In the following week, three more provinces announced their independence from the Empire.
As Nezha predicted, the southern Warlords capitulated first. After all, the south had no reason to stay loyal to the Empire or Daji. The Third Poppy War had hit them the hardest. Their refugees were starving, their bandit epidemic had exploded, and the attack at the Autumn Palace had destroyed any chance that they might win concessions or promises of aid at the Lusan summit.
The southern Warlords notified Arlong of their intentions to secede through breathless delegates traveling over land if they were close enough, and by messenger pigeon if they weren’t. Days later the Warlords themselves arrived at Arlong’s gates.
“Rooster, Monkey, and Boar.” Nezha counted the provinces off as they watched Eriden’s guards escort the portly Boar Warlord into the palace. “Not bad.”
“That puts us at four provinces to eight,” Rin said. “Not incredible odds.”
“Five to seven. And they’re good generals.” That was true. None of the southern Warlords had been born into their ranks; they’d all assumed them in the bloodbaths of the Second and Third Poppy Wars. “And Tsolin will come through.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Tsolin knows how to pick sides. He’ll show up eventually. Cheer up, this is about as good as we expected.”
Rin had imagined that once the four-province alliance solidified, they would march on the north immediately. But politics quickly crushed her hopes for rapid action. The southern Warlords had not brought their armies with them to Arlong. Their military forces remained in their respective capitals, hedging their bets, watching before joining the fray. The south was playing a waiting game. By seceding they had insulated themselves from Vaisra’s ire, but so long as they didn’t commit troops against the Empire, there was still the chance that Daji would welcome them back with open arms, all sins forgiven.
Days passed. The order to ship out didn’t come. The four-province alliance spent hours and hours debating strategy in an endless series of war councils. Rin, Nezha, and Kitay were all present at these; Nezha because he was a general, Kitay because he, in a bizarre turn of events, was now considered a competent strategist if not an especially well-liked one, and Rin purely because Vaisra wanted her there.
She suspected her purpose was to intimidate, to give some reassurance that if the island-destroying Speerly was alive and well in Arlong, then this war could not be so difficult to win.
She tried her best to act as if that weren’t a lie.
“We need cross-division squadrons, or this alliance is just a suicide pact.” General Hu, Vaisra’s senior strategist, had long ago given up on masking his frustration. “The Republican Army has to act as a cohesive whole. The men can’t think they’re still squadrons of their old province.”
“I’m not putting my men under the command of soldiers I’ve never met,” said the Boar Warlord. Rin detested Cao Charouk; he seemed to do nothing but complain so fiercely about everything Vaisra’s staff suggested that often she wondered why he’d come to Arlong at all. “And those squads won’t function. You’re asking men who have never met to fight together. They don’t know the same command signals, they don’t use the same codes, and they don’t have time to learn.”
“Well, you lot don’t seem keen on attacking the north anytime soon, so I imagine they’ll have months at the least,” Kitay muttered.
Nezha made a choking noise that sounded like a laugh.
Charouk looked as if he would very much like to skewer Kitay on a flagpole if given the chance.
“We can’t beat Daji fighting as four separate armies,” General Hu said quickly. “Our scouts report she’s assembling a coalition in the north as we speak.”
“Doesn’t matter if they don’t have a fleet,” said the Monkey Warlord, Liu Gurubai. He was the most cooperative among the southern Warlords; sharp-tongued and clever-eyed, he spent most meetings stroking his thick, dark whiskers while he played both sides at the table.
If they were dealing only with Gurubai, Rin thought, they might have moved north by now. The Monkey Warlord was cautious, but he at least responded to reason. The Boar and Rooster Warlords, however, seemed determined to hunker down in Arlong behind Vaisra’s army. Gong Takha had passed the last few days sitting silent and sullen at the table while Charouk continually blustered his suspicion of everyone else in the room.
“But they will. Daji is now commissioning ships from civilian centers for a restored Imperial Navy. They’re converting grain transport ships into war galleys, and they’ve constructed naval yards at multiple sites in Tiger Province.” General Hu tapped on the map. “The longer we wait, the more time they have to prepare.”
“Who’s leading that fleet?” asked Gurubai.
“Chang En.”
“That’s surprising,” Charouk said. “Not Jun?”
“Jun didn’t want the job,” said General Hu.
Charouk raised an eyebrow. “That’d be a first.”
“It’s wise on his part,” said Vaisra. “No one wants to have to give Chang En orders. When his officers question him, they lose their heads.”
“That’s certainly a sign the Empire’s on the decline,” tutted Takha. “That man is wicked and wasteful.”
The Wolf Meat General was notorious for his brutality. When Chang En had staged his coup against the previous Horse Warlord, his troops had split skulls in half and hung strings of the severed heads across the capital walls.
“Or it just means, you know, that all the good generals are dead,” Jinzha drawled. He had been remarkably restrained in council so far, though Rin had been watching the contempt build on his face for hours.
“You would know,” said Charouk. “Did your apprenticeship with him, didn’t you?”
Jinzha bristled. “That was five years ago.”
“Not so long for such a short career.”
Jinzha opened his mouth to retort, but Vaisra cut him off with a raised hand. “If you’re going to accuse my eldest son of treachery—”
“No one is accusing Jinzha of anything,” said Charouk. “Again, Vaisra, we just don’t think Jinzha is the right choice to lead your fleet.”
“Your men couldn’t be in better hands. Jinzha studied warcraft at Sinegard, he commanded troops in the Third Poppy War—”
“As did we all,” said Gurubai. “Why not give one of our generals the job? Or why not one of us?”
“Because you three are too important to spare.”
Even Rin couldn’t help but cringe at that naked flattery. The southern Warlords exchanged wry looks. Gurubai made a show of rolling his eyes.
“All right, then because the men of the Dragon Province are not prepared to fight under anyone else,” Vaisra said. “Believe it or not, I am trying to find the solution that best protects you.”
“And yet it’s our troops you want on the front lines,” said Charouk.
“Dragon Province is committing more troops than any of you, asshat,” Rin snapped. She couldn’t help it. She knew Vaisra had wanted her to simply observe, but she couldn’t stand watching this mess of passivity and petty infighting. The Warlords were acting like children, squabbling as if someone else would win their war for them if they only procrastinated long enough.
Everyone stared at her as if she’d suddenly grown wings. When Vaisra didn’t cut her off, she kept going. “It’s been three fucking days. Why the fuck are we arguing about division makeup? The Empire is weak now. We need to send a force up north now.”
“Then how about we just send you?” asked Takha. “You sank the longbow island, didn’t you?”
Rin didn’t miss a beat. “You want me to kill off half the country? My powers don’t discriminate.”
Takha looked to Vaisra. “What is she even doing here?”
“I’m the commander of the Cike,” Rin said. “And I’m standing right in front of you.”
“You’re a little girl with no command experience and hardly a year of combat under your belt,” Gurubai said. “Do not presume to tell us how to fight a war.”
“I won the last war. You wouldn’t even be standing here without me.”
Vaisra placed a hand on her shoulder. “Runin, hush.”
“But he—”
“Silence,” he said sternly. “This discussion is beyond you. Let the generals talk.”
Rin swallowed her protest.
The door creaked open. A palace aide poked his head in through the gap. “The Snake Warlord is here to see you, sir.”
“Let him in,” Vaisra said.
The aide stepped inside to hold the door open.
Ang Tsolin walked inside, unaccompanied and unarmed. Jinzha moved to his right to let Tsolin stand next to his father. Nezha shot Rin a smug look, as if to say I told you so.
Vaisra looked equally vindicated. “I’m glad to see you join us, Master.”
Tsolin scowled. “You didn’t have to sail through my fleet.”
“Going the other way would have taken longer.”
“They came for my family first.”
“I assume you had the foresight to extricate them in time.”
Tsolin folded his arms. “My wife and children will arrive tomorrow morning. I want them set up with your most secure accommodations. If I catch so much as a whiff of a spy in their quarters, I will turn over my entire fleet to the Empire’s use.”
Vaisra dipped his head. “Whatever you ask.”
“Good.” Tsolin bent forward to examine the maps. “These are all wrong.”
“How so?” Jinzha asked.
“The Horse Province hasn’t remained inactive. They’re gathering their troops to the Yinshan base.” Tsolin pointed to a spot just above Hare Province. “And Tiger Province is bringing their fleet toward the Autumn Palace. They’re closing off your attack routes. You don’t have much time.”
“Then tell me what I ought to do,” Vaisra said. Rin was amazed at how his tone could shift—once commanding, but now deferential and meek, a student seeking a teacher’s aid.
Tsolin gave him a wary look. “Good men are dead because of you. I hope you know.”
“Then they died for a good cause,” Vaisra said. “I suspect you know that, too.”
Tsolin didn’t answer. He simply sat down, pulled the maps toward him, and began to examine the attack lines with the weary, practiced air of a man who had spent his entire life fighting wars.
As the days dragged on, despite the northern offensive’s ongoing delay, Arlong itself continued to mobilize for war like a tightening spring. War preparations were integrated into almost every facet of civilian life. Steely-eyed children worked the furnaces at the armory and carried messages back and forth across the city. Their mothers produced immaculately stitched uniforms at an astonishing rate. In the mess hall, grandmothers stirred congee in giant vats while their grandchildren ferried bowls around to the soldiers.
Another week passed. The Warlords continued to shout at each other in the council room. Rin couldn’t bear the constant waiting, so she took out her adrenaline with Nezha.
Sparring was a welcome exercise. The skirmish at Lusan had made it abundantly clear to her that she had been relying far too much on calling the fire. Her reflexes had flagged, her muscles had atrophied, and her stamina was pathetic.
So at least once every day, she and Nezha picked up their weapons and hiked up to empty clearings far up on the cliffs. She lost herself in the sheer, mindless physicality of their bouts. When they were sparring, her mind couldn’t languish on any one thought for too long. She was too busy calculating angles, maneuvering steel on steel. The immediacy of the fight was its own kind of drug, one that could numb her to anything else she might accidentally feel.
Altan couldn’t torture her if she couldn’t think.
Blow by blow, bruise by bruise, she relearned the muscle memory that she had lost, and she relished it. Here she could channel the adrenaline and fear that kept her vibrating with anxiety on a daily basis.
The first few days left her wrecked and aching. The next few were better. She filled in her uniform. She lost her hollow, skeletal appearance. This was the only reason she was grateful for the council’s slow deliberation—it gave her time to become the soldier she used to be.
Nezha was not a lenient sparring partner, and she didn’t want him to be. The first time he held back out of fear of hurting her, she swept out a leg and knocked him to the ground.
He propped himself up on his stomach. “If you wanted to go for a tumble, you could have just asked.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” she said.
Once she stopped losing hand-to-hand bouts in under thirty seconds, they moved on to padded weapons.
“I don’t understand why you insist on using that thing,” he said after he disarmed her of her trident for the third time. “It’s clumsy as hell. Father’s been telling me to get you to switch to a sword.”
She knew what Vaisra wanted. She was tired of that argument.
“Reach matters more than maneuverability.” She wedged her foot under the trident and kicked it up into her hands.
Nezha came at her from the right. “Reach?”
She parried. “When you summon fire, there’s no one who’s going to get close to you.”
He hung back. “Not to state the obvious, but you can’t really do that anymore.”
She scowled at him. “I’ll fix it.”
“Suppose you don’t?”
“Suppose you stop underestimating me?”
She didn’t want to tell him that she’d been trying. That every night she climbed up to this same clearing where no one would see her, took a dose of Chaghan’s stupid blue powder, approached the Seal, and tried to burn the ghost of Altan out of her mind.
It never worked. She could never bring herself to hurt him, not that wonderful version of Altan that she’d never known. When she tried to fight him, he grew angry. And then he reminded her why she’d always been terrified of him.
The worst part was that Altan seemed to be getting stronger every time. His eyes burned more vividly in the dark, his laughter rang louder, and several nights he’d nearly choked the breath from her before she got her senses back. It didn’t matter that he was only a vision. Her fear made him more present than anything else.
“Look alive.” Rin jabbed at Nezha’s side, hoping to catch him off guard, but he whipped his blade out and parried just in time.
They sparred for a few more seconds, but she was quickly losing heart. Her trident suddenly seemed twice as heavy in her arms; she felt like she was fighting at a third her normal speed. Her footwork was sloppy, without form or technique, and her swings grew increasingly haphazard and unguarded.
“It’s not the worst thing,” Nezha said. He batted a wild blow away from his head. “Aren’t you glad?”
She stiffened. “Why would I be glad?”
“I mean, I just thought . . .” He touched a hand to his temple. “Isn’t it at least nice to have your mind back to yourself?”
She slammed the hilt of the trident down into the ground. “You think I’d lost my mind?”
Nezha rapidly backtracked. “No, I mean, I thought—I saw how you were hurting. That looked like torture. I thought you might be a little relieved.”
“It’s not a relief to be useless,” she said.
She twirled the trident over her head, whipped it around to generate momentum. It wasn’t a staff—and she should know better than to wield it with staff techniques—but she was angry now, she wasn’t thinking, and her muscles settled into familiar but wrong patterns.
It showed. Nezha may as well have been sparring with a toddler. He sent the trident spinning out of her hands in seconds.
“I told you,” he said. “No flexibility.”
She snatched the trident up off the ground. “Still has longer reach than your sword.”
“So what happens if I get in close?” Nezha twisted his blade between the trident’s gaps and closed the distance between them. She tried to fend him off, but he was right—he was out of the trident’s reach.
He raised a dagger to her chin with his other hand. She kicked savagely at his shin. He buckled to the ground.
“Bitch,” he said.
“You deserved it.”
“Fuck you.” He rocked back and forth on the grass, clutching his leg. “Help me up.”
“Let’s take a break.” She dropped the trident and sat down on the grass beside him. Her lung capacity hadn’t returned. She was still tiring too quickly; she couldn’t last more than two hours sparring, much less a full day in the field.
Nezha hadn’t even broken a sweat. “You’re much better with a sword. Please tell me you know that.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“That thing is useless! It’s too heavy for you! But I’ve seen you with a sword, and—”
“I’ll get used to it.”
“I just think that you shouldn’t make life-or-death choices based on sentimentality.”
She glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He ripped a handful of grass from the ground. “Forget it.”
“No, say it.”
“Fine. You won’t trade because it’s his weapon, isn’t it?”
Rin’s stomach twisted. “That’s idiotic.”
“Oh, come on. You’re always talking about Altan like he was some great hero. But he wasn’t. I saw him at Khurdalain, and I saw the way he spoke to people—”
“And how did he speak to people?” she asked sharply.
“Like they were objects, and he owned them, and they didn’t matter to him apart from how they could serve.” His tone turned vicious. “Altan was a shitty person and a shittier commander, and he would have let me die, and you know that, and here you are, running around with his trident, babbling on about revenge for someone you should hate.”
The trident suddenly felt terribly heavy in Rin’s hands.
“That’s not fair.” She heard a faint buzzing in her ears. “He’s dead— You can’t— That’s not fair.”
“I know,” Nezha said softly. The anger had left him as quickly as it had come. He sounded exhausted. He sat, shoulders slouched, mindlessly shredding blades of grass with his fingers. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I know how much you cared about him.”
“I’m not talking about Altan,” she said. “Not with you. Not now. Not ever.”
“All right,” he said. He gave her a look that she didn’t understand, a look that might have been equal parts pity and disappointment, and that made her desperately uncomfortable. “All right.”
Three days later the council finally came to a joint decision. At least, Vaisra and Tsolin came up with a solution short of immediate military action, and then argued the others into submission.
“We’re going to starve them out,” Vaisra announced. “The south is the agricultural breadbasket of the Empire. If the northern provinces won’t secede, then we’ll simply stop feeding them.”
Takha balked. “You’re asking us to reduce our exports by at least a third.”
“So you’ll bleed income for a year or two,” said Vaisra. “And then your prices will jack up in the next year. The north is in no position to become agriculturally self-sufficient now. If you make this one-time sacrifice, that’s likely the end of tariffs, too. Beggars have no leverage.”
“What about the coastal routes?” Charouk asked.
Rin had to admit that was a fair point. The Western Murui and Golyn River weren’t the only rivers that crossed into the northern provinces. Those provinces could easily smuggle food up the coastline by sending merchants down in the guise of southerners to buy up food stores. They had more than enough silver.
“Moag will cover them,” said Vaisra.
Charouk looked amazed. “You’re trusting the Pirate Queen?”
“It’s in her best interest,” Vaisra said. “For every blockade runner’s ship she seizes, her fleet gets seventy percent of the profits. She’d be a fool to double-cross us.”
“The north has other grain supplies, though,” Gurubai pointed out. “Hare Province has arable land, for instance—”
“No, they don’t.” Jinzha looked smug. “Last year the Hare Province suffered a blight and ran out of seed grain. We sold them several boxes of high-yielding seed.”
“I remember,” said Tsolin. “If you were trying to curry favor, it didn’t work.”
Jinzha grinned nastily. “We weren’t. We sold them damaged seeds, which lulled them into consuming their emergency stores. If we cut off their external supply, a famine should hit in about six months.”
For once, the Warlords seemed impressed. Rin saw reluctant nods around the table.
Only Kitay looked unhappy.
“Six months?” he echoed. “I thought we were trying to move out in the next month.”
“They won’t have felt the blockade by then,” said Jinzha.
“It doesn’t matter! It’s only the threat of the blockade that matters, you don’t need them to actually starve—”
“Why not?” Jinzha asked.
Kitay looked horrified. “Because then you’d be punishing thousands of innocent people. And because that’s not what you told me when you asked me to do the figures—”
“It doesn’t matter what you were told,” Jinzha said. “Know your place.”
Kitay kept talking. “Why starve them slowly? Why wait at all? If we mount an offensive right now, we can end this war before winter sets in. Any later and we’ll be trapped up north when the rivers freeze.”
General Hu laughed. “The boy presumes to know how to fight a campaign better than we do.”
Kitay looked livid. “I actually read Sunzi, so yes.”
“You’re not the only Sinegard student at the table,” said General Hu.
“Sure, but I got in during an era when acceptance actually took brains, so your opinion doesn’t count.”
“Vaisra!” General Hu shouted. “Discipline this boy!”
“‘Discipline this boy,’” Kitay mimicked. “‘Shut up the only person who has a halfway viable strategy, because my ego can’t take the heat.’”
“Enough,” Vaisra said. “You’re out of line.”
“This plan is out of line,” Kitay retorted.
“You’re dismissed,” Vaisra said. “Stay out of sight until you’re sent for.”
For a brief, terrifying moment Rin thought Kitay might start mocking Vaisra, too, but he just threw his papers down onto the table, knocking over inkwells, and stalked toward the door.
“Keep throwing fits like that and Father won’t have you at his councils anymore,” Nezha said.
He and Rin had both followed Kitay out, which Rin thought was a rather dangerous move on Nezha’s part, but Kitay was too angry to be grateful for the gesture.
“Keep ignoring me and we won’t have a palace to hold councils in,” Kitay snapped. “A blockade? A fucking blockade?”
“It’s our best option for now,” Nezha said. “We don’t have the military capability to sail north alone, but we could just wait them out.”
“But that could take years!” Kitay shouted. “And what happens in the meantime? You just let people die?”
“Threats have to be credible to work,” Nezha said.
Kitay shot him a disdainful look. “You try dealing with a country with a famine crisis, then. You don’t unite a country by starving innocent people to death.”
“They’re not going to starve—”
“No? They’re going to eat wood bark? Leaves? Cow dung? I can think of a million strategies better than murder.”
“Try being diplomatic, then,” Nezha snapped. “You can’t disrespect the old guard.”
“Why not? The old guard has no clue what they’re doing!” Kitay shouted. “They got their positions because they’re good at factional maneuvering! They graduated from Sinegard, sure, but that was when the entire curriculum was just emergency basic training. They don’t have a thorough grounding in military science or technology, and they’ve never bothered to learn, because they know they’ll never lose their jobs!”
“I think you’re underestimating some rather qualified men,” Nezha said drily.
“No, your father is in a double bind,” Kitay said. “No, wait, I’ve got it, here’s what it is—the men he can trust aren’t competent, but the men who are competent, he must keep on a taut leash, because they might calculate to defect.”
“So what, he trusts you instead?”
“I’m the only one who knows what I’m doing.”
“And you basically only joined up yesterday, so can you not act so startled that my father trusts you less than men who have served him for decades?”
Kitay stormed off, muttering under his breath. Rin suspected they wouldn’t see him emerge from the library for days.
“Asshole,” Nezha grumbled once Kitay was out of earshot.
“Don’t look at me,” Rin said. “I’m on his side.”
She didn’t care so much about the blockade. If the northern provinces were holding out, then starvation served them right. But she couldn’t bear the idea that they were about to kick a hornet’s nest—because then their only strategy would be to wait, hide, and hope the hornets didn’t sting first.
She couldn’t stand the uncertainty. She wanted to be on the attack.
“Innocent people aren’t going to die,” Nezha insisted, though he sounded more like he was trying to convince himself. “They’ll surrender before it gets that bad. They’ll have to.”
“And if they don’t?” she asked. “Then we attack?”
“We attack, or they starve,” Nezha said. “Win-win.”
Arlong’s military operations turned inward. The army stopped preparing ships to sail out and focused on building up defense structures to make Arlong completely invulnerable to a Militia invasion.
A defensive war was starting to seem more and more likely. If the Republic didn’t launch their northern assault now, then they’d be stuck at home until the next spring. They were more than halfway into autumn, and Rin remembered how vicious the Sinegardian winters were. As the days became colder, it would get harder to boil water and prepare hot food. Disease and frostbite would spread quickly through the camps. The troops would be miserable.
But the south would remain warm, hospitable, and ripe for the picking. The longer they waited, the more likely it was the Militia would sail downriver toward Arlong.
Rin didn’t want to fight a defensive battle. Every great treatise on military strategy agreed that defensive battles were a nightmare. And Arlong, impenetrable as it was, would still take a heavy beating from the combined forces of the north. Surely Vaisra knew that, too; he was too competent to believe otherwise. But in meeting after meeting, he chastised Kitay for speaking up, appeased the Warlords, and did nothing close to inciting the alliance to action.
Rin was beginning to think that even independent action by Dragon Province would be better than nothing. But the orders did not come.
“Father’s hands are tied,” said Nezha, again and again.
Kitay remained holed up in the library, drawing up war plans that would never be used with increasing frustration.
“I knew joining up with you would be treason,” he raged at Nezha. “I didn’t think it would be suicide.”
“The Warlords will come around,” Nezha said.
“Fat chance. Charouk’s a lazy pig who wants to hide behind Republican swords, Takha doesn’t have the spine to do anything but hide behind Charouk, and Gurubai might be the smartest of the lot, but he’s not sticking his neck out if the other two won’t.”
There has to be something else, Rin thought. Something we don’t know about. There was no way Vaisra would just sit back and let winter come without taking the initiative. What was he waiting for?
For lack of better options, she put her blind faith in Vaisra. She sucked it up when her men asked her about the delay. She closed her ears to the rumors that Vaisra was considering a peace agreement with the Empress. She realized she couldn’t influence policy, so she poured her focus into the only things she could control.
She sparred more bouts with Nezha. She stopped wielding her trident like a staff. She became familiar with the generals and lieutenants of the Republican Army. She did her best to integrate the Cike into the Dragon Province’s military ecosystem, though both Baji and Ramsa rankled at the strict ban on alcohol. She learned the Republican Army’s command codes, communications channels, and amphibious attack formations. She prepared herself for war, whenever it came.
Until the day came when gongs sounded frantically across the harbor, and messengers ran up the docks, and all of Arlong was alight with the news that ships were sailing into the Dragon Province. Great white ships from the west.
Then Rin understood what the stalling had been about.
Vaisra hadn’t been pulling back from the northern expedition after all.
He’d been waiting for backup.