The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  “I don’t want him to be gone,” she whispered.

  “Our dead don’t leave us,” said the Sorqan Sira. “They’ll haunt you as long as you let them. That boy is a disease on your mind. Forget him.”

  “I can’t.” She pressed her face into her hands. “He was brilliant. He was different. You’d have never met anyone like him.”

  “You would be stunned.” The Sorqan Sira looked very sad. “You have no idea how many men are like Altan Trengsin.”

  “Rin! Oh, gods.” Kitay was at her side the instant she emerged from the yurt. She knew, could tell from the expression on his face, that he’d been waiting outside, teeth clenched in anxiety, for hours.

  “Hold her up,” the Sorqan Sira told him.

  He slipped an arm around her waist to take the weight off her ankle. “You’re all right?”

  She nodded. Together they limped forward.

  “Are you sure?” he pressed.

  “I’m better,” she murmured. “I think I’m better than I’ve been in a long time.”

  She stood for a minute, leaning against his shoulder, simply basking in the cold air. She had never known that the air itself could taste or feel so sweet. The sensation of the wind against her face was crisp and delicious, more refreshing than cool rainwater.

  “Rin,” Kitay said.

  She opened her eyes. “What?”

  He was staring pointedly at her chest.

  Rin fumbled at her front, wondering if her clothes had somehow burned away in the heat. She wouldn’t have noticed if they had. The sensation of having a physical body still felt so entirely new to her that she might as well have been walking around naked.

  “What is it?” she asked, dazed.

  The Sorqan Sira said nothing.

  “Look down,” Kitay said. His voice sounded oddly strangled.

  She glanced down.

  “Oh,” she said faintly.

  A black handprint was scorched into her skin like a brand just below her sternum.

  Kitay whirled on the Sorqan Sira. “What did you—”

  “It wasn’t her,” Rin said.

  This mark was Altan’s work and legacy.

  That bastard.

  Kitay was watching her carefully. “Are you all right with this?”

  “No,” she said.

  She put her hand over her chest, placed her fingers inside the outlines of Altan’s.

  His hand was so much bigger than hers.

  She let her hand drop. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “Rin . . .”

  “He’s dead,” she said, voice trembling. “He’s dead, he’s gone, do you understand? He’s gone, and he’s never going to touch me again.”

  “I know,” said Kitay. “He won’t.”

  “Call the flame,” the Sorqan Sira said abruptly. She had been standing quietly, observing their exchange, but now her voice carried an odd urgency. “Do it now.”

  “Hold on,” Kitay said. “She’s weak, she’s exhausted—”

  “She must do it now,” the Sorqan Sira insisted. She looked strangely frightened, and that terrified Rin. “I have to know.”

  “Be reasonable—” Kitay began, but Rin shook her head.

  “No. She’s right. Stand back.”

  He let go of her arm and stepped several paces backward.

  She closed her eyes, exhaled, and let her mind sink into the state of ecstasy. The place where rage met power. And for the first time in months she let herself hope that she might feel the flame again, a hope that had become as unattainable as flying.

  It was infinitely easier now to generate the anger. She could plunder her own memories with abandon. There were no more parts of her mind that she didn’t dare prod, that still bled like open wounds.

  She traversed a familiar path through the void until she saw the Phoenix as if through a mist; heard it like an echo, felt it like the remembrance of a touch.

  She felt for its rage, and she pulled.

  The fire didn’t come.

  Something pulsed.

  Flashes of light seared behind her eyelids.

  The Seal remained, burned into her mind, still present. The ghost of Altan’s laughter echoed in her ears.

  Rin held the flame in the palm of her hand for only an instant, just enough to tantalize her and leave her gasping for more, and then it disappeared.

  There was no pain this time, no immediate threat that she might be sucked into a vision and lose her mind to the fantasy, but still Rin sank to her knees and screamed.

  Chapter 23

  “There’s another way,” said the Sorqan Sira.

  “Shut up,” Rin said.

  She’d come so close. She’d almost had the fire back, she’d tasted it, only to have it wrenched out of her grasp. She wanted to lash out at something, she just didn’t know who or what, and the sheer pressure made her feel like she might explode. “You said you’d fixed it.”

  “The Seal is neutralized,” said the Sorqan Sira. “It cannot corrupt you any longer. But the venom ran deep, and it still blocks your access to the world of spirit—”

  “Fuck all you know.”

  “Rin, don’t,” Kitay warned.

  She ignored him. She knew this wasn’t the Sorqan Sira’s fault, but still she wanted to hurt, to cut. “Your people don’t know shit. No wonder the Trifecta killed you off, no wonder you lost to three fucking teenagers—”

  A shrieking noise slammed into her mind. She fell to her knees, but the noise kept reverberating, growing louder and louder until it solidified into words that vibrated in her bones.

  You dare reproach me? The Sorqan Sira loomed over Rin like a giant, standing tall as a mountain while everything else in the clearing shrank. I am the Mother of the Ketreyids. I rule the north of the Baghra, where the scorpions are fat with poison and the great-mawed sandworms lie in the red sands, ready to swallow camels whole. I have tamed a land created to wither humans away until they are polished bone. Do not think to defy me.

  Rin couldn’t speak for the pain. The shriek intensified for several torturous seconds before finally ebbing away. She rolled onto her back and sucked in air in great, heaving gulps.

  Kitay helped her sit up. “This is why we are polite to our allies.”

  “I will await your apology,” said the Sorqan Sira.

  “I’m sorry,” Rin muttered. “I just—I thought I had it back.”

  She’d numbed herself to her loss during the campaign. She hadn’t realized how desperately she still wanted the fire back until she touched it again, just for a moment, and everything had come rushing back; the thrill, the blaze, the sheer roaring power.

  “Do not presume that all is lost,” said the Sorqan Sira. “You will never access the Phoenix on your own unless Daji removes the Seal. That she will never do.”

  “Then it’s all over,” Rin said.

  “No. Not if another soul calls the Phoenix for you. A soul that is bound to your own.” The Sorqan Sira looked pointedly at Kitay.

  He blinked, confused.

  “No,” Rin said immediately. “I don’t—I don’t care what you can do, no—”

  “Let her speak,” Kitay said.

  “No, you don’t understand the risk—”

  “Yes, he does,” said the Sorqan Sira.

  “But he doesn’t know anything about the gods!” Rin cried.

  “He doesn’t now. Once you’ve been twinned, he will know everything.”

  “Twinned?” Kitay repeated.

  “Do you understand the nature of Chaghan and Qara’s bond?” the Sorqan Sira asked.

  Kitay shook his head.

  “They’re spiritually linked,” Rin said flatly. “Cut him, and she feels the pain. Kill him and she dies.”

  Horror flitted across Kitay’s face. He tried to mask it, but she saw.

  “The anchor bond connects your souls across the psychospiritual plane,” said the Sorqan Sira. “You can still call the Phoenix if you do it through the boy. He will be your cond
uit. The divine power will flow straight through him and into you.”

  “I’m going to become a shaman?” Kitay asked.

  “No. You will only lend your mind to one. She will call the god through you.” The Sorqan Sira tilted her head, considering the both of them. “You are good friends, yes?”

  “Yes,” Kitay said.

  “Good. The anchor takes best on two souls that are already familiar. It’s stronger. More stable. Can you bear a little pain?”

  “Yes,” Kitay said again.

  “Then we should perform the bonding ritual as soon as we can.”

  “Absolutely not,” Rin said.

  “I’ll do it,” Kitay said firmly. “Just tell me how.”

  “No, I’m not letting you—”

  “I’m not asking your permission, Rin. We don’t have another choice.”

  “But you could die!”

  He barked out a laugh. “We’re soldiers. We’re always about to die.”

  Rin stared at him in disbelief. How could he sound so cavalier? Did he not understand the risk?

  Kitay had survived Sinegard. Golyn Niis. Boyang. He’d suffered enough pain for a lifetime. She wasn’t putting him through this, too. She’d never be able to forgive herself.

  “You have no idea what it’s like,” she said. “You’ve never spoken to the gods, you—”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t get to talk like that. You don’t get to keep this world from me, like I’m too stupid or too weak for it—”

  “I don’t think you’re weak.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because you don’t know anything about this world, and you never should.” She didn’t care if the Phoenix tormented her, but Kitay . . . Kitay was pure. He was the best person she had ever known. Kitay shouldn’t know how it felt to call a god of vengeance. Kitay was the last thing in the world that was still fundamentally kind and good, and she’d die before she corrupted that. “You have no idea how it feels. The gods will break you.”

  “Do you want the fire back?” Kitay asked.

  “What?”

  “Do you want the fire back? If you can call the Phoenix again, will you use it to win us this war?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I want it more than anything. But I can’t ask you to do this for me.”

  “Then you don’t have to ask.” He turned to the Sorqan Sira. “Anchor us. Just tell me what I have to do.”

  The Sorqan Sira was looking at Kitay with an expression that almost amounted to respect. A thin smile spread across her face. “As you wish.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Chaghan said. “You take the agaric. You kill the sacrifice. Then the Sorqan Sira binds you, and your souls are linked together forever after. You don’t need to do much but exist, really.”

  “Why a living sacrifice?” Kitay asked.

  “Because there’s power in a soul released from the material world,” Qara said. “The Sorqan Sira will use that power to forge your bond.”

  Chaghan and Qara had been enlisted to prepare Rin and Kitay for the ritual, which involved a tedious process of painting a line of characters down their bare arms, running from their shoulders to the tips of their middle fingers. The characters had to be written at precisely the same time, each stroke synchronous with its pair.

  The twins worked with remarkable coordination, which Rin would have appreciated more if she weren’t so upset.

  “Stop moving,” Chaghan said. “You’re making the ink bleed.”

  “Then write faster,” she snapped.

  “That would be nice,” Kitay said amiably. “I need to pee.”

  Chaghan dipped his brush into an inkwell and shook away the excess drops. “Ruin one more character and we’ll have to start over.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Rin grumbled. “Why don’t you just take another hour? With luck the war will be over before you’re done!”

  Chaghan lowered his brush. “We didn’t have a choice in this. You know that.”

  “I know you’re a little bitch,” she said.

  “You have no other choice.”

  “Fuck you.”

  It was a petty exchange, and it didn’t make Rin feel nearly as good as she thought it would. It only exhausted her. Because Chaghan was right—the twins had to comply with the Sorqan Sira or they would certainly have been killed, and if they hadn’t, Rin would still have no way out.

  “It’ll be all right,” Qara said gently. “An anchor makes you stronger. More stable.”

  Rin scoffed. “How? It just seems like a good way to lose two soldiers for every one.”

  “Because it makes you resilient to the gods. Every time you call them down, you are like a lantern, drifting away from your body. Drift too far, and the gods root themselves in your physical form instead. That’s when you lose your mind.”

  “Is that what happened to this Feylen?” Kitay asked.

  “Yes,” said Qara. “He went out too far, got lost, and the god planted itself inside.”

  “Interesting,” Kitay said. “And the anchor absolutely prevents that?”

  He sounded far too excited about the procedure. He drank the twins’ words in with a hungry expression, cataloging every new sliver of information into his prodigious memory. Rin could almost see the gears turning in his mind.

  That scared her. She didn’t want him entranced with this world. She wanted him to run far, far away.

  “It’s not perfect, but it makes it much harder to lose your mind,” Chaghan said. “The gods can’t uproot you with an anchor. You can drift as far as you want into the world of spirit, and you’ll always have a way to come back.”

  “You’re saying I’ll stop Rin from going crazy,” Kitay said.

  “She’s already crazy,” Chaghan said.

  “Fair enough,” Kitay said.

  The twins worked in silence for a long while. Rin sat up straight, eyes closed, breathing steadily as she felt the wet brush tip move against her bare skin.

  What if the anchor did make her stronger? She couldn’t help feeling a thrill of hope at the thought. What would it be like to call the Phoenix without fear of losing her mind to the rage? She might summon fire whenever she wanted, for as long as she wanted. She might control it the way Altan had.

  But was it worth it? The sacrifice seemed so immense—not just for Kitay, but for her. To link her life to his would be such an unpredictable, terrifying liability. She would never be safe unless Kitay was, too.

  Unless she could protect him. Unless she could guarantee that Kitay was never in danger.

  At last Chaghan put his brush down. “You’re finished.”

  Rin stretched and examined her arms. Swirling black script covered her skin, made of words that almost resembled a language that she could understand. “That’s it?”

  “Not yet.” Chaghan passed them a fistful of red-capped toadstools. “Eat these.”

  Kitay prodded a toadstool with his finger. “What are these?”

  “Fly agaric. You can find it near birch and fir trees.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “To open up the crack between the worlds,” Qara said.

  Kitay looked confused.

  “Tell him what it’s really for,” Rin said.

  Qara smiled. “To get you incredibly high. Much more elegant than poppy seeds. Faster, too.”

  Kitay turned the mushroom over in his hand. “Looks poisonous.”

  “They’re psychedelics,” Chaghan said. “They’re all poisonous. The whole point is to deliver you right to the doorstep of the afterworld.”

  Rin popped the mushrooms in her mouth and chewed. They were tough and tasteless, and she had to work her teeth for several minutes before they were tender enough to go down. She had the unpleasant sensation that she was chewing through a lump of flesh every time her teeth cut into the fibrous chunks.

  Chaghan passed Kitay a wooden cup. “If you don’t want to eat the mushroom you can drink the agaric instead.”

 
; Kitay sniffed it, took a sip, and gagged. “What’s in this?”

  “Horse urine,” Chaghan said cheerfully. “We feed the mushrooms to the horses, and you get the drug after it passes. Goes down easier.”

  “Your people are disgusting,” Kitay muttered. He pinched his nose, tossed the contents of the cup back into his throat, and gagged.

  Rin swallowed. Dry lumps of mushroom pushed painfully down her throat.

  “What happens to you when your anchor dies?” she asked.

  “You die,” Chaghan said. “Your souls are bound, which means they depart this earth together. One pulls the other along.”

  “That’s not strictly true,” Qara said. “It’s a choice. You can choose to depart this earth together. Or you may break the bond.”

  “You can?” Rin asked. “How?”

  Qara exchanged a look with Chaghan. “With your last word. If both partners are willing.”

  Kitay frowned. “I don’t understand. Why is this a liability, then?”

  “Because once you have an anchor, they become a part of your soul. Your very existence. They know your thoughts. They feel what you feel. They are the only ones who completely and fully understand you. Most would die rather than give that up.”

  “And you’d both have to be in the same place when one of you died,” said Chaghan. “Most people aren’t.”

  “But you can break it,” Rin said.

  “You could,” Chaghan said. “Though I doubt the Sorqan Sira will teach you how.”

  Of course not. Rin knew the Sorqan Sira would want Kitay as insurance—not only to ensure that her weapon against Daji kept working, but as a failsafe in case she ever decided to put Rin down.

  “Did Altan have an anchor?” she asked. Altan had possessed an eerie amount of control for a Speerly.

  “No. The Speerlies didn’t know how to do it. Altan was . . . whatever Altan was doing, that was inhuman. Near the end, he was staying sane off of sheer willpower alone.” Chaghan swallowed. “I offered many times. He always said no.”

  “But you already have an anchor,” said Rin. “You can have more than one?”

  “Not at the same time. A pairwise bond is optimal. A triangular bond is deeply unstable, because unpredictability in reciprocation means that any defection on one end affects the other two in ways that you cannot protect against.”