The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)

“I can feel my heartbeat in my temples.” Venka leaned over her mounted crossbow and checked the gears for what seemed like the hundredth time. It was cranked to maximum, fitted in with twelve reloading bolts. “Don’t you love this part?”

“I hate this part,” Kitay said. “Feels like we’re waiting for our executioner.”

His hairline sported visible bald patches. He was going mad waiting for the Imperial Navy to show up, and Rin knew why. They both liked it so much better when they were on the offensive, when they could decide when to attack and where.

They’d been taught at Sinegard that fighting a defensive battle by sitting behind fixed fortifications was courting disaster because it just gave the enemy the advantage of initiative. Unless a siege was at play, sitting behind defenses was almost always a doomed strategy, because there were no locks that couldn’t be broken, and no fortresses that were impregnable.

And this would not be a siege. Daji had no interest in starving them out. She didn’t need to. She intended to smash right through the gates.

“Arlong hasn’t been taken for centuries,” Venka pointed out.

Kitay’s hands twitched. “Well, its luck had to run out sometime.”

The Republic was as prepared as it ever would be. The generals had set their defensive traps. They’d divided and positioned their troops—seven artillery stations all along the upper cliffs, the majority stationed on the Republican Fleet in formation inside the channel, and the rest either guarding the shore or barricading the heavily fortified palace.

Rin wished that the Cike could be up on the cliff fighting by her side, but neither Baji nor Suni could offer much air support against Feylen. They were both stationed on warships at the center of the Republican Fleet where, right in the brunt of enemy fire, their abilities might stay hidden from Hesperian observers, and also where they’d be able to cause the most damage.

“Is Nezha in position?” Kitay peered over the channel.

Nezha was assigned to the front of the fleet, leading one of the three remaining warships that could hold its own in a naval skirmish. He was to drive his ship directly into the center of the Imperial Fleet and split it apart.

“Nezha’s always in position,” said Venka. “He’s sprung like a—”

“Don’t be vulgar,” Kitay said.

Venka grinned.

They could hear a faint series of booms echoing from beyond the mouth of the channel. In truth, the battle had already begun—a flimsy handful of riverside forts that constituted Arlong’s first line of defense had already engaged the Militia, but they were manned with only enough soldiers to keep the cannons firing.

Kitay had estimated those would buy them all of ten minutes.

“There,” Venka said sharply. “I see them.”

They stood up.

The Imperial Navy sailed directly into their line of sight. Rin caught her breath, trying not to panic at the sheer size of Daji’s fleet combined with Tsolin’s.

“What’s Chang En doing?” Kitay demanded.

The Wolf Meat General had lashed his boats together, tied them stern to stern into a single, immobile structure. The fleet had become a single, massive battering ram, with the floating fortress at the very center.

“To fight the seasickness, you think?” Venka asked.

Rin frowned. “Has to be.”

That seemed like a clever move. The Imperial troops weren’t used to fighting over moving water, so they might do better on a locked platform. But a static formation was also particularly dangerous where battling Rin was concerned. If one ship went up in flames, so did the rest of them.

Had Daji not discovered that Rin had figured a way around the Seal?

“It’s not seasickness,” Kitay said. “It’s so Feylen won’t blow them out of the water. And it gives them the advantage if we try to board. They get troop mobility between ships.”

“We’re not going to board,” said Rin. “We’re going to torch that thing.”

“That’s the spirit,” Venka said with an optimism that nobody felt.

The locked fleet crawled toward the cliffs at a maddeningly slow pace. War drums echoed around the channel as the fortress moved inexorably forward.

“I wonder how many men it takes to propel that thing,” Venka mused.

“They don’t need much paddling force,” Rin said. “They’re sailing downstream.”

“Okay, but what about lateral movement—”

“Please stop talking,” Kitay snapped.

Rin knew their chattering was idiotic, but she couldn’t help it. She and Venka had the same problem. They had to keep running their mouths, because the wait would drive them crazy otherwise.

“The gates aren’t going to hold,” Rin said despite Kitay’s glare. “It’ll be like kicking down a sandcastle.”

“You’re giving it five minutes, then?” Venka asked.

“More like two. Get ready to fire that thing.”

Venka patted Kitay’s shoulder. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

He rolled his eyes. “The gate wasn’t my idea.”

In a last-ditch effort, Vaisra had ordered his troops to chain the gates of the channel shut with every spare link of iron in the city. It might have deterred a pirate ship, but against this fleet, it was little more than a symbolic gesture. From the sounds of it, the Militia intended to simply knock the gates over with a battering ram.

Boom. Rin felt stone vibrating beneath her feet.

“How old are those gates?” she wondered out loud.

Boom.

“Older than this province,” said Venka. “Maybe as old as the Red Emperor. Lot of architectural value.”

“That’s a pity.”

“Isn’t it?”

Boom. Rin heard the sharp crack of fracturing wood, and then a noise like fabric ripping.

Arlong’s gates were down.

The Imperial Navy poured through. The channel lit up with pyrotechnics. Massive twenty-foot cannons embedded into Arlong’s cliff walls went off one by one, sending scorching, boulder-sized balls shrieking into the sides of Chang En’s ships. Each one of Kitay’s carefully planted water mines went off in lovely, timed succession to the sound of firecrackers magnified by a thousand.

For a moment the Imperial Fleet was hidden behind a massive cloud of smoke.

“Nice,” Venka marveled.

Kitay shook his head. “That’s nothing. They can absorb the losses.”

He was right. When the smoke cleared, Rin saw that there had been more noise than damage. The fleet pressed on through the explosions. The floating fortress remained untouched.

Rin paced toward the cliff edge, sword in hand.

“Patience,” Kitay muttered. “Now’s not the time.”

“We should be down there,” she said. She felt like a coward waiting up on the cliff, hiding out of sight while soldiers burned below.

“We’re only three people,” Kitay said. “We’d be cannon fodder. You dive in now, you’ll just get shot full of iron.”

Rin hated that he was right.

The cliffs shook continuously under their feet. The Imperial Navy was returning fire. Loaded missiles shot out of the siege towers, showering tiny rockets onto the cliffside artillery stations. Shielded Militia archers returned two crossbow bolts for every one that reached their decks.

Rin’s stomach twisted with horror as she watched. The Militia was using precisely the same siege-breaking strategy that Jinzha had employed on the northern campaign—eviscerate the archers first, then barrel through land resistance.

The Republican warships took the worst damage. One had already been blown so thoroughly out of the water that its fragmented remains were blocking the paths of its sister ships.

The Imperial cannons fired low to aim at the paddle wheels. The Republican ships tried to rotate in the water to keep their back paddles out of the line of fire, but they were rapidly losing mobility. At this rate, Nezha’s ships would be reduced to sitting ducks.

Rin still saw no sign of Feylen.

“Where is he?” Kitay muttered. “You’d think they would bring him out right away.”

“Maybe he’s bad with orders,” Rin said. Feylen had seemed so terrified of Daji, she didn’t want to think about the kind of torture it took to persuade him to fight.

But at this rate, the Militia didn’t even need to bring Feylen out. Two artillery stations had gone down. The other five were running out of ammunition and had slowed their rate of fire. Most of Nezha’s warships were dead in the water, while the core of the Imperial Navy had sustained very little fire damage.

Time to rectify that. Rin stood up. “I’m going in.”

“Now’s the time,” Kitay agreed. He handed her a jug of oil from a tidy pile stocked next to the crossbow, and then pointed down at the channel. “I’m thinking center left of that tower ship. You want to split that formation apart. Get the ropes going and the rest will catch fire.”

“And don’t look down,” Venka said helpfully.

“Shut up.” Rin stepped backward, dug her feet against the ground, and broke into a run. The wind whipped against her face. Her wings rippled against the drag. Then the cliff disappeared under her feet, her head pitched downward, and there was no fear, no sound, only the thrilling and sickening lurch of the drop.

She let herself dive for a moment before she opened her wings. When she spread her arms the resistance hit her like a punch. Her arms felt like they were being torn from their sockets. She gasped—not from the pain, but from the sheer exhilaration. The river was a blur, ships and armies dissolving into solid streaks of browns and blues and greens.

Arrows emerged in her line of sight. They looked like needles from a distance; gaining in size at a frightening pace. She veered to the left. They whizzed harmlessly past her.

She’d gotten within range of the tower ship. She leveled off the dive. She opened her mouth and palms; a stream of fire shot out from her extremities, setting ablaze everything she passed.

She dropped the oil just before she pulled up.

She heard the glass shatter as the jar hit the deck, the crackle as the flames caught. She smiled as she soared upward to the opposite cliff wall. When she hazarded a glance backward she saw arrows lose momentum and drop back to the ground as they struggled to reach her.

Her feet found solid earth. She dropped to her knees and doubled over on all fours, panting while she surveyed the damage below.

The ropes had caught a steady, spreading fire. She could see them blackening and fraying where she’d dropped the oil.

She looked up. Across the channel, Venka methodically shoved another round of bolts into her crossbow loading mechanism, while Kitay waved for her to return.

The muscles in her arms burned, but she couldn’t afford too much time for recovery. She crawled to the edge of the cliff and hauled herself to her feet.

She squinted, mapping out her next flight pattern. She caught Venka’s attention and pointed toward a cluster of ships untouched by the fire. Venka nodded and redirected her crossbow.

Rin took a deep breath, jumped off the cliff, and swooped down, basking again in the rush of adrenaline. Javelins came whistling in her direction, one after another, but all she had to do was swerve and they soared uselessly into empty air.

She felt giddy as she set sails ablaze and felt the warm heat of the fire buoying her up as it spread. Was this how Altan had always felt in the heat of battle? She understood now why he’d summoned himself wings, even though he couldn’t fly with them.

It was symbolic. Ecstatic. In this moment she was invincible, divine. She hadn’t just summoned the Phoenix, she’d become it.

“Nice job,” Kitay said once she’d landed. “The fire’s spread to three ships, they haven’t managed to put it out—wait, can you breathe?”

“I’m okay,” she gasped. “Just—give me a moment . . .”

“Guys,” Venka said sharply. “This is bad.”

Rin staggered to her feet and joined her near the precipice.

Burning the ropes had worked. The Imperial formation had begun to splinter, its outward ships drifting away from the center. Nezha had seized the opening to wedge his warship straight through the main cluster, where he’d managed to blow smoking holes into the side of the floating fortress.

But now he was stuck. The Imperial Navy had lowered wide planks onto his ship’s sides. Nezha was about to get swarmed.

“I’m going down there,” Rin said.

“To do what?” Kitay asked. “Burn them and you burn Nezha.”

“Then I’ll land and fight. I can direct fire more accurately from the ground, I just have to get there.”

Kitay looked reluctant. “But Feylen—”

“We don’t know where Feylen is. Nezha’s in trouble. I’m going.”

“Rin. Look at the hills.” Venka pointed toward the lowland valleys. “I think they’ve sent ground troops.”

Rin exchanged a glance with Kitay.

Before he could speak she launched herself into the sky.

The ground column was impossible to miss. Rin could see them so clearly through the forest, a thick band of troops marching on Arlong from behind. They were barely half a mile from the refugee evacuation areas. They’d reach them in minutes.

She cursed into the wind. Eriden had claimed his scouts hadn’t seen anything in the valley.

But how did one miss an entire brigade?

Her mind raced. Venka and Kitay were both screaming at her, but she couldn’t hear them.

Should she go? How much good could she do? She couldn’t destroy a column of soldiers on her own. And she couldn’t abandon the naval battle—if Feylen appeared while she was miles away he could sink the entirety of their fleet before she could return.

But she had to tell someone.

She scanned the channel. She knew Vaisra and his generals were ensconced behind fortifications near the shore where they could oversee the battle, but they would refuse to do anything even if she warned them. The naval battle had few enough soldiers to spare.

She had to warn the Warlords.

They were scattered throughout the battleground with their troops, she just didn’t know where.

No one could hear her shout from this high up. Her only option was to write them a message in the sky. She beat her wings twice to gain altitude and flew forward until she hung right over the channel, in clear sight but high out of range.

She decided on two words.

Valley invaded.

She pointed down. Flames poured from her fingers and lingered for a few seconds where she’d placed them before they dissipated. She wrote the two characters over and over, going over strokes that had faded from the air, praying that someone below would see the message.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then, near the shoreline, she saw a line of soldiers peeling away from the front. Someone had noticed.

She redirected her attention to the channel.

Nezha’s ship had been almost completely overrun by Imperial troops. The ship’s cannons had gone silent. By now its crew had to be mostly dead or incapacitated.

She didn’t stop to think. She dove.

She landed badly. Her dive was too steep and she hadn’t pulled up in time. She skidded forward on her knees, yelping in pain as her skin scraped along the deck.

Militia soldiers converged on her instantly. She called down a column of flame, a protective circle that incinerated everything within a five-foot radius and pushed the approaching soldiers back.

Her eyes fell on a blue uniform in a sea of green. She barreled through the burning bodies, arms shielding her head, until she reached the single Republican soldier in sight.

“Where’s Nezha?” she asked.

He stared past her with unfocused eyes. Blood trickled in a single line from his forehead across his face.

She shook him hard. “Where’s Nezha?”

The officer opened his mouth just as an arrow embedded itself in his left eye. Rin flung the body away, ducked, and snatched a shield up from the deck just before three arrows thudded into the space where her head had been.

She advanced slowly along the deck, flames roaring out of her in a semicircle to repel Militia troops. Soldiers crumpled in her path, twitching and burning, while others hurled themselves into the water to escape the fire.

Through the blaze she heard the faint sound of clashing steel. She dimmed the wall of flame just for a moment to see Nezha and a handful of remaining Republican soldiers dueling with General Jun’s platoon on the other end of the deck.

He’s still alive. Warm hope filled her chest. She ran toward Nezha, shooting targeted ribbons of flame into the melee. Tendrils of fire wrapped around Militia soldiers’ necks like whips while balls of flame consumed their faces, blinding their eyes, scorching their mouths, asphyxiating them. She kept going until all soldiers in her vicinity had dropped to the ground, either dead or dying. It felt bizarrely, exhilaratingly good to know she had so much control over the flame, that she now possessed such potent and novel ways of killing.

When she pulled the fire back in, Nezha had fought Jun to submission.

“You’re a good soldier,” said Nezha. “My father doesn’t want you dead.”

“Don’t bother.” A sneer twisted Jun’s face. He raised his sword to his chest.

Nezha moved faster. His blade flashed through the air. Rin heard a thick chop that reminded her of a butcher shop. Jun’s severed hand dropped to the ground.

Jun stumbled forward on his knees, staring at his bloody stump like he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

“It won’t be that easy for you,” said Nezha.

“You ingrate,” Jun seethed. “I created you.”

“You taught me the meaning of fear,” Nezha said. “Nothing more.”

Jun made a wild grab for the dagger in Nezha’s belt, but Nezha kicked out—one short, precise blow against Jun’s severed stump. Jun howled in pain and fell over onto his side.

“Do it,” Rin said. “Quickly.”

Nezha shook his head. “He’s a good prisoner—”

“He tried to kill you!” Rin shouted. She summoned a ball of flame to her right hand. “If you won’t, then I will—”

Nezha grabbed her shoulder. “Stop!”

Jun struggled to his feet and made a mad scramble for the edge of the ship.

“No!” Nezha rushed forward, but it was too late. Rin saw Jun’s feet disappear over the railing. She heard a splash several seconds later. She and Nezha hurried to the railing to look over the edge, but Jun didn’t resurface.

Nezha whirled on her. “We could have taken him prisoner!”

“Look, I didn’t hurl him off the side.” She couldn’t see how this was her fault. “And I just saved your life. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Rin saw Nezha open his mouth to retort just before something wet and heavy slammed into her from above and knocked her to the deck. Her wings jammed painfully into her shoulders. She was caught under a water-soaked canvas, she realized. Her fire did nothing but fill the inside of the canvas with scorching steam. She had to call it back in before she choked.

Someone was holding the canvas down, trapping her inside. She kicked frantically, trying to wriggle out to no avail. She twisted harder until her head broke through the side.

“Hello.” The Wolf Meat General leered down at her.

She roared flames at his face. He slugged the back of his gauntleted hand against her head. She slammed back against the deck; her vision exploded into sparks. Dimly she saw Chang En lift his sword over her neck.

Nezha hurled himself into Chang En’s side. They landed sprawled in a heap. Nezha scrambled to his feet and backed away, sword raised. Chang En picked his sword off the deck, cackling, and then attacked.

Rin lay flat on her back, blinking at the sky. All of her extremities tingled, but they wouldn’t obey when she tried to move them. From the corner of her eye she caught glimpses of a fight; she heard a deafening flurry of blows, steel raining down on steel.

She had to help Nezha. But her fists wouldn’t open; the fire wouldn’t come.

Her vision started fading to black, but she couldn’t lose consciousness. Not now. She bit down hard on her tongue, willing the pain to keep her awake.

Finally she managed to lift her head. Chang En had backed Nezha into a corner. Nezha was flagging, clearly struggling simply to stand up straight. Blood soaked the entire left side of his uniform.

“I’ll saw your head off,” Chang En sneered. “Then I’ll feed it to my dogs, just like I did your brother’s.”

Nezha screamed and redoubled his assault.

Rin groaned and rolled over onto her side. Flames sparked and burst in her palms—just tiny lights, nowhere near the intensity she needed. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to concentrate. To pray.

Please, I need you . . .

Nezha’s strikes came nowhere close to landing. Chang En disarmed him with ease and kicked his sword across the deck. Nezha scrambled for the hilt. Chang En swept a leg behind his knees, kicking him to the ground, and placed a boot on his chest.

Hello, little one, said the Phoenix.

Flames burst out of every part of her. The fire was no longer localized to her control points—her hands and mouth—but blazed around her entire body like a suit of armor, glowing and untouchable.

She pointed a finger at Chang En. A thick stream of fire slammed into his face. He dropped his sword and buried his head in his hands, trying to smother the flames, but the blaze only extended across his entire body, burning brighter and brighter as he screamed.

Rin stopped just short of killing him. She didn’t want to make this easy for him.

Chang En had stopped moving. He lay flat on his back, covered in grotesque burns. His face and arms had turned black, shot through with cracks that revealed blistered, bubbling skin.

Rin stood over him and opened her palms downward.

Nezha grabbed her shoulder. “Don’t.”

She shot him an exasperated look. “Don’t tell me you want to take him prisoner, too.”

“No,” he said. “I want to do it.”

She stepped back and gestured to Chang En’s limp form. “All yours.”

“I’ll need a sword,” he said.

Wordlessly, she handed hers over.

Nezha traced the tip of the blade over Chang En’s face, jabbing it into the blistered skin between his crackled cheekbones. “Hey. Wake up.”

Chang En’s eyes opened.

Nezha forced the sword point straight down into Chang En’s left eye.

Chang En grabbed at empty air, trying to wrench the blade from Nezha’s grasp, but Nezha gave him a savage kick to the ribs, then several more to the face.

Nezha wanted to watch Chang En bleed. Rin didn’t try to stop him. She wanted to watch, too.

Nezha pressed the sword point to Chang En’s neck. “Stop moving.”

Whimpering, Chang En lay still. His gouged eye dangled grotesquely on the side of his face, still connected by lumpy strings. The other eye blinked furiously, drenched in blood.

Nezha grasped the hilt with both hands and brought it down hard. Blood splashed across both of their faces.

Nezha let the sword drop and backed away slowly. His chest heaved. Rin put her hand on his back.

He leaned into her, shaking. “It’s over.”

“No, it’s not,” she whispered.

It had barely just begun. Because the air had suddenly gone still—so still that every flag in the channel dropped, and the sound of every shout and clash of steel was amplified in the absence of wind.

She reached out and grabbed Nezha’s fingers in hers, just as the ship ripped out from beneath them.