Chapter 24
A fresh blanket of snow had fallen while they slept. It made the sun shine brighter, the air bite colder. Rin limped outside and stretched her aching muscles, squinting against the harsh light.
The Ketreyids were eating in shifts. Six riders at a time sat by the fire, wolfing down their food while the others stood guard by the periphery.
“Eat your fill.” The Sorqan Sira ladled out two steaming bowls of stew and handed them to Rin and Kitay. “You have a hard ride before you. We’ll pack you a bag of dried meat and some yak’s milk, but eat as much as you can now.”
Rin took the proffered bowl. The stew smelled terribly good.
She huddled on the ground and pressed next to Kitay for warmth, bony elbows touching bony hips.
Little details about him seemed to stand out in stark relief.
She had never noticed before just how long and thin his fingers were, or how he always smelled faintly of ink and dust, or how his wiry hair curled just so at the tips.
She’d known him for more than four years by now, but every time she looked at him, she discovered something new.
“So that’s it?” Kitay asked the Sorqan Sira. “You’re letting us go? No strings attached?”
“The terms are met,” she replied. “We have no reason to harm you now.”
“So what am I to you?” Rin asked. “A pet on a long leash?”
“You are my gamble. A trained wolf set loose.”
“To kill an enemy that you can’t face,” Rin said.
The Sorqan Sira smiled, displaying teeth. “Be glad that we still have some use for you.”
Rin didn’t like her phrasing. “What happens if I succeed, and you no longer have use for me?”
“Then we’ll let you keep your lives as a token of our gratitude.”
“And what happens if you decide I’m a threat again?”
“Then we’ll find you again.” The Sorqan Sira nodded to Kitay. “And this time, his life will be on the line.”
Rin had no doubt the Sorqan Sira would put an arrow through Kitay’s heart without hesitation.
“You still don’t trust me,” she said. “You’re playing a long game with us, and the anchor bond was your insurance.”
The Sorqan Sira sighed. “I am afraid, child. And I have the right to be. The last time we taught Nikara shamans how to anchor themselves, they turned on us.”
“But I’m nothing like them.”
“You are far too much like them. You have the same eyes. Angry. Desperate. You’ve seen too much.
You hate too much. Those three were younger than you when they came to us, more timid and afraid, and still they slaughtered thousands of innocents.
You are older than they were, and you’ve done far worse. ”
“That’s not the same,” Rin said. “The Federation—”
“Deserved it?” asked the Sorqan Sira. “Every single one? Even the women? The children?”
Rin flushed. “But I’m not—I didn’t do it because I liked it. I’m not like them.”
Not like that vision of a younger Jiang, who laughed when he killed, who seemed to delight in being drenched in blood. Not like Daji.
“That’s what they thought about themselves, too,” said the Sorqan Sira. “But the gods corrupted them, just as they will corrupt you. The gods manifest your worst and cruelest instincts. You think you are in control, but your mind erodes by the second. To call the gods is to gamble with madness.”
“It’s better than doing nothing.” Rin knew that she was already walking a fine line, that she ought to keep her mouth shut, but the Ketreyids’ constant high-minded pacifistic lecturing infuriated her.
“I’d rather go mad than hide behind the Baghra Desert and pretend that atrocities aren’t happening when I could have done something about them. ”
The Sorqan Sira chuckled. “You think that we did nothing? Is that what they taught you?”
“I know that millions died during the first two Poppy Wars. And I know that your people never crossed down south to stop it.”
“How many people do you think Vaisra’s war has killed?” the Sorqan Sira asked.
“Fewer than would have died otherwise,” Rin said.
The Sorqan Sira didn’t answer. She just let the silence stretch on and on until Rin’s answer began to seem ridiculous.
Rin picked at her food, no longer hungry.
“What will you do with the foreigners?” Kitay asked.
Rin had forgotten about the Hesperians until Kitay asked. She peered around the camp but couldn’t spot them. Then she saw a larger yurt a little off to the edge of the clearing, guarded heavily by Bekter and his riders.
“Perhaps we will kill them.” The Sorqan Sira shrugged. “They are holy men, and nothing good ever comes of the Hesperian religion.”
“Why do you say that?” Kitay asked.
“They believe in a singular and all-powerful deity, which means they cannot accept the truth of other gods. And when nations start to believe that other beliefs lead to damnation, violence becomes inevitable.” The Sorqan Sira cocked her head.
“What do you think? Shall we shoot them? It’s kinder than leaving them to die of exposure. ”
“Don’t kill them,” Rin said quickly. Tarcquet made her uncomfortable and Sister Petra made her want to put her hand through a wall, but Augus had never struck her as anything other than naive and well-intentioned. “Those kids are missionaries, not soldiers. They’re harmless.”
“Those weapons are not harmless,” said the Sorqan Sira.
“No,” Kitay said. “They are faster and deadlier than crossbows, and they are most deadly in inexperienced hands. I would not return their weapons.”
“Safe passage back will be difficult, then. We can spare only one steed for the two of you. They will have to walk through enemy territory.”
“Would you give them supplies to make rafts?” Rin asked.
The Sorqan Sira frowned, considering. “Can they find their own way back over the rivers?”
Rin hesitated. Her altruism extended only so far. She didn’t want to see Augus dead, but she wasn’t about to waste time shepherding children who never should have come along in the first place.
She turned to Kitay. “If they can make it to the Western Murui, they’re fine, right?”
He shrugged. “More or less. Tributaries get tricky. They could get lost. Could end up at Khurdalain.”
She could accept that risk. It did enough to alleviate her conscience.
If Augus and his companions weren’t clever enough to make it back to Arlong, then that was their own fault.
Augus had been kind to her once. She’d made sure the Ketreyids didn’t put an arrow in his head. She owed him nothing more than that.
Chaghan was alone when Rin found him, sitting at the edge of the river with his knees pulled up to his chest.
“Don’t they think you might run?” she asked.
He gave her a wry smile. “You know I don’t run very fast.”
She sat down beside him. “So what happens to you now?”
His face was unreadable. “The Sorqan Sira doesn’t trust us to watch over the Cike any longer. She’s taking us back north.”
“And what will happen to you there?”
His throat bobbed. “That depends.”
She knew he didn’t want her pity, so she didn’t burden him with it. She took a deep breath. “I wanted to say thank you.”
“For what?”
“You vouched for me.”
“I was just saving my own skin.”
“Of course.”
“I was also rather hoping that you wouldn’t die,” he admitted.
“Thanks for that.”
An awkward silence passed between them. She saw Chaghan’s eyes dart toward her several times, as if he was debating whether to broach the next subject.
“Say it,” she finally said.
“Do you really want me to?”
“Yes, if you’re going to be this awkward otherwise.”
“Fine,” he said. “Inside the Seal, what you saw—”
“It was Altan,” she said promptly. “Altan, alive. That’s what I saw. He was alive.”
Chaghan exhaled. “So you killed him?”
“I gave him what he wanted,” she said.
“I see.”
“I also saw him happy,” she said. “He was different. He wasn’t suffering. He’d never suffered. He was happy. That’s how I’ll remember him.”
Chaghan didn’t say anything for a long time. She knew he was trying not to cry in front of her; she could see the tears welling up in his eyes.
“Is that real?” she asked. “In another world, is that real? Or was the Seal just showing me what I wanted to see?”
“I don’t know,” Chaghan said. “Our world is a dream of the gods. Maybe they have other dreams. But all we have is this story unfolding, and in the script of this world, nothing’s going to bring Altan back to life.”
Rin leaned back. “I thought I knew how this world worked. How the cosmos worked. But I don’t know anything.”
“Most Nikara don’t,” Chaghan said, and he didn’t even try to mask his arrogance.
Rin snorted. “And you do?”
“We know what constitutes the nature of reality,” said Chaghan.
“We’ve understood it for years. But your people are fragile and desperate fools.
They don’t know what’s real and what’s false, so they’ll cling to their little truths, because it’s better than imagining that their world might not matter so much after all. ”
It was starting to become clear to her now, why the Hinterlanders might view themselves as caretakers of the universe. Who else understood the nature of the cosmos like they did? Who even came close?
Perhaps Jiang had known, a long time ago when his mind was still his. But the man she’d known had been shattered, and the secrets he’d taught her were only fragments of the truth.
“I thought it was hubris, what you did,” she murmured. “But it’s kindness. The Hinterlanders maintain the illusion so you can let everyone else live in the lie.”
“Don’t call us that,” Chaghan said sharply. “Hinterlander is not a name. Only the Empire uses this word, because you assume everyone who lives on the steppe is the same. Naimads are not Ketreyids. Call us by our names.”
“I’m sorry.” She crossed her arms against her chest, shivering against the biting wind. “Can I ask you something else?”
“You’re going to ask me regardless.”
“Why do you hate me so much?”
“I don’t hate you,” he said automatically.
“Sure seemed like it. Seemed like it for a long time, even before Altan died.”
Finally he twisted around to face her. “I can’t look at you and not see him.”