AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Some of the villages they conquered didn’t put up a resistance at all, but readily joined the Republic. They sent out volunteers in boats laden with food and supplies. Hastily stitched flags bearing the colors of Dragon Province flew over city walls in a welcoming gesture.
“Look at that.” Kitay pointed. “Vaisra’s flag. Not the flag of the Republic.”
“Does the Republic even have a flag?” Rin asked.
“I’m not sure. It’s curious that they think they’re being conquered by Dragon Province, though.”
On Kitay’s advice, Jinzha placed the volunteer ships and sailors in the front of the fleet. He didn’t trust Hare Province sailors to fight on their home territory, and he didn’t want them in strategically crucial positions in case they defected. But the extra ships were, in the worst-case scenario, excellent bait. Several times Jinzha sent allied ships out first to lure townships into opening their gates before he stormed them with his warships.
For a while it seemed like they might take the entire north in one clean, unobstructed sweep. But their fortunes finally took a turn for the worse at the northern border of Hare Province when a massive thunderstorm forced them to make anchor in a river cove.
The storm wasn’t so much dangerous as it was boring. River storms, unlike ocean storms, could just be waited out if they grounded ships. So for three days the troops holed up belowdecks, playing cards and telling stories while rain battered at the hull.
“In the north they still offer divine sacrifices to the wind.” The Kingfisher’s first mate, a gaunt man who had been at sea longer than Jinzha had been alive, had become the favorite storyteller of the mess. “In the days before the Red Emperor, the Khan of the Hinterlands sent down a fleet to invade the Empire. But a magician summoned a wind god to create a typhoon to destroy the Khan’s fleet, and the Khan’s ships turned to splinters in the ocean.”
“Why not sacrifice to the ocean?” asked a sailor.
“Because oceans don’t create storms. This was a god of the wind. But wind is fickle and unpredictable, and the gods have never taken lightly to being summoned by the Nikara. The moment the Khan’s fleet was destroyed, the wind god turned on the Nikara magician who had summoned him. He pulled the magician’s village into the sky and dropped it down in a bloody rain of ripped houses, crushed livestock, and dismembered children.”
Rin stood up and quietly left the mess.
The passageways belowdecks were eerily quiet. Absent was the constant grinding sound of men working the paddle wheels. The crew and soldiers were concentrated in the mess, if they weren’t sleeping, and so the passage was empty except for her.
When she pressed her face to the porthole she saw the storm raging outside, the vicious waves swirling about the cove like eager hands reaching to rip the fleet apart. In the clouds she thought she saw two eyes—bright, cerulean, maliciously intelligent.
She shivered. She thought she heard laughter in the thunder. She thought she saw a hand reach from the skies.
Then she blinked, and the storm was just a storm.
She didn’t want to be alone, so she ventured downstairs to the soldiers’ cabins, where she knew she could find the Cike.
“Hello there.” Baji waved her inside. “Nice of you to join.”
She sat down cross-legged beside him. “What are you playing?”
Baji tossed a handful of dice into a cup. “Divisions. Ever played?”
Rin thought briefly back to Tutor Feyrik, the man who had gotten her to Sinegard, and his unfortunate addiction to the game. She smiled wistfully. “Just a bit.”
Nominally, no gambling of any kind was permitted on the ships. Lady Yin Saikhara, since her pilgrimage to the west, had instituted strict rules about vices such as drinking, smoking, gambling, and consorting with prostitutes. Almost everyone ignored them. Vaisra never enforced them.
It turned out to be a rather vicious game. Ramsa kept accusing Baji of cheating. Baji was not cheating, but they discovered that Ramsa was when a handful of dice spilled out of his sleeve, at which point the game turned into a wrestling match that ended only when Ramsa bit Baji on the arm hard enough to draw blood.
“You mangy little brat,” Baji cursed as he wrapped a linen around his elbow.
Ramsa grinned, displaying teeth stained red.
All of them were clearly bored, going stir-crazy while waiting out the storm. But Rin suspected that they were also itching for action. She’d cautioned them not to put their full abilities on display where Hesperian soldiers might be watching. Petra knew about one shaman; she didn’t need to discover the rest.
Concealment had turned out to be fairly easy on campaign. Suni and Baji’s abilities were freakish, yes, but not necessarily in the realm of the supernatural. In the chaos of a melee, they could pass themselves off as hypercompetent soldiers. It had worked so far. As far as Rin knew, the Hesperians suspected nothing. Suni and Baji might be getting frustrated holding themselves back, but at least they were free.
For once, Rin thought, she’d made some decent decisions as commander. She hadn’t gotten them killed. The Republican troops treated them better than the Militia ever had. They were getting paid, they were as safe as they’d ever be, and that was as good as she could do for them.
“What are the Gray Company like?” Baji asked as he scooped the dice off the floor for a new game. “I heard that woman talks your ear off every time you’re together.”
“It’s stupid,” Rin muttered. “Religious lecturing.”
“Load of hogwash?” Ramsa asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “They might be right about some things.”
She wished she could discard the Hesperian faith more easily, but so many parts of it made sense. She wanted to believe it. She wanted to see her catastrophic actions as a product of Chaos, an entropic mistake, and to believe that she could repent for them by reinforcing order in the Empire, reversing devastation the way one pieced together a broken teacup.
It made her feel better. It made every battle she’d fought since Adlaga feel like another step toward putting things right. It made her feel less like a killer.
“You know their Divine Architect doesn’t exist,” Baji said. “I mean, you understand why that’s obvious, right?”
“I’m not sure,” she said slowly. Certainly the Maker didn’t exist on the same psychospiritual plane as the sixty-four gods of the Pantheon, but was that enough to discount the Hesperians’ theory? What if the Pantheon was, in fact, a manifestation of Chaos? What if the Divine Architect truly existed on a higher plane, out of reach of anyone but his chosen and blessed people?
“I mean, look at their airships,” she said. “Their arquebuses. If they’re claiming religion made them advanced, they might be right about some things.”
Baji opened his mouth to respond and promptly closed it. Rin looked up and saw a shock of white hair in the doorway.
No one spoke. The dice clattered loudly to the floor and stayed there.
Ramsa broke the silence. “Hi, Chaghan.”
Rin hadn’t spoken to Chaghan since Arlong. When the fleet had sailed, she’d partly hoped that Chaghan might just elect to stay on land. He was never one for the thick of battle, and after their falling-out she couldn’t imagine why he’d stay with her. But the twins had remained with the Cike, and Rin had found herself crossing the room whenever she saw a hint of white hair.
