Chapter 34 #3
But they weren’t fine. Something had shattered between them, and she was sure that it was her own fault. She just didn’t know how to make it right.
“Okay.” She broke the silence. She couldn’t stand this anymore; she needed to flee. “I’m going to go find—”
“Did you see her die?” Nezha asked abruptly, startling her.
“Who?”
“Daji. We never found a body.”
“I gave your father my report,” she said. She’d told Vaisra and Eriden that Daji was dead, drowned, sunk at the bottom of the Murui.
“I know what you told him. Now I want you to tell me the truth.”
“That’s the truth.”
Nezha’s voice hardened. “Don’t lie to me.”
She crossed her arms. “Why would I lie about that?”
“Because they haven’t found a body.”
“I was trapped under a fucking mast, Nezha. I was too busy trying not to die to think.”
“Then why did you tell Father that she’s dead?”
“Because I think she is!” Rin quickly pulled an explanation out of thin air.
“I saw Feylen crash that ship. I saw her fall into the water. And if you can’t find a body that just means she’s buried down there with the other ten thousand corpses clogging up your channel.
What I don’t understand is why you’re acting like I’m a traitor when I just killed a god for you. ”
“I’m sorry.” Nezha sighed. “No, you’re right. I just—I want us to be able to trust each other.”
His eyes looked so sincere. He’d really bought it.
Rin exhaled, marveling at how narrowly she’d gotten away.
“I’ve never lied to you.” She placed a hand on his arm. It was so easy to act. She didn’t have to fake her affection for him. It felt good to tell Nezha what he wanted to hear. “And I never will. I swear.”
Nezha gave her a smile. A real smile. “I like when we’re on the same side.”
“Me too,” she said, and that, finally, wasn’t a lie. How desperately she wished they could stay that way.
The parade turnout was pathetic. That didn’t surprise Rin.
In Tikany, people came out for festivals only because they bore the promise of free food and drink, but battle-wrecked Arlong didn’t have the resources to spare either.
Vaisra had ordered an extra ration of rice and fish distributed across the city, but to civilians who had just lost their homes and relatives, that was little cause to celebrate.
Rin still could only barely walk. She’d stopped using her cane, but she couldn’t move more than fifty yards without getting exhausted, and both her arms and legs were riddled by a tight, sore ache that seemed to only be getting worse.
“We can have you ride on a sedan chair if you need,” Kitay said when she faltered on the dais.
Rin clutched his proffered arm. “I’ll walk.”
“But you’re hurting.”
“Entire city’s hurting,” she said. “That’s the point.”
She hadn’t seen the city outside the infirmary until now, and the devastation was painful to look at.
The fires in the outer city had burned for nearly a day after the battle, extinguished only by rainfall.
The palace remained intact, though blackened at the bottom.
The lush greenery of the canal islands had been replaced by withered dead trees and ash.
The infirmaries were overcrowded with the wounded.
The dead lay in neat lines by the beach, awaiting a proper burial.
Vaisra’s parade wasn’t a testament to victory, but an acknowledgment of sacrifice. Rin appreciated that. There were no gaudy musicians, no flagrant displays of wealth and power. The army walked the streets to show that they had survived. That the Republic was alive.
Saikhara headed the procession, breathtaking in robes of cerulean and silver.
Vaisra strode just behind her. His hair was streaked with far more white than it had been months ago, and he walked with just the barest hint of a limp, but even those signs of weakness seemed only to add to his dignity.
He was dressed like an Emperor, and Saikhara looked like his Empress.
She was their divine mother and he was their savior, father, and ruler all at once.
Behind that celestial couple stood the entire military might of the west. Hesperian soldiers lined the streets.
Hesperian dirigibles drifted slowly through the air above them.
Vaisra may have promised to usher in a democratic government, but if he intended to stake his claim to the entire Empire, Rin doubted that anyone could stop him.
“Where are the southern Warlords?” Kitay asked. He kept twisting around to get a look at the line of generals. “Haven’t seen them all day.”
Rin searched the crowd. He was right; the Warlords were absent. She couldn’t see a single southern refugee, either.
“Do you think they’ve left?” she asked.
“I know they haven’t. The valleys are still full of refugee camps. I think they chose not to come.”
“What for, a show of protest?”
“I suppose it makes sense,” he said. “This wasn’t their victory.”
Rin could understand that. The victory at the Red Cliffs had solved very few of the south’s problems. Southern troops had bled for a regime that only continued to treat them as a necessary sacrifice.
But the Warlords were sacrificing prudence for symbolic protest. They needed Hesperian troops to clear out the Federation enclaves in their home provinces.
They should have been doing their best to win back Vaisra’s favor.
Instead, they’d made clear their loyalties, just as they had to her in that alley days ago.
She wondered what that meant for the Republic. The south hadn’t submitted an open declaration of war. But they’d hardly demonstrated obedient cooperation, either. Would Vaisra now send those armed dirigibles to conquer Tikany?
Rin planned to be gone long before it came to that.
The procession culminated in a funeral rite for the dead on the riverbank. The turnout for this was much larger. A mass of civilians lined up under the cliffs. Rin couldn’t tell if the water was only reflecting the Red Cliffs, but it seemed as if the channel was still shot through with blood.
Vaisra’s generals and admirals stood in a straight line on the beach. Ribbons on posts marked those with rank who were absent. Rin counted more ribbons than people.
“That’s a hell of a lot of digging.” She looked out over the stacks of drenched, rotting corpses. The soldiers had spent days trawling the water for bodies, which otherwise would have poisoned the water with the foul taste of decay for years.
“They don’t bury their dead in Arlong,” Kitay said. “They send them out to sea.”
They watched as soldiers loaded pyramids of bodies onto rafts, then pushed them out into the water one by one.
Each pyre was draped with a funeral shroud dipped in oil.
At Vaisra’s command, Eriden’s men shot a barrage of flaming arrows onto the fleet of bodies.
Each one found its target. The pyres caught fire with a sharp, satisfying crackle.
“I could have done that,” Rin said.
“It means less when you do it.”
“Why?”
“Because the only thing that makes it significant is the possibility that they don’t aim true.” Kitay nodded over her shoulder. “Look who’s here.”
She followed his line of sight to find Ramsa, Baji, and Suni standing by the edge of the shore a little ways away from a huddle of civilians. They were looking back at her. Ramsa gave her a little wave.
She couldn’t help grinning in relief.
She hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to the Cike since the eve of the battle. She’d known they were all right, but they hadn’t been permitted in the infirmary, and she didn’t want to make a fuss for fear of arousing Hesperian suspicion. This might be their only chance to talk privately.
She leaned close to murmur in Kitay’s ear. “Is anyone looking?”
“I think you’re fine,” he said. “Hurry.”
She shuffled, limping, as quickly as she could down the shore.
“I see they finally let you out of the death farm,” Baji said in greeting.
“ ‘Death farm’?” she repeated.
“Ramsa’s nickname for the infirmary.”
“It’s because they’d roll out corpses every day in grain wagons,” Ramsa said. “Glad you weren’t in one of them.”
“How bad is it?” Baji asked.
She instinctively brushed her fingers over her lower back. “Manageable. Hurts, but I can walk without assistance now. You all got through unscathed?”
“More or less.” Baji showed her his bandaged shins. “Scraped those when I was jumping off a ship. Ramsa threw a fuse too late, got a bad burn on his knee. Suni’s completely fine. The man can survive anything.”
“Good,” she said. She glanced quickly around the beach. No one was paying attention to them; the crowd’s eyes were fixed on the funeral pyres. She lowered her voice regardless. “We can’t stay here anymore. Get ready to run.”
“When?” Baji asked. None of them looked surprised. Rather, they all seemed to have been expecting it.
“Soon. We’re not safe here. Vaisra doesn’t need us anymore and we can’t count on his protection. The Hesperians don’t know you and Suni are shamans, so we have a bit of leeway. Kitay doesn’t think they’ll move in immediately. But we shouldn’t drag our feet.”
“Thank the gods,” Ramsa said. “I couldn’t stand them. They smell horrible.”
Baji gave him a look. “Really? That’s your biggest complaint? The smell?”
“It’s rank,” Ramsa insisted. “Like tofu gone sour.”
Suni spoke up for the first time. “If you’re worried, why don’t we get out tonight?”
“That works,” Rin said.
“Any particulars?” Ramsa asked.
“I don’t have a plan beyond escape. We tried to get Moag on board, but she hasn’t responded. We’ll have to just make our way out of the city on our own.”
“One problem,” Baji said. “Suni and I are on night patrol. Think it’ll tip them off if we go missing?”
Rin assumed that was precisely the reason why they had been put on night patrol.
“When do you get off?” she asked.
“An hour before dawn.”
“So we’ll go then,” she said. “Make straight for the cliffs. Don’t wait at the gates, that’ll only attract attention. We’ll figure out what to do once we’re out of the city. Does that work?”
“Fine,” Baji said. Ramsa and Suni nodded.
There was nothing else to discuss. They stood together in a cluster, watching the funeral in silence for a few minutes.
The flames on the pyres had grown to a full blaze.
Rin didn’t know what was propelling the pyres farther out to sea, but the way the flames blurred the air above them was oddly hypnotizing.
“It’s pretty,” Baji said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It is.”
“You know what’s going to happen to them, right?
” Ramsa said. “They’ll float for about three days.
Then the pyres will start to break apart.
Burned wood is weak and bodies are heavy as shit.
They sink into the ocean, and they’ll bloat and crumble unless the fish nibble everything but the bones first.”
His brittle voice carried over the still morning air. Heads were turning.
“Will you stop?” Rin muttered.
“Sorry,” said Ramsa. “All I’m saying is that they should have just burned them on land.”
“I don’t think they got all the bodies,” Baji said. “I saw more corpses in the river than that. How many Imperial soldiers do you think are still down there?”
Rin shot him a look. “Baji, please—”
“You know, it’s funny. The fish will feed on the corpses. Then you’ll eat the fish, and you’ll literally be feeding on the bodies of your enemies.”
She glared at him through blurry eyes. “Do you have to do that?”
“What, you don’t think it’s funny?” He put his arm around her. “Hey. Don’t cry—I’m sorry.”
She swallowed hard. She hadn’t meant to cry. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying—she didn’t know any of the bodies on the pyre, and she didn’t have any reason to grieve.
Those bodies weren’t her fault. She still felt miserable.
“I don’t like feeling this way,” she whispered.
“Me neither, kid.” Baji rubbed her shoulder. “But that’s war. You might as well be on the winning side.”