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Jiang surveyed the forts for a moment, and then shook his head. “Oh, no. Double that, at least.”
Kitay furrowed his brows. “Then how are you going to . . . ?”
“I said we’ll break the front,” Jiang said very calmly.
Kitay blinked at him, clearly at a loss for words.
“Just trust him,” Rin muttered.
She thought back to memories of howling screeches, shapes of darkness furling out of nowhere. She thought of Tseveri’s stricken face as Jiang’s clawed fingers went into her rib cage.
She didn’t trust this newly confident, capable Jiang. She had no idea who he was, or what he could do. But she feared him, which meant the Republic should, too.
“Fine.” Kitay still looked baffled, but he didn’t push the point. “What’s your signal, then?”
Jiang just chuckled. “Oh, I think you’ll know.”
“You’re shitting me,” Venka said.
She looked terrible. She’d lost a startling amount of weight. She was wrung out, rangier, sharp cheekbones jutting beneath hollow, purple-ringed eyes.
She hadn’t been easy to find. Rin and Kitay had climbed out of the river into what looked like a long-deserted army camp. The sentry posts nearest them were unmanned; the few sandbags visible were scattered uselessly across the dirt. Rin would have assumed the Southern Coalition had already fled, except that the charred logs near the mountainside were evidence of freshly doused campfires, and the latrine dugouts stank of fresh shit.
The entire army, it appeared, had gone underground.
Rin and Kitay had ventured into the tunnels, ambushed the first soldier they encountered, and demanded he lead them to Venka. He sat tamely now in the corner of the dimly lit room, gagged with rope, eyes darting back and forth in equal parts terror and confusion.
“Hello to you, too.” Kitay headed for a pile of maps lying on the floor and began to rummage through them. “Are these up to date? Mind if I take a look?”
“Do whatever you want,” Venka said faintly. She didn’t even glance at him. Her eyes, still wide in disbelief, were fixed on Rin. “I thought they carted you to that mountain. Souji kept crowing on and on about that, said you were stuck in stone for good.”
“Some old friends broke me out,” Rin said. “Looks like you’ve been doing far worse.”
“Gods, Rin, it’s been a nightmare.” Venka pressed her palms against her temples. “I honestly don’t know what Souji’s plan is at this point. I was starting to think we’d be buried here.”
“So Souji’s in charge?” Rin asked.
“He and Gurubai together.” Venka looked abashed. “You, ah, might hear about some things I said. I mean, after Tikany, they were out for me, too, and I—”
“I’m sure you said whatever you needed to to get them off your back,” Rin said. “I don’t care about that. Just fill us in on what’s happened.”
Venka nodded. “The Republic launched a second assault a few days after the first air raid. Souji led us in a retreat north—the idea was to get back to Ruijin—but the Republic kept pushing us eastward, so we got trapped up against these mountains instead. We’re calling this the Anvil, because they keep slamming up against us and we’ve got nowhere to run. I’m sure they’ll be making their final push any day now; they know we’re nearly out of supplies.”
“I’m shocked you made it to the mountains at all.” Kitay looked up from the maps. “How on earth did you hold them off this long?”
“It’s their artillery’s fault,” Venka said. “They keep shooting themselves in the feet. Literally. Nezha’s got his army outfitted with new Hesperian technology, but they don’t know how to use it, and I guess they moved out before they were properly trained, so half the time they try to hit us they blow themselves up in the process.”
No wonder Nezha had sounded so rattled when complaining about force integration. Rin couldn’t help but grin.
“Something funny?” Venka asked.
“Nothing,” Rin said. “It’s just—remember that night on the tower, how Nezha kept bragging about how Hesperian technology was going to win the Empire for us?”
“Yes, they’ve had growing pains,” Venka said drily. “Unfortunately, a misfired cannonball hurts just as bad.”
Kitay held up a map and tapped at an arrow snaking south. “Is this how you were going to get them out? A hard press by the southern border?”
“That’s what Souji’s planning,” Venka said. “It seemed like our best bet. Nezha doesn’t have his own men on that border; it’s under the domain of the new Ox Warlord. Bai Lin. There are massive tungsten deposits on the Monkey Province side of the border, and Gurubai’s offered to mine it for him if he’ll carve us an escape corridor.”
“That won’t work,” Kitay said.
Venka gave him an exasperated look. “We’ve been planning this for weeks.”
“Sure, but I know Bai Lin. He used to come over to our estate in Sinegard to play wikki with my parents all the time. The man hasn’t got a backbone—Father used to call him the Empire’s greatest brownnoser. There’s no way he’ll risk pissing Vaisra off. He’ll let Nezha decimate you and send laborers in to mine the tungsten himself.”
“Fine.” Venka jutted her chin out. “You come up with something better, then.”
Kitay tapped a northern point on the blockade. “We have to go through the old mining tunnels. They’ll bring us out onto the other side of the Baolei range.”
“We’ve tried those tunnels,” Venka said. “They’re blocked up.”
“Then we’ll blow a hole through the entrance,” Kitay said.
Venka looked doubtful. “You’d need a lot of firepower.”
“Oh dear,” Rin drawled. “I wonder how we’ll manage that.”
Venka snorted. “None of the cave tunnels here lead to the mines. We’d still have to get through the dead zone, which is at least a mile long. Nezha’s got half his infantry stationed right outside. We’re working with two-thirds the numbers we had at Tikany, and we don’t have an air defense. This can’t work.”
“It’ll work,” Kitay said. “We’ve got allies.”
“Who?” Venka perked up. “How many?”
“Two,” Rin said.
“You assholes—”
“Rin brought the Trifecta,” Kitay clarified.
Venka squinted at them. “What, like the shadow puppets?”
“The original Trifecta,” Rin said. “Two of them, at least. The Empress. Master Jiang. They’re the Vipress and the Gatekeeper.”
“Are you telling me,” Venka said slowly, “that Lore Master Jiang, the man who kept a drug garden at Sinegard, is going to single-handedly spring us out of this blockade?”
Kitay scratched his chin. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“He’s only the most powerful shaman in Nikan,” Rin said. “I mean, so we think. Word’s still out on the Dragon Emperor.”
Venka looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A vein twitched beneath her left eye. “The last time I saw Jiang he was trying to snip my hair off with garden shears.”
