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She shot him a wry look. “Then you’d be dead, too.”
“Just as well,” he said, and sounded like he meant it.
Rin felt as if eternity had passed by the time the sun set. Twenty-four hours ago, she had led troops into battle for the first time. That afternoon, she’d liberated a village. Now her wrist throbbed, her knees shook, and a headache pounded behind her eyes.
She could not silence the memory of that scream in the temple. She needed to silence it.
Back in her tent, she dug a packet of opium out from the bottom of her traveling satchel and pressed a nugget into a pipe.
“Do you have to?” Kitay asked. It wasn’t really a question. They’d had this argument a thousand times, and every time arrived at the same lack of resolution. He just felt obligated to express his displeasure. By now they were simply going through the motions.
“It’s not your business,” she said.
“You need to sleep. You’ve been up nearly forty-eight hours.”
“I’ll sleep after this. I can’t relax without it.”
“It smells awful.”
“So go sleep somewhere else.”
Silently Kitay stood up and walked out of the tent.
Rin didn’t watch him go. She lifted the pipe to her mouth, lit the bowl with her fingers, and breathed in deep. Then she curled over on her side and drew her knees into her chest.
In seconds she saw the Seal—a live, pulsing thing, reeking so strongly of the Vipress’s venom that Su Daji might have been standing in the tent right next to her. She used to curse the Seal, used to barrel pointlessly against the immutable barrier of venom that wouldn’t leave her mind.
But she’d since found a better use for it.
Rin drifted toward the glistening characters. The Seal tilted toward her, opened, and swallowed her. There was a brief moment of blinding, terrifying darkness, and then she was in a dark room with no doors or windows.
Daji’s poison was composed of desire—the things she would kill for, the things she missed so badly she wanted to die.
Altan materialized on cue.
Rin used to be so afraid of him. She’d felt a little thrill of fear every time she’d looked at him, and she’d liked it. When he was alive, she’d never known if he was going to caress or throttle her. The first time she’d seen him inside the Seal, he’d nearly convinced her to follow him into oblivion. But now she kept him leashed in her mind, firmly under control, and he spoke only when she wanted him to.
Still the fear remained. She couldn’t help it, nor did she want to.
She needed someone who could still scare her.
“There you are.” He reached a hand out to stroke her cheek. “Did you miss me?”
“Get back,” she said. “Sit down.”
He held his hands up and obeyed, crossing his legs on the dark floor. “Whatever you say, darling.”
She sat down across from him. “I killed dozens of people last night. Probably some of them innocent.”
Altan tilted his head to the side. “And how did that make you feel?” His tone was perfectly neutral, without judgment.
Even so, she felt a swell in her chest, a familiar toxic squeeze, like her lungs were eroding under the sheer weight of her guilt. She exhaled, fighting to remain calm. Altan stayed under her control only so long as she was calm. “You would have done it.”
“And why would I have done it, kiddo?”
“Because you were ruthless,” she said. “You did strategy by the numbers. You would have known you had to do it. You couldn’t risk your troops. Soldiers are worth more than civilians, it’s just math.”
“So there it is.” He gave her a patronizing smile. “You did what you needed to. You’re a hero. Did you enjoy it?”
She didn’t lie. Why would she? Altan was her secret, her conjuration, and no one would ever know what she said here. Not even Kitay.
“Yes.”
“Show it to me,” Altan said. Hunger was etched across his face. “Show me everything.”
She let him see. Relived it all, second by second, in vivid, lurid detail. She showed him the bodies doubling over. The babble of terrified voices pleading for mercy—No, no, please, no. The temple transforming into a pillar of flame.
“Good,” said Altan. “That’s very good. Show me more.”
She brought out the memories of ashes, of pristine white bone poking out from charred black piles. She could never burn the bones away entirely, no matter how hard she tried. Some fragment always remained.
She stayed for another minute to let herself feel it—feel all of it, the guilt, the remorse, the horror. She could only feel them in this space, where they wouldn’t be debilitating, where they wouldn’t make her want to crawl across the floor and scratch long streaks of blood into her forearms and thighs.
Then she left the memories alone. Interred here, they wouldn’t haunt her again.
She always felt so clean afterward. Like the world was covered in stains and with every enemy she reduced to ash, it became just a little bit more pure.
This was both her absolution and her penance. Once she self-flagellated in her mind, once she replayed the atrocities over and over so much the images lost meaning, then she’d given the dead their due respect. She owed them nothing more.
She opened her eyes. The memory of Altan threatened to resurge in her thoughts, but she forced it back down. He appeared only when she allowed it, only when she wanted to see him.
Once, her memories of Altan had nearly driven her mad. Now his company was one of the only things keeping her sane.
She was finding it easier and easier to cut him off. She’d learned now to divide her mind into clean, convenient compartments. Thoughts could be blocked. Memories suppressed. Life was so much easier when she blockaded off the part of her that agonized over what she’d done. And as long as she kept those parts of her mind separate—the part that felt pain and the part that fought wars—then she would be all right.
“You think they’re going to join up?” Kitay asked.
“I’m not sure,” Rin said. “They’ve been a bit surly about everything so far. Ingrates.”
They watched, arms crossed, as the men who called themselves the Iron Wolves carried salvageable wreckage out of the village center.
The Iron Wolves were Souji’s troops. More of them had survived Khudla’s occupation than Rin had feared—their numbers ranked at least five hundred. That was a relief. The Southern Army desperately needed new troops, but suitable recruits were difficult to find in Mugenese-occupied villages. Most young men with any inclination to fight were already buried in the killing fields. The lucky survivors were either too young or too old—or too frightened—to make good soldiers.
But Souji’s Iron Wolves were strong, healthy men with plenty of combat experience. Until now, they had been roving protectors of the Monkey Province’s backwaters. Many had fled into the forests when Khudla fell. Now they’d returned in hordes. They would make excellent soldiers—but the question was whether they could be convinced to join the Coalition.
Rin wasn’t sure. So far the Iron Wolves had been less than grateful to their liberators. In fact the rescue operations had taken a heated turn; Souji’s men were terribly territorial and reluctant to take commands that didn’t come from Souji himself. They were irked, it seemed, that someone else had swooped in to claim the title of savior. Already Kitay had mediated three quarrels over resource allocation between Iron Wolves and soldiers of the Southern Coalition.
