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And as if she could sense her fear, the Speerly Woman became more and more vivid each time Rin meditated. Rin could see details now she hadn’t seen before; cracks in her skin like she had been smashed apart and then put back together, burn scars where piece met piece.
“Don’t give in,” the Woman said. “You’ve been so brave . . . but it takes more bravery to resist the power. That boy couldn’t do it, and you are so close to giving in . . . but that’s what it wants, that’s precisely what it’s planned.”
“Gods don’t want anything,” said Rin. “They’re just forces. Powers to be tapped. How can it be wrong to use what exists in nature?”
“Not this god,” said the Woman. “The nature of this god is to destroy. The nature of this god is to be greedy, to never be satisfied with what he has consumed. Be careful . . .”
Light streamed through the cracks in the Speerly Woman, as if she were being illuminated from within. Her face twisted in pain and then she disappeared, shattering the space in the void.
As downtown warfare took a greater toll on civilian life, the city was permeated with an atmosphere of intense suspicion. Two weeks after the saltpeter explosion, six Nikara farmers were sentenced to death by Jun’s men for spying on behalf of the Federation. Likely they had been promised safe passage out of the besieged city if they provided valuable snippets of information. That, or they simply needed to feed themselves. Either way, thousands of fishermen, women, and children watched with a mixture of glee and disgust as Jun took their heads off in public, spiked them on poles, and placed them on display along the tall outer walls.
The vigilante justice the civilians inflicted on one another was greater—and more vicious—than anything the Militia could enforce. When rumors abounded that the Federation was planning to poison the central city water supply, armed bands of men with clubs stalked the streets, stopping and searching individuals at random. Anyone with a powdery substance was beaten severely. In the end, division soldiers had to intervene to save a group of merchants delivering herbs to the hospital from being torn apart by a crowd.
As the weeks dragged on, Altan’s shoulders became stooped, his face lined and haggard. His eyes were now permanently ringed with shadows. He hardly slept; he stopped working far later than any of them and was up earlier. He took his rest in short, fretful shifts, if at all.
He spent many hours frantically pacing the walled fortifications himself, watching the horizon for any sign of Federation movement, as if willing the next assault to happen so that he could fight the entire Federation army by himself.
Once when Rin walked into his office to submit an intelligence report, she found him asleep on his desk. His cheek had ink on it; it was pressed against war plans that he had been deliberating over for hours. His shoulders were slumped on the wooden surface. In sleep, the tense lines that normally arrested his face were gone, bringing his age down at least five years.
She always forgot how young he was.
He looked so vulnerable.
He smelled like smoke.
She couldn’t help herself. She stretched out a hand and touched him tentatively on the shoulder.
He sat up immediately. One hand flew instinctively to a dagger at his waist, the other shot out in front of him, igniting instantaneously. Rin took a quick step backward.
Altan took several panicked breaths before he saw Rin.
“It’s just me,” she said.
His chest rose and fell, and then his breathing slowed. She thought she had seen fear in his eyes, but then he swallowed and an impassive mask slid over his face.
His pupils were oddly constricted.
“I don’t know,” he said after a long moment. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Nobody does, she wanted to say, but she was interrupted by the loud ringing of a signal gong.
Someone was at the gates.
Qara was already standing sentry over the west wall when they climbed the stairs.
“They’re here,” she said simply before Altan could ask.
Rin leaned over the wall to see an army riding slowly up to the gates. It had to be a force of no less than two thousand. She was anxious at first, until she saw that they were clad in Nikara armor. At the front of the column flew a Nikara banner, the symbol of the Red Emperor above the emblems of the Twelve Warlords.
Reinforcements.
Rin refused to allow herself to hope. It couldn’t be.
“Possibly it’s a trap,” said Altan.
But Rin was looking past the flag at a face in the ranks—a boy, a beautiful boy with the palest skin and lovely almond eyes, walking on his own two legs as if his spine had never been severed. As if he had never been impaled on a general’s halberd.
As if he could sense her gaze, Nezha looked up.
Their eyes met under the moonlight. Rin’s heart leaped.
The Dragon Warlord had responded to the call. The Seventh Division was here.
“That’s not a trap,” she said.
Chapter 17
“You’re really all better?”
“Near enough,” said Nezha. “They sent me down with the next shipment of soldiers as soon as I could walk.”
The Seventh Division had brought with them three thousand fresh troops and wagons of badly needed supplies from farther inland—bandages, medicine, sacks of rice and spices. It was the best thing to happen at Khurdalain in weeks.
“Three months,” she marveled. “And Kitay said you were never going to walk again.”
“He exaggerated,” he said. “I got lucky. The blade went right in between my stomach and my kidney. Didn’t puncture anything on its way out. Hurt like hell, but it healed cleanly. Scar’s ugly, though. Do you want to see?”
“Keep your shirt on,” she said hastily. “Still, three months? That’s amazing.”
Nezha looked away, gazing over the quiet stretch of city under the wall that they’d been assigned to patrol. He hesitated, as if trying to decide whether or not to say something, but then abruptly changed the subject. “So. Screaming at rocks. Is that, like, normal behavior here?”
“That’s just Suni.” Rin broke a wheat bun in half and offered a piece to Nezha. They had increased bread rations to twice a week, and it was worth savoring. “Ignore him.”
He took it, chewed, and made a face. Even in wartime, Nezha had a way of acting as if he’d expected better luxuries. “It’s a little hard to ignore when he’s yelling right outside your tent.”
“I’ll ask Suni to avoid your particular tent.”
“Would you?”
Snideness aside, Rin was deeply grateful for Nezha’s presence. As much as they had hated each other at the Academy, Rin found comfort in having someone else from her class here on the other side of the country, so far away from Sinegard. It was good to have someone who could sympathize, in some way, with what she was going through.
It helped that Nezha had stopped acting like he had a stick up his ass. War brought out the worst in some people; with Nezha, though, it had transformed him, stripping away his snobby pretensions. It seemed petty now to maintain her old grudge. It was difficult to dislike someone who had saved her life.
And she didn’t want to admit it, but Nezha was a welcome relief from Altan, who had taken lately to hurling objects across the room at the slightest hint of disobedience. Rin found herself wondering why they hadn’t become friends sooner.
