by R. F. Kuang
“You sold us.”
“I did it for them,” Daji said softly. “I did it for the empire Riga left me. And you don’t understand the stakes, because you don’t know the meaning of true fear. You don’t know how much worse it could have been.”
Daji’s voice broke.
And for the second time, Rin saw the facade break, saw through the carefully crafted mirage that Daji had been presenting to the world for decades. This woman wasn’t the Vipress, wasn’t the scheming ruler Rin had learned to hate and fear.
This woman was afraid. But not of her.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Daji whispered. “I’m sorry I hurt Altan. I wish I’d never had to. But I had a plan to protect my people, and you simply got in the way. You didn’t know your true enemy. You wouldn’t listen.”
Rin was so furious with her then, because she couldn’t hate her anymore. Who was she supposed to fight for now? What side was she supposed to be on? She didn’t believe in Vaisra’s Republic, not anymore, and she certainly didn’t trust the Hesperians, but she didn’t know what Daji wanted her to do.
“You can go ahead and kill me,” said Daji. “You probably could. I’d fight back, of course, but you’d probably win. I would kill me.”
“Shut up,” Rin said.
She wanted to tighten her fists and choke the life out of Daji. But the rage had drained away. She didn’t have the will to fight anymore. She wanted to be angry—things were so much easier when she was just blindly angry—but the anger wouldn’t come.
Daji twisted out from her grip, and Rin didn’t try to stop her.
Daji was as good as dead regardless. Her face was a grotesque ruin—black liquid gushed out from her gouged eye. She stumbled to the side, fingers feeling for the ship.
Her good eye locked on to Rin’s. “What do you think happens to you after I’m gone? Don’t imagine for a moment you can trust Vaisra. Without me, Vaisra has no use for you. Vaisra discards his allies without blinking when they are no longer convenient, and if you don’t believe me when I say you’re next, then you’re a fool.”
Rin knew Daji was right.
She just didn’t know where that left her.
Daji shook her head and held her hands out, open and unthreatening. “Come with me.”
Rin took a small step forward.
Wood groaned above her head. Daji skirted backward. Too late, Rin looked up just in time to see the ship’s mast crashing down on her.
Rin couldn’t even scream. It took everything she had just to breathe. Air came in hoarse, painful bursts; it felt like her throat had been reduced to the diameter of a pin. Her entire back burned with agony.
Daji knelt down in front of her. Stroked her cheek. “You’ll need me. You don’t realize it now, but you’ll figure it out soon. You need me far more than you need them. I just hope you survive.”
She leaned down so close that Rin could feel her hot breath on her skin. Daji grabbed Rin by the chin and forced her to look up, into her good eye. Rin stared into a black pupil inside a ring of yellow, pulsing hypnotically, an abyss daring her to fall inside.
“I’ll leave you with this.”
Rin saw a beautiful young girl—Daji, it had to be—in a huddled heap on the ground, naked, clothes clutched to her chest. Dark blood dripped down pale thighs. She saw the young Riga sprawled on the ground, unconscious. She saw Jiang lying on his side, screaming, as a man kicked him in the ribs, over and over and over.
She dared to look up. Their tormenter was not Mugenese.
Blue eyes. Yellow hair. The soldier brought his boot down, over and over and over, and each time Rin heard another set of cracks.
She leaped forward in time, just a few minutes. The soldier was gone, and the children were clinging to each other, crying, covered in each other’s blood, crouching in the shadow of a different soldier.
“Get out of here,” said the soldier, in a tongue she was far too familiar with. A tongue she would have never believed would utter a kind word. “Now.”
Then Rin understood.
It had been a Hesperian soldier who raped Daji, and a Mugenese soldier who saved her. That was the frame the Empress had been locked into since childhood; that was the crux that had formed every decision afterward.
“The Mugenese weren’t the real enemy,” Daji murmured. “They never were. They were just poor puppets serving a mad emperor who started a war that he shouldn’t have. But who gave them those ideas? Who told them they could conquer the continent?”
Blue eyes. White sails.
“I warned you about everything. I told you this from the beginning. Those devils are going to destroy our world. The Hesperians have a singular vision for the future, and we’re not in it. You already know this. You must have realized it, now that you’ve seen what they’re like. I can see it in your eyes. You know they’re dangerous. You know you’ll need an ally.”
Questions formed on Rin’s tongue, too many to count, but she couldn’t summon the breath to speak them. Her vision was tunneling, turning black at the edges. All she could see was Daji’s pale face, dancing above her like the moon.
“Think about it,” Daji whispered, tracing her cool fingers over Rin’s cheek. “Figure out who you’re fighting for. And when you know, come find me.”
“Rin? Rin!” Venka’s face loomed over her. “Fucking hell. Can you hear me?”
Rin felt a great weight lifting off her back and shoulders. She lay flat, eyes open wide, sucking in great gulps of air.
“Hey.” Venka snapped her fingers in front of her. “What’s my name?”
Rin moaned. “Just help me up.”
“Close enough.” Venka wedged her arms under her stomach and helped Rin roll onto her side. Every tiny movement sent fresh spasms of pain rippling through her back. She collapsed into Venka’s arms, breathless with agony.
Venka’s hands moved over her skin, feeling for injuries. Rin felt her fingers pause on her back.
“Oh, that’s not good,” Venka murmured.
“What?”
“Uh. Can you breathe all right?”
“Ribs,” Rin gasped. “My—ow!”
Venka pulled her hands away from Rin. They were slippery with blood. “There’s a rod stuck under your skin.”
“I know,” Rin said through gritted teeth. “Get it out.” She reached back to try again to yank it out herself, but Venka grabbed her wrist before she could.
“You’ll lose too much blood if it comes out now.”
Rin knew that, but the thought of the rod digging deeper inside her was making her panic spiral. “But I’m—”
“Just breathe for a minute. All right? Can you do that for me? Just breathe.”
“How bad is it?” Kitay’s voice. Thank the gods.
“Several ribs broken. Don’t move, I’ll get a stretcher.” Venka set off at a run.
Kitay knelt down beside her. His voice dropped to a whisper. “What happened? Where’s the Empress?”
Rin swallowed. “She got away.”
“Obviously.” Kitay’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “Did you let her go?”
“I . . . what?”
Kitay gave her a hard look. “Did you let her go?”
Had she?
She found that she couldn’t answer.
She could have killed Daji. She’d had plenty of opportunities to burn, strangle, stab, or choke the Empress before the beam fell. If she’d wanted to, she could have ended everything then and there.
Why hadn’t she?
Had the Vipress manipulated her into letting her go? Was Rin’s reluctance a product of her own thoughts or Daji’s hypnosis? She could not remember if she had chosen to let Daji escape, or if she had simply been outsmarted and defeated.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“You don’t know,” Kitay asked, “or you don’t want to tell me?”
“I thought it’d be so clear,” she said. Her head swam; her eyes fluttered closed. “I thought the choice was obv
ious. But now I really don’t know.”
“I think I understand,” Kitay said after a long pause. “But I’d keep that to yourself.”
Chapter 34
Rin jolted awake to the sound of gongs. She tried to spring out of bed, but the moment she lifted her head, a searing pain rippled through her back.
“Whoa.” Venka’s blurry face came into view. She put a hand on Rin’s shoulder and forced her back down. “Not so fast.”
“But the morning alarm,” Rin said. “I’m going to be late.”
Venka laughed. “To what? You’re off duty. We’re all off duty.”
Rin blinked. “What?”
“It’s over. We won. You can relax.”
After months of warfare, of sleeping and eating and waking on the same strict schedule, that statement was so incredible to Rin that for a moment the words themselves sounded like they’d been spoken in a different language.
“We’re finished?” she asked faintly.
“For now. But don’t be too disappointed, you’ll have plenty to do once you’re up and moving.” Venka cracked her knuckles. “Soon we’ll be running cleanup.”
Rin struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. The pain in her lower back pulsed along with her heartbeat. She clenched her teeth to stave it off. “What else is there? Update me.”
“Well, the Empire hasn’t exactly surrendered. They’re decapitated, but the strongest provinces—Tiger, Horse, and Snake—are still holding out.”
“But the Wolf Meat General’s dead,” Rin said. Venka already knew that—she’d seen it happen—but saying it out loud made her feel better.
“Yeah. We captured Tsolin alive, too. Jun made it out, though.” Venka picked up an apple from Rin’s bedside. She began paring it with rapid, sure movements, fingers moving so fast that Rin was amazed she didn’t peel her own skin off. “Somehow he swam out of the channel and got away—he’s well on his way back to Tiger Province now. Horse and Snake are loyal to him, and he’s a better strategist than Chang En was. They’ll put up a good fight. But the war should be over soon.”
“Why?”
Venka pointed out the window with her paring knife. “We have help.”
Rin shifted around in her bed to peer outside, clutching the windowsill for support. A seemingly infinite number of warships crowded the harbor. She tried to calculate how many Hesperian troops that entailed. Thousands? Tens of thousands?
She should have been relieved the civil war was as good as over. Instead, when she looked at those white sails, all she could feel was dread.
“Something wrong?” Venka asked.
Rin took a breath. “Just . . . disoriented a bit, I think.”
Venka handed the peeled apple to Rin. “Eat something.”
Rin wrapped her fingers around it with difficulty. It was amazing how hard the simple act of chewing was; how much it hurt her teeth, how it strained her jaw. Swallowing was agony. She couldn’t manage more than a few bites. She put the apple down. “What happened to the Militia deserters?”
“A couple tried to flee over the mountains, but their horses got scared when the dirigibles came,” Venka said. “Trampled them underfoot. Their bodies are still stuck in the mud. We’ll probably send a crew to get those horses back. How’s your . . . well, how’s everything feeling?”
Rin reached backward to feel at her wounds. Her back and shoulder were covered in a swath of bandages. Her fingers kept brushing against raised skin that hurt to touch. She winced. She didn’t want to see what lay beneath the wrappings. “Did they tell you how bad it was?”
“Can you still wiggle your toes?”
Rin froze. “Venka.”
“I’m kidding.” Venka cracked a smile. “It looks worse than it is. It’ll take you a while, but you’ll get full mobility back. Your biggest concern is scarring. But you were always ugly, so it’s not like that will make a difference.”
Rin was too relieved to be angry. “Go fuck yourself.”
“There’s a mirror inside that cabinet door.” Venka pointed to the back corner of the room and stood up. “I’ll give you some time alone.”
After Venka closed the door, Rin pulled off her shirt, climbed gingerly to her feet, and stood naked in front of the mirror.
She was stunned by how repulsive she looked.
She’d always known that nothing could make her attractive; not with her mud-colored skin, sullen face, and short, jagged hair that had never been styled with anything more sophisticated than a rusty knife.
But now she just looked like a broken and battered thing. She was an amalgamation of scars and stitches. On her arm, dotted white reminders of the hot wax she’d once used to burn herself to stay awake studying. On her back and shoulders, whatever lay behind those bandages. And just under her sternum, Altan’s handprint, as dark and vivid as the day she’d first seen it.
Exhaling slowly, she pressed her left hand to the spot over her stomach. She couldn’t tell if she was only imagining it, but it felt hot to the touch.
“I should apologize,” said Kitay.
She jumped. She hadn’t heard the door open. “Fucking hell—”
“Sorry.”
She scrambled to pull her shirt back on. “You might have knocked!”
“I didn’t realize you’d be up.” He crossed the room and perched himself on the side of her bed. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize. That wound is my fault. Didn’t put padding around the gears—I didn’t have time, so I was just going for something functional. The rod went in about three inches at a slant. The physicians said you’re lucky it didn’t sever your spine.”
“Did you feel it, too?” she asked.
“Just a little,” Kitay said. He was lying, she knew that, but in that moment she was just grateful he would even try to spare her the guilt. He lifted his shirt and twisted around to show her a pale white scar running across his lower back. “Look. They’re the same shape, I think.”
She peered enviously at the smooth white lines. “That’s prettier than mine will be.”
“Don’t get too jealous.”
She moved her hands and arms about, gingerly testing the temporary boundaries of her mobility. She tried to raise her right arm above her head, but gave up when her shoulder threatened to tear itself apart. “I don’t think I want to fly for a while.”
“I gathered.” Kitay picked her unfinished apple up off the windowsill and took a bite. “Good thing you won’t have to.”
She sat back down on the bed. It hurt to stand for too long.
“The Cike?” she asked.
“All alive and accounted for. None with serious injuries.”
She nodded, relieved. “And Feylen. Is he . . . you know, properly dead?”
“Who cares?” Kitay said. “He’s buried under thousands of tons of rock. If there’s anything alive down there, it won’t bother us for a millennium.”
Rin tried to take comfort in that. She wanted to be sure Feylen was dead. She wanted to see a body. But for now, this would have to do.
“Where’s Nezha?” she asked.
“He’s been in here. Constantly. Wouldn’t leave, but I think someone finally got him to go take a nap. Good thing, too. He was starting to smell.”
“So he’s all right?” she asked quickly.
“Not entirely.” Kitay tilted his head at her. “Rin, what did you do to him?”
She hesitated.
Could she tell Kitay the truth? Nezha’s secret was so personal, so intensely painful, that it would feel like an awful betrayal. But it also entailed immense consequences that she didn’t know how to grapple with, and she couldn’t stand keeping that to herself. At least not from the other half of her soul.
Kitay said out loud what she had been thinking. “We’re both better off if you don’t hide things from me.”
“It’s an odd story.”
“Try me.”
She told him everything, every last painful, disgusting detail.
Kitay didn’t flinch.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Nezha’s been a prick his whole life. I imagine it’s hard to be pleasant when you’re in chronic pain.”
Rin managed a laugh. “I don’t think that’s entirely it.”
Kitay was silent for a moment. “So am I to understand that’s why he’s been moping for days? Did he call the dragon at the Red Cliffs?”
Rin’s stomach twisted with guilt. “I didn’t make him do it.”
“Then what happened?”
“We were in the channel. We were—I was drowning. But I didn’t force him. That wasn’t me.”
What she wanted was for Kitay to tell her she hadn’t done anything wrong. But as usual, all he did was tell her the truth. “You didn’t have to force him. You think that Nezha would let you die? After you’d called him a coward?”
“The pain’s not so bad,” she insisted. “Not so bad that you want to die. You’ve felt it. We both survived it.”
“You don’t know how it feels for him.”
“It can’t possibly be worse.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe it’s worse than you could even imagine.”
She drew her knees up to her chest. “I never wanted to hurt him.”
Kitay’s voice held no judgment, only curiosity. “Why’d you say those things to him, then?”
“Because his life is not his own,” she said, echoing Vaisra’s words from so long ago. “Because when you have this much power, it’s selfish to sit on it just because you’re scared.”
But that wasn’t entirely it.
She was also jealous. Jealous that Nezha might have access to such enormous power and never consider using it. Jealous that Nezha’s entire identity and worth did not hinge on his shamanic abilities. Nezha had never been referred to solely by his race. Nezha had never been someone’s weapon. They had both been claimed by gods, but Nezha got to be the princeling of the House of Yin, free from Hesperian experimentation, and she got to be the last heir of a tragic race.
Kitay knew that. Kitay knew everything that crossed her mind.
He sat quietly for a long time.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he finally said. “And I don’t want you to take it as a judgment, I want you to take it as a warning.”