The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)
The Dragon Republic: Part 2 – Chapter 21

Rin ran across a dark field, chasing after a fiery silhouette that she was never going to catch. Her legs moved as if treading water—she was too slow, too clumsy, and the farther back she fell from the silhouette, the more her despair weighed her down, until her legs were so heavy that she couldn’t run any longer.

“Please,” she cried. “Wait.”

The silhouette stopped.

When Altan turned around, she saw he was already burning, his handsome features charred and twisted, blackened skin peeled away to reveal pristine, gleaming bone.

And then he was looming above her. Somehow he was still magnificent, still beautiful, even when arrested in the moment of his death. He knelt in front of her, took her face in his scorching hands, and brought their foreheads close together.

“They’re right, you know,” he said.

“About what?” She saw oceans of fire in his eyes. His grip was hurting her; it always had. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to let her go or to kiss her.

His fingers dug into her cheeks. “It should have been you.”

His face morphed into Qara’s.

Rin screamed and jerked away.

“Tiger’s tits. I’m not that ugly.” Qara wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Welcome to the world of the living.”

Rin sat up and spat out a mouthful of lake water. She was shivering uncontrollably; it took her a while before she could push words out from between numb, clumsy lips. “Where are we?”

“Right by the riverbank,” Qara said. “Maybe a mile out of Boyang.”

“What about the rest?” Rin fought a swell of panic. “Ramsa? Suni? Nezha?”

Qara didn’t answer, which meant she didn’t know, which meant that the Cike had either gotten away or drowned.

Rin took several deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating. You don’t know they’re dead, she told herself. And Nezha, if anyone, had to be alive. The water protected him like he was its child. The waves would have shielded him, whether he consciously called them or not.

And if the others are dead, there’s nothing you can do.

She forced her mind to compartmentalize, to lock up her concern and shove it away. She could grieve later. First she needed to survive.

“Kitay’s all right,” Chaghan told her. He looked like a living corpse; his lips were the same dark shade as his fingers, which were blue up to the middle joint. “Just went out to get some firewood.”

Rin pulled her knees up to her chest, still shaking. “Feylen. That was Feylen.”

The twins nodded.

“But why—what was he—” She couldn’t understand why they looked so calm. “What’s he doing with them? What does he want?”

“Well, Feylen the man probably wants to die,” Chaghan said.

“Then what does—”

“The Wind God? Who knows?” He rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “The gods are agents of pure chaos. Behind the veil they’re balanced, each one against the other sixty-three, but if you set them loose in the material world, they’re like water bursting from a broken dam. With no opposing force to check them, they’ll do whatever they want. And we never know what the gods want. He’ll create a light breeze one day, and then a typhoon the next. The one thing you can expect is inconsistency.”

“But then why’s he fighting for them?” Rin asked. Wars took consistency. Unpredictable and uncontrollable soldiers were worse than none.

“I think he’s scared of someone,” Chaghan said. “Someone who can frighten him into obeying orders.”

“Daji?”

“Who else?”

“Good, you’re awake.” Kitay emerged into the clearing, carrying a bundle of sticks. He was drenched, curly hair plastered to his temples. Rin saw bloody scratches all over his face and arms where he’d hit the rocks, but otherwise he looked unharmed.

“You’re all right?” she asked.

“Eh. My bad arm’s feeling a bit off, but I think it’s just the cold.” He tossed the bundle onto the damp dirt. “Are you hurt?”

She was so cold it was hard to tell. Everything just felt numb. She flexed her arms, wiggled her fingers, and found no trouble. Then she tried to stand up. Her left leg buckled beneath her.

“Fuck.” She ran her fingers over her ankle. It was painfully tender to the touch, throbbing wherever she pressed it.

Kitay knelt down beside her. “Can you wiggle your toes?”

She tried, and they obeyed. That was a minor relief. This wasn’t a break, then, just a sprain. She was used to sprains. They’d been common for students at Sinegard; she’d learned how to deal with them years ago. She just needed something like cloth for compression.

“Does anyone have a knife?” she asked.

“I’ve got one.” Qara fished around in her pockets and tossed a small hunting knife in her direction.

Rin unsheathed it, held her trouser leg taut, and cut off a strip at the ankle. She ripped that longways into two pieces and wrapped them tightly around her ankle.

“At least you don’t have to worry about keeping it cool,” said Kitay.

She didn’t have the energy to laugh. She flexed her ankle, and another tremor of pain shot up her leg. She winced. “Are we the only ones who made it out?”

“If only. We’ve got a bit of company.” He nodded to his left.

She followed his line of sight and saw a cluster of bodies—maybe seven, eight—huddled together a little ways up the riverbank. Gray cassocks, light hair. No army uniforms. They were all from the Gray Company.

She could recognize Augus. She wouldn’t have been able to pick the rest out of a line—Hesperian faces looked so similar to her, all pale and sparse. She noticed with relief that Sister Petra was not among them.

They looked miserable. They were breathing and blinking—moving just enough that Rin could tell they were alive, but otherwise they seemed frozen stiff. Their skin was pale as snow; their lips were turning blue.

Rin waved at them and pointed to the bundle of sticks. “Come over here. We’ll build a fire.”

She may as well try to be kind. If she could save some of the Gray Company from freezing to death, they might win her some political capital with the Hesperians when—if—they made it back to Arlong.

The missionaries made no move to get up.

She tried again in slow, deliberate Hesperian. “Come on, Augus. You’re going to freeze.”

Augus registered no recognition when she called his name. She might not have been speaking Hesperian at all. The others had either blank stares or vaguely frightened expressions on their faces. She shuffled toward them, and several scuttled backward as if scared she might bite them.

“Forget it,” Kitay said. “I’ve been trying to talk to them for the last hour, and my Hesperian is better than yours. I think they’re in shock.”

“They’ll die if they don’t warm up.” Rin raised her voice. “Hey! Get over here!”

More scared looks. Three of them leveled their weapons at her.

Shit. Rin stumbled back.

They had arquebuses.

“Just leave them,” Chaghan muttered. “I’m in no mood to be shot.”

“We can’t,” she said. “The Hesperians will blame us if they die.”

He rolled his eyes. “They don’t have to know.”

“They’ll find out if even one of those idiots ever finds their way back.”

“They won’t.”

“But we don’t know that. And I’m not killing them to make sure.”

If it weren’t for Augus, she wouldn’t have cared. But blue-eyed devil or not, she couldn’t let him freeze to death. He’d been kind to her on the Kingfisher when he hadn’t needed to be. She felt obligated to return the favor.

Chaghan sighed. “Then leave them a fire. And then we’ll move far enough that they’ll feel safe to approach it.”

That wasn’t a bad idea. Kitay had a small flame going within minutes, and Rin waved toward the Hesperians. “We’re going to sit over there,” she called. “You can use this one.”

Again, no response.

But once she’d moved farther down the bank, she saw the Hesperians inching slowly toward the fire. Augus stretched his hands out over the flame. That was a small relief. At least they wouldn’t die of sheer idiocy.

Once Kitay had built a second fire, all four of them stripped their uniforms off without self-consciousness. The air was icy around them, but they were colder in their drenched clothes than without. Naked, they huddled together over the flames, holding their hands as close to the fire as they could get without burning their skin. They squatted in silence for what seemed like hours. Nobody wanted to expend the energy to talk.

“We’ll get back to the Murui.” Rin finally spoke as she pulled her dry uniform back on. It felt good to say the words out loud. It was something pragmatic, a step toward solid action, and it quelled the panic building in her stomach. “There’s plenty of loose driftwood around here. We could make a raft and just float downstream through the minor tributaries until we hit the main river, and if we’re careful and only move at night, then—”

Chaghan didn’t let her finish. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because there’s nothing to go back to. The Republic’s finished. Your friends are dead. Their bodies are probably lining the bottom of Lake Boyang.”

“You don’t know that,” she said.

He shrugged.

“They’re not dead,” she insisted.

“So run back to Arlong, then.” He shrugged again. “Crawl into Vaisra’s arms and hide as long as you can before the Empress comes for you.”

“That’s not what I—”

“That’s exactly what you want. You can’t wait to go groveling to his feet, waiting for your next command like some trained dog.”

“I’m not a fucking dog.”

“Aren’t you?” Chaghan raised his voice. “Did you even put up a fight when they stripped you of command? Or were you glad? Can’t give orders for shit, but you love taking them. Speerlies ought to know what it’s like to be slaves, but I never imagined you’d enjoy it.”

“I was never a slave,” Rin snarled.

“Oh, you were, you just didn’t know it. You bow down to anyone who will give you orders. Altan pulled on your fucking heartstrings, played you like a lute—he just had to say the right words, make you think he loved you, and you’d run after him to the Chuluu Korikh like an idiot.”

“Shut up,” she said in a low voice.

But then she saw what this was all about now. This wasn’t about Vaisra. This wasn’t about the Republic at all. This was about Altan. All these months later, after everything they’d been through, everything was still about Altan.

She could give Chaghan that fight. He’d fucking had it coming.

“Like you didn’t worship him,” she hissed. “I’m not the one who was obsessed with him. You dropped everything to do whatever he asked you to—”

“But I didn’t go with him to the Chuluu Korikh,” he said. “You did.”

“You’re blaming me for that?”

She knew where this was going. She understood now what Chaghan had been too cowardly to say to her face all these months—that he blamed Altan’s death on her.

No wonder he hated her.

Qara put a hand on her brother’s arm. “Chaghan, don’t.”

Chaghan shook her off. “Someone let Feylen loose. Someone got Altan captured. It wasn’t me.”

“And someone told him where the Chuluu Korikh was in the first place,” Rin shouted. “Why? Why would you do that? You knew what was in there!”

“Because Altan thought he could raise an army.” Chaghan spoke in a loud, flat voice. “Because Altan thought he could reset the course of history to before the Red Emperor and bring the world back to a time when Speer was free and the shamans were at the height of their power. Because for a time that vision was so beautiful that even I believed it. But I stopped. I realized that he’d gone crazy and that something had broken and that that path was just going to lead to his death.

“But you? You followed him right to the very end. You let them capture him on that mountain, and you let him die on that pier.”

Guilt coiled tightly in Rin’s gut, wrenching and horrible. She had nothing to say. Chaghan was right; she’d known he was right, she just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

He cocked his head to the side. “Did you think he’d fall in love with you if you just did what he asked?”

“Shut up.”

His expression turned vicious. “Is that why you’re in love with Vaisra? Do you think he’s Altan’s replacement?”

She rammed her fist into his mouth.

Her knuckles met his jaw with a crack so satisfying she didn’t even feel where his teeth punctured her skin. She’d broken something, and that felt marvelous. Chaghan toppled over like a straw target. She lunged forward, reaching for his neck, but Kitay grabbed her from behind.

She flailed in his grasp. “Let me go!”

His grip tightened. “Calm down.”

Chaghan pulled himself to a sitting position and spat a tooth onto the ground. “And she says she’s not a dog.”

Rin lunged to hit him again, but Kitay yanked her back.

“Let me go!”

“Rin, stop—”

“I’ll kill him!”

“No, you won’t,” Kitay snapped. He forced Rin into a kneeling position and twisted her arms painfully behind her back. He pointed at Chaghan. “You—stop talking. Both of you stop this right now. We’re alone in enemy territory. We split up from each other and we’re dead.”

Rin struggled to break free. “Just let me at him—”

“Oh, go on, let her try,” Chaghan said. “A Speerly that can’t call fire, I’m terrified.”

“I can still break your skinny chicken neck,” she said.

“Stop talking,” Kitay hissed.

“Why?” Chaghan sneered. “Is she going to cry?”

“No.” Kitay nodded toward the forest. “Because we’re not alone.”

Hooded riders emerged from the trees, sitting astride monstrous warhorses much larger than any steed Rin had ever seen. Rin couldn’t identify their uniforms. They were garbed in furs and leathers, not Militia greens, but they didn’t seem like friends, either. The riders aimed their bows toward them, bowstrings stretched so taut that at this distance the arrows wouldn’t just pierce their bodies, they would fly straight through them.

Rin rose slowly, hand creeping toward her trident. But Chaghan grabbed her wrist.

“Surrender now,” he hissed.

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

She jerked her hand out of his grip. “That’s likely.”

But even as her fingers closed around her weapon, she knew they were trapped. Those longbows were massive—at this distance, there would be no dodging those arrows.

She heard a rustling noise from upriver. The Hesperians had seen the riders. They were trying to run.

The riders twisted around and loosed their bowstrings into the forest. Arrows thudded into the snow. Rin saw Augus drop to the ground, his face twisted in pain as he clutched at a feathered shaft sticking out of his left shoulder.

But the riders hadn’t shot to kill. Most of the arrows were aimed at the dirt around the missionaries’ feet. Only a few of the Hesperians were injured. The rest had collapsed from sheer fright. They huddled together in a clump, arms raised high, arquebuses unfired.

Two riders dismounted and wrenched the weapons out of the missionaries’ trembling hands. The missionaries put up no resistance.

Rin’s mind raced as she watched, trying to find a way out. If she and Kitay could just get to the stream, then the current would carry them downriver, hopefully faster than the horses could run, and if she held her breath and ducked deep enough then she’d have some cover from the arrows. But how to get to the water before the riders loosed their bowstrings? Her eyes darted around the clearing—

Put your hands up.

No one spoke the order but she heard it—a deep, hoarse command that resonated loudly in her mind.

A warning shot whistled past her, inches from her temple. She ducked down, grabbed a clump of mud to fling at the riders. If she could distract them, just for a few seconds . . .

The riders turned their bows back toward her.

“Stop!” Chaghan ran out in front of the riders, waving his arms over his head.

A sound like a gong echoed through the clearing, so loud that Rin felt her temples vibrating.

A flurry of images from someone else’s imagination forced their way into her mind’s eye. She saw herself on her knees, arms up. She saw herself stuck through with arrows, bleeding from a dozen different wounds. She saw a vast and dizzying landscape—a sparse steppe, desert dunes, a thunderous stampede as riders set out on horseback to seek something, destroy something . . .

Then she saw Chaghan, facing the riders with his fists clenched, felt the sheer intent radiating out from his form—we’re here in peace we’re here in peace I am one of you we’re here in peace—and she realized that this wasn’t just some psychospiritual battle of wills.

This was a conversation.

Somehow, the riders could communicate without moving their lips. They conveyed images and fragments of intent without spoken language directly into their receivers’ minds. Rin glanced at Kitay, checking to make sure that she hadn’t gone mad. He was staring at the riders, eyes wide, hands trembling.

Stop resisting, boomed the first voice.

Frantic babbles erupted from the bound Hesperians. Augus doubled forward and yelled, clutching his head. He was hearing it, too.

Whatever Chaghan said in response, it was enough to persuade the riders that they weren’t a threat. Their leader lifted a hand and barked out a command in a language Rin didn’t understand. The riders lowered their bows.

The leader swung himself off his horse in one fluid motion and strode toward Chaghan.

“Hello, Bekter,” Chaghan said.

“Hello, cousin,” Bekter responded. He’d spoken in Nikara; his words came out harsh and twisted. He wrenched sounds out of the air like he was ripping meat from bone, as if he were unused to spoken language.

“Cousin?” Kitay echoed out loud.

“We’re not proud of it,” Qara muttered.

Bekter shot her a quick smile. Whatever passed mentally between them happened too fast for Rin to understand, but she caught the gist of it—something lewd, something violent, horrid, and dripping in contempt.

“Go fuck yourself,” Qara said.

Bekter called something to his riders. Two of them jumped to the ground, wrenched Chaghan’s and Qara’s arms behind their backs, and forced them to their knees.

Rin snatched up her trident, but arrows dotted the ground around her before she could move.

“You won’t get a third warning,” Bekter said.

She dropped the trident and placed her hands behind her head. Kitay did the same. The riders tied Rin’s hands together, pulled her to her feet, and dragged her, stumbling miserably, toward Bekter so that the four of them knelt before him in a single line.

“Where is he?” Bekter asked.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Kitay said.

“The Wind God. I believe the mortal’s name is Feylen. We are hunting him. Where has he gone?”

“Downriver, probably,” said Kitay. “If you know how to fly, you might catch up!”

Bekter ignored him. His eyes roved over Rin’s body, lingering in places that made her flinch. Hazy images came unbidden to her mind, too blurry for her to see more than shattered limbs and flesh on flesh.

“Is this the Speerly?” he asked.

“You can’t hurt her,” Chaghan said. “You’re sworn.”

“Sworn not to hurt you. Not them.”

“They’re under my charge. This is my territory.”

Bekter laughed. “You’ve been gone a long time, little cousin. The Naimads are weak. The treaty is shattering. The Sorqan Sira’s decided to come down and clean up your mess.”

“‘Charge’?” Rin repeated. “‘Treaty’? Who are you people?”

“They’re watchers,” Qara murmured.

“Of what?”

“People like you, little Speerly.” Bekter pulled off his hood.

Rin flinched back, repulsed.

His face was covered in mottled burns, ropey and raised, a mountainous terrain of pain running from cheek to cheek. He smiled at her, and the way the scars crinkled around the sides of his mouth was a terrible sight.

She spat at his feet. “Had a bad encounter with a Speerly, didn’t you?”

Bekter smiled again. More images invaded her mind. She saw men on fire. She saw blood staining the dirt.

Bekter leaned in so close that she could feel his breath, hot and rank on her neck. “I survived it. He did not.”

Before Rin could speak, a hunting horn pierced the air.

The thunder of hooves followed. Rin craned her neck to look over her shoulder. Another group of riders approached the clearing, this one far larger than Bekter’s contingent. They formed a circle with their horses, surrounding them.

Their ranks parted. A slight little woman, reaching no higher than Rin’s elbow, moved through the lines.

She walked the way Chaghan and Qara did. She was delicate, birdlike, as if she were some ethereal creature for whom being anchored to the earth was a mere inconvenience. Her cloud-white hair fell just past her waist, looped in two intricate braids interwoven with what looked like shells and bone.

Her eyes were the opposite of Chaghan’s—darker than the bottom of a well, and black all the way through.

“Bow,” Qara muttered. “She is the Sorqan Sira.”

Rin ducked her head. “Their leader?”

“Our aunt.”

The Sorqan Sira clicked her tongue as she strode past Chaghan and Qara, who knelt with their eyes cast down as if in shame. Kitay she ignored completely.

She stopped in front of Rin. Her bony fingers moved over Rin’s face, gripping at her chin and cheekbones.

“How curious,” she said. Her Nikara was fluent but oddly syncopated in a way that made her words sound laced with poetry. “She looks like Hanelai.”

The name meant nothing to Rin, but the riders tensed.

“Where did they find you?” the Sorqan Sira asked. When Rin didn’t answer, she smacked her cheek lightly. “I am talking to you, girl. Speak.”

“I don’t know,” Rin said. Her knees throbbed. She wished desperately that they would let her stop kneeling.

The Sorqan Sira dug her fingernails into Rin’s cheek. “Where did they hide you? Who found you? Who protected you?”

“I don’t know,” Rin repeated. “Nowhere. No one.”

“You are lying.”

“She’s not,” Chaghan said. “She didn’t know what she was until a year ago.”

The Sorqan Sira gave Rin a long, suspicious look, but released her.

“Impossible. The Mugenese were supposed to have killed you off, but you Speerlies keep turning up like rats.”

“Chaghan has always drawn Speerlies like moths to a candle,” Bekter said. “You remember.”

“Shut up,” Chaghan said hoarsely.

Bekter smiled widely. “Remember what you wrote in your letters? The Speerly has suffered. The Mugenese were not kind. But he survived, and he is powerful.”

Was he talking about Altan? Rin fought the urge to vomit.

“He has his mind for now but he is hurting.” Bekter’s voice took on a high, mocking pitch. “But I can fix him. Give him time. Don’t make me kill him. Please.”

Chaghan jammed his elbow backward into Bekter’s stomach. In an instant Bekter seized Chaghan’s bound wrists and twisted them so far behind his back that Rin thought surely he’d broken them.

Chaghan’s mouth opened in a silent scream.

A sound like a thunderclap ricocheted through Rin’s mind. She saw the riders wince; they’d heard it, too.

“Enough of this,” said the Sorqan Sira.

Bekter released Chaghan, whose head lurched forward as if he’d been shot.

The Sorqan Sira bent down before him and brushed his hair back behind his ears, petting it softly like a mother grooming a misbehaved child.

“You’ve failed,” she said softly. “Your duty was to observe and cull when necessary. Not to join their petty wars.”

“We tried to stay neutral,” Chaghan said. “We didn’t intervene, we never—”

“Don’t lie to me. I know what you’ve done.” The Sorqan Sira stood up. “There will be no more of the Cike. We are putting an end to your mother’s little experiment.”

“Experiment?” Rin echoed. “What experiment?”

The Sorqan Sira turned toward her, eyebrows raised. “Precisely what I said. The twins’ mother, Kalagan, thought it would be unjust to deny the Nikara access to the gods. The Cike was Kalagan’s last chance. She has failed. I have decided there will be no more shamans in the Empire.”

“Oh, you’ve decided?” Rin struggled to stand up straight. She still didn’t fully understand what was happening, but she didn’t need to. The dynamic of this encounter had become abundantly clear. The riders thought her an animal to be put down. They thought they could determine who had access to the Pantheon.

The sheer arrogance of that made her want to spit.

The Sorqan Sira looked amused. “Did I upset you?”

“We don’t need your permission to exist,” she snapped.

“Yes, you do.” The Sorqan Sira cast her a disdainful smile. “You’re little children, grasping in a void that you don’t understand for toys that don’t belong to you.”

Rin wanted to slap the contempt off of her face. “The gods don’t belong to you, either.”

“But we know that. And that is the simple difference. You Nikara are the only people foolish enough to call the gods into this world. We Ketreyids would never dream of the folly your shamans commit.”

“Then that makes you cowards,” Rin said. “And just because you won’t call them down doesn’t mean that we can’t.”

The Sorqan Sira threw her head back and began to laugh—a harsh, cackling crow’s laugh. “My word. You sound just like them.”

“Who?”

“Has no one ever told you?” The Sorqan Sira grasped Rin’s face in her hands once more. Rin flinched away, but the Sorqan Sira’s fingers tightened around her cheeks. She pressed her face against Rin’s, so close that all Rin could see was those dark, obsidian eyes. “No? Then I’ll show you.”

Visions pierced Rin’s mind like knives forced into her temples.

She stood on a desert steppe, in the shadow of dunes stretching out as far as she could see. Sand whipped around her ankles. The wind struck a low and melancholy note.

She looked down at herself and saw white braids woven with shells and bone. She realized she was in the memory of a much younger Sorqan Sira. To her left she saw a young woman who had to be the twins’ mother, Kalagan—she had the same high cheekbones as Qara, the same shock of white hair as Chaghan.

Before them stood the Trifecta.

Rin stared at them in wonder.

They were so young. They couldn’t have been much older than she was. They could have been fourth-years at Sinegard.

Su Daji as a girl was already impossibly, bewitchingly beautiful. She emanated sex even when she was standing still. Rin saw it in the way she shifted her hips back and forth, the way she swept her curtain of hair over her shoulders.

To Daji’s left stood the Dragon Emperor. His face was stunningly, shockingly familiar. Sharp angles, a long straight nose, thick and somber eyebrows. Strikingly handsome, pale and perfectly sculpted in a way that didn’t seem human.

He had to be from the House of Yin.

He was a younger, gentler Vaisra. He was Nezha without his scars and Jinzha without his arrogance. His face could not be called kind; it was too severe and aristocratic. But it was an open, honest, and earnest face. A face she immediately trusted, because she couldn’t see a way that this man was capable of any evil.

She understood now what they meant in the old stories when they said that soldiers defected to him in droves and knelt at his feet. She would have followed him anywhere.

Then there was Jiang.

If she had ever doubted that her old master could possibly be the Gatekeeper, there was no mistaking his identity now. His hair, shorn close to his ears, was still the same unnatural white, his face as ageless as it had been when she’d met him.

But when he spoke, and his face twisted, he became a complete stranger.

“You don’t want to fight us on this,” he said. “You’re running out of time. I’d clear out while you still can.”

The Jiang that Rin had known was placid and cheerful, drifting through the world with a kind of detached curiosity. He spoke softly and whimsically, as if he were a curious bystander to his own conversations. But this younger Jiang had a harshness to his face that startled Rin, and every word he spoke dripped with a casual cruelty.

It’s the fury, she realized. The Jiang she knew was utterly peaceful, immune to insult. This Jiang was consumed with some kind of poisonous wrath that radiated from within.

Kalagan’s voice trembled with anger. “Our people have claimed the area north of the Baghra Desert for centuries. Your Horse Warlord has forgotten himself. This is not diplomacy, it is sheer arrogance.”

“Perhaps,” Jiang said. “You still didn’t have to dismember his son and send the fingers back to the father.”

“He dared to threaten us,” said Kalagan. “He deserved what he got.”

Jiang shrugged. “Maybe he did. I never liked that kid. But do you know what our dilemma is, dearest Kalagan? We need the Horse Warlord. We need his troops and his warhorses, and we can’t get those if they’re too busy running around the Baghra Desert fending off your arrows.”

“Then he should retreat,” said the Sorqan Sira.

Jiang inspected his fingernails. “Or perhaps we’ll make you retreat. Would it be so hard for you to just go settle somewhere else? Ketreyids are all nomads, aren’t you?”

Kalagan lifted her spear. “You dare—”

Jiang wagged a finger. “I wouldn’t.”

“Do you think this is wise, Ziya?”

A girl emerged from the ranks of the riders. She bore a remarkable resemblance to Chaghan, but she stood taller, stronger, and her face was flushed with more color.

“Get back, Tseveri,” said the Sorqan Sira, but Tseveri walked toward Jiang until they were separated by only inches.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.

“Politics, really,” Jiang said. “It’s nothing personal.”

“We taught you everything you know. Three years ago we took pity on you and took you in. We’ve sheltered you, hidden you, healed you, given you secrets no Nikara has ever obtained. Aren’t we family to you?”

She spoke to Jiang intimately, like a sister. But if Jiang was bothered, he hid it well behind a mask of amused indifference.

“Would a simple thank-you suffice?” he asked. “Or did you also want a hug?”

“Be careful who you turn your back on,” warned Tseveri. “You don’t need the Horse Warlord, not truly. You still need us. You need our wisdom. There’s so much you still don’t know—”

“I doubt it.” Jiang sneered. “I’ve had enough of playing philosopher with a people so timid they shrink from the Pantheon. I need hard power. Military might. The Horse Warlord can give us that. What can you give me? Endless conversations about the cosmos?”

“You’ve no idea how ignorant you still are.” Tseveri gave him a pitying look. “I see you’ve anchored yourselves. Did it hurt?”

Rin had no idea what that meant, but she saw Daji flinch.

“Don’t be surprised,” Tseveri said. “You’re so obviously bound. I can see it shining out of you. You think it makes you strong, but it’s going to destroy you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jiang said.

“No?” Tseveri tilted her head. “Then here’s a prophecy for you. Your bond will shatter. You will destroy one another. One will die, one will rule, and one will sleep for eternity.”

“That’s impossible,” Daji scoffed. “None of us can die. Not while the others live.”

“That’s what you think,” said Tseveri.

“Enough of this,” Riga said. Rin was stricken by how much he even sounded like Nezha. “This isn’t what we came for.”

“You came to start a war you don’t need to fight. And you ignore me at your peril.” Tseveri reached for Jiang’s hand. “Ziya. Please. Don’t do this to me.”

Jiang refused to meet her eye.

Daji yawned, making a desultory attempt to cover her mouth with the back of a dainty pale hand. “We can do this the easy way. Nobody needs to get hurt. Or we could just start fighting.”

Kalagan leveled her spear at her. “Don’t presume, little girl.”

A crackling energy charged the air. Even through the distance of memory Rin could sense how the fabric of the desert had changed. The boundaries of the material world were thinning, threatening to warp and give way to the world of spirit.

Something was happening to Jiang.

His shadow writhed madly against the bright sand. The shape was not Jiang’s own, but something terrible—a myriad of beasts, so many in size and form, shifting faster and faster, with a growing desperation, as if frantic to break free.

The beasts were in Jiang, too. Rin could see them, shadows rippling under his skin, horrible patches of black straining to get out.

Tseveri cried something in her own language—a plea or an incantation, Rin didn’t know, but it sounded like despair.

Daji laughed.

“No!” Rin shouted, but Jiang didn’t hear her—couldn’t hear her, because all of this had already come to pass. All she could do was watch helplessly as Jiang forced his hand into Tseveri’s rib cage and ripped out her still-beating heart.

Kalagan screamed.

“That’s enough,” said the present Sorqan Sira, and the last things Rin saw were Daji whipping her needles toward the Ketreyids, Jiang and his beasts pinning down the Sorqan Sira, and Riga, standing impassively, watching the carnage with that wise and caring face, arms raised beatifically as if he blessed the slaughter with his presence.

“We gave the Nikara the keys to the heavens, and they stole our land and murdered my daughter.” The Sorqan Sira’s voice was flat, emotionless, as if she were merely recounting an interesting anecdote, as if her pain had already been processed so many times she could not feel it anymore.

Rin bent over on her hands and knees, gasping. She couldn’t scrub the image of Jiang from her mind. Jiang, her master, cackling with his hands covered with blood.

“Surprised?” asked the Sorqan Sira.

“But I knew him,” Rin whispered. “I know what he’s like, he’s not like that . . .”

“How would you know what the Gatekeeper is like?” The Sorqan Sira sneered. “Have you ever asked him about his past? Did you have any idea?”

The worst part was that it all made sense—the truth had dawned on Rin, awful and bitter, and the mystery of Jiang was clear to her now; she knew why he’d fled, why he’d hidden in the Chuluu Korikh.

He must have been starting to remember.

The man she had met at Sinegard had been no more than a shade of a person; a pathetic, affable shade of a personality suppressed. He had not been pretending. She was certain of that. No one could pretend that well.

He had simply not known. The Seal had stolen his memories, just like it would one day steal hers, and hidden them behind a wall in his mind.

Was it better now that he remained in his stone prison, suspended halfway between amnesia and sanity?

“You see now. You’ll understand if we’d rather put an end to you.” The Sorqan Sira nodded to Bekter.

Her unspoken command rang clear in Rin’s mind. Kill them.

“Wait!” Rin struggled to her feet. “Please—you don’t have to—”

“I don’t entertain begging, girl.”

“I’m not begging, I’m bartering,” Rin said quickly. “We have the same enemy. You want Daji dead. You want revenge. Yes? So do I. Kill us, and you’ve lost an ally.”

The Sorqan Sira scoffed. “We can kill the Vipress easily enough ourselves.”

“No, you can’t. If you could, she’d be dead already. You’re scared of her.” Rin thought frantically as she spoke, spinning an argument together from thin air. “In twenty years you haven’t even ventured south, haven’t attempted to take back your lands. Why? Because you know the Vipress will destroy you. You’ve lost to her before. You don’t dare to face her again.”

The Sorqan Sira’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Rin felt a desperate stab of hope. If her words angered the Ketreyids, that meant she had touched on a fragment of the truth. It meant she still had a chance of convincing them.

“But you’ve seen what I can do,” she continued. “You know that I could fight her, because you know what Speerlies are capable of. I’ve faced the Empress before. Set me free, and I’ll fight your battles for you.”

The Sorqan Sira shot Chaghan a question in her own language. They conversed for a moment. Chaghan’s words sounded hesitant and deferential; the Sorqan Sira’s harsh and angry. Their eyes darted once in a while to Kitay, who shifted uncomfortably, confused.

“She will do it,” Chaghan said finally in Nikara. “She won’t have a choice.”

“I’ll do what?” Rin asked.

They ignored her to keep arguing.

“This is not worth the risk,” Bekter interrupted. “Mother, you know this. Speerlies go mad faster than the rest.”

Chaghan shook his head. “Not this one. She’s stable.”

“No Speerlies are stable,” said Bekter.

“She fought it,” Chaghan insisted. “She’s off opium. She hasn’t touched it in months.”

“An adult Speerly who doesn’t smoke?” The Sorqan Sira cocked her head. “That’d be a first.” Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the Findɴovel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“It makes no difference,” Bekter said. “The Phoenix will take her. It always does. Better to kill her now—”

Chaghan spoke over him, appealing directly to his aunt. “I have seen her at her worst. If the Phoenix could, then it would have already.”

“He’s lying,” Bekter snarled. “Look at him, he’s pathetic, he’s protecting them even now—”

“Enough,” said the Sorqan Sira. “I’ll have the truth for myself.”

Again, she grasped the sides of Rin’s face. “Look at me.”

Her eyes seemed different this time. They had become dark and hollow expanses, windows into an abyss that Rin did not want to see. Rin let out an involuntary whine, but the Sorqan Sira’s fingers tightened under her jaws. “Look.”

Rin felt herself pitching forward into that darkness. The Sorqan Sira wasn’t forcing a vision into her mind, she was forcing Rin to dredge one up herself. Memories loomed before her, haphazard and jagged fragments of visions that she’d done her best to bury. She was wrought in a sea of fire, she was pitching backward into black water, she was kneeling at Altan’s feet, blood pooling in her mouth.

The Seal loomed over her.

It had grown. It was thrice as large as she had last seen it, an expanded and hypnotic array of colors, swirling and pulsing like a heartbeat, arranged like a character she still could not recognize.

Rin could feel Daji’s presence inside it—sickening, addictive, seductive. Whispers sounded all about her, as if Daji were murmuring into her ear, promising her wonderful things.

I’ll take you away from this. I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ll give him back to you.

You only have to give in.

“What is this?” the Sorqan Sira murmured.

Rin couldn’t answer.

The Sorqan Sira let go of her face.

Rin dropped to her knees, hands splayed against solid ground. The sun spun in circles above her.

It took her a moment to realize the Sorqan Sira was laughing.

“She’s afraid of you,” the Sorqan Sira whispered. “Su Daji is afraid of you.”

“I don’t understand,” Rin said.

“This changes everything.” The Sorqan Sira barked a command. The riders standing nearest Rin seized her by the arms and hoisted her to her feet.

“What are you doing?” Rin struggled against their grip. “You can’t kill me, you still need me—”

“Oh, child. We are not going to kill you.” The Sorqan Sira reached out and stroked the backs of her fingers down Rin’s cheek. “We are going to fix you.”

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