Chapter 25 #2
Kitay made a choking noise and buried his head in his hands.
She dropped to her knees beside him. “Kitay—”
“I’m fine,” he gasped. “Fine.”
She tried to put her hands on him, but he pushed her away with a violence that shocked her.
“Just let me breathe.” He shook his head. “It’s all right, Rin. I’m not hurt. It’s just—it’s all in my head.”
She could have slapped him. “You’re supposed to tell me when it’s too much.”
“It wasn’t too much.” He sat up straight. “Try that again.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t get a good look at your blast radius just then,” he said. “Try it again.”
“Absolutely not,” she snapped. “I don’t care that you’ve got a death wish. I can’t keep doing this to you.”
“Then go right up to the edge,” he insisted. “The point right before it hurts too much. Let’s figure out what the limit is.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s better than finding out on a battlefield. Please, Rin, we won’t get a better chance to do this.”
“What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Why does this matter so much?”
“Because I need to know the full extent of what you can do,” Kitay said.
“Because if I’m strategizing for Arlong’s defense then I need to know where to put you, and why.
Because if I went through all of this for you, then the very least you can do is show me what maximum power looks like.
If we’ve turned you back into a weapon, then you’re going to be a damn good one.
And stop panicking over me, Rin. I’m fine until I say I’m not. ”
So she called the flame again and again, pushing the limits every time, until the shores burned pitch-black around them.
She kept going even while Kitay screamed because he’d ordered her not to stop unless he said so explicitly.
She kept going until his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp on the raft.
And even then, when he revived seconds later, the first thing he said to her was: “Fifty yards.”
When at last they reached the Red Cliffs, Rin saw with immense relief that the flag of the Republic still flew over Arlong.
So Vaisra was safe, and Daji was still a distant threat.
Their next challenge was to get back into the city without getting shot.
Arlong, expecting a Militia assault, had hunkered down behind its defenses.
The massive gates to the harbor past the Red Cliffs were locked.
Crossbows were lined up against every flat surface overlooking the channel.
Rin and Kitay could hardly march up to the city doors—any sudden, unexpected movement would get them stuck full of arrows.
They discovered this when they saw a wild monkey wander too close to the walls and startle a line of trigger-happy archers.
They were so exhausted that they found this ridiculously funny. A month’s worth of travel and their biggest concern was friendly fire.
Finally they decided to get some sentries’ attention in the least threatening way possible. They hurled rocks at the sides of the cliff and waited while pinging noises echoed around the channel until at last a line of soldiers emerged on the cliffside, crossbows pointed down.
Rin and Kitay immediately put their hands up.
“Don’t shoot, please,” Kitay called.
The sentry captain leaned over the cliff wall. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“We’re Republican soldiers back from Boyang,” Kitay called, gesturing to their uniforms.
“Uniforms are cheap on corpses,” said the captain.
Kitay pointed to Rin. “Not uniforms that fit her.”
The captain looked unconvinced. “Back away or I’ll shoot.”
“I wouldn’t,” Rin called. “Or Vaisra will be asking why you’ve killed his Speerly.”
The sentries hooted with laughter.
“Good one,” said the captain.
Rin blinked. Did they not recognize her? Did they not know who she was?
“Maybe he’s new,” Kitay said.
“Can I hurt him?” she muttered.
“Just a little.”
She tilted her head back and opened her mouth.
Breathing fire was harder than shooting it from her hands because it gave her less directional control, but she liked the dramatic effect.
A stream of fire shot into the air and unfurled itself into the shape of a dragon that hung for a moment in front of the awed soldiers, undulating grandly, before rushing the captain.
He was never in any real danger. Rin extinguished the flames as soon as they made contact. But he still screamed and fell backward as if he were being charged by a bear. When at last he resurfaced over the cliff wall, his face had turned bright pink, and smoke drifted up from his singed eyebrows.
“I should shoot you just for that,” he said.
“Why don’t you just tell Vaisra that the Speerly’s back,” Rin said. “And bring us something to eat.”
Word of their return seemed to have spread instantly to the entire harbor. A massive crowd of soldiers and civilians alike surrounded them the moment they passed through the gates. Everyone had questions, and they shouted them from every direction so loudly that Rin could barely make out a word.
The questions she did understand were about soldiers still missing from Boyang. The people wanted to know if any others were still alive. If they were on their way back. Rin didn’t have the heart to answer.
“Who dragged you out of hell?” Venka elbowed her way through the soldiers. She seized Rin by the arms, looked her up and down, and then wrinkled her pert nose. “You smell.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Rin said.
“No, really, it’s rank. It’s like you’ve taken a knife blade to my nose.”
“Well, we haven’t seen properly clean water in over a month, so—”
“So what’s the story?” Venka interrupted. “Did you break out of prison? Take out an entire battalion? Swim the whole length back down the Murui?”
“We drank horse piss and got high,” said Kitay.
“Come again?” Venka asked.
Rin was about to explain when she caught sight of Nezha pushing his way to the front of the crowd.
“Hello,” she said.
He stopped just before her and stared, blinking rapidly as if he didn’t know what he was looking at. His arms hung awkwardly at his sides, slightly uplifted, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.
“Can I?” he asked.
She stretched her arms toward him. He pulled her in against him so hard that she stiffened on instinct. Then she relaxed, because Nezha was so warm, so solid, and hugging him was such a wonderful feeling that she just wanted to bury her face into his uniform and stand there for a very long time.
“I can’t believe it,” Nezha murmured into her ear. “We thought for sure . . .”
She pressed her forehead against his chest. “Me too.”
Her tears were falling thick and fast. The embrace had already stretched on much longer than it should have, and finally Nezha let her go, but he didn’t take his arms off her shoulders.
Finally he spoke. “Where is Jinzha?”
“What do you mean?” Rin asked. “He didn’t return with you?”
Nezha just shook his head, eyes wide, before he was pushed aside by two massive bodies.
“Rin!”
Before she could speak, Suni wrapped her in a tight hug, lifting her a good foot off the ground, and she had to pound frantically at his shoulder before he released her.
“All right.” Ramsa reached up and frantically patted Suni’s shoulder. “You’re going to crush her.”
“Sorry,” Suni said, abashed. “We just thought . . .”
Rin couldn’t help but grin even as she felt her ribs for bruises. “Yeah. Good to see you, too.”
Baji grabbed her hand, pulled her in, and pounded her on the shoulder. “We knew you weren’t dead. You’re too spiteful to go that easy.”
“How did you get back?” Rin asked.
“Feylen didn’t just wreck our ships, he whipped up a storm that wrecked everything in the lake,” Baji said.
“He was aiming for the big ships, though; somehow a few of the skimmers held together. About a quarter of us managed to get out of the maelstrom. I’ve no idea how we paddled back out to the river alive, but here we are. ”
Rin had an idea of how that had happened.
Ramsa’s eyes flickered between her and Kitay. “Where are the twins?”
“That’s a long story,” Rin said.
“Not dead?” Baji asked.
“I . . . ah, it’s complicated. Chaghan isn’t. But Qara—” She paused, searching for the right words to say next, just as she saw a tall figure approaching from just over Baji’s shoulder.
“Later,” she said quietly.
Baji turned his head, saw who she was looking at, and immediately stepped aside. A hush fell over the soldiers, who parted ranks to let the Dragon Warlord through.
“You’ve returned,” said Vaisra. He looked neither pleased nor displeased but somewhat impatient, as if he’d simply been expecting her.
Rin instinctively ducked her head. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Vaisra gestured toward the palace. “Go clean yourself up. I’ll be in my office.”
“Tell me everything that happened at Boyang,” Vaisra said.
“Haven’t they already told you?” Rin sat down opposite him. She smelled better than she had in weeks. She’d cut her oily, lice-ridden hair; scrubbed herself in cold water; and traded in her stained, pungent clothes for a fresh uniform.
A part of her had been hoping for a warmer welcome—a smile, a hand on her shoulder, at least some indication that Vaisra was glad she was back—but all he gave her was solemn expectation.
“I want your account,” he said.
Rin considered pinning the blame on Jinzha’s tactical decisions, but there was no point in antagonizing Vaisra by rubbing salt into an open wound. Besides, nothing Jinzha had done could have prevented what had happened once the battle began. He might as well have been fighting the ocean itself.
“The Empress has another shaman in her employ. His name is Feylen. He channels the Wind God. He used to be in the Cike, until that went sideways. He wrecked your fleet. Took him minutes.”
“What do you mean, he used to be in the Cike?” Vaisra asked.
“He was put down,” Rin said. “I mean, he went mad. A lot of shamans do. Altan let him back out of the Chuluu Korikh by accident—”
“By accident?”