The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  Groaning, she rolled over onto her side. Her right shoulder was a bloody mess. She didn’t want to look at it. She knew her wings were a crumpled disaster. Something sharp shoved deeper into her skin every time she moved. She struggled to rip the contraption off, but the metal harness had twisted and bent. It wouldn’t give.

  She felt for where it pressed into her lower back. Her fingers came away bloody.

  She tried not to panic. Something was stuck, that was all. She knew she wasn’t supposed to pull it out until she was with a physician, that the object piercing her back was the only thing stopping her blood spilling out. And she couldn’t see well enough from this angle—she’d be stupid to try to remove it herself.

  But she could barely move without digging the rod deeper into her back. She might end up severing her own spine.

  Nezha was in no state to help her. He had curled into a small, trembling ball, his arms wrapped around his knees. She crawled toward him and tried to hoist him into a sitting position using her good arm. “Hey. Hey.”

  He didn’t respond.

  He was twitching all over. His eyes fluttered madly while little whimpering noises escaped his mouth. He raised his hands, trying to claw at the tattoo on his back.

  Rin glanced at the river. The water had started moving in eerie, erratic patterns. Odd little waves ran against the current. Blood-soaked columns rose out of the river at random. A handful splashed harmlessly near the shore, but one was growing larger and larger near the center of the river.

  She had to knock Nezha out. That, or she had to get him high—but this time she had no opium . . .

  “I brought it,” he gasped.

  “What?”

  He placed a trembling hand over his pocket. “Stole it—brought it here, just in case . . .”

  She shoved her hand into his pocket and drew out a fist-sized packet wrapped tightly in bamboo leaves. She tore it open with her teeth, choking at the familiar, sickly sweet taste. Her body ached with an old craving.

  Nezha sucked in air through clenched teeth. “Please . . .”

  She clutched two nuggets in her hand and ignited a small fire beneath them. With her other hand she hoisted Nezha upright and tilted his head over the fumes.

  He inhaled for a long time. His eyes fluttered closed. The water began to calm. The little waves sank beneath the surface. The columns lowered slowly and disappeared. Rin exhaled in relief.

  Then Nezha shrank away from the smoke, coughing. “No—no, I don’t want that much—”

  She gripped him tighter. “I’m sorry.”

  He’d only smoked several whiffs. That would wear off in under an hour. That wasn’t enough time. She needed to make sure the god was gone.

  She forced the opium under his nose and clamped a hand over his mouth to force him to inhale. He thrashed in protest, but he was already weak and his struggles grew more and more feeble as he inhaled more of the smoke. Finally he lay still.

  Rin threw the half-burned nuggets into the dirt. She brushed a hand over Nezha’s forehead, pushed strands of wet hair out of his eyes.

  “You’ll be all right,” she whispered. “I’ll send someone out after you.”

  “Stay,” he murmured. “Please.”

  “I’m sorry.” She leaned forward and lightly kissed his forehead. “We’ve got a battle to win.”

  His voice was so faint she had to lean down to hear it. “But we’ve won.”

  She choked with desperate laughter. He hadn’t seen the burning city. He didn’t know that Arlong barely existed anymore. “We haven’t won.”

  “No . . .” His eyes opened. He struggled to raise his arm. He pointed at something past her shoulder. “Look. There.”

  She turned her head.

  There on the seam of the horizon sailed a fleet, waves and waves of warships. Some glided over water; some floated through the air. There were so many that they almost seemed like a mirage, endless doubles of the same row of white sails and blue flags against a brilliant sun.

  Chapter 33

  “How lovely,” spoke a voice, familiar and beautiful, that made Rin’s heart sink and her mouth fill with the taste of blood.

  She lowered Nezha onto the sand and forced herself to stand up. Metal shifted beneath her flesh, and she bit back a cry of pain. The agony in her back and shoulder was almost unbearable. But she was not going to die lying down.

  How could the Empress still terrify her like this? Daji was just a lone woman now, without an army or a fleet. Her general’s garb was ripped and drenched. She limped when she walked, and her shoes left behind imprints of blood. Yet she approached with her chin lifted high, her eyebrows arched, and her lips curved in an imperious smile as if she had just won a great victory, emanating a dark, seductive beauty that made irrelevant her sodden robes, her shattered ships.

  Rin hated that beauty. She wanted to drag her nails across it until white flesh gave way under her fingers. She wanted to gouge Daji’s eyes out of their sockets, crush them in her fists, and drip the gelatinous ruin over her porcelain skin.

  And yet.

  When she looked at Daji her entire body felt weak. Her pulse raced. Her face felt hot. She couldn’t tear her eyes from Daji’s face. She had to look and keep looking, otherwise she would never be satisfied.

  She forced herself to focus. She needed a weapon—she snatched a sharp piece of driftwood off the ground.

  “Get back,” she whispered. “Come any closer and I’ll burn you.”

  Daji only laughed. “Oh, my darling. Haven’t you learned?”

  Her eyes flashed.

  Suddenly Rin felt the overwhelming urge to kill herself, to drag the driftwood against her own wrists until red lines opened along her veins, and twist.

  Hands shaking, she pressed the sharpest edge of the driftwood to her skin. What am I doing? Her mind screamed for her to stop, but her body didn’t care. She could only watch as her hands moved on their own, preparing to saw her veins apart.

  “That’s enough,” Daji said lightly.

  The urge disappeared. Rin dropped the driftwood, gasping.

  “Will you listen now?” Daji asked. “I’d like you to stand still, please. Arms up.”

  Rin immediately put her arms up over her head, stifling a scream as her wounds tore anew.

  Daji limped closer. Her eyes flickered over the remains of Rin’s harness, and her right lip curled up in amusement. “So that’s how you dealt with poor Feylen. Clever.”

  “Your best weapon is gone,” Rin said.

  “Ah, well. He was a pain to begin with. One moment he’d try to sink our own fleet, and the next all he wanted to do was float among the clouds. Do you know how absurdly difficult it was to get him to do anything?” Daji sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to finish the job myself.”

  “You’ve lost,” Rin said. “Hurt me, kill me, it’s still over for you. Your generals are dead. Your ships are driftwood.”

  A round of cannon fire punctuated her words, a roar so loud that it drowned out every other sound along the shore. It went on for so long that Rin couldn’t imagine that anything remained floating in the channel.

  But Daji didn’t look faintly bothered. “You think that’s winning? You aren’t the victors. There are no victors in this fight. Vaisra has ensured that civil war will continue for decades. He’s only deepened the fractures. No man can stitch this country back together now.”

  She continued to limp forward until they were separated by only several feet.

  Rin’s eyes darted around the shore. They stood on an isolated stretch of sand, hidden behind the wreckage of great warships. The only other soldiers in sight were corpses. No one was coming to her rescue. It was just her and the Empress now, facing off in the shadows of the unforgiving cliffs.

  “So how did you manage the Seal?” Daji asked. “I was rather convinced that it was unbreakable. It can’t have been one of the twins; they would have done it long ago if they could.” She tilted her head. “Oh, no, let me guess. Did you fin
d the Sorqan Sira? Is that old bat still alive?”

  “Fuck you, murderer,” Rin said.

  “I presume that means you’ve found yourself an anchor, too?” Daji’s eyes flitted toward Nezha. He wasn’t moving. “I do hope it’s not him. That one’s almost gone.”

  “Don’t you dare touch him,” Rin hissed.

  Daji knelt over Nezha, fingers tracing over the scars on his face. “He’s very pretty, isn’t he? Despite everything. He reminds me of Riga.”

  I must get her away from him. Rin strained to move, eyes bulging, but her limbs remained fixed in place. The flame wouldn’t come, either; when she reached for the Phoenix, all her rage crashed pointlessly against her own mind, like waves crashing against cliffs.

  “The Ketreyids showed me what you’ve done,” she said loudly, hoping it would distract Daji.

  It worked. Daji stood up. “Really.”

  “The Sorqan Sira showed us everything. You can try to convince me that you’re trying to save the Empire, but I know what kind of person you are—you betray those who help you and you throw lives away like they’re nothing. I saw you attack them, I saw you three murder Tseveri—”

  “Be quiet,” Daji said. “Don’t say that name.”

  Rin’s jaw locked shut.

  Rin stood frozen, heart slamming against her ribs, as Daji approached her. She had just been spinning words out of the air, hurling everything she could to get Daji away from Nezha.

  But something had pissed Daji off. Two high spots of color rose in her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed. She looked furious.

  “The Ketreyids should have surrendered,” she said quietly. “We wouldn’t have hurt them if they weren’t so fucking stubborn.”

  Daji stretched a pale hand out and ran her knuckles over Rin’s cheeks. “Always such a hypocrite. I acted from necessity, just like you. We are precisely the same, you and I. We’ve acquired more power than any mortal should have the right to, which means we have to make the decisions no one else can. The world is our chessboard. It’s not our fault if the pieces get broken.”

  “You hurt everything you touch,” Rin whispered.

  “And you’ve killed in numbers exponentially greater than we ever managed. What really separates us, darling? That you committed your war crimes by accident, and mine were intentional? Would you really do things differently, if you had another chance?”

  The hold on Rin’s jaw loosened.

  Daji had given her permission to answer.

  She couldn’t say yes. She could lie, of course, but it wouldn’t matter; not here, where no one but Daji was listening, and Daji already knew the truth.

  Because if she had another chance, if she could go back to that moment in time when she stood in the temple of the Phoenix and faced her god, she would make the same decision. She would release the volcano. She would encase Mugen in tons of molten stone and choking ash.

  She would destroy the country completely and without mercy, the same way that its armies had treated her. And she’d laugh.

  “Do you understand now?” Daji tucked a strand of hair behind Rin’s ear. “Come with me. We’ve much to discuss.”

  “Fuck off,” Rin said.

  Daji’s mouth pressed in a thin line. The compulsion seized Rin’s legs and forced her to move, shuddering, toward Daji. One by one Rin’s feet dragged through the sand. Sweat beaded on her temples. She tried to shut her eyes and couldn’t.

  “Kneel,” Daji commanded.

  No, spoke the Phoenix.

  The god’s voice was terribly quiet, a tiny echo across a vast plain. But it was there.

  Rin struggled to remain standing. A horrible pain shot through her legs, forcing them down, growing stronger every moment that she refused. She wanted to scream but couldn’t open her mouth.

  Daji’s eyes flashed yellow. “Kneel.”

  You will not kneel, said the Phoenix.

  The pain intensified. Rin gasped, fighting the pull, her mind split between two ancient gods.

  Just another battle. And, as always, anger was her greatest ally.

  Rage drowned out the Vipress’s hypnosis. Daji had sold out the Speerlies. Daji had killed Altan, and Daji had started this war. Daji didn’t get to lie to her anymore. Didn’t get to torture and manipulate her like prey.

  The fire came in fits and bursts, little balls of flame that Rin hurled desperately from her palms. Daji only dodged daintily to the side and flicked a wrist out. Rin jerked aside to avoid a needle that wasn’t there. The sudden movement pulled the broken contraption deeper into her back.

  She yelped and doubled over.

  Daji laughed. “Had enough?”

  Rin screeched.

  A thin stream of fire lanced over her entire body—enveloping her, protecting her, amplifying her every movement.

  This was power like she’d never felt.

  That’s a state of ecstasy, Altan told her once. You don’t get tired. . . . You don’t feel pain. All you do is destroy.

  Rin had always felt so unhinged—volleying between powerlessness and utter subjugation to the Phoenix—but now the fire was hers. Was her. And that made her feel so giddy that she almost screamed with laughter because for the first time ever, she had the upper hand.

  Daji’s resistance was nothing. Rin backed her easily up against the hull of the nearest beached ship. Her fist smashed into the wood next to Daji’s face, missing it by an inch. Wood cracked, splintered, and smoked under her knuckles. The entire ship groaned. Rin drew her fist back again and slammed it into Daji’s jaw.

  Daji’s head jerked to the side like a broken doll’s. Rin had split her lip; blood trickled down her chin. Yet still she smiled.

  “You’re so weak,” she whispered. “You have a god but you have no idea what you’re doing with it.”

  “Right now, I know exactly what I want to do with it.”

  She placed her glowing-hot fingers around Daji’s neck. Pale flesh crackled and burned under her touch. She started to squeeze. She thought she’d feel a thrill of satisfaction.

  It didn’t come.

  She couldn’t just kill her. Not like this. This was too quick, too easy.

  She had to destroy her.

  She moved her hands up. Placed her thumbs under the bases of Daji’s eye sockets. Dug her nails into soft flesh.

  “Look at me,” Daji hissed.

  Rin shook her head, eyes squeezed tight.

  Something popped under her left thumb. Warm liquid streamed down her wrist.

  “I’m already dying,” Daji whispered. “Don’t you want to know who I am? Don’t you want to know the truth about us?”

  Rin knew she should end things right then.

  She couldn’t.

  Because she did want to know. She’d been tortured by these questions. She had to understand why the Empire’s greatest heroes—Daji, Riga, and Jiang, her Master Jiang—had become the monsters they had. And because here, at the end of things, she doubted now more than ever that she was fighting for the right side.

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  Visions swarmed her mind.

  She saw a city burning the way Arlong burned now; buildings charred and blackened, corpses lining the streets. She saw troops marching in uniform lines of terrifying numbers, while the city’s surviving inhabitants crouched by their doorsteps, heads bent and arms raised.

  This was the Nikara Empire under Mugenese occupation.

  “We couldn’t do anything,” Daji said. “We were too weak to do anything when their ships arrived at our shores. And for the next five decades, when they raped us, beat us, spat on us and told us we were worth less than dogs, we couldn’t do anything.”

  Rin squeezed her eyes shut, but the images wouldn’t go away. She saw a beautiful little girl standing alone before a heap of bodies, soot across her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. She saw a young boy lying in a starved, broken heap in the corner of the alley, curled around jagged, shattered bottles. She saw a white-haired boy screaming profanities and w
aving his fists at the retreating backs of soldiers who did not care.

  “Then we escaped, and we had power within our hands to change the fate of the Empire,” Daji said. “So what do you think we did?”

  “That doesn’t excuse anything.”

  “It explains and justifies everything.”

  The visions shifted again. Rin saw a naked girl shrieking and crying beside a cave while snakes writhed over her body. She saw a tall boy crouching on the shore while a dragon encircled him, whipping up higher and higher waves that surrounded his body like a tornado. She saw a white-haired boy on his hands and knees, beating his fists against the ground while shadows writhed and stretched out of his back.

  “Tell me you wouldn’t have given up everything,” Daji said. “Tell me you wouldn’t sacrifice everything and everyone you knew for the power to take back your country.”

  Months flashed before Rin’s eyes. Next she saw the Trifecta, fully grown, kneeling by the body of Tseveri, who was just one girl, and the choice seemed so clear and obvious. Against the suffering of a teeming mass of millions, what was one life? Twenty lives? The Ketreyids were so few; how hard could the comparison be?

  What difference could it possibly make?

  “We didn’t want to kill Tseveri,” Daji whispered. “She saved us. She convinced the Ketreyids to take us in. And Jiang loved her.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because we had to. Because our allies wanted that land, and the Sorqan Sira said no, and we needed to win it through force and fear. We had one chance to unite the Warlords and we weren’t going to throw it away.”

  “But then you gave it away!” Rin cried. “You didn’t take it back! You sold it to the Mugenese—”

  “If your arm were rotting, wouldn’t you cut it off to save your body? The provinces were rebelling. Corrupt. Diseased. I would have sacrificed it all for a united core. I knew we weren’t strong enough to defend the whole country, only a part of it. So I culled. You know that; you command the Cike. You know what rulers must sometimes do.”