AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m the commander of the Cike,” Rin said. “And I’m standing right in front of you.”
“You’re a little girl with no command experience and hardly a year of combat under your belt,” Gurubai said. “Do not presume to tell us how to fight a war.”
“I won the last war. You wouldn’t even be standing here without me.”
Vaisra placed a hand on her shoulder. “Runin, hush.”
“But he—”
“Silence,” he said sternly. “This discussion is beyond you. Let the generals talk.”
Rin swallowed her protest.
The door creaked open. A palace aide poked his head in through the gap. “The Snake Warlord is here to see you, sir.”
“Let him in,” Vaisra said.
The aide stepped inside to hold the door open.
Ang Tsolin walked inside, unaccompanied and unarmed. Jinzha moved to his right to let Tsolin stand next to his father. Nezha shot Rin a smug look, as if to say I told you so.
Vaisra looked equally vindicated. “I’m glad to see you join us, Master.”
Tsolin scowled. “You didn’t have to sail through my fleet.”
“Going the other way would have taken longer.”
“They came for my family first.”
“I assume you had the foresight to extricate them in time.”
Tsolin folded his arms. “My wife and children will arrive tomorrow morning. I want them set up with your most secure accommodations. If I catch so much as a whiff of a spy in their quarters, I will turn over my entire fleet to the Empire’s use.”
Vaisra dipped his head. “Whatever you ask.”
“Good.” Tsolin bent forward to examine the maps. “These are all wrong.”
“How so?” Jinzha asked.
“The Horse Province hasn’t remained inactive. They’re gathering their troops to the Yinshan base.” Tsolin pointed to a spot just above Hare Province. “And Tiger Province is bringing their fleet toward the Autumn Palace. They’re closing off your attack routes. You don’t have much time.”
“Then tell me what I ought to do,” Vaisra said. Rin was amazed at how his tone could shift—once commanding, but now deferential and meek, a student seeking a teacher’s aid.
Tsolin gave him a wary look. “Good men are dead because of you. I hope you know.”
“Then they died for a good cause,” Vaisra said. “I suspect you know that, too.”
Tsolin didn’t answer. He simply sat down, pulled the maps toward him, and began to examine the attack lines with the weary, practiced air of a man who had spent his entire life fighting wars.
As the days dragged on, despite the northern offensive’s ongoing delay, Arlong itself continued to mobilize for war like a tightening spring. War preparations were integrated into almost every facet of civilian life. Steely-eyed children worked the furnaces at the armory and carried messages back and forth across the city. Their mothers produced immaculately stitched uniforms at an astonishing rate. In the mess hall, grandmothers stirred congee in giant vats while their grandchildren ferried bowls around to the soldiers.
Another week passed. The Warlords continued to shout at each other in the council room. Rin couldn’t bear the constant waiting, so she took out her adrenaline with Nezha.
Sparring was a welcome exercise. The skirmish at Lusan had made it abundantly clear to her that she had been relying far too much on calling the fire. Her reflexes had flagged, her muscles had atrophied, and her stamina was pathetic.
So at least once every day, she and Nezha picked up their weapons and hiked up to empty clearings far up on the cliffs. She lost herself in the sheer, mindless physicality of their bouts. When they were sparring, her mind couldn’t languish on any one thought for too long. She was too busy calculating angles, maneuvering steel on steel. The immediacy of the fight was its own kind of drug, one that could numb her to anything else she might accidentally feel.
Altan couldn’t torture her if she couldn’t think.
Blow by blow, bruise by bruise, she relearned the muscle memory that she had lost, and she relished it. Here she could channel the adrenaline and fear that kept her vibrating with anxiety on a daily basis.
The first few days left her wrecked and aching. The next few were better. She filled in her uniform. She lost her hollow, skeletal appearance. This was the only reason she was grateful for the council’s slow deliberation—it gave her time to become the soldier she used to be.
Nezha was not a lenient sparring partner, and she didn’t want him to be. The first time he held back out of fear of hurting her, she swept out a leg and knocked him to the ground.
He propped himself up on his stomach. “If you wanted to go for a tumble, you could have just asked.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” she said.
Once she stopped losing hand-to-hand bouts in under thirty seconds, they moved on to padded weapons.
“I don’t understand why you insist on using that thing,” he said after he disarmed her of her trident for the third time. “It’s clumsy as hell. Father’s been telling me to get you to switch to a sword.”
She knew what Vaisra wanted. She was tired of that argument.
“Reach matters more than maneuverability.” She wedged her foot under the trident and kicked it up into her hands.
Nezha came at her from the right. “Reach?”
She parried. “When you summon fire, there’s no one who’s going to get close to you.”
He hung back. “Not to state the obvious, but you can’t really do that anymore.”
She scowled at him. “I’ll fix it.”
“Suppose you don’t?”
“Suppose you stop underestimating me?”
She didn’t want to tell him that she’d been trying. That every night she climbed up to this same clearing where no one would see her, took a dose of Chaghan’s stupid blue powder, approached the Seal, and tried to burn the ghost of Altan out of her mind.
It never worked. She could never bring herself to hurt him, not that wonderful version of Altan that she’d never known. When she tried to fight him, he grew angry. And then he reminded her why she’d always been terrified of him.
The worst part was that Altan seemed to be getting stronger every time. His eyes burned more vividly in the dark, his laughter rang louder, and several nights he’d nearly choked the breath from her before she got her senses back. It didn’t matter that he was only a vision. Her fear made him more present than anything else.
“Look alive.” Rin jabbed at Nezha’s side, hoping to catch him off guard, but he whipped his blade out and parried just in time.
They sparred for a few more seconds, but she was quickly losing heart. Her trident suddenly seemed twice as heavy in her arms; she felt like she was fighting at a third her normal speed. Her footwork was sloppy, without form or technique, and her swings grew increasingly haphazard and unguarded.
“It’s not the worst thing,” Nezha said. He batted a wild blow away from his head. “Aren’t you glad?”
She stiffened. “Why would I be glad?”
“I mean, I just thought . . .” He touched a hand to his temple. “Isn’t it at least nice to have your mind back to yourself?”
