The Dragon Republic. R.F. Kuang

      “Oh, I understand. We were classmates. Weren’t we, Rin?” The general knelt down before her and pulled off his mask.

      Rin flinched.

      The boy she remembered was so beautiful. Skin like porcelain, features finer than any sculptor could carve, delicately arched eyebrows that conveyed precisely that mixture of condescension and vulnerability that Nikara poets had been trying to describe for centuries.

      Nezha wasn’t beautiful anymore.

      The left side of his face was still perfect, somehow; still smooth like the glaze on fine ceramic. But the right side … the right side was mottled with scars, crisscrossing over his cheek like the plates of a tortoise shell.

      Those were not natural scars. They looked nothing like the burn scars Rin had seen on bodies destroyed by gas. Nezha’s face should have been twisted and deformed, if not utterly blackened. But his skin remained as pale as ever. His porcelain face had not darkened, but rather looked like glass that had been shattered and glued back together. Those oddly geometric scars could have been drawn over his skin with a fine brush.

      His mouth was pulled into a permanent sneer toward the left side of his face, revealing teeth, a mask of condescension that he couldn’t ever take off.

      When Rin looked into his eyes, she saw noxious yellow fumes rolling over withering grass. She heard shrieks that dwindled into chokes. And she heard someone screaming her name, over and over and over.

      She found it harder and harder to breathe. A buzzing noise filled her ears, and black spots clouded the sides of her vision like ink drops on wet parchment.

      “You’re dead,” she said. “I saw you die.”

      Nezha looked amused. “And you were always supposed to be the clever one.”

       CHAPTER 6

      “What the fuck?” she screamed.

      “Hello to you, too,” said Nezha. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

      She couldn’t do anything but stare at him. It seemed impossible, unthinkable, that he was really alive, standing before her, speaking, breathing.

      “Captain,” Nezha called. “The ropes.”

      Rin felt the pressure around her wrists tighten briefly, then disappear. Her arms dropped to her sides. Blood rushed back into her extremities, sending a million shocks of lightning through her fingers. She rubbed her wrists and winced when skin came off in her hands.

      “Can you stand?” Nezha asked.

      She managed a nod. He pulled her to her feet. She took a step forward, and a dizzying spell of vertigo slammed into her like a wave.

      “Steady.” Nezha caught her arm just as she lurched toward him.

      She righted herself. “Don’t touch me.”

      “I know you’re confused. But it’ll—”

      “I said don’t touch me.”

      He backed away, hands out. “It’ll all make sense in a minute. You’re safe. Just trust me.”

      “Trust you?” she repeated. “You bombed my ship!”

      “Well, it’s not technically your ship.”

      “You could have killed us!” she shrieked. Her brain still felt terribly sluggish, but this fact struck her as very, very important. “You fired opium onto my ship!”

      “Would you rather we fired real missiles? We were trying not to hurt you.”

      “Your men bound us to the mast for hours!”

      “Because they didn’t want to die!” Nezha lowered his voice. “Look, I’m sorry it came to that. We needed to get you out of Ankhiluun. We weren’t trying to hurt you.”

      His placating tone only made her angrier. She wasn’t a fucking child; he couldn’t calm her with soothing whispers. “You let me think you were dead.”

      “What did you want, a letter? It’s not like it was terribly easy to track you down, either.”

      “A letter would have been better than bombing my ship!”

      “Are you ever going to let that go?”

      “It’s a rather large thing to let go!”

      “I will explain everything if you come with me,” he said. “Can you walk? Please? My father’s waiting for us.”

      “Your father?” she repeated dumbly.

      “Come on, Rin. You know who my father is.”

      She blinked at him. Then it hit her.

      Oh.

      Either she’d been hit by a massive stroke of fortune, or she was about to die.

      “Just me?” she asked.

      Nezha’s eyes flickered toward the Cike, lingering briefly on Chaghan. “I was told you’re the commander now?”

      She hesitated. She hadn’t been acting much like a commander. But the title was hers, even if in name only. “Yes.”

      “Then just you.”

      “I’m not going without my men.”

      “I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”

      She stuck her chin out. “Sucks, then.”

      “Do you seriously think any of them are in a state for an audience with a Warlord?” Nezha gestured toward the Cike. Suni was still asleep, the puddle of drool widening under his mouth. Chaghan stared open-mouthed at the sky, fascinated, and Ramsa had his eyes squeezed shut, giggling at nothing in particular.

      It was the first time Rin had ever been glad she’d developed such a high tolerance for opium.

      “I need your word you won’t hurt them,” she said.

      Nezha looked offended. “Please. You’re not prisoners.”

      “Then what are we?”

      “Mercenaries,” he said delicately. “Think of it that way. You’re mercenaries out of a job, and my father has a very generous offer for your consideration.”

      “What if we don’t like it?”

      “I really think you will.” Nezha motioned for Rin to follow him down the deck, but she remained where she stood.

      “Feed my men while we’re gone, then. A hot meal, not leftovers.”

      “Rin, come on—”

      “Give them baths, too. And then take them to their own quarters. Not the brig. Those are my terms. Also, Ramsa doesn’t like fish.”

      “He’s been operating out of the coast and he doesn’t like fish?”

      “He’s picky.”

      Nezha muttered something to the captain, who adopted a face like he’d been forced to sniff curdled milk.

      “Done,” Nezha said. “Now will you come?”

      She took a step and stumbled. Nezha extended his arm toward her. She let him help her to the edge of the ship.

      “Thanks, Commander,” Ramsa called behind them. “Try not to die.”

      The Hesperian warship Seagrim loomed huge over their rowboat, swallowing them completely in its shadow. Rin couldn’t help but stare in awe at its sheer scale. She could have fit half of Tikany on that warship, temple included.

      How