The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  Rin’s temples throbbed. She rubbed her eyes, trying desperately to think through all the possibilities. There had to be a catch. She knew better than to take offers like this at face value. She’d learned her lesson from Moag—never trust someone who holds all the cards.

  She had to buy herself some time. “I can’t make a decision without speaking to my people.”

  “Do as you like,” Vaisra said. “But have an answer for me by dawn.”

  “Or what?” she asked.

  “Or you’ll have to find your own way back to shore,” he said. “And it’s a long swim.”

  “Just to clarify, the Dragon Warlord does not want to kill us?” Ramsa asked.

  “No,” said Rin. “He wants us in his army.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “But why? The Federation’s gone.”

  “Exactly that. He thinks it’s his opportunity to overthrow the Empire.”

  “That’s actually clever,” Baji said. “Think about it. Rob the house while it’s on fire, or however the saying goes.”

  “I don’t think that’s a real saying,” Ramsa said.

  “It’s a little more noble than that,” said Rin. “He wants to build a republic instead. Overthrow the Warlord system. Construct a parliament, appoint elected officials, restructure how governance works across the Empire.”

  Baji chuckled. “Democracy? Really?”

  “It’s worked for the Hesperians,” said Qara.

  “Has it?” Baji asked. “Hasn’t the western continent been at war for the past decade?”

  “The question isn’t whether democracy could work,” Rin said. “That doesn’t matter. The question is whether we enlist.”

  “This could be a trap,” Ramsa pointed out. “He could be bringing you to Daji.”

  “He could have just killed us when we were drugged, then. We’re dangerous passengers to have on board. It wouldn’t be worth the risk unless Vaisra really did think he could convince us to join him.”

  “So?” Ramsa asked. “Can he convince us?”

  “I don’t know,” Rin admitted. “Maybe.”

  The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. She wanted Vaisra’s ships. His weapons, his soldiers, his power.

  But if things went south, if Vaisra hurt the Cike, then this fell on her shoulders. And she couldn’t let the Cike down again.

  “There’s still a benefit to going it on our own,” said Baji. “Means we don’t have to take orders.”

  Rin shook her head. “We’re still six people. You can’t assassinate a head of state with six people.”

  Never mind that she’d been perfectly willing to try just a few hours ago.

  “And what if he betrays us?” Aratsha asked.

  Baji shrugged. “We could always just cut our losses and defect. Run back to Ankhiluun.”

  “We can’t run back to Ankhiluun,” Rin said.

  “Why not?”

  She told them about Moag’s ploy. “She’d have sold us to Daji if Vaisra hadn’t offered her something better. He sank our ship because he wanted her to think that we’d died.”

  “So it’s Vaisra or nothing,” Ramsa said. “That’s just fantastic.”

  “Is this Yin Vaisra really so bad?” Suni asked. “He’s just one man.”

  “That’s true,” said Baji. “He can’t be any scarier than the other Warlords. The Ox and Ram Warlords weren’t anything special. It’s nepotism and inbreeding all around.”

  “Oh, so like how you were produced,” said Ramsa.

  “Listen, you little bitch—”

  “Join them,” Chaghan said. His voice was hardly louder than a whisper, but the cabin fell silent. It was the first time he had spoken all evening.

  “You’re debating this like you get to decide,” he said. “You don’t. You really think Vaisra’s going to let you go if you say no? He’s too smart for that. He’s just told you his intentions to commit treason. He’ll have you killed if there’s even the slightest risk you’d go to anyone else.” He gave Rin a grim look. “Face it, Speerly. It’s join up or die.”

  “You’re gloating,” Rin accused.

  “I would never,” said Nezha. He’d been beaming the entire way down the passageway, showing her around the warship like some ebullient tour guide. “But glad to have you on board.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Can’t I be happy? I’ve missed you.” Nezha stopped before a room on the first deck. “After you.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Your new quarters.” He opened the door for her. “Look, it locks from the inside four different ways. Thought you’d like that.”

  She did like it. The room was twice as large as her quarters on her old ship, and the bed was a proper bed, not a cot with lice-ridden sheets. She stepped inside. “I have this all to myself?”

  “I told you.” Nezha sounded smug. “The Dragon Army has its benefits.”

  “Ah, that’s what you call yourselves?”

  “Technically it’s the Army of the Republic. Nonprovincial, and all that.”

  “You’d need allies for that.”

  “We’re working on it.”

  She turned toward the porthole. Even in the darkness she could see how fast the Seagrim was moving, slicing through black waves at speeds faster than Aratsha had ever been capable of. By morning Moag and her fleet would be dozens of miles behind them.

  But Rin couldn’t leave Ankhiluun like this. Not yet. She had one more thing to retrieve.

  “You said Moag thinks we’re dead?” she asked.

  “I’d be surprised if she didn’t. We even tossed some charred corpses in the water.”

  “Whose bodies?”

  Nezha stretched his arms over his head. “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not.” The sun had just set over the water. Soon the Ankhiluuni pirate patrol would begin to make its rounds around the coast. “Do you have a smaller boat? One that can sneak past Moag’s ships?”

  “Of course,” he scoffed. “Why, do you need to go back?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “But you’ve forgotten someone.”

  By all accounts Kitay’s audience with Vaisra was an unmitigated disaster. Captain Eriden wouldn’t let Rin onto the second deck, so she was unable to eavesdrop, but about an hour after they brought Kitay on board, she saw Nezha and two soldiers dragging him to the lower level. She ran down the passageway to catch up.

  “—and I don’t care if you’re pissed, you can’t throw food at the Dragon Warlord,” said Nezha.

  Kitay’s face was purple with anger. If he was at all relieved to see Nezha alive, he didn’t show it. “Your men tried to blow up my house!”

  “They tend to do that,” Rin said.

  “We had to make it look like you’d died,” Nezha said.

  “I was still in it!” Kitay cried. “And so were my ledgers!”

  Nezha looked amazed. “Who gives a shit about your ledgers?”

  “I was doing the city’s taxes.”

  “What?”

  Kitay stuck his lower lip out. “And I was almost done.”

  “What the fuck?” Nezha blinked. “I don’t—Rin, you talk some sense into this idiot.”

  “I’m the idiot?” Kitay demanded. “Me? You’re the ones who think it’d be a good idea to start a bloody civil war—”

  “Because the Empire needs one,” Nezha insisted. “Daji’s the reason why the Federation invaded; she’s the reason why Golyn Niis—”

  “You were not at Golyn Niis,” Kitay snarled. “Don’t talk to me about Golyn Niis.”

  “Fine—I’m sorry—but shouldn’t that justify a regime change? She’s hamstrung the Militia, she’s fucked our foreign relations, she’s not fit to rule—”

  “You have no proof of that.”

  “We do have proof.” Nezha stopped walking. “Look at your scars. Look at me. The proof’s written on our skin.”

  “I don’t care,” Kitay said. “I don’t give a shit what your politics are,
I want to go home.”

  “And do what?” Nezha asked. “And fight for whom? There’s a war coming, Kitay, and when it’s here, there will be no such thing as neutrality.”

  “That’s not true. I shall seclude myself and live the virtuous life of a scholarly hermit,” Kitay said stiffly.

  “Stop,” Rin said. “Nezha’s right. Now you’re just being stubborn.”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “Of course you’re in on this madness. What did I expect?”

  “Maybe it’s madness,” she said. “But it’s better than fighting for the Militia. Come on, Kitay. You know you can’t go back to the status quo.”

  She could see it in Kitay’s eyes, how badly he wanted to resolve the contradiction between loyalty and justice—because Kitay, poor, upright, moral Kitay, always so concerned with doing what was right, couldn’t reconcile himself to the fact that a military coup might be justified.

  He flung his hands in the air. “Even so, you think I’m in a position to join your republic? My father is the Imperial defense minister.”

  “Then he’s serving the wrong ruler,” said Nezha.

  “You don’t understand! My entire family is at the heart of the capital. They could use them against me—my mother, my sister—”

  “We could extract them,” Nezha said.

  “Oh, like you extracted me? Very nice, I’m sure they’ll love getting abducted in the middle of the night while their house burns down.”

  “Calm down,” Rin said. “They’d still be alive. You wouldn’t have to worry.”

  “Like you’d know how it feels,” Kitay snapped. “The closest thing you had to a family was a suicidal maniac who got himself killed on a mission almost as stupid as this one.”

  She could tell he knew he’d crossed the line, even as he said it. Nezha looked stunned. Kitay blinked rapidly, refusing to meet her eyes. Rin hoped for a moment that he might cave, that he’d apologize, but he simply looked away.

  She felt a pang in her chest. The Kitay she knew would have apologized.

  A long silence followed. Nezha stared at the wall, Kitay at the floor, and neither of them dared to meet Rin’s eyes.

  Finally Kitay held out his hands, as if waiting for someone to bind them. “Best get me down to the brig,” he said. “Don’t want your prisoners running around on deck.”

  Chapter 7

  When Rin returned to her private quarters, she locked the door carefully from the inside, sliding all four bolts into place, and propped a chair against the door for good measure. Then she lay back on her bed. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, to make herself internalize a brief sense of security. She was safe. She was with allies. No one was coming for her.

  Sleep didn’t come. Something was missing.

  It took her a moment to realize what it was. She was searching for that rocking feeling of the bed shifting over water, and it wasn’t there. The Seagrim was such a massive warship that its decks mimicked solid land. For once, she was on stable ground.

  This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She had a place to be and a place to go. She wasn’t drifting anymore, wasn’t desperately scrambling to put together plans she knew would likely fail.

  She stared up at the ceiling, trying to will her racing heartbeat to slow down. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong—a deep-seated discomfort that wasn’t just the absence of rolling waves.

  It began with a prickling feeling in her fingertips. Then a flush of heat started in her palms and crept up her arms to her chest. The headache began a minute after that, searing flashes of pain that made her grind her teeth.

  And then fire started burning at the back of her eyelids.

  She saw Speer and she saw the Federation. She saw ashes and bones blurred and melted into one, one lone figure striding toward her, slender and handsome, trident in hand.

  “You stupid cunt,” Altan whispered. He reached forward. His hands made a necklace around her throat.

  Her eyes flew open. She sat up and breathed in and out, deep and slow and desperate breaths, trying to quell her sudden swell of panic.

  Then she realized what was wrong.

  She had no access to opium on this ship.

  No. Calm. Stay calm.

  Once upon a time at Sinegard, back when Master Jiang had been trying to help her shut her mind to the Phoenix, he’d taught her techniques to clear her thoughts and disappear into a void that imitated nonexistence. He’d taught her how to think like she was dead.

  She had shunned his lessons then. She tried to recall them now. She forced her mind through the mantras he’d made her repeat for hours. Nothingness. I am nothing. I do not exist. I feel nothing, I regret nothing . . . I am sand, I am dust, I am ash.

  It didn’t work. Surges of panic kept breaking the calm. The prickling in her fingers intensified into twisting knives. She was on fire, every part of her burned excruciatingly, and Altan’s voice echoed from everywhere.

  It should have been you.

  She ran to the door, kicked the chair away, undid the locks, and ran barefoot out into the passageway. Stabs of pain pricked the backs of her eyes, made her vision spark and flash.

  She squinted, struggling to see in the dim light. Nezha had said his cabin was at the end of the passage . . . so this one, it had to be . . . She banged frantically against the door until it opened and he appeared in the gap.

  “Rin? What are you—”

  She grabbed his shirt. “Where’s your physician?”

  His eyebrows flew up. “Are you hurt?”

  “Where?”

  “First deck, third door to the right, but—”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish before she started sprinting toward the stairs. She heard him running after her but she didn’t care; all that mattered was that she get some opium, or laudanum, or whatever was on board.

  But the physician wouldn’t let her into his office. He blocked the entrance with his body, one hand against the doorframe, the other clenched on the door handle.

  “Dragon Warlord’s orders.” He sounded like he’d been expecting her. “I’m not to give you anything.”

  “But I need—the pain, I can’t stand it, I need—”

  He started to close the door. “You’ll have to do without.”

  She jammed her foot in the door. “Just a little,” she begged. She didn’t care how pathetic she sounded, she just needed something. Anything. “Please.”

  “I have my orders,” he said. “Nothing I can do.”

  “Damn it!” she screamed. The physician flinched and slammed the door shut, but she was already running in the opposite direction, feet pounding as she neared the stairs.

  She had to get to the top deck, away from everyone. She could feel the pricks of malicious memory pressing like shards of glass into her mind; bits and pieces of suppressed recollections that swam vividly before her eyes—corpses at Golyn Niis, corpses in the research facility, corpses at Speer, and the soldiers, all with Shiro’s face, jeering and pointing and laughing, and that made her so furious, made the rage build and build—

  “Rin!”

  Nezha had caught up with her. His hand grasped her shoulder. “What the hell—”

  She whirled around. “Where’s your father?”

  “I think he’s meeting with his admirals,” he stammered. “But I wouldn’t—”

  She pushed past him. Nezha reached for her arm, but she ducked away and raced through the passageway and down the stairs to Vaisra’s office. She jiggled the handles—locked—then kicked furiously at the doors until they swung open from inside.

  Vaisra didn’t look remotely surprised to see her.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “we’ll need some privacy, please.”

  The men inside vacated their seats without a word. None of them looked at her. Vaisra pulled the doors shut, locked them, and turned around. “What can I do for you?”

  “You told the physician not to give me opium,” Rin said.

  “That is co
rrect.”

  Her voice trembled. “Look, asshole, I need my—”

  “Oh, no, Runin.” Vaisra lifted a finger and wagged it, as if chiding a small child. “I should have mentioned. A last condition of your enlistment. I do not tolerate opium addicts in my army.”

  “I’m not an addict, I just . . .” A fresh wave of pain racked her head and she broke off, wincing.

  “You’re no good to me high. I need you alert. I need someone capable of infiltrating the Autumn Palace and killing the Empress, not some opium-riddled sack of shit.”

  “You don’t get it,” she said. “If you don’t drug me, I will incinerate everyone on this ship.”

  He shrugged. “Then we’ll throw you overboard.”

  She could only stare at him. This made no sense to her. How could he remain so infuriatingly calm? Why wasn’t he caving in, cowering in terror? This wasn’t how it was supposed to work—she was supposed to threaten him and he was supposed to do what she wanted, that was always how it worked—

  Why hadn’t she scared him?

  Desperate, she resorted to begging. “You don’t know how much this hurts. It’s in my mind—the god is always in my mind, and it hurts . . .”

  “It’s not the god.” Vaisra stood up and crossed the room toward her. “It’s the anger. And it’s your fear. You’ve seen battle for the first time, and your nerves can’t shut down. You’re frightened all the time. You think everyone’s out to get you, and you want them to be out to get you because then that’ll give you an excuse to hurt them. That’s not a Speerly problem, it’s a universal experience of soldiers. And you can’t cure it with opium. There’s no running from it.”

  “Then what—”

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “You face it. You accept that it’s your reality now. You fight it.”

  Couldn’t he understand that she’d tried? Did he think it was easy? “No,” she said. “I need—”

  He cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  Rin’s tongue felt terribly heavy in her mouth. Sweat broke out over her body; she could see it beading on her hands.

  He raised his voice. “Are you contradicting my orders?”