The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  If she were in a different mood, she would have yelled at the twins for their deception. They’d been spies for all of these years, watching the Cike to determine whether or not they would hold stable. Whether they did a good enough job culling their own, immuring the maddest among them in the Chuluu Korikh.

  What if the twins had decided that the Cike had grown too dangerous? Would they have simply killed them off? Certainly the Ketreyids felt as if they had the right. They looked down on Nikara shamans with the same supercilious arrogance as the Hesperians, and Rin hated that.

  But she held her tongue. Chaghan and Qara had suffered enough.

  And she, if anyone, knew what it was like to be an outcast in her own country.

  “These yurts.” Kitay put his palms on the walls; his outspread arms reached across a third of the diameter of the hut. “They’re all this small?”

  “We build them even smaller on the steppe,” Qara said. “You’re from the south; you’ve never seen real winds.”

  “I’m from Sinegard,” Kitay said.

  “That’s not the true north. Everything below the sand dunes counts as the south to us. On the steppe, the night gusts can rip the flesh off your face if they don’t freeze you to death first. We stay in yurts because the steppe will kill you otherwise.”

  No one had a response to that. A peaceful quiet fell over the yurt. Kitay and the twins were asleep in moments; Rin could tell by the sound of their steady, even breathing.

  She lay awake with her trident clutched close to her chest, staring at the open roof above her, that perfect circle that revealed the night sky. She felt like a little rodent burrowing down in its hole, trying to pretend that if it lay low enough, then the world outside wouldn’t bother it.

  Maybe the Ketreyids stayed in their yurts to hide from the winds. Or maybe, she thought, with stars this bright, if you believed that above you lay the cosmos, then you had to construct a yurt to provide some temporary feeling of materiality. Otherwise, under the weight of swirling divinity, you might feel you had no significance at all.

  Chapter 24

  A fresh blanket of snow had fallen while they slept. It made the sun shine brighter, the air bite colder. Rin limped outside and stretched her aching muscles, squinting against the harsh light.

  The Ketreyids were eating in shifts. Six riders at a time sat by the fire, wolfing down their food while the others stood guard by the periphery.

  “Eat your fill.” The Sorqan Sira ladled out two steaming bowls of stew and handed them to Rin and Kitay. “You have a hard ride before you. We’ll pack you a bag of dried meat and some yak’s milk, but eat as much as you can now.”

  Rin took the proffered bowl. The stew smelled terribly good. She huddled on the ground and pressed next to Kitay for warmth, bony elbows touching bony hips. Little details about him seemed to stand out in stark relief. She had never noticed before just how long and thin his fingers were, or how he always smelled faintly of ink and dust, or how his wiry hair curled just so at the tips.

  She’d known him for more than four years by now, but every time she looked at him, she discovered something new.

  “So that’s it?” Kitay asked the Sorqan Sira. “You’re letting us go? No strings attached?”

  “The terms are met,” she replied. “We have no reason to harm you now.”

  “So what am I to you?” Rin asked. “A pet on a long leash?”

  “You are my gamble. A trained wolf set loose.”

  “To kill an enemy that you can’t face,” Rin said.

  The Sorqan Sira smiled, displaying teeth. “Be glad that we still have some use for you.”

  Rin didn’t like her phrasing. “What happens if I succeed, and you no longer have use for me?”

  “Then we’ll let you keep your lives as a token of our gratitude.”

  “And what happens if you decide I’m a threat again?”

  “Then we’ll find you again.” The Sorqan Sira nodded to Kitay. “And this time, his life will be on the line.”

  Rin had no doubt the Sorqan Sira would put an arrow through Kitay’s heart without hesitation.

  “You still don’t trust me,” she said. “You’re playing a long game with us, and the anchor bond was your insurance.”

  The Sorqan Sira sighed. “I am afraid, child. And I have the right to be. The last time we taught Nikara shamans how to anchor themselves, they turned on us.”

  “But I’m nothing like them.”

  “You are far too much like them. You have the same eyes. Angry. Desperate. You’ve seen too much. You hate too much. Those three were younger than you when they came to us, more timid and afraid, and still they slaughtered thousands of innocents. You are older than they were, and you’ve done far worse.”

  “That’s not the same,” Rin said. “The Federation—”

  “Deserved it?” asked the Sorqan Sira. “Every single one? Even the women? The children?”

  Rin flushed. “But I’m not—I didn’t do it because I liked it. I’m not like them.”

  Not like that vision of a younger Jiang, who laughed when he killed, who seemed to delight in being drenched in blood. Not like Daji.

  “That’s what they thought about themselves, too,” said the Sorqan Sira. “But the gods corrupted them, just as they will corrupt you. The gods manifest your worst and cruelest instincts. You think you are in control, but your mind erodes by the second. To call the gods is to gamble with madness.”

  “It’s better than doing nothing.” Rin knew that she was already walking a fine line, that she ought to keep her mouth shut, but the Ketreyids’ constant high-minded pacifistic lecturing infuriated her. “I’d rather go mad than hide behind the Baghra Desert and pretend that atrocities aren’t happening when I could have done something about them.”

  The Sorqan Sira chuckled. “You think that we did nothing? Is that what they taught you?”

  “I know that millions died during the first two Poppy Wars. And I know that your people never crossed down south to stop it.”

  “How many people do you think Vaisra’s war has killed?” the Sorqan Sira asked.

  “Fewer than would have died otherwise,” Rin said.

  The Sorqan Sira didn’t answer. She just let the silence stretch on and on until Rin’s answer began to seem ridiculous.

  Rin picked at her food, no longer hungry.

  “What will you do with the foreigners?” Kitay asked.

  Rin had forgotten about the Hesperians until Kitay asked. She peered around the camp but couldn’t spot them. Then she saw a larger yurt a little off to the edge of the clearing, guarded heavily by Bekter and his riders.

  “Perhaps we will kill them.” The Sorqan Sira shrugged. “They are holy men, and nothing good ever comes of the Hesperian religion.”

  “Why do you say that?” Kitay asked.

  “They believe in a singular and all-powerful deity, which means they cannot accept the truth of other gods. And when nations start to believe that other beliefs lead to damnation, violence becomes inevitable.” The Sorqan Sira cocked her head. “What do you think? Shall we shoot them? It’s kinder than leaving them to die of exposure.”

  “Don’t kill them,” Rin said quickly. Tarcquet made her uncomfortable and Sister Petra made her want to put her hand through a wall, but Augus had never struck her as anything other than naive and well-intentioned. “Those kids are missionaries, not soldiers. They’re harmless.”

  “Those weapons are not harmless,” said the Sorqan Sira.

  “No,” Kitay said. “They are faster and deadlier than crossbows, and they are most deadly in inexperienced hands. I would not return their weapons.”

  “Safe passage back will be difficult, then. We can spare only one steed for the two of you. They will have to walk through enemy territory.”

  “Would you give them supplies to make rafts?” Rin asked.

  The Sorqan Sira frowned, considering. “Can they find their own way back over the rivers?”

  Rin hesit
ated. Her altruism extended only so far. She didn’t want to see Augus dead, but she wasn’t about to waste time shepherding children who never should have come along in the first place.

  She turned to Kitay. “If they can make it to the Western Murui, they’re fine, right?”

  He shrugged. “More or less. Tributaries get tricky. They could get lost. Could end up at Khurdalain.”

  She could accept that risk. It did enough to alleviate her conscience. If Augus and his companions weren’t clever enough to make it back to Arlong, then that was their own fault. Augus had been kind to her once. She’d made sure the Ketreyids didn’t put an arrow in his head. She owed him nothing more than that.

  Chaghan was alone when Rin found him, sitting at the edge of the river with his knees pulled up to his chest.

  “Don’t they think you might run?” she asked.

  He gave her a wry smile. “You know I don’t run very fast.”

  She sat down beside him. “So what happens to you now?”

  His face was unreadable. “The Sorqan Sira doesn’t trust us to watch over the Cike any longer. She’s taking us back north.”

  “And what will happen to you there?”

  His throat bobbed. “That depends.”

  She knew he didn’t want her pity, so she didn’t burden him with it. She took a deep breath. “I wanted to say thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “You vouched for me.”

  “I was just saving my own skin.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was also rather hoping that you wouldn’t die,” he admitted.

  “Thanks for that.”

  An awkward silence passed between them. She saw Chaghan’s eyes dart toward her several times, as if he was debating whether to broach the next subject.

  “Say it,” she finally said.

  “Do you really want me to?”

  “Yes, if you’re going to be this awkward otherwise.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Inside the Seal, what you saw—”

  “It was Altan,” she said promptly. “Altan, alive. That’s what I saw. He was alive.”

  Chaghan exhaled. “So you killed him?”

  “I gave him what he wanted,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “I also saw him happy,” she said. “He was different. He wasn’t suffering. He’d never suffered. He was happy. That’s how I’ll remember him.”

  Chaghan didn’t say anything for a long time. She knew he was trying not to cry in front of her; she could see the tears welling up in his eyes.

  “Is that real?” she asked. “In another world, is that real? Or was the Seal just showing me what I wanted to see?”

  “I don’t know,” Chaghan said. “Our world is a dream of the gods. Maybe they have other dreams. But all we have is this story unfolding, and in the script of this world, nothing’s going to bring Altan back to life.”

  Rin leaned back. “I thought I knew how this world worked. How the cosmos worked. But I don’t know anything.”

  “Most Nikara don’t,” Chaghan said, and he didn’t even try to mask his arrogance.

  Rin snorted. “And you do?”

  “We know what constitutes the nature of reality,” said Chaghan. “We’ve understood it for years. But your people are fragile and desperate fools. They don’t know what’s real and what’s false, so they’ll cling to their little truths, because it’s better than imagining that their world might not matter so much after all.”

  It was starting to become clear to her now, why the Hinterlanders might view themselves as caretakers of the universe. Who else understood the nature of the cosmos like they did? Who even came close?

  Perhaps Jiang had known, a long time ago when his mind was still his. But the man she’d known had been shattered, and the secrets he’d taught her were only fragments of the truth.

  “I thought it was hubris, what you did,” she murmured. “But it’s kindness. The Hinterlanders maintain the illusion so you can let everyone else live in the lie.”

  “Don’t call us that,” Chaghan said sharply. “Hinterlander is not a name. Only the Empire uses this word, because you assume everyone who lives on the steppe is the same. Naimads are not Ketreyids. Call us by our names.”

  “I’m sorry.” She crossed her arms against her chest, shivering against the biting wind. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “You’re going to ask me regardless.”

  “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “I don’t hate you,” he said automatically.

  “Sure seemed like it. Seemed like it for a long time, even before Altan died.”

  Finally he twisted around to face her. “I can’t look at you and not see him.”

  She knew he would say that. She knew, and still it hurt. “You thought I couldn’t live up to him. And that’s—that’s fair, I never could. And—and if you were jealous, for some reason, I understand that, too, but you should just know that—”

  “I wasn’t just jealous,” he said. “I was angry. At both of us. I was watching you make all the same mistakes Altan did, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I saw Altan confused and angry all those years, and I saw him walk down the path he chose like a blind child, and I thought precisely the same was happening to you.”

  “But I know what I’m doing. I’m not blind like he was—”

  “Yes, you are, you don’t even realize it. Your kind has been treated as slaves for so long that you’ve forgotten what it is like to be free. You’re easily angered, and you latch quickly onto things—opium, people, ideas—that soothe your pain, even temporarily. And that makes you terribly easy to manipulate.” Chaghan paused. “I’m sorry. Do I offend?”

  “Vaisra isn’t manipulating me,” Rin insisted. “He’s . . . we’re fighting for something good. Something worth fighting for.”

  He gave her a long look. “And you really believe in his Republic?”

  “I believe the Republic is a better alternative to anything we’ve got,” she said. “Daji has to die. Vaisra’s our best shot at killing her. And whatever happens next can’t possibly be worse than the Empire.”

  “You really think that?”

  Rin didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Didn’t want her mind to drift in that direction. Not once since the disaster at Lake Boyang had she seriously considered not returning to Arlong, or the idea that there might not be anything to return to.

  She had too much power now, too much rage, and she needed a cause for which to burn. Vaisra’s Republic was her anchor. Without that, she’d be lost, drifting. That thought terrified her.

  “I have to do this,” she said. “Otherwise I have nothing.”

  “If you say so.” Chaghan turned to gaze at the river. He seemed to have given up on arguing the point. She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not. “Maybe you’re right. But eventually, you’ll have to ask yourself precisely what you’re fighting for. And you’ll have to find a reason to live past vengeance. Altan never managed that.”

  “You’re sure you know how to ride this?” Qara handed the warhorse’s reins to Rin.

  “No, but Kitay does.” Rin peered up at the black warhorse with trepidation. She’d never been entirely comfortable around horses—they were so much bigger up close, their hooves so poised to split her head open—but Kitay had spent enough of his childhood riding around on his family’s estate that he could handle most animals with ease.

  “Keep off the main roads,” Chaghan said. “My birds tell me the Empire’s taking back much of its territory. You’ll run into Militia patrols if you’re seen traveling in broad daylight. Stick to the tree line when you can.”

  Rin was about to ask about the horse’s feed when Chaghan and Qara both looked sharply to the left, like two hunting animals alerted to their prey.

  She heard the noises a second later. Shouts from the Ketreyid camp. Arrows thudding into bodies. And a moment later, the unmistakable sound of a firing arquebus.

  “Shit,
” Kitay breathed.

  The twins were already racing back. Rin snatched her trident off the ground and followed.

  The camp was in chaos. Ketreyids ran about, grabbing at the reins of spooked horses trying to break free. The air was sharp with the acrid smoke of fire powder. Bullet holes riddled the yurts. Ketreyid bodies were strewn across the ground. And the Gray Company missionaries, half of them wielding arquebuses, fired indiscriminately around the camp.

  How had they gotten their arquebuses back?

  Rin heard a shot and threw herself to the ground as a bullet burrowed into the tree behind her.

  Arrows whistled overhead. Each one found its mark with a thickening thud. A handful of Hesperians dropped to the ground, arrows pierced cleanly into their skulls. A few others ran, panicked, from the clearing. No one chased them.

  The only one left was Augus. He wielded two arquebuses, one in each hand, their barrels drooping clumsily against the ground.

  He’d never fired one. Rin could tell—he was shaking; he had absolutely no idea what to do.

  The Sorqan Sira uttered a command under her breath. The riders moved at once. Instantly twelve arrowheads were pointed at Augus, bowstrings stretching taut.

  “Don’t shoot!” Rin cried. She ran forward, blocking their arrows’ paths with her body. “Don’t shoot—please, he’s confused—”

  Augus didn’t seem to notice. His eyes locked on Rin’s. He raised the arquebus in his right hand. The barrel formed a direct line to her chest.

  It didn’t matter if he’d never fired an arquebus before. He couldn’t miss. Not from this distance.

  “Demon,” he said.

  “Rin, get back,” Kitay said tightly.

  Rin stood frozen, unable to move. Augus waved his weapons erratically about, pointed them alternately between the Sorqan Sira, Rin, and Kitay. “Maker give me the courage, protect me from these heathens . . .”

  “What is he saying?” the Sorqan Sira demanded.

  Augus squeezed his eyes shut. “Show them the strength of heaven and smite them with your divine justice . . .”

  “Augus, stop!” Rin walked forward, hands raised in what she hoped was a nonthreatening gesture, and spoke in clearly enunciated Hesperian. “You have nothing to be afraid of. These people aren’t your enemies, they’re not going to hurt you—”