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They crossed the channel in a small fisherman’s dinghy. Rin sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, shivering against the ocean breeze while Kitay fussed with the sails. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing more to be said. Everything had been spilled the night the fields in Tikany burned, and now what lay between them was a quiet, exhausted resignation. There was no point in commiseration or reassurance. Rin knew what happened next and Kitay thought he did; now there was only the wait.
When the Dead Island emerged on the horizon, a gray, ashy mound that at first seemed indistinguishable from the mist, Kitay reached over and rubbed his thumb over her wrist.
“It’ll be all right,” he murmured. “We’ll fix this.”
She gave him a tight smile, twisted around to face the island, and said nothing.
Nezha was waiting on the beach when their vessel approached the shallows. He didn’t appear to be armed, but that didn’t matter. Neither of them was far from their army. Rin had troops waiting in ships off the coast of Snake Province, spyglasses trained on the horizon for the first sign of her beacon. She could only assume that Nezha’s reinforcements were doing the same.
No, she was counting on it.
“Scared?” she inquired as she stepped onto the sand.
He gave her a hollow smile. “You know I can’t die.”
“We’re trying to broker a peace here.” Kitay dropped an anchor off the side of the dinghy, then followed Rin onto the shore. “Let’s not start off with death threats, shall we?”
“Fair enough.” Nezha gestured farther up the beach, where Rin saw he’d prepared three chairs and a square tea table covered in ink, brushes, and blank parchment. “After you.”
They crossed the length of the beach in silence.
Rin couldn’t help but take quick, furtive glances at Nezha as she walked beside him.
He looked wrecked. He still carried himself like a general. His shoulders never slumped; his voice never wavered. Yet every part of him seemed diminished, stretched thin and whittled down. His scarred mouth, once twisted on one side into a jeering grin, now seemed trapped in a painful rictus.
She’d expected him to jeer at her, to gloat over their capitulation, but he didn’t seem at all like he was enjoying this. He looked exhausted. He looked like someone waiting to die.
They pulled their chairs out and sat. Rin nearly laughed when the first thing Nezha did was politely, meticulously pour each of them a full, steaming cup of tea. It lent such an air of ceremony, of normalcy, to negotiations made possible by an ocean of blood.
Neither she nor Kitay touched their cups. Nezha drained his in a single swallow.
“Well, then.” He reached for an ink brush and held it lightly over the parchment. “Where shall we start?”
“Tell us their final terms,” Rin said.
Nezha faltered for a moment. He’d expected more of a dance. “You mean—”
“Lay it all out,” she said. “List every last thing it’ll take to get the Hesperians off our back. We’re not here to bandy words. Just tell us how much it’ll cost.”
“As you wish.” He cleared his throat. He had no papers to consult; he knew by heart what the Hesperians wanted. “The Consortium is willing to withdraw their forces, commit to a signed armistice, and provide enough shipments of grain, dried meat, and starches to tide the entire country over to the next harvest.”
“Great Tortoise,” Kitay breathed. “Thank—”
Rin spoke over him. “And in return?”
“First, full amnesty for all soldiers and leadership involved with the Republic,” Nezha said. “That benefits you, too. You need people to keep the country running. Let them go back home with their safety guaranteed, and they’ll work for you. I’ll vouch for that. Second, the Consortium wants designated treaty ports—at least one in each province that borders the ocean. Third, they’d like their missionary privileges back. The Gray Order conduct proselytization with immunity, and anyone who lays a finger on them gets extradited to Hesperia for punishment.”
“And what about me?” she pressed.
He held out his arms. Golden circlets gleamed bright around pale skin rubbed painfully raw. Up close, it was clear they were fitted perfectly to the width of his wrists. She didn’t know how he ever took them off, or even if he could. “You’ll put these on. You’ll never call the Phoenix again. You’ll never pass on your knowledge of how shamanism works in any form to anyone alive, and you’ll cooperate with hunting down everyone in Nikan who is even suspected to know about the Pantheon. You can walk free in the south—even rule it, if you like—so long as you make yourself available.”
“Available in what ways?” Kitay asked.
Nezha swallowed. “In the same ways I was.”
A heavy silence descended on the table. Nezha wouldn’t meet their eyes. But neither did his gaze drop—he stared straight forward, shoulders still squared, meeting their pity with silent defiance as they stared at his circlets.
“Why?” Rin asked at last. She couldn’t keep her voice from breaking. The sight of the circlets was suddenly too much to bear. She wanted to rip them off his wrists, to cover them with his sleeves—anything to make them disappear. “Nezha, why the fuck—”
“Because they had all the power,” he said quietly. “Because they still do.”
She shook her head, astonished. “Have you no pride?”
“It’s not about pride.” He withdrew his arms. “It’s about sacrifice. I chose the Hesperians because I recognize that they aren’t just decades but centuries ahead of us in every way that matters, and if they decide to work with us, we could use their knowledge to make life better for millions of people. Despite the cost.”
“The costs are where we differ,” she said coldly.
“You’ve only seen one side of them, Rin. You’ve seen them at their very worst, but you also stand for everything they can’t abide. But what if you didn’t? I know they are condescending, I know they don’t think we’re human, I know—” His throat pulsed. He coughed. “I know the depths of their cruelty. But they were willing to cooperate with me. They’re getting this close to respecting me. And if I just had that—”
“What’s it going to take?” Kitay asked abruptly. “For them to respect you?”
Nezha didn’t hesitate. “Your deaths.”
There was no malice in his voice. That wasn’t a threat, just a simple statement of fact. Nezha had not been able to deliver Rin’s corpse, despite having ample opportunity to kill her, and for that he’d given up a nation.
Kitay gave a slight nod, as if he’d fully expected that answer. “And what’s it going to take for them to respect us?”
“They’ll never respect you,” Nezha said tonelessly. “They will never see you as anything more than subhuman. They will work warily with you because they’re afraid of you, but you’ll always have to stay on edge. You’ll always have to grovel to get what you want. My father’s Republic was the only regime they would ever have willingly supported, and they still wouldn’t ever have really trusted me unless I delivered your heads.”
