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But Pipaji’s hand shot up into the air, fingers splayed outward in a firm and unquestionable gesture. Stop.
“Let her lie,” Rin said sharply. “Don’t touch her.”
Pipaji’s fingers curled like claws against the ground, digging long grooves into the dirt. Low, guttural moans emitted from her throat.
“She’s in pain,” Merchi insisted. He scooped her up from the floor and pulled her into his lap, patting her cheeks frantically. “Hey. Hey. Can you hear me?”
Pipaji’s lips moved very quickly, uttering a stream of syllables that formed no language Rin could recognize. The tips of her fingers had turned a rotted purple beneath the dirt. When her eyes fluttered open, all Rin saw beneath her lashes were dark pools, black all the way through.
Finally. Rin felt a pulse of fierce, vicious pride, accompanied by the faintest pang of fear. What kind of deity had Pipaji called back from across the void? Was it stronger than she was?
Merchi’s voice faltered. “Pipaji?”
Pipaji lifted a trembling hand to his face. “I . . .”
Her face spasmed and stretched into a wide smile with tortured eyes, like something inside her, something that didn’t understand human expressions, was wearing her skin like a mask.
“Get back,” Rin whispered.
The other recruits had already retreated to the opposite end of the hut. Merchi looked down, and his face went slack with confusion. Black streaks covered his arms everywhere his skin had touched Pipaji’s.
Pipaji blinked and sat up, peering around as if she’d just awoken from a deeply absorbing dream. Her eyes were still the same unsettling obsidian. “Where are we?”
“Merchi, get back,” Rin shouted.
Merchi pushed Pipaji away. She collapsed into a pile on the floor, limbs shaking. He shrank away, wiping furiously at his forearms as if he could rub his skin clean. But the black didn’t stop spreading. It looked as if every vein in Merchi’s body had risen to the surface of his skin, thickening like creeks transforming into rivers.
I have to help him, Rin thought. I did this, this is my fault—
But she couldn’t bring herself to move. She didn’t know what she would do if she could.
Merchi’s eyes bulged wide. He opened his mouth to retch, then toppled sideways, writhing.
Pipaji shuffled backward, fingers clenched over her mouth. Sharp, hiccuping breaths escaped from behind her fingers.
“Oh, gods,” she whispered, over and over. “Oh, gods. What did I do?”
Dulin and Lianhua were backed up against the opposite wall. Lianhua kept eyeing the door, as if considering bolting away. Pipaji’s whimpers rose to a screaming wail. She crawled over to Merchi and shook his shoulders, trying to revive him, but all she did was dig craters into desiccated flesh wherever her fingers met his skin.
Finally Rin came to her senses.
“Get in the corner,” she ordered Pipaji. “Sit on your hands. Touch no one.”
To her great relief, Pipaji obeyed. Rin turned her attention to Merchi. His thrashing had subsided to a faint twitching, and black and purple blotches now covered every visible inch of skin, under which his veins bulged like they had crystallized into stone.
She had no idea what Cholang’s physicians could possibly do for him, but she owed it to him to try.
“Someone help me lift him,” she ordered. But neither Dulin nor Lianhua moved; they were frozen with shock.
She’d have to drag Merchi out herself, then. He was too tall for her to hoist up onto her shoulder; her only choice was to drag him by a leg. She bent and grasped his shin, careful not to brush against his exposed skin. Her shoulder throbbed from his weight as she pulled, but her adrenaline kicked in, counteracting the pain, and somehow she found the energy to drag him out of the hut and toward the infirmary.
“Hang in there,” she told him. “Just breathe. We’ll fix this.”
She might as well have been talking to a rock. When she glanced back moments later to check how he was doing, his eyes had gone glassy, and his flesh had deteriorated so much he looked like a three-day-old corpse. He didn’t respond when she shook him. His pulse was gone. She didn’t know when he’d stopped breathing.
She kept limping forward. But she knew, long before she reached the infirmary, that she didn’t need a physician now but a gravedigger.
Pipaji was gone when Rin returned to the hut.
“Where is she?” she demanded.
Dulin and Lianhua were sitting shell-shocked against the wall where she’d left them. They’d clearly been crying; Dulin’s eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, while Lianhua sat trembling with her fists balled up against her eyes.
“She ran,” Dulin said. “Said she couldn’t be here anymore.”
“And you let her?” Rin wanted to slap him, just to wipe that dull, dazed expression off his face. “Do you know where she went?”
“I think up toward the hill, maybe, she said—”
Rin set out at a run.
Pipaji was thankfully easy to track; her slender footprints were stamped fresh in the snow. Rin caught up to her at a ledge twenty feet up the hill. She was doubled over, coughing, exhausted by the sprint.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rin called.
Pipaji didn’t respond. She straightened up and faced the ledge, stretching out one slim ankle as if testing out the empty space before she hurtled forward.
“Pipaji, get away from there.” Rin measured the distance between them, calculating. If she took a running leap she might seize Pipaji by the legs before she jumped, but only if Pipaji hesitated. The girl looked ready to spring—any sudden movements could startle her off the edge.
“You’re confused.” Rin kept her tone low and gentle, hand stretched out as if approaching a wild animal. “You’re overwhelmed, I understand, but this is normal . . .”
“It’s horrible.” Pipaji didn’t turn around. “This is—I didn’t—I can’t . . .”
She was dawdling. She wasn’t sure yet whether she wanted to die. Good.
Her fingers, Rin noticed, were no longer purple. She’d wrested some control back over herself. That made her safe to touch.
Rin lunged forward and tackled her by the waist. They landed sprawled together in the snow. Rin clambered up, jerked the unresisting Pipaji back from the ledge by her shirt, then pinned her down with a knee against her stomach so that she couldn’t flee.
“Are you going to jump?” Rin asked.
Pipaji’s narrow chest heaved. “No.”
“Then get up.” Rin stood and extended Pipaji her hand.
But Pipaji remained on the ground, shoulders shaking violently, her face contorted again into sobs.
“Stop crying. Look at me.” Rin leaned down and grabbed Pipaji by the chin. She didn’t know what compelled her to do it. She’d never acted like this before. But Vaisra had done this to her once, and it had worked to command her attention, if only by shocking the fear into the back of her mind. “Do you want to quit?”
Pipaji stared mutely at her, tears streaking her face. She seemed stunned into silence.
“Because you can quit,” Rin said. “I’ll let you go right now, if that’s what you want. No one’s forcing you to be a shaman. You don’t ever have to go to the Pantheon again. You can quit this army, too, if you’d prefer. You can go back to your sister and find somewhere to live in Dog Province. Is that what you want?”
