh Division soldiers she had met at Khurdalain wore green Militia gear with the insignia of a dragon stitched into their armbands. But these soldiers were decked out in dark blue, with a silver dragon pattern visible over their chests.
“This way.” Nezha led her down the stairs to the second deck and down the passageway until they stopped before a set of wooden doors guarded by a tall, spare man holding a blue-ribboned halberd.
“Captain Eriden.” Nezha stopped and saluted, though according to uniform he should have been the higher rank.
“General.” Captain Eriden looked like a man who’d never smiled in his life. Deep frown lines seemed permanently etched into his gaunt, spare face. He dipped his head to Nezha, then turned to Rin. “Hold out your arms.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Nezha.
“With all due respect, sir, you are not the one sworn to guard your father’s life,” Eriden said. “Hold out your arms.”
Rin obeyed. “You’re not going to find anything.”
Normally she kept daggers in her boots and inner shirt, but she could feel their absence; the Cormorant’s crew must have removed them already.
“Still have to check.” Eriden peered inside her sleeves. “I’m to warn you that if you dare to so much as point a chopstick in the Dragon Warlord’s direction, then you’ll be shot full of crossbow bolts faster than you can breathe.” His hands moved up her shirt. “Do not forget we also have your men as hostages.”
Rin shot Nezha an accusing glare. “You said we weren’t hostages.”
“They aren’t,” Nezha said. He turned to Eriden, eyes hard. “They aren’t. They’re our guests, Captain.”
“Call them whatever you like.” Eriden shrugged. “But try anything funny and they’re dead.”
Rin shifted so that he could feel the small of her back for weapons. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
Finished, Eriden wiped his hands off on his uniform, turned, and grasped the door handles. “In that case, I’m to extend you a welcome on behalf of the Dragon Warlord.”
“Fang Runin, isn’t it? Welcome to the Seagrim.”
For a moment Rin could only gape. She couldn’t look at the Dragon Warlord and not see Nezha. Yin Vaisra was a grown version of his son without scars. He possessed all the infuriating beauty of the House of Yin—pale skin, black hair without a single streak of gray, and fine features that looked like they had been carved from marble—cold, arrogant, and imposing.
She’d heard endless gossip about the Dragon Warlord during her years at Sinegard. He ruled the richest province in the Empire by far. He’d single-handedly led the defense of the Red Cliffs in the Second Poppy War, had obliterated a Federation fleet with only a small cluster of Nikara fishing boats. He’d been chafing under Daji’s rule for years. When he’d failed to appear at the Empress’s summer parade for the third consecutive year, the apprentices had speculated so loudly that he was planning open treason that Nezha had lost his cool and sent one of them to the infirmary.
“Rin is fine.” Her words came out sounding frail and tiny, swallowed up by the vast gilded room.
“A vulgar diminutive,” Vaisra declared. Even his voice was a deeper version of Nezha’s, a hard drawl that seemed permanently coated in condescension. “They’re fond of those in the south. But I shall call you Runin. Please, sit down.”
She cast a fleeting glance at the oak table between them. It had a low surface, and the high-backed chairs looked terribly heavy. If she sat, her knees would be trapped. “I’ll stand.”
Vaisra raised an eyebrow. “Have I made you uncomfortable?”
“You bombed my ship,” Rin said. “So yes, a little.”
“My dear girl, if I wanted you dead, your body would be at the bottom of Omonod Bay.”
“Then why isn’t it?”
“Because we need you.” Vaisra drew out his own chair and sat, gesturing to Nezha to do the same. “It hasn’t been easy to find you, you know. We’ve been sailing down the coast of the Snake Province for weeks now. We even checked Mugen.”
He said it like he’d meant to startle her, and it worked. She couldn’t help but flinch. He watched her, waiting.
She took the bait. “What did you find?”
“Just a few fringe islands. Of course, they had no clue of your whereabouts, but we stayed a week or so to make sure. People will say anything under torture.”
Her fingers tightened into fists. “They’re still alive?”
She felt like someone had taken a bar to her rib cage. She knew Federation soldiers remained on the mainland, but not that civilians were still alive. She’d thought she had put a permanent end to the country.
What if she hadn’t? The great strategist Sunzi cautioned to always finish off an enemy in case they came back stronger. What would happen when Federation civilians regrouped? What if she still had a war to fight?
“Their invasion is over,” Vaisra reassured her. “You made certain of that. The main islands have been destroyed. Emperor Ryohai and his advisers are dead. A few cities on the edges of the archipelago remain standing, but the Federation has erupted into frothy madness, like ants pouring out of a hill once you’ve killed the queen. Some of them are sailing off the islands in droves, seeking refuge on Nikara shores, but … well. We’re getting rid of them as they come.”
“How?”
“The usual way.” His lips twitched into a smile. “Why don’t you sit?”
Reluctantly, she drew the chair out as far from the table as she could and sat at the very edge, knees locked together.
“There,” Vaisra said. “Now we’re friends.”
Rin decided to be blunt. “Are you here to take me back to the capital?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“Your services.”
“I’m not murdering anyone for you.”
“Dream a little bigger, my dear.” Vaisra leaned forward. “I want to overthrow the Empire. I’d like you to help.”
The room fell silent. Rin studied Vaisra’s face, waiting for him to burst into laughter. But he looked so terribly sincere—and so did Nezha—that she couldn’t help but cackle.
“Is something funny?” Vaisra asked.
“Are you mad?”
“‘Visionary,’ I think, is the word you want. The Empire is on the verge of falling apart. A revolution is the only alternative to decades of civil warfare, and someone has to start the ball rolling.”
“And you’d bet on your odds against the Militia?” Rin laughed again. “You’re one province against eleven. It’ll be a massacre.”
“Don’t be so certain,” Vaisra said. “The provinces are angry. They’re hurting. And for the first time since any of the Warlords can remember, the specter of the Federation has disappeared. Fear used to be a unifying force. Now the cracks in the foundation grow day by day. Do you know how many local insurrections have erupted in the past month? Daji is doing everything she can to keep the Empire united, but the institution is a sinking ship that’s rotted at the core. It may drift for a while, but eventually it will be dashed to pieces against the rocks.”
“And you think you can destroy it and build a new one.”
“Isn’t that precisely what you want?”
“Killing one woman is not the same thing as overthrowing a regime.”
“But you can’t evaluate those events in a vacuum,” said Vaisra. “What do you think happens if you succeed? Who steps into Daji’s shoes? And whoever that person is, do you trust them to rule the Twelve Provinces? To be any kinder to people like you than Daji was?”
Rin hadn’t thought that far. She had never bothered to think much about life after she’d killed Daji. Once she’d gotten Altan’s revenge, she wasn’t sure that she even wanted to keep living.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she said.
“Then think of it this way,” Vaisra said. “I can give you a chance to take your revenge with the full support of an army of thousands.”
“Would I have to take orders?” she asked.
“Rin—” Nezha started.
“Would I have to take orders?”
“Yes,” Vaisra said. “Of course.”
“Then you can fuck off.”
Vaisra looked confused. “All soldiers take orders.”
“I’m not a soldier anymore,” she said. “I put in my time, I gave the Empire my loyalty, and that got me strapped to a table in a Mugenese research lab. I’m done taking orders.”
“We are not the Empire.”
She shrugged. “You want to be.”
“You little fool.” Vaisra slammed his hand against the table. Rin flinched. “Look outside yourself for a moment. This isn’t just about you, it’s about the future of our people.”
“Your people,” she said. “I’m a Speerly.”
“You are a scared little girl reacting from anger and loss in the most shortsighted way possible. All you want is to get your revenge. But you could be so much more. Do so much more. Listen to me. You could change history.”
“Haven’t I changed history enough?” Rin whispered.
She didn’t care about anyone’s visions for the future. She’d stopped wanting to be great, to carve out her place in history, a long time ago. She’d since learned the cost.
And she didn’t know how to say that she was just so tired.
All she wanted was to get Altan’s revenge. She wanted to put a blade in Daji’s heart.
And then she wanted to disappear.
“Your people died not because of Daji but because of this Empire,” Vaisra said. “The provinces have become weak, isolated, technologically inept. Compared to the Federation, compared to Hesperia, we are not just decades but centuries behind. And the problem isn’t our people, it’s their rulers. The twelve-province system is an antiquated, inefficient yoke dragging the Nikara behind. Imagine a country that was truly united. Imagine an army whose factions weren’t constantly at war with one another. Who could possibly defeat us?”
Vaisra’s eyes glimmered as he spread his hands across the table. “I am going to transform the Empire into a republic—a great republic, founded on the individual freedom of men. Instead of Warlords, we would have elected officials. Instead of an Empress, we would have a parliament, overseen by an elected president. I would make it impossible for a single person like Su Daji to bring ruin upon this realm. What do you think of that?”
A lovely speech, Rin thought, if Vaisra had been talking to someone more gullible.
Maybe the Empire did need a new government. Maybe a democracy would usher in peace and stability. But Vaisra had failed to realize that she simply did not care.
“I just finished fighting one war,” she said. “I’m not terribly interested in fighting another.”
“So what is your strategy? To roam up and down the coastline, killing off the only officials who have been brave enough to keep opium outside their borders?” Vaisra made a noise of disgust. “If that’s your goal, you’re just as bad as the Mugenese.”
She bristled. “I’ll kill Daji eventually.”
“And how, pray tell?”
“I don’t have to tell you—”
“By renting a pirate ship?” he mocked. “By entering into losing negotiations with a pirate queen?”
“Moag was going to give us supplies.” Rin felt the blood rushing to her face. “And we would have had the money, too, until you assholes showed up—”
“You’re so terribly naive. Don’t you get it? Moag was always going to sell you out. Did you think she would pass up that bounty on your heads? You’re lucky our offer was better.”
“Moag wouldn’t,” Rin said. “Moag knows my value.”
“You’re assuming Moag is rational. And she is, until it comes to great sums of money. You can buy her off with any amount of silver, and that I have in abundance.” Vaisra shook his head like a disappointed teacher. “Don’t you get it? Moag only flourishes while Daji is on the throne, because Daji’s isolationist policies create Ankhiluun’s competitive advantage. Moag only benefits as long as she operates outside the law, while the rest of the country is in such deep shit that it’s more profitable to operate inside her boundaries than without. Once trade becomes legitimized, she’s out of an empire. Which means the very last thing she wants is for you to succeed.”
Rin opened her mouth, realized she had nothing to say, and closed it. For the first time, she did not have a counterargument.
“Please, Rin,” Nezha interjected. “Be honest with yourself. You can’t fight a war on your own. You are six people. The Vipress is guarded by a corps of elite soldiers that you’ve never gone up against. And that’s not to mention her own martial arts skills, which you know nothing about.”
“And you no longer have the advantage of surprise,” said Vaisra. “Daji knows you are coming for her, which means you need a way to get closer to her. You need me.”
He gestured to the walls around them. “Look at this ship. This is the very best that Hesperian naval technology can offer. Twelve cannons lined on every side.”
Rin rolled her eyes. “Congratulations?”
“I have ten more ships like it.”
That gave her pause.
Vaisra leaned forward. “Now you get it. You’re a smart girl; you can run the calculations yourself. The Empire does not have a functioning navy. I do. We will control this Empire’s waterways. The war will be over in six months at worst.”
Rin tapped her fingers against the table, considering. Could they win this war? And what if they did?
She couldn’t help but balance the possibilities—she’d been trained too well at Sinegard not to.
If what Vaisra said was true, then she had to admit this was the perfect time to launch a coup. The Militia at present was fragmented and weak. The provinces had been decimated by Federation battalions. And they might switch sides quickly, once they learned the truth about Daji’s deception.
The benefits of joining an army were also obvious. She’d never have to worry about her supplies. She’d have access to intelligence she couldn’t get on her own. She’d have free transportation to wherever she wanted to go.
And yet.
“What happens if I say no?” she asked. “Are you going to compel me into service? Make me your own Speerly slave?”
Vaisra didn’t take the bait. “The Republic will be founded on freedom of choice. If you refuse to join, then we can’t make you.”
“Then maybe I’ll leave,” she said, mostly to see how he would respond. “I’ll go into hiding. I’ll bide my time. Get stronger.”
“You could do that.” Vaisra sounded bored, like he knew she was just pulling objections out of her ass. “Or you could fight for me and get the revenge you want. This isn’t hard, Runin. And you’re not really considering saying no. You’re just pretending to think because you like being a little brat.”
Rin glared at him.
It was such a rational option. She hated that it was a rational option. And she hated more that Vaisra knew that, and knew she’d arrive at the same conclusion, and was now simply mocking her until her mind caught up to his.
“I have more money and resources at my disposal than anyone in this empire,” Vaisra said. “Weapons, men, information—anything you need, you can get it from me. Work for me and you will want for nothing.”
“I’m not putting my life in your hands,” she said. The last time she had pledged her loyalty to someone, she’d been betrayed. Altan had died.
“I will never lie to you,” said Vaisra.
“Everybody lies to me.”
Vaisra shrugged. “Then don’t trust me. Act purely in your own interest. But I think you’ll find it clear soon enough that you don’t have many other options.”
Rin’s temples throbbed. She rubbed her eyes, trying desperately to think through all the possibilities. There had to be a catch. She knew better than to take offers like this at face value. She’d learned her lesson from Moag—never trust someone who holds all the cards.
She had to buy herself some time. “I can’t make a decision without speaking to my people.”
“Do as you like,” Vaisra said. “But have an answer for me by dawn.”
“Or what?” she asked.
“Or you’ll have to find your own way back to shore,” he said. “And it’s a long swim.”
“Just to clarify, the Dragon Warlord does not want to kill us?” Ramsa asked.
“No,” said Rin. “He wants us in his army.”
He wrinkled his nose. “But why? The Federation’s gone.”
“Exactly that. He thinks it’s his opportunity to overthrow the Empire.”
“That’s actually clever,” Baji said. “Think about it. Rob the house while it’s on fire, or however the saying goes.”
“I don’t think that’s a real saying,” Ramsa said.
“It’s a little more noble than that,” said Rin. “He wants to build a republic instead. Overthrow the Warlord system. Construct a parliament, appoint elected officials, restructure how governance works across the Empire.”
Baji chuckled. “Democracy? Really?”
“It’s worked for the Hesperians,” said Qara.
“Has it?” Baji asked. “Hasn’t the western continent been at war for the past decade?”
“The question isn’t whether democracy could work,” Rin said. “That doesn’t matter. The question is whether we enlist.”
“This could be a trap,” Ramsa pointed out. “He could be bringing you to Daji.”
“He could have just killed us when we were drugged, then. We’re dangerous passengers to have on board. It wouldn’t be worth the risk unless Vaisra really did think he could convince us to join him.”
“So?” Ramsa asked. “Can he convince us?”
“I don’t know,” Rin admitted. “Maybe.”
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. She wanted Vaisra’s ships. His weapons, his soldiers, his power.
But if things went south, if Vaisra hurt the Cike, then this fell on her shoulders. And she couldn’t let the Cike down again.
“There’s still a benefit to going it on our own,” said Baji. “Means we don’t have to take orders.”
Rin shook her head. “We’re still six people. You can’t assassinate a head of state with six people.”
Never mind that she’d been perfectly willing to try just a few hours ago.
“And what if he betrays us?” Aratsha asked.
Baji shrugged. “We could always just cut our losses and defect. Run back to Ankhiluun.”
“We can’t run back to Ankhiluun,” Rin said.
“Why not?”
She told them about Moag’s ploy. “She’d have sold us to Daji if Vaisra hadn’t offered her something better. He sank our ship because he wanted her to think that we’d died.”
“So it’s Vaisra or nothing,” Ramsa said. “That’s just fantastic.”
“Is this Yin Vaisra really so bad?” Suni asked. “He’s just one man.”
“That’s true,” said Baji. “He can’t be any scarier than the other Warlords. The Ox and Ram Warlords weren’t anything special. It’s nepotism and inbreeding all around.”
“Oh, so like how you were produced,” said Ramsa.
“Listen, you little bitch—”
“Join them,” Chaghan said. His voice was hardly louder than a whisper, but the cabin fell silent. It was the first time he had spoken all evening.
“You’re debating this like you get to decide,” he said. “You don’t. You really think Vaisra’s going to let you go if you say no? He’s too smart for that. He’s just told you his intentions to commit treason. He’ll have you killed if there’s even the slightest risk you’d go to anyone else.” He gave Rin a grim look. “Face it, Speerly. It’s join up or die.”
“You’re gloating,” Rin accused.
“I would never,” said Nezha. He’d been beaming the entire way down the passageway, showing her around the warship like some ebullient tour guide. “But glad to have you on board.”
“Shut up.”
“Can’t I be happy? I’ve missed you.” Nezha stopped before a room on the first deck. “After you.”
“What’s this?”
“Your new quarters.” He opened the door for her. “Look, it locks from the inside four different ways. Thought you’d like that.”
She did like it. The room was twice as large as her quarters on her old ship, and the bed was a proper bed, not a cot with lice-ridden sheets. She stepped inside. “I have this all to myself?”
“I told you.” Nezha sounded smug. “The Dragon Army has its benefits.”
“Ah, that’s what you call yourselves?”
“Technically it’s the Army of the Republic. Nonprovincial, and all that.”
“You’d need allies for that.”
“We’re working on it.”
She turned toward the porthole. Even in the darkness she could see how fast the Seagrim was moving, slicing through black waves at speeds faster than Aratsha had ever been capable of. By morning Moag and her fleet would be dozens of miles behind them.
But Rin couldn’t leave Ankhiluun like this. Not yet. She had one more thing to retrieve.
“You said Moag thinks we’re dead?” she asked.
“I’d be surprised if she didn’t. We even tossed some charred corpses in the water.”
“Whose bodies?”
Nezha stretched his arms over his head. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.” The sun had just set over the water. Soon the Ankhiluuni pirate patrol would begin to make its rounds around the coast. “Do you have a smaller boat? One that can sneak past Moag’s ships?”
“Of course,” he scoffed. “Why, do you need to go back?”
“I don’t,” she said. “But you’ve forgotten someone.”
By all accounts Kitay’s audience with Vaisra was an unmitigated disaster. Captain Eriden wouldn’t let Rin onto the second deck, so she was unable to eavesdrop, but about an hour after they brought Kitay on board, she saw Nezha and two soldiers dragging him to the lower level. She ran down the passageway to catch up.
“—and I don’t care if you’re pissed, you can’t throw food at the Dragon Warlord,” said Nezha.
Kitay’s face was purple with anger. If he was at all relieved to see Nezha alive, he didn’t show it. “Your men tried to blow up my house!”
“They tend to do that,” Rin said.
“We had to make it look like you’d died,” Nezha said.
“I was still in it!” Kitay cried. “And so were my ledgers!”
Nezha looked amazed. “Who gives a shit about your ledgers?”
“I was doing the city’s taxes.”
“What?”
Kitay stuck his lower lip out. “And I was almost done.”
“What the fuck?” Nezha blinked. “I don’t—Rin, you talk some sense into this idiot.”
“I’m the idiot?” Kitay demanded. “Me? You’re the ones who think it’d be a good idea to start a bloody civil war—”
“Because the Empire needs one,” Nezha insisted. “Daji’s the reason why the Federation invaded; she’s the reason why Golyn Niis—”
“You were not at Golyn Niis,” Kitay snarled. “Don’t talk to me about Golyn Niis.”
“Fine—I’m sorry—but shouldn’t that justify a regime change? She’s hamstrung the Militia, she’s fucked our foreign relations, she’s not fit to rule—”
“You have no proof of that.”
“We do have proof.” Nezha stopped walking. “Look at your scars. Look at me. The proof’s written on our skin.”
“I don’t care,” Kitay said. “I don’t give a shit what your politics are, I want to go home.”
“And do what?” Nezha asked. “And fight for whom? There’s a war coming, Kitay, and when it’s here, there will be no such thing as neutrality.”
“That’s not true. I shall seclude myself and live the virtuous life of a scholarly hermit,” Kitay said stiffly.
“Stop,” Rin said. “Nezha’s right. Now you’re just being stubborn.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “Of course you’re in on this madness. What did I expect?”
“Maybe it’s madness,” she said. “But it’s better than fighting for the Militia. Come on, Kitay. You know you can’t go back to the status quo.”
She could see it in Kitay’s eyes, how badly he wanted to resolve the contradiction between loyalty and justice—because Kitay, poor, upright, moral Kitay, always so concerned with doing what was right, couldn’t reconcile himself to the fact that a military coup might be justified.
He flung his hands in the air. “Even so, you think I’m in a position to join your republic? My father is the Imperial defense minister.”
“Then he’s serving the wrong ruler,” said Nezha.
“You don’t understand! My entire family is at the heart of the capital. They could use them against me—my mother, my sister—”
“We could extract them,” Nezha said.
“Oh, like you extracted me? Very nice, I’m sure they’ll love getting abducted in the middle of the night while their house burns down.”
“Calm down,” Rin said. “They’d still be alive. You wouldn’t have to worry.”
“Like you’d know how it feels,” Kitay snapped. “The closest thing you had to a family was a suicidal maniac who got himself killed on a mission almost as stupid as this one.”
She could tell he knew he’d crossed the line, even as he said it. Nezha looked stunned. Kitay blinked rapidly, refusing to meet her eyes. Rin hoped for a moment that he might cave, that he’d apologize, but he simply looked away.
She felt a pang in her chest. The Kitay she knew would have apologized.
A long silence followed. Nezha stared at the wall, Kitay at the floor, and neither of them dared to meet Rin’s eyes.
Finally Kitay held out his hands, as if waiting for someone to bind them. “Best get me down to the brig,” he said. “Don’t want your prisoners running around on deck.”
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_e81ed1cb-e319-5700-bfb1-d884f35f870a)
When Rin returned to her private quarters, she locked the door carefully from the inside, sliding all four bolts into place, and propped a chair against the door for good measure. Then she lay back on her bed. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, to make herself internalize a brief sense of security. She was safe. She was with allies. No one was coming for her.
Sleep didn’t come. Something was missing.
It took her a moment to realize what it was. She was searching for that rocking feeling of the bed shifting over water, and it wasn’t there. The Seagrim was such a massive warship that its decks mimicked solid land. For once, she was on stable ground.
This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She had a place to be and a place to go. She wasn’t drifting anymore, wasn’t desperately scrambling to put together plans she knew would likely fail.
She stared up at the ceiling, trying to will her racing heartbeat to slow down. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong—a deep-seated discomfort that wasn’t just the absence of rolling waves.
It began with a prickling feeling in her fingertips. Then a flush of heat started in her palms and crept up her arms to her chest. The headache began a minute after that, searing flashes of pain that made her grind her teeth.
And then fire started burning at the back of her eyelids.
She saw Speer and she saw the Federation. She saw ashes and bones blurred and melted into one, one lone figure striding toward her, slender and handsome, trident in hand.
“You stupid cunt,” Altan whispered. He reached forward. His hands made a necklace around her throat.
Her eyes flew open. She sat up and breathed in and out, deep and slow and desperate breaths, trying to quell her sudden swell of panic.
Then she realized what was wrong.
She had no access to opium on this ship.
No. Calm. Stay calm.
Once upon a time at Sinegard, back when Master Jiang had been trying to help her shut her mind to the Phoenix, he’d taught her techniques to clear her thoughts and disappear into a void that imitated nonexistence. He’d taught her how to think like she was dead.
She had shunned his lessons then. She tried to recall them now. She forced her mind through the mantras he’d made her repeat for hours. Nothingness. I am nothing. I do not exist. I feel nothing, I regret nothing … I am sand, I am dust, I am ash.
It didn’t work. Surges of panic kept breaking the calm. The prickling in her fingers intensified into twisting knives. She was on fire, every part of her burned excruciatingly, and Altan’s voice echoed from everywhere.
It should have been you.
She ran to the door, kicked the chair away, undid the locks, and ran barefoot out into the passageway. Stabs of pain pricked the backs of her eyes, made her vision spark and flash.
She squinted, struggling to see in the dim light. Nezha had said his cabin was at the end of the passage … so this one, it had to be … She banged frantically against the door until it opened and he appeared in the gap.
“Rin? What are you—”
She grabbed his shirt. “Where’s your physician?”
His eyebrows flew up. “Are you hurt?”
“Where?”
“First deck, third door to the right, but—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish before she started sprinting toward the stairs. She heard him running after her but she didn’t care; all that mattered was that she get some opium, or laudanum, or whatever was on board.
But the physician wouldn’t let her into his office. He blocked the entrance with his body, one hand against the doorframe, the other clenched on the door handle.
“Dragon Warlord’s orders.” He sounded like he’d been expecting her. “I’m not to give you anything.”
“But I need—the pain, I can’t stand it, I need—”
He started to close the door. “You’ll have to do without.”
She jammed her foot in the door. “Just a little,” she begged. She didn’t care how pathetic she sounded, she just needed something. Anything. “Please.”
“I have my orders,” he said. “Nothing I can do.”
“Damn it!” she screamed. The physician flinched and slammed the door shut, but she was already running in the opposite direction, feet pounding as she neared the stairs.
She had to get to the top deck, away from everyone. She could feel the pricks of malicious memory pressing like shards of glass into her mind; bits and pieces of suppressed recollections that swam vividly before her eyes—corpses at Golyn Niis, corpses in the research facility, corpses at Speer, and the soldiers, all with Shiro’s face, jeering and pointing and laughing, and that made her so furious, made the rage build and build—
“Rin!”
Nezha had caught up with her. His hand grasped her shoulder. “What the hell—”
She whirled around. “Where’s your father?”
“I think he’s meeting with his admirals,” he stammered. “But I wouldn’t—”
She pushed past him. Nezha reached for her arm, but she ducked away and raced through the passageway and down the stairs to Vaisra’s office. She jiggled the handles—locked—then kicked furiously at the doors until they swung open from inside.
Vaisra didn’t look remotely surprised to see her.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we’ll need some privacy, please.”
The men inside vacated their seats without a word. None of them looked at her. Vaisra pulled the doors shut, locked them, and turned around. “What can I do for you?”
“You told the physician not to give me opium,” Rin said.
“That is correct.”
Her voice trembled. “Look, asshole, I need my—”
“Oh, no, Runin.” Vaisra lifted a finger and wagged it, as if chiding a small child. “I should have mentioned. A last condition of your enlistment. I do not tolerate opium addicts in my army.”
“I’m not an addict, I just …” A fresh wave of pain racked her head and she broke off, wincing.
“You’re no good to me high. I need you alert. I need someone capable of infiltrating the Autumn Palace and killing the Empress, not some opium-riddled sack of shit.”
“You don’t get it,” she said. “If you don’t drug me, I will incinerate everyone on this ship.”
He shrugged. “Then we’ll throw you overboard.”
She could only stare at him. This made no sense to her. How could he remain so infuriatingly calm? Why wasn’t he caving in, cowering in terror? This wasn’t how it was supposed to work—she was supposed to threaten him and he was supposed to do what she wanted, that was always how it worked—
Why hadn’t she scared him?
Desperate, she resorted to begging. “You don’t know how much this hurts. It’s in my mind—the god is always in my mind, and it hurts …”
“It’s not the god.” Vaisra stood up and crossed the room toward her. “It’s the anger. And it’s your fear. You’ve seen battle for the first time, and your nerves can’t shut down. You’re frightened all the time. You think everyone’s out to get you, and you want them to be out to get you because then that’ll give you an excuse to hurt them. That’s not a Speerly problem, it’s a universal experience of soldiers. And you can’t cure it with opium. There’s no running from it.”
“Then what—”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “You face it. You accept that it’s your reality now. You fight it.”
Couldn’t he understand that she’d tried? Did he think it was easy? “No,” she said. “I need—”
He cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
Rin’s tongue felt terribly heavy in her mouth. Sweat broke out over her body; she could see it beading on her hands.
He raised his voice. “Are you contradicting my orders?”
She took a shuddering breath. “I—I can’t. Fight it.”
“Ah, Runin. You don’t understand. You’re my soldier now. You follow orders. I tell you to jump, you ask how high.”
“But I can’t,” she repeated, frustrated.
Vaisra lifted his left hand, briefly examined his knuckles, and then slammed the back of his hand across her face.
She stumbled backward, more from the shock than the force. Her face registered no pain, only an intense sting, like she’d walked straight into a bolt of lightning. She touched a finger to her lip. It came away bloody.
“You hit me,” she said, dazed.
He grasped her chin tightly in his fingers and forced her to look up at him. She was too stunned to feel any rage. She wasn’t angry, she was only afraid. No one dared to touch her like this. No one had for a long time.
No one since Altan.
“I’ve broken in Speerlies before.” Vaisra traced a thumb across her cheek. “You’re not the first. Sallow skin. Sunken eyes. You’re smoking your life away. Anyone could smell it on you. Do you know why the Speerlies died young? It wasn’t their penchant for constant warfare, and it wasn’t their god. They were smoking themselves to death. Right now I wouldn’t give you six months.”
He dug his nails into her skin so hard that she gasped. “That ends now. You’re cut off. You can smoke yourself to death after you’ve done what I need you for. But only after.”
Rin stared at him in shock. The pain was starting to seep in, first a little sting and then a great throbbing bruise across her entire face. A sob rose up in her throat. “But it hurts so much …”
“Oh, Runin. Poor little Runin.” He smoothed her hair out of her eyes and leaned in close. “Fuck your pain. What you’re dealing with is nothing that a little discipline can’t solve. You’re capable of blocking out the Phoenix. Your mind can build up its own defenses, and you just haven’t done it because you’re using the opium as a safe way out.”
“Because I need—”
“You need discipline.” Vaisra forced her head up farther. “You must concentrate. Fortify your mind. I know you hear the screaming. Learn to live with it. Altan did.”
Rin could taste blood staining her teeth when she spoke. “I’m not Altan.”
“Then learn to be,” he said.
So Rin suffered alone in her quarters, with the door bolted shut, guarded from the outside by three soldiers, at her own request.
She couldn’t bear lying on her bed. The sheets scratched at her skin and exacerbated the terrible prickling that had spread across her body. She wound up curled on the floor with her head between her knees, rocking back and forth, biting her knuckles to keep from screaming. Her whole body cramped and shivered, racked with wave after wave of what felt like someone stamping slowly on each of her internal organs.
The ship’s physician had refused to give her any sedatives on the grounds that she would just trade her opium addiction for a milder substance, so she had nothing to silence her mind, nothing to quell the visions that flashed through her eyes every time she closed them, a combination of the Phoenix’s never-ending visual tour of horrors and her own opioid-driven hallucinations.
And, of course, Altan. Her visions always came back to Altan. Sometimes he was burning on the pier; sometimes he was strapped to an operating table, groaning in pain, and sometimes he wasn’t injured at all, but those visions hurt the most, because then he would be talking to her—
Her cheek still burned from the force of Vaisra’s blow, but in her visions it was Altan who struck her, smiling cruelly as she stared stupidly up at him.
“You hit me,” she said.
“I had to,” he answered. “Someone had to. You deserved it.”
Did she deserve it? She didn’t know. The only version of the truth that mattered was Altan’s, and in her visions, Altan thought she deserved to die.
“You’re a failure,” he said.
“You can’t come close to what I did,” he said.
“It should have been you,” he said.
And under everything, the unspoken command: Avenge me, avenge me, avenge me …
Sometimes, fleetingly, the visions became a terribly twisted fantasy where Altan was not hurting her. A version where he loved her instead, and his strikes were caresses. But they were fundamentally irreconcilable because Altan’s nature was the same as the fire that had devoured him: if he didn’t burn everyone around him, then he wasn’t himself.
Sleep came finally through sheer exhaustion, but then only in short, fitful bursts; every time she nodded off she awoke screaming, and it was only by biting her knuckles and pressing herself into the corner that she could remain quiet throughout the night.
“Fuck you, Vaisra,” she whispered. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
But she couldn’t hate Vaisra, not really. It may have just been the sheer exhaustion; she was so racked with fear, grief, and rage that it was a trial to feel anything more. But she knew she needed this. She’d known for months she was killing herself and that she didn’t have the self-control to stop, that the only person who might have stopped her was dead.
She needed someone who was capable of controlling her like no one since Altan could. She hated to admit it, but she knew that in Vaisra she might have found a savior.
Daytime was worse. Sunlight was a constant hammer on Rin’s skull. But if she stayed cooped up in her quarters any longer, she would lose her mind, so Nezha accompanied her outside, keeping a tight grip on her arm while they walked along the top deck.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
It was a stupid question, asked more to break the silence than anything, because it should have been obvious how she was doing: she hadn’t slept, she was trembling uncontrollably from both exhaustion and withdrawal, and eventually, she hoped, she would reach the point where she simply fell unconscious.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“About what?”
“Anything. Literally anything else.”
So he started telling her court stories in a low murmur that wouldn’t give her a headache; trivial tales of gossip about who was fucking this Warlord’s wife, who had really fathered that Warlord’s son.
Rin watched him while he spoke. If she focused on the most minute details of his face, it distracted her from the pain, just for a little bit. The way his left eye opened just slightly wider than his right now. The way his eyebrows arched. The way his scars curled over his right cheek to resemble a poppy flower.
He was so much taller than she was. She had to crane her head to look up at him. When had he gotten so tall? At Sinegard they had been about the same height, nearly the same build, until their second year, when he’d started bulking up at a ridiculous pace. But then, at Sinegard they had just been children, stupid, naive, playing at war games that they had never seriously believed would become their reality.
Rin turned her gaze to the river. The Seagrim had moved inland, was traveling upstream on the Murui now. It moved upriver at a snail’s pace as the men at the paddle boards wheeled furiously to push the ship through the sludgy mud.
She squinted at the banks. She wasn’t sure if she was just hallucinating, but the closer they got, the more clearly she could make out little shapes moving in the distance, like ants crawling up logs.
“Are those people?” she asked.
They were. She could see them clearly now—men and women stooped beneath the sacks they carried over their shoulders, young children staggering barefoot along the riverside, and little babies strapped in bamboo baskets to their parents’ backs.
“Where are they going?”
Nezha looked faintly surprised that she had even asked. “They’re refugees.”
“From where?”
“Everywhere. Golyn Niis wasn’t the only city the Federation sacked. They destroyed the whole countryside. The entire time we were holding that pointless siege at Khurdalain they were marching southward, setting villages ablaze after they’d ripped them apart for supplies.”
Rin was still hung up on the first thing he’d said. “So Golyn Niis wasn’t …”
“No. Not even close.”
She couldn’t even fathom the death count this implied. How many people had lived in Golyn Niis? She multiplied that by the provinces and came up with a number nearing a million.
And now, all across the country, the Nikara refugees were shuffling back to their homes. The tide of bodies that had flowed from the war-ravaged cities to the barren northwest had started to turn.
“‘You asked how large my sorrow is,’” Nezha recited. Rin recognized the line—it was from a poem she’d studied a lifetime ago, a lament by an Emperor whose last words became exam material for future generations. “‘And I answered, like a river in spring flowing east.’”
As they floated up the Murui, crowds of people lined the banks with their arms outstretched, screaming at the Seagrim.
“Please, just up to the edge of the province …”
“Take my girls, leave me but take the girls …”
“You have space! You have space, damn you …”
Nezha tugged gently at Rin’s wrist. “Let’s go belowdecks.”
She shook her head. She wanted to see.
“Why can’t someone send boats?” she asked. “Why can’t we bring them home?”
“They’re not going home, Rin. They’re running.”
Dread pooled in her stomach. “How many are still out there?”
“The Mugenese?” Nezha sighed. “They’re not a single army. They’re individual brigades. They’re cold, hungry, frustrated, and they have nowhere to go. They’re thieves and bandits now.”
“How many?” she repeated.
“Enough.”
She made a fist. “I thought I brought peace.”
“You brought victory,” he said. “This is what happens after. The Warlords can hardly keep control over their home provinces. Food shortages. Rampant crime—and it’s not just the Federation bandits. The Nikara are at each other’s throats. Scarcity will do that to you.”
“So of course you think it’s a good time to fight another war.”
“Another war is inevitable. But maybe we can prevent the next big one. The Republic will have growing pains. But if we can fix the foundation—if we can institute structures that make the next invasion less likely and keep future generations safe—then we’ll have succeeded.”
Foundation. Growing pains. Future generations. Such abstract concepts, she thought; concepts that wouldn’t compute for the average peasant. Who cared who sat on the throne at Sinegard when vast stretches of the Empire were underwater?
The children’s cries suddenly seemed unbearable.
“Couldn’t we give them something?” she asked. “Money? Don’t you have stacks of silver?”
“So they could spend it where?” Nezha asked. “You could give them more ingots than you could count, but they’ve got nowhere to buy goods. There’s no supply.”
“Food, then?”
“We tried doing that. They just tear each other to pieces trying to get at it. It’s not a pretty sight.”
She rested her chin on her elbows. Behind them the flock of humans receded; ignored, irrelevant, betrayed.
“You want to hear a joke?” Nezha asked.
She shrugged.
“A Hesperian missionary once said the state of the average Nikara peasant is that of a man standing in a pond with water coming up to his chin,” said Nezha. “The slightest ripple is enough to put him underwater.”
Staring out over the Murui, Rin didn’t find that the least bit funny.
That night she decided to drown herself.
It wasn’t a premeditated decision so much as it was an act of sheer desperation. The pain had gotten so bad that she banged on the door to her room, begging for help, and then when the guards opened it she ducked past their arms and ran up the stairs and out the hatch to the main deck.
Guards ran after her, shouting for reinforcements, but she doubled her pace, bare heels slamming against the wood. Splinters lanced little shreds of pain through her skin—but that was good pain because it distracted her from her screaming mind, if only for half a second.
The railing of the prow came up to her chest. She gripped the edge and attempted to pull herself up, but her arms were weak—surprisingly weak, she didn’t remember getting that weak—and she sagged against the side. She tried again, hoisted herself far enough that her upper body draped over the edge. She hung there facedown for a moment, staring at the dark waves trailing alongside the Seagrim.
A pair of arms grasped her around the waist. She kicked and flailed, but they only tightened as they dragged her back down. She twisted her neck around.
“Suni?”
He walked backward from the prow, carrying her by the waist like a little child.
“Let go,” she panted. “Let me go!”
He put her down. She tried to break away but he grabbed her wrists, twisted her arms behind her back, and forced her down into a sitting position.
“Breathe,” he ordered. “Just breathe.”
She obeyed. The pain didn’t subside. The screaming didn’t quiet. She began to shake, but Suni didn’t let go of her arms. “If you just keep breathing, I’ll tell you a story.”
“I don’t want to hear a fucking story,” she said, gasping.
“Don’t want. Don’t think. Just breathe.” Suni’s voice was quiet, soothing. “Have you heard the story of the Monkey King and the moon?”
“No,” she whimpered.
“Then listen carefully.” He relaxed his grip ever so slightly, just enough that her arms stopped hurting. “Once upon a time, the Monkey King caught his first glimpse of the Moon Goddess.”
Rin shut her eyes and tried to focus on Suni’s voice. She’d never heard Suni talk this much. He was always so quiet, drawn into himself, as if he were unused to being in full occupation of his own mind that he wanted to relish the experience as much as possible. She’d forgotten how gentle he could sound.
He continued. “The Moon Goddess had just ascended to the heavens, and she was still drifting so close to Earth that you could see her face on the surface. She was such a lovely thing.”
Some old memory stirred in the back of her mind. She did know this story after all. They told it to children in Rooster Province during the Lunar Festival, every autumn when children ate moon cakes and solved riddles written on rice paper and floated lanterns in the sky.
“Then he fell in love,” she whispered.
“That’s right. The Monkey King was struck with the most terrible passion. He had to possess her, he thought, or he might die. So he sent his best soldiers to retrieve her from the ocean. But they failed, for the moon lived not in the ocean but in the sky, and they drowned.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why did they drown? Why did the moon kill them? Because they weren’t climbing to the sky to find her, they were diving into the water toward her reflection. But it was a fucking illusion they were grasping, not the real thing.” Suni’s voice hardened. It didn’t rise above a whisper, but he might as well have been shouting. “You spend your whole life chasing after some illusion you think is real, only to realize you’re a damned fool, and that if you reach any further, you’ll drown.”
He let go of her arms.
Rin turned around to face him. “Suni …”
“Altan liked that story,” he said. “I first heard it from him. He told it whenever he needed to calm me down. Said it would help if I thought of the Monkey King as just another person, someone gullible and foolish, and not a god.”
“The Monkey King is a dick,” she said.
“And the Moon Goddess is a bitch,” he said. “She sat there in the sky and watched the monkeys drowning over her. What does that say about her?”
That made her laugh. For a moment they both looked up at the moon. It was half-full, hiding behind a wispy dark cloud. Rin could imagine she was a woman, coy and devious, waiting to entice foolish men to their deaths.
She placed her hand over Suni’s. His hand was massive, rougher than wood bark, mottled with calluses. Her mind spun with a thousand unanswered questions.
Who made you like this?
And, more importantly, Do you regret it?
“You don’t have to suffer alone, you know.” Suni gave her one of his rare, slow smiles. “You’re not the only one.”
She would have smiled back, but then a wave of sickness hit her gut and she jerked her head down. Vomit splattered the deck.
Suni rubbed circles on her back while she spat blood-speckled phlegm on the planks. When she was done, he smoothed her vomit-covered hair out of her eyes as she sucked in air in great, racking sobs.
“You’re so strong,” he said. “Whatever you’re seeing, whatever you’re feeling, it’s not as strong as you are.”
But she didn’t want to be strong. Because if she were strong then she would be sober, and if she were sober she would have to consider the consequences of her actions. Then she’d have to look into the chasm. Then the Federation of Mugen would stop being an amorphous blur, and her victims would stop being meaningless numbers. Then she would recognize one death, what it meant, and then another, and then another and another and—
And if she wanted to recognize it, then she would have to be something, feel something other than anger, but she was afraid that if she stopped being angry then she might shatter.
She started to cry.
Suni smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “Just breathe,” he murmured. “Breathe for me. Can you do that? Breathe five times.”
One. Two. Three.
He continued to rub her back. “You just have to make it through the next five seconds. Then the next five. Then on and on.”
Four. Five.
And then another five. And those five, oddly enough, were just the littlest bit more bearable than the last.
“There you go,” Suni said after maybe a dozen counts to five. His voice was so low it was hardly a whisper. “There, look, you’ve done it.”
She breathed, and counted, and wondered how Suni knew exactly what to say.
She wondered if he had done this before with Altan.
“She’ll be all right,” Suni said.
Rin looked up to see who he was talking to, and saw Vaisra standing in the shadows.
It couldn’t have taken him long to respond to the soldiers’ calls. Had he been there the entire time, watching without speaking?
“I heard you came out to get some air,” he said.
She wiped vomit off her cheek with the back of her hand. Vaisra’s gaze flickered to her stained clothing and back to her face. She couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered.
“Will you?”
“I’ll take care of her,” Suni said.
A brief pause. Vaisra gave Suni a curt nod.
After another moment Suni helped her up and walked her back to her cabin. He kept one arm around her shoulders, warm, solid, comforting. The ship rocked against a particularly violent wave, and she staggered into his side.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry,” Suni said. “And don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
Five days later the Seagrim sailed over a submerged town. At first when Rin saw the tops of buildings emerging from the river she thought they were driftwood, or rocks. Then they got close enough that she could see the curving roofs of drowned pagodas, thatched houses lying under the surface. An entire village peeked up at her through river silt.
Then she saw the bodies—half-eaten, bloated and discolored, all with empty sockets because the glutinous eyes had already been nibbled away. They blocked up the river, decomposing at such a rate that the crew had to sweep away the maggots that threatened to climb on board.
Sailors lined up at the prow to shift bodies aside with long poles to make way for the ship. The corpses started piling up on the river’s sides. Every few hours sailors had to climb down and drag them into a pile before the Seagrim could move—a duty the crew drew lots for with dread.
“What happened here?” Rin asked. “Did the Murui run its banks?”
“No. Dam breach.” Nezha looked pale with fury. “Daji had the dam destroyed to flood the Murui river valley.”
That wasn’t Daji. Rin knew whose handiwork this was.
But did no one else know?
“Did it work?” she asked.
“Sure. It took out the Federation contingents in the north. Holed them up long enough for the northern Divisions to make mincemeat out of them. But then the floodwaters caught several hundred villages, which makes several thousand people who don’t have homes now.” Nezha made a fist. “How does a ruler do this? To her own people?”
“How do you know it was her?” Rin asked cautiously.
“Who else could it be? Something that big had to be an order from above. Right?”
“Of course,” she murmured. “Who else would it be?”
Rin found the twins sitting together at the stern of the ship. They were perched on the railing, staring down at the wreckage trailing behind them. When they saw Rin approaching, they both jumped down and turned around, regarding her warily, as if they knew exactly why she had come.
“So how does it feel?” Rin asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chaghan said.
“You did it, too,” she said gleefully. “It wasn’t just me.”
“Go back to sleep,” he said.
“Thousands of people!” she crowed. “Drowned like ants! Are you proud?”
Qara turned her head away, but Chaghan lifted his chin indignantly. “I did what Altan ordered.”
That made her screech with laughter. “Me too! I was just acting on orders! He said I had to get vengeance for the Speerlies, and so I did, so it’s not my fault, because Altan said—”
“Shut up,” Chaghan snapped. “Listen—Vaisra thinks that Daji ordered the opening of those dikes.”
She was still giggling. “So does Nezha.”
He looked alarmed. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing, obviously. I’m not stupid.”
“You can’t tell anyone the truth,” Qara cut in. “Nobody in the Dragon Republic can know.”
Of course Rin understood that. She knew how dangerous it would be to give the Dragon Army a reason to turn on the Cike. But in that moment all she could think of was how terribly funny it was that she wasn’t the only one with mass murder on her hands.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell. I’ll be the only monster. Just me.”
The twins looked stricken, but she couldn’t stop laughing. She wondered how it had felt, the moment before the wave hit. The civilians might have been making dinner, playing outside, putting their children to bed, telling stories, making love, before a crushing force of water swept over their homes, destroyed their villages, and snuffed out their lives.
This was what the balance of power looked like now. People like her waved a hand and millions were crushed within the confines of some elemental disaster, flung off the chessboard of the world like irrelevant pieces. People like her—shamans, all of them—were like children stomping around over entire cities as if they were mud castles, glass houses, fungible entities that could be targeted and demolished.
On the seventh morning after they’d left Ankhiluun, the pain receded.
She woke up without a fever. No headache. She took a hesitant step toward the door and was pleasantly surprised at how steady her feet felt on the floor, how the world didn’t whirl and shift around her. She opened the door, wandered out onto the upper deck, and was stunned by how good the river spray felt on her face.
Her senses felt sharper. Colors seemed brighter. She could smell things she hadn’t before. The world seemed to exist with a vibrancy that she hadn’t been aware of.
And then she realized that she had her mind to herself.
The Phoenix wasn’t gone. She felt the god lingering still at the forefront of her mind, whispering tales of destruction, trying to control her desires.
But this time she knew what she wanted.
And she wanted control.
She’d been victim to the god’s urges because she’d been keeping her own mind weak, dousing away the flame with a temporary and unsustainable solution. But now her head was clear, her mind was present—and when the Phoenix screamed, she could shut it down.
She requested to see Vaisra. He sent for her within minutes.
He was alone in his office when she arrived.
“You’re not afraid of me?” she asked.
“I trust you,” he said.
“You shouldn’t.”
“Then I trust you more than you trust yourself.” He was acting like an entirely different person. The harsh persona was gone. His voice sounded so gentle, so encouraging that she was suddenly reminded of Tutor Feyrik.
She hadn’t thought about Tutor Feyrik in a long time. She hadn’t felt safe in a long time.
Vaisra leaned back in his chair. “Go on, then. Try calling the fire for me. Just a little bit.”
She opened her hand and focused her eyes on her palm. She recalled the rage, felt the heat of it coil in the pit of her stomach. But this time it didn’t come all at once in an uncontrollable torrent, but manifested as a slow, angry burn.
A small burst of flame erupted in her palm. And it was just the burst; no more, no less, though she could increase its size, or if she wanted to, force it even smaller.
She closed her eyes, breathing slowly; cautiously she raised the flame higher and higher, a single ribbon of fire swaying over her hand like a reed, until Vaisra commanded her, “Stop.”
She closed her fist. The fire went out.
Only afterward did she realize how fast her heart was beating.
“Are you all right?” Vaisra asked.
She managed a nod.
A smile spread over his face. He looked more than pleased. He looked proud. “Do it again. Make it bigger. Brighter. Shape it for me.”
She reeled. “I can’t. I don’t have that much control.”
“You can. Don’t think about the Phoenix. Look at me.”
She met his eyes. His gaze was an anchor.
A fire sparked out of her fist. She shaped it with trembling hands until it took on the image of a dragon, coils undulating in the space between her and Vaisra, making the air shimmer with the heat of the blaze.
More, said the Phoenix. Bigger. Higher.
Its screams pushed at the edge of her mind. She tried to shut it down.
The fire didn’t recede.
She started to shake. “No, I can’t—I can’t, you have to get out—”
“Don’t think about it,” Vaisra whispered. “Look at me.”
Slowly, so faintly she was afraid she was imagining it, the red behind her eyelids subsided.
The fire disappeared. She collapsed to her knees.
“Good girl,” Vaisra said softly.
She wrapped her arms around herself, rocked back and forth on the floor, and tried to remember how to breathe.
“May I show you something?” Vaisra asked.
She looked up. He crossed the room to a cabinet, opened a drawer, and pulled out a cloth-covered parcel. She flinched when he jerked the cloth off, but all she saw underneath was the dull sheen of metal.
“What is it?” she asked.
But she already knew. She would recognize this weapon anywhere. She had spent hours gazing upon that steel, the metal etched with evidence of countless battles. It was metal all the way through, even at the hilt, which would normally be made of wood, because Speerlies needed weapons that wouldn’t burn through when they held them.
Rin felt a sudden light-headedness that had nothing to do with opium withdrawal and everything to do with the sudden and terribly vivid memory of Altan Trengsin walking down the pier to his death.
A harsh sob rose in her throat. “Where did you get that?”
“My men recovered it from the Chuluu Korikh.” Vaisra bent down and held the trident out before her. “I thought you might want to have it.”
She blinked at him, uncomprehending. “You—why were you there?”
“You’ve got to stop thinking I know less than I do. We were looking for Altan. He would have been, ah, useful.”
She snorted through her tears. “You think Altan would have joined you?”
“I think Altan wanted any opportunity to rebuild this Empire.”
“Then you don’t know anything about him.”
“I knew his people,” Vaisra said. “I led the soldiers that liberated him from the research facility, and I helped train him when he was old enough to fight. Altan would have fought for this Republic.”
She shook her head. “No, Altan just wanted to make things burn.”
She reached out, grasped the trident, and hefted it in her hands. It felt awkward in her fingers, too heavy at the front and oddly light near the back. Altan had been much taller than she, and the weapon seemed too long for her to wield comfortably.
It couldn’t function like a sword. It was no good for lateral blows. This trident had to be wielded surgically. Killing strikes only.
She held it away from her. “I shouldn’t have this.”
“Why not?”
She barely got the words out, she was crying so hard. “Because I’m not him.”
Because I should have died, and he should be alive and standing here.
“No, you’re not.” Vaisra continued to stroke her hair with one hand, though he’d already smoothed it behind her ears. The other hand closed over her fingers, pressing them harder around the cool metal. “You’ll be better.”
When Rin was sure she could stomach solid food without vomiting, she joined Nezha abovedeck for her first actual meal in more than a week.
“Don’t choke.” Nezha sounded amused.
She was too busy ripping apart a steamed bun to respond. She didn’t know if the food on deck was ridiculously good, or if she was just so famished that it tasted like the best thing she’d ever eaten.
“It’s a pretty day,” he said while she swallowed.
She made a muffled noise in agreement. The first few days she hadn’t been able to bear standing outside in the direct sunlight. Now that her eyes no longer burned, she could look out over the bright water without wincing.
“Kitay’s still sulking?” she asked.
“He’ll come around,” Nezha said. “He’s always been stubborn.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“Have a little sympathy. Kitay never wanted to be a soldier. He spent half his time wishing he’d gone to Yuelu Mountain, not Sinegard. He’s an academic at heart, not a fighter.”
Rin remembered. All Kitay had ever wanted to do was be a scholar, go to the academy at Yuelu Mountain, and study science, or astronomy, or whatever struck his fancy at the moment. But he was the only son of the defense minister to the Empress, so his fate had been carved out before he was even born.
“That’s sad,” she murmured. “You shouldn’t have to be a soldier unless you want to.”
Nezha rested his chin on his hand. “Did you want to?”
She hesitated.
Yes. No. She hadn’t thought there was anything else for her. She hadn’t thought it mattered if she wanted to.
“I used to be scared of war,” she finally said. “Then I realized I was very good at it. And I’m not sure I’d be good at anything else.”
Nezha nodded silently, gazing out at the river, pulling mindlessly at his steamed bun without eating it.
“How’s your … uh …” Nezha gestured toward his temples.
“Good. I’m good.”
For the first time she felt as if she had a handle on her anger. She could think. She could breathe. The Phoenix was still there, looming in the back of her mind, ready to burst into flame if she called it—but only if she called it.
She looked down to discover the steamed bun was gone. Her fingers were clutching nothing. Her stomach reacted to this by growling.
“Here,” Nezha said. He handed her his somewhat mangled bun. “Have mine.”
“You’re not hungry?”
“I don’t have much of an appetite right now. And you look emaciated.”
“I’m not taking your food.”
“Eat,” he insisted.
She took a bite. It slid thickly down her throat and settled in her stomach with a wonderful heaviness. She hadn’t been so full for such a long time.
“How’s your face?” Nezha asked.
She touched her cheek. Sharp twinges of pain lanced through her lower face whenever she spoke. The bruise had blossomed while the opium seeped out of her system, as if one had to trade off with the other.
“It feels like it’s just getting worse,” she said.
“Nah. You’ll be fine. Father doesn’t hit hard enough to injure.”
They sat awhile in silence. Rin watched fish jumping out of the water, leaping and flailing as if begging to be caught.
“And your face?” she asked. “Does it still hurt?”
In certain lights Nezha’s scars looked like angry red lines someone had carved all over his face. In other lights they looked like a delicately painted crosshatch of brush ink.
“It hurt for a long time. Now I just can’t feel anything.”
“What if I touched you?” She was struck by the urge to run her thumb over his scars. To caress them.
“I wouldn’t feel that, either.” Nezha’s fingers drifted to his cheek. “I suppose it scares people, though. Father makes me wear the mask whenever I’m around civilians.”
“I thought you were just being vain.”
Nezha smiled but didn’t laugh. “That too.”
Rin ripped large chunks from the steamed bun and barely chewed before swallowing.
Nezha reached out and touched her hair. “That’s a good look on you. Nice to see your eyes again.”
She’d shorn her hair close to her head. Not until she’d seen her discarded locks on the floor had she realized how disgusting it had become; the scraggly tendrils had grown out greasy and tangled, a nesting site for lice. Her hair was shorter than Nezha’s now, close-cropped and clean. It made her feel like a student again.
“Has Kitay eaten anything?” she asked.
Nezha shifted uncomfortably. “No. Still hiding in his room. We don’t keep it locked, but he won’t come out.”
She frowned. “If he’s that furious, then why don’t you let him go?”
“Because we’d rather have him on our side.”
“Then why not just use him as leverage against his father? Trade him as a hostage?”
“Because Kitay’s a resource,” Nezha said frankly. “You know the way his mind works. It’s not a secret. He knows most things and he remembers everything. He has a better grasp on strategy than anyone should. My father likes to keep his best pieces around for as long as he can. Besides, his father was at Sinegard before they abandoned it. There’s no guarantee he’s alive.”
“Oh” was all she could say. She looked down and realized that she had finished Nezha’s bun, too.
He laughed. “You think you can handle something more than bread?”
She nodded. He signaled for a servant, who disappeared into the cabin and reemerged a few minutes later with a bowl that smelled so good that a disgusting amount of saliva filled Rin’s mouth.
“This is a delicacy near the coast,” Nezha said. “We call it the wawa fish.”
“Why?” she asked through a full mouth.
Nezha turned it over with his chopsticks, deftly separating the white flesh from the spine. “Because of the way it shrieks. Flails in the water crying like a baby with a rash. Sometimes the cooks boil them to death just for fun. Didn’t you hear it in the galley?”
Rin’s stomach turned. “I thought there might be a baby on board.”
“Aren’t they hilarious?” Nezha picked up a slice and put it in her bowl. “Try it. Father loves them.”
CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_8496e632-1cde-5ddb-86a0-cb40554da299)
“If you have an open shot at Daji, take it.” Captain Eriden jabbed the blunt end of his spear at Rin’s head as he spoke. “Don’t give her a chance to seduce you.”
She ducked the first blow. The second whacked her on the nose. She shook off the pain, winced, and readjusted her stance. She narrowed her eyes at Eriden’s legs, trying to predict his movements by watching only his lower body.
“She’ll want to talk,” Eriden said. “She always does, she thinks it’s funny to watch her prey squirm before she kills it. Don’t wait for her to say her piece. You’ll be deathly curious because she’ll make you, but you must attack before your chance is gone.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Rin panted.
Eriden directed another flurry of blows at her torso. Rin managed to block about half of them. The rest wrecked her.
He withdrew his spear, signaling a temporary reprieve. “You don’t understand. The Vipress is no mere mortal. You’ve heard the stories. Her face is so dazzling that when she walks outside, the birds fall out of the sky and the fish swim up to the surface.”
“It’s just a face,” she said.
“It is not just a face. I’ve seen Daji beguile and bewitch some of the most powerful and rational men I know. She brings them to their knees with just a few words. More often with just a look.”
“Did she ever charm you?” Rin asked.
“She charmed everyone,” Eriden said, but didn’t elaborate. Rin could never get anything but blunt, literal answers from Eriden, who had the dour visage and personality of a corpse. “Be careful. And keep your gaze down.”
Rin knew that. He’d been saying it for days. Daji’s preferred weapon was her eyes—those snake’s eyes that could ensnare a soul with a simple look, could trap the viewer into a vision of Daji’s own choosing.
The solution was to never look her in the face. Eriden was training Rin to fight solely by watching her opponent’s lower body.
This turned out to be particularly difficult when it came to hand-to-hand combat. So much depended on where the eyes darted, where the torso was pointed. All motion on oblique planes came from the upper body, but Eriden chided Rin every time her eyes strayed too far upward.
Eriden lunged forward without warning. Rin fared slightly better blocking the next sequence of attacks. She’d learned to watch not just the feet but the hip—often that pivoted first, set into motion the legs and feet. She parried a series of blows before a strong hit got through to her shoulder. It wasn’t painful, but the shock nearly made her drop her trident.
Eriden signaled another pause.
While Rin doubled over to catch her breath, he drew a set of long needles out of his pocket. “The Empress is also partial to these.”
He flung three of them toward her. Rin hopped hastily to the side and managed to get out of the needles’ trajectory but landed badly on her ankle.
She winced. The needles kept coming.
She waved her trident madly in a circle, trying to knock them out of the air. It almost worked. Five clattered against the ground. One struck her on the upper thigh. She yanked it out. Eriden hadn’t bothered to blunt the tips. Asshole.
“Daji likes her poison,” Eriden said. “You’re dead now.”
“Thanks, I got that,” Rin snapped.
She let the trident drop and bent over her knees, sucking in deep draughts of air. Her lungs were on fire. Where had her stamina gone? At Sinegard, she could have sparred for hours.
Right—up in a puff of opium smoke.
Eriden hadn’t even broken a sweat. She didn’t want to look weak by asking for another break, so she tried distracting him with questions. “How do you know so much about the Empress?”
“We fought by her side. The Dragon Province had some of the best-trained troops during the Second Poppy War. We were almost always with the Trifecta on the front lines.”
“What were the Trifecta like?”
“Brutal. Dangerous.” Eriden pointed his spear toward her. “Enough talk. You should—”
“But I have to know,” she insisted. “Did Daji fight on the battlefield? Did you see her? What was she like?”
“Daji’s not a warrior. She’s a competent martial artist, they all were, but she’s never relied on blunt force. Her powers are more subtle than the Gatekeeper’s or the Dragon Emperor’s were. She understands desire. She knows what drives men, and she takes their deepest desire and makes them believe that she is the only thing that can give it to them.”
“But I’m a woman.”
“All the same.”
“But that can’t make so much of a difference,” Rin said, more to convince herself than anything. “That’s just—that’s desire. What is that next to hard power?”
“You think fire and steel can trump desire? Daji was always the strongest of the Trifecta.”
“Stronger than the Dragon Emperor?” A memory resurfaced of a white-haired man floating above the ground, beastly shadows circling around him. “Stronger than the Gatekeeper?”
“Of course she was,” Eriden said softly. “Why do you think she’s the only one left?”
That gave Rin pause.
How had Daji become the sole ruler of Nikan? Everyone she’d asked told a different story. All that anyone in the Empire seemed to know for sure was that one day the Dragon Emperor died, the Gatekeeper disappeared, and Daji alone remained on the throne.
“Do you know what she did to them?” she asked.
“I’d give my arms to find out.” Eriden tossed his spear to the side and drew his sword. “Let’s see how you do with this.”
His blade moved blindingly fast. Rin staggered backward, trying desperately to keep up. Several times her trident nearly slipped out of her hands. She gritted her teeth, frustrated.
It wasn’t just that Altan’s trident was too long, too unbalanced, clearly designed for a taller stature than hers. If that were the problem, she would have just swallowed her pride and swapped it for a sword.
It was her body. She knew the right motions and patterns, but her muscles simply could not keep up. Her limbs seemed to obey her mind only after a two-second lag.
Simply put, she didn’t work. Months of lying prone in her room, breathing smoke in and out, had whittled her muscles away. Only now had she become aware of how weak, how painfully thin and easily tired she’d become.
“Focus.” Eriden closed in. Rin’s movements became increasingly desperate. She wasn’t even trying to get a blow in herself; it took all her concentration to keep his blade away from her face.
She couldn’t win a weapons match at this rate.
But she didn’t have to use her trident for the kill. The trident was only useful as a ranged weapon—it kept her opponents at a far enough distance to protect her.
But she need only to get close enough to use the fire.
She narrowed her eyes, waiting.
There it was. Eriden struck for her hilt—a low, reaching blow. She let him flip the weapon out of her hands. Then she took advantage of the opening, darted into the space created by their interlocking weapons, and jammed her knee into Eriden’s sternum.
He doubled over. She kicked in his knees, dropped down onto his chest, and splayed her palms out before his face.
She emitted the smallest hint of flame—just enough to make him feel the heat on his skin.
“Boom,” she said. “You’re dead now.”
Eriden’s mouth pressed into something that almost resembled a smile.
“How’s she doing?”
Rin twisted to look over her shoulder.
Vaisra and Nezha emerged on the deck. Eriden pulled himself to a sitting position.
“She’ll be ready,” he said.
“She’ll be ready?” Vaisra repeated.
“Give me a few days,” Rin said, panting. “Still figuring this out. But I’ll get there.”
“Good,” Vaisra said.
“You’re bleeding.” Nezha pointed to her thigh.
But she barely heard him. She was still looking at Vaisra, who was smiling more widely than she’d ever seen him. He looked pleased. Proud. And somehow, the jolt of satisfaction that gave her felt better than anything she’d smoked in months.
“You’ll accompany the Dragon Warlord into the Autumn Palace for the noon summit,” Eriden said. “Remember, you’ll be presented as a war criminal. Do not act like he is your ally. Make sure to look afraid.”
A dozen of Vaisra’s generals and advisers were in the stateroom, seated around an array of detailed maps of the palace. Rin sat on Vaisra’s right, sweating slightly from the constant attention. The entire plan centered on her, and she had no room to fail.
Eriden held up a pair of iron handcuffs. “You’ll be bound and muzzled. I’d get used to the feel of these.”
“That’s no good,” Rin said. “I can’t burn through metal.”
“They’re not completely metal.” Eriden slid the handcuffs across the table so that Rin could take a closer look. “The link in the middle is twine. It will burn through with minimal heat.”
She fiddled with the handcuffs. “And Daji won’t just have me killed? I mean—she’ll know what I’m there to do; she saw me try at Adlaga.”
“Oh, she’ll likely suspect us of treachery the moment we dock in Lusan. We’re not trying to ambush her. Daji likes to play with her food before she eats it. And she especially won’t want to get rid of you. You’re too interesting.”
“Daji never strikes first,” Vaisra said. “She’ll want to milk you for as much information as she can, so she’ll try to take you somewhere private to talk. Feign surprise at that. Then she’ll likely make an offer nearly as tempting as mine.”
“Which will be what?” Rin asked.
“Use your imagination. A place in her Imperial Guard. Free rein to scour the Empire of any remaining Federation troops. More glory and riches than you could possibly dream of. It’ll all be a lie, of course. Daji has kept her throne for two decades by eliminating people before they become problems. Should you take a position in her court, you will simply be the latest on her long list of political assassinations.”
“Or they’ll find your body in the sewers minutes after you say yes,” said Eriden.
Rin looked around the table. “Does no one else see the gaping flaw in this plan?”
“Pray tell,” Vaisra said.
“Why don’t I just kill her on sight? Before she opens her mouth? Why even take the risk of letting her talk?”
Vaisra and Eriden exchanged a glance. Eriden hesitated a moment, then spoke. “You, ah, won’t be able to.”
Rin blanched. “What does that mean?”
“We just went over this,” Vaisra said. “Once Daji sees you, she’ll know you’re there to kill her. And she’ll very strongly suspect my own intentions. The only way to get you into the Autumn Palace and close enough to attack without putting the rest of us in danger is if you’re sedated first.”
“Sedated,” Rin repeated.
“We’ll have to give you a dose of opium while Daji’s guards are watching,” Vaisra said. “Enough to pacify you for an hour or two. But Daji doesn’t know about your increased tolerance, which helps us. It’ll wear off sooner than she expects.”
Rin hated this plan. They were asking her to enter the Autumn Palace unarmed, high out of her mind, and completely unable to call the fire. But no matter how she turned it over in her mind, she couldn’t find a loophole in the logic. She had to be defanged if she was to get close enough to get a hit.
She tried not to let her fear show as she spoke. “So am I—I mean, will I be alone?”
“We cannot bring a larger guard to the Autumn Palace without arousing Daji’s suspicion. You will have hidden but minimal reinforcements. We can get soldiers in here, here, and here.” Vaisra tapped at three points on a map of the palace. “But remember, our objective here is very limited. If we wanted an all-out war, we would have brought the armada up the Murui. We are only here to cut the head off the snake. The battles come after.”
“So I’m the only one at risk,” Rin said. “Nice.”
“We will not abandon you. We will extract you if it goes badly, I promise. Successful or not, you’ll use one of these escape routes to get out of the palace. Captain Eriden will have the Seagrim ready to depart Lusan in seconds if escape is necessary.”
Rin peered down at the map. The Autumn Palace was hopelessly large, arranged like a maze within a conch shell, a spiraling complex of narrow corridors and dead ends, with twisting hallways and tunnels constructed in every direction.
The escape routes were marked with green lines. She narrowed her eyes, muttering to herself. A few more minutes and she’d have them memorized. She’d always been good at memorizing things, and now that she was off opium she was finding it easier and easier to focus on mental tasks.
She cringed at the thought of giving that up, even for an hour.
“You make this sound so easy,” she said. “Why hasn’t anyone tried to kill Daji before?”
“She’s the Empress,” said Vaisra, as if that were explanation enough.
“She’s one woman whose sole talent is being very pretty,” Rin said. “I don’t understand.”
“Because you’re too young,” Eriden said. “You weren’t alive when the Trifecta were at the peak of their power. You don’t know the fear. You couldn’t trust anyone around you, even your own family. If you whispered a word of treason against Emperor Riga, then the Vipress and the Gatekeeper would be sure to have you destroyed. Not just imprisoned—obliterated.”
Vaisra nodded. “In those years, entire families were ruined, executed, or exiled, and their lineages wiped from history. Daji oversaw this all without blinking an eye. There is a reason why the Warlords still bow down before her, and it’s not just because she is pretty.”
Something about Vaisra’s expression gave Rin pause. Then she realized it was the first time she had ever seen him look scared.
She wondered what Daji had done to him.
Someone knocked on the door just then. She jumped in her seat.
“Come in,” Vaisra called.
A junior officer poked his head in. “Nezha sent me to alert you. We’ve arrived.”
Near the end of his reign, the Red Emperor built the Autumn Palace in the northern city of Lusan. It was never meant to be a capital or an administrative center; it was too far removed from the central provinces to properly govern. It served merely as a resort for his favorite concubines and their children, an escape for the days when Sinegard became so scorching hot that their skin threatened to darken within seconds of stepping outside.
Under the Empress Su Daji’s regime, Lusan had been a place for court officials to harbor their wives and families safely away from the dangers at court, until it turned into the interim capital after Sinegard and then Golyn Niis were razed to the ground.
As the Seagrim sailed toward the city, the Murui narrowed to a thinner and thinner stream, which forced them to move at a slower and slower pace until they weren’t sailing so much as crawling toward the Autumn Palace.
Rin could see the city walls from miles off. Lusan seemed to be lit from within by some unearthly afternoon glow. Everything was somehow golden; it was like the rest of the Empire had dulled to shades of black, white, and bloody red during the war, and Lusan had soaked up all the surrounding color, shining brighter than anything she had seen in months.
Close to the city walls Rin saw a woman walking down the riverbank with buckets of dye and heavy rolls of cloth strapped to her back. Rin knew the cloth was silk from the way it glimmered when it was unrolled, so soft that she could almost imagine the butterfly-wing texture on the backs of her fingers.
How could Lusan have silk? The rest of the country was garbed in unwashed, threadbare scraps. All along the Murui, Rin had seen naked children and babies wrapped in lily pads in some effort to preserve their dignity.
Farther downriver, fishing sampans glided up and down the winding waterways. Each boat carried several large birds—white creatures with massive beaks—hooked to the boats on strings.
Nezha had to explain to Rin what the birds were for. “They’ve got a string around their necks, see? The bird swallows the fish; the farmer pulls the fish out of the bird’s neck. The bird goes in again, always hungry, always too dumb to realize that everything it catches goes into the fish basket and that all it’ll ever get are slops.”
Rin made a face. “That seems inefficient. Why not just use a net?”
“It is inefficient,” Nezha agreed. “But they’re not fishing for staples, they’re hunting for delicacies. Sweetfish.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
Rin already knew the answer. Why not hunt for delicacies? Lusan was clearly untouched by the refugee crisis that had swept the rest of the country; it could afford to focus on luxury.
Perhaps it was the heat, or perhaps because Rin’s nerves were already always on edge, but she felt angrier and angrier as they made for port. She hated this city, this land of pale and pampered women, men who were not soldiers but bureaucrats, and children who didn’t know what fear felt like.
She simmered not with resentment so much as with a nameless fury at the idea that outside the confines of warfare, life could go on and did go on, that somehow, still, in pockets scattered throughout the Empire there were cities and cities of people who were dyeing silk and fishing for gourmet dinners, unaffected by the single issue that plagued a soldier’s mind: when and where the next attack would come.
“I thought I wasn’t a prisoner,” said Kitay.
“You’re not,” said Nezha. “You’re a guest.”
“A guest who isn’t allowed off the ship?”
“A guest whom we’d like to keep with us a little longer,” Nezha said delicately. “Can you stop glaring at me like that?”
When the captain announced that they had anchored in Lusan, Kitay had ventured abovedeck for the first time in weeks. Rin had hoped he’d come up for some fresh air, but he was just following Nezha around the deck, intent on antagonizing him in any way possible.
Rin had tried several times to intercede. Kitay, however, seemed determined to pretend she didn’t exist by ignoring her every time she spoke, so she turned her attention to the sights on the riverbank instead.
A mild crowd had gathered around the base of the Seagrim, made up mostly of Imperial officials, Lusani merchants, and messengers from other Warlords. Rin surmised from what snatches of conversation she could hear from the top deck that they were all trying to get an audience with Vaisra. But Eriden and his men were stationed at the bottom of the gangplank, turning everyone away.
Vaisra had also issued strict orders that no one was to leave the ship. The soldiers and crewmen were to continue living on board as if they were still out on open water, and only a handful of Eriden’s men had been permitted to enter Lusan to purchase fresh supplies. This, Nezha had explained, was to minimize the risk that someone might give away Rin’s cover. Meanwhile, she was only allowed on deck if she wore a scarf to cover her face.
“You know you can’t keep me here indefinitely,” Kitay said loudly. “Someone’s going to find out.”
“Like who?” Nezha asked. “My father.”
“You think your father’s in Lusan?”
“He’s in the Empress’s guard. He commands her security detail. There’s no way she would have left him behind.”
“She left everyone else behind,” Nezha said.
Kitay crossed his arms. “Not my father.”
Nezha caught Rin’s eye. For the briefest moment he looked guilty, like he wanted to say something that he couldn’t, but she couldn’t imagine what.
“That’s the commerce minister,” Kitay said suddenly. “He’ll know.”
“What?”
Before either Nezha or Rin could register what he meant, Kitay broke into a run at the gangplank.
Nezha shouted for the closest soldiers to restrain him. They were too slow—Kitay dodged their arms, climbed onto the side of the ship, grabbed a rope, and lowered himself to the riverbank so quickly that he must have burned his hands raw.
Rin ran for the gangplank to intercept him, but Nezha held her back with one arm. “Don’t.”
“But he—”
Nezha just shook his head. “Let him.”
They watched from a distance, silent, as Kitay ran up to the commerce minister and seized his arm, then doubled over, panting.
Rin could see them clearly from the deck. The minister recoiled for a moment, hands lifted as if to ward off this unfamiliar soldier, until he recognized Defense Minister Chen’s son and his arms dropped.
Rin couldn’t tell what they were saying. She could only see their mouths moving, the expressions on their faces.
She saw the minister place his hands on Kitay’s shoulders.
She saw Kitay ask a question.
She saw the minister shake his head.
Then she saw Kitay collapse in on himself as if he had been speared in the gut, and she realized that Defense Minister Chen had not survived the Third Poppy War.
Kitay didn’t struggle when Vaisra’s men marched him back onto the boat. He was white-faced, tight-lipped, and his madly twitching eyes looked red at the rims.
Nezha tried to put a hand on Kitay’s shoulder. Kitay shook him off and made straight for the Dragon Warlord. Blue-clad soldiers immediately moved to form a protective wall between them, but Kitay didn’t reach for a weapon.
“I’ve decided something,” he said.
Vaisra waved a hand. His guard dispersed. Then it was just the two of them facing each other: the regal Dragon Warlord and the furious, trembling boy.
“Yes?” Vaisra asked.
“I want a position,” Kitay said.
“I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Kitay snapped. “I want a position. Give me a uniform. I won’t wear this one anymore.”
“I’ll see where we can—”
Kitay cut him off again. “I’m not going to be a foot soldier.”
“Kitay—”
“I want a seat at the table. Chief strategist.”
“You’re rather young for that,” Vaisra said drily.
“No, I’m not. You made Nezha a general. And I’ve always been smarter than Nezha. You know I’m brilliant. I’m a fucking genius. Put me in charge of operations and you won’t lose a single battle, I swear.” Kitay’s voice broke at the end. Rin saw his throat bob, saw the veins protruding from his jaw, and knew that he was holding back tears.
“I’ll consider it,” Vaisra said.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Kitay demanded. “You’ve known for months.”
Vaisra’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you. I know how much pain you must feel—”
“No. No, shut the fuck up, I don’t want that.” Kitay backed away. “I don’t need your fake sympathy.”
“Then what would you like from me?”
Kitay lifted his chin. “I want troops.”
The Warlords’ summit would not commence until after the victory parade, and that stretched over the next two days. For the most part Vaisra’s soldiers did not participate. Several troops entered the city in civilian clothes, sketching out final details in their already extensive maps of the city in case anything had changed. But the majority of the crew remained on board, watching the festivities from afar.
Every now and then an armed delegation arrived aboard the Seagrim, faces shrouded under hoods to conceal their identities. Vaisra received them in his office, doors sealed, guards posted outside to discourage curious eavesdroppers. Rin assumed the visitors were the southern Warlords—the rulers of Boar, Rooster, and Monkey provinces.
Hours passed without news. Rin grew maddeningly bored. She’d been over the palace maps a thousand times, and she’d already trained so long with Eriden that day that her leg muscles screamed when she walked. She was just about to ask Nezha if they might explore Lusan in disguise when Vaisra summoned her to his office.
“I have a meeting with the Snake Warlord,” he said. “On land. You’re coming.”
“As a guard?”
“No. As proof.”
He didn’t explain further, but she suspected she knew what he meant, so she simply picked up her trident, pulled her scarf up higher over her face until it concealed all but her eyes, and followed him toward the gangplank.
“Is the Snake Warlord an ally?” she asked.
“Ang Tsolin was my Strategy master at Sinegard. He could be anything from ally to enemy. Today, we’ll simply treat him as an old friend.”
“What should I say to him?”
“You’ll remain silent. All he has to do is look at you.”
Rin followed Vaisra across the riverbank until they reached a line of tents propped up at the city borders as if it were an invading army’s. When they approached the periphery, a group of green-clad soldiers stopped them and demanded their weapons.
“Go on,” Vaisra muttered when Rin hesitated to part with her trident.
“You trust him that much?”
“No. But I trust you won’t need it.”
The Snake Warlord came to meet them outside, where his aides had set up two chairs and a small table.
At first Rin mistook him for a servant. Ang Tsolin didn’t look like a Warlord. He was an old man with a long and sad face, so slender he seemed frail. He wore the same forest-green Militia uniform as his men, but no symbols announced his rank, and no weapon hung at his hip.
“Old master.” Vaisra dipped his head. “It’s good to see you again.”
Tsolin’s eyes flickered toward the outline of the Seagrim, which was just visible down the river. “So you didn’t take the bitch’s offer, either?”
“It was rather unsubtle, even for her,” Vaisra said. “Is anyone staying in the palace?”
“Chang En. Our old friend Jun Loran. None of the southern Warlords.”
Vaisra arched an eyebrow. “They hadn’t mentioned that. That’s surprising.”
“Is it? They’re southern.”
Vaisra settled back in his chair. “I suppose not. They’ve been touchy for years.”
No one had brought a chair out for Rin, so she remained standing behind Vaisra, hands folded over her chest in imitation of the guards who flanked Tsolin. They looked unamused.
“You’ve certainly taken your time getting here,” Tsolin said. “It’s been a long camping trip for the rest of us.”
“I was picking up something on the coast.” Vaisra pointed toward Rin. “Do you know who she is?”
Rin lowered her scarf.
Tsolin glanced up. At first he seemed only confused as he examined her face, but then he must have taken in the dark hue of her skin, the red glint in her eyes, because his entire body tensed.
“She’s wanted for quite a lot of silver,” he said finally. “Something about an assassination attempt in Adlaga.”
“It’s a good thing I’ve never wanted for silver,” said Vaisra.
Tsolin rose from his chair and walked toward Rin until only inches separated them. He was not so much taller than she was, but his gaze made her distinctly uncomfortable. She felt like a specimen under his careful examination.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Rin.”
Tsolin ignored her. He made a humming noise under his breath and returned to his seat. “This is a very blunt display of force. You’re just going to march her into the Autumn Palace?”
“She’ll be properly bound. Drugged, too. Daji insisted on it.”
“So Daji knows she’s here.”
“I thought that’d be prudent. I sent a messenger ahead.”
“No wonder she’s getting antsy, then,” Tsolin said. “She’s increased the palace guard threefold. The Warlords are talking. Whatever you’re planning, she’s ready for it.”
“So it will help to have your support,” Vaisra said.
Rin noticed that Vaisra dipped his head every time he spoke to Tsolin. In a subtle fashion, he was bowing continuously to his elder, displaying deference and respect.
But Tsolin seemed unresponsive to flattery. He sighed. “You’ve never been content with peace, have you?”
“And you refuse to acknowledge that war is the only option,” said Vaisra. “Which would you prefer, Tsolin? The Empire can die a slow death over the next century, or we can set the country on the right path within the week if we’re lucky.”
“Within a few bloody years, you mean.”
“Months, at the most.”
“Don’t you remember the last time someone went up against the Trifecta?” Tsolin asked. “Remember how the bodies littered the steps of the Heavenly Pass?”
“It won’t be like that,” Vaisra said.
“Why not?”
“Because we have her.” Vaisra nodded toward Rin.
Tsolin looked wearily in Rin’s direction.
“You poor child,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
She blinked, unsure what that meant.
“And we have the advantage of time,” Vaisra continued quickly. “The Militia is reeling from the Federation attack. They need to recuperate. They couldn’t marshal their defenses fast enough.”
“Yet under your best-case scenario, Daji still has the northern provinces,” Tsolin said. “Horse and Tiger would never defect. She has Chang En and Jun. That’s all you need.”
“Jun knows not to fight battles he can’t win.”
“But he can and will win this one. Or did you think you would defeat everyone through a little intimidation?”
“This war could be over in days if I had your support,” Vaisra said impatiently. “Together we’d control the coastline. I own the canals. You own the eastern shore. Combined, our fleets—”
Tsolin held up a hand. “My people have undergone three wars in their lifetime, each time with a different ruler. Now they might have their first chance at a lasting peace. And you want to bring a civil war to their doorsteps.”
“There’s a civil war coming, whether you admit it or not. I only hasten the inevitable.”
“We will not survive the inevitable,” Tsolin said. True sorrow laced his words. Rin could see it in his eyes; the man looked haunted. “We lost so many men at Golyn Niis, Vaisra. Boys. You know what our commanders made their soldiers do the evening before the siege? They wrote letters home to their families. Told them they loved them. Told them they wouldn’t be coming home. And our generals chose the strongest and fastest soldiers to deliver the messages back home, because they knew it wasn’t going to make a difference whether we had them at the wall.”
He stood up. “My answer is no. We have yet to recover from the scars of the Poppy Wars. You can’t ask us to bleed again.”
Vaisra reached out and grabbed Tsolin’s wrist before he could turn to go. “You’re neutral then?”
“Vaisra—”
“Or against me? Shall I expect Daji’s assassins at my door?”
Tsolin looked pained. “I know nothing. I help no one. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”
“We’re just going to let him go?” Rin asked once they were out of Tsolin’s earshot.
Vaisra’s harsh laugh surprised her. “You think he’s going to report us to the Empress?”
Rin thought this had seemed rather obvious. “It’s clear he’s not with us.”
“He will be. He’s revealed his threshold for going to war. Provincial danger. He’ll pick a side quick enough if it means the difference between warfare and obliteration, so I will force his hand. I’ll bring the fight to his province. He won’t have a choice then, and I suspect he knows that.”
Vaisra’s stride grew faster and faster as they walked. Rin had to run to catch up.
“You’re angry,” she realized.
No, he was furious. She could see it in the icy glare in his eyes, in the stiffness of his gait. She’d spent too much of her childhood learning to tell when someone was in a dangerous mood.
Vaisra didn’t respond.
She stopped walking. “The other Warlords. They said no, didn’t they?”
Vaisra paused before he answered. “They’re undecided. It’s too early to tell.”
“Will they betray you?”
“They don’t know enough about my plans to do anything. All they can tell Daji is that I’m displeased with her, which she already knows. But I doubt they’ll have the backbone to say even that.” Vaisra’s voice dripped with condescension. “They are like sheep. They will watch silently, waiting to see how the balance of power falls, and they will align with whoever can protect them. But we won’t need them until then.”
“But you needed Tsolin,” she said.
“This will be significantly harder without Tsolin,” he admitted. “He could have tipped the balance. It’ll truly be a war now.”
She couldn’t help but ask, “Then are we going to lose?”
Vaisra regarded her in silence for a moment. Then he knelt down in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked up at her with an intensity that made Rin want to squirm.
“No,” he said softly. “We have you.”
“Vaisra—”
“You will be the spear that brings this empire down,” he said sternly. “You will defeat Daji. You will set in motion this war, and then the southern Warlords will have no choice.”
The intensity in his eyes made her desperately uncomfortable. “But what if I can’t?”
“You will.”
“But—”
“You will, because I ordered you to.” His grip tightened on her shoulders. “You are my greatest weapon. Do not disappoint.”
CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_ebbaea2b-2a04-547e-bb58-8ad71336f9ef)
Rin had imagined the Autumn Palace as composed of blocky, abstract shapes, the way it was represented on the maps. But the real Autumn Palace was a perfectly preserved sanctuary of beauty, a sight lifted straight out of an ink brush painting. Flowers bloomed everywhere. White plum blossoms and peach flowers laced the gardens; lily pads and lotus flowers dotted the ponds and waterways. The complex itself was an elegantly designed structure of ornamented ceremonial gates, massive marble pillars, and sprawling pavilions.
But for all that beauty, a stillness hung over the palace that made Rin deeply uncomfortable. The heat was oppressive. The roads looked as if they were swept clean hourly by unseen servants, but still Rin could hear the ubiquitous sound of buzzing flies, as if they detected something rotten in the air that no one could see.
It felt as if the palace hid something foul under its lovely exterior; beneath the smell of blooming lilacs, something was in the last stages of decay.
Perhaps she was imagining it. Perhaps the palace was truly beautiful, and she just hated it because it was a coward’s resort. This was a refuge, and the fact that anyone had hidden alive in the Autumn Palace while corpses rotted in Golyn Niis infuriated her.
Eriden nudged the small of her back with his spear. “Eyes down.”
She hastily obeyed. She had come posing as Vaisra’s prisoner—hands cuffed behind her back, mouth sealed behind an iron muzzle that clamped her lower jaw tightly upward. She could barely speak except in whispers.
She didn’t have to remember to look scared. She was terrified. The thirty grams of opium circulating through her bloodstream did nothing to calm her down. It magnified her paranoia even as it kept her heart rate low and made her feel as if she were floating among clouds. Her mind was anxious and hyperactive but her body was slow and sluggish—the worst possible combination.
At sunrise Rin, Vaisra, and Captain Eriden had passed under the arched gateways of the nine concentric circles of the Autumn Palace. Servants patted them down for weapons at each gate. By the seventh gate, they had been groped so thoroughly that Rin was surprised they hadn’t been asked to strip naked.
At the eighth gate an Imperial guard stopped her to check her pupils.
“She took a dose before the guards this morning,” Vaisra said.
“Even so,” said the guard. He reached for Rin’s chin and tilted it up. “Eyes open, please.”
Rin obliged and tried not to squirm as he pulled her eyelids apart.
Satisfied, the guard stepped back to let them through.
Rin followed Vaisra into the throne room, shoes echoing against a marble floor so smooth it looked like still water at the surface of a lake.
The inner chamber was a rich and ornate assault of decorations that blurred and swam in Rin’s opium-blurred eyesight. She blinked and tried to focus. Intricately painted symbols covered every wall, stretching all the way up to the ceiling, where they coalesced in a circle.
It’s the Pantheon, she realized. If she squinted, she could make out the gods she had come to recognize: the Monkey God, mischievous and cruel; the Phoenix, imposing and ravenous …
That was odd. The Red Emperor had hated shamans. After he’d claimed his throne at Sinegard, he’d had the monks killed and their monasteries burned.
But maybe he hadn’t hated the gods. Maybe he’d just hated that he couldn’t access their power for himself.
The ninth gate led to the council room. The Empress’s personal guard, a row of soldiers in gold-lined armor, blocked their path.
“No attendants,” said the guard captain. “The Empress has decided that she does not want to crowd the council room with bodyguards.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Vaisra’s face. “The Empress might have told me this beforehand.”
“The Empress sent a notice to everyone residing in the palace,” the guard captain said smugly. “You declined her invitation.”
Rin thought Vaisra might protest, but he only turned to Eriden and told him to wait outside. Eriden bowed and departed, leaving them without guards or weapons in the heart of the Autumn Palace.
But they were not entirely alone. At that moment the Cike were swimming through the underground waterways toward the city’s heart. Aratsha had constructed air bubbles around their heads so they could swim for miles without needing to come up for air.
The Cike had used this as an infiltration method many times before. This time, they would deliver reinforcements if the coup went sour. Baji and Suni would take up posts directly outside the council room, poised to spring in and break Vaisra out if necessary. Qara would station herself at the highest pavilion outside the council room for ranged support. And Ramsa would squirrel himself away wherever he and his waterproof bag of combustible treasures could cause the most havoc.
Rin found a small degree of comfort in that. If they couldn’t capture the Autumn Palace, at least they had a good chance of blowing it up.
Silence fell over the council room when Rin and Vaisra walked in.
The Warlords twisted in their seats to stare at her, their expressions ranging from surprise to curiosity to mild distaste. Their eyes roved over her body, lingered on her arms and legs, took stock of her height and build. They looked everywhere except at her eyes.
Rin shifted uncomfortably. They were sizing her up like a cow at market.
The Ox Warlord spoke first. Rin recognized him from Khurdalain; she was surprised that he was still alive. “This little girl held you up for weeks?”
Vaisra chuckled. “The searching ate my time, not the extraction. I found her stranded in Ankhiluun. Moag got to her first.”
The Ox Warlord looked surprised. “The Pirate Queen? How did you wrestle her away?”
“I traded Moag for something she likes better,” Vaisra said.
“Why would you bring her here alive?” demanded a man at the other end of the table.
Rin swiveled her head around and nearly jumped in surprise. She hadn’t recognized Master Jun at first glance. His beard had grown much longer, and his hair was shot through with gray streaks that hadn’t been there before the war. But she could find the same arrogance etched into the lines of her old Combat master’s face, as well as his clear distaste for her.
He glared at Vaisra. “Treason deserves the death penalty. And she’s far too dangerous to keep around.”
“Don’t be hasty,” said the Horse Warlord. “She might be useful.”
“Useful?” Jun echoed.
“She’s the last of her kind. We’d be fools to throw a weapon like that away.”
“Weapons are only useful if you can wield them,” said the Ox Warlord. “I think you’d have a little trouble taming this beast.”
“Where do you think she went wrong?” The Rooster Warlord leaned forward to get a better look at her.
Rin had privately been looking forward to meeting the Rooster Warlord, Gong Takha. They came from the same province. They spoke the same dialect, and his skin was nearly as dark as hers. Word on the Seagrim was that Takha was the closest to joining the Republic. But if provincial ties counted for anything, Takha didn’t show it. He stared at her with the same sort of fearful curiosity one displayed toward a caged tiger.
“She’s got a wild look in her eyes,” he continued. “Do you think the Mugenese experiments did that to her?”
I’m in the room, Rin wanted to snap. Stop talking about me like I’m not here.
But Vaisra wanted her to be docile. Act stupid, he’d said. Don’t come off as too intelligent.
“Nothing so complex,” said Vaisra. “She was a Speerly straining against her leash. You remember how the Speerlies were.”
“When my dogs go mad, I put them down,” Jun said.
The Empress spoke from the doorway. “But little girls aren’t dogs, Loran.”
Rin froze.
Su Daji had traded her ceremonial robes for a green soldier’s uniform. Her shoulder pads were inlaid with jade armor, and a longsword hung at her waist. It seemed like a message. She was not only the Empress, she was also grand marshal of the Nikara Imperial Militia. She’d conquered the Empire once by force. She’d do it again.
Rin fought to keep her breathing steady as Daji reached out and traced her fingertips over her muzzle.
“Careful,” Jun said. “She bites.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Daji’s voice sounded languid, almost disinterested. “Did she put up a fight?”
“She tried,” Vaisra said.
“I imagine there were casualties.”
“Not as many as you would expect. She’s weak. The drug’s done her in.”
“Of course.” Daji’s lip curled. “Speerlies have always had their predilections.”
Her hand drifted upward to pat Rin gently on the head.
Rin’s fingers curled into fists.
Calm, she reminded herself. The opium hadn’t worn off yet. When she tried to call the fire, she felt only a numb, blocked sensation in the back of her mind.
Daji’s eyes lingered on Rin for a long while. Rin froze, terrified that the Empress might take her aside now like Vaisra had warned. It was too early. If she were alone in a room with Daji, the best she could do was hurl some disoriented fists in her direction.
But Daji only smiled, shook her head, and turned toward the table. “We’ve much to get through. Shall we proceed?”
“What about the girl?” Jun asked. “She ought to be in a cell.”
“I know.” Daji shot Rin a poisonous smile. “But I like to watch her sweat.”
The next two hours were the slowest of Rin’s life.
Once the Warlords had exhausted their curiosity over her, they turned their attention to an enormous roster of problems economic, agricultural, and political. The Third Poppy War had wrecked nearly every province. Federation soldiers had destroyed most of the infrastructure in every major city they’d occupied, set fire to huge swaths of grain fields, and wiped out entire villages. Mass refugee movements had reshaped the human density of the country. This was the kind of disaster that would have taken miraculous effort from a unified central leadership to ameliorate, and the council of the twelve Warlords was anything but.
“Control your damn people,” said the Ox Warlord. “I have thousands streaming into my border as we speak and we don’t have a place for them.”
“What are we supposed to do, create a border guard?” The Hare Warlord had a distinctly plaintive, grating voice that made Rin wince every time he spoke. “Half my province is flooded, we haven’t got food stores to last the winter—”
“Neither do we,” said the Ox Warlord. “Send them elsewhere or we’ll all starve.”
“We’d be willing to repatriate citizens from the Hare Province under a set quota,” said the Dog Warlord. “But they’d have to display provincial registration papers.”
“Registration papers?” the Hare Warlord echoed. “These people had their villages sacked and you’re asking for registration papers? Right, like the first thing they grabbed when their village started going up in flames was—”
“We can’t house everyone. My people are pressed for resources as is—”
“Your province is a steppe wasteland, you’ve got more than enough space.”
“We have space; we don’t have food. And who knows what your sort would bring in over the borders …”
Rin had a difficult time believing that this council, if one could call it that, was really how the Empire functioned. She knew how often the Warlords went to arms over resources, trade routes, and—occasionally—over the best recruits graduating from Sinegard. And she knew that the fractures had been deepening, had gotten worse in the aftermath of the Third Poppy War.
She just hadn’t known it was this bad.
For hours the Warlords had bickered and squabbled over details so inane that Rin could not believe anyone could possibly care. And she had stood waiting in the corner, sweating through her chains, waiting for Daji to drop her front.
But the Empress seemed content to wait. Eriden was right—she clearly relished playing with her food before she ate it. She sat at the head of the table with a vaguely amused expression on her face. Every once in a while, she met Rin’s eyes and winked.
What was Daji’s endgame? Certainly she knew that the opium would wear off in Rin eventually. Why was she running out the clock?
Did Daji want this fight?
The sheer anxiety made Rin feel weak-kneed and light-headed. It took everything she had to remain standing.
“What about Tiger Province?” someone asked.
All eyes turned to the plump child sitting with his elbows up on the table. The young Tiger Warlord looked around with an expression equal parts bewildered and terrified, blinked twice, then peered over his shoulder for help.
His father had died at Khurdalain and now his steward and generals ruled the province in his stead, which meant that the power in Tiger Province really lay with Jun.
“We’ve done more than enough for this war,” Jun said. “We bled at Khurdalain for months. We’re thousands of men down. We need time to heal.”
“Come on, Jun.” A tall man sitting at the far end of the room spat a wad of phlegm on the table. “Tiger Province is full of arable land. Spread some of the goodness around.”
Rin grimaced. This had to be the new Horse Warlord—the Wolf Meat General Chang En. She’d been briefed extensively on this one. Chang En was a former divisional commander who had escaped from a Federation prison camp near the start of the Third Poppy War, taken up the life of a bandit, and assumed rapid control of the upper region of the Horse Province while the former Horse Warlord and his army were busy defending Khurdalain.
They had eaten anything. Wolf meat. Corpses by the roadside. The rumor was that they had paid good money for live human babies.
Now the former Horse Warlord was dead, skinned alive by Federation troops. His heirs had been too weak or too young to challenge Chang En, so the bandit ruler had assumed de facto control of the province.
Chang En caught Rin’s eye, bared his teeth, and slowly licked his upper lip with a thick, mottled black tongue.
She suppressed a shudder and looked away.
“Most of our arable land near the coastline has been destroyed by tsunamis or ash fall.” Jun gave Rin a look of utter disgust. “The Speerly made sure of that.”
Rin felt a twist of guilt. But it had been either that or extinction at Federation hands. She’d stopped debating that trade. She could function only if she believed that it had been worth it.
“You can’t just keep foisting your refugees on me,” Chang En said. “They’re cramming the cities. We can’t get a moment’s rest without their whining in the streets, demanding free accommodations.”
“Then put them to work,” Jun said coldly. “Have them rebuild your roads and buildings. They’ll earn their own keep.”
“And how are we supposed to feed them? If they starve at the borders, that’s your fault.”
Rin noticed it was the northern Warlords—the Ox, Ram, Horse, and Dog Warlords—who did most of the talking. Tsolin sat with his fingers steepled under his chin, saying nothing. The southern Warlords, clustered near the back of the room, largely remained silent. They were the ones who had suffered the most damage, lost the most troops, and thus had the least leverage.
Throughout all of this Daji sat at the head of the table, observing, rarely speaking. She watched the others, one eyebrow arched just a bit higher than the other, as if she were supervising a group of children who had managed to continually disappoint her.
Another hour passed and they had resolved nothing, except for a halfhearted gesture by Tiger Province to allocate six thousand catties of food aid to the landlocked Ram Province in exchange for a thousand pounds of salt. In the grander scheme of things, with thousands of refugees dying of starvation daily, this was hardly a drop in the bucket.
“Why don’t we take a recess?” The Empress stood up from the table. “We’re not getting anywhere.”
“We’ve barely resolved anything,” said Tsolin.
“And the Empire won’t collapse if we break for a meal. Cool your heads, gentlemen. Dare I suggest you consider the radical option of compromising with each other?” Daji turned toward Rin. “Meanwhile, I shall retire for a moment to my gardens. Runin, it’s time for you to head off to your cell, don’t you think?”
Rin stiffened. She couldn’t help but shoot a panicked glance at Vaisra.
He stared forward without meeting her eyes, betraying nothing.
This was it. Rin squared her shoulders. She dipped her head in submission, and the Empress smiled.
Rin and the Empress exited not through the throne room but by a narrow corridor in the back. The servants’ exit. As they walked Rin could hear the gurgling of the irrigation pipes beneath the floors.
Hours had passed since the council began. The Cike should be stationed within the palace by now, but that thought made her no less terrified. For now she was operating alone with the Empress.
But she still didn’t have the fire.
“Are you exhausted yet?” Daji asked.
Rin didn’t respond.
“I wanted you to watch the Warlords at their best. They’re such a troublesome bunch, aren’t they?”
Rin continued pretending she hadn’t heard.
“You don’t talk very much, do you?” Daji glanced over her shoulder at her. Her eyes slid down to the muzzle. “Oh, of course. Let’s get this off you.”
She placed her slim fingers on either side of the contraption and gently pulled it off. “Better?”
Rin kept her silence. Don’t engage her, Vaisra had warned her. Maintain constant vigilance and let her speak her piece.
She only needed to buy herself a few more minutes. She could feel the opium wearing off. Her vision had gotten sharper, and her limbs responded without delay to her commands. She just needed Daji to keep talking until the Phoenix responded to her call. Then she could turn the Autumn Palace to ash.
“Altan was the same,” Daji mused. “You know, the first three years he was with us, we thought he was a mute.”
Rin nearly tripped over a cobblestone. Daji continued walking as if she had noticed nothing. Rin followed behind, fighting to keep her calm.
“I was sorry to hear of his loss,” Daji said. “He was a good commander. One of our very best.”
And you killed him, you old bitch. Rin rubbed her fingers together, hoping for a spark, but still the channel to the Phoenix remained blocked.
Just a little longer.
Daji led her behind the building toward a patch of empty space near the servants’ quarters.
“The Red Emperor built a series of tunnels in the Autumn Palace so that he could escape to and from any room if need be. Ruler of an entire empire, and he didn’t feel safe in his own bed.” Daji stopped beside a well and pushed hard at the cover, bracing her feet against the stone floor. The cover slid off with a loud screech. She straightened and brushed her hands on her uniform. “Follow me.”
Rin crawled after Daji into the well, which had a set of narrow, spiraling steps built into its wall. Daji reached up and slid the stone closed over them, leaving them standing in pitch darkness. Icy fingers wrapped around Rin’s hand. She jumped, but Daji only tightened her grip.
“It’s easy to get lost if you’ve never been here before.” Daji’s voice echoed around the chamber. “Stay close.”
Rin tried to keep count of how many turns they had taken—fifteen, sixteen—but soon enough she lost track of where they were, even in her carefully memorized mental map. How far were they from the council room? Would she have to ignite in the tunnels?
After several more minutes of walking, they resurfaced into a garden. The sudden burst of color was disorienting. Rin peered, blinking, at the resplendent array of lilies, chrysanthemums, and plum trees planted in clusters around rows upon rows of sculptures.
This wasn’t the Imperial Garden—the layout of the walls didn’t match. The Imperial Garden was shaped in a circle; this garden was erected inside a hexagon. This was a private courtyard.
This hadn’t been on the map. Rin had no clue where she was.
Her eyes flickered frantically around her surroundings, seeking out possible exit routes, mapping out useful trajectories and planes of motion for the impending fight, making note of objects that could be weaponized if she couldn’t get the fire back in time. Those saplings looked fragile—she might break a branch off for a club if she got desperate. Best if she could back Daji up against the far wall. If nothing else, she could use those loose cobblestones to smash the Empress’s head in.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?”
Rin realized Daji was waiting for her to say something.
If she engaged Daji in conversation, she’d be walking headfirst into a trap. Vaisra and Eriden had warned her many times how easily Daji would manipulate, could plant thoughts in her mind that weren’t her own.
But Daji would grow bored of talking if Rin stayed silent. And Daji’s interest in playing with her food was the only thing buying Rin time. Rin needed to keep the conversation going until she had the fire back.
“I guess,” she said. “I’m not one for aesthetics.”
“Of course you’re not. You got your education at Sinegard. They’re all crude utilitarians.” Daji put her hands on Rin’s shoulders and slowly turned her about the garden. “Tell me something. Does the palace look new to you?”
Rin glanced around the hexagon. Yes, it had to be new. The lustrous buildings of the Autumn Palace, though designed with the architecture of the Red Emperor, did not bear the stains of time. The stones were smooth and unscratched, the wooden posts gleaming with fresh paint.
“I suppose,” she said. “Is it not?”
“Follow me.” Daji walked toward a small gate built into the far wall, pushed it open, and motioned for Rin to follow her through.
The other side of the garden looked like it had been smashed under a giant’s heel. The midsection of the opposite wall was in pieces, as if it had been blown apart by cannon fire. Statues were strewn across the overgrown grass, limbs shattered, lying at grotesque and awkward angles.
This wasn’t natural decay. Wasn’t the result of failure to keep the grounds. This had to be the deliberate action of an invading force.
“I thought the Federation never reached Lusan,” Rin said.
“This wasn’t the Federation,” Daji said. “This wreckage has been here for over seventy years.”
“Then who …?”
“The Hesperians. History likes to focus on the Federation, but the masters at Sinegard always gloss over the first colonizers. No one remembers who started the First Poppy War.” Daji nudged a statue’s head with her foot. “One autumn day seventy years ago, a Hesperian admiral sailed up the Murui and blasted his way into Lusan. He pillaged the palace, razed it to the ground, poured oil over the wreckage, and danced in the ashes. By that evening the Autumn Palace had ceased to exist.”
“Then why haven’t you rebuilt the garden?” Rin’s eyes darted around the grounds while she spoke. A rake lay in the grass about half a yard from her feet. After all these years it was certainly blunt and covered in rust, but Rin might still use it as a staff.
“So we have the reminder,” Daji said. “To remember how we were humiliated. To remember that nothing good can come of dealing with the Hesperians.”
Rin couldn’t let her eyes linger on the rake. Daji would notice. She carefully reconstructed its position from memory. The sharp end was facing her. If she got close enough, she could kick it up into her grasp. Unless the grass had grown too long … but it was just grass; if she kicked hard it shouldn’t be a problem …
“The Hesperians have always intended to come back,” Daji said. “The Mugenese weakened this country using western silver. We remember the Federation as the face of the oppressor, but the Hesperians and Bolonians—the Consortium of western countries—are the ones with real power. They are who you ought to be afraid of.”
Rin moved just slightly so her left leg was positioned close enough to kick the rake up. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Daji said sharply. “I know what Vaisra intends to do. I know he intends to go to war. I’m trying to show you that it’s the wrong one.”
Rin’s pulse began to race. This was it—Daji knew her intentions, she needed to fight, it didn’t matter if she didn’t have the fire yet, she had to get to the rake—
“Stop that,” Daji ordered.
Rin’s limbs froze suddenly in place, muscles stiffening painfully as if the slightest movement might shatter them. She should be springing to fight. She should have at least crouched down. But somehow her body was arrested where she stood, as if she needed the Empress’s permission to even breathe.
“We are not finished talking,” said Daji.
“I’m finished listening,” Rin hissed through clenched teeth.
“Relax. I haven’t brought you here to kill you. You are an asset, one of the few I have left. It would be stupid to let you go.” Daji stepped in front of her so that they stood face-to-face. Rin hastily averted her eyes. “You’re fighting the wrong enemy, dear. Can’t you see it?”
Sweat beaded on Rin’s neck as she strained to break out of Daji’s hold.
“What did Vaisra promise you? You must know you’re being used. Is it worth it? Is it money? An estate? No … I don’t think you could be swayed by material promises.” Daji tapped her lacquered nails against painted lips. “No—don’t tell me you believe him, do you? Did he say he’d bring you a democracy? And you fell for it?”
“He said he’d depose you,” Rin whispered. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Do you really believe that?” Daji sighed. “What would you replace me with? The Nikara people aren’t ready for democracy. They’re sheep. They’re crude, uneducated fools. They need to be told what to do, even if that means tyranny. If Vaisra takes this nation then he’ll run it into the ground. The people don’t know what to vote for. They don’t even understand what it means to vote. And they certainly don’t know what’s good for them.”
“Neither do you,” Rin said. “You let them die in hordes. You invited the Mugenese in yourself and you traded them the Cike.”
To her surprise, Daji laughed. “Is that what you believe? You can’t trust everything you hear.”
“Shiro had no reason to lie. I know what you did.”
“You understand nothing. I have toiled for decades to keep this Empire intact. Do you think I wanted this war?”
“I think that at least half of this country was disposable to you.”
“I made a calculated sacrifice. The last time the Federation invaded, the Warlords rallied under the Dragon Emperor. The Dragon Emperor is dead. And the Federation was readying itself for a third invasion. No matter what I did, they were going to attack, and we were nowhere near strong enough to resist them. So I brokered a peace. They could have slices of the east if they would let the heartland remain free.”
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R.F. Kuang
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The searing follow-up to 2018’s most celebrated fantasy debut – THE POPPY WAR.In the aftermath of the Third Poppy War, shaman and warrior Rin is on the run: haunted by the atrocity she committed to end the war, addicted to opium, and hiding from the murderous commands of her vengeful god, the fiery Phoenix. Her only reason for living is to get revenge on the traitorous Empress who sold out Nikan to their enemies.With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance…The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.