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“But I don’t . . .” Pipaji’s sobs subsided. She looked bewildered. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I . . .”
“I know,” Rin said. “I know you don’t want to quit. Because that felt good, didn’t it? When you brought down the god? That rush of power was the best thing you’ve ever felt and you know it. How good is it to realize what you can do? Unfortunate that your first victim was an ally, but imagine laying your hands on enemy troops. Imagine felling armies with just a single touch.”
“She told me . . .” Pipaji took a deep, rattling breath. “The goddess, I mean . . . she told me I’ll never be afraid again.”
“That’s power,” Rin said. “And you’re not giving that up. I know you. You’re me.”
Pipaji stared, not quite at Rin, but at the blank space behind her. She seemed lost in her own mind.
Rin sat down beside Pipaji so that they were side by side, looking out over the ledge together. “What did you see when you swallowed the seeds?”
Pipaji bit her lip and glanced away.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t, it’s . . .”
“Look at me.” Rin lifted her shirt. Her upper torso was wrapped tight in bandages, ribs still cracked from where Riga had kicked her. But Altan’s black handprint, etched just as clearly as the day he’d left it, was visible just below her sternum. Rin let Pipaji stare long enough to understand its shape, and then twisted to the side to show her the raised, bumpy ridges where Nezha had once slid a blade in her lower back.
Pipaji’s face went white at the sight. “How . . . ?”
“I received both these scars from men I thought I loved,” Rin said. “One is dead now. One will be. I understand how humiliation feels. Keep your secrets if you want. But there’s nothing you can say that will make me think any less of you.”
Pipaji stared for a long time at Altan’s handprint. When she spoke at last, it was in such a low whisper that Rin had to lean in close to hear her over the wind.
“We were in the whorehouse when they came. They started marching up the stairs, and I told Jiuto to hide. She—” Pipaji’s voice caught. She took a shaky breath, then continued. “She didn’t have time to get out the door, so she hid under the blankets. I piled them on her. Piles and piles of winter coats. And I told her not to move, not to make a single sound, no matter what happened, no matter what she heard. Then they came in, and they found me, and they—they—” Pipaji swallowed. “And Jiuto didn’t move.”
“You protected her,” Rin said gently.
“No.” Pipaji gave her head a violent shake. “I didn’t. Because—because after they’d gone, I opened the cabinet. And I took the blankets off. And Jiuto wasn’t moving.” Her face crumpled. “She hadn’t moved. She was suffocating, she couldn’t fucking breathe under there, and still she hadn’t moved because that’s what I told her. I thought I’d killed her. And I didn’t, because she started breathing again, but I’m the reason why . . .”
She gave a little wail and pressed her face into her hands. She didn’t continue. She didn’t need to; Rin could piece the rest of this story together herself.
That explained why Jiuto followed her sister everywhere. Why Pipaji had never left her alone until now. Why Jiuto didn’t—couldn’t—speak. Why she responded to everyone who spoke to her with a dead, haunted stare.
Rin wanted to put an arm around Pipaji’s shaking shoulders, hold her tight, and tell her she had nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to repent for. That she’d survived, and survival was enough. She wanted to tell her to go to her sister and run far away from this place and to never think about the Pantheon again. She wanted to tell Pipaji it was over.
Instead, she said in the hardest voice she could imagine, “Stop crying.”
Pipaji lifted her head, startled.
“You’re living in a country at war,” Rin said. “Did you think you’re special? You think you’re the only one who’s suffered? Look around. At least you’re alive. There are thousands of others who weren’t nearly as lucky. And there are thousands more who will meet the same fate if you can’t accept the power you could have.”
She heard a steely, ruthless timbre in her own voice that she had never used before. It was a stranger’s voice. But she knew exactly where it came from, for everything she said was an echo of things Vaisra had once told her, the only true gift he’d ever given her.
When you hear screaming, run toward it.
“Everything you just told me? That’s your key to the gods. Hold that in your mind and never forget the way you’re feeling right now. That’s what gives you power. And that’s what is going to keep you human.”
Rin seized Pipaji’s fingers. They were slender fingers, dirty and scarred. Nothing like how a pretty young girl’s fingers were supposed to look. They were fingers that had broken bodies. Fingers just like hers.
“You have the power to poison anyone you touch,” she said. “You can make sure no one ever suffers like you and your sister again. Use it.”
The other breakthroughs came much faster after Pipaji’s success. Two days later, Lianhua gave a little whimper and slumped over on her side. At first Rin was afraid she’d overdosed and fainted, but then she noticed that the scars across Lianhua’s arms and collarbones were disappearing—smooth new skin knitted over areas that had previously been cruelly crosshatched by a blade.
“What did you see?” Rin asked when Lianhua awoke.
“A beautiful woman,” Lianhua murmured. “She held a lotus flower in one hand, and a set of reed pipes in the other. She smiled at me and said she could fix me.”
“Do you think she could help you fix others?” Rin asked.
“I think so,” Lianhua said. “She put something in my hands. It was white and hot, and I saw it shining through my fingers, like—like I was holding the sun itself.”
Great Tortoise. Rin’s heart leaped at the implications. We can use this.
When Lianhua managed to call her goddess while retaining consciousness, Rin had her test her abilities on a succession of injured animals—squirrels with shattered legs, birds with broken wings, and rabbits burned half to death. Lianhua had the good sense not to ask where the animals were coming from. When she restored all the creatures to full health without any apparent side effects, Rin let Lianhua experiment on her own body.
“It’s these two ribs that are giving me trouble,” she said, lifting her shirt up. “Do you need the bandages off, too?”
“I don’t think so.” Lianhua trailed her fingers over the linen strips so lightly they tickled. Then Rin felt a searing heat at an intensity straddling the line between relief and torment. Seconds later, the pain in her ribs was gone. For the first time since ascending Mount Tianshan, she could breathe without wincing.
“Great Tortoise.” Rin marveled as she twisted her upper body back and forth. “Thank you.”
“Do you . . .” Lianhua’s fingers hovered in the air over Rin’s right arm, as if awaiting permission. She was staring at the stump. “Um, do you want me to try?”
