by R. F. Kuang
She shuffled, limping, as quickly as she could down the shore.
“I see they finally let you out of the death farm,” Baji said in greeting.
“‘Death farm’?” she repeated.
“Ramsa’s nickname for the infirmary.”
“It’s because they’d roll out corpses every day in grain wagons,” Ramsa said. “Glad you weren’t in one of them.”
“How bad is it?” Baji asked.
She instinctively brushed her fingers over her lower back. “Manageable. Hurts, but I can walk without assistance now. You all got through unscathed?”
“More or less.” Baji showed her his bandaged shins. “Scraped those when I was jumping off a ship. Ramsa threw a fuse too late, got a bad burn on his knee. Suni’s completely fine. The man can survive anything.”
“Good,” she said. She glanced quickly around the beach. No one was paying attention to them; the crowd’s eyes were fixed on the funeral pyres. She lowered her voice regardless. “We can’t stay here anymore. Get ready to run.”
“When?” Baji asked. None of them looked surprised. Rather, they all seemed to have been expecting it.
“Soon. We’re not safe here. Vaisra doesn’t need us anymore and we can’t count on his protection. The Hesperians don’t know you and Suni are shamans, so we have a bit of leeway. Kitay doesn’t think they’ll move in immediately. But we shouldn’t drag our feet.”
“Thank the gods,” Ramsa said. “I couldn’t stand them. They smell horrible.”
Baji gave him a look. “Really? That’s your biggest complaint? The smell?”
“It’s rank,” Ramsa insisted. “Like tofu gone sour.”
Suni spoke up for the first time. “If you’re worried, why don’t we get out tonight?”
“That works,” Rin said.
“Any particulars?” Ramsa asked.
“I don’t have a plan beyond escape. We tried to get Moag on board, but she hasn’t responded. We’ll have to just make our way out of the city on our own.”
“One problem,” Baji said. “Suni and I are on night patrol. Think it’ll tip them off if we go missing?”
Rin assumed that was precisely the reason why they had been put on night patrol.
“When do you get off?” she asked.
“An hour before dawn.”
“So we’ll go then,” she said. “Make straight for the cliffs. Don’t wait at the gates, that’ll only attract attention. We’ll figure out what to do once we’re out of the city. Does that work?”
“Fine,” Baji said. Ramsa and Suni nodded.
There was nothing else to discuss. They stood together in a cluster, watching the funeral in silence for a few minutes. The flames on the pyres had grown to a full blaze. Rin didn’t know what was propelling the pyres farther out to sea, but the way the flames blurred the air above them was oddly hypnotizing.
“It’s pretty,” Baji said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It is.”
“You know what’s going to happen to them, right?” Ramsa said. “They’ll float for about three days. Then the pyres will start to break apart. Burned wood is weak and bodies are heavy as shit. They sink into the ocean, and they’ll bloat and crumble unless the fish nibble everything but the bones first.”
His brittle voice carried over the still morning air. Heads were turning.
“Will you stop?” Rin muttered.
“Sorry,” said Ramsa. “All I’m saying is that they should have just burned them on land.”
“I don’t think they got all the bodies,” Baji said. “I saw more corpses in the river than that. How many Imperial soldiers do you think are still down there?”
Rin shot him a look. “Baji, please—”
“You know, it’s funny. The fish will feed on the corpses. Then you’ll eat the fish, and you’ll literally be feeding on the bodies of your enemies.”
She glared at him through blurry eyes. “Do you have to do that?”
“What, you don’t think it’s funny?” He put his arm around her. “Hey. Don’t cry—I’m sorry.”
She swallowed hard. She hadn’t meant to cry. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying—she didn’t know any of the bodies on the pyre, and she didn’t have any reason to grieve.
Those bodies weren’t her fault. She still felt miserable.
“I don’t like feeling this way,” she whispered.
“Me neither, kid.” Baji rubbed her shoulder. “But that’s war. You might as well be on the winning side.”
Chapter 35
Rin couldn’t sleep that night. She sat upright in her infirmary bed, staring out the window at the still harbor, counting down the minutes until dawn. She wanted to pace the hallway, but didn’t want the infirmary staff to find her behavior odd. She also wished desperately she could be with Kitay, poring over every possible contingency one last time, but they’d been sleeping in separate rooms every night. She couldn’t risk giving away any sign that she intended to leave until she’d made it out of the city gates.
She’d packed nothing. She owned very little that mattered—she’d bring along her backup longsword, the one that wasn’t lost at the bottom of the channel, and the clothes on her back. She’d leave everything else behind in the barracks. The more she took with her, the faster Vaisra would realize that she had left for good.
Rin had no idea what she was going to do once she got out. Moag still hadn’t returned her missive. She might not have even received it. Perhaps she had and elected to ignore it. Or she might have taken it straight to Vaisra.
Ankhiluun might have been a terrible gamble. But Rin simply had no other options.
All she knew was that she needed to get out of the city. For once, she needed to be a step ahead of Vaisra. No one suspected that she might leave, which meant no one was keeping her from going.
She had no advantages past that, but she’d figure out the rest once the Red Cliffs were well behind her.
“Fancy a drink?” asked a voice.
She jumped, hands scrabbling for her sword.
“Tiger’s tits,” Nezha said. “It’s just me.”
“Sorry,” she breathed. Could he read the fear on her face? She hastily rearranged her features into some semblance of calm. “I’m still twitchy. Every noise I hear sounds like cannon fire.”
“I know that feeling.” Nezha held up a jug. “This might help.”
“What is that?”
“Sorghum wine. We’re off duty for the first time since any of us can remember.” He grinned. “Let’s go get smashed.”
“Who’s us?” she asked cautiously.
“Me and Venka. We’ll go grab Kitay, too.” He extended his hand to her. “Come on. Unless you’ve got something better to do?”
Rin wavered, mind racing furiously.
It was a horrible idea to get drunk on the eve of her escape. But Nezha might suspect something if both she and Kitay refused. He was right—neither she nor Kitay had a plausible excuse to be anywhere else. All of them had been off duty since the Hesperians docked in the harbor.
If she wasn’t planning to turn traitor, why on earth would she say no?
“Come on,” Nezha said again. “A few drinks won’t hurt.”
She managed a smile and took his hand. “You read my mind.”
She tried to calm her racing heartbeat as she followed him out of the barracks.
This was all right. She could afford this one liberty. Once she left Arlong, she might never see Nezha again. She knew, despite their bond, that he could never leave his father’s side. She didn’t want him to remember her as a traitor. She wanted him to remember her as a friend.
She had at least until the hour before dawn. She might as well say a proper goodbye.
Rin didn’t know where Nezha and Venka had found so much liquor in a city that prohibited its sale to soldiers. When she’d made it outside the infirmary, Venka was waiting on the street with an entire wagon of sealed jugs. Nezha retrieved Kitay from the barracks. Then they push
ed the wagon together up to the highest tower of the palace, where they sat overlooking the Red Cliffs, surveying the wreckage of the fleets floating below.
For the first few minutes they didn’t speak. They just drank furiously, trying to get as inebriated as possible. It didn’t take very long.
Venka kicked at Nezha’s foot. “You sure we’re not getting jailed for this?”
“We just won the most important battle in the history of the Empire.” Nezha gave her a lazy smile. “I think you’re fine to imbibe.”
“He’s trying to frame us,” Rin said.
She hadn’t meant to start drinking. But Venka and Nezha had kept urging her, and she hadn’t known how to say no without drawing suspicion. Once she started it was harder and harder to stop. Sorghum wine was only horrible for the first few swallows, when it felt like it was burning away at her esophagus, but very quickly a delicious, giddy numbness settled over her body and the wine began tasting like water.
It’ll wear off in a few hours, she thought dimly. She’d be fine by dawn.
“Believe me,” Nezha said. “I wouldn’t need this to frame any of you.”
Venka sniffed at her jug. “This stuff is gross.”
“What do you like better?” Nezha asked.
“Bamboo rice wine.”
“The lady is demanding,” Kitay said.
“I’ll procure it,” Nezha vowed.
“‘I’ll procure it,’” Kitay mimicked.
“Problem?” Nezha asked.
“No, just a question. Have you ever considered being less of a pretentious fuck?”
Nezha put his jug down. “Have you ever considered how close you’re standing to the roof?”
“Boys, boys.” Venka twirled a strand of hair between her fingers, while Kitay flicked droplets of wine at Nezha.
“Stop it,” Nezha snapped.
“Make me.”
Rin drank steadily, watching with lidded eyes as Nezha scooted on his knees across the tower and tackled Kitay to the floor. She supposed she should be afraid that they might fall off the edge, but drunk as she was, it just seemed very funny.
“I learned something,” Kitay announced abruptly, shoving Nezha off of him.
“You’re always learning things,” said Venka. “Kitay the scholar.”
“I’m an intellectually curious man,” Kitay said.
“Always hunkering down in the library. You know, I made a wager once at Sinegard that you spent all that time jerking off.”
Kitay spat out a mouthful of wine. “What?”
Venka propped her chin up on her hands. “Well, were you? Because I’d like to get my money back.”
Kitay ignored her. “My point being—listen, guys, this is actually interesting. You know why the Militia troops were fighting like they’d never held a sword before?”
“They were fighting with a bit more skill than that,” Nezha said.
“I don’t want to talk about troops,” said Venka.
Nezha elbowed her. “Indulge him. Else he’ll never shut up.”
“It’s malaria,” Kitay said. He sounded at first like he was hiccupping, but then he rolled on his side, giggling so hard his entire frame shook. He was drunk, Rin realized; perhaps more drunk than she was, despite the risk.
Kitay must be feeling the way she did—happy, deliriously so, for once in the company of friends who weren’t in danger, and she suspected that he, too, wanted to suspend reality and break the rules, to ignore the fact that they were about to part forever and just share these last jugs of wine.
She didn’t want dawn to come. She would draw this moment out forever if she could.
“They’re not used to southern diseases,” Kitay continued. “The mosquitoes weakened them more than anything we did. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Marvelous,” Venka said drily.
Rin wasn’t paying attention. She scooted closer to the edge of the tower. She wanted to fly again, to feel that precipitous drop in her stomach, the sheer thrill of the dive.
She dangled one foot over the edge and relished the feeling of the wind buffeting her limbs. She leaned forward just the slightest bit. What if she jumped right now? Would she enjoy the fall?
“Get away from there.” Kitay’s voice cut through the fog in her mind. “Nezha, grab her—”
“On it.” Strong arms wrapped around her midriff and dragged her away from the edge. Nezha gripped her tightly, anticipating a struggle, but she just hummed a happy note and slouched back against his chest.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you are?” he grumbled.
“Hand me another jug,” she said.
Nezha hesitated, but Venka readily obliged.
Rin took a long draught, sighed, and lifted her fingertips to her temples. She felt as if a current were running through her limbs, like she had stuck her hand in a bolt of lightning. She rested her head back against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut.
The best part of being drunk was how nothing mattered.
She could dwell on thoughts that used to hurt too much to think about. She could conjure memories—Altan burning on the pier, the corpses in Golyn Niis, Qara’s body in Chaghan’s arms—all without cringing, without the attendant torment. She could reminisce with a quiet detachment, because nothing mattered and nothing hurt.
“Sixteen months.” Kitay had started counting aloud on his fingers. “That’s almost a year and a half we’ve been at war now, if you start from the invasion.”
“That’s not that long,” said Venka. “The First Poppy War took three years. The Second Poppy War took five. The succession battles after the Red Emperor could take as long as seven.”
“How do you fight a war for seven years?” Rin asked. “Wouldn’t you get bored of fighting?”
“Soldiers get bored,” Kitay said. “Aristocrats don’t. To them, it was all a big game. I guess that’s the problem.”
“Here’s a thought experiment.” Venka waved her hands in a small arc like a rainbow. “Imagine some alternate world where this war hadn’t happened. The Federation never invaded. No, scratch that, the Federation doesn’t even exist. Where are you?”
“Any particular point in time?” Kitay asked.
Venka shook her head. “No, I meant, what are you doing with your life? What do you wish you were doing?”
“I know what Kitay’s doing.” Nezha tilted his head back, shook the last drops from his jug into his mouth, then looked disappointed when it refused to yield any more. Venka passed him another jug. Nezha attempted to pop the cork, failed, muttered a curse under his breath, and smashed the neck against the wall.
“Careful,” said Rin. “That’s premium stuff.”
Nezha lifted the broken edges to his lips and smiled.
“Go on,” Kitay said. “Where am I?”
“You’re at Yuelu Academy,” Nezha said. “You’re conducting groundbreaking research on—on some irrelevant shit like the movement of planetary bodies, or the most effective accounting methods across the Twelve Provinces.”
“Don’t mock accounting,” Kitay said. “It’s important.”
“Only to you,” Venka said.
“Regimes have fallen because rulers didn’t balance their accounts.”
“Whatever.” Venka rolled her eyes. “What about the rest of you?”
“I’m good at war,” Rin said. “I’d still be doing wars.”
“Against who?” Venka asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Anyone.”
“There might not be any wars left to fight now,” Nezha said.
“There’s always war,” Kitay said.
“The only thing permanent about this Empire is war,” Rin said. The words were so familiar she said them without thinking, and it took her a long moment to realize she was reciting an aphorism from a history textbook she’d studied for the Keju. That was incredible—even now, the vestiges of that exam were still burned into her mind.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that t
he only permanent thing about her might be war. She couldn’t imagine where she’d be if she weren’t a soldier anymore. The past four years had been the first time in her life that she’d felt like she was worth something. In Tikany, she’d been an invisible shopgirl, far beneath everyone’s notice. Her life and death had been utterly insignificant. If she’d been run over by a rickshaw on the street, no one would have bothered to stop.
But now? Now civilians obeyed her command, Warlords sought her audience, and soldiers feared her. Now she spoke to the greatest military minds in the country as if they were equals—or at least as if she belonged in the room. Now she was drinking sorghum wine on the highest tower of the palace of Arlong with the son of the Dragon Warlord.
No one would have paid so much attention to her if she weren’t so very good at killing people.
A twinge of discomfort wormed through her gut. Once she left Vaisra’s employ, what on earth was she supposed to do?
“We could all just switch to civilian posts now,” Kitay said. “Let’s all be ministers and magistrates.”
“You have to get elected first,” Nezha said. “Government by the people, and all that. People have to like you.”
“Rin’s out of a job, then,” Venka said.
“She can be a custodian,” said Nezha.
“Did you want someone to rearrange your face?” Rin asked. “Because I’ll do it for free.”
“Rin’s never going to be out of a job,” Kitay said hastily. “We’ll always need armies. There’ll always be another enemy to fight.”
“Like who?” Rin asked.
Kitay counted them off on his fingers. “Rogue Federation units. The fractured provinces. The Hinterlanders. Don’t look at me like that, Rin; you heard Bekter, too. The Ketreyids want war.”
“The Ketreyids want to go to war with the other clans,” Venka said.
“And what happens when that spills over? We’ll be fighting another border war within the decade, I promise.”
“That’s just mop-up duty,” Nezha said dismissively. “We’ll get rid of them.”
“Then we’ll create another war,” said Kitay. “That’s what militaries do.”
“Not a military controlled by a Republic,” Nezha said.