The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)

At dawn, Arlong’s civilians began clearing out of the city. The evacuation proceeded with impressive efficiency. The civilians had been packed and prepared for this for weeks. All families were ready to go with two bags each of clothing, medical supplies, and several days’ worth of food.

By midafternoon the city center had been hollowed out. Arlong became a shell of a city. The Republican Army quickly transformed the larger residences into defense bases with sandbags and hidden explosives.

Soldiers accompanied the civilians to the base of the cliffs, where they began a long, winding climb up to the caves inside the rock face. The pass was narrow and treacherous, and some heights could not be scaled except by using several stringy rope ladders embedded into the rock with nails.

“That’s a rough climb,” Rin said, looking doubtfully up the rock wall. The ladders were so narrow the evacuees would have to go up one by one, with no one to aid them. “Can everyone make it?”

“They’ll get over it.” Venka walked up behind her with two small, sniffling children in tow, a brother and sister who’d been separated from their parents in the crowd. “Our people have been using those hills as hideouts for years. We hid there during the Era of Warring States. We hid there when the Federation came. We’ll survive this, too.” She hoisted the girl up onto her hip and jerked her brother along. “Come on, hurry up.”

Rin glanced backward over her shoulder at the masses of people moving below.

Maybe the caves would keep the Dragons safe. But the southern refugees had been ordered to occupy the valley lowlands, and that was just open space.

The official word was that the caves were too small to accommodate everyone, and so the refugees would have to make do. But the valley provided no shelter at all. Exposed to the elements, with no natural or military barriers to hide behind, the refugees would have no protection from the weather or the Militia—and certainly not from Feylen.

But where else were they going to go? They wouldn’t have fled to Arlong if home were safe.

“I’m hungry,” complained the boy.

“I don’t care.” Venka tugged at his skinny wrist. “Stop crying. Walk faster.”

“This battle will take place primarily in three stages,” said Vaisra. “One, we will fend them off at the outer channel between the Red Cliffs. Two, we win the ground battle in the city. Three, they will try to retreat along the coast, and we will pick them off. We’ll get to that stage if we are miraculously lucky.”

His officers nodded grimly.

Rin glanced around the council room, amazed by how many faces she’d never seen before. A good half of the officers were newly promoted. They wore the stripes of senior leadership, but they looked five years older than Rin at most.

So many young, scared faces. The military command had been killed off at the top. This was rapidly becoming a war fought by the children.

“Can that warship even get through the cliffs?” asked Captain Dalain.

“Daji’s familiar with the channel,” said Admiral Kulau, the young navy officer who had replaced Molkoi. He sounded as if he were deepening his voice to seem older. “She’ll have designed it so it can.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Eriden said. “If their warship even starts depositing troops outside the channel, then we’re in trouble.” He leaned over the map. “That’s why we have archers stationed here and here—”

“Why aren’t there any back-end fortifications?” Kitay interrupted.

“The invasion will come from the channel,” Vaisra said. “Not the valley.”

“But the channel’s the obvious avenue of attack,” Kitay said. “They know you’re expecting them. If I’m Daji, and I have a numerical advantage that large, then I split my troops and send a third column round the back while everyone’s distracted.”

“No one’s ever attacked Arlong from land routes,” Kulau said. “They’d be eviscerated on the mountaintops.”

“Not if they’re unguarded,” Kitay insisted.

Kulau cleared his throat. “They’re not unguarded. They’ve got fifty men guarding them.”

“Fifty men can’t beat a column!”

“Chang En’s not going to send a full column of his crack troops round the back. You have a fleet that big, you man it.”

No one spoke the more obvious answer, which was that the Republican Army simply didn’t have the troops for better fortifications. And if any part of Arlong warranted a defense, then it was the palace and military barracks. Not the valley lowlands. Not the southerners.

“Of course, Chang En will want this to turn into a land battle,” Vaisra continued smoothly. “There they have the sheer advantage in numbers. But this fight remains winnable as long as we keep it amphibious.”

The channel had already been blocked up with so many iron chains and underwater obstacles that it almost functioned as a dam. The Republic was banking on mobility over numbers—their armed skimmers could dart between the Imperial ships, breaking up formations while the munitions crews shot bombs down from their cliffside stations.

“What’s the makeup of their fleet?” asked a young officer Rin didn’t recognize. He sounded terribly nervous. “Which ships do we target?”

“Aim for the warships, not the skimmers,” Kulau said. “Anything that has a trebuchet should be a target. But the bulk of their troops are on that floating fortress. If you can sink any ships, sink that first.”

“You want us in a fan formation at the cliffs?” Captain Dalain asked.

“No,” said Kulau. “If we spread out then they’ll just obliterate us. Stay in a narrow line and plug up the channel.”

“We’re not worried about their shaman?” Dalain asked. “If we clump our ships together, he’s just going to blast our fleet against the cliffs.”

“I’ll take care of Feylen,” Rin said.

The generals blinked at her. She looked around the table, eyes wide open. “What?”

“Last time you ended up stranded for a month,” said Captain Eriden. “We’ll be fine against Feylen—we have fifteen squadrons of archers positioned across the cliff walls.”

“And he’ll just fling them off the cliffs,” said Rin. “They won’t be more than an annoyance.”

“And you won’t be?”

“No,” she said. “This time, I can fly.”

The generals looked as if they were unsure whether to laugh. Only General Tarcquet, sitting silently as usual in the back of the room, looked mildly curious.

“I built her a, uh, flying kite sort of contraption,” Kitay explained. He made some gestures with his hands that clarified nothing. “It’s made up of some leather wings with rods, and she can generate flames hot enough to levitate herself using the same principle that lifts a lantern—”

“Have you tried it?” Vaisra asked. “Does it work?”

Rin and Kitay nodded.

“Wonderful,” Gurubai said drily. “So, assuming she’s not mad, that’s the Wind God taken care of. There’s still the rest of the Imperial Navy to deal with, and we’re still outnumbered three to one.”

The officers shifted uneasily.

It was easier for Rin if she compartmentalized the battle to simply dealing with Feylen. She didn’t want to think about the rest of the fleet, because the truth was there was no easy way to deal with the fleet. They were outnumbered, they were on the defensive, and they were trapped.

Kitay sounded far calmer than she felt. “There’s a number of different tactics we can try. We can try to break them up and storm their warships. The important thing is that we don’t let that fortress get to the shore, because then it turns into a land battle for the city.”

“And Jun’s forces won’t be so formidable,” Kulau added. “They’ll be exhausted. The Militia isn’t used to naval battles, they’ll be seasick and dizzy. Meanwhile our army was designed for riverine warfare, and our soldiers are fresh. We’ll just outfight them.”

The room looked unconvinced.

“Here’s an option we haven’t considered,” General Hu said after a short pause. “We could surrender.”

Rin found it disheartening that this wasn’t immediately met with a general outcry.

Several seconds passed in silence. Rin glanced sideways at Vaisra but couldn’t read his expression.

“That wouldn’t be a terrible idea,” Vaisra said finally.

“It wouldn’t.” General Hu glanced desperately around the room. “Look, I’m not the only one thinking it. They’re going to slaughter us. No one’s come back from a numbers disadvantage like this in history. If we cut our losses now, we still come out of this alive.”

“As always,” Vaisra said slowly, “you are the voice of reason, General Hu.”

General Hu looked profoundly relieved, but his smile faded as Vaisra continued to speak. “Why not surrender? The consequences couldn’t possibly be so terrible. All that would happen is that every single person in this room would be flayed alive, Arlong destroyed, and any hope of democratic reform would be quashed in the Empire for at least the next few centuries. Is that what you want?”

General Hu had turned pale. “No.”

“I have no place in my army for cowards,” Vaisra said softly. He nodded to the soldier standing beside Hu. “You there. You’re his aide?”

The boy nodded, eyes huge. He couldn’t have been older than twenty. “Yes, sir.”

“Ever been in battle?” Vaisra asked.

The boy’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Yes, sir. I was at Boyang.”

“Excellent. And what is your name?”

“Zhou Anlan, sir.”

“Congratulations, General Zhou. You’ve been promoted.” Vaisra turned to General Hu. “You can leave.”

General Hu forced his way through the crowded bodies and left without another word. The door swung shut behind him.

“He’s going to defect,” said Vaisra. “Eriden, see that he’s stopped.”

“Permanently?” Eriden asked.

Vaisra considered that briefly. “Only if he struggles.”

After the council had been dismissed, Vaisra motioned for Rin to stay behind. She exchanged a panicked glance with Kitay as he filtered out with the others. Once the room had emptied, Vaisra closed the door behind him.

“When this is over I want you to go pay a visit to our friend Moag,” he said quietly.

She was so relieved that he hadn’t mentioned the Hesperians that for a moment all she did was blink at him, uncomprehending. “The Pirate Queen?”

“Make it quick,” Vaisra said. “Leave the corpse and bring back the head.”

“Wait. You want me to kill her?”

“Was I not sufficiently clear?”

“But she’s your biggest naval ally—”

“The Hesperians are our biggest naval ally,” Vaisra said. “Do you see Moag’s ships in the bay?”

“I don’t see any Hesperian ships in the bay,” Rin pointed out.

“They will come. Give them time. But Moag’s going to be nothing but trouble once this war’s over. She’s operated extralegally for too long, and she couldn’t get used to a naval authority that isn’t her own. Smuggling’s in her blood.”

“So let her smuggle,” Rin said. “Keep her happy. What’s the problem with that?”

“There’s no way to keep her happy. Ankhiluun exists because of the tariffs. Once we have free trade with the Hesperians, that makes the entire premise of Ankhiluun irrelevant. All she’ll have left is opium smuggling, and I don’t intend to be half as lenient toward opium as Daji is. There’s a war coming once Moag realizes all her income streams are drying up. I’d rather nip it in the bud.”

“And this request has nothing to do with the fact that she hasn’t sent ships?” Rin asked.

Vaisra smiled. “An ally’s only useful if they do as they’re told. Moag’s proven herself unreliable.”

“So you want me to commit preemptive murder.”

“Let’s not be as dramatic as that.” He waved a hand. “We’ll call it insurance.”

“I think the wall’s ready,” Kitay said, rubbing his eyes. He looked exhausted. “I wanted to triple-check the fuses, but there wasn’t time.”

They stood at the edge of the cliffs, watching the sun set between the two sides of the channel like a ball falling down a ravine. Dark water shimmered below, reflecting crimson rock and a burnt-orange sun. It looked like a flood of blood gushing out from a freshly sliced artery.

When Rin squinted at the opposite cliff, she could just see the lines where fuses had been strung together and tucked with nails into the rock, like a sprawling, ugly patchwork of protruding veins.

“What are they chances they don’t go off?” she asked.

Kitay yawned. “They’ll probably go off.”

“Probably,” she repeated.

“You’re just going to have to trust Ramsa and I did our jobs. If they don’t go off, we’re all dead.”

“Fair enough.” Rin hugged her arms across her chest. She felt tiny standing over the massive precipice. Empires had been won and lost under these cliffs. They were on the brink of losing another one.

“Do you think we can win tomorrow?” she asked quietly. “I mean, is there even the slightest chance?”

“I’ve done the math seven different ways,” Kitay said. “Compiled all the intelligence we have and compared the probabilities and everything.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know.” His fists clenched and unclenched, and Rin could tell he was resisting the urge to start tugging at his hair. “That’s the frustrating part. You know the one thing that all the great strategists agree upon? It actually doesn’t matter what numbers you have. It doesn’t matter how good your models are, or how brilliant your strategies are. The world is chaotic and war is fundamentally unpredictable and at the end of the day you don’t know who will be the last man standing. You don’t know anything going into a battle. You only know the stakes.”

“Well, they’re pretty fucking high,” Rin said.

If they lost, their rebellion would be vanquished and Nikan would descend into darkness for another several decades at least, rent apart by factional warfare and a lingering Federation presence.

But if they won, the Empire would become a Republic, primed to hurtle into the new and glorious future with Vaisra at the helm and the Hesperians at his side.

And then Rin would have to worry about what happened after.

An idea struck her then—just the smallest tendril of one, but it was there; a fierce, burning spark of hope. Vaisra might have just handed her a way out.

“How do you get to the rookery?” she asked.

“I can take you,” Kitay said. “Who do you want to send a letter to?”

“Moag.” Rin turned to begin the climb back toward the city.

Kitay followed. “What for?”

“There’s something she should know.” She was already composing the message in her head. If—no, when—she left the Republic, she would need an ally. Someone who could get her out of the city fast. Someone who wasn’t linked to the Republic.

Moag was a liar, but Moag had ships. And now, Moag had a death sentence over her head that she didn’t know about. That gave Rin leverage, which gave her an ally.

“Call it insurance,” she said.

Traveling at its current pace, the Imperial Navy would breach the channel at dawn. That gave Arlong six more hours to prepare. Vaisra ordered his troops to sleep in rotating two-hour shifts so they would meet the Militia with as much stamina as possible.

Rin understood the rationale, but she couldn’t see how she was possibly supposed to close her eyes. She vibrated with nervous energy, and even sitting still made her uneasy—she needed to be moving, running, hitting something.

She paced around the field outside the barracks. Little rivulets of fire danced through the air around her, swirling in perfect circles. That made her feel the slightest bit better. It was proof that she still had control over something.

Someone cleared his throat. She turned around. Nezha stood at the door, bleary-eyed and disheveled.

“What’s happened?” she asked sharply. “Did anything—”

“I had a dream,” he mumbled.

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“You died.”

She made her flames disappear. “What is going on with you?”

“You died,” he repeated. He sounded dazed, only half-present, like a little schoolboy disinterestedly reciting his Classics. “You—they shot you down over the water, and I saw your body floating up in the water. You were so still. I saw you drown, and I couldn’t save you.”

He started to cry.

“What the fuck,” she muttered.

Was he drunk? High? She didn’t know what she was supposed to do, only that she didn’t want to be alone with him. She glanced toward the barracks. What would happen if she just left?

“Please don’t leave,” Nezha said, as if reading her mind.

She folded her arms against her chest. “I didn’t think you ever wanted to see me again.”

“Why would you think that?”

“‘It would be best if we died,’” she said. “Who said that?”

“I didn’t mean that—”

“Then what? Where do you draw the line? Suni, Baji, Altan—we’re all monsters in your book, aren’t we?”

“I was angry that you called me a coward—”

“Because you are a coward!” she shouted. “How many men died at Boyang? How many are going to die today? But no, Yin Nezha has the power to stop the river and he won’t do it, because he’s fucking scared of a tattoo on his back—”

“I told you, it hurts—”

“It always hurts. You call the gods anyway. We’re soldiers—we make the sacrifices we must, no matter what it takes. But I suppose you would put your own comfort over a chance to crush the Empire—”

“Comfort?” Nezha repeated. “You think it’s about comfort? Do you know how it felt, when I was in his cave? Do you know what he did to me?”

“Yes,” she said. “Exactly the same thing the Phoenix did to me.”

Rin knew Nezha’s pain. She just didn’t have the sympathy for it.

“You’re acting like a fucking child,” she said. “You’re a general, Nezha. Do your job.”

Anger darkened his face. “Just because you’ve decided to worship your abuser doesn’t mean we all—”

Rin stiffened. “No one abused me.”

“Rin, you know that’s not true.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m sorry.” He held up his hands in surrender. “Look—I really am. I didn’t come here to talk about that. I don’t want to fight.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because you could die out there,” he said. “We both could.” His words poured out in a torrent, as if he were afraid that if he stopped speaking they would run out of time, as if he would only ever get this one chance. “I saw it happen, I saw you bleeding out in the water, and I couldn’t do anything about it. That was the worst part.”

“Are you high?” she demanded.

“I just want to make things right between us. What’s that going to take?” Nezha spread his arms. “Should I let you hit me? Do you want to? Go ahead, take a swing. I won’t move.”

Rin almost took him up on the offer. But the moment she made a fist, her anger dissipated.

Why was it that whenever she looked at Nezha, she wanted to either kill him or kiss him? He made her either furious or deliriously happy. The one thing he did not make her feel was secure.

With him there was no neutrality, no in between. She loved him or she hated him, but she didn’t know how to do both.

She lowered her fist.

“I really am sorry,” Nezha said. “Please, Rin. I don’t want us to end like this.”

He tried to say something else, but the sudden boom of the signal gongs drowned out his voice. They reverberated through the barracks with such loud urgency that Rin could feel the ground trembling beneath her feet.

The familiar taste of blood filled her mouth. Panic, fear, and adrenaline flooded her veins. But this time they didn’t make her collapse; she didn’t want to curl into a ball and rock back and forth until it was over. She was used to this now, and she could use it as a fuel. Turn it into bloodlust.

“We should be in position,” she said. She tried to walk past him into the barracks to get her equipment, but he grabbed at her arm.

“Rin, please—you have more enemies than you think you do—”

She shrugged him off. “Let me go!”

He blocked her path. “I don’t want this to be the last conversation we ever have.”

“Then don’t die out there,” she said. “Problem solved.”

“But Feylen—”

“We’re not going to lose to Feylen this time,” she said. “We’re going to win, and we’re going to live.”

He sounded like a terrified child woken up from a bad dream. “But how do you know?”

She didn’t know what made her do it, but she put her hand on Nezha’s shoulder. It wasn’t an apology or forgiveness, but it was a concession. An acknowledgment.

And for just a moment, she felt a hint of that old camaraderie, a flicker she’d felt once, a year ago at Sinegard, when he’d thrown her a sword and they’d fought back to back, enemies turned to comrades, firmly on the same side for the first time in their lives.

She saw the way he was looking at her. She knew he felt it, too.

“Between us, we have the fire and the water,” she said quietly. “I’m quite sure that together, we can take on the wind.”