The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War Trilogy #2)

Rin jolted awake to the sound of gongs. She tried to spring out of bed, but the moment she lifted her head, a searing pain rippled through her back.

“Whoa.” Venka’s blurry face came into view. She put a hand on Rin’s shoulder and forced her back down. “Not so fast.”

“But the morning alarm,” Rin said. “I’m going to be late.”

Venka laughed. “To what? You’re off duty. We’re all off duty.”

Rin blinked. “What?”

“It’s over. We won. You can relax.”

After months of warfare, of sleeping and eating and waking on the same strict schedule, that statement was so incredible to Rin that for a moment the words themselves sounded like they’d been spoken in a different language.

“We’re finished?” she asked faintly.

“For now. But don’t be too disappointed, you’ll have plenty to do once you’re up and moving.” Venka cracked her knuckles. “Soon we’ll be running cleanup.”

Rin struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. The pain in her lower back pulsed along with her heartbeat. She clenched her teeth to stave it off. “What else is there? Update me.”

“Well, the Empire hasn’t exactly surrendered. They’re decapitated, but the strongest provinces—Tiger, Horse, and Snake—are still holding out.”

“But the Wolf Meat General’s dead,” Rin said. Venka already knew that—she’d seen it happen—but saying it out loud made her feel better.

“Yeah. We captured Tsolin alive, too. Jun made it out, though.” Venka picked up an apple from Rin’s bedside. She began paring it with rapid, sure movements, fingers moving so fast that Rin was amazed she didn’t peel her own skin off. “Somehow he swam out of the channel and got away—he’s well on his way back to Tiger Province now. Horse and Snake are loyal to him, and he’s a better strategist than Chang En was. They’ll put up a good fight. But the war should be over soon.”

“Why?”

Venka pointed out the window with her paring knife. “We have help.”

Rin shifted around in her bed to peer outside, clutching the windowsill for support. A seemingly infinite number of warships crowded the harbor. She tried to calculate how many Hesperian troops that entailed. Thousands? Tens of thousands?

She should have been relieved the civil war was as good as over. Instead, when she looked at those white sails, all she could feel was dread.

“Something wrong?” Venka asked.

Rin took a breath. “Just . . . disoriented a bit, I think.”

Venka handed the peeled apple to Rin. “Eat something.”

Rin wrapped her fingers around it with difficulty. It was amazing how hard the simple act of chewing was; how much it hurt her teeth, how it strained her jaw. Swallowing was agony. She couldn’t manage more than a few bites. She put the apple down. “What happened to the Militia deserters?”

“A couple tried to flee over the mountains, but their horses got scared when the dirigibles came,” Venka said. “Trampled them underfoot. Their bodies are still stuck in the mud. We’ll probably send a crew to get those horses back. How’s your . . . well, how’s everything feeling?”

Rin reached backward to feel at her wounds. Her back and shoulder were covered in a swath of bandages. Her fingers kept brushing against raised skin that hurt to touch. She winced. She didn’t want to see what lay beneath the wrappings. “Did they tell you how bad it was?”

“Can you still wiggle your toes?”

Rin froze. “Venka.”

“I’m kidding.” Venka cracked a smile. “It looks worse than it is. It’ll take you a while, but you’ll get full mobility back. Your biggest concern is scarring. But you were always ugly, so it’s not like that will make a difference.”

Rin was too relieved to be angry. “Go fuck yourself.”

“There’s a mirror inside that cabinet door.” Venka pointed to the back corner of the room and stood up. “I’ll give you some time alone.”

After Venka closed the door, Rin pulled off her shirt, climbed gingerly to her feet, and stood naked in front of the mirror.

She was stunned by how repulsive she looked.

She’d always known that nothing could make her attractive; not with her mud-colored skin, sullen face, and short, jagged hair that had never been styled with anything more sophisticated than a rusty knife.

But now she just looked like a broken and battered thing. She was an amalgamation of scars and stitches. On her arm, dotted white reminders of the hot wax she’d once used to burn herself to stay awake studying. On her back and shoulders, whatever lay behind those bandages. And just under her sternum, Altan’s handprint, as dark and vivid as the day she’d first seen it.

Exhaling slowly, she pressed her left hand to the spot over her stomach. She couldn’t tell if she was only imagining it, but it felt hot to the touch.

“I should apologize,” said Kitay.

She jumped. She hadn’t heard the door open. “Fucking hell—”

“Sorry.”

She scrambled to pull her shirt back on. “You might have knocked!”

“I didn’t realize you’d be up.” He crossed the room and perched himself on the side of her bed. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize. That wound is my fault. Didn’t put padding around the gears—I didn’t have time, so I was just going for something functional. The rod went in about three inches at a slant. The physicians said you’re lucky it didn’t sever your spine.”

“Did you feel it, too?” she asked.

“Just a little,” Kitay said. He was lying, she knew that, but in that moment she was just grateful he would even try to spare her the guilt. He lifted his shirt and twisted around to show her a pale white scar running across his lower back. “Look. They’re the same shape, I think.”

She peered enviously at the smooth white lines. “That’s prettier than mine will be.”

“Don’t get too jealous.”

She moved her hands and arms about, gingerly testing the temporary boundaries of her mobility. She tried to raise her right arm above her head, but gave up when her shoulder threatened to tear itself apart. “I don’t think I want to fly for a while.”

“I gathered.” Kitay picked her unfinished apple up off the windowsill and took a bite. “Good thing you won’t have to.”

She sat back down on the bed. It hurt to stand for too long.

“The Cike?” she asked.

“All alive and accounted for. None with serious injuries.”

She nodded, relieved. “And Feylen. Is he . . . you know, properly dead?”

“Who cares?” Kitay said. “He’s buried under thousands of tons of rock. If there’s anything alive down there, it won’t bother us for a millennium.”

Rin tried to take comfort in that. She wanted to be sure Feylen was dead. She wanted to see a body. But for now, this would have to do.

“Where’s Nezha?” she asked.

“He’s been in here. Constantly. Wouldn’t leave, but I think someone finally got him to go take a nap. Good thing, too. He was starting to smell.”

“So he’s all right?” she asked quickly.

“Not entirely.” Kitay tilted his head at her. “Rin, what did you do to him?”

She hesitated.

Could she tell Kitay the truth? Nezha’s secret was so personal, so intensely painful, that it would feel like an awful betrayal. But it also entailed immense consequences that she didn’t know how to grapple with, and she couldn’t stand keeping that to herself. At least not from the other half of her soul.

Kitay said out loud what she had been thinking. “We’re both better off if you don’t hide things from me.”

“It’s an odd story.”

“Try me.”

She told him everything, every last painful, disgusting detail.

Kitay didn’t flinch. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Nezha’s been a prick his whole life. I imagine it’s hard to be pleasant when you’re in chronic pain.”

Rin managed a laugh. “I don’t think that’s entirely it.”

Kitay was silent for a moment. “So am I to understand that’s why he’s been moping for days? Did he call the dragon at the Red Cliffs?”

Rin’s stomach twisted with guilt. “I didn’t make him do it.”

“Then what happened?”

“We were in the channel. We were—I was drowning. But I didn’t force him. That wasn’t me.”

What she wanted was for Kitay to tell her she hadn’t done anything wrong. But as usual, all he did was tell her the truth. “You didn’t have to force him. You think that Nezha would let you die? After you’d called him a coward?”

“The pain’s not so bad,” she insisted. “Not so bad that you want to die. You’ve felt it. We both survived it.”

“You don’t know how it feels for him.”

“It can’t possibly be worse.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe it’s worse than you could even imagine.”

She drew her knees up to her chest. “I never wanted to hurt him.”

Kitay’s voice held no judgment, only curiosity. “Why’d you say those things to him, then?”

“Because his life is not his own,” she said, echoing Vaisra’s words from so long ago. “Because when you have this much power, it’s selfish to sit on it just because you’re scared.”

But that wasn’t entirely it.

She was also jealous. Jealous that Nezha might have access to such enormous power and never consider using it. Jealous that Nezha’s entire identity and worth did not hinge on his shamanic abilities. Nezha had never been referred to solely by his race. Nezha had never been someone’s weapon. They had both been claimed by gods, but Nezha got to be the princeling of the House of Yin, free from Hesperian experimentation, and she got to be the last heir of a tragic race.

Kitay knew that. Kitay knew everything that crossed her mind.

He sat quietly for a long time.

“I’m going to tell you something,” he finally said. “And I don’t want you to take it as a judgment, I want you to take it as a warning.”

She gave him a wary look. “What?”

“You’ve known Nezha for a few years,” he said. “You met him when he’d perfected his masks and pretensions. But I’ve known him since we were children. You think that he’s invincible, but he is more fragile than you think. Yes, I know he’s a prick. But I also know that he’d throw himself off a cliff for you. Please stop trying to break him.”

The trial of Ang Tsolin took place the next morning on a raised dais before the palace. Republican soldiers crowded the courtyard below, wearing uniform expressions of cold resentment. Civilians had been barred from attendance. Word of Tsolin’s betrayal was common knowledge by now, but Vaisra didn’t want a riot. He didn’t want Tsolin to die in chaos. He wanted to give his old master a precise, cleanly executed death, every silent second drawn out as long as possible.

Captain Eriden and his guards led Tsolin to the top of the platform. They’d let him keep his dignity—he was neither blindfolded nor bound. Under different circumstances he might have been receiving the highest honors.

Vaisra met Tsolin at the center of the dais, handed him a wrapped sword, and leaned forward to murmur something into his ear.

“What’s happening?” Rin murmured into Kitay’s ear.

“He’s giving him the option of suicide,” Kitay explained. “A respectable end for a disgraceful traitor. But only if Tsolin confesses to and repents for his wrongs.”

“Will he?”

“Doubt it. Even an honorable suicide can’t overcome that kind of disgrace.”

Tsolin and Vaisra stood still on the dais, silently regarding each other. Then Tsolin shook his head and handed the sword back.

“Your regime is a puppet democracy,” he said aloud. “And all you have done is hand your country over to be ruled by the blue-eyed devils.”

A murmur of unease swept through the soldiers.

Vaisra’s eyes roved the crowd and fell on Rin. He beckoned to her with one finger.

“Come here,” he said.

She glanced around her, hoping he was pointing to someone else.

“Go,” Kitay muttered.

“What does he want with me?”

“What do you think?”

She blanched. “I’m not doing this.”

He gave her a gentle nudge. “It’s best if you don’t think too much about it.”

She shuffled forward, leaning heavily on her cane. She could still only barely walk. The worst was the pain in her lower back, because it wasn’t localized. The node seemed connected to every muscle in her body—every time she took a step or moved her arms, she felt like she’d been stabbed.

The soldiers parted to clear her a path to the platform. She ascended with slow, shaking steps. Every step pulled painfully at the stitches in her lower back.

Finally she stopped before the Snake Warlord. He met her gaze with tired eyes. Even now, even when he was completely at her mercy, he still looked like he pitied her.

“A puppet to the end,” Tsolin whispered, so softly that only she could hear. “When are you going to learn?”

“I’m not a puppet,” she said.

He shook his head. “I thought you might be the smart one. But you let him take everything he needed from you and just rolled over like a whore.”

She would have responded, but Vaisra spoke over her.

“Do it,” he said coldly.

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. She knew what he wanted from her. Right now, unless she wanted to arouse suspicion, she needed to be Vaisra’s obedient weapon of the Republic.

She placed her right palm on Tsolin’s chest, just over his heart, and pushed. Her curled fingers seared with flames so hot her nails went straight into his flesh as if she were clawing at soft tofu.

Tsolin twitched and jerked but kept his mouth shut. She paused, marveling at how long he managed not to scream.

“You’re brave,” she said.

“You’re going to die,” he gasped. “You fool.”

Her fingers closed around something that she thought might be his heart. She squeezed. Tsolin’s head dropped. Over his slumped shoulder, she saw Vaisra nod and smile.

Rin wanted to get out of Arlong immediately after that. But Kitay argued, and she reluctantly agreed, that they wouldn’t make it a mile out of the channel. She still couldn’t walk properly, much less run. Her open wounds required daily checkups in the infirmary that neither of them had the medical knowledge to conduct on their own.

They also didn’t have an escape plan. They’d heard only silence from Moag. If they left now, they’d have to travel on foot unless they could steal a riverboat, and Arlong’s dock security was too good for them to manage that.

They had no choice other than to wait, at least until Rin had healed up enough to hold her own in a fight.

Everything hung in a tense equilibrium. Rin received no word from Vaisra or the Hesperians. Sister Petra hadn’t summoned her for an examination in months. Rin and Kitay made no overt moves to escape. Vaisra didn’t have any reason to suspect her allegiances had shifted, so she was operating on a fairly loose leash. That gave her time to figure out her next move. She was a mouse inching closer to a trap. It would spring when she moved to escape, but only then.

A week after Tsolin’s execution, the palace servants delivered a heavy, silk-wrapped package to her room. When she unwrapped it she found a ceremonial dress with instructions to put it on and appear on the dais in an hour.

Rin still couldn’t lift her hands all the way over her head, so she enlisted Venka’s assistance.

“What the fuck do I do with this?” Rin held up a loose rectangle of cloth.

“Calm down. It’s a shawl, you drape it just under your shoulders.” Venka took the cloth from Rin and wrapped it loosely over Rin’s upper arms. “Like so. So that it flows like water, see?”

Rin was getting too hot and frustrated to care how well her clothes flowed. She snatched up another loose rectangle that looked identical to her shawl. “Then what about this?”

Venka blinked at her as if she were an idiot. “You tie that around your waist.”

The biggest injustice, Rin thought, was that despite her injuries, they were still forcing her to walk in the victory parade. Vaisra had insisted it was crucial for decorum. He wanted to put on a show for the Hesperians. A display of Nikara gratitude and etiquette. Proof they were civilized.

Rin was so tired of having to prove her humanity.

The robe was quickly wearing down her patience. The damned thing was hot, stifling, and so tight it restricted her mobility in ways that made her breathing quicken. Putting it on required so many moving pieces she was tempted to throw the whole pile in the corner and set it on fire.

Venka made a noise of disgust as she watched Rin fasten the sash around her waist with a quick sailor’s knot. “That looks horrendous.”

“It’s going to come undone otherwise.”

“There’s more than one way to tie a knot. And that’s far too loose besides. You look like you’ve been caught getting frisky with a courtier.”

Rin pulled at the sash until it pressed into her ribs. “Like this?”

“Tighter.”

“But I can’t breathe.”

“That’s the point. Stop only when it feels like your ribs are going to crack.”

“I think my ribs have cracked. Twice over now.”

“Then a third time can’t do much more damage.” Venka took the sash out of Rin’s hands and began retying the knot herself. “You are incredible.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How did you come this far without learning any feminine wiles?”

That was such an absurd phrase that Rin snorted into her sleeve. “We’re soldiers. Where did you learn feminine wiles?”

“I’m aristocracy. My whole life my parents were determined to get me married to some minister.” Venka smirked. “They were a little miffed when I joined the military instead.”

“They didn’t want you at Sinegard?” Rin asked.

“No, they hated the idea. But I insisted on it. I wanted glory and attention. Wanted them to write stories about me. Look how that turned out.” Venka yanked the knot tight. “You have a visitor, by the way.”

Rin turned around.

Nezha stood in the doorway, hands dangling awkwardly by his sides. He cleared his throat. “Hello.”

Venka patted Rin’s shoulder. “Have fun.”

“That’s a pretty knot,” Nezha said.

Venka winked as she flounced past him. “Even prettier on the wearer.”

The creak as the door swung shut might have been the loudest noise Rin had ever heard.

Nezha crossed the room to stand beside her in front of the mirror. They looked at each other in the glass. She was struck by the imbalance between them—how much taller he was, how pale his skin looked next to hers, how elegant and natural he looked in ceremonial garb.

She looked ridiculous. He looked like he belonged.

“You look good,” he said.

She snorted. “Don’t lie to my face.”

“I would never lie to you.”

The following silence felt oppressive.

It seemed obvious what they should be talking about, but she didn’t know how to raise the subject. She never knew how to bring things up around him. He was so unpredictable, warm one minute and cold to her the next. She never knew where she stood with him; never knew if she could trust him, and that was so damn frustrating because aside from Kitay he was the one person whom she wanted to tell everything.

“How do you feel?” she finally asked.

“I’ll live,” he said lightly.

She waited for him to continue. He didn’t.

She was terrified to say anything more. She knew a chasm had opened between them, she just didn’t know how to close it.

“Thank you,” she tried.

He raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“You didn’t have to save me,” she said. “You didn’t have to . . . do what you did.”

“Yes, I did.” She couldn’t tell if the lightness in his tone was forced or not. “How would it go over if I let our Speerly die?”

“It hurt you,” she said. And I had you smoke enough opium to kill a calf. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “We’re fine.”

But they weren’t fine. Something had shattered between them, and she was sure that it was her own fault. She just didn’t know how to make it right.

“Okay.” She broke the silence. She couldn’t stand this anymore; she needed to flee. “I’m going to go find—”

“Did you see her die?” Nezha asked abruptly, startling her.

“Who?”

“Daji. We never found a body.”

“I gave your father my report,” she said. She’d told Vaisra and Eriden that Daji was dead, drowned, sunk at the bottom of the Murui.

“I know what you told him. Now I want you to tell me the truth.”

“That’s the truth.”

Nezha’s voice hardened. “Don’t lie to me.”

She crossed her arms. “Why would I lie about that?”

“Because they haven’t found a body.”

“I was trapped under a fucking mast, Nezha. I was too busy trying not to die to think.”

“Then why did you tell Father that she’s dead?”

“Because I think she is!” Rin quickly pulled an explanation out of thin air. “I saw Feylen crash that ship. I saw her fall into the water. And if you can’t find a body that just means she’s buried down there with the other ten thousand corpses clogging up your channel. What I don’t understand is why you’re acting like I’m a traitor when I just killed a god for you.”

“I’m sorry.” Nezha sighed. “No, you’re right. I just—I want us to be able to trust each other.”

His eyes looked so sincere. He’d really bought it.

Rin exhaled, marveling at how narrowly she’d gotten away.

“I’ve never lied to you.” She placed a hand on his arm. It was so easy to act. She didn’t have to fake her affection for him. It felt good to tell Nezha what he wanted to hear. “And I never will. I swear.”

Nezha gave her a smile. A real smile. “I like when we’re on the same side.”

“Me too,” she said, and that, finally, wasn’t a lie. How desperately she wished they could stay that way.

The parade turnout was pathetic. That didn’t surprise Rin. In Tikany, people came out for festivals only because they bore the promise of free food and drink, but battle-wrecked Arlong didn’t have the resources to spare either. Vaisra had ordered an extra ration of rice and fish distributed across the city, but to civilians who had just lost their homes and relatives, that was little cause to celebrate.

Rin still could only barely walk. She’d stopped using her cane, but she couldn’t move more than fifty yards without getting exhausted, and both her arms and legs were riddled by a tight, sore ache that seemed to only be getting worse.

“We can have you ride on a sedan chair if you need,” Kitay said when she faltered on the dais.

Rin clutched his proffered arm. “I’ll walk.”

“But you’re hurting.”

“Entire city’s hurting,” she said. “That’s the point.”

She hadn’t seen the city outside the infirmary until now, and the devastation was painful to look at. The fires in the outer city had burned for nearly a day after the battle, extinguished only by rainfall. The palace remained intact, though blackened at the bottom. The lush greenery of the canal islands had been replaced by withered dead trees and ash. The infirmaries were overcrowded with the wounded. The dead lay in neat lines by the beach, awaiting a proper burial.

Vaisra’s parade wasn’t a testament to victory, but an acknowledgment of sacrifice. Rin appreciated that. There were no gaudy musicians, no flagrant displays of wealth and power. The army walked the streets to show that they had survived. That the Republic was alive.

Saikhara headed the procession, breathtaking in robes of cerulean and silver. Vaisra strode just behind her. His hair was streaked with far more white than it had been months ago, and he walked with just the barest hint of a limp, but even those signs of weakness seemed only to add to his dignity. He was dressed like an Emperor, and Saikhara looked like his Empress. She was their divine mother and he was their savior, father, and ruler all at once.

Behind that celestial couple stood the entire military might of the west. Hesperian soldiers lined the streets. Hesperian dirigibles drifted slowly through the air above them. Vaisra may have promised to usher in a democratic government, but if he intended to stake his claim to the entire Empire, Rin doubted that anyone could stop him.

“Where are the southern Warlords?” Kitay asked. He kept twisting around to get a look at the line of generals. “Haven’t seen them all day.”

Rin searched the crowd. He was right; the Warlords were absent. She couldn’t see a single southern refugee, either.

“Do you think they’ve left?” she asked.

“I know they haven’t. The valleys are still full of refugee camps. I think they chose not to come.”

“What for, a show of protest?”

“I suppose it makes sense,” he said. “This wasn’t their victory.”

Rin could understand that. The victory at the Red Cliffs had solved very few of the south’s problems. Southern troops had bled for a regime that only continued to treat them as a necessary sacrifice. But the Warlords were sacrificing prudence for symbolic protest. They needed Hesperian troops to clear out the Federation enclaves in their home provinces. They should have been doing their best to win back Vaisra’s favor.

Instead, they’d made clear their loyalties, just as they had to her in that alley days ago.

She wondered what that meant for the Republic. The south hadn’t submitted an open declaration of war. But they’d hardly demonstrated obedient cooperation, either. Would Vaisra now send those armed dirigibles to conquer Tikany?

Rin planned to be gone long before it came to that.

The procession culminated in a funeral rite for the dead on the riverbank. The turnout for this was much larger. A mass of civilians lined up under the cliffs. Rin couldn’t tell if the water was only reflecting the Red Cliffs, but it seemed as if the channel was still shot through with blood.

Vaisra’s generals and admirals stood in a straight line on the beach. Ribbons on posts marked those with rank who were absent. Rin counted more ribbons than people.

“That’s a hell of a lot of digging.” She looked out over the stacks of drenched, rotting corpses. The soldiers had spent days trawling the water for bodies, which otherwise would have poisoned the water with the foul taste of decay for years.

“They don’t bury their dead in Arlong,” Kitay said. “They send them out to sea.”

They watched as soldiers loaded pyramids of bodies onto rafts, then pushed them out into the water one by one. Each pyre was draped with a funeral shroud dipped in oil. At Vaisra’s command, Eriden’s men shot a barrage of flaming arrows onto the fleet of bodies. Each one found its target. The pyres caught fire with a sharp, satisfying crackle.

“I could have done that,” Rin said.

“It means less when you do it.”

“Why?”

“Because the only thing that makes it significant is the possibility that they don’t aim true.” Kitay nodded over her shoulder. “Look who’s here.”

She followed his line of sight to find Ramsa, Baji, and Suni standing by the edge of the shore a little ways away from a huddle of civilians. They were looking back at her. Ramsa gave her a little wave.

She couldn’t help grinning in relief.

She hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to the Cike since the eve of the battle. She’d known they were all right, but they hadn’t been permitted in the infirmary, and she didn’t want to make a fuss for fear of arousing Hesperian suspicion. This might be their only chance to talk privately.

She leaned close to murmur in Kitay’s ear. “Is anyone looking?”

“I think you’re fine,” he said. “Hurry.”

She shuffled, limping, as quickly as she could down the shore.

“I see they finally let you out of the death farm,” Baji said in greeting.

“‘Death farm’?” she repeated.

“Ramsa’s nickname for the infirmary.”

“It’s because they’d roll out corpses every day in grain wagons,” Ramsa said. “Glad you weren’t in one of them.”

“How bad is it?” Baji asked.

She instinctively brushed her fingers over her lower back. “Manageable. Hurts, but I can walk without assistance now. You all got through unscathed?”

“More or less.” Baji showed her his bandaged shins. “Scraped those when I was jumping off a ship. Ramsa threw a fuse too late, got a bad burn on his knee. Suni’s completely fine. The man can survive anything.”

“Good,” she said. She glanced quickly around the beach. No one was paying attention to them; the crowd’s eyes were fixed on the funeral pyres. She lowered her voice regardless. “We can’t stay here anymore. Get ready to run.”

“When?” Baji asked. None of them looked surprised. Rather, they all seemed to have been expecting it.

“Soon. We’re not safe here. Vaisra doesn’t need us anymore and we can’t count on his protection. The Hesperians don’t know you and Suni are shamans, so we have a bit of leeway. Kitay doesn’t think they’ll move in immediately. But we shouldn’t drag our feet.”

“Thank the gods,” Ramsa said. “I couldn’t stand them. They smell horrible.”

Baji gave him a look. “Really? That’s your biggest complaint? The smell?”

“It’s rank,” Ramsa insisted. “Like tofu gone sour.”

Suni spoke up for the first time. “If you’re worried, why don’t we get out tonight?”

“That works,” Rin said.

“Any particulars?” Ramsa asked.

“I don’t have a plan beyond escape. We tried to get Moag on board, but she hasn’t responded. We’ll have to just make our way out of the city on our own.”

“One problem,” Baji said. “Suni and I are on night patrol. Think it’ll tip them off if we go missing?”

Rin assumed that was precisely the reason why they had been put on night patrol.

“When do you get off?” she asked.

“An hour before dawn.”

“So we’ll go then,” she said. “Make straight for the cliffs. Don’t wait at the gates, that’ll only attract attention. We’ll figure out what to do once we’re out of the city. Does that work?”

“Fine,” Baji said. Ramsa and Suni nodded.

There was nothing else to discuss. They stood together in a cluster, watching the funeral in silence for a few minutes. The flames on the pyres had grown to a full blaze. Rin didn’t know what was propelling the pyres farther out to sea, but the way the flames blurred the air above them was oddly hypnotizing.

“It’s pretty,” Baji said.

“Yeah,” she said. “It is.”

“You know what’s going to happen to them, right?” Ramsa said. “They’ll float for about three days. Then the pyres will start to break apart. Burned wood is weak and bodies are heavy as shit. They sink into the ocean, and they’ll bloat and crumble unless the fish nibble everything but the bones first.”

His brittle voice carried over the still morning air. Heads were turning.

“Will you stop?” Rin muttered.

“Sorry,” said Ramsa. “All I’m saying is that they should have just burned them on land.”

“I don’t think they got all the bodies,” Baji said. “I saw more corpses in the river than that. How many Imperial soldiers do you think are still down there?”

Rin shot him a look. “Baji, please—”

“You know, it’s funny. The fish will feed on the corpses. Then you’ll eat the fish, and you’ll literally be feeding on the bodies of your enemies.”

She glared at him through blurry eyes. “Do you have to do that?”

“What, you don’t think it’s funny?” He put his arm around her. “Hey. Don’t cry—I’m sorry.”

She swallowed hard. She hadn’t meant to cry. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying—she didn’t know any of the bodies on the pyre, and she didn’t have any reason to grieve.

Those bodies weren’t her fault. She still felt miserable.

“I don’t like feeling this way,” she whispered.

“Me neither, kid.” Baji rubbed her shoulder. “But that’s war. You might as well be on the winning side.”