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Nezha elbowed her. “Indulge him. Else he’ll never shut up.”
“It’s malaria,” Kitay said. He sounded at first like he was hiccupping, but then he rolled on his side, giggling so hard his entire frame shook. He was drunk, Rin realized; perhaps more drunk than she was, despite the risk.
Kitay must be feeling the way she did—happy, deliriously so, for once in the company of friends who weren’t in danger, and she suspected that he, too, wanted to suspend reality and break the rules, to ignore the fact that they were about to part forever and just share these last jugs of wine.
She didn’t want dawn to come. She would draw this moment out forever if she could.
“They’re not used to southern diseases,” Kitay continued. “The mosquitoes weakened them more than anything we did. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Marvelous,” Venka said drily.
Rin wasn’t paying attention. She scooted closer to the edge of the tower. She wanted to fly again, to feel that precipitous drop in her stomach, the sheer thrill of the dive.
She dangled one foot over the edge and relished the feeling of the wind buffeting her limbs. She leaned forward just the slightest bit. What if she jumped right now? Would she enjoy the fall?
“Get away from there.” Kitay’s voice cut through the fog in her mind. “Nezha, grab her—”
“On it.” Strong arms wrapped around her midriff and dragged her away from the edge. Nezha gripped her tightly, anticipating a struggle, but she just hummed a happy note and slouched back against his chest.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you are?” he grumbled.
“Hand me another jug,” she said.
Nezha hesitated, but Venka readily obliged.
Rin took a long draught, sighed, and lifted her fingertips to her temples. She felt as if a current were running through her limbs, like she had stuck her hand in a bolt of lightning. She rested her head back against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut.
The best part of being drunk was how nothing mattered.
She could dwell on thoughts that used to hurt too much to think about. She could conjure memories—Altan burning on the pier, the corpses in Golyn Niis, Qara’s body in Chaghan’s arms—all without cringing, without the attendant torment. She could reminisce with a quiet detachment, because nothing mattered and nothing hurt.
“Sixteen months.” Kitay had started counting aloud on his fingers. “That’s almost a year and a half we’ve been at war now, if you start from the invasion.”
“That’s not that long,” said Venka. “The First Poppy War took three years. The Second Poppy War took five. The succession battles after the Red Emperor could take as long as seven.”
“How do you fight a war for seven years?” Rin asked. “Wouldn’t you get bored of fighting?”
“Soldiers get bored,” Kitay said. “Aristocrats don’t. To them, it was all a big game. I guess that’s the problem.”
“Here’s a thought experiment.” Venka waved her hands in a small arc like a rainbow. “Imagine some alternate world where this war hadn’t happened. The Federation never invaded. No, scratch that, the Federation doesn’t even exist. Where are you?”
“Any particular point in time?” Kitay asked.
Venka shook her head. “No, I meant, what are you doing with your life? What do you wish you were doing?”
“I know what Kitay’s doing.” Nezha tilted his head back, shook the last drops from his jug into his mouth, then looked disappointed when it refused to yield any more. Venka passed him another jug. Nezha attempted to pop the cork, failed, muttered a curse under his breath, and smashed the neck against the wall.
“Careful,” said Rin. “That’s premium stuff.”
Nezha lifted the broken edges to his lips and smiled.
“Go on,” Kitay said. “Where am I?”
“You’re at Yuelu Academy,” Nezha said. “You’re conducting groundbreaking research on—on some irrelevant shit like the movement of planetary bodies, or the most effective accounting methods across the Twelve Provinces.”
“Don’t mock accounting,” Kitay said. “It’s important.”
“Only to you,” Venka said.
“Regimes have fallen because rulers didn’t balance their accounts.”
“Whatever.” Venka rolled her eyes. “What about the rest of you?”
“I’m good at war,” Rin said. “I’d still be doing wars.”
“Against who?” Venka asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Anyone.”
“There might not be any wars left to fight now,” Nezha said.
“There’s always war,” Kitay said.
“The only thing permanent about this Empire is war,” Rin said. The words were so familiar she said them without thinking, and it took her a long moment to realize she was reciting an aphorism from a history textbook she’d studied for the Keju. That was incredible—even now, the vestiges of that exam were still burned into her mind.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that the only permanent thing about her might be war. She couldn’t imagine where she’d be if she weren’t a soldier anymore. The past four years had been the first time in her life that she’d felt like she was worth something. In Tikany, she’d been an invisible shopgirl, far beneath everyone’s notice. Her life and death had been utterly insignificant. If she’d been run over by a rickshaw on the street, no one would have bothered to stop.
But now? Now civilians obeyed her command, Warlords sought her audience, and soldiers feared her. Now she spoke to the greatest military minds in the country as if they were equals—or at least as if she belonged in the room. Now she was drinking sorghum wine on the highest tower of the palace of Arlong with the son of the Dragon Warlord.
No one would have paid so much attention to her if she weren’t so very good at killing people.
A twinge of discomfort wormed through her gut. Once she left Vaisra’s employ, what on earth was she supposed to do?
“We could all just switch to civilian posts now,” Kitay said. “Let’s all be ministers and magistrates.”
“You have to get elected first,” Nezha said. “Government by the people, and all that. People have to like you.”
“Rin’s out of a job, then,” Venka said.
“She can be a custodian,” said Nezha.
“Did you want someone to rearrange your face?” Rin asked. “Because I’ll do it for free.”
“Rin’s never going to be out of a job,” Kitay said hastily. “We’ll always need armies. There’ll always be another enemy to fight.”
“Like who?” Rin asked.
Kitay counted them off on his fingers. “Rogue Federation units. The fractured provinces. The Hinterlanders. Don’t look at me like that, Rin; you heard Bekter, too. The Ketreyids want war.”
“The Ketreyids want to go to war with the other clans,” Venka said.
“And what happens when that spills over? We’ll be fighting another border war within the decade, I promise.”
“That’s just mop-up duty,” Nezha said dismissively. “We’ll get rid of them.”
