The Poppy War (The Poppy War Trilogy #1)
The Poppy War: Part 3 – Chapter 24

She woke in darkness. She was lying on a flat, swaying surface—a wagon? A ship? Though she was certain her eyes were open, she could see nothing. Had she been sealed inside something, or was it simply nighttime? She had no idea how much time had passed. She tried to move and discovered that she was bound: hands tied tightly behind her back, legs strapped together. She tried to sit up, and the muscles around her left shoulder screamed in pain. She choked back a whimper and lay down until the throbbing subsided.

Then she tried moving horizontally instead. Her legs were stiff; the one she lay on was numb from lack of blood flow, and when she shifted so that it would regain feeling, it hurt like a thousand needles were being slowly inserted into her foot. She could not move her legs separately so she writhed back and forth like a worm, inching about until her feet kicked against the sides of something. She pushed against it and writhed the other way.

She was sure now that she was in a wagon.

With great effort she pulled herself to a sitting position. The top of her head bumped against something scratchy. A canvas sheet. Or a tarp? Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see that it was not dark outside after all; the wagon cover simply blocked out the sunlight.

She strained against the tarp until a crack of light flooded in through the side. Trembling with effort, she pressed her eye to the slit.

It took her a while to comprehend what she saw.

The road looked like something out of a dream. It was as if a great gust of wind had blown through a small city, turning households inside out, distributing the contents at random on the grass by the trail. A pair of ornate wooden chairs lay tipped over next to a set of woolen stockings. A dining table sat beside a carved chess set, jade pieces scattered across the dirt. Paintings. Toys. Entire trunks of clothing lay open by the roadside. She saw a wedding dress. A matching set of silken sleepwear.

It was a trail of fleeing villagers. Whatever Nikara had lived in this area, they had long gone, and they had flung things by the roadside as they became too heavy to carry. As desperation for survival outweighed their attachment to their possessions, the Nikara had dropped off their belongings one by one.

Was this Feylen’s doing, or the Federation’s? Rin’s stomach curdled at the idea that she might be responsible for this. But if the Wind God had indeed caused this destruction, then he had long moved on. The air was calm when they rode, and no freak winds or tornadoes materialized to rip them to pieces.

Perhaps he was wreaking havoc on the world elsewhere. Perhaps he had fled north to bide his time, to heal and adjust to his long-awaited freedom. Who could predict the will of a god?

Had the Federation razed Tikany to the ground yet? Had the Fangs heard rumors of the advancing army early enough to run before the Federation tore their village apart? What about Kesegi?

She thought the Federation soldiers might loot the debris. But they were moving so fast that the officers yelled at their troops when they stopped to pick things up. Wherever they were going, they wanted to get there soon.

Among the abandoned chests and furniture, Rin saw a man sitting by the road. He slouched beside a bamboo carrying pole, the kind farmers used to balance buckets of water for irrigation. He had fashioned a large sign out of the back of a painting, on which he’d scrawled in messy calligraphy FIVE INGOTS.

“Two girls,” he said in a slow chant. “Two girls, healthy girls, for sale.”

Two toddlers peered out over the tops of the wooden buckets. They stared wonderingly at the passing soldiers. One noticed Rin peeking out from under the tarp, and she blinked her luminous eyes in uncomprehending curiosity. She lifted her tiny fingers and waved at them, just as a soldier shouted out in excitement.

Rin shrank back into the wagon. Tears leaked out the sides of her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. She squeezed her eyes shut. She did not want to see what became of those girls.

“Rin?”

For the first time she noticed that Altan was curled up in the other corner of the wagon. She could barely see him under the darkness of the tarp. She inched clumsily toward him like a caterpillar.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“I can’t tell,” she said. “But we’re nowhere near the Kukhonin range. We’re traveling over flat roads.”

“We’re in a wagon?”

“I think so. I don’t know how many of them there are.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll get us out. I’m going to burn through these ropes,” he announced. “Get back.”

She wriggled to the other side of the wagon just as Altan ignited a small flame from his arms. His bonds caught fire at the edges, began slowly to blacken.

Smoke filled the wagon. Rin’s eyes teared up; she could not stop herself from coughing. Minutes passed.

“Just a bit longer,” Altan said.

The smoke curled off the rope in thick tendrils. Rin glanced about the tarp, panicked. If the smoke didn’t escape out the sides, they might suffocate before Altan broke through his bonds. But if it did . . .

She heard shouting above her. The language was Mugini but the commands were too terse and abrupt for her to translate.

Someone yanked the tarp off.

Altan’s flames exploded into full force, just as a soldier drenched him with an entire bucket full of water. A great sizzling noise filled the air.

Altan screamed.

Someone clamped a damp cloth over Rin’s mouth. She kicked and struggled, holding her breath, but they jabbed something sharp into her bruised shoulder and she could not help inhaling sharply in pain. Then her nostrils filled with the sweet smell of gas.

Lights. Lights so bright they hurt like knives jabbing into her eyes. Rin tried to squirm away from the source, but nothing happened. For a moment she thrashed in vain, terrified that she’d been paralyzed, until she realized she was tied down with restraints. Strapped to some flat bed. Rin’s peripheral vision was limited to the top half of the room. If she strained, she could just see Altan’s head adjacent to hers.

Rin’s eyes darted around in terror. Shelves filled the sides of the room. They brimmed with jars that contained feet, heads, organs, and fingers, all meticulously labeled. A massive glass chamber stood in the corner. Inside was the body of an adult man. Rin stared at him for a minute before she realized the man was long dead; it was only a corpse that was being preserved in chemicals, like pickled vegetables. His eyes were still frozen in an expression of horror; mouth wide in an underwater scream. The label at the top of the jar read in fine, neat handwriting: Nikara Man, 32.

The jars on the shelves were labeled similarly. Liver, Nikara Child, 12. Lungs, Nikara Woman, 51. She wondered dully if that was how she would end up, neatly parceled in this operating room. Nikara Woman, 19.

“I’m back.” Altan had awoken beside her. His voice was a dry whisper. “I never thought I’d be back.”

Rin’s insides twisted with dread. “Where are we?”

“Please,” Altan said. “Don’t make me explain this to you.”

She knew, then, exactly where they were.

Chaghan’s words echoed in her mind.

After the First Poppy War, the Federation became obsessed with your people . . . They spent the decades in between the Poppy Wars kidnapping Speerlies, experimenting on them, trying to figure out what made them special.

The Federation soldiers had brought them to that same research facility that Altan had been abducted to as a child. The place that had left him with a crippling addiction to opium. The place that had been liberated by the Hesperians. The place that should have been destroyed after the Second Poppy War.

Snake Province must have fallen, she realized with a sinking feeling. The Federation had occupied more ground than she’d feared.

The Hesperians were long gone. The Federation was back. The monsters had returned to their lair.

“You know the worst part?” Altan said. “We’re so close to home. To Speer. We’re on the coastline. We’re right by the sea. When they first brought us here, there weren’t so many cells . . . they put us in a room with a window facing the water. I could see the constellations. Every night. I saw the star of the Phoenix and thought that if I could just slip away, I could swim and keep swimming and find my way back home.”

Rin thought of a four-year-old Altan, locked in this place, staring out at the night sky while around him his friends were strapped down and dissected. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but no matter how hard she strained against those straps, she couldn’t move. “Altan . . .”

“I thought someone would come and get us,” he continued, and Rin didn’t think he was talking to her anymore. He spoke like he was recounting a nightmare to the empty air. “Even when they killed the others, I thought that maybe . . . maybe my parents would still come for me. But when the Hesperian troops liberated me, they told me I could never go back. They told me there was nothing on the island but bones and ash.”

He fell quiet.

Rin was at a loss for words. She felt like she needed to say something, something to rouse him, turn his attention to seeking a way out of this place, but anything that came to mind was laughably inadequate. What kind of consolation could she possibly give?

“Good! You’re awake.”

A high, tremulous voice interrupted her thoughts. Whoever it was spoke from directly behind her, out of her line of sight. Rin’s eyes bulged and she strained against the straps.

“Oh, I’m sorry—but of course you cannot see me.”

The owner of the voice moved to stand directly above her. He was a very thin white-haired man in a doctor’s uniform. His beard was trimmed meticulously to a sharp point ending two inches below his chin. His dark eyes glittered with a bright intelligence.

“Is this better?” He smiled benignly, as if greeting an old friend. “I am Eyimchi Shiro, chief medical officer of this camp. You may call me Dr. Shiro.”

He spoke Nikara, not Mugini. He had a very prim Sinegardian accent, as if he’d learned the language fifty years ago. His tone was stilted, artificially cheerful.

When Rin did not respond, the doctor shrugged and turned to the other table.

“Oh, Altan,” he said. “I had no idea you’d be coming back. This is a wonderful surprise! I couldn’t believe it when they told me. They said, ‘Dr. Shiro, we’ve found a Speerly!’ And I said, ‘You’ve got to be joking! There are no more Speerlies!’” Shiro chuckled mildly.

Rin strained to see Altan’s face. He was awake; his eyes were open, but he glared at the ceiling without looking at Shiro.

“They have been so scared of you, you know,” Shiro continued cheerfully. “What do they call you? The monster of Nikan? The Phoenix incarnate? My countrymen love exaggerations, and they love you Nikara shamans even more. You are a myth, a legend! You are so special! Why do you act so sullen?”

Altan said nothing.

Shiro seemed to deflate slightly, but then he grinned and patted Altan on the cheek. “Of course. You must be tired. Do not worry. We will fix you up in just a moment. I have just the thing . . .”

He hummed happily as he bustled over to the corner of the operating room. He perused his shelves, plucking out various vials and instruments. Rin heard a popping noise, and then the sound of a candle being lit. She could not see what Shiro was doing with his hands until he returned to stand above Altan.

“Did you miss me?” he inquired.

Altan said nothing.

“Hm.” Shiro lifted a syringe over Altan’s face, tapping the glass so that both of them could see the liquid inside. “Did you miss this?” Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the (F)indNƟvᴇl.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Altan’s eyes bulged.

Shiro held Altan’s wrist down with a gentle touch, almost as a mother would caress her child. His skilled fingers prodded for a vein. With his other hand he brought the needle to Altan’s arm and pushed.

Only then did Altan scream.

“Stop!” Rin shrieked. Spittle flew out the sides of her mouth. “Stop it!”

“My dear!” Shiro set the empty syringe down and rushed to her side. “Calm! Calm down! He will be fine.”

“You’re killing him!” She thrashed wildly against her bonds, but they held firm.

Tears leaked from her eyes. Shiro wiped them meticulously away, keeping his fingers out of reach of her gnashing teeth.

“Killing? Don’t be dramatic. I just gave him some of his favorite medicine.” Shiro tapped his temple and winked at her. “You know he enjoys it. You traveled with him, didn’t you? This drug is not anything new to him. He will be fine in a few minutes.”

They both looked to Altan. Altan’s breathing had stabilized, but he certainly did not look fine.

“Why are you doing this?” Rin choked. She’d thought she understood Federation cruelty by now. She had seen Golyn Niis. She’d seen the evidence of Mugenese scientists’ handiwork. But to look this evil in the eye, to watch Shiro inflict such pain on Altan and smile about it . . . Rin could not comprehend it. “What do you want from us?”

Shiro sighed. “Is it not obvious?” He patted her cheek. “I want knowledge. Our work here will advance medical technology by decades. When else do you get such a good chance to do research? An endless supply of cadavers! Boundless opportunities for experimentation! I can answer every question I’ve ever had about the human body! I can devise ways to prevent death!”

Rin gaped at him in disbelief. “You are cutting my people open.”

“Your people?” Shiro snorted. “Don’t degrade yourself. You’re nothing like those pathetic Nikara. You Speerlies are so fascinating. Composed of such lovely material.” Shiro fondly brushed the hair from Altan’s sweaty forehead. “Such beautiful skin. Such fascinating eyes. The Empress doesn’t know what she has.”

He pressed two fingers against Rin’s neck to take her pulse. She swallowed down the bile that rose up at his touch.

“I wonder if you might oblige me,” he said gently. “Show me the fire. I know you can.”

“What?”

“You Speerlies are so special,” Shiro confided. His voice had taken on a low, husky tone. He spoke as if to an infant, or a lover. “So strong. So unique. They say you are a god’s chosen people. What makes you this way?”

Hatred, Rin thought. Hatred, and a history of suffering inflicted by people like you.

“You know my country has never achieved feats of shamanism,” Shiro said. “Do you have any idea why?”

“Because the gods wouldn’t bother with scum like you,” Rin spat.

Shiro brushed at the air, as if swatting the insult away. He must have heard so many Nikara curses by now that they meant nothing to him.

“We will do it like this,” he said. “I will request you to show me the way to the gods. Each time you refuse, I will give him another injection of the drug. You know how he will feel it.”

Altan made a low, guttural noise from his bed. His entire body tensed and spasmed.

Shiro murmured something into his ear and stroked Altan’s forehead, as tenderly as a mother might comfort an ailing child.

Hours passed. Shiro posed his questions about shamanism to Rin again and again, but she maintained a stony front. She would not reveal the secrets behind the Pantheon. She would not place yet another weapon in Mugen’s hands.

Instead she cursed and spat, called him a monster, called him every vile thing she could think of. Jima hadn’t taught them to curse in Mugini, but Shiro caught the gist.

“Come now,” Shiro said dismissively. “It’s not like you’ve never seen this before.”

She paused, spittle dripping from her mouth. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Shiro touched his fingers to Altan’s neck to feel his pulse, pulled his eyelids back and pursed his lips as if confirming something. “His tolerance is astounding. Inhuman. He’s been smoking opium for years.”

“Because of what you did to him,” she screeched.

“And afterward? After he was liberated?” Shiro sounded like a disappointed teacher. “They had the last Speerly in their hands, and they never tried to wean him off the drug? It’s obvious—someone’s been feeding it to him for years. Clever of them. Oh, don’t look at me like that. The Federation weren’t the first to use opium to control a population. The Nikara originated this technique.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They didn’t teach you?” Shiro looked amused. “But of course. Of course they wouldn’t. Nikan likes to scrub out all that is embarrassing about its past.”

He crossed the room to stand over her, brushing his fingers along the shelves as he walked. “How do you think the Red Emperor kept the Speerlies on their leash? Use your head, my dear. When Speer lost its independence, the Red Emperor sent crates of opium over to the Speerlies as an offering. A gift, from the colonizing state to the tributary. This was deliberate. Previously the Speerlies had only ever ingested their local bark in their ceremonies. They were used to such mild hallucinogens that to them, smoking opium was like drinking wood alcohol. When they tried it, they immediately became addicted. They did anything they could to get more of it. They were slaves to the opium just as much as they were slaves to the Emperor.”

Rin’s mind reeled. She could not think of any response.

She wanted to call Shiro a liar. She wanted to scream at him to stop. But it made sense.

It made so much sense.

“So you see, our countries are not so different after all,” Shiro said smugly. “The only difference is that we revere shamans, we desire to learn from them, while your Empire is terrified and paranoid about the power it possesses. Your Empire has culled you and exploited you and made you eliminate each other. I will unleash you. I will grant you freedom to call the god as you have never been allowed to before.”

“If you give me freedom,” she snarled, “the first thing I will do is burn you alive.”

Her connection to the Phoenix was the last advantage she had. The Federation had raped and burned her country. The Federation had destroyed her school and killed her friends. By now they had mostly likely razed her hometown to the ground. Only the Pantheon remained sacred, the one thing in the universe that Mugen still had no access to.

Rin had been tortured, bound, beaten, and starved, but her mind was her own. Her god was her own. She would die before she betrayed it.

Eventually, Shiro grew bored of her. He summoned the guards to drag the prisoners into a cell. “I will see you both tomorrow,” he said cheerfully. “And we will try this again.”

Rin spat on his coat as the guards marched her out. Another guard followed with Altan’s inert form thrown over his shoulder like an animal carcass.

One guard chained Rin’s leg to the wall and slammed the cell door shut on them. Beside her Altan jerked and moaned, muttering incoherently under his breath. Rin cradled his head in her lap and kept a miserable vigil over her fallen commander.

Altan did not come to his senses for hours. Many times he cried out, spoke words in the Speerly language that she didn’t understand.

Then he moaned her name. “Rin.”

“I’m here,” she said, stroking his forehead.

“Did he hurt you?” he demanded.

She choked back a sob. “No. No—he wanted me to talk, teach him about the Pantheon. I didn’t, but he said he’d just keep hurting you . . .”

“It’s not the drug that hurts,” he said. “It’s when it wears off.”

Then, with a sickening pang in her stomach, she understood.

Altan was not lapsing when he smoked opium. No—smoking opium was the only time when he was not in pain. He had lived his entire life in perpetual pain, always longing to have another dose.

She had never understood how horrendously difficult it was to be Altan Trengsin, to live under the strain of a furious god constantly screaming for destruction in the back of his mind, while an indifferent narcotic deity whispered promises in his blood.

That’s why the Speerlies became addicted to opium so easily, she realized. Not because they needed it for their fire. Because for some of them, it was the only time they could get away from their horrible god.

Deep down, she had known this, had suspected this ever since she’d learned that Altan didn’t need drugs like the rest of the Cike did, that Altan’s eyes were perpetually bright like poppy flowers.

Altan should have been locked into the Chuluu Korikh himself a long time ago.

But she hadn’t wanted to believe, because she needed to trust that her commander was sane.

Because without Altan, what was she?

In the hours that followed, when the drug seeped out of his bloodstream, Altan suffered. He sweated. He writhed. He seized so violently that Rin had to restrain him to keep him from hurting himself. He screamed. He begged for Shiro to come back. He begged for Rin to help him die.

“You can’t,” she said, panicking. “We have to escape here. We have to get out.”

His eyes were blank, defeated. “Resistance here means suffering, Rin. There is no escape. There is no future. The best you can hope for is that Shiro gets bored and grants you a painless death.”

She almost did it then.

She wanted to end his misery. She couldn’t see him tortured like this anymore, couldn’t watch the man she had admired since she set eyes on him reduced to this.

She found herself kneeling over his inert torso, hands around his neck. All she had to do was put pressure into her arms. Force the air out of his throat. Choke the life out of him.

He would hardly feel it. He could hardly feel anything anymore.

Even as her fingers grasped his skin, he did not resist. He wanted it to end.

She had done this once before. She had killed the likeness of him in the guise of the chimei.

But Altan had been fighting then. Then, Altan had been a threat. He was not a threat now, only the tragic, glaring proof that her heroes inevitably let her down.

Altan Trengsin was not invincible after all.

He had been so good at following orders. They told him to jump and he flew. They told him to fight and he destroyed.

But here at the end, without a purpose and without a ruler, Altan Trengsin was broken.

Rin’s fingers tensed, but then she trembled and pushed his limp form violently away from her.

“How are my darling Speerlies doing? Ready for another round?”

Shiro approached their cell, beaming. He was coming from the lab at the opposite end of the hallway. He held several round metallic containers in his arms.

They didn’t respond.

“Would you like to know what those canisters are for?” Shiro asked. His voice remained artificially bright. “Any guesses? Here’s a hint. It’s a weapon.”

Rin glowered at the doctor. Altan stared at the floor.

Shiro continued, unfazed. “It’s the plague, children. Surely you know what the plague does? First your nose begins to run, and then great welts start growing on your arms, your legs, between your legs . . . you die from shock when the wounds rupture, or from your own poisoned blood. It takes quite a long time to die down, once it’s caught on. But perhaps that was before your time. Nikan has been plague free for a while now, hasn’t it?”

Shiro tapped the metal bars. “It took us a devilishly long time to figure out how it spread. Fleas, can you believe that? Fleas, that latch onto rats, and then spread their little plague particles over everything they touch. Of course, now that we know how it spreads, it’s only a hop step to turning it into a weapon. Obviously it will not do to have the weapon run around without control—we do plan to inhabit your country one day—but when released in some densely populated areas, with the right critical mass . . . well, this war will be over much sooner than we anticipated, won’t it?”

Shiro leaned forward, head resting against the bars. “You have nothing to fight for anymore,” he said quietly. “Your country is lost. Why do you hold your silence? You have an easy way out of this place. Just cooperate with me. Tell me how you summon the fire.”

“I’ll die first,” Rin spat.

“What are you defending?” Shiro asked. “You owe Nikan nothing. What were you to them? What were the Speerlies to them, ever? Freaks! Outcasts!”

Rin stood up. “We fight for the Empress,” she said. “I’m a Militia soldier until the day I die.”

“The Empress?” Shiro looked faintly puzzled. “Have you really not figured it out?”

“Figured what out?” Rin snapped, even as Altan silently mouthed no.

But she had taken the bait, she had risen to the doctor’s provocation, and she could tell from the way Shiro’s eyes gleamed that he had been waiting for this moment.

“Have you even asked how we knew you were at the Chuluu Korikh?” Shiro asked. “Who must have given us that information? Who was the only other person who knew of that wonderful mountain?”

Rin gaped at him, openmouthed, while the truth pieced itself together in her mind. She could see Altan puzzling it out, too. His eyes widened as he came to the same realization that she did.

“No,” said Altan. “You’re lying.”

“Your precious Empress betrayed you,” Shiro said with relish. “You were a trade.”

“That’s impossible,” said Altan. “We served her. We killed for her.”

“Your Empress gave you up, you and your precious band of shamans. You were sold, my dear Speerlies, just like Speer was sold. Just like your Empire was sold.”

“You’re lying!”

Altan flung himself at the bars. Fire ignited across his body, flared out in tentacles that almost reached the guards. Altan continued to scream, and the fire licked wider and wider, and although the metal did not melt, Rin thought she saw the bars begin to bend.

Shiro shouted a command in Mugini.

Three guards rushed to the cell. As one worked to unlock the gate, another sloshed a bucket of water over Altan. Once he was doused, the third rushed in to pull Altan’s arms back behind his head while the first jammed a needle into his neck. Altan jerked and dropped to the floor.

The guards turned to Rin.

Rin thought she saw Shiro’s mouth moving, yelling, “No, not her,” before she, too, felt the needle sink into her neck.

The rush she felt was nothing like poppy seeds.

With poppy seeds, she still had to concentrate on clearing her mind. With poppy seeds it took conscious effort to ascend to the Pantheon.

Heroin was nowhere near as subtle. Heroin evicted her from her own body so that she had no choice but to seek refuge in the realm of spirit.

And she realized, with a fierce joy, that in attempting to sedate her, Shiro’s guards had set her free.

She found Altan in the other realm. She felt him. She knew the pattern of him as well as she knew her own.

She had not always known the shape of him. She had loved the version of him she’d constructed for herself. She had admired him. She had idolized him. She had adored an idea of him, an archetype, a version of him that was invulnerable.

But now she knew the truth, she knew the realness of Altan and his vulnerabilities and most of all his pain . . . and still she loved him.

She had mirrored herself against him, molded herself after him; one Speerly after another. She had emulated his cruelty, his hatred, and his vulnerability. She knew him, finally knew all of him, and that was how she found him.

Altan?

Rin.

She could feel him all around her; a hard edge, a deeply wounded aura, and yet a comforting presence.

Altan’s form appeared before her as if he stood across a very large field. He walked, or floated, toward her. Space and distance did not exist in this realm, not really, but her mind had to interpret it as such for her to orient herself.

She did not have to read the anguish in his eyes. She felt it. Altan did not keep his spirit closed off, the way Chaghan did; he was an open book, available for her to peruse, as if he were offering himself up for her to try to understand.

She understood. She understood his pain and his misery, and she understood why all he wanted to do now was die.

But she had no patience for it.

Rin had given up the luxury of fear a long, long time ago. She had wanted to give up so many times. It would have been easier. It would have been painless.

But throughout everything, the one thing she had held on to was her anger, and she knew one truth: She would not die like this. She would not die without vengeance.

“They killed our people,” she said. “They sold us. Since Tearza, Speer has been a pawn in the Empire’s geopolitical chess game. We were disposable. We were tools. Tell me that doesn’t make you furious.”

He looked exhausted. “I am sick with fury,” he said. “And I am sick knowing that there is nothing I can do.”

“You’ve blinded yourself. You’re a Speerly. You have power,” she said. “You have the anger of all of Speer. Show me how to use it. Give it to me.”

“You’ll die.”

“Then I will die on my feet,” she said. “I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro’s operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward. And neither will you. Altan, look at me. We are not like Jiang. We are not like Tearza.”

Altan lifted his head then.

“Mai’rinnen Tearza,” he whispered. “The queen who abandoned her people.”

“Would you abandon them?” she pressed. “You heard what Shiro said. The Empress didn’t just sell us out. She sold the entire Cike. Shiro won’t stop until he has every Nikara shaman locked up in this hellhole. When you are gone, who will protect them? Who will protect Ramsa? Suni? Chaghan?”

She felt it from him then—a stab of defiance. A flicker of resolve.

That was all she needed.

“The Phoenix isn’t only the god of fire,” he said. “It is the god of revenge. And there is a power, born of centuries of festering hatred, that only a Speerly can access. I have tapped into it many times, but never in full. It would consume you. It would burn at you until there was nothing left.”

“Give it to me,” she said immediately, hungrily.

“I can’t,” he said. “It’s not mine to give. That power belongs to the Speerlies.”

“Then take me to them,” Rin demanded.

And so he took her back.

In the realm of dreams, time ceased to hold meaning. Altan took her back centuries. He took her back into the only spaces where their ancestors still existed, in ancient memory.

Being led by Altan was not the same as being led by Chaghan. Chaghan was a sure guide, more native to the spirit world than the world of the living. With Chaghan, she had felt as if she were being dragged along, and that if she didn’t obey, Chaghan would have shattered her mind. But with Altan . . . Altan did not feel even like a separate presence. Rather, he and she made two parts of a much greater whole. They were two small instances of the grand, ancient entity of all that was Speer, hurtling through the world of spirit to rejoin their kind.

When space and time again became tangible concepts to her, Rin perceived that they were at a campfire. She saw drums, she heard people chanting and singing, and she knew that song, she had been taught that song when she was a little girl, she could not believe she had ever forgotten that song . . . all Speerlies could sing that song before their fifth birthday.

No—not her. Rin had never learned that song. This was not her recollection; she was living inside the remembrance of a Speerly who had lived many, many years ago. This was a shared memory. This was an illusion.

So was this dance. And so, too, was the man who held her by the fire. He danced with her, spinning her about in great arcs, then pulling her back against his warm chest. He could not be Altan, and yet he had Altan’s face, and she was certain that she had always known him.

She had never been taught to dance, but somehow she knew the steps.

The night sky was lit up with stars like little torches. A million tiny campfires scattered across the darkness. A thousand Isles of Speer, a thousand fireside dances.

Years ago Jiang had told her that the spirits of the dead dissolved back into the void. But not the spirits of Speer. The Speerlies refused to let go of their illusions, refused to forget about the material world, because Speer’s shamans couldn’t be at peace until they got their vengeance.

She saw faces in the shadow. She saw a sad-looking woman who looked like her, sitting beside an old man wearing a crescent pendant around his neck. Rin tried to look closer but their faces were blurred, those of people she only half remembered.

“Is this what it was like?” she asked out loud.

The voices of the ghosts answered as one. This was the golden age of Speer. This was Speer before Tearza. Before the massacre.

She could have wept at the beauty of it.

There was no madness here. Only fires and dances.

“We could stay here,” Altan said. “We could stay here forever. We wouldn’t have to go back.”

In that moment it was all she wanted.

Their bodies would waste away and become nothing. Shiro would deposit their corpses into a waste chamber and incinerate them. Then, when the last part of them had been given to the Phoenix, once their ashes were scattered in the winds, they would be free.

“We could,” she agreed. “We could be lost to history. But you’d never do that, would you?”

“They wouldn’t take us now,” he said. “Do you feel them? Can you feel their anger?”

She could. The ghosts of Speer were so sad, but they were also furious.

“This is why we are strong. We draw our strength from centuries and centuries of unforgotten injustices. Our task—our very reason for being—is to make those deaths mean something. After us, there will be no Speer. Only a memory.”

She had thought she understood Altan’s power, but only now did she realize the depth of it. The weight of it. He was burdened with the legacy of a million souls forgotten by history, vengeful souls screaming for justice.

The ghosts of Speer were chanting now, a deep and sorrowful song in the language she was born too late to understand, but connected to her very bones. The ghosts spoke to them for an eternity. Years passed. No time passed at all. Their ancestors imparted all that they knew of Speer, all that had ever been remembered of their people. They instilled in her centuries of history and culture and religion.

They told her what she had to do.

“Our god is an angry god,” said the woman who looked like Rin. “It will not let this injustice rest. It demands vengeance.”

“You must go to the isle,” said the old man with the crescent pendant. “You must go to the temple. Find the Pantheon. Call the Phoenix, and wake the ancient fault lines on which Speer lies. The Phoenix will only answer to you. It has to.”

The man and woman faded back into the blur of brown faces. The ghosts of Speer began to sing as one, mouths moving in unison.

Rin could not determine the meaning of the song from the words, but she felt it. It was a song of vengeance. It was a horrible song. It was a wonderful song.

The ghosts gave Rin their blessing, and it made the rush from the heroin feel like a feathery touch in comparison.

She had been granted a power beyond imagination.

She had the strength of their ancestors. She held within her every Speerly who had died on that terrible day, and every Speerly who had ever lived on the Dead Island.

They were the Phoenix’s chosen people. The Phoenix thrived on anger, and Rin possessed that in abundance.

She reached for Altan. They were of one mind and one purpose.

They forced their way back into the world of the living.

Their eyes flared open at the same time.

One of Shiro’s assistants had been bending over them, back on the table in Shiro’s laboratory. The flames roiling from their bodies immolated him immediately, catching his hair and clothes so that when he reeled away from them, screaming, every bit of him was on fire.

Flames licked out in every direction. They caught the chemicals in the laboratory and combusted, shattering glass. They caught the alcohol used to sterilize wounds and spread rapidly on the fumes. The jar in the corner bearing the pickled man trembled from the heat and exploded, spilling its vile contents out onto the floor. The fumes of the embalming fluid caught fire, too, lighting up the room in an earnest blaze.

The lab assistant ran into the hallway, screaming for Shiro to save him.

Rin writhed and twisted where she lay. The straps keeping her down could not bear the heat of the flame at such a close angle. They snapped and she fell off the table, picked herself up, and turned just as Shiro rushed into the room clutching a reloading crossbow.

He shifted his aim from Altan to Rin and back again.

Rin tensed, but Shiro did not pull the trigger—whether out of inexperience or reluctance, Rin did not know.

“Beautiful,” he marveled in a low voice. The fire reflected in his hungry eyes, and for a moment made him seem as if he, too, possessed the scarlet eyes of the Speerlies.

“Shiro!” Altan roared.

The doctor did not move as Altan advanced. Rather he lowered his crossbow, held his arms out to Altan as if welcoming a son into his embrace.

Altan grabbed his tormentor by the face. And squeezed. Flames poured from his hands, white-hot flames, surrounding the doctor’s head like a crown. First Altan’s hands left fingerprints of black against around Shiro’s temples, and then the heat burned through bone and Altan’s fingers bored holes through Shiro’s skull. Shiro’s eyes bulged. His arms twitched madly. He dropped the crossbow.

Altan pressed Shiro’s skull between his hands. Shiro’s head split open with a wet crack.

The twitching stopped.

Altan dropped the body and stepped away from it. He turned to Rin. His eyes burned a brighter red than they ever had before.

“Okay,” he said. “Now we run.”

Rin scooped the crossbow off the ground and followed Altan out of the operating room.

“Where’s the exit?”

“No clue,” Altan said. “Look for light.”

They ran for their lives, turning corners at random. The research facility was a massive complex, far larger than Rin had imagined. As they ran, Rin saw that the hallway containing their cells was only one corridor in the mazelike interior; they passed empty barracks, many operating tables, and storage rooms stacked with canisters of gas.

Alarm bells sounded across the entire complex, alerting the soldiers to the breach.

Finally they found an exit: a side door in an empty corridor. It was boarded shut, but Altan pushed Rin aside and then kicked it down. She jumped out and helped him climb through.

“Over there!”

A Federation patrol group caught sight of them and raced in their direction.

Altan grabbed the crossbow from Rin and aimed it at the patrol group. Three soldiers dropped to the ground, but the others advanced over their comrades’ dead bodies.

The crossbow made a hollow clicking noise.

“Shit,” Altan said.

The patrol group drew closer.

Rin and Altan were starved, weakened, still half-drugged. And yet they fought, back to back. They moved as perfect complements to each other. They achieved a better synchronization than Rin had even with Nezha, for Nezha knew how she moved only by observing her. Altan didn’t have to—Altan knew by instinct who she was, how she would fight, because they were the same. They were two parts of a whole. They were Speerlies.

They dispatched the patrol of five, only to see another squadron of twenty approach them from the side of the building.

“Well, we can’t kill all of them,” said Altan.

Rin wasn’t sure about that. They kept running anyway.

Her feet were scraped raw from the cobbled floor. Altan gripped her arm as they ran, dragging her forward.

The cobblestones became sand, then wooden planks. They were at a port. They were by the sea.

They needed to get to the water, to the sea. Needed to swim across the narrow strait. Speer was so close . . .

You must go to the isle. You must go to the temple.

They reached the end of the pier. And stopped.

The night was lit up with torches.

It seemed as if the entire Federation army had assembled by the docks—Mugenese soldiers behind the pier, Mugenese ships in the water. There were hundreds of them. They were hundreds against two. The odds were not simply bad, they were insurmountable.

Rin felt a sensation of crushing despair. She couldn’t breathe under the weight of it. This was where it ended. This was Speer’s last stand.

Altan hadn’t let go of her arm. Blood dripped from his eyes, blood dropped from his mouth.

“Look.” He pointed. “Do you see that star? That’s the constellation of the Phoenix.”

She raised her head.

“Take it as your guide,” he said. “Speer is southeast of here. It’ll be a long swim.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “We’ll swim together. You’ll guide me.”

His hand closed around her fingers. He held them tight for a moment and then let go.

“No,” he said. “I’ll finish my duty.”

Panic twisted her insides.

“Altan, no.”

She couldn’t stop the onslaught of hot tears, but Altan wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing out at the assembled army.

“Tearza didn’t save our people,” he said. “I couldn’t save our people. But this comes close.”

“Altan, please . . .”

“It will be harder for you,” Altan said. “You’ll have to live with the consequences. But you’re brave . . . you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

“Don’t leave me,” she begged.

He leaned forward and grasped her face in both hands.

She thought for a bizarre moment that he was going to kiss her.

He didn’t. He pressed his forehead against hers for a long time.

She closed her eyes. She drank in the sensation of her skin against his. She seared it into her memory.

“You’re so much stronger than I am,” said Altan. Then he let her go.

She shook her head frantically. “No, I’m not, it’s you, I need you—”

“Someone’s got to destroy that research facility, Rin.”

He stepped away from her. Arms stretched forward, he walked toward the fleet.

“No,” Rin begged. “No!”

Altan took off at a run.

A hail of arrows erupted from the Federation force.

At the same moment Altan lit up like a torch.

He called the Phoenix and the Phoenix came; enveloping him, embracing him, loving him, bringing him back into the fold.

Altan was a silhouette in the light, a shadow of a man. She thought she saw him look back toward her. She thought she saw him smile.

She thought she heard a bird’s cackle.

Rin saw in the flames the image of Mai’rinnen Tearza. She was weeping.

The fire doesn’t give, the fire takes, and takes, and takes.

Rin screamed a wordless scream. Her voice was lost in the fire.

A great column of flame erupted from the site of Altan’s immolation.

A wave of heat rolled out in every direction, bowling over the Federation soldiers like they were straw. It hit Rin like a punch to the gut, and she pitched backward into the inky black water.

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