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Jinzha announced that the fleet would remain grounded for one more day to pass the New Year’s holiday. Everywhere else in the Empire, New Year’s would be a weeklong affair involving twelve-course banquets, firecrackers, and endless parades. On campaign, a single day would have to be enough.
The troops disembarked to camp out in the winter landscape, glad for the chance to escape the close quarters of the cabins.
“See if you can get that fire going,” Nezha told Kitay.
The three of them sat huddled together on the riverbank, rubbing their hands together while Kitay fumbled with a piece of flint to start a fire.
Somewhere Nezha had scrounged up a small packet of glutinous rice flour. He poured the flour out into a tin bowl, added some water from his canteen, and stirred it together with his fingers until it formed a small ball of dough.
Rin prodded at the measly fire. It fizzled and sputtered; the next gust of wind put it out entirely. She groaned and reached for the flint. They wouldn’t have boiling water for at least half an hour. “You know, you could just take that to the kitchen and have them cook it.”
“The kitchen isn’t supposed to know I have it,” said Nezha.
“I see,” Kitay said. “The general is stealing rations.”
“The general is rewarding his best soldiers with a New Year’s treat,” Nezha said.
Kitay rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “Oh, so it’s nepotism.”
“Shut up,” Nezha mumbled. He rubbed harder at the ball of dough, but it crumbled to bits in his fingers.
“You haven’t added enough water.” Rin grabbed the bowl from him and kneaded the dough with one hand, adding droplets of water with the other until she had a wet, round ball the size of her fist.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Nezha said curiously.
“I used to all the time. No one else was going to feed Kesegi.”
“Kesegi?”
“My little brother.” The memory of his face rose up in Rin’s mind. She forced it back down. She hadn’t seen him in four years. She didn’t know if he was still alive, and she didn’t want to wonder.
“I didn’t know you had a little brother,” Nezha said.
“Not a real brother. I was adopted.”
No one asked her to elaborate, so she didn’t. She rolled the dough into a snakelike strip between both palms, then broke it up piece by piece into thumb-sized lumps.
Nezha watched her hands with the wide-eyed fascination of a boy who’d clearly never been in the kitchen. “Those balls are smaller than the tangyuan I remember.”
“That’s because we don’t have red bean paste or sesame to fill them with,” she said. “Any chance you scrounged up some sugar?”
“You have to add sugar?” Nezha asked.
Kitay laughed.
“We’ll eat them bland, then,” she said. “It’ll taste better in little pieces. More to chew.”
When the water finally came to a boil, Rin dropped the rice flour balls into the tin cauldron and stirred them with a stick, creating a clockwise current so that they wouldn’t stick to each other.
“Did you know that cauldrons are a military invention?” Kitay asked. “One of the Red Emperor’s generals came up with the idea of tin cookware. Can you imagine? Before that, they were stuck trying to build fires large enough for giant bamboo steamers.”
“A lot of innovations came from the military,” Nezha mused. “Messenger pigeons, for one. And there’s a good argument that most of the advances in blacksmithing and medicine were a product of the Era of Warring States.”
“That’s cute.” Rin peered into the cauldron. “Proves that war’s good for something, then.”
“It’s a good theory,” Nezha insisted. “The country was in chaos during the Era of Warring States, sure. But look at what it brought us—Sunzi’s Principles of War; Mengzi’s theories on governance. Everything we know now about philosophy, about warfare and statecraft, was developed during that era.”
“So what’s the tradeoff?” Rin asked. “Thousands of people have to die so that we can get better at killing each other in the future?”
“You know that’s not my argument.”
“It’s what it sounds like. It sounds like you’re saying that people have to die for progress.”
“It’s not progress they’re dying for,” Nezha said. “Progress is the side effect. And military innovation doesn’t just mean we get better at killing each other, it means we get better equipped to kill whoever decides to invade us next.”
“And who do you think is going to invade us next?” Rin asked. “The Hinterlanders?”
“Don’t rule them out.”
“They’d have to stop killing each other off, first.”
The tribes of the northern Hinterlands had been at constant war since any of them could remember. In the days of the Red Emperor, the students of Sinegard had been trained primarily to fend off northern invaders. Now they were just an afterthought.
“Better question,” Kitay said. “What do you think is the next great military innovation?”
“Arquebuses,” Nezha said, at the same moment that Rin said, “Shamanic armies.”
Both of them turned to stare at her.
“Shamans over arquebuses?” Nezha asked.
“Of course,” she said. The thought had just occurred to her, but the more she considered it, the more attractive it sounded. “Tarcquet’s weapon is just a glorified rocket. But imagine a whole army of people who could summon gods.”
“That sounds like a disaster,” Nezha said.
“Or an unstoppable military,” Rin said.
“I feel like if that could be done, it would have been,” said Nezha. “But there’s no written history on shamanic warfare. The only shamans the Red Emperor employed were the Speerlies, and we know how that went.”
“But the predynastic texts—”
“—are irrelevant.” Nezha cut her off. “Fortification technology and bronze weapons didn’t become military standard until well into the Red Emperor’s rule, which is about the same time that shamans started disappearing from the record. We have no idea how shamans would change the nature of warfare, whether they could be worked into a military bureaucracy.”
“The Cike’s done pretty well,” Rin challenged.
“When there are fewer than ten of you, sure. Don’t you think hundreds of shamans would be a disaster?”
“You should become one,” she said. “See what it’s like.”
Nezha flinched. “You’re not serious.”
“It’s not the worst idea. Any of us could teach you.”
“I have never met a shaman in complete control of their own mind.” Nezha looked strangely bothered by her suggestion. “And I’m sorry, but knowing the Cike does not make me terribly optimistic.”
Rin pulled the cauldron off of the fire. She knew she was supposed to let the tangyuan cool for a few minutes before serving, but she was too cold, and the vapors misting up from the surface were too enticing. They didn’t have bowls, so they wrapped the cauldron in leaves to keep their hands from burning and passed it around in a circle.
