The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

Had she truly done this?

  But she had felt it, precisely at the moment of eruption. She had triggered it. She had willed it into being. She had felt each one of those lives wink out of existence. She had felt the Phoenix’s exhilaration, experienced vicariously its frenzied bloodlust.

  She had destroyed an entire country with the power of her anger. She had done to Mugen what the Federation did to Speer.

  “The Dead Island was dangerously close to that ash cloud,” Kitay said finally. “It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s the will of the gods.”

  Kitay looked as if he was struggling with his words. Rin watched him, confused. Why wasn’t Kitay relieved to see her? Why did he look as if something terrible had happened? She had survived! She was okay! She had made it out of the temple!

  “I need to know what you did,” he said finally. “Did you will that?”

  She trembled without knowing why, and then nodded. What was the point in lying to Kitay now? What was the point in lying to anyone? They all knew what she was capable of. And, she realized, she wanted them to know.

  “Was that your will?” Kitay demanded.

  “I told you,” she whispered. “I went to my god. I told it what I wanted.”

  He looked aghast.

  “You’re saying—so your god, it—it made you do this?”

  “My god didn’t make me do anything,” she said. “The gods can’t make our choices for us. They can only offer their power, and we can wield it. And I did, and this is what I chose.” She swallowed. “I don’t regret it.”

  But Kitay’s face had drained of color. “You just killed thousands of innocent people.”

  “They tortured me! They killed Altan!”

  “You did to Mugen the same thing that they did to Speer.”

  “They deserved it!”

  “How could anyone deserve that?” Kitay yelled. “How, Rin?”

  She was amazed. How could he be angry with her now? Did he have any idea what she had been through?

  “You don’t know what they did,” she said in a low whisper. “What they were planning. They were going to kill us all. They don’t care about human lives. They—”

  “They’re monsters! I know! I was at Golyn Niis! I lay amid the corpses for days! But you—” Kitay swallowed, choking on his words. “You turned around and did the exact same thing. Civilians. Innocents. Children, Rin. You just buried an entire country and you don’t feel a thing.”

  “They were monsters!” Rin shrieked. “They were not human!”

  Kitay opened his mouth. No sound came out. He closed it. When he finally spoke again, it sounded as if he was close to tears.

  “Have you ever considered,” he said slowly, “that that was exactly what they thought of us?”

  They glared at each other, breathing heavily. Blood thundered in Rin’s ears.

  How dare he? How dare he stand there like this and accuse her of atrocities? He had not seen the inside of that laboratory, he had not known how Shiro had planned to wipe out every Nikara alive . . . he had not seen Altan walk off that dock and light up like a human torch.

  She had achieved revenge for her people. She had saved the Empire. Kitay would not judge her for it. She wouldn’t let him.

  “Get out of my way,” she snapped. “I need to go find my people.”

  Kitay looked exhausted. “What for, Rin?”

  “We have work to do,” she said tightly. “This isn’t over.”

  “Are you serious? Have you listened to anything I’ve said? Mugen’s finished!” Kitay shouted.

  “Not Mugen,” she said. “Mugen is not the final enemy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want a war against the Empress.”

  “The Empress?” Kitay looked dumbfounded.

  “Su Daji betrayed our location to the Federation,” she said. “That’s why they found us, they knew we’d be at the Chuluu Korikh—”

  “That’s insane,” said Kitay.

  “But they said it! The Mugenese, they said—”

  Kitay stared at her. “And it never occurred to you that they had good incentive to lie?”

  “Not about that. They knew who we were. Where we’d be. Only she knew that.” Her breathing quickened. The anger had returned. “I need to know why she did it. And then I need to punish her for it. I need to make her suffer.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? Does it matter who sold who?” Kitay grasped her by her shoulders and shook her hard. “Look around you. Look at what’s happened to this world. All of our friends are dead. Nezha. Raban. Irjah. Altan.” Rin flinched at each name, but Kitay continued, relentless. “Our entire world has been torn apart, and you still want to go to war?”

  “War’s already here. A traitor sits on the throne of the Empire,” she said stubbornly. “I will see her burn.”

  Kitay let go of her arm, and the expression on his face stunned her.

  He looked at her as if looking at a stranger. He looked scared of her.

  “I don’t know what happened to you in that temple,” he said. “But you are not Fang Runin.”

  Kitay left her on the deck. He did not seek her out again.

  Rin saw the Cike in the galley belowdecks, but she did not join them. She was too drained, exhausted. She went back to her cabin and locked herself inside.

  She thought—hoped, really—that Kitay would seek her out, but he didn’t. When she cried, there was no one to comfort her. She choked on her tears and buried her face in the mattress. She stifled her screams in the hard straw padding, then decided she didn’t care who heard her, and screamed out loud into the dark.

  Baji came to the door, bearing a tray of food. She refused it.

  An hour later Enki forced his way into her quarters. He enjoined her to eat. Again she refused. He argued she wouldn’t do any of them any favors by starving to death.

  She agreed to eat if he would give her opium.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Enki said, looking over Rin’s gaunt face, her tangled, matted hair.

  “It’s not that,” she said. “I don’t need seeds. I need the smoke.”

  “I can make you a sleeping draught.”

  “I don’t need to sleep,” she insisted. “I need to feel nothing.”

  Because the Phoenix had not left her when she crawled out of that temple. The Phoenix spoke to her even now, a constant presence in her mind, hungry and frenzied. It had been ecstatic, out there on the deck. It had seen the cloud of ash and read it as worship.

  Rin could not separate her thoughts from the Phoenix’s desire. She could resist it, in which case she thought she’d go mad. Or she could embrace it and love it.

  If Jiang could see me now, she realized, he would have me locked in the Chuluu Korikh.

  That was, after all, where she belonged.

  Jiang would say that self-immurement was the noble thing to do.

  No fucking way, she thought.

  She would never step voluntarily into the Chuluu Korikh, not while the Empress Su Daji walked this earth. Not while Feylen ran free.

  She was the only one powerful enough to stop them, because she had now attained a power that Altan had only ever dreamed of.

  She saw now that the Phoenix was right: Altan had been weak. Altan, despite how hard he tried, could only ever have been weak. He was crippled by those years spent in captivity. He did not choose his anger freely; it was inflicted on him, blow after blow, torture after torture, until he reacted precisely the way an injured wolf might, rising up to bite the hand that hit him.

  Altan’s anger was wild and undirected; he was a walking vessel for the Phoenix. He never had any choice in his quest for vengeance. Altan could not negotiate with the god like she did.

  She was sane, she was convinced of it. She was whole. She had lost much, yes, but she still had her own mind. She made her decisions. She chose to accept the Phoenix. She chose to let it invade her mind.r />
  But if she wanted her thoughts to herself, then she had to think nothing at all. If she wanted a reprieve from the Phoenix’s bloodlust, she needed the pipe.

  She mused out loud to the darkness as she sucked in that sickly sweet drug.

  In, out. In, out.

  I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible.

  Was she now a goddess or a monster?

  Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

  Rin was curled up on her bed when the twins finally boarded the ship. She did not know they had even arrived until they appeared at her cabin door unannounced.

  “So you made it,” Chaghan said.

  She sat up. They had caught her in a rare state, a sober state. She had not touched the pipe for hours, but only because she had been asleep.

  Qara dashed inside and embraced her.

  Rin accepted the embrace, eyes wide in shock. Qara had always been so reticent. So distant. She lifted her arm awkwardly, trying to decide if she should pat Qara on the shoulder.

  But Qara drew back just as abruptly.

  “You’re burning,” she said.

  “I can’t turn it off,” Rin said. “It’s with me. It’s always with me.”

  Qara touched Rin’s shoulders softly. She gave her a knowing look, a pitying look. “You went to the temple.”

  “I did it,” Rin said. “That cloud of ash. That was me.”

  “I know,” Qara said. “We felt it.”

  “Feylen,” she said abruptly. “Feylen’s out, Feylen escaped, we tried to stop him but—”

  “We know,” said Chaghan. “We felt that, too.”

  He stood stiffly at the doorway. He looked as if he were choking on something.

  “Where’s Altan?” he finally asked.

  She said nothing. She just sat there, matching his gaze.

  Chaghan blinked and made a noise like an animal that had been kicked.

  “That’s not possible,” he said very quietly.

  “He’s dead, Chaghan,” Rin said. She felt very tired. “Give it up. He’s gone.”

  “But I would have felt it. I would have felt him go,” he insisted.

  “That’s what we all think,” she said flatly.

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I? I was there. I saw it happen.”

  Chaghan abruptly stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  Qara glanced down at Rin. She didn’t wear her normal irate expression then. She just looked sad.

  “You understand,” she said.

  Rin more than understood.

  “What did you do? What happened?” she asked Qara finally.

  “We won the war in the north,” said Qara, twisting her hands in her lap. “We followed orders.”

  Altan’s last, desperate operation had involved not one but two prongs. To the south, he had taken Rin to open the Chuluu Korikh. And to the north, he sent the twins.

  They had flooded the Murui River. That river delta Rin had seen from the spirit realm was the Four Gorges Dam, the largest set of levees that held the Murui back from inundating all four surrounding provinces with river water. Altan had ordered the breaking of the levees to divert the river south into an older channel, cutting off the Federation supply route to the south.

  It was almost exactly like a battle plan Rin had suggested in Strategy class in her first year. She remembered Venka’s objections. You can’t just break a dam like that. Dams take years to rebuild. The entire river delta will flood, not just that valley. You’re talking about famine. Dysentery.

  Rin drew her knees to her chest. “I suppose there’s no point asking if you evacuated the countryside first.”

  Qara laughed without smiling. “Did you?”

  Qara’s words hit her like a blow. There was no reasoning through what she had done. It had happened. It was a decision that had been ripped out of her. And she had . . . and she had . . .

  She began to quiver. “What have I done, Qara?”

  Until now the sheer scale of the atrocity had not computed for her, not really. The number of lives lost, the enormity of what she had invoked—it was an abstract concept, an unreal impossibility.

  Was it worth it? Was it enough to atone for Golyn Niis? For Speer?

  How could she compare the lives lost? One genocide against another—how did they balance on the scale of justice? And who was she, to imagine that she could make that comparison?

  She seized Qara’s wrist. “What have I done?”

  “The same thing that we did,” said Qara. “We won a war.”

  “No, I killed . . .” Rin choked. She couldn’t finish saying it.

  But Qara suddenly looked angry. “What do you want from me? Do you want forgiveness? I can’t give you that.”

  “I just . . .”

  “Would you like to compare death tolls?” she asked sharply. “Would you like to argue about whose guilt is greater? You created an eruption, and we caused a flood. Entire villages, drowned in an instant. Flattened. You destroyed the enemy. We killed the Nikara.”

  Rin could only stare at her.

  Qara wrenched her arm out of Rin’s grip. “Get that look off your face. We made our decisions, and we survived with our country intact. Worth it is worth it.”

  “But we murdered—”

  “We won a war!” Qara shouted. “We avenged him, Rin. He’s gone, but avenged.”

  When Rin didn’t respond, Qara seized her by both shoulders. Her fingers dug painfully into her flesh.

  “This is what you have to tell yourself,” Qara said fiercely. “You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the lie we’ll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward. You made your choice. There’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s over.”

  That was what Rin had told herself on the island. It was what she had told herself when talking to Kitay.

  And later, in the dead of night, when she couldn’t sleep for the nightmares and had to reach for her pipe, she would do as Qara said and keep telling herself what was done was done. But Qara was wrong about one thing:

  It was not over. It couldn’t be over—because Federation troops were still on the mainland, scattered throughout the south; because even Chaghan and Qara hadn’t managed to drown them all. And now they had no leader to obey and no home to return to, which made them desperate, unpredictable . . . and dangerous.

  And somewhere on the mainland sat an Empress on a makeshift throne, taking refuge in a new wartime capital because Sinegard had been destroyed by a conflict she’d invented. Perhaps by now she had heard the longbow island was gone. Was she distressed to lose an ally? Relieved to be freed from an enemy? Perhaps she had already taken credit for a victory she hadn’t planned; perhaps she was using it to cement her hold on power.

  Mugen was gone, but the Cike’s enemies had multiplied. And they were rogue agents now, no longer loyal to the crown that had sold them.

  Nothing was over.

  The Cike had never before acknowledged the passing of their commander. By nature of their occupation, a change in leadership was an unavoidably messy affair. Past Cike commanders had either gone frothing mad and had to be dragged into the Chuluu Korikh against their will, or been killed on assignment and never come back.

  Few had died with such grace as Altan Trengsin.

  They said their goodbyes at sunrise. The entire contingent gathered on the front deck, solemn in their black robes. The ritual was no Nikara ceremony. It was a Speerly ceremony.

  Qara spoke for all of them. She conducted the ceremony, because Chaghan, the Seer, refused to. Because Chaghan could not.

  “The Speerlies used to burn the dead,” she said. “They believed that their bodies were only temporary. From ash we come, and to ash we return. To the Speerlies, death was not an end but only a great reunion. Altan has left us to go home. Altan has returned to Speer.”

  Qara cast her arms over the waters
. She began to chant, not in the language of the Speerlies but in the rhythmic language of the Hinterlands. Her birds circled overhead in silent tribute. And the wind itself seemed to cease, the rocking of the waves halted, as if the very universe stood still for the loss of Altan.

  The Cike stood in a line, all in their identical black uniforms, watching Qara wordlessly. Ramsa’s arms were folded tightly over his narrow chest, shoulders hunched as if he could withdraw into himself. Baji silently put a hand on his shoulder.

  Rin and Chaghan stood at the back of the deck, removed from the rest of their division.

  Kitay was nowhere to be seen.

  “We should have his ashes,” Chaghan said bitterly.

  “His ashes are already in the sea,” Rin said.

  Chaghan glared at her. His eyes were red with grief, bloodshot. His pale skin was pulled over his high cheekbones so tightly that he looked even more skeletal than he usually did. He appeared as if he had not eaten in days. He appeared as if he might blow away with the wind.

  Rin wondered how long it would take for him to stop blaming her in his mind for Altan’s death.

  “I guess he gave as good as he got,” Chaghan said, nodding toward the ashen mess that was the Federation of Mugen. “Trengsin got his revenge in the end.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Chaghan stiffened. “Explain.”

  “Mugen didn’t betray him,” she said. “Mugen didn’t draw him to that mountain. Mugen didn’t sell Speer. The Empress did.”

  “Su Daji?” Chaghan said incredulously. “Why? What would she have to gain?”

  “I don’t know. I intend to find out.”

  “Tenega,” Chaghan swore. He looked as if he had just realized something. He crossed his thin arms against his chest, muttering in his own language. “But of course.”

  “What?”

  “You drew the Hexagram of the Net,” he said. “The Net signifies traps, betrayals. The wires of your capture were laid out ahead of you. She must have sent a missive to the Federation the minute Altan got it in his head to go to that damned mountain. One is ready to move, but his footprints run crisscross. You two were pawns in someone else’s game this entire time.”

  “We were not pawns,” Rin snapped. “And don’t act like you saw this coming.” She felt a sudden flash of anger then—at Chaghan’s lecturing tone, his retrospective musing, as if he’d seen it all, like he’d expected this to happen, like he’d known better than Altan all along. “Your Hexagrams only make sense in hindsight and give no guidance when they’re cast. Your Hexagrams are fucking useless.”