The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

  The Federation delegates who met them in the town square bore no weapons and wore no armor. They dressed in light, form-fitting blue uniforms designed to make it clear that they concealed no weapons in their sleeves.

  The head delegate, whose uniform stripes indicated his higher rank, stepped forward when he saw them.

  “Do you speak our language?” He spoke in a halting and outdated Nikara dialect, complete with a bad approximation of a Sinegardian accent.

  The Warlords hesitated, but Altan cut in, “I do.”

  “Good,” the delegate responded in Mugini. “Then we may proceed without misunderstanding.”

  It was the first time Rin had gotten a good look at the Mugenese outside the chaos of a melee, and she was disappointed by how very similar they looked to the Nikara. The slant of their eyes and the shape of their mouths were nowhere near as pronounced as the textbooks reported. Their hair was the same pitch-black as Nezha’s, their skin as pale as any northerner’s.

  In fact, they looked more like Sinegardians than Rin and Altan did.

  Aside from their language, which was more clipped and rapid than Sinegardian Nikara, they were virtually indistinguishable from the Nikara themselves.

  It disturbed her that the Federation soldiers so closely resembled her own people. She would have preferred a faceless, monstrous enemy, or one that was entirely foreign, like the pale-haired Hesperians across the sea.

  “What are your terms?” Jun asked.

  “Our general requests a cease-fire for the next forty-eight hours while we meet to negotiate conditions of surrender,” said the head delegate. He indicated the wagon. “We know your city has been unable to import spices since the fighting began. We bring an offering of salt and sugar. A gesture of our goodwill.” The delegate placed his hand on the lid of the closest chest. “May I?”

  Altan gave a nod of permission. The delegates pulled up the lids, displaying heaps of white and caramel crystals that glistened in the afternoon sun.

  “Eat it,” suggested Jun.

  The delegate cocked his head. “Pardon?”

  “Taste the sugar,” Jun said. “So we know you’re not trying to poison us.”

  “That would be a terribly inefficient way of conducting warfare,” said the delegate.

  “Even so.”

  Shrugging, the delegate obliged Jun’s request. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Not poison.”

  Jun licked his finger, stuck it in the chest of sugar, and tipped it into his mouth. He swilled it around in his mouth, and seemed disappointed when he couldn’t detect traces of any other material.

  “Only sugar,” said the delegate.

  “Excellent,” the Ox Warlord said. “Bring these to the mess hall.”

  “No,” said Altan quickly. “Leave it out here. We’ll distribute this in the town square. A small amount for every household.”

  He met the Ox Warlord’s eyes with a level gaze, and Rin realized why he’d said it. If the rations were brought to the mess hall, the divisions would immediately fight over distribution of resources. Altan had tied the Warlords’ hands by designating the rations for the people.

  In any case, a trickle of Khurdalaini civilians had already begun to gather around the wagon in curiosity. Salt and sugar had been sorely missed since the siege began. Rin suspected that if the Warlords confiscated the trunks for military use, the people would riot.

  The Ox Warlord shrugged. “Whatever you say, kid.”

  Altan looked warily about the square. Given the ranks of Militia soldiers present, a large crowd of civilians had deemed it safe to form around the three delegates. Rin saw such open hostility in their eyes that she didn’t doubt they would tear the Mugenese apart if the Militia didn’t intervene.

  “We will continue this negotiation in a private office,” Altan suggested. “Away from the people.”

  The delegate inclined his head. “As you like.”

  “The Emperor Ryohai is impressed with the resistance at Khurdalain,” said the delegate. His tone was clipped and courteous, despite his words. “Your people have fought well. The Emperor Ryohai would like to extend his compliments to the people of Khurdalain, who have proven themselves a stronger breed than the rest of this land of sniveling cowards.”

  Jun translated to the Warlords. The Ox Warlord rolled his eyes.

  “Let’s skip ahead to the part where you surrender,” said Altan.

  The delegate raised an eyebrow. “Alas, the Emperor Ryohai has no intentions of abandoning his designs on the Nikara continent. Expansion onto the continent is the divine right of the glorious Federation of Mugen. Your provincial government is weak and fragile. Your technology is centuries behind that of the west. Your isolation has set you behind while the rest of the world develops. Your demise was only a matter of time. This landmass belongs to a country that can propel it into the next century.”

  “Did you come here just to insult us?” Jun demanded. “Not a wise way to surrender.”

  The delegate’s lip curled. “We came only to discuss surrender. The Emperor Ryohai has no desire to punish the people of Khurdalain. He admires their fighting spirit. He says that your resilience has proven worthy of the Federation. He adds also that the people of Khurdalain would make excellent subjects to the Federation crown.”

  “Ah,” said Jun. “This is that kind of negotiation.”

  “We do not want to destroy this town,” said the delegate. “This is an important port. A hub of international trade. If Khurdalain lays down its arms, then the Emperor Ryohai will consider this city a territory of the Federation, and we will not lay a finger on a single man, woman, or child. All citizens will be pardoned, on the condition that they swear allegiance to the Emperor Ryohai.”

  “Pause,” said Altan. “You’re asking us to surrender to you?”

  The delegate inclined his head. “These are generous terms. We know how Khurdalain struggles under occupation. Your people are starving. Your supplies will only last you a few more months. When we break the siege, we will take the open battle to the streets, and then your people will die in droves. You can avoid that. Let the Federation fleet through, and the Emperor will reward you. We shall permit you to live.”

  “Incredible,” muttered Jun. “Absolutely incredible.”

  Altan crossed his arms. “Tell your generals that if you turn your fleets back and evacuate the shore now, we will let you live.”

  The delegate merely regarded him with an idle curiosity. “You must be the Speerly from the marsh.”

  “I am.” Altan said. “And I’ll be the one who accepts your surrender.”

  The corners of the head delegate’s mouth turned up. “But of course,” he said smoothly. “Only a child would assume a war could end so quickly, or so bloodlessly.”

  “That child speaks for all of us,” Jun cut in, voice steely. He spoke in Nikara. “Take your conditions and tell the Emperor Ryohai that Khurdalain will never bow to the longbow island.”

  “In that case,” said the delegate, “every last man, woman, and child in Khurdalain shall die.”

  “Tall words from a man who’s just had his fleet burned to bits,” Jun sneered.

  The delegate answered in flat, emotionless Nikara. “The marsh defeat has set us back several weeks. But we have been preparing for this war for two decades. Our training schools far outstrip your pathetic Sinegard Academy. We have studied the western techniques of warfare while you have spent these twenty years indulging in your isolation. The Nikara Empire belongs to the past. We will raze your country to the ground.”

  The Ox Warlord reached for his axe. “Or I can take your head off right now.”

  The delegate looked supremely unconcerned. “Kill me if you like. On the longbow island, we are taught that our lives are meaningless. I am only one in a horde of millions. I will die, and I will be reincarnated again in the Emperor Ryohai’s service. But for you, heretics who do not bow to the divine throne, death will be final.”

  Altan stood u
p. His face had turned pale with fury. “You are trapped on a narrow strip of land. You are outnumbered. We took your supplies. We burned your boats. We sank your munitions. Your men have met the wrath of a Speerly, and they burned.”

  “Oh, Speerlies are not so difficult to kill,” the delegate said. “We managed it once. We’ll do it again.”

  The office doors burst open. Ramsa ran inside, wild-eyed.

  “That’s saltpeter!” he shrieked. “That’s not salt, it’s saltpeter.”

  The office fell silent.

  The Warlords looked at Ramsa as if they couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Altan’s mouth opened in confusion.

  Then the delegate threw his head back and laughed with the abandon of a man who knew he was about to die.

  “Remember,” he said. “You could have saved Khurdalain.”

  Rin and Altan stood up at the same time.

  She had barely reached for her sword when a blast split the air like a thunderbolt.

  One moment she was standing behind Altan and the next she was on the floor, dazed, with such a ferocious ringing in her ears that it drowned out any other sound.

  She lifted her hand to her face and it came away bloody.

  As if to compensate for her hearing, her vision became exceedingly bright; the blurred sights were like images on a shadow puppet screen, occurring both too fast and too slow for her to comprehend. She perceived movements as if from inside a drug-induced fever dream, but this was no dream; her senses simply refused to comply with the perception of what had happened.

  She saw the walls of the office shudder and then lean so far to the side she was sure that the building would collapse with them in it, and then right themselves.

  She saw Ramsa tackle Altan to the ground.

  She saw Altan stagger to his feet, reaching for his trident.

  She saw the Ox Warlord swing his axe through the air.

  She saw Altan shouting “No, no!”—before the Ox Warlord decapitated the delegate.

  The delegate’s head rolled to a stop by the doorway, eyes open and glassy, and Rin thought she saw it smile.

  Strong arms grasped her by the shoulders and hauled her to her feet. Altan spun her around to face him, eyes darting around her form as if checking for injuries.

  His mouth moved, but no sound came through. She shook her head frantically and pointed to her ears.

  He mouthed the words. “Are you all right?”

  She examined her body. Somehow all four limbs were working, and she couldn’t even feel the pain where she bled from a head wound. She nodded.

  Altan let her go and knelt down before Ramsa, who was curled in a ball on the ground, pale and trembling.

  On the other side of the room General Jun and the Ram Warlord hauled themselves to their feet. They were both unharmed; the blast had blown them over but had not injured them. The Warlords’ quarters were far enough from the center of the town that the explosion only shook them.

  Even Ramsa seemed like he would be fine. His eyes were glassy and he wobbled when Altan pulled him to his feet, but he was nodding and talking, and looked otherwise uninjured.

  Rin exhaled in relief.

  They were all right. It hadn’t worked. They were all right.

  And then she remembered the civilians.

  Odd how the rest of her senses were amplified when she couldn’t hear.

  Khurdalain looked like the Academy in the first days of winter. She squinted; at first she thought her eyesight had blurred as well, and then she realized that a fine powder hung in the air. It clouded everything like some bizarre mix of fog and snowfall, a blanket of innocence that mixed in with the blood, that obscured the full extent of the explosion.

  The square had been flattened, shop fronts and residential complexes collapsed, debris strewn out in oddly symmetrical lines from the radius of the blast, as if they stood inside a giant’s footprint.

  Farther out from the blast site, the buildings were not flattened but blown open; they tilted at bizarre angles, entire walls torn away. There was a strangely intimate perversity to how their insides were revealed, displaying private bedrooms and washrooms to the outside.

  Men and women had been thrown against the walls of buildings. They remained frozen there with a kind of ghastly adhesion, pinned like preserved butterflies. The intense pressure from the bombs had torn off their clothes; they hung naked like a grotesque display of the human form.

  The stench of charcoal, blood, and burned flesh was so heavy that Rin could taste it on her tongue. Even worse was the sickening sweet undercurrent of caramelized sugar wafting through the air.

  She did not know how long she stood there staring. She was incited to movement only when jostled by a pair of soldiers rushing past her with a stretcher, reminding her that she had a job to do.

  Find the survivors. Help the survivors.

  She made her way down the street, but her sense of balance seemed to have disappeared completely along with her hearing. She lurched from side to side when she tried to walk, and so she traversed the street by clinging to furniture like a drunkard.

  To her left she saw a group of soldiers hauling a pair of children out from a pile of debris. She couldn’t believe they had survived, it seemed impossible so close to the blast epicenter—but the little boy they lifted from the wreckage was moving, wailing and struggling but moving nonetheless. His sister was not so fortunate; her leg was mangled, crushed by the foundations of the house. She clung to the soldier’s arms, white-faced, too racked with pain to cry.

  “Help me! Help me!”

  A tinny voice made it through the roaring in her ears, like someone shouting from across a great field, but it was the only sound she could hear.

  She looked up and saw a man clinging desperately to the remains of a wall with one hand.

  The floor of the building had been blown out right beneath him. It was a five-story inn; without its fourth wall it looked like one of the porcelain dollhouses that Rin had seen in the market, the kind that swung wide open to reveal its contents.

  The floors tilted down toward the gap; the inn’s furniture and its other occupants had already slid out, forming a grotesque pile of shattered chairs and bodies.

  A small crowd had gathered under the teetering inn to watch the man.

  “Help,” he moaned. “Someone, help . . .”

  Rin felt like a spectator, like this was a show, like the man was the only thing in the world that mattered, yet she couldn’t think of anything to do; the building had been blown apart; it looked minutes from collapsing in on itself, and the man was too high up to reach from the rooftops of any surrounding buildings.

  All she could do was stand there in awe with her mouth hanging slackly open, watching as the man struggled in vain to hoist himself up.

  She felt so utterly, entirely useless. Even if she could call the Phoenix then, summoning fire now would not save this man from dying.

  Because all the Cike knew how to do was destroy. For all their powers, for all their gods, they couldn’t protect their people. Couldn’t reverse time. Couldn’t bring back the dead.

  They had won that battle on the marsh, but they were powerless in the face of the consequences.

  Altan shouted something, and he might have been calling for a sheet to break the man’s fall, because moments later Rin saw several soldiers come running back down into the square with a cloth.

  But before they could reach the end of the street, the inn teetered perilously. Rin thought it might crash all the way to the ground, flattening the man underneath it, but the wooden planks dipped downward and came to a jarring halt.

  The man was now only four floors up. He flung his other hand up at the roof in an attempt to secure a better hold. Perhaps he was emboldened by his closeness to the ground. For a moment Rin thought he might make it—but then his hand slipped against the shattered glass and he fell back, the downward rebound pulling him off the roof entirely.

  He seemed to hang in the air
for a moment before he fell.

  The crowd scrambled backward.

  Rin turned away, grateful that she could not hear his body break on the ground.

  The city settled into a tense silence.

  Every soldier was dispatched to Khurdalain’s defenses in anticipation of a ground assault. Rin held her post on the outer wall for hours, eyes trained on the perimeter. If the Federation was going to attempt to breach the walls, certainly it would be now.

  But evening fell, and no attack came.

  “They can’t possibly be afraid,” Rin murmured, then winced. Her hearing had finally come back, though a high-pitched ringing still sounded constantly in her ears.

  Ramsa shook his head. “They’re playing the long game. They’ll keep trying to weaken us. Get us scared, hungry, and tired.”

  Eventually the defensive line relaxed. If the Federation launched a midnight invasion, the city alarm system would bring the troops back to the walls; in the meantime, there was more pressing work to do.

  It felt brutally ironic that civilians had been dancing on this street only hours ago, celebrating what they’d thought would be a Federation surrender. Khurdalain had expected to win this war. Khurdalain had thought that things were going back to normal.

  But Khurdalain was resilient. Khurdalain had survived two Poppy Wars. Khurdalain knew how to deal with devastation.

  The civilians quietly combed through the wreckage for their loved ones, and when so many hours had passed that the only bodies that were recovered were those of the dead, they built them a funeral bier, lit it on fire, and pushed it out to the sea. They did this with a sad, practiced efficiency.

  The medical squads of all three divisions jointly created a triage center in the city center. For the rest of the day civilians straggled in, amateur tourniquets tied clumsily around severed limbs—crushed ankles, hands shattered to the stump.

  Rin had a year’s worth of instruction in field medicine under Enro, so Enki put her to work tying off new tourniquets for those bleeding in line as they waited for medical attention.