“If they aren’t, they will be soon,” said Kitay. “I’ve imagined it so many times. I’ve pieced things together from what we studied. The fire mountain would have emitted an avalanche of hot ash and volcanic gas. It would have swallowed their country whole. If they didn’t burn to death, they choked. If they didn’t choke to death, they were buried under rubble. And if all of that didn’t kill them, then they’ll starve to death, because sure as hell nothing is going to grow on that island now, because the ash would have decimated the island agriculture. When the lava dries, the island will be a solid tomb.”
Rin stared out at the plume of ash, watched the smoke yet unfurling, bit by bit, like an eternally burning furnace.
The Federation of Mugen had become, in some perverse way, like the Chuluu Korikh. The island across the narrow strait had turned into a stone mountain of its own. The citizens of the Federation were prisoners arrested in suspended animation, never to reawaken.
Had she really destroyed that island? She felt a swell of panicked confusion. Impossible. It couldn’t be. That kind of natural disaster could not have been her doing. This was a freak coincidence. An accident.
Had she truly done this?
But she had felt it, precisely at the moment of eruption. She had triggered it. She had willed it into being. She had felt each one of those lives wink out of existence. She had felt the Phoenix’s exhilaration, experienced vicariously its frenzied bloodlust.
She had destroyed an entire country with the power of her anger. She had done to Mugen what the Federation did to Speer.
“The Dead Island was dangerously close to that ash cloud,” Kitay said finally. “It’s a miracle you’re alive.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s the will of the gods.”
Kitay looked as if he was struggling with his words. Rin watched him, confused. Why wasn’t Kitay relieved to see her? Why did he look as if something terrible had happened? She had survived! She was okay! She had made it out of the temple!
“I need to know what you did,” he said finally. “Did you will that?”
She trembled without knowing why, and then nodded. What was the point in lying to Kitay now? What was the point in lying to anyone? They all knew what she was capable of. And, she realized, she wanted them to know.
“Was that your will?” Kitay demanded.
“I told you,” she whispered. “I went to my god. I told it what I wanted.”
He looked aghast.
“You’re saying—so your god, it—it made you do this?”
“My god didn’t make me do anything,” she said. “The gods can’t make our choices for us. They can only offer their power, and we can wield it. And I did, and this is what I chose.” She swallowed. “I don’t regret it.”
But Kitay’s face had drained of color. “You just killed thousands of innocent people.”
“They tortured me! They killed Altan!”
“You did to Mugen the same thing that they did to Speer.”
“They deserved it!”
“How could anyone deserve that?” Kitay yelled. “How, Rin?”
She was amazed. How could he be angry with her now? Did he have any idea what she had been through?
“You don’t know what they did,” she said in a low whisper. “What they were planning. They were going to kill us all. They don’t care about human lives. They—”
“They’re monsters! I know! I was at Golyn Niis! I lay amid the corpses for days! But you—” Kitay swallowed, choking on his words. “You turned around and did the exact same thing. Civilians. Innocents. Children, Rin. You just buried an entire country and you don’t feel a thing.”
“They were monsters!” Rin shrieked. “They were not human!”
Kitay opened his mouth. No sound came out. He closed it. When he finally spoke again, it sounded as if he was close to tears.
“Have you ever considered,” he said slowly, “that that was exactly what they thought of us?”
They glared at each other, breathing heavily. Blood thundered in Rin’s ears.
How dare he? How dare he stand there like this and accuse her of atrocities? He had not seen the inside of that laboratory, he had not known how Shiro had planned to wipe out every Nikara alive . . . he had not seen Altan walk off that dock and light up like a human torch.
She had achieved revenge for her people. She had saved the Empire. Kitay would not judge her for it. She wouldn’t let him.
“Get out of my way,” she snapped. “I need to go find my people.”
Kitay looked exhausted. “What for, Rin?”
“We have work to do,” she said tightly. “This isn’t over.”
“Are you serious? Have you listened to anything I’ve said? Mugen’s finished!” Kitay shouted.
“Not Mugen,” she said. “Mugen is not the final enemy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want a war against the Empress.”
“The Empress?” Kitay looked dumbfounded.
“Su Daji betrayed our location to the Federation,” she said. “That’s why they found us, they knew we’d be at the Chuluu Korikh—”
“That’s insane,” said Kitay.
“But they said it! The Mugenese, they said—”
Kitay stared at her. “And it never occurred to you that they had good incentive to lie?”
“Not about that. They knew who we were. Where we’d be. Only she knew that.” Her breathing quickened. The anger had returned. “I need to know why she did it. And then I need to punish her for it. I need to make her suffer.”
“Are you listening to yourself? Does it matter who sold who?” Kitay grasped her by her shoulders and shook her hard. “Look around you. Look at what’s happened to this world. All of our friends are dead. Nezha. Raban. Irjah. Altan.” Rin flinched at each name, but Kitay continued, relentless. “Our entire world has been torn apart, and you still want to go to war?”
“War’s already here. A traitor sits on the throne of the Empire,” she said stubbornly. “I will see her burn.”
Kitay let go of her arm, and the expression on his face stunned her.
He looked at her as if looking at a stranger. He looked scared of her.
“I don’t know what happened to you in that temple,” he said. “But you are not Fang Runin.”
Kitay left her on the deck. He did not seek her out again.
Rin saw the Cike in the galley belowdecks, but she did not join them. She was too drained, exhausted. She went back to her cabin and locked herself inside.
She thought—hoped, really—that Kitay would seek her out, but he didn’t. When she cried, there was no one to comfort her. She choked on her tears and buried her face in the mattress. She stifled her screams in the hard straw padding, then decided she didn’t care who heard her, and screamed out loud into the dark.
Baji came to the door, bearing a tray of food. She refused it.
An hour later Enki forced his way into her quarters. He enjoined her to eat. Again she refused. He argued she wouldn’t do any of them any favors by starving to death.
She agreed to eat if he would give her opium.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Enki said, looking over Rin’s gaunt face, her tangled, matted hair.
“It’s not that,” she said. “I don’t need seeds. I need the smoke.”
“I can make you a sleeping draught.”
“I don’t need to sleep,” she insisted. “I need to feel nothing.”
Because the Phoenix had not left her when she crawled out of that temple. The Phoenix spoke to her even now, a constant presence in her mind, hungry and frenzied. It had been ecstatic, out there on the deck. It had seen the cloud of ash and read it as worship.
Rin could not separate her thoughts from the Phoenix’s desire. She could resist it, in which case she thought she’d go mad. Or she could embrace it and love it.
If Jiang could see me now, she realized, he would have me locked in the Chuluu Korikh.
That was, after all, where she belonged.
Jiang would say that self-immurement was the noble thing to do.
No fucking way, she thought.
She would never step voluntarily into the Chuluu Korikh, not while the Empress Su Daji walked this earth. Not while Feylen ran free.
She was the only one powerful enough to stop them, because she had now attained a power that Altan had only ever dreamed of.