The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)

The journey back to Arlong took twenty-nine days. Rin knew because she carved one notch each day into the side of their raft, imagining, as the time stretched on, how the war must be going. Each mark represented a question, another possible alternate outcome. Had Daji invaded Arlong yet? Was the Republic still alive? Was Nezha?

She took solace during the journey in the fact that she didn’t see the Imperial Fleet on the Western Murui, but that meant little. The fleet might have already passed them. Daji might be marching on Arlong instead of sailing—the Militia had always been far more comfortable with ground warfare. Or the fleet could have taken a coastal route, could have destroyed Tsolin’s forces before sailing south for the Red Cliffs.

Meanwhile their raft bobbled insignificantly down the Western Murui, drifting on the current because both of them were too exhausted to row.

Kitay had cobbled the raft together over two days using ropes and hunting knives the Ketreyids had left behind. It was a flimsy thing, tied together from the washed-up remains of the Republican Fleet, and just large enough for the two of them to lie down without touching.

Rafting was slow progress. They kept cautiously to the shores to avoid dangerous currents like the one that had swept them over the falls at Boyang. When they could, they drifted under tree cover to stay hidden.

They had to be careful with their food. They’d salvaged two weeks’ worth of dried meat from the Ketreyids’ rations, and occasionally they managed a catch of fish, but still their bones became ever more visible under their skin as the days went on. They lost both muscle mass and stamina, which made it even more important to avoid patrols. Even with Rin’s reacquisition of her abilities, there was little chance they could win in any real skirmish if they couldn’t even run a mile.

They spent their days sleeping to conserve energy. One of them would curl up on the raft while the other kept a lonely vigil by the spear attached to a shield which served as an oar and rudder. One afternoon Rin awoke to find Kitay etching diagrams into the raft with a knife.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What are you doing?”

Kitay rested his chin on his fist, tapping his knife against the raft. “I’ve been thinking about how best to weaponize you.”

She sat up. “Weaponize?”

“Bad word?” He continued to scratch at the wood. “Optimize, then. You’re like a lamp. I’m trying to figure out how to make you burn brighter.”

Rin pointed to a wobbly carved circle. “Is that supposed to be me?”

“Yes. That represents your heat source. I’m trying to figure out exactly how your abilities work. Can you summon fire from anywhere?” Kitay pointed across the river. “For instance, could you make those reeds light up?”

“No.” She knew the answer without trying it. “It has to come from me. Within me.”

Yes, that was right. When she called the flame it felt like it was being tugged out from something inside her and through her.

“It comes out my hands and mouth,” she said. “I can do it from other places too, but it feels easier that way.”

“So you’re the heat source?”

“Not so much the source. More like . . . the bridge. Or the gate, rather.”

“The gate,” he repeated, rubbing his chin. “Is that what the Gatekeeper’s name means? Is he a conduit to every god?”

“I don’t think so. Jiang . . . Jiang is an open door for certain creatures. You saw what the Sorqan Sira showed us. I think that he’s only able to call those beasts. All the monsters of the Emperor’s Menagerie, isn’t that how the story goes? But the rest of us . . . it’s hard to explain.” Rin struggled to find the words. “The gods are in this world, but they’re also still in their own, but while the Phoenix is in me it can affect the world—”

“But not in the way that it wants to,” Kitay interrupted. “Or not always.”

“Because I don’t let it,” she said. “It’s a matter of control. If you’ve got enough presence of mind, you redirect the god’s power for your purposes.”

“And if not? What happens if you open the gate all the way?”

“Then you’re lost. Then you become like Feylen.”

“But what does that mean?” he pressed. “Do you have any control over your body left at all?”

“I’m not sure. There were a few times—just a few—I thought Feylen was inside, fighting for his body back. But you saw what happened.”

Kitay nodded slowly. “Must be hard to win a mental battle with a god.”

Rin thought of the shamans encased in stone within the Chuluu Korikh, trapped forever with their thoughts and regrets, comforted only by the knowledge that this was the least horrible alternative. She shuddered. “It’s nearly impossible.”

“So we’ll just have to figure out how to beat the wind with fire.” Kitay pushed his fingers through his overgrown bangs. “That’s a pretty puzzle.”

There wasn’t much else to do on the raft, so they started experimenting with the fire. Day after day they pushed Rin’s abilities to see how far she could go, how much control she could manage.

Up until then, Rin had been calling the fire on instinct. She’d been too busy fighting the Phoenix for control of her mind to ever bother examining the mechanics of the flame. But under Kitay’s pointed questions and guided experiments, she figured out the exact parameters of her abilities.

She couldn’t seize control of a fire that already existed. She also couldn’t control fire that had left her body. She could give the fire a shape and make it erupt into the air, but the lingering flames would dissipate in seconds unless they found something to consume.

“What does it feel like for you?” she asked Kitay.

He paused for a moment before he answered. “It doesn’t hurt. At least, not so much as the first time. It’s more like—I’m aware of something. Something’s moving in the back of my head, and I’m not sure what. I feel a rush, like the shot of adrenaline you get when you look over the edge of a cliff.”

“And you’re sure it doesn’t hurt?”

“Promise.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “You make the same face every time I summon a flame any bigger than a campfire. It’s like you’re dying.”

“Do I?” He blinked. “Just a reflex, I think. Don’t worry about it.”

He was lying to her. She loved that about him, that he’d care enough to lie to her. But she couldn’t keep doing this to him. She couldn’t hurt Kitay and not worry about it.

If she could, she’d be lost.

“You have to tell me when it’s too much,” she said.

“It’s really not so bad.”

“Cut the crap, Kitay—”

“It’s the urges I feel more than anything,” he said. “Not the pain. It makes me hungry. It makes me want more. Do you understand that feeling?”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s the Phoenix’s most basic impulse. Fire devours.”

“Devouring feels good.” He pointed at an overhanging branch. “Try that shooty thing again.”

Over the next few days she learned a number of different tricks. She could create balls of fire and hurl them at targets up to ten yards away. She could make shapes out of flame so intricate that she could have put on an entire puppet show with them. She could, by shoving her hands into the river, boil the water around them until steam misted the air and fish bubbled belly-up to the surface.

Most importantly, she could carve out protective spaces in the fire, up to ten feet from her own body, so that Kitay never burned even when everything around them did.

“What about mass destruction?” he asked after a few days of exploring minor tricks.

Rin stiffened. “What do you mean?”

His tone was carefully neutral. Purely academic. “What you did to the Federation, for instance—can we replicate that? How much flame can you summon?”

“That was different. I was on the island. In the temple. I’d . . . I’d just seen Altan die.” She swallowed. “And I was angry. I was so angry.”

In that moment, she’d been capable of an inhuman, vicious, and terrible rage. But she wasn’t sure she could replicate that rage, because it had been sparked by Altan’s death, and what she felt now when she thought about Altan wasn’t fury, but grief.

Rage and grief were so different. Rage gave her the power to burn down countries. Grief only exhausted her.

“And if you went back to the temple?” Kitay pressed. “If you went back and summoned the Phoenix?”

“I’m not going back to that temple,” Rin said immediately. She didn’t know what it was, but Kitay’s enthusiasm was making her uncomfortable—he was looking at her with the sort of intense curiosity that she had only ever seen in Shiro and Petra.

“But if you had to? If we only had one option, if everything would be lost if you didn’t do it?”

“We’re not putting that on the table.”

“I’m not saying you have to. I’m saying we have to know if it’s even an option. I’m saying you have to at least try.”

“You want me to practice a genocidal event,” she said slowly. “Just to be clear.”

“Start small,” he suggested. “Then get bigger. See how far you can go without the temple.”

“That’ll destroy everything in sight.”

“We haven’t seen signs of human life all day. If anyone lived here, they’re long gone. This is empty land.”

“What about wildlife?”

Kitay rolled his eyes. “You and I both know that wildlife is the least of your concerns. Stop hedging, Rin. Do it.”

She nodded, put her palms out, and closed her eyes.

Flame wrapped her like a warm blanket. It felt good. It felt too good. She was burning without guilt or consequence. She was unrestrained power. She could feel herself tipping back into that state of ecstasy, could have lost herself in the dreamy oblivion of the wildfire that surged higher, faster, brighter, if she hadn’t heard a high-pitched keening that wasn’t coming from her.

She looked down. Kitay lay curled in a fetal position on the raft, hands clutching his mouth, trying to suppress his screams.

She reined the fire back in with difficulty.

Kitay made a choking noise and buried his head in his hands.

She dropped to her knees beside him. “Kitay—”

“I’m fine,” he gasped. “Fine.”

She tried to put her hands on him, but he pushed her away with a violence that shocked her.

“Just let me breathe.” He shook his head. “It’s all right, Rin. I’m not hurt. It’s just—it’s all in my head.”

She could have slapped him. “You’re supposed to tell me when it’s too much.”

“It wasn’t too much.” He sat up straight. “Try that again.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t get a good look at your blast radius just then,” he said. “Try it again.”

“Absolutely not,” she snapped. “I don’t care that you’ve got a death wish. I can’t keep doing this to you.”

“Then go right up to the edge,” he insisted. “The point right before it hurts too much. Let’s figure out what the limit is.”

“That’s insane.”

“It’s better than finding out on a battlefield. Please, Rin, we won’t get a better chance to do this.”

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Why does this matter so much?”

“Because I need to know the full extent of what you can do,” Kitay said. “Because if I’m strategizing for Arlong’s defense then I need to know where to put you, and why. Because if I went through all of this for you, then the very least you can do is show me what maximum power looks like. If we’ve turned you back into a weapon, then you’re going to be a damn good one. And stop panicking over me, Rin. I’m fine until I say I’m not.”

So she called the flame again and again, pushing the limits every time, until the shores burned pitch-black around them. She kept going even while Kitay screamed because he’d ordered her not to stop unless he said so explicitly. She kept going until his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp on the raft. And even then, when he revived seconds later, the first thing he said to her was: “Fifty yards.”

When at last they reached the Red Cliffs, Rin saw with immense relief that the flag of the Republic still flew over Arlong.

So Vaisra was safe, and Daji was still a distant threat.

Their next challenge was to get back into the city without getting shot. Arlong, expecting a Militia assault, had hunkered down behind its defenses. The massive gates to the harbor past the Red Cliffs were locked. Crossbows were lined up against every flat surface overlooking the channel. Rin and Kitay could hardly march up to the city doors—any sudden, unexpected movement would get them stuck full of arrows. They discovered this when they saw a wild monkey wander too close to the walls and startle a line of trigger-happy archers.

They were so exhausted that they found this ridiculously funny. A month’s worth of travel and their biggest concern was friendly fire.

Finally they decided to get some sentries’ attention in the least threatening way possible. They hurled rocks at the sides of the cliff and waited while pinging noises echoed around the channel until at last a line of soldiers emerged on the cliffside, crossbows pointed down.

Rin and Kitay immediately put their hands up.

“Don’t shoot, please,” Kitay called.

The sentry captain leaned over the cliff wall. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re Republican soldiers back from Boyang,” Kitay called, gesturing to their uniforms.

“Uniforms are cheap on corpses,” said the captain.

Kitay pointed to Rin. “Not uniforms that fit her.”

The captain looked unconvinced. “Back away or I’ll shoot.”

“I wouldn’t,” Rin called. “Or Vaisra will be asking why you’ve killed his Speerly.”

The sentries hooted with laughter.

“Good one,” said the captain.

Rin blinked. Did they not recognize her? Did they not know who she was?

“Maybe he’s new,” Kitay said.

“Can I hurt him?” she muttered.

“Just a little.”

She tilted her head back and opened her mouth. Breathing fire was harder than shooting it from her hands because it gave her less directional control, but she liked the dramatic effect. A stream of fire shot into the air and unfurled itself into the shape of a dragon that hung for a moment in front of the awed soldiers, undulating grandly, before rushing the captain.

He was never in any real danger. Rin extinguished the flames as soon as they made contact. But he still screamed and fell backward as if he were being charged by a bear. When at last he resurfaced over the cliff wall, his face had turned bright pink, and smoke drifted up from his singed eyebrows.

“I should shoot you just for that,” he said.

“Why don’t you just tell Vaisra that the Speerly’s back,” Rin said. “And bring us something to eat.”

Word of their return seemed to have spread instantly to the entire harbor. A massive crowd of soldiers and civilians alike surrounded them the moment they passed through the gates. Everyone had questions, and they shouted them from every direction so loudly that Rin could barely make out a word.

The questions she did understand were about soldiers still missing from Boyang. The people wanted to know if any others were still alive. If they were on their way back. Rin didn’t have the heart to answer.

“Who dragged you out of hell?” Venka elbowed her way through the soldiers. She seized Rin by the arms, looked her up and down, and then wrinkled her pert nose. “You smell.”

“Nice to see you, too,” Rin said.

“No, really, it’s rank. It’s like you’ve taken a knife blade to my nose.”

“Well, we haven’t seen properly clean water in over a month, so—”

“So what’s the story?” Venka interrupted. “Did you break out of prison? Take out an entire battalion? Swim the whole length back down the Murui?”

“We drank horse piss and got high,” said Kitay.

“Come again?” Venka asked.

Rin was about to explain when she caught sight of Nezha pushing his way to the front of the crowd.

“Hello,” she said.

He stopped just before her and stared, blinking rapidly as if he didn’t know what he was looking at. His arms hung awkwardly at his sides, slightly uplifted, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

“Can I?” he asked.

She stretched her arms toward him. He pulled her in against him so hard that she stiffened on instinct. Then she relaxed, because Nezha was so warm, so solid, and hugging him was such a wonderful feeling that she just wanted to bury her face into his uniform and stand there for a very long time.

“I can’t believe it,” Nezha murmured into her ear. “We thought for sure . . .”

She pressed her forehead against his chest. “Me too.”

Her tears were falling thick and fast. The embrace had already stretched on much longer than it should have, and finally Nezha let her go, but he didn’t take his arms off her shoulders.

Finally he spoke. “Where is Jinzha?”

“What do you mean?” Rin asked. “He didn’t return with you?”

Nezha just shook his head, eyes wide, before he was pushed aside by two massive bodies.

“Rin!”

Before she could speak, Suni wrapped her in a tight hug, lifting her a good foot off the ground, and she had to pound frantically at his shoulder before he released her.

“All right.” Ramsa reached up and frantically patted Suni’s shoulder. “You’re going to crush her.”

“Sorry,” Suni said, abashed. “We just thought . . .”

Rin couldn’t help but grin even as she felt her ribs for bruises. “Yeah. Good to see you, too.”

Baji grabbed her hand, pulled her in, and pounded her on the shoulder. “We knew you weren’t dead. You’re too spiteful to go that easy.”

“How did you get back?” Rin asked.

“Feylen didn’t just wreck our ships, he whipped up a storm that wrecked everything in the lake,” Baji said. “He was aiming for the big ships, though; somehow a few of the skimmers held together. About a quarter of us managed to get out of the maelstrom. I’ve no idea how we paddled back out to the river alive, but here we are.”

Rin had an idea of how that had happened.

Ramsa’s eyes flickered between her and Kitay. “Where are the twins?”

“That’s a long story,” Rin said.

“Not dead?” Baji asked.

“I . . . ah, it’s complicated. Chaghan isn’t. But Qara—” She paused, searching for the right words to say next, just as she saw a tall figure approaching from just over Baji’s shoulder.

“Later,” she said quietly.

Baji turned his head, saw who she was looking at, and immediately stepped aside. A hush fell over the soldiers, who parted ranks to let the Dragon Warlord through.

“You’ve returned,” said Vaisra. He looked neither pleased nor displeased but somewhat impatient, as if he’d simply been expecting her.

Rin instinctively ducked her head. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Vaisra gestured toward the palace. “Go clean yourself up. I’ll be in my office.”

“Tell me everything that happened at Boyang,” Vaisra said.

“Haven’t they already told you?” Rin sat down opposite him. She smelled better than she had in weeks. She’d cut her oily, lice-ridden hair; scrubbed herself in cold water; and traded in her stained, pungent clothes for a fresh uniform.

A part of her had been hoping for a warmer welcome—a smile, a hand on her shoulder, at least some indication that Vaisra was glad she was back—but all he gave her was solemn expectation.

“I want your account,” he said.

Rin considered pinning the blame on Jinzha’s tactical decisions, but there was no point in antagonizing Vaisra by rubbing salt into an open wound. Besides, nothing Jinzha had done could have prevented what had happened once the battle began. He might as well have been fighting the ocean itself.

“The Empress has another shaman in her employ. His name is Feylen. He channels the Wind God. He used to be in the Cike, until that went sideways. He wrecked your fleet. Took him minutes.”

“What do you mean, he used to be in the Cike?” Vaisra asked.

“He was put down,” Rin said. “I mean, he went mad. A lot of shamans do. Altan let him back out of the Chuluu Korikh by accident—”

“By accident?”

“On purpose, but he was stupid to do it. And now I suppose Daji’s found a way to lure him onto her side.”

“How did she do that?” Vaisra demanded. “Money? Power? Can he be bought?”

“I don’t think he cares about any of that. He’s . . .” Rin paused, trying to figure out how to explain it to Vaisra. “He doesn’t want what humans want. The god has . . . like with me, with the Phoenix—”

“He’s lost his mind,” Vaisra supplied.

She nodded. “I think Feylen needs to fulfill the god’s fundamental nature. The Phoenix needs to consume. But the Wind God needs chaos. Daji’s found some way to bend that to her will, but you won’t be able to tempt him with anything humans might want.”

“I see.” Vaisra was silent for a moment. “And my son?”

Rin hesitated. Had they not told him about Jinzha? “Sir?”

“They didn’t bring back a body,” Vaisra said.

His mask cracked then. For the briefest moment, he looked like a father.

So he did know. He just wouldn’t admit to himself that if Jinzha hadn’t made his way back to Arlong with the rest of the fleet, then he was probably dead.

“I didn’t see what happened to him,” Rin said. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no point speculating, then,” Vaisra said coolly. His mask reassembled itself. “Let’s move on. I assume you’ll want to rejoin the infantry?”

“Not the infantry.” Rin took a deep breath. “I want command of the Cike again. I want a seat at the strategy table. I want direct say in anything you want the Cike to do.”

“And why’s that?” Vaisra asked.

Because Chaghan can’t be right about my being your dog. “Because I deserve it. I broke the Seal. I’ve gotten the fire back.”

Vaisra raised an eyebrow. “Show me.”

She turned an open palm toward the ceiling and summoned a fist-sized ball of fire. She made it run up and down the length of her arm, made it twist around her in the air before calling it back into her fingers. Even after a month of practice, she was still amazed at how easy it was, how delightfully natural it felt to control the flame the way she controlled her fingers. She let it take shapes—a rat, a rooster, an undulating orange dragon—and then she closed her fingers over her palm.

“Very nice,” Vaisra said approvingly. The mask was gone now; he was finally smiling. She felt a warm rush of encouragement.

“So. Command?”

He waved a hand. “You’re reinstated. I’ll let the generals know. How did you manage this?”

“That’s a long story.” She paused, wondering where to start. “We, ah, ran into some Ketreyids.”

He frowned. “Hinterlanders?”

“Don’t call them that. They’re Ketreyids.” She gave him a quick account of what the Ketreyids had done, told him about the Sorqan Sira and the Trifecta.

She omitted the part about the anchor bond. Vaisra didn’t need to know.

“Then what happened?” Vaisra asked. “Where are they?”

“They’re gone. And the Sorqan Sira’s dead.”

“What?”

She told him about Augus. She knew Vaisra would be surprised, but she hadn’t expected his reaction. The color drained from his face. His entire body tensed.

“Who else knows?” he demanded.

“Just Kitay. And a couple of Ketreyids, but they’re not telling anyone.”

“Tell no one this happened,” he said quietly. “Not even my son. If the Hesperians find out, our lives are forfeit.”

“It was their fault to begin with,” she muttered.

“Shut up.” He slammed a hand on the table. She flinched back, startled.

“How could you be so stupid?” he demanded. “You should have brought them back safe, that would have ingratiated us to General Tarcquet—”

“Tarcquet made it back?” she interrupted.

“Yes, and many of the Gray Company are with him. They escaped south in one of the skimmers. They are deeply unhappy with our naval capabilities and are this close to pulling out of the continent, which is a thought I assume never crossed your mind when you decided to murder one of them.”

“Are you joking? They were trying to kill us—”

“So you should have incapacitated him or fled. The Gray Company is untouchable. You couldn’t have picked a worse Hesperian to kill.”

“This isn’t my fault,” Rin insisted. “He’d gone mad, he was waving an arquebus around—”

“Listen to me,” Vaisra said. “You are walking a very fine line right now. The Hesperians are not just upset, they are terrified. They thought you a curiosity before. Then they saw what happened at Boyang. Now they are convinced that each and every one of you is a mindless agent of Chaos who could bring about the end of the world. They’re going to hunt down every shaman in this empire and put them in cages if they can. The only reason why they haven’t touched you is because you volunteered, and they know you’ll cooperate. Do you understand now?”

Fear struck Rin. “Then Suni and Baji—”

“—are safe,” Vaisra said. “The Hesperians don’t know about them. And they’d better not find out, because then Tarcquet will know we’ve lied to him. Your job is to keep your head down, to cooperate, and to draw the least possible attention to yourself. You have a reprieve for now. Sister Petra has agreed to postpone your meetings until, one way or another, this war has concluded. So behave yourself. Do not give them further reason for irritation. Otherwise we are all lost.”

Then Rin understood.

Vaisra wasn’t angry at her. This wasn’t about her at all. No, Vaisra was frustrated. He’d been frustrated for months, playing an impossible game with the Hesperians where they kept changing the rules.

She dared to ask. “They’re never bringing their ships, are they?”

He sighed. “We don’t know.”

“They still won’t give you a straight answer? All this because they’re still deciding?”

“Tarcquet claims they haven’t finished their evaluation,” Vaisra said. “I admit I do not understand their standards. When I ask, they utter idiotic vagaries. They want signs of rational sentience. Proof of the ability to self-govern.”

“But that’s ridiculous. If they’d just tell us what they wanted—”

“Ah, but then that would be cheating.” Vaisra’s lip curled. “They need proof that we’ve independently attained civilized society.”

“But that’s a paradox. We can’t achieve that unless they help.”

He looked exhausted. “I know.”

“Then that’s fucked.” She threw her hands up in the air. “This is all just a spectacle to them. They’re never going to come.”

“Maybe.” Vaisra looked decades older then, lined and weary. Rin imagined how Petra might sketch him in her book. Nikara man, middle-aged. Strong build. Reasonable intelligence. Inferior. “But we are the weaker party. We have no choice but to play their game. That’s how power works.”

She found Nezha waiting for her outside the palace gates.

“Hi,” she said tentatively. She looked him up and down, trying to get a read on his expression, but he was just as inscrutable as his father.

“Hello,” he said back.

She tried a smile. He didn’t return it. For a minute they just stood there staring at each other. Rin was torn between running into his arms again and simply running away. She still didn’t know where she stood with him. The last time they’d spoken—really spoken—she’d been sure that he would hate her forever.

“Can we talk?” he asked finally.

“We are talking.”

He shook his head. “Alone. In private. Not here.”

“Fine,” she said, and followed him along the canal to the edge of a pier, where the waves were loud enough to drown their voices out from any curious eavesdroppers.

“I owe you an explanation,” he said at last.

She leaned against the railing. “Go on.”

“I’m not a shaman.”

She threw her hands up. “Oh, don’t fuck with me—”

“I’m not,” he insisted. “I know I can do things. I mean, I know I’m linked to a god, and I can—sort of—call it, sometimes . . .”

“That’s what shamanism is.”

“You’re not listening to me. Whatever I am, it’s not what you are. My mind’s not my own—my body belongs to some—some thing . . .”

“That’s just it, Nezha. That’s how it is for all of us. And I know it hurts, and I know it’s hard, but—”

“You’re still not listening,” he snapped. “It’s no sacrifice for you. You and your god want the same damn thing. But I didn’t ask for this—”

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, it doesn’t just happen by accident. You had to want it first. You had to ask the god.”

“But I didn’t. I never asked, and I’ve never wanted it.” The way Nezha said it made her fall quiet. He sounded like he was about to cry.

He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was so quiet she had to step closer to hear him. “Back at Boyang, you called me a coward.”

“Look, all I meant was that—”

“I’m going to tell you a story,” he interrupted. He was trembling. Why was he trembling? “I want you to just listen. And I want you to believe me. Please.”

She crossed her arms. “Fine.”

Nezha blinked hard and stared out over the water. “I told you once that I had another brother. His name was Mingzha.”

When he didn’t continue, Rin asked, “What was he like?”

“Hilarious,” Nezha said. “Chubby, loud, and incredible. He was everyone’s favorite. He was so full of energy, he glowed. My mother had miscarried twice before she gave birth to him, but Mingzha was perfect. He was never sick. My mother adored him. She was hugging him constantly. She dressed him up in so many golden bracelets and anklets that he jangled when he walked.” He shuddered. “She should have known better. Dragons like gold.”

“Dragons,” Rin repeated.

“You said you’d listen.”

“Sorry.”

Nezha was sickly pale. His skin was almost translucent; Rin could see blue veins under his jaw, crisscrossing with his scars.

“My siblings and I spent our childhood playing by the river,” he said. “There’s a grotto about a mile out from the entrance to this channel, this underwater crystal cave that the servants liked telling stories about, but Father had forbidden us to enter it. So of course all we ever wanted to do was explore it.

“My mother took sick one night when Mingzha was six. During that time my father had been called to Sinegard on the Empress’s orders, so the servants weren’t as concerned with watching us as they might have been. Jinzha was at the Academy. Muzha was abroad. So the responsibility for watching Mingzha fell to me.”

Nezha’s voice cracked. His eyes looked hollow, tortured. Rin didn’t want to hear any more. She had a sickening suspicion of where this story was headed, and she didn’t want it spoken out loud, because that would make it true.

She wanted to tell him it was all right, he didn’t have to tell her, they never had to speak about this again, but Nezha was talking faster and faster, like he was afraid the words would be buried inside him if he didn’t spit them out now.

“Mingzha wanted to—no, I wanted to explore that grotto. It was my idea to begin with. I put it in Mingzha’s head. It was my fault. He didn’t know any better.”

Rin reached for his arm. “Nezha, you don’t have to—”

He shoved her away. “Can you please shut up and just listen for once?”

She fell silent.

“He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he whispered. “That’s what scares me. They say the House of Yin is beautiful. But that’s because dragons like beautiful things, because dragons are beautiful and they create beauty. When he emerged from the cave, all I could think about was how bright his scales were, how lovely his form, how magnificent.”

But they’re not real, Rin thought desperately. Dragons are just stories.

Weren’t they?

Even if she didn’t believe in Nezha’s story, she believed in his pain. It was written all over his face.

Something had happened all those years ago. She just didn’t know what.

“So beautiful,” Nezha murmured, even as his knuckles whitened. “I couldn’t stop staring.

“Then he ate my brother. Devoured him in seconds. Have you watched a wild animal eat before? It’s not clean. It’s brutal. Mingzha didn’t even have time to scream. One moment he was there, clutching at my leg, and the next moment he was a mess of blood and gore and shining bones, and then there was nothing.

“But the dragon spared me. He said he had something better for me.” Nezha swallowed. “He said he was going to give me a gift. And then he claimed me for his own.”

“I’m so sorry,” Rin said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

Nezha didn’t seem to have even heard. “My mother wishes I’d died that day. I wish I’d died. I wish it had been me. But it’s selfish even to wish I were dead—because if I had died, then Mingzha would have lived, and the Dragon Lord would have cursed him like he cursed me, he would have touched him like he touched me.”

She didn’t dare ask what that meant.

“I’m going to show you something,” he said.

She was too stunned to say anything. She could only watch, aghast, as he undid the clasps of his tunic with trembling fingers.

He yanked it down and turned around. “Do you see this?”

It was his tattoo—an image of a dragon in blue and silver. She’d seen it before, but he wouldn’t remember.

She touched her index finger to the dragon’s head, wondering. Was this tattoo the reason Nezha had always healed so quickly? He seemed able to survive anything—blunt trauma, poisonous gas, drowning.

But at what price?

“You said he claimed you for his own,” she said softly. “What does that mean?”

“It means it hurts,” he said. “Every moment that I’m not with him. It feels like anchors digging into my body; hooks trying to drag me back into the water.”

The mark didn’t look like a scar that was almost ten years old. It looked freshly inflicted; his skin shone an angry crimson. The glint of sunlight made the dragon seem as if it was writhing over Nezha’s muscles, pressing itself deeper and deeper into his raw skin.

“And if you went back to him?” she asked. “What would happen to you?”

“I’d become part of his collection,” he said. “He’d do what he wanted to me, satisfy himself, and I’d never leave. I’d be trapped, because I don’t think I can die. I’ve tried. I’ve cut my wrists, but I never bleed out before my wounds stitch themselves back together. I’ve jumped off the Red Cliffs, and sometimes the pain is enough for me to think I’ve managed it this time, but I always wake up. I think the Dragon is keeping me alive. At least until I return to him.

“The first time I saw that grotto, there were faces all along the cave floor. It took me a while to realize I was fated to become one of them.”

Rin withdrew her finger, suppressing a shudder.

“So now you know,” Nezha said. He yanked his shirt back on. His voice hardened. “You’re disgusted—don’t say you aren’t, I can see it on your face. I don’t care. But don’t you tell anyone what I’ve just told you, and don’t you ever fucking dare call me a coward to my face.”

Rin knew what she should have done. She should have said she was sorry. She should have acknowledged his pain, should have begged his forgiveness.

But the way he said it—his long-suffering martyr’s voice, like she had no right to question him, like he was doing her a favor by telling her . . . that infuriated her.

“I’m not disgusted by that,” she said.

“No?”

“I’m disgusted by you.” She fought to keep her voice level. “You’re acting like it’s a death sentence, but it’s not. It’s also a source of power. It’s kept you alive.”

“It’s a fucking abomination,” he said.

“Am I an abomination?”

“No, but—”

“So what, it’s fine for me to call the gods, but you’re too good for it? You can’t sully yourself?”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Well, that’s the implication.”

“It’s different for you, you chose that—”

“You think that makes it hurt any less?” She was shouting now. “I thought I was going mad. For the longest time I didn’t know which thoughts were my own and which thoughts were the Phoenix’s. And it fucking hurt, Nezha, so don’t tell me I don’t know anything about that. There were days I wanted to die, too, but we’re not allowed to die, we’re too powerful. Your father said it himself. When you have this much power and this much is at stake you don’t fucking run from it.”

He looked furious. “You think I’m running?”

“All I know is that hundreds of soldiers are dead at the bottom of Lake Boyang, and you might have done something to prevent it.”

“Don’t you dare pin that on me,” he hissed. “I shouldn’t have this power. Neither of us should. We shouldn’t exist, we’re abominations, and we’d be better off dead.”

“But we do exist. By that logic it’s a good thing the Speerlies were killed.”

“Maybe the Speerlies should have been killed. Maybe every shaman in the Empire should die. Maybe my mother’s right—maybe we should get rid of you freaks, and get rid of the Hinterlanders, too, while we’re at it.”

She stared at him in disbelief. This wasn’t Nezha. Nezha—her Nezha—couldn’t possibly be saying this to her. She was so sure that he would realize he’d crossed the line, would back down and apologize, that she was stunned when his expression only hardened.

“Don’t tell me Altan wasn’t better off dead,” he said.

All shreds of pity she’d felt for him fled.

She pulled her shirt up. “Look at me.”

Immediately Nezha averted his eyes, but she grabbed at his chin and forced him to look at her sternum, down at the handprint scorched into her skin.

“You’re not the only one with scars,” she said.

Nezha wrenched himself from her grasp. “We are not the same.”

“Yes, we are.” She yanked her shirt back down. Her eyes blurred with tears. “The only difference between us is that I can suffer pain, and you’re still a fucking coward.”

She couldn’t remember how they parted, only that one moment they were glaring at each other and the next she was stumbling back to the barracks in a daze, alone.

She wanted to run after Nezha and say she was sorry, and she also wanted never to see him again.

Dimly she understood that something had broken irreparably between them. They’d fought before. They’d spent their first three years together fighting. But this wasn’t like those childish schoolyard squabbles.

They weren’t coming back from this.

But what was she supposed to do? Apologize? She had too much pride to grovel. She was so sure she was right. Yes, Nezha had been hurt, but hadn’t they all been hurt? She’d been through Golyn Niis. She’d been tortured on a lab table. She’d watched Altan die.

Nezha’s particular tragedy wasn’t worse because it had happened when he was a child. It wasn’t worse because he was too scared to confront it.

She’d been through hell, and she was stronger for it. It wasn’t her fault that he was too pathetic to do the same.

She found the Cike sitting in a circle on the barracks floor. Baji and Ramsa were playing dice while Suni watched from a top bunk to make sure Ramsa didn’t cheat, as he always did.

“Oh, dear,” Baji said as she approached. “Who made you cry?”

“Nezha,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ramsa clicked his tongue. “Ah, boy trouble.”

She sat down in between them. “Shut up.”

“Want me to do something about it? Put a missile in his toilet?”

She managed a smile. “Please don’t.”

“Suit yourself,” he said.

Baji tossed the dice on the floor. “So what happened up north? Where’s Chaghan?”

“Chaghan won’t be with us for a while,” she said. She took a deep breath and willed herself to push Nezha to the back of her mind. Forget him. Focus on something else. That was easy enough—she had so much to tell the Cike.

Over the next half hour she spoke to them about the Ketreyids, about Augus, and about what had happened in the forest.

They were predictably furious.

“So Chaghan was spying on us the entire time?” Baji demanded. “That lying fuck.”

“I always hated him,” Ramsa said. “Always prancing around with his mysterious mutters. Figures he’d been up to something.”

“Can you really be surprised, though?” Suni, to Rin’s shock, seemed the least bothered. “You had to know they had some other agenda. What else would Hinterlanders be doing in the Cike?”

“Don’t call them Hinterlanders,” Rin said automatically.

Ramsa ignored her. “So what were the Hinterlanders going to do if Chaghan decided we were getting too dangerous?”

“Kill you, probably,” Baji said. “Pity they went back north, though. Would have been nice to have someone deal with Feylen. It’ll be a struggle.”

“A struggle?” Ramsa repeated. He laughed weakly. “You think last time we tried to put him down was a struggle?”

“What happened last time?” Rin asked.

“Tyr and Trengsin lured him into a small cave and stabbed so many knives through his body that even if he could have shamanized, it wouldn’t have done a lick of good,” Baji said. “It was kind of funny, really. When they brought him back out he looked like a pincushion.”

“And Tyr was all right with that?” Rin asked.

“What do you think?” Baji asked. “Of course not. But that was his job. You can’t command the Cike if you don’t have the stomach to cull.”

A cascade of footsteps sounded outside the room. Rin peered around the door to see a line of soldiers marching out, fully equipped with shields and halberds. “Where are they all going? I thought the Militia hadn’t moved south yet.”

“It’s refugee patrol,” Baji said.

She blinked. “Refugee patrol?”

“You didn’t see all them coming in?” Ramsa asked. “They were pretty hard to miss.”

“We came in through the Red Cliffs,” Rin said. “I haven’t seen anything but the palace. What do you mean, refugees?”

Ramsa exchanged an uncomfortable look with Baji. “You missed a lot while you were gone, I think.”

Rin didn’t like what that implied. She stood up. “Take me there.”

“Our patrol shift isn’t until tomorrow morning,” Ramsa said.

“I don’t care.”

“But they’re fussy about that,” Ramsa insisted. “Security is tight on the refugee border, they’re not going to let us through.”

“I’m the Speerly,” Rin said. “Do you think I give a shit?”

“Fine.” Baji hauled himself to his feet. “I’ll take you. But you’re not going to like it.”