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One. Two. Three.
He continued to rub her back. “You just have to make it through the next five seconds. Then the next five. Then on and on.”
Four. Five.
And then another five. And those five, oddly enough, were just the littlest bit more bearable than the last.
“There you go,” Suni said after maybe a dozen counts to five. His voice was so low it was hardly a whisper. “There, look, you’ve done it.”
She breathed, and counted, and wondered how Suni knew exactly what to say.
She wondered if he had done this before with Altan.
“She’ll be all right,” Suni said.
Rin looked up to see who he was talking to, and saw Vaisra standing in the shadows.
It couldn’t have taken him long to respond to the soldiers’ calls. Had he been there the entire time, watching without speaking?
“I heard you came out to get some air,” he said.
She wiped vomit off her cheek with the back of her hand. Vaisra’s gaze flickered to her stained clothing and back to her face. She couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered.
“Will you?”
“I’ll take care of her,” Suni said.
A brief pause. Vaisra gave Suni a curt nod.
After another moment Suni helped her up and walked her back to her cabin. He kept one arm around her shoulders, warm, solid, comforting. The ship rocked against a particularly violent wave, and she staggered into his side.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry,” Suni said. “And don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
Five days later the Seagrim sailed over a submerged town. At first when Rin saw the tops of buildings emerging from the river she thought they were driftwood, or rocks. Then they got close enough that she could see the curving roofs of drowned pagodas, thatched houses lying under the surface. An entire village peeked up at her through river silt.
Then she saw the bodies—half-eaten, bloated and discolored, all with empty sockets because the glutinous eyes had already been nibbled away. They blocked up the river, decomposing at such a rate that the crew had to sweep away the maggots that threatened to climb on board.
Sailors lined up at the prow to shift bodies aside with long poles to make way for the ship. The corpses started piling up on the river’s sides. Every few hours sailors had to climb down and drag them into a pile before the Seagrim could move—a duty the crew drew lots for with dread.
“What happened here?” Rin asked. “Did the Murui run its banks?”
“No. Dam breach.” Nezha looked pale with fury. “Daji had the dam destroyed to flood the Murui river valley.”
That wasn’t Daji. Rin knew whose handiwork this was.
But did no one else know?
“Did it work?” she asked.
“Sure. It took out the Federation contingents in the north. Holed them up long enough for the northern Divisions to make mincemeat out of them. But then the floodwaters caught several hundred villages, which makes several thousand people who don’t have homes now.” Nezha made a fist. “How does a ruler do this? To her own people?”
“How do you know it was her?” Rin asked cautiously.
“Who else could it be? Something that big had to be an order from above. Right?”
“Of course,” she murmured. “Who else would it be?”
Rin found the twins sitting together at the stern of the ship. They were perched on the railing, staring down at the wreckage trailing behind them. When they saw Rin approaching, they both jumped down and turned around, regarding her warily, as if they knew exactly why she had come.
“So how does it feel?” Rin asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chaghan said.
“You did it, too,” she said gleefully. “It wasn’t just me.”
“Go back to sleep,” he said.
“Thousands of people!” she crowed. “Drowned like ants! Are you proud?”
Qara turned her head away, but Chaghan lifted his chin indignantly. “I did what Altan ordered.”
That made her screech with laughter. “Me too! I was just acting on orders! He said I had to get vengeance for the Speerlies, and so I did, so it’s not my fault, because Altan said—”
“Shut up,” Chaghan snapped. “Listen—Vaisra thinks that Daji ordered the opening of those dikes.”
She was still giggling. “So does Nezha.”
He looked alarmed. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing, obviously. I’m not stupid.”
“You can’t tell anyone the truth,” Qara cut in. “Nobody in the Dragon Republic can know.”
Of course Rin understood that. She knew how dangerous it would be to give the Dragon Army a reason to turn on the Cike. But in that moment all she could think of was how terribly funny it was that she wasn’t the only one with mass murder on her hands.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell. I’ll be the only monster. Just me.”
The twins looked stricken, but she couldn’t stop laughing. She wondered how it had felt, the moment before the wave hit. The civilians might have been making dinner, playing outside, putting their children to bed, telling stories, making love, before a crushing force of water swept over their homes, destroyed their villages, and snuffed out their lives.
This was what the balance of power looked like now. People like her waved a hand and millions were crushed within the confines of some elemental disaster, flung off the chessboard of the world like irrelevant pieces. People like her—shamans, all of them—were like children stomping around over entire cities as if they were mud castles, glass houses, fungible entities that could be targeted and demolished.
On the seventh morning after they’d left Ankhiluun, the pain receded.
She woke up without a fever. No headache. She took a hesitant step toward the door and was pleasantly surprised at how steady her feet felt on the floor, how the world didn’t whirl and shift around her. She opened the door, wandered out onto the upper deck, and was stunned by how good the river spray felt on her face.
Her senses felt sharper. Colors seemed brighter. She could smell things she hadn’t before. The world seemed to exist with a vibrancy that she hadn’t been aware of.
And then she realized that she had her mind to herself.
The Phoenix wasn’t gone. She felt the god lingering still at the forefront of her mind, whispering tales of destruction, trying to control her desires.
But this time she knew what she wanted.
And she wanted control.
She’d been victim to the god’s urges because she’d been keeping her own mind weak, dousing away the flame with a temporary and unsustainable solution. But now her head was clear, her mind was present—and when the Phoenix screamed, she could shut it down.
She requested to see Vaisra. He sent for her within minutes.
He was alone in his office when she arrived.
“You’re not afraid of me?” she asked.
“I trust you,” he said.
“You shouldn’t.”
“Then I trust you more than you trust yourself.” He was acting like an entirely different person. The harsh persona was gone. His voice sounded so gentle, so encouraging that she was suddenly reminded of Tutor Feyrik.
