The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  Why had she been using a trident for so long? That seemed so stupid in retrospect. She’d practiced with the sword for years at Sinegard; it felt like a natural extension of her arm. Wielding one again felt like trading a ceremonial gown for a comfortable set of training clothes.

  She gave a yell and hurled the sword toward the opposite wall. It stuck into the wood right where she’d aimed, perfectly angled, hilt quivering.

  “How is it?” asked the blacksmith.

  “It’s perfect,” she said, satisfied.

  Fuck Altan, fuck his legacy, and fuck his trident. It was time she started using a weapon that would keep her alive.

  The sun had gone down by the time she returned to the barracks. Rin moved hastily through the canals, arms sore from hours of lugging sandbags into empty houses.

  “Rin?” A small figure emerged from the corner just before she reached the door.

  She jumped, startled. Her new blades clattered to the floor.

  “It’s just me.” The figure stepped into the light.

  “Kesegi?” She swiped the swords off the ground. “How’d you get past the barrier?”

  “I need you to come with me.” He reached out to seize her hand. “Quick.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I can’t tell you here.” He bit his lip, eyes darting nervously around the barracks. “But I’m in trouble. Will you come?”

  “I . . .” Rin glanced distractedly toward the barracks. This could go terribly badly. She’d been ordered not to interact with the refugees unless she was on duty, and given the current tensions in Arlong, she would be the last to receive the benefit of the doubt. What if someone saw?

  “Please,” Kesegi said. “It’s bad.”

  She swallowed. What was she thinking? This was Kesegi. Kesegi was family, the very last family that she had. “Of course. Lead the way.”

  Kesegi set off at a run. She followed close behind.

  She assumed something had happened behind the barrier. Some brawl, some accident or skirmish between guards and refugees. Auntie Fang would be at the bottom of it; she always was. But Kesegi didn’t take her back to the camps. He led her behind the barracks, past the clanging shipyards to an empty warehouse at the far end of the harbor.

  Behind the warehouse stood three dark silhouettes.

  Rin halted. None of those figures could be Auntie Fang; they were all too tall.

  “Kesegi, what’s going on?”

  But Kesegi pulled her straight toward the warehouse.

  “I brought her,” he called loudly.

  Rin’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, and the strangers’ faces became clear. She groaned. Those weren’t refugees.

  She turned to Kesegi. “What the hell?”

  He looked away. “I had to get you here somehow.”

  “You lied to me.”

  He set his jaw. “Well, you wouldn’t have come otherwise.”

  “Just hear us out,” said Takha. “Please don’t go. We’ll only get this one chance to speak.”

  She crossed her arms. “We’re hiding from Vaisra behind warehouses now?”

  “Vaisra has done enough to ruin us,” said Gurubai. “That much is obvious. The Republic has abandoned the south. This alliance must be aborted.”

  She fought the impulse to roll her eyes. “And what’s your alternative?”

  “Our own revolution,” he said immediately. “We revoke our support for Vaisra, defect from the Dragon Army, and return to our home provinces.”

  “That’s suicide,” Rin said. “Vaisra is the only one protecting you.”

  “You can’t even say that with a straight face,” Charouk said. “Protection? We’ve been duped from the beginning. It is time to stop hoping Vaisra will throw us scraps from the table. We must return home and fight the Mugenese off on our own. We should have done that from the beginning.”

  “You and what army?” Rin asked coolly.

  This entire conversation was moot. Vaisra had called this bluff months ago. The southern Warlords couldn’t go home. Alone, their provincial armies would be destroyed by the Federation.

  “We’ll need to build an army,” Gurubai acknowledged. “It won’t be easy. But we’ll have the numbers. You’ve seen the camps. You know how many of us there are.”

  “I also know that they are untrained, unarmed, and starving,” she said. “You think they can fight Federation troops? The Republic is your only chance at survival.”

  “Survival?” Charouk scoffed. “We’re all going to die within the week. Vaisra’s gambled our lives on the Hesperians, and they will never come.”

  Rin faltered. She didn’t have a good answer to that. She knew, just as they did, that the Hesperians were unlikely to ever find the Nikara worthy of their aid.

  But until General Tarcquet declared explicitly that the Consortium had refused, the Republic still had a fighting chance. Defecting to the south was certain suicide—especially because if Rin abandoned Vaisra, then no one was left to protect her from the Gray Company. She might run from Arlong and hide. She might elude the Hesperians for a long time, if she was clever, but they would track her down eventually. They wouldn’t relent. Rin understood now that people like Petra would never let challenges to the Maker slip away so easily. They would hunt down and kill or capture every shaman in the Empire for further study. Rin might still fight them off, might even hold her own for a while—fire against airships, the Phoenix against the Maker—but that confrontation would be terrible. She didn’t know if she’d come out alive.

  And if the southern Warlords defected from the Republic, then no one was left to protect them from the Militia or the Federation. That calculation was so obvious. Why couldn’t they see it?

  “Give up this fool’s hope,” Gurubai urged her. “Ignore Vaisra’s nonsense. The Hesperians are staying away on purpose, just as they did during the Poppy Wars.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rin demanded.

  “You really think they didn’t have a single piece of information about what was happening on this continent?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Vaisra sent his wife to them,” Gurubai said. “Lady Saikhara spent the second and third Poppy Wars tucked safely away on a Hesperian warship. The Hesperians had full knowledge of what was happening. And they didn’t send a single sack of grain or crate of swords. Not when Sinegard burned, not when Khurdalain fell, and not when the Mugenese raped Golyn Niis. These are the allies you’re waiting for. And Vaisra knows that.”

  “Why don’t you just say what you’re suggesting?” Rin asked.

  “Has this really never crossed your mind?” Gurubai asked. “This war has been orchestrated by Vaisra and the Hesperians to put him in a prime position to consolidate control of this country. They didn’t come during the third war because they wanted to see the Empire bleed. They won’t come now until Vaisra’s challengers are dead. Vaisra is no true democrat, nor a champion of the people. He’s an opportunist building his throne with Nikara blood.”

  “You’re mad,” Rin said. “No one is crazy enough to do that.”

  “You’d have to be crazy not to see it! The evidence is right in front of you. The Federation troops never made it as far inland as Arlong. Vaisra lost nothing in the war.”

  “He nearly lost his son—”

  “And he got him back with no trouble at all. Face it, Yin Vaisra was the only victor of the Third Poppy War. You’re too smart to believe otherwise.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” Rin snapped. “And even if that’s all true, that doesn’t change anything. I already know the Hesperians are assholes. I’d still fight for the Republic.”

  “You shouldn’t fight for an alliance with people who think we’re barely human,” said Charouk.

  “Well, that still gives me no reason to fight for you—”

  “You should fight for us because you’re one of us,” said Gurubai.

  “I am not one of you.”

  “Yes, you are,�
�� Takha said. “You’re a Rooster. Just like me.”

  She stared at him in disbelief.

  The sheer hypocrisy. He’d disowned her easily enough at Lusan, had treated her like an animal. Now he wanted to claim they were one and the same?

  “The south would rise for you,” Gurubai insisted. “Do you have any idea how much power you hold? You are the last Speerly. The entire continent knows your name. If you raised your sword, tens of thousands would follow. They’d fight for you. You’d be their goddess.”

  “I’d also be a traitor to my closest friends,” she said. They were asking her to abandon Kitay. Nezha. “Don’t try to flatter me. It won’t work.”

  “Your friends?” Gurubai scoffed. “Who, Yin Nezha? Chen Kitay? Northerners who would spit on your very existence? Are you so desperate to be like them that you’ll ignore everything else at stake?”

  She bristled. “I don’t want to be like them.”

  “Yes, you do,” he sneered. “That’s all you want, even if you don’t realize it. But you’re southern mud in the end. You can butcher the way you talk, you can turn away from the stench of the refugee camps and pretend that you don’t smell, too, but they are never going to think you’re one of them.”

  That did it. Rin’s sympathy evaporated.

  Did they really believe they could sway her with provincial ties? Rooster Province had never done anything for her. For the first sixteen years of her life, Tikany had tried to grind her into the dirt. She’d lost her ties to the south the moment she’d left for Sinegard.

  She’d escaped the Fangs. She’d carved out a place for herself in Arlong. She was one of Vaisra’s best soldiers. She wouldn’t go back now. She couldn’t.

  For her, the south had only ever meant abuse and misery. She owed it nothing. Certainly not a suicide mission. If the Warlords wanted to throw their lives away, they could do that by themselves.

  She saw the way Kesegi was looking at her—stricken, disappointed—and she willed herself not to care.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I’m not one of you. I’m a Speerly. And I know where my loyalties lie.”

  “If you stay here you’ll die for nothing,” Gurubai said. “We all will.”

  “Then go back,” she sneered. “Take your troops. Go home. I won’t stop you.”

  They didn’t move. Their faces—stricken, ashen—confirmed she’d called their bluff. They couldn’t run. Alone in their provinces, they didn’t have a chance. They might—might, though Rin strongly doubted they had the numbers—be able to fight off the Mugenese troops on their own. But if Arlong fell, it was only a matter of time until Daji came for them, too.

  Without her support, their hands were tied. The southern Warlords were trapped.

  Gurubai’s hand moved to the sword at his waist. “Will you tell Vaisra?”

  Her lip curled. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Will you tell Vaisra?” he repeated.

  Rin gave him an incredulous smile. Was he really going to fight her? Was he really even going to try?

  She couldn’t help relishing this. For once she held all the power; for once, she held their fates in her hands and not the other way around.

  She could have killed them right there and been done with it. Vaisra might have even praised her for the demonstration of loyalty.

  But it was the eve of battle. The Militia was creeping to their doorstep. The refugees needed some sort of leadership if they were going to survive—certainly no one else was looking out for them. And if she murdered the Warlords now, the resulting chaos would hurt the Republic. The southern armies’ numbers weren’t great enough to win the battle, but their defection was more than enough to guarantee defeat, and that wasn’t something Rin wanted on her hands.

  She loved that this was her decision—that she could disguise this cruel calculation as mercy.

  “Go to sleep,” she said softly, as if speaking to children. “We’ve a battle to fight.”

  She escorted Kesegi back to the refugee quarters over his protests. She took him the long way around the city, trying to keep as much distance from the barracks as possible. For ten minutes they walked in stony silence. Every time Rin looked at Kesegi he stared angrily forward, pretending he hadn’t seen her.

  “You’re angry with me,” she said.

  He didn’t respond.

  “I can’t give them what they want. You know that.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said curtly.

  “Kesegi—”

  “And I don’t know you anymore.”

  She had to admit that was true. Kesegi had said farewell to a sister and found a soldier in her place. But she didn’t know him anymore, either. The Kesegi she’d left had been just a tiny child. This Kesegi was a tall, sullen, and angry boy who had seen too much suffering and didn’t know who to blame for it.

  They resumed walking in silence. Rin was tempted to turn around and head back, but she didn’t want Kesegi caught alone on the wrong side of the barrier. The night patrol had lately taken to flogging refugees who wandered out of bounds to set an example.

  Finally Kesegi said, “You could have written.”

  “What?”

  “I kept waiting for you to write. Why didn’t you?”

  Rin didn’t have a good response to that.

  Why hadn’t she written? The Masters had permitted it. All of her classmates had regularly written home. She remembered watching Niang send eight separate letters to each of her siblings every week, and being amazed that anyone had so much to say about their grueling coursework.

  But the thought of writing the Fangs had never even crossed her mind. Once she reached Sinegard, she’d locked her memories of Tikany tightly away in the back of her mind and willed herself to forget.

  “You were so young,” she said after a pause. “I guess I didn’t think you’d remember me.”

  “Bullshit,” Kesegi said. “You’re my sister. How could I not remember you?”

  “I don’t know. I just . . . I thought it’d be easier if we made a clean break with each other. I mean, it’s not like I was ever coming home once I got out—”

  His voice hardened. “And you didn’t ever think I wanted to get out, too?”

  She felt a wave of irritation. How had this suddenly become her fault? “You could have if you wanted to. You could have studied—”

  “When? When you left it was just me and the shop; and after Father started getting worse, I had to do everything around the house. And Mother isn’t kind, Rin. You knew that—I begged you to not leave me with her—but you left anyway. Off in Sinegard on your adventures—”

  “They weren’t adventures,” she said coldly.

  “But you were in Sinegard,” he said plaintively, with the voice of a child who had only heard stories of the former capital, who still thought it was a land of riches and marvels. “And I was stuck in Tikany, hiding from Mother every chance I got. And then the war started and all we did every single day was huddle terrified in underground shelters and hope that the Federation hadn’t come to our town yet, and if they did, then they might not kill us immediately.”

  She stopped walking. “Kesegi.”

  “They kept saying you were going to come for us.” His voice cracked. “That a fire goddess from the Rooster Province had destroyed the longbow island, and that you were going to come back home to liberate us, too.”

  “I wanted to. I would have—”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. Where were you all those months? Launching a coup in the Autumn Palace. Starting another war.” Venom crept into his voice. “You don’t get to say you don’t want any part of this. This is your fault. Without you we wouldn’t be here.”

  She could have replied. She could have argued with him, said it wasn’t her fault but the Empress’s, told him there were political forces at play that were much larger than any of them.

  But she simply couldn’t form the sentences. None of them felt genuine.

  The simple truth was that she’d aband
oned her foster brother and hadn’t thought about him for years. He’d barely crossed her mind until they’d met in the camp. And she would have forgotten him again if he weren’t standing right here before her.

  She didn’t know how to fix that. She didn’t know if fixing it was even possible.

  They turned the corner toward a line of single-story stone buildings. They had made it to the Hesperian quarters. A few more minutes and they’d be back at the refugee district. Rin was glad of it. She wanted to get away from Kesegi. She couldn’t bear the full brunt of his resentment.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw a blue uniform disappear around the back of the closest building. She would have dismissed it, but then she heard the sounds—a rhythmic shuffle, a muffled moan.

  She’d heard those noises before. She’d delivered parcels of opium to Tikany’s whorehouses plenty of times. She just couldn’t imagine how this could be the time or the place.

  Kesegi heard it, too. He stopped walking.

  “Run to the barrier,” she hissed.

  “But—”

  “I’m not asking.” She pushed him. “Go.”

  He obeyed.

  She broke into a run. She saw two half-naked bodies behind the building. Hesperian soldier, Nikara girl. The girl whimpered, trying to scream, but the soldier covered her mouth with one hand, grasped her hair with the other, and jerked her head back to expose her neck.

  For a moment all Rin could do was stand and watch.

  She’d never seen a rape before.

  She’d heard about them. She’d heard too many stories from the women who had survived Golyn Niis, had imagined it vividly so many times that they invaded her nightmares and made her wake up shaking in rage and fear.

  And the only thing she could think about was whether this was how Venka had suffered at Golyn Niis. Whether Venka’s face had contorted like this girl’s, mouth open in a silent scream. Whether the Mugenese soldiers who had pinned her down had been laughing like the Hesperian soldier was now.