Chapter 26
“Makes the barracks look nice, huh?” Ramsa asked.
Rin didn’t know what to say.
The refugee district was an ocean of people crammed into endless rows of tents stretching toward the valley. The crowds had been kept out of the city proper, hemmed in behind hastily constructed barriers of shipping planks and driftwood.
It looked as if a giant had drawn a line in the sand with one finger and pushed everyone to one side. Republican soldiers wielding halberds paced back and forth in front of the barrier, though Rin wasn’t sure who they were guarding—the refugees or the citizens.
“The refugees aren’t allowed past that barrier,” Baji explained. “The, uh, citizens didn’t want them crowding the streets.”
“What happens if they cross?” Rin asked.
“Nothing too terrible. Guards toss them back to the other side. It happened more often at the beginning, but a few beatings taught everyone their lesson.”
They walked a few more paces. A horrible stench hit Rin’s nose—the smell of too many unwashed bodies packed together for far too long. “How long have they been there?”
“At least a month,” Baji said. “I’m told they started flooding in as soon as we moved on Rat Province, but it only got worse once we came back.”
Rin could not believe that anyone had been living in these camps for that long. She saw clouds of flies everywhere she looked. The buzzing was unbearable.
“They’re still trickling in,” Ramsa said. “They come in waves, usually at night. They keep trying to sneak past the borders.”
“And they’re all from Hare and Rat Provinces?” she asked.
“What are you talking about? These are southern refugees.”
She blinked at him. “I thought the Militia hadn’t moved south.”
Ramsa exchanged a glance with Baji. “They’re not fleeing the Militia. They’re fleeing the Federation.”
“What?”
Baji scratched the back of his head. “Well, yes. It’s not like the Mugenese soldiers all just laid down their weapons.”
“I know, but I thought . . .” Rin trailed off.
She felt dizzy. She’d known Federation troops remained on the mainland, but she’d thought they were contained to isolated units.
Rogue soldiers, scattered squadrons. Roving mercenaries, forming predatory coalitions with provincial cities if they were large enough, but not enough to displace the entire south.
“How many are there?” she asked.
“Enough,” Baji said. “Enough that they constitute an entirely separate army. They’re fighting for the Militia, Rin. We don’t know how; we don’t know what deal she brokered with them. But soon enough we’ll be fighting a war on two fronts, not one.”
“Which regions?” she demanded.
“They’re everywhere.” Ramsa listed the provinces off on his fingers. “Monkey. Snake. Rooster.”
Rin flinched. Rooster?
“Are you all right?” Ramsa asked.
But she was already running.
She knew immediately these were her people. She knew them by their tawny skin that was almost as dark as hers. She knew them by the way they talked—the soft country drawl that made her feel nostalgic and uncomfortable at the same time.
That was the tongue she had grown up speaking—the flat, rustic dialect that she couldn’t speak without cringing now, because she’d spent years at school beating it out of herself.
She hadn’t heard anyone speak the Rooster dialect in so long.
She thought, stupidly, that they might recognize her. But the Rooster refugees shrank away when they saw her. Their faces grew closed and sullen when she met their eyes. They crawled back into their tents if she approached.
It took her a moment to realize that they weren’t afraid of her, they were afraid of her uniform.
They were afraid of Republican soldiers.
“You.” Rin pointed to a woman about her height. “Do you have a spare set of clothes?”
The woman blinked at her, uncomprehending.
Rin tried again, slipping clumsily into her old dialect like it was an ill-fitting pair of shoes. “Do you have another, uh, shirt? Pants?”
The woman gave a terrified nod.
“Give them to me.”
The woman crawled into her tent. She reappeared with a bundle of clothing—a faded blouse that might have once been dyed with a poppy flower pattern, and wide slacks with deep pockets.
Rin felt a sharp pang in her chest as she held the blouse out in front of her. She hadn’t seen clothes like this in a long time. They were made for fieldworkers. Even the poor of Sinegard would have laughed at them.
Stripping off her Republican uniform worked. The Roosters stopped avoiding her when they saw her. Instead, she became effectively invisible as she navigated through the sea of tightly packed bodies. She shouted to get attention as she moved down the rows of tents.
“Tutor Feyrik! I’m looking for a Tutor Feyrik! Has anyone seen him?”
Responses came in reluctant whispers and indifferent mutters.
No. No. Leave us alone. No. These refugees were so used to hearing desperate cries for lost ones that they’d closed their ears to them.
Someone knew a Tutor Fu, but he wasn’t from Tikany.
Someone else knew a Feyrik, but he was a cobbler, not a teacher.
Rin found it pointless trying to describe him; there were hundreds of men who could have fit his description—with every row she passed she saw old men with gray beards who turned out not to be Tutor Feyrik after all.
She pushed down a swell of despair. It had been stupid to hope in the first place. She’d known she’d never see him again; she’d resigned herself to that fact long ago.
But she couldn’t help it. She still had to try.
She tried broadening her search. “Is anyone here from Tikany?”
Blank looks. She moved faster and faster through the camp, breaking into a run. “Tikany? Please? Anyone?”
Then at last she heard one voice through the crowd—one that was laced not with casual indifference but with sheer disbelief.
“Rin?”
She stumbled to a halt. When she turned around she saw a spindly boy, no more than fourteen, with a mop of brown hair and large, downward-sloping eyes. He stood with a sodden shirt dangling from one hand and a bandage clutched in the other.
“Kesegi?”
He nodded wordlessly.
Then she was sixteen years old again herself, crying as she held him, rocking him so hard they almost fell to the dirt. He hugged her back, wrapping his long and scrawny limbs all the way around her like he used to.
When had he gotten so tall? Rin marveled at the change. Once, he’d barely come up to her waist. Now he was taller than she by about an inch. But the rest of him was far too skinny, close to starved; he looked like he’d been stretched more than he had grown.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
“Mother’s here with me. Father’s dead.”
“The Federation . . . ?”
“No. It was the opium in the end.” He gave a false laugh.
“Funny, really. He heard they were coming, and he ate an entire pan of nuggets. Mother found him just as we were packing up to leave. He’d been dead for hours.
” He gave her an awkward smile. A smile.
He’d lost his father, and he was trying to make her feel better about it. “We just thought he was sleeping.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice came out flat. She couldn’t help it. Her relationship with Uncle Fang had been one between master and servant, and she couldn’t conjure up anything that remotely resembled grief.
“Tutor Feyrik?” she asked.
Kesegi shook his head. “I don’t know. I saw him in the crowd when we left, I think, but I haven’t seen him since.”
His voice cracked when he spoke. She realized that he was trying to imitate a deeper voice than he possessed. He stood up overly straight, too, to appear taller than he was. He was trying to pass himself off as an adult.
“So you’ve come back.”
Rin’s blood froze. She’d been walking blindly without a destination, assuming Kesegi had been doing the same, but of course they’d been walking back to his tent.
Kesegi stopped. “Mother. Look who I found.”
Auntie Fang gave Rin a thin smile. “Well, look at that. It’s the war hero. You’ve grown.”
Rin wouldn’t have recognized her if Kesegi hadn’t introduced her.
Auntie Fang looked twenty years older, with the complexion of a wrinkled walnut.
She had always been so red-faced, perpetually furious, burdened with a foster child she didn’t want and a husband addicted to opium.
She used to terrify Rin. But now she seemed shriveled dry, as if the fight had been drained from her completely.
“Come to gloat?” Auntie Fang asked. “Go on, look. There’s not much to see.”
“Gloat?” Rin repeated, baffled. “No, I . . .”
“Then what is it?” Auntie Fang asked. “Well, don’t just stand there.”
How was it that even now Auntie Fang could still make her feel so stupid and worthless? Under her withering glare Rin felt like a little girl again, hiding in the shed to avoid a beating.
“I didn’t know you were here,” she managed. “I just—I wanted to see if—”
“If we were still alive?” Auntie Fang put bony hands on narrow hips. “Well, here we are. No thanks to you soldiers—no, you were too busy drowning up north. It’s Vaisra’s fault we’re here at all.”
“Watch your tone,” Rin snapped.
It shocked her when Auntie Fang cringed backward like she was expecting to be hit.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that.” Auntie Fang adopted a wheedling, wide-eyed expression that looked grotesque on her leathery face.
“The hunger’s just getting to me. Can’t you get us some food, Rin?
You’re a soldier, I bet they’ve even made you a commander, you’re so important, surely you could call in some favors. ”
“They’re not feeding you?” Rin asked.
Auntie Fang laughed. “Not unless you’re talking about the Lady of Arlong walking around handing out tiny bowls of rice to the skinniest children she can find while the blue-eyed devils follow her around to document how wonderful she is.”