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Not a fairy tale, she thought. She had burned so hot that she had melted down the sand around her. That was no story. It was a nightmare.
“How long have I been out?”
“About three days. We put you up in the captain’s cabin.”
Three days? How long had she been without food? Her legs nearly gave way under her then, and she hastily shifted to lean against the rail. Her head felt very, very light. She turned to face the sea. The spray of ocean mist felt wonderful against her face. She lost herself for a minute, basked in lingering rays of the sun, until she remembered herself.
In a small voice she asked, “What did I do?”
Ramsa’s smile slid off his face.
He looked uneasy, trying to decide upon words, but then another familiar voice spoke from behind her.
“We were rather hoping you’d tell us.”
And then there was Kitay.
Lovely, wonderful Kitay. Amazingly unharmed Kitay.
There was a hard glint to his eyes that she had never seen in him before. He looked as if he had aged five years. He looked like his father. He was like a sword that had been sharpened, metal that had been tempered.
“You’re okay,” she whispered.
“I made them take me along after you left with Altan,” Kitay said with a wry smile. “They took some convincing.”
“Good thing he did, too,” said Ramsa. “It was his idea to search the island.”
“And I was right,” said Kitay. “I’ve never been so glad to be right.” He rushed forward and hugged Rin tightly. “You didn’t give up on me at Golyn Niis. I couldn’t give up on you.”
All Rin wanted to do was stand forever in that embrace. She wanted to forget everything, to forget the war, to forget her gods. It was enough to simply be, to know that her friends were alive and that the entire world was not so dark after all.
But she could not remain inside this happy delusion.
More powerful than her desire to forget was her desire to know. What had the Phoenix done? What, precisely, had she accomplished in the temple?
“I need to know what I did,” she said. “Right now.”
Ramsa looked uncomfortable. There was something he wasn’t telling her. “Why don’t you come back belowdecks?” he suggested, shooting Kitay a glance. “Everyone else is in the mess. It’s probably best if we talk about this together.”
Rin began to follow him, but Kitay reached for her wrist. He leveled a grim look at Ramsa.
“Actually,” said Kitay, “I’d rather talk to her alone.”
Ramsa shot Rin a confused glance, but she hesitantly nodded her assent.
“Sure.” Ramsa backed away. “We’ll be belowdecks when you’re ready.”
Kitay remained silent until Ramsa had walked out of earshot. Rin watched his expression but couldn’t tell what he was thinking. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he look happier to see her? She thought she might go mad from anxiety if he didn’t say something.
“So it’s true,” he said finally. “You can really call gods.”
His eyes hadn’t left her face. She wished she had a mirror, so that she could see her own crimson eyes.
“What is it? What are you not telling me?”
“Do you really have no idea?” Kitay whispered.
She shrank from him, suddenly fearful. She had some idea. She had more than an idea. But she needed confirmation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Come with me,” Kitay said. She followed him the length of the deck until they stood on the other side of the ship.
Then he pointed out to the horizon.
“There.”
Far out over the water sprouted the most unnatural-looking cloud Rin had ever seen. It was a massive, dense plume of ash, spreading over the earth like a flood. It looked like a thundercloud, but it was erupting upward from a dark landmass, not concentrated in the sky. Great rolls of gray and black smoke billowed out, like a slow-growing mushroom. Illuminated from behind by red rays of the setting sun, it looked like it was bleeding bright rivulets of blood into the ocean.
It looked like something alive, like a vengeful smoke giant arisen from the depths of the ocean. It was somehow beautiful, the way that the Empress was beautiful: lovely and terrible all at once. Rin could not tear her eyes away.
“What is that? What happened?”
“I didn’t see it happen,” said Kitay. “I only felt it. Even miles away from the shore, I felt it. A great trembling under my feet. A sudden jolt, and then everything was still. When we went outside, the sky was pitch-black. The ash blotted out the sun for days. This is the first sunset I’ve seen since we found you.”
Rin’s insides curdled. That small, dark landmass, there in the distance . . . that was Mugen?
“What is it?” she asked in a small voice. “The cloud?”
“Pyroclastic flows. Ash clouds. Do you remember the old fire mountain eruptions we studied in Yim’s class?” Kitay asked.
She nodded.
“That’s what happened. The landmass under the island was stable for millennia, and then it erupted without warning. I’ve spent days trying to puzzle out how it happened, Rin. Trying to imagine how it must have felt for the people on the island. I’ll bet most of the population was incinerated in their homes. The survivors wouldn’t have lasted much longer. The whole island is trapped in a firestorm of poisonous vapors and molten debris,” said Kitay. His voice was oddly flat. “We couldn’t get nearer if we tried. We would choke. The ship would burn from the heat a mile off.”
“So Mugen is gone?” Rin breathed. “They’re all dead?”
“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.
