The Burning God (The Poppy War Book 3)

On the twelfth day of their march, after an eternity of navigating winding, treacherous forest footpaths, they reached a vast plain filled with red stalks of sorghum. Against the otherwise overgrown wilderness, the sparse and dying trees that littered the roadside, those neatly cultivated fields stood out like a red flag of warning.

Armies only maintained fields once they’d settled down for permanent occupation. They’d reached the edge of the Beehive.

Rin’s men wanted to move on Leiyang that night. They’d marched at a leisurely pace for the last two days; the forest routes didn’t permit them to go any faster. They had energy, pent up and raging. They wanted blood.

Souji was the only holdout. “You’ve got to contact the local leadership first.”

Rin humored him. “Fine. Where are they?”

“Well.” Souji scratched his ear. “On the inside.”

“Are you mad?”

“The civilians suffer the most from your little liberations,” Souji said. “Or did you not count the casualties at Khudla?”

“Listen, we freed Khudla—”

“And burned a temple full of civilians to death,” Souji said. “Don’t think I didn’t know about that. We need to give them advance warning.”

“That’s too risky,” Kitay said. “We don’t know how many collaborators they have. If the wrong person sees you, they’ll crack down on the civilians regardless.”

“No one’s going to report us,” Souji said. “I know these people. Their loyalty runs thicker than blood.”

Rin gave him a skeptical look. “You’d be willing to stake the lives of everyone in this army on that?”

“I’m staking the lives of everyone in that township on it,” Souji said. “I’ve gotten you this far, Speerly. Trust me just a little longer.”

So Rin found herself walking with Souji into the center of the Beehive, dressed in peasant rags, without her sword and without reinforcements. Souji had identified a lapse in the northern patrol, a thirty-second pocket of time between revolving guards that allowed them to sneak past the fields and over the city gates unnoticed.

What Rin saw inside Leiyang astonished her.

She’d never before encountered a Mugenese-occupied township where corpses weren’t stacked in rotting, haphazard piles around every corner. Where the residents weren’t utterly, uniformly, brutally crushed into submission.

But here in Leiyang, the Mugenese had embarked on something more like occupational state-building. And this, somehow, was scarier.

The civilians here were thin, haggard, clearly downtrodden, but alive—and not just alive, but free. They weren’t locked up in holding pens, nor were they crouching inside their homes in fear. Civilians—visibly Nikara civilians—strode around the township so casually that if Rin didn’t know better she wouldn’t have guessed there was a Mugenese presence at all. As they snuck deeper into the township, Rin saw a band of men—laborers with farming implements that could easily be used as weapons—walking toward the fields without so much as a single armed guard. Closer to the town center, there were long queues looping around an unbelievable sight—a rationing station, where Mugenese troops doled out daily portions of barley grain to civilians waiting patiently with copper bowls.

She could barely form the question. “How—?”

“Collaboration,” Souji said. “It’s how most of us have been getting along. The Mugenese figured out pretty quickly that their original depopulation policy was only going to work if they were getting supplies from the island. Island’s gone, and there’s no point to clearing out space anymore. What’s more, they need someone to do their cooking and cleaning.”

So the soldiers without a home had formed a sick symbiosis with their intended victims. The Mugenese had merged with the Nikara into a society that, if not necessarily nonviolent, at least looked stable and sustainable.

Rin found evidence of wary coexistence everywhere she looked. She saw Mugenese soldiers eating at Nikara food stands. She saw Mugenese patrolmen escorting a group of Nikara farmers back through the city gates. No blades were drawn; no hands were bound. This looked routine. She even saw a Mugenese soldier fondly stroke the head of a Nikara child as they passed each other on the street.

Her stomach churned.

She didn’t know what to do with this. She was so used to absolute destruction, a complete binary of the extremities of war, that she couldn’t work her mind around this bizarre middle ground. How did it feel to live with a sword hanging over your head? How did it feel to look these men in the eyes, day by day, knowing full well what they were capable of?

Rin followed closely behind Souji as they moved through the streets, her eyes darting nervously about with every turn. No one had reported, or even seemed to care about, their presence. Occasionally someone narrowed their eyes at Souji in questioning recognition, but no one so much as breathed a word.

Souji didn’t stop walking until they’d reached the far edge of the township, where he pointed to a small, thatched-roof hut half-hidden behind a cluster of trees. “The chief of Leiyang is a man named Lien Wen. His daughter-in-law came from the same village as my mother. He’s expecting us.”

Rin frowned. “How?”

“I told you.” Souji shrugged. “I know these people.”

A skinny, plain-faced girl about seven years old sat outside the door, hand-grinding sorghum grain in a small stone bowl. She scrambled to her feet when they approached and, without a word, gestured for them to follow her inside the hut.

Souji nudged Rin forward. “Go on.”

For the home of a township chief, Lien Wen’s was not particularly luxurious. The interior would barely have fit ten men standing shoulder to shoulder. A square tea table occupied the center, surrounded by three-legged stools. Rin squatted down on the nearest stool. The uneven, scratched-up legs wobbled every time she shifted position. That was oddly calming—this kind of poverty felt familiar.

“Weapons over there. Father’s orders.” The girl pointed at a cracked vase in the corner.

Rin’s fingers twitched toward the knives hidden inside her shirt. “But—”

“Of course.” Souji shot Rin a stern look. “Whatever Chief Lien asks.”

Rin reluctantly dropped the blades into the vase.

The girl disappeared for several seconds, returned with a plate of coarse-grain steamed buns, and set it down on the tea table.

“Dinner,” she said, then retreated to the corner.

The starchy grain smelled terribly good. Rin hadn’t seen proper steamed buns in ages; in Ruijin, they’d long ago run out of yeast. She reached out for a bun, but Souji slapped her hand away.

“Don’t,” he muttered. “That’s more than she eats in a week.”

“Then why—”

“Leave it. They’ll save it for later if you don’t touch it, but if you touch it and put it down then they’ll insist you take it with you when you leave.”

Stomach growling, Rin returned her hand to her lap.

“I didn’t think you’d come back.”

A tall, broad-shouldered man filled the doorframe. Rin found his age impossible to place—his lined eyes and white whiskers could have made him as old as her grandfather, but he carried himself with his back straight and chin up, a warrior with decades of fight left in his body.

“Chief Lien.” Souji stood up, cupped his hands, and bowed deeply at the waist. Rin hastily followed suit.

“Sit,” Chief Lien grumbled. “This hut isn’t big enough for all this commotion.”

Rin and Souji returned to their stools. Chief Lien merely shoved his out of the way and sat down cross-legged on the dirt floor, which made Rin feel suddenly very childish, squatting as she was.

Chief Lien folded his arms across his chest. “So you’re the ones who’ve been causing trouble up north.”

“Guilty.” Souji beamed. “Next up is—”

“Stop it,” Chief Lien said. “I don’t care what’s next. Take your army, leave here, and don’t come back.”

Souji trailed off, looking hurt. Rin would have found that funny if she weren’t also confused.

“They think our men are doing it,” Chief Lien said. “They made the elders line up in the square the morning after the first patrolmen went missing and said they’d shoot them one by one until the culprits confessed. No one stepped forward, so they beat my mother within an inch of her life. That was over a week ago. She’s not recovered. She’ll be lucky if she makes it through tonight.”

“We have a physician,” Souji said. “We’ll bring him to you, or we can just carry her out to our camps. We’ve got men in those fields, we can move on the crickets tonight—”

“No,” Chief Lien said firmly. “You will turn around and disappear. We know how this story ends, and we can’t suffer the consequences. Compliance is the only thing keeping us alive—”

“Compliance?” Souji had warned Rin to keep quiet and let him do the talking, but she couldn’t help but interject. “That’s your word for slavery? You like walking the streets with your head down, cringing when they approach you, licking their boots to win their goodwill?”

“Our township still has all our men,” said Chief Lien.

“Then you have soldiers,” Rin said. “And you should be fighting.”

Chief Lien merely regarded her through his lined, tired eyes.

In the passing silence, Rin noticed for the first time a series of ropy scars etched across his arms. Others snaked up the side of his neck. Those weren’t the kind of scars you got from a whip. Those were from knives.

His gaze made her feel so tiny.

Finally he asked, “Did you know that they take young girls with the darkest skin they can find and burn them alive?”

She flinched. “What?”

But then the explanation rose to her mind, slow and dreadful, just as Chief Lien spelled it out aloud. “The Mugenese tell stories about you. They know what happened to the longbow island. They know it was a dark-skinned girl with red eyes. And they know you’re near.”

Of course they know. They’d massacred the Speerlies twenty years ago; surely the myth of the dark-skinned, red-eyed race who called fire still circulated in their younger generations. And certainly they’d heard whispers in the south. The Mugenese troops who could understand Nikara would have picked up on whispered stories of the goddess incarnate, the reason why they could never go home. They would have tortured to discover the details. They would have learned very quickly who they needed to target.

But they couldn’t find her, so they’d targeted anyone who might possibly look like her instead.

Guilt twisted in her stomach like a knife.

She heard the sudden noise of steel scraping against steel. She jumped and turned. The little girl, still sitting in the corner of the hut, had started fiddling with their weapons.

Chief Lien turned to look over his shoulder. “Don’t touch that.”

“She’s all right,” Souji said easily. “She ought to learn how to handle steel. You like that knife?”

“Yes,” said the girl, testing the blade’s balance on one finger.

“Keep it. You’ll need it.”

The girl peered up at them. “Are you soldiers?”

“Yes,” Souji said.

“Then why don’t you have uniforms?”

“Because we don’t have any money.” Souji gave her a toothy smile. “Would you like to sew us some uniforms?”

The girl ignored this question. “The Mugenese have uniforms.”

“That’s true.”

“So do they have more money than you?”

“Not if we and your baba have anything to do with it.” Souji turned back to Chief Lien. “Please, Chief. Just hear us out.”

Chief Lien shook his head. “I won’t risk the reprisals.”

“There won’t be reprisals—”

“How can you guarantee that?”

“Because everything they say about me is true,” Rin interrupted. Little arcs of flame danced around her arms and shoulders, just enough to cast long shadows across her face. To make her look utterly inhuman.

She saw a faint look of surprise flicker across Chief Lien’s face. She knew, despite the rumors, that until now he hadn’t really believed what she was. She could understand that. It was hard to believe in the gods, to truly believe, until they stared you in the face.

She’d made believers of the Mugenese. She’d make him believe, too.

“They’re killing those girls because they’re afraid,” she said. “They should be. I sank the longbow island. I can destroy everything around me in a fifty-yard radius. When we attack it won’t be like the previous attempts. There will be no chance of defeat and no reprisals, because I cannot lose. I have a god. I only need you to bring the civilians out of range. We’ll do the rest.”

Chief Lien’s jaw had lost its stubborn set. She’d won him over, she knew. She saw it in his eyes—for the first time, he was considering something other than compliance. He was thinking about how freedom might taste.

“You can ambush them at the northern border,” he said at last. “Not many civilians live up there, and we can evacuate the ones who do. The reeds would be tall enough to conceal you—you could fit about five hundred men in those fields alone. They won’t know you’re here until you choose to reveal yourselves.”

“Understood,” Souji said. “Thank you.”

“You’ll only have a bit of time to get in position. They send troops with dogs and staves every few hours to track anyone who might be hiding in the fields.”

“Combing their hair for lice,” said the girl. “That’s what they call it.”

“We’ll have to be clever lice, then,” Souji said. Relief shone clear on his face. This wasn’t a negotiation anymore; now it was just about logistics. “And do you know how many men they have?”

“About three thousand,” Chief Lien said.

“That’s very precise,” Rin said. “How do you know?”

“They commission their grains from us. We know how much they eat.”

“And you can calculate that by the grain?”

“It’s simple multiplication,” Chief Lien said. “We’re not stupid.”

Rin sat back, impressed. “All right. Three thousand, then.”

“We can draw them two hundred yards out of the township if we split half our forces around and drive them into the fields,” Souji said. “That’s out of Rin’s range—”

“No,” said Chief Lien. “Four hundred.”

“That might not be possible,” Rin said.

“Make it possible,” Chief Lien said. “You keep your fight away from this township.”

“I understand,” Rin said. Her voice turned hard. “You want your liberation without suffering the consequences.”

Chief Lien stood up. The message was clear; this audience was over. “If you lose, they will come for us. And you know what they can do.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rin said. “We won’t lose.”

Chief Lien said nothing. His eyes followed them silently, judging, as they left the hut. In the corner, his daughter hummed and continued to scrape steel against steel.

“That went well,” Rin muttered.

“Sure did.” Souji was beaming.

“What are you so happy about? He’s made this ten times harder than it had to be, and he hasn’t given us anything in return—”

“That’s not true. He gave us permission.”

“Permission? Who the fuck needs permission—”

“You always need permission.” Souji stopped walking. The grin slid off his face. “Every time you bring a fight to a village, you put every innocent civilian’s life in danger. It’s your obligation to warn them.”

“Look, if every army behaved like that, then—”

“Listen. You’re not fighting a campaign for this land, you’re fighting for the people. And if you learn to trust them, they’ll be your best weapons. They’ll be your eyes and ears on the ground. They’ll be natural extensions of your army. But you never, ever endanger them against their will. Do you understand?”

He glared at her until she nodded.

“Good,” he said, and strode briskly toward the gate. Chastened, she followed.

Someone stood awaiting them in the shadows.

Rin pulled a flame into her hand, but Souji grabbed her elbow. “Don’t. It’s a friendly.”

The man at the gate was, indeed, Nikara. He had to be—his clothes, ratty and faded, hung from his gaunt frame. None of the Mugenese soldiers were starving.

He was quite young—hardly more than a boy. He seemed terribly excited to see them. He took one look at Rin, and his entire face lit up. “Are you the Speerly?”

Something about him struck her as familiar—his thick eyebrows, his broad shoulders. He carried himself like a born leader, confident and resolute.

“You’re Chief Lien’s son,” Rin said. “Aren’t you?”

“Guilty,” he said. “Lien Qinen. It’s good to meet you.”

“Come here, you bastard.” Souji grasped Qinen’s arm and pulled him into a tight embrace. “Does your father know you’re here?”

“Father thinks I’m still hiding out in the woods.” Qinen turned to Rin. “So are you the Speerly? You’re smaller than I expected.”

She bristled at that. “Oh, am I?”

He held out his hands. “No, no, I wasn’t—I—wow.” He blinked several times. “Sorry. I’ve just heard so much about you, I was expecting—I didn’t know what to expect. It’s good to meet you.”

He wasn’t being rude, Rin realized. He was nervous. Her expression softened. “Yes, I’m the Speerly. And you’re here because—”

“I’m your ally.” Qinen reached out quickly to shake her hand. His palms were slick with sweat. He gawked at her, mouth hanging slightly agape, as if he’d just watched her descend from the heavens on a staircase of clouds. Then he blinked and cleared his throat. “We’re going to help you fight. I’ve got men prepared to come out for you, just say the word and we’ll—”

“You’ll do nothing,” Souji said. “You know what your father demanded.”

Qinen’s face twisted in contempt. “My father’s a coward.”

“He’s just trying to keep you alive,” Souji said.

“Alive?” Qinen scowled. “He’s sentenced us to a living hell. He thinks compliance means lenience, but he doesn’t listen to reports from villages all around us. He doesn’t know what they do to the women. Or he doesn’t care.” His fists tightened. “Thirty miles from here, a village tried to hide girls in nearby mines, and when the Mugenese found out, they sealed off the exits and let them suffocate over three days. When they finally let the villagers retrieve the corpses, they found the girls dead with their fingers cracked and bleeding from trying to claw their way out. But Father doesn’t understand. He’s been—I mean, since my brother died, he’s . . .” His throat bobbed. “He’s wrong. We aren’t safe here; we’ll never be. Let us fight beside you. If we die, then at least let us die like men.”

This isn’t about permission, Rin realized. Souji was wrong. Qinen was going to fight whether they agreed to let him or not. This was about validation. After everything Qinen had seen, he needed absolution for the guilt of remaining alive, and he could get that only by putting his life on the line. She knew that feeling.

“You and your friends aren’t soldiers,” Souji said quietly.

“We can be,” Qinen said. “Did you think we’d just lie down and wait to be rescued? I’m glad to see you, brother, but we would have started this fight without you. You’ll need us. We’ve been laying down our own preparations, we’ve already set your stage—”

“What?” Souji shot him a sharp glance. “What have you been doing?”

“Everything my father’s been too scared to try.” Qinen lifted his chin with pride. “We’ve taken down their patrol routes to the minute. They’re all written down in a code they can’t read. We’ve sent round signals so the villagers know exactly when to run or hide. We’ve made sure every household has a weapon. Knives made from stakes, or farming implements we’ve snuck out of the sheds one at a time. We’re ready for this fight.”

“If they found out they’d kill you,” Souji said.

“We’re braver than that,” Qinen scoffed. “You saw my baby sister?”

“The girl in the hut?” Rin asked.

He nodded. “She’s with us, too. The Mugenese have her working in the mess hall—that’s where they force the children to work—so she slips a handful of water hemlock into a few bowls every time. It doesn’t do much. Just induces some vomiting and diarrhea—but it weakens them, and no one ever suspects it’s her.”

Watching Qinen’s face—his earnest, furious, desperate face—Rin couldn’t help but feel a mix of admiration and pity. His courage amazed her. These civilians were poking the dragon’s nest, risking their lives every day, preparing for a rebellion that they must have known they wouldn’t win.

What did they really think they could accomplish? They were farmers and children. Their little acts of resistance might infuriate the Mugenese, but wouldn’t drive them away.

Maybe, Rin thought, under these circumstances, that kind of resistance—no matter how futile—was the only way to live.

“We can help you,” Qinen insisted. “Just tell us where to be and when.”

The ruthless side of her wanted to say yes. She could use Qinen. It was so easy to go through cannon fodder. Even the most inexperienced commander could buy seconds, even minutes, by throwing bodies at the enemy.

But she couldn’t forget the look in Chief Lien’s eyes.

She’d learned, now, what it meant to bring the war to the south.

She read the expression on Souji’s face. Don’t you dare.

And she knew that if she said the wrong thing now, then she’d lose the support of both Chief Lien and the Iron Wolves.

“Souji’s right.” She reached out to touch Qinen lightly on the arm. “This isn’t your fight.”

“The hell it isn’t,” Qinen snapped. “This is my home.”

“I know.” She tried to sound like she meant what she was saying. “And the best thing you can do is keep your countrymen safe when we attack.”

Qinen looked crestfallen. “But that’s nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” said Souji. “That’s everything.”

Night had fallen by the time Rin and Souji rejoined the camp. They’d planned their attack for the following sunset. They had considered striking right then, under cover of darkness, and before any news had leaked of their arrival. But they’d decided to hold off until the next evening; Chief Lien needed time to orchestrate the villagers’ evacuation, and the Southern Army needed time to scope out the terrain, to position their troops optimally within the fields. The general staff spent the next few hours huddled around maps, marking out lines of entry.

It was far past midnight when at last they disbanded to rest. When Rin returned to her tent, she found a slim scroll placed neatly at the top of her travel pack.

She reached out, paused, and then withdrew her hand. This wasn’t right. Nobody at camp was receiving personal parcels. The Southern Coalition owned only one carrier pigeon, and it was trained to take a one-way message to Ankhiluun. Every instinct screamed that this was a trap. The scroll’s exterior could be laced with venom—countless Nikara generals of old had tried that trick before.

She leaned over the scroll with a small flame bobbing in her palm, carefully illuminating its every angle. She couldn’t see anything dangerous—no thin needles, no dark sheen on the parchment edge. Still, she used her teeth to pull her sleeve over her fingers before she picked the scroll up and unrolled it. Then she nearly dropped it.

The wax seal bore the dragon insignia of the House of Yin.

She exhaled slowly, trying to slow her racing heart. This had to be a joke—someone had pulled a deeply unfunny prank, and she would make sure they suffered for it.

The note inside was scrawled in a wobbly, childish font; the characters were so smudged and messy she had to squint to read it.

Hello, Rin,

They told me to write this in my own hand, but I don’t see how it could have made a difference seeing as I could barely write when you left, so you wouldn’t have recognized it anyway.

“This isn’t funny,” she muttered to herself.

But she knew this wasn’t a joke. Nobody at camp could have done this. Nobody knew.

This is Kesegi, if you hadn’t pieced that together. I’ve been in the New City prisons for a while and it was my fault, I got stupid and bragged to some people that you were my sister and I knew you, and then the talk trickled up to the guards so now here I am.

I’m sorry I did this to you. I really am.

Your friend says to tell you that this doesn’t have to be difficult. He said to tell you I walk free if you’ll come to the New City yourself, but if you bring an army then they’ll behead me above the city gates. He says that this doesn’t have to end in bloodshed, and that he only wants to speak. He says he doesn’t want a war. He’s prepared to grant clemency to every one of your allies. He only wants you.

Although to be honest—

The rest of the message had been scratched out with thick inky lines.

Rin snatched the scroll up and ran outside her tent.

She accosted the first sentry she saw. “Who delivered this?”

He gave her a blank stare. “Delivered what?”

She waved the scroll at him. “This was inside my travel pack. Did anyone deliver this to you?”

“N-No—”

“Did you see anyone going through my things?”

“No, but my watch has only just started, you’d have to ask Ginsen, he was here for three hours before that, and he should be—General, are you all right?”

Rin couldn’t stop trembling.

Nezha knew where she was. Nezha knew where she slept.

“General?” the sentry asked again. “Is everything all right?”

She crumpled the scroll in her fist. “Get me Kitay.”

“Shit.” Kitay lowered the letter.

“I know,” Rin said.

“Is this real?”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, is there any chance this is a forgery? That this isn’t really Kesegi?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve no idea.”

She couldn’t tell if that was really Kesegi’s handwriting. Frankly, she wasn’t even sure Kesegi knew how to read; her foster brother had rarely attended school. She couldn’t tell if the letter sounded like him, either. Certainly she could imagine the words in his voice, could picture him sitting at a writing desk, wrists shackled, his thin face trembling as Nezha dictated the words to him one by one. But how could she know for sure? She’d barely spoken to Kesegi in years.

“And what if it’s not?” Kitay asked.

“I don’t think we should respond,” Rin said in the calmest tone she could muster. “Either way.”

She’d worked through the possibilities in the minutes it had taken Kitay to arrive. She’d weighed the cost of her foster brother’s life, and she’d decided she could afford to lose him.

Kesegi wasn’t a general, wasn’t even a soldier. Nezha couldn’t torture him for information. Kesegi knew nothing of importance about either the Southern Coalition or Rin. Everything he knew of Rin was the biography of a little girl that she’d killed long ago at Sinegard, a naive Tikany shopgirl who existed only in suppressed memories.

“Rin.” Kitay put a hand on her arm. “Do you want to go after him?”

She hated how he was looking at her, eyes wide with pity, as if she were on the verge of tears. It made her feel so fragile.

But that’s just what Nezha wants. She refused to let this shake her. Nezha had manipulated her with sentiment before. The Cike had died for her sentiment.

“The problem is not Kesegi,” she said. “It’s Nezha’s troop placements. It’s his fucking reach—I mean, he put a letter in my fucking tent, Kitay. We’re just supposed to ignore that?”

“Rin, if you need to—”

“We need to discuss whether Nezha’s forces are in the south.” She had to keep talking; they had to move the conversation on to something else, because she was afraid of how her chest would feel if they didn’t. “Which I don’t think is possible—Venka says he’s leading his father’s troops in Tiger Province. But if they’re in the south, they’ve hidden so well that not a single one of our scouts has seen any troops, dirigibles, or supply wagons.”

“I don’t think he’s in the south,” Kitay said. “I think he’s just fucking with you. He’s gathering information; he just wants to see how you’ll respond.”

“He won’t get a response. We’re not going to take the bait.”

“We can discuss that.”

“This isn’t a discussion,” she snapped. “This letter is a forgery. And Nezha’s terms are absurd.”

Her fingers clenched around the scroll. The remainder of the message had been written in Nezha’s smooth, elegant calligraphy.

Hello, Rin,

It’s about time we talked.

You and I both know this war benefits no one. Our country has cracked apart. Our homeland has been ravaged, by war, by environmental catastrophe, by mindless evil. Nikan now faces her greatest test. And the Hesperians are watching us, waiting to see if we might stand strong or become another slave society for them to exploit.

I understand why you hate them. I am not blind to their intentions, and I will not let them turn our Republic into their mining ground. I will not see this land ruled by foreign hands. I know you don’t want that, either.

Please, Rin. Come to reason. I need you at my side.

The terms he listed were simple and unacceptable. A truce, full-scale demobilization and disarmament, and Kesegi returned safely in exchange for Rin. The Southern Coalition would be allowed to walk free, or join the Republican Army if they wished. Nezha hadn’t specified what would happen to Rin. She suspected it involved hourly doses of laudanum and an operating table.

“I’m not crazy, right?” she asked. “This is clearly a trap?”

“I’m not sure,” Kitay said. “I think there’s a world where Nezha does want you alive. He’s not stupid, he knows you’d be useful to him. He might try to talk you around—”

“The Hesperians are never going to let me walk free.”

“If you take Nezha at face value, then it looks like he’s trying to defy the Hesperians.”

She snorted. “You really think he’d do that?”

“I don’t know. The Yins . . . the House of Yin is far more comfortable working with foreigners than any Nikara leaders ever have been. It’s the reason why they’re rolling in silver. They might be fine with remaining stewards for the blue-eyed devils. But Nezha . . .”

“Nezha’s a shaman.”

“Yes.”

“And you think the Hesperians know.”

“I think Nezha knows that he cannot exist in a Hesperian-dominated world,” Kitay said. “It’s a world that labels him an abomination. Their vision of order demands his death and yours.”

Was that what Nezha was trying to imply? That he’d changed his mind about shamans? That if she joined him at his side, he might break the alliance his father had forged?

“But I’ve had this argument with Nezha,” she said. “And he thinks they’re right. That we are abominations, and that we’re better off dead. Only he can’t die.”

“So then we’re back to square one. We have no idea what this letter implies. And we have no reason to trust Nezha.”

Rin sighed. “So what’s our move, then?”

“I think we start with deciding what to do about your brother.”

“My foster brother,” she corrected. “And I’ve told you, we’re doing nothing.”

“Why don’t you even want to talk about this?”

“Because he’s just my brother.” She gave him a helpless look. “And I am the last great hope of the south. How do you think history will judge me if I throw away its fate for one person?”

Kitay opened his mouth, paused, and closed it. Rin knew his mind was racing; he was trying to come up with a way to save Kesegi, a way to foil Nezha, or a justification why one life might be worth more than thousands.

They didn’t exist. She knew that. She loved him for trying.

“Please,” she said. “Please just let this go.”

She was grateful he did not argue.

“Then we have a battle to win.” He handed the scroll back to her. “And I think we can both agree that showing this to anyone else gets us nothing.”

Rin understood his implication. The Southern Coalition could never know about this. Not Souji, not Zhuden, and certainly not Gurubai. The offer was admittedly attractive—even she found it tempting, might even have sacrificed herself for it if she weren’t so sure that what lay at the other end were lies.

If this got out, the factional infighting would explode. The Monkey Warlord had taught her that much about southern politics. This had to remain her secret.

“Of course,” she said.

She drew a ball of flame into her palm under the scroll. For a moment Nezha’s words burned bright, searing red. The parchment edges blackened, crinkled, then curled in on themselves like the legs of a dying spider.

Rin spent the next few hours attempting to catch short bursts of fitful sleep. She didn’t know why she tried; she could never sleep before battle. At last she gave up and passed the last hours until dawn pacing around the camp, watching for the sun to rise. She couldn’t bear sitting still with her thoughts. She couldn’t keep torturing herself with the possibilities—whether Kesegi was alive, whether Nezha was telling the truth, whether she should have responded to the letter rather than ignore it.

She needed a distraction. She needed this battle.

She felt good about their positions. They’d arranged their troops in a four-point formation. One squadron, the one she led, would spearhead the attack and tie the Mugenese soldiers down at the front near the sorghum fields, while two smaller squadrons would circle around the Mugenese flanks, hemming them inside a triangle to form a wedge between the village and the battlefield. Souji’s Iron Wolves, the fourth squadron, would drive holes through the enemy lines in the back, preventing a rout toward the civilians’ evacuation zone.

Preparations proceeded smoothly as the day wore on. Thanks to the Liens, they were operating with far more information than she’d ever been used to on the battlefield. She knew exactly where the Mugenese slept. When they ate. Where and when they patrolled. It was almost like a textbook case of an ambush, a test question on an exam she would have taken at Sinegard.

As the sun began its downward slope, Rin went over final instructions before she dispatched her squadron commanders to their spots. Their plans had come together with clockwork efficiency. They avoided the patrols they knew were coming. Their map directions lined up perfectly with the actual terrain. All squadron commanders fully understood their signals and timetables.

The only hiccup was their uniforms.

Chief Lien had requested they wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from civilians. Rin had protested that they didn’t have any.

“Tough,” Chief Lien said. “Find some, or your ambush is off.”

They’d compromised at headbands—thin strips of cloth tied around their foreheads. But an hour before they were due to move out, the squadron leaders started reporting they didn’t have enough excess cloth. Their soldiers were already marching in threadbare uniforms; they didn’t have any spares to cut up. Zhuden asked Rin if they should start ripping strips from their trouser legs.

“Forget that,” Rin grumbled. “Let’s just send them out.”

“You can’t,” Souji said. “You made a promise.”

“It’s idiotic! Who’s going to care about uniforms at nighttime?”

“The Mugenese might care,” Kitay said. “Killing their labor source doesn’t work in a symbiotic relationship. It’s a small measure, but it’s the least you can do. It’s the difference between ten lives and a thousand.”

In the end they had their troops smear their faces with bright red mud from a nearby pond. It left crimson patches on their clothes wherever they touched, and it caked onto their skin in dry, rusty streaks that didn’t rub off without water.

“We look stupid.” Rin surveyed the ranks. “We look like children playing past our dinnertime.”

“No, we look like a clay army.” Souji dragged two fingers across his cheek, leaving a thick, clearly visible streak. “The Red Emperor’s very finest, baked fresh from southern dirt.”

Thirty minutes until sunset, Rin crouched low amid the sorghum stalks. The smell of oil hung heavy in the air—the two thousand men behind her held dripping torches, ready to light at her signal.

The Southern Coalition’s soldiers had been trained to fight in the darkness as they had at Khudla. It hurt their visibility, yes, but the psychological advantage was significant. Troops under ambush in pitch-black night reacted with panic, confusion, and cowardice.

But tonight, Rin wanted the battlefield well lit. The Mugenese might fall back on the civilians in the chaotic dark. She needed to draw them out into the grain fields, which meant she needed to show them precisely where their enemy lay.

Are you ready, little warrior?

The Phoenix crooned in the back of her mind, eager, waiting. Rin let the old rage leak in, familiar and warming as a hearth fire, let it seep into her limbs while visions of destruction played in her head.

Oh, how she’d craved this fight.

I’m ready.

“Rin!”

She whipped around. Souji pushed his way through the sorghum stalks, red-faced and panting for breath.

Her stomach dropped. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be on the eastern flank with his Iron Wolves, poised and ready to attack.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Hold up.” He doubled over, wheezing. “Don’t give the signal. Something’s wrong.”

“What are you talking about? We’re ready, it’s time—”

“No. Look.” He rummaged in his pockets, pulled out a spyglass, and tossed it toward her. “Look carefully.”

She raised it to her eye at the township walls. She struggled to make anything out in the dark. “I don’t see anything.”

“Move to the west. Just over the fields.”

Rin moved the lens. What she saw didn’t make any sense.

Mugenese soldiers clustered around the township walls. More poured out with every passing second. They knew about the ambush. Something—or someone—had tipped them off.

But they weren’t charging forward. Their blades weren’t pointed outward. They weren’t even arranging themselves into defensive formations of the kind Rin would have expected from an army under attack.

No—their weapons were pointed at the city gates. They weren’t preventing the attackers from coming in, they were keeping the residents from coming out.

Then Rin understood their strategy.

They weren’t going to fight a fair fight. They weren’t planning to engage the Southern Coalition at all.

They’d simply taken all Leiyang hostage.

Rin grabbed the arm of the nearest field officer and hissed, “Find Kitay.”

He sprinted back toward the camp.

“Fuck.” Rin slammed a fist against her knee. “Fuck—how?”

“I don’t know.” For the first time, the confident swagger was wiped from Souji’s face. He looked terrified. “I’ve no idea, I don’t know what we’re going to do—”

What had given them away? They’d prepared this ambush with twice their usual caution. The patrols couldn’t possibly have seen them; they’d worked around the guard schedule with clockwork precision. Had someone seen her and Souji leaving the township? That was possible, but then how would the Mugenese have known when the ambush was scheduled? And how did they know it would come from the north?

It didn’t matter how. Even if there were spies within her ranks, she couldn’t solve that now; she had a more pressing problem to deal with.

The Mugenese were holding Leiyang’s civilians at knifepoint.

A small contingent of Mugenese soldiers started moving toward the ambush line. One of them waved a red flag. They wanted to negotiate.

Rin worked frantically through all the possible ways this could end, and couldn’t come up with one where both the civilians and the Southern Army were safe. The Mugenese would have to secure a guarantee that Rin’s troops would never come back.

They were going to demand a blood sacrifice. Most likely they’d massacre Rin’s troops, one for every civilian kept alive.

Rin didn’t know if she could pay that price.

“What’s going on?”

Kitay, at last. Rin turned toward him, trying not to slip into a panicked babble as she started to explain what was happening, but the moment she twisted around she saw Souji’s expression morph into horror as he lifted a finger, pointing, toward the village.

A second later, she heard an arrow shriek through the air.

The Mugenese flag-bearer dropped to the ground.

Instinctively she whipped her head around, searching the ranks for a raised bow, a twanging bowstring—who’d done it, which absolute idiot had—

“My gods,” Souji murmured. His eyes were still fixed on the village.

Rin turned back around and thought she was hallucinating. What else explained that great column moving out of the township gates, a crowd nearly the size of an army?

She raised the spyglass back to her eye.

Qinen. It had to be. He’d mobilized his resistance band—no, from the looks of it, he’d mobilized the entire township. The column wasn’t just the fighting men of Leiyang; they were the women, elders, and even some of the children. They held torches, plows, field hoes, kitchen knives, and clubs clearly made from legs torn from chairs.

They charged.

They knew their lives were the price of this battle. Rin’s attack couldn’t proceed so long as they were held hostage. They’d known the Mugenese would force her to choose.

They’d made this decision for her.

The Mugenese archers turned toward the township to commence the massacre. Their commander signaled an order.

Civilian bodies fell from the front of the column in a clean sweep. But the villagers kept marching over their dead, pressing inexorably forward like ants bursting forth. Another round of arrows. Another line of bodies. The villagers kept marching.

The Mugenese soldiers couldn’t shoot quickly enough to keep them at bay. This was a clash of steel and bodies now, an utterly mismatched comedy of a melee. Federation soldiers cut the villagers down as quickly as they came. They knocked the weapons out of their hands, pierced them easily in their necks and chests because their victims had never been trained to parry.

The villagers kept marching.

The bodies piled up on the field. Rin watched, horrified, as a blade went clean through an old woman’s shoulder. But the woman lifted her trembling hands and clenched the wrist of her attacker, held him still long enough for an arrow to find his forehead.

The villagers kept marching.

Souji’s hand landed on her shoulder. His voice came out a strangled rasp. “What are you waiting for?”

She reached into the back of her mind, through the channel of Kitay’s soul, to the god who lay patiently waiting.

Avenge this, she ordered.

Whatever you ask, said the Phoenix.

And Rin strode forward through the sorghum fields to rip the world open with fire. She killed indiscriminately. She turned them all to ash, civilians and enemies alike. Leiyang’s civilians welcomed her flames with smiles.

This was their choice. Their sacrifice.

Her troops surged forth around her, blades glinting in the fiery night. They’d broken formation, but formation didn’t matter anymore, only bodies, blood, and steel.

This is how we win the south, she thought as her surroundings dissolved into a blurry wave of heat. That made it easier to keep going. She couldn’t see faces, couldn’t see the pain. All she saw were shapes. Not with our blades, but our bodies.

They would take back the south with sheer numbers. The Mugenese and the Republic were strong, but the south was many. And if southerners were dirt like all the legends said, then they would crush their enemies with the overwhelming force of the earth until they could only dream of breathing. They would bury them with their bodies. They would drown them in their blood.