The Poppy War (The Poppy War Trilogy #1)
The Poppy War: Part 2 – Chapter 14

“So much of a siege is sitting around on your ass,” Ramsa complained. “You know how much actual fighting there’s been since the Federation started landing on the beach in droves? None. We’re just scouting each other out, testing the limits, playing chicken.”

Ramsa had recruited Rin to help him fortify the back alleys of the intersection by the wharf.

They were slowly transforming the streets of Khurdalain into defense lines. Each evacuated house became a fort; each intersection became a trap of barbed wire. They had spent the morning methodically knocking holes through walls to link the labyrinth of lanes into a navigable transportation system to which only the Nikara had the map. Now they were filling bags with sand to pad the gaps in the walls against Federation bombardments.

“I thought you blew up an embassy building,” said Rin.

“That was one time,” Ramsa snapped. “More action than anyone’s attempted since we got here, anyhow.”

“You mean the Federation hasn’t attacked yet?”

“They’ve launched exploratory parties to sniff out the borders. No major troop movements yet.”

“And they’ve been at it this long? Why?”

“Because Khurdalain’s better fortified than Sinegard. Khurdalain withstood the first two Poppy Wars, and it sure as hell is going to make it through a third.” Ramsa bent down. “Pass me that bag.”

She hauled it up, and he hoisted it to the top of the fortification with a grunt.

Rin couldn’t help liking the scrawny urchin, who reminded her of a younger Kitay, if Kitay ad been a one-eyed pyromaniac with an unfortunate adoration for explosions. She wondered how long he’d had been with the Cike. He looked impossibly young. How did a child end up on the front lines of a war?

“You’ve got a Sinegardian accent,” she noticed.

Ramsa nodded. “Lived there for a while. My family were alchemists for the Militia base in the capital. Oversaw fire powder production.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“You mean with the Cike?” Ramsa shrugged. “Long story. Father got wrapped up in some political stuff, ended up turning on the Empress. Extremists, you know. Could have been the Opera, but I’ll never be sure. Anyways, he tried to detonate a rocket over the palace and ended up blowing up our factory instead.” He pointed to his eyepatch. “Burned my eyeball right out. Daji’s guards lopped the heads off everyone remotely involved. Public execution and everything.”

Rin blinked, mostly stunned by Ramsa’s breezy delivery. “Then what about you?”

“I got off easy. Father never told me much about his plans, so after they realized I didn’t know anything, they just tossed me into Baghra. I think they thought killing a kid might make them look bad.”

“Baghra?”

Ramsa nodded cheerfully. “Worst two years of my life. Near the tail end, the Empress paid me a visit and said she’d let me out if I worked on munitions for the Cike.”

“And you just said yes?”

“Do you know what Baghra is like? By then, I was just about ready to do anything,” said Ramsa. “Baji was in Baghra, too. Just ask him.”

“What was he there for?”

Ramsa shrugged. “Who knows? He won’t say. He was only there for a few months, though. But let’s face it—even Khurdalain is so much better than a cell in Baghra. And the work here is awesome.”

Rin gave him a sideways look. Ramsa sounded disturbingly chipper about his situation.

She decided to change the subject. “What was that about in the mess hall?”

“What do you mean?”

“The—uh . . .” She flailed her arms around. “The monkey man.”

“Huh? Oh, that’s just Suni. Does that maybe every other day. I think he just likes the attention. Altan’s pretty good with him; Tyr used to just lock him up for hours until he’d calmed down.” Ramsa handed her another bag. “Don’t let Suni scare you. He’s really pretty nice when he’s not being a terror. It’s just that god fucking with his head.”

“So you’re not a shaman?” she asked.

Ramsa shook his head quickly. “I don’t mess with that shit. It screws you up. You saw Suni in there. My only god is science. Combine six parts sulfur, six parts saltpeter, and one part birthwort herb, and you’ve got fire powder. Formulaic. Dependable. Doesn’t change. I understand the appeal, I really do, but I like having my mind to myself.”

Three days passed before Rin spoke with Altan again. He spent a good deal of his time tied up in meetings with the Warlords, trying to patch up relations with the military leadership before they deteriorated any further. She would see him darting back to his office in between meetings, looking haggard and pissed. Finally, he sent Qara to summon her.

“Hey. I’m about to call a meeting. Wanted to check in on you first.” Altan didn’t look at her as he spoke; he was busy scrawling something on a map covering his desk. “I’m sorry it couldn’t be earlier, I’ve been dealing with bureaucratic bullshit.”

“That’s all right.” She fidgeted with her hands. He looked exhausted. “What are the Warlords like?”

“They’re nearly useless.” Altan made a disgusted noise. “The Ox Warlord’s a slimy politician, and the Ram Warlord is an insecure fool who’ll bend whichever way the wind blows. Jun’s got them both by the ear, and the only thing they all agree on is that they hate the Cike. Means we don’t get supplies, reinforcements, or intelligence, and they wouldn’t let us into the mess hall if they had their way. It’s a stupid way to fight a war.”

“I’m sorry you have to put up with that.”

“It’s not your problem.” He looked up from his map. “So what do you think of your division?”

“They’re weird,” she said.

“Oh?”

“None of them seem to realize we’re in a war zone,” she rephrased. Every regular division soldier she’d encountered was grim-faced, exhausted, but the way the Cike spoke and behaved made them seem like fidgety children—bored rather than scared, off-kilter and out of touch.

“They’re killers by profession,” Altan said. “They’re desensitized to danger—everyone but Unegen, anyway; he’s skittish about everything. But the rest can act like they don’t understand what everyone’s so freaked out about.”

“Is that why the Militia hates them?”

“The Militia hates us because we have unlimited access to psychedelics, we can do what they can’t, and they don’t understand why. It is very difficult to justify how the Cike behave to people who don’t believe in shamans,” Altan said.

Rin could sympathize with the Militia. Suni’s fits of rage were frequent and public. Qara mumbled to her birds in full view of the other soldiers. And once word had gotten out about Enki’s veritable apothecary of hallucinogens, it spread like wildfire; the division soldiers couldn’t understand why only the Cike should have access to morphine.

“So why don’t you just try to tell them?” she asked. “How shamanism works, I mean.”

“Because that’s such an easy conversation to have? But trust me. They’ll see soon enough.” Altan tapped his map. “They’re treating you all right, though? Made any friends?”

“I like Ramsa,” she offered.

“He’s a charmer. Like a new puppy. You think he’s adorable until he pisses on the furniture.”

“Did he?”

“No. But he did take a shit in Baji’s pillow once. Don’t get on his bad side.” Altan grimaced.

“How old is he?” Rin had to ask.

“At least twelve. Probably no older than fifteen.” Altan shrugged. “Baji’s got this theory that he’s actually a forty-year-old who doesn’t age, because we’ve never seen him get any taller, but he’s not nearly mature enough.”

“And you put him into war zones?”

“Ramsa puts himself into war zones,” Altan said. “You just try to stop him. Have you met the rest? No problems?”

“No problems,” she said hastily. “Everything’s fine, it’s just . . .”

“They’re not Sinegard graduates,” he finished for her. “There’s no routine. No discipline. Nothing you’re used to. Am I right?”

She nodded.

“You can’t think of them as just the Thirteenth Division. You can’t command them like ground troops. They’re like chess pieces, right? Only they’re mismatched and overpowered. Baji’s the most competent, and probably should be the commander, but he gets distracted by anything with legs. Unegen’s good for intelligence gathering, but he’s scared of his own shadow. Bad in open combat. Aratsha’s useless unless you’re right beside a body of water. You always want Suni in a firefight, but he’s got no subtlety, so you can’t assign him to anything else. Qara’s the best archer I’ve seen and probably the most useful of the lot, but she’s mediocre in hand-to-hand. And Chaghan’s a walking psychospiritual bomb, but only when he’s here.” Altan threw his hands up. “Put that all together and try to formulate a strategy.”

Rin glanced down at the markings on his map. “But you’ve thought of something?”

“I think so.” A grin quirked over his face. “Why don’t we go call the rest of them?”

Ramsa arrived first. He smelled suspiciously of fire powder, though Rin couldn’t imagine where he’d gotten more. Baji and Unegen showed up minutes later, hoisting Aratsha’s barrel between them. Qara appeared with Enki, heatedly discussing something in Qara’s language. When they saw the others, they quickly fell silent. Suni came in last, and Rin was privately relieved when he took a seat at the opposite end of the room.

Altan’s office had only the one chair, so they sat on the floor in a circle like a ring of schoolchildren. Aratsha bobbed conspicuously in the corner, towering over them like some grotesque watery plant.

“Gang’s together again,” Ramsa said happily.

“Sans Chaghan,” said Baji. “When’s he back? Qara? Estimated location?”

Qara glowered at him.

“Never mind,” said Baji.

“We’re all here? Good.” Altan walked into the office carrying a rolled-up map in one hand. He unfurled it over his desk, then pinned it up against the far wall. The crucial landmarks of the city had been marked in red and black ink, dotted over with circles of varying size.

“Here’s our position in Khurdalain,” he said. He pointed to the black circles. “This is us.” Then to the red ones. “This is Mugen.”

The maps reminded Rin of a game of wikki, the chess variation Irjah had taught them to play in their third-year Strategy class. Wikki play did not involve direct confrontation, but rather dominance through strategic encirclement. Both the Nikara and the Federation had as of yet avoided direct clash, instead filling empty spaces on the complicated network of canals that was Khurdalain to establish a relative advantage. The opposing forces held each other in a fragile equilibrium, gradually raising the stakes as reinforcements flocked to the city from both sides.

“The wharf now stands as the main line of defense. We insulate the civilian quarters against Federation encampments on the beach. They haven’t attempted a press farther inland because all three divisions are concentrated right on the mouth of the Sharhap River. But that balance only holds so long as they’re uncertain about our numbers. We’re not sure how good their intelligence is, but we’re guessing they’re aware that we’d be pretty evenly matched in an open field. After Sinegard, the Federation forces don’t want to risk direct confrontation. They don’t want to bleed forces before their inland campaign. They’ll only attack when they have the sure numbers advantage.”

Altan indicated on the map where he had circled an area to the north of where they were stationed.

“In three days, the Federation will bring in a fleet to supplement the troops at the Sharhap River. Their warship will unload twelve sampans bearing men, supplies, and fire powder off the coast. Qara’s birds have seen them sailing over the narrow strait. At their current speed, we predict they will land after sunset of the third day,” Altan announced. “I want to sink them.”

“And I want to sleep with the Empress.” Baji looked around. “Sorry, I thought we were voicing our fantasies.”

Altan looked unamused.

“Look at your own map,” Baji insisted. “The Sharhap is swarming with Jun’s men. You can’t attack the Federation without escalation. This forces their hand. And the Warlords won’t get on board—they’re not ready, they want to wait for the Seventh to get here.”

“They’re not landing at the Sharhap,” Altan responded. “They’re docking at the Murui. Far away from the fishing wharf. The civilians stay away from Murui; the flat shore means that there’s a broad intertidal zone and a fast-running tide. Which means there’s no fixed coastline. They’ll have difficulty unloading. And the terrain beyond the beaches is nonideal for them; it’s crisscrossed by rivers and creeks, and there are hardly any good roads.”

Baji looked confused. “Then why the hell are they docking there?”

Altan looked smug. “For precisely the same reasons that the First and Eighth are amassing troops by Sharhap. Sharhap’s the obvious landing spot. The Federation don’t think anyone will be guarding Murui. But they weren’t counting on, you know, talking birds.”

“Nice one,” Unegen said.

“Thank you.” Qara looked smug.

“The coast at Murui leads into a tight latticework of irrigation channels by a rice paddy. We will draw the boats as far as possible inland, and Aratsha will ground them by reversing the currents to cut off an escape route.”

They looked to Aratsha.

“You can do that?” Baji asked.

The watery blob that was Aratsha’s head bobbed from side to side. “A fleet that size? Not easily. I can give you thirty minutes. One hour, tops.”

“That’s more than enough,” said Altan. “If we can get them bunched together, they’ll catch fire in seconds. But we need to corral them into the narrow strait. Ramsa. Can you create a diversion?”

Ramsa tossed something round in a sack across the table to Altan.

Altan caught it, opened it, and made a face. “What is this?”

“It’s the Bone-Burning Fire Oil Magic Bomb,” Ramsa said. “New model.”

“Cool.” Suni leaned toward the bag. “What’s in it?”

“Tung oil, sal ammoniac, scallion juice, and feces.” Ramsa rattled off the ingredients with relish.

Altan looked faintly alarmed. “Whose feces?”

“That’s not important,” Ramsa said hastily. “This can knock birds out of the sky from fifty feet away. I can plant some bamboo rockets for you, too, but you’ll have trouble igniting in this humidity.”

Altan raised an eyebrow.

“Right.” Ramsa chuckled. “I love Speerlies.”

“Aratsha will reverse the currents to trap them,” Altan continued. “Suni, Baji, Rin, and I will defend from the shore. They’ll have reduced visibility from the combination of smoke and fog, so they’ll think we’re a larger squad than we are.”

“What happens if they try to storm the shore?” Unegen asked.

“They can’t,” said Altan. “It’s marshland. They’ll sink into the bog. At nighttime it’ll be impossible for them to replace solid land. We will defend those crucial points in teams of two. Qara and Unegen will detach supply boats from the back of the van and drag them back to the main channel. Whatever we can’t take, we’ll burn.”

“One problem,” Ramsa said. “I’m out of fire powder. The Warlords aren’t sharing.”

“I’ll deal with the Warlords,” Altan said. “You just keep making those shit bombs.”

The great military strategist Sunzi wrote that fire should be used on a dry night, when flames might spread with the smallest provocation. Fire should be used when one was upwind, so that the wind would carry its brother element, smoke, into the enemy encampment. Fire should be used on a clear night, when there was no chance for rainfall to quench the flames.

Fire should not be used on a night like this, when the humid winds from the beach would prevent it from spreading, when stealth was of utmost importance but any torchlight would give them away.

But tonight they were not using regular fire. They needed nothing so rudimentary as kindling and oil. They didn’t need torches. They had Speerlies.

Rin crouched among the reeds beside Altan, eyes fixed on the darkening sky as she awaited Qara’s signal. They pressed flat against the mud bank, stomachs on the ground. Water seeped through her thin tunic from the moist mud, and the peat emitted such a rank odor of rotten eggs that breathing through her mouth only made her want to gag.

On the opposite bank she could just see Suni and Baji crawl up against the river and drop down among the reeds. Between them, they held the only two strips of solid land in the paddy; two slender pieces of dry peat that reached into the marsh like fingers.

The thick fog that might have dampened regular kindling now gave them the advantage. It would be a boon to the Federation as they made their amphibious landing, but it would also serve to conceal the Cike and to exaggerate their numbers.

“How did you know there would be a fog?” she whispered to Altan.

“There’s a fog every time it rains. This is the wet cycle for the rice paddies. Qara’s birds have been keeping track of cloud movements for the past week,” Altan said. “We know the marsh inside out.”

Altan’s attention to detail was remarkable. The Cike operated with a system of signals and cues that Rin would never have been able to decipher had she not been drilled relentlessly the day before. When Qara’s falcon flew overhead, that had been the signal for Aratsha to begin his subtle manipulation of the river currents. Half an hour before that, an owl had flown low over the river, signaling Baji and Suni to ingest a handful of colorful fungi. The drug’s reaction time was timed precisely to the estimated arrival of the fleet.

Amateurs obsess over strategy, Irjah had once told their class. Professionals obsess over logistics.

Rin had choked down a bagful of poppy seeds when she saw Qara’s first signal; they stuck thickly to her throat, settled lightly in her stomach. She felt the effects when she stood; she was just high enough that her head felt light but not so woozy that she couldn’t wield a sword.

Altan had ingested nothing. Altan, for some reason, did not seem to need any drugs to summon the Phoenix. He called the fire as casually as one might whistle. It was an extension of him that he could manipulate with no concentration at all.

A faint rustle overhead. Rin could barely make out the silhouette of Qara’s eagle, passing over for the second time to alert them to the arrival of the Federation. She heard a gentle sloshing noise coming from the channel.

Rin squinted at the river and saw not a fleet of boats but a line of Federation soldiers, implausibly walking in the river that reached up to their shoulders. They carried wooden planks high over their heads.

She realized that they were engineers. They were going to use those planks to create bridges for the incoming fleet to roll supplies onto dry land. Smart, she thought. The engineers each held a waterproof lamp high over the murky channel, casting an eerie glow over the canal.

Altan motioned for Suni and Baji to crouch deeper to the ground so they wouldn’t be visible over the reeds. The long grass tickled Rin’s earlobes, but she didn’t move.

Then, far down by the mouth of the channel, Rin saw the dim flicker of a lantern signal. At first she could see only the boat at the fore.

Then the full fleet emerged from the mist.

Rin counted under her breath. The fleet was twelve boats—sleek, well-constructed river sampans—packed with eight men each, sitting in a straight line with trunks of equipment stacked in high piles at the center of each boat.

The fleet paused at a fork in the river. The Federation had two choices; one channel took them to a wide bay where they could unload with relative ease, and the other took them on a detour into the salt marsh labyrinth where the Cike lay in waiting.

The Cike needed to force the fleet to the left.

Altan lifted an arm and flicked his hand out as if releasing a whip. Tendrils of flame licked out from his hands, streaking in either direction like glowing snakes. Rin heard a short sizzling noise as the flame raced through the reeds.

Then, with a high-pitched whistling noise, the first of Ramsa’s rockets erupted into the night sky.

Ramsa had rigged the marsh so that each rocket’s ignition would light the next sequentially, granting several seconds of delay between explosions. They set the marsh ablaze with a horrifically pungent stink that overwhelmed even the sulfurous odor of the peat.

“Tiger’s tits,” Altan muttered. “He wasn’t joking about the feces.”

The explosions continued, a chain reaction of fire powder to simulate the noise and devastation of an army that didn’t exist. Bamboo bombs at the far end of the river erupted with what sounded like thunderclaps. A succession of smaller fire rockets exploded with resonant booms and enormous pillars of smoke; these did not catch fire, but served to confuse the Federation soldiers and obstruct their vision, so their boats could not see where they were going.

The explosions goaded the Federation soldiers directly into the dead zone created by Aratsha. When the first flare went up, the Federation boats swerved rapidly away from the source of the explosions. The boats collided with one another, snarled together and crammed in the narrow creek as the fleet moved clumsily forward. The tall rice fields, unharvested since the siege had begun, forced the boats to clump together.

Realizing his mistake, the Federation captain ordered his men to reverse direction, but panicked shouts echoed across the boats as the ships realized they could not move.

The Federation was locked in.

Time for the real attack.

As fire rockets continued to shoot toward the Federation fleet, a series of flaming arrows screamed through the night sky and thudded into the cargo trunks. The volley of arrows came so rapidly that it seemed as if an entire squadron were concealed in the marshes, firing from different directions, but Rin knew that it was only Qara, safely ensconced on the opposite bank, firing with the blinding speed of a trained huntress from the Hinterlands.

Next Qara took out the engineers. She punctured the forehead of every other man, tidily collapsing the man-made bridge with a surreal neatness.

Assaulted from all sides by enemy fire, the Federation fleet began to burn.

The Federation soldiers abandoned their flaming boats in a panic. They leaped for the bank, only to be bogged down in the muddy marsh. Men slipped and fell in paddy water that came up to their waists, filling up their heavy armor. Then, at a whisper from Altan, the reeds along the shore also burst into flame, surrounding the Federation like a death trap.

Even so, some made it to the opposite bank. A throng of soldiers—ten, twenty—clambered onto dry land—only to run into Suni and Baji.

Rin wondered how Suni and Baji intended to hold the entire strip of peat alone. They were only two, and from what she knew of their shamanic abilities, they couldn’t control a far-ranging element the way Altan or Aratsha could. Surely they were outnumbered.

She shouldn’t have worried.

They barreled through the soldiers like boulders crashing through a wheat field.

In the dim light of Ramsa’s flares, Suni and Baji were a flurry of motion that evoked the flashing combat of a shadow puppetry show.

They were so much the opposite of Altan. Altan fought with the practiced grace of a martial artist. Altan moved like a ribbon of smoke, like a dancer. But Baji and Suni were a study in brutality, paragons of sheer and untempered force. They utilized none of the economical forms of Seejin. Their only guiding principle was to smash everything in their vicinity—which they did with abandon, knocking men back off the shore as quickly as they clambered on.

A Sinegard-trained martial artist was worth four Militia men. But Suni and Baji were each worth at least ten.

Baji cut through bodies like a canteen cook chopping through vegetables. His absurd nine-pointed rake, unwieldy in the hands of any other soldier, became a death machine in Baji’s grip. He snagged sword blades between the nine prongs, locking three or four blades together before wrenching them out of his opponents’ grasps.

His god had given him no apparent transformations, but he fought with a berserker’s rage, truly a wild boar in a bloodthirsty frenzy.

Suni fought with no weapon at all. Already massive, he seemed to have grown to the size of a small giant, stretching up to well over ten feet. It shouldn’t have been possible for Suni to disarm men with steel swords as he did, but he was simply so terribly strong that his opponents were like children in comparison.

As Rin watched, Suni grasped the heads of the two closest soldiers and smashed them against each other. They burst like ripe cantaloupes. Blood and brain matter splashed out, drenching Suni’s entire torso, but he hardly paused to wipe the gore from his face as he turned to smash his fist into another soldier’s head.

Fur had sprouted from his arms and back that seemed to serve as an organic shield, repelling metal. A soldier jammed his spear into Suni’s back from behind, but the blade simply clattered off to the side. Suni turned around and bent slightly, placed his arms around the soldier’s head, and tore it clean off his body with such ease that he might have been twisting the lid off a jar.

When he turned back to the marsh, Rin caught a glimpse of his eyes in the firelight. They were black all the way through.

She shuddered. Those were the eyes of a beast. Whatever was fighting on the shore, that wasn’t Suni. That was some ancient entity, malevolent and gleeful, ecstatic to be given free rein to break men’s bodies like toys.

“The other bank! Get to the other bank!”

A clump of soldiers broke off from the jammed fleet and approached Altan and Rin’s shore in a desperate swarm.

“We’re up, kiddo,” Altan said, and emerged from the reeds, trident spinning in his grasp.

Rin scampered to her feet, then swayed when the effects of the poppy hit her like a club to the side of the head. She stumbled. She knew she was in a dangerous place. Unless she called the god, the poppy would only make her useless in battle, high and disoriented. But when she reached inside herself for the fire, she grasped nothing.

She tried chanting in the old Speerly language. Altan had taught her the incantation. She didn’t understand the words; Altan barely understood them himself, but that didn’t matter. What mattered were the harsh sounds, the repetition of incantations that sounded like spitting. The language of Speer was primal, guttural, and savage. It sounded like a curse. It sounded like a condemnation.

Still, it slowed her mind, brought her to the center of her swirling thoughts, and established a direct connection to the Pantheon above.

But she didn’t feel herself tipping forward into the void. She heard no whooshing sound in her ears. She was not journeying upward. She reached inside herself, searching for the link to the Phoenix and . . . nothing. She felt nothing.

Something soared through the air and embedded itself in the mud by Rin’s feet. She examined it with great difficulty, as if she were looking through a hazy fog. Finally, her drugged mind identified it as an arrow.

The Federation was shooting back.

She was faintly aware of Baji shouting at her from across the channel. She tried to shake away the distractions and direct her mind inward, but panic bubbled up in her chest. She couldn’t concentrate. She focused on everything at once: Qara’s birds, the incoming soldiers, the bodies getting closer and closer to the shore.

Across the bay she heard an unearthly scream. Suni emitted a series of high-pitched shrieks like a deranged monkey, beat his fists against his chest, and howled up at the night sky.

Beside him Baji threw his head back and boomed out a laugh, and that, too, sounded unnatural. He was too gleeful, more delighted than anyone in the midst of such carnage had the right to be. And Rin realized that this wasn’t Baji laughing, this was the god in him that read spilled blood as worship.

Baji lifted his foot and shoved the soldiers squarely into the water, toppling them over like dominoes; he sent them sprawling into the river, where they flailed and struggled against the soggy marsh.

Who controlled whom? Was it the soldier who had called the god, or the god in the body of the soldier?

She didn’t want to be possessed. She wanted to remain free.

But the cognitive dissonance clashed in her head. Three sets of countervailing orders competed for priority in her mind—Jiang’s mandate to empty her mind, Altan’s insistence that she hone her anger as a razor blade, and her own fear of letting the fire rip through her again, because once it began she didn’t know how to stop it.

But she couldn’t just stand there.

Come on, come on . . . She reached for the flames and grasped nothing. She was stuck halfway to the Pantheon and halfway in the material world, unable to fully grasp either. She had lost all sense of balance; she was disoriented, navigating her body as if remotely from very far away.

Something cold and clammy grasped at her ankles. Rin jumped back just as a soldier hauled himself out of the water. He sucked in air with hoarse gasps; he must have held his breath the entire length of the channel.

He saw her, yelled, and fell backward.

All she could register was how young he looked. He was not a hardened, trained soldier. This might have been his first combat engagement. He hadn’t even thought to draw his weapon.

She advanced on him slowly, walking as if in a dream. Her sword hand felt foreign to her; it was someone else’s arm that brought the blade down, it was someone else’s foot that kicked the soldier down by his shoulder—

He was faster than she thought; he swept out and kicked her kneecap, knocking her into the mud. Before she could react, he climbed over her, pinning her down with both knees.

She looked up. Their eyes met.

Naked fear was written across his face, round and soft like a child’s. He was barely taller than her. He couldn’t have been older than Ramsa.

He fumbled with his knife, had to adjust it against his stomach to get a proper grip before he brought it down—

Three metal prongs sprouted from above his collarbone, puncturing the place where his windpipe met his lungs. Blood bubbled from the corners of the soldier’s mouth. He splashed backward into the marsh.

“Are you all right?” Altan asked.

Before them the soldier flailed and gurgled pitifully. Altan had aimed two inches above his heart, robbed him of the mercy of an instant death and sentenced him to drown in his own blood.

Rin nodded mutely, scrabbling in the mud for her sword.

“Stay down,” he said. “And get back.”

He pushed her behind him with more force than necessary. She stumbled against the reeds, then looked up just in time to see Altan light up like a torch.

The effect was like a match struck to oil. Flames burst out of his chest, poured off his bare shoulders and back in streaming rivulets; surrounding him, protecting him. He was a living torch. His fire took the shape of a pair of massive wings that unfurled magnificently about him. Steam rose from the water in a five-foot radius from where Altan stood.

She had to shield her eyes from him.

This was a fully grown Speerly. This was a god in a man.

Altan repelled the soldiers like a wave. They scrambled backward, preferring to take their chances on their burning boats rather than take on this terrifying apparition.

Altan advanced on them, and the flesh sloughed off their bodies.

She could not bear the sight of him and yet she could not tear her eyes away.

Rin wondered if this was how she had burned at Sinegard.

But surely in that moment, with the flames ripping out of every orifice, she had not been so wonderfully graceful. When Altan moved, his fiery wings swirled and dipped as a reflection of him, sweeping indiscriminately across the flotilla and setting things freshly aflame.

It made sense, she thought wildly, that the Cike became living manifestations of their gods.

When Jiang had taught her to access the Pantheon, he had only ever taught her to kneel before the deities.

But the Cike pulled them down with them back into the world of mortals, and when they did, they were destructive and chaotic and terrible. When the shamans of the Cike prayed, they were not requesting that the gods do things for them so much as they were begging the gods to act through them; when they opened their minds to the heavens they became vessels for their chosen deities to inhabit.

The more Altan moved, the brighter he burned, as if the Phoenix itself were slowly burning through him to breach the divide between the world of dreaming and the material world. Any arrows that flew in his direction were rendered useless by roiling flames, flung to the side to sizzle dully in the marshy waters.

Rin was half-afraid that Altan would burn away altogether, until there was nothing but the fire.

In that moment she found it impossible to believe that the Speerlies could have been massacred. What a marvel the Speerly army must have been. A full regiment of warriors who burned with the same glory as Altan . . . how had anyone ever killed that race off? One Speerly was a terror; a thousand should have been unstoppable. They should have been able to burn down the world.

Whatever weaponry they had used then, the Federation soldiers were not so powerful now. Their fleet was at every possible disadvantage: trapped on all sides, with fire to their backs, a muddy marsh under their feet, and veritable gods guarding the only strips of solid land in sight.

The jammed boats had begun to burn in earnest; the crates of uniforms, blankets, and medicine smoldered and crackled, emitting thick streams of smoke that cloaked the marsh in an impenetrable shroud. The soldiers on the boats doubled over, choking, and the ones who huddled uncertainly in the shallow water began to scream, for the water had begun to boil under the heat of the blazing inferno.

It was utter carnage. It was beautiful.

Altan’s plan had been brilliant in conception. Under normal circumstances, a squad of eight could not hope to stand a chance against such massive odds. But Altan had chosen a battlefield where every single one of the Federation advantages was negated by their surroundings, and the Cike’s advantages were amplified.

What it came down to was that the smallest division of the Militia had brought down an entire fleet.

Altan didn’t break balance when he strode onto the boat at the fore. He adjusted to the tilting floor so gracefully he might have been walking on solid ground. While the Federation soldiers flailed and reeled away, he flashed his trident out and out again, eliciting blood and silencing cries each time.

They clambered and fell before him like worshippers. He cut them down like reeds.

They splashed into the water, and the screams became louder. Rin saw them boil to death before her very eyes, skin scalded bubbling red like crab shells, and then bursting; cooked inside and out, eyes bulging in their death throes.

She had fought at Sinegard; she had incinerated a general with her own flames, but in that moment she could barely comprehend the casual destruction that Altan wrought. He fought on a scale that should not be human.

Only the captain of the fleet did not scream, did not jump into the water to escape him, but stood as erect and proud as if he were back on his ship, not in the burning wreckage of his fleet.

The captain withdrew his sword slowly and held it out before him.

He could not possibly defeat Altan in combat, but Rin found it strangely honorable that he was going to try.

The captain’s lips moved rapidly, as if he was muttering an incantation to the darkness. Rin half wondered whether the captain was a shaman himself, but when she parsed out his frantic Mugini she realized he was praying.

“I am nothing to the glory that is the Emperor. By his favor I am made clean. By his grace I am given purpose. It is an honor to serve. It is an honor to live. It is an honor to die. For Ryohai. For Ryohai. For—”

Altan stepped lightly across the charred helm. Flames licked around his legs, engulfed him, but they could not hurt him.

The captain lifted his sword to his neck.

Altan lunged forward at the last moment, suddenly aware of what the captain meant to do, but he was too far to reach.

The captain drew the blade to the side in a sharp sawing motion. His eyes met Altan’s, and a moment before the life dimmed from them, Rin thought she saw a glimmer of victory. Then his corpse slumped into the bog.

When Aratsha’s power gave out, the wreckage that drifted back out into the Nariin Sea was a smoldering mess of charred boats, useless supplies, and broken men.

Altan called for a retreat before the Federation soldiers could regroup. Far more soldiers had escaped than they had killed, but their aim had never been to destroy the army. Sinking the supplies was enough.

Not all of the supplies, though. In the confusion of the melee, Unegen and Qara had detached two boats from the rear and hidden them in an inland canal. They boarded these now, and Aratsha spirited them through the narrow canals of Khurdalain into a downtown nook not far from the wharf.

Ramsa ran up to them when they returned.

“Did it work?” he demanded. “Did the flares work?”

“Lit up like a charm. Nice work, kid,” Altan said.

Ramsa gave a hoot of victory. Altan clapped him on the shoulder, and Ramsa beamed widely. Rin could read it clearly on Ramsa’s face: he adored Altan like an older brother.

It was hard not to feel the same. Altan was so solemnly competent, so casually brilliant, that all she wanted was to please him. He was strict in his command, sparing with his praise, but when he gave it, it felt wonderful. She wanted it, craved it like something tangible.

Next time. Next time she wouldn’t be deadweight. She would learn to channel that anger at will, even if she risked losing herself to it.

They celebrated that night with a sack of sugar pillaged from one of the stolen boats. The mess hall was locked and they had nothing to sprinkle the sugar on, so they ate it straight by the spoonful. Once Rin would have found this disgusting; now she shoved great heaps of it into her mouth when the spoon and sack came around to her place in the circle.

Upon Ramsa’s insistence, Altan acquiesced to lighting a roaring bonfire for them out in an empty field.

“We’re not worried about being seen?” Rin asked.

“We’re well behind Nikara lines. It’s fine. Just don’t throw anything on it,” he said. “You can’t experiment with pyrotechnics so close to civilians.”

Ramsa blew air out of his cheeks. “Whatever you say, Trengsin.”

Altan gave him an exasperated look. “I mean it this time.”

“You suck the fun out of everything,” Ramsa grumbled as Altan stepped away from the fire.

“You’re not staying?” Baji asked.

Altan shook his head. “Need to brief the Warlords. I’ll be back in a few hours. You go on and celebrate. I’m very pleased with your performance today.”

“‘I’m very pleased with your performance today,’” Baji mimicked when Altan had left. “Someone tell him to get that stick out of his butt.”

Ramsa leaned back on his elbows and nudged Rin with his foot. “Was he this insufferable at the Academy?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know him well at Sinegard.”

“I bet he’s always been like this. Old man in a young man’s body. You think he ever smiles?”

“Only once a year,” said Baji. “Accidentally, in his sleep.”

“Come on,” Unegen said, though he was also smiling. “He’s a good commander.”

“He is a good commander,” Suni agreed. “Better than Tyr.”

Suni’s gentle voice surprised Rin. When he was free of his god, Suni was remarkably quiet, almost timid, and he spoke only after ponderous deliberation.

Rin watched him sitting calmly before the fire. His broad features were relaxed and placid; he seemed utterly at ease with himself. She wondered when he would next lose control and fall prey to that screaming voice in his mind. He was so terrifyingly strong—he had broken men apart in his hands like eggs. He killed so well and so efficiently.

He could have killed Altan. Three nights ago in the mess hall Suni could have broken Altan’s neck as easily as he would wring a chicken’s. The thought made her dry-mouthed with fear.

And she wondered at how Altan had known this and had crossed the distance to Suni anyway, had placed his life completely in the hands of his subordinate.

Baji had somehow extracted a bottle of sorghum spirits from one of the many warehouses of Khurdalain. They passed it around the circle. They had just scored a major combat victory; they could afford to be off guard for just one night.

“Hey, Rin.” Ramsa rolled onto his stomach and propped his chin up on his hands.

“Yeah?”

“Does this mean the Speerlies aren’t extinct after all?” he inquired. “Are you and Altan going to make babies and repopulate the Speerly race?”

Qara snorted loudly. Unegen spat out a mouthful of sorghum wine.

Rin turned bright red. “Not likely,” she said.

“Why not? You don’t like Altan?”

The cheeky little shit. “No, I mean I can’t,” she said. “I can’t have children.”

“Why not?” Ramsa pressed.

“I had my womb destroyed at the Academy,” she said. She hugged her knees up to her chest. “It was, um, interfering with my training.”

Ramsa looked so bewildered then that Rin burst out laughing. Qara snickered into her canteen.

“What?” Ramsa asked, indignant.

“I’ll tell you one day,” Baji promised. He’d imbibed twice as much wine as the rest of them; he was already slurring his words together. “When your balls have dropped.”

“My balls have dropped.”

“When your voice drops, then.”

They passed the bottle around in silence for a moment. Now that the frenzy at the marsh was over, the Cike seemed diminished somehow, like they had been animated only by the presence of their gods, and now in the gods’ absence they were empty, shells that lacked vitality.

They seemed eminently human—vulnerable and breakable.

“So you’re the last of your kind,” said Suni after a short silence. “That’s sad.”

“I guess.” Rin poked a stick at the fire. She still didn’t feel quite acclimated to her new identity. She had no memories of Speer, no real attachments to it. The only time she felt like being a Speerly meant something was when she was with Altan. “Everything about Speer is sad.”

“It’s that idiot queen’s fault,” said Unegen. “They never would have died off if Tearza hadn’t stabbed herself.”

“She didn’t stab herself,” said Ramsa. “She burned to death. Imploded from inside. Boom.” He spread his fingers in the air.

“Why did she kill herself?” Rin asked. “I never understood that story.”

“In the version I heard, she was in love with the Red Emperor,” said Baji. “He comes to her island, and she’s immediately besotted with him. He turns around and threatens to invade the island if Speer doesn’t become a tributary state. And she’s so distraught at his betrayal that she flees to her temple and kills herself.”

Rin wrinkled her nose. Every version she heard of the myth made Tearza seem more and more stupid.

“It is not a love story.” Qara spoke up from her corner for the first time. Their eyes flickered toward her with mild surprise.

“That myth is Nikara propaganda,” she continued flatly. “The story of Tearza was modeled on the myth of Han Ping, because the story makes for a better telling than the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” asked Rin.

“You don’t know?” Qara fixed Rin with a somber gaze. “Speerlies especially ought to know.”

“Obviously I don’t. So how would you tell it?”

“I would tell it not as a love story, but as a story of gods and humans.” Qara’s voice dropped to such a low volume that the Cike had to lean in to hear her. “They say Tearza could have called the Phoenix and saved the isle. They say that if Tearza had summoned the flames, Nikan never would have been able to annex Speer. They say that if she wanted to, Tearza could have summoned such a power that the Red Emperor and his armies would not have dared set foot on Speer, not for a thousand years.”

Qara paused. She did not take her eyes off Rin.

“And then?” Rin pressed.

“Tearza refused,” Qara said. “She said the independence of Speer did not warrant the sacrifice the Phoenix demanded. The Phoenix declared that Tearza had broken her vows as the ruler of Speer, and so it punished her for it.”

Rin was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, “Do you think she was right?”

Qara shrugged. “I think Tearza was wise. And I think that she was a bad ruler. Shamans should know when to resist the power of the gods. That is wisdom. But rulers should do everything in their power to save their country. That is responsibility. If you hold the fate of the country in your hands, if you have accepted your obligation to your people, then your life ceases to be your own. Once you accept the title of ruler, your choices are made for you. In those days, to rule Speer meant serving the Phoenix. Speer used to be a proud race. A free people. When Tearza killed herself, the Speerlies became little more than the Emperor’s mad dogs. Tearza has the blood of Speer on her hands. Tearza deserved what she got.”

When Altan returned from reporting to the Warlords, most of the Cike had drifted off to sleep. Rin remained awake, staring at the flickering bonfire.

“Hey,” he said, and sat down next to her. He smelled of smoke.

She drew her knees up to her chest and tilted her head sideways to look at him. “How’d they take it?”

Altan smiled. It was the first time she’d seen him smile since they came to Khurdalain. “They couldn’t believe it. How are you doing?”

“Embarrassed,” she said frankly, “and still a little high.”

He leaned back and crossed his arms. His smile disappeared. “What happened?”

“Couldn’t concentrate,” she said. Got scared. Held off. Did everything you told me not to do.

Altan looked faintly puzzled, and more than a little disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.

“No, it’s my fault.” His voice was carefully neutral. “I threw you into combat before you were ready. At the Night Castle, you would have trained for months before we put you in the field.”

This was meant to make her feel better, but Rin only felt ashamed.

“I couldn’t clear my mind,” she said.

“Then don’t,” Altan said. “Open-minded meditation is for monks. It only gets you to the Pantheon, it doesn’t bring the god back down with you. You don’t need to open your mind to all sixty-four deities. You only need our god. You only need the fire.”

“But Jiang said that was dangerous.”

Though Rin thought she saw a spasm of impatience flicker across Altan’s face, his tone remained carefully neutral. “Because Jiang feared, and so he held you back. Were you acting under his orders when you called the Phoenix at Sinegard?”

“No,” she admitted, “but—”

“Have you ever successfully called a god under Jiang’s instruction? Did Jiang even teach you how? I’ll bet he did the opposite. I’ll bet he wanted you to shut them out.”

“He was trying to protect me,” she protested, though she wasn’t sure why. After all, it was precisely what had frustrated her about Jiang. But somehow, after what she’d done at Sinegard, Jiang’s caution made more sense. “He warned that I might . . . that the consequences . . .”

“Great danger is always associated with great power. The difference between the great and the mediocre is that the great are willing to take that risk.” Altan’s face twisted into a scowl. “Jiang was a coward, scared of what he had unlocked. Jiang was a doddering fool who didn’t realize what talents he had. What talents you have.”

“He was still my master,” she said, feeling an instinctive urge to defend him.

“He’s not your master anymore. You don’t have a master. You have a commander.” Altan put a hand on her shoulder. “The easiest shortcut to the state is anger. Build on your anger. Don’t ever let go of that anger. Rage gives you power. Caution does not.”

Rin wanted to believe him. She was in awe of the extent of Altan’s power. And she knew that, if she allowed it, the same power could be her own.

And yet, Jiang’s warnings echoed in the back of her mind.

I have met spirits unable to replace their bodies again. I have met men who are only halfway to the spirit realm, caught between our world and the next.

Was that the price of power? For her mind to shatter, like Suni’s clearly had? Would she become neurotically paranoid, like Unegen?

But Altan’s mind hadn’t shattered. Among the Cike, Altan used his abilities most recklessly. Baji and Suni needed hallucinogens to call their gods, but the fire was never more than a whisper away for Altan. He seemed to always be in that state of rage he wanted Rin to cultivate. And yet he never lost control. He gave an incredible illusion of sanity and stability, whatever was going on below his dispassionate mask.

Who is imprisoned in the Chuluu Korikh?

Unnatural criminals, who have committed unnatural crimes.

She suspected she knew now what Jiang’s question had meant.

She didn’t want to admit that she was scared. Scared of being in a state where she had little control of herself, less still of the fires pouring out of her. Scared of being consumed by the fire, becoming a conduit that demanded more and more sacrifice for her god.

“The last time I did it, I couldn’t stop,” she said. “I had to beg it. I don’t—I don’t know how to control myself when I’ve called the Phoenix.”

“Think of it like a candle,” he said. “Difficult to light. Only this is even more difficult to extinguish, and if you’re not careful, you’ll burn yourself.”

But that didn’t help at all—she’d tried lighting the candle, yet nothing had happened. So what would happen if she finally figured that out, only to be unable to extinguish the flames? “Then how do you do it? How do you make it stop?”

Altan leaned back away from the flames.

“I don’t,” he said.