The Dragon Republic. R.F. Kuang

their first chance at a lasting peace. And you want to bring a civil war to their doorsteps.”

      “There’s a civil war coming, whether you admit it or not. I only hasten the inevitable.”

      “We will not survive the inevitable,” Tsolin said. True sorrow laced his words. Rin could see it in his eyes; the man looked haunted. “We lost so many men at Golyn Niis, Vaisra. Boys. You know what our commanders made their soldiers do the evening before the siege? They wrote letters home to their families. Told them they loved them. Told them they wouldn’t be coming home. And our generals chose the strongest and fastest soldiers to deliver the messages back home, because they knew it wasn’t going to make a difference whether we had them at the wall.”

      He stood up. “My answer is no. We have yet to recover from the scars of the Poppy Wars. You can’t ask us to bleed again.”

      Vaisra reached out and grabbed Tsolin’s wrist before he could turn to go. “You’re neutral then?”

      “Vaisra—”

      “Or against me? Shall I expect Daji’s assassins at my door?”

      Tsolin looked pained. “I know nothing. I help no one. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

      “We’re just going to let him go?” Rin asked once they were out of Tsolin’s earshot.

      Vaisra’s harsh laugh surprised her. “You think he’s going to report us to the Empress?”

      Rin thought this had seemed rather obvious. “It’s clear he’s not with us.”

      “He will be. He’s revealed his threshold for going to war. Provincial danger. He’ll pick a side quick enough if it means the difference between warfare and obliteration, so I will force his hand. I’ll bring the fight to his province. He won’t have a choice then, and I suspect he knows that.”

      Vaisra’s stride grew faster and faster as they walked. Rin had to run to catch up.

      “You’re angry,” she realized.

      No, he was furious. She could see it in the icy glare in his eyes, in the stiffness of his gait. She’d spent too much of her childhood learning to tell when someone was in a dangerous mood.

      Vaisra didn’t respond.

      She stopped walking. “The other Warlords. They said no, didn’t they?”

      Vaisra paused before he answered. “They’re undecided. It’s too early to tell.”

      “Will they betray you?”

      “They don’t know enough about my plans to do anything. All they can tell Daji is that I’m displeased with her, which she already knows. But I doubt they’ll have the backbone to say even that.” Vaisra’s voice dripped with condescension. “They are like sheep. They will watch silently, waiting to see how the balance of power falls, and they will align with whoever can protect them. But we won’t need them until then.”

      “But you needed Tsolin,” she said.

      “This will be significantly harder without Tsolin,” he admitted. “He could have tipped the balance. It’ll truly be a war now.”

      She couldn’t help but ask, “Then are we going to lose?”

      Vaisra regarded her in silence for a moment. Then he knelt down in front of her, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked up at her with an intensity that made Rin want to squirm.

      “No,” he said softly. “We have you.”

      “Vaisra—”

      “You will be the spear that brings this empire down,” he said sternly. “You will defeat Daji. You will set in motion this war, and then the southern Warlords will have no choice.”

      The intensity in his eyes made her desperately uncomfortable. “But what if I can’t?”

      “You will.”

      “But—”

      “You will, because I ordered you to.” His grip tightened on her shoulders. “You are my greatest weapon. Do not disappoint.”

       CHAPTER 9

      Rin had imagined the Autumn Palace as composed of blocky, abstract shapes, the way it was represented on the maps. But the real Autumn Palace was a perfectly preserved sanctuary of beauty, a sight lifted straight out of an ink brush painting. Flowers bloomed everywhere. White plum blossoms and peach flowers laced the gardens; lily pads and lotus flowers dotted the ponds and waterways. The complex itself was an elegantly designed structure of ornamented ceremonial gates, massive marble pillars, and sprawling pavilions.

      But for all that beauty, a stillness hung over the palace that made Rin deeply uncomfortable. The heat was oppressive. The roads looked as if they were swept clean hourly by unseen servants, but still Rin could hear the ubiquitous sound of buzzing flies, as if they detected something rotten in the air that no one could see.

      It felt as if the palace hid something foul under its lovely exterior; beneath the smell of blooming lilacs, something was in the last stages of decay.

      Perhaps she was imagining it. Perhaps the palace was truly beautiful, and she just hated it because it was a coward’s resort. This was a refuge, and the fact that anyone had hidden alive in the Autumn Palace while corpses rotted in Golyn Niis infuriated her.

      Eriden nudged the small of her back with his spear. “Eyes down.”

      She hastily obeyed. She had come posing as Vaisra’s prisoner—hands cuffed behind her back, mouth sealed behind an iron muzzle that clamped her lower jaw tightly upward. She could barely speak except in whispers.

      She didn’t have to remember to look scared. She was terrified. The thirty grams of opium circulating through her bloodstream did nothing to calm her down. It magnified her paranoia even as it kept her heart rate low and made her feel as if she were floating among clouds. Her mind was anxious and hyperactive but her body was slow and sluggish—the worst possible combination.

      At sunrise Rin, Vaisra, and Captain Eriden had passed under the arched gateways of the nine concentric circles of the Autumn Palace. Servants patted them down for weapons at each gate. By the seventh gate, they had been groped so thoroughly that Rin was surprised they hadn’t been asked to strip naked.

      At the eighth gate an Imperial guard stopped her to check her pupils.

      “She took a dose before the guards this morning,” Vaisra said.

      “Even so,” said the guard. He reached for Rin’s chin and tilted it up. “Eyes open, please.”

      Rin obliged and tried not to squirm as he pulled her eyelids apart.

      Satisfied, the guard stepped back to let them through.

      Rin followed Vaisra into the throne room, shoes echoing against a marble floor so smooth it looked like still water at the surface of a lake.

      The inner chamber was a rich and ornate assault of decorations that blurred and swam in Rin’s opium-blurred eyesight. She blinked and tried to focus. Intricately painted symbols covered every wall, stretching all the way up to the ceiling, where they coalesced in a circle.

      It’s the Pantheon, she realized. If she squinted, she could make out the gods she had come to recognize: the Monkey God, mischievous and cruel; the Phoenix, imposing and ravenous …

      That was odd. The Red Emperor had hated shamans. After he’d claimed his throne at Sinegard, he’d had the monks killed and their monasteries burned.

      But maybe he hadn’t hated the gods. Maybe he’d just hated that he couldn’t access their power for himself.

      The ninth gate led to the council room. The Empress’s personal guard,