The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)

“How lovely,” spoke a voice, familiar and beautiful, that made Rin’s heart sink and her mouth fill with the taste of blood.

She lowered Nezha onto the sand and forced herself to stand up. Metal shifted beneath her flesh, and she bit back a cry of pain. The agony in her back and shoulder was almost unbearable. But she was not going to die lying down.

How could the Empress still terrify her like this? Daji was just a lone woman now, without an army or a fleet. Her general’s garb was ripped and drenched. She limped when she walked, and her shoes left behind imprints of blood. Yet she approached with her chin lifted high, her eyebrows arched, and her lips curved in an imperious smile as if she had just won a great victory, emanating a dark, seductive beauty that made irrelevant her sodden robes, her shattered ships.

Rin hated that beauty. She wanted to drag her nails across it until white flesh gave way under her fingers. She wanted to gouge Daji’s eyes out of their sockets, crush them in her fists, and drip the gelatinous ruin over her porcelain skin.

And yet.

When she looked at Daji her entire body felt weak. Her pulse raced. Her face felt hot. She couldn’t tear her eyes from Daji’s face. She had to look and keep looking, otherwise she would never be satisfied.

She forced herself to focus. She needed a weapon—she snatched a sharp piece of driftwood off the ground.

“Get back,” she whispered. “Come any closer and I’ll burn you.”

Daji only laughed. “Oh, my darling. Haven’t you learned?”

Her eyes flashed.

Suddenly Rin felt the overwhelming urge to kill herself, to drag the driftwood against her own wrists until red lines opened along her veins, and twist.

Hands shaking, she pressed the sharpest edge of the driftwood to her skin. What am I doing? Her mind screamed for her to stop, but her body didn’t care. She could only watch as her hands moved on their own, preparing to saw her veins apart.

“That’s enough,” Daji said lightly.

The urge disappeared. Rin dropped the driftwood, gasping.

“Will you listen now?” Daji asked. “I’d like you to stand still, please. Arms up.”

Rin immediately put her arms up over her head, stifling a scream as her wounds tore anew.

Daji limped closer. Her eyes flickered over the remains of Rin’s harness, and her right lip curled up in amusement. “So that’s how you dealt with poor Feylen. Clever.”

“Your best weapon is gone,” Rin said.

“Ah, well. He was a pain to begin with. One moment he’d try to sink our own fleet, and the next all he wanted to do was float among the clouds. Do you know how absurdly difficult it was to get him to do anything?” Daji sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to finish the job myself.”

“You’ve lost,” Rin said. “Hurt me, kill me, it’s still over for you. Your generals are dead. Your ships are driftwood.”

A round of cannon fire punctuated her words, a roar so loud that it drowned out every other sound along the shore. It went on for so long that Rin couldn’t imagine that anything remained floating in the channel.

But Daji didn’t look faintly bothered. “You think that’s winning? You aren’t the victors. There are no victors in this fight. Vaisra has ensured that civil war will continue for decades. He’s only deepened the fractures. No man can stitch this country back together now.”

She continued to limp forward until they were separated by only several feet.

Rin’s eyes darted around the shore. They stood on an isolated stretch of sand, hidden behind the wreckage of great warships. The only other soldiers in sight were corpses. No one was coming to her rescue. It was just her and the Empress now, facing off in the shadows of the unforgiving cliffs.

“So how did you manage the Seal?” Daji asked. “I was rather convinced that it was unbreakable. It can’t have been one of the twins; they would have done it long ago if they could.” She tilted her head. “Oh, no, let me guess. Did you find the Sorqan Sira? Is that old bat still alive?”

“Fuck you, murderer,” Rin said.

“I presume that means you’ve found yourself an anchor, too?” Daji’s eyes flitted toward Nezha. He wasn’t moving. “I do hope it’s not him. That one’s almost gone.”

“Don’t you dare touch him,” Rin hissed.

Daji knelt over Nezha, fingers tracing over the scars on his face. “He’s very pretty, isn’t he? Despite everything. He reminds me of Riga.”

I must get her away from him. Rin strained to move, eyes bulging, but her limbs remained fixed in place. The flame wouldn’t come, either; when she reached for the Phoenix, all her rage crashed pointlessly against her own mind, like waves crashing against cliffs.

“The Ketreyids showed me what you’ve done,” she said loudly, hoping it would distract Daji.

It worked. Daji stood up. “Really.”

“The Sorqan Sira showed us everything. You can try to convince me that you’re trying to save the Empire, but I know what kind of person you are—you betray those who help you and you throw lives away like they’re nothing. I saw you attack them, I saw you three murder Tseveri—”

“Be quiet,” Daji said. “Don’t say that name.”

Rin’s jaw locked shut.

Rin stood frozen, heart slamming against her ribs, as Daji approached her. She had just been spinning words out of the air, hurling everything she could to get Daji away from Nezha.

But something had pissed Daji off. Two high spots of color rose in her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed. She looked furious.

“The Ketreyids should have surrendered,” she said quietly. “We wouldn’t have hurt them if they weren’t so fucking stubborn.”

Daji stretched a pale hand out and ran her knuckles over Rin’s cheeks. “Always such a hypocrite. I acted from necessity, just like you. We are precisely the same, you and I. We’ve acquired more power than any mortal should have the right to, which means we have to make the decisions no one else can. The world is our chessboard. It’s not our fault if the pieces get broken.”

“You hurt everything you touch,” Rin whispered.

“And you’ve killed in numbers exponentially greater than we ever managed. What really separates us, darling? That you committed your war crimes by accident, and mine were intentional? Would you really do things differently, if you had another chance?”

The hold on Rin’s jaw loosened.

Daji had given her permission to answer.

She couldn’t say yes. She could lie, of course, but it wouldn’t matter; not here, where no one but Daji was listening, and Daji already knew the truth.

Because if she had another chance, if she could go back to that moment in time when she stood in the temple of the Phoenix and faced her god, she would make the same decision. She would release the volcano. She would encase Mugen in tons of molten stone and choking ash.

She would destroy the country completely and without mercy, the same way that its armies had treated her. And she’d laugh.

“Do you understand now?” Daji tucked a strand of hair behind Rin’s ear. “Come with me. We’ve much to discuss.”

“Fuck off,” Rin said.

Daji’s mouth pressed in a thin line. The compulsion seized Rin’s legs and forced her to move, shuddering, toward Daji. One by one Rin’s feet dragged through the sand. Sweat beaded on her temples. She tried to shut her eyes and couldn’t.

“Kneel,” Daji commanded.

No, spoke the Phoenix.

The god’s voice was terribly quiet, a tiny echo across a vast plain. But it was there.

Rin struggled to remain standing. A horrible pain shot through her legs, forcing them down, growing stronger every moment that she refused. She wanted to scream but couldn’t open her mouth.

Daji’s eyes flashed yellow. “Kneel.”

You will not kneel, said the Phoenix.

The pain intensified. Rin gasped, fighting the pull, her mind split between two ancient gods.

Just another battle. And, as always, anger was her greatest ally.

Rage drowned out the Vipress’s hypnosis. Daji had sold out the Speerlies. Daji had killed Altan, and Daji had started this war. Daji didn’t get to lie to her anymore. Didn’t get to torture and manipulate her like prey.

The fire came in fits and bursts, little balls of flame that Rin hurled desperately from her palms. Daji only dodged daintily to the side and flicked a wrist out. Rin jerked aside to avoid a needle that wasn’t there. The sudden movement pulled the broken contraption deeper into her back.

She yelped and doubled over.

Daji laughed. “Had enough?”

Rin screeched.

A thin stream of fire lanced over her entire body—enveloping her, protecting her, amplifying her every movement.

This was power like she’d never felt.

That’s a state of ecstasy, Altan told her once. You don’t get tired. . . . You don’t feel pain. All you do is destroy.

Rin had always felt so unhinged—volleying between powerlessness and utter subjugation to the Phoenix—but now the fire was hers. Was her. And that made her feel so giddy that she almost screamed with laughter because for the first time ever, she had the upper hand.

Daji’s resistance was nothing. Rin backed her easily up against the hull of the nearest beached ship. Her fist smashed into the wood next to Daji’s face, missing it by an inch. Wood cracked, splintered, and smoked under her knuckles. The entire ship groaned. Rin drew her fist back again and slammed it into Daji’s jaw.

Daji’s head jerked to the side like a broken doll’s. Rin had split her lip; blood trickled down her chin. Yet still she smiled.

“You’re so weak,” she whispered. “You have a god but you have no idea what you’re doing with it.”

“Right now, I know exactly what I want to do with it.”

She placed her glowing-hot fingers around Daji’s neck. Pale flesh crackled and burned under her touch. She started to squeeze. She thought she’d feel a thrill of satisfaction.

It didn’t come.

She couldn’t just kill her. Not like this. This was too quick, too easy.

She had to destroy her.

She moved her hands up. Placed her thumbs under the bases of Daji’s eye sockets. Dug her nails into soft flesh.

“Look at me,” Daji hissed.

Rin shook her head, eyes squeezed tight.

Something popped under her left thumb. Warm liquid streamed down her wrist.

“I’m already dying,” Daji whispered. “Don’t you want to know who I am? Don’t you want to know the truth about us?”

Rin knew she should end things right then.

She couldn’t.

Because she did want to know. She’d been tortured by these questions. She had to understand why the Empire’s greatest heroes—Daji, Riga, and Jiang, her Master Jiang—had become the monsters they had. And because here, at the end of things, she doubted now more than ever that she was fighting for the right side.

Her eyes fluttered open.

Visions swarmed her mind.

She saw a city burning the way Arlong burned now; buildings charred and blackened, corpses lining the streets. She saw troops marching in uniform lines of terrifying numbers, while the city’s surviving inhabitants crouched by their doorsteps, heads bent and arms raised.

This was the Nikara Empire under Mugenese occupation.

“We couldn’t do anything,” Daji said. “We were too weak to do anything when their ships arrived at our shores. And for the next five decades, when they raped us, beat us, spat on us and told us we were worth less than dogs, we couldn’t do anything.”

Rin squeezed her eyes shut, but the images wouldn’t go away. She saw a beautiful little girl standing alone before a heap of bodies, soot across her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. She saw a young boy lying in a starved, broken heap in the corner of the alley, curled around jagged, shattered bottles. She saw a white-haired boy screaming profanities and waving his fists at the retreating backs of soldiers who did not care.

“Then we escaped, and we had power within our hands to change the fate of the Empire,” Daji said. “So what do you think we did?”

“That doesn’t excuse anything.”

“It explains and justifies everything.”

The visions shifted again. Rin saw a naked girl shrieking and crying beside a cave while snakes writhed over her body. She saw a tall boy crouching on the shore while a dragon encircled him, whipping up higher and higher waves that surrounded his body like a tornado. She saw a white-haired boy on his hands and knees, beating his fists against the ground while shadows writhed and stretched out of his back.

“Tell me you wouldn’t have given up everything,” Daji said. “Tell me you wouldn’t sacrifice everything and everyone you knew for the power to take back your country.”

Months flashed before Rin’s eyes. Next she saw the Trifecta, fully grown, kneeling by the body of Tseveri, who was just one girl, and the choice seemed so clear and obvious. Against the suffering of a teeming mass of millions, what was one life? Twenty lives? The Ketreyids were so few; how hard could the comparison be?

What difference could it possibly make?

“We didn’t want to kill Tseveri,” Daji whispered. “She saved us. She convinced the Ketreyids to take us in. And Jiang loved her.”

“Then why—”

“Because we had to. Because our allies wanted that land, and the Sorqan Sira said no, and we needed to win it through force and fear. We had one chance to unite the Warlords and we weren’t going to throw it away.”

“But then you gave it away!” Rin cried. “You didn’t take it back! You sold it to the Mugenese—”

“If your arm were rotting, wouldn’t you cut it off to save your body? The provinces were rebelling. Corrupt. Diseased. I would have sacrificed it all for a united core. I knew we weren’t strong enough to defend the whole country, only a part of it. So I culled. You know that; you command the Cike. You know what rulers must sometimes do.”

“You sold us.”

“I did it for them,” Daji said softly. “I did it for the empire Riga left me. And you don’t understand the stakes, because you don’t know the meaning of true fear. You don’t know how much worse it could have been.”

Daji’s voice broke.

And for the second time, Rin saw the facade break, saw through the carefully crafted mirage that Daji had been presenting to the world for decades. This woman wasn’t the Vipress, wasn’t the scheming ruler Rin had learned to hate and fear.

This woman was afraid. But not of her.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Daji whispered. “I’m sorry I hurt Altan. I wish I’d never had to. But I had a plan to protect my people, and you simply got in the way. You didn’t know your true enemy. You wouldn’t listen.”

Rin was so furious with her then, because she couldn’t hate her anymore. Who was she supposed to fight for now? What side was she supposed to be on? She didn’t believe in Vaisra’s Republic, not anymore, and she certainly didn’t trust the Hesperians, but she didn’t know what Daji wanted her to do.

“You can go ahead and kill me,” said Daji. “You probably could. I’d fight back, of course, but you’d probably win. I would kill me.”

“Shut up,” Rin said.

She wanted to tighten her fists and choke the life out of Daji. But the rage had drained away. She didn’t have the will to fight anymore. She wanted to be angry—things were so much easier when she was just blindly angry—but the anger wouldn’t come.

Daji twisted out from her grip, and Rin didn’t try to stop her.

Daji was as good as dead regardless. Her face was a grotesque ruin—black liquid gushed out from her gouged eye. She stumbled to the side, fingers feeling for the ship.

Her good eye locked on to Rin’s. “What do you think happens to you after I’m gone? Don’t imagine for a moment you can trust Vaisra. Without me, Vaisra has no use for you. Vaisra discards his allies without blinking when they are no longer convenient, and if you don’t believe me when I say you’re next, then you’re a fool.”

Rin knew Daji was right.

She just didn’t know where that left her.

Daji shook her head and held her hands out, open and unthreatening. “Come with me.”

Rin took a small step forward.

Wood groaned above her head. Daji skirted backward. Too late, Rin looked up just in time to see the ship’s mast crashing down on her.

Rin couldn’t even scream. It took everything she had just to breathe. Air came in hoarse, painful bursts; it felt like her throat had been reduced to the diameter of a pin. Her entire back burned with agony.

Daji knelt down in front of her. Stroked her cheek. “You’ll need me. You don’t realize it now, but you’ll figure it out soon. You need me far more than you need them. I just hope you survive.”

She leaned down so close that Rin could feel her hot breath on her skin. Daji grabbed Rin by the chin and forced her to look up, into her good eye. Rin stared into a black pupil inside a ring of yellow, pulsing hypnotically, an abyss daring her to fall inside.

“I’ll leave you with this.”

Rin saw a beautiful young girl—Daji, it had to be—in a huddled heap on the ground, naked, clothes clutched to her chest. Dark blood dripped down pale thighs. She saw the young Riga sprawled on the ground, unconscious. She saw Jiang lying on his side, screaming, as a man kicked him in the ribs, over and over and over.

She dared to look up. Their tormenter was not Mugenese.

Blue eyes. Yellow hair. The soldier brought his boot down, over and over and over, and each time Rin heard another set of cracks.

She leaped forward in time, just a few minutes. The soldier was gone, and the children were clinging to each other, crying, covered in each other’s blood, crouching in the shadow of a different soldier.

“Get out of here,” said the soldier, in a tongue she was far too familiar with. A tongue she would have never believed would utter a kind word. “Now.”

Then Rin understood.

It had been a Hesperian soldier who raped Daji, and a Mugenese soldier who saved her. That was the frame the Empress had been locked into since childhood; that was the crux that had formed every decision afterward.

“The Mugenese weren’t the real enemy,” Daji murmured. “They never were. They were just poor puppets serving a mad emperor who started a war that he shouldn’t have. But who gave them those ideas? Who told them they could conquer the continent?”

Blue eyes. White sails.

“I warned you about everything. I told you this from the beginning. Those devils are going to destroy our world. The Hesperians have a singular vision for the future, and we’re not in it. You already know this. You must have realized it, now that you’ve seen what they’re like. I can see it in your eyes. You know they’re dangerous. You know you’ll need an ally.”

Questions formed on Rin’s tongue, too many to count, but she couldn’t summon the breath to speak them. Her vision was tunneling, turning black at the edges. All she could see was Daji’s pale face, dancing above her like the moon.

“Think about it,” Daji whispered, tracing her cool fingers over Rin’s cheek. “Figure out who you’re fighting for. And when you know, come find me.”

“Rin? Rin!” Venka’s face loomed over her. “Fucking hell. Can you hear me?”

Rin felt a great weight lifting off her back and shoulders. She lay flat, eyes open wide, sucking in great gulps of air.

“Hey.” Venka snapped her fingers in front of her. “What’s my name?”

Rin moaned. “Just help me up.”

“Close enough.” Venka wedged her arms under her stomach and helped Rin roll onto her side. Every tiny movement sent fresh spasms of pain rippling through her back. She collapsed into Venka’s arms, breathless with agony.

Venka’s hands moved over her skin, feeling for injuries. Rin felt her fingers pause on her back.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Venka murmured.

“What?”

“Uh. Can you breathe all right?”

“Ribs,” Rin gasped. “My—ow!”

Venka pulled her hands away from Rin. They were slippery with blood. “There’s a rod stuck under your skin.”

“I know,” Rin said through gritted teeth. “Get it out.” She reached back to try again to yank it out herself, but Venka grabbed her wrist before she could.

“You’ll lose too much blood if it comes out now.”

Rin knew that, but the thought of the rod digging deeper inside her was making her panic spiral. “But I’m—”

“Just breathe for a minute. All right? Can you do that for me? Just breathe.”

“How bad is it?” Kitay’s voice. Thank the gods.

“Several ribs broken. Don’t move, I’ll get a stretcher.” Venka set off at a run.

Kitay knelt down beside her. His voice dropped to a whisper. “What happened? Where’s the Empress?”

Rin swallowed. “She got away.”

“Obviously.” Kitay’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “Did you let her go?”

“I . . . what?”

Kitay gave her a hard look. “Did you let her go?”

Had she?

She found that she couldn’t answer.

She could have killed Daji. She’d had plenty of opportunities to burn, strangle, stab, or choke the Empress before the beam fell. If she’d wanted to, she could have ended everything then and there.

Why hadn’t she?

Had the Vipress manipulated her into letting her go? Was Rin’s reluctance a product of her own thoughts or Daji’s hypnosis? She could not remember if she had chosen to let Daji escape, or if she had simply been outsmarted and defeated.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“You don’t know,” Kitay asked, “or you don’t want to tell me?”

“I thought it’d be so clear,” she said. Her head swam; her eyes fluttered closed. “I thought the choice was obvious. But now I really don’t know.”

“I think I understand,” Kitay said after a long pause. “But I’d keep that to yourself.”