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His index finger was crusted over in dried blood. He’d done it with his nail.
She reached for his leg. “Are you—”
“It’s fine. It’s stopped bleeding, I’ll clean it up later.” Kitay stood up. “Who are you here with?”
“Two-thirds of the Trifecta.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Which two?”
“The Vipress and the Gatekeeper.”
“Of course. And when are we meeting the Dragon Emperor?”
“We’ll discuss that later.” She jangled the keys at him. “Let’s get you out first. Padlocks?”
He shook his ankle at her, looking impressed. “How did you—”
“Daji is persuasive.” She held a flame up to the lock and began flipping through the keys to find one that looked like it matched. “No more bone smashing for us.”
He snorted. “Thank the gods.”
She’d just found a silver key that looked about the right size when she heard the unmistakable screech of a door sliding open, followed by a faint patter of footsteps echoing through the corridor. She froze. Daji had promised her more than an hour; she’d been planning to hide out downstairs until whatever ritual was going on in the main chamber had ended. Had something gone wrong upstairs?
“Hide,” Kitay hissed.
“Where?”
He pointed to his cot. Rin didn’t see how that could possibly work—it was a flimsy, narrow structure, barely two feet wide, with crossed wooden legs that wouldn’t conceal a rabbit.
“Get under this.” Kitay tugged at his blanket. The cotton sheet was thin but solidly opaque; hanging off the edge of the bed, it was just long enough to stretch to the floor.
Rin crawled underneath the cot and shrank in on herself, fighting to make her breathing inaudible. She heard the lock click back into place as Kitay pushed the cell door shut.
She poked her head out from the blankets, confused. “Wait, why don’t we just—”
“Shh,” he whispered. “I said hide.”
Footsteps grew louder and louder in the corridor, then stopped just outside the cell.
“Hello, Kitay.”
Rin dug her nails into her palm, madly clenching her teeth in an attempt to keep quiet. She knew only one person who could speak with that precise mixture of confidence, condescension, and feigned camaraderie.
“Good evening.” Kitay’s tone was all light, cheery indifference. “Good timing. I’ve just taken my nap.”
The door screeched open. Rin hardly dared to breathe.
If he made any moves toward the cot, she’d kill him. She held two advantages—the element of surprise and the fire. She wouldn’t hesitate this time. First a torrent of flame to his face to startle and blind him, then four white-hot fingers in a claw around his neck. She’d rip out his artery before he even realized what was happening.
“How have you been?” Nezha was standing right above her. “Accommodations still adequate?”
“I’d like some new books,” Kitay said. “And my reading lamps are running low.”
“I’ll see to that.”
“Thank you,” Kitay said stiffly. “And how is the lab rat life?”
“Don’t be a prick, Kitay.”
“My apologies,” Kitay drawled. “You were just so quick to send Rin to the same fate, I’m always stunned by the irony.”
“Listen, asshole—”
“Why do you let them do it?” Kitay asked. “I’m just curious. Certainly you don’t enjoy getting hurt.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Nezha said quietly. “It’s the only time it doesn’t hurt.”
There was a pause, which stretched into a longer, more awkward silence.
“I take it the council’s still giving you grief?” Kitay finally asked.
She heard a shuffling noise. Nezha was sitting down. “They’re madmen. All of them.”
Kitay chuckled. “At least we agree about something.”
Rin was astonished by how quickly they settled into amiable chitchat. No—amiable wasn’t quite the right word; they sounded far from friendly. But they also didn’t sound like a prisoner and his interrogator. They sounded like second-year students at Sinegard complaining about Jima’s sentence-diagramming homework. They were old acquaintances taking their seats at a wikki board, resuming a game right where they’d left off.
But was this really so surprising? Nostalgia gnawed Rin’s chest at the mere sound of Nezha’s voice. She wanted this familiarity with him back, too. Never mind that thirty seconds ago she’d been ready to kill him. His voice, his very presence, made her heart ache—she wished desperately they could be caught in a stalemate, that for just one minute the wars surrounding them could be suspended, so that they might speak like friends again. Just once.
“Our northern allies won’t commit further troops to Arabak until they get relief,” Nezha said. “They think I’m rolling in silver, that I’m just withholding it—but damn it, Kitay, they don’t understand. The coffers are empty.”
“And where’s the money gone?” Kitay asked.
He said it lightly, but he’d clearly meant to strike a nerve. Nezha’s tone turned sharp. “Don’t you dare accuse—”
“You’re getting far too much aid from the Hesperians for your army to be so poorly outfitted. Someone’s bleeding you dry. Come on, Nezha, we’ve been over this already. Get your house in order.”
“You’re making baseless accusations—”
“I’m just telling you what’s right in front of you,” Kitay said. “You know I’m right. You wouldn’t keep coming here if you didn’t think I could be useful.”
“Say something useful, then.” Nezha sounded so nasally petty then, so much like how he’d sounded their first year at Sinegard, that Rin almost laughed.
“I’ve been telling you things so obvious a child could see them,” Kitay said. “Your generals are siphoning away funds meant for relief—probably squirreling them away to their summer palaces, so that’s the first place you’ll want to check. That’s the problem with all that Hesperian silver. Your entire base has gotten corrupted. You might start with cutting down on the bribes.”
“But you have to bribe them to keep them on your side,” Nezha said, frustrated. “Otherwise they won’t present a united front, and if we don’t have a united front then the Hesperians just run roughshod over us like our government doesn’t even exist.”
“Poor Nezha,” Kitay said. “They’ve tied your hands behind your back, haven’t they?”
“This is all so fucking stupid. I need unified army command. I need freedom to put absolute priority on the southern front, and I want to divert forces from the north to deal with Rin without making all these compromises. I just don’t know why—”
“I know why. You’re not the grand marshal, you’re the Young Marshal. That’s your nickname, right? The generals and the Hesperians both think you’re just a spoiled, stupid princeling who doesn’t know what he’s doing. They think you’re just like Jinzha. And they wouldn’t put you in charge of their dirigibles if you sank to your knees and begged.”
