by R. F. Kuang
Rin gaped at him, openmouthed, while the truth pieced itself together in her mind. She could see Altan puzzling it out, too. His eyes widened as he came to the same realization that she did.
“No,” said Altan. “You’re lying.”
“Your precious Empress betrayed you,” Shiro said with relish. “You were a trade.”
“That’s impossible,” said Altan. “We served her. We killed for her.”
“Your Empress gave you up, you and your precious band of shamans. You were sold, my dear Speerlies, just like Speer was sold. Just like your Empire was sold.”
“You’re lying!”
Altan flung himself at the bars. Fire ignited across his body, flared out in tentacles that almost reached the guards. Altan continued to scream, and the fire licked wider and wider, and although the metal did not melt, Rin thought she saw the bars begin to bend.
Shiro shouted a command in Mugini.
Three guards rushed to the cell. As one worked to unlock the gate, another sloshed a bucket of water over Altan. Once he was doused, the third rushed in to pull Altan’s arms back behind his head while the first jammed a needle into his neck. Altan jerked and dropped to the floor.
The guards turned to Rin.
Rin thought she saw Shiro’s mouth moving, yelling, “No, not her,” before she, too, felt the needle sink into her neck.
The rush she felt was nothing like poppy seeds.
With poppy seeds, she still had to concentrate on clearing her mind. With poppy seeds it took conscious effort to ascend to the Pantheon.
Heroin was nowhere near as subtle. Heroin evicted her from her own body so that she had no choice but to seek refuge in the realm of spirit.
And she realized, with a fierce joy, that in attempting to sedate her, Shiro’s guards had set her free.
She found Altan in the other realm. She felt him. She knew the pattern of him as well as she knew her own.
She had not always known the shape of him. She had loved the version of him she’d constructed for herself. She had admired him. She had idolized him. She had adored an idea of him, an archetype, a version of him that was invulnerable.
But now she knew the truth, she knew the realness of Altan and his vulnerabilities and most of all his pain . . . and still she loved him.
She had mirrored herself against him, molded herself after him; one Speerly after another. She had emulated his cruelty, his hatred, and his vulnerability. She knew him, finally knew all of him, and that was how she found him.
Altan?
Rin.
She could feel him all around her; a hard edge, a deeply wounded aura, and yet a comforting presence.
Altan’s form appeared before her as if he stood across a very large field. He walked, or floated, toward her. Space and distance did not exist in this realm, not really, but her mind had to interpret it as such for her to orient herself.
She did not have to read the anguish in his eyes. She felt it. Altan did not keep his spirit closed off, the way Chaghan did; he was an open book, available for her to peruse, as if he were offering himself up for her to try to understand.
She understood. She understood his pain and his misery, and she understood why all he wanted to do now was die.
But she had no patience for it.
Rin had given up the luxury of fear a long, long time ago. She had wanted to give up so many times. It would have been easier. It would have been painless.
But throughout everything, the one thing she had held on to was her anger, and she knew one truth: She would not die like this. She would not die without vengeance.
“They killed our people,” she said. “They sold us. Since Tearza, Speer has been a pawn in the Empire’s geopolitical chess game. We were disposable. We were tools. Tell me that doesn’t make you furious.”
He looked exhausted. “I am sick with fury,” he said. “And I am sick knowing that there is nothing I can do.”
“You’ve blinded yourself. You’re a Speerly. You have power,” she said. “You have the anger of all of Speer. Show me how to use it. Give it to me.”
“You’ll die.”
“Then I will die on my feet,” she said. “I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro’s operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward. And neither will you. Altan, look at me. We are not like Jiang. We are not like Tearza.”
Altan lifted his head then.
“Mai’rinnen Tearza,” he whispered. “The queen who abandoned her people.”
“Would you abandon them?” she pressed. “You heard what Shiro said. The Empress didn’t just sell us out. She sold the entire Cike. Shiro won’t stop until he has every Nikara shaman locked up in this hellhole. When you are gone, who will protect them? Who will protect Ramsa? Suni? Chaghan?”
She felt it from him then—a stab of defiance. A flicker of resolve.
That was all she needed.
“The Phoenix isn’t only the god of fire,” he said. “It is the god of revenge. And there is a power, born of centuries of festering hatred, that only a Speerly can access. I have tapped into it many times, but never in full. It would consume you. It would burn at you until there was nothing left.”
“Give it to me,” she said immediately, hungrily.
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s not mine to give. That power belongs to the Speerlies.”
“Then take me to them,” Rin demanded.
And so he took her back.
In the realm of dreams, time ceased to hold meaning. Altan took her back centuries. He took her back into the only spaces where their ancestors still existed, in ancient memory.
Being led by Altan was not the same as being led by Chaghan. Chaghan was a sure guide, more native to the spirit world than the world of the living. With Chaghan, she had felt as if she were being dragged along, and that if she didn’t obey, Chaghan would have shattered her mind. But with Altan . . . Altan did not feel even like a separate presence. Rather, he and she made two parts of a much greater whole. They were two small instances of the grand, ancient entity of all that was Speer, hurtling through the world of spirit to rejoin their kind.
When space and time again became tangible concepts to her, Rin perceived that they were at a campfire. She saw drums, she heard people chanting and singing, and she knew that song, she had been taught that song when she was a little girl, she could not believe she had ever forgotten that song . . . all Speerlies could sing that song before their fifth birthday.
No—not her. Rin had never learned that song. This was not her recollection; she was living inside the remembrance of a Speerly who had lived many, many years ago. This was a shared memory. This was an illusion.
So was this dance. And so, too, was the man who held her by the fire. He danced with her, spinning her about in great arcs, then pulling her back against his warm chest. He could not be Altan, and yet he had Altan’s face, and she was certain that she had always known him.
She had never been taught to dance, but somehow she knew the steps.
The night sky was lit up with stars like little torches. A million tiny campfires scattered across the darkness. A thousand Isles of Speer, a thousand fireside dances.
Years ago Jiang had told her that the spirits of the dead dissolved back into the void. But not the spirits of Speer. The Speerlies refused to let go of their illusions, refused to forget about the material world, because Speer’s shamans couldn’t be at peace until they got their vengeance.
She saw faces in the shadow. She saw a sad-looking woman who looked like her, sitting beside an old man wearing a crescent pendant around his neck. Rin tried to look closer but their faces were blurred, those of people she only half remembered.
“Is this what it was like?” she asked out loud.
The voices of the ghosts answered as one. This was the golden age of Speer. This was Speer before Tearza. Before the massacre.
She could have wept a
t the beauty of it.
There was no madness here. Only fires and dances.
“We could stay here,” Altan said. “We could stay here forever. We wouldn’t have to go back.”
In that moment it was all she wanted.
Their bodies would waste away and become nothing. Shiro would deposit their corpses into a waste chamber and incinerate them. Then, when the last part of them had been given to the Phoenix, once their ashes were scattered in the winds, they would be free.
“We could,” she agreed. “We could be lost to history. But you’d never do that, would you?”
“They wouldn’t take us now,” he said. “Do you feel them? Can you feel their anger?”
She could. The ghosts of Speer were so sad, but they were also furious.
“This is why we are strong. We draw our strength from centuries and centuries of unforgotten injustices. Our task—our very reason for being—is to make those deaths mean something. After us, there will be no Speer. Only a memory.”
She had thought she understood Altan’s power, but only now did she realize the depth of it. The weight of it. He was burdened with the legacy of a million souls forgotten by history, vengeful souls screaming for justice.
The ghosts of Speer were chanting now, a deep and sorrowful song in the language she was born too late to understand, but connected to her very bones. The ghosts spoke to them for an eternity. Years passed. No time passed at all. Their ancestors imparted all that they knew of Speer, all that had ever been remembered of their people. They instilled in her centuries of history and culture and religion.
They told her what she had to do.
“Our god is an angry god,” said the woman who looked like Rin. “It will not let this injustice rest. It demands vengeance.”
“You must go to the isle,” said the old man with the crescent pendant. “You must go to the temple. Find the Pantheon. Call the Phoenix, and wake the ancient fault lines on which Speer lies. The Phoenix will only answer to you. It has to.”
The man and woman faded back into the blur of brown faces. The ghosts of Speer began to sing as one, mouths moving in unison.
Rin could not determine the meaning of the song from the words, but she felt it. It was a song of vengeance. It was a horrible song. It was a wonderful song.
The ghosts gave Rin their blessing, and it made the rush from the heroin feel like a feathery touch in comparison.
She had been granted a power beyond imagination.
She had the strength of their ancestors. She held within her every Speerly who had died on that terrible day, and every Speerly who had ever lived on the Dead Island.
They were the Phoenix’s chosen people. The Phoenix thrived on anger, and Rin possessed that in abundance.
She reached for Altan. They were of one mind and one purpose.
They forced their way back into the world of the living.
Their eyes flared open at the same time.
One of Shiro’s assistants had been bending over them, back on the table in Shiro’s laboratory. The flames roiling from their bodies immolated him immediately, catching his hair and clothes so that when he reeled away from them, screaming, every bit of him was on fire.
Flames licked out in every direction. They caught the chemicals in the laboratory and combusted, shattering glass. They caught the alcohol used to sterilize wounds and spread rapidly on the fumes. The jar in the corner bearing the pickled man trembled from the heat and exploded, spilling its vile contents out onto the floor. The fumes of the embalming fluid caught fire, too, lighting up the room in an earnest blaze.
The lab assistant ran into the hallway, screaming for Shiro to save him.
Rin writhed and twisted where she lay. The straps keeping her down could not bear the heat of the flame at such a close angle. They snapped and she fell off the table, picked herself up, and turned just as Shiro rushed into the room clutching a reloading crossbow.
He shifted his aim from Altan to Rin and back again.
Rin tensed, but Shiro did not pull the trigger—whether out of inexperience or reluctance, Rin did not know.
“Beautiful,” he marveled in a low voice. The fire reflected in his hungry eyes, and for a moment made him seem as if he, too, possessed the scarlet eyes of the Speerlies.
“Shiro!” Altan roared.
The doctor did not move as Altan advanced. Rather he lowered his crossbow, held his arms out to Altan as if welcoming a son into his embrace.
Altan grabbed his tormentor by the face. And squeezed. Flames poured from his hands, white-hot flames, surrounding the doctor’s head like a crown. First Altan’s hands left fingerprints of black against around Shiro’s temples, and then the heat burned through bone and Altan’s fingers bored holes through Shiro’s skull. Shiro’s eyes bulged. His arms twitched madly. He dropped the crossbow.
Altan pressed Shiro’s skull between his hands. Shiro’s head split open with a wet crack.
The twitching stopped.
Altan dropped the body and stepped away from it. He turned to Rin. His eyes burned a brighter red than they ever had before.
“Okay,” he said. “Now we run.”
Rin scooped the crossbow off the ground and followed Altan out of the operating room.
“Where’s the exit?”
“No clue,” Altan said. “Look for light.”
They ran for their lives, turning corners at random. The research facility was a massive complex, far larger than Rin had imagined. As they ran, Rin saw that the hallway containing their cells was only one corridor in the mazelike interior; they passed empty barracks, many operating tables, and storage rooms stacked with canisters of gas.
Alarm bells sounded across the entire complex, alerting the soldiers to the breach.
Finally they found an exit: a side door in an empty corridor. It was boarded shut, but Altan pushed Rin aside and then kicked it down. She jumped out and helped him climb through.
“Over there!”
A Federation patrol group caught sight of them and raced in their direction.
Altan grabbed the crossbow from Rin and aimed it at the patrol group. Three soldiers dropped to the ground, but the others advanced over their comrades’ dead bodies.
The crossbow made a hollow clicking noise.
“Shit,” Altan said.
The patrol group drew closer.
Rin and Altan were starved, weakened, still half-drugged. And yet they fought, back to back. They moved as perfect complements to each other. They achieved a better synchronization than Rin had even with Nezha, for Nezha knew how she moved only by observing her. Altan didn’t have to—Altan knew by instinct who she was, how she would fight, because they were the same. They were two parts of a whole. They were Speerlies.
They dispatched the patrol of five, only to see another squadron of twenty approach them from the side of the building.
“Well, we can’t kill all of them,” said Altan.
Rin wasn’t sure about that. They kept running anyway.
Her feet were scraped raw from the cobbled floor. Altan gripped her arm as they ran, dragging her forward.
The cobblestones became sand, then wooden planks. They were at a port. They were by the sea.
They needed to get to the water, to the sea. Needed to swim across the narrow strait. Speer was so close . . .
You must go to the isle. You must go to the temple.
They reached the end of the pier. And stopped.
The night was lit up with torches.
It seemed as if the entire Federation army had assembled by the docks—Mugenese soldiers behind the pier, Mugenese ships in the water. There were hundreds of them. They were hundreds against two. The odds were not simply bad, they were insurmountable.
Rin felt a sensation of crushing despair. She couldn’t breathe under the weight of it. This was where it ended. This was Speer’s last stand.
Altan hadn’t let go of her arm. Blood dripped from his eyes, blood dropped from his mouth.
/> “Look.” He pointed. “Do you see that star? That’s the constellation of the Phoenix.”
She raised her head.
“Take it as your guide,” he said. “Speer is southeast of here. It’ll be a long swim.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “We’ll swim together. You’ll guide me.”
His hand closed around her fingers. He held them tight for a moment and then let go.
“No,” he said. “I’ll finish my duty.”
Panic twisted her insides.
“Altan, no.”
She couldn’t stop the onslaught of hot tears, but Altan wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing out at the assembled army.
“Tearza didn’t save our people,” he said. “I couldn’t save our people. But this comes close.”
“Altan, please . . .”
“It will be harder for you,” Altan said. “You’ll have to live with the consequences. But you’re brave . . . you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
“Don’t leave me,” she begged.
He leaned forward and grasped her face in both hands.
She thought for a bizarre moment that he was going to kiss her.
He didn’t. He pressed his forehead against hers for a long time.
She closed her eyes. She drank in the sensation of her skin against his. She seared it into her memory.
“You’re so much stronger than I am,” said Altan. Then he let her go.
She shook her head frantically. “No, I’m not, it’s you, I need you—”
“Someone’s got to destroy that research facility, Rin.”
He stepped away from her. Arms stretched forward, he walked toward the fleet.
“No,” Rin begged. “No!”
Altan took off at a run.
A hail of arrows erupted from the Federation force.
At the same moment Altan lit up like a torch.
He called the Phoenix and the Phoenix came; enveloping him, embracing him, loving him, bringing him back into the fold.
Altan was a silhouette in the light, a shadow of a man. She thought she saw him look back toward her. She thought she saw him smile.