The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)
The Dragon Republic: Part 2 – Chapter 11

Nezha pushed her door open. “You awake?”

“What’s going on?” Rin yawned. It was still dark outside her porthole, but Nezha was dressed in full uniform. Behind him stood Kitay, looking half-asleep and very crabby.

“Come upstairs,” said Nezha.

“He wants to show us the view,” Kitay grumbled. “Get a move on so I can go back to sleep.”

Rin followed them down the hall, hopping on one foot as she pulled her shoes on.

The Seagrim was blanketed in such a dense blue mist that they might have been sailing through clouds. Rin could not see the landmarks surrounding them until they were close enough for shapes to emerge through the fog. On her left, great cliffs guarded the narrow entrance to Arlong: a dark sliver of space inside the yawning stone wall. Against the light of the rising sun, the rock face glimmered a bright crimson.

Those were the famous Red Cliffs of the Dragon Province. The cliff walls were said to shine a brighter red with every failed invasion against the stronghold, painted with the blood of sailors whose ships had been dashed against those stones.

Rin could just make out massive characters etched into the walls—words that she could see only if she tilted her head the right way and if the faint sunlight hit them just so. “What do those say?”

“Can’t you read it?” Kitay asked. “It’s just Old Nikara.”

She tried not to roll her eyes. “Translate for me, then.”

“You actually can’t,” Nezha said. “All of those characters have layers upon layers of meaning, and they don’t obey modern Nikara grammar rules, so any translation must be imperfect and unfaithful.”

Rin had to smile. Those were words recited straight from the Linguistics texts they’d both read at Sinegard, back when their biggest concern was the next week’s grammar quiz. “So which translation do you think is right?”

“‘Nothing lasts,’” said Nezha, at the same time that Kitay said, “‘The world doesn’t exist.’”

Kitay wrinkled his nose at Nezha. “‘Nothing lasts’? What kind of translation is that?”

“The historically accurate one,” Nezha said. “The last faithful minister of the Red Emperor carved those words into the cliffs. When the Red Emperor died, his empire fragmented into provinces. His sons and generals snapped up prize pieces of land like wolves. But the minister of the Dragon Province didn’t pledge allegiance to any of the newly formed states.”

“I assume that didn’t end well,” Rin said.

“It’s as Father says: there’s no such thing as neutrality in a civil war,” Nezha said. “The Eight Princes came for the Dragon Province and tore Arlong apart. Thus the minister’s epigram. Most think it’s a nihilistic cry, a warning that nothing lasts. Not friendships, not loyalties, and certainly not empire. Which makes it consistent with your translation, Kitay, if you think about it. This world is ephemeral. Permanence is an illusion.”

As they spoke, the Seagrim passed into a channel through the cliffs so narrow that Rin marveled that the warship did not breach its hull along the rocks. The ship must have been designed according to the exact specifications of the channel—and even then, it was a remarkable feat of navigation that they slipped through the walls without so much as scraping stone.

As they penetrated the passage, the cliffs themselves appeared to cleave open, revealing Arlong between them like a pearl hidden inside an oystershell. The city within was startlingly lush, all waterfalls and running streams and more green than Rin had ever seen in Tikany. On the other side of the channel, she could just trace the faint outlines of two mountain chains peeking over the mist: the Qinling Mountains to the east and the Daba range to the west.

“I used to climb up those cliffs all the time.” Nezha pointed toward a steep set of stairs carved into the red walls that made Rin dizzy just looking at them. “You can see everything from up there—the ocean, the mountains, the entire province.”

“So you could see attackers coming from every direction from miles off,” Kitay said. “That’s very useful.”

Now Rin understood. This explained why Vaisra was so confident in his military base. Arlong might be the most impenetrable city in the Empire. The only way to invade was by sailing through a narrow channel or scaling a massive mountain range. Arlong was easy to defend and tremendously difficult to attack—the ideal wartime capital.

“We used to spend days on the beaches, too,” said Nezha. “You can’t see them from here, but there are coves hidden under the cliff walls if you know where to find them. In Arlong the riverbanks are so large that if you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were on the ocean.”

Rin shuddered at the thought. Tikany had been landlocked, and she couldn’t imagine growing up this close to so much water. She would have felt so vulnerable. Anything could land on those shores. Pirates. Hesperians. The Federation.

Speer had been that vulnerable.

Nezha cast her a sideways look. “You don’t like the ocean?”

She thought of Altan pitching backward into black water. She thought of a long, desperate swim and of nearly losing her mind. “I don’t like the way it smells,” she said.

“But it just smells like salt,” he said.

“No. It smells like blood.”

The moment the Seagrim dropped anchor, a group of soldiers escorted Vaisra off the ship and ensconced him inside a curtained sedan chair to be carted off to the palace. Rin had not seen Vaisra in more than a week, but she’d heard rumors his condition had worsened. She supposed the last thing he wanted was for word to spread.

“Should we be concerned?” she asked, watching as the chair made its way down the pier.

“He just needs some shoreside rest.” Nezha’s words didn’t sound forced, which Rin took as a good sign. “He’ll recover.” sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ (ꜰind)ɴʘvel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“In time to lead a campaign north, you think?” Kitay asked.

“Certainly. And if not Father, then my brother. Let’s get you to the barracks.” Nezha motioned toward the gangplank. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the ranks.”

Arlong was an amphibious city composed of a series of interconnected islands scattered inside a wide swath of the Western Murui. Nezha led Rin, Kitay, and the Cike into one of the slim, ubiquitous sampans that navigated Arlong’s interior. As Nezha guided their boat into the inner city, Rin swallowed down a wave of nausea. The city reminded her of Ankhiluun; it was far less shabby but just as disorienting in its reliance on waterways. She hated it. What was so wrong with dry land?

“No bridges?” she asked. “No roads?”

“No need. Whole islands linked by canals.” Nezha stood at the stern, steering the sampan forward with gentle sweeps of the rudder. “It’s arranged in a circular grid, like a conch shell.”

“Your city looks like it’s halfway to sinking,” Rin said.

“That’s on purpose. It’s nearly impossible to launch a land invasion on Arlong.” He guided the sampan around a corner. “This was the first capital of the Red Emperor. Back during his wars with the Speerlies, he surrounded himself with water. He never felt safe without it—he chose to build a city at Arlong for precisely that reason. Or so the myth goes.”

“Why was he obsessed with water?”

“How else do you protect yourself from beings who control fire? He was terrified of Tearza and her army.”

“I thought he was in love with Tearza,” Rin said.

“He loved her and feared her,” Nezha said. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Rin was glad when they finally pulled up to a solid sidewalk. She felt far more comfortable on land, where the floorboards wouldn’t shift under her feet, where she was at no risk of tipping into the water.

But Nezha looked happier over water than she’d ever seen him. He controlled the rudder like it was a natural extension of his body, and he hopped lightly from the edge of the sampan to the walkway as if it were no more difficult than walking through a grassy field.

He led them into the heart of Arlong’s military district. As they walked, Rin saw a series of tower ships, vessels that could carry entire villages, mounted with massive catapults and studded with rows and rows of iron cannons shaped like dragons’ heads, mouths curled in vicious sneers, waiting to spit fire and iron.

“These ships are stupidly tall,” she said.

“That’s because they’re designed to capture walled cities,” Nezha said. “Naval warfare is a matter of collecting cities like gambling chips. Those structures are meant to overtop walls along major waterways. Strategically speaking, most provinces are just empty space. The major cities control economic and political levers, the transportation and communications routes. So control the city and you’ve controlled the province.”

“I know that,” she said, slightly irked that he thought she needed a primer on basic invasion strategy. “I’m just concerned about their maneuverability. How much agility do you get in shallow waters?”

“Not much, but that doesn’t matter. Most naval warfare is still decided by hand-to-hand combat,” Nezha explained. “The tower ships take down the walls. We go in and pick up the pieces.”

Ramsa piped up from behind them, “I don’t understand why we couldn’t have taken this beautiful, giant fleet and blasted the shit out of the Autumn Palace.”

“Because we were attempting a bloodless coup,” Nezha said. “Father wanted to avoid a war if he could. Sending a massive fleet up to Lusan might have given the wrong message.”

“So what I’m hearing is that it’s all Rin’s fault,” said Ramsa. “Classic.”

Nezha walked backward so that he could face them as he talked. He looked terribly smug as he gestured to the ships around them. “A few years ago we added crossbeams to increase structural integrity in the hulls. And we redesigned the rudders—they have more mobility now, so they can operate in a broader range of water depths . . .”

“And your rudder?” Kitay inquired. “Still plunging those depths?”

Nezha ignored him. “We’ve improved our anchors, too.”

“How so?” Rin asked, mostly because she could tell he wanted to brag.

“The teeth. They’re arranged circularly instead of in one direction. Means they hardly ever break.”

Rin found this very funny. “Does that happen often?”

“You’d be surprised,” Nezha said. “During the Second Poppy War we lost a crucial naval skirmish because the ship started drifting out to sea without its crew during a maelstrom. We’ve learned from that mistake.”

He continued to elucidate newer innovations as they walked, gesturing with the pride of a newborn parent. “We started building the hulls with the broadest beam aft—makes it easier to steer at slow speeds. The junks have sails divided into horizontal panels by bamboo slats that make them more aerodynamic.”

“You know a lot about ships,” Rin said.

“I spent my childhood next door to a shipyard. It’d be embarrassing if I didn’t.”

Rin stopped walking, letting the others pass her until she and Nezha stood alone. She lowered her voice. “Be honest with me. How long have you been preparing for this war?”

He didn’t miss a beat. Didn’t even blink. “As long as I’ve been alive.”

So Nezha had spent his entire childhood readying himself to betray the Empire. So he had known, when he came to Sinegard, that one day he would lead a fleet against his classmates.

“You’ve been a traitor since birth,” she said.

“Depends on your perspective.”

“But I was fighting for the Militia until now. We could have been enemies.”

“I know.” Nezha beamed. “Aren’t you so glad we’re not?”

The Dragon Army absorbed the Cike into its ranks with impressive efficiency. A young woman named Officer Sola received them at the barracks. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Rin, and she wore the green armband that indicated she had graduated from Sinegard with a Strategy degree.

“You trained with Irjah?” Kitay asked.

Sola glanced at Kitay’s own faded armband. “What division?”

“Second. I was with him at Golyn Niis.”

“Ah.” Sola’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “How did he die?”

Skinned alive and hung over a city wall, Rin thought.

“With honor,” Kitay said.

“He’d be proud of you,” Sola said.

“Well, I’m quite sure he would have called us traitors.”

“Irjah cared about justice,” Sola said in a hard voice. “He would have been with us.”

Within the hour Sola had assigned them to bunks in the barracks, given them a walking tour of the sprawling base that occupied three mini islands and the canals in between, and outfitted them with new uniforms. These were made of warmer, sturdier material than any Militia suits Rin had ever seen. The cloth base came with a set of lamellar armor made up of overlapping leather and metal plates so confusing that Sola had to demonstrate in detail what went where.

Sola didn’t point them to any changing rooms, so Rin stripped down along with her men, pulled her new uniform on, and stretched her limbs out. She was amazed at the flexibility. The lamellar armor was far more sophisticated than the flimsy uniforms the Militia issued, and likely cost three times as much.

“We have better blacksmiths than they do up north.” Sola passed Rin a chest plate. “Our armor’s lighter. Deflects more.”

“What should we do with these?” Ramsa held up a bundle of his old clothing.

Sola wrinkled her nose. “Burn them.”

The barracks and armory were cleaner, larger, and better stocked than any Militia facility Rin had ever visited. Kitay rifled through the gleaming rows of swords and knives until he found a set that suited him; the rest of them turned in their weapons to the blacksmith for refurbishment.

“I was told you had a detonations expert in your squadron.” Sola pulled the curtain aside to reveal the full store of the First Platoon’s explosives. Stacks upon stacks of missiles, rockets, and fire lances were arranged neatly in pyramidal piles waiting in the cool darkness to be loaded onto warships.

Ramsa made a highly suggestive whimpering noise. He lifted a missile shaped like a dragon head out from the pile and turned it over in his hands. “Is this what I think it is?”

Sola nodded. “It’s a two-stage rocket. The main vessel contains the booster. The rest detonates in midair. Gives it a little extra thrust.”

“How’d you manage these?” Ramsa demanded. “I’ve been working on this for at least two years.”

“And we’ve been working on it for five.”

Ramsa pointed at another pile of explosives. “What do those do?”

“They’re fin-mounted winged rockets.” Sola sounded amused. “The fins are for guided flight. We see better accuracy with these than the two-stage rockets.”

Someone with a bad sense of humor had carved the head to look like a fish with a droopy expression. Ramsa ran his fingers along the fins. “What kind of range do you get on these?”

“That depends,” said Sola. “On a clear day, sixty miles. Rainy days, as far as you can get them.”

Ramsa weighed the missile in his hands, looking so delighted that Rin suspected he might have gotten an erection. “Oh, we are going to have fun with these.”

“Are you hungry?” Nezha knocked on the door frame.

Rin glanced up. She was alone in the barracks. Kitay had left to find the Dragon Province’s archives, and the other Cike members’ first priority had been finding the mess hall.

“Not very,” she said.

“Good. Do you want to see something cool?”

“Is it another ship?” she asked.

“Yes. But you’ll really like this one. Nice uniform, by the way.”

She smacked his arm. “Eyes up, General.”

“I’m just saying the colors look good on you. You make a good Dragon.”

Rin heard the shipyard long before they reached it. Over the cacophonous din of screeches and hammering, they had to yell to hear each other. She had assumed what she saw in the harbor was a completed fleet, but apparently several more vessels were still under construction.

Her eyes landed immediately on the ship at the far end. It was still in its initial stages—only a skeleton thus far. But if she imagined the structure to be built around it, it was titanic. It seemed impossible that a thing like that could ever stay afloat, let alone get past the channel through the Red Cliffs.

“We’re going to board that to the capital?” she asked.

“That one isn’t ready. It keeps getting updated with plans from the west. It’s Jinzha’s pet project; he’s a perfectionist about stuff like this.”

“A pet project,” she repeated. “Your siblings just build massive boats for their pet projects.”

Nezha shook his head. “It was supposed to be finished in time for the northern campaign, whenever that gets off the ground. Now it’ll be much longer. They’ve changed the design to a defensive warship. It’s meant to guard Arlong now, not to lead the fleet.”

“Why is it behind schedule?”

“Fire broke out in the shipyard overnight. Some idiot on watch kicked his lamp over. Set construction back by months. They had to import the timber from the Dog Province. Father had to get pretty creative with that—it’s hard to ship in massive amounts of lumber and hide the fact that you’re building a fleet. Took a few weeks of dealing with Moag’s smugglers.”

Rin could see blackened edges on some of the skeleton’s outer boards. But the rest had been replaced with new timber, smoothed to a shine.

“The whole thing made a big stir in the city,” Nezha said. “Some people kept saying it was a sign from the gods that the rebellion would fail.”

“And Vaisra?”

“Father took it as a sign that he should go out and get himself a Speerly.”

Instead of taking a river sampan back to the military barracks, Nezha led her down the stairs to the base of the pier, where Rin could still hear the noise of the shipyard over the water rushing gently against the posts that kept the pier up. At first she thought they had walked into a dead end, until Nezha stepped from the glassy sand and right onto the river.

“What the hell?”

After a second she realized he was standing not on the water, but rather on a large circular flap that almost matched the river’s greenish-blue hue.

“Lily pads,” Nezha said before she could ask. Arms spread for balance, he shifted his weight just so as the waves lifted the lily pad under his feet.

“Show-off,” Rin said.

“You’ve never seen these before?”

“Yes, but only in wall scrolls.” She grimaced at the pads. Her balance wasn’t half as good as Nezha’s, and she wasn’t keen to fall into the river. “I didn’t know they grew so large.”

“They don’t usually. These will only last a month or two before they sink. They grow naturally in the freshwater ponds up the mountain, but our botanists found a way to militarize them. You’ll find them up and down the harbor. The better sailors don’t need rowboats to get to their ships; they can just run across the lily pads.”

“Calm down,” she said. “They’re just stepping stones.”

“They’re militarized lily pads. Isn’t that great?”

“I think you just like using the word ‘militarized.’”

Nezha opened his mouth to respond, but a voice from atop the pier cut him off.

“Had enough of playing tour guide?”

A man descended the steps toward them. He wore a blue soldier’s uniform, and the black stripes on his left arm marked him as a general.

Nezha hastily hopped off the lily pads onto the wet sand and sank to one knee. “Brother. Good to see you again.”

Rin realized in retrospect she should have knelt as well, but she was too busy staring at Nezha’s brother. Yin Jinzha. She had seen him once, briefly, three years back at her first Summer Festival in Sinegard. Back then she’d thought that Jinzha and Nezha could have been twins, but upon closer inspection, their similarities were not really so pronounced. Jinzha was taller, more thickly built, and he carried himself with the air of a firstborn—a son who knew he was heir to his father’s entire estate, while his younger siblings would be left to a fate of squabbling over the refuse.

“I heard you screwed up at the Autumn Palace.” Jinzha’s voice was deeper than Nezha’s. More arrogant, if that was possible. It sounded oddly familiar to Rin, but she couldn’t quite place it. “What happened?”

Nezha rose to his feet. “Hasn’t Captain Eriden briefed you?”

“Eriden didn’t see everything. Until Father recovers I’m the senior ranking general in Arlong, and I’d like to know the details.”

It’s Altan, Rin realized with a jolt. Jinzha spoke with a clipped, military precision that reminded her of Altan at his best. This was a man used to competence and immediate obedience.

“I don’t have anything to add,” Nezha said. “I was on the Seagrim.”

Jinzha’s lip curled. “Out of harm’s way. Typical.”

Rin expected Nezha to lash out at that, but he swallowed the barb with a nod. “How is Father?”

“Better now than last night. He’d been straining himself. Our physician didn’t understand how he was still alive at first.”

“But Father told me it was just a flesh wound.”

“Did you even get a good look at him? That blade went nearly all the way through his shoulder bone. He’s been lying to everyone. It’s a wonder he’s even conscious.”

“Has he asked for me?” Nezha asked.

“Why would he?” Jinzha gave his brother a patronizing look. “I’ll let you know when you’re needed.”

“Yes, sir.” Nezha dipped his head and nodded. Rin watched this exchange, fascinated. She’d never seen anyone who could bully Nezha the way Nezha tended to bully everyone else.

“You’re the Speerly.” Jinzha looked suddenly at Rin, as if he had just remembered she was there.

“Yes.” For some reason Rin’s voice came out strangled, girlish. She cleared her throat. “That’s me.”

“Go on, then,” Jinzha said. “Let’s see it.”

“What?”

“Show me what you can do,” Jinzha said very slowly, as if talking to a small child. “Make it big.”

Rin shot Nezha a confused look. “I don’t understand.”

“They say you can call fire,” Jinzha said.

“Well, yes—”

“How much? How hot? To what degree? Does it come from your body, or can you summon it from other places? What does it take for you to trigger a volcano?” Jinzha spoke at such a terribly fast clip that Rin had trouble deciphering his curt Sinegardian accent. She hadn’t struggled with that in years.

She blinked, feeling rather stupid, and when she spoke she stumbled over her words. “I mean, it just happens—”

“‘It just happens,’” he mimicked. “What, like a sneeze? What help is that? Explain to me how to use you.”

“I’m not someone for you to use.”

“Fancy that. The soldier won’t take orders.”

“Rin’s had a long journey,” Nezha cut in hastily. “I’m sure she’d be happy to demonstrate for you in the morning, when she’s had some rest . . .”

“Soldiers get tired, that’s part of the job,” Jinzha said. “Come on, Speerly. Show us what you’ve got.”

Nezha placed a placating hand on Rin’s arm. “Jinzha, really . . .”

Jinzha made a noise of disgust. “You should hear the way Father talks about them. Speerlies this, Speerlies that. I told him he’d be better off launching an invasion from Arlong, but no, he thought he could win a bloodless coup if he just had you. Look how that worked out.”

“Rin’s stronger than you can imagine,” Nezha said.

“You know, if the Speerlies were so strong, you’d think they’d be less dead.” Jinzha’s lip curled. “Spent my whole childhood hearing about what a marvel your precious Altan was. Turns out he was just another dirt-skinned idiot who blew himself up for nothing.”

Rin’s vision flashed red. When she looked at Jinzha she didn’t see flesh but a charred stump, ashes peeling off what used to be a man—she wanted him dying, dead, hurting. She wanted him to scream.

“You want to see what I can do?” she asked. Her voice sounded very distant, as if someone were speaking at her from very far away.

“Rin . . .” Nezha cautioned.

“No, fuck off.” She shrugged his hand off her arm. “He wants to see what I can do.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Get back.”

She turned her palms out toward Jinzha. It took nothing to summon the anger. It was already there, waiting, like water bursting forth from a dam—I hate, I hate, I hate—

Nothing happened.

Jinzha raised his eyebrows.

Rin felt a twinge of pain in her temples. She touched her finger to her eyes.

The twinge blossomed into a searing bolt of agony. She saw an explosion of colors branded behind her eyelids: reds and yellows, flames flickering over a burning village, the silhouettes of people writhing inside, a great mushroom cloud over the longbow island in miniature.

For a moment she saw a character she couldn’t recognize, swimming into shape like a nest of snakes, lingering just in front of her eyes before it disappeared. She drifted in a moment between the world in her mind and the material world. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see . . .

She sagged to her knees. She felt Nezha’s arms hoisting her up, heard him shouting for someone to help. She struggled to open her eyes. Jinzha stood above her, staring down with open contempt.

“Father was right,” he said. “We should have tried to save the other one.”

Chaghan slammed the door shut behind him. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Rin’s fingers clenched and unclenched around the bedsheets while Chaghan unpacked his satchel beside her. Her voice trembled; she had spent the last half hour trying simply to breathe normally, but still her heart raced so furiously that she could barely hear her own thoughts. “I got careless. I was going to call the fire—just a bit, I didn’t really want to hurt him, and then—”

Chaghan grabbed her wrists. “Why are you shaking?”

She hadn’t realized she was. She couldn’t stop her hands from trembling, but thinking about it only made her shake harder.

“He won’t want me anymore,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“Vaisra.”

She was terrified. If she couldn’t call the fire, then Vaisra had recruited a Speerly for nothing. Without the fire, she might be tossed away.

She’d been trying since she regained consciousness to call the fire, but the result was always the same—a searing pain in her temples, a burst of color, and flashes of visions she never wanted to see again. She couldn’t tell what was wrong, only that the fire remained out of her reach, and without the fire she was nothing but useless.

Another tremor passed through her body.

“Just calm down,” Chaghan said. He set the satchel on the floor and knelt beside her. “Focus on me. Look in my eyes.”

She obeyed.

Chaghan’s eyes, pale and without pupils or irises, were normally unsettling. But up close they were strangely alluring, two shards of a snowy landscape embedded in his thin face that drew her in like some hypnotized prey.

“What is wrong with me?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. Why don’t we find out?” Chaghan rummaged in his satchel, closed his fist around something, and offered her a handful of bright blue powder.

She recognized the drug. It was the ground-up dust of some dried northern fungus. She’d ingested it once before with Chaghan in Khurdalain, when she’d taken him to the immaterial realm where Mai’rinnen Tearza was haunting her.

Chaghan wanted to accompany her to the inner recesses of her mind, the point where her soul ascended to the plane of the gods.

“Afraid?” he asked when she hesitated.

Not afraid. Ashamed. Rin didn’t want to bring Chaghan into her mind. She was scared of what he might see.

“Do you have to come?” she asked.

“You can’t do it alone. I’m all you’ve got. You have to trust me.”

“Will you promise to stop if I ask you to?”

Chaghan scoffed, reached for her hand, and pressed her finger into the powder. “We’ll stop when I say we can stop.”

“Chaghan.”

He gave her a frank look. “Do you really have another option?”

The drug began to act almost from the moment it hit her tongue. Rin was surprised at how fast and clean the high was. Poppy seeds were so frustratingly slow, a gradual crawl into the realm of spirit that worked only if she concentrated, but this drug was like a kick through the door between this world and the next.

Chaghan grabbed her hand just before the infirmary faded from her vision. They departed the mortal plane in a swirl of colors. Then it was just the two of them in an expanse of black. Drifting. Searching.

Rin knew what she had to do. She homed in on her anger and created the link to the Phoenix that pulled their souls from the chasm of nothing toward the Pantheon. She could almost feel the Phoenix, the scorching heat of its divinity washing over her, could almost hear its malicious cackle—

Then something dimmed its presence, cut her off.

Something massive materialized before them. There was no way to describe it other than a giant word, slashed into empty space. Twelve strokes hung in the air, a great pictogram the shimmering hue of green-blue snakeskin, glinting in the unnatural brightness like freshly spilled blood.

“That’s impossible,” Chaghan said. “She shouldn’t be able to do this.”

The pictogram looked both entirely familiar and entirely foreign. Rin couldn’t read it, though it had to be written in the Nikara script. It came close to resembling several characters she knew but deviated from all of them in significant ways.

This was something ancient, then. Something old; something that predated the Red Emperor. “What is this?”

“What does it look like?” Chaghan reached out an incorporeal hand as if to touch it, then hastily drew it back. “This is a Seal.”

A Seal? The term sounded oddly familiar. Rin remembered fragments of a battle. A white-haired man floating in the air, lightning swirling around the tip of his staff, opening a void to a realm of things not mortal, things that didn’t belong in their world.

You’re Sealed.

Not anymore.

“Like the Gatekeeper?” she asked.

“The Gatekeeper was Sealed?” Chaghan sounded astonished. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I had no idea!”

“But that would explain so much! That’s why he’s been lost, why he doesn’t remember—”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Seal blocks your access to the world of spirit,” Chaghan explained. “The Vipress left her venom inside you. That’s what it’s made of. It will keep you from accessing the Pantheon. And over time it will grow stronger and stronger, eating away at your mind until you lose even your memories associated with the Phoenix. It’ll make you a shell of yourself.”

“Please tell me you can get rid of it.”

“I can try. You’ll have to take me inside.”

“Inside?”

“The Seal is also a gateway. Look.” Chaghan pointed into the heart of the character, where the glimmering snake blood formed a swirling circle. When Rin focused on it, it did indeed seem to call to her, drawing her into some unknown dimension beyond. “Go inside. I’m betting that’s where Daji’s left the venom. It exists here in the form of memory. Daji’s power dwells in desire; she’s conjured the things that you want the most to prevent you from calling the fire.”

“Venom. Memory. Desire.” Very little of this was making sense to Rin. “Look—just tell me whatever the fuck I’m supposed to do with it.”

“You destroy it however you can.”

“Destroy what?”

“I think you’ll know when you see it.”

Rin didn’t have to ask how to pass the gate. It pulled her in as soon as she approached it. The Seal seemed to fold in over them, growing larger and larger until it enveloped them. Swirls of blood drifted around her, undulating, as if trying to decide what shape to take, what illusion to create.

“She’ll show you the future you want,” Chaghan said.

But Rin didn’t see how that could possibly work for her, because her greatest desires didn’t exist in the future. They were all in the past. She wanted the last five years back. She wanted lazy days on the Academy campus. She wanted lackadaisical strolls in Jiang’s garden, she wanted summer vacations at Kitay’s estate, she wanted, she wanted . . .

She was on the sands of the Isle of Speer again—vibrant, beautiful Speer, lush and vivid like she had never seen it before. And there Altan was, healthy and whole, smiling like she had never really seen him smile.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you ready to come home?”

“Kill him,” Chaghan said urgently.

But hadn’t she already? At Khurdalain she’d fought a beast with Altan’s face, and she’d killed him then. Then at the research facility she’d let him walk out on the pier, let him sacrifice himself to save her.

She’d already killed Altan, over and over, and he kept coming back.

How could she harm him now? He looked so happy. So free from pain. She knew so much more about him now, she knew what he had suffered, and she couldn’t touch him. Not like this.

Altan drew closer. “What are you doing out here? Come with me.”

She wanted to go with him more than anything. She didn’t even know where he would take her, only that he would be there. Oblivion. Some dark paradise.

Altan extended his hand toward her. “Come.”

She steeled herself. “Stop this,” she managed. “Chaghan, I can’t—stop it—take me back—”

“Surely you’re joking,” Chaghan said. “You can’t even do this?”

Altan took her fingers in his. “Let’s go.”

“Stop it!”

She wasn’t sure what she did but she felt a burst of energy, saw the Seal contort and writhe around Chaghan, like a predator sniffing out some new and interesting prey, and saw his mouth open in some soundless scream of agony.

Then they weren’t on Speer anymore.

This was nowhere she had ever seen.

They were somewhere high up on a mountain, cold and dark. A series of caves were carved into stone, all glowing with candle fire on the inside. And sitting on the ledge, shoulders touching, were two boys: one dark haired and one fair haired.

She was an outsider in this memory, but the moment she stepped closer her perspective shifted and she wasn’t the voyeur anymore but the subject. She saw Altan’s face up close, and she realized she was looking at him the way Chaghan once had.

Altan’s face was entirely too close to hers. She could make out every last terrible and wonderful detail: the scar running up from his right cheek, the clumsy way his hair had been tied up, the dark lids over his crimson eyes.

Altan was awful. Altan was beautiful. And as she looked into his eyes she realized the feeling that overcame her was not love; this was a total, paralyzing fear. This was the terror of a moth drawn to the flame.

She hadn’t thought that anyone else felt that way. It was such a familiar feeling that she almost cried.

“I could kill you,” said Altan, muttering the death threat like a love song, and when she-as-Chaghan struggled against him he pressed his body closer.

“So you could,” Chaghan said, and that was such a familiar voice, the coy, level voice. She’d always marveled at how Chaghan could speak so casually to Altan. But Chaghan hadn’t been joking, she realized, he’d been afraid; he had been constantly terrified every time he was around Altan. “So what?”

Altan’s fingers closed over Chaghan’s; too hot, too crushing, an attempt at human contact with absolute disregard for the object of his affection.

His lips brushed against Chaghan’s ear. She shuddered involuntarily; she thought he might bite her, move his mouth lower against her neck and rip out her arteries.

She realized that Chaghan felt this fear often.

She realized that Chaghan probably enjoyed it.

“Don’t,” Chaghan said.

She didn’t listen; she wanted to stay in this vision, had the sickening desire to watch it play out to its conclusion.

“That’s enough.”

A wave of darkness slammed down onto them, and when she opened her eyes she was back in the infirmary, sprawled on top of her bed. Chaghan sat bolt upright on the floor, eyes wide open, expression blank.

She grabbed him by the collar. “What was that?”

Chaghan stirred awake. His features settled into something like contempt. “Why don’t you ask yourself?”

“You hypocrite,” she said. “You’re just as obsessed with him—”

“Are you sure that wasn’t you?”

“Don’t lie to me!” she shrieked. “I know what I saw, I know what you were doing, I bet you only wanted to get in my mind because you wanted to see him from another angle—”

He flinched back.

She hadn’t expected him to flinch. He looked so small. So vulnerable.

Somehow, that made her angrier.

She clenched his collar tighter. “He’s dead. All right? Can’t you get that in your fucking head?”

“Rin—”

“He’s dead, he’s gone, and we can’t bring him back. And maybe he loved you, maybe he loved me, but that doesn’t fucking matter anymore, does it? He’s gone.”

She thought he might hit her then.

But he just leaned forward, shoulders hunched over his knees, and pressed his face into his hands. When he spoke he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “I thought I could catch him.”

“What?”

“Sometimes before the dead pass on, they linger,” he whispered. “Especially your kind. Anger depends on resentment, and your dead exist in resentment. And I think he’s still out there, drifting between this world and the next, but each time I try all I get is fragments of memories, and as more time passes I can’t even remember the beautiful things, and I thought maybe—with the venom—”

“You don’t know how to fix me, do you?” she asked. “You never did.”

Chaghan didn’t answer.

She released his collar. “Get out.”

He packed up his satchel and left without a word. She almost called him back, but she couldn’t think of a single thing to say before he slammed the door.

Once Chaghan was gone, Rin shouted down the hallway until she got the attention of a physician, whom she berated until she obtained a sleeping draught in twice the recommended dosage. She swallowed that in two large gulps, crawled back onto her bed, and fell into the deepest sleep she’d had in a long time.

When she woke, the physician refused her another sleeping draught for another six hours. So she waited in fearful apprehension, anticipating a visit from Jinzha or Nezha or even Vaisra himself. She didn’t know what to expect, only that it couldn’t be anything good. Who had any use for a Speerly who couldn’t summon fire?

But her only visitor was Captain Eriden, who instructed her that she was to continue acting as if she were in full command of her abilities. She was still Vaisra’s trump card, Vaisra’s hidden weapon, and she was still to appear at his side, even if only as a psychological weapon.

He didn’t convey Vaisra’s disappointment. He didn’t have to. Vaisra’s absence stung more than anything else.

She chugged down the next sleeping draught they gave her. The sun had set by the time she woke again. She was terribly hungry. She stood up, unlocked the door, and walked down the hallway, barefoot and groggy, with the vague intention of demanding food from the first person she saw.

“Well, fuck you, too!”

Rin stopped walking.

The voice came from a door near the end of the hallway. “What was I supposed to do? Hang myself like the women of Lü? I bet you’d like that.”

Rin recognized that voice—shrill, petulant, and furious. She tiptoed down the hall and stood just beyond the door.

“The women of Lü preserved their dignity.” A male voice this time, much older and deeper.

“And who put my dignity in my cunt?”

Rin caught her breath. Venka. It had to be.

“Would you prefer I were a lifeless corpse?” Venka screamed. “Would you prefer my spine were broken, my body crushed, just so long as nothing had gone between my legs?”

The male voice again. “I wish you had never been taken. You know that.”

“You’re not answering the question.” A choked noise. Was Venka crying? “Look at me, Father. Look at me.”

Venka’s father said something in response, too softly for Rin to hear. A moment later the door slammed open. Rin ducked around the corner and froze until she heard the footsteps recede down the hall in the opposite direction.

She exhaled in relief. She considered for a moment, then walked toward the door. It was open, hanging slightly ajar. She placed her fingertips on the wooden panel and pushed.

It was Venka. She had shorn her hair off completely—and clearly some time ago, because it was starting to grow back in little dark patches. But her face was the same—ridiculously pretty, all sharp angles and piercing eyes.

“What the hell do you want?” Venka demanded. “Can I help you?”

“You were being loud,” Rin said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Next time my father disowns me, I’ll keep it down.”

“You were disowned?”

“Well. Probably not. It’s not like he’s got other heirs to spare.” Venka’s eyes were red around the rims. “I wish he would, it’s better than him trying to tell me what to do with my own body. When I was pregnant—”

“You’re pregnant?”

“Was.” Venka scowled. “No thanks to that fucking doctor. He kept saying that fucking cunt Saikhara didn’t permit abortions.”

“Saikhara?”

“Nezha’s mother. She’s got some funny ideas about religion. Grew up in Hesperia, did you know that? She worships their stupid fucking Maker. She doesn’t just pretend for diplomatic reasons, she actually believes in that shit. And she runs around obeying everything he wrote in some little book, which apparently includes forcing women to bear the children of their rapists.”

“So what did you do?”

Venka’s throat pulsed. “Got creative.”

“Ah.”

They both stared at the floor for a minute. Venka broke the silence. “I mean, it only hurt a little bit. Not as bad as—you know.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what I thought about when I did it. Kept thinking about their piggy little faces, and then it wasn’t difficult. And the Lady Saikhara can go fuck herself.”

Rin sat down on the edge of her bed. It felt oddly good to be around Venka—angry, impatient, abrasive Venka. Venka gave voice to the raw anger that everyone else seemed to have patched over, and for that Rin was grateful.

“How are your arms?” she asked. Last time she’d seen Venka her arms were swathed in so many bandages that Rin wasn’t sure if she’d lost use of them altogether. But her bandages were gone now, and her arms weren’t dangling uselessly by her sides.

Venka flexed her fingers. “Right one’s healed. Left one won’t, ever. It was bent all funny, and I can’t move three fingers on my left hand.”

“Can you still shoot?”

“Works just as well as long as I can hold a bow. They had a glove designed for me. Keeps the three fingers bent back so I don’t have to. I’d be just fine on the field with a little practice. Not like anyone believes me.” Venka shifted in her bed. “But what are you doing here? Did Nezha win you over with his pretty words?”

Rin shifted. “Something like that.”

Venka was looking at her with something that might have been jealousy. “So you’re still a soldier. Lucky you.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Rin said.

“Why not?”

For a moment Rin considered telling Venka everything—about the Vipress, about the Seal, about what she had seen with Chaghan. But Venka didn’t have the patience for details. Venka didn’t care that much.

“I just—I can’t do what I did anymore. Not like that.” She hugged her chest with her arms. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that again.”

Venka pointed to her eyes. “Is that what you’ve been crying about?”

“No—I just . . .” Rin took a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I’m useful anymore.”

Venka rolled her eyes. “Well, you can still hold a sword, can’t you?”

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