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The pressure on her chest disappeared. Rin curled into a ball, choking miserably.
“Someone take her outside of camp,” Jinzha said. “Bind her, gag her, I don’t care. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
“Yes, sir,” said Molkoi.
“She hasn’t eaten,” Nezha said.
“Then have someone bring her food or water if she asks,” Jinzha said. “Just get her out of my sight.”
Rin screamed.
No one could hear her—they’d banished her to a stretch of forest outside the camp perimeter—so she screamed louder, again and again, bashing her fists against a tree until blood ran down her knuckles while rage built up hotter and hotter in her chest. And for a moment she thought—hoped—that the crimson fury sparking in her vision might explode into flames, real flames, finally—
But nothing. No sparks lit her fingers; no divine laughter rippled through her thoughts. She could feel the Seal at the back of her mind, a pulsing, sickly thing, blurring and softening her anger every time it reached a peak. And that only doubled her rage, made her shriek louder in frustration, but it was a pointless tantrum because the fire remained out of her grasp; dancing, taunting her behind the barrier in her head.
Please, she thought. I need you, I need the fire, I need to burn . . .
The Phoenix remained silent.
She sank to her knees.
She could hear Altan laughing. That wasn’t the Seal, that was her own imagination, but she heard it as clearly as if he were standing right beside her.
“Look at you,” he said.
“Pathetic,” he said.
“It’s not coming back,” he said. “You’re lost, you’re done, you’re not a Speerly, you’re just a stupid little girl throwing a temper tantrum in the forest.”
Finally her voice and strength gave out and the anger ebbed pathetically, ineffectually, away. Then she was alone with the indifferent silence of the trees, with no company except for her own mind.
And Rin couldn’t stand that, so she decided to get as drunk as she possibly could.
She’d picked up a small jug of sorghum wine back at camp. She chugged it down in under a minute.
She wasn’t used to drinking. The masters at Sinegard had been strict—the smallest whiff of alcohol was grounds for expulsion. She still preferred the sickly sweetness of opium smoke to the burn of sorghum wine, but she liked how it seared her delightfully from the inside. It didn’t make the anger go away, but it reduced it to a dull throb, an aching pain rather than a sharp, fresh wound.
By the time Nezha came out for her she was utterly soused, and she wouldn’t have heard him approach if he hadn’t shouted for her every step he took.
“Rin? Are you there?”
She heard his voice around the other side of a tree. She blinked for a few seconds before she remembered how to push words out of her mouth. “Yes. Don’t come around.”
“What are you doing?”
He circled the tree. She hastily yanked her trousers back up with one hand. A dripping jug dangled from the other.
“Are you pissing in a jug?”
“I’m preparing a gift for your brother,” she said. “Think he’ll like it?”
“You can’t give the grand marshal of the Republican Army a jug of urine.”
“But it’s warm,” she mumbled. She shook it at him. Piss sloshed out the side.
Nezha hastily stepped away. “Please put that down.”
“You sure Jinzha doesn’t want it?”
“Rin.”
She sighed dramatically and complied.
He took her clean hand and led her to a patch of grass by the river, far away from the soiled jug. “You know you can’t lash out like that.”
She squared her shoulders. “And I have been appropriately disciplined.”
“It’s not about discipline. They’ll think you’re mad.”
“They already think I’m mad,” she retorted. “Savage, dumb little Speerly. Right? It’s in my nature.”
“That’s not what I . . . Come on, Rin.” Nezha shook his head. “Anyhow. I’ve, uh, got bad news.”
She yawned. “Did we lose the war? That was quick.”
“No. Jinzha’s demoted you.”
She blinked several times, uncomprehending. “What?”
“You’re unranked. You’re to serve as a foot soldier now. And you’re not in command of the Cike anymore.”
“So who is?”
“No one. There is no Cike. They’ve all been reassigned to other ships.”
He watched her carefully to gauge her reaction, but Rin just hiccupped.
“That’s all right. They hardly listened to me anyway.” She derived a kind of bitter satisfaction from saying this out loud. Her position as commander had always been a sham. To be fair, the Cike did listen to her when she had a plan, but she usually didn’t. Really, they’d effectively been running themselves.
“You know what your problem is?” Nezha asked. “You have no impulse control. Absolutely zero. None.”
“It’s terrible,” she agreed, and started to giggle. “Good thing I can’t call the fire, huh?”
He responded to that with such a long silence that eventually it began to embarrass her. She wished now that she hadn’t drunk so much. She couldn’t think properly through her helplessly muddled mind. She felt terribly foolish, crude, and ashamed.
She had to practice whispering her words before she could voice them out loud. “So what’s happening now?”
“Same thing as usual. They’re gathering up the civilians. The men will cast their votes tonight.”
She sat up. “They should not get a vote.”
“They’re Nikara. All Nikara get the option to join the Republic.”
“They helped the Federation!”
“Because they didn’t have a choice,” Nezha said. “Think about it. Put yourself in their position. You really think you would have done any better?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “I did. I was in their position. I was in worse—they had me strapped down to a bed, they were torturing me and torturing Altan in front of me and I was terrified, I wanted to die—”
“They were scared, too,” he said softly.
“Then they should have fought back.”
“Maybe they didn’t have the choice. They weren’t trained soldiers. They weren’t shamans. How else were they going to survive?”
“It’s not enough just to survive,” she hissed. “You have to fight for something, you can’t just—just live your life like a fucking coward.”
“Some people are just cowards. Some people just aren’t that strong.”
“Then they shouldn’t have votes,” she snarled.
The more she thought about it, the more ludicrous Vaisra’s proposed democracy seemed. How were the Nikara supposed to rule themselves? They hadn’t run their own country since before the days of the Red Emperor, and even drunk, she could figure out why—the Nikara were simply far too stupid, too selfish, and too cowardly.
“Democracy’s not going to work. Look at them.” She was gesturing at trees, not people, but it hardly made a difference to her. “They’re cows. Fools. They’re voting for the Republic because they’re scared—I’m sure they’d vote just as quickly to join the Federation.”
