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“And you never suspected what you were?”
She shook her head. “Not until I . . . I mean, when I . . .”
She choked suddenly. The memories she had been suppressing flooded up in front of her: the shrieking Woman, the cackling Phoenix, the terrible heat ripping through her body, the way the general’s armor bent and liquefied under the heat of the fire . . .
She lifted her hands to her face and found that they were trembling.
She hadn’t been able to control it. She hadn’t been able to turn it off. The flames had just kept pouring out of her without end; she might have burned Nezha, she might have burned Kitay, she might have turned all of Sinegard to ashes if the Phoenix hadn’t heeded her prayer. And even when the flames did stop, the fire coursing inside her hadn’t, not until the Empress kissed her forehead and made them die away.
I’m going crazy, she thought. I have become everything that Jiang warned me against.
“Hey. Hey.”
Cool fingers wrapped around her wrists. Gently, Altan pulled her hands away from her face.
She looked up and met his eyes. They were a shade of crimson brighter than poppy petals.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I know. I know what it’s like. I’m going to help you.”
“The Cike aren’t so bad once you get to know them,” he said as he led her out of the basement. “I mean, we kill people on orders, but on the whole we’re quite nice.”
“Are you all shamans?” she asked. She felt dizzy.
Altan shook his head. “Not all. We’ve got two who don’t mess with the gods—a munitions expert and a physician. But the rest are. Tyr had the most training out of all of us before he came to the Cike—he grew up with a sect of monks that worshipped a goddess of darkness. The others were like you: dripping in power and shamanic potential, but confused. We take them to the Night Castle, train them, and set them loose on the Empress’s enemies. Everybody wins.”
Rin tried to find this reassuring. “Where do they come from?”
“All over. You’d be surprised how many places the old religions are still alive,” said Altan. “Lots of hidden cults from across the provinces. Some contribute an initiate to the Cike every year in exchange for the Empress leaving them alone. It’s not easy to find shamans in this country, not in this age, but the Empress procures them wherever she can. A lot of them come from the prison at Baghra—the Cike is their second chance.”
“But you’re not really Militia.”
“No. We’re assassins. In wartime, though, we function as the Thirteenth Division.”
Rin wondered how many people Altan had killed. Whom he had killed. “What do you do in peacetime?”
“Peacetime?” He gave her a wry look. “There’s no peacetime for the Cike. There’s never a shortage of people the Empress wants dead.”
Altan instructed her to pack her things and meet him at the gate. They were scheduled to march out that afternoon with the squadron of Officer Yenjen of the Fifth Division to the war front, where the rest of the Cike had gone a week prior.
All of Rin’s belongings had been confiscated after the battle. She barely had time to pick up a new set of weapons from the armory before making her way across the city. The Fifth Division soldiers bore light traveling packs and two sets of weapons each. Rin had only a sword with a slightly dull blade and its accompanying sheath. She looked and felt woefully unprepared. She did not even have a second set of clothing. She suspected she would begin to smell very bad very soon.
“Where are we headed?” she asked as they began descending the mountain path.
“Khurdalain,” Altan said. “Tiger Province. It’ll be two weeks’ march south until we get to the Western Murui River, and then we’ll catch a ride down to the port.”
Despite everything, Rin felt a thrill of excitement. Khurdalain was a coastal port city by the eastern Nariin Sea, a thriving center of international trade. It was the only city in the Empire that regularly dealt with foreigners; the Hesperians and Bolonians had established embassies there centuries ago. Even Federation merchants had once occupied the docks, until Khurdalain became a central theater of the Poppy Wars.
Khurdalain was a city that had seen two decades of warfare and survived. And now the Empress had established a front in Khurdalain once again to draw the Federation invaders into eastern and central Nikan.
Altan relayed the Empress’s defense strategy to Rin as they marched.
Khurdalain was an ideal location to establish the initial front. The Federation armored columns would have enjoyed a crushing advantage in the wide-open plains of northern Nikan, but Khurdalain abounded in rivers and creeks, which favored defensive operations.
Routing the Federation into Khurdalain would force them onto their weakest ground. The attack on Sinegard had been a bold attempt to separate the northern provinces from the southern. If the Federation generals could choose, they would almost certainly have cut directly into the Nikara heartland by marching directly south. But if Khurdalain was well defended, the Federation would be forced to change the north-to-south direction of their offensive to east-to-west. And Nikan would have room in the southwest to retreat and regroup should Khurdalain fall.
Ideally, the Militia would have attempted a pincer maneuver to squeeze the Federation from both sides, cutting them off from both their escape routes and supply lines. But the Militia was nowhere near competent or large enough for such an attempt. The Twelve Warlords had barely coordinated in time to rally to Sinegard’s defense; now each was too preoccupied defending his own province independently to genuinely attempt joint military action.
“Why can’t they just unite like they did during the Second War?” Rin asked.
“Because the Dragon Emperor is dead,” said Altan. “He can’t rally the Warlords to him this time, and the Empress can’t command the same allegiance that he did. Oh, the Warlords will kowtow to Sinegard and swear vows of loyalty to the Empress’s face, but when it comes to it, they’ll put their own provinces first.”
Holding Khurdalain would not be easy. The recent offensive at Sinegard had proven the Federation had clear military superiority in terms of mobility and weaponry. And Mugen held the advantage on the northern coastline; their troops were easily reinforced over the narrow sea; fresh troops and supplies were just a ship’s journey away.
Khurdalain had little advantage in the way of defense structures. It was an open port city, designed as an enclave for foreigners prior to the Poppy Wars. Nikan’s best defense structures had been built along the lower river delta of the Western Murui, far south of Khurdalain. Compared to the heavily garrisoned wartime capital at Golyn Niis, Khurdalain was a sitting duck, arms flung open to welcome invaders.
But Khurdalain had to be defended. If Mugen advanced down the heartland and managed to take Golyn Niis, they could then easily turn east, chasing whatever remnants of the Militia were left onto the coast. And if they were trapped by the sea, the pitifully small Nikara fleet could not save them. So Khurdalain was the vital crux on which the fate of the rest of the country lay.
“We’re the final front,” said Altan. “If we fail, this country’s lost.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Excited?”
