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The Sorqan Sira bent down before him and brushed his hair back behind his ears, petting it softly like a mother grooming a misbehaved child.
“You’ve failed,” she said softly. “Your duty was to observe and cull when necessary. Not to join their petty wars.”
“We tried to stay neutral,” Chaghan said. “We didn’t intervene, we never—”
“Don’t lie to me. I know what you’ve done.” The Sorqan Sira stood up. “There will be no more of the Cike. We are putting an end to your mother’s little experiment.”
“Experiment?” Rin echoed. “What experiment?”
The Sorqan Sira turned toward her, eyebrows raised. “Precisely what I said. The twins’ mother, Kalagan, thought it would be unjust to deny the Nikara access to the gods. The Cike was Kalagan’s last chance. She has failed. I have decided there will be no more shamans in the Empire.”
“Oh, you’ve decided?” Rin struggled to stand up straight. She still didn’t fully understand what was happening, but she didn’t need to. The dynamic of this encounter had become abundantly clear. The riders thought her an animal to be put down. They thought they could determine who had access to the Pantheon.
The sheer arrogance of that made her want to spit.
The Sorqan Sira looked amused. “Did I upset you?”
“We don’t need your permission to exist,” she snapped.
“Yes, you do.” The Sorqan Sira cast her a disdainful smile. “You’re little children, grasping in a void that you don’t understand for toys that don’t belong to you.”
Rin wanted to slap the contempt off of her face. “The gods don’t belong to you, either.”
“But we know that. And that is the simple difference. You Nikara are the only people foolish enough to call the gods into this world. We Ketreyids would never dream of the folly your shamans commit.”
“Then that makes you cowards,” Rin said. “And just because you won’t call them down doesn’t mean that we can’t.”
The Sorqan Sira threw her head back and began to laugh—a harsh, cackling crow’s laugh. “My word. You sound just like them.”
“Who?”
“Has no one ever told you?” The Sorqan Sira grasped Rin’s face in her hands once more. Rin flinched away, but the Sorqan Sira’s fingers tightened around her cheeks. She pressed her face against Rin’s, so close that all Rin could see was those dark, obsidian eyes. “No? Then I’ll show you.”
Visions pierced Rin’s mind like knives forced into her temples.
She stood on a desert steppe, in the shadow of dunes stretching out as far as she could see. Sand whipped around her ankles. The wind struck a low and melancholy note.
She looked down at herself and saw white braids woven with shells and bone. She realized she was in the memory of a much younger Sorqan Sira. To her left she saw a young woman who had to be the twins’ mother, Kalagan—she had the same high cheekbones as Qara, the same shock of white hair as Chaghan.
Before them stood the Trifecta.
Rin stared at them in wonder.
They were so young. They couldn’t have been much older than she was. They could have been fourth-years at Sinegard.
Su Daji as a girl was already impossibly, bewitchingly beautiful. She emanated sex even when she was standing still. Rin saw it in the way she shifted her hips back and forth, the way she swept her curtain of hair over her shoulders.
To Daji’s left stood the Dragon Emperor. His face was stunningly, shockingly familiar. Sharp angles, a long straight nose, thick and somber eyebrows. Strikingly handsome, pale and perfectly sculpted in a way that didn’t seem human.
He had to be from the House of Yin.
He was a younger, gentler Vaisra. He was Nezha without his scars and Jinzha without his arrogance. His face could not be called kind; it was too severe and aristocratic. But it was an open, honest, and earnest face. A face she immediately trusted, because she couldn’t see a way that this man was capable of any evil.
She understood now what they meant in the old stories when they said that soldiers defected to him in droves and knelt at his feet. She would have followed him anywhere.
Then there was Jiang.
If she had ever doubted that her old master could possibly be the Gatekeeper, there was no mistaking his identity now. His hair, shorn close to his ears, was still the same unnatural white, his face as ageless as it had been when she’d met him.
But when he spoke, and his face twisted, he became a complete stranger.
“You don’t want to fight us on this,” he said. “You’re running out of time. I’d clear out while you still can.”
The Jiang that Rin had known was placid and cheerful, drifting through the world with a kind of detached curiosity. He spoke softly and whimsically, as if he were a curious bystander to his own conversations. But this younger Jiang had a harshness to his face that startled Rin, and every word he spoke dripped with a casual cruelty.
It’s the fury, she realized. The Jiang she knew was utterly peaceful, immune to insult. This Jiang was consumed with some kind of poisonous wrath that radiated from within.
Kalagan’s voice trembled with anger. “Our people have claimed the area north of the Baghra Desert for centuries. Your Horse Warlord has forgotten himself. This is not diplomacy, it is sheer arrogance.”
“Perhaps,” Jiang said. “You still didn’t have to dismember his son and send the fingers back to the father.”
“He dared to threaten us,” said Kalagan. “He deserved what he got.”
Jiang shrugged. “Maybe he did. I never liked that kid. But do you know what our dilemma is, dearest Kalagan? We need the Horse Warlord. We need his troops and his warhorses, and we can’t get those if they’re too busy running around the Baghra Desert fending off your arrows.”
“Then he should retreat,” said the Sorqan Sira.
Jiang inspected his fingernails. “Or perhaps we’ll make you retreat. Would it be so hard for you to just go settle somewhere else? Ketreyids are all nomads, aren’t you?”
Kalagan lifted her spear. “You dare—”
Jiang wagged a finger. “I wouldn’t.”
“Do you think this is wise, Ziya?”
A girl emerged from the ranks of the riders. She bore a remarkable resemblance to Chaghan, but she stood taller, stronger, and her face was flushed with more color.
“Get back, Tseveri,” said the Sorqan Sira, but Tseveri walked toward Jiang until they were separated by only inches.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.
“Politics, really,” Jiang said. “It’s nothing personal.”
“We taught you everything you know. Three years ago we took pity on you and took you in. We’ve sheltered you, hidden you, healed you, given you secrets no Nikara has ever obtained. Aren’t we family to you?”
She spoke to Jiang intimately, like a sister. But if Jiang was bothered, he hid it well behind a mask of amused indifference.
“Would a simple thank-you suffice?” he asked. “Or did you also want a hug?”
“Be careful who you turn your back on,” warned Tseveri. “You don’t need the Horse Warlord, not truly. You still need us. You need our wisdom. There’s so much you still don’t know—”
