The Poppy War (The Poppy War Trilogy #1)
The Poppy War: Part 2 – Chapter 10

The Emperor Ryohai had now patrolled the eastern Nikara border in the Nariin Sea for twelve nights. The Ryohai was a lightly built ship, an elegant Federation model designed for slicing quickly through choppy waters. It carried few soldiers; its deck wasn’t large enough to hold a battalion. It wasn’t doing reconnaissance. No courier birds circled the flagless masthead; no spies left the ship under the cover of the ocean mist.

The only thing the Ryohai did was flit fretfully around the shoreline, pacing back and forth over still waters like an anxious housewife. Waiting for something. Someone.

The crew spent their days in silence. The Ryohai carried only a skeleton crew: the captain, a few deckhands, and a small contingent from the Federation Armed Forces. It bore one esteemed guest: General Gin Seiryu, grand marshal of the Armed Forces and esteemed adviser to Emperor Ryohai himself. And it bore one visitor, one Nikara who had lurked in the shadows of the hold since the Ryohai had crossed into the waters of the Nariin Sea.

Cike commander Tyr was good at being invisible. In this state, he did not need to eat or sleep. Absorbed in the shadow, shrouded in darkness, he hardly needed to breathe.

He found the passing days irksome only due to boredom, but he had maintained longer vigils than this one. He had waited a week in the bedroom closet of the Dragon Warlord. He had spent an entire month ensconced under the floorboards beneath the feet of the leaders of the Republic of Hesperia.

Now he waited for the men aboard the Ryohai to reveal their purpose.

Tyr had been surprised when he received orders from Sinegard to infiltrate a Federation ship. For years the Cike had operated only within the Empire, killing off dissidents the Empress found particularly troublesome. The Empress did not send the Cike overseas—not since her disastrous attempt to assassinate the young Emperor Ryohai, which had ended with two dead operatives and another driven so mad he had to be carted off, screaming, to a plinth in the stone prison.

But Tyr’s duty was not to question but to obey. He crouched inside the shadow, unperceived by all. He waited.

It was a still, windless night. It was a night heavy with secrets.

It had been a night like this one, so many decades ago, when the moon was full and resplendent in the sky, that Tyr’s master had first taken him deep into the underground tunnels where light would never touch. His master had guided him around one winding turn after another, spinning him about in the darkness so that he could not keep a map in his head of the underground labyrinth.

When they’d reached the heart of the spider’s web, Tyr’s master had abandoned him within. Find your way out, he had ordered Tyr. If the goddess takes you, she will guide you. If she does not, you will perish.

Tyr had never resented his master for leaving him in the darkness. Such was how things must be. Still, his fear had been real and urgent. He had lingered in the airless tunnels for days in a panic. First had come the thirst. Then the hunger. When he tripped over objects in the darkness, objects that clattered and echoed about him, he knew they were bones.

How many apprentices had been sent into the same underground maze? How many had emerged?

Only one in Tyr’s generation. Tyr’s shamanic line remained pure and strong through the proven ability of its successors, and only a survivor could be instilled with the gifts of the goddess to pass down to the next generation. The fact that Tyr was given this chance meant that every apprentice before him had tried and failed, and died.

Tyr had been so scared then.

He was not scared now.

Now, aboard the ship, the darkness took him once more, just as it had thirty years ago. Tyr was swathed in it, an unborn infant in his mother’s womb. To pray to his goddess was to regress to that primordial state before infancy, when the world was quiet. Nothing could see him. Nothing could harm him.

The schooner made its way across the midnight sea, sailing skittishly, like a little child doing something that it shouldn’t. The tiny boat wasn’t a part of the Nikara fleet. All identifying marks had been clumsily chipped off its hull.

But it sailed from the direction of the Nikara shore. Either the schooner had taken a very long and convoluted route to meet with the Ryohai in order to fool an assassin that the Ryohai didn’t know it had on board, or it was a Nikara vessel.

Tyr crouched behind the masthead, spyglass trained on the schooner’s deck.

When he stepped out of the darkness, he experienced a sudden vertigo. This happened more and more often now, whenever he had waited in shadows for too long. It became harder to walk in the world of the material, to detach himself from his goddess.

Careful, he warned himself, or you won’t be able to come back.

He knew what would happen then. He would become a spouting, unstoppable conduit for the gods, a gate to the spirit realm without a lock. He would be a foaming, useless, seizing vessel, and someone would cart him off to the Chuluu Korikh, where he couldn’t do any harm. Someone would register his name in the Wheels and watch him sink into the stone prison the way he’d imprisoned so many of his own subordinates.

He remembered his first visit to the Chuluu Korikh, when he had immured his own master in the mountain. Stood before him, face-to-face, as the stone walls closed around his master’s mien: Eyes closed. Sleeping but not dead.

The day would come soon when he would go mad if he left, and madder still if he didn’t. But that was the fate that awaited the men and women of the Cike. To be an Empress’s assassin meant early death or madness, or both.

Tyr had thought he might still have one or two more decades, as his master had before he’d relinquished the goddess to Tyr. He thought he still had a solid period of time to train an initiate and teach them to walk the void. But he was following his goddess’s timeline, and he had no say in when she would ultimately call him back.

I should have chosen an apprentice. I should have chosen one of my people.

Five years ago he’d thought he might choose the Seer of the Cike, that thin child from the Hinterlands. But Chaghan was so frail and bizarre, even for his people. Chaghan would have commanded like a demon. He would have achieved utter obedience from his underlings, but only because he would have taken away their free will. Chaghan would have shattered minds.

Tyr’s new lieutenant, the boy sent to him from the Academy, made a far better candidate. The boy was already slated to command the Cike when the time came that Tyr was no longer fit to lead.

But the boy already had a god of his own. And the gods were selfish.

The schooner halted under the Ryohai’s shadow. A solitary cloaked figure climbed into a rowboat and crossed the narrow distance between the two ships.

The Ryohai’s captain ordered ropes to be lowered. He and half the crew stood on the main deck, waiting for the Nikara contingent to come aboard.

Two deckhands helped the cloaked figure onto the deck.

She pulled the dark hood off her head and shook out a mass of long, shimmering hair. Hair like obsidian. Skin of a mineral whiteness that shone like the moon itself. Lips like freshly spilled blood.

The Empress Su Daji was on this ship.

Tyr was so surprised he nearly stumbled out of the shadows.

Why was she here? His first thought was absurdly petty—did she not trust him to take care of this on his own?

Something had to have gone wrong. Was she here of her own volition? Had the Federation compelled her to come?

Or had his own orders changed?

Tyr’s mind raced frantically, wondering how to react. He could act now, kill the soldiers before they could hurt the Empress. But Daji knew he was here—she would have signaled him if she wanted the Federation men dead.

He was to wait, then—wait and watch what Daji’s play was.

“Your Highness.” General Gin Seiryu was a massive soldier, a giant among men. He towered over the Empress. “You have been long in coming. The Emperor Ryohai grows impatient with you.”

“I am not Ryohai’s dog to command.” Daji’s voice resounded across the ship—cool and clear as ice, sharp as knives. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ Findɴovel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

A circle of soldiers formed around Daji, closing her in with the general. But Daji stood tall, chin raised, betraying no fear.

“But you will be summoned,” the general said harshly. “The Emperor Ryohai grows irritated with your dallying. Your advantages are dwindling. You hold precious few cards, and this you know. You should be glad the Emperor has deigned to speak to you at all.”

Daji’s lip curled. “His Excellency is certainly gracious.”

“Enough of this banter. Speak your piece.”

“All in due time,” Daji said calmly. “But first, another matter to attend to.”

And she looked directly into the shadows where Tyr stood. “Good. You’re here.”

Tyr took that for his signal.

Knives raised, he rushed from the shadows—only to stumble to his knees as Daji arrested him with her gaze.

He choked, unable to speak. His limbs were numb, frozen; it was all he could do to remain upright. Daji had the power of hypnosis, he knew, but never had she used it on him.

All thoughts were pushed from his mind. All he could think about were her eyes. They were at first large, luminous and black; and then they were yellow like a snake’s, with narrow pupils that drew him in like a mother grasping at her baby, like a cruel imitation of his own goddess.

And like his goddess, she was so beautiful. So very beautiful.

Transfixed, Tyr lowered his knives.

Visions danced before him. Her great yellow eyes pulsed in his gaze; suddenly gigantic, they filled his entire field of sight to the periphery, drew him into her world.

He saw shapes without names. He saw colors beyond description. He saw faceless women dancing through vermilion and cobalt, bodies curved like the silk ribbons they spun in their hands. Then, as her prey was entranced, the Vipress slammed down into him with her fangs and flooded him with poison.

The psychospiritual assault was devastating and immediate.

She shattered Tyr’s world like glass, like he existed in a mirror and she had dashed it against a sharp corner, and he was arrested in the moment of breaking so that it was not over in seconds but took place over eons. Somewhere a shriek began and grew higher and higher in pitch, and did not stop. The Vipress’s eyes turned a colorless white that bored into his vision and turned everything into pain. Tyr sought refuge in the shadows, but his goddess was nowhere, and those hypnotic eyes were everywhere. Everywhere he turned, the eyes looked upon him; the great Snake hissed, her gaze trained on him, boring into him, paralyzing him—

Tyr called out for his goddess again, but still she was silent, she had been driven away by a power that was infinitely stronger than darkness itself.

Su Daji had channeled something older than the Empire. Something as old as time.

Tyr’s world ceased to spin. He and the Empress drifted alone together in the eye of the hurricane of colors, stabilized only by her generosity. He took a form again, and so did she; no longer a viper but a goddess in the shape of Su Daji, the woman.

“Do not resent me for this. There are forces at play you could not possibly understand, against which your life is irrelevant.” Although she appeared mortal, her voice came from everywhere, originated within him, vibrated in his bones. It was the only thing that existed, until she relented and let him speak.

“Why are you doing this?” Tyr whispered.

“Prey do not question the motives of the predator,” hissed the thing that was not Su Daji. “The dead do not question the living. Mortals do not challenge the gods.”

“I killed for you,” Tyr said. “I would have done anything for you.”

“I know,” she said, and stroked his face. She spoke with a casual sorrow, and for an instant she sounded like the Empress again. The colors dimmed. “You were fools.”

She pushed him off the ship.

The pain of drowning, Tyr realized, came in the struggle. But he could not struggle. He was every part of him paralyzed, unable to blink even to shut his eyes against the stinging assault of salt water.

Tyr could do nothing then but die.

He sank back into the darkness. Back into the deep, where sounds could not be heard, sights could not be seen, where nothing could be felt, where nothing lived.

Back into the soft stillness of the womb.

Back to his mother. Back to his goddess.

The death of a shaman did not go unnoticed in the world of spirit. The shattering of Tyr sent a psychospiritual shock wave across the realm of things unknown.

It was felt far away in the peaks of the Wudang Mountains, where the Night Castle stood hidden from the world. It was felt by the Seer of the Bizarre Children, the lost son of the last true khan of the Hinterlands.

The pale Seer traversed the spirit plane as easily as passing through a door, and when he looked for his commander he saw only darkness and the shattered outline of what had once been human. He saw, on the horizon of things yet to come, a land covered in smoke and fire. He saw a battalion of ships crossing the narrow strait. He saw the beginning of a war.

“What do you see?” asked Altan Trengsin.

The white-haired Seer tilted his head to the sky, exposing long, jagged scars running down the sides of his pale neck. He uttered a harsh, cackling laugh.

“He’s gone,” he said. “He’s really gone.”

Altan’s fingers tightened on the Seer’s shoulder.

The Seer’s eyes flew open. Behind thin eyelids there was nothing but white. No pupils, no irises, no spot of color. Only a pale mountain landscape, like freshly fallen snow, like nothingness itself. “There has been a Hexagram.”

“Tell me,” Altan said.

The Seer turned to face him. “I see the truth of three things. One: we stand on the verge of war.”

“This we’ve known,” Altan said, but the Seer cut him off.

“Two: we have an enemy whom we love.”

Altan stiffened.

“Three: Tyr is lost.”

Altan swallowed hard. “What does that mean?”

The Seer took his hand. Brought it to his lips and kissed it.

“I have seen the end of things,” he said. “The shape of the world has changed. The gods now walk in men as they have not for a long, long time. Tyr will not return. The Bizarre Children answer to you now, and you alone.”

Altan exhaled slowly. He felt a tremendous sense of both grief and relief. He had no commander. No. He was the commander.

Tyr cannot stop me now, he thought.

Tyr’s death was felt by the Gatekeeper himself, who had lingered all these years, not quite dead but not quite alive, ensconced in the shell of a mortal but not mortal himself.

The Gatekeeper was broken and confused, and he had forgotten much of who he was, but one thing he would never forget was the stain of the Vipress’s venom.

The Gatekeeper felt her ancient power dissipate into the void that both separated them and brought them together. And he raised his head to the sky and knew that an enemy had returned.

It was felt by the young apprentice at Sinegard who meditated alone when her classmates slept. Who frowned at the disturbance she felt acutely but did not understand.

Who wondered, as she constantly did, what would happen if she disobeyed her master, swallowed the poppy seed, and traversed to commune again with the gods.

If she did more than commune. If she pulled one back down with her.

For although she was forbidden from calling the Phoenix, that did not stop the Phoenix from calling upon her.

Soon, whispered the Phoenix in her sleep. Soon you will call on me for my power, and when the time comes, you will not be able to resist. Soon you will ignore the warnings of the Woman and the Gatekeeper and fall into my fiery embrace.

I can make you great. I can make you a legend.

She tried to resist.

She tried to empty her mind, like Jiang had taught her; she tried to clear the anger and the fire from her head.

She found that she couldn’t.

She found that she didn’t want to.

On the first day of the seventh month, another border skirmish erupted, between the Eighteenth Battalion of the Federation Armed Forces and the Nikara patrol in Horse Province bordering the Hinterlands to the north. After six hours of combat, the parties reached a cease-fire. They passed the night in an uneasy truce.

On the second day, a Federation soldier did not report for morning patrol. After a thorough search of the camp, the Federation general at the border city of Muriden demanded the Nikara general open the gates of his camp to be searched.

The Nikara general refused.

On the third day, Emperor Ryohai of the Federation of Mugen issued by courier pigeon a formal demand to the Empress Su Daji for the return of his soldier at Muriden.

The Empress called the Twelve Warlords to her throne at Sinegard and deliberated for seventy-two hours.

On the sixth day, the Empress formally replied that Ryohai could go fuck himself.

On the seventh day, the Federation of Mugen declared war on the Empire of Nikan. Across the longbow island, women wept tears of joy and purchased likenesses of Emperor Ryohai to hang in their homes, men enlisted to serve in the reserve forces, and children ran in the streets screaming with the celebratory bloodlust of a nation at war.

On the eighth day, a battalion of Federation soldiers landed at the port of Muriden and decimated the city. When resisted by province Militia, they ordered that all the males in Muriden, children and babies included, be rounded up and shot.

The women were spared only by the Federation army’s haste to move inland. The battalion looted the villages as it went, seized grain and transport animals for their own. What they could not take with them, they killed. They needed no supply lines. They took from the land as they traveled. They marched across the heartland on a warpath to the capital.

On the thirteenth day, a courier eagle reached the office of Jima Lain at the Academy. It read simply:

Horse Province has fallen. Mugen comes for Sinegard.

“It’s sort of exciting, really,” Kitay said.

“Yes,” said Rin. “We’re about to be invaded by our centuries-old enemy after they breached a peace treaty that has maintained a fragile geopolitical stability for two decades. So very exciting.”

“At least now we know we have job security,” said Kitay. “Everyone wants more soldiers.”

“Could you be a little less glib about this?”

“Could you be less depressing?”

“Could we move a bit faster?” asked the magistrate.

Rin and Kitay glanced at each other.

Both of them would rather have been doing anything other than aiding the civilian evacuation effort. Since Sinegard was too far north for comfort, the Empire’s bureaucracy was moving to a wartime capital in the city of Golyn Niis to the south.

By the time the Federation battalion arrived, Sinegard would be nothing but a ghost city. A city of soldiers. In theory, this meant that Rin and Kitay had the incredibly important job of ensuring that the central leadership of the Empire survived even if the capital didn’t.

In practice, this meant dealing with very fat, very annoying city bureaucrats.

Kitay tried to hoist the last crate up into the wagon and promptly staggered under the weight. “What’s in this?” he demanded, wobbling as he tried to balance the crate on his hip.

Rin hastily reached down and helped Kitay ease the crate up onto the wagon, which was already teetering from the weight of the magistrate’s many possessions.

“My teapots,” said the magistrate. “See how I marked the side? Careful not to let it tilt.”

“Your teapots,” Kitay repeated incredulously. “Your teapots are a priority right now.”

“They were a gift to my father from the Dragon Emperor, may his soul rest in peace.” The magistrate surveyed the top-heavy wagon. “Oh, that reminds me—don’t forget the vase on the patio.”

He looked imploringly at Rin.

She was dazed from the afternoon heat, exhausted from hours of packing the magistrate’s entire estate into several ill-prepared moving vehicles. She noticed in her stupor that the magistrate’s jowls quivered hilariously when he spoke. Under different circumstances she might have pointed that out to Kitay. Under different circumstances, Kitay might have laughed.

The magistrate gestured again to the vase. “Be careful with that, will you? It’s as old as the Red Emperor. You might want to strap it down to the back of the wagon.”

Rin stared at him in disbelief.

“Sir?” Kitay asked.

The magistrate turned to look at him. “What?”

With a grunt, Kitay raised the crate over his head and flung it to the ground. It landed on the dirt with a hard thud, not the tremendous crash Rin had rather been hoping for. The wooden lid of the crate popped off. Out rolled several very nice porcelain teapots, glazed with a lovely flower pattern. Despite their tumble, they looked unbroken.

Then Kitay took to them with a slab of wood.

When he was done smashing them, he pushed his wiry curls out of his face and whirled on the sweating magistrate, who cringed in his seat as if afraid Kitay might start smashing at him, too.

“We are at war,” Kitay said. “And you are being evacuated because for gods know what reason, you’ve been deemed important to this country’s survival. So do your job. Reassure your people. Help us maintain order. Do not pack your fucking teapots.”

Within days, the Academy was transformed from a campus to a military encampment. The grounds were overrun with green-clad soldiers from the Eighth Division of the nearby Ram Province, and the students were absorbed into their number.

The Militia soldiers were a stoic, curt crowd. They took on the Academy students begrudgingly, all the while making it very clear that they thought the students had no place in the war.

“It’s a superiority issue,” Kitay speculated later. “Most of the soldiers were never at Sinegard. It’s like being told to work with someone who in three years would have been your superior officer, even though you have a decade of combat experience on them.”

“They don’t have combat experience, either,” said Rin. “We’ve fought no wars in the last two decades. They know less of what they’re doing than we do.”

Kitay couldn’t argue with that.

At least the arrival of the Eighth Division meant the return of Raban, who was tasked with evacuating the first-year students out of the city, along with the civilians.

“But I want to fight!” protested a student who barely came up to Rin’s shoulder.

“Fat lot of good you’ll do,” Raban answered.

The first-year stuck out his chin. “Sinegard is my home. I’ll defend it. I’m not a little kid, I don’t have to be herded out like all those terrified women and children.”

“You are defending Sinegard. You’re protecting its inhabitants. All those women and children? You’re in charge of their safety. Your job is to make sure they get to the mountain pass. That’s quite a serious task.” Raban caught Rin’s eye as he shepherded the first-years out of the main gate.

“I’m scared some of the younger ones are going to sneak back in,” he told her quietly.

“You’ve got to admire them,” said Rin. “Their city’s about to be invaded and their first thought is to defend it.”

“They’re being stupid,” said Raban. He spoke with none of his usual patience. He looked exhausted. “This is not the time for heroism. This is war. If they stay, they’re dead.”

Escape plans were made for the students. In case the city fell, they were to flee down the little-known ravine on the other side of the valley to join the rest of the civilians in a mountain hideout where they couldn’t be reached by the Federation battalions. This plan did not include the masters.

“Jima doesn’t think we can win,” said Kitay. “She and the faculty are going to go down with the school.”

“Jima’s just being cautious,” said Raban, trying to lift their spirits. “Sunzi said to plan for every contingency, right?”

“Sunzi also said that when you cross a river, you should burn the bridges so that your army can’t entertain thoughts of retreating,” said Kitay. “This sounds a lot like retreating to me.”

“Prudence is different from cowardice,” said Raban. “And besides, Sunzi also wrote that you should never attack a cornered foe. They’ll fight harder than any man thinks possible. Because a cornered enemy has nothing to lose.”

The days seemed to both stretch for an eternity and disappear before anything could get done. Rin had the uncomfortable sense that they were just waiting around for the enemy to land on their front porch. At the same time she felt frantically underprepared, as if battle preparations were not being done quickly enough.

“I wonder what a Federation soldier looks like,” Kitay said as they descended the mountain to pick up sharpened weapons from the armory.

“They have arms and legs, I’m guessing. Maybe even a head.”

“No, I mean, what do they look like?” Kitay asked. “Like Nikara? All of the Federation came from the eastern continent. They’re not like Hesperians, so they must look somewhat normal.”

Rin couldn’t see why this was relevant. “Does it matter?”

“Don’t you want to see the face of the enemy?” Kitay asked.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “Because then I might think they’re human. And they’re not human. We’re talking about the people who gave opium to toddlers the last time they invaded. The people who massacred Speer.”

“Maybe they’re more human than we realize,” said Kitay. “Has anyone ever stopped to ask what the Federation want? Why is it that they must fight us?”

“Because they’re crammed on that tiny island and they think Nikan should be theirs. Because they fought us before and they almost won,” Rin said curtly. “What does it matter? They’re coming, and we’re staying, and at the end of the day whoever is alive is the side that wins. War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.”

All classes at Sinegard ceased to meet. The masters resumed positions they had retired from decades ago. Irjah took over strategic command of the Sinegardian Reserve Forces. Enro and her apprentices returned to the city’s central hospital to set up a triage center. Jima assumed martial command over the city, a position she shared with the Ram Warlord. This involved, in parts, shouting at city officials and at obstinate squadron leaders.

The outlook was grim. The Eighth Division was three thousand men strong, hardly enough to take on the reported invading force of ten thousand. The Ram Warlord had sent for reinforcements from the Third Division, which was returning from patrol up north by the Hinterlands, but the Third was unlikely to arrive before the Federation did.

Jiang was rarely available. He was always either in Jima’s office going over contingency plans with Irjah, or not on campus at all. When Rin finally managed to track him down, he seemed harried and impatient. She had to run to keep up with him on his way down the steps.

“We’re putting lessons on hiatus,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s no time for that now. I can’t devote the time to train you properly.”

He made to brush past her, but she grabbed his sleeve. “Master, I wanted to ask—what if we called the gods? I mean, against the Federation?”

“What are you talking about?” He seemed faintly aghast. “Now is hardly the time for this.”

“Surely there are battle applications to what we’ve been studying,” she pressed.

“We’ve been studying how to consult the gods,” he said. “Not how to bring them back down to earth.”

“But they could help us fight!”

“What? No. No.” He flapped his hands, growing visibly agitated as he spoke. “Have you not listened to a word I’ve said these past two years? I told you, the gods are not weapons you can just dust off and use. The gods won’t be summoned into battle.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “I’ve read the reports from the Red Emperor’s crusades. I know the monks summoned gods against him. And the tribes of the Hinterlands—”

“The Hinterlanders consult the gods for healing. They seek guidance and enlightenment,” Jiang interrupted. “They do not call the gods down onto earth, because they know better. Every war we’ve fought with the aid of the gods, we’ve won at a terrible consequence. There is a price. There is always a price.”

“Then what’s the point?” she snapped. “Why learn Lore at all?”

His expression then was terrible. He looked as he had that day Sunzi the pig was slaughtered, when she told him she wanted to pledge Strategy. He looked wounded. Betrayed.

“The point of every lesson does not have to be to destroy,” he said. “I taught you Lore to help you find balance. I taught you so that you would understand how the universe is more than what we perceive. I didn’t teach you so that you could weaponize it.”

“The gods—”

“The gods will not be used at our beck and call. The gods are so far out of our realm of understanding that any attempt to weaponize them can only end in disaster.”

“What about the Phoenix?”

Jiang stopped walking. “Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.”

“The god of the Speerlies,” said Rin. “Each time it has been called, it has answered. If we could just . . .”

Jiang looked pained. “You know what happened to the Speerlies.”

“But they were channeling fire long before the Second Poppy War! They practiced shamanism for centuries! The power—”

“The power would consume you,” Jiang said harshly. “That’s what fire does. Why do you think the Speerlies never won back their freedom? You’d think a race like that wouldn’t have remained subordinate for long. They would have conquered all of Nikan, if their power were sustainable. How come they never revolted against the Empire? The fire killed them, Rin, just as it empowered them. It drove them mad, it robbed them of their ability to think for themselves, until all they knew to do was fight and destroy as they had been ordered. The Speerlies were obsessed with their own power, and as long as the Emperor gave them free license to run rampant with their bloodlust, there was very little they cared about. The Speerlies were collectively deluded. They called the fire, yes, but they are hardly worth emulating. The Red Emperor was cruel and ruthless, but even he had the good sense never to train shamans in his Militia, outside of the Speerlies. Treating the gods as weapons only ever spells death.”

“We’re at war! We might die anyway. So maybe calling the gods gives us a fighting chance. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You’re so young,” he said softly. “You have no idea.”

After that, Rin saw neither hide nor hair of Jiang on campus at all. Rin knew he was deliberately avoiding her, as he had before her Trials, as he did whenever he didn’t want to have a conversation. She found this incredibly frustrating.

You’re so young.

That was even more frustrating.

She wasn’t so young that she didn’t know her country was at war. Not so young that she hadn’t been tasked to defend it.

Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.

Sinegard’s time was running out. Scouts reported daily that the Federation force was almost on their doorstep.

Rin couldn’t sleep, though she desperately needed to. Each time she closed her eyes, anxiety crushed her like an avalanche. During the day her head swam with exhaustion and her eyes burned, yet she could not calm herself enough to rest. She tried meditating, but terror plagued her mind; her heart raced and her breath contracted with fear.

At night, when she lay alone in the darkness, she heard over and over the call of the Phoenix. It plagued her dreams, whispered seductively to her from the other realm. The temptation was so great that it nearly drove her mad.

I will keep you sane, Jiang had promised.

But he had not kept her sane. He had shown her a great power, a tantalizingly wonderful power strong enough to protect her city and country, and then he had forbidden her from accessing it.

Rin obeyed, because he was her master, and the allegiance between master and apprentice still meant something, even in times of war.

But that didn’t stop her from going into his garden when she knew he was not on campus, and shoving several handfuls of poppy seeds in her front pocket.

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