The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

  She pulled it from the air. Her fingers closed with familiarity around the hilt. A wave of relief shot through her. She had a weapon.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “On your left,” he responded.

  Without thinking they sank into a formation; back to back, fighting while covering each other’s blind spots. They made a startlingly good team. Rin covered for Nezha’s overstretched attacks; Nezha guarded Rin’s lower corners. They were each intimately familiar with the other’s weaknesses: Rin knew Nezha was slow to bring his guard back up after missed blows; Nezha parried from above while Rin ducked in low for close-quarters attacks.

  It wasn’t as if she could read his mind. She had simply spent so much time observing him that she knew exactly how he was going to attack. They were like a well-oiled machine. They were a spontaneously coordinated dance. They weren’t two parts of a whole, not quite, but they came close.

  If they hadn’t spent so much time hating each other, Rin thought, they might have trained together.

  Backs to each other, swords at the enemy, they fought with savage desperation. They fought better than men twice their age. They drew on each other’s strengths; as long as Nezha was fighting, wasn’t flagging, Rin didn’t feel fatigued, either. Because she wasn’t just fighting to keep herself alive now, she was fighting with a partner. They fought so well that they half-convinced themselves they might emerge intact. The onslaught was, in fact, thinning.

  “They’re retreating,” Nezha said in disbelief.

  Rin’s chest flooded with hope for one short, blissful moment, until she realized that Nezha was wrong. The soldiers weren’t backing away from them. They were making way for their general.

  The general stood a head taller than the tallest man Rin had ever seen. His limbs were like tree trunks, his armor made of enough metal to coat three smaller men. He sat astride a warhorse as massive as he was; a monstrous creature, decked in steel. His face was hidden behind a metal helmet that covered all but his eyes.

  “What is this?” His voice sounded with an unnatural reverberation, as if the very ground shook when he spoke. “Why have you stopped? ”

  He brought his warhorse to a halt before Rin and Nezha.

  “Two puppies,” he said, his voice low in amusement. “Two Nikara puppies, holding an entire gate by themselves. Has Sinegard fallen so low that the city must be defended by children?”

  Nezha was trembling. Rin was too scared to tremble.

  “Watch closely,” the general said to his soldiers. “This is how we deal with Nikara scum.”

  Rin reached out and grasped Nezha’s wrist.

  Nezha nodded curtly in response to her unspoken question.

  Together?

  Together.

  The general reared his monstrous horse back and charged them.

  There was nothing they could do now. In that moment, Rin could only squeeze her eyes shut and wait for the end.

  It didn’t come.

  A deafening clang shattered the air—the sound of metal against metal. The air itself shook with the unnatural vibration of a great force stopped in its tracks.

  When Rin realized she hadn’t been cut in half or trampled to death, she opened her eyes.

  “What the fuck,” Nezha said.

  Jiang stood before them, his white hair hanging still in the air as if he had been struck by lightning. His feet did not touch the ground. Both his arms were flung out, blocking the tremendous force of the general’s halberd with his own iron staff.

  The general tried to force Jiang’s staff out of the way, and his arms trembled with a mighty pressure, but Jiang did not look like he was exerting any force at all. The air crackled unnaturally, like a prolonged rumble of thunder. The Federation soldiers fell back, as if they could sense an impending explosion.

  “Jiang Ziya,” said the general. “So you live after all.”

  “Do I know you?” Jiang asked.

  The general responded with another massive swing of his halberd. Jiang waved his staff and blocked the blow as effortlessly as if he were swatting away a fly. He dispelled the force of the blow into the air and the ground below them. The paving stones shuddered from the impact, nearly knocking Rin and Nezha off their feet.

  “Call off your men.”

  Though Jiang spoke calmly, his voice echoed as if he had shouted. He appeared to have grown taller; not larger, but extended somehow, just as his shadow was extended against the wall behind them. No longer willowy and fidgety, Jiang seemed an entirely different person—someone younger, someone infinitely more powerful.

  Rin stared at him in awe. The man before her was not the doddering, eccentric embarrassment of the Academy. This man was a soldier.

  This man was a shaman.

  When Jiang spoke again, his voice contained the echo of itself; he spoke in two pitches, one normal and one far lower, as if his shadow shouted back everything he said at double the volume. “Call off your men, or I will summon into existence things that should not be in this world.”

  Nezha grabbed at Rin’s arm. His eyes were wide. “Look.”

  The air behind Jiang was warping, shimmering, turning darker than the night itself. Jiang’s eyes had rolled up into the back of his head. He chanted loudly, singing in that unfamiliar language that Rin had heard him use only once before.

  “You are Sealed!” the general bellowed. But he backed rapidly away from the void and clutched his halberd close.

  “Am I now?” Jiang spread his arms.

  Behind him sounded a keening wail, too high-pitched for any beast known to man.

  Something was coming through the darkness.

  Beyond the void, Rin saw silhouettes that should exist only in puppetry, outlines of beasts that belonged to story. A three-headed lion. A nine-tailed vixen. A mass of serpents tangled into one another, its multitude of heads snapping and biting in every direction.

  “Rin. Nezha.” Jiang didn’t turn around to look at them. “Run.”

  Then Rin understood. Whatever was being summoned, Jiang couldn’t control them. The gods will not be called willingly into battle. The gods will always demand something in return. He was doing precisely what he had forbidden her to do.

  Nezha pulled Rin to her feet. Her left leg felt as if white-hot knives had been jammed into her kneecap. She cried out and staggered against him.

  He steadied her. His eyes were wide with terror. There was no time to run.

  Jiang convulsed in the air before them, and then lost control altogether. The void burst outward, ripping the fabric of the world, collapsing the gated wall around them. He slammed his staff into the air. A wave of force emitted from the site of contact and exploded outward in a visible ring. For a moment everything was still.

  And then the east wall came down.

  Rin moaned and rolled onto her side. She could barely see, barely feel. None of her senses worked; she was wrapped in a cocoon of darkness penetrated only by shards of pain. Her leg rubbed against something soft and human, and she reached for it. It was Nezha.

  She groaned and forced her eyes open. Nezha lay slumped against her, bleeding profusely from a cut on his forehead. His eyes were closed.

  Rin sat up, wincing, and shook his shoulder. “Nezha?”

  He stirred faintly. Relief washed over her.

  “We have to get up—Nezha, come on, we have to—”

  A shower of debris erupted in the far corner by the gate.

  Something was buried there under the rubble. Something was alive.

  She clung to Nezha’s hand and watched the shifting rubble, hoping wildly it would be Jiang, that he would have survived whatever terror he had called and that he was all right, and he would be himself again, and he would save the—

  The hand that clawed out from beneath the rubble was bloody, massive, and heavily armored.

  Rin should have killed the general before he pulled himself out of the rubble. She should have taken Nezha and run. She should have done something.

&nb
sp; But her limbs would not obey the commands that her brain sent; her nerves could not register anything but that same fear and despair. She lay paralyzed on the ground, heart slamming against her ribs.

  The general staggered to his feet, took one lopsided step forward and then another. His helmet was gone. When he turned toward them, Rin’s breath caught. Half of his face had been scraped away in the explosion, revealing an awful skeletal smile underneath peeling skin.

  “Nikara scum,” he snarled as he advanced. His foot caught against the limp form of one of his own soldiers. Without looking, he kicked it aside in disgust. His furious gaze remained fixed on Rin and Nezha. “I will bury you.”

  Nezha gave a low moan of terror.

  Rin’s arms were finally responding to her commands. She tried to haul Nezha up, but her own legs were weak with fear and she could not stand.

  The general loomed over them. He raised his halberd.

  Half-crazed with panic, Rin swung her sword upward in a great, wild arc. Her blade clattered uselessly against the general’s armored torso.

  The general closed his gauntleted fingers around her thin blade and wrenched it out of her hands. His fingers bent grooves into the steel.

  Trembling, she let go of her sword. He dragged her up by the collar and flung her at what was left of the wall. Her head cracked against stone; her vision erupted in black, then spots of light, then a fuzzy nothing. She blinked slowly, and whatever vision was restored showed the general raising his halberd slowly over Nezha’s limp form.

  Rin opened her mouth to scream just as the general jammed the bladed tip into Nezha’s stomach. Nezha made a high, keening noise. A second thrust silenced him.

  Sobbing with fear, Rin scrabbled in her pocket for the poppy seeds. She seized a handful and brought them to her mouth, choked them down just as the general noticed she was still moving.

  “No, you don’t,” he snarled, hauling her back up by the front of her robes. He dragged her close to his face, leering down at her with his horrific half-smile. “No more of that Nikara witchcraft. Even the gods won’t inhabit dead vessels.”

  Rin shook madly in his grasp, tears leaking down her face as she choked for air. Her head throbbed where he’d slammed it against the stone. She felt as if she were floating, swimming in darkness, whether from the poppy seeds or her head injury, she didn’t know. She was either dying or going to see the gods. Maybe both.

  Please, she prayed. Please come to me. I’ll do anything.

  Then she tipped forward into the void; she was in that tunnel to the heavens again, spirited upward, hurtling at a tremendous speed to a place unknown. The edges of her vision turned black and then a familiar red, a sheet of crimson that spread across her entire field of vision like a glass lens.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the Woman appear before her. The Woman reached a hand toward her, but—

  “Get out of my way!” Rin screamed. She didn’t have time for a guardian, she didn’t have time for warnings—she needed the gods, she needed her god.

  To her shock, the Woman obeyed.

  And then she was through the barrier, she was hurtling upward again, and she was in the throne room of the gods, the Pantheon.

  All the plinths were empty except one.

  She saw it then in all of its glorious fire. A great and terrible voice echoed in her mind. It echoed throughout the universe.

  I can give you the power you seek.

  She struggled wildly to breathe, but the general’s grip only tightened around her neck.

  I can give you the strength to topple empires. To burn your enemies until their bones are nothing but ash. All this I will give you and more. You know the trade. You know the terms.

  “Anything,” Rin whispered. “Anything at all.”

  Everything.

  Something like a gust of wind blew through the chamber. She thought she heard something cackling.

  Rin opened her eyes. She was not light-headed anymore. She reached up and clasped the general’s wrists. She was deathly weak; her grasp should have been like a feather’s touch. But the general howled. He dropped her, and when he raised his arms to strike her, she saw that both his wrists were a mottled, bubbling red.

  She crouched, raised her elbows over her head to form a pathetic shield.

  And a great sheet of flame erupted before her. The heat of it hit her in the face. The general stumbled backward.

  “No . . .” His mouth opened wide in disbelief. He looked at her like he was seeing someone else. “Not you.”

  Rin struggled to her feet. Flames continued to pour out before her, flames she had no control over.

  “You’re dead!” the general shouted. “I killed you!”

  She rose slowly, flames streaming from her hands, rivulets that ensconced them, gave no escape. The general howled in pain as the fire licked at his open wounds, the gaping holes on his face, all across his body.

  “I watched you burn! I watched you all burn!”

  “Not me,” she whispered, and opened her hands toward him.

  The fire billowed outward with a vengeance. She felt a tearing sensation, as if it were being ripped from her gut, from somewhere inside her. It coursed through her, not harming her but immobilizing her. It used her as a conduit. She controlled the flame no more than the wick of a candle might; it rallied to her and enveloped her.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the Phoenix, undulating from its plinth in the Pantheon. Watching. Laughing.

  She couldn’t see the general through the flame, only a silhouette, an outline of armor collapsing and folding in on itself, a kneeling pile of something that was less a man than it was a chunk of charred flesh, carbon, and metal.

  “Stop,” she whispered. Please, make it stop.

  But the fire kept burning. The lump that had been the general staggered back and crumpled, a ball of flame that grew smaller and smaller and then was extinguished.

  Her lips were dry, cracked; when she moved them, they bled. “Please, stop.”

  The fire roared louder and louder. She couldn’t hear; she couldn’t breathe through the heat. She sank to her knees, eyes squeezed shut, grabbing her face with her hands.

  I’m begging you.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the Phoenix recoil, as if irritated. It opened its wings in a huge, fiery expanse and then folded them.

  The way to the Pantheon shut.

  Rin swayed and fell.

  Time ceased to hold meaning. There was a battle around her and then there wasn’t. Rin was enveloped in a silo of nothing, insulated from anything that happened around her. Nothing else existed, until it did.

  “She’s burning,” she heard Niang say. “Feverish . . . I checked for poison in her wounds, but there’s nothing.”

  It’s not a fever, Rin wanted to say, it’s a god. The water that Niang dripped on her forehead did nothing to quench the flames still coursing inside her.

  She tried to ask for Jiang, but her mouth would not obey. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move.

  She thought she could see, but she didn’t know if she was dreaming, because when she opened her eyes next she saw a face so lovely she almost cried.

  Arched eyebrows, a porcelain smoothness. Lips like blood.

  The Empress?

  But the Empress was far away, with the Third Division, still marching in from the north. They could not have arrived so soon, before daybreak.

  Was it daybreak already? She thought she could see the first rays of the rising sun, the break of dawn on this long, horrible night.

  “What do they call her?” the Empress demanded.

  “Her”? Is the Empress talking about me?

  “Runin.” Irjah’s voice. “Fang Runin.”

  “Runin,” the Empress repeated. Her voice was like a plucked string on a table harp, sharp and penetrating and beautiful all at once. “Runin, look at me.”

  Rin felt the Empress’s fingers on her cheeks. They were cool, like snow, like a winter breeze. She opened her eyes
to the Empress, looked into those lovely eyes. How could anyone possess such beautiful eyes? They were nothing like a viper’s eyes. They were not the eyes of a snake; they were wild and dark and strange, but beautiful, like a deer’s.

  And the visions . . . she saw a cloud of butterflies, silk sheets of ribbon fluttering in the wind. She saw a world that consisted only of beauty and color and rhythm. She would have done anything to stay trapped within that gaze.

  The Empress inhaled sharply, and the visions fell away.

  Her grasp on Rin’s face tightened.

  “I watched you burn,” she said. “I thought I watched you die.”

  “I’m not dead,” Rin tried to say, but her tongue was too heavy in her mouth and all she made was a gagging noise.

  “Shhh.” The Empress held an icy finger against her lips. “Don’t speak. It’s all right. I know what you are.”

  Then there was a cool press of lips against her forehead, the same coolness that Jiang had forced into her during her Trials, and the fire inside her died.

  Chapter 12

  When Rin was released from Enro’s supervision, she was moved to the basement of the main hall, where the matches used to be held. She should have found this odd, but she was too dazed to think much about anything. She slept an inordinate amount. There was no clock in the basement, but often she dozed off to find that the sun had gone down. She had trouble staying awake for more than a few minutes. Food was brought to her, and each time she ate, she fell asleep again almost immediately.

  Once, as she slept, she heard voices above her.

  “This is inelegant,” said the Empress.

  “This is inhumane,” said Irjah. “You’re treating her like a common criminal. This girl might have won the battle for us.”

  “And she might yet burn down this city,” said Jun. “We don’t know what she’s capable of.”

  “She’s just a girl,” said Irjah. “She’ll be scared. Someone needs to tell her what’s happening to her.”

  “We don’t know what’s happening to her,” said Jun.

  “It’s obvious,” the Empress said. “She’s another Altan.”