The Dragon Republic. R.F. Kuang

she tilted into, and then the ink assumed colors and became a world of red and black and orange.

      The chasm opened. That was the only time it could—when she was high out of her mind, too out of control to stay away from the one thing she refused to let herself think about.

      She was flying over the longbow island, she was watching the fire mountain erupt, streams of molten lava pouring over the peak, rushing in rivulets toward the cities below.

      She saw the lives crushed out, burned and flattened and transformed to smoke in an instant. And it was so easy, like blowing out a candle, like crushing a moth under her finger; she wanted it and it happened; she had willed it like a god.

      As long as she remembered it from that detached, bird’s-eye view, she felt no guilt. She felt rather remotely curious, as if she had set an anthill on fire, as if she had impaled a beetle on a knife tip.

      There was no guilt in killing insects, only the lovely, childish curiosity of seeing them writhe in their dying throes.

      This wasn’t a memory or a vision; this was an illusion she had conjured for herself, the illusion she returned to every time she lost control and they sedated her.

      She wanted to see it—she needed to dance at the edge of this memory that she did not have, skirting between the godlike cold indifference of a murderer and the crippling guilt of the deed. She played with her guilt the way a child holds his palm to a candle flame, daring to venture just close enough to feel the stabbing licks of pain.

      It was mental self-flagellation, the equivalent of digging a nail into an open sore. She knew the answer, of course, she just couldn’t admit it to anyone—that at the moment she sank the island, the moment she became a murderer, she had wanted it.

      “Is she all right?” Ramsa’s voice. “Why is she laughing?”

      Chaghan’s voice. “She’ll be fine.”

      Yes, Rin wanted to shout, yes, she was fine; just dreaming, just caught between this world and the next, just enraptured by the illusions of what she had done. She rolled around on the bottom of the sampan and giggled until the laughter turned to loud, harsh sobs, and then she cried until she couldn’t see anymore.

       CHAPTER 3

      “Wake up.”

      Someone pinched her arm, hard. Rin bolted upright. Her right hand reached to a belt that wasn’t there for a knife that was in the other room, and her left hand slammed blindly sideways into—

      “Fuck!” Chaghan shouted.

      She focused with difficulty on his face. He backed up, hands held out before her to show that he held no weapons, just a washcloth.

      Rin’s fingers moved frantically over her neck and wrists. She knew she wasn’t tied down, she knew, but still she had to check.

      Chaghan rubbed ruefully at his rapidly bruising cheek.

      Rin didn’t apologize for hitting him. He knew better than that. All of them knew better than that. They knew not to touch her without asking. Not to approach her from behind. Not to make sudden movements or sounds around her unless they wanted to end up a stick of charcoal floating to the bottom of Omonod Bay.

      “How long have I been out?” She gagged. Her mouth tasted like something had died in it; her tongue was as dry as if she had spent hours licking at a wooden board.

      “Couple of days,” Chaghan said. “Good job getting out of bed.”

       “Days?”

      He shrugged. “Messed up the dosage, I think. At least it didn’t kill you.”

      Rin rubbed at dry eyes. Bits of hardened mucus came off the sides of her eyes in clumps. She caught a glimpse of her face in her bedside mirror. Her pupils weren’t red—they took a while to adjust back every time she’d been on any kind of opiates—but the whites of her eyes were bloodshot, full of angry veins thick and sprawling like cobwebs.

      Memories seeped slowly into the forefront of her mind, fighting through the fog of laudanum to sort themselves out. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to separate what had happened from what she’d dreamed. A sick feeling pooled in her gut as slowly, her thoughts formed into questions. “Where’s Unegen …?”

      “You burned over half his body. Nearly killed him.” Chaghan’s clipped tone spared her no sympathy. “We couldn’t bring him with us, so Enki stayed behind to look after him. And they’re, ah, not coming back.”

      Rin blinked several times, trying to make the world around her less blurry. Her head swam, disorienting her terribly every time she moved. “What? Why?”

      “Because they’ve left the Cike.”

      That took several seconds to sink in.

      “But—but they can’t.” Panic rose in her chest, thick and constricting. Enki was their only physician, and Unegen their best spy. Without them the Cike were reduced to six.

      She couldn’t kill the Empress with six people.

      “You really can’t blame them,” Chaghan said.

      “But they’re sworn!”

      “They swore to Tyr. They were sworn to Altan. They have no obligation to an incompetent like you.” Chaghan cocked his head. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you that Daji got away.”

      Rin glared at him. “I thought you were on my side.”

      “I said I’d help you kill Su Daji,” he said. “I didn’t say I’d hold your hand while you threatened the lives of everyone on this ship.”

      “But the others—” A sudden fear seized her. “They’re still with me, aren’t they? They’re loyal?”

      “It’s nothing to do with loyalty,” he said. “They are terrified.”

      “Of me?”

      “You really can’t see past yourself, can you?” Chaghan’s lip curled. “They’re terrified of themselves. It’s very lonely to be a shaman in this Empire, especially when you don’t know when you’re going to lose your mind.”

      “I know. I understand that.”

      “You don’t understand anything. They aren’t afraid of going mad. They know they will. They know that soon they will become like Feylen. Prisoners inside their own bodies. And when that day comes, they want to be around the only other people who could put an end to it. That’s why they’re still here.”

      The Cike culls the Cike, Altan had once told her. The Cike takes care of its own.

      That meant they defended one another. It also meant they protected the world from one another. The Cike were like children playing at acrobatics, perched precariously against one another, relying on the rest to stop them from hurtling into the abyss.

      “Your duty as commander is to protect them,” Chaghan said. “They are with you because they are scared, and they don’t know where else they can go. But you’re endangering them with every stupid decision you make and your utter lack of control.”

      Rin moaned, clutching her head between her hands. Every word was like a knife to her eardrums. She knew she’d fucked up, but Chaghan seemed to take inordinate delight in rubbing it in. “Just leave me alone.”

      “No. Get out of bed and stop being such a brat.”

      “Chaghan, please—”

      “You’re a fucking mess.”

      “I know that.”

      “Yes, you’ve known that since Speer, but you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.