The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  But if she gave in to her anger now, the worst she could do was make a mess in Petra’s lab, wind up dead at the bottom of the Murui, and destroy any hope of a Hesperian-Nikara military alliance. Resistance meant doom for her and everyone she cared about.

  So even though it tasted like the bitterest bile, she swallowed her rage.

  “It’s really gone,” she said when Petra released her jaw. “I told you it’s been Sealed off. I can’t call it anymore.”

  “So you say.” Petra looked deeply skeptical, but she dropped the subject. She placed the instrument back on her table. “Raise your right hand and hold your breath.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I asked.”

  The Sister never lost her temper with Rin, no matter what Rin said. Petra had a freakishly calm composure. She never betrayed any emotion other than an icy professional curiosity. Rin almost wished that Petra would strike her, just so she knew she was human, but frustration seemed to slide off of her like rainwater from a tin roof.

  However, as time passed with no results, she did start subjecting Rin to baser and baser experiments. She made Rin solve puzzles meant for children while she kept time with her little watch. She made Rin perform simple tasks of memorization that seemed designed to make her fail, watching without blinking as Rin became so frustrated that she started throwing things at the wall.

  Eventually Petra asked her to stand for examinations naked.

  “If you wanted to ogle me you could have asked earlier,” Rin said.

  Petra didn’t react. “Quickly, please.”

  Rin yanked her uniform off and tossed it in a bundle on the floor.

  “Good.” Petra passed her an empty cup. “Now urinate in this for me.”

  Rin stared at her in disbelief. “Right now?”

  “I’m doing fluids analysis tonight,” Petra said. “Go on.”

  Rin set her jaw. “I’m not doing that.”

  “Would you like a sheet for privacy?”

  “I don’t care,” Rin said. “This isn’t about science. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing, you’re just being spiteful.”

  Petra sat down and crossed one leg over the other. “Urinate, please.”

  “Fuck that.” Rin tossed the cup onto the floor. “Admit it. You’ve no idea what you’re doing. All your treatises and all your instruments, and you don’t have a single clue about how shamanism works or how to measure Chaos, if that really even exists. You’re shooting in the dark.”

  Petra stood up from her chair. Her nostrils flared white.

  Rin had finally struck a nerve. She hoped that Petra might hit her then, if only to break that inhuman mask of control. But Petra only cocked her head to the side.

  “Remember your situation.” Her voice retained its icy calm. “I am asking you to cooperate only out of etiquette. Refuse, and I will have you strapped to that bed. Now. Will you behave?”

  Rin wanted to kill her.

  If she hadn’t been so exhausted, if she had been an ounce more impulsive, then she would have. It would have been so easy to knock Petra to the floor and jam every sharp instrument on the table into her neck, her chest, her eyes. It would have felt so good.

  But Rin couldn’t act on impulse anymore.

  She felt the sheer, overwhelming weight of Hesperia’s military might restricting her options like an invisible cage. They held her life hostage. They held her friends and her entire nation hostage.

  Against all of that, Sealed off from the fire and the Phoenix, she was helpless.

  So she held her tongue and forced down her fury as Petra’s requests became more and more humiliating. She complied when Petra made her lean naked against the wall while she drew intricate diagrams of her genitals. She sat still when Petra inserted a long, thick needle into her right arm and drew so much blood that she fainted when she stood up to return to her quarters and couldn’t stand back up for half a day. And she bit her tongue and didn’t react when Petra waved a packet of opium under her nose, trying to entice her to draw the fire out by offering her favorite vice.

  “Go on,” Petra said. “I’ve read about your kind. You can’t resist the smoke. You crave it in your bones. Isn’t that how the Red Emperor subdued your ancestors? Call the fire for me, and I’ll let you have a little.”

  That last meeting left Rin so furious that the moment she left Petra’s quarters, she shrieked in fury and punched the wall so hard that her knuckle split open. For a moment she stood still, stunned, while blood ran down the back of her hand and dripped off her wrist. Then she sank to her knees and started to cry.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was Augus, the baby-faced, blue-eyed missionary. Rin gave him a wary look. “Go away.”

  He reached for her bleeding hand. “You’re upset.”

  She jerked it out of his grasp. “I don’t want your pity.”

  He sat down next to her, fished a linen out of his pocket, and passed it to her. “Here. Why don’t you wrap that up?”

  Rin’s knuckle was bleeding faster than she had realized. After getting her blood drawn the week before, the very sight of it made her want to faint. Reluctantly she took the cloth.

  Augus watched as she looped it tightly around her hand. She realized she couldn’t tie off the knot by herself.

  “I can do that,” he offered.

  She let him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked again when he was finished.

  “Does it fucking look like—”

  “I meant with Sister Petra,” he clarified. “I know she can be difficult.”

  Rin shot him a sideways look. “You don’t like her?”

  “We all admire her,” he said slowly. “But . . . ah, do you understand Hesperian? This language is hard for me.”

  “Yes.”

  He switched, speaking deliberately slowly so that she could keep up. “She’s the most brilliant Gray Sister of our generation and the foremost expert of Chaos manifestations on the eastern continent. But we don’t all agree with her methods.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Sister Petra is old-fashioned about conversion. Her school believes that the only pathway to salvation is patterning civilizations on the development of Hesperia. To obey the Maker you must become like us. You must stop being Nikara.”

  “Attractive,” Rin muttered.

  “But I think that when we wish to win barbarians over and convert them to the greater good, we should use the same strategies that Chaos uses to draw souls to evil,” Augus continued. “Chaos enters through the other’s door and comes out his own. So should we.”

  Rin pressed her bound knuckles against the wall to stem the pain. Her dizziness subsided. “From what I know, you lot are more fond of blowing our doors up.”

  “Like I said. Conservative.” Augus shot her an embarrassed smile. “But the Company has been changing its ways. Take the bow, for instance. I’ve read about the Nikara tradition of performing deep bows to superiors—”

  “That’s only for special occasions,” she said.

  “Even so. Decades ago, the Company would have argued that bowing to a Nikara would be an utter affront to the dignity of the white race. We are chosen by the Maker, after all. We are the highest evolved persons, and we shouldn’t show respect to you. But I don’t agree with that.”

  Rin fought the urge to roll her eyes. “That’s nice of you.”

  “We are not equals,” Augus said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. And I don’t think the path to salvation involves treating you like you’re not people.”

  Augus, Rin realized, really thought that he was being kind.

  “I think I’m good now,” she said.

  He helped her to her feet. “Would you like me to walk you back to your quarters?”

  “No. Thank you. I can manage.”

  When she returned to her room, she drew the packet of opium out from her pocket. She hadn’t quite stolen it. Petra had left it in her lap and hadn’t comment
ed on it when Rin stood up to leave. She meant for Rin to have it.

  Rin yanked up a loose floorboard and hid the drug where no one could see. She wasn’t going to use it. She didn’t know what sick game Petra was playing, but she couldn’t tempt her that far.

  Still, it relieved her to know that if it became too much, that if she wanted it all to end and she wanted to float higher, higher, away from her body and shame and humiliation and pain until she left it permanently, then the opium was there.

  If any other Hesperians shared Augus’s opinions, they didn’t show it. Tarcquet’s men on the Kingfisher kept a chilly distance from the Nikara. They ate and slept by themselves, and every time Rin drifted within earshot of their conversations, they fell quiet until she’d passed. They continued to observe the Nikara without intervening—coldly amused by their incompetence, and mildly surprised by their victories.

  Only once did they put their arquebuses to any use. One evening a commotion broke out on the lower deck. A group of prisoners from Ram Province broke out of their holding cell and attacked a handful of missionaries who had been proselytizing in the brig.

  They might have been trying to escape. They might have thought to use the Hesperians as hostages. Or they might have simply wanted to lash out at foreigners for getting too close—Ram Province had suffered greatly under occupation and had no great love of the west. When Rin and the other soldiers on patrol reached the source of the shouting, the prisoners had the missionaries pinned to the floor, alive but incapacitated.

  Rin recognized Augus, gasping desperately for breath while a prisoner wedged an arm under his throat.

  His eyes locked on to hers. “Help—”

  “Get back!” the prisoner shouted. “Everyone get back, or they’re dead!”

  More Republican soldiers crowded the hallway in seconds. The skirmish should have been resolved instantly. The prisoners were unarmed and outnumbered. But they had also been marked for their strength as pedalers. Jinzha had specifically ordered that they be treated well, and no one wanted to attack for fear of causing irreparable injury.

  “Please,” Augus whispered.

  Rin faltered. She wanted to dart forward and pull his attacker off. But the Republican soldiers were holding back, waiting for orders. She couldn’t jump alone into the fray; they’d tear her apart.

  She stood, trident raised, watching as Augus’s face turned a grotesque blue.

  “Out of the way!” Tarcquet and his guard pushed through the commotion, arquebuses raised.

  Tarcquet took one look at the prisoners and shouted an order. A round of shots rang through the air. Eight men dropped to the ground. The air curdled with the familiar smell of fire powder. The missionaries broke free, gasping for breath.

  “What is this?” Jinzha forced his way through the crowd. “What’s happened?”

  “General Jinzha.” Tarcquet signaled to his men, who lowered their weapons. “Good of you to show up.”

  Jinzha surveyed the bodies on the floor. “You’ve cost me good labor.”

  Tarcquet cocked his arquebus. “I would improve your brig security.”

  “Our brig security is fine.” Jinzha looked white-faced with fury. “Your missionaries weren’t supposed to be down there.”

  Augus rose to his feet, coughing. He reached for Jinzha’s arm. “Prisoners deserve mercy, too. You can’t just—”

  “Fuck your mercy.” Jinzha pushed Augus away. “You’re on my ship. You’ll obey orders, or you can take a swim in the river.”

  “Don’t speak to my people like that.” Tarcquet stepped in between them. The difference between him and Jinzha was almost laughable—Jinzha was tall by Nikara standards, but Tarcquet towered over him. “Perhaps your father didn’t make it clear. We are diplomats on your ship. If you want the Consortium to even consider funding your pathetic war, you will treat every Hesperian here like royalty.”

  Jinzha’s throat bobbed. Rin watched the anger pass through his expression; saw Jinzha shove down the impulse to react. Tarcquet held all the leverage. Tarcquet could not be reproached.

  Rin derived some small satisfaction from that. It felt good to see Jinzha humiliated, treated with the same condescension with which he’d always treated her.

  “Am I understood?” Tarcquet asked.

  Jinzha glared up at him.

  Tarcquet cocked his head. “Say ‘yes, sir’ or ‘no, sir.’”

  Jinzha had murder written across his face. “Yes, sir.”

  Tensions ran high for several days afterward. A pair of Hesperian soldiers began following the missionaries around wherever they went, and the Nikara kept their wary distance. But unless one of theirs was in danger, Tarcquet’s soldiers did not fire their weapons.

  Tarcquet continued his constant assessment of Jinzha’s campaign. Rin saw him every now and then on deck, obnoxiously marking notes into a small book while he surveyed the fleet moving up the river. And Rin wondered what he thought of them—their unresponsive gods, their weapons that seemed so primitive, and their bloody, desperate war.

  Two months into the campaign, they sailed at last into Rat Province. Here their string of victories came to an end.

  Rat Province’s Second Division was the intelligence branch of the Militia, and its espionage officers were the best in the Twelve Provinces. By now, it had also had several months of warning time to put together a better defensive strategy than Hare or Ram Provinces had been able to mount.

  The Republic arrived to find villages already abandoned, granaries emptied, and fields scorched. The Rat Warlord had either recalled his civilians to metropolitan centers farther upriver or sent them fleeing to other provinces. Jinzha’s soldiers found clothing, furniture, and children’s toys scattered across the grassy roads. Whatever couldn’t be taken was ruined. In village after village they found burned, useless seed grain and rotting piles of livestock carcasses.

  The Rat Warlord wasn’t trying to mount a defense of his borders. He had simply retreated to Baraya, his heavily barricaded capital city. He planned to starve the fleet out. And Baraya had a better chance of success than Xiashang had—its gates were thicker, its residents better prepared, and it was more than a mile inland, which neutralized the attack capabilities of the Shrike and the Crake.

  “We should just stop here and turn back.” Kitay paced his office floor, frustrated. “Ride out the winter. We’ll starve otherwise.”

  But Jinzha had become increasingly irascible, less and less willing to listen to his advisers and more adamant that they had to storm forward.

  “He wants to move on Baraya?” Rin asked.

  “He wants to press north as fast as we can.” Kitay tugged anxiously at his hair. “It’s a terrible idea. But he won’t listen to me.”

  “Then who’s he listening to?”

  “Any of the leadership who agree with him. Molkoi especially. He’s in the old guard—I told Vaisra that was a bad idea, but who listens to me? Nezha’s on my side, but of course Jinzha won’t listen to his little brother, it’d mean losing face. This could throw away all of our gains so far. You know, there’s a good chance we’ll all just starve to death up north. That’d be hilarious, wouldn’t it?”

  But, as Jinzha announced to the Kingfisher, they absolutely would not starve. They would take Rat Province. They would blow open the gates to the capital city of Baraya, and win themselves enough supplies to last out the winter.

  Easy orders to give. Harder to implement, especially when they reached a stretch of the Murui so steep that Jinzha had no choice but to order his troops to move the ships over land. The flooded riverbanks earlier had made it possible for them to sail directly over lowland roads. But now they were forced to disembark and roll the ships over logs to reach the next waterway wide enough to accommodate the warships.

  It took an entire day of straining against ropes to simply pull the massive tower ships onto dry land, and much longer to cut down enough trees to roll them across the bumpy terrain. One week bled into two weeks of backb
reaking, mindless, numbing labor. The only advantage of this was that Rin was so exhausted that she didn’t have the time to be bored.

  Patrol shifts were slightly more exciting. These were a chance to get away from the din of ships rolling over logs and explore the surrounding land. Thick forests obscured all visibility past a mile, and Jinzha sent out daily parties to root through the trees for any sightings of the Militia.

  Rin found these relaxing, until word got back to the base that the noon patrol had caught sight of a Militia scouting party.

  “And you just let them go?” Jinzha demanded. “Are you stupid?”

  The men on patrol were from the Griffon, and Nezha hastily interceded on their behalf. “They weren’t worth the fight, brother. Our men were outnumbered.”

  “But they had the advantage of surprise,” Jinzha snapped. “Instead, the entire Militia now knows our precise location. Send your men back out. No one sleeps until I have proof every last scout is dead.”

  Nezha bowed his head. “Yes, brother.”

  “And take Salkhi’s men with you. Yours clearly can’t be trusted to get the job done.”

  The next day, Salkhi and Nezha’s joint expedition returned to the Kingfisher with a string of severed heads and empty Militia uniforms.

  That appeased Jinzha, but ultimately it made no difference. First the Militia scouts returned in larger and larger numbers. Then the attacks began en masse. The Militia soldiers hid in the mountains. They never launched a frontal assault, but maintained a constant stream of arrow fire, picking off soldiers unawares.

  The Republican troops fared badly against these scattered, unpredictable attacks. Panic swept through the camp, destroying morale, and Rin understood why. The Republican Army felt out of place on land. They were used to fighting from their ships. They were most comfortable in water, where they had a quick escape route.

  They had no escape routes now.

  Chapter 19

  Snow started falling the day that they finally returned to the river. At first it drifted down in fat, lazy flakes. But within hours it had transformed into a blinding blizzard, with winds so fierce that the troops could hardly see five feet in front of them. Jinzha was forced to keep his fleet grounded by the edge of the river while his soldiers holed up in their ships to wait out the storm.