The Poppy War

Chapter 21

Baji yawned loudly, winced, and pulled his neck far to the side. A series of cracks punctuated the still morning air. There was no room to lie down in the river sampan, so sleep had to be acquired in short, fitful bursts, bent over in cramp-inducing positions. He blinked blearily for a minute, and then reached across the narrow boat with his foot to nudge Rin’s leg.

“I can take watch now.”

“I’m fine,” Rin said. She sat huddled with her hands shoved into her armpits, slumped forward so that her head rested on her knees. She stared blankly out at the running water.

“You really should get some sleep.”

“Can’t.”

“You should try.”

“I’ve tried,” Rin said shortly.

Rin could not silence the Talwu’s voice in her head. She had heard the Hexagram uttered only once, but she was unlikely to forget a single word. It had been seared into her mind, and no matter how many times she revisited it, she could not interpret it in a way that did not leave her feeling sick with dread.

Abrupt with fire, with death . . . as though burning; as though dying . . . the subject is with tears flowing in torrents . . . great joy in decapitating enemies . . .

She used to think divination was a pale science, a vague approximation if valuable at all. But the Talwu’s words were anything but vague. There was only one possible fate for Golyn Niis.

You have cast the Twenty-Sixth Hexagram. The Net. Chaghan had said the net meant a trap had been laid. But had the trap been laid for Golyn Niis? Had it already been sprung, or were they heading straight toward their deaths?

“You’re going to wear yourself out. Fretting won’t make these boats run any faster.” Baji pulled his head to the side until he heard another satisfying crack. “And it won’t make the dead come back to life.”

They raced up the Golyn River, making absurd time in a journey that should have taken a month on horseback. Aratsha ferried them along the river at blinding speed. Still, it took them a week to travel the length of the Golyn River to the lush delta where Golyn Niis had been built.

Rin glanced up to look at the boat at the very fore, where Altan sat. He rode beside Chaghan; their heads were tilted together, speaking in low tones as usual. They had been like this since they had left Khurdalain. Chaghan and Qara may have been linked as anchor twins, but it was Altan whom Chaghan seemed bonded to.

“Why isn’t Chaghan commander?” she asked.

Baji looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t understand why Chaghan obeys Altan,” she said. Against the Woman, he had proclaimed himself the most powerful shaman in existence. She believed it. Chaghan navigated the spirit world like he belonged there, as if he were a god himself. The Cike didn’t hesitate to talk back to Altan, but she had never seen any of them dare to so much as contradict Chaghan. Altan commanded their loyalty, but Chaghan enjoyed their fear.

“He was slated to be commander after Tyr,” said Baji. “Got shunted to the side after Altan showed up, though.”

“And he was fine with that?” Rin couldn’t imagine someone like Chaghan relinquishing authority peacefully.

“Of course not. Nearly spit fire when Tyr started favoring the golden boy from Sinegard over him.”

“So then why—”

“Why’s he happy serving under Altan? He wasn’t, at first. He bitched about it for a straight week, until Altan finally got fed up. He asked Tyr for permission for a duel and got it. He took Chaghan out into the valleys for three days.”

“What happened?”

Baji snorted. “What happens when anyone fights Trengsin? When Chaghan got back, all that pretty white hair was singed black and he was obeying Altan like a whipped dog. Our friend from the Hinterlands might shatter minds, but he couldn’t touch Trengsin. No one can.”

Rin dropped her head back onto her knees and closed her eyes against the light from the rising sun. She hadn’t slept—hadn’t truly rested—since they’d left Khurdalain. But her body couldn’t sustain itself any longer. She was so tired . . .

Their boat jolted in the water. Rin snapped up to a sitting position. They had bumped straight into the boat in front of them.

“Something’s in the water,” Ramsa shouted from the fore.

Rin looked over the side and squinted at the river. The water was the same muddy brown, until she glanced upstream.

At first she thought it was a trick of the light, an illusion of the sun’s rays. And then her boat reached an odd patch of colored water, and she draped her fingers over the edge. Then she yanked it back in horror.

They were riding through a river of blood.

Altan and Chaghan both jumped up with startled exclamations. Behind them, Unegen uttered a long, inhuman shriek.

“Oh gods,” Baji said, over and over. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.”

Then the bodies began to float toward them.

Rin was paralyzed, stricken with an irrational fear that the bodies might be the enemy, that they would rise out of the water and attack them.

Their boat stopped moving completely. They were surrounded by corpses. Soldiers. Civilians. Men. Women. Children. They were uniformly bloated and discolored. Some of their faces were disfigured, slashed apart. Others were simply blank, resigned, bobbing listlessly in the crimson water as if they had never been living, breathing bodies.

Chaghan reached out to examine a young girl’s blue lips. His own mouth was pursed dispassionately as if he were tracking a footprint, not touching a rubbery carcass. “These bodies have been in the river for days. Why haven’t they drifted out to sea yet?

“It’s the Golyn Niis Dam,” Unegen suggested. “It’s blocking them up.”

“But we’re still miles out from the city . . .” Rin trailed off.

They fell silent.

Altan stood up at the head of his boat. “Get out. Start running.”

The road to Golyn Niis was empty. Qara and Unegen scouted ahead but reported no sign of enemy combatants. Yet evidence of Federation presence was obvious everywhere they looked—trampled grass, abandoned campfires, rectangular patches in the dirt where tents had been erected. Rin felt sure that Federation soldiers were lying in wait for them, setting an ambush, but as they drew closer to the city, she realized that made no sense; the Federation wouldn’t have known they were coming, and they wouldn’t have set such an elaborate trap for such a small squadron.

She would have preferred an ambush. The silence was worse.

If Golyn Niis were still under siege, the Federation would be on guard. They would be prepared for skirmishes. They would have posted guards to make sure no reinforcements could reach the resistance inside.

There would be a resistance.

But the Federation seemed to have simply packed up and walked away. They hadn’t even bothered to leave behind a skeleton patrol. Which meant that the Federation didn’t care who came into Golyn Niis.

Which meant that whatever lay behind those city walls, it wasn’t worth guarding.

When the Cike finally succeeded in dragging open the heavy gates, an appalling stink assaulted them like a slap to the face. Rin knew the smell. She had experienced it at Sinegard and Khurdalain. She knew what to expect now. It had been a fool’s hope to expect anything different, but still she could not fully register the sight that awaited them when they passed through the barrier.

All of them stood still at the gates, unwilling to take one step farther inside.

For a long time none of them could speak.

Then Ramsa fell to his knees and began to cackle with laughter.

“Khurdalain,” he gasped. “We were all so obsessed with holding Khurdalain.”

He doubled over, sides shaking with mirth, and beat his fists against the dirt.

Rin envied him.

Golyn Niis was a city of corpses.

The bodies had been arranged deliberately, as if the Federation had wanted to leave a greeting message for the next people to walk into the city. The destruction possessed a strange artfulness, a sadistic symmetry. Corpses were piled in neat, even rows, forming pyramids of ten, then nine, then eight. Corpses were stacked against the wall. Corpses were placed across the street in tidy lines. Corpses were arranged as far as the eye could see.

Nothing human moved. The only sounds in the city were wind rustling through debris, the buzzing of flies, and the squawking of carrion birds.

Rin’s eyes watered. The stench was overwhelming. She looked to Altan, but his face was a mask. He marched them stoically down the main street into the city center, as if he was determined to witness the full extent of the destruction.

They marched in silence.

The Federation handiwork became more elaborate the deeper they traveled into the city. Close to the city square, the Federation had arrayed the corpses in states of incredible desecration, grotesque positions that defied human imagination. Corpses nailed to boards. Corpses hung by their tongues from hooks. Corpses dismembered in every possible way; headless, limbless, displaying mutilations that must have been performed while the victim was still alive. Fingers removed, then stacked in a small pile beside stubby hands. An entire line of castrated men, severed penises placed delicately on their slack-jawed mouths.

One sees great joy in decapitating enemies.

There were so many beheadings. Heads stacked up in neat little piles, not yet so rotted that they had become skulls, but no longer resembling human faces. Whatever heads retained enough flesh to form expressions wore identical looks of terrible dullness, as if they had never been alive.

As though burning; as though dying.

Perhaps due to some initial desire for sanitation, or mere curiosity, the Federation had tried to ignite several corpse pyramids. But they had given up before the job was finished. Perhaps they did not want to waste the oil. Perhaps the stink became unbearable. The bodies were grotesque, half-charred spectacles; hair had turned to ash, and the top layers of skin had turned a crinkling black, but the worst part was that there was something beneath the ashes that looked identifiably human.

The subject is with tears flowing in torrents, groaning in sorrow.

In the square they found bizarrely short skeletons—not corpses, but skeletons gleaming pristine white. They looked at first like children’s bones, but upon closer examination, Enki identified them as adult torsos. He bent down and touched the dirt where one skeleton was fixed to the ground. The top half of the body had been stripped clean so the bones glistened in the sunlight, while the lower half remained intact in the dirt.

“They were buried,” he said, disgusted. “They were buried up to the waist and set upon by dogs.”

Rin could not understand how the Federation had found so many different ways to inflict suffering. But each corner they turned revealed another instance in the string of horrors, barbarian savagery matched only by inventiveness. A family, arms still around each other, impaled upon the same spear. Babies lying at the bottoms of vats, their skin a horrible shade of crimson, floating in the water in which they’d boiled to death.

In the hours that had passed, the only living creatures they encountered were dogs unnaturally fattened by feeding on corpses. Dogs, and vultures.

“Orders?” Unegen finally asked Altan.

They looked to their commander.

Altan hadn’t spoken since they had walked through the city gates. His skin had turned a ghostly shade of gray. He might have been ill. He was sweating profusely, his left arm trembling. When they reached another pile of charred corpses, he convulsed, sank to his knees, and could not keep walking.

This was not Altan’s first genocide.

This is Speer again, Rin thought. Altan must have been imagining the massacre of Speer in his mind, imagining the way his people were slaughtered overnight like cattle.

After a long time Chaghan extended his hand to Altan.

Altan grasped it and rose to his feet. He swallowed, closed his eyes. A mask of detachment spread across his expression once more with a curious ripple, like a facade of indifference had formed a seal over the surface of his face, locking any vulnerabilities within.

“Spread out,” Altan ordered. His voice was impossibly level. “Find any survivors.”

Surrounded by death, spreading out was the last thing any of them wanted to do.

Suni opened his mouth to protest. “But the Federation—”

“The Federation isn’t here. They’ve been marching inland for a steady week. Our people are dead. Find me survivors.”

They found evidence of a last desperate battle near the southern gate. The victors were clear. The Militia corpses had been given the same deliberate treatment as the carcasses of the civilians. Corpses had been stacked in the middle of the square, neat little piles with bodies arranged carefully on top of one another.

Rin saw the broken flag of the Militia lying on the ground, burned and smeared with blood. The flag bearer’s hand was detached at the wrist; the rest of his body lay several feet away, eyes blank and unseeing.

The flag bore the dragon crest of the Red Emperor, the symbol of the Nikara Empire. In the lower left corner was stitched the number two in Old Nikara calligraphy. It was the insignia of the Second Division.

Rin’s heart skipped a beat.

Kitay’s division.

Rin dropped to her knees and touched the flag. A barking noise sounded from behind a pile of corpses. She looked up just as a dark, flea-matted mongrel came running at her. It was the size of a small wolf. Its gut was grotesquely round, like it had been gorging for days.

It dashed past Rin toward the flag bearer’s corpse, sniffing hopefully.

Rin watched it rooting around, salivating eagerly, and something inside her snapped.

“Get away!” she shrieked, kicking out at the dog.

Any Sinegardian animal would have slunk away in fear. But this dog had lost all fear of human beings. This dog had lived amid a juicy feast of carnage for too long. Perhaps it assumed that she, too, was close to death. Perhaps it thought fresh meat would taste better than rotting flesh.

It snarled and lunged at her.

Rin was caught off guard by the dog’s tremendous weight; it knocked her to the ground. It slobbered from open jaws as it lunged for her artery, but she raised her arms in defense and it sank its teeth into her left forearm instead. She screamed out loud, but the dog did not let go; with her right arm she reached for her sword, unsheathed it, and shoved it upward.

Her sword found its way through the dog’s ribs. The dog’s jaws went slack.

She stabbed again. The dog fell off her.

She jumped to her feet and jammed her sword down, piercing the dog’s side. It was in its death throes now. She stabbed it again, this time in the neck. A spray of blood exploded outward, coating her face with its warm wetness. She was using her sword like a dagger now, bringing her arm down again and again just to feel bones and muscle give way to metal, just to hurt and break something . . .

“Rin!”

Someone grabbed her sword arm. She whirled on him, but Suni pulled her arms behind her back and held her tightly, so that she could not move until her sobbing had subsided.

“You’re lucky it didn’t get your sword arm,” said Enki. “Keep this on for a week. See me if it starts to smell.”

Rin flexed her arm. Enki had bound the dog bite tightly with a poultice that stung like she had stuck her arm in a hornet’s nest.

“It’s good for you,” he said when she grimaced. “It’ll prevent infection. We don’t need you to go frothing mad.”

“I think I’d like to go frothing mad,” said Rin. “I’d like to lose my head. I think I’d be happier.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Enki said sternly. “You have work to do.”

But was it really work, what they were doing? Or were they deluding themselves that by finding the survivors, they could atone for the simple truth that they were too late?

She continued her miserable work of combing through the empty streets, upending debris, searching homes whose doors had been smashed in. After hours of looking she stopped hoping to find Kitay alive, and started to hope she wouldn’t find his corpse during her patrols, because the sight of him flayed, dismembered, jammed into a wheelbarrow with a pile of other corpses, half-burned, would be worse than never finding him at all.

She walked Golyn Niis alone in a daze, trying to both see and not see. In time she found herself inured to the smell, and eventually the sight of bodies was not a shock, just another array of faces to be scanned for someone she knew.

All the while she called Kitay’s name. She screamed it every time she saw a hint of motion, anything that could be alive: a cat disappearing into an alley, a pack of crows taking off suddenly, startled by the return of humans who weren’t dead or dying. She screamed it for days.

And then from the ruins, so faintly she thought it was an echo, she heard her name in response.

“Remember that time I said the Trials were as bad as Speer?” Kitay asked. “I was wrong. This is as bad as Speer. This is worse than Speer.”

It wasn’t remotely funny, and neither of them laughed.

Rin’s eyes and throat were sore from weeping. She had been clutching Kitay’s hand for hours, fingers wound tightly around his, and she never wanted to let go. They sat side by side in a hastily constructed shelter half a mile outside the city, the only place they could escape the stench of death that permeated Golyn Niis. Kitay’s survival was nothing short of a miracle. He and a small band of soldiers from the Second Division had hidden for days under the bodies of their slain comrades, too afraid to venture out in case the Federation patrols should return.

When it looked like they could sneak away from the killing fields, they hid in the demolished slums of the eastern side of the city. They had pulled a cellar door away and filled the open space with bricks, so from the outside it just looked like a wall. That was why the Cike hadn’t seen them on their first pass through the city.

Only a handful of Kitay’s squadron was still alive. He didn’t know if the city contained any more survivors.

“Have you seen Nezha?” Kitay finally asked. “I heard he was being shipped to Khurdalain.”

Rin opened her mouth to respond, but a horrible prickling feeling spread from the bridge of her nose to under her eyes, and then she was choking under wild, heaving sobs, and she couldn’t form any words at all.

Kitay said nothing, just held his arms out in wordless sympathy. She collapsed into them. It was absurd that he should be comforting her, that she should be the one crying, after all that Kitay had survived. But Kitay was numb; for Kitay the suffering had been normalized, and he couldn’t grieve any more than he already had. He was still holding her when Qara ducked into the tent.

“You’re Chen Kitay?” She wasn’t really asking, she just needed to say something to break the silence.

“Yes.”

“You were with the Second Division when . . . ?” Qara trailed off.

Kitay nodded.

“We need you to brief us. Can you walk?”

Under the open sky, in front of a silent audience of Altan and the twins, Kitay recounted in a halting voice the massacre at Golyn Niis.

“The city’s defense was doomed from the start,” Kitay said. “We thought we still had weeks. But you could have given us months, and the same thing would have happened.”

Golyn Niis had been defended by an amalgamation of the Second, Ninth, and Eleventh Divisions. In this case, greater numbers did not mean greater strength. Perhaps even worse than in Khurdalain, the soldiers of the different provinces felt little sense of cohesion or purpose. The commanding officers were rivals, paranoid with distrust, unwilling to share intelligence.

“Irjah begged the Warlords over and over again to put aside their differences. He couldn’t make them see reason.” Kitay swallowed. “The first two skirmishes went badly. They took us by surprise. They surrounded the city from the southeast. We hadn’t been expecting them so early. We didn’t think they had found the mountain pass. But they came at night, and they . . . they captured Irjah. They flayed him alive over the city wall so that everyone could see. That broke our resistance. Most of the soldiers wanted to flee after that.

“After Irjah was dead, the Ninth and Eleventh surrendered en masse. I don’t blame them. They were outnumbered, and they thought they’d get off easier if they didn’t resist. Thought maybe it’d be better to become prisoners than to die.” Kitay shuddered violently. “They were so wrong. The Federation general took their surrender with all the usual etiquette. Confiscated their arms, corralled the soldiers into prison camps. The next morning they were marched up the mountain and beheaded. There were a lot of deserters from the Second after that. A couple of us stayed to fight. It was pointless, but . . . it was better than surrendering. We couldn’t dishonor Irjah. Not like that.”

“Wait,” Chaghan interrupted. “Did they take the Empress?”

“The Empress fled,” Kitay said. “She took twenty of her guards and stole out of the city the night after Irjah died.”

Qara and Chaghan made synchronous noises of disbelief, but Kitay shook his head warily. “Who can blame her? It was that or let those monsters get their hands on her, and who knows what they would have done to her . . .”

Chaghan did not look convinced.

“Pathetic,” he spat, and Rin agreed with him. The idea that the Empress had fled from a city while her people were burned, killed, murdered, raped went against everything Rin had been taught about warfare. A general did not abandon his soldiers. An Empress did not abandon her people.

Again, the Talwu’s words rang true.

A leader abandons their people. A ruler begins a campaign. . . . Joy in decapitating enemies. This signifies evil.

Was there any other way to interpret the Hexagram, in the face of the evidence of destruction before them? Rin had been torturing herself with the Talwu’s words, trying to construe them in any way that didn’t point to the massacre at Golyn Niis, but she had been deluding herself. The Talwu had told them exactly what to expect.

She should have known that when the Empress had abandoned the Nikara, then all truly was lost.

But the Empress was not the only one who had abandoned Golyn Niis. The entire army had surrendered the city. Within a week Golyn Niis had more or less been delivered to the Federation on the platter, and the entirety of its half million people subjected to the whims of the invading forces.

Those whims turned out to have little to do with the city itself. Instead, the Federation simply wanted to squeeze Golyn Niis for whatever resources they could find in preparation for a deeper march inland. They sacked the marketplace, rounded up the livestock, and demanded that families bring out their stores of rice and grain. Whatever couldn’t be loaded up on their supply wagons, they burned or left out to spoil.

Then they disposed of the people.

“They decided that beheadings took too long, so they started doing things more efficiently,” said Kitay. “They started with gas. You should probably know this, actually; they’ve got this thing, this weapon that emits yellow-green fog—”

“I know,” Altan said. “We saw the same thing in Khurdalain.”

“They took out practically the entire Second Division in one night,” said Kitay. “Some of us put up a last stand near the south gate. When the gas cleared, nothing was alive. I went there afterward to find survivors. At first I didn’t know what I was looking at. All over the ground, you could see animals. Mice, rats, rodents of every kind. So many of them. They’d crawled out of their holes to die. When the Militia was gone, nothing stood between the soldiers and our people. The Federation had fun. They made it a sport. They threw babies in the air to see if they could cleave them in half before they hit the ground. They had contests to see how many civilians they could round up and decapitate in an hour. They raced to see who could stack bodies the fastest.” Kitay’s voice cracked. “Could I have some water?”

Qara wordlessly handed him her canteen.

“How did Mugen become like this?” Chaghan asked wonderingly. “What did you ever do to make them hate you so much?”

“It’s not anything we did,” said Altan. His left hand, Rin noticed, was shaking again. “It’s how the Federation soldiers were trained. When you believe your life means nothing except for your usefulness to your Emperor, the lives of your enemies mean even less.”

“The Federation soldiers don’t feel anything.” Kitay nodded in agreement. “They don’t think of themselves as people. They are parts of a machine. They do as they are commanded, and the only time they feel joy is when reveling in another person’s suffering. There is no reasoning with them. There is no attempting to understand them. They are accustomed to propagating such grotesque evil that they cannot properly be called human.” Kitay’s voice trembled.

“When they were cutting my squadron down, I looked into the eyes of one of them. I thought I could make him recognize me as a fellow man. As a person, not just an opponent. And he stared back at me, and I realized I couldn’t connect with him at all. There was nothing human in those eyes.”

Once the survivors began to realize that the Militia had arrived, they emerged from their hiding holes in miserable, straggling groups.

The few survivors of Golyn Niis had been driven deep into the city, hiding in disguised shelters like Kitay or locked up in makeshift prisons and then forgotten when the Federation soldiers decided to continue their march inland. After discovering two or three such holding rooms, Altan ordered them—Cike and civilians alike—to carefully search the city.

No one disagreed with the order. They all knew, Rin suspected, that it would be horrible to die alone, chained to walls when their captors had long since departed.

“I guess we’re saving people for once,” Baji said. “Feels nice.”

Altan himself led a squad to take on the nearly impossible task of clearing away the bodies. He claimed it was to ward against rot and disease, but Rin suspected it was because he wanted to give them a proper funeral—and because there was so little else that he could do for the city.

They had no time to dig mass graves on the scale necessary before the stench of rotting bodies became unbearable. So they stacked the corpses into large pyres, great bonfires of bodies that burned constantly. Golyn Niis turned from a city of corpses to a city of ash.

But the sheer number of the dead was staggering. The corpses Altan burned barely made a dent in the piles of rotting bodies inside the city walls. Rin didn’t think it was possible to truly cleanse Golyn Niis unless they burned the entire city to the ground.

Eventually they might have to. But not while there could still be survivors.

Rin was outside the city walls trying to find a fresh source of water that wasn’t spoiled with blood when Kitay pulled her aside and reported that they had found Venka. She had been kept in a “relaxation house,” which was likely the only reason why the Federation had let a division soldier live. Kitay did not elaborate on what a “relaxation house” was, but he didn’t need to.

Rin could hardly recognize Venka when she went to see her that night. Her lovely hair was shorn short, as if someone had hacked at it with a knife. Her lively eyes were now dull and glassy. Both her arms had been broken at the wrist. She wore them in slings. Rin saw the angle at which Venka’s arms had been twisted, and knew there was only one way they could have gotten like that.

Venka hardly stirred when Rin entered her room. Only when Rin closed the door did she flinch.

“Hi,” Rin said in a small voice.

Venka looked up dully and said nothing.

“I thought you’d want someone to talk to,” said Rin, though the words sounded hollow and insufficient even as they left her mouth.

Venka glared at her.

Rin struggled for words. She could think of no questions that were not inane. Are you all right? Of course Venka was not all right. How did you survive? By having the body of a woman. What happened to you? But she already knew.

“Did you know they called us public toilets?” Venka asked suddenly.

Rin stopped two paces from the door. Comprehension dawned on her, and her blood turned to ice. “What?”

“They thought I couldn’t understand Mugini,” Venka said with a horrifying attempt at a chuckle. “That’s what they called me, when they were in me.”

“Venka . . .”

“Do you know how badly it hurt? They were in me, they were in me for hours and they wouldn’t stop. I blacked out over and over but every time I awoke they were still going, a different man would be on top of me, or maybe the same man . . . they were all the same after a while. It was a nightmare, and I couldn’t wake up.”

Rin’s mouth filled with the taste of bile. “I’m so sorry—” she tried, but Venka didn’t seem to hear her.

“I’m not the worst,” Venka said. “I fought back. I was trouble. So they saved me for last. They wanted to break me first. They made me watch. I saw women disemboweled. I saw the soldiers slice off their breasts. I saw them nail women alive to walls. I saw them mutilate young girls, when they had tired of their mothers. If their vaginas were too small, they cut them open to make it easier to rape them.” Venka’s voice rose in pitch. “There was a pregnant woman in the house with us. She was seven months to term. Eight. At first the soldiers let her live so she’d take care of us. Wash us. Feed us. She was the only kind face in that house. They didn’t touch her because she was pregnant, not at first. Then one day the general decided he’d had enough of the other girls. He came for her. You’d think she’d have learned by then, after watching what the soldiers did to us. You’d think she would know there wasn’t any point in resisting.”

Rin didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted to bury her head under her arms and block everything out. But Venka continued, as if now that she had started her testimony she couldn’t stop. “She kicked and dragged. And then she slapped him. The general howled and grabbed at her stomach. Not with his knife. With his fingers. His nails. He knocked her down and he tore and tore.” Venka turned her head away. “And he pulled out her stomach, and her intestines, and then finally the baby . . . and the baby was still moving. We saw everything from the hallway.”

Rin stopped breathing.

“I was glad,” Venka said. “Glad that she was dead, before the general ripped her baby in half the way you’d split an orange.” Underneath her slings, Venka’s fingers clenched and spasmed. “He made me mop it up.”

“Gods. Venka.” Rin couldn’t look her in the eye. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t pity me!” Venka shrieked suddenly. She made a movement as if trying to reach for Rin’s arm, as if she had forgotten that her arms were broken. She stood up and walked toward Rin so that they were face-to-face, nose to nose.

Her expression was as unhinged as it had been that day when they fought in the ring.

“I don’t need your pity. I need you to kill them for me. You have to kill them for me,” Venka hissed. “Swear it. Swear on your blood that you will burn them.”

“Venka, I can’t . . .”

“I know you can.” Venka’s voice climbed in pitch. “I heard what they said about you. You have to burn them. Whatever it takes. Swear it on your life. Swear it. Swear it for me.”

Her eyes were like shattered glass.

It took all of Rin’s courage to meet her gaze.

“I swear.”

Rin left Venka’s room and set off at a run.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak.

She needed Altan.

She didn’t know why she thought that he would offer the relief she was looking for, but among them only Altan had gone through this once before. Altan had been on Speer when it burned, Altan had seen his people killed . . . Altan, surely, could tell her that the Earth might keep on turning, that the sun would continue to rise and set, that the existence of such abominable evil, such disregard for human life did not mean the entire world was shrouded in darkness. Altan, surely, could tell her they still had something worth fighting for.

“In the library,” Suni told her, pointing to an ancient-looking tower two blocks past the city gates.

The door to the library was closed, and nobody responded when she knocked.

Rin turned the handle slowly and peered within.

The great inner chamber was filled with lamps, yet none were lit. The only light came from the moonbeams shining in through tall glass windows. The room was filled with a sickly sweet smoke that tugged at her memory, so thick and cloying that Rin nearly choked.

In a corner among stacks of books, Altan was sprawled, legs out and head tilted listlessly. His shirt was off.

Her breath hitched in her throat.

His chest was a crisscross of scars. Many were jagged battle wounds. Others were startlingly neat, symmetrical and clean as if carved deliberately into his skin.

A pipe lay in his hand. As she watched, he brought it to his lips and inhaled deeply, crimson eyes rolling upward as he did so. He let the smoke fill his lungs and then exhaled slowly with a low, satisfied sigh.

“Altan?” she said quietly.

He didn’t seem to hear her at first. Rin crossed the room and slowly knelt down next to him. The smell was nauseatingly familiar: opium nuggets, sweet like rotted fruit. It gave her memories of Tikany, of living corpses wasting away in drug dens.

Finally, Altan looked in her direction. His face twisted into a droll, uninterested smile, and even in the ruins of Golyn Niis, even in this city of corpses, Rin thought that the sight of Altan then was the most terrible thing she’d ever seen.

Chapter 22

“You knew?” Rin asked.

“We all did,” Ramsa murmured. He touched her shoulder tentatively, attempting a comforting gesture, but it didn’t help. “He tries to hide it. Doesn’t do a very good job.”

Rin moaned and pressed her forehead into her knees. She could hardly see through her tears. It hurt to inhale now; it felt like her rib cage was being crushed, like the despair was pressing against her chest, weighing her down so that she could barely breathe.

This had to be the end. Their wartime capital had fallen, her friends were dead or broken, and Altan . . .

“Why?” she wailed. “Doesn’t he know what it does to you?”

“He knows.” Ramsa let his hand drop. He twisted his fingers in his lap. “I don’t think he can help it.”

Rin knew that was true, but she couldn’t accept it.

She knew the horrors of opium addiction. She’d seen the Fangs’ clientele—promising young scholars, well-to-do merchants, talented men—whose lives had been ruined by opium nuggets. She’d seen proud government officials reduced in the span of months to shriveled, penniless men begging in the streets to fund their next fix.

But she couldn’t reconcile those images with her commander.

Altan was invincible. Altan was the best martial artist in the country. Altan wasn’t—Altan couldn’t be—

“He’s supposed to be our commander,” she said hoarsely. “How can he fight when he—when he’s like that?”

“We cover for him,” Ramsa said quietly. “He never used to do it more than once a month.”

All those times he’d smelled like smoke. All those times he’d been missing when she tried to find him.

He’d just been sprawled in his office, sucking in and out, glassy and empty and gone.

“It’s disgusting,” she said. “It’s—it’s pathetic.”

“Don’t say that,” Ramsa said sharply. He curled his fingers into a fist. “Take that back.”

“He’s our commander! He has a duty to us! How could he—”

But Ramsa cut her off. “I don’t know how Altan survived that island. But I do know whatever happened to him is unimaginable. You didn’t know you were a Speerly until months ago. But Altan lost everyone in his life overnight. You don’t get over that kind of pain. So it’s what he needs. So it’s a vulnerability. I won’t judge him. I don’t dare, because I don’t have the right. And neither do you.”

After two weeks of sifting through rubble, breaking into locked basements, and relocating corpses, the Cike found fewer than a thousand survivors in the city that had once been home to half a million. Too many days had passed. They gave up hope of finding any more.

For the first time since the start of the war, the Cike had no operations planned.

“What are we waiting around for?” Baji asked several times a day.

“Orders,” Qara always answered.

But no commands were forthcoming. Altan was usually absent, sometimes disappearing for entire days. When he was present, he was in no state to give orders. Chaghan took over smoothly, assigned the Cike routine duties in the interim. Most of them were told to keep watch. They all knew that the enemy was already moving inland to finish what they had started, and that there was nothing in Golyn Niis to guard but ruins, but still they obeyed.

Rin sat over the gate, clutching a spear to keep herself upright as she watched the path leading to the city. She had the twilight watch, which was just as well, because she could not sleep if she tried. Each time she closed her eyes she saw blood. Dried blood in the streets. Blood in the Golyn River. Corpses on hooks. Infants in barrels.

She couldn’t eat, either. The blandest foods still tasted like carcasses. Only once did they have meat; Baji caught two rabbits in the woods, flayed them, and staked them on a narrow piece of wood to roast. When Rin smelled them, she dry-heaved for several long minutes. She could not dissociate the rabbits’ flesh from the charred flesh of bodies in the square. She could not walk Golyn Niis without imagining the deaths in the moment of the execution. She could not see the hundreds of decapitated heads on poles without seeing the soldier who had walked down the row of kneeling prisoners, methodically bringing his sword down again and again as if reaping corn. She could not pass the babies in their barrel graves without hearing their uncomprehending screams.

The entire time, her own mind screamed the unanswerable question: Why?

The cruelty could not register for her. Bloodlust, she understood. Bloodlust, she was guilty of. She had lost herself in battle, too; she had gone further than she should have, she had hurt others when she should have stopped.

But this—viciousness on this scale, wanton slaughter of this magnitude, against innocents who hadn’t even lifted a finger in self-defense, this she could not imagine doing.

They surrendered, she wanted to scream at her disappeared enemy. They dropped their weapons. They posed no threat to you. Why did you have to do this?

A rational explanation eluded her.

Because the answer could not be rational. It was not founded in military strategy. It was not because of a shortage of food rations, or because of the risk of insurgency or backlash. It was, simply, what happened when one race decided that the other was insignificant.

The Federation had massacred Golyn Niis for the simple reason that they did not think of the Nikara as human. And if your opponent was not human, if your opponent was a cockroach, what did it matter how many of them you killed? What was the difference between crushing an ant and setting an anthill on fire? Why shouldn’t you pull wings off insects for your own enjoyment? The bug might feel pain, but what did that matter to you?

If you were the victim, what could you say to make your tormentor recognize you as human? How did you get your enemy to recognize you at all?

And why should an oppressor care?

Warfare was about absolutes. Us or them. Victory or defeat. There was no middle way. There was no mercy. No surrender.

This was the same logic, Rin realized, that had justified the destruction of Speer. To the Federation, to wipe out an entire race overnight was not an atrocity at all. Only a necessity.

“You’re insane.”

Rin’s head jerked up. She had sunk into another exhausted daze. She blinked twice and squinted out into the darkness until the source of the voice shifted from amorphous shadows to two recognizable forms.

Altan and Chaghan stood underneath the gate, Chaghan with his arms tightly crossed, Altan slouched against the wall. Heart hammering, Rin ducked under the low wall so they wouldn’t see her if they looked up.

“What if it wasn’t just us?” Altan asked in a low, eager voice. Rin was stunned; Altan sounded alert, alive, like he hadn’t been in days. “What if there were more of us?”

“Not this again,” said Chaghan.

“What if there were thousands of the Cike, soldiers as powerful as you and me, soldiers who could call the gods?”

“Altan . . .”

“What if I could raise an entire army of shamans?”

Rin’s eyes widened. An army?

Chaghan made a choking noise that might have been a laugh. “How do you propose to do that?”

“You know precisely how,” said Altan. “You know why I sent you to the mountain.”

“You said you only wanted the Gatekeeper.” Chaghan’s voice grew agitated. “You didn’t say you wanted to release every madman in there.”

“They’re not madmen—”

“They are not men at all! By now they are demigods! They are like bolts of lightning, like hurricanes of spiritual power. If I’d known what you were planning, I wouldn’t have—”

“Bullshit, Chaghan. You knew exactly what I was planning.”

“We were supposed to release the Gatekeeper together.” Chaghan sounded wounded.

“And we will. Just as we’ll release everyone else. Feylen. Huleinin. All of them.”

“Feylen? After what he tried to do? You don’t know what you’re saying. You are speaking of atrocities.”

“Atrocities?” Altan asked coolly. “You’ve seen the bodies here, and you accuse me of atrocities?”

Chaghan’s voice rose steadily in pitch. “What Mugen has done is human cruelty. But humans alone are only capable of so much destruction. The beings locked inside the Chuluu Korikh are capable of ruin on a different scale altogether.”

Altan barked out a laugh. “Do you have eyes? Do you see what they’ve done to Golyn Niis? A ruler should do anything necessary to protect their people. I will not be Tearza, Chaghan. I will not let them kill us off like dogs.”

Rin heard a scuffling noise. Feet shuffling against dry leaves. Limbs brushing against limbs. Were they fighting? Hardly daring to breathe, Rin peeked out from over the wall.

Chaghan grasped Altan by the collar with both hands, pulling him down so that they were face-to-face. Altan was half a foot taller than Chaghan, could have snapped him in half with ease, and yet he did not lift a hand in defense.

Rin stared at them in disbelief. Nobody touched Altan like that.

“This isn’t Speer again,” Chaghan hissed. His face was so close to Altan’s that their noses almost touched. “Even Tearza wouldn’t unleash her god to save one island. But you are sentencing thousands of people to death.”

“I’m trying to win this war—”

“What for? Look around, Trengsin! No one is going to pat you on the back and tell you good job. There’s no one left. This country is going to shit, and no one cares—”

“The Empress cares,” said Altan. “I sent a falcon, she approved my plan—”

“Who cares what your Empress says?” Chaghan screamed. His hands shook wildly. “Fuck your Empress! Your Empress fled!”

“She’s one of us,” Altan said. “You know she is. If we have her, and we have the Gatekeeper, then we can lead this army—”

“No one can lead that army.” Chaghan let go of Altan’s collar. “Those people in the mountain are not like you. They’re not like Suni. You can’t control them, and you’re not going to try. I won’t let you.”

Chaghan raised his hands to push Altan again, but Altan grabbed them this time, seized his wrists and lowered them easily. He did not let them go. “Do you really think you can stop me?”

“This isn’t you,” Chaghan said. “This is about Speer. This is about your revenge. That’s all you Speerlies do, you hate and burn and destroy without consequence. Tearza was the only one of you with any foresight. Maybe the Federation was right about you, maybe it was best they burned down your island—”

“How dare you,” Altan said, his voice so quiet Rin pressed herself against the wall as if she could somehow get closer and make sure she was hearing right. Altan’s fingers tightened around Chaghan’s wrists. “You’ve crossed the line.”

“I’m your Seer,” Chaghan said. “I give you counsel, whether you want to hear it or not.”

“The Seer does not command,” Altan said. “The Seer does not disobey. I have no place for a disloyal lieutenant. If you won’t help me, then I’ll send you away. Go north. Go to the dam. Take your sister and do as we planned.”

“Altan, listen to reason,” Chaghan pleaded. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do as I command,” Altan said curtly. “Go, or leave the Cike.”

Rin sank back behind the wall, heart hammering.

She abandoned her post as soon as she heard Altan’s footsteps fading into the distance. Once she could no longer see his form from the gate, she darted down the steps and raced out onto the open road. She caught Chaghan and Qara as they were saddling a recovered gelding.

“Let’s go,” Chaghan told his sister when he saw Rin approaching, but Rin grabbed the reins before Qara could prod the horse forward.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“Away,” Chaghan said tersely. “Please let go.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“We have orders to leave.”

“I overheard you with Altan.”

Qara muttered something in her own language.

Chaghan scowled. “Have you ever been able to mind your own business?”

Rin tightened her grip on the reins. “What army is he talking about? Why won’t you help him?”

Chaghan’s eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“So tell me. Who is Feylen?” Rin continued loudly. “Who is Huleinin? What did he mean, he’ll release the Gatekeeper?”

“Altan is going to burn down Nikan. I will not be responsible.”

“Burn down Nikan?” Rin repeated. “How—”

“Your commander has gone mad,” Chaghan said bluntly. “That is as much as you need to know. And you know the worst part? I think he’s meant to do this all along. I’ve been blind. This is what he’s wanted since the Federation marched on Sinegard.”

“And you’re just going to let him?”

Chaghan recoiled violently, as if he’d been slapped. Rin had a fear that he might yank on the reins and ride away, but Chaghan merely sat there, mouth slightly open.

She had never seen Chaghan speechless before. It scared her.

She wouldn’t have expected Chaghan to shrink from cruelty. Chaghan, alone among the Cike, had never displayed an ounce of fear about his power, about losing control. Chaghan reveled in his abilities. He relished them.

What could be so unthinkable that it horrified even Chaghan?

Without taking his eyes off Rin, Chaghan reached down, grasped the reins, and swung himself off the horse. She took two steps backward as he walked toward her. He stopped much closer to her than she would have liked. He studied her in silence for a long moment.

“Do you understand the source of Altan’s power?” he asked finally.

Rin frowned. “He’s a Speerly. It’s obvious.”

“Even the average Speerly was not half as powerful as Altan is,” said Chaghan. “Have you ever asked yourself why Altan alone among Speerlies survived? Why he was allowed to live when the rest of his kin were burned and dismembered?”

Rin shook her head.

“After the First Poppy War, the Federation became obsessed with your people,” said Chaghan. “They couldn’t believe their Armed Forces had been bested by this tiny island nation. That’s what spurred their interest in shamanism. There has never been a Federation shaman. The Federation needed to know how the Speerlies got their powers. When they occupied the Snake Province, they built a research base opposite the island and spent the decades in between the Poppy Wars kidnapping Speerlies, experimenting on them, trying to figure out what made them special. Altan was one of those experiments.”

Rin’s chest felt very tight. She dreaded what might come next, but Chaghan continued, his voice as flat and emotionless as if he were reciting history lessons. “By the time the Hesperians liberated the facilities, Altan had spent half his life in a lab. The Federation scientists drugged him daily to keep him sedated. They starved him. They tortured him to make him comply. He wasn’t the only Speerly they took, but he was the only one who survived. Do you know how?”

Rin shook her head. “I . . .”

Chaghan continued, ruthless. “Did you know they strapped him down and made him watch as they took the others apart to find out what made them tick? What are Speerlies made of? The Federation was determined to find out. Did you know they kept them alive as long as they could, even when they had peeled their flesh away from their rib cages, so they could see how their muscles moved while they were splayed out like rabbits?”

“He never told me,” Rin whispered.

“And he never would have.” Chaghan said. “Altan likes to suffer in silence. Altan likes to let his hatred fester, likes to incubate it as long as he can. Now do you understand the source of his power? It is not because he is a Speerly. It is nothing genetic. Altan is so powerful because he hates so deeply and so thoroughly that it constitutes every part of his being. Your Phoenix is the god of fire, but it is also the god of rage. Of vengeance. Altan doesn’t need opium to call the Phoenix because the Phoenix is always alive inside him. You asked me why I wouldn’t stop him. Now you understand. You can’t stop an avenger. You can’t reason with a madman. You think I am running, and I admit to you that I am afraid. I am afraid of what he might do in his quest for vengeance. And I am afraid that he is right.”

When she found Altan, lying in that same corner of the ancient library he had been last time, she said nothing. She crossed the moonlit room and took the pipe from his languid fingers. She sat down cross-legged, leaning against the shelves of ancient scrolls. Then she took a long draught herself. The effect took a long while to set in, but when it did, she wondered why she had ever meditated at all.

She understood, now, why Altan needed opium.

Small wonder he was addicted. Smoking the pipe had to be the only time that he was not consumed with his misery, with scars that would never heal. The haze induced by the smoke was the only time that he could feel nothing, the only time that he could forget.

“How are you doing?” Altan mumbled.

“I hate them,” she said. “I hate them so much. I hate them so much it hurts. I hate them with every drop of my blood. I hate them with every bone in my body.”

Altan blew out a long stream of smoke. He didn’t look like a human so much as he did a simple vessel for the fumes, an inanimate extension of the pipe.

“It doesn’t stop hurting,” he said.

She sucked in another deep breath of the wonderful sweetness.

“I understand now,” she said.

“Do you?”

“I’m sorry about before.”

Her words were vague, but Altan seemed to know what she meant. He took the pipe back from her and inhaled again, and that was acknowledgment enough.

It was a long while before he spoke again.

“I am about to do something terrible,” he said. “And you will have a choice. You can choose to come with me to the prison under the stone. I believe you know what I intend to do there.”

“Yes.” She knew, without asking, what was imprisoned in the Chuluu Korikh.

Unnatural criminals, who have committed unnatural crimes.

If she went with him, she would help him to unleash monsters. Monsters worse than the chimei. Monsters worse than anything in the Emperor’s Menagerie—because these monsters were not beasts, mindless things that could be leashed and controlled, but warriors. Shamans. The gods walking in humans, with no regard for the mortal world.

“Or you can stay in Golyn Niis. You can fight with the remnants of the Nikara army and you can try to win this war without the help of the gods. You can remain Jiang’s good girl, you can heed his warnings, and you can shy away from the power that you know you have.” He extended his hand to her. “But I need your help. I need another Speerly.”

She glanced down at his slender brown fingers.

If she helped him free this army, would that make her a monster? Would they be guilty of everything Chaghan had accused them of?

Perhaps. But what else did they have to lose? The invaders who had already pumped her country full of opium and left it to rot had returned to finish the job.

She reached for his hand, curled her fingers around his. The sensation of his skin under hers was a feeling unlike anything she had dared to imagine. Alone in the library, with only the ancient scrolls of Old Nikan to bear witness, she pledged her allegiance.

“I’m with you,” she said.

Chapter 23

The Chuluu Korikh

From The Seejin Classification of Deities, compiled in the Annals of the Red Emperor, recorded by Vachir Mogoi, High Historian of Sinegard

Long before the days of the Red Emperor, this country was not yet a great empire, but a sparse land populated by a small scattering of tribes. These tribesmen were horse-riding nomads from the north, who had been cast out of the Hinterlands by the hordes of the great khan. Now they struggled to survive in this strange, warm land.

They were ignorant of many things: the cycles of the rain, the tides of the Murui River, the variations of soil. They knew not how to plow the land or to sow seeds so they could grow food instead of hunt for it. They needed guidance. They needed the gods.

But the deities of the Pantheon were yet reluctant to grant their aid to mankind.

“Men are selfish and petty,” argued Erlang Shen, Grand Marshal of the Heavenly Forces. “Their life spans are so short that they give no thought to the future of the land. If we lend them aid, they will drain this earth and squabble among themselves. There will be no peace.”

“But they are suffering now.” Erlang Shen’s twin sister, the beautiful Sanshengmu, led the opposing faction. “We have the power to help them. Why do we withhold it?”

“You are blind, sister,” said Erlang Shen. “You think too highly of mortals. They give nothing to the universe, and the universe owes them nothing in return. If they cannot survive, then let them die.”

He issued a heavenly order forbidding any entity in the Pantheon from interfering with mortal matters. But Sanshengmu, always the gentler of the two, was convinced that her brother was too quick to judge mankind. She hatched a plan to descend to Earth in secret, in hopes of proving to the Pantheon that men were worthy of help from the gods. However, Erlang Shen was alerted to Sanshengmu’s plot at the last moment, and he gave chase. In her haste to escape from her brother, Sanshengmu landed badly on Earth.

She lay on the road for three days. Her mortal guise was of a woman of uncommon beauty. In those times, that was a dangerous thing to be.

The first man who found her, a soldier, raped her and left her for dead.

The second man, a merchant, took her clothes but left her behind, as she would have been too heavy for his wagon.

The third man was a hunter. When he saw Sanshengmu he took off his cloak and wrapped her in it. Then he carried her back to his tent.

“Why are you helping me?” Sanshengmu asked. “You are a human. You live only to prey upon each other. You have no compassion. All you do is satisfy your own greed.”

“Not all humans,” said the hunter. “Not me.”

By the time they reached his tent, Sanshengmu had fallen in love.

She married the hunter. She taught the men of the hunter’s tribe many things: how to chant at the sky for rain, how to read the patterns of the weather in the cracked shell of a tortoise, how to burn incense to appease the deities of agriculture in return for a bountiful harvest.

The hunter’s tribe flourished and spread across the fertile land of Nikan. Word spread of the living goddess who had come to Earth. Sanshengmu’s worshippers increased in number across the country. The men of Nikan lit incense and built statues in her honor, the first divine entity they had ever known of.

And in time, she bore the hunter a child.

From his throne in the heavens, Erlang Shen watched, and grew enraged.

When Sanshengmu’s son reached his first birthday, Erlang Shen journeyed down to the world of man. He set fire to the banquet tent, driving out the guests in a panicked terror. He impaled the hunter with his great three-pronged spear and killed him. He took Sanshengmu’s son and hurled him off the side of a mountain. Then he grasped his horrified sister by the neck and lifted her in the air.

“You cannot kill me,” choked Sanshengmu. “You are bound to me. We are two halves of one whole. You cannot survive my death.”

“No,” acknowledged Erlang Shen. “But I can imprison you. Since you love the world of men so much, I will build for you an earthly prison, where you will pass an eternity. This will be your punishment for daring to love a mortal.”

As he spoke, a great mountain formed in the air. He flung his twin sister away from him, and the mountain sank on top of her, an unbreakable prison of stone. Sanshengmu tried and tried to escape, but inside her prison, she could not access her magic.

She languished in that stone prison for years. And every moment was torture to the goddess, who had once flown free through the heavens.

There are many stories about Sanshengmu. There are stories of her son, the Lotus Warrior, and how he was the first shaman to walk Nikan, a liaison between gods and men. There are stories of his war against his uncle, Erlang Shen, in order to free his mother.

There are stories, too, about the Chuluu Korikh. There are stories of the monkey king, the arrogant shaman who was locked for five thousand years within by the Jade Emperor as punishment for his impudence. One could say that this was the beginning of the age of stories, because that was the beginning of the age of shamans.

Much is true. Much more is not.

But one thing can be said to be fact. To this day, of all the places on this Earth, only the Chuluu Korikh may contain a god.

“Are you finally going to tell me where you’re headed?” Kitay asked. “Or did you call me here just to say goodbye?”

Rin was packing her equipment into traveling bags, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Kitay. She had avoided him the past week while she and Altan planned their journey.

Altan had forbidden her to speak of it to anyone outside the Cike. He and Rin would travel to the Chuluu Korikh alone. But if they succeeded, Rin wanted Kitay to know what was coming. She wanted him to know when to flee.

“We’re leaving as soon as the gelding is ready,” she said. Chaghan and Qara had departed Golyn Niis on the only halfway decent horse that the Federation hadn’t taken with them. It had taken days to find another gelding that wasn’t diseased or dying, and days more to nurture it back to a state fit for travel.

“Can I ask where to?” Kitay asked. He tried not to display his annoyance, but she knew him too well to overlook it; irritation was written across his face. Kitay was not used to missing information; she knew he resented her for it.

She hesitated, and then said, “The Kukhonin range.”

“Kukhonin?” Kitay repeated.

“Two days’ ride south from here.” She rummaged around in her bag to avoid looking at him. She had packed an enormous amount of poppy seed, everything from Enki’s stores that she could hold. Of course, none of it would be useful inside the Chuluu Korikh itself, but once they left the mountain, once they had freed every shaman inside . . .

“I know where the Kukhonin range is,” Kitay said impatiently. “I want to know why you’re riding in the opposite direction from Mugen’s main column.”

You have to tell him. Rin could not see a way of warning Kitay without divulging part of Altan’s plan. Otherwise he would insist on finding out for himself, and his curiosity would spell the death of him. She set the bag down, straightened up, and met Kitay’s eyes.

“Altan wants to raise an army.”

Kitay made a noise of disbelief. “Come again?”

“It’s . . . they’re . . . You wouldn’t understand if I told you.” How was she to explain this to him? Kitay had never studied Lore. Kitay had never truly believed in the gods, not even after the battle at Sinegard. Kitay thought that shamanism was a metaphor for arcane martial arts, that Rin and Altan’s abilities were sleights of hand and parlor tricks. Kitay did not know what lay in the Pantheon. Kitay did not understand the danger they were about to unleash.

“Just—look, I’m trying to warn you—”

“No, you’re trying to deceive me. You don’t get to deceive me,” Kitay said very loudly. “I have seen cities burning. I have seen you do what mortals should not be able to do. I have seen you raise fire. I think I have the right to know. Try me.”

“Fine.”

She told him.

Amazingly, he believed her.

“This sounds like a plan where many things could go wrong,” said Kitay when she finished. “How does Altan even know this army will fight for him?”

“They’re Nikara,” said Rin. “They have to. They’ve fought for the Empire before.”

“The same Empire that had them buried alive in the first place?”

“Not buried alive,” she said. “Immured.”

“Oh, sorry,” Kitay amended, “immured. Enclosed in stone in some magic mountain, because they became so powerful that a fucking mountain was the only thing that could stop them tearing apart entire villages. This is the army you’re just going to set loose on the country. This is what you think is going to save Nikan. Who came up with this, you or your opium-addled commander? Because this sure as hell isn’t the kind of plan you come up with sober, I can tell you that.”

Rin crossed her arms tightly against her chest. Kitay wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t already considered. What could anyone predict about maddened souls who had been entombed for years? The shamans of the Chuluu Korikh might do nothing. They might destroy half the country out of spite.

But Altan was certain they would fight for him.

They have no right to begrudge the Empress, Altan had said. All shamans know the risks when they journey to the gods. Everyone in the Cike knows that at the end of the line, they are destined for the Stone Mountain.

And the alternative was the extermination of every Nikara alive. The massacre of Golyn Niis made it obvious that the Federation did not want to take any prisoners. They wanted the massive piece of land that was the Nikara Empire. They were not interested in cohabitation with its former occupants. She knew the risks, and she had weighed them and concluded that she didn’t care. She had thrown her lot in with Altan, for better or worse.

“You can’t change my mind,” she said. “I’m telling you this as a favor. When we come out of that mountain, I don’t know how much control we’ll have, only that we’ll be powerful. Do not try to stop us. Do not try to join us. When we come, you should flee.”

“The rendezvous point will be at the base of the Kukhonin Mountains,” Altan told the assembled Cike. “If we don’t meet you there in seven days’ time, assume we were killed. Do not go inside the mountain yourselves. Wait for a bird from Qara and do as the message commands. Chaghan is commander in my stead.”

“Where is Chaghan?” Unegen ventured to ask.

“With Qara.” Altan’s face betrayed nothing. “They’ve gone north on my orders. You’ll know when they’re back.”

“When will that be?”

“When they’ve done their job.”

Rin waited by their horse, watched Altan speaking with a self-assured aura that she had not seen since Sinegard. Altan, as he presented himself now, was not that broken boy with the opium pipe. He was not the despairing Speerly reliving the genocide of his people. He was not a victim. Altan was different now than he had been even in Khurdalain. He was no longer frustrated, pacing around his office like a cornered animal, no longer constrained under Jun’s thumb. Altan had orders now, a mission, a singular purpose. He didn’t have to hold back anymore. He had been let off his leash. Altan was going to take his anger to a final, terrible conclusion.

She had no doubts they would succeed. She just didn’t know if the country would survive his plan.

“Good luck,” said Enki. “Say hi to Feylen for us.”

“Great guy,” Unegen said wistfully. “Until, you know, he tried to flatten everything in a twenty-mile radius.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” said Ramsa. “It was only ten.”

They rode as fast as the old gelding would allow. At midday they passed a boulder with two lines etched into its side. She would have missed it if Altan had not pointed it out.

“Chaghan’s work,” said Altan. “Proof that the way is safe.”

“You sent Chaghan here?”

“Yes. Before we left the Night Castle for Khurdalain.”

“Why?”

“Chaghan and I . . . Chaghan had a theory,” said Altan. “About the Trifecta. Before Sinegard, when he realized Tyr had died, he’d seen something on the spirit horizon. He thought he’d seen the Gatekeeper. He saw the same disturbance a week later, and then it disappeared. He thought the Gatekeeper must have intentionally closed himself in the Chuluu Korikh. We thought we might extract him, find out the truth—maybe discover the truth behind the Trifecta, see what’s happened to the Gatekeeper and the Emperor, find out what the Empress did to them. Chaghan didn’t know I wanted to free anyone else.”

“You lied to him.”

Altan shrugged. “Chaghan believes what he wants to believe.”

“Chaghan also . . . He said . . .” She trailed off, unsure of how to phrase her question.

“What?” Altan demanded.

“He said they trained you like a dog. At Sinegard.”

Altan laughed drily. “He phrased it like that, did he?”

“He said they fed you opium.”

Altan stiffened.

“They trained soldiers at Sinegard,” he said. “With me, they did their job.”

They might have done their job too well, Rin thought. Like the Cike, the masters at Sinegard had conjured a more frightening power than they were equipped to handle. They’d done more than train a Speerly. They’d created an avenger.

Altan was a commander who would burn down the world to destroy his enemy.

This should have bothered her. Three years ago, if she had known what she knew about Altan now, she would have run in the opposite direction.

But now, she had seen and suffered too much. The Empire didn’t need someone reasonable. It needed someone mad enough to try to save it.

They stopped riding when it became too dark to see the path in front of them. They had ventured onto a trail so lightly trodden it could hardly be called a road, and their horse could have easily cut its hooves on a jagged rock or sent them tumbling into a ravine. Their gelding staggered when they dismounted. Altan poured out a pan of water for it, but only after Rin’s prodding did it begin to halfheartedly drink.

“He’ll die if we ride him any harder,” Rin said. She knew very little about horses, but she could tell when an animal was on the verge of collapse. One of the military steeds at Khurdalain, perhaps, could have easily made the trip, but this horse was a miserable pack animal—an old beast so thin its ribs showed through its matted coat.

“We just need him for one more day,” said Altan. “He can die after.”

Rin fed the gelding a handful of oats from their pack. Meanwhile Altan built their camp with austere, methodical efficiency. He collected fallen pine needles and dry leaves to insulate against the cold. He formed a frame out of broken tree limbs and draped a spare cloak over it to shield against overnight snowfall. He pulled from his pack dry kindling and oil, quickly dug a pit, and arranged the flammables inside. He extended his hand. A flare caught immediately. Casually, as if he were doing nothing harder than waving a fan, Altan increased the volume of the flame until they were sitting before a roaring bonfire.

Rin held her hands out, let the heat seep through into her bones. She hadn’t noticed how cold she’d become over the day; she realized she hadn’t been able to feel her toes until now.

“Are you warm?” Altan asked.

She nodded quickly. “Thanks.”

He watched her in silence for a moment. She felt the heat of his gaze on her, and tried not to flush. She was not used to receiving Altan’s full attention; he had been distracted with Chaghan ever since Khurdalain, ever since their falling-out. But things were reversed now. Chaghan had abandoned Altan, and Rin stood by his side. She felt a thrill of vindictive joy when she considered this. Suddenly guilty, she tried to quash it down.

“You’ve been to the mountain before?”

“Only once,” Altan said. “A year ago. I helped Tyr bring Feylen in.”

“Feylen’s the one who went crazy?”

“They all go crazy, in the end,” he said. “The Cike die in battle, or they get immured. Most commanders assume their title when they’ve disposed of their old master. If Tyr hadn’t died, I probably would have locked him in myself. It’s always a pain when it happens.”

“Why aren’t they just killed?” she asked.

“You can’t kill a shaman who’s been fully possessed,” said Altan. “When that happens, the shaman isn’t human anymore. They’re not mortal. They’re vessels of the divine. You can behead them, stab them, hang them, but the body will keep moving. You dismember the body, and still the pieces will skitter to rejoin the others. The best you can do is bind them, incapacitate them, and overpower them until you get them into the mountain.”

Rin imagined herself bound and blindfolded, dragged involuntarily along this same mountain path into an eternal stone prison. She shuddered. She could understand this sort of cruelty from the Federation, but from her own commander?

“And you’re all right with that?”

“Of course I’m not all right with that,” he snapped. “But it’s the job. It’s my job. I’m supposed to bring the Cike to the mountain when they’ve become unfit to serve. The Cike controls itself. The Cike is the Empire’s way of eliminating the threat of rogue shamans.”

Altan twisted his fingers together. “Every Cike commander is charged with two things: to obey the will of the Empress, and to cull the force when it’s time. Jun was right. There’s no place for the Cike in modern warfare. We’re too small. We can’t achieve anything a well-trained Militia force couldn’t. Fire powder, cannons, and steel—these things win wars, not a handful of shamans. The only unique role of the Cike is to do what no other military force can do. We can subdue ourselves, which is the only reason why we’re allowed to exist.”

Rin thought of Suni—poor, gentle, and horrifically strong Suni, who was so clearly unstable. How long before he would meet the same fate that had befallen Feylen? When would Suni’s madness outweigh his usefulness to the Empire?

“But I won’t be like the commanders of before,” Altan said. His fingers clenched to form fists. “I won’t turn from my people because they’ve drawn more power than they should have. How is that fair? Suni and Baji were sent to the Baghra desert because Jiang got scared of them. That’s what he does—erases his mistakes, runs from them. But Tyr trained them instead, gave them back a shred of rationality. So there must be a way of taming the gods. The Feylen that I knew would not kill his own people. There must be a way to bring him back from madness. There has to be.”

He spoke with such conviction. He looked so sure, so absolutely sure that he could control this sleeping army the same way he had calmed Suni in that mess hall, had brought him back to the world of mortals with nothing more than whispers and words.

She forced herself to believe him, because the alternative was too terrible to comprehend.

They reached the Chuluu Korikh on the afternoon of the second day, hours earlier than they had planned. Altan was pleased at this; he was pleased at everything today, forging ahead with an ecstatic, giddy energy. He acted as if he had waited years for this day. For all Rin knew, he had.

When the terrain became too treacherous to keep riding, they dismounted and let the animal go. The gelding strode away with a grievous air to find somewhere to die.

They hiked for the better part of the afternoon. The ice and snow thickened the higher up they climbed. Rin was reminded of the treacherously icy stairs at Sinegard, how one misstep could mean a shattered spine. But here, no first-years had scattered salt across the ice to make the ground safe. If they slipped now, they were guaranteed a quick, icy death.

Altan used his trident as a staff, stabbing at the ground in front of him before he stepped forward. Rin followed gingerly in the path he had marked as safe. She suggested that they simply melt the ice with Speerly fire. Altan tried it. It took too long.

The sky had just begun to darken when Altan paused before a stretch of wall.

“Wait. This is it.”

Rin froze in her steps, teeth chattering madly. She glanced around. She could see no marker, no indication that this was the special entrance. But Altan sounded certain.

He backtracked several steps and then began scrubbing at the mountainside, wiping off snow to get at the smooth stone face underneath. He grumbled with exasperation and pressed a flaming hand against the rock. The fire gradually melted a clean circle in the ice with Altan’s hand at its center.

Rin could now see a crevice carved into the rock. It had been barely visible under a thick coat of snow and ice. A traveler could have walked past it twenty times and never seen it.

“Tyr said to stop when we reached the crag that looked like an eagle’s beak,” Altan said. He gestured toward the precipice they stood upon. It did, in fact, look like the profile of one of Qara’s birds. “I almost forgot.”

Rin dug two strips of dry cloth out of her travel sack, dribbled a vial of oil over them, and busied herself with wrapping the heads of a couple of wooden sticks. “You’ve never been inside?”

“Tyr had me wait outside,” said Altan. He stood back from the entrance. He had cleanly melted the ice away from the stone face, revealing a circular door embedded in the side of the mountain. “The only person alive who’s ever been inside is Chaghan. I’ve no idea how he got this door open. You ready?”

Rin yanked the last cloth knot tight with her teeth and nodded.

Altan turned around, braced his back against the stone door, bent his legs, and pushed. His face strained with the effort.

For a second nothing happened. Then, with a ponderous screech, the rock slid at an angle into its stone bed.

When the rock ground to a halt, Rin and Altan stood before the great maw of darkness. The tunnel was so black inside it seemed to swallow the sunlight whole. Glancing into the dark interior, Rin felt a sense of dread that had nothing to do with the darkness. Inside this mountain, there was no calling the Phoenix. They would have no access to the Pantheon. No way to call the power.

“Last chance to turn back,” said Altan.

She scoffed, handed him a torch, and strode forward.

Rin had barely made it ten feet in when she took one step too wide. The dark passageway turned out to be perilously narrow. She felt something crumble under her foot, and scrambled back against the wall. She held her torch out over the precipice and was immediately overcome with a horrible sense of vertigo. There was no visible bottom to the abyss; it dropped away into nothing.

“It’s hollow all the way down,” said Altan, standing close behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Stick to me. Watch your feet. Chaghan said we’d reach a wider platform in about twenty paces.”

She pressed herself against the cliff wall and let Altan squeeze past her, following him gingerly down the steps.

“What else did Chaghan say?”

“That we would find this.” Altan held out his torch.

A lone pulley lift hung in the middle of the mountain. Rin held her torch out as far as it would go, and the light illuminated something black and shiny on the platform surface.

“That’s oil. This is a lamp,” Rin realized. She drew her arm back.

“Careful,” Altan hissed just as Rin flung her torch out onto the lift.

The ancient oil blazed immediately to life. Fire snaked through the darkness across predetermined oil patterns in a hypnotizing sequence, revealing several similar pulley lamps hanging at various heights. Only after several long minutes was the entire mountain illuminated, revealing an intricate architecture to the stone prison. Below the passageway where they stood, Rin could see circles upon circles of plinths, extending down as far as the light reached. Around and around the inside of the mountain went a spiraling pathway that led to countless stone tombs.

The pattern was oddly familiar. Rin had seen this before.

It was a stone version of the Pantheon in miniature, multiplied in a spiraling helix. It was a perverse Pantheon, for the gods were not alive here but arrested in suspended animation.

Rin felt a sudden burst of panic. She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the feeling, but the overwhelming sense of suffocation only grew.

“I feel it, too,” Altan said quietly. “It’s the mountain. We’ve been sealed off.”

Back in Tikany, Rin had once fallen out of a tree and hit her head so hard against the ground that she lost her hearing temporarily. She’d seen Kesegi shouting at her, gesturing at his throat, but nothing had come through. It was the same here. Something was missing. She had been denied access to something.

She could not imagine what it was like to be trapped here for years, decades upon decades, unable to die but unable to leave the material world. This was a place that did not allow dreaming. This was a place of never-ending nightmares.

What a horrible fate to be entombed here.

Rin’s fingers brushed against something round. Under the pressure of her touch, it shifted and began to turn. She shone her torch on it and signaled for Altan’s attention.

“Look.”

It was a stone cylinder. Rin was reminded of the prayer wheels in front of the pagoda at the Academy. But this cylinder was much larger, rising up to her shoulder. Rin held the torch up to the stone and examined it closely. Deep grooves had been cut into its sides. She placed a hand on one side and dug her heels into the dirt, pushed hard.

With a screech that sounded like a scream, the wheel began to turn.

The grooves were words. No—names. Names upon names, each one followed by a string of numbers. It was a record. A registry of every soul that had been sealed inside the Chuluu Korikh.

There must have been a hundred names carved into that wheel.

Altan held the torch up to her right. “It’s not the only one.”

She looked up and saw that the fire illuminated another record wheel.

Then another. Then another.

They stretched through the entire first tier of the Stone Mountain.

Thousands and thousands of names. Names dating past the reign of the Dragon Emperor. Names dating past the Red Emperor himself.

Rin almost staggered at the significance.

There were people here who had not been conscious since the birth of the Nikara Empire.

“The investiture of the gods,” said Altan. He was trembling. “The sheer power in this mountain . . . no one could stop them, not even the Federation . . .”

And not even us, Rin thought.

If they woke the Chuluu Korikh, they would have an army of madmen, of primordial spigots of psychic energy. This was an army they would not be able to control. This was an army that could raze the world.

Rin traced her fingers against the first record wheel, the one closest to the entrance.

At the top, in very careful, deliberate writing, was the most recent entry.

She recognized that handwriting.

“I found him,” she said.

“Who, the Gatekeeper?” Altan looked confused.

“It’s him,” she said. “Of course it’s him.”

She ran her fingers over the engraved stone, and a deep flood of relief shot through her.

Jiang Ziya.

She had found him, finally found him. Her master was sealed inside one of these plinths. She grabbed the torch back from Altan and started at a run down the steps. Whispers echoed past her as she ran. She thought she could sense things coming through from the other side, the things that had been whispering through the void Jiang summoned at Sinegard.

She felt in the air an overwhelming want.

They must have immured the shamans starting at the bottom of the prison. Jiang could not be far from where they stood. Rin ran faster, felt the stone scrape under her feet. Up before her, her torch illuminated a plinth carved in the image of a stooped gatekeeper. She came to a sudden halt.

This had to be Jiang.

Altan caught up to her. “Don’t just take off like that.”

“He’s here,” she said, shining her torch up at the plinth. “He’s in there.”

“Move,” said Altan.

She had barely stepped out of the way when Altan slammed the end of his trident into the plinth.

When the rubble cleared, Jiang’s serene form was revealed under a layer of crumbling dust. He lay perfectly still against the rock, the sides of his mouth curved faintly upward as if he found something deeply amusing. He might have been sleeping.

He opened his eyes, looked them up and down, and blinked. “You might have knocked first.”

Rin stepped toward him. “Master?”

Jiang tilted his head sideways. “Have you gotten taller?”

“We’re here to rescue you,” said Rin, although the words sounded stupid as soon as she uttered them. No one could have forced Jiang into the mountain. He must have wanted to be there.

But she didn’t care why he had come here; she had found him, she had released him, she had his attention now. “We need your help. Please.”

Jiang stepped forward out of the stone and shook his limbs as if working out the kinks. He brushed the dust meticulously off his robes. Then he uttered mildly, “You should not be here. It’s not your time.”

“You don’t understand—”

“And you do not listen.” He was not smiling anymore. “The Seal is breaking. I can feel it—it’s almost gone. If I leave this mountain, all sorts of terrible things will come into your world.”

“So it’s true,” Altan said. “You’re the Gatekeeper.”

Jiang looked irritated. “What did I just say about not listening?”

But Altan was flushed with excitement. “You are the most powerful shaman in Nikara history! You can unlock this entire mountain! You could command this army!”

“That’s your plan?” Jiang gaped at him as if in disbelief that anyone could be this stupid. “Are you mad?”

“We . . .” Altan faltered, then regained his composure. “I’m not—”

Jiang buried his face in his palm, like an exasperated schoolteacher. “The boy wants to set everyone in this mountain free. The boy wants to unleash the contents of the Chuluu Korikh on the world.”

“It’s that, or let Nikan fall,” Altan snapped.

“Then let it.”

“What?”

“You don’t know what the Federation is capable of,” Rin said. “You didn’t see what they did to Golyn Niis.”

“I saw more than you think,” said Jiang. “But this is not the way. This path leads only to darkness.”

“How can there be more darkness?” she screamed in frustration. Her voice echoed off the cavernous walls. “How can things possibly get worse than this? Even you took the risks, you opened the void . . .”

“That was my mistake,” Jiang said regretfully, like a child who had been chastened. “I never should have done that. I should have let them take Sinegard.”

“Don’t you dare,” Rin hissed. “You opened the void, you let the beasts through, and you ran and hid here to let us deal with the consequences. When are you going to stop hiding? When are you going to stop being such a damn coward? What are you running from?”

Jiang looked pained. “It’s easy to be brave. Harder to know when not to fight. I’ve learned that lesson.”

“Master, please . . .”

“If you unleash this on Mugen, you will ensure that this war will continue for generations,” said Jiang. “You will do more than burn entire provinces to the ground. You will rip apart the very fabric of the universe. These are not men entombed in this mountain; these are gods. They will treat the material world as a plaything. They will shape nature according to their will. They will level mountains and redraw rivers. They will turn the mortal world into the same chaotic flow of primal forces that constitutes the Pantheon. But in the Pantheon, the gods are balanced. Life and death, light and dark—each of the sixty-four entities has its opposite. Bring the gods into your world, and that balance will shatter. You will turn your world to ash, and only demons will live in the rubble.”

When Jiang finished speaking, the silence rang heavily in the darkness.

“I can control them,” said Altan, though even to Rin he sounded hesitant, like a boy insisting to himself that he could fly. “There are men in those bodies. The gods can’t run free. I’ve done it with my people. Suni should have been locked up here years ago, but I’ve tamed him, I can talk them back from the madness—”

“You are mad.” Jiang’s voice was almost a whisper, containing as much awe as disbelief. “You’re blinded by your own desire for vengeance. Why are you doing this?” He reached out and grasped Altan’s shoulder. “For the Empire? For love of the country? Which is it, Trengsin? What story have you told yourself?”

“I want to save Nikan,” Altan insisted. He repeated in a strained voice, as if trying to convince himself, “I want to save Nikan.”

“No, you don’t,” said Jiang. “You want to raze Mugen.”

“They’re the same thing!”

“There is a world of difference between them, and the fact that you don’t see that is why you can’t do this. Your patriotism is a farce. You dress up your crusade with moral arguments, when in truth you would let millions die if it means you get your so-called justice. That’s what will happen if you open the Chuluu Korikh, you know,” said Jiang. “It won’t be just Mugen that pays to sate your need for retribution, but anyone unlucky enough to be caught in this storm of insanity. Chaos does not discriminate, Trengsin, and that’s why this prison was designed to never be unlocked.” He sighed. “But of course, you don’t care.”

Altan could not have looked more shocked if Jiang had struck him across the face.

“You have not cared about anything for a very long time,” Jiang continued. He regarded Altan with pity. “You are broken. You’re hardly yourself anymore.”

“I’m trying to save my country,” Altan reiterated hollowly. “And you’re a coward.”

“I am terrified,” Jiang acknowledged. “But only because I’m starting to remember who I once was. Don’t go down that path. Your country is ash. You can’t bring it back with blood.”

Altan gaped at him, unable to respond.

Jiang tilted his head to the side. “Irjah knew, didn’t he?”

Altan blinked rapidly. He looked terrified. “What? Irjah didn’t—Irjah never—”

“Oh, he knew.” Jiang sighed. “He must have known. Daji would have told him—Daji saw what I didn’t, Daji would have made sure Irjah knew how to keep you tame.”

Rin looked between them, confused. The blood had drained from Altan’s face; his features twisted with rage. “How dare you—you dare allege—”

“It’s my fault,” Jiang said. “I should have tried harder to help you.”

Altan’s voice cracked. “I didn’t need to be helped.”

“You needed it more than anything,” Jiang said sadly. “I’m so sorry. I should have fought to save you. You were a scared little boy, and they turned you into a weapon. And now . . . now you’re lost. But not her. She can still be saved. Don’t burn her with yourself.”

They both looked to her then.

Rin glanced between them. So this was her choice. The paths before her were clear. Altan or Jiang. Commander or master. Victory and revenge, or . . . or whatever Jiang had promised her.

But what had he ever promised her? Only wisdom. Only understanding. Enlightenment. But those meant only further warnings, petty excuses to hold her back from exercising a power that she knew she could access . . .

“I taught you better than this.” Jiang put a hand on her shoulder. He sounded as if he were pleading. “Didn’t I? Rin?”

He could have helped them. He could have stopped the massacre at Golyn Niis. He could have saved Nezha.

But Jiang had hidden. His country had needed him, and he had fled to ensconce himself here, without any regard for those he left behind.

He had abandoned her.

He hadn’t even said goodbye.

But Altan . . . Altan had not given up on her.

Altan had verbally abused her and hit her, but he had faith in her power. Altan had only ever wanted to make her stronger.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “But I have my orders.”

Jiang exhaled, and his hand fell away from her shoulder. As always under his gaze, she felt as if she were suffocating, as if he could see through to every part of her. He weighed her with those pale eyes then, and she failed him.

And even though she had made her choice, she couldn’t bear his disappointment. She looked away.

“No, I am sorry,” Jiang said. “I’m so sorry. I tried to warn you.”

He stepped backward over the ruins of his plinth. He closed his eyes.

“Master, please—”

He began to chant. At his feet the broken stone began to move as if liquid, assuming again the form of a smooth, unbroken plinth that built slowly from the ground up.

Rin ran forward. “Master!”

But Jiang was still, silent. Then the stone covered his face completely.

“He’s wrong.”

Altan’s voice trembled, whether from fear or naked rage, she didn’t know. “That isn’t why—I’m not . . . We don’t need him. We’ll wake the others. They’ll fight for me. And you—you’ll fight for me, won’t you? Rin?”

“Of course I will,” she whispered, but Altan was already bashing at the next plinth with his trident, slamming the metal down over and over with naked desperation.

“Wake up,” he shouted, voice cracking. “Wake up, come on . . .”

The shaman in the plinth had to be Feylen, the mad and murderous one. That should have posed a deterrent, but Altan certainly didn’t seem to care as he slammed his trident down again into the thin stone veneer that lay over Feylen’s face.

The rocks came crumbling down, and the second shaman woke.

Rin held her torch out hesitantly. When she saw the figure inside she cringed in revulsion.

Feylen was barely recognizable as human. Jiang had only just immured himself; his body was still passably that of a man, displaying no signs of decay. But Feylen . . . Feylen’s body was a dead one, grayed and hardened after months of entombment without nourishment or oxygen. He had not decayed, but he had petrified.

Blue veins protruded against ash-gray skin. Rin doubted any blood still flowed through those veins.

Feylen’s build was slender, thin and stooped, and his face looked like it might have been pleasant once. But now his skin was pulled taut over his cheekbones, eyes sunken in deep craters in his skull.

And then he opened his eyes, and Rin’s breath hitched in her throat.

Feylen’s eyes glowed brilliantly in the darkness, an unnerving blue like two fragments of the sky.

“It’s me,” Altan said. “Trengsin.” She could hear the way he fought to keep his voice level. “Do you remember me?”

“We remember voices,” Feylen said slowly. His voice was scratchy from months without use; it sounded like a steel blade dragged against the ancient stone of the mountain. He cocked his head at an unnatural angle, as if trying to tip maggots out of his ear. “We remember fire. And we remember you, Trengsin. We remember your hand across our mouth and your other hand at our throat.”

The way Feylen spoke made Rin clench the hilt of her sword with fear. He didn’t speak like a man who had fought by Altan’s side.

He referred to himself as we.

Altan seemed to have realized this, too. “Do you remember who you are?”

Feylen frowned at this as if he had forgotten. He pondered a long time before he rasped out, “We are a spirit of the wind. We may take the body of a dragon or the body of a man. We rule the skies of this world. We carry the four winds in a bag and we fly as our whims take us.”

“You’re Feylen of the Cike. You serve the Empress, and you served under Tyr’s command. I need your help,” Altan said. “I need you to fight for me again.”

“To . . . fight?”

“There’s a war,” Altan said, “and we need the power of the gods.”

“The power of the gods,” Feylen drawled slowly. Then he laughed.

It wasn’t a human laugh. It was a high-pitched echo that sounded off the mountain walls like the shrieking of bats.

“We fought for you the first time,” he said. “We fought for the Empire. For your thrice-damned Empress. What did that get us? A slap on the back, and a trip to this mountain.”

“You did try to send the Night Castle tumbling down a cliff,” Altan pointed out.

“We were confused. We didn’t know where we were.” Feylen sounded rueful. “But no one helped us . . . no one calmed us. No, instead you helped put us in here. When Tyr subdued us, you held the rope. You dragged us here like cattle. And he stood there and watched the stone close across our face.”

“That wasn’t my decision,” Altan said. “Tyr thought—”

“Tyr got scared. The man asked for our power, and backed off when it became too much.”

Altan swallowed. “I didn’t want this for you.”

“You promised us you wouldn’t hurt us. I thought you cared about us. We were scared. We were vulnerable. And you bound us in the night, you subdued us with your flames . . . can you imagine the pain? The terror? All we ever did was fight for you, and you repaid us with eternal torture.”

“We put you to sleep,” Altan said. “We gave you rest.”

“Rest? Do you think this is rest?” Feylen hissed. “Do you have any idea what this mountain is like? Try stepping into that stone, see if you can last even an hour. Gods were not meant to be contained, least of all us. We are the wind. We blow in each and every direction. We obey no master. Do you know what torment this is? Do you know what the boredom is like?”

He stepped forward and opened his hands out toward Altan.

Rin tensed, but nothing happened.

Perhaps the god Feylen had summoned was capable of immense power. Perhaps he could have leveled villages, might have ripped Altan apart under normal circumstances. But they were inside the mountain. Whatever Feylen was capable of, whatever he would have done, the gods had no power here.

“I know how terrible it must be to be cut off from the Pantheon,” said Altan. “But if you fight for me, if you promise to contain yourself, then you never have to suffer that again.”

“We have become divine,” said Feylen. “Do you think we care what happens to mortals?”

“I don’t need you to care about mortals,” said Altan. “I need you to remember me. I need the power of your god, but I need more the man inside. I need the person in control. I know you’re in there, Feylen.”

“In control? You speak to us of control?” Feylen gnashed his teeth when he spoke, like every word was a curse. “We cannot be controlled like pack animals for your use. You’re in over your head, little Speerly. You’ve brought down forces you don’t understand into your pathetic little material world, and your world would be infinitely more interesting if someone smashed it up for a bit.”

The color drained from Altan’s face.

“Rin, get back,” he said quietly.

Jiang was right. Chaghan had been right. An entire army of these creatures would have spelled the end of the world.

She had never felt so wrong.

We can’t let this thing leave the mountain.

The same thought seemed to strike Feylen at precisely that moment. He looked between them and the stream of light two tiers up, through which they could just hear the wind howling outside, and he smiled crookedly.

“Ah,” he said. “Left it wide open, haven’t you?”

His luminous eyes came alive with malicious glee, and he regarded the exit with the yearning of a drowning man desperate to come up for air.

“Feylen, please.” Altan stretched out a hand, and his voice was quiet when he spoke to Feylen, as if he thought he could calm him the way he had calmed Suni.

“You cannot threaten us. We can rip you apart,” sneered Feylen.

“I know you can,” said Altan. “But I trust that you won’t. I’m trusting the person inside.”

“You are a fool to think me human.”

“Me,” said Altan. “You said me.”

Feylen’s face spasmed. The blue light dimmed from his eyes. His features morphed just so slightly; the sneer disappeared, and his mouth worked as if trying to decide what commands to obey.

Altan lifted his trident out to the side, far away from Feylen. Then, with a slow deliberateness, he flung the weapon away from him. It clattered against the wall, echoed in the silence of the mountain.

Feylen stared at the weapon in wide-eyed disbelief.

“I’m trusting you with my life,” said Altan. “I know you’re in there, Feylen.”

Slowly, he stretched his hand out again.

And Feylen grasped it.

The contact sent tremors through Feylen’s body. When he looked up, he had that same terrified expression she’d seen in Suni. His eyes were wide, dark and imploring, like a child seeking a protector; a lost soul desperately seeking an anchor back to the mortal world.

“Altan?” he whispered.

“I’m here.” Altan walked forward. As before, he approached the god without fear, despite full knowledge of what it could do to him.

“I can’t die,” Feylen whispered. His voice contained none of that grating quality now; it was tremulous, so vulnerable there was no doubt that this Feylen was human. “It’s awful, Trengsin. Why can’t I die? I should never have summoned that god . . . Our minds are meant to be our own, not shared with these things . . . I do not live here in this mountain . . . but I can’t die.”

Rin felt sick.

Jiang was right. The gods had no place in their world. No wonder the Speerlies had driven themselves mad. No wonder Jiang was so terrified of pulling the gods down into the mortal realm.

The Pantheon was where they belonged; the Pantheon was where they should stay. This was a power mankind never should have meddled with.

What were they thinking? They should leave, now, while Feylen was still under control; they should pull the stone door closed so that he could never escape.

But Altan showed none of her fear. Altan had his soldier back.

“I can’t let you die yet,” Altan said. “I need you to fight for me. Can you do that?”

Feylen had not let go of Altan’s arm; he drew him closer, as if into an embrace. He leaned in and brushed his lips against Altan’s ear, and whispered so that Rin could barely hear what he said: “Kill yourself, Trengsin. Die while you still can.”

His eyes met Rin’s over Altan’s shoulder. They glinted a bright blue.

“Altan!” Rin screamed.

And Feylen wrenched his commander across the plinth and flung him toward the abyss.

It was not a strong throw. Feylen’s muscles were atrophied from months of disuse; he moved clumsily, like newborn fawn, a god tottering about in a mortal body.

But Altan careened wildly over the side, flailing in the air for balance, and Feylen pushed past him and scrambled up the stone steps toward the exit. His face was wild with a gleeful malice, ecstatic.

Rin threw herself across the stone; she landed stomach-first on floor, arms extended, and the next thing she felt was terrible pain as Altan’s fingers closed around her wrist just before he plunged into the darkness.

His weight wrenched her arm down. She cried out in agony as her elbow slammed against stone.

But then Altan’s other arm shot up from the darkness. She strained down. Their fingers clasped together.

Rocks clattered off the edge of the precipice, falling away into the abyss, but Altan hung steady by both of her arms. They slid forward and for one sick moment she feared his weight might pull the both of them over the edge, but then her foot caught in a groove and they came to a stop.

“I’ve got you,” she panted.

“Let go,” Altan said.

“What?”

“I’m going to swing myself up,” he said. “Let my left arm go.”

She obeyed.

Altan kicked himself to the side to generate momentum and then threw his other hand up to grasp the edge. She lay straining against the floor, legs digging into the stone to keep herself from sliding forward while he pulled himself over the edge of the precipice. He slammed one arm over the top and dug his elbow into the floor. Grunting, he hauled his legs over the edge in a single fluid movement.

Sobbing with relief, Rin helped him to his feet, but he brushed her off.

“Feylen,” he hissed, and set out at an uneven sprint up the stone pathway.

Rin followed him, but it was pointless. When they ran, the only footsteps they could hear were their own, because Feylen had long disappeared out the mouth of the Chuluu Korikh.

They’d given him free rein in the world.

But Altan had overpowered him once. Surely they could do so again. They had to.

They stumbled out the stone door and skidded to a halt before a wall of steel.

Federation soldiers thronged the mountainside.

Their general barked a command and the soldiers pressed forward with their shields linked to create a barrier, backing Rin and Altan inside the stone mountain.

She caught Altan’s stricken expression for a brief moment before he was buried beneath a crowd of armor and swords.

She had no time to wonder why the Federation soldiers were there or how they had known to arrive; all questions disappeared from her mind with the immediacy of combat. The fighting instinct took over—the world became a matter of blades and parries, just another melee—

Yet even as she drew her sword she knew it was hopeless.

The Federation had chosen precisely the right place to kill a Speerly.

Altan and Rin had no advantage in here. The Phoenix could not reach them through the thick walls of stone. Swallowing the poppy would be useless. They might pray to their god, but no one would answer.

A pair of gauntleted arms reached around Rin from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. From the corner of her eye she saw Altan backed against the wall, no fewer than five blades at his neck.

He might have been the best martial artist in Nikan. But without his fire, without his trident, he was still only one man.

Rin jammed her elbow into her captor’s stomach, wriggled free, and whipped her sword outward at the nearest soldier. Their blades clashed; she landed a lucky, wild swing. He tumbled, yelling, into the abyss with her sword embedded in his knee. Rin made a grab for her weapon, but it was too late.

The next soldier swung wide overhead. She ducked into close quarters, reaching for the knife in her belt.

The soldier cracked the hilt of his blade down on her shoulder and sent her sprawling across the floor. She fumbled blindly against the rock.

Then someone slammed a shield against the back of her head.

Chapter 24

She woke in darkness. She was lying on a flat, swaying surface—a wagon? A ship? Though she was certain her eyes were open, she could see nothing. Had she been sealed inside something, or was it simply nighttime? She had no idea how much time had passed. She tried to move and discovered that she was bound: hands tied tightly behind her back, legs strapped together. She tried to sit up, and the muscles around her left shoulder screamed in pain. She choked back a whimper and lay down until the throbbing subsided.

Then she tried moving horizontally instead. Her legs were stiff; the one she lay on was numb from lack of blood flow, and when she shifted so that it would regain feeling, it hurt like a thousand needles were being slowly inserted into her foot. She could not move her legs separately so she writhed back and forth like a worm, inching about until her feet kicked against the sides of something. She pushed against it and writhed the other way.

She was sure now that she was in a wagon.

With great effort she pulled herself to a sitting position. The top of her head bumped against something scratchy. A canvas sheet. Or a tarp? Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see that it was not dark outside after all; the wagon cover simply blocked out the sunlight.

She strained against the tarp until a crack of light flooded in through the side. Trembling with effort, she pressed her eye to the slit.

It took her a while to comprehend what she saw.

The road looked like something out of a dream. It was as if a great gust of wind had blown through a small city, turning households inside out, distributing the contents at random on the grass by the trail. A pair of ornate wooden chairs lay tipped over next to a set of woolen stockings. A dining table sat beside a carved chess set, jade pieces scattered across the dirt. Paintings. Toys. Entire trunks of clothing lay open by the roadside. She saw a wedding dress. A matching set of silken sleepwear.

It was a trail of fleeing villagers. Whatever Nikara had lived in this area, they had long gone, and they had flung things by the roadside as they became too heavy to carry. As desperation for survival outweighed their attachment to their possessions, the Nikara had dropped off their belongings one by one.

Was this Feylen’s doing, or the Federation’s? Rin’s stomach curdled at the idea that she might be responsible for this. But if the Wind God had indeed caused this destruction, then he had long moved on. The air was calm when they rode, and no freak winds or tornadoes materialized to rip them to pieces.

Perhaps he was wreaking havoc on the world elsewhere. Perhaps he had fled north to bide his time, to heal and adjust to his long-awaited freedom. Who could predict the will of a god?

Had the Federation razed Tikany to the ground yet? Had the Fangs heard rumors of the advancing army early enough to run before the Federation tore their village apart? What about Kesegi?

She thought the Federation soldiers might loot the debris. But they were moving so fast that the officers yelled at their troops when they stopped to pick things up. Wherever they were going, they wanted to get there soon.

Among the abandoned chests and furniture, Rin saw a man sitting by the road. He slouched beside a bamboo carrying pole, the kind farmers used to balance buckets of water for irrigation. He had fashioned a large sign out of the back of a painting, on which he’d scrawled in messy calligraphy five ingots.

“Two girls,” he said in a slow chant. “Two girls, healthy girls, for sale.”

Two toddlers peered out over the tops of the wooden buckets. They stared wonderingly at the passing soldiers. One noticed Rin peeking out from under the tarp, and she blinked her luminous eyes in uncomprehending curiosity. She lifted her tiny fingers and waved at them, just as a soldier shouted out in excitement.

Rin shrank back into the wagon. Tears leaked out the sides of her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. She squeezed her eyes shut. She did not want to see what became of those girls.

“Rin?”

For the first time she noticed that Altan was curled up in the other corner of the wagon. She could barely see him under the darkness of the tarp. She inched clumsily toward him like a caterpillar.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“I can’t tell,” she said. “But we’re nowhere near the Kukhonin range. We’re traveling over flat roads.”

“We’re in a wagon?”

“I think so. I don’t know how many of them there are.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll get us out. I’m going to burn through these ropes,” he announced. “Get back.”

She wriggled to the other side of the wagon just as Altan ignited a small flame from his arms. His bonds caught fire at the edges, began slowly to blacken.

Smoke filled the wagon. Rin’s eyes teared up; she could not stop herself from coughing. Minutes passed.

“Just a bit longer,” Altan said.

The smoke curled off the rope in thick tendrils. Rin glanced about the tarp, panicked. If the smoke didn’t escape out the sides, they might suffocate before Altan broke through his bonds. But if it did . . .

She heard shouting above her. The language was Mugini but the commands were too terse and abrupt for her to translate.

Someone yanked the tarp off.

Altan’s flames exploded into full force, just as a soldier drenched him with an entire bucket full of water. A great sizzling noise filled the air.

Altan screamed.

Someone clamped a damp cloth over Rin’s mouth. She kicked and struggled, holding her breath, but they jabbed something sharp into her bruised shoulder and she could not help inhaling sharply in pain. Then her nostrils filled with the sweet smell of gas.

Lights. Lights so bright they hurt like knives jabbing into her eyes. Rin tried to squirm away from the source, but nothing happened. For a moment she thrashed in vain, terrified that she’d been paralyzed, until she realized she was tied down with restraints. Strapped to some flat bed. Rin’s peripheral vision was limited to the top half of the room. If she strained, she could just see Altan’s head adjacent to hers.

Rin’s eyes darted around in terror. Shelves filled the sides of the room. They brimmed with jars that contained feet, heads, organs, and fingers, all meticulously labeled. A massive glass chamber stood in the corner. Inside was the body of an adult man. Rin stared at him for a minute before she realized the man was long dead; it was only a corpse that was being preserved in chemicals, like pickled vegetables. His eyes were still frozen in an expression of horror; mouth wide in an underwater scream. The label at the top of the jar read in fine, neat handwriting: Nikara Man, 32.

The jars on the shelves were labeled similarly. Liver, Nikara Child, 12. Lungs, Nikara Woman, 51. She wondered dully if that was how she would end up, neatly parceled in this operating room. Nikara Woman, 19.

“I’m back.” Altan had awoken beside her. His voice was a dry whisper. “I never thought I’d be back.”

Rin’s insides twisted with dread. “Where are we?”

“Please,” Altan said. “Don’t make me explain this to you.”

She knew, then, exactly where they were.

Chaghan’s words echoed in her mind.

After the First Poppy War, the Federation became obsessed with your people . . . They spent the decades in between the Poppy Wars kidnapping Speerlies, experimenting on them, trying to figure out what made them special.

The Federation soldiers had brought them to that same research facility that Altan had been abducted to as a child. The place that had left him with a crippling addiction to opium. The place that had been liberated by the Hesperians. The place that should have been destroyed after the Second Poppy War.

Snake Province must have fallen, she realized with a sinking feeling. The Federation had occupied more ground than she’d feared.

The Hesperians were long gone. The Federation was back. The monsters had returned to their lair.

“You know the worst part?” Altan said. “We’re so close to home. To Speer. We’re on the coastline. We’re right by the sea. When they first brought us here, there weren’t so many cells . . . they put us in a room with a window facing the water. I could see the constellations. Every night. I saw the star of the Phoenix and thought that if I could just slip away, I could swim and keep swimming and find my way back home.”

Rin thought of a four-year-old Altan, locked in this place, staring out at the night sky while around him his friends were strapped down and dissected. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but no matter how hard she strained against those straps, she couldn’t move. “Altan . . .”

“I thought someone would come and get us,” he continued, and Rin didn’t think he was talking to her anymore. He spoke like he was recounting a nightmare to the empty air. “Even when they killed the others, I thought that maybe . . . maybe my parents would still come for me. But when the Hesperian troops liberated me, they told me I could never go back. They told me there was nothing on the island but bones and ash.”

He fell quiet.

Rin was at a loss for words. She felt like she needed to say something, something to rouse him, turn his attention to seeking a way out of this place, but anything that came to mind was laughably inadequate. What kind of consolation could she possibly give?

“Good! You’re awake.”

A high, tremulous voice interrupted her thoughts. Whoever it was spoke from directly behind her, out of her line of sight. Rin’s eyes bulged and she strained against the straps.

“Oh, I’m sorry—but of course you cannot see me.”

The owner of the voice moved to stand directly above her. He was a very thin white-haired man in a doctor’s uniform. His beard was trimmed meticulously to a sharp point ending two inches below his chin. His dark eyes glittered with a bright intelligence.

“Is this better?” He smiled benignly, as if greeting an old friend. “I am Eyimchi Shiro, chief medical officer of this camp. You may call me Dr. Shiro.”

He spoke Nikara, not Mugini. He had a very prim Sinegardian accent, as if he’d learned the language fifty years ago. His tone was stilted, artificially cheerful.

When Rin did not respond, the doctor shrugged and turned to the other table.

“Oh, Altan,” he said. “I had no idea you’d be coming back. This is a wonderful surprise! I couldn’t believe it when they told me. They said, ‘Dr. Shiro, we’ve found a Speerly!’ And I said, ‘You’ve got to be joking! There are no more Speerlies!’” Shiro chuckled mildly.

Rin strained to see Altan’s face. He was awake; his eyes were open, but he glared at the ceiling without looking at Shiro.

“They have been so scared of you, you know,” Shiro continued cheerfully. “What do they call you? The monster of Nikan? The Phoenix incarnate? My countrymen love exaggerations, and they love you Nikara shamans even more. You are a myth, a legend! You are so special! Why do you act so sullen?”

Altan said nothing.

Shiro seemed to deflate slightly, but then he grinned and patted Altan on the cheek. “Of course. You must be tired. Do not worry. We will fix you up in just a moment. I have just the thing . . .”

He hummed happily as he bustled over to the corner of the operating room. He perused his shelves, plucking out various vials and instruments. Rin heard a popping noise, and then the sound of a candle being lit. She could not see what Shiro was doing with his hands until he returned to stand above Altan.

“Did you miss me?” he inquired.

Altan said nothing.

“Hm.” Shiro lifted a syringe over Altan’s face, tapping the glass so that both of them could see the liquid inside. “Did you miss this?”

Altan’s eyes bulged.

Shiro held Altan’s wrist down with a gentle touch, almost as a mother would caress her child. His skilled fingers prodded for a vein. With his other hand he brought the needle to Altan’s arm and pushed.

Only then did Altan scream.

“Stop!” Rin shrieked. Spittle flew out the sides of her mouth. “Stop it!”

“My dear!” Shiro set the empty syringe down and rushed to her side. “Calm! Calm down! He will be fine.”

“You’re killing him!” She thrashed wildly against her bonds, but they held firm.

Tears leaked from her eyes. Shiro wiped them meticulously away, keeping his fingers out of reach of her gnashing teeth.

“Killing? Don’t be dramatic. I just gave him some of his favorite medicine.” Shiro tapped his temple and winked at her. “You know he enjoys it. You traveled with him, didn’t you? This drug is not anything new to him. He will be fine in a few minutes.”

They both looked to Altan. Altan’s breathing had stabilized, but he certainly did not look fine.

“Why are you doing this?” Rin choked. She’d thought she understood Federation cruelty by now. She had seen Golyn Niis. She’d seen the evidence of Mugenese scientists’ handiwork. But to look this evil in the eye, to watch Shiro inflict such pain on Altan and smile about it . . . Rin could not comprehend it. “What do you want from us?”

Shiro sighed. “Is it not obvious?” He patted her cheek. “I want knowledge. Our work here will advance medical technology by decades. When else do you get such a good chance to do research? An endless supply of cadavers! Boundless opportunities for experimentation! I can answer every question I’ve ever had about the human body! I can devise ways to prevent death!”

Rin gaped at him in disbelief. “You are cutting my people open.”

“Your people?” Shiro snorted. “Don’t degrade yourself. You’re nothing like those pathetic Nikara. You Speerlies are so fascinating. Composed of such lovely material.” Shiro fondly brushed the hair from Altan’s sweaty forehead. “Such beautiful skin. Such fascinating eyes. The Empress doesn’t know what she has.”

He pressed two fingers against Rin’s neck to take her pulse. She swallowed down the bile that rose up at his touch.

“I wonder if you might oblige me,” he said gently. “Show me the fire. I know you can.”

“What?”

“You Speerlies are so special,” Shiro confided. His voice had taken on a low, husky tone. He spoke as if to an infant, or a lover. “So strong. So unique. They say you are a god’s chosen people. What makes you this way?”

Hatred, Rin thought. Hatred, and a history of suffering inflicted by people like you.

“You know my country has never achieved feats of shamanism,” Shiro said. “Do you have any idea why?”

“Because the gods wouldn’t bother with scum like you,” Rin spat.

Shiro brushed at the air, as if swatting the insult away. He must have heard so many Nikara curses by now that they meant nothing to him.

“We will do it like this,” he said. “I will request you to show me the way to the gods. Each time you refuse, I will give him another injection of the drug. You know how he will feel it.”

Altan made a low, guttural noise from his bed. His entire body tensed and spasmed.

Shiro murmured something into his ear and stroked Altan’s forehead, as tenderly as a mother might comfort an ailing child.

Hours passed. Shiro posed his questions about shamanism to Rin again and again, but she maintained a stony front. She would not reveal the secrets behind the Pantheon. She would not place yet another weapon in Mugen’s hands.

Instead she cursed and spat, called him a monster, called him every vile thing she could think of. Jima hadn’t taught them to curse in Mugini, but Shiro caught the gist.

“Come now,” Shiro said dismissively. “It’s not like you’ve never seen this before.”

She paused, spittle dripping from her mouth. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Shiro touched his fingers to Altan’s neck to feel his pulse, pulled his eyelids back and pursed his lips as if confirming something. “His tolerance is astounding. Inhuman. He’s been smoking opium for years.”

“Because of what you did to him,” she screeched.

“And afterward? After he was liberated?” Shiro sounded like a disappointed teacher. “They had the last Speerly in their hands, and they never tried to wean him off the drug? It’s obvious—someone’s been feeding it to him for years. Clever of them. Oh, don’t look at me like that. The Federation weren’t the first to use opium to control a population. The Nikara originated this technique.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They didn’t teach you?” Shiro looked amused. “But of course. Of course they wouldn’t. Nikan likes to scrub out all that is embarrassing about its past.”

He crossed the room to stand over her, brushing his fingers along the shelves as he walked. “How do you think the Red Emperor kept the Speerlies on their leash? Use your head, my dear. When Speer lost its independence, the Red Emperor sent crates of opium over to the Speerlies as an offering. A gift, from the colonizing state to the tributary. This was deliberate. Previously the Speerlies had only ever ingested their local bark in their ceremonies. They were used to such mild hallucinogens that to them, smoking opium was like drinking wood alcohol. When they tried it, they immediately became addicted. They did anything they could to get more of it. They were slaves to the opium just as much as they were slaves to the Emperor.”

Rin’s mind reeled. She could not think of any response.

She wanted to call Shiro a liar. She wanted to scream at him to stop. But it made sense.

It made so much sense.

“So you see, our countries are not so different after all,” Shiro said smugly. “The only difference is that we revere shamans, we desire to learn from them, while your Empire is terrified and paranoid about the power it possesses. Your Empire has culled you and exploited you and made you eliminate each other. I will unleash you. I will grant you freedom to call the god as you have never been allowed to before.”

“If you give me freedom,” she snarled, “the first thing I will do is burn you alive.”

Her connection to the Phoenix was the last advantage she had. The Federation had raped and burned her country. The Federation had destroyed her school and killed her friends. By now they had mostly likely razed her hometown to the ground. Only the Pantheon remained sacred, the one thing in the universe that Mugen still had no access to.

Rin had been tortured, bound, beaten, and starved, but her mind was her own. Her god was her own. She would die before she betrayed it.

Eventually, Shiro grew bored of her. He summoned the guards to drag the prisoners into a cell. “I will see you both tomorrow,” he said cheerfully. “And we will try this again.”

Rin spat on his coat as the guards marched her out. Another guard followed with Altan’s inert form thrown over his shoulder like an animal carcass.

One guard chained Rin’s leg to the wall and slammed the cell door shut on them. Beside her Altan jerked and moaned, muttering incoherently under his breath. Rin cradled his head in her lap and kept a miserable vigil over her fallen commander.

Altan did not come to his senses for hours. Many times he cried out, spoke words in the Speerly language that she didn’t understand.

Then he moaned her name. “Rin.”

“I’m here,” she said, stroking his forehead.

“Did he hurt you?” he demanded.

She choked back a sob. “No. No—he wanted me to talk, teach him about the Pantheon. I didn’t, but he said he’d just keep hurting you . . .”

“It’s not the drug that hurts,” he said. “It’s when it wears off.”

Then, with a sickening pang in her stomach, she understood.

Altan was not lapsing when he smoked opium. No—smoking opium was the only time when he was not in pain. He had lived his entire life in perpetual pain, always longing to have another dose.

She had never understood how horrendously difficult it was to be Altan Trengsin, to live under the strain of a furious god constantly screaming for destruction in the back of his mind, while an indifferent narcotic deity whispered promises in his blood.

That’s why the Speerlies became addicted to opium so easily, she realized. Not because they needed it for their fire. Because for some of them, it was the only time they could get away from their horrible god.

Deep down, she had known this, had suspected this ever since she’d learned that Altan didn’t need drugs like the rest of the Cike did, that Altan’s eyes were perpetually bright like poppy flowers.

Altan should have been locked into the Chuluu Korikh himself a long time ago.

But she hadn’t wanted to believe, because she needed to trust that her commander was sane.

Because without Altan, what was she?

In the hours that followed, when the drug seeped out of his bloodstream, Altan suffered. He sweated. He writhed. He seized so violently that Rin had to restrain him to keep him from hurting himself. He screamed. He begged for Shiro to come back. He begged for Rin to help him die.

“You can’t,” she said, panicking. “We have to escape here. We have to get out.”

His eyes were blank, defeated. “Resistance here means suffering, Rin. There is no escape. There is no future. The best you can hope for is that Shiro gets bored and grants you a painless death.”

She almost did it then.

She wanted to end his misery. She couldn’t see him tortured like this anymore, couldn’t watch the man she had admired since she set eyes on him reduced to this.

She found herself kneeling over his inert torso, hands around his neck. All she had to do was put pressure into her arms. Force the air out of his throat. Choke the life out of him.

He would hardly feel it. He could hardly feel anything anymore.

Even as her fingers grasped his skin, he did not resist. He wanted it to end.

She had done this once before. She had killed the likeness of him in the guise of the chimei.

But Altan had been fighting then. Then, Altan had been a threat. He was not a threat now, only the tragic, glaring proof that her heroes inevitably let her down.

Altan Trengsin was not invincible after all.

He had been so good at following orders. They told him to jump and he flew. They told him to fight and he destroyed.

But here at the end, without a purpose and without a ruler, Altan Trengsin was broken.

Rin’s fingers tensed, but then she trembled and pushed his limp form violently away from her.

“How are my darling Speerlies doing? Ready for another round?”

Shiro approached their cell, beaming. He was coming from the lab at the opposite end of the hallway. He held several round metallic containers in his arms.

They didn’t respond.

“Would you like to know what those canisters are for?” Shiro asked. His voice remained artificially bright. “Any guesses? Here’s a hint. It’s a weapon.”

Rin glowered at the doctor. Altan stared at the floor.

Shiro continued, unfazed. “It’s the plague, children. Surely you know what the plague does? First your nose begins to run, and then great welts start growing on your arms, your legs, between your legs . . . you die from shock when the wounds rupture, or from your own poisoned blood. It takes quite a long time to die down, once it’s caught on. But perhaps that was before your time. Nikan has been plague free for a while now, hasn’t it?”

Shiro tapped the metal bars. “It took us a devilishly long time to figure out how it spread. Fleas, can you believe that? Fleas, that latch onto rats, and then spread their little plague particles over everything they touch. Of course, now that we know how it spreads, it’s only a hop step to turning it into a weapon. Obviously it will not do to have the weapon run around without control—we do plan to inhabit your country one day—but when released in some densely populated areas, with the right critical mass . . . well, this war will be over much sooner than we anticipated, won’t it?”

Shiro leaned forward, head resting against the bars. “You have nothing to fight for anymore,” he said quietly. “Your country is lost. Why do you hold your silence? You have an easy way out of this place. Just cooperate with me. Tell me how you summon the fire.”

“I’ll die first,” Rin spat.

“What are you defending?” Shiro asked. “You owe Nikan nothing. What were you to them? What were the Speerlies to them, ever? Freaks! Outcasts!”

Rin stood up. “We fight for the Empress,” she said. “I’m a Militia soldier until the day I die.”

“The Empress?” Shiro looked faintly puzzled. “Have you really not figured it out?”

“Figured what out?” Rin snapped, even as Altan silently mouthed no.

But she had taken the bait, she had risen to the doctor’s provocation, and she could tell from the way Shiro’s eyes gleamed that he had been waiting for this moment.

“Have you even asked how we knew you were at the Chuluu Korikh?” Shiro asked. “Who must have given us that information? Who was the only other person who knew of that wonderful mountain?”

Rin gaped at him, openmouthed, while the truth pieced itself together in her mind. She could see Altan puzzling it out, too. His eyes widened as he came to the same realization that she did.

“No,” said Altan. “You’re lying.”

“Your precious Empress betrayed you,” Shiro said with relish. “You were a trade.”

“That’s impossible,” said Altan. “We served her. We killed for her.”

“Your Empress gave you up, you and your precious band of shamans. You were sold, my dear Speerlies, just like Speer was sold. Just like your Empire was sold.”

“You’re lying!”

Altan flung himself at the bars. Fire ignited across his body, flared out in tentacles that almost reached the guards. Altan continued to scream, and the fire licked wider and wider, and although the metal did not melt, Rin thought she saw the bars begin to bend.

Shiro shouted a command in Mugini.

Three guards rushed to the cell. As one worked to unlock the gate, another sloshed a bucket of water over Altan. Once he was doused, the third rushed in to pull Altan’s arms back behind his head while the first jammed a needle into his neck. Altan jerked and dropped to the floor.

The guards turned to Rin.

Rin thought she saw Shiro’s mouth moving, yelling, “No, not her,” before she, too, felt the needle sink into her neck.

The rush she felt was nothing like poppy seeds.

With poppy seeds, she still had to concentrate on clearing her mind. With poppy seeds it took conscious effort to ascend to the Pantheon.

Heroin was nowhere near as subtle. Heroin evicted her from her own body so that she had no choice but to seek refuge in the realm of spirit.

And she realized, with a fierce joy, that in attempting to sedate her, Shiro’s guards had set her free.

She found Altan in the other realm. She felt him. She knew the pattern of him as well as she knew her own.

She had not always known the shape of him. She had loved the version of him she’d constructed for herself. She had admired him. She had idolized him. She had adored an idea of him, an archetype, a version of him that was invulnerable.

But now she knew the truth, she knew the realness of Altan and his vulnerabilities and most of all his pain . . . and still she loved him.

She had mirrored herself against him, molded herself after him; one Speerly after another. She had emulated his cruelty, his hatred, and his vulnerability. She knew him, finally knew all of him, and that was how she found him.

Altan?

Rin.

She could feel him all around her; a hard edge, a deeply wounded aura, and yet a comforting presence.

Altan’s form appeared before her as if he stood across a very large field. He walked, or floated, toward her. Space and distance did not exist in this realm, not really, but her mind had to interpret it as such for her to orient herself.

She did not have to read the anguish in his eyes. She felt it. Altan did not keep his spirit closed off, the way Chaghan did; he was an open book, available for her to peruse, as if he were offering himself up for her to try to understand.

She understood. She understood his pain and his misery, and she understood why all he wanted to do now was die.

But she had no patience for it.

Rin had given up the luxury of fear a long, long time ago. She had wanted to give up so many times. It would have been easier. It would have been painless.

But throughout everything, the one thing she had held on to was her anger, and she knew one truth: She would not die like this. She would not die without vengeance.

“They killed our people,” she said. “They sold us. Since Tearza, Speer has been a pawn in the Empire’s geopolitical chess game. We were disposable. We were tools. Tell me that doesn’t make you furious.”

He looked exhausted. “I am sick with fury,” he said. “And I am sick knowing that there is nothing I can do.”

“You’ve blinded yourself. You’re a Speerly. You have power,” she said. “You have the anger of all of Speer. Show me how to use it. Give it to me.”

“You’ll die.”

“Then I will die on my feet,” she said. “I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro’s operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward. And neither will you. Altan, look at me. We are not like Jiang. We are not like Tearza.”

Altan lifted his head then.

“Mai’rinnen Tearza,” he whispered. “The queen who abandoned her people.”

“Would you abandon them?” she pressed. “You heard what Shiro said. The Empress didn’t just sell us out. She sold the entire Cike. Shiro won’t stop until he has every Nikara shaman locked up in this hellhole. When you are gone, who will protect them? Who will protect Ramsa? Suni? Chaghan?”

She felt it from him then—a stab of defiance. A flicker of resolve.

That was all she needed.

“The Phoenix isn’t only the god of fire,” he said. “It is the god of revenge. And there is a power, born of centuries of festering hatred, that only a Speerly can access. I have tapped into it many times, but never in full. It would consume you. It would burn at you until there was nothing left.”

“Give it to me,” she said immediately, hungrily.

“I can’t,” he said. “It’s not mine to give. That power belongs to the Speerlies.”

“Then take me to them,” Rin demanded.

And so he took her back.

In the realm of dreams, time ceased to hold meaning. Altan took her back centuries. He took her back into the only spaces where their ancestors still existed, in ancient memory.

Being led by Altan was not the same as being led by Chaghan. Chaghan was a sure guide, more native to the spirit world than the world of the living. With Chaghan, she had felt as if she were being dragged along, and that if she didn’t obey, Chaghan would have shattered her mind. But with Altan . . . Altan did not feel even like a separate presence. Rather, he and she made two parts of a much greater whole. They were two small instances of the grand, ancient entity of all that was Speer, hurtling through the world of spirit to rejoin their kind.

When space and time again became tangible concepts to her, Rin perceived that they were at a campfire. She saw drums, she heard people chanting and singing, and she knew that song, she had been taught that song when she was a little girl, she could not believe she had ever forgotten that song . . . all Speerlies could sing that song before their fifth birthday.

No—not her. Rin had never learned that song. This was not her recollection; she was living inside the remembrance of a Speerly who had lived many, many years ago. This was a shared memory. This was an illusion.

So was this dance. And so, too, was the man who held her by the fire. He danced with her, spinning her about in great arcs, then pulling her back against his warm chest. He could not be Altan, and yet he had Altan’s face, and she was certain that she had always known him.

She had never been taught to dance, but somehow she knew the steps.

The night sky was lit up with stars like little torches. A million tiny campfires scattered across the darkness. A thousand Isles of Speer, a thousand fireside dances.

Years ago Jiang had told her that the spirits of the dead dissolved back into the void. But not the spirits of Speer. The Speerlies refused to let go of their illusions, refused to forget about the material world, because Speer’s shamans couldn’t be at peace until they got their vengeance.

She saw faces in the shadow. She saw a sad-looking woman who looked like her, sitting beside an old man wearing a crescent pendant around his neck. Rin tried to look closer but their faces were blurred, those of people she only half remembered.

“Is this what it was like?” she asked out loud.

The voices of the ghosts answered as one. This was the golden age of Speer. This was Speer before Tearza. Before the massacre.

She could have wept at the beauty of it.

There was no madness here. Only fires and dances.

“We could stay here,” Altan said. “We could stay here forever. We wouldn’t have to go back.”

In that moment it was all she wanted.

Their bodies would waste away and become nothing. Shiro would deposit their corpses into a waste chamber and incinerate them. Then, when the last part of them had been given to the Phoenix, once their ashes were scattered in the winds, they would be free.

“We could,” she agreed. “We could be lost to history. But you’d never do that, would you?”

“They wouldn’t take us now,” he said. “Do you feel them? Can you feel their anger?”

She could. The ghosts of Speer were so sad, but they were also furious.

“This is why we are strong. We draw our strength from centuries and centuries of unforgotten injustices. Our task—our very reason for being—is to make those deaths mean something. After us, there will be no Speer. Only a memory.”

She had thought she understood Altan’s power, but only now did she realize the depth of it. The weight of it. He was burdened with the legacy of a million souls forgotten by history, vengeful souls screaming for justice.

The ghosts of Speer were chanting now, a deep and sorrowful song in the language she was born too late to understand, but connected to her very bones. The ghosts spoke to them for an eternity. Years passed. No time passed at all. Their ancestors imparted all that they knew of Speer, all that had ever been remembered of their people. They instilled in her centuries of history and culture and religion.

They told her what she had to do.

“Our god is an angry god,” said the woman who looked like Rin. “It will not let this injustice rest. It demands vengeance.”

“You must go to the isle,” said the old man with the crescent pendant. “You must go to the temple. Find the Pantheon. Call the Phoenix, and wake the ancient fault lines on which Speer lies. The Phoenix will only answer to you. It has to.”

The man and woman faded back into the blur of brown faces. The ghosts of Speer began to sing as one, mouths moving in unison.

Rin could not determine the meaning of the song from the words, but she felt it. It was a song of vengeance. It was a horrible song. It was a wonderful song.

The ghosts gave Rin their blessing, and it made the rush from the heroin feel like a feathery touch in comparison.

She had been granted a power beyond imagination.

She had the strength of their ancestors. She held within her every Speerly who had died on that terrible day, and every Speerly who had ever lived on the Dead Island.

They were the Phoenix’s chosen people. The Phoenix thrived on anger, and Rin possessed that in abundance.

She reached for Altan. They were of one mind and one purpose.

They forced their way back into the world of the living.

Their eyes flared open at the same time.

One of Shiro’s assistants had been bending over them, back on the table in Shiro’s laboratory. The flames roiling from their bodies immolated him immediately, catching his hair and clothes so that when he reeled away from them, screaming, every bit of him was on fire.

Flames licked out in every direction. They caught the chemicals in the laboratory and combusted, shattering glass. They caught the alcohol used to sterilize wounds and spread rapidly on the fumes. The jar in the corner bearing the pickled man trembled from the heat and exploded, spilling its vile contents out onto the floor. The fumes of the embalming fluid caught fire, too, lighting up the room in an earnest blaze.

The lab assistant ran into the hallway, screaming for Shiro to save him.

Rin writhed and twisted where she lay. The straps keeping her down could not bear the heat of the flame at such a close angle. They snapped and she fell off the table, picked herself up, and turned just as Shiro rushed into the room clutching a reloading crossbow.

He shifted his aim from Altan to Rin and back again.

Rin tensed, but Shiro did not pull the trigger—whether out of inexperience or reluctance, Rin did not know.

“Beautiful,” he marveled in a low voice. The fire reflected in his hungry eyes, and for a moment made him seem as if he, too, possessed the scarlet eyes of the Speerlies.

“Shiro!” Altan roared.

The doctor did not move as Altan advanced. Rather he lowered his crossbow, held his arms out to Altan as if welcoming a son into his embrace.

Altan grabbed his tormentor by the face. And squeezed. Flames poured from his hands, white-hot flames, surrounding the doctor’s head like a crown. First Altan’s hands left fingerprints of black against around Shiro’s temples, and then the heat burned through bone and Altan’s fingers bored holes through Shiro’s skull. Shiro’s eyes bulged. His arms twitched madly. He dropped the crossbow.

Altan pressed Shiro’s skull between his hands. Shiro’s head split open with a wet crack.

The twitching stopped.

Altan dropped the body and stepped away from it. He turned to Rin. His eyes burned a brighter red than they ever had before.

“Okay,” he said. “Now we run.”

Rin scooped the crossbow off the ground and followed Altan out of the operating room.

“Where’s the exit?”

“No clue,” Altan said. “Look for light.”

They ran for their lives, turning corners at random. The research facility was a massive complex, far larger than Rin had imagined. As they ran, Rin saw that the hallway containing their cells was only one corridor in the mazelike interior; they passed empty barracks, many operating tables, and storage rooms stacked with canisters of gas.

Alarm bells sounded across the entire complex, alerting the soldiers to the breach.

Finally they found an exit: a side door in an empty corridor. It was boarded shut, but Altan pushed Rin aside and then kicked it down. She jumped out and helped him climb through.

“Over there!”

A Federation patrol group caught sight of them and raced in their direction.

Altan grabbed the crossbow from Rin and aimed it at the patrol group. Three soldiers dropped to the ground, but the others advanced over their comrades’ dead bodies.

The crossbow made a hollow clicking noise.

“Shit,” Altan said.

The patrol group drew closer.

Rin and Altan were starved, weakened, still half-drugged. And yet they fought, back to back. They moved as perfect complements to each other. They achieved a better synchronization than Rin had even with Nezha, for Nezha knew how she moved only by observing her. Altan didn’t have to—Altan knew by instinct who she was, how she would fight, because they were the same. They were two parts of a whole. They were Speerlies.

They dispatched the patrol of five, only to see another squadron of twenty approach them from the side of the building.

“Well, we can’t kill all of them,” said Altan.

Rin wasn’t sure about that. They kept running anyway.

Her feet were scraped raw from the cobbled floor. Altan gripped her arm as they ran, dragging her forward.

The cobblestones became sand, then wooden planks. They were at a port. They were by the sea.

They needed to get to the water, to the sea. Needed to swim across the narrow strait. Speer was so close . . .

You must go to the isle. You must go to the temple.

They reached the end of the pier. And stopped.

The night was lit up with torches.

It seemed as if the entire Federation army had assembled by the docks—Mugenese soldiers behind the pier, Mugenese ships in the water. There were hundreds of them. They were hundreds against two. The odds were not simply bad, they were insurmountable.

Rin felt a sensation of crushing despair. She couldn’t breathe under the weight of it. This was where it ended. This was Speer’s last stand.

Altan hadn’t let go of her arm. Blood dripped from his eyes, blood dropped from his mouth.

“Look.” He pointed. “Do you see that star? That’s the constellation of the Phoenix.”

She raised her head.

“Take it as your guide,” he said. “Speer is southeast of here. It’ll be a long swim.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “We’ll swim together. You’ll guide me.”

His hand closed around her fingers. He held them tight for a moment and then let go.

“No,” he said. “I’ll finish my duty.”

Panic twisted her insides.

“Altan, no.”

She couldn’t stop the onslaught of hot tears, but Altan wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing out at the assembled army.

“Tearza didn’t save our people,” he said. “I couldn’t save our people. But this comes close.”

“Altan, please . . .”

“It will be harder for you,” Altan said. “You’ll have to live with the consequences. But you’re brave . . . you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

“Don’t leave me,” she begged.

He leaned forward and grasped her face in both hands.

She thought for a bizarre moment that he was going to kiss her.

He didn’t. He pressed his forehead against hers for a long time.

She closed her eyes. She drank in the sensation of her skin against his. She seared it into her memory.

“You’re so much stronger than I am,” said Altan. Then he let her go.

She shook her head frantically. “No, I’m not, it’s you, I need you—”

“Someone’s got to destroy that research facility, Rin.”

He stepped away from her. Arms stretched forward, he walked toward the fleet.

“No,” Rin begged. “No!”

Altan took off at a run.

A hail of arrows erupted from the Federation force.

At the same moment Altan lit up like a torch.

He called the Phoenix and the Phoenix came; enveloping him, embracing him, loving him, bringing him back into the fold.

Altan was a silhouette in the light, a shadow of a man. She thought she saw him look back toward her. She thought she saw him smile.

She thought she heard a bird’s cackle.

Rin saw in the flames the image of Mai’rinnen Tearza. She was weeping.

The fire doesn’t give, the fire takes, and takes, and takes.

Rin screamed a wordless scream. Her voice was lost in the fire.

A great column of flame erupted from the site of Altan’s immolation.

A wave of heat rolled out in every direction, bowling over the Federation soldiers like they were straw. It hit Rin like a punch to the gut, and she pitched backward into the inky black water.

Chapter 25

She swam for hours. Days. An eternity. She remembered only the beginning, the initial shock as her body slammed into the water, how she thought she had died because she could not make her body obey, and because her skin prickled where it hit the water as if she had been flayed alive. If she craned her head she could see the research base burning. It was a beautiful burn, crimson and gold licking up in tendrils to the softly dark sky.

At first Rin swam the way she had been trained to at the Academy—a stroke with a minimized profile so her arms would not exit the water. The Federation archers would shoot her dead in the water if they saw her, if there were any left alive . . . Then the fatigue set in, and she simply moved her limbs to keep afloat, to keep drifting, without any consideration for technique. Her strokes became mechanical, automated, and formless.

Even the water had warmed from the heat of Altan’s conflagration. It felt like a bath, like a soft bed. She drifted, and thought it might be nice to drown. The ocean floor would be quiet. Nothing would hurt. There would be no Phoenix, no war, nothing at all, only silence . . . In those warm, dark depths she would feel no loss at all . . .

But the sight of Altan walking to his death was seared into her memory; it burned at the forefront of her thoughts, more raw and painful than the salt water seeping into her open wounds. He commanded her from the grave, whispering orders even now . . . She did not know if she merely hallucinated his voice, or if he was truly with her, guiding her.

Keep swimming, follow the wings, don’t stop, don’t give up, keep moving . . .

She trained her eyes on the constellation of the Phoenix. Southeast. You must swim to the southeast.

The stars became torches, and the torches became fire, and she thought she saw her god. “I feel you,” said the Phoenix, undulating before her. “I sense your sacrifice, your pain, and I want it, bring it to me . . . you are close, so close.”

Rin reached a shaking hand toward the god, but then something jolted in her mind, something primal and terrified.

Stay away, screamed the Woman. Stay far away from here.

No, Rin thought. You can’t keep me away. I’m coming.

She floated senselessly in the black water; arms and legs spread-eagled to remain afloat. She wavered in and out of reality. Her spirit went flying. She lost all sense of direction; she had no destination. She went wherever she was pulled, as if by a magnetic power, as if by an entity beyond her control.

She saw visions.

She saw a storm cloud that looked like a man gathering over the mountains, with four cyclones branching off like limbs, and when she stared at the source, two intelligent spots of cerulean peered back at her—too bright to be natural, too malicious to be anything but a god.

She saw a great dam with four gorges, the largest structure she had ever seen. She saw water gushing in every direction, flooding the plains. She saw Chaghan and Qara standing somewhere high, watching the fragments of the broken dam stream into the shifting river mouth.

She brushed against them, wondering, and Chaghan jerked his head up.

“Altan?” Chaghan asked hopefully.

Qara looked to her brother. “What is it?”

Chaghan ignored his sister, gazing around as if he could see Rin. But his pale eyes went straight through her. He was looking for something that no longer existed.

“Altan, are you there?”

She tried to say something, but no sound came out. She didn’t have a mouth. She didn’t have a body. Scared, she flitted away, and then the void was pulling her through again so that she couldn’t have gone back if she’d tried.

She flew through the present to the past.

She saw a great temple, a temple built of stone and blood.

She saw a familiar woman, tall and magnificent, brown-skinned and long-limbed. She wore a crown of scarlet feathers and ash-colored beads. She was weeping.

“I won’t,” said the woman. “I will not sacrifice the world for the sake of this island.”

The Phoenix shrieked with a fury so great that Rin trembled under its naked rage.

“I will not be defied. I will smite those who have broken their promises. And you . . . you have broken the greatest vow of all,” hissed the god. “I condemn you. You will never know peace.”

The woman screamed, collapsed to her knees, and clutched at something within her, as if trying to claw her very heart out. She glowed from inside like a burning coal; light poured through her eyes, her mouth, until cracks appeared in her skin and she shattered like rock.

Rin would have screamed, too, if she had a mouth.

The Phoenix turned its attention to her, just as the void dragged her away again.

She hurtled through time and space.

She saw a shock of white hair, and then everything stood still.

The Gatekeeper hung in a vacuum, frozen in a state of suspended animation, a place next to nowhere and on the way to everywhere.

“Why did you abandon us?” she cried. “You could have helped us. You could have saved us.”

His eyes shot open and found her.

She did not know how long he stared at her. His eyes bored into the back of her soul, searched through all of her. And she stared back. She stared back, and what was she saw nearly broke her.

Jiang was no mortal. He was something old, something ancient, something very, very powerful. And yet at the same time he was her teacher, he was that frail and ageless man whom she knew as human.

He reached out for her and she almost touched him, but her fingers glided through his and touched nothing, and she thought with a sickening fright that she was drifting away again. But he uttered a word, and she hung still.

Then their fingers met, and she had a body again, and she could feel, feel his hands cup her cheeks and his forehead press against hers. She felt it acutely when he grasped her shoulders and shook her, hard.

“Wake up,” he said. “You’re going to drown.”

She hauled herself out of the water onto hot sand.

She took a breath, and her throat burned as if she had drunk a gallon of peppercorn sauce. She whimpered and swallowed, and it felt like a fistful of rocks was trying to scrape its way down her esophagus. She curled into herself, rolled over, hauled herself to her feet, and attempted a step forward.

Something crunched under her foot. She lurched forward and tripped onto the ground. Dazed, she glanced around. Her ankle had wedged inside something. She wiggled her foot and lifted it up.

She dragged a skull out of the sand.

She had stepped inside a dead man’s jaw.

She shrieked and fell backward. Her vision pulsed black. Her eyes were open but they had shut down, refusing all sensory input. Bright flashes of light swam before her eyes. Her fingers scrabbled through the sand. It was full of hard little objects. She lifted them out and brought them to her eyes, squinting until her vision returned.

They weren’t pebbles.

Little bits of white stuck up in the sand everywhere she looked. Bones. Bones, everywhere.

She was kneeling in a massive graveyard.

She trembled so hard the sand beneath her vibrated. She doubled over onto her knees and gagged. Her stomach was so shrunken that with every dry heave, she felt as if she had been stabbed with a knife.

Get out of the target line. Was that Altan’s voice echoing in her head, or her own thoughts? The voice was harsh, commanding. She obeyed. You are visible against white sand. Take cover in the trees.

She dragged herself across the sand, heaving every time her fingers rolled over a skull. She shook with tearless sobs, too dehydrated to cry.

Go to the temple. You’ll find the way. All paths lead to the temple.

Paths? What paths? Whatever walkways had once existed had long ago been reclaimed by the island. She knelt there, staring stupidly at the foliage.

You’re not looking hard enough.

She crawled up and down the tree line on her hands and knees, trying to find any indication of something that might have been a trail. Her fingers found a flat rock, the size of her head, just visible under a veneer of grass. Then another. And another.

She hauled herself to her feet and stumbled along the path, holding the surrounding trees for support. The rocks were hard and jagged, and they cut her feet so that she left bloody footprints as she walked.

Her head swam; she had been so long without food or drink that she hardly remembered she had a body anymore. She saw, or imagined, grotesque animals, animals that should not exist. Birds with two heads. Rodents with many tails. Spiders with a thousand eyes.

She continued following the path until she felt as if she’d walked the length of the entire island. All paths lead to the temple, the ancestors had told her. But when she came to the clearing at the center, she found only ruins among the sand. She saw shattered rocks engraved in a calligraphy she could not read, a stone entrance that led nowhere.

The Federation must have torn down the temple twenty years ago. It must have been the first thing they did, after they had butchered the Speerlies. The Federation had to destroy the Speerlies’ place of worship. They had to remove their source of power, to ruin and smash it so completely so that no one on Speer could seek the Phoenix for help.

Rin ran through the ruins, searching for a door, some remnant of the holy area, but she found nothing. Nothing was there.

She sank to the ground, too numb to move. No. Not like this. Not after all she had been through. She had almost begun to cry when she felt the sand giving way under her hands. It was sliding. Falling somewhere.

She laughed suddenly. She laughed so hard that she gasped in pain. She fell over on her side and clutched her stomach, shrieking with relief.

The temple was underground.

She fashioned herself a torch from a stick of dry wood and held it before her as she descended the stairs of the temple. She climbed down for a long time. The air became cool and dry. She rounded a corner and could no longer see sunlight. She found it difficult to breathe.

She thought of the Chuluu Korikh, and her head reeled. She had to lean against the stone and took several heaving breaths before her panic subsided. This was not the prison under the stone. She was not walking away from her god. No—she was getting closer.

The inner chamber was entirely devoid of sound. She could hear none of the ocean, not the rustling of wind or sounds of wildlife above. But silent though it was, the temple was the opposite of the Chuluu Korikh. The silence in the temple was lucid, enhancing. It helped her focus. She could almost see her way upward, as if the path to the gods were as mundane as the dirt on which she trod.

The wall formed a circle, just like the Pantheon, but she saw only one plinth.

The Speerlies needed only one.

The entire room was a shrine to the Phoenix. Its likeness had been carved in stone in the far wall, a bas-relief thrice her size. The bird’s head was turned sideways, its profile etched into the chamber. Its eye was huge, wild, and mad. Fear struck her as she looked into that eye. It seemed furious. It seemed alive.

Rin’s hands moved instinctively to her belt, but she didn’t have poppy with her. She realized she didn’t need it, the same way that Altan had never needed it. Her very presence inside the temple placed her halfway to the gods already. She entered the trance simply by gazing into the furious eyes of the Phoenix.

Her spirit flew up until it was stopped.

When she saw the Woman, this time she spoke first.

“Not this again,” Rin said. “You can’t stop me. You know where I stand.”

“I warn you one more time,” said the ghost of Mai’rinnen Tearza. “Do not give yourself to the Phoenix.”

“Shut up and let me through,” Rin said. Starved and dehydrated, she had no patience for warnings.

Tearza touched her cheek. Her expression was desperate. “To give your soul to the Phoenix is to enter hell. It consumes you. You will burn eternally.”

“I’m already in hell,” Rin said hoarsely. “And I don’t care.”

Tearza’s face twisted in grief. “Blood of my blood. Daughter of mine. Do not go down this path.”

“I’m not going down your path. You did nothing,” said Rin. “You were too scared to do what you needed to do. You sold our people. You acted from cowardice.”

“Not cowardice,” Tearza said. “I acted from a higher principle.”

“You acted from selfishness!” Rin screamed. “If you hadn’t given up Speer, our people might still be alive right now!”

“If I hadn’t given up Speer, the world would be burning down,” said Tearza. “When I was young, I thought that I would have done it. I sat where you sit now. I came to this temple and prayed to our god. And the Phoenix came to me, too, for I was his chosen ruler. But I realized what I was about to do, and I turned the fire on myself. I burned away my body, my power, and Speer’s hope for freedom. I gave my country to the Red Emperor. And I maintained peace.”

“How is death and slavery peace?” Rin spat. “I have lost my friends and my country. I have lost everything I care about. I don’t want peace, I want revenge.”

“Revenge will only bring you pain.”

“What do you know?” Rin sneered. “Do you think you brought peace? You left your people to become slaves. You let the Red Emperor exploit and abuse and mistreat them for a millennium. You set Speer on a path that made centuries of suffering inevitable. If you hadn’t been such a fucking coward, I wouldn’t have to do this. And Altan would still be alive.”

Mai’rinnen Tearza’s eyes blazed red, but Rin moved first. A wall of flame erupted between them. Tearza’s spirit dissolved in the fire.

And then she was before her god.

The Phoenix was so much more beautiful up close, and so much more terrible. As she watched, it unfurled its great wings behind her back and spread them. They stretched to the ends of the room. The Phoenix tilted its head to the side and fixed her with its ember eyes. Rin saw entire civilizations rise and fall in those eyes. She saw cities built from the ground up, then burning, then crumbling into ash.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” said her god.

“I would have come sooner,” said Rin. “But I was warned against you. My master . . .”

“Your master was a coward. But not your commander.”

“You know what Altan did,” Rin said in a low whisper. “You have him forever now.”

“The boy could never have done what you are able to do,” said the Phoenix. “The boy was broken in body and spirit. The boy was a coward.”

“But he called you—”

“And I answered. I gave him what he wanted.”

Altan had won. Altan had achieved in death what he couldn’t do in life because Altan, Rin suspected, had been tired of living. He couldn’t wage the protracted war of vengeance that the Phoenix demanded, so he’d sought a martyr’s death and gotten it.

It’s harder to keep living.

“And what do you want from me?” the Phoenix inquired.

“I want an end to the Federation.”

“How do you intend to achieve that?”

She glowered at the god. The Phoenix was playing with her, forcing her to spell out her demand. Forcing her to specify exactly what abomination she wanted to commit.

Rin forced the last parts of what was human out of her soul and gave way to her hatred. Hating was so easy. It filled a hole inside her. It let her feel something again. It felt so good.

“Total victory,” she said. “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“What I want?” The Phoenix sounded amused. “The gods do not want anything. The gods merely exist. We cannot help what we are; we are pure essence, pure element. You humans inflict everything on yourselves, and then blame us afterward. Every calamity has been man-made. We do not force you to do anything. We have only ever helped.”

“This is my destiny,” Rin said with conviction. “I’m the last Speerly. I have to do this. It is written.”

“Nothing is written,” said the Phoenix. “You humans always think you’re destined for things, for tragedy or for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose. You chose to take the exam. You chose to come to Sinegard. You chose to pledge Lore, you chose to study the paths of the gods, and you chose to follow your commander’s demands over your master’s warnings. At every critical juncture you were given an option; you were given a way out. Yet you picked precisely the roads that led you here. You are at this temple, kneeling before me, only because you wanted to be. And you know that should you give the command, I will call something terrible. I will wreak a disaster to destroy the island of Mugen completely, as thoroughly as Speer was destroyed. By your choice, many will die.”

“Many more will live,” Rin said, and she was nearly certain that it was true. And even if it wasn’t, she was willing to take that gamble. She knew she would bear full responsibility for the murders she was about to commit, bear the weight of them for as long as she lived.

But it was worth it.

For the sake of her vengeance, it was worth it. This was divine retribution for what the Federation had wreaked on her people. This was her justice.

“They aren’t people,” she whispered. “They’re animals. I want you to make them burn. Every last one.”

“And what will you give me in return?” inquired the Phoenix. “The price to alter the fabric of the world is steep.”

What did a god, especially the Phoenix, want? What did any god ever want?

“I can give you worship,” she promised. “I can give you an unending flow of blood.”

The Phoenix inclined its head. Its want was tangible, as great as her hatred. The Phoenix could not help what it craved; it was an agent of destruction, and it needed an avatar. Rin could give it one.

Don’t, cried the ghost of Mai’rinnen Tearza.

“Do it,” Rin whispered.

“Your will is mine,” said the Phoenix.

For one moment, glorious air rushed into the chamber, sweet air, filling her lungs.

Then she burned. The pain was immediate and intense. There was no time for her to even gasp. It was as if a roaring wall of flame had attacked every part of her at once, forcing her onto her knees and then onto the floor when her knees buckled.

She writhed and contorted at the base of the carving, clawing at the floor, trying to find some grounding against the pain. It was relentless, however, consuming her in waves of greater and greater intensity. She would have screamed, but she couldn’t force air into her seizing throat.

It seemed to last for an eternity. Rin cried and whimpered, silently begging the impassive figure looming over her . . . anything, death even, would be better than this; she just wanted it to stop.

But death wasn’t coming; she wasn’t dying, she wasn’t hurt, even; she could see no change in her body even though it felt as if she were being consumed by fire . . . no, she was whole, but something was burning inside. Something was disappearing.

Then Rin felt herself jerked back by a force infinitely greater than she was; her head flung back, arms stretched out to the sides. She had become a conduit. An open door without a gatekeeper. The power came not from her but from the terrible source on the other side; she was merely the portal that let it into this world. She erupted in a column of flame. The fire filled the temple, gushed out the doors and into the night where many miles away Federation children lay sleeping in their beds.

The whole world was on fire.

She had not just altered the fabric of the universe, had not simply rewritten the script. She had torn it, ripped a great gaping hole in the cloth of reality, and set fire to it with the ravenous rage of an uncontrollable god.

Once, the fabric had contained the stories of millions of lives—the lives of every man, woman, and child on the longbow island—civilians who had gone to bed easy, knowing that what their soldiers did across the narrow sea was a far-off dream, fulfilling the promise of their Emperor of some great destiny that they had been conditioned to believe in since birth.

In an instant, the script had written their stories to the end.

At one point in time those people existed.

And then they didn’t.

Because nothing was written. The Phoenix had told Rin that, and the Phoenix had shown Rin that.

And now the unrealized futures of millions were scorched out of existence, like a sky full of stars suddenly darkened.

She could not abide the terrible guilt of it, so she closed her mind off to the reality. She burned away the part of her that would have felt remorse for those deaths, because if she felt them, if she felt each and every single one of them, it would have torn her apart. The lives were so many that she ceased to acknowledge them for what they were.

Those weren’t lives.

She thought of the pathetic little noise a candle wick made when she licked her fingers and pinched it. She thought of incense sticks fizzling out when they had burned to the end. She thought of the flies that she had crushed under her finger.

Those weren’t lives.

The death of one soldier was a tragedy, because she could imagine the pain he felt at the very end: the hopes he had, the finest details like the way he put on his uniform, whether he had a family, whether he had kids whom he told he would see right after he came back from the war. His life was an entire world constructed around him, and the passing of that was a tragedy.

But she could not possibly multiply that by thousands. That kind of thinking did not compute. The scale was unimaginable. So she didn’t bother to try.

The part of her that was capable of considering that no longer worked.

Those weren’t lives.

They were numbers.

They were a necessary subtraction.

Hours later, it seemed, the pain slowly subsided. Rin drew breath in great, hoarse gasps. Air had never tasted so sweet. She uncurled herself from the fetal position she’d withdrawn into and slowly pulled herself up, clutching at the carving for support.

She tried to stand. Her legs trembled. Flames erupted wherever her hands touched stone. She lit sparks every time she moved. Whatever gift the Phoenix had given her, she couldn’t control it, couldn’t contain it or use it in discrete bits. It was a flood of divine fire pouring straight from the heavens, and she barely functioned as the channel. She could hardly keep from dissolving into the flames herself.

The fire was everywhere: in her eyes, streaming from her nostrils and mouth. A burning sensation consumed her throat and she opened her mouth to scream. The fire burst out of her mouth, on and on, a blazing ball in the air before her.

Somehow she dragged herself out of the temple. Then she collapsed into the sand.

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 find us.”

She looked up at him. “How did you find 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 find 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 find 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 find 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.