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“So we’d only be partially occupied.” Rin scoffed. “That’s what you call statecraft?”
“Occupied? Not for long. Sometimes the best offensive is false acquiescence. I had a plan. I would become close to Ryohai. I would gain his trust. I would lure him into a false sense of complacency. And then I would kill him. But in the meantime, while their forces were impenetrable, I would play along. I’d do what it took to keep this nation alive.”
“Kept alive only to die at Mugenese hands.”
Daji’s voice hardened. “Don’t be so naive. What do you do when you know that war is inevitable? Who do you save?”
“What did you think we were going to do?” Rin demanded. “Did you think we would just lie down and let them raze our lands?”
“Better to rule over a fragmented empire than none at all.”
“You sentenced millions of us to death.”
“I was trying to save you. Without me the violence would have been ten times as devastating—”
“Without you, we would at least have had a choice!”
“That would have been no choice. Do you think the Nikara are so altruistic? What if you asked a village to give up their homes so that thousands of others might live? Do you think they would do it? The Nikara are selfish. This entire country is selfish. People are selfish. The provinces have always been so fucking parochial, unable to see past their own narrow interests to pursue any kind of joint action. You heard those idiots in there. I let you watch for a reason. I can’t work with those Warlords. Those fools don’t listen.”
At the end Daji’s voice trembled—only just barely, and only for a second, but Rin heard it.
And for just that moment she saw through that facade of cool, confident beauty, and she saw Su Daji for what she might truly have been: not an invincible Empress, not a treacherous monster, but rather a woman who had been saddled with a country that she didn’t know how to run.
She’s weak, Rin realized. She wishes she could control the Warlords, but she can’t.
Because if Daji could have persuaded the Warlords to follow her wishes, she would have done so. She would have done away with the Warlord system and replaced provincial leadership with branches of the Imperial government. But she had left the Warlords in place because even she was not strong enough to supplant them. She was one woman. She couldn’t take on their combined armies. She was just barely clinging to power through the last vestiges of the legacy of the Second Poppy War.
But now that the Federation was gone, now that the Warlords no longer had reason to fear, it was very likely the provinces would realize they had no need for Daji.
Daji didn’t sound like she was spinning lies. If anything, Rin thought it more likely that she was telling the truth.
But if so—then what? That didn’t change things.
Daji had sold the Cike to the Federation. Daji was the reason why Altan was dead. Those were the only two things that mattered.
“This Empire is falling apart,” Daji said urgently. “It’s becoming weak, you’ve seen that. But what if we bent the Warlords to our will? Just imagine what you could do under my command.” She cupped Rin’s cheek in her hand, drew their faces close together. “There’s so much you have to learn, and I can teach you.”
Rin would have bitten Daji’s fingers off if she could move her head. “There’s nothing you can teach me.”
“Don’t be foolish. You need me. You’ve been feeling the pull, haven’t you? It’s consuming you. Your mind is not your own.”
Rin flinched. “I don’t—you’re not—”
“You’re scared to close your eyes,” Daji murmured. “You crave the opium, because that’s the only thing that makes your mind your own again. You’re fighting your god at every moment. Every instant you’re not incinerating everything around you, you’re dying. But I can help you.” Daji’s voice was so soft, so tender, so gentle and reassuring that Rin wanted terribly to believe her. “I can give you your mind back.”
“I have control of my mind,” Rin said hoarsely.
“Liar. Who would have taught you? Altan? He was barely sane himself. You think I don’t know what that’s like? The first time we called the gods, I wanted to die. We all did. We thought we were going mad. We wanted to fling our bodies off Mount Tianshan to end it.”
Rin couldn’t stop herself from asking, “So what did you do?”
Daji touched an icy finger to Rin’s lips. “Loyalty first. Then answers.”
She snapped her fingers.
Suddenly Rin could move again; could breathe easily again. She hugged trembling arms around her torso.
“You don’t have anyone else,” Daji said. “You’re the last Speerly. Altan is gone. Vaisra has no clue what you’re suffering. Only I know how to help you.”
Rin hesitated, considering.
She knew she could never trust Daji.
And yet.
Was it better to serve at the hand of a tyrant, to consolidate the Empire into the true dictatorship that it had always aspired to be? Or should she overthrow the Empire and take her chances on democracy?
No—that was a political question, and Rin had no interest in its answer.
She was interested only in her own survival. Altan had trusted the Empress. Altan was dead. She wouldn’t make that same mistake.
She kicked out with her left foot. The rake slammed hard into her hand—the grass offered less resistance than she’d thought—and she sprang forward, spinning the rake in a forward loop.
But attacking Daji was like attacking air. The Empress dodged effortlessly, skirting so fast through the courtyard that Rin could barely track her movements.
“You think this is wise?” Daji didn’t sound the least bit breathless. “You’re a little girl armed with a stick.”
You’re a little girl armed with fire, said the Phoenix.
Finally.
Rin held the rake still so she could concentrate on pulling the flame out from inside her, gathering the searing heat in her palms just as something silver flashed past her face and pinged off the brick wall.
Needles. Daji hurled them at her fistfuls at a time, pulling them out from her sleeves in seemingly endless quantities. The fire dissipated. Rin swung the rake in a desperate circle in front of her, knocking the needles out of the air as fast as they came.
“You’re slow. You’re clumsy.” Now Daji was on the attack, forcing Rin backward in a steady retreat. “You fight like you’ve never seen battle.”
Rin struggled to keep her hands on the heavy rake. She couldn’t concentrate enough to call the fire; she was too focused on warding off the needles. Panic clouded her senses. At this rate she’d exhaust herself on the defensive.
“Does it ever bother you?” whispered Daji. “That you are only a pale imitation of Altan?”
Rin’s back slammed into the brick wall. She had nowhere left to run.
“Look at me.” Daji’s voice reverberated through the air, echoed over and over again in Rin’s mind.
Rin squeezed her eyes shut. She had to call the fire now, she’d never get this chance again—but her mind was leaving her. The world was not quite going dark, but shifting. Everything suddenly seemed too bright, everything was the wrong color and the wrong shape and she couldn’t tell the grass from the sky, or her hands from her own feet . . .
