R.F. Kuang - The Dragon Republic

She wasn’t fine. Her head was throbbing again, and this time the pain was accompanied by a nausea that seized her rib cage and didn’t let go until she was doubled over on her knees, whimpering.

Vomit splattered the floor.

“Change of plans,” Chaghan said. “Rin, get back to the ship.”

She wiped her mouth. “No.”

“I’m telling you you’re not in any state to be useful.”

“And I’m your commander,” she said. “So shut up and do as I say.”

Chaghan’s eyes narrowed. The warehouse fell silent.

Rin had been wrestling Chaghan for control over the Cike for months. He questioned her decisions at every turn; he took every chance he could to make it very clear that he thought Altan had made a stupid decision naming her commander.

And Rin knew, in all fairness, he was right.

She was dreadful at leadership. Most of her attack plans over the past three months had boiled down to “everyone attack at once and see if we come out all right on the other side.”

But command ability aside, she had to be here. Had to see Adlaga through. Since they’d left Speer her withdrawals had only been getting worse and worse. She’d been mostly functional during their first few missions for Moag. Then the endless killings, the screams, and the flashbacks to the battlefield kept setting her anger off again and again until she was spending more hours of the day high than she did sober, and even when she was sober she felt like she was still teetering on the brink of madness because the fucking Phoenix never shut up.

She needed to pull herself back from the precipice. If she couldn’t do this basic, simple task; couldn’t kill some township official who wasn’t even a shaman, then she would hardly be able to stand up to the Empress.

And she couldn’t lose her chance at revenge. Revenge was the only thing she had.

“Don’t you jeopardize this,” Chaghan said.

“Don’t you patronize me,” she retorted.

Chaghan sighed and turned to Unegen. “Can you watch her? I’ll give you laudanum.”

“I thought I was supposed to return to the ship,” Unegen said.

“Change of plans.”

“Fine.” Unegen twitched out a shrug. “If I have to.”

“Come on,” Rin said. “I don’t need a wet nurse.”

“You’ll wait in the corner of the crowd,” Chaghan ordered, ignoring her. “You won’t leave Unegen’s side. You’ll both act as reinforcements, and barring that, you will be the last resort.”

She scowled. “Chaghan—”

“The last resort ,” he repeated. “You’ve killed enough innocents.”

The hour came. The Cike dissipated, darting out of the warehouse to join the moving crowd one by one.

Rin and Unegen blended into Adlaga’s masses easily enough. The main streets were packed with civilians, all caught up in their own miseries, and so many noises and sights came from all directions that Rin, unsure of where to look, couldn’t help but feel a constant state of mild panic.

A wildly discordant mash of gongs and war drums drowned out the lute music from the front of the parade. Merchants hawked their wares every time they turned a corner, screaming prices with the sort of urgency that she associated with evacuation warnings. Celebratory red confetti littered the streets, tossed out in handfuls by children and entertainers, a snowfall of red paper flecks that covered every surface.

“How do they have the funds for this?” Rin muttered. “The Federation left them starving.”

“Aid from Sinegard,” Unegen guessed. “End-of-war celebration funds. Keeps them happy, keeps them loyal.”

Rin saw food everywhere she looked. Huge cubes of watermelon on sticks. Red bean buns. Stalls selling soup dumplings dripping with soy sauce and lotus seed tarts lined the streets. Merchants flipped egg cakes with deft movements, and the crackle of oil under any other circumstances would make her hungry, but now the pungent smells only made her stomach turn.

It seemed both unfair and impossible that there could be such an abundance of food. Just days ago they had sailed past people who were drowning their babies in river mud because that was a quicker and more merciful death than letting them slowly starve.

If all this came from Sinegard, then that meant the Imperial bureaucracy had possessed food stores like this the entire time. Why had they withheld it during the war?

If the people of Adlaga were asking that same question, they didn’t show it. Everyone looked so happy . Faces relaxed in simple relief because the war was over, the Empire was victorious, and they were safe.

And that made Rin furious.

She’d always had trouble with anger, she knew that. At Sinegard she’d constantly acted in furious, impulsive bursts and dealt with the consequences later. But now the anger was permanent, an unspeakable fury imposed upon her that she could neither contain nor control.

But she also didn’t want to make it stop. The anger was a shield. The anger helped her to keep from remembering what she’d done. Because as long as she was angry , then it was okay—she’d acted within reason. She was afraid that if she stopped being angry, she might crack apart.

She tried to distract herself by scanning the crowd for Yang Yuanfu and his guards. Tried to focus on the task at hand.

Her god wouldn’t let her.

Kill them , encouraged the Phoenix. They don’t deserve their happiness. They didn’t fight.

She had a sudden vision of the marketplace on fire. She shook her head frantically, trying to tune out the Phoenix’s voice. “No, stop …”

Make them burn .

Heat flared up in her palms. Her gut twisted. No—not here, not now. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Turn them to ash .

Her heartbeat began to quicken; her vision narrowed to a pinprick and expanded again. She felt feverish. The crowd suddenly seemed full of enemies. In one instant everyone was a blue-uniformed Federation soldier, bearing weapons; and in another they were civilians once again. She took a deep, choking breath, trying to force air into her lungs, eyes squeezed shut while she willed the red haze to go away once more.

This time it wouldn’t.

The laughter, the music, the smiling faces standing around her all made her want to scream.

How dare they live when Altan was dead? It seemed horrifically unfair that life could keep on going and these people could be celebrating a war that they hadn’t won for themselves, when they hadn’t suffered for it …

The heat in her hands intensified.

Unegen seized her by the shoulder. “I thought you had your shit under control.”

She jumped and spun around. “ I do! ” she hissed. Too loud. The people around her backed away from her.

Unegen pulled her toward the edge of the crowd, into the safety of the shadows under Adlaga’s ruins. “You’re drawing attention.”

“I’m fine , Unegen, just let go—”

He didn’t. “You need to calm down.”

“I know—”

“No. I mean right now .” He nodded over her shoulder. “She’s here.”

Rin turned.

And there sat the Empress, borne like a bride on a palanquin of red silk.

The last time Rin had encountered the Empress Su Daji, she had been burning with fever, too delirious to see anything but Daji’s face—lovely, hypnotic, with skin like porcelain and eyes like moth’s wings.

The Empress was just as arresting as ever. Everyone Rin knew had emerged from the Mugenese invasion looking a decade older, jaded and scarred, but the Empress was as pale, ageless, and unmarked as ever, as if she existed on some transcendent plane untouchable by mortals.