The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

  No one at the table was bothering to pretend to eat anymore; Baji and Unegen both fidgeted like they couldn’t wait to leave, looking around at everything except Rin and Chaghan.

  But Chaghan only looked amused. “Oh, you think he’s an asshole?”

  Anger flared inside her. Her last remaining shreds of caution fled. “He’s impatient, overdemanding, paranoid, and—”

  “Look, everyone’s on edge,” Baji interrupted hastily. “We shouldn’t complain. Chaghan, there’s no need to tell—I mean, look . . .”

  Chaghan tapped his fingers against the table. “Baji. Unegen. I want a word with Rin.”

  He spoke so imperiously, so arrogantly, that Rin thought that surely Baji would tell Chaghan where he could shove it, but he and Unegen simply picked up their bowls and left the table. Amazed, she watched them walk to the other end of the room without so much as a word. Not even Altan commanded that kind of unquestioning subordination.

  When the others were out of earshot, Chaghan leaned forward. “If you ever speak about Altan like that again,” he said pleasantly, “I will have you killed.”

  Chaghan might have cowed Baji and Unegen, but Rin was too angry to be afraid of him. “Go ahead and try,” she snapped. “It’s not like we have soldiers to spare.”

  Chaghan’s mouth quirked into a grin. “Altan did say you were difficult.”

  She gave him a wary look. “Altan’s not wrong.”

  “So you don’t respect him.”

  “I respect him,” she said. “I just—he’s been . . .” Different. Paranoid. Not the commander I thought I knew.

  What she didn’t want to admit was that Altan was scaring her.

  But Chaghan looked surprisingly sympathetic. “You must understand. Altan is new to command. He’s trying to figure out what he’s doing just as much as you are. He’s scared.”

  He was scared? Rin almost laughed. Altan’s attempted operations had grown so much in scale over the past two weeks that it felt as if he were trying to take on the entire Federation by himself. “Altan doesn’t know what scared means.”

  “Altan is perhaps the most powerful martial artist in Nikan right now. Maybe the world,” said Chaghan. “But for all that, most of his life he was just good at following orders. Tyr’s death was a shock to us. Altan wasn’t ready to take over. Command is difficult for him. He doesn’t know how to make peace with the Warlords. He’s overextended. He’s trying to fight an entire war with a squad of ten. And he’s going to lose.”

  “You don’t think we can hold Khurdalain?”

  “I think we were never meant to hold Khurdalain,” said Chaghan. “I think Khurdalain was a sacrifice for time paid in blood. Altan is going to lose because Khurdalain is not winnable, and when he does, it’s going to break him.”

  “Altan won’t break,” she said. Altan was the strongest fighter she’d ever seen. Altan couldn’t break.

  “Altan is more fragile than you think,” said Chaghan. “He’s cracking under the weight of command, can’t you see? This is new territory for him, and he’s flailing, because he’s utterly dependent on victory.”

  Rin rolled her eyes. “The entire country’s dependent on our victory.”

  Chaghan shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. Altan is used to winning. His entire life he’s been put on a pedestal. He was the last Speerly, a national rarity. Best student at the Academy. Tyr’s favorite in the Cike. He’s been fed a steady stream of constant affirmation for being very good at destroying things, but he won’t get any praise here, especially not when his own soldiers are openly insubordinate.”

  “I’m not being—”

  “Oh, come now, Rin. You’re being a little bitch, is what you’re doing, all because Altan won’t pet you on the head and say you’re doing a great job.”

  She stood up and slammed her hands on the table. “Look, asshole, I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

  “And yet, as your lieutenant, that is precisely my job.” Chaghan glanced lazily up at her, and his expression was so smug that Rin trembled from the effort of not smashing his face into the table. “Your duty is to obey. My duty is to see that you stop fucking up. So I would suggest you get your shit together, learn to call the damn fire, and give Altan one less thing to worry about. Am I clear?”

  Chapter 19

  “So who’s the newcomer?” Nezha asked casually.

  Rin wasn’t sure if she could discuss Chaghan without kicking something, which would be bad, especially since they were supposed to be hiding. But they had been staking out the barricade for what seemed like hours, and she was getting bored.

  “He’s Altan’s lieutenant.”

  “How come I’ve never seen him before?”

  “He’s been away,” she said.

  A hail of arrows whizzed above them. Nezha ducked back below the barricade.

  The Seventh Division had launched a joint assault with the Cike against the embassies by the wharf in an attempt to cut the main Federation encampment in two. In theory if they could hold the old Hesperian quarters, they could then divide the enemy forces and cut off their access to the docks. They had sent two regiments: one attacking perpendicular to the river and the other snaking around to the wharf from the direction of the canals.

  But they had to move past five heavily defended intersections to get to the wharf, and those had turned into five separate bloodbaths. The Federation hadn’t met them out on the open field because they didn’t need to; safely ensconced behind the walls of the buildings they held on the wharf, they responded to the Nikara onslaught by embedding themselves on rooftops and shooting from windows on the upper floors of the embassy buildings.

  The Seventh Division’s only option was to throw their infantry en masse against the Federation’s fortified position. They had to gamble that the press of Nikara bodies would be enough to force the Federation out. It had turned into a contest of flesh against steel, and the Militia was determined to break the Federation upon their bodies.

  “You mean, you have no clue,” Nezha said as a fire rocket exploded over his head.

  “I mean, you have no business asking.”

  She didn’t know if Nezha was fishing for information for his father, or if he was just trying to make small talk. She supposed it didn’t matter. Chaghan’s presence was hardly a secret, especially after Altan’s dramatic rescue outside the east gate. Perhaps because of that, though, the Militia seemed even more spooked by him than they were by the rest of the Cike combined.

  Several paces down, Suni lit one of Ramsa’s specialty bombs and hurled it over the barricade.

  They ducked back down and plugged up their ears until a now-familiar acrid, sulfuric smell filled their nostrils.

  The arrow fire stopped.

  “Is that shit?” Nezha demanded.

  “Don’t ask,” Rin said. In the temporary lull granted by Ramsa’s dung bomb they moved past the barricade and stormed down the street to reach the next of the five intersections.

  “I heard he’s creepy,” Nezha continued. “I heard he’s from the Hinterlands.”

  “Qara’s from the Hinterlands, too. So what?”

  “So I’ve heard he’s unnatural,” Nezha said.

  Rin snorted. “It’s the Cike. We’re all unnatural.”

  A massive explosion rolled through the air in front of them, followed by a series of bursts of fire.

  Altan.

  He was leading the charge. His roiling flames, combined with Ramsa’s many fire powder spectacles, created a number of large fires that drastically improved their nighttime visibility.

  Altan had broken through to the next intersection. The Nikara continued their surge forward.

  “But he can do things that Speerlies can’t,” Nezha said as they pressed on. “They say he can read the future. Shatter minds. My father says that even the Warlords know of him, did you know that? It makes you wonder. If Altan’s got a lieutenant who’s so powerful that he scares the Warlords, why is he sending him a
way from Khurdalain? What are they planning?”

  “I’m not spying on my own division for you,” Rin said.

  “I didn’t ask you to,” Nezha said delicately. “I’m just saying you might want to keep an open mind.”

  “And you might want to keep your nose out of my division’s matters.”

  But Nezha had stopped listening; he stared over Rin’s shoulder at something farther along the wharf, where the first line of Nikara soldiers was pressing. “What is that?”

  Rin craned her neck to see what he was looking at. Then she squinted in confusion.

  An odd greenish-yellow fog had begun wending its way over the blockade toward the two division squadrons in front of them.

  As if in a dream, the fighting stopped. The foremost squadron ceased moving, lowering their weapons with an almost hypnotic fascination as the cloud reached the wall, paused, gathered itself like a wave, and then ponderously lapped over into the dugouts.

  Then the screaming began.

  “Retreat,” shouted a squadron officer. “Retreat!”

  The Militia reversed direction immediately, commencing a disorganized stampede away from the gas. They abandoned their hard-won stations along the wharf in a frenzy to get away from the gas.

  Rin coughed and glanced over her shoulder as she ran. Most of the soldiers who hadn’t escaped the gas lay gasping and twitching on the ground, clawing at their faces as if their own throats were attacking them. Others lay quite still.

  An arrowhead lashed across her cheek and embedded itself in the ground before her. The side of her mouth exploded in pain; she cupped a hand against it and continued running. The Federation soldiers were firing from behind the poisonous fog, they were going to pick them off one by one . . .

  The forest line loomed up before her. She would be fine once she could take cover behind the foliage. Rin ducked her head and sprinted for the trees. Only a hundred yards . . . fifty . . . twenty . . .

  Behind her she heard a strangled cry. She twisted her head to look and tripped over a rock, just as another arrow whistled over her head. Blood streamed from her cheek into her eyes. Rin wiped it furiously off and rolled over flat against the ground.

  The source of the cry was Nezha. He was crawling furiously forward, but the gas had caught up to him. He met her eyes through the fog. He might have lifted one hand toward her.

  She watched in horror, mouth open in a silent scream, as the gas enveloped him.

  Through the gas, she saw forms advancing. Federation soldiers. They wore bulky contraptions over their heads, masks that concealed their necks and faces. They seemed unaffected by the gas.

  One of them lifted a bulky gloved hand and pointed where Nezha lay.

  Without thinking, Rin took a deep breath of air and rushed into the fog.

  It burned her skin as soon as she touched it.

  She clenched her teeth and forged ahead through the pain—but she’d hardly gone ten paces when someone grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back out of the gas zone. She struggled furiously to escape their grip.

  Altan didn’t let go.

  “Back off!” She elbowed him in the face. Altan stumbled and grabbed at his nose. Rin tried to duck past him, but Altan wrenched her backward by her wrist.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “They’ve got Nezha!” she screamed.

  “I don’t care.” He pushed her in the direction of the tree line. “Retreat.”

  “You’re leaving one of our men to die!”

  “He’s not one of our men, he’s one of the Seventh’s men. Go.”

  “I won’t leave my friend behind!”

  “You will do as I command.”

  “But Nezha—”

  “I’m not sorry about this,” Altan said, and jammed a fist into her solar plexus.

  Stunned, paralyzed, she sank to her knees.

  She heard Altan shout out an order, and then someone picked her up and slung her over their shoulders as if she were a child. She beat and screamed as the soldier began jogging in the direction of the barracks. From the soldier’s back, she thought she could see the masked Federation soldiers dragging Nezha away.

  The gas attack created the precisely the effect that the Federation intended. The sugar bomb had been devastating—the gas attack was monstrous. Khurdalain erupted into a state of terror. Though the gas itself dissipated within an hour, rumors of it spread quickly. The fog was an invisible enemy, one that killed indiscriminately. There was no hiding from the fumes. Civilians began fleeing the city en masse, no longer confident in the Militia’s ability to protect them. Panic enveloped the streets.

  Jun’s soldiers had shouted themselves hoarse in the alleys, trying to convince civilians they would be safer behind city walls. But the people weren’t listening. They felt trapped. The narrow, winding roads of Khurdalain meant certain death in case of another gas attack.

  While the city collapsed into chaos, the commanders commenced an emergency meeting in the nearest headquarters. The Cike crammed into the Ram Warlord’s office along with the Warlords and their junior officers. Rin leaned against the corner of the wall, listening dully as the commanders argued over their immediate strategy.

  Only one of Jun’s soldiers on the beach had survived the attack. He had been posted in the back, and had dropped his weapon and run as soon as he saw his comrades choking.

  “It was like breathing fire,” he reported. “Like red-hot needles were piercing my lungs. I thought I was being strangled by some invisible demon . . . my throat closed up, I couldn’t breathe . . .” He shuddered.

  Rin listened, and resented him for not being Nezha.

  It was only fifty yards. I could have saved him. I could have dragged us both out.

  “We need to evacuate downtown right now,” Jun said. He was remarkably calm for a man who had just lost more than a hundred men to a poisonous fog. “My men will—”

  “Your men will do crowd control. The civilians are going to trample themselves trying to get out of the city, and it’ll be easy for Mugen to pick them off if they’re not corralled out in an orderly fashion,” Altan said.

  Amazingly, Jun didn’t argue.

  “We’ll pack up headquarters and move it farther back into the Sihang warehouse,” Altan continued. “We can dump the prisoner in the basement.”

  Rin jerked her head up. “What prisoner?”

  She was faintly aware that she should not be talking, that as an unranked soldier of the Cike she was not technically a part of this meeting and was certainly acting out of line. But she was too grief-stricken and exhausted to care.

  Unegen leaned down and murmured into her ear, “One of the Federation soldiers got caught in their own gas. Altan took his mask and pulled him out.”

  Rin blinked in disbelief.

  “You went back in?” she asked. Her voice rang very loudly in her ears. “You had a mask?”

  Altan shot her an irritated look. “This is not the time,” he said.

  She clambered to her feet. “You let one of our people die?”

  “You and I can discuss this later.”

  She understood, in the abstract, the strategic boon of taking a Federation prisoner; the last Federation soldiers who had been captured spying across the bank had promptly been torn apart by furious civilians. And yet . . .

  “You are unbelievable,” Rin said.

  “We will see to headquarters evacuation,” Altan said loudly over her. “We’ll regroup in the warehouse.”

  Jun nodded curtly, then muttered something to his officers. They saluted him and left the headquarters at a run.

  At the same time, Altan issued orders to the Cike.

  “Qara, Unegen, Ramsa: secure us a safe route to the warehouse and guide Jun’s officers there. Baji and Suni, help Enki pack up shop. The rest of you resume positions in case of another gas attack.” He paused at the door. “Rin. You stay.”

  She hung back as the rest of them exited the office. Unegen cast her a ne
rvous look on his way out.

  Altan waited until they were alone, and then he closed the door. He crossed the room and stood so that there was very little distance between them.

  “You do not contradict me,” he said quietly.

  Rin crossed her arms. “Ever, or just in front of Jun?”

  Altan didn’t rise to the bait. “You will answer to me as a soldier to her commander.”

  “Or what? You’ll have Suni drag me out of your office?”

  “You’re out of line.” Altan’s voice dropped to a dangerously low volume.

  “And you let my friend die,” Rin answered. “He was lying there and you left him there.”

  “You couldn’t have extracted him.”

  “Yes, I could have,” she seethed. “And even if I couldn’t have—you might have, you might have saved my friend instead of dragging out some Federation soldier who deserved to die in there—”

  “Prisoners of war have greater strategic importance than individual soldiers,” Altan said calmly.

  “That is such bullshit,” she snarled.

  Altan didn’t answer. He took two steps forward and struck her across the face.

  None of her guards were up. She took the full force of his hit with no preparation. His blow was so powerful that her head snapped to the side. The sudden impact made her knees buckle, jerked her to the ground. She raised a hand to her cheek, stunned. Her fingers came away bloody; he’d reopened her arrow wound.

  Slowly she looked up at Altan. Her ears rang.

  Altan’s scarlet gaze met hers, and the naked rage on his face stunned her.

  “How dare you,” he said. His voice was overly loud, distorted through her thundering ears. “You misunderstand the nature of our relationship. I am not your friend. I am not your brother, though kin we may be. I am your commander. You do not argue with my orders. You follow them without question. You obey me, or you leave this Militia.”

  His voice held the same double timbre that Jiang’s voice had held when he opened the void at Sinegard. Altan’s eyes burned red—no, they were not red, they were the color of fire itself. Flames blazed behind him, flames whiter and hotter than any fire she’d ever been able to summon. She was immune to her own fire, but not his; it burned in her face, choking her, forcing her backward.