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But they didn’t need to last forever. Just long enough.
Rin felt a sudden, bizarre sense of detachment as she watched the carnage playing out from the far side of the ravine. None of this seems real. Yes, she knew the costs were real—she knew that below her feet, real bodies were bleeding and breaking as a consequence of orders she’d given, that real lives were being snuffed out in the rain while she waited out the timetable of her plan.
But the adrenaline, that mad rush of energy that accompanied the irrepressible fear of death, was missing. Here she stood, watching from an angle so safe that Kitay was standing right next to her. None of those missiles could reach her. None of those swords could touch her. Her only true opponent was Nezha, and he hadn’t entered the fray, either. Like her, he waited from his vantage point, calmly observing the chaos playing out below.
This wasn’t really a fight. This wasn’t one of those bare-knuckled, bruising scuffles they’d been so fond of at school. This battle was, at its core, a contest of their ideas. Nezha had gambled on the environment—the rain and ravine. Rin had placed her hopes on wild, distracting gambits.
They’d learn soon who had placed the better bet.
An arrow thudded into the ground ten feet away. Rin glanced down, jerked from her reverie. The arrow shaft was wrapped with red ribbon—Venka’s signal: Your turn.
Kitay noticed it, too.
“Turtle’s ready behind the third column,” he said, lowering his spyglass. “Quickly, before he notices.”
Rin sprinted down into the ravine. A last turtle cart awaited her near the front lines, already manned by waiting troops. They grasped her by the arms and hauled her into the center of the cart, where she crouched down, arms folded over her knees. Two soldiers set off at a run, pushing the cart downhill until it gained momentum.
Rin braced herself in the cramped, dark interior, jolting from side to side as the cart careened over bumpy terrain. She heard loud thuds as arrows assailed the sides of the cart. The tip of a spear slammed through the wall in front of her, wedged between a chink in the armor plating.
She hugged her knees tighter. Almost there.
Everything up until now—Dulin’s avalanches, the initial charge of turtle carts, the pipe bombs, and the infantry rush—had been a distraction. Rin knew she couldn’t win a battle of attrition against Nezha’s ranks; she’d just put up the front of trying.
Nezha had chosen this graveyard, in this weather, to neutralize the Phoenix. The bloodbath happening below only mattered because the rain kept Rin from igniting everyone in a blue uniform.
But what did you do when nature presented your greatest disadvantage?
How did you shut out nature itself?
The turtle cart jerked to a halt. Rin peeked out through the top hatch. When she squinted, she could just make out thin black ropes stretched taut over the top of the ravine, and a massive tarp meant for a battleship slowly unfurling from one side of the cliffs to the other.
Her troops, who knew to watch for the tarp’s unfolding, were already retreating, shields locked behind them. The Republican soldiers seemed confused. Some half-heartedly gave chase, and some fell back, as if sensing some impending disaster.
Within seconds, the tarp reached the other end of the pass, secured from both sides by Venka’s squadrons. Rain hammered hard against the canvas, but nothing penetrated the pass. Suddenly the middle patch of the ravine was gloriously, miraculously dry.
Rin climbed out of the turtle and reached into her mind for the waiting god. Your turn.
The Phoenix surged forth, warm and familiar. Finally.
She flung her arms up. Flames burst into the pass, a crescent arc roaring outward at Nezha’s forces.
His front lines charred instantly. She advanced unobstructed, picking her way over bodies sizzling black under glowing armor. Her flames shimmered around her, forming a shield of unimaginable heat. Arrows disintegrated in the air before they reached her. Nezha’s mounted arquebuses and cannons glowed bright, twisting and crumpling beyond use. The Southern Army advanced behind her, bowstrings taut, cannons loaded, fire lances aimed forward and ready to launch.
She only had minutes. She kept her fire concentrated low inside the ravine, but at this heat, the tarp would burn from sheer proximity, which meant she had to end this fast.
She could make out Nezha’s figure through the wall of orange—alone and unguarded, shouting orders to his men as they fled. He had not retreated ahead of his troops; he was waiting until the last of his ranks reached safe ground. He’d refused to abandon his army.
Always so noble. Always so stupid.
She had him. She’d won this game of ideas, she had him in sight and in range, and this time she would not falter.
“Nezha!” she screamed.
She wanted to see his face.
He turned around. They stood close enough now that she could make out every detail on his lovely, wretched, cracked-porcelain face. His expression twisted as he met her eyes—not in fear, but in a wary, exhausted sorrow.
Did he realize he was about to die?
In her daydreams, whenever she’d fantasized about the moment that she would truly, finally kill him, he had always burned. But he stood just out of range of the tarp, so iron and steel would have to do. And if his body still kept stitching itself together, then she would take him apart piece by piece and burn them down to ash until not even the Dragon could put him back together.
She nodded to her waiting army, signaled with a hand. “Fire.”
She pulled her flames back inside her and knelt. A great rip echoed through the ravine as projectiles of every type surged over her head.
Nezha raised his arms. The air rippled around him, then appeared to coalesce. Time diluted; arrows, missiles, and cannonballs hung arrested in midair, unable to budge forward. It took Rin a moment to realize that the projectiles had been trapped inside a barrier—a wall of clear water.
Again, she slashed a hand through the air. “Fire!”
Another volley of arrows shrieked over the ravine, but she knew before she even gave the command that it would make no difference. Nezha’s shield held firm. Her troops shot another round, then another, but everything they hurled at Nezha was swallowed into the barrier.
Fuck. Rin wanted to scream. We’re just dumping weapons into the river.
She’d known he could control the rain. She’d watched him do it at Tikany—had felt it pummeling against her like a thousand fists as he called it down harder and harder. But she hadn’t known he could manipulate it at such a massive scale, that he could pull all the water out of the sky to construct barriers more impenetrable than steel.
She hadn’t imagined his link to his god might now rival her own.
Nezha used to fear the Dragon more than he feared his enemies. He used to call his god only when forced to with his back against the wall, and every time he’d done so, it had looked like torture.
But now, he and the water moved like one.
This means nothing, she thought. Nezha could erect all the shields he wanted. She’d simply evaporate them.
“Get back,” she ordered her troops. Once they’d retreated ten yards she pulled another parabola of flame into the ravine and brought its heat to the highest possible intensity, sinking deeper and deeper into the Phoenix’s reverie until her world turned red. Heat baked the air. Above, the tarp sizzled and dissipated to ash.
