The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)

A fresh blanket of snow had fallen while they slept. It made the sun shine brighter, the air bite colder. Rin limped outside and stretched her aching muscles, squinting against the harsh light.

The Ketreyids were eating in shifts. Six riders at a time sat by the fire, wolfing down their food while the others stood guard by the periphery.

“Eat your fill.” The Sorqan Sira ladled out two steaming bowls of stew and handed them to Rin and Kitay. “You have a hard ride before you. We’ll pack you a bag of dried meat and some yak’s milk, but eat as much as you can now.”

Rin took the proffered bowl. The stew smelled terribly good. She huddled on the ground and pressed next to Kitay for warmth, bony elbows touching bony hips. Little details about him seemed to stand out in stark relief. She had never noticed before just how long and thin his fingers were, or how he always smelled faintly of ink and dust, or how his wiry hair curled just so at the tips.

She’d known him for more than four years by now, but every time she looked at him, she discovered something new.

“So that’s it?” Kitay asked the Sorqan Sira. “You’re letting us go? No strings attached?”

“The terms are met,” she replied. “We have no reason to harm you now.”

“So what am I to you?” Rin asked. “A pet on a long leash?”

“You are my gamble. A trained wolf set loose.”

“To kill an enemy that you can’t face,” Rin said.

The Sorqan Sira smiled, displaying teeth. “Be glad that we still have some use for you.”

Rin didn’t like her phrasing. “What happens if I succeed, and you no longer have use for me?”

“Then we’ll let you keep your lives as a token of our gratitude.”

“And what happens if you decide I’m a threat again?”

“Then we’ll find you again.” The Sorqan Sira nodded to Kitay. “And this time, his life will be on the line.”

Rin had no doubt the Sorqan Sira would put an arrow through Kitay’s heart without hesitation.

“You still don’t trust me,” she said. “You’re playing a long game with us, and the anchor bond was your insurance.”

The Sorqan Sira sighed. “I am afraid, child. And I have the right to be. The last time we taught Nikara shamans how to anchor themselves, they turned on us.”

“But I’m nothing like them.”

“You are far too much like them. You have the same eyes. Angry. Desperate. You’ve seen too much. You hate too much. Those three were younger than you when they came to us, more timid and afraid, and still they slaughtered thousands of innocents. You are older than they were, and you’ve done far worse.”

“That’s not the same,” Rin said. “The Federation—”

“Deserved it?” asked the Sorqan Sira. “Every single one? Even the women? The children?”

Rin flushed. “But I’m not—I didn’t do it because I liked it. I’m not like them.”

Not like that vision of a younger Jiang, who laughed when he killed, who seemed to delight in being drenched in blood. Not like Daji.

“That’s what they thought about themselves, too,” said the Sorqan Sira. “But the gods corrupted them, just as they will corrupt you. The gods manifest your worst and cruelest instincts. You think you are in control, but your mind erodes by the second. To call the gods is to gamble with madness.”

“It’s better than doing nothing.” Rin knew that she was already walking a fine line, that she ought to keep her mouth shut, but the Ketreyids’ constant high-minded pacifistic lecturing infuriated her. “I’d rather go mad than hide behind the Baghra Desert and pretend that atrocities aren’t happening when I could have done something about them.”

The Sorqan Sira chuckled. “You think that we did nothing? Is that what they taught you?”

“I know that millions died during the first two Poppy Wars. And I know that your people never crossed down south to stop it.”

“How many people do you think Vaisra’s war has killed?” the Sorqan Sira asked.

“Fewer than would have died otherwise,” Rin said.

The Sorqan Sira didn’t answer. She just let the silence stretch on and on until Rin’s answer began to seem ridiculous.

Rin picked at her food, no longer hungry.

“What will you do with the foreigners?” Kitay asked.

Rin had forgotten about the Hesperians until Kitay asked. She peered around the camp but couldn’t spot them. Then she saw a larger yurt a little off to the edge of the clearing, guarded heavily by Bekter and his riders.

“Perhaps we will kill them.” The Sorqan Sira shrugged. “They are holy men, and nothing good ever comes of the Hesperian religion.”

“Why do you say that?” Kitay asked.

“They believe in a singular and all-powerful deity, which means they cannot accept the truth of other gods. And when nations start to believe that other beliefs lead to damnation, violence becomes inevitable.” The Sorqan Sira cocked her head. “What do you think? Shall we shoot them? It’s kinder than leaving them to die of exposure.”

“Don’t kill them,” Rin said quickly. Tarcquet made her uncomfortable and Sister Petra made her want to put her hand through a wall, but Augus had never struck her as anything other than naive and well-intentioned. “Those kids are missionaries, not soldiers. They’re harmless.”

“Those weapons are not harmless,” said the Sorqan Sira.

“No,” Kitay said. “They are faster and deadlier than crossbows, and they are most deadly in inexperienced hands. I would not return their weapons.”

“Safe passage back will be difficult, then. We can spare only one steed for the two of you. They will have to walk through enemy territory.”

“Would you give them supplies to make rafts?” Rin asked.

The Sorqan Sira frowned, considering. “Can they find their own way back over the rivers?”

Rin hesitated. Her altruism extended only so far. She didn’t want to see Augus dead, but she wasn’t about to waste time shepherding children who never should have come along in the first place.

She turned to Kitay. “If they can make it to the Western Murui, they’re fine, right?”

He shrugged. “More or less. Tributaries get tricky. They could get lost. Could end up at Khurdalain.”

She could accept that risk. It did enough to alleviate her conscience. If Augus and his companions weren’t clever enough to make it back to Arlong, then that was their own fault. Augus had been kind to her once. She’d made sure the Ketreyids didn’t put an arrow in his head. She owed him nothing more than that.

Chaghan was alone when Rin found him, sitting at the edge of the river with his knees pulled up to his chest.

“Don’t they think you might run?” she asked.

He gave her a wry smile. “You know I don’t run very fast.”

She sat down beside him. “So what happens to you now?”

His face was unreadable. “The Sorqan Sira doesn’t trust us to watch over the Cike any longer. She’s taking us back north.”

“And what will happen to you there?”

His throat bobbed. “That depends.”

She knew he didn’t want her pity, so she didn’t burden him with it. She took a deep breath. “I wanted to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“You vouched for me.”

“I was just saving my own skin.”

“Of course.”

“I was also rather hoping that you wouldn’t die,” he admitted.

“Thanks for that.”

An awkward silence passed between them. She saw Chaghan’s eyes dart toward her several times, as if he was debating whether to broach the next subject.

“Say it,” she finally said.

“Do you really want me to?”

“Yes, if you’re going to be this awkward otherwise.”

“Fine,” he said. “Inside the Seal, what you saw—”

“It was Altan,” she said promptly. “Altan, alive. That’s what I saw. He was alive.”

Chaghan exhaled. “So you killed him?”

“I gave him what he wanted,” she said.

“I see.”

“I also saw him happy,” she said. “He was different. He wasn’t suffering. He’d never suffered. He was happy. That’s how I’ll remember him.”

Chaghan didn’t say anything for a long time. She knew he was trying not to cry in front of her; she could see the tears welling up in his eyes.

“Is that real?” she asked. “In another world, is that real? Or was the Seal just showing me what I wanted to see?”

“I don’t know,” Chaghan said. “Our world is a dream of the gods. Maybe they have other dreams. But all we have is this story unfolding, and in the script of this world, nothing’s going to bring Altan back to life.”

Rin leaned back. “I thought I knew how this world worked. How the cosmos worked. But I don’t know anything.”

“Most Nikara don’t,” Chaghan said, and he didn’t even try to mask his arrogance.

Rin snorted. “And you do?”

“We know what constitutes the nature of reality,” said Chaghan. “We’ve understood it for years. But your people are fragile and desperate fools. They don’t know what’s real and what’s false, so they’ll cling to their little truths, because it’s better than imagining that their world might not matter so much after all.”

It was starting to become clear to her now, why the Hinterlanders might view themselves as caretakers of the universe. Who else understood the nature of the cosmos like they did? Who even came close?

Perhaps Jiang had known, a long time ago when his mind was still his. But the man she’d known had been shattered, and the secrets he’d taught her were only fragments of the truth.

“I thought it was hubris, what you did,” she murmured. “But it’s kindness. The Hinterlanders maintain the illusion so you can let everyone else live in the lie.”

“Don’t call us that,” Chaghan said sharply. “Hinterlander is not a name. Only the Empire uses this word, because you assume everyone who lives on the steppe is the same. Naimads are not Ketreyids. Call us by our names.”

“I’m sorry.” She crossed her arms against her chest, shivering against the biting wind. “Can I ask you something else?”

“You’re going to ask me regardless.”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you,” he said automatically.

“Sure seemed like it. Seemed like it for a long time, even before Altan died.”

Finally he twisted around to face her. “I can’t look at you and not see him.”

She knew he would say that. She knew, and still it hurt. “You thought I couldn’t live up to him. And that’s—that’s fair, I never could. And—and if you were jealous, for some reason, I understand that, too, but you should just know that—”

“I wasn’t just jealous,” he said. “I was angry. At both of us. I was watching you make all the same mistakes Altan did, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I saw Altan confused and angry all those years, and I saw him walk down the path he chose like a blind child, and I thought precisely the same was happening to you.”

“But I know what I’m doing. I’m not blind like he was—”

“Yes, you are, you don’t even realize it. Your kind has been treated as slaves for so long that you’ve forgotten what it is like to be free. You’re easily angered, and you latch quickly onto things—opium, people, ideas—that soothe your pain, even temporarily. And that makes you terribly easy to manipulate.” Chaghan paused. “I’m sorry. Do I offend?”

“Vaisra isn’t manipulating me,” Rin insisted. “He’s . . . we’re fighting for something good. Something worth fighting for.”

He gave her a long look. “And you really believe in his Republic?”

“I believe the Republic is a better alternative to anything we’ve got,” she said. “Daji has to die. Vaisra’s our best shot at killing her. And whatever happens next can’t possibly be worse than the Empire.”

“You really think that?”

Rin didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Didn’t want her mind to drift in that direction. Not once since the disaster at Lake Boyang had she seriously considered not returning to Arlong, or the idea that there might not be anything to return to.

She had too much power now, too much rage, and she needed a cause for which to burn. Vaisra’s Republic was her anchor. Without that, she’d be lost, drifting. That thought terrified her.

“I have to do this,” she said. “Otherwise I have nothing.”

“If you say so.” Chaghan turned to gaze at the river. He seemed to have given up on arguing the point. She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not. “Maybe you’re right. But eventually, you’ll have to ask yourself precisely what you’re fighting for. And you’ll have to find a reason to live past vengeance. Altan never managed that.”

“You’re sure you know how to ride this?” Qara handed the warhorse’s reins to Rin.

“No, but Kitay does.” Rin peered up at the black warhorse with trepidation. She’d never been entirely comfortable around horses—they were so much bigger up close, their hooves so poised to split her head open—but Kitay had spent enough of his childhood riding around on his family’s estate that he could handle most animals with ease.

“Keep off the main roads,” Chaghan said. “My birds tell me the Empire’s taking back much of its territory. You’ll run into Militia patrols if you’re seen traveling in broad daylight. Stick to the tree line when you can.”

Rin was about to ask about the horse’s feed when Chaghan and Qara both looked sharply to the left, like two hunting animals alerted to their prey.

She heard the noises a second later. Shouts from the Ketreyid camp. Arrows thudding into bodies. And a moment later, the unmistakable sound of a firing arquebus.

“Shit,” Kitay breathed.

The twins were already racing back. Rin snatched her trident off the ground and followed.

The camp was in chaos. Ketreyids ran about, grabbing at the reins of spooked horses trying to break free. The air was sharp with the acrid smoke of fire powder. Bullet holes riddled the yurts. Ketreyid bodies were strewn across the ground. And the Gray Company missionaries, half of them wielding arquebuses, fired indiscriminately around the camp.

How had they gotten their arquebuses back?

Rin heard a shot and threw herself to the ground as a bullet burrowed into the tree behind her.

Arrows whistled overhead. Each one found its mark with a thickening thud. A handful of Hesperians dropped to the ground, arrows pierced cleanly into their skulls. A few others ran, panicked, from the clearing. No one chased them.

The only one left was Augus. He wielded two arquebuses, one in each hand, their barrels drooping clumsily against the ground.

He’d never fired one. Rin could tell—he was shaking; he had absolutely no idea what to do.

The Sorqan Sira uttered a command under her breath. The riders moved at once. Instantly twelve arrowheads were pointed at Augus, bowstrings stretching taut.

“Don’t shoot!” Rin cried. She ran forward, blocking their arrows’ paths with her body. “Don’t shoot—please, he’s confused—”

Augus didn’t seem to notice. His eyes locked on Rin’s. He raised the arquebus in his right hand. The barrel formed a direct line to her chest.

It didn’t matter if he’d never fired an arquebus before. He couldn’t miss. Not from this distance.

“Demon,” he said.

“Rin, get back,” Kitay said tightly.

Rin stood frozen, unable to move. Augus waved his weapons erratically about, pointed them alternately between the Sorqan Sira, Rin, and Kitay. “Maker give me the courage, protect me from these heathens . . .”

“What is he saying?” the Sorqan Sira demanded.

Augus squeezed his eyes shut. “Show them the strength of heaven and smite them with your divine justice . . .”

“Augus, stop!” Rin walked forward, hands raised in what she hoped was a nonthreatening gesture, and spoke in clearly enunciated Hesperian. “You have nothing to be afraid of. These people aren’t your enemies, they’re not going to hurt you—”

“Savages!” Augus screamed. He waved one arquebus in an arc before him. The Ketreyids hissed and scattered backward; several sank into a low crouch. “Get out of my head!”

“Augus, please,” Rin begged. “You’re scared, you’re not yourself. Look at me, you know who I am, you’ve met me—”

Augus leveled the arquebus again at her.

The Sorqan Sira’s silent command rippled through the clearing. Fire.

Not a single Ketreyid rider loosed their bow.

Rin glanced around in confusion.

“Bekter!” the Sorqan Sira shouted. “What is this?”

Bekter smiled, and Rin realized with a twist of dread what was happening.

This wasn’t an accident. The Hesperians had been set free on purpose.

This was a coup.

A furious flurry of flashing images ricocheted back and forth in the clearing, a silent war of minds between Bekter and the Sorqan Sira blasted to everyone present, like they were wrestlers performing for an audience.

Rin saw Bekter cutting the Hesperians’ bonds and placing the arquebuses in their hands. They stared at him, brain-addled in terror. He told them they were about to play a game. He challenged them to outrun his arrows. The Hesperians scattered.

She saw the girl Jiang had murdered—Tseveri, the Sorqan Sira’s daughter—riding across the steppe with a little boy seated before her. They were laughing.

She saw a band of warriors—Speerlies, she realized with a start—at least a dozen of them, flames rolling off of their shoulders as they marched through burned yurts and charred bodies.

She felt a scorching fury radiating out of Bekter, a fury that the Sorqan Sira’s weakening protests only amplified, and she understood: This wasn’t just some ambition-fueled power struggle. This was vengeance.

Bekter wanted to do for his sister Tseveri what the Sorqan Sira never could. He wanted retribution. The Sorqan Sira wanted Nikara shamans controlled, but Bekter wanted them dead.

Too long you’ve let the Cike run unchecked in the Empire, Mother. Bekter’s voice rang loud and clear. Too long you’ve shown mercy to the Naimad scum. No more.

The riders agreed.

They’d long since shifted their loyalties. Now they only had to dispose of their leader.

The exchange was over in an instant.

The Sorqan Sira reeled back. She seemed to have shrunk in on herself. For the first time, Rin saw fear on her face.

“Bekter,” she said. “Please.”

Bekter spoke an order.

Arrows dotted the earth around Augus’s feet. Augus gave a strangled yelp. Rin lunged forward, but it was too late. She heard a click, then a small explosion.

The Sorqan Sira dropped to the ground. Smoke curled from the spot where the bullet had burrowed into her chest. She looked down, then back up at Augus, face contorted in disbelief, before slumping to the side.

Chaghan rushed forward. “Ama!”

Augus dropped the arquebus he’d fired and raised the second one to his shoulder.

Several things happened at once.

Augus pulled the trigger. Qara threw herself in front of her brother. A bang split the night and together the twins collapsed, Qara falling back into Chaghan’s arms.

The riders turned to flee.

Rin screamed. A rivulet of fire shot from her mouth and slammed into Augus’s chest, knocking him over. He shouted, writhing madly to put out the flames, but the fire didn’t stop; it consumed his air, poured into his lungs, seized him from inside like a hand until his torso was charcoal and he couldn’t scream anymore.

Augus’s death throes slowed to an insectlike twitching as Rin sank to her knees. She closed her mouth. The flames died away, and Augus lay still.

Behind her Chaghan was cradling his sister. A dark splotch of blood appeared over Qara’s right breast as if painted by an invisible artist, blossoming larger and larger like a blooming poppy flower.

“Qara—Qara, no . . .” Chaghan’s hands moved frantically over her breast, but there was no arrowhead to pull out; the metal shard had buried itself too deep for him to save her.

“Stop,” Qara gasped. She lifted a shaking hand and touched it to Chaghan’s chest. Blood bubbled out between her teeth. “Let go. You have to let go.”

“I’m going with you,” Chaghan said.

Qara’s breath came in short, pained gasps. “No. Too important.”

“Qara . . .”

“Do this for me,” Qara whispered. “Please.”

Chaghan pressed his forehead against Qara’s. Something passed between them, an exchange of thoughts that Rin could not hear. Qara reached a shaking hand to her chest, drew a pattern in her own blood on the pale skin of Chaghan’s cheek, and then placed her palm against it.

Chaghan exhaled. Rin thought she saw something pass in the space between them—a gust of air, a shimmer of light.

Qara’s head fell to the side. Chaghan pulled her limp form into his arms and dropped his head.

“Rin,” Kitay said urgently.

She spun around. Ten feet away, Bekter sat astride his horse, bow raised.

She lifted her trident, but she had no chance. From this close Bekter had an easy shot. They’d be dead in seconds.

But Bekter wasn’t shooting. His arrow was nocked to his bow, but the string wasn’t pulled taut. He had a dazed look in his eye; his gaze flickered between the bodies of the Sorqan Sira and Qara.

He’s in shock, Rin realized. Bekter couldn’t believe what he’d done.

She hefted her trident over her head, poised to throw. “Murder’s not so easy, is it?”

Bekter blinked, as if just coming to his senses, and then aimed his bow at her.

“Go on,” she told him. “We’ll see who’s faster.”

Bekter looked at the gleaming tips of her trident, then down at Chaghan, who was rocking back and forth over Qara’s form. He lowered his bow just a fraction.

“You did this,” Bekter said. “You killed Mother. That’s what I’ll tell them. This is your fault.” His voice wavered; he seemed to be trying to convince himself. His bow shook in his hands. “All of this is your fault.”

Rin hurled her trident. Bekter’s horse bolted. The trident flew a foot over his head and shot through empty air. Rin aimed a burst of flame in his direction, but she was too slow—within seconds Bekter was gone from her sight, disappeared into the forest to follow his band of traitors.

For a long time, the only sound in the clearing came from Chaghan. He wasn’t crying, not quite. His eyes were dry. But his chest heaved erratically, his breath came out in short, strangled bursts, and his eyes stared wide, down at his sister’s corpse as if he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

Our wills have been united since we were children, Qara had said. We are two halves of the same person.

Rin couldn’t possibly imagine how it felt to have that stripped away.

At last Kitay bent down over the Sorqan Sira’s body and rolled her flat on her back. He pulled her eyelids closed.

Then he touched Chaghan gently on the shoulder. “Is there something we should—”

“There’s going to be war,” Chaghan said abruptly. He laid Qara out on the dirt before him, then arranged her hands on her chest, one clasped over the other. His voice was flat, emotionless. “Bekter’s the chieftain now.”

“Chieftain?” Kitay repeated. “He just killed his own mother!”

“Not by his own hand. That’s why he gave the Hesperians those guns. He didn’t touch her, and his riders will attest to that. They’ll be able to swear it before the Pantheon, because it’s true.”

There was no emotion on Chaghan’s face. He looked utterly, terrifyingly calm.

Rin understood. He’d shut down, replaced his feelings with a focus on calm pragmatism, because that was the only way he could block out the pain.

Chaghan took a deep, shuddering breath. For a moment the facade cracked, and Rin could see pain twisting across his face, but it disappeared just as fast as it came. “This is . . . this changes everything. The Sorqan Sira was the only one keeping the Ketreyids in check. Now Bekter will lead them to slaughter the Naimads.”

“Then go,” Rin said. “Take the warhorse. Ride north. Go back to your clan and warn them.”

Chaghan blinked at her. “That horse is for you.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“We’ll find another way,” Kitay said. “It’ll take us a little longer, but we’ll figure it out. You need to go.”

Slowly, Chaghan stood up on shaky legs and followed them to the riverbank.

The horse was waiting tamely where they’d left it. It seemed completely unbothered by the commotion in the clearing. It had been trained well not to panic.

Chaghan lifted his foot into the stirrup and swung himself up into the saddle in one graceful, practiced movement. He grasped the reins in both hands and looked down at them. He swallowed. “Rin . . .”

“Yes?” she answered.

He looked very small atop the horse. For the first time, she saw him for what he was: not a fearsome shaman, not a mysterious Seer, but just a boy, really. She’d always thought Chaghan so ethereally powerful, so detached from the realm of mortals. But he was human after all, smaller and thinner than the rest of them.

And for the first time in his life, he was alone.

“What am I going to do?” he asked quietly.

His voice trembled. He looked so utterly lost.

Rin reached for his hand. Then she looked at him, really looked him in the eyes. They were so similar when she thought about it. Too young to be so powerful, not close to ready for the positions they had been thrust into.

She squeezed his fingers. “You fight.”