Chapter 13 #2
Several cracks split the air. Rin dove to the ground by instinct. Eight holes dotted the dirt in front of her. She looked up.
The air smelled like smoke. Gray flumes unfurled from the tips of the barrel tubes.
“Oh, fuck,” Nezha muttered under his breath.
The general shouted something that Rin couldn’t understand, but she didn’t have to translate what he’d said. There was no way to interpret this as anything but a threat.
She had two default responses to threats. And she couldn’t run away, not in this crowd, so her only choice was to fight.
Two of the Hesperian soldiers came running toward her. She slammed her trident against the closest one’s shins. He doubled over, just briefly. She jammed an elbow into the side of his head, grabbed him by the shoulders, and barreled forward, using him as a human shield to deter further fire.
It worked until something landed over Rin’s shoulders. A fishing net. She flailed, trying to wriggle out, but it only tightened around her arms. Whoever held it yanked hard, knocking her off balance.
The Hesperian general loomed above her, his weapon pointed straight down at her face. Rin looked up the barrel. The smell of fire powder was so thick she nearly choked on it.
“Vaisra!” she shouted. “Help—”
Soldiers swarmed around her. Strong arms pinned her arms over her head; others grabbed her ankles, rendering her immobile.
She heard the clank of steel next to her head.
She twisted around and saw a wooden tray on the ground beside her, upon which lay a vast assortment of thin devices that looked like torture instruments.
She’d seen devices like that before.
Someone pulled her head back and jerked her mouth open. One of the Gray Company, a woman with skin like alabaster, knelt over her. She pressed something hard and metallic against Rin’s tongue.
Rin bit at her fingers.
The woman snatched her hand away.
Rin struggled harder. Miraculously, the grips on her shoulders loosened. She flailed out and upturned the tray, scattering the instruments across the ground. For a single, desperate moment, she thought she might break free.
Then the general slammed the butt of his weapon into her head and Rin’s vision exploded into stars that winked out into nothing.
“Oh, good,” said Nezha. “You’re awake.”
Rin found herself lying on a stone floor. She scrambled to her feet. She was unbound. Good. Her hand jumped for a weapon that wasn’t there, and when she couldn’t find her trident she curled her hands into fists. “What—”
“That was a misunderstanding.” Nezha grabbed her by the shoulders. “You’re safe, we’re alone. What happened out there was a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“They thought you were a threat. My mother told them to attack as soon as they reached land.”
Rin’s forehead throbbed. She touched her fingers to where she knew a massive bruise was forming. “Your mother is a real bitch, then.”
“She often is, yes. But you’re in no danger. Father is talking them down.”
“And if he can’t?”
“He will. They’re not idiots.” Nezha grabbed her hand. “Will you stop that?”
Rin had begun pacing back and forth in the small chamber like a caged animal, teeth chattering, rubbing her hands agitatedly up and down her arms. But she couldn’t stand still; her mind was racing in panic, if she stopped moving she would start to shake uncontrollably.
“Why would they think I was a threat?” she demanded.
“It’s, ah, a little complicated.” Nezha paused. “I guess the simplest way to put it is that they want to study you.”
“Study?”
“They know what you did to the longbow island. They know what you can do, and as the most powerful country on earth of course they’re going to investigate it.
Their proposed treaty terms, I think, were that they’d get to examine you in exchange for military aid.
Mother put it in their heads that you weren’t going to come quietly. ”
“So what, Vaisra’s selling me for their aid?”
“It’s not like that. My mother . . .” Nezha continued talking, but Rin wasn’t listening. She scrutinized him, considering.
She had to get out of here. She had to rally the Cike and get them out of Arlong. Nezha was taller, heavier, and stronger than she was, but she could still take him—she’d go after his eyes and scars, gouge her fingernails into his skin and knee his balls repeatedly until he dropped his guard.
But she might still be trapped. The doors could be locked from the outside.
And if she broke the door down, there could be—no, there certainly were guards outside.
What about the window? She could tell from a glance they were on the second, maybe third story, but maybe she could scale down somehow, if she could manage to knock Nezha unconscious.
She just needed a weapon—the chair legs might do, or a shard of porcelain.
She lunged for the flower vase.
“Don’t.” Nezha’s hand shot out and gripped her wrist. She struggled to break free. He twisted her arm painfully behind her back, forced her to her knees, and pressed a knee against the small of her back. “Come on, Rin. Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t do this,” she gasped. “Nezha, please, I can’t stay here—”
“You’re not allowed to leave the room.”
“So now I’m a prisoner?”
“Rin, please—”
“Let me go!”
She tried to break free. His grip tightened. “You’re not in any danger.”
“So let me go!”
“You’ll derail negotiations that have been years in the making—”
“Negotiations?” she screeched. “You think I give a fuck about negotiations? They want to dissect me!”
“And Father won’t let that happen! You think he’s about to give you up? You think I’d let that happen? I’d die before I let anyone hurt you, Rin, calm down—”
That did nothing to calm her down. Every second she was still felt like a vise tightening around her neck.
“My family has been planning this war for over a decade,” Nezha said. “My mother has been pursuing this diplomatic mission for years. She was educated in Hesperia; she has strong ties to the west. As soon as the third war was over, Father sent her overseas to solidify Hesperian military support.”
Rin barked out a laugh. “Well, then she cut a shitty deal.”
“We won’t take it. The Hesperians are greedy and malleable.
They want resources only the Empire can offer.
Father can talk them down. But we must not anger them.
We need their weapons.” Nezha let go of her arms when it was clear she’d stopped struggling.
“You’ve been in the councils. We won’t win this war without them. ”
Rin twisted around to face him. “You want whatever those barrel things are.”
“They’re called arquebuses. They’re like hand cannons, except they’re lighter than crossbows, they can penetrate wooden panels, and they shoot for longer distance.”
“Oh, I’m sure Vaisra just wants crates and crates of them.”
He gave her a frank look. “We need anything we can get our hands on.”
“But suppose you win this war, and the Hesperians don’t want to leave,” she said. “Suppose it’s the First Poppy War all over again.”
“They have no interest in staying,” he said dismissively.
“They’re done with that now. They’ve found their colonies too difficult to defend, and the war’s weakened them too much to commit the kind of ground resources they could before.
All they want is trade rights and permission to dump missionaries wherever they want.
At the end of this war we’ll make them leave our shores quickly enough. ”
“And if they don’t want to go?”
“I expect we’ll find a way,” Nezha said. “Just as we have before. But at present, Father’s going to choose the lesser of two evils. And so should you.”
The doors opened. Captain Eriden walked inside.
“They’re ready for you,” he said.
“ ‘They’?” Rin echoed.
“The Dragon Warlord is entertaining the Hesperian delegates in the great hall. They’d like to speak to you.”
“No,” Rin said.
“You’ll be fine,” Nezha said. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“We have very different ideas of what defines ‘stupid,’” she said.
“The Dragon Warlord would prefer not to be kept waiting.” Eriden motioned with a hand. Two of his guards strode forward and seized Rin by the arms. She managed a last, panicked glance over her shoulder at Nezha before they escorted her out the door.
The guards deposited Rin in the short walkway that led to the palace’s great hall and shut the doors behind her.
She stepped hesitantly forward. She saw the Hesperians sitting in gilded chairs around the center table. Jinzha sat at his father’s right hand. The southern Warlords had been relegated to the far end of the table, looking flustered and uncomfortable.
Rin could tell she’d walked into the middle of a heated argument. A thick tension crackled in the air, and all parties looked flustered, red-faced, and furious, as if they were about to come to blows.
She hung back in the hallway for a moment, concealed by the corner wall, and listened.
“The Consortium is still recovering from its own war,” the Hesperian general was saying.
Rin struggled to make sense of his speech at first, but gradually the language returned to her.
She felt like a student again, sitting in the back of Jima’s classroom, memorizing verb tenses. “We’re in no mood to speculate.”
“This isn’t speculation,” Vaisra said urgently. He spoke Hesperian like it was his native tongue. “We could take back this country in days, if you just—”
“Then do it yourselves,” the general said. “We’re here to do business, not alchemy. We are not interested in transforming frauds into kings.”
Vaisra sat back. “So you’re going to run my country like an experiment before you choose to intervene.”
“A necessary experiment. We didn’t come here to lend ships at your will, Vaisra. This is an investigation.”
“Into what?”