Seven days later Rin stood with Jiang and Daji at the base of Mount Tianshan, preparing to make the final climb. Jiang carried a fawn slung over his shoulders, its skinny legs bound with rope. Rin tried not to look at its large, blinking eyes. There was power in a fleeing life, she knew. The incantation to break the eroding Seal required death.
The mountain loomed tall above them, deceptively pretty in its lush greenery and patches of clean snow, shrouded by its famous mists so thick she could barely see half a mile up the path. At twenty-five thousand feet, it was the tallest peak in the Empire, but the Heavenly Temple was only two-thirds of the way up the mountain. Still, it would take them the full day to climb, and they likely would not reach the temple until sunset.
“Well.” Rin turned around to face Kitay. “See you tonight.”
He wasn’t coming with her. Despite his protests, they’d both agreed he would only be a liability on the mountain—he’d be safer in the valley, surrounded by Cholang’s troops.
“Tonight,” he agreed, leaning down to give her a tight, brief hug. His lips brushed against her ear. “Don’t fuck this up.”
“Can’t promise anything.” Rin gave him a wry chuckle. She had to laugh, to mask her apprehension with callous humor, otherwise she’d splinter from the fear. “It’s only a day, dearest, don’t miss me too much.”
He didn’t laugh.
“Come back down,” he said, his expression suddenly grim. His fingers clenched tight around hers. “Listen, Rin. I don’t care what else happens up there. But you come back to me.”
The road up Mount Tianshan was a sacred path.
In all the myths, Tianshan was the site from which the gods descended. Where Lei Gong stood when he carved lightning into the sky with his staff. Where the Queen Mother of the West tended the peach tree of immortality that had sentenced the Moon Lady Chang’e to an eternity of torment. Where Sanshengmu, sister of the vengeful Erlang Shen, had fallen when the heavens banished her for loving a mortal.
It was clear why the gods would choose this place, where the rarefied air was cool and sweet, where the flowers that laced the road bloomed in colors so bright they did not seem real. The path, so rarely trodden it had nearly faded away, was silent as they walked. No one spoke. Save for their footsteps, Rin heard nothing—not the chirping of birds nor the hum of insects. Mount Tianshan, for all its natural loveliness, seemed devoid of any other life.
The dirigibles came at midday.
Rin thought she’d imagined the buzzing at first; it was so faint. She thought the droning was a fear-induced flashback, brought on by the nerves and pounding exhaustion.
But then Daji froze in her steps, and Rin realized she’d heard it, too.
Jiang glanced up at the sky and groaned. “Fucking hell.”
Slowly the aircraft emerged from the thick white misty wall, one after another, black shapes half-hidden in clouds like lurking monsters.
Rin, Jiang, and Daji stood still below, exposed against the white snow, three targets laid bare before a firing squad.
How long had Nezha known where she was? Since she’d reached Dog Province? Since she’d begun the march? He must have tailed the southerners with reconnaissance crafts, lurking unseen beyond the horizon, tracing their movements across the Baolei range, waiting to see where they led him like a hunter following a baby deer to its herd. He must have realized they were marching west to seek salvation. And following his devastating loss at the Anvil, in desperate need of a victory to hand the Hesperians, he must have decided to wait to eliminate the resistance at its source.
“What are you waiting for?” Daji hissed. “Hit them.”
Jiang shook his head. “They’re not in range.”
He was right. The airships crept hesitantly through the mist, patient predators watching to see where their prey scurried next. But they remained hovering at such a distance that they were only hazy shapes in the sky, where they knew Jiang’s shades could not reach. They didn’t approach. And they didn’t fire.
Nezha knows, Rin thought. She was certain; that was the only explanation. Somehow, Nezha understood what she was attempting, or at least an approximation of it. He wasn’t ready to murder the Trifecta just yet. He needed to find out, for the sake of his Hesperian overseers, what precisely lay in that chamber.
“Then hurry up,” Daji said curtly, turning her gaze back to the path. “Climb.”
There was no other option but to follow.
Rin scrambled up the slippery rock, all reservations driven from her mind by sheer icy fear. Her questions about the Trifecta didn’t matter now. Whatever Jiang had done, whatever he was hiding from her, whoever the children were—it didn’t matter. Nezha lurked above her, ready to turn her bones to dust with a single order. She had one path to survival and that was Riga.
She could be about to wake a monster. She didn’t care.
Farther up, the path was ensconced inside fog so thick that Rin could barely see or breathe. This was the famous mist of Mount Tianshan, the so-called impenetrable shroud of the Empress of the Four Skies, cast down to keep mortals from discovering the doors to the heavens. The humidity was so dense she felt almost as if she were moving through water. She couldn’t see even a foot in front of her; she had to scrabble along on all fours, listening desperately for the sound of Daji’s footsteps.
She could still hear the dirigible fleet, but she couldn’t see them at all now. The droning had become fainter, too, as if the fleet had first approached the mountain and then retreated backward.
Could they not see where they were going? That must be it—if the mist was hazardous to climbers, it must be doubly so for the aircraft. They must have fallen back to clearer skies, waiting until they figured out the precise location of their targets.
How long did that give them? Hours? Minutes?
She was finding it harder and harder to breathe. She had grown used to thin air on the march, but rarely had they ascended to such altitudes. Fatigue crept up her legs and arms and intensified to a screaming burn. Every step felt like torture. She slowed to a third of her initial speed, dragging her feet forward with every last ounce of energy she could squeeze from her muscles.
She couldn’t stop. They’d initially agreed to camp halfway up the mountain if they tired too quickly, but with dirigibles following overhead, that was no longer an option.
One at a time, she told herself. One step. Then another. And then another, until at last, the steep path gave way to flat stone. She dropped to all fours, chest heaving, desperate for just a few seconds’ reprieve.
“There,” Daji whispered behind her.
Rin lifted her head, squinting through the fog, until the Heavenly Temple emerged through the mist—an imposing nine-story pagoda with red walls and slanted cobalt roofs, gleaming pristinely as if it had been built only yesterday.
The temple had no doors. A square hole was carved into the wall where one should have been, revealing nothing but darkness within. There was no barrier against the wind and the cold. Whatever lay inside needed no defenses—the interior pulsed with some dark, crackling power of its own. Rin could feel it in the air, growing thicker as she approached—a vague tension that made her skin prickle with unease.
Here, the boundary between the world of gods and the world of men blurred. This place was blessed. This place was cursed. She didn’t know which.
The temple’s dark entrance beckoned, inviting. Rin was seized by a sudden, heart-clenching impulse to flee.
“Well,” Daji said behind her. “Go on.”
Rin swallowed and stepped over the raised panel at the threshold, casting flames into the darkness to light her way. The room on the ground level wasn’t warm. It wasn’t cool, either. It was nothing at all, the absence of temperature, a place perfectly conditioned to leave her untouched. The air didn’t stir. There was no dust. This was a space carved out of the boundaries of the natural world, a chamber outside of time.
Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dim interior.
The Heavenly Temple had no windows. The walls on all nine floors were solid stone. Even the ceiling, unlike ceilings in every pagoda Rin had ever seen, was closed off to the sky, blocking out all light except for the red glow in her palm.
Cautiously, she cast her flames higher and wider, trying to bring light to every corner of the room without setting anything ablaze. She made out the shapes of the sixty-four gods above her, statues perched on plinths exactly like those she’d always seen in the Pantheon. The flames distorted their shadows, made them loom large and menacing on the high stone walls.
Yes—the gods were undeniably present here. She didn’t just feel them, she could hear them. Odd whispers arced around her, speaking fleeting words that disappeared just as she tried to catch them. She lingered under the plinth of the Phoenix. Its eyes gazed down at her—fond, mocking, daring. Long time no see, little one.
In the middle of the room stood an altar.
“Great Tortoise,” Jiang said. “You really did a number on him.”
The Dragon Emperor lay still on a bed of pure jade, hands folded serenely over his chest. He didn’t look like someone who had been comatose without food or water for two decades. He didn’t look like a living person at all. He seemed a part of the temple, as still and permanent as stone. His chest did not rise or fall; Rin couldn’t tell if he still breathed.
The Yin family resemblance was uncanny. His face was sculpted porcelain: strong brows, straight nose, a lovely arrangement of sharp angles. His long, raven-black hair draped elegantly over his shoulders. Rin felt dizzy as her eyes traced his noble sleeping features. She felt as if she were staring down at Nezha’s corpse.
“Let’s not draw this out,” Daji said. “Ziya?”
Jiang moved fast. Before Rin could blink, he’d dropped the fawn onto the stone tiles and wedged a blade into its neck.
The fawn’s mouth worked furiously, but no scream came out, only agonized gurgles and an astonishing tide of blood.
“Quickly now, before he’s gone.” Daji pulled Rin out of the way as Jiang dragged the fawn’s writhing form against the base of the altar.
The fawn’s choking went on for a torturously long time. Finally, its struggling dwindled to minute shudders as its blood seeped across the floor, running in straight, clean rivulets where the stone tiles met. All the while Daji knelt over it, one hand pressed against its flank, murmuring something under her breath.
A crackling noise filled the cave, a long, unceasing roll of thunder that grew louder and louder until it seemed the pagoda was about to explode. Rin felt power in the air. Too much power—it cloyed in her throat, choking her. She crouched back against the wall, suddenly terrified.
Daji spoke faster and faster, unintelligible words tumbling eagerly from her lips.
Jiang was utterly still. His face twisted in some strange and unfamiliar grimace; Rin couldn’t tell if he was horrified or ecstatic.
Then shone a burst of white light, followed by a noise like a thunderclap. Rin didn’t realize she’d been thrown off her feet until she felt her back slam against the far wall.
Stars exploded behind her eyelids. The pain was excruciating. She wanted to curl up into a ball and rock back and forth until it stopped, but fear dominated; fear made her crawl to her knees, coughing, squinting as she waited for her vision to return.
Jiang stood with his back against the opposite wall, unmoving, his expression blank. Daji was collapsed against the base of the altar. A thin trail of blood ran out from between her lips. Rin stumbled forth to help her up, but Daji shook her head and pointed to the altar, where, for the first time in over twenty years, Yin Riga rose.
The Dragon Emperor’s eyes were pure, gleaming cobalt. They roved slowly about the room as he sat up, drinking in the sights of the pagoda.
Rin couldn’t move. She couldn’t even speak—all words seemed insufficient. Some force seemed to be clenching her jaw shut, some gravity that made the air in the temple thicker than rock.
“Can you hear me?” Daji, rising to her knees, pulled Riga’s hands into her own. “Riga?”
He stared at her for a long time. Then he croaked, in a voice like scraping gravel, “Daji.”
Jiang made a choking noise.
Riga’s gaze flickered briefly toward him, then returned to Daji. “How long have I been gone?”
“Twenty years.” Daji cleared her throat. “Do—do you know where you are?”
Riga sat silent for a moment, eyebrows furrowed.
“I’ve been drifting,” he said. At least he sounded nothing like Nezha—his voice was hoarse from disuse, a rusted blade dragging against stone. “I don’t know where. It was dark, and the gods were silent. And I couldn’t get back. I couldn’t find the way. And I kept wondering, who could possibly have . . .” His eyes refocused suddenly on Daji, as if he had just realized he was speaking out loud. “I remember now. We quarreled.”
Daji’s pale throat bobbed. “Yes.”
“And you stopped it.” His gaze lingered on Daji’s face for a long while. Something passed between them that Rin did not understand—something full of remorse, longing, and resentment. Something dangerous.
Abruptly, Riga turned away.
“Ziya,” he commanded. His voice grew smoother, louder, resounding off the pagoda walls.
Jiang’s head jerked up. “Yes.”
“You’ve come around, then?” Riga rose to his feet, shrugging off Daji’s proffered arm. He was much taller than Nezha—if they’d been standing side by side, he would have made Nezha look like a child. “Have you gotten over that stupid girl? That’s why we fought, wasn’t it?”
Jiang’s face was unreadable as stone. “It’s good to see you again.”
Riga turned toward Rin. “And what’s this?”
Rin still couldn’t speak. She tried to take a step backward, but to her horror she found herself frozen in place. Riga’s gaze was like steel spikes nailing her feet to the ground, paralyzing her with seemingly no effort at all.
“How interesting.” Riga tilted his head, eyes roving up and down her form as if surveying a pack animal at market. “I thought they killed them all.”
Rin tried to draw her knife. Her arm wouldn’t listen.
“Kneel,” Riga said softly.
She obeyed instantly. His voice was like a physical force on its own, capable of bending her knees and forcing her gaze to the ground. It vibrated in her bones. It shook the very foundations of the pagoda.
Riga strode slowly toward her. “She’s shorter than the others. Why is that?”
No one answered. He made a humming noise. “I suppose Hanelai was short. Does she follow orders?”
At last, Rin managed to spit out a word. “Orders?”
“Rin, be quiet,” Daji said sharply.
Riga just laughed. “I’m impressed, Ziya. You really found another one to keep around, did you? You always did like your pets.”
“I’m not his pet,” Rin snarled.
“Oh, it talks.”
Riga leaned down and gave her a wide, terrible smile. Then he reached out, seized her collar, and pulled her up into the air in one smooth, easy motion. Rin gasped as his thumbs dug painfully into her windpipe. She kicked out with her feet, but she was swinging entire inches off the ground, and all she could do was brush Riga’s knees with her toes. All her flailing had no more effect than a child throwing a tantrum. Riga pulled her toward him until their eyes were level, their faces so close that she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheeks when he spoke.
“I’ve been asleep for a very long time, little Speerly,” he whispered. “I’m not in the mood for contradiction.”
“Oh, let her go,” Daji said. “You’re going to kill her like that.”
Riga shot her a glare. “Did I give you permission to speak?”
“She’s useful,” Daji insisted. “She’s strong, she helped us get here—”
“Really? That’s pathetic. You used to get these things done on your own.” Riga’s lip curled in amusement. “What is it? Did Ziya fuck this one, too? I must say, his standards have dropped.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Daji said quickly. “She’s just a child, Riga, don’t hurt her—”
“What’s this, darling?” Riga gave a low chuckle. “Finally developing a conscience?”
Daji’s voice became shrill. “Riga, listen to me, let her go.”
Riga opened his fingers.
Rin dropped to the ground, clutching noiselessly at her throat. Riga’s legs loomed above her. She cringed, bracing herself for a vicious kick, but he merely stepped over her as if she were a footstool.
He was headed for Daji.
“Riga—” Daji started, just before Riga drew his hand back and slapped her across the face. Daji’s head whipped to the side. She cried out and clutched her cheek.
“Shut up,” Riga said, and slapped her again. Then again, and again, until a vivid crimson handprint bloomed on Daji’s paper-white cheek. “Shut up, you fucking whore.”
Rin watched them from where she lay, astonished.
For the longest time she had considered Daji—Su Daji, the Vipress, former Empress of Nikan—the most powerful being on earth. From the moment she’d met her, she’d feared her. She’d wanted terribly to be her.
But here Daji stood, shoulders hunched like she was trying to shrivel into nothing while Riga battered her like she was a dog. And she was just taking it.
“Did you think I’d forgotten?” Riga asked hoarsely. “You treacherous little bitch, did you think I don’t know who put me here?”
He raised his hand high. Daji shrank against the wall and loosed a whimpering sob.
“Oh, don’t be like that.” He put his fingers under Daji’s chin and forced her head up. He sighed. “You used to be so pretty when you cried. When did you stop being so pretty?”
Rin wanted to vomit.
Surely Daji wouldn’t take this. Surely she would strike back. Surely Jiang would defend her.
But they only looked away—Daji at her hands, Jiang at the ground. They were both trembling. Then Rin realized that this was nothing new for them; this was a trained response to a terror they’d lived with for years. A terror so incapacitating that now, twenty years later, after half a lifetime of freedom from the man they’d hated, they still cowered meekly before him like whipped dogs.
Rin was astounded.
What had Riga done to them?
And if she brought him back down the mountain, what would he do to her?
Kill him, said the Phoenix. Kill him now.
Riga’s back was turned to her. She could end this in seconds; all it took was a quick hop, lunge, and stab. She clasped the hilt of her knife, rose to her feet as silently as she could, and dug her heels into the ground. She could call on the Phoenix, but sometimes steel was faster than fire—
No. No. If she hurt the Trifecta, then she was alone. She’d come this far. He was her last, best hope; she couldn’t throw this away.
She knew she’d woken a monster. But she’d known this from the start; she’d known she needed monsters on her side.
“I’m not your enemy,” she said. “And I’m not your servant, either. I’m the last Speerly. And I came to seek your help.”
Riga didn’t turn around, but his hand dropped from Daji’s chin. He stood very still, head cocked. Daji stumbled back, rubbing her jaw, staring at Rin with wide-eyed astonishment.
“I know what you did.” Rin’s words came out shaky and girlish; she couldn’t help it. “I know everything. And I don’t care. The past doesn’t matter. Nikan is in danger now, and I need you.”
Riga turned. His eyes were wide, his mouth half-open in an incredulous smile.
“You know?” He strode toward her, his steps low and menacing like a tiger approaching its prey. “What do you think you know?”
“Speer.” Rin took a step back without thinking. Everything about him radiated danger; that grin on his face made her want to spin around and run. “I saw—I know—I know you gave it up. I know you let them.”
“Is that what you think?” He bent toward her. “Then why don’t you want to kill me, child?”
“Because I don’t care,” she breathed. “Because there’s another enemy at our shores that’s ten times worse than you, and I need you to destroy them. You made a necessary choice at Speer. I get it. I’ve traded lives, too.”
Riga regarded her for a long moment in silence. Rin did her best to meet his gaze, heart pounding so furiously she was afraid it might burst.
She couldn’t read his expression. She had no idea what he was thinking. Something was off, something was wrong—she could tell from Daji’s terrified expression—but she couldn’t flee, she had to see this through.
Then Riga threw his head back and laughed. His cackle was a horrible thing, so like Nezha’s, and so gleefully cruel. “You don’t know shit.”
“I don’t care,” Rin repeated desperately. “The Hesperians are here, Riga, they’re right outside, you need to work with me—”
He lifted a hand. “Oh, shut up.”
An invisible force slammed her forward into the ground. Her kneecaps screamed in agony. She hunched over on all fours, trying and failing to get up.
Riga knelt down before her and clasped her face in his hands. “Look at me.”
Rin squeezed her eyes shut.
It didn’t matter. Riga’s fingertips dug so hard into her temples she thought he was about to shatter her skull in his hands. A cruel, cold presence forced its way into her mind, digging through her memories with callous disregard, wrenching out everything that made Rin go dry-mouthed in fright. Auntie Fang, twisting skin to form welts under her clothes where no one could see. Shiro, carelessly jamming needles into her veins with brutish force. Petra, tracing cold metal against her naked body, thin lips curling with amusement every time Rin flinched.
It went on for what seemed like an eternity. Rin wasn’t aware she was screaming until her throat convulsed from the strain.
“Ah,” Riga said. “Here we are.”
The memories paused. She found herself bent over the floor, panting, drool dripping from her mouth.
“Look at me,” Riga said again, and this time she wearily obeyed.
There was no fight left in her. She just wanted this over. If she just did what he said, would it be over?
“Is this what you wanted to see?” Riga inquired.
His face morphed into Altan’s. He grinned.
And then, at last, Rin understood what Daji had meant when she said that Riga’s power lay in fear.
He didn’t just terrorize with brute force. He terrorized with pure, overwhelming power. He’d probed her memory for the one person she’d once thought so intimidatingly strong that she couldn’t help but obey—no, longed to obey, because fear and love were really just opposite sides of the same coin.
She saw now what bound Jiang and Daji to Riga. It was the same reason she’d once been drawn to Altan. With Altan, it had always been so easy. She never had to think. He raged and she followed, blind and unquestioning, because marveling at his purpose was simpler than coming up with one of her own. He’d terrified her. She would have died for him.
“Altan Trengsin,” Riga mused. “I remember the name. Hanelai’s nephew, wasn’t he, Ziya? Pride of the island?”
New images invaded her mind.
She saw waves crashing against a jagged shore. She saw a boy wading through the shallows. He was very young, no more than four or five. He stood alone on the beach, trident in his hand, his dark eyes narrowed in concentration as he watched the waves. His inky-black hair fell in soft curls around sun-bronzed cheeks, and his face was tight with a mature, intense focus that belonged to someone much older. Slowly, without glancing away from the water, he lifted the trident over his shoulder in a practiced stance Rin had seen many times before.
She realized with a jolt that she was looking at Altan.
“Come,” said a voice—Riga’s voice from her mouth, for this was Riga’s memory, and she was experiencing something Riga had already done from within his body.
Twenty years ago, Yin Riga approached Altan Trengsin and said, “Come now. Your aunt is waiting.”
Riga extended his hand. And Altan, without question or hesitation, took it.
She heard Riga’s laughter ringing in her mind. Now do you see?
Rin stumbled back, horrified, but she was still caught in the vision, forced to watch as long as Riga wanted her to, and she couldn’t bring herself back to her senses. She couldn’t bring herself back to her body, couldn’t return to Mount Tianshan—could only keep watching as Riga led Altan to a boat waiting down the shore, a boat flying Federation colors.
Other children were waiting on the decks. Dozens of them. And standing among them, one man—a thin, spindly man whose hands moved across the children’s shoulders, whose narrow eyes danced with curious glee as he observed them the same way he had once observed Rin, whose narrow, sharp-chinned face had hovered above her in the worst moments of her life and haunted her nightmares even now.
Shiro.
Twenty years ago, Dr. Eyimchi Shiro took Altan’s hand and guided him on board.
Then it all fit together; the final, horrible piece of the puzzle fell into place. The Federation had not kidnapped Speer’s children. It was the Trifecta. It had been Riga all along; Riga who delivered the children to the Federation; Riga who forced Hanelai’s hand when she dissented, and then watched her island go up in smoke when she made the wrong choice.
“You’re right.” Riga removed his hands from Rin’s temples, leaving her gasping on her knees. “I make hard choices. I do whatever I must. But I do not work with Speerlies. I tried with Hanelai. That bitch tried to defect. Your kind don’t serve, they only cause trouble. And you’ll be no different.”
Rin’s head throbbed. She heaved for breath, glaring at the floor until her vision stopped spinning, trying to buy a few seconds.
She’d been so terribly wrong. There was no appeasing Riga. She couldn’t beg an alliance from someone who didn’t think her human.
This wasn’t about humiliation.
This was about survival.
Then the calculus became starkly clear.
She’d hoped so desperately for a different outcome. She’d climbed that mountain willing to do almost anything for the Trifecta. She’d known they had done awful things. She would have overlooked those things, if only she could borrow their power. If it meant victory against the Republic, she would have forgiven the Trifecta for almost anything.
But not this.
She lifted her head. “Thank you.”
Riga’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “What for, little girl?”
“For making this easy.” She closed her eyes, focusing through her pain onto a singular point of rage. Then she turned her palm out.
The burst of flame lasted for only two seconds, just long enough to singe Riga’s clothes before it died away.
The Phoenix hadn’t disappeared. Rin could still feel her link to the god, clearer than ever in the Heavenly Temple. But the Phoenix was suppressed, screeching, struggling against an enemy that Rin could not perceive.
Somewhere on the spiritual plane, the gods were at war.
Hand-to-hand combat, then.
Rin drew her sword. Riga pulled his blade from atop the altar just before she charged at him, parrying with a force that sent shock waves ripping through her arm.
He was unexpectedly slow. Bizarrely clumsy. He made the right moves, but always a split second behind, as if he were still remembering how to channel thoughts into actions. After twenty years asleep, Riga had yet to acclimate to his physical body, and only that disadvantage was keeping Rin alive.
It wasn’t enough. Her swordplay was awful. She never practiced with her left hand. She had no balance. Slow as he was, she only barely managed to keep pace, and in seconds he put her on the defensive. She couldn’t even think about striking back; she was so focused on avoiding his blade.
Riga raised his sword overhead. She jerked her blade up just in time to meet a blow meant to cleave her in two. Her shoulder buckled from the impact. She tensed, anticipating a side strike, but Riga did not lift his blade from hers. He pressed down, harder and harder, until the crossed steel was inches from Rin’s face.
“Kneel,” he said.
Rin’s knees shook.
“I will be merciful,” he said. “I will permit you to serve. You need only kneel.”
Her arm gave out. He sliced down. She dove to the left, barely avoiding his blade, as her own sword dropped from her numb fingers to the floor. Riga scraped his foot over the hilt and kicked it to the other side of the room.
“Ziya.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Get rid of that.”
Jiang was still standing where he’d frozen when Riga stepped off the altar. At the sound of his name, he lifted his head, brows furrowed in confusion.
“Master,” Rin breathed. “Please . . .”
Jiang moved slowly toward the sword, bent over to pick it up, then hesitated. His eyes landed on Rin and he frowned, squinting as if he was trying to remember where he had seen her before.
“Come now, Ziya.” Riga sounded bored. “Don’t dawdle.”
Jiang blinked, then lifted the sword off the ground.
Rin hastened to her feet, hand scrabbling for her knife only to remember that she was reaching with phantom fingers, that her right hand wasn’t there.
She lunged at Riga’s legs. If she could just knock him off balance, get him on the ground—
He saw her coming. He stepped aside and swept his knee up high into her sternum. Something cracked in her rib cage. She dropped to the floor, unable to even gasp.
“Had enough?” He bent down, seized her collar, and dragged her up to face him. Then he slammed a fist into her stomach.
The blow sent her careening back until she hit the wall. Her head cracked against stone. Stars exploded behind her eyes. She slid bonelessly to the ground, choking. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t perceive anything but pulsing, white-hot flashes of pain.
She had no weapon, no shield, and no fire.
For the first time, it sank in that she might not leave this temple alive.
“I hate to do this.” Riga tapped his blade to the side of her neck, as if practicing his swing before he took it. “Killing off the last of you. It’s so final. But you Speerlies never gave me a choice. You always had to be so very troublesome.”
He drew his sword back. Rin squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the blade to land.
It never did.
She heard a splintering crack. She opened her eyes. Jiang stood between her and Riga. His staff was in splinters, and crimson stained both his torso and Riga’s blade. Jiang twisted around. Their eyes met.
“Run,” he whispered.
Riga swung his sword again. Something black whistled through the air, and Riga’s blade skidded across the ground.
“I forgot,” Riga sneered. “You always had a soft spot for Speerlies.”
He aimed a savage kick at the wound in Jiang’s side. Jiang doubled over. In the corner, Daji gasped and clutched her stomach, her faced pinched with pain.
Rin hesitated, torn between Jiang and the door.
“He can’t kill me,” Jiang hissed. “Run.”
She staggered to her feet. The door was ten feet away. That was nothing. Her legs hurt so much, everything hurt so much, but she bit down the pain and forced herself to keep moving. Five feet—
A bang exploded behind her. She tripped and fell.
“Run,” Jiang repeated, though his voice sounded strained. Rin smelled blood. She wanted to look back but knew she couldn’t, knew she had to keep moving. Three feet. She was so close.
“Call them,” Jiang shouted. “End this.”
Rin knew precisely what he meant.
Outside, she stumbled into the fog.
She refused to feel guilt for this. This was her only option; this was what Jiang wanted. He’d made his choice, and now she made hers. She turned an open palm to the sky.
I unleash you.
This time the Phoenix came. The Dragon was distracted, struggling against the Gatekeeper, and so her god was free. The fire surged through her arm and up into the mist, a shining beacon against a backdrop of gray.
The Phoenix shrieked, delighted. In that moment Rin felt its divine presence closer, more intimately than she ever had, a synchronicity that surpassed what she had once felt on Speer. Here where the boundary between man and god was blurred, their wills overlapped until they were not separate beings, one channeled through the other, but a single entity, ripping through the fabric of the world to rewrite history.
Fire pierced the dense mist, spiraling into a pillar so tall and bright that Rin thought it must be visible to the entire world. The clouds that shrouded Mount Tianshan shriveled away, exposing the pagoda against the bare face of stone.
Nezha must have seen. Rin was counting on it. He’d been following her all this way, and now she’d delivered to him everything he and the Hesperians wanted—all the world’s most powerful shamans clustered in one place, open targets trapped atop the mountain.
Here’s your chance, Nezha. Now take it.
One by one, the airships appeared from behind the clouds, blurry black shapes that homed in on her unmistakable beacon. They had been hovering, waiting, searching for a target. Now they had it.
They flew into a semicircular formation, surrounding the pagoda from every angle. Rin couldn’t see Nezha from this distance, but she imagined he was riding in the center of the fleet, eyes trained on her. She raised her hand and waved.
“Hello there,” she murmured. “You’re welcome.”
Then she extinguished her flames and ran, just as every dirigible in the sky turned its cannons toward the mountain and fired.
Booms split the sky. They didn’t fade. They rolled on like endless thunder, growing louder and louder until Rin couldn’t hear her own thoughts. She couldn’t tell if she’d been knocked off the ground; she moved her legs but couldn’t feel anything below her knees except deep reverberations in her bones. She moved like she was floating, buoyed by a numbing shock that muted all pain.
Something pulsed in the air. Not a noise, but a sensation—she could feel it, thick like congealed porridge, a crackling stillness that by now was all too familiar.
She hazarded a glance behind her. Beasts poured out of the pagoda—not the malformed, shadowy entities that Rin had seen Jiang summon before, but solid creatures, infinite in number, color, size, and shape, as if Jiang had really opened the gates to the Emperor’s Menagerie and let every single one of those clawed, fanged, winged, and screeching creatures into the mortal world.
They shifted endlessly between forms. Rin watched as a phoenix became a kirin became a lion became some winged thing that shot toward the dirigible fleet like an arrow, accompanied by the screeching cacophony of its brothers and sisters.
The Hesperians fired back. The rumbling grew so loud that the mountain itself seemed to shake.
Good, Rin thought. Hit them with everything you have.
Let this be the ultimate test. Let this prove that even the most legendary shamans in Nikara history could not stand up to the machines of the Divine Architect.
Can you see this, Sister Petra? Is this vindicating?
She wanted to stand still and watch, to marvel at destruction that for once was not her own doing. She wanted to see, the same way little children ripped down birds’ nests with glee, just how great a scar the two self-proclaimed great powers on this earth could rip into the fabric of the world.
A missile exploded overhead. Rin flung herself forward just as a boulder crashed into the dirt behind her. Shards of debris, still red-hot from impact, splattered the backs of her legs.
Get a fucking grip, said Altan’s voice as she clambered upright, heart slamming against her ribs. And get the fuck off this mountain.
She needed a quicker way down. The missiles hadn’t hit her yet, but they inevitably would; when dirigibles fired en masse they were not discriminate.
She paused, considering the fleet.
The airships weren’t going to land. That would be stupid. But they had to get in close. They couldn’t aim properly at the pagoda from too far away; they had to dip down to get a good shot at the Trifecta.
Which gave Rin a single, obvious way out.
She exhaled sharply. Ah, fuck.
She saw only one dirigible in jumping range, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to make that leap. In top fighting condition, she’d have taken it with confidence. But she was exhausted. Every part of her body was battered and hurting. Her legs felt weighed down with anchors, and her lungs burned for breath.
The closest dirigible was veering upward. If it scaled too high she’d never catch it—she couldn’t jump at that trajectory.
No more time to think. It was now or never. She crouched low, pushed her feet against the dirt, and summoned every last ounce of her strength as she took a running leap off the cliff.
Her fingers just snagged an iron rod at the bottom of the carriage. The dirigible tilted dangerously to one side, jerked down by her sudden weight. Rin curled her fingers tighter as her other wrist flailed uselessly in the air. The dirigible readjusted its balance. Its pilot must have known she was there—he swerved back and forth, trying to shake her off. The thin metal rod dug into her flesh, nearly slicing through her joints. She screamed in pain.
Something—one of Jiang’s beasts, a misfired missile, or flying debris; Rin couldn’t see—struck the opposite side of the carriage. The dirigible lurched, flipping her upward. She strained to maintain her grip. They weren’t anywhere near solid ground yet—if she let go now she’d fall to her death.
She made the mistake of looking down. The chasm loomed. Her heart skipped a beat, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
The dirigible kept rising. She felt it turn away from the mountain, retreating to safer skies. The lurching had stopped.
The pilot had figured out who she was. He wanted to take her alive.
No. Oh, no no no . . .
Something shrieked above her head. Rin glanced up. Something had punctured the side of the dirigible—the balloon deflated as air escaped the hole with a deafening whistle.
The dirigible’s movements grew erratic, dipping toward the mountain one moment and twisting away the next. Rin fought to keep a hold but her fingers were slick with sweat; her thumb slipped off the iron bar, numb, and then it was just four fingers between her and the chasm.
The pilot had lost all control. The dirigible was starting to nosedive.
But—thank the gods—it was careening toward the mountain.
Rin eyed the craggy surface, fighting to stay calm. She had to jump as soon as she was close enough, just before the airship crushed her in its wreckage.
The rock face loomed closer and closer.
She took a deep breath.
Three, two, one. She exhaled and let go.
Am I dead?
The world was black. Her body was on fire, and she could not see.
But death would not hurt so much. Death was easy; she’d come close so many times now that she knew dying was like falling backward into a black pit of comforting nothingness. Death made the pain go away. But hers only intensified.
Ah, Rin. Altan’s voice rang in her temples—amused, teasing. Ever the surprise.
For once she did not recoil from his presence. She was grateful for the company. She needed him to filter through the horror.
Something wrong?
“I’m the only one now,” she said. “They . . . they’re not . . . I’m the only one.”
It’s nice to be the only one.
“But I wanted allies.”
He just laughed. Shouldn’t you know better by now?
And he was right—she should have known better than to put her fate in the hands of people more powerful than she. She should have learned, many times over, that everyone she pledged her faith to would inevitably use and abuse her.
But she’d wanted to follow the Trifecta. She wanted someone else to fight her battles for her, because she was so, so exhausted. She wanted Jiang back, and she wanted to believe Daji was the woman she hoped she’d be. She’d wanted to believe she could foist this war onto someone else. And she’d always clung far too hard to her illusions.
Forget those assholes, Altan said. We can do this on our own.
She snorted, tasting blood. “Yeah.”
After a long time, the explosions stopped. By then, Rin’s vision was fully restored. At first she’d seen only blotches of color—great patches of red against the white sky, flaring with every boom. Then her vision clarified, differentiated between billows of smoke and the fires that created them.
She lay flat on her back, head tilted to the sky, and laughed.
She’d done it.
She’d fucking done it.
In one blow, she’d rid herself of the Trifecta and the Hesperian fleet. Two of the greatest forces the Empire had ever seen—gone, wiped off the face of the earth with no monument but ash. The entire balance of the world had just changed. She saw the forces reversing in her mind.
For so long she’d been fighting a mad, hopeless, desperate war. And now it looked so very, very winnable.
Ever so faintly in the back of her mind, though muted and strained by the spiritual back door that ran through Kitay’s mind, she heard the Phoenix laughing, too—the low, harsh cackle of a deity who had finally gotten everything it had wanted.
“Fuck you all,” she whispered at the coiling smoke that dissipated up into the reforming mist. She made a rude gesture with her hand. “That’s for Speer.”
She would have seen something if anyone in the Heavenly Temple were still alive. She would have seen movement. As she stared, the mountain mist played tricks on her eyes, kept making her believe she’d caught the faintest glimpse of a silhouette stumbling out of the pagoda. But whenever she looked closer, all she saw was smoke.
It took a few moments for her rational mind to start working again.
Basics first. First she had to get off this mountain. Then she had to get medical care. Her open wounds weren’t deep, and most of them had stopped bleeding, but a million other things—exposure, cracked ribs, bruised organs—might kill her if she didn’t move fast.
But moving was agony. Her knees buckled with every step. Her ribs shrieked in protest every time she breathed. She clenched her teeth and willed herself to trudge forward. She couldn’t manage more than a pathetic lurch with every step. The pain in her legs intensified—something, somewhere, was broken. It didn’t matter. Kitay was waiting for her below. She just had to get back to Kitay.
Silent wreckage littered the base of Mount Tianshan. Not just the debris of ruined dirigibles—Nezha’s bombers had also decimated Cholang’s troops. She saw fragments of ground cannons mixed in with airship shells. Craters formed horribly clean hemispheres in the dirt.
She stood a moment in the silence, breathing in the ash. Nothing moved. She was the only survivor in sight.
Then she heard it—a distorted hum, the sloping whine of a dying engine. She spun around. Looked up.
In the moonlight she saw only its black silhouette—small but growing, flying straight toward her. It wouldn’t make it. Whatever kept it alight was ruined—she saw smoke trailing out the back in thick, billowing clouds.
But it was still firing.
Fuck.
Rin dropped to the ground.
The bullets scattered pointlessly across scorched ground. The pilot wasn’t aiming, he just needed to destroy something, anything, before his life spiraled out of his hands. The dirigible loosed one last round of cannons, then careened into the side of the mountain and exploded in a ball of fire.
She stood up, unscathed.
“You missed me!” she screamed at the mountainside, at the spot where plumes furled up from the last dirigible’s wreckage. “You fucking missed!”
Of course no one answered. Her voice, thin and reedy, faded without echo into the frigid air.
But she screamed it again, and then again, and then again. It felt so good to say that she’d survived, that she’d fucking finally come out on top, that she didn’t even care that she was screaming to corpses.
