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“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
Chaghan raised his head and took a deep, shuddering breath. His eyes were ringed with red. “She was—I’ve never . . . I never imagined anyone could be so . . .”
“What?”
He shook his head.
Qara answered for him. “Stable.” She whispered the word like it was a horrifying idea. “She shouldn’t be so stable.”
“What is she?” Rin asked. “What goddess is that?”
“She’s old power,” Chaghan said. “She’s something that’s been alive longer than the world itself. I thought she’d be weakened, now that the other two are gone, but she’s . . . if that’s the Vipress at her weakest . . .” He slammed a palm against the deck. “We were fools to try.”
“She’s not invincible,” Rin said. “You beat her.”
“No, I surprised her. And then for only an instant. I don’t think things like that can be beat. We got lucky.”
“Any longer and she would have had your minds,” Qara said. “You’d be trapped forever in those illusions.”
She’d turned just as pale as her brother. Rin wondered how much Qara had seen. Qara hadn’t even been there, but Rin knew the twins were bonded by some odd Hinterlander magic. When Chaghan bled, Qara hurt. If Chaghan was shaken by Daji, then Qara must have felt it back on the Seagrim, a psychic tremble that threatened to poison her soul.
“So we’ll find some other way,” Rin said. “She’s still a mortal body, she’s still—”
“She will squeeze your soul in her fist and turn you into a babbling idiot,” Chaghan said. “I’m not trying to dissuade you. I know you’ll fight her to the end. But I hope you realize you’re going to go mad trying.”
Then so be it. Rin wrapped her arms around her knees. “Did you see? In there, when she showed me?”
Chaghan gave her a pitying look. “I couldn’t help it.”
Qara looked away. She must have seen, too.
For some reason, in that moment Rin felt like it was the most important thing in the world for her to explain herself to the twins. She felt guilty, dirty, like she had been caught in a terrible lie. “It wasn’t like that. With him. With Altan, I mean—”
“I know,” Chaghan said.
She wiped at her eyes. “It was never like that. I mean—I think I wanted—but he never—”
“We know,” Qara said. “Trust us, we know.”
Rin was stunned when Chaghan reached out and put his arm around her shoulder. She would have cried, but she felt too raw inside, like she had been hollowed out with a carving knife.
Chaghan’s arm rested at an odd angle over her back; his bony elbow joint dug painfully into her bone. After a while she shifted her right shoulder, and he withdrew his arm.
Hours passed before Nezha reemerged onto the deck.
Rin searched his face for clues. He looked wan but not grief-stricken, exhausted but not panicked, which meant . . .
She hastened to her feet. “Your father?”
“I think he’ll pull through.” He rubbed at his temples. “Dr. Sien finally kicked me out. Said to give Father some space.”
“He’s awake?”
“Sleeping for now. He was delirious for a bit, but Dr. Sien said that was a good sign. Meant he was talking.”
She let loose a long breath. “I’m glad.”
He sat down and rubbed his hands down his legs with a small sigh of relief. He must have been standing beside his father’s bedside for hours.
“Watching something?” he asked her.
“I’m watching nothing.” She squinted at the receding outline of Lusan. Only the highest pagoda towers of the palace were still visible. “That’s what’s bothering me. No one’s coming after us.”
She couldn’t understand why the riverways were so calm, so silent. Why weren’t arrows flying through the air? Why weren’t they being pursued by Imperial vessels? Perhaps the Militia lay in wait at the gates at the province’s edge. Perhaps they were sailing straight toward a trap.
But the gates were open, and no ships came chasing after them in the darkness.
“Who would they send?” Nezha asked. “They don’t have a navy at the Autumn Palace.”
“And no one in any of the provinces has one?”
“Ah.” Nezha smiled. Why was he smiling? “You don’t understand. We’re not going back the same way. We’re headed out to sea this time. Tsolin’s ships patrol the Nariin coast.”
“And Tsolin won’t interfere?”
“No. Father’s made him choose. He’s not going to choose the Empire.”
She couldn’t understand his logic. “Because . . . ?”
“Because now there’s going to be a war, whether Tsolin likes it or not. And he’s not putting his money against Vaisra. So he’ll let us through unharmed, and I’ll bet that he’ll be at our council table in under a month.”
Rin was frankly amazed by the confidence with which the House of Yin seemed to manipulate people. “That’s assuming he gets out of Lusan.”
“If he hasn’t made contingency plans for this I’ll be shocked.”
“Did you ask if he had?”
Nezha chuckled. “It’s Tsolin. Asking would be an insult.”
“Or, you know, a decent precaution.”
“Oh, we’re about to fight a civil war. You’ll have plenty of chances to take precautions.” His tone sounded ridiculously cavalier.
“You really think we can win this?” she asked.
“We’ll be all right.”
“How do you know?”
He grinned sideways at her. “Because we’ve got the best navy in the Empire. Because we have the most brilliant strategist Sinegard has ever seen. And because we’ve got you.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m serious. You know you’re a military asset worth your weight in silver, and if Kitay’s on strategy, then that gives us excellent chances.”
“Is Kitay—”
“He’s fine. He’s belowdecks. He’s been chatting with the admirals; Father gave him full access to our intelligence files, and he’s getting caught up.”
“I guess he came around pretty quickly, then.”
“We thought he might.” Nezha’s tone confirmed what she already suspected.
“You knew his father was dead.”
He didn’t bother denying it. “Father told me weeks ago. He said not to tell Kitay. Not until we’d reached Lusan, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because it would mean more if it didn’t come from us. Because it would feel less to him like manipulation.”
“So you let him think his father was alive for weeks?”
“We’re not the ones who killed him, were we?” Nezha didn’t look sorry in the slightest. “Look, Rin. My father is very good at cultivating talent. He knows people. He knows how to pull their strings. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about them.”
“But I don’t want to be lied to,” she said.
