The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  “You’ve no idea how ignorant you still are.” Tseveri gave him a pitying look. “I see you’ve anchored yourselves. Did it hurt?”

  Rin had no idea what that meant, but she saw Daji flinch.

  “Don’t be surprised,” Tseveri said. “You’re so obviously bound. I can see it shining out of you. You think it makes you strong, but it’s going to destroy you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jiang said.

  “No?” Tseveri tilted her head. “Then here’s a prophecy for you. Your bond will shatter. You will destroy one another. One will die, one will rule, and one will sleep for eternity.”

  “That’s impossible,” Daji scoffed. “None of us can die. Not while the others live.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Tseveri.

  “Enough of this,” Riga said. Rin was stricken by how much he even sounded like Nezha. “This isn’t what we came for.”

  “You came to start a war you don’t need to fight. And you ignore me at your peril.” Tseveri reached for Jiang’s hand. “Ziya. Please. Don’t do this to me.”

  Jiang refused to meet her eye.

  Daji yawned, making a desultory attempt to cover her mouth with the back of a dainty pale hand. “We can do this the easy way. Nobody needs to get hurt. Or we could just start fighting.”

  Kalagan leveled her spear at her. “Don’t presume, little girl.”

  A crackling energy charged the air. Even through the distance of memory Rin could sense how the fabric of the desert had changed. The boundaries of the material world were thinning, threatening to warp and give way to the world of spirit.

  Something was happening to Jiang.

  His shadow writhed madly against the bright sand. The shape was not Jiang’s own, but something terrible—a myriad of beasts, so many in size and form, shifting faster and faster, with a growing desperation, as if frantic to break free.

  The beasts were in Jiang, too. Rin could see them, shadows rippling under his skin, horrible patches of black straining to get out.

  Tseveri cried something in her own language—a plea or an incantation, Rin didn’t know, but it sounded like despair.

  Daji laughed.

  “No!” Rin shouted, but Jiang didn’t hear her—couldn’t hear her, because all of this had already come to pass. All she could do was watch helplessly as Jiang forced his hand into Tseveri’s rib cage and ripped out her still-beating heart.

  Kalagan screamed.

  “That’s enough,” said the present Sorqan Sira, and the last things Rin saw were Daji whipping her needles toward the Ketreyids, Jiang and his beasts pinning down the Sorqan Sira, and Riga, standing impassively, watching the carnage with that wise and caring face, arms raised beatifically as if he blessed the slaughter with his presence.

  “We gave the Nikara the keys to the heavens, and they stole our land and murdered my daughter.” The Sorqan Sira’s voice was flat, emotionless, as if she were merely recounting an interesting anecdote, as if her pain had already been processed so many times she could not feel it anymore.

  Rin bent over on her hands and knees, gasping. She couldn’t scrub the image of Jiang from her mind. Jiang, her master, cackling with his hands covered with blood.

  “Surprised?” asked the Sorqan Sira.

  “But I knew him,” Rin whispered. “I know what he’s like, he’s not like that . . .”

  “How would you know what the Gatekeeper is like?” The Sorqan Sira sneered. “Have you ever asked him about his past? Did you have any idea?”

  The worst part was that it all made sense—the truth had dawned on Rin, awful and bitter, and the mystery of Jiang was clear to her now; she knew why he’d fled, why he’d hidden in the Chuluu Korikh.

  He must have been starting to remember.

  The man she had met at Sinegard had been no more than a shade of a person; a pathetic, affable shade of a personality suppressed. He had not been pretending. She was certain of that. No one could pretend that well.

  He had simply not known. The Seal had stolen his memories, just like it would one day steal hers, and hidden them behind a wall in his mind.

  Was it better now that he remained in his stone prison, suspended halfway between amnesia and sanity?

  “You see now. You’ll understand if we’d rather put an end to you.” The Sorqan Sira nodded to Bekter.

  Her unspoken command rang clear in Rin’s mind. Kill them.

  “Wait!” Rin struggled to her feet. “Please—you don’t have to—”

  “I don’t entertain begging, girl.”

  “I’m not begging, I’m bartering,” Rin said quickly. “We have the same enemy. You want Daji dead. You want revenge. Yes? So do I. Kill us, and you’ve lost an ally.”

  The Sorqan Sira scoffed. “We can kill the Vipress easily enough ourselves.”

  “No, you can’t. If you could, she’d be dead already. You’re scared of her.” Rin thought frantically as she spoke, spinning an argument together from thin air. “In twenty years you haven’t even ventured south, haven’t attempted to take back your lands. Why? Because you know the Vipress will destroy you. You’ve lost to her before. You don’t dare to face her again.”

  The Sorqan Sira’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Rin felt a desperate stab of hope. If her words angered the Ketreyids, that meant she had touched on a fragment of the truth. It meant she still had a chance of convincing them.

  “But you’ve seen what I can do,” she continued. “You know that I could fight her, because you know what Speerlies are capable of. I’ve faced the Empress before. Set me free, and I’ll fight your battles for you.”

  The Sorqan Sira shot Chaghan a question in her own language. They conversed for a moment. Chaghan’s words sounded hesitant and deferential; the Sorqan Sira’s harsh and angry. Their eyes darted once in a while to Kitay, who shifted uncomfortably, confused.

  “She will do it,” Chaghan said finally in Nikara. “She won’t have a choice.”

  “I’ll do what?” Rin asked.

  They ignored her to keep arguing.

  “This is not worth the risk,” Bekter interrupted. “Mother, you know this. Speerlies go mad faster than the rest.”

  Chaghan shook his head. “Not this one. She’s stable.”

  “No Speerlies are stable,” said Bekter.

  “She fought it,” Chaghan insisted. “She’s off opium. She hasn’t touched it in months.”

  “An adult Speerly who doesn’t smoke?” The Sorqan Sira cocked her head. “That’d be a first.”

  “It makes no difference,” Bekter said. “The Phoenix will take her. It always does. Better to kill her now—”

  Chaghan spoke over him, appealing directly to his aunt. “I have seen her at her worst. If the Phoenix could, then it would have already.”

  “He’s lying,” Bekter snarled. “Look at him, he’s pathetic, he’s protecting them even now—”

  “Enough,” said the Sorqan Sira. “I’ll have the truth for myself.”

  Again, she grasped the sides of Rin’s face. “Look at me.”

  Her eyes seemed different this time. They had become dark and hollow expanses, windows into an abyss that Rin did not want to see. Rin let out an involuntary whine, but the Sorqan Sira’s fingers tightened under her jaws. “Look.”

  Rin felt herself pitching forward into that darkness. The Sorqan Sira wasn’t forcing a vision into her mind, she was forcing Rin to dredge one up herself. Memories loomed before her, haphazard and jagged fragments of visions that she’d done her best to bury. She was wrought in a sea of fire, she was pitching backward into black water, she was kneeling at Altan’s feet, blood pooling in her mouth.

  The Seal loomed over her.

  It had grown. It was thrice as large as she had last seen it, an expanded and hypnotic array of colors, swirling and pulsing like a heartbeat, arranged like a character she still could not recognize.

  Rin could feel Daji’s presence inside it—sickening, addictive, seductive. Whis
pers sounded all about her, as if Daji were murmuring into her ear, promising her wonderful things.

  I’ll take you away from this. I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ll give him back to you.

  You only have to give in.

  “What is this?” the Sorqan Sira murmured.

  Rin couldn’t answer.

  The Sorqan Sira let go of her face.

  Rin dropped to her knees, hands splayed against solid ground. The sun spun in circles above her.

  It took her a moment to realize the Sorqan Sira was laughing.

  “She’s afraid of you,” the Sorqan Sira whispered. “Su Daji is afraid of you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rin said.

  “This changes everything.” The Sorqan Sira barked a command. The riders standing nearest Rin seized her by the arms and hoisted her to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Rin struggled against their grip. “You can’t kill me, you still need me—”

  “Oh, child. We are not going to kill you.” The Sorqan Sira reached out and stroked the backs of her fingers down Rin’s cheek. “We are going to fix you.”

  Chapter 22

  The Ketreyids tied Rin against a tree, though this time they were considerably gentler. They placed her bound wrists in her lap instead of twisting them painfully behind her back, and they left her legs untied once the extent of her ankle injury became obvious.

  She couldn’t have run far even without a sprained ankle. Her limbs tingled from fatigue, her head was swimming, and her vision had started going fuzzy. She slouched back against the tree, eyes closed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything.

  “What are they doing?” Kitay asked.

  Rin focused with difficulty on the clearing. The Ketreyids were arranging wooden poles to create a latticed dome-like structure, just large enough to accommodate two people. When the dome was finished, they draped thick blankets over its top until it was completely covered.

  The Ketreyids had also added logs to their measly campfire. It was a roaring bonfire now, flames leaping higher than the Sorqan Sira’s head. Two riders carried a pile of rocks in from the shore, all at least the size of Rin’s head, and placed them over the flames one by one.

  “They’re preparing for a sweat,” Chaghan explained. “That’s what the rocks are for. You’ll go inside that yurt with the Sorqan Sira. They’ll put the rocks inside one by one and pour water over them while they’re hot. That fills the yurt with steam and drives the temperatures up to just under what will kill you.”

  “They’re going to steam me like a fish,” Rin said.

  “It’s risky. But that’s the only way to draw something like the Seal out. What Daji’s left inside you is like a venom. Over time it will keep festering in your subconscious and corrupt your mind.”

  She blinked in alarm. “You could have told me that!”

  “I didn’t think it was worth scaring you when I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “You weren’t going to tell me I was going mad?”

  “You would have noticed eventually.”

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “Calm down. The sweat will extract the venom from your mind.” Chaghan paused. “Well. It’ll give you a better chance than anything else. It doesn’t always work.”

  “That’s optimistic,” Kitay said.

  Chaghan shrugged. “If it doesn’t work, the Sorqan Sira will put you out of your misery.”

  “That’s nice of her,” Rin mumbled.

  “She’d do it swiftly,” Qara assured her. “Quick slice to the arteries, so clean you’ll barely even feel it. She’s done it before.”

  “Can you walk?” asked the Sorqan Sira.

  Rin jerked awake. She didn’t remember dozing off. She was still exhausted; her body felt like it was weighted down with rocks.

  She blinked the sleep from her eyes and glanced around. She was lying curled on the ground. Thankfully, someone had untied her arms. She pulled herself to a sitting position and stretched the cricks out of her back.

  “Can you walk?” the Sorqan Sira repeated.

  Rin flexed her ankle. Pain shot up her leg. “I don’t think so.”

  The Sorqan Sira raised her voice. “Bekter. Lift her.”

  Bekter glanced down at Rin with a look of distaste.

  “I hate you, too,” she told him.

  She was sure that he would lash out. But the Sorqan Sira’s command must truly have been law, because he simply knelt down, pulled her into his arms, and carried her to the yurt. He made no effort to be gentle. She jostled uncomfortably in his arms, and her sprained ankle smashed against the yurt’s entrance when he deposited her inside.

  She bit back a cry of pain to deny him the pleasure of hearing it. He shut the tent flap on her without another word.

  The yurt’s interior was pitch-black. The Ketreyids had padded its lattice sides with so many layers of blankets that not a single ray of light could penetrate the exterior.

  The air inside was cold, silent, and peaceful, like the belly of a cave. If Rin didn’t know where she was, she would have thought the walls were made of stone. She exhaled slowly, listening as her breath filled the empty space.

  Light flooded the yurt as the Sorqan Sira entered through the flap. She carried a bucket of water in one hand and a ladle in the other.

  “Lie down,” she told Rin. “Get as close as you can to the walls.”

  “Why?”

  “So you don’t fall onto the rocks when you faint.”

  Rin curled into the corner, back braced against the taut cloth, and pressed her cheek to the cool dirt. The tent flap closed. Rin heard the Sorqan Sira crawling across the yurt to sit right beside her.

  “Are you ready?” the Sorqan Sira asked.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No. But you should prepare your mind. This will go badly if you are frightened.” The Sorqan Sira called to the riders outside, “First stone.”

  A shovel appeared through the flap, bearing a single rock glowing a bright, angry red. The rider outside tipped the rock over into a muddy bed at the center of the yurt, withdrew the shovel, and shut the flap.

  In the darkness, Rin heard the Sorqan Sira dip the ladle into the water.

  “May the gods hear our prayers.” Water splashed over the rock. A loud hiss filled the yurt. “May they grant our wishes to commune.”

  A wave of steam hit Rin’s nose. She fought the urge to sneeze.

  “May they clear our eyes to see,” said the Sorqan Sira. “Second rock.”

  The rider deposited another rock into the mud bed. Another splash, another hiss. The steam grew thicker and hotter.

  “May they give us the ears to hear their voices.”

  Rin was starting to feel light-headed. Panic clawed at her chest. She could barely breathe. Even though her lungs filled with air, she felt as if she were drowning. She couldn’t lie still any longer. She pawed at the edges of the tent, desperate for a whiff of cold air, anything . . . the steam was in her face now, every part of her was burning, she was being boiled alive.

  The rocks kept coming—a third, a fourth, a fifth. The steam became unbearable. She tried covering her nose with her sleeve, but that, too, was damp, and trying to breathe through it was the worst form of torture.

  “Empty your mind,” the Sorqan Sira ordered.

  Rin’s heart pumped furiously, so hard that she could feel it in her temples.

  I’m going to die in here.

  “Stop resisting,” the Sorqan Sira said urgently. “Relax.”

  Relax? The only thing Rin wanted to do then was scramble out of the yurt. She didn’t care if she burned her feet on the rocks, didn’t care if she had to slip through the mud, she just wanted to get out into the open air where she could breathe.

  Only years of meditation practice under Jiang stopped her from getting up and running out.

  Breathe.

  Just breathe.

  She could feel her hea
rtbeat slowing, crawling nearly to a stop.

  Her vision swirled and sparked. She saw little lights in the darkness, candles that flickered in the edges of her sight, stars that winked away when she looked upon them . . .

  The Sorqan Sira’s breath tickled her ear. “Soon you will see many things. The Seal will tempt you. Remember that none of what you see is real. This will be a test of your resolve. Pass, and you will emerge intact, in full possession of your natural abilities. Fail, and I will cut your throat.”

  “I’m ready,” Rin gasped. “I know pain.”

  “This isn’t pain,” said the Sorqan Sira. “The Vipress never makes you suffer. She fulfills your wishes. She promises you peace when you know you ought to be fighting a war. That’s worse.”

  She pressed her thumb against Rin’s forehead. The ground tipped away.

  Rin saw a stream of bright colors, bold and gaudy, which resolved themselves into definable shapes only when she squinted. Reds and golds became streamers and firecrackers; blues and purples became fruits, berries, and cups of pouring wine.

  She looked around, dazed. She was standing in a massive banquet hall. It was twice the size of the Autumn Palace’s throne room, packed with long tables at which sat gorgeously dressed guests. She saw platters of dragon fruit carved like flowers, soup steaming from turtle shells, and entire roasted pigs sitting on tables of their very own, with attendants designated to carve away pieces of meat for the guests. Sorghum wine ran down gilded trenches carved into the table sides so that the diners could fill their cups themselves whenever they wished.

  Faces she knew drifted in and out of her sight, faces she hadn’t seen for so long that they felt like they were from a different lifetime. She saw Tutor Feyrik sitting two tables away, meticulously picking the bones from a cut of fish. She saw Masters Irjah and Jima, laughing at the high table with the rest of the Academy masters.

  Kesegi waved at her from his seat. He was unchanged since she’d last seen him—still ten years old, tawny-skinned, all knees and elbows. She stared at him. She’d forgotten what a wonderful smile he had, cheeky and irreverent.