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Something bumped into Rin’s knee. She looked down and saw a small child—tiny, half Kesegi’s age. He wasn’t wearing any pants. He groped blindly at her shin, bawling loudly. He must have lost his parents in the confusion. She reached down and picked him up, the same way she used to hold Kesegi when he cried.
As she searched through the mob for anyone who looked like they were missing a child, she saw three great spouts of flame appear in the air, in the shape of three small dragons flying upward at the sky. It had to be Altan’s signal.
Through the noise Rin heard his hoarse yell, “Cike, to me!”
She placed the child in the arms the first civilian she saw and fought her way through the masses to where Altan stood. Jun was there, too, surrounded by about ten of his men. Nezha stood among them. He didn’t meet her eyes.
Altan looked more openly furious than she had ever seen him. “I warned you not to evacuate without giving notice.”
“This isn’t me,” said Jun. “They’re running from something.”
“From what?”
“Damned if I know,” Jun snapped.
Altan heaved a great sigh of impatience, reached into the horde of bodies, and pulled someone out at random. It was a young woman, a little older than Rin, wearing nothing but a nightgown. She screeched loudly in protest, then clamped her jaw shut when she saw their Militia uniforms.
“What’s going on?” Altan demanded. “What are you all running from?”
“A chimei,” she said, out of breath and terrified. “There’s a chimei downtown, near the town square . . .”
A chimei? The name was vaguely familiar. Rin thought back to where she had last seen it—somewhere in the library, perhaps, in one of the absurd tomes Jiang had made her read when conducting a thorough investigation on every piece of arcane knowledge known to mankind. She thought it might be a beast, some mythological creature with bizarre abilities.
“Really,” Jun said skeptically. “How do you know it’s a chimei?”
The girl looked him straight in the eyes. “Because it’s tearing the faces off corpses,” she said in a wavering voice. “I saw the bodies, I saw . . .” She broke off.
“What does it look like?” Altan asked.
The woman shivered. “I didn’t get a close look, but I think . . . it looked like a great four-legged beast. Large as a horse, arms like a monkey’s.”
“A beast,” Altan repeated. “Anything else?”
“Its fur was black, and its eyes . . .” She swallowed.
“Its eyes were what?” Jun pressed.
The woman flinched. “Like his,” she said, and pointed to Altan. “Red like blood. Bright as flame.”
Altan released the young woman back into the crowd, and she immediately disappeared into the fleeing mass.
The two commanders faced each other.
“We need to send someone in,” Altan said. “Someone has to kill that beast.”
“Yes,” Jun agreed immediately. “My people are tied up with crowd control, but I can gather a squadron.”
“We don’t need a squadron. One of my people should be fine. We can’t dispatch everyone. Mugen could use this chance to attack our base. This could be a diversion.”
“I’ll go,” Rin volunteered immediately.
Altan frowned at her. “You know how to handle a chimei?”
She didn’t know. She’d only just remembered what a chimei was—and that was only from Academy readings that she barely remembered. But she was sure that was more than anyone else in the divisions or the Cike knew, because no one else had been forced to read arcane bestiaries at Sinegard. And she wasn’t about to admit incompetence to Altan in front of Jun. She could handle this task. She had to.
“As well as anyone else does, sir. I’ve read the bestiaries.”
Altan considered for a short moment, then nodded curtly. “Go against the grain of the crowd. Keep to the alleys.”
“I’ll go, too,” Nezha volunteered.
“That’s not necessary,” Altan said immediately.
But Jun said, “She should take a Militia man. Just in case.”
Altan glared at Jun, and she realized what this was about. Jun wanted someone to accompany her, just in case she saw something that Altan didn’t report to Jun.
Rin couldn’t believe that division politics were at play even now.
Altan looked like he wanted to argue. But there was no time. He shoved past Nezha toward the crowd and seized a torch from a passing civilian.
“Hey! I need that!”
“Shut up,” Altan said, and pushed the civilian away. He handed the torch to Rin and pulled her into a side alley where she could avoid the traffic. “Go.”
Rin and Nezha couldn’t reach downtown by fighting the stampede of bodies. But the buildings in their district had low, flat roofs that were easy to climb onto. Rin and Nezha ran across them, their torches bobbing in the light. When they reached the end of the block, they dropped down into an alley and crossed another block in silence.
Finally Nezha asked, “What’s a chimei?”
“You heard the woman,” Rin said curtly. “Great beast. Red eyes.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Probably shouldn’t have come along, then.” She turned a corner.
“I read the bestiaries, too,” Nezha said after he had caught up to her. “Nothing about a chimei.”
“You didn’t read the old texts. Archive basement,” she said. “Red Emperor’s era. It only gets a few mentions, but it’s there. Sometimes it’s depicted as a child with red eyes. Sometimes as a black shadow. It tears the faces off its victims but leaves the rest of the corpse intact.”
“Creepy,” Nezha said. “What’s its deal with faces?”
“I’m not sure,” Rin admitted. She searched her memory for anything else she could remember about chimeis. “The bestiaries didn’t say. I think it collects them. The books claim that the chimei can imitate just about anyone—people you care about, people you could never hurt.”
“Even people it hasn’t killed?”
“Probably,” she guessed. “It’s been collecting faces for thousands of years. With that many facial features, you could approximate anyone.”
“So what? How does that make it dangerous?”
She shot him a glance over her shoulder. “You’d be fine stabbing something with your mother’s face?”
“I’d know it wasn’t real.”
“You’d know in the back of your mind it wasn’t real. But could you do it in the moment? Look in your mother’s eyes, listen to her begging, and put your knife to her throat?”
“If I knew there was no way it could be my mother,” Nezha said. “The chimei sounds scary only if it catches you by surprise. But not if you know.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” said Rin. “This thing didn’t just frighten one or two people. It scared off half the city. What’s more, the bestiaries don’t tell us how to kill it. There isn’t a defeat of a chimei on record in history. We’re fighting this one blind.”
