The Burning God (The Poppy War Book 3)

After that, it was just cleanup.

Rin walked dazedly through the sorghum fields, razed now to a level sheet of dark gray ash. Smoke curled out of her clothes in lazy, indolent spirals. She hadn’t touched opium since they’d set out on this march. But she was high now on a familiar euphoria, an exhilarating buzz that started in her fingertips and thrummed through her chest to her heart.

In Tikany, summer season was always overrun with ants. The vicious red creatures were driven into a frenzy by the dry heat, attacking whatever small children and animals crossed their paths. One bite alone raised a welt; a dozen could be fatal. The villagers retaliated with acid, using long poles to tip jars onto the anthills from a distance. Rin remembered how as a child she would crouch by the ground with empty jars in hand, squinting as destroyed civilizations frothed and burned under the sunlight.

She’d always lingered too long. She liked to listen to the acid hissing as it burrowed into the ants’ deepest tunnels. Liked to see the ants pouring frantically out the top, fleeing straight into the pools of acid she’d laid carefully in a ring around the nest. Liked to watch their little legs wiggle as they frothed and dissolved.

She felt a similar kind of pleasure now, the sadistic glee of watching lives evaporate and knowing she’d done it. Of knowing she had that power.

What is wrong with me?

She felt the same bizarre, confused elation that’d come over her when she’d poisoned Ma Lien. This time she didn’t push it away. She drank it in. Her power was derived from rage, and what she felt now was the other side of the coin—vengeance fulfilled.

Leiyang hadn’t been completely lost. When Rin’s soldiers searched the ruins for any civilians with breath left in their lungs, they found that the rate of survival was surprisingly high. The Mugenese attackers had been careless, acting from a frenzied panic rather than a calculated cruelty. They’d slammed steel haphazardly into any exposed flesh they saw instead of aiming for vital organs as they should have.

Leiyang the township was dead. Chief Lien’s people couldn’t live here any longer. Their numbers were too few; their homes and belongings were destroyed. They’d have to march south with Rin’s army to seek new homes, would have to see their numbers cannibalized into whatever villages would take them.

But Leiyang’s survivors were free. That, at least, was worth it.

Qinen, by some miracle, had made it out alive. Rin went to see him the moment she heard he was conscious.

The Southern Coalition’s handful of physicians had set up a triage center in a butchery, one of the few structures in Leiyang’s city center that hadn’t burned to the ground. They’d sanitized the structurally intact interior to the best of their ability, but couldn’t scourge the taint of burned pig intestines. By the end of the day the air was thick with the hot, tangy smell of blood, human and animal alike.

Rin found Qinen lying on a sheet outdoors, where the physicians had sent every patient not under immediate surgery. He looked awful. The burns that covered the right side of his body had twisted the skin on his face so badly that he could only speak in a hoarse, garbled whisper. His eyes were open but swollen, his right eye covered by a filmy white layer. Rin wasn’t sure that he could see her until his face broke into an awful, painful smile.

“I’m sorry—” she started, but he reached out and seized her wrist with a force that surprised her.

“I told you,” he rasped. “I told you we’d fight.”

Qinen’s band of resistance fighters hadn’t been acting alone. Similar organizations had existed all throughout the Beehive. This Rin discovered when, one by one, the villages clustered around Leiyang began to liberate themselves with startling speed.

Without the central leadership at Leiyang, the remaining ranks of Mugenese soldiers were isolated, cut off from all communications, resources, or reinforcements. Villagers armed with knives and plows now stood a fighting chance. Reports began flooding in about the villagers all throughout Rooster Province rising up, taking up arms, and purging their villages of their former rulers.

After Rin sent squadrons of Zhuden’s troops throughout the Beehive to speed up the process, the battle for the surrounding area took no more than two weeks. Some Mugenese troops put up a fight and went down in explosions of fire, yellow gas, steel, and blood. Others took their chances and surrendered, begging for exile or leniency, and were invariably executed by village committees.

When Rin toured the Beehive, she found herself witness to a wave of violence sweeping across the province.

In some hamlets, the civilians had already decapitated their Mugenese guards and strung their heads upside down along the town gates like a welcoming display of holiday lanterns. In other villages, Rin arrived while the executions were ongoing. These were drawn out over a period of days, a twisted parade whose centerpiece entertainment was an orgy of violence.

The sheer creativity astounded her. The liberated southerners marched the Mugenese naked in chains along the streets while onlookers reached out with knives to slice their flesh. They forced the Mugenese to kneel for hours on broken bricks with millstones hung around their necks. They buried the Mugenese alive, dismembered them, shot them, throttled them, and threw their bodies into dirty, rotting piles.

The victims were not limited to Mugenese troops. The victorious liberators’ harshest punishments fell on the collaborators—the magistrates, merchants, and delegates who had succumbed to Federation rule. In one village three miles south of Leiyang, Rin stumbled upon a public ceremony where three men were tied to posts, naked and gagged with rags to muffle their screams. In the corner, two women held long knives over a barrel fire. The blades glowed a vicious orange.

Rin could guess this would end in castration.

She turned to Souji. “Do you know what those men did?”

“Sure,” he said. “Traded girls.”

“They—what?”

He spelled it out for her. “They struck a deal to stop the Mugenese from grabbing women off the street. Every day they’d take a few women—usually the poor ones, or the orphans, who had no one to fight for them—and deliver them to the Mugenese general headquarters. Then they’d go back at sunrise, retrieve the girls, clean them up best they could, and send them home. It kept the younger girls and the pregnant women safe, though I don’t think the women they picked were too happy.” He watched, unflinching, as a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen ascended the stage and poured a vat of boiling oil over the men’s heads. “They said it was for the good of the village. Guess not everyone agreed.”

Loud sizzles mixed with the screams. Rin’s stomach grumbled, tricked into thinking she’d smelled freshly cooked meat. She hugged her arms over her chest and looked away, suppressing the urge to vomit.

Souji chuckled. “What’s wrong, Princess?”

“I just . . .” Rin wasn’t sure how to articulate her unease, much less distinguish it from obvious hypocrisy. “Isn’t this a bit much?”

“‘A bit much’?” He scoffed. “Really? This from you?”

“It’s different when . . .” She trailed off. How exactly was it different? What right did she have to judge? Why did she feel shame and disgust now, when the pain she regularly inflicted on the battlefield was a thousand times worse? “It’s different when it’s civilians doing it. It . . . it feels wrong.”

“How did it feel when you called the Phoenix at Speer?”

She flinched. “What does that matter?”

“It was good, wasn’t it?” His lip curled. “Oh, it was horrific, I’m sure, must have left a mental scar the size of a crater. But it was also the best thing you’d ever felt, wasn’t it? It felt like you’d put the universe back in place. Like you were balancing the scales. Didn’t it?”

He pointed to the men on the stage. They weren’t screaming anymore. Only one was still twitching. “You don’t know what these men have done. They might look like innocent Nikara faces, but you weren’t here during occupation, and you don’t know the pain they caused. The south doesn’t burn its own unless there’s a reason. You have no idea what these villagers are healing from. So don’t take this from them.”

His voice grew louder. “You don’t fix hurts by pretending they never happened. You treat them like infected wounds. You dig deep with a burning knife and gouge out the rotten flesh and then, maybe, you have a chance to heal.”

So when the south reclaimed itself in a sea of blood, Rin didn’t stop it. She could only watch as the tide of peasant violence rose to a fever pitch that she wasn’t sure she could control, even if she’d wanted to. Nobody would admit out loud how satisfying this was—the villagers had to pretend that this was a ritual of necessity and not of indulgence—but Rin saw the hungry gleams in their eyes as they drank in the screams.

This was catharsis. They needed to spill blood like they needed to breathe. Of course she understood that impulse; at night, alone with her pipe, she showed those bloody scenes over and over again to Altan so that her mind could find some semblance of peace while he could drink them hungrily in. The south needed retribution to keep going. How could she deprive them?

Only Kitay kept agitating to put an end to the riots. He could allow for the death penalty but he wanted order; he wanted public trials that weren’t a sham and sentences more moderate than execution.

“Some of those people are innocent,” he said. “Some of them were just trying to stay alive.”

“Bullshit,” Souji said. “They made their choice.”

“Do you understand the choices they got?” Kitay pointed across the courtyard to where a man had been hanging upside down by his ankles for the past three days. “He served as one of their translators for seven months. Why? Because the Mugenese captured his wife and daughter and told him he could serve, or he could watch them be buried alive. Then they started torturing his daughter in front of him to drive home the point. What do you think he picked?”

Souji was utterly unmoved. “He helped them kill other Nikara.”

“Everyone helped them kill other Nikara,” Kitay insisted. “Ideological purity is well and fine, but some people were just trying to survive.”

“You know, the Mugenese gave my sister a choice,” Souji said. “Said she could be one of their double agents and rat on her fellow villagers, or they’d rape and kill her. You know what she picked?”

Kitay’s cheeks flushed red. “I’m not saying—”

“Did you know the Mugenese liked to play games to fill their kill quota?” Souji inquired.

“I know,” Kitay said. “At Golyn Niis—”

“I know what they did at Golyn Niis.” Souji’s voice was like steel. “Want to know what they did here? They’d drive mobs of villagers up to the roofs of the tallest buildings they could find. Then they’d tear down the stairs, set the bottom floors on fire, and stand back in a circle to watch while they screamed. That’s what those collaborators had a hand in. Tell me we’re supposed to forgive that.”

“Kitay,” Rin said quietly. “Drop it.”

He didn’t. “But they’re not just targeting the Mugenese and their collaborators.”

“Kitay, please—”

“They’re targeting everyone who’s ever been remotely suspected of collaboration,” Kitay hissed. “This isn’t justice, it’s a killing frenzy, and whispers and pointed fingers are ending lives. You can’t tell who’s truly guilty and who’s fallen on the bad side of their neighbors. It’s not justice, it’s chaos.”

“So what?” Souji shrugged. “Hunt a rat, you’re going to smash some dishes. This is a revolution. It’s not a fucking tea party.”

They marched in silent exhaustion on the road back to Leiyang. The thrill of victory had long since died off. Two weeks of screams and torture, no matter who the victims were, had left them all somewhat haggard and pale.

They were half a day’s march out when a hooded rider appeared on the road. Rin’s officers rushed forward, spears leveled, shouting for the rider to stop. The rider halted, raising their hands to indicate the lack of weapon.

“Get down!” Zhuden insisted. “Who are you?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Venka threw the hood off her face and dismounted from her horse. She strode forth, batting spear points away with one hand as if swatting at a cloud of gnats. “What the fuck, Rin? Call off these fools.”

“Venka!” Rin darted forward and embraced Venka, but quickly let go; the stench was too much to bear. Venka smelled like a tannery on fire. “Great Tortoise, when’s the last time you had a bath?”

“Cut me a fucking break,” Venka said. “I’ve been fleeing for my life.”

“You had time to put on fresh face paint,” Kitay pointed out.

“Everyone was doing it in Sinegard. I had some left in my bag. Easier to access than soap, all right?”

Rin could only laugh. What else did they expect? Sring Venka was a prim, spoiled Sinegardian princess turned lethal soldier turned brittle survivor; of course she’d walk into a war zone with red paint on her lips simply because she felt like it.

“Anyway, it took you long enough to get back,” Venka griped. “I’ve been pacing this patch of road since yesterday. They told me you were based in Leiyang.”

“We were,” Rin said. “Are. Left to do some cleaning up.”

“What happened?” Kitay asked. “Thought you were just fine in the Republic.”

Venka gave a dramatic sigh. “Broke my cover. It was the stupidest thing. There I was, an utterly invisible servant girl in a magistrate’s household, and then the lady of the house started thinking I was trying to seduce her husband and dragged me out into the street.”

“Were you—?” Kitay began.

Venka shot him a scathing look. “Of course not. It’s not my fault that the stupid man couldn’t keep his eyes off my ass.”

Kitay looked flustered. “I was just going to ask if you were recognized.”

“Oh. No, but it was a near thing. His wife had me fired, then she went around telling all the other households not to hire me. That brought a bit too much attention. So I looted the armory in the middle of the night, sweet-talked the stable boy into lending me a horse, and made my way down south.” She recounted all this with such brazen flippancy she might have been chatting about Sinegard’s latest fashions. “At Ruijin they said you’d gone south, so I followed the trail of bodies. Didn’t take me long to track you down.”

“We’ve, ah, split with Ruijin,” Rin said.

“So I figured.” Venka nodded to the waiting troops. “How’d you wrestle an army from Gurubai?”

“Created a vacancy.” Rin glanced over her shoulder at her troops. Souji and the other officers were paused in the middle of the road, watching them curiously.

“She’s an ally,” Rin told them. “Carry on.”

The column resumed its march toward Leiyang. Rin kept her voice low as she spoke to Venka, glancing around to make sure Souji did not overhear.

“Listen, has Nezha started sending anyone south?”

Venka arched an eyebrow. “Not the last I heard. Why?”

“Are you sure?”

“Supposedly he’s still cooped up in the palace. Rumor has it he’s not doing so well, actually; he’s been out of commission for a few weeks.”

“What?” Rin asked sharply. Her heart was suddenly beating very quickly. “What does that mean?”

Kitay shot her a curious look. She ignored it. “Was he injured?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Venka said. “He hasn’t been out on the field in weeks. Vaisra recalled him from Tiger Province last month. He’s spent a lot of time with the Hesperians, negotiating with their delegates, and I think the prevailing rumor was that he’s fallen ill. He looks weak, he’s got shadows under his eyes, or so they say. It’s hard to tell what’s gossip and what’s fact, since no one I knew had actually gotten a good look at him, but it seems serious.”

Rin felt a stupid, instinctive stab of worry, the residue of concern. She quashed it. “You think he’s going to die?”

“Not sure,” Venka said. “They say he’s got all the best Hesperian doctors working on him, though that might be doing more harm than good. I doubt he’ll be leading troops out anytime soon.”

Did that mean she was safe? Had Nezha just been fucking around with her? His illness did not negate the fact that he had spies in her camp, that he knew where she laid her head every night. But if Venka was right, and if Nezha and his father were indeed still preoccupied with the north, they might not have to worry about an impending ambush for the time being.

This reprieve might not last for long. But she’d take every extra day she had.

“What’s the matter?” Venka asked. “You spooked about something?”

Rin exchanged a glance with Kitay. They’d come to an unspoken agreement—they wouldn’t tell Venka about the letter. The fewer people who knew, the better.

“Nothing,” Rin said. “Just—just wanted to make sure we’re not getting blindsided.”

“Trust me.” Venka snorted. “I don’t think he’s even in a fit state to walk.”

They rode for a few moments in silence. Rin could see the silhouette of Leiyang emerging from the horizon; from here on it was only flat roads.

“So what in the sixty-four gods has been happening here?” Venka asked after a while. “I passed a few villages on my way up here. They’ve all gone completely mad.”

“Throes of victory,” Rin said. “Growing pains.”

“They’re skinning people alive,” Venka said.

“Because they traded little girls for food rations.”

“Oh. Fair enough.” Venka flicked an invisible speck of dust from her wrist. “I hope they castrated them, too.”

Later that afternoon, as Rin headed to the fields to supervise basic training, she was accosted by a wizened old woman dragging two skinny girls along by their wrists.

“We heard you were taking girls,” she said. “Will they do?”

Rin was so startled by her pushy irreverence that rather than directing the woman to the enlistment stand, she paused and looked. She was puzzled by what she saw. The girls were thin and scrawny, certainly no older than fifteen, and they cowered behind the old woman as if terrified of being seen. They couldn’t possibly be volunteers—every other woman who had enlisted in the Southern Army had done so proudly and of her own volition.

“You’re taking girls,” the old woman prompted.

Rin hesitated. “Yes, but—”

“They’re sisters. You can have them for two silvers.”

Rin blinked. “Pardon?”

“One silver?” the woman suggested impatiently.

“I’m not paying you anything.” Rin’s brow furrowed. “That’s not what—”

“They’re good girls,” said the woman. “Quick. Obedient. And neither are virgins—”

“Virgins?” Rin repeated. “What do you think we’re doing here?”

The woman looked at her as if she were mad. “They said you were taking girls. For the army.”

Then the pieces fell together. Rin’s gut twisted. “We aren’t hiring prostitutes.”

The woman was undaunted. “One silver.”

“Get out of here,” Rin snapped. “Or I’ll have you thrown in jail.”

The woman spat a gob of saliva at Rin’s feet and stormed off, tugging the girls behind her.

“Hold it,” Rin said. “Leave them.”

The woman paused, looking for a moment like she might protest. So Rin let a stream of fire, ever so delicate, slip through her fingers and dance around her wrist. “I wasn’t asking.”

Hastily, the woman left without another word.

Rin turned to the girls. They had barely moved this whole time. Neither would meet her eyes. They stood still, arms hanging loose by their sides, heads lowered deferentially like house servants waiting for commands.

Rin had the oddest temptation to pinch their arms, check their muscles, turn up their chins, and open their mouths to see if their teeth were good. What is wrong with me?

She asked, for want of anything better to say, “Do you want to be soldiers?”

The older girl shot Rin a fleeting glance, then gave a dull shrug. The other didn’t react at all; her eyes remained fixed on an empty patch of air before her.

Rin tried something else. “What are your names?”

“Pipaji,” said the older girl.

The younger girl’s eyes dropped to the ground.

“What’s wrong with her?” Rin asked.

“She doesn’t speak,” snapped Pipaji. Rin saw a sudden flash of anger in her eyes—a sharp defensiveness, and she understood then that Pipaji had spent her entire life shielding her sister from other people.

“I understand,” Rin said. “You speak for her. What’s her name?”

The hostility eased somewhat from Pipaji’s face. “Jiuto.”

“Jiuto and Pipaji,” Rin said. “Do you have a family name?”

Silence.

“Where are you from?”

Pipaji gave her a sullen look. “Not here.”

“I see. They took your home, too, huh?”

Pipaji gave a listless shrug, as if she found this question incredibly stupid.

“Listen,” Rin said. Her patience was running out. She wanted to be on the field with her troops, not coaxing words from sullen little girls. “I haven’t got time for this. You’re free of that woman, so you can do whatever you like. You can join this army if you want—”

“Do we get food?” Pipaji interrupted.

“Yes. Twice a day.”

Pipaji considered this for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

Her tone made it clear she had no further questions. Rin watched them both for a moment, then shrugged and pointed. “Good. Barracks are over there.”