Chapter 15 #2
Rin and Kitay flinched simultaneously.
Niang lowered her arm, snickering. “Kidding.”
“Put that down,” Kitay said quietly. His voice was taut, carefully controlled. “Let’s talk. Let’s just talk, Niang. I know someone put you up to this. You don’t have to do this.”
“I know that,” Niang said. “I volunteered. Or did you think I’d sit back and let traitors divide the Empire?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rin said.
“I know enough.” Niang lifted the canister higher. “I know you threatened to starve out the north so they’d bow to the Dragon Warlord. I know you’re going to invade our provinces if you don’t get your way.”
“So your solution is to poison the entire south?” Kitay asked.
“You’re one to talk,” Niang snarled. “You made us starve. You sold us that blighted grain. How does it feel getting a taste of your own medicine?”
“The embargo was just a threat,” Kitay said. “No one has to die.”
“People have died!” Niang pointed a finger at Rin. “How many did she kill on that island?”
Rin blinked. “Who gives a fuck about the Federation?”
“There were Militia troops there, too. Thousands of them.” Niang’s voice trembled. “The Federation took prisoners of war, shipped them over to labor camps. They took my brothers. Did you give them a chance to get off the island?”
“I . . .” Rin cast Kitay a desperate look. “That’s not true.”
Was it true?
Surely someone would have told her if it were true.
Kitay wouldn’t meet her eyes.
She swallowed. “Niang, I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t know!” Niang screamed. The canister swung perilously in her hand. “That makes it all better, doesn’t it?”
Kitay held a palm out, crossbow lowered. “Niang, please, put that down.”
Niang shook her head. “This is your fault. We just fought a war. Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”
“We don’t want to kill you,” Rin said. “Please—”
“How generous!” Niang lifted the canister over her head. “She doesn’t want to kill me! The Republic will take pity on—”
“Fuck this,” Kitay muttered. In one fluid movement he lifted his crossbow, aimed, and shot an arrow straight into Niang’s left breast.
The thud echoed like a final heartbeat.
Niang’s eyes bulged open. She tilted her head down, examined her chest as if idly curious. Her knees gave out beneath her. The canister slipped from her hand and rolled to a halt by the wall.
The canister’s lid burst off with a pop. Yellow smoke streamed out from it, rapidly filling the far end of the room.
Kitay lowered his crossbow. “Let’s go.”
They ran. Rin glanced over her shoulder just as they passed the door.
The gas was almost too thick to see clearly, but she couldn’t mistake the sight of Niang, twitching and jerking in a shroud of acid eating ravenously into her skin.
Red spots blooming mercilessly across her body, as if she were a paper doll dropped in a pool of ink.
Light rain misted the air over the Swallow as it drifted down the tributary to rejoin the main fleet.
The crew had argued briefly over what to do with the canisters.
They couldn’t just leave them in the mission, but none of them wanted to have the gas on board.
Finally Ramsa had suggested that they destroy the mission with a controlled burn.
This was purportedly to deter anyone from approaching it until Jinzha could send a squadron to retrieve any remaining canisters, but Rin suspected that Ramsa just wanted an excuse to blow something up.
So they’d drenched the place in oil, piled kindling on the roof and in the makeshift slaughterhouse, and then fired flaming crossbow bolts from the ship once they were a safe sailing distance away.
The building had caught fire immediately, a lovely conflagration that remained visible from miles away. The rain hadn’t yet managed to smother all of the flame. Little bursts of red still burned at the base of the building and smoke stretched out to embrace the sky from the towers.
A crack of thunder split the sky. Seconds later the light drizzle turned into fat, hard drops that slammed loudly and relentlessly against the deck.
Captain Salkhi ordered the crew to set out barrels to capture fresh water.
Most of the crew descended to their cabins, but Rin sat down on the deck, pulled her knees up to her chest, and tilted her head back.
Raindrops hit the back of her throat, wonderfully fresh and cool.
She gargled the rainwater, let it splash over her face and clothes.
She knew the poison hadn’t tainted her or she would have seen its effects, but somehow she couldn’t feel clean.
“I thought you hated water,” Kitay said.
She looked up. He stood over her, a miserable, drenched mess. He still had his crossbow clenched in his hands.
“You all right?” she asked.
His eyes were dead things. “No.”
“Sit with me.”
He obeyed without a word. Only when he was next to her did she see how violently he was trembling.
“I’m sorry about Niang,” she said.
He jerked out a shrug. “I’m not.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“I barely knew her.”
“You did like her. I remember. You thought she was cute. You told me that at school.”
“Yes, and then that bitch went and poisoned half the country.”
He tilted his head upward. His eyes were red, and she couldn’t tell his tears apart from the rain. He took a long, shuddering breath.
Then he broke.
“I can’t keep doing this.” The words spilled out of him between choked, sudden sobs. “I can’t sleep. I can’t go a second without seeing Golyn Niis. I close my eyes and I’m hiding behind that wall again and the screams don’t stop because the killing goes on all night—”
Rin reached for his hand. “Kitay . . .”
“It’s like I’m frozen in one moment. And no one knows it because everyone else has moved on except me, but to me everything that’s happened since Golyn Niis is a dream, and I know it’s not real because I’m still behind the wall.
And the worst part—the worst part is that I don’t know who’s causing the screams. It was easier when only the Federation was evil.
Now I can’t figure out who’s right or wrong, and I’m the smart one, I’m always supposed to have the right answer, but I don’t. ”
She didn’t know what she could possibly say to comfort him, so she curled her fingers around his and held them tight. “Me neither.”
“What happened on that island?” he asked abruptly.
“You know what happened.”
“No. You never told me.” He straightened up. “Was it conscious? Did you think about what you were doing?”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “I try not to remember.”
“Did you know you were killing them?” he pressed. “Or did you just . . .” His fingers clenched into a fist and then unclenched beneath hers.
“I just wanted it to be over,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want to hurt them, not really, I just wanted it to end.”
“I didn’t want to kill her. I just—I don’t know why I—”
“I know.”
“That wasn’t me,” he insisted, but she wasn’t the one he needed to convince.
All she could do was squeeze his hand again. “I know.”
Signals were sent, courses were reversed. Within a day the dispersed skimmers had fled hastily down the Murui to rejoin the main armada.
When Rin saw the Republican Fleet from the front it seemed deceptively small, ships arranged in a narrow formation.
Then they approached from the side and the full menace of the flotilla was splayed out in front of her, a marvelous and breathtaking display of force.
Compared to the warships, the Swallow was just a tiny thing, a baby bird returning to the flock.
Captain Salkhi lit several lanterns to signal their return, and the patrol ships at the fore signaled back their permission to break through the line. The Swallow slipped into the ranks. An hour later Jinzha boarded their ship. The crew assembled on deck to report.
“We’ve stopped the poison at the source, but there may be canisters left in the ruins,” Salkhi told Jinzha. “You’ll want to send a squadron up there to see if you can retrieve it.”
“Were they producing it themselves?” Jinzha asked.
“That’s unlikely,” Salkhi said. “That wasn’t a research facility, it was a makeshift slaughterhouse. It seems like that was just the distribution point.”
“We think they got it from the Federation facility on the coast,” said Rin. “The one where I was—The one they took me to.”
Jinzha frowned. “That’s all the way out in Snake Province. Why bring it here?”
“They couldn’t have set it off in Snake Province,” Kitay said. “The current takes the poison out to sea instead of to Arlong. So someone must have gone there recently, retrieved the canisters, and carted them over to Hare Province.”
“I hope that’s right,” said Jinzha. “I don’t want to entertain the alternative.”
Because the alternative, of course, was terrifying—that they were fighting a war not only against the Empire, but also against the Federation. That the Federation had survived, and had retained its weapons, and was sending them to Vaisra’s enemies.
“Did you take prisoners?” Jinzha asked.
Salkhi nodded. “Two guardsmen. They’re in the brig. We’ll turn them over for interrogation.”
“There’s no need for that.” Jinzha waved a hand. “We know what we need to know. Bring them out to the beach.”
“Your brother has a flair for public spectacle,” Kitay told Nezha.
The screaming had been going on for more than an hour now. Rin had almost gotten used to it, though it made it difficult to stomach her dinner.
The Hare Province guardsmen were strung up against posts in the ground, beaten for good measure.
Jinzha had stripped them, flayed them, then poured diluted poison from one of the pods into a flask and boiled it.
Now it ran in rivulets down the guardsmen’s skin, tracing a steaming, angrily red path over their cheeks, their collarbones, down toward their exposed genitals, while the Republican soldiers sat back on the beach and watched.
“This wasn’t necessary,” Nezha said. His dinner rations sat untouched beside him. “This is grotesque.”
Kitay laughed, a flat, hollow noise. “Don’t be naive.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This is necessary. The Republic’s just taken a massive blow. Vaisra can’t undo the poisoning of the river, or the fact that thousands of people are going to starve. But give a few men a little pain, do it in public, and it’ll all be all right.”
“Does it make it all right to you?” Rin asked.
Kitay shrugged. “They poisoned a fucking river.”
Nezha wrapped his arms around his knees. “Salkhi says you were in there for a while.”
Rin nodded. “We saw Niang. Meant to tell you that.”
Nezha blinked, surprised. “And how is she?”
“Dead,” said Kitay. He was still staring at the men on the posts.
Nezha watched him for a moment, then raised an eyebrow at Rin. She understood his question. She shook her head.
“I hadn’t thought about fighting our own classmates,” Nezha murmured after a pause. “Who else do we know in the north? Kureel, Arda . . .”
“My cousins,” Kitay said without turning around. “Han. Tobi. Most of the rest of our class, if they’re still alive.”
“I suppose it’s not easy going to war against friends,” Nezha said.
“Yes, it is,” Kitay said. “They have a choice. Niang made her choice. She just happened to be dead fucking wrong.”