by R. F. Kuang
Rin sat up. “Have any of you pictured it? A democratic Nikan? Do you really think it’ll work?”
The prospect of a functioning democracy had rarely bothered her during the war itself. There was always the more pressing threat of the Empire at hand. But now they’d actually won, and Vaisra had the opportunity to turn his abstract dream into a political reality.
Rin doubted he would. Vaisra had too much power now. Why on earth would he give it away?
She couldn’t say she blamed him. She still wasn’t convinced democracy was even a good idea. The Nikara had been fighting among themselves for a millennium. Were they going to stop just because they could vote for their rulers? And who was going to vote for those rulers? People like Auntie Fang?
“Of course it’ll work,” Nezha said. “I mean, imagine all the senseless military disputes the Warlords get into every year. We’ll end that. All arguments get settled in council, not on a battlefield. And once we’ve united the entire Empire, we can do anything.”
Venka snorted. “You actually believe that shit?”
Nezha looked miffed. “Of course I believe it. Why do you think I fought this war?”
“Because you want to make Daddy happy?”
Nezha aimed a languid kick at her ribs.
Venka dodged and swiped another jug of wine from the wagon, cackling.
Nezha leaned back against the tower wall. “The future is going to be glorious,” he said, and there wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “We live in the most beautiful country in the world. We have more manpower than the Hesperians. We have more natural resources. The whole world wants what we have, and for the first time in our history we’re going to be able to use it.”
Rin rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin up on her hands.
She liked listening to Nezha talk. He was so hopeful, so optimistic, and so stupid.
He could spout all the ideology he wanted, but she knew better. The Nikara were never going to rule themselves, not peacefully, because there was no such thing as a Nikara at all. There were Sinegardians, then the people who tried to act like Sinegardians, and then there were the southerners.
They weren’t on the same side. They’d never been.
“We’re hurtling into a bright new era,” Nezha finished. “And it’ll be magnificent.”
Rin spread her arms. “Come here,” she said.
He leaned into her embrace. She held his head against her chest and rested her chin on the top of his head, silently counting his breaths.
She was going to miss him so much.
“You poor thing,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
She just hugged him tighter. She didn’t want this moment to end. She didn’t want to have to go. “I just don’t want the world to break you.”
Eventually Venka started retching off the side of the tower.
“It’s okay,” Kitay said when Rin moved to stand up. “I’ve got her.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’ll be fine. I’m not close to as drunk as the rest of you.” He draped Venka’s arm over his shoulder and guided her carefully toward the stairs.
Venka hiccupped and mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Don’t you dare puke on me,” Kitay told her. He looked over his shoulder at Rin. “You shouldn’t be staying out with wounds like that. Go get some sleep soon.”
“I will,” Rin promised.
“You’re sure?” Kitay pressed.
She read the concern on his face. We’re running out of time.
“I’ll be out here for an hour,” she said. “Tops.”
“Good.” Kitay turned to leave with Venka. Their footsteps faded down the staircase, and then it was just Rin and Nezha left on the rooftop. The night air had suddenly become very cold, which at that point seemed to Rin like a good excuse to sit closer to Nezha.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
“Splendid,” she said, and repeated the word twice when the consonants didn’t seem to come out right. “Splendid. Splendid.” Her tongue sat heavy in her mouth. She’d stopped drinking hours ago, had nearly sobered up by now, but the evening chill had numbed her extremities.
“Good.” Nezha stood up and offered her his hand. “Come with me.”
“But I like it here,” she whined.
“We’re freezing here,” he said. “Just come on.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll be fun,” he said, which at that point sounded like a good reason to do anything.
Somehow they ended up on the harbor. Rin lurched into Nezha’s side as she walked. She hadn’t sobered up as quickly as she’d hoped. The ground tilted treacherously beneath her feet every time she moved. “If you’re trying to drown me, then you’re being a little obvious about it.”
“Why do you always think someone’s trying to kill you?” Nezha asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
They stopped at the end of the pier, farther out than any of the fishing crafts were docked. Nezha jumped into a little sampan and gestured for her to follow.
“What do you see?” he asked as he rowed.
She blinked at him. “Water.”
“And illuminating the water?”
“That’s moonlight.”
“Look closely,” he said. “That’s not just the moon.”
Rin’s breath caught in her throat. Slowly her mind made sense of what she was seeing. The light wasn’t coming from the sky. It was coming from the river itself.
She leaned over the side of the sampan to get a closer look. She saw darting little sparks among a milky background. The river was not just reflecting the stars, it was adding its own phosphorescent glow—lightning flashes breaking over minuscule movements of the waves, luminous streams washing over every ripple. The sea was on fire.
Nezha pulled her back by the wrist. “Careful.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the water. “What is it?”
“Fish and mollusks and crabs,” he said. “When you put them in the shadow they produce light of their own, like underwater flames.”
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
She wondered if he was going to kiss her now. She didn’t know much about being kissed, but if the old stories were anything to judge by, now seemed like a good time. The hero always took his maiden somewhere beautiful and declared his love under the stars.
She would have liked Nezha to kiss her, too. She would have liked to share this final memory with him before she fled. But he only stared thoughtfully at her, his mind fixed on something she couldn’t guess at.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked after a pause.
“Anything,” she said.
“Why did you hate me so much at school?”
She laughed, surprised. “Wasn’t it obvious?”
She had so many answers, it seemed a ridiculous question. Because he was obnoxious. Because he was rich and special and popular, and she wasn’t. Because he was the heir to the Dragon Province, and she was a war orphan and a mud-skinned southerner.
“No,” said Nezha. “I mean—I understood I wasn’t the nicest to you.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that. But, Rin, we managed to hate each other so much for three years. That’s not normal. That goes back to first-year jitters. Was it all because I made fun of you?”
“No, it’s because you scared me.”
“I scared you?”
“I thought you were going to be the reason why I’d have to leave,” she said. “And I didn’t have anywhere else to go. If I’d been expelled from Sinegard, then I might well have died. So I feared you, I hated you, and that never really went away.”
“I didn’t realize,” he said quietly.
“Bullshit,” she said. “Don’t act like you didn’t know.”
“I swear that never crossed my mind.”
“Really? Because it had to. We weren’
t on the same level, and you knew it, and that’s how you got away with everything you did, because you knew I could never retaliate. You were rich and I was poor and you exploited it.” She was surprised by how quickly the words came, how easily she could still feel her lingering resentment toward him. She’d thought she’d put it behind her a long time ago. Perhaps not. “And the fact that it’s never fucking crossed your mind that the stakes were vastly different between us is frustrating, to be frank.”
“That’s fair,” Nezha said. “Can I ask you another question?”
“No. I get to ask my question first.”
Whatever game they were playing suddenly had rules, was suddenly open to debate. And the rules, Rin decided, meant reciprocity. She stared at him expectantly.
“Fine.” Nezha shrugged. “What is it?”
She was glad she had the liquid courage of lingering alcohol to say what came next. “Are you ever going to go back to that grotto?”
He stiffened. “What?”
“The gods can’t be physical things,” she said. “Chaghan taught me that. They need mortal conduits to affect the world. Whatever the dragon is . . .”
“That thing is a monster,” he said flatly.
“Maybe. But it’s beatable,” she said. Perhaps she was still flush with the victory of defeating Feylen, but it seemed so obvious to her, what Nezha had to do if he wanted to be freed. “Maybe it was a person once. I don’t know how it became what it is, and maybe it’s as powerful as a god should be now, but I’ve buried gods before. I’ll do it again.”
“You can’t beat that thing,” Nezha said. “You have no idea what you’re up against.”
“I think have some idea.”
“Not about this.” His voice hardened. “You will never ask me about this again.”
“Fine.”
She leaned backward and let her fingers trail through the luminous water. She made flames trickle up her arms, delighting in how their intricate patterns were reflected in the blue-green light. Fire and water looked so lovely together. It was a pity they destroyed each other by nature.
“Can I ask another question now?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Did you mean it when you said we should raise an army of shamans?”
She recoiled. “When did I say that?”
“New Year’s. Back on the campaign, when we were sitting in the snow.”
She laughed, amused that he had even remembered. The northern campaign felt like it had been lifetimes ago. “Why not? It’d be marvelous. We’d never lose.”
“You understand that’s precisely what the Hesperians are terrified of.”
“For good reason,” she said. “It’d fuck them up, wouldn’t it?”
Nezha leaned forward. “Did you know that Tarcquet is seeking a moratorium on all shamanic activity?”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you promise never to call on your powers again, and you’ll be punished if you do. We report every living shaman in the Empire. And we destroy all written knowledge of shamanism so it can’t be passed down.”
“Very funny,” she said.
“I’m not joking. You’d have to cooperate. If you never call the fire again, you’ll be safe.”
“Fat chance,” she said. “I’ve just gotten the fire back. I don’t intend to give it up.”
“And if they tried to force you?”
She let the flames dance across her shoulders. “Then good fucking luck.”
Nezha stood up and moved across the sampan to sit down beside her. His hand grazed the small of her back.
She shivered at his touch. “What are you doing?”
“Where’s your injury?” he asked. He pressed his fingers into the scar in her side. “Here?”
“That hurts.”
“Good,” he said. His hand moved behind her. She thought he was going to pull her into him, but then she felt a pressure at the small of her back. She blinked, confused. She didn’t realize that she had been stabbed until Nezha drew his hand away, and she saw the blood on his fingers.
She slumped to the side. He pulled her into his arms.
His face ebbed in and out of her vision. She tried to speak, but her lips were heavy, clumsy; all she could do was push air out in incoherent whispers. “You . . . but you . . .”
“Don’t try to speak,” Nezha murmured, and he brushed his lips against her forehead as he drove the knife deeper into her back.
Chapter 36
The morning sun was a dagger to Rin’s eyes. She moaned and curled onto her side. For a single, blissful moment, she couldn’t remember how she had ended up there. Then awareness came slowly and painfully—her mind lapsed into flashes of images, fragments of conversations. Nezha’s face. The sour aftertaste of sorghum wine. A knife. A kiss.
She rolled over into something wet, sticky, and putrid. She had vomited in her sleep. A wave of nausea racked her body, but when her stomach heaved nothing came out. Everything hurt. She reached to feel at her back, terrified. Someone had stitched her up—blood was crusted around the wound, but it wasn’t bleeding.
She might be fucked, but she wasn’t dying just yet.
Two bolts chained her to the wall—one around her right wrist, and one between her ankles. The chains had some slack, but not very much; she couldn’t crawl farther than halfway across the room.
She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness forced her back onto the floor. Her thoughts moved in slow, confused strains. She tried without hope to call the fire. Nothing happened.
Of course they’d drugged her.
Slowly, her tired mind worked through what had happened. She’d been so stupid, she wanted to kick herself. She’d been this close to getting out, until she’d caved to sentiment.
She’d known Vaisra was a manipulator. She’d known the Hesperians would come after her. But never had she dreamed that Nezha might hurt her. She should have incapacitated him in the barracks and snuck out of Arlong before anyone saw. Instead, she’d hoped they could have one last night together before they parted forever.
Fool, she thought. You loved him and you trusted him, and you walked straight into his trap.
After Altan, she should have known better.
She glanced around the room. She was alone. She didn’t want to be alone—if she was a prisoner then she needed to at least know what was coming for her. Minutes passed and no one entered the room, so she screamed. Then she screamed again and kept screaming, on and on until her throat burned.
The door slammed open. Lady Yin Saikhara walked into the room. She carried a whip in her right hand.
Fuck, Rin thought sluggishly, just before the whip lashed across her left shoulder to the right side of her hip. For a moment Rin lay frozen, the crack ringing in her ears. Then the pain sank in, so fierce and white-hot that it brought her to her knees. The whip came down again. Right shoulder this time. Rin couldn’t bite back her screams.
Saikhara lowered the whip. Rin could just see the barest tremble in her hands, but otherwise the Lady of Arlong stood stiff, imperious, pale with that raw hate that Rin had never understood.
“You were supposed to tell them,” Saikhara said. Her hair was loose and disheveled, her voice a tremulous snarl. “You were supposed to help them fix him.”
Rin crawled toward the far corner of the room, trying to get out of Saikhara’s striking range. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You creature of Chaos,” Saikhara hissed. “You snake-tongued deceiver, you pawn of the greatest evil, this is all your fault . . .”
Rin realized for the first time that the Lady of Arlong might not be entirely sane.
She raised her hands over her head and crouched against the back corner in case Saikhara decided to bring the whip down again. “What do you think is my fault?”
Saikhara’s eyes looked wide and unfocused; she spoke staring at a point a yard to Rin’s left. “They were going to fix him. Vaisra promised. But they cam
e back from the campaign and they said they’ve come no closer to knowing the truth, and you’re still here, you dirty little thing—”
“Wait,” Rin said. Puzzle pieces fitted slowly together in her mind; she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen this connection before. “Fix who?”
Saikhara only glared.
“Did they say they’d fix Nezha?” Rin demanded. “Did the Hesperians say they could cure his dragon mark?”
Saikhara blinked. A mask froze over her features, the same mask her son and husband were so adept at.
But she didn’t have to say anything. Rin understood the truth now; it was lying so obviously before her.
“You promised,” Saikhara had hissed at Vaisra. “You swore to me. You said you’d make this right, that if I brought them back they’d find a way to fix him.”
Sister Petra had promised Saikhara a cure for her son’s affliction—this was the entire reason Saikhara had fought so hard to bring the Gray Company to the Empire. Which meant Vaisra and Saikhara had both known Nezha was a shaman all this time.
But they hadn’t traded him to the Hesperians.
No, they’d only jeopardized every other shaman in the empire. They’d handed her to Petra to repeat what Shiro had put her through, just for some hope of saving their boy.
“I don’t know what you think they’ll learn,” Rin said quietly. “But hurting me can’t fix your son.”
No, Nezha was likely going to suffer the dragon’s curse until he died. That curse had to be beyond Hesperian knowledge. That thought gave her some small, vicious satisfaction.
“Chaos deceives masterfully.” Saikhara moved her hand rapidly over her chest, forming symbols with her fingers that Rin had never seen. “It conceals its true nature and imitates order to subvert it. I know I cannot elicit the truth from you. I am only a novice initiate. But the Gray Company will have their turn.”
Rin watched her warily, paying close attention to the whip. “Then what do you want?”
Saikhara pointed toward the window. “I’m here to watch.”
Rin followed her gaze, confused.
“Go ahead,” Saikhara said. She looked oddly, viciously triumphant. “Enjoy the show.”
Rin stumbled toward the window and peered outside.