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At the same time she felt a woozy tilt in her limbs, a heady rush in her temples.
So this was it. The opium had seeped too deep into her bloodstream. She didn’t have the fire, and her only advantage was that he’d lost the water. This was now a matter of blades and fists and teeth.
She unsheathed her knife. They dueled for only a moment. It was no contest. He disarmed her first, and easily, sent her blade spinning far away into the dark.
No matter. She knew she couldn’t match him with blades. The moment the hilt left her palm, she aimed a savage kick at Nezha’s wrist.
It worked. He dropped his sword. Now they had only their fists. That was a relief. This was so much easier, more direct, more brutal. She clawed at his eyes. He slapped her hand away. She bit at his elbow. He shoved it at her mouth. Her head jerked back.
Blood stung her eyes and clouded her vision. She punched without looking. Nezha was doing the same. His blows came at her too fast for her to dodge or block but she gave as good as she got, landed just as many as he did, until she forgot she didn’t have a right hand to punch with. She lashed out with her stump. He blocked it with his elbow. Awful, blinding pain ripped through the right half of her torso. For a moment she forgot how to breathe.
Nezha broke free of her grasp, jumped to his feet, and kicked down at her ribs. She curled into a ball, too winded to scream. He stomped on her stump. Her vision flashed white.
He kicked her in the side, again and again until she was lying on her back, too stunned to do anything but gasp like a fish out of water. He stumbled back, chest heaving. Then he dropped to his knees, straddled her chest, and pinned her arms down with his hands.
“I told you,” he panted, “to come quietly.”
She spat blood in his face.
He slammed his knuckles into her right eye. Her head thudded against the wet dirt. He wiped the back of his hand against his shirt, then drew it back to deliver a second punch to her left eye. She took the beating like a limp doll, without sound, without response. He punched her five, six, seven times. She lost count. She was dazed with pain and opium; the blows felt like raindrops.
But the fact that he was beating her meant something—the fact that she wasn’t dead meant something. She should be dead right now. He should have just stabbed her in the heart or slashed her throat; it would have been easier. And Nezha wasn’t sadistic, wasn’t prone to torture over efficiency.
He’s not aiming to kill, she realized. Nezha wanted her alive. He wanted to incapacitate. And right now, he just wanted to hurt.
That was the difference between them. His loss.
“You should have killed me at Arlong,” she hissed.
The punches stopped.
Nezha reached down for her neck and began to squeeze.
She scrabbled frantically at his hands. Altan had taught her to escape chokeholds—hands were strong, single fingers weren’t so much, so all you had to do was separate them. One at a time. She dug her fingers under his middle finger and detached it from the others, then pulled backward hard, harder—
He wasn’t letting go.
Alternate means, then. She jammed her thumb toward his eyes. He twisted his face away. Her nails dug into his cheek instead, and she compensated by digging in so hard she drew blood. Three neat crimson streaks sliced down his right jaw.
His grip loosened, just the slightest bit, for a brief moment. That was all she needed.
She reached behind her, scrabbling to find his blade. She’d seen him drop it, it had to be within reach . . . but the first thing her fingers closed around was not the hilt but a stone, heavy and jagged, just about the size of her palm.
That would do.
She swung the stone up against Nezha’s temple. It connected with bone with a satisfying crunch. His grip loosened. She summoned every remaining ounce of her strength into her left arm and struck his head again. Blood gathered inside a gash by his right eye, as if hesitating, then started pouring out in thick rivulets.
He slumped to the side.
She wriggled out from beneath him. He toppled to the ground.
Was that it? Had she knocked him unconscious? Could this have been so easy? She leaned cautiously over him, hefting the rock in her hand for a third and final blow.
Then she paused, startled.
The blood flow had stopped. Nezha’s skin was stitching itself together, pale skin growing back over red pulp as if time had simply reversed.
She watched in disbelief. Nezha could recover from blows with terrifying speed, she knew that, but the process had taken hours before. Now his body was erasing wounds in mere seconds.
She’d burned him earlier. Badly. There was no evidence of that, either.
What if she ripped his heart from his chest? Would a new one sprout? If she buried his sword between his ribs, would his heart grow around it?
Only one way to find out. She picked the sword up off the ground and knelt above him, straddling his torso with her knees.
Nezha made a soft moaning noise. His eyelids fluttered.
Rin raised her left hand high, blade pointed straight down. Her arm trembled; her fingers felt awkward around the hilt. But she couldn’t miss, not from this angle. She had an immobile victim and a clear, open target; she couldn’t possibly fuck this up.
One hard blow to the chest. That was all it would take. One blow, perhaps a twist for good measure, and all this would be over.
But she couldn’t bring her arm down. Something stayed her hand. Her arm was like some foreign object, moving of its own will. She clenched her teeth and tried again. The blade remained suspended in the air.
She screamed in frustration, lunging forward over Nezha’s limp form, yet she still couldn’t bring the blade anywhere near his flesh.
Nezha’s eyes shot open just as a droning noise buzzed over their heads.
Rin glanced up. A dirigible approached, swooping low toward the clearing at a frightening speed. She dropped the sword and scrambled off Nezha’s chest.
The dirigible landed only ten yards away. The basket had barely hit the ground before soldiers jumped out, shouting words that Rin couldn’t understand.
She dove for the trees. For the next several moments she crawled desperately through the bushes, ignoring the thorns and branches scratching at her eyes, lacerating her skin. Elbow, knee, elbow, knee. She didn’t dare look back. She just had to get away, quickly as she could. If they caught her now she was nothing; she had no sword, no fire, no army. If they caught her now, she was dead. Pain screamed for her to stop and fear propelled her forward.
She kept waiting for the shouts to catch up to her. For the cold steel at the back of her neck.
They never came.
At last, when her lungs burned red-hot and her heart felt like it would explode out of her chest, she stopped and peered behind her.
The dirigible rose slowly into the air. She watched, heart pounding, as it ascended above the trees. It teetered for a moment, as if unsure of where it was going, and then it veered sharply to the left and retreated.
They hadn’t found her. They hadn’t even tried.
Rin attempted to stand and failed. Her muscles wouldn’t obey. She couldn’t even sit up. The pummeling she’d just taken hit her all at once, a million different pains and bruises that kept her on the ground like firm hands pushing her down.
She lay curled on her side, helpless and immobile, shrieking in frustration. She’d squandered her chance. She wouldn’t get it back. Nezha was gone, and she was alone in the mud, the dark, and the smoke.
