The Dragon Republic. R.F. Kuang

against the dock. The Cike gathered on the upper deck, watching the gray skies with tense anticipation as the minutes trickled past.

      Ramsa drummed his foot against the deck. “It’s been an hour.”

      “Patience,” Chaghan said.

      “Could be that Unegen’s run off,” Baji said.

      “He hasn’t run off,” Rin said. “He said he needed until noon.”

      “He’d also be the first to seize this chance to be rid of us,” Baji said.

      He had a point. Unegen, already the most skittish by far among the Cike, had been complaining for days about their impending mission. Rin had sent him ahead overland to scope out their target in Adlaga. But the rendezvous window was quickly closing and Unegen hadn’t shown.

      “Unegen wouldn’t dare,” Rin said, and winced when the effort of speaking sent little stabs through the base of her skull. “He knows I’d hunt him down and skin him alive.”

      “Mm,” Ramsa said. “Fox fur. I’d like a new scarf.”

      Rin turned her eyes back to the city. Adlaga made an odd corpse of a township, half-alive and half-destroyed. One side had emerged from the war intact; the other had been bombed so thoroughly that she could see building foundations poking up from blackened grass. The split appeared so even that half houses existed on the line: one side blackened and exposed, the other somehow teetering and groaning against the ocean winds, yet still standing.

      Rin found it hard to imagine that anyone still lived in the township. If the Federation had been as thorough here as they’d been at Golyn Niis, then all that should be left were corpses.

      At last a raven emerged from the blackened ruins. It circled the ship twice, then dove straight toward the Petrel as if locked on a target. Qara lifted a padded arm into the air. The raven pulled out of its dive and wrapped its talons around her wrist.

      Qara ran the back of her index finger over the bird’s head and down its spine. The raven ruffled its feathers as she brought its beak to her ear. Several seconds passed. Qara stood still with her eyes shut, listening intently to something the rest of them couldn’t hear.

      “Unegen’s pinned Yuanfu,” Qara said. “City hall, two hours.”

      “Guess you’re not getting that scarf,” Baji told Ramsa.

      Chaghan yanked a sack out from under the deck and emptied its contents onto the planks. “Everyone get dressed.”

      Ramsa had come up with the idea to disguise themselves in stolen Militia uniforms. Uniforms were the one thing Moag hadn’t been able to sell them, but they weren’t hard to find. Rotting corpses lay in messy piles by the roadside in every abandoned coastal town, and it took only two trips to scavenge enough clothes that weren’t burned or covered in blood.

      Rin had to roll up the arms and legs of her uniform. Corpses of her stature were difficult to come by. She suppressed the urge to vomit as she laced on her boots. She’d pulled the shirt off a body wedged inside a half-burned funeral pyre, and three washes still couldn’t conceal the smell of charred flesh under salty ocean water.

      Ramsa, draped absurdly in a uniform three times his size, gave her a salute. “How do I look?”

      She bent down to tie her boot laces. “Why are you wearing that?”

      “Rin, please—”

      “You’re not coming.”

      “But I want to—”

      “You are not coming,” she repeated. Ramsa was a munitions genius, but he was also short, scrawny, and utterly worthless in a melee. She wasn’t losing her only fire powder engineer because he didn’t know how to wield a sword. “Don’t make me tie you to the mast.”

      “Come on,” Ramsa whined. “We’ve been on this ship for weeks, and I’m so fucking seasick just walking around makes me want to vomit—”

      “Tough.” Rin yanked a belt through the loops around her waist.

      Ramsa pulled a handful of rockets from his pocket. “Will you set these off, then?”

      Rin gave him a stern look. “I don’t think you understand that we’re not trying to blow Adlaga up.”

      “Oh, no, you just want to topple the local government, that’s so much better.”

      “With minimal civilian casualties, which means we don’t need you.” Rin reached out and tapped at the lone barrel leaning against the mast. “Aratsha, will you watch him? Make sure he doesn’t get off the ship.”

      A blurry face, grotesquely transparent, emerged from the water. Aratsha spent most of his time in the water, spiriting the Cike’s ships along to wherever they needed to go, and when he wasn’t calling down his god he preferred to rest in his barrel. Rin had never seen his original human form. She wasn’t sure he had one anymore.

      Bubbles floated from Aratsha’s mouth as he spoke. “If I must.”

      “Good luck,” Ramsa muttered. “As if I couldn’t outrun a fucking barrel.”

      Aratsha tilted his head at him. “Please be reminded that I could drown you in seconds.”

      Ramsa opened his mouth to retort, but Chaghan spoke over him. “Everyone take your pick.” Steel clattered as he dumped out a chest of Militia weapons onto the deck. Baji, complaining loudly, traded his conspicuous nine-pointed rake for a standard infantry sword. Suni scooped up an Imperial halberd, but Rin knew the weapon was purely for show. Suni’s specialty was bashing heads in with his shield-sized hands. He didn’t need anything else.

      Rin fastened a curved pirate scimitar to her waist. It wasn’t Militia standard, but Militia swords were too heavy for her to wield. Moag’s blacksmiths had fashioned her something lighter. She wasn’t yet used to the grip, but she also doubted the day would end in a sword fight.

      If things got so bad that she needed to get involved, then it would end in fire.

      “Let’s reiterate.” Chaghan’s pale eyes roved over the assembled Cike. “This is surgical. We have a single target. This is an assassination, not a battle. You will harm no civilians.”

      He looked pointedly at Rin.

      She crossed her arms. “I know.”

      “Not even by accident.”

      “I know.”

      “Come off it,” Baji said. “Since when did you get so high and mighty about casualties?”

      “We’ve done enough harm to your people,” said Chaghan.

      “You did enough harm,” Baji said. “I didn’t break those dams.”

      Qara flinched at that, but Chaghan acted as if he hadn’t heard a word. “We’re finished hurting civilians. Am I understood?”

      Rin jerked out a shrug. Chaghan liked to play commander, and she was rarely in a state to be bothered. He could boss them around all he liked. All she cared about was that they got this job done.

      Three months. Twenty-nine targets, all killed without error. One more head in a sack, and then they’d be sailing north to assassinate their very last mark—the Empress Su Daji.

      Rin felt a flush creep up her neck at the thought. Her palms grew dangerously hot.

      Not now. Not yet. She took a deep breath. Then another one, more desperate, when the heat only extended through her torso.

      Baji clamped a hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”

      She exhaled slowly. Made herself count backward from ten, and then up to forty-nine by odd numbers, and then back down by prime numbers. Altan had taught her that trick, and it mostly worked, at least when she took care not to think about Altan when she did it. The fever flush receded.