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“The Gatekeeper?” Jiang tilted his head. “Riga’s right hand? The man who overthrew the Mugenese? No. I don’t think I am him, either.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How can I describe it?” He paused, tapping at his chin. “It’s like seeing a warped reflection in a mirror. Sometimes we are the same and sometimes we are not; sometimes he moves with me, and sometimes he acts of his own volition. Sometimes I catch glimpses of his past, but it’s like I’m watching from far away like a helpless observer, and that—”
He broke off, wincing, and pressed his fingers against his temples. Rin watched the headache pass; she’d witnessed these spasms before. They never lasted more than several seconds.
“And other times?” she prompted, after the lines around his eyes relaxed.
“Other times the memories are from my perspective, but it’s like I’m experiencing them for the first time. For him, it’s a memory. He already knows what happened. But for me, it’s like watching a story unfold, but I don’t know its ending. The only thing I do know, with absolute certainty, is that I did it. I see the bodies, and I know I’m responsible.”
Rin tried to wrap her head around this, and failed. She couldn’t see how one could live with two different sets of memories, belonging to two different personalities, and still remain sane.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Knowing what I’ve done? Yes, it hurts. Unlike anything you could ever imagine.”
Rin didn’t have to imagine. She knew very well how it felt for a chasm of guilt to eat at her soul, to try to sleep when an abyss of vengeful souls whispered that she’d put them there, and for that she deserved to die.
But she had owned her memories. She knew what she’d done, and she’d come to terms with it. How did Jiang relate to his crimes? How could he take responsibility for them if he still couldn’t identify with the person who had done them? And if he couldn’t face his own past, couldn’t even recognize it as his, was he doomed to remain a divided man, trapped in the schism of his psyche?
She phrased her next question carefully. She could tell she’d pushed him to the edge—he looked pale and skittish, ready to bolt if she said the wrong thing. She was reminded of her time at the Academy, when she’d had to mince and contort her words so that Jiang wouldn’t mock them, skirt them, or simply pretend she hadn’t spoken.
She understood now what he had been afraid of.
“Do you think . . .” She swallowed, shook her head, and started over. “Do you think you’ll transform back to the person you were supposed to be? Before the Seal?”
“Is that who you want me to become?” he inquired.
“I think that’s the man we need,” she said. She blurted out her next words before her boldness receded. “But the Sorqan Sira said that man was a monster.”
He didn’t answer for a while. He sat back, watching the shore, trailing his fingers through the murky water. She couldn’t tell what was going on behind those pale, pale eyes.
“The Sorqan Sira was right,” he said at last.
Rin had thought—hoped, really—that when she came near enough to Kitay, she’d start sensing his presence, a warm familiarity that might gradually strengthen as she drew closer. She didn’t think it would be so sudden. One morning she woke up shaking and gasping, nerves tingling like she’d been set on fire.
“What’s wrong?” Daji asked sharply.
“Nothing, I’m . . .” Rin took several deep breaths, trying to pin down what had changed. She felt as if she’d been slowly drowning without realizing it until one day, abruptly, she broke for air. “I think we’re close.”
“It’s your anchor.” It wasn’t a question; Jiang sounded certain. “How do you feel?”
“It’s like—like I’m whole again.” She struggled to articulate the feeling. It wasn’t as if she could read Kitay’s thoughts or sense his emotions. She still hadn’t received any messages from him, not even scars in her skin. But she knew, as surely as she knew that the sun would set, that he was close. “It’s as if—you know how when you’re ill for a long time, you forget how it feels to be healthy? You get used to your head ringing, your ears being blocked, or your nose being stuffed—and you don’t even notice you’re not right anymore. Until you are.”
She wasn’t sure she’d made sense; the words sounded stupid tumbling out of her mouth. But Jiang and Daji only nodded.
Of course they understood. They were the only ones who could understand.
“Soon you’ll start feeling his pain,” Daji said. “If he’s suffered any. That’ll give us some clue about how he’s been treated. And that feeling will get stronger and stronger the closer we get. Convenient, no? Our very own homing pigeon.”
Their suspicions had been correct—Kitay was being held right on the Republican battlefront. The next morning, after long weeks on a road that seemed composed of never-ending bomb craters and ghost villages, the New City rose out of the horizon like a garish dash of color against a scorched background.
It made sense that the Republic would stake their base here, in one of the bloodiest cities in Nikara history. The New City, once named Arabak, had served as a military bastion since the campaigns of the Red Emperor. Originally it was a string of defensive forts over which warlords had fought for so long that the border between Boar and Hare Province was drawn in blood. The war machine required labor and talent, so over the years, civilians—physicians, farmers, craftsmen, and artisans—had moved with their families into the fortress complexes, which grew to accommodate the masses of people whose sole business was fighting.
Now, the New City was the frontier hub of the Republican Army and the air base of the Hesperian dirigible fleet. The Republican’s senior military command was stationed behind those walls, and so was Kitay.
Rin, Jiang, and Daji had to get creative as they got closer to the city. They started traveling only at night, and even then in short, careful bursts, hiding in the forest undergrowth to avoid the dirigibles that circled the city in regular patrols, shining unnaturally strong lights at the ground below. They altered their appearances—Daji clipped her hair short above her ears, Rin started hiding her eyes behind messy shanks of hair, and Jiang dyed his white locks a rich brown with a mix of walnut hulls and ochre, ingredients that he found so easily that Rin had to assume he’d done it before. They agreed on a cover story in case they were stopped by sentries—they were a family of refugees, Rin their daughter, traveling from Snake Province to reunite with Daji’s brother, a low-level bureaucrat in Dragon Province.
Rin found this last ploy ridiculous.
“No one’s going to think I’m your daughter,” she said.
“Why not?” Jiang asked.
“We look nothing alike! For one, your skin’s infinitely paler than mine—”
“Ah, darling.” He patted her on the head. “That’s your fault. What did I tell you about staying out in the sun?”
Half a mile out from the gates they found crowds. Actual refugees, it turned out, had flocked to the New City in hordes. Those fortresses were the only thing within miles that guaranteed safety from the bombing campaigns.
