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Rin didn’t know what surprised her most—Kitay’s frankness, that Nezha hadn’t yet punished him for it, or that anything Kitay was saying might be true.
None of this made sense. She had assumed Nezha was wallowing in power. That he had the entire dirigible fleet at his disposal. He’d seemed so dominant when he’d descended on Tikany, she’d thought he had the entire Republic at his back.
But this was her first indication that Nezha was not holding together as well as she’d thought. Here, alone in the basement with his old classmate and prisoner, perhaps the only person he could be honest with, Nezha just sounded scared.
“I’m guessing things haven’t gotten better with Tarcquet, either,” Kitay said.
“He’s a patronizing fuck,” Nezha snarled. “You know what he’s blamed the last campaign on? Our lack of fighting spirit. He said that the Nikara inherently don’t have fighting spirit.”
“A rather bold claim given our history, I think.”
Nezha didn’t laugh. “There’s nothing wrong with our troops. They’re incredibly well trained, they’re excellent on the field, but the problem is the restructuring and integrated forces—”
“The what now?”
“Another one of Tarcquet’s ideas.” Nezha spat the name like it was poison. “They want coordinated air and ground assault teams.”
“Interesting,” Kitay said. “I’d have thought they were too up their own asses for that.”
“It’s not real integration. It means they want us to lug their coal wagons for them wherever they decide to go. Means we’re just their fucking mules—”
“There are worse roles to play on the battlefront.”
“Not if we’re ever going to earn their respect.”
“I think we both know your chances of winning Hesperian respect sailed a long time ago,” Kitay said lightly. “So who are you dropping bombs on next? Has Boar Province capitulated?”
A tinge of exasperation crept into Nezha’s voice. “If you’d agree to help with planning, I could tell you.”
Kitay sighed. “Alas, I’m not that desperate to leave this cell.”
“No, you seem to like captivity.”
“I like knowing that the words out of my mouth won’t cause the deaths of people I’ve become quite fond of. It’s this thing called ethics. You might try it sometime.”
“No one has to die,” Nezha said. “No one ever had to die. But Rin’s suckered those fools into waging everything on an all-or-nothing outcome.”
Rin flinched at the sound of her name from his mouth this time. He said it with such violence.
“Rin’s not behind this,” Kitay said cautiously. “Rin’s dead.”
“Bullshit. The whole country would be talking if she were gone.”
“Oh, you think that your lovely airships managed to miss her?”
“She can’t be dead,” Nezha insisted. “She’s just in hiding, she has to be. They never found a body, and the south wouldn’t be fighting this hard if they knew she was gone. She’s the only thing they’re rallying around. Without her they have no hope. They would have surrendered.”
Rin heard a rustle of clothing. Kitay might have been shrugging.
“I suppose you know better than me.”
Another silence filled the cell. Rin lay utterly still, her heartbeat ringing so loudly she was amazed she had not been discovered.
“I didn’t want this war,” Nezha said at last. His voice sounded oddly brittle—defensive, even. Rin didn’t know what to make of it. “I never did. Why couldn’t she understand that?”
“Well, you did put a blade in her back.”
“I didn’t want things to be like this.”
“Oh, gods, let’s not go down this road again.”
“We’d let her have the south if she’d just come to the table. Gods know we’re grateful she got rid of the Mugenese for us. And she’s a good soldier. The very best. We’d happily have her back on our side; we’d make her a general in a heartbeat—”
“You seem to have mistaken me for a dullard,” Kitay said.
“It’s a tragedy we’re on different sides, Kitay. You know that. We would have been so good united, all three of us.”
“We were united. And we were good. Your father had other plans.”
“We can come back from this,” Nezha insisted. “Yes, we’ve messed up—I’ve messed up, I’ll admit that—but think about what the Republic could accomplish, if we really fought to make it work. You’re too smart to ignore its potential—”
“You’re still on about that shit? Please don’t patronize me, Nezha.”
“Help me,” Nezha begged. “Together we could end this whole thing in weeks, regardless of whether Rin is dead or alive. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. If you had access to our resources—”
“See, it’s hard to take you seriously when you do things like drop bombs on innocent children.”
“That ambush was a mistake—”
“Sleeping in past roll call is a mistake,” Kitay snapped. “Neglecting to deliver my meals on time was a mistake. What you did was cold-hearted murder. And Rin and I know that if we join you, it’ll happen again, because we and the south are utterly disposable to you. You and your father think we are tools to be traded or thrown away at your convenience, which is precisely what you did.”
“I didn’t have a choice—”
“You had a thousand choices. You drew the lines at Arlong. You started this war, and it’s not my fault if you haven’t got the balls to finish it. So tell Vaisra he might as well lop my head off, because then he could at least use it for decoration.”
Nezha said nothing. Rin heard a rustle of cloth as he stood. He was leaving; his footsteps sounded hard and angry against the stone. She wished she could see his face. She hoped he might give some rejoinder, any kind of reaction, just so she would know if Kitay had rattled him or not. But she heard only the screech as he pushed the door shut behind him, and then the click of the lock.
“Sorry I didn’t have time to warn you.” Kitay pulled the blanket off the cot and helped Rin to her feet. “Just thought you should hear.”
She passed him the keys. “How long has he been at it?”
“Every day since I got here. He was actually on pretty good behavior today; you didn’t get to see him at his worst. He’s tried a million different things to break me.” Kitay bent over to unlock his shackles. “But he should have remembered he never figured out how. Not at Sinegard, and certainly not now.”
Rin felt an aching burst of pride. She forgot sometimes how resilient Kitay could be. One would never have suspected it by looking at him—the archetypal reedy and anxious scholar—but he bore hardship with iron fortitude. Sinegard hadn’t worn him down. Even Golyn Niis hadn’t destroyed him. Nezha could never have broken him.
No, whispered the little voice in her head that sounded too much like Altan. The only person capable of breaking him is you.
