The Poppy War (The Poppy War Trilogy #1)
The Poppy War: Part 3 – Chapter 26

When Rin woke inside yet another unfamiliar room, she was seized with a panic so great that she could not breathe. Not this again. No. She had been caught again, she was back in Mugen’s clutches, and they were going to cut her to pieces and splay her out like a rabbit . . .

But when she flung her arms outward, no restraints kept them down. And when she tried to sit up, nothing stopped her. She was bound by no chains. The weight she felt on her chest was a thin blanket, not a strap.

She was lying on a bed. Not tied down to an operating table. Not shackled to a floor.

It was only a bed.

She curled in on herself, clutched her knees to her chest, and rocked back and forth until her breathing slowed and she had calmed enough to take stock of her surroundings.

The room was small, dark, and windowless. Wooden floors. Wooden ceiling, wooden walls. The floor moved beneath her, tilting back and forth gently, the way a mother rocked an infant. She thought at first that she had been drugged again, for what else could explain the way the room shifted rhythmically even when she lay still?

It took her a while to realize that she might be out at sea.

She flexed her limbs gingerly, and a fresh wave of pain rolled over her. She tried it again, and it hurt less this time. Amazingly, none of her limbs were broken. She was all of herself. She was whole, intact.

She rolled to her side and gingerly placed her bare feet on the cool floor. She took a deep breath and tried to stand, but her legs gave out under her and she immediately collapsed against the small bed. She had never been out on open sea before. She was suddenly nauseated, and although her stomach was empty, she dry-heaved over the side of the bed for several minutes before she finally got a grip on herself.

Her stained, tattered shift was gone. Someone had dressed her in a clean set of black robes. She thought the cloth felt oddly familiar, until she examined the fabric and realized she had worn robes like this before. They were Cike robes.

For the first time, the possibility struck her that she was not on enemy ground.

Hoping against hope, not daring to wish, Rin slid off the bed and found the strength to stand. She approached the door. Her arm trembled as she tried the handle.

It swung free.

She walked up the first staircase she saw and climbed onto a wooden deck, and when she saw the open sky above her, purple in the evening light, she could have cried.

“She awakens!”

She turned her head, dazed. She knew that voice.

Ramsa waved to her from the other end of the deck. He held a mop in one hand, a bucket in the other. He smiled widely at her, dropped the mop, and started at a run toward her.

The sight of him was so unexpected that for a long moment Rin stood still, staring at him in confusion. Then she walked tentatively toward him, hand outstretched. It had been so long since she had seen any of the Cike that she was half-convinced that Ramsa was an illusion, some terrible trick conjured by Shiro to torture her.

She would have welcomed the mirage anyway, if she could at least hold on to something.

But he was real—no sooner had he reached her than Ramsa knocked her hand aside and wrapped his skinny arms around her in a tight embrace. And as she pressed her face into his thin shoulder, every part of him felt and looked so real: his bony frame, the warmth of his skin, the scarring around his eyepatch. He was solid. He was there.

She was not dreaming.

Ramsa broke away and stared at her eyes, frowning. “Shit,” he said. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Your eyes,” he said.

“What about them?”

“They look like Altan’s.”

At the sound of that name she began to cry in earnest.

“Hey. Hey, now,” Ramsa said, patting her awkwardly on the head. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”

“How did you . . . where?” She choked out incoherent questions in between her sobs.

“Well, we’re several miles out from the southern coast,” said Ramsa. “Aratsha has been navigating for us. We think it’s best if we stay off the shore for a while. Things are getting messy on the mainland.”

“‘We’ . . . ?” Rin repeated with bated breath. Could it be?

Ramsa nodded, grinning broadly. “We’re all here. Everyone else is belowdecks. Well—except the twins, but they’ll join us in a few days.”

“How?” Rin demanded. The Cike hadn’t known what happened at the Chuluu Korikh. They couldn’t have known what happened in the research facility. How could they have known to come to Speer?

“We waited at the rendezvous point like Altan commanded,” Ramsa explained. “When you didn’t show, we knew something had happened. Unegen tracked the Federation soldiers all the way to that . . . that place. We staked the whole thing out, sent Unegen in to try to figure out a way to grab you, but then . . .” Ramsa trailed off. “Well. You know.”

“That was Altan,” Rin said. She felt a fresh pang of grief the moment she said it, and her face crumpled.

“We saw,” Ramsa said softly. “We figured that was him.”

“He saved me.”

“Yeah.”

Ramsa hesitated. “So he’s definitely . . .”

She began to sob.

“Fuck,” Ramsa said quietly. “Chaghan’s . . . someone’s going to have to tell Chaghan.”

“Where is he?”

“Close. Qara sent us a message with a raven but it didn’t say much, except that they’re coming. We’ll rendezvous with them soon. She’ll know how to replace us.”

She looked up at him. “How did you replace me?”

“After a lot of corpse digging.” Ramsa shot her a thin smile. “We searched the rubble for survivors for two days. Nothing. Then your friend had the idea to sail to the island, and that’s where we stumbled upon you. You were lying on a sheet of glass, Rin. Sand all around you, and you were on a sheet of clear crystal. It was something like a story. A fairy tale.”

Not a fairy tale, she thought. She had burned so hot that she had melted down the sand around her. That was no story. It was a nightmare.

“How long have I been out?”

“About three days. We put you up in the captain’s cabin.”

Three days? How long had she been without food? Her legs nearly gave way under her then, and she hastily shifted to lean against the rail. Her head felt very, very light. She turned to face the sea. The spray of ocean mist felt wonderful against her face. She lost herself for a minute, basked in lingering rays of the sun, until she remembered herself.

In a small voice she asked, “What did I do?”

Ramsa’s smile slid off his face.

He looked uneasy, trying to decide upon words, but then another familiar voice spoke from behind her.

“We were rather hoping you’d tell us.”

And then there was Kitay.

Lovely, wonderful Kitay. Amazingly unharmed Kitay.

There was a hard glint to his eyes that she had never seen in him before. He looked as if he had aged five years. He looked like his father. He was like a sword that had been sharpened, metal that had been tempered.

“You’re okay,” she whispered.

“I made them take me along after you left with Altan,” Kitay said with a wry smile. “They took some convincing.”

“Good thing he did, too,” said Ramsa. “It was his idea to search the island.”

“And I was right,” said Kitay. “I’ve never been so glad to be right.” He rushed forward and hugged Rin tightly. “You didn’t give up on me at Golyn Niis. I couldn’t give up on you.”

All Rin wanted to do was stand forever in that embrace. She wanted to forget everything, to forget the war, to forget her gods. It was enough to simply be, to know that her friends were alive and that the entire world was not so dark after all.

But she could not remain inside this happy delusion.

More powerful than her desire to forget was her desire to know. What had the Phoenix done? What, precisely, had she accomplished in the temple?

“I need to know what I did,” she said. “Right now.”

Ramsa looked uncomfortable. There was something he wasn’t telling her. “Why don’t you come back belowdecks?” he suggested, shooting Kitay a glance. “Everyone else is in the mess. It’s probably best if we talk about this together.”

Rin began to follow him, but Kitay reached for her wrist. He leveled a grim look at Ramsa.

“Actually,” said Kitay, “I’d rather talk to her alone.”

Ramsa shot Rin a confused glance, but she hesitantly nodded her assent.

“Sure.” Ramsa backed away. “We’ll be belowdecks when you’re ready.”

Kitay remained silent until Ramsa had walked out of earshot. Rin watched his expression but couldn’t tell what he was thinking. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he look happier to see her? She thought she might go mad from anxiety if he didn’t say something.

“So it’s true,” he said finally. “You can really call gods.”

His eyes hadn’t left her face. She wished she had a mirror, so that she could see her own crimson eyes.

“What is it? What are you not telling me?”

“Do you really have no idea?” Kitay whispered.

She shrank from him, suddenly fearful. She had some idea. She had more than an idea. But she needed confirmation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Come with me,” Kitay said. She followed him the length of the deck until they stood on the other side of the ship.

Then he pointed out to the horizon.

“There.”

Far out over the water sprouted the most unnatural-looking cloud Rin had ever seen. It was a massive, dense plume of ash, spreading over the earth like a flood. It looked like a thundercloud, but it was erupting upward from a dark landmass, not concentrated in the sky. Great rolls of gray and black smoke billowed out, like a slow-growing mushroom. Illuminated from behind by red rays of the setting sun, it looked like it was bleeding bright rivulets of blood into the ocean.

It looked like something alive, like a vengeful smoke giant arisen from the depths of the ocean. It was somehow beautiful, the way that the Empress was beautiful: lovely and terrible all at once. Rin could not tear her eyes away.

“What is that? What happened?”

“I didn’t see it happen,” said Kitay. “I only felt it. Even miles away from the shore, I felt it. A great trembling under my feet. A sudden jolt, and then everything was still. When we went outside, the sky was pitch-black. The ash blotted out the sun for days. This is the first sunset I’ve seen since we found you.”

Rin’s insides curdled. That small, dark landmass, there in the distance . . . that was Mugen?

“What is it?” she asked in a small voice. “The cloud?”

“Pyroclastic flows. Ash clouds. Do you remember the old fire mountain eruptions we studied in Yim’s class?” Kitay asked.

She nodded.

“That’s what happened. The landmass under the island was stable for millennia, and then it erupted without warning. I’ve spent days trying to puzzle out how it happened, Rin. Trying to imagine how it must have felt for the people on the island. I’ll bet most of the population was incinerated in their homes. The survivors wouldn’t have lasted much longer. The whole island is trapped in a firestorm of poisonous vapors and molten debris,” said Kitay. His voice was oddly flat. “We couldn’t get nearer if we tried. We would choke. The ship would burn from the heat a mile off.”

“So Mugen is gone?” Rin breathed. “They’re all dead?”

“If they aren’t, they will be soon,” said Kitay. “I’ve imagined it so many times. I’ve pieced things together from what we studied. The fire mountain would have emitted an avalanche of hot ash and volcanic gas. It would have swallowed their country whole. If they didn’t burn to death, they choked. If they didn’t choke to death, they were buried under rubble. And if all of that didn’t kill them, then they’ll starve to death, because sure as hell nothing is going to grow on that island now, because the ash would have decimated the island agriculture. When the lava dries, the island will be a solid tomb.”

Rin stared out at the plume of ash, watched the smoke yet unfurling, bit by bit, like an eternally burning furnace.

The Federation of Mugen had become, in some perverse way, like the Chuluu Korikh. The island across the narrow strait had turned into a stone mountain of its own. The citizens of the Federation were prisoners arrested in suspended animation, never to reawaken.

Had she really destroyed that island? She felt a swell of panicked confusion. Impossible. It couldn’t be. That kind of natural disaster could not have been her doing. This was a freak coincidence. An accident.

Had she truly done this?

But she had felt it, precisely at the moment of eruption. She had triggered it. She had willed it into being. She had felt each one of those lives wink out of existence. She had felt the Phoenix’s exhilaration, experienced vicariously its frenzied bloodlust.

She had destroyed an entire country with the power of her anger. She had done to Mugen what the Federation did to Speer.

“The Dead Island was dangerously close to that ash cloud,” Kitay said finally. “It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s the will of the gods.”

Kitay looked as if he was struggling with his words. Rin watched him, confused. Why wasn’t Kitay relieved to see her? Why did he look as if something terrible had happened? She had survived! She was okay! She had made it out of the temple!

“I need to know what you did,” he said finally. “Did you will that?”

She trembled without knowing why, and then nodded. What was the point in lying to Kitay now? What was the point in lying to anyone? They all knew what she was capable of. And, she realized, she wanted them to know.

“Was that your will?” Kitay demanded.

“I told you,” she whispered. “I went to my god. I told it what I wanted.”

He looked aghast.

“You’re saying—so your god, it—it made you do this?”

“My god didn’t make me do anything,” she said. “The gods can’t make our choices for us. They can only offer their power, and we can wield it. And I did, and this is what I chose.” She swallowed. “I don’t regret it.”

But Kitay’s face had drained of color. “You just killed thousands of innocent people.”

“They tortured me! They killed Altan!”

“You did to Mugen the same thing that they did to Speer.”

“They deserved it!”

“How could anyone deserve that?” Kitay yelled. “How, Rin?”

She was amazed. How could he be angry with her now? Did he have any idea what she had been through?

“You don’t know what they did,” she said in a low whisper. “What they were planning. They were going to kill us all. They don’t care about human lives. They—”

“They’re monsters! I know! I was at Golyn Niis! I lay amid the corpses for days! But you—” Kitay swallowed, choking on his words. “You turned around and did the exact same thing. Civilians. Innocents. Children, Rin. You just buried an entire country and you don’t feel a thing.”

“They were monsters!” Rin shrieked. “They were not human!”

Kitay opened his mouth. No sound came out. He closed it. When he finally spoke again, it sounded as if he was close to tears.

“Have you ever considered,” he said slowly, “that that was exactly what they thought of us?”

They glared at each other, breathing heavily. Blood thundered in Rin’s ears.

How dare he? How dare he stand there like this and accuse her of atrocities? He had not seen the inside of that laboratory, he had not known how Shiro had planned to wipe out every Nikara alive . . . he had not seen Altan walk off that dock and light up like a human torch.

She had achieved revenge for her people. She had saved the Empire. Kitay would not judge her for it. She wouldn’t let him.

“Get out of my way,” she snapped. “I need to go replace my people.”

Kitay looked exhausted. “What for, Rin?”

“We have work to do,” she said tightly. “This isn’t over.”

“Are you serious? Have you listened to anything I’ve said? Mugen’s finished!” Kitay shouted.

“Not Mugen,” she said. “Mugen is not the final enemy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want a war against the Empress.”

“The Empress?” Kitay looked dumbfounded.

“Su Daji betrayed our location to the Federation,” she said. “That’s why they found us, they knew we’d be at the Chuluu Korikh—”

“That’s insane,” said Kitay.

“But they said it! The Mugenese, they said—”

Kitay stared at her. “And it never occurred to you that they had good incentive to lie?”

“Not about that. They knew who we were. Where we’d be. Only she knew that.” Her breathing quickened. The anger had returned. “I need to know why she did it. And then I need to punish her for it. I need to make her suffer.”

“Are you listening to yourself? Does it matter who sold who?” Kitay grasped her by her shoulders and shook her hard. “Look around you. Look at what’s happened to this world. All of our friends are dead. Nezha. Raban. Irjah. Altan.” Rin flinched at each name, but Kitay continued, relentless. “Our entire world has been torn apart, and you still want to go to war?”

“War’s already here. A traitor sits on the throne of the Empire,” she said stubbornly. “I will see her burn.”

Kitay let go of her arm, and the expression on his face stunned her.

He looked at her as if looking at a stranger. He looked scared of her.

“I don’t know what happened to you in that temple,” he said. “But you are not Fang Runin.”

Kitay left her on the deck. He did not seek her out again.

Rin saw the Cike in the galley belowdecks, but she did not join them. She was too drained, exhausted. She went back to her cabin and locked herself inside.

She thought—hoped, really—that Kitay would seek her out, but he didn’t. When she cried, there was no one to comfort her. She choked on her tears and buried her face in the mattress. She stifled her screams in the hard straw padding, then decided she didn’t care who heard her, and screamed out loud into the dark.

Baji came to the door, bearing a tray of food. She refused it.

An hour later Enki forced his way into her quarters. He enjoined her to eat. Again she refused. He argued she wouldn’t do any of them any favors by starving to death.

She agreed to eat if he would give her opium.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Enki said, looking over Rin’s gaunt face, her tangled, matted hair.

“It’s not that,” she said. “I don’t need seeds. I need the smoke.”

“I can make you a sleeping draught.”

“I don’t need to sleep,” she insisted. “I need to feel nothing.”

Because the Phoenix had not left her when she crawled out of that temple. The Phoenix spoke to her even now, a constant presence in her mind, hungry and frenzied. It had been ecstatic, out there on the deck. It had seen the cloud of ash and read it as worship.

Rin could not separate her thoughts from the Phoenix’s desire. She could resist it, in which case she thought she’d go mad. Or she could embrace it and love it.

If Jiang could see me now, she realized, he would have me locked in the Chuluu Korikh.

That was, after all, where she belonged.

Jiang would say that self-immurement was the noble thing to do.

No fucking way, she thought.

She would never step voluntarily into the Chuluu Korikh, not while the Empress Su Daji walked this earth. Not while Feylen ran free.

She was the only one powerful enough to stop them, because she had now attained a power that Altan had only ever dreamed of.

She saw now that the Phoenix was right: Altan had been weak. Altan, despite how hard he tried, could only ever have been weak. He was crippled by those years spent in captivity. He did not choose his anger freely; it was inflicted on him, blow after blow, torture after torture, until he reacted precisely the way an injured wolf might, rising up to bite the hand that hit him.

Altan’s anger was wild and undirected; he was a walking vessel for the Phoenix. He never had any choice in his quest for vengeance. Altan could not negotiate with the god like she did.

She was sane, she was convinced of it. She was whole. She had lost much, yes, but she still had her own mind. She made her decisions. She chose to accept the Phoenix. She chose to let it invade her mind.

But if she wanted her thoughts to herself, then she had to think nothing at all. If she wanted a reprieve from the Phoenix’s bloodlust, she needed the pipe.

She mused out loud to the darkness as she sucked in that sickly sweet drug.

In, out. In, out.

I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible.

Was she now a goddess or a monster?

Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

Rin was curled up on her bed when the twins finally boarded the ship. She did not know they had even arrived until they appeared at her cabin door unannounced.

“So you made it,” Chaghan said.

She sat up. They had caught her in a rare state, a sober state. She had not touched the pipe for hours, but only because she had been asleep.

Qara dashed inside and embraced her.

Rin accepted the embrace, eyes wide in shock. Qara had always been so reticent. So distant. She lifted her arm awkwardly, trying to decide if she should pat Qara on the shoulder.

But Qara drew back just as abruptly.

“You’re burning,” she said.

“I can’t turn it off,” Rin said. “It’s with me. It’s always with me.”

Qara touched Rin’s shoulders softly. She gave her a knowing look, a pitying look. “You went to the temple.”

“I did it,” Rin said. “That cloud of ash. That was me.”

“I know,” Qara said. “We felt it.”

“Feylen,” she said abruptly. “Feylen’s out, Feylen escaped, we tried to stop him but—”

“We know,” said Chaghan. “We felt that, too.”

He stood stiffly at the doorway. He looked as if he were choking on something.

“Where’s Altan?” he finally asked.

She said nothing. She just sat there, matching his gaze.

Chaghan blinked and made a noise like an animal that had been kicked.

“That’s not possible,” he said very quietly.

“He’s dead, Chaghan,” Rin said. She felt very tired. “Give it up. He’s gone.”

“But I would have felt it. I would have felt him go,” he insisted.

“That’s what we all think,” she said flatly.

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I? I was there. I saw it happen.”

Chaghan abruptly stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

Qara glanced down at Rin. She didn’t wear her normal irate expression then. She just looked sad.

“You understand,” she said.

Rin more than understood.

“What did you do? What happened?” she asked Qara finally.

“We won the war in the north,” said Qara, twisting her hands in her lap. “We followed orders.”

Altan’s last, desperate operation had involved not one but two prongs. To the south, he had taken Rin to open the Chuluu Korikh. And to the north, he sent the twins.

They had flooded the Murui River. That river delta Rin had seen from the spirit realm was the Four Gorges Dam, the largest set of levees that held the Murui back from inundating all four surrounding provinces with river water. Altan had ordered the breaking of the levees to divert the river south into an older channel, cutting off the Federation supply route to the south.

It was almost exactly like a battle plan Rin had suggested in Strategy class in her first year. She remembered Venka’s objections. You can’t just break a dam like that. Dams take years to rebuild. The entire river delta will flood, not just that valley. You’re talking about famine. Dysentery.

Rin drew her knees to her chest. “I suppose there’s no point asking if you evacuated the countryside first.”

Qara laughed without smiling. “Did you?”

Qara’s words hit her like a blow. There was no reasoning through what she had done. It had happened. It was a decision that had been ripped out of her. And she had . . . and she had . . .

She began to quiver. “What have I done, Qara?”

Until now the sheer scale of the atrocity had not computed for her, not really. The number of lives lost, the enormity of what she had invoked—it was an abstract concept, an unreal impossibility.

Was it worth it? Was it enough to atone for Golyn Niis? For Speer?

How could she compare the lives lost? One genocide against another—how did they balance on the scale of justice? And who was she, to imagine that she could make that comparison?

She seized Qara’s wrist. “What have I done?”

“The same thing that we did,” said Qara. “We won a war.”

“No, I killed . . .” Rin choked. She couldn’t finish saying it.

But Qara suddenly looked angry. “What do you want from me? Do you want forgiveness? I can’t give you that.”

“I just . . .”

“Would you like to compare death tolls?” she asked sharply. “Would you like to argue about whose guilt is greater? You created an eruption, and we caused a flood. Entire villages, drowned in an instant. Flattened. You destroyed the enemy. We killed the Nikara.”

Rin could only stare at her.

Qara wrenched her arm out of Rin’s grip. “Get that look off your face. We made our decisions, and we survived with our country intact. Worth it is worth it.”

“But we murdered—”

“We won a war!” Qara shouted. “We avenged him, Rin. He’s gone, but avenged.”

When Rin didn’t respond, Qara seized her by both shoulders. Her fingers dug painfully into her flesh.

“This is what you have to tell yourself,” Qara said fiercely. “You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the lie we’ll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward. You made your choice. There’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s over.”

That was what Rin had told herself on the island. It was what she had told herself when talking to Kitay.

And later, in the dead of night, when she couldn’t sleep for the nightmares and had to reach for her pipe, she would do as Qara said and keep telling herself what was done was done. But Qara was wrong about one thing:

It was not over. It couldn’t be over—because Federation troops were still on the mainland, scattered throughout the south; because even Chaghan and Qara hadn’t managed to drown them all. And now they had no leader to obey and no home to return to, which made them desperate, unpredictable . . . and dangerous.

And somewhere on the mainland sat an Empress on a makeshift throne, taking refuge in a new wartime capital because Sinegard had been destroyed by a conflict she’d invented. Perhaps by now she had heard the longbow island was gone. Was she distressed to lose an ally? Relieved to be freed from an enemy? Perhaps she had already taken credit for a victory she hadn’t planned; perhaps she was using it to cement her hold on power.

Mugen was gone, but the Cike’s enemies had multiplied. And they were rogue agents now, no longer loyal to the crown that had sold them.

Nothing was over.

The Cike had never before acknowledged the passing of their commander. By nature of their occupation, a change in leadership was an unavoidably messy affair. Past Cike commanders had either gone frothing mad and had to be dragged into the Chuluu Korikh against their will, or been killed on assignment and never come back.

Few had died with such grace as Altan Trengsin.

They said their goodbyes at sunrise. The entire contingent gathered on the front deck, solemn in their black robes. The ritual was no Nikara ceremony. It was a Speerly ceremony.

Qara spoke for all of them. She conducted the ceremony, because Chaghan, the Seer, refused to. Because Chaghan could not.

“The Speerlies used to burn the dead,” she said. “They believed that their bodies were only temporary. From ash we come, and to ash we return. To the Speerlies, death was not an end but only a great reunion. Altan has left us to go home. Altan has returned to Speer.”

Qara cast her arms over the waters. She began to chant, not in the language of the Speerlies but in the rhythmic language of the Hinterlands. Her birds circled overhead in silent tribute. And the wind itself seemed to cease, the rocking of the waves halted, as if the very universe stood still for the loss of Altan.

The Cike stood in a line, all in their identical black uniforms, watching Qara wordlessly. Ramsa’s arms were folded tightly over his narrow chest, shoulders hunched as if he could withdraw into himself. Baji silently put a hand on his shoulder.

Rin and Chaghan stood at the back of the deck, removed from the rest of their division.

Kitay was nowhere to be seen.

“We should have his ashes,” Chaghan said bitterly.

“His ashes are already in the sea,” Rin said.

Chaghan glared at her. His eyes were red with grief, bloodshot. His pale skin was pulled over his high cheekbones so tightly that he looked even more skeletal than he usually did. He appeared as if he had not eaten in days. He appeared as if he might blow away with the wind.

Rin wondered how long it would take for him to stop blaming her in his mind for Altan’s death.

“I guess he gave as good as he got,” Chaghan said, nodding toward the ashen mess that was the Federation of Mugen. “Trengsin got his revenge in the end.”

“No, he didn’t.”

Chaghan stiffened. “Explain.”

“Mugen didn’t betray him,” she said. “Mugen didn’t draw him to that mountain. Mugen didn’t sell Speer. The Empress did.”

“Su Daji?” Chaghan said incredulously. “Why? What would she have to gain?”

“I don’t know. I intend to replace out.”

“Tenega,” Chaghan swore. He looked as if he had just realized something. He crossed his thin arms against his chest, muttering in his own language. “But of course.”

“What?”

“You drew the Hexagram of the Net,” he said. “The Net signifies traps, betrayals. The wires of your capture were laid out ahead of you. She must have sent a missive to the Federation the minute Altan got it in his head to go to that damned mountain. One is ready to move, but his footprints run crisscross. You two were pawns in someone else’s game this entire time.”

“We were not pawns,” Rin snapped. “And don’t act like you saw this coming.” She felt a sudden flash of anger then—at Chaghan’s lecturing tone, his retrospective musing, as if he’d seen it all, like he’d expected this to happen, like he’d known better than Altan all along. “Your Hexagrams only make sense in hindsight and give no guidance when they’re cast. Your Hexagrams are fucking useless.”

Chaghan stiffened. “My Hexagrams are not useless. I see the shape of the world. I understand the changing nature of reality. I have read countless Hexagrams for the Cike’s commanders—”

She snorted. “And in all the Hexagrams you read for Altan, you never foresaw that he might die?”

To her surprise, Chaghan flinched.

She knew it wasn’t fair, to hurl accusations when Altan’s death was hardly Chaghan’s fault, but she needed to lash out, needed to blame it on someone other than herself.

She couldn’t stand Chaghan with his attitude that he knew better, that he’d foreseen this tragedy, because he hadn’t. She and Altan had gone to the mountain blind, and he had let them.

“I told you,” Chaghan said. “The Hexagrams can’t foresee the future. They’re portraits of the world as it is, descriptions of the forces at hand. The gods of the Pantheon represent sixty-four fundamental forces, and the Hexagrams reflect their undulations.

“And none of those undulations screamed, Don’t go to this mountain, you’ll be killed?”

“I did warn him,” Chaghan said quietly.

“You could have tried harder,” Rin said bitterly, even though she knew that, too, was an unfair accusation, and that she was saying it only to hurt Chaghan. “You could have told him he was about to die.”

“All of Altan’s Hexagrams spoke of death,” said Chaghan. “I didn’t expect that this time it would mark his own.”

She laughed out loud. “Aren’t you supposed to be a Seer? Do you ever see anything useful?”

“I saw Golyn Niis, didn’t I?” Chaghan snapped.

But the moment those words left his mouth he made a choking noise, and his features twisted with grief.

Rin didn’t say what they were both thinking—that maybe if they hadn’t gone to Golyn Niis, Altan wouldn’t have died.

She wished they had just fought the war out at Khurdalain. She wished they had abandoned the Empire completely and escaped back to the Night Castle, let the Federation ravage the countryside while they waited out the turmoil in the mountains, safe and insulated and alive.

Chaghan looked so miserable that Rin’s anger dissipated. Chaghan had, after all, tried to stop Altan. He’d failed. Neither of them could have talked Altan out of his frenzied death drive.

There was no way Chaghan could have predicted Altan’s future because the future was not written. Altan made his choices; at Khurdalain, at Golyn Niis, and finally on that pier, and neither of them could have stopped him.

“I should have known,” Chaghan said finally. “We have an enemy whom we love.”

“What?”

“I read it in Altan’s Hexagram. Months ago.”

“It meant the Empress,” she said.

“Perhaps,” he said, and turned his gaze out to the sea.

They watched Qara’s falcons in silence. The birds flew in great circles overhead, as if they were guides, as if they could lead a spirit toward the heavens.

Rin thought of the parade from so long ago, of the puppets of the animals of the Emperor’s Menagerie. Of the majestic kirin, that noble lion-headed beast, which appeared in the skies upon the death of a great leader.

Would a kirin appear for Altan?

Did he deserve one?

She found that she could not answer.

“The Empress should be the least of your concerns,” said Chaghan after a while. “Feylen’s getting stronger. And he always was powerful. Almost more so than Altan.”

Rin thought of that storm cloud she’d seen over the mountains. Those malicious blue eyes. “What does he want?”

“Who knows? The God of the Four Winds is one of the most mercurial entities of the Pantheon. His moods are entirely unpredictable. He will become a gentle breeze one day, and rip apart entire villages the next. He will sink ships and topple cities. He might be the end of this country.”

Chaghan spoke lightly, casually, as if he couldn’t care less if Nikan was destroyed the very next day. Rin had expected blame and accusation, but she heard none; only detachment, as if the Hinterlander held no stake in Nikan’s affairs now that Altan was gone. Maybe he didn’t.

“We’ll stop him,” Rin said.

Chaghan gave an indifferent shrug. “Good luck. It’ll take all of you.”

“Then will you command us?”

Chaghan shook his head “It couldn’t be me. Even back when I was Tyr’s lieutenant, I knew it could never be me. I was Altan’s Seer, but I was never slated to be a commander.”

“Why not?”

“A foreigner in charge of the Empire’s most lethal division? Not likely.” Chaghan folded his arms across his chest. “No, Altan named his successor before we left for Golyn Niis.”

Rin jerked her head up. That was news. “Who?”

Chaghan looked like he couldn’t believe she had asked.

“It’s you,” he said, as if it were obvious.

Rin felt like he had punched her in the solar plexus.

Altan had named her as his successor. Entrusted his legacy to her. He had written and signed the order in blood before they had even left Khurdalain.

“I am the commander of the Cike,” she said, and then had to repeat the words to herself before their meaning sank in. She held a status equivalent to the generals of the Warlords. She had the power to order the Cike to do as she wished. “I command the Cike.”

Chaghan looked sideways at her. His expression was grim. “You are going to paint the world in Altan’s blood, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to replace and kill everyone responsible,” said Rin. “You cannot stop me.”

Chaghan laughed a dry, cutting laugh. “Oh, I’m not going to stop you.”

He held out his hand.

She grasped it, and the drowned land and the ash-choked sky bore witness to the pact between Seer and Speerly.

They had come to an understanding, she and Chaghan. They were no longer opposed, vying for Altan’s favor. They were allies, now, bound by the mutual atrocities they had committed.

They had a god to kill. A world to reshape. An Empress to overthrow.

They were bound by the blood they had spilled. They were bound by their suffering. They were bound by what had happened to them.

No.

This had not happened to her.

We do not force you to do anything, the Phoenix had whispered, and it had spoken the truth. The Phoenix, for all its power, could not compel Tearza to obey it. And it could not have compelled Rin, because she had agreed wholeheartedly to the bargain.

Jiang was wrong. She was not dabbling in forces she could not control, for the gods were not dangerous. The gods had no power at all, except what she gave them. The gods could affect the universe only through humans like her. Her destiny had not been written in the stars, or in the registers of the Pantheon. She had made her choices fully and autonomously. And though she called upon the gods to aid her in battle, they were her tools from beginning to end.

She was no victim of destiny. She was the last Speerly, commander of the Cike, and a shaman who called the gods to do her bidding.

And she would call the gods to do such terrible things.