The Burning God (The Poppy War Book 3)

The battlefront under the Baolei Mountains was a conundrum.

The valleys were silent. Dirigibles weren’t buzzing, swords weren’t clashing, and the air wasn’t thick with the acrid burn of fire powder. Rin neither saw nor heard any signs of active combat, at least not for the seven days it took for their party to reach the front lines.

Only when they drew closer did she realize why. The Southern Coalition was trapped. The Republic had pinned them against the mountainside behind a series of makeshift forts, each planted half a mile within the other, surrounded by lines of cannons and mounted arquebuses prepared to mow down any who tried to break out of the impasse. The forts were temporary constructions but they looked brick solid, supported by piles of sandbags, their stone walls impenetrable save for tiny slits just large enough for the firing end of an arquebus. Archery was certainly futile against those forts, and Rin suspected that rudimentary cannons of the type the Southern Coalition possessed would barely make a dent, either.

But the Republic also couldn’t penetrate the mountainside. The ravines and caves along the southern Baolei range functioned as natural bomb shelters, which meant sustained dirigible attacks would only be a waste of ammunition. The underground terrain couldn’t be mapped from the air, which gave the southerners a significant defensive advantage. This, Rin assumed, was the only reason the Republic hadn’t yet mounted a ground assault.

The Southern Coalition didn’t have the manpower to break out. The Republic didn’t want to bleed the forces necessary to break in. For now, both sides remained holed up in their respective stations. But this standoff would end, as all sieges did, the moment the southerners finally ran out of food and water.

“Your old classmate is unfortunately very good at siege warfare,” Daji said. They had spent the morning circling the blockade perimeter in the laundry wagon, searching for a way to sneak past Republican lines unnoticed. “He’s got them fenced in at every critical juncture. No easy way to slip past those pillboxes unless we make a scene.”

“I think a scene is exactly what we want,” Rin said.

“No, that’s what you want when you break out,” Kitay pointed out. “But we’ve got to get inside and rally the forces first. We don’t know what condition they’re in. Making a scene puts a hard time limit on how long it takes the southerners to mobilize.”

So the question remained: How did one sneak past the greatest assembly of military power ever seen on the continent?

“We could swim in,” Kitay suggested after a pause. “I think I saw a stream a mile back.”

“They’d shoot us in the water,” Rin said.

“They’re guarding the river flows leading out,” Kitay pointed out. “They don’t care so much about people sneaking in. We get some bamboo reeds, swim down in the bottom layers where it’s muddy—best to do it when it’s raining, too; that’ll maximize our water cover.”

He glanced around the wagon. Daji shrugged, silent.

“So we’ll swim,” Rin said, since it didn’t appear anyone had a better plan. “What next?”

“You need to go through the old mining tunnels.” Rin was startled when Jiang spoke up. He’d been silent all morning, gazing placidly around the battlefront like he was touring a botanical garden. Now suddenly his gaze was focused, his voice firm and assured. “You won’t be underground for long. Just until you emerge on the other side into the forests. It’s not a perfect exit route—those tunnels aren’t well lit, and quite a few people are probably going to fall down the pits and break their necks. But there’s no other route that keeps you safe from the dirigibles.”

Once again, his switch in demeanor was so abrupt that Rin couldn’t help but stare. Jiang was acting like a seasoned general, casually spinning together pieces of a strategy like someone who’d planned ambushes like this a hundred times before. This wasn’t him. This was a stranger.

“The real challenge is getting the southerners to follow you out,” he continued. “You’ll have to be discreet about it. If Souji tried selling you to Vaisra once, he might do so again. Is there anyone in the coalition you still trust?”

“Venka,” Rin said immediately. “Qinen, too, probably, if he’s still alive. We could try to swing Zhuden’s officers, but they’ll take convincing.”

“Can Venka mobilize at least half the army?” Daji asked.

Rin considered that for a moment. She didn’t know how much sway Venka held. Venka wasn’t terribly popular among the southerners; she was by nature curt and abrasive, a pale-skinned northerner with a harsh Sinegardian accent who clearly didn’t belong. But she could be charming when she wanted to be. She might have managed to talk her way out of any suspected ties to Rin. Or Souji might have had her killed long ago.

Rin decided to be optimistic. “Probably. We can get her to scare up a crowd, and once the battle’s started, the rest should follow.”

“I suppose we can’t do better than that.” Jiang pointed to Rin and Kitay. “You two go in first and find your people. Round up as many of them as you can within the next twenty-four hours, and tell them to press hard to the west-facing mines when we break through the front lines. If you have to break cover before then, just send up a flare and we’ll break the front early.”

“There are at least two thousand Republican troops on the front,” Kitay said.

Jiang surveyed the forts for a moment, and then shook his head. “Oh, no. Double that, at least.”

Kitay furrowed his brows. “Then how are you going to . . . ?”

“I said we’ll break the front,” Jiang said very calmly.

Kitay blinked at him, clearly at a loss for words.

“Just trust him,” Rin muttered.

She thought back to memories of howling screeches, shapes of darkness furling out of nowhere. She thought of Tseveri’s stricken face as Jiang’s clawed fingers went into her rib cage.

She didn’t trust this newly confident, capable Jiang. She had no idea who he was, or what he could do. But she feared him, which meant the Republic should, too.

“Fine.” Kitay still looked baffled, but he didn’t push the point. “What’s your signal, then?”

Jiang just chuckled. “Oh, I think you’ll know.”

“You’re shitting me,” Venka said.

She looked terrible. She’d lost a startling amount of weight. She was wrung out, rangier, sharp cheekbones jutting beneath hollow, purple-ringed eyes.

She hadn’t been easy to find. Rin and Kitay had climbed out of the river into what looked like a long-deserted army camp. The sentry posts nearest them were unmanned; the few sandbags visible were scattered uselessly across the dirt. Rin would have assumed the Southern Coalition had already fled, except that the charred logs near the mountainside were evidence of freshly doused campfires, and the latrine dugouts stank of fresh shit.

The entire army, it appeared, had gone underground.

Rin and Kitay had ventured into the tunnels, ambushed the first soldier they encountered, and demanded he lead them to Venka. He sat tamely now in the corner of the dimly lit room, gagged with rope, eyes darting back and forth in equal parts terror and confusion.

“Hello to you, too.” Kitay headed for a pile of maps lying on the floor and began to rummage through them. “Are these up to date? Mind if I take a look?”

“Do whatever you want,” Venka said faintly. She didn’t even glance at him. Her eyes, still wide in disbelief, were fixed on Rin. “I thought they carted you to that mountain. Souji kept crowing on and on about that, said you were stuck in stone for good.”

“Some old friends broke me out,” Rin said. “Looks like you’ve been doing far worse.”

“Gods, Rin, it’s been a nightmare.” Venka pressed her palms against her temples. “I honestly don’t know what Souji’s plan is at this point. I was starting to think we’d be buried here.”

“So Souji’s in charge?” Rin asked.

“He and Gurubai together.” Venka looked abashed. “You, ah, might hear about some things I said. I mean, after Tikany, they were out for me, too, and I—”

“I’m sure you said whatever you needed to to get them off your back,” Rin said. “I don’t care about that. Just fill us in on what’s happened.”

Venka nodded. “The Republic launched a second assault a few days after the first air raid. Souji led us in a retreat north—the idea was to get back to Ruijin—but the Republic kept pushing us eastward, so we got trapped up against these mountains instead. We’re calling this the Anvil, because they keep slamming up against us and we’ve got nowhere to run. I’m sure they’ll be making their final push any day now; they know we’re nearly out of supplies.”

“I’m shocked you made it to the mountains at all.” Kitay looked up from the maps. “How on earth did you hold them off this long?”

“It’s their artillery’s fault,” Venka said. “They keep shooting themselves in the feet. Literally. Nezha’s got his army outfitted with new Hesperian technology, but they don’t know how to use it, and I guess they moved out before they were properly trained, so half the time they try to hit us they blow themselves up in the process.”

No wonder Nezha had sounded so rattled when complaining about force integration. Rin couldn’t help but grin.

“Something funny?” Venka asked.

“Nothing,” Rin said. “It’s just—remember that night on the tower, how Nezha kept bragging about how Hesperian technology was going to win the Empire for us?”

“Yes, they’ve had growing pains,” Venka said drily. “Unfortunately, a misfired cannonball hurts just as bad.”

Kitay held up a map and tapped at an arrow snaking south. “Is this how you were going to get them out? A hard press by the southern border?”

“That’s what Souji’s planning,” Venka said. “It seemed like our best bet. Nezha doesn’t have his own men on that border; it’s under the domain of the new Ox Warlord. Bai Lin. There are massive tungsten deposits on the Monkey Province side of the border, and Gurubai’s offered to mine it for him if he’ll carve us an escape corridor.”

“That won’t work,” Kitay said.

Venka gave him an exasperated look. “We’ve been planning this for weeks.”

“Sure, but I know Bai Lin. He used to come over to our estate in Sinegard to play wikki with my parents all the time. The man hasn’t got a backbone—Father used to call him the Empire’s greatest brownnoser. There’s no way he’ll risk pissing Vaisra off. He’ll let Nezha decimate you and send laborers in to mine the tungsten himself.”

“Fine.” Venka jutted her chin out. “You come up with something better, then.”

Kitay tapped a northern point on the blockade. “We have to go through the old mining tunnels. They’ll bring us out onto the other side of the Baolei range.”

“We’ve tried those tunnels,” Venka said. “They’re blocked up.”

“Then we’ll blow a hole through the entrance,” Kitay said.

Venka looked doubtful. “You’d need a lot of firepower.”

“Oh dear,” Rin drawled. “I wonder how we’ll manage that.”

Venka snorted. “None of the cave tunnels here lead to the mines. We’d still have to get through the dead zone, which is at least a mile long. Nezha’s got half his infantry stationed right outside. We’re working with two-thirds the numbers we had at Tikany, and we don’t have an air defense. This can’t work.”

“It’ll work,” Kitay said. “We’ve got allies.”

“Who?” Venka perked up. “How many?”

“Two,” Rin said.

“You assholes—”

“Rin brought the Trifecta,” Kitay clarified.

Venka squinted at them. “What, like the shadow puppets?”

“The original Trifecta,” Rin said. “Two of them, at least. The Empress. Master Jiang. They’re the Vipress and the Gatekeeper.”

“Are you telling me,” Venka said slowly, “that Lore Master Jiang, the man who kept a drug garden at Sinegard, is going to single-handedly spring us out of this blockade?”

Kitay scratched his chin. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“He’s only the most powerful shaman in Nikan,” Rin said. “I mean, so we think. Word’s still out on the Dragon Emperor.”

Venka looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A vein twitched beneath her left eye. “The last time I saw Jiang he was trying to snip my hair off with garden shears.”

“He’s about the same now,” Rin said. “But he can summon beasts that can wipe out entire platoons in seconds, if history is anything to go by, so we’ve got a bit more to work with.”

“I don’t—I just—you know what? Fine. Sure. This might as well be happening.” Venka dragged her palms down her face and groaned. “Fucking hell, Rin. I wish you’d gotten here just a few days earlier. You picked a dreadful time to show up.”

“Why’s that?” Rin asked.

“Vaisra’s making his tour to inspect the troops tomorrow.”

“Tour?” Kitay repeated. “Vaisra doesn’t command?”

“No, Nezha’s in command. Vaisra stays behind at Arlong, rules over his new kingdom, and plays nice with the Hesperians.”

Of course, Rin thought. Why would she have expected otherwise? Vaisra had fought the civil war from his throne room in Arlong, sending Rin out like an obedient hunting dog while he sat back and reaped the rewards. Vaisra never dirtied his own hands. He just turned people into weapons and then disposed of them.

“He comes out to Arabak every three weeks,” Venka said. “Then he flies out here to conduct a troop appraisal right before he leaves. A rallying ceremony of sorts—it’s insufferable. We’ve figured out the schedule because they always start firing into the air when he’s here.”

“Why is that a problem?” Kitay asked. “That’s good for us.”

Venka wrinkled her nose. “How so? It means the entire front line will be fully armed and at attention, and that we’ll have to deal with Vaisra’s private guard on top of that.”

“It also puts them on the defensive,” Kitay said. “Because now they’ve got a target to protect.”

“But you’re not . . .” Venka glanced between them. “Oh. Oh, you’re not fucking serious. That’s your plan?”

Rin hadn’t thought of targeting Vaisra until Kitay said it out loud. But it made perfect sense. If the Republic’s most important figure was going to put himself on the front lines, then of course she should aim his way. At the very least, it would split the Republican Army’s attention—if they were busy rallying around Vaisra, that drew troops away from the Southern Coalition’s escape route.

“He’s had it coming,” she said. “Why not now?”

“I—sure.” Venka was past the point of disbelief; now she simply looked resigned. “And you’re sure Master Jiang can clear the dead zone?”

“We’ll worry about breaking the front,” she said. “You handle evacuation. How many people here will listen to you?”

“Probably a lot, if I tell them you’re back,” Venka said. “Souji and Gurubai haven’t got much goodwill among the ranks right now.”

“Good,” Rin said. “Tell every officer you can find to drive north in a wedge formation when things start exploding at the border. When does Vaisra arrive?”

“Typically in the mornings. That’s when they’ve had their parades the last two times he’s visited.”

“Crack of dawn?” Kitay asked.

“A little later. Twenty minutes, maybe?”

“Then we’ll break to the mines twenty minutes after dawn.” Rin turned to the gagged soldier in the corner. “Are you going to help us?”

He nodded frantically. She strode toward him and pulled the rope out of his mouth. He coughed to clear his throat.

“I have no idea what is going on,” he said, eyes watering. “And I’m fairly sure that we’re all about to die.”

“That’s fine,” Rin said. “Just so long as you’ll do as I say.”

For the rest of the night Rin followed Venka through the caves and tunnels, whispering the same message to everyone who cared to listen. The Speerly is back. She’s brought allies. Pack your things and ready your arms. Spread the word. At dawn, we break.

But when at last the hour came, the tunnels were depressingly quiet. Rin had seen this coming. The Southern Coalition was a threadbare army living on stretched rations. Exhaustion plagued the ranks; even those who fully believed in her didn’t have the energy to lead the charge. They were suffering a collective action problem—everyone was hoping someone else would make the first move.

Rin was happy to do just that.

“Give them a kick in the ass if they won’t mobilize,” Jiang had told her. “Bring hell to their doorstep.”

So twenty minutes after the sun rose, once faint notes of parade music began carrying over the still morning air from the Republican line, Rin walked out in front of the cave mouths, stretched her hand toward the sky, and called down a column of bright orange fire.

The flames formed a thick pillar stretching to the heavens. A beacon, an invitation. She stood with her eyes closed and arms outstretched, relishing the caress of hot air against her skin, basking in its deafening roar. A minute later, she saw through the heat shimmer a cluster of black dots—dirigibles rising to meet her.

Then the southerners burst out of their caves and tunnels like ants foaming from the dirt. They ran past her, half-packed satchels hanging from their shoulders, bare feet padding against the dirt.

Rin stood still at the center of the frenzied panic.

Time seemed to dilate for a moment. She knew she should join the fleeing crowd. She knew she had to rally them, to use her flame to corral their confused panic into a concentrated assault. In a moment, she would.

But right now, she wanted to enjoy this.

At last this war was back under her control. She’d chosen this battle. She’d determined its time and place. She spoke the word, and the world exploded into action.

This was chaos, but chaos was where she thrived. A world at peace, at stalemate, at cease-fire, had no use for her. She understood now what she needed to do to cling to power: submerge the world in chaos, and forge her authority from the broken pieces.

The Republican Army awaited them at the northern front.

The infantry stood behind several rows of cannons, mounted arquebuses, and archers—three types of artillery, a mix of Nikara and Hesperian technologies designed to rip flesh apart at a distance. Six dirigibles hovered in the sky above them like guardian deities.

Rin’s heart sank as she scanned the horizon. Jiang was nowhere to be seen. He’d promised them safe passage. This was a death trap.

Where is he?

Her mouth filled with the taste of ash. This was her fault. Despite his clear mental volatility, she’d trusted him. She’d placed her life and the fate of the south in his hands with all the naivete of a pupil at Sinegard. And once again, he’d failed her.

“It’s a suicide drive, then.” Venka, to her great credit, did not sound the least bit afraid. She reached for her sword, as if that could do anything against the impending air assault. “I suppose this had to end sometime. It’s been fun, kids.”

“Hold on.” Kitay pointed to the front line just as Jiang strode, seemingly out of nowhere, into the empty space between the two armies.

He wielded no weapon and carried no shield. He loped casually with slouched shoulders across the field, hands in his pockets, as if he had just stepped out his front door for a mild afternoon stroll. He didn’t stop until he reached the very center of the line of dirigibles. Then he turned around to face them, head tilted sideways like a fascinated child.

Rin dug her nails into her palm.

She couldn’t breathe.

This was it. She’d wagered the lives of everyone in the Southern Coalition on what happened next. The fate of the south hung on one man, one clearly unstable man, and Rin could not truthfully say whether she believed in Jiang or not.

The dirigibles dipped down slightly toward him, like predators stalking their prey. Miraculously, they had not yet begun to fire.

Did they intend to be merciful? Did they want to spare the Southern Coalition so that they could take them alive, to be tortured and interrogated later? Or were they so confused and amazed by this solitary, suicidal fool that they wanted to draw in closer for a better look?

Did they have any idea what he was?

Someone on the Republican front must have shouted an order, because the entire artillery swiveled their barrels around to aim at Jiang.

Something invisible pulsed through the air.

Jiang hadn’t moved, but something about the world had shifted, had knocked its sounds and colors slightly off-kilter. The hairs stood up on Rin’s arm. She felt intensely, deliciously light-headed. A strange, exhilarating energy thrummed just beneath her skin, an incredible sense of potential. She felt like a cotton ball suffused in oil, just waiting for the smallest spark to ignite.

Jiang raised one hand into the air. His fingers splayed out. The air around him shimmered and distorted. Then the sky exploded into shadow like an ink bottle shattered on parchment.

Rin saw the effects before the cause. Bodies fell. The entire archery line collapsed. The dirigible closest to Jiang careened to the side and struck its neighbor, sending both crashing to the ground in a ball of fire.

Only after the wave of smoke cleared did Rin see the source of the destruction—black, mist-like wraiths snaked through the air, shooting through bodies, weapons, and shields with uniform ease. At times they hung still and, ever so briefly, she could just barely make out their shapes—a lion, a dragon, a kirin—before they disappeared back into formless shadow. They followed no known laws of the physical world. Metal passed through them as if they were immaterial, but their fangs ripped through flesh just as easily as the sharpest of swords.

Jiang had called down every beast of the Emperor’s Menagerie, and they were tearing through the material world like steel through paper.

The other four dirigibles never managed to fire. A fleet of black birdlike shadows ripped through the balloons that kept them afloat, puncturing the centers and flying out the other side in neat, straight lines. The balloons popped into nothing. The dirigible baskets plummeted with startling velocity, where Jiang’s beasts continued wreaking havoc on the ground forces. The Republican soldiers struggled valiantly against the wraiths, swinging their blades desperately against the onslaught, but they might as well have been fighting the wind.

“Holy shit.” Venka stood gaping, arms hanging by her side. She should have been leading the charge toward the mines, but neither she nor any of the Southern Coalition had moved an inch. All that any of them seemed able to do was watch.

“Told you,” Rin murmured. “He’s a shaman.”

“I didn’t think shamans were that powerful.”

Rin shot her an indignant look. “You’ve seen me call flame!”

Venka pointed to Jiang. He was still alone in the dead zone. He was so open, so vulnerable. But no bullets seemed able to pierce his skin, and every arrow aimed his way dropped harmlessly onto the ground long before it reached him. Everywhere he pointed, explosions followed.

“You,” Venka said reverently, “cannot do that.”

She was right. Rin felt a pang of jealousy as she watched Jiang conducting his wraiths like a musician, each sweep of his arm prompting another charge of shadowy havoc.

She’d thought she understood the limits of shamanic destruction. She’d leveled a field of bodies before. She’d leveled a country.

But what she’d done to the longbow island had been a singular episode of divine intervention. It could never—should never be repeated. In conventional combat, on a battlefield where discriminating between ally and enemy actually mattered, she couldn’t compete with Jiang. She could burn a handful of soldiers at once, dozens if she had a clear, clustered target. But Jiang was blowing through entire squadrons with mere waves of his hand.

No wonder he’d acted so cavalier before. This wasn’t a fight for him, this was child’s play.

Rin wanted power like that.

She could see now how the Trifecta had become legend. This was how they had massacred the Ketreyids. This was how they had reunited a country, declared themselves its rulers, and yanked it back from both Hesperia and the Federation.

So how had they ever lost it?

At last the Southern Coalition came to their senses. Under Venka and Kitay’s direction they began a frenzied drive toward the scattered blockade. Jiang’s shadow wraiths parted to let them through unscathed. His control was astonishing—there must have been more than a hundred beasts on the field, each weaving autonomously through the mass of bodies, all distinguishing perfectly between southerners and Republicans.

Rin and Jiang alone remained behind the front lines.

This wasn’t over. A second fleet of dirigibles was approaching fast from the east. Deafening booms split the sky. The air was suddenly thick with missiles. Rin threw herself to the ground, wincing as explosions thundered above her.

The Republican troops had realized their only viable strategy. They’d noticed Jiang’s limits—his beasts might be able to knock missiles out of the air, but their numbers were constrained to a pack the size of a small field. He couldn’t tear through the ground troops and defend against the dirigibles at the same time. He couldn’t summon an unending horde.

Rin lifted her head just as three airships peeled away from the fleet and veered toward the mines. She understood their plan in an instant—they couldn’t count on taking Jiang out, so they were going to take out the Southern Coalition instead.

They were going to fire on Kitay.

Oh, fuck no.

Your turn, Rin told the Phoenix. Show them everything we’ve got.

The god responded with glee.

Her world burst into orange. Rin had never called flames so great into battle before. She had always kept the fire reined in within a twenty-yard radius; any farther than that and she risked collateral damage to allies and civilians. But now she had clear targets across an empty field. Now she could send great roaring columns fifty yards high into the sky, could shroud the dirigible baskets in flame, could scorch the troops inside, could char the balloons until they imploded.

One by one the dirigibles dropped.

This felt deliriously good. It wasn’t just the freedom of range, the permission to destroy without constraint. Everything felt so easy. She wasn’t calling the flame, she was the flame; those great columns were natural extensions of her body, as simple to command as her fingers and toes. She felt the Phoenix’s presence so closely she might have been in the world of spirit. She might have been on Speer.

This was Jiang’s doing. He’d opened the gate to the void to let the beasts in, and now the gap between worlds had thinned just a little more. Such small shreds of reality separated them from a churning cosmos of infinite possibility, and that made the material world so very malleable. It made her feel divine.

She noticed one more dirigible flying in the opposite direction of the fleet. Its guns weren’t firing. Its flight pattern seemed erratic—she couldn’t tell if the dirigible had been damaged, or if something was wrong with the crew. It climbed several feet in altitude above the rest of the fleet, teetered for a moment, and then turned back in the direction of the New City.

Rin knew then exactly who was on that dirigible. Someone who badly needed protection. Someone who had to be extracted from the fracas, immediately.

“Master!” She shouted, pointing. Her flames couldn’t reach that high, but perhaps his beasts could. “Bring down that ship!”

Jiang didn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure that he’d heard her. His pale eyes had gone entirely blank; he seemed trapped in the throes of his own symphony of ruin.

But then a small cluster of shadows peeled away from the rest, hurtled upward through the air, and fell on the balloon like a ravenous pack of wolves. Moments later the carriage started tumbling to the ground.

The crash shook the earth. Rin sprinted toward the wreckage.

Most of the crew had died on impact. She made short work of the survivors. Two Hesperian soldiers made staggering advances when they saw her coming. One had an arquebus, so she took him out first, shrouding his head and shoulders in a ball of flame before he had time to pull the trigger. The other soldier had a knife. But he’d been injured in the crash, and his movements were comically slow. Rin let him approach, twisted the hilt from his hand, and jammed the blade into his neck so hard the point came up through his eye.

Then she started digging through the debris.

Yin Vaisra was still alive. She found him pinned beneath part of the basket hull and the corpses of two of his guards, gasping hoarsely as he struggled to free himself. His eyes widened when he saw her. The twist of fear was visible for only an instant before his face resumed its habitual mask of calm, but Rin saw. She felt a vicious pulse of glee.

He reached for a knife lying by his waist. She wedged her toe beneath its hilt and flicked it out of his reach. She sat back and waited, expecting him to produce another weapon, but he seemed otherwise unarmed. All he could do was squirm.

Easy. This was so easy. She could kill him where he lay, could gut him with his own knife with no more ceremony than a butcher slaughtering a pig. But that would be so terribly unsatisfying. She wanted to milk this moment for all it was worth.

She braced herself under the carriage hull and pushed her legs against the ground. The hull was heavier than it looked. Those things seemed so elegant and lightweight in the air; now it took all her strength to shift it off Vaisra’s legs.

At last, he struggled out from beneath the corpses. She dropped the hull.

“Get up,” she ordered.

To her surprise, he obeyed.

Slowly he rose to his feet. It hurt him terribly to stand—she could tell from the stoop of his shoulders and the way he winced as his left leg shook beneath him. But he didn’t make a sound of protest.

No, the first President of the Nikara Republic had too much dignity for that.

They stood face-to-face for a moment in silence. Rin looked him up and down, etching every detail of him into her memory. She wanted to remember everything about this moment.

He really was the spitting image of Nezha—an older, crueler version, an unsettling premonition of everything Nezha was supposed to be. Small wonder she’d so eagerly cast him her loyalty. She’d been attracted to him; she could admit this to herself, now that it didn’t matter. It couldn’t humiliate her anymore. She could concede that not so long ago, she’d wanted to be commanded and owned by someone who looked like Nezha.

Gods, she’d been so stupid.

Every day since her escape from Arlong, she’d wondered what she would say to Vaisra if she ever saw him again. What she might do if he were ever at her mercy. She’d fantasized about this moment so many times, but now, as he stood weakened and vulnerable before her, she couldn’t think of anything to say.

There was nothing more to be said. She sought no answers or explanations from him. She knew very well why he’d betrayed her. She knew he considered her less human than animal. She didn’t need his acknowledgment or respect. She needed nothing from him at all.

She just needed him gone. Out of the equation; off the chessboard.

“You do realize they’re going to destroy you,” he said.

She lifted her chin. “Are those your last words?”

“Everything you do convinces them you should not exist.” Blood trickled from his lips. He knew he was a dead man; all he could do now was try to rattle her. “Every time you call the fire, you remind the Gray Order why you cannot remain free. The only reason you stand here now is because you’ve been useful in the south. But they’ll come for you soon, my dear. These are your final days. Enjoy them.”

Rin didn’t flinch.

If he thought he could unsettle her with words, he was wrong. Once, perhaps, he could manipulate her with coaxing, praise, and insults like she was clay in his hands. Once, she’d clung to everything he said because she was weak and drifting, flailing about for anything solid to hold on to. But nothing he said could shake her now.

She couldn’t feel the revulsion she’d anticipated at the sight of him. She’d spent so long thinking of Vaisra as a monster. This man had traded everything for power—his southern allies, all three of his sons, and Rin herself. But she found she couldn’t fault him for that. Like her, like the Trifecta, Vaisra had only been pursuing his vision for Nikan with a ruthless and single-minded determination. The only difference between them was that he’d lost.

“Do you know your biggest mistake?” she asked softly. “You should have gambled on me.”

Before Vaisra could respond, she seized his chin and brought his mouth to hers. He tried to twist away. She gripped the back of his head and kept it pressed against her face. He struggled, but he was so weak. He bit desperately at her lips. The taste of blood filled her mouth, but she just pressed her lips harder against his.

Then she funneled flame into his mouth.

It wasn’t enough simply to kill him. She had to humiliate and mutilate him. She had to force an inferno down his throat and char him from the inside, to feel his burned flesh sloughing away under her fingers. She wanted overkill. She had to reduce him to a pile of something unfixable, unrecognizable.

This couldn’t undo the past. It couldn’t bring Suni, Baji, or Ramsa back, couldn’t erase all the tortures she’d suffered at his commands. Couldn’t erase the scar on her back or restore her missing hand. But it felt good. The point of revenge wasn’t to heal. The point was that the exhilaration, however temporary, drowned out the hurt.

He went limp against her. She let his body drop; he fell forward, chest curled over his knees, as if he were bowing to her.

She breathed deep, inhaling the smoky tang of his burning innards. She knew this ecstasy wouldn’t last. It would fade away in minutes, and then she’d want more. She almost wished that he would come back to life so she could kill him again, and then again, that she might keep experiencing the thrill of glimpsing the wretched fear in his eyes before her flames extinguished their light.

She felt the same way now that she did every time she destroyed a Mugenese contingent. She knew revenge was a drug. She knew it couldn’t sustain her forever. But right now, while she was riding the high, before her adrenaline crashed and the weight and horror of what she’d just done flooded back through the crevices of her mind, while she stood breathing hard over the blackened ashes of the man who had destroyed almost everything she loved, it felt better than anything in the world.

She didn’t see the last dirigible swooping low through the smoke at Jiang until it was too late.

“Watch out!” she screamed, but the boom of cannons drowned out her voice.

Jiang dropped like a puppet with cut strings. His beasts vanished. The dirigible veered tentatively backward, as if trying to assess the damage before it took a second shot. She flung her head back and screamed fire. A single jet of flame ripped through the airship balloon. The carriage spiraled into the ground and exploded.

Rin sprinted through the raining wreckage to Jiang.

He lay still where he had fallen. She pressed her fingers into his neck. She felt a pulse, strong and insistent. Good. She patted her hand over his body, trying to check the extent of his wounds. But there was no blood—his clothes were dry.

They weren’t safe yet. Arquebuses went off all around them; Jiang had not finished off the Republican artillery.

“Get him up.” Daji materialized, seemingly from nowhere. Her eyes were wild and frantic; her hair and clothes singed black. She jammed her hands under Jiang’s arms and hoisted him to a sitting position. “Hurry.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Rin asked. “He’s not even—”

Daji shook her head just as the crack of arquebus fire echoed around them. They both ducked.

“Quickly!” Daji hissed.

Rin pulled one of Jiang’s arms around her shoulder. Daji took the other. Together they staggered to their feet and ran for cover, Jiang lolling between them like a drunkard.

Somehow they made it unscathed to the Southern Coalition’s rear guard. Venka and a line of defenders stood at the base of the mountains, firing back at the Republicans as the civilians clustered around the blocked tunnel entrances.

“Oh, thank fuck, there you are.” Venka dropped her crossbow to help them hoist Jiang toward a wagon. “Is he hurt?”

“I can’t tell.” Rin helped Daji push Jiang’s legs up over the cart. He didn’t look wounded. In fact, he was still conscious. He pulled his knees up into a crouched sitting position, rocking back and forth, emitting bursts of low, nervous giggles.

Rin couldn’t look at him. This was wrong, this was so wrong. Her gut wrenched with a mix of horror and shame; she wanted to vomit.

“Riga,” Jiang whispered suddenly. He’d stopped giggling. He sat utterly still, eyes fixed at something Rin couldn’t see.

Daji recoiled like she’d been slapped.

“Riga?” Rin repeated. “What—”

“He’s here,” Jiang said. His shoulders began to tremble.

“He’s not here.” The blood had drained from Daji’s face. She looked terrified. “Ziya, listen to me—”

“He’s going to kill me,” Jiang whispered.

His eyes rolled up to the back of his head. He shuddered so hard his teeth clacked. Then he slumped to the side and lay still.