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“Hold on,” Rin said sharply. She’d thought Kitay had only been studying how they worked, not how to operate them. “You’re telling me we can fly this?”
“Maybe. I’m still a few days from attempting a test flight. But yes, once we get the basket fitted together, I theoretically should be able to get it up . . .”
“Tiger’s tits.” Rin’s pulse quickened just thinking about what this could mean. All kinds of tactical maneuvers opened up if they had a working dirigible. They still couldn’t go toe-to-toe with the Hesperian fleet in the open air—they’d simply be outnumbered—but they could use air travel for so many other purposes. “This solves so much. Bulk transportation. Quick supply movements. River crossings—”
“Not so fast.” Kitay tapped a winding copper cylinder at the center of the intestinal mess. “I’ve finally figured out its fuel source. It burns coal, but very inefficiently. These things are built with material that is as lightweight as possible, but they’re still awfully heavy. They can’t remain afloat for more than a day, and they can’t carry enough coal to lengthen their journey otherwise they’ll sink.”
“I see,” she said, disappointed.
So that partly solved the central mystery of why Nezha had used the fleet with such restraint during the march over the Baolei Mountains. Dirigibles were a decent quick show of force. But they did not give the Hesperians full reign over the sky. They still depended on ground support for fuel.
“It’s still better than nothing,” Kitay said. “I’ll try to have it flying within the next week.”
“You’re incredible,” Rin murmured. Kitay had always been so wonderfully clever—really, she should have stopped feeling surprised by his inventions after he’d found a way to make her fly—but learning to work a dirigible was an achievement on an entirely different scale. This was alien technology, technology supposedly centuries ahead of Nikara achievements, and somehow he’d pieced together its workings in mere days. “Did you figure this out just by looking at it?”
“I took apart the pieces that seemed removable, and spent a long time staring at the pieces that didn’t.” He pushed his fingers through his bangs, surveying the engine. “The basic principles were easy enough. There’s still a lot I don’t know.”
“But then—then how.” She blinked at the complex metal gears. They looked dauntingly sophisticated. She wouldn’t have known where to start. “I mean, how did you figure out the science?”
“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “I can’t. I don’t know what half these things are or what they do. They’re a mystery to me and will remain so until I’m versed in the fundamentals of this technology, which I won’t be until I’ve studied in their Gray Towers.”
“But if you didn’t even have the fundamentals, then how—”
“I didn’t need them, see? It doesn’t matter. We’re not building any dirigibles of our own, we just have to learn how to fly this one. I’ve only got to poke around until I re-create the original working circumstances.”
She froze. “What did you say?”
“I said, I’ve only got to poke around until—” He broke off and gave her an odd look. “You all right?”
“Yes,” she said, dazed. Kitay’s words echoed in her mind like ringing gongs. The original working circumstances.
Great Tortoise, was it that easy?
“Fuck,” she said. “Kitay, I’ve got it.”
At last, Rin dragged her recruits to the Pantheon by force.
It was such a simple solution. Why hadn’t she seen it before? She should have started here, by re-creating the original working circumstances of her own encounter with divinity.
She had first called the Phoenix a full year before Jiang took her to the Pantheon. She hadn’t known what she was doing. All she remembered was that she’d beaten Nezha in a combat ring, had pummeled him within an inch of his life because he had slapped her and she couldn’t bear the indignation, and then she’d rushed out of the building into the cool air outside because she couldn’t contain the wave of power surging inside her.
She hadn’t summoned fire that day. But she had touched the Pantheon. And that was the catalyst for everything that had happened thereafter—once she’d met the gods, it ripped a hole in her world that nothing but repeated encounters with divinity could fill.
What had driven her to the gods before she ever knew their names?
Anger. Burning, resentful anger.
And fear.
“What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” Rin asked her recruits.
As usual, they responded with puzzled hesitation.
“You don’t . . .” Pipaji hesitated. “You don’t actually want us to say, do—”
“I do,” Rin said. “Tell me. Describe the very worst thing you’ve ever been through. Something you never want to happen again.”
Pipaji flinched. “I’m not fucking—”
“I know it’s hard to relive,” Rin said. “But pain is the quickest way to the Pantheon. Find your scars. Drag a knife through them. Push yourself. What memory just surfaced in your mind?”
Two high spots of color rose up in Pipaji’s face. She began blinking very rapidly.
“Fine. Take a moment to think about it.” Rin turned to Dulin. “How long did you spend in that burial pit?”
He balked. “I . . .”
“Two days? Three? You looked close to decomposing when we found you.”
Dulin’s voice was strangled. “I don’t want to think about that.”
“You have to,” Rin insisted. “This is the only way this works. Let’s try a different question. What do you see when you see the face of the Mugenese?”
“Easy,” Merchi said. “I see a fucking bug.”
“Good,” Rin said, though she knew that was bravado, not the corrosive resentment she needed from them. “And what would you do to them if you could? How would you crush them?”
When this elicited awkward stares, she hardened her voice. “Don’t act so shocked. You’re here to learn to kill, that’s why you signed up. Not for self-defense, and not out of nobility. Every one of you wants blood. What would you do to them?”
“I want them helpless like I was,” Pipaji burst out. “I want to stand over their faces and spit venom into their eyes. I want them to wither at my touch.”
“Why?”
“Because they touched me,” Pipaji said. “And it made me want to die.”
“Good.” Rin held the bowl of poppy seeds out toward her. “Now let’s try this again.”
Pipaji succeeded first.
The last few times Pipaji had gotten high she’d rocked back and forth on the ground, giggling to herself at jokes that only she could hear. But this time she sat perfectly still for several minutes before suddenly falling backward like a puppet with cut strings. Her eyes remained open but were terrifyingly white; her pupils had rolled entirely into the back of her head.
“Help!” Lianhua gripped Pipaji’s shoulders. “Help, I think she’s—”
