The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  See eye fold—indicates lazy character.

  Sallow skin. Malnutrition?

  On the last page, Rin saw a heavily annotated drawing of herself that must have been done by Petra. Rin was glad that Petra’s handwriting was far too small for her to decipher. She didn’t want to read any conclusions about herself.

  “Since your eyes are smaller, you see within a smaller periphery than we do.” Petra pointed to the diagrams as she explained. “Your skin has a yellowish tint that indicates malnutrition or an unbalanced diet. Now see your skull shapes. Your brains, which we know to be an indicator of your rational capacity, are by nature smaller.”

  Rin looked at her in disbelief. “You think you’re just naturally smarter than me?”

  “I don’t think that,” Petra said. “I know it. The proof is all well-documented. The Nikara are a particularly herdlike nation. You listen well, but independent thought is difficult for you. You reach scientific conclusions centuries after we discover them.” Petra shut the book. “But worry not. In time, all civilizations will become perfect in the eyes of the Maker. That is the Gray Company’s task.”

  “You think we’re stupid,” Rin said, almost to herself. She had the ridiculous urge to laugh. Did the Hesperians really take themselves this seriously? They thought this was science? “You think we’re all inferior to you.”

  “Look at those people on the beach,” Petra said. “Look at your country, squabbling over the refuse of wars you’ve been fighting for centuries. Do they look evolved to you?”

  “And what, your own wars just happen to be civilized? Millions of you died, didn’t they?”

  “They died because we were fighting the forces of Chaos. Our wars are not internal. They are crusaders’ battles. But look back to your own history, and tell me that any of your internal wars were fought for anything other than naked greed, ambition, or sheer cruelty.”

  Rin didn’t know whether it was the laudanum, or whether Petra was truly correct, but she hated that she didn’t have an answer.

  In the morning, the remaining men of Radan were walked at sword point to the town square and instructed to cast their votes by throwing tiles into burlap bags. They could pick from two tile colors: white for yes and black for no.

  “What happens if they vote against?” Rin asked Nezha.

  “They’ll die,” he said. “Well, most of them. If they fight.”

  “Don’t you think that kind of misses the point?”

  Nezha shrugged. “Everyone joins the Republic by their own free choice. We’re just, well, tipping the scales a little bit.”

  The voting took place one man at a time and lasted just over an hour. Rather than counting the tiles, Jinzha dumped the bags out onto the ground so that everyone could see the colors. By an overwhelming majority, the village of Radan had elected to join the Republic.

  “Good decision,” he said. “Welcome to the future.”

  He ordered a single skimmer to remain behind with its crew to enforce martial law and collect a monthly grain tax until the war’s end. The fleet would confiscate a seventh of the township’s food stores, leaving just enough to tide Radan over through the winter.

  Nezha looked both pleased and relieved as they departed on the Murui. “That’s what you get when the people decide.”

  Kitay shook his head. “No, that’s what you get when you’ve killed all the brave men and let the cowards vote.”

  The Republican Fleet’s subsequent skirmishes were similarly easy to the point of overkill. More often than not they took over townships and villages without a fight. A few cities put up resistance, but never to any effect. Against the combined strength of Jinzha’s Seahawks, resisters usually capitulated within half a day.

  As they went north, Jinzha detached brigades, and then entire platoons, to rule over recently liberated territory. Other crews bled soldiers to man those empty ships, until several skimmers had to be grounded and left on shore because the fleet had been spread too thin.

  Some of the villages they conquered didn’t put up a resistance at all, but readily joined the Republic. They sent out volunteers in boats laden with food and supplies. Hastily stitched flags bearing the colors of Dragon Province flew over city walls in a welcoming gesture.

  “Look at that.” Kitay pointed. “Vaisra’s flag. Not the flag of the Republic.”

  “Does the Republic even have a flag?” Rin asked.

  “I’m not sure. It’s curious that they think they’re being conquered by Dragon Province, though.”

  On Kitay’s advice, Jinzha placed the volunteer ships and sailors in the front of the fleet. He didn’t trust Hare Province sailors to fight on their home territory, and he didn’t want them in strategically crucial positions in case they defected. But the extra ships were, in the worst-case scenario, excellent bait. Several times Jinzha sent allied ships out first to lure townships into opening their gates before he stormed them with his warships.

  For a while it seemed like they might take the entire north in one clean, unobstructed sweep. But their fortunes finally took a turn for the worse at the northern border of Hare Province when a massive thunderstorm forced them to make anchor in a river cove.

  The storm wasn’t so much dangerous as it was boring. River storms, unlike ocean storms, could just be waited out if they grounded ships. So for three days the troops holed up belowdecks, playing cards and telling stories while rain battered at the hull.

  “In the north they still offer divine sacrifices to the wind.” The Kingfisher’s first mate, a gaunt man who had been at sea longer than Jinzha had been alive, had become the favorite storyteller of the mess. “In the days before the Red Emperor, the Khan of the Hinterlands sent down a fleet to invade the Empire. But a magician summoned a wind god to create a typhoon to destroy the Khan’s fleet, and the Khan’s ships turned to splinters in the ocean.”

  “Why not sacrifice to the ocean?” asked a sailor.

  “Because oceans don’t create storms. This was a god of the wind. But wind is fickle and unpredictable, and the gods have never taken lightly to being summoned by the Nikara. The moment the Khan’s fleet was destroyed, the wind god turned on the Nikara magician who had summoned him. He pulled the magician’s village into the sky and dropped it down in a bloody rain of ripped houses, crushed livestock, and dismembered children.”

  Rin stood up and quietly left the mess.

  The passageways belowdecks were eerily quiet. Absent was the constant grinding sound of men working the paddle wheels. The crew and soldiers were concentrated in the mess, if they weren’t sleeping, and so the passage was empty except for her.

  When she pressed her face to the porthole she saw the storm raging outside, the vicious waves swirling about the cove like eager hands reaching to rip the fleet apart. In the clouds she thought she saw two eyes—bright, cerulean, maliciously intelligent.

  She shivered. She thought she heard laughter in the thunder. She thought she saw a hand reach from the skies.

  Then she blinked, and the storm was just a storm.

  She didn’t want to be alone, so she ventured downstairs to the soldiers’ cabins, where she knew she could find the Cike.

  “Hello there.” Baji waved her inside. “Nice of you to join.”

  She sat down cross-legged beside him. “What are you playing?”

  Baji tossed a handful of dice into a cup. “Divisions. Ever played?”

  Rin thought briefly back to Tutor Feyrik, the man who had gotten her to Sinegard, and his unfortunate addiction to the game. She smiled wistfully. “Just a bit.”

  Nominally, no gambling of any kind was permitted on the ships. Lady Yin Saikhara, since her pilgrimage to the west, had instituted strict rules about vices such as drinking, smoking, gambling, and consorting with prostitutes. Almost everyone ignored them. Vaisra never enforced them.

  It turned out to be a rather vicious game. Ramsa kept accusing Baji of cheating. Baji was not cheating, but they discovered that Ramsa was when a handful of dice
spilled out of his sleeve, at which point the game turned into a wrestling match that ended only when Ramsa bit Baji on the arm hard enough to draw blood.

  “You mangy little brat,” Baji cursed as he wrapped a linen around his elbow.

  Ramsa grinned, displaying teeth stained red.

  All of them were clearly bored, going stir-crazy while waiting out the storm. But Rin suspected that they were also itching for action. She’d cautioned them not to put their full abilities on display where Hesperian soldiers might be watching. Petra knew about one shaman; she didn’t need to discover the rest.

  Concealment had turned out to be fairly easy on campaign. Suni and Baji’s abilities were freakish, yes, but not necessarily in the realm of the supernatural. In the chaos of a melee, they could pass themselves off as hypercompetent soldiers. It had worked so far. As far as Rin knew, the Hesperians suspected nothing. Suni and Baji might be getting frustrated holding themselves back, but at least they were free.

  For once, Rin thought, she’d made some decent decisions as commander. She hadn’t gotten them killed. The Republican troops treated them better than the Militia ever had. They were getting paid, they were as safe as they’d ever be, and that was as good as she could do for them.

  “What are the Gray Company like?” Baji asked as he scooped the dice off the floor for a new game. “I heard that woman talks your ear off every time you’re together.”

  “It’s stupid,” Rin muttered. “Religious lecturing.”

  “Load of hogwash?” Ramsa asked.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “They might be right about some things.”

  She wished she could discard the Hesperian faith more easily, but so many parts of it made sense. She wanted to believe it. She wanted to see her catastrophic actions as a product of Chaos, an entropic mistake, and to believe that she could repent for them by reinforcing order in the Empire, reversing devastation the way one pieced together a broken teacup.

  It made her feel better. It made every battle she’d fought since Adlaga feel like another step toward putting things right. It made her feel less like a killer.

  “You know their Divine Architect doesn’t exist,” Baji said. “I mean, you understand why that’s obvious, right?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. Certainly the Maker didn’t exist on the same psychospiritual plane as the sixty-four gods of the Pantheon, but was that enough to discount the Hesperians’ theory? What if the Pantheon was, in fact, a manifestation of Chaos? What if the Divine Architect truly existed on a higher plane, out of reach of anyone but his chosen and blessed people?

  “I mean, look at their airships,” she said. “Their arquebuses. If they’re claiming religion made them advanced, they might be right about some things.”

  Baji opened his mouth to respond and promptly closed it. Rin looked up and saw a shock of white hair in the doorway.

  No one spoke. The dice clattered loudly to the floor and stayed there.

  Ramsa broke the silence. “Hi, Chaghan.”

  Rin hadn’t spoken to Chaghan since Arlong. When the fleet had sailed, she’d partly hoped that Chaghan might just elect to stay on land. He was never one for the thick of battle, and after their falling-out she couldn’t imagine why he’d stay with her. But the twins had remained with the Cike, and Rin had found herself crossing the room whenever she saw a hint of white hair.

  Chaghan paused by the door, Qara close behind him.

  “Having fun?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Baji said. “You want in?”

  “No, thank you,” Chaghan said. “But it’s nice to see you’re all having such a good time.”

  No one responded to that. Rin knew she was being mocked, she just didn’t have the energy to get into it with Chaghan right now.

  “Does it hurt?” Qara asked.

  Rin blinked. “What?”

  “When the gray-eyed one takes you to her cabin,” Qara said. “Does it hurt?”

  “Oh. It’s—it’s not so bad. It’s just a lot of measurements.”

  Qara cast her what looked like a glance of sympathy, but Chaghan grabbed his sister by the arm and stormed out of the cabin before she could speak.

  Ramsa gave a low whistle and began to pick the dice up off the floor.

  Baji gave Rin a curious look. “What happened between you two?”

  “Stupid shit,” Rin muttered.

  “Stupid shit about Altan?” Ramsa pressed.

  “Why would you think it was about Altan?”

  “Because with Chaghan, it’s always about Altan.” Ramsa tossed his dice into a cup and shook. “Honestly? I think Altan was Chaghan’s only friend. He’s still grieving. And there’s nothing you can do to make that hurt less.”

  Chapter 17

  The storm passed with minimal damage. One skimmer capsized—the force of the winds had ripped it from its anchor. Three men drowned. But the crew managed to salvage most of its supplies, and the drowned men had been only foot soldiers, so Jinzha wrote it off as a minor setback.

  The moment the skies cleared, he gave the order to continue upriver toward Ram Province. It was one step closer to the military center of the Empire and, as Kitay anticipated, the first territory that would present a fighting challenge.

  The Ram Warlord had holed up inside Xiashang, his capital, instead of mounting a border defense. This was why the Republic encountered little other than local volunteer militias throughout their destructive trek north. The Ram Warlord had chosen to bide his time and wait for Jinzha’s troops to tire before fighting a defensive battle.

  That should have been a losing strategy. The Republican Fleet was simply bigger than whatever force the Ram Warlord could have rounded up. They knew they could take Ram Province; it was only a matter of time.

  The only wrinkle was that Xiashang had unexpectedly robust defenses. Thanks to Qara’s birds, the Republican forces had a good layout map of the capital’s defensive structures. Even the tower ships with their trebuchets would have a difficult time breaching those walls.

  As such, Rin spent her next few evenings in the Kingfisher’s office, crammed around a table with Jinzha’s leadership coterie.

  “The walls are the problem. You can’t blow through them.” Kitay pointed to a ring he’d drawn around the walls of the city. “They’re made of packed earth, three feet thick. You could try ramming them with cannonballs, but it’d just be a waste of good fire powder.”

  “What about a siege?” Jinzha asked. “We could force a surrender if they think we’re willing to wait.”

  “You’d be a fool,” said General Tarcquet.

  Jinzha bristled visibly. The leadership exchanged awkward looks.

  Tarcquet was always present at strategy councils, though he rarely spoke and never offered the assistance of his own troops. He’d made his role clear. He was there to judge their competence and quietly deride their mistakes, which made his input both irreproachable and grating.

  “If this were my fleet I’d throw everything I have at those walls,” Tarcquet said. “If you can’t take a minor capital, you won’t take the Empire.”

  “But this is not your fleet,” Jinzha said. “It’s mine.”

  Tarcquet’s lip curled in contempt. “You are in command because your father thought you’d at least be smart enough to do whatever I told you.”

  Jinzha looked furious, but Tarcquet held up a hand before he could respond. “You can’t pull off this bluff. They know you don’t have the supplies or the time. You’ll have to fold in weeks.”

  Despite herself, Rin agreed with Tarcquet’s assessment. She’d studied this precise problem at Sinegard. Of all the successful defensive campaigns on military record, most were when cities had warded off invaders through protracted siege warfare. A siege turned a battle into a waiting game of who starved first. The Republican Fleet had the supplies to last for perhaps a month. It was unclear how long Xiashang could last. It would be foolish to wait and find out.

  “They certainly don
’t have enough food for the entire city,” Nezha said. “We made sure of that.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kitay said. “The Ram Warlord and his people will be fine. They’ll just let the peasants starve; Tsung Ho has done that before.”

  “Do we try negotiating?” Nezha asked.

  “Won’t work—Tsung Ho hates Father,” Jinzha said. “And he has no incentive to cooperate, because he’ll just assume that under the Republican regime he’d be deposed sooner or later.”

  “A siege might work,” said Admiral Molkoi. “Those walls are not so impenetrable. We’d just have to break them down at a choke point.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Kitay said. “That’s what they’ll be preparing for. If you’re going to storm the city, you want the element of surprise. Some gimmick. Like a false peace proposal. But I don’t think they’d fall for that; Tsung Ho is too smart.”

  A thought occurred to Rin. “What about Fuchai and Goujian?”

  The men stared blankly at her.

  “Fuchai and who?” Jinzha asked.

  Only Kitay and Nezha looked like they understood. The tale of Fuchai and Goujian was a favorite story of Master Irjah’s. They’d all been assigned to write term papers about it during their second year.

  “Fuchai and Goujian were two generals during the Era of Warring States,” Nezha explained. “Fuchai destroyed Goujian’s home state, and then made Goujian his personal servant to humiliate him. Goujian performed the most degrading tasks to make Fuchai believe he bore him no ill will. One time when Fuchai fell sick, Goujian volunteered to taste his stool to tell how bad his illness was. It worked—ten years later, Fuchai set Goujian free. The first thing Goujian did was hire a beautiful concubine and send her to Fuchai’s court in the guise of a gift.”

  “The concubine, of course, killed Fuchai,” Kitay said.

  Jinzha looked baffled. “You’re saying I send the Ram Warlord a beautiful concubine.”

  “No,” Rin said. “I’m saying you should eat shit.”