She saw now that the Phoenix was right: Altan had been weak. Altan, despite how hard he tried, could only ever have been weak. He was crippled by those years spent in captivity. He did not choose his anger freely; it was inflicted on him, blow after blow, torture after torture, until he reacted precisely the way an injured wolf might, rising up to bite the hand that hit him.
Altan’s anger was wild and undirected; he was a walking vessel for the Phoenix. He never had any choice in his quest for vengeance. Altan could not negotiate with the god like she did.
She was sane, she was convinced of it. She was whole. She had lost much, yes, but she still had her own mind. She made her decisions. She chose to accept the Phoenix. She chose to let it invade her mind.
But if she wanted her thoughts to herself, then she had to think nothing at all. If she wanted a reprieve from the Phoenix’s bloodlust, she needed the pipe.
She mused out loud to the darkness as she sucked in that sickly sweet drug.
In, out. In, out.
I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible.
Was she now a goddess or a monster?
Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.
Rin was curled up on her bed when the twins finally boarded the ship. She did not know they had even arrived until they appeared at her cabin door unannounced.
“So you made it,” Chaghan said.
She sat up. They had caught her in a rare state, a sober state. She had not touched the pipe for hours, but only because she had been asleep.
Qara dashed inside and embraced her.
Rin accepted the embrace, eyes wide in shock. Qara had always been so reticent. So distant. She lifted her arm awkwardly, trying to decide if she should pat Qara on the shoulder.
But Qara drew back just as abruptly.
“You’re burning,” she said.
“I can’t turn it off,” Rin said. “It’s with me. It’s always with me.”
Qara touched Rin’s shoulders softly. She gave her a knowing look, a pitying look. “You went to the temple.”
“I did it,” Rin said. “That cloud of ash. That was me.”
“I know,” Qara said. “We felt it.”
“Feylen,” she said abruptly. “Feylen’s out, Feylen escaped, we tried to stop him but—”
“We know,” said Chaghan. “We felt that, too.”
He stood stiffly at the doorway. He looked as if he were choking on something.
“Where’s Altan?” he finally asked.
She said nothing. She just sat there, matching his gaze.
Chaghan blinked and made a noise like an animal that had been kicked.
“That’s not possible,” he said very quietly.
“He’s dead, Chaghan,” Rin said. She felt very tired. “Give it up. He’s gone.”
“But I would have felt it. I would have felt him go,” he insisted.
“That’s what we all think,” she said flatly.
“You’re lying.”
“Why would I? I was there. I saw it happen.”
Chaghan abruptly stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
Qara glanced down at Rin. She didn’t wear her normal irate expression then. She just looked sad.
“You understand,” she said.
Rin more than understood.
“What did you do? What happened?” she asked Qara finally.
“We won the war in the north,” said Qara, twisting her hands in her lap. “We followed orders.”
Altan’s last, desperate operation had involved not one but two prongs. To the south, he had taken Rin to open the Chuluu Korikh. And to the north, he sent the twins.
They had flooded the Murui River. That river delta Rin had seen from the spirit realm was the Four Gorges Dam, the largest set of levees that held the Murui back from inundating all four surrounding provinces with river water. Altan had ordered the breaking of the levees to divert the river south into an older channel, cutting off the Federation supply route to the south.
It was almost exactly like a battle plan Rin had suggested in Strategy class in her first year. She remembered Venka’s objections. You can’t just break a dam like that. Dams take years to rebuild. The entire river delta will flood, not just that valley. You’re talking about famine. Dysentery.
Rin drew her knees to her chest. “I suppose there’s no point asking if you evacuated the countryside first.”
Qara laughed without smiling. “Did you?”
Qara’s words hit her like a blow. There was no reasoning through what she had done. It had happened. It was a decision that had been ripped out of her. And she had . . . and she had . . .
She began to quiver. “What have I done, Qara?”
Until now the sheer scale of the atrocity had not computed for her, not really. The number of lives lost, the enormity of what she had invoked—it was an abstract concept, an unreal impossibility.
Was it worth it? Was it enough to atone for Golyn Niis? For Speer?
How could she compare the lives lost? One genocide against another—how did they balance on the scale of justice? And who was she, to imagine that she could make that comparison?
She seized Qara’s wrist. “What have I done?”
“The same thing that we did,” said Qara. “We won a war.”
“No, I killed . . .” Rin choked. She couldn’t finish saying it.
But Qara suddenly looked angry. “What do you want from me? Do you want forgiveness? I can’t give you that.”
“I just . . .”
“Would you like to compare death tolls?” she asked sharply. “Would you like to argue about whose guilt is greater? You created an eruption, and we caused a flood. Entire villages, drowned in an instant. Flattened. You destroyed the enemy. We killed the Nikara.”
Rin could only stare at her.
Qara wrenched her arm out of Rin’s grip. “Get that look off your face. We made our decisions, and we survived with our country intact. Worth it is worth it.”
“But we murdered—”
“We won a war!” Qara shouted. “We avenged him, Rin. He’s gone, but avenged.”
When Rin didn’t respond, Qara seized her by both shoulders. Her fingers dug painfully into her flesh.
“This is what you have to tell yourself,” Qara said fiercely. “You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the lie we’ll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward. You made your choice. There’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s over.”
That was what Rin had told herself on the island. It was what she had told herself when talking to Kitay.
And later, in the dead of night, when she couldn’t sleep for the nightmares and had to reach for her pipe, she would do as Qara said and keep telling herself what was done was done. But Qara was wrong about one thing:
It was not over. It couldn’t be over—because Federation troops were still on the mainland, scattered throughout the south; because even Chaghan and Qara hadn’t managed to drown them all. And now they had no leader to obey and no home to return to, which made them desperate, unpredictable . . . and dangerous.
And somewhere on the mainland sat an Empress on a makeshift throne, taking refuge in a new wartime capital because Sinegard had been destroyed by a conflict she’d invented. Perhaps by now she had heard the longbow island was gone. Was she distressed to lose an ally? Relieved to be freed from an enemy? Perhaps she had already taken credit for a victory she hadn’t planned; perhaps she was using it to cement her hold on power.
Mugen was gone, but the Cike’s enemies had multiplied. And they were rogue agents now, no longer loyal to the crown that had sold them.
Nothing was over.
The Cike had never before acknowledged the passing of their commander. By nature of their occupation, a change in leadership was an unavoidably messy affair. Past Cike commanders had either gone frothing mad and had to be dragged into the Chuluu Korikh against their will, or been killed on assignment and never come back.
Few had died with such grace as Altan Trengsin.
They said their goodbyes at sunrise. The entire contingent gathered on the front deck, solemn in their black robes. The ritual was no Nikara ceremony. It was a Speerly ceremony.
Qara spoke for all of them. She conducted the ceremony, because Chaghan, the Seer, refused to. Because Chaghan could not.