by R. F. Kuang
“He’s going to tire his army out before we even get there,” Kitay grumbled to Rin. “Bet you wish we’d brought those Federation troops along now, don’t you?”
The army was both weary and hungry. Their rations had been dwindling. They now received dried fish twice a day instead of three times, and rice only once in the evenings. Most of the extra provisions they’d obtained in Xiashang had been lost in the explosions. Morale drooped by the day.
The soldiers became even more disheartened when scouts returned with details of the lake defense. The Imperial Navy was indeed stationed at Boyang, as all of them had feared, and it was far better equipped than Jinzha had anticipated.
The navy rivaled the size of the fleet that had sailed out from Arlong. The one consolation was that it was nowhere near the technological level of Jinzha’s armada. The Empress had hastily constructed it in the months since Lusan, and the lack of preparation time showed—the Imperial Fleet was a messy amalgamation of badly constructed new ships, some with unfinished decks, and conscripted old merchant boats with no uniformity of build. At least three were leisure barges without firing capacity.
But they had more ships, and they had more men.
“Ship quality would have mattered if they were out over the ocean,” Kitay told Rin. “But the lake will turn this battle into a crucible. We’ll all be crammed in together. They just need to get their men to board our ships, and it’ll be over. Boyang’s going to turn red with blood.”
Rin knew one way the Republic could easily win. They wouldn’t even have to fire a shot. But Nezha refused to speak to her. She only ever saw him when he came aboard the Kingfisher for meetings in his brother’s office. Each time they crossed paths he hastily looked away; if she called his name, he only shook his head. Otherwise, they might have been complete strangers.
“Do we expect anything to come of this?” Rin asked.
“Not really,” Kitay said. He held his crossbow ready against his chest. “It’s just a formality. You know how aristocrats are.”
Rin’s teeth chattered as the Imperial flagship drifted closer to the Kingfisher. “We shouldn’t have even come.”
“It’s Jinzha. Always worried about his honor.”
“Yes, well, he might try worrying more about his life.”
Against the counsel of his admirals, Jinzha had demanded a last-minute negotiation with the flagship of the Imperial Navy. Gentlemen’s etiquette, he called it. He had to at least give the Wolf Meat General a chance to surrender. But the negotiation would not even be a charade; it was only a risk, and a stupid one.
Chang En had refused a private meeting. The most he would acquiesce to was a temporary cease-fire and a confrontation held over the open water, and that meant their ships were forced to draw dangerously close together in the final moments before the firing began.
“Hello, little dragon!” Chang En’s voice rang over the still, cold air. For once, the waters were calm and quiet. Mist drifted from the surface of Boyang Lake, shrouding the assembled fleets in a cloudy fog.
“You’ve done well for yourself, Master,” Jinzha called. “Admiral of the Imperial Navy, now?”
Chang En spread his arms. “I take what I want when I see it.”
Jinzha lifted his chin. “You’ll want to take this surrender, then. You can retain your position in my father’s employ.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Chang En’s jackal laughter rang high and cruel across the lake.
Jinzha raised his voice. “There’s nothing Su Daji can do for you. Whatever she’s promised you, we’ll double it. My father can make you a general—”
“Your father will give me a cell in Baghra and relieve me of my limbs.”
“You’ll have immunity if you lay down your arms now. I give you my word.”
“A Dragon’s word means nothing.” Chang En laughed again. “Do you think me stupid? When has Vaisra ever kept a vow he’s made?”
“My father is an honorable man who only wants to see this country unified under a just regime,” Jinzha said. “You’d serve well by his side.”
He wasn’t just posturing. Jinzha spoke like he meant it. He seemed to truly hope that he could convince his former master to switch loyalties.
Chang En spat into the water. “Your father’s a Hesperian puppet dancing for donations.”
“And you think Daji is any better?” Jinzha asked. “Stand by her, and you’re guaranteeing years of bloody warfare.”
“Ah, but I’m a soldier. Without war, I’m out of a job.”
Chang En lifted a gauntleted hand. His archers lifted their bows.
“Negotiator’s honor,” Jinzha cautioned.
Chang En smiled widely. “Talks are over, little dragon.”
His hand fell.
A single arrow whistled through the air, grazed Jinzha’s cheek, and embedded itself in the bulkhead behind him.
Jinzha touched his fingers to his cheek, pulled them away, and watched his blood trickle down his pale white hand as if shocked that he could bleed.
“Let you off easy that time,” Chang En said. “Wouldn’t want the fun to be over too quick.”
Lake Boyang lit up like a torch. Flaming arrows, fire rockets, and cannon fire turned the sky red, while below, smokescreens went off everywhere to shroud the Imperial Navy behind a murky gray veil.
The Kingfisher sailed straight into the mist.
“Bring me his head,” Jinzha ordered, ignoring his men’s frantic shouts for him to duck down.
The rest of the fleet spread out across the lake to decrease their vulnerability to incendiary attacks. The closer they clumped, the faster they would all go up in flames. The Seahawks and trebuchets started to return the fire, launching missile after missile over the Kingfisher and into the opaque wall of gray.
But their spread-out formation only made the Republicans weak against Imperial swarming tactics. Tiny, patched-up skimmers shot into the gaps between the Republican warships and pushed them farther apart, isolating them to fight on their own.
The Imperial Navy targeted the tower ships first. Imperial skimmers attacked the Crake with relentless cannon fire from all sides. Without its own skimmer support, the Crake began shaking in the water like a man in his death throes.
Jinzha ordered the Kingfisher to come to the Crake’s aid, but it, too, was trapped, cut off from the fleet by a phalanx of old Imperial junks. Jinzha ordered round after round of cannon fire to clear them a path. But even the bombed-out junks took up space in the water, which meant all they could do was stand and watch as the Wolf Meat General’s men swarmed aboard the Crake.
The Crake’s men were exhausted and spread too thin to begin with. The Wolf Meat General’s men were out for blood. The Crake never stood a chance.
Chang En cut a ferocious path through the upper deck. Rin saw him raise a broadsword over his head and cleave a soldier’s skull in half so neatly he might have been slicing a winter melon. When another soldier took the opportunity to charge him from behind, Chang En twisted around and shoved his blade so hard into his chest that it came out clean on the other side.
The man was a monster. If Rin hadn’t been so terrified for her life, she might have stood there on the deck and simply watched.
“Speerly!” Admiral Molkoi pointed to the empty mounted crossbow in front of her, then waved at the Crake. “Cover them!”
He said something else, but just then a wave of cannons exploded against the Kingfisher’s sides. Rin’s ears rang as she made her way to the crossbow. She could hear nothing else. Hands shaking, she fitted a bolt into the slot.
Her fingers kept slipping. Fuck, fuck—she hadn’t fired a crossbow since the Academy, she’d never served in the artillery, and in her panic she’d almost forgotten completely what to do . . .
She took a deep breath. Wind it up. Aim. She squinted at the end of the Crake.
The Wolf Meat General had cornered a captain near the edge of the prow. Rin recognized her as Captain Salkhi—she must have been reassigned
to the Crake after the Swallow was lost in the burning channel. Rin’s stomach twisted in dread. Salkhi still had her weapon, was still trading blows, but it wasn’t even close. Rin could tell that Salkhi was struggling to hold on to her blade while Chang En hacked at her with lackadaisical ease.
Rin’s first shot didn’t even make it to the deck. She had the direction right but the height wrong; the bolt pinged uselessly off the Crake’s hull.
Salkhi brought her sword up to block a blow from above, but Chang En slammed his blade so strongly against hers that she dropped it. Salkhi was weaponless, trapped against the prow. Chang En advanced slowly, grinning.
Rin fitted a new bolt into the crossbow and, squinting, lined up the shot with Chang En’s head. She pulled the trigger. The bolt sailed over the burning seas and slammed into the wood just next to Salkhi’s arm. Salkhi jumped at the noise, twisted around by instinct . . .
She had barely turned when the Wolf Meat General slammed his blade into the side of her neck, nearly decapitating her. She dropped to her knees. Chang En reached down and dragged her upright by her collar until she was dangling a good foot above the ground. He pulled her close, kissed her on her mouth, and tossed her over the side of the ship.
Rin stood frozen, watching Salkhi’s body disappear under the waves.
Slowly the tide of red took over the Crake. Despite a steady stream of arrow fire from the Shrike and the Kingfisher, Chang En’s men dispatched its crew like a pack of wolves falling on sheep. Someone shot a fiery arrow at the masthead, and the Crake’s blue and silver flag went up in flames.
The tower ship now turned on its sister ships. Its catapults and incendiaries were no longer aimed at the Imperial Navy, but at the Kingfisher and the Griffon.
Meanwhile the Imperial skimmers, small as they were, ran circles around Jinzha’s fleet. In shallow waters the Republic’s massive warships simply didn’t have maneuverability. They drifted helplessly like sick whales while a frenzy of smaller fish tore them apart.
“Put us by the Shrike,” Jinzha ordered. “We have to keep at least one of our tower ships.”
“We can’t,” Molkoi said.
“Why not?”
“The water level’s too low on that side of the lake. The Shrike’s been grounded. Any farther and we’ll get stuck in the mud ourselves.”
“Then at least get us away from the Crake,” Jinzha snapped. “We’re about to be stuck as is.”
He was right. While Chang En wrestled for control of the Crake, the tower ship had drifted so far into shallow waters that it could not extricate itself.
But the Kingfisher and the Griffon still had more firepower than the Imperial junks. If they just kept shooting, they might cement their hold on the deeper end of the lake. They had to. They had no other way out.
The Imperial Navy, however, had ground to a halt around the Crake.
“What on earth are they doing?” Kitay asked.
They didn’t seem to be stuck. Rather, Chang En seemed to have ordered his fleet to sit completely still. Rin scoured the decks for any sign of activity—a lantern signal, a flag—and saw nothing.
What were they waiting for?
Something dark flitted across the upper field of her spyglass. She moved her focus up to the mast.
A man stood at the very top.
He wore neither a Militia nor a Republican uniform. He was garbed entirely in black. Rin could hardly make out his face. His hair was a straggly, matted mess that hung into his eyes and his skin was both pale and dark, mottled like ruined marble. He looked as if he’d been dragged up from the bottom of the ocean.
Rin found him oddly familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen him before.
“What are you looking at?” Kitay asked.
She blinked into the spyglass, and the man was gone.
“There’s a man.” She pointed. “I saw him, he was right there—”
Kitay frowned, squinting at the mast. “What man?”
Rin couldn’t speak. Dread pooled at the bottom of her stomach.
She’d remembered. She knew exactly who that was.
A sudden chill had fallen over the lake. New ice crackled over the water’s surface. The Kingfisher’s sails suddenly dropped without warning. Its crew looked around the deck, bewildered. No one had given that order. No one had lowered the sails.
“There’s no wind,” Kitay murmured. “Why isn’t there a wind?”
Rin heard a whooshing noise. A blur shot past her eyes, followed by a scream that grew fainter and fainter until it abruptly cut off.
She heard a crack in the air far above her head.
Admiral Molkoi appeared suddenly on the cliff wall, his body bent at grotesque angles like a broken doll on display. He hung there for a moment before skidding down the rock face and into the lake, leaving behind a crimson streak on gray.
“Oh, fuck,” Rin muttered.
What seemed like a lifetime ago, she and Altan had freed someone very powerful and very mad from the Chuluu Korikh.
The Wind God Feylen had returned.
The Kingfisher’s deck erupted into shouts. Some soldiers ran to the mounted crossbows, aiming their bolts at nothing. Others dropped to the deck and wrapped their arms around their necks as if hiding from wild animals.
Rin finally regained her senses. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Everybody get belowdecks!”
She grabbed Kitay’s arm and pulled him toward the closest hatch, just as a piercing gust of wind slammed into them from the side. They crumpled together against the bulkhead. His bent elbow went straight into her rib cage.
“Ow!” she cried.
Kitay picked himself off the deck. “Sorry.”
Somehow they managed to drag themselves toward the hatch and tumbled more than walked down the stairs to the hold, where the rest of the crew huddled in the pitch darkness. There passed a long silence, pregnant with terror. No one spoke a word.
Light filled the chamber. Gust after gust of wind ripped the wooden panels cleanly away from the ship as if peeling off layers of skin, exposing the cowering and vulnerable crew underneath.
The strange man perched before them on the jagged wood like a bird alighting on a branch. Rin could see his eyes clearly now—bright, gleaming, malicious dots of blue.
“What’s this?” asked Feylen. “Little rats, hiding with nowhere to go?”
Someone shot an arrow at his head. He waved a hand, annoyed. The arrow jerked to the side and came whistling back into the soldiers’ ranks. Rin heard a dull thud. Someone collapsed to the floor.
“Don’t be so rude.” Feylen’s voice was quiet, reedy and thin, but in the eerily still air they could hear every word he said. He hovered above them, effortlessly drifting above the ground, until his bright eyes landed on Rin. “There you are.”
She didn’t think. If she stopped to think, then fear would catch up. Instead she launched herself at him, screaming, trident in hand.
He sent her spinning to the planks with a flick of his fingers. She got up to rush him again but didn’t even get close. He hurled her away every time she approached him, but she kept trying, again and again. If she was going to die, then she’d do it on her feet.
But Feylen was just toying with her.
Finally he yanked her out of the ship and started tossing her around in the air like a rag doll. He could have flung her into the opposite cliff if he’d wanted to; he could have lifted her high into the air and sent her plummeting into the lake, and the only reason he hadn’t was that he wanted to play.
“Behold the great Phoenix, trapped inside a little girl,” sneered Feylen. “Where is your fire now?”
“You’re Cike,” Rin gasped. Altan had appealed to Feylen’s humanity once. It had almost worked. She had to try the same. “You’re one of us.”
“A traitor like you?” Feylen chuckled as the winds hurtled her up and down. “Hardly.”
“Why would you fight for her?” Rin demanded. “She had you imprisoned!”
“Imprisoned?” Feylen sent Rin tumbling so close to the cliff wall that her fingers brushed the surface before he jerked her back in front of him. “No, that was Trengsin. That was Trengsin and Tyr, the pair of them. They crept up on us in the middle of the night, and still it took them until midday to pin us down.”
He let her drop. She hurtled down to the lake, crashed into the water, and was certain she was about to drown just before Feylen yanked her back up by her ankle. He emitted a high-pitched cackle. “Look at you. You’re like a little cat. Drenched to the bone.”
A pair of rockets shot toward Feylen’s head. He swept them carelessly out of the air. They fell to the water and fizzled out.
“Is Ramsa still at it?” he asked. “How adorable. Is he well? We never liked him, we’ll rip out his fingernails one by one after this.”
He tossed Rin up and down by her ankle as he spoke. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out.
“Did you really think you were going to fight us?” He sounded amused. “We can’t be killed, child.”
“Altan stopped you once,” she snarled.
“He did,” Feylen acknowledged, “but you’re a far cry from Altan Trengsin.”
He stopped tossing her and held her still in the air, buffeted on all sides by winds so strong she could barely keep her eyes open. He hung before her, arms outstretched, tattered clothes rippling in the wind, daring her to attack and knowing that she couldn’t.
“Isn’t it fun to fly?” he asked. The winds whipped harder and harder around her until it felt like a thousand steel blades jamming into every tender point of her body.
“Just kill me,” she gasped. “Get it over with.”
“Oh, we’re not going to kill you,” said Feylen. “She told us not to do that. We’re just supposed to hurt you.”
He waved a hand. The winds yanked her away.
She flew up, weightless and utterly out of control, and crumpled against the masthead. She hung there, splayed out like a dissected corpse, for just the briefest moment before the drop. She landed in a crumpled heap on the Kingfisher’s deck. She couldn’t draw enough breath to scream. Every part of her body was on fire. She tried making her limbs move but they wouldn’t obey her.