The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  That was clever, Rin thought. If the Hesperians didn’t notice the second skimmer escaping into the night, they might conclude that she’d drowned.

  “Then what about its crew?” she asked. “That thing is crewed, right? You’re just going to sacrifice Lilies?”

  Sarana’s smile looked carved into her face. “Cheer up. With luck, they’ll think it’s you.”

  The Lilies’ physician laid Rin’s hand on a table, gingerly unwrapped it, and took a sharp breath when she saw the damage. “You sure you don’t want any sedatives?”

  “No.” Rin twisted her head around to face the wall. The look on the physician’s face was worse than the sight of her mangled fingers. “Just fix it.”

  “If you move, I’ll have to sedate you,” the physician warned.

  “I won’t.” Rin clenched her teeth. “Just give me a gag. Please.”

  The physician barely looked older than Sarana, but she acted with practiced, efficient movements that set Rin slightly more at ease.

  First she doused the wounds with some kind of clear alcohol that stung so badly that Rin nearly bit through the cloth. Then she stitched together the places where the flesh had split apart to reveal the bone. Rin’s hand was already stinging so badly from the alcohol that it almost masked the pain, but the sight of the needle dipping repeatedly into her flesh made her so nauseated she had to stop in the middle to dry-heave.

  At last, the physician prepared to set the bones. “You’ll want to hold on to something.”

  Rin grasped the edge of the chair with her good hand. Without warning, the physician pressed down.

  Rin’s eyes bulged open. She couldn’t stop her legs from kicking madly at the air. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “You’re doing well,” the physician murmured as she tied a cloth splint over the set hand. “The worst part’s over.”

  She pressed Rin’s hand between two wooden planks and tied them together with several loops of twine to render the hand immobile. Rin’s fingers were splayed outward, frozen in position.

  “See how that feels,” said the physician. “I’m sorry it looks so clumsy. I can build you something more lightweight, but it’ll take a few days, and I don’t have the supplies on the ship.”

  Rin raised the splint to her eyes. Between the planks she could see only the tips of her fingers. She tried to wiggle her fingers, but she couldn’t tell if they were obeying her or not.

  “Am I all right to remove the gag?” the physician asked.

  Rin nodded.

  The physician pulled it out of her mouth.

  “Will I be able to use this hand?” she asked the moment she could speak.

  “There’s no telling how this might heal. Most of your fingers are actually fine, but the center of your hand is cracked straight through the middle. If—”

  “Am I losing this hand?” Rin interrupted.

  “That’s likely. I mean, you can never quite predict how—”

  “I understand.” Rin sat back, trying not to panic. “All right. That’s—that’s okay. That . . .”

  “You’ll want to consider getting it amputated if it heals and you still don’t have mobility.” The physician attempted to sound soothing, but her quiet words only made Rin want to scream. “That might be better than walking around with . . . ah, dead flesh. It’s more prone to infections, and the recurring pain might be so bad that you want it gone entirely.”

  Rin didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how she was supposed to absorb the information that she was now effectively one-handed, that she’d have to relearn everything if she wanted to fight with a sword again.

  This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening to her.

  “Breathe slowly,” said the physician.

  Rin realized she’d been hyperventilating.

  The physician put a hand on her wrist. “You’ll be all right. It’s not as bad as you think it is.”

  Rin raised her voice. “Not as bad?”

  “Most amputees learn to adjust. In time, you’ll—”

  “I’m supposed to be a soldier!” Rin shouted. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now?”

  “You can summon fire,” said the physician. “What do you need a sword for?”

  “I thought the Hesperians were only here for military support and trade negotiations. This treaty basically turns us into a colony.” Venka was talking when Rin, despite the physician’s protests, walked into the captain’s quarters. She glanced up. “Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

  “Didn’t want to,” Rin said. “What are we talking about?”

  “The physician said the laudanum would have you out for hours,” Kitay said.

  “I didn’t take it.” She sat down beside him. “I’ve had enough of opiates for a while.”

  “Fair enough.” He glanced over at her splint, then flexed his own fingers. Rin noticed the sweat drenching his uniform, the half-moon marks where he’d dug his nails into his palm. He’d felt every second of her pain.

  She cleared her throat and changed the subject. “Why are we talking about treaties?”

  “Tarcquet has staked his claim to the continent,” said the Monkey Warlord. Gurubai looked awful. Flecks of dried blood covered both his hands and the left side of his face, and his expression was hollow and haggard. He’d escaped the crackdown, but just barely. “The treaty terms were atrocious. The Hesperians got their trade rights—we’ve waived our rights to any tariffs, but they get to keep theirs. They also won the right to build military bases anywhere they want on Nikara soil.”

  “Bet they got permission for missionaries, too,” Kitay said.

  “They did. And they wanted the right to market opium in the Empire again.”

  “Surely Vaisra said no,” Rin said.

  “Vaisra signed every clause,” Gurubai said. “He didn’t even put up a fight. You think he had a choice? He doesn’t even have full control over domestic affairs anymore. Everything he does has to be approved by a delegate from the Consortium.”

  “So Nikan’s fucked.” Kitay threw his hands up in the air. “Everything’s fucked.”

  “Why would Vaisra want this?” Rin asked. None of this made sense to her. “Vaisra hates giving up control.”

  “Because he knows it’s better to be a puppet Emperor than to have nothing at all. Because this arrangement plies him with so much silver he’ll choke on it. And because now he has the military resources necessary to take the rest of the Empire.” Gurubai leaned back in his chair. “You’re all too young to remember the days of joint occupation. But things are going right back to how they were seventy years ago.”

  “We’ll be slaves in our own country,” Kitay said.

  “‘Slave’ is a strong way of putting it,” Gurubai said. “The Hesperians aren’t much into forced labor, at least on this continent. They prefer relying on forces of economic coercion. The Divine Architect appreciates rational and voluntary choice, and all that nonsense.”

  “That’s fucked,” Rin said.

  “It was inevitable the moment Vaisra invited them to his hall. The southern Warlords saw this coming. We tried to warn you. You wouldn’t listen.”

  Rin shifted uncomfortably in her seat. But Gurubai’s tone wasn’t accusatory, simply resigned.

  “We can’t do anything about it now,” he said. “We need to go back down to the south first. Clean out the Federation. Make it safe for our people to come home.”

  “What’s the point?” Kitay asked. “You’re the agricultural center of the Empire. Fight off the Federation and you’ll just be doing Vaisra a favor. He’s going to come for you sooner or later.”

  “Then we’ll fight back,” Rin said. “They want the south, they’ll have to bleed for it.”

  Gurubai gave her a grim smile. “That sounds about right.”

  “We’re going to take on Vaisra and the entire Consortium.” Kitay let that sink in for a moment, and then let out a mad, high-pitched giggle. “You can’t be serious.”
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br />   “We don’t have any other options,” said Rin.

  “You could all run,” Venka said. “Go to Ankhiluun, get the Black Lilies to hide you. Lie low.”

  Gurubai shook his head. “There’s not a single person in the Republic who doesn’t know who Rin is. Moag’s on our side, but she can’t keep every lowlife in Ankhiluun from talking. You’d all last at most a month.”

  “I’m not running,” Rin said.

  She wasn’t going to let Vaisra hunt her down like a dog.

  “You’re not fighting another war, either,” Kitay said. “Rin. You have one functional hand.”

  “You don’t need both hands to command troops,” she said.

  “What troops?”

  She gestured around the ship. “I’m assuming we’ll have the Red Junk Fleet.”

  Kitay scoffed. “A fleet so powerful that Moag’s never dared to move on Daji.”

  “Because Ankhiluun’s never been at stake,” Rin said. “Now it is.”

  “Fine,” Kitay snapped. “You’ve got a fleet maybe a tenth of the size of what the Hesperians could bring. What else you got? Farm boys? Peasants?”

  “Farm boys and peasants become soldiers all the time.”

  “Yes, given time to train and weapons, neither of which you have.”

  “What would you have us do, then?” Rin asked softly. “Die quietly and let Vaisra have his way?”

  “That’s better than getting more idiots killed for a war that you can’t win.”

  “I don’t think you realize how big our power base is,” said Gurubai.

  “Really?” Kitay asked. “Did I just miss the army you’ve got hidden away somewhere?”

  “The refugees you saw at Arlong don’t represent even a thousandth of the southern population,” said Gurubai. “There are a hundred thousand men who picked up axes to fend off the Federation when it became clear we weren’t getting aid. They’ll fight for us.”

  He pointed at Rin. “They’ll fight especially for her. She’s already become myth in the south. The vermilion bird. The goddess of fire. She’s the savior they’ve been waiting for. She’s the symbol they’ve been waiting this whole war to follow. What do you think happens when they see her in person?”

  “Rin’s been through enough,” Kitay said. “You’re not turning her into some kind of figurehead—”

  “Not a figurehead.” Rin cut him off. “I’ll be a general. I’ll lead the entire southern army. Isn’t that right?”

  Gurubai nodded. “If you’ll do it.”

  Kitay gripped her shoulder. “Is that what you want to be? Another Warlord in the south?”

  Rin didn’t understand that question.

  Why did it matter what she wanted to be? She knew what she couldn’t be. She couldn’t be Vaisra’s weapon anymore. She couldn’t be the tool of any military; couldn’t close her eyes and lend her destructive abilities to someone else who told her where and when to kill.

  She had thought that being a weapon might give her peace. That it might place the blame of blood-soaked decisions on someone else so that she was not responsible for the deaths at her hands. But all that had done was make her blind, stupid, and so easily manipulated.

  She was so much more powerful than anyone—Altan, Vaisra—had ever let her be. She was finished taking orders. Whatever she did next would be her sole, autonomous choice.

  “The south is going to go to war regardless,” she said. “They’ll need a leader. Why shouldn’t it be me?”

  “They’re untrained,” Kitay said. “They’re unarmed, they’re probably starving—”

  “Then we’ll steal food and equipment. Or we’ll get it shipped in. Perks of allying with Moag.”

  He blinked at her. “You’re going to lead peasants and refugees against Hesperian dirigibles.”

  Rin shrugged. She was mad to be so cavalier, she knew that. But they were backed against a wall, and their lack of options was almost a relief, because it meant simply that they fought or they died. “Don’t forget the pirates, too.”

  Kitay looked like he was on the verge of ripping out every strand of hair left on his head.

  “Do not assume that because the southerners are untrained they will not make good soldiers,” said Gurubai. “Our advantage lies in numbers. The fault lines of this country don’t lie at the level that Vaisra was prepared to engage. The real civil war won’t be fought at the provincial level.”

  “But Vaisra’s not the Empire,” Kitay said. “The split was with the Empire.”

  “No, the split is with people like us,” Rin said suddenly. “It’s the north and the south. It always was.”

  The pieces had been working slowly through her opium-addled mind, but when they finally clicked, the epiphany came like a shock of cold water.

  How had it taken her this long to figure this out? There was a reason why she’d always felt uncomfortable championing the Republic. The vision of a democratic government was an artificial construct, teetering on the implausibility of Vaisra’s promises.

  But the real base of opposition came from the people who had lost the most under Imperial rule. The people who, by now, hated Vaisra the most.

  Somewhere out there, hiding within the wreckage of Rooster Province, was a little girl, terrified and alone. She was choking on her hopelessness, disgusted by her weakness, and burning with rage. And she would do anything to get the chance to fight, to really fight, even if that meant losing control of her own mind.

  And there were millions more like her.

  The magnitude of this realization was dizzying.

  The maps of war rearranged themselves in Rin’s mind. The provincial lines disappeared. Everything was merely black and red—privileged aristocracy against stark poverty. The numbers rebalanced, and the war she’d thought she was fighting suddenly looked very, very different.

  She’d seen the resentment on the faces of her people. The glare in their eyes when they dared to look up. They were not a people grasping for power. Their rebellion would not fracture over stupid personal ambitions. They were a people who refused to be killed, and that made them dangerous.

  You can’t fight a war on your own, Nezha had once told her.

  No, but she could with thousands of bodies. And if a thousand fell, then she would throw another thousand at him, and then another thousand. No matter what the power asymmetry, war on this scale was a numbers game, and she had lives to spare. That was the single advantage that the south had against the Hesperians—that there were so, so many of them.

  Kitay seemed to have realized this, too. The incredulity slid off his face, replaced by grim resignation.

  “Then we’re going to war against Nezha,” he said.

  “The Republic’s already declared war on us,” she said. “Nezha knows what side he chose.”

  She didn’t have to debate this any longer. She wanted this war. She wanted to go up against Nezha again and again until at the end, she was the only one standing. She wanted to watch his scarred face twist in despair as she took away from him everything he cared about. She wanted him tortured, diminished, weakened, powerless, and begging on his knees.

  Nezha had everything she used to want. He was aristocracy, beauty, and elegance. Nezha was the north. He had been born into a locus of power, and that made him feel entitled to use it, to make decisions for millions of people whom he considered inferior to himself.

  She was going to wrench that power away from him. And then she’d pay him back in kind.

  Finally, spoke the Phoenix. The god’s voice was dimmed by the Seal, but Rin could hear clearly every ring of its laughter. My darling little Speerly. At last we agree.

  All shreds of affection she’d once felt for Nezha had burned away. When she thought of him she felt only a cruel, delicious hatred.

  Let it smolder, said the Phoenix. Let it grow.

  Anger, pain, and hatred—that was all kindling for a great and terrible power, and it had been festering in the south for a very long time.

&n
bsp; “Let Nezha come for us,” she said. “I’m going to burn his heart out of his chest.”

  After a pause, Kitay sighed. “Fine. Then we’ll go to war against the strongest military force in the world.”

  “They’re not the strongest force in the world,” Rin said. She felt the god’s presence in the back of her mind—eager, delighted, and at last perfectly aligned with her intentions.

  Together, spoke the Phoenix, we will burn down this world.

  She slammed her fist against the table. “I am.”

  Dramatis Personae

  The Cike

  Fang Runin: a war orphan from Rooster Province; commander of the Cike; and the last living Speerly

  Ramsa: a former prisoner at Baghra; current munitions expert

  Baji: a shaman who calls on an unknown god that gives him berserker powers

  Suni: a shaman who calls on the Monkey God

  Chaghan Suren: a shaman of the Naimad clan; and the twin brother of Qara

  Qara Suren: a sharpshooter; speaker to birds; and twin sister of Chaghan

  Unegen: a shape-shifter who calls on a minor fox spirit

  Aratsha: a shaman who calls the river god

  *Altan Trengsin: a Speerly, formerly the commander of the Cike

  The Dragon Republic and Its Allies

  The House of Yin

  Yin Vaisra: the Dragon Warlord and leader of the Republic

  Yin Saikhara: the Lady of Arlong; and the wife of Yin Vaisra

  Yin Jinzha: the oldest son of the Dragon Warlord; and the grand marshal of the Republican Army

  Yin Muzha: Jinzha’s twin sister, studying abroad in Hesperia

  Yin Nezha: the second son of the Dragon Warlord

  *Yin Mingzha: the third son of the Dragon Warlord; drowned in an accident as a child

  Chen Kitay: son of the defense minister; and the last heir to the House of Chen

  Sring Venka: daughter of the finance minister

  Liu Gurubai: the Monkey Warlord