by R. F. Kuang
He sighed. “We don’t know.”
“They still won’t give you a straight answer? All this because they’re still deciding?”
“Tarcquet claims they haven’t finished their evaluation,” Vaisra said. “I admit I do not understand their standards. When I ask, they utter idiotic vagaries. They want signs of rational sentience. Proof of the ability to self-govern.”
“But that’s ridiculous. If they’d just tell us what they wanted—”
“Ah, but then that would be cheating.” Vaisra’s lip curled. “They need proof that we’ve independently attained civilized society.”
“But that’s a paradox. We can’t achieve that unless they help.”
He looked exhausted. “I know.”
“Then that’s fucked.” She threw her hands up in the air. “This is all just a spectacle to them. They’re never going to come.”
“Maybe.” Vaisra looked decades older then, lined and weary. Rin imagined how Petra might sketch him in her book. Nikara man, middle-aged. Strong build. Reasonable intelligence. Inferior. “But we are the weaker party. We have no choice but to play their game. That’s how power works.”
She found Nezha waiting for her outside the palace gates.
“Hi,” she said tentatively. She looked him up and down, trying to get a read on his expression, but he was just as inscrutable as his father.
“Hello,” he said back.
She tried a smile. He didn’t return it. For a minute they just stood there staring at each other. Rin was torn between running into his arms again and simply running away. She still didn’t know where she stood with him. The last time they’d spoken—really spoken—she’d been sure that he would hate her forever.
“Can we talk?” he asked finally.
“We are talking.”
He shook his head. “Alone. In private. Not here.”
“Fine,” she said, and followed him along the canal to the edge of a pier, where the waves were loud enough to drown their voices out from any curious eavesdroppers.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said at last.
She leaned against the railing. “Go on.”
“I’m not a shaman.”
She threw her hands up. “Oh, don’t fuck with me—”
“I’m not,” he insisted. “I know I can do things. I mean, I know I’m linked to a god, and I can—sort of—call it, sometimes . . .”
“That’s what shamanism is.”
“You’re not listening to me. Whatever I am, it’s not what you are. My mind’s not my own—my body belongs to some—some thing . . .”
“That’s just it, Nezha. That’s how it is for all of us. And I know it hurts, and I know it’s hard, but—”
“You’re still not listening,” he snapped. “It’s no sacrifice for you. You and your god want the same damn thing. But I didn’t ask for this—”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, it doesn’t just happen by accident. You had to want it first. You had to ask the god.”
“But I didn’t. I never asked, and I’ve never wanted it.” The way Nezha said it made her fall quiet. He sounded like he was about to cry.
He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was so quiet she had to step closer to hear him. “Back at Boyang, you called me a coward.”
“Look, all I meant was that—”
“I’m going to tell you a story,” he interrupted. He was trembling. Why was he trembling? “I want you to just listen. And I want you to believe me. Please.”
She crossed her arms. “Fine.”
Nezha blinked hard and stared out over the water. “I told you once that I had another brother. His name was Mingzha.”
When he didn’t continue, Rin asked, “What was he like?”
“Hilarious,” Nezha said. “Chubby, loud, and incredible. He was everyone’s favorite. He was so full of energy, he glowed. My mother had miscarried twice before she gave birth to him, but Mingzha was perfect. He was never sick. My mother adored him. She was hugging him constantly. She dressed him up in so many golden bracelets and anklets that he jangled when he walked.” He shuddered. “She should have known better. Dragons like gold.”
“Dragons,” Rin repeated.
“You said you’d listen.”
“Sorry.”
Nezha was sickly pale. His skin was almost translucent; Rin could see blue veins under his jaw, crisscrossing with his scars.
“My siblings and I spent our childhood playing by the river,” he said. “There’s a grotto about a mile out from the entrance to this channel, this underwater crystal cave that the servants liked telling stories about, but Father had forbidden us to enter it. So of course all we ever wanted to do was explore it.
“My mother took sick one night when Mingzha was six. During that time my father had been called to Sinegard on the Empress’s orders, so the servants weren’t as concerned with watching us as they might have been. Jinzha was at the Academy. Muzha was abroad. So the responsibility for watching Mingzha fell to me.”
Nezha’s voice cracked. His eyes looked hollow, tortured. Rin didn’t want to hear any more. She had a sickening suspicion of where this story was headed, and she didn’t want it spoken out loud, because that would make it true.
She wanted to tell him it was all right, he didn’t have to tell her, they never had to speak about this again, but Nezha was talking faster and faster, like he was afraid the words would be buried inside him if he didn’t spit them out now.
“Mingzha wanted to—no, I wanted to explore that grotto. It was my idea to begin with. I put it in Mingzha’s head. It was my fault. He didn’t know any better.”
Rin reached for his arm. “Nezha, you don’t have to—”
He shoved her away. “Can you please shut up and just listen for once?”
She fell silent.
“He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he whispered. “That’s what scares me. They say the House of Yin is beautiful. But that’s because dragons like beautiful things, because dragons are beautiful and they create beauty. When he emerged from the cave, all I could think about was how bright his scales were, how lovely his form, how magnificent.”
But they’re not real, Rin thought desperately. Dragons are just stories.
Weren’t they?
Even if she didn’t believe in Nezha’s story, she believed in his pain. It was written all over his face.
Something had happened all those years ago. She just didn’t know what.
“So beautiful,” Nezha murmured, even as his knuckles whitened. “I couldn’t stop staring.
“Then he ate my brother. Devoured him in seconds. Have you watched a wild animal eat before? It’s not clean. It’s brutal. Mingzha didn’t even have time to scream. One moment he was there, clutching at my leg, and the next moment he was a mess of blood and gore and shining bones, and then there was nothing.
“But the dragon spared me. He said he had something better for me.” Nezha swallowed. “He said he was going to give me a gift. And then he claimed me for his own.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rin said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
Nezha didn’t seem to have even heard. “My mother wishes I’d died that day. I wish I’d died. I wish it had been me. But it’s selfish even to wish I were dead—because if I had died, then Mingzha would have lived, and the Dragon Lord would have cursed him like he cursed me, he would have touched him like he touched me.”
She didn’t dare ask what that meant.
“I’m going to show you something,” he said.
She was too stunned to say anything. She could only watch, aghast, as he undid the clasps of his tunic with trembling fingers.
He yanked it down and turned around. “Do you see this?”
It was his tattoo—an image of a dragon in blue and silver. She’d seen it before, but he wouldn’t remember.
She touched her index finger to the dragon’s head, wondering. Was this tattoo the reason Nezha had
always healed so quickly? He seemed able to survive anything—blunt trauma, poisonous gas, drowning.
But at what price?
“You said he claimed you for his own,” she said softly. “What does that mean?”
“It means it hurts,” he said. “Every moment that I’m not with him. It feels like anchors digging into my body; hooks trying to drag me back into the water.”
The mark didn’t look like a scar that was almost ten years old. It looked freshly inflicted; his skin shone an angry crimson. The glint of sunlight made the dragon seem as if it was writhing over Nezha’s muscles, pressing itself deeper and deeper into his raw skin.
“And if you went back to him?” she asked. “What would happen to you?”
“I’d become part of his collection,” he said. “He’d do what he wanted to me, satisfy himself, and I’d never leave. I’d be trapped, because I don’t think I can die. I’ve tried. I’ve cut my wrists, but I never bleed out before my wounds stitch themselves back together. I’ve jumped off the Red Cliffs, and sometimes the pain is enough for me to think I’ve managed it this time, but I always wake up. I think the Dragon is keeping me alive. At least until I return to him.
“The first time I saw that grotto, there were faces all along the cave floor. It took me a while to realize I was fated to become one of them.”
Rin withdrew her finger, suppressing a shudder.
“So now you know,” Nezha said. He yanked his shirt back on. His voice hardened. “You’re disgusted—don’t say you aren’t, I can see it on your face. I don’t care. But don’t you tell anyone what I’ve just told you, and don’t you ever fucking dare call me a coward to my face.”
Rin knew what she should have done. She should have said she was sorry. She should have acknowledged his pain, should have begged his forgiveness.
But the way he said it—his long-suffering martyr’s voice, like she had no right to question him, like he was doing her a favor by telling her . . . that infuriated her.
“I’m not disgusted by that,” she said.
“No?”
“I’m disgusted by you.” She fought to keep her voice level. “You’re acting like it’s a death sentence, but it’s not. It’s also a source of power. It’s kept you alive.”
“It’s a fucking abomination,” he said.
“Am I an abomination?”
“No, but—”
“So what, it’s fine for me to call the gods, but you’re too good for it? You can’t sully yourself?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Well, that’s the implication.”
“It’s different for you, you chose that—”
“You think that makes it hurt any less?” She was shouting now. “I thought I was going mad. For the longest time I didn’t know which thoughts were my own and which thoughts were the Phoenix’s. And it fucking hurt, Nezha, so don’t tell me I don’t know anything about that. There were days I wanted to die, too, but we’re not allowed to die, we’re too powerful. Your father said it himself. When you have this much power and this much is at stake you don’t fucking run from it.”
He looked furious. “You think I’m running?”
“All I know is that hundreds of soldiers are dead at the bottom of Lake Boyang, and you might have done something to prevent it.”
“Don’t you dare pin that on me,” he hissed. “I shouldn’t have this power. Neither of us should. We shouldn’t exist, we’re abominations, and we’d be better off dead.”
“But we do exist. By that logic it’s a good thing the Speerlies were killed.”
“Maybe the Speerlies should have been killed. Maybe every shaman in the Empire should die. Maybe my mother’s right—maybe we should get rid of you freaks, and get rid of the Hinterlanders, too, while we’re at it.”
She stared at him in disbelief. This wasn’t Nezha. Nezha—her Nezha—couldn’t possibly be saying this to her. She was so sure that he would realize he’d crossed the line, would back down and apologize, that she was stunned when his expression only hardened.
“Don’t tell me Altan wasn’t better off dead,” he said.
All shreds of pity she’d felt for him fled.
She pulled her shirt up. “Look at me.”
Immediately Nezha averted his eyes, but she grabbed at his chin and forced him to look at her sternum, down at the handprint scorched into her skin.
“You’re not the only one with scars,” she said.
Nezha wrenched himself from her grasp. “We are not the same.”
“Yes, we are.” She yanked her shirt back down. Her eyes blurred with tears. “The only difference between us is that I can suffer pain, and you’re still a fucking coward.”
She couldn’t remember how they parted, only that one moment they were glaring at each other and the next she was stumbling back to the barracks in a daze, alone.
She wanted to run after Nezha and say she was sorry, and she also wanted never to see him again.
Dimly she understood that something had broken irreparably between them. They’d fought before. They’d spent their first three years together fighting. But this wasn’t like those childish schoolyard squabbles.
They weren’t coming back from this.
But what was she supposed to do? Apologize? She had too much pride to grovel. She was so sure she was right. Yes, Nezha had been hurt, but hadn’t they all been hurt? She’d been through Golyn Niis. She’d been tortured on a lab table. She’d watched Altan die.
Nezha’s particular tragedy wasn’t worse because it had happened when he was a child. It wasn’t worse because he was too scared to confront it.
She’d been through hell, and she was stronger for it. It wasn’t her fault that he was too pathetic to do the same.
She found the Cike sitting in a circle on the barracks floor. Baji and Ramsa were playing dice while Suni watched from a top bunk to make sure Ramsa didn’t cheat, as he always did.
“Oh, dear,” Baji said as she approached. “Who made you cry?”
“Nezha,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ramsa clicked his tongue. “Ah, boy trouble.”
She sat down in between them. “Shut up.”
“Want me to do something about it? Put a missile in his toilet?”
She managed a smile. “Please don’t.”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
Baji tossed the dice on the floor. “So what happened up north? Where’s Chaghan?”
“Chaghan won’t be with us for a while,” she said. She took a deep breath and willed herself to push Nezha to the back of her mind. Forget him. Focus on something else. That was easy enough—she had so much to tell the Cike.
Over the next half hour she spoke to them about the Ketreyids, about Augus, and about what had happened in the forest.
They were predictably furious.
“So Chaghan was spying on us the entire time?” Baji demanded. “That lying fuck.”
“I always hated him,” Ramsa said. “Always prancing around with his mysterious mutters. Figures he’d been up to something.”
“Can you really be surprised, though?” Suni, to Rin’s shock, seemed the least bothered. “You had to know they had some other agenda. What else would Hinterlanders be doing in the Cike?”
“Don’t call them Hinterlanders,” Rin said automatically.
Ramsa ignored her. “So what were the Hinterlanders going to do if Chaghan decided we were getting too dangerous?”
“Kill you, probably,” Baji said. “Pity they went back north, though. Would have been nice to have someone deal with Feylen. It’ll be a struggle.”
“A struggle?” Ramsa repeated. He laughed weakly. “You think last time we tried to put him down was a struggle?”
“What happened last time?” Rin asked.
“Tyr and Trengsin lured him into a small cave and stabbed so many knives through his body that even if he could have shamanized, it wouldn’t have done a lick of good,” Baji s
aid. “It was kind of funny, really. When they brought him back out he looked like a pincushion.”
“And Tyr was all right with that?” Rin asked.
“What do you think?” Baji asked. “Of course not. But that was his job. You can’t command the Cike if you don’t have the stomach to cull.”
A cascade of footsteps sounded outside the room. Rin peered around the door to see a line of soldiers marching out, fully equipped with shields and halberds. “Where are they all going? I thought the Militia hadn’t moved south yet.”
“It’s refugee patrol,” Baji said.
She blinked. “Refugee patrol?”
“You didn’t see all them coming in?” Ramsa asked. “They were pretty hard to miss.”
“We came in through the Red Cliffs,” Rin said. “I haven’t seen anything but the palace. What do you mean, refugees?”
Ramsa exchanged an uncomfortable look with Baji. “You missed a lot while you were gone, I think.”
Rin didn’t like what that implied. She stood up. “Take me there.”
“Our patrol shift isn’t until tomorrow morning,” Ramsa said.
“I don’t care.”
“But they’re fussy about that,” Ramsa insisted. “Security is tight on the refugee border, they’re not going to let us through.”
“I’m the Speerly,” Rin said. “Do you think I give a shit?”
“Fine.” Baji hauled himself to his feet. “I’ll take you. But you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter 26
“Makes the barracks look nice, huh?” Ramsa asked.
Rin didn’t know what to say.
The refugee district was an ocean of people crammed into endless rows of tents stretching toward the valley. The crowds had been kept out of the city proper, hemmed in behind hastily constructed barriers of shipping planks and driftwood.
It looked as if a giant had drawn a line in the sand with one finger and pushed everyone to one side. Republican soldiers wielding halberds paced back and forth in front of the barrier, though Rin wasn’t sure who they were guarding—the refugees or the citizens.
“The refugees aren’t allowed past that barrier,” Baji explained. “The, uh, citizens didn’t want them crowding the streets.”