Her fingers, Rin noticed, were no longer purple. She’d wrested some control back over herself. That made her safe to touch.

  Rin lunged forward and tackled her by the waist. They landed sprawled together in the snow. Rin clambered up, jerked the unresisting Pipaji back from the ledge by her shirt, then pinned her down with a knee against her stomach so that she couldn’t flee.

  “Are you going to jump?” Rin asked.

  Pipaji’s narrow chest heaved. “No.”

  “Then get up.” Rin stood and extended Pipaji her hand.

  But Pipaji remained on the ground, shoulders shaking violently, her face contorted again into sobs.

  “Stop crying. Look at me.” Rin leaned down and grabbed Pipaji by the chin. She didn’t know what compelled her to do it. She’d never acted like this before. But Vaisra had done this to her once, and it had worked to command her attention, if only by shocking the fear into the back of her mind. “Do you want to quit?”

  Pipaji stared mutely at her, tears streaking her face. She seemed stunned into silence.

  “Because you can quit,” Rin said. “I’ll let you go right now, if that’s what you want. No one’s forcing you to be a shaman. You don’t ever have to go to the Pantheon again. You can quit this army, too, if you’d prefer. You can go back to your sister and find somewhere to live in Dog Province. Is that what you want?”

  “But I don’t . . .” Pipaji’s sobs subsided. She looked bewildered. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I . . .”

  “I know,” Rin said. “I know you don’t want to quit. Because that felt good, didn’t it? When you brought down the god? That rush of power was the best thing you’ve ever felt and you know it. How good is it to realize what you can do? Unfortunate that your first victim was an ally, but imagine laying your hands on enemy troops. Imagine felling armies with just a single touch.”

  “She told me . . .” Pipaji took a deep, rattling breath. “The goddess, I mean . . . she told me I’ll never be afraid again.”

  “That’s power,” Rin said. “And you’re not giving that up. I know you. You’re me.”

  Pipaji stared, not quite at Rin, but at the blank space behind her. She seemed lost in her own mind.

  Rin sat down beside Pipaji so that they were side by side, looking out over the ledge together. “What did you see when you swallowed the seeds?”

  Pipaji bit her lip and glanced away.

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t, it’s . . .”

  “Look at me.” Rin lifted her shirt. Her upper torso was wrapped tight in bandages, ribs still cracked from where Riga had kicked her. But Altan’s black handprint, etched just as clearly as the day he’d left it, was visible just below her sternum. Rin let Pipaji stare long enough to understand its shape, and then twisted to the side to show her the raised, bumpy ridges where Nezha had once slid a blade in her lower back.

  Pipaji’s face went white at the sight. “How . . . ?”

  “I received both these scars from men I thought I loved,” Rin said. “One is dead now. One will be. I understand how humiliation feels. Keep your secrets if you want. But there’s nothing you can say that will make me think any less of you.”

  Pipaji stared for a long time at Altan’s handprint. When she spoke at last, it was in such a low whisper that Rin had to lean in close to hear her over the wind.

  “We were in the whorehouse when they came. They started marching up the stairs, and I told Jiuto to hide. She—” Pipaji’s voice caught. She took a shaky breath, then continued. “She didn’t have time to get out the door, so she hid under the blankets. I piled them on her. Piles and piles of winter coats. And I told her not to move, not to make a single sound, no matter what happened, no matter what she heard. Then they came in, and they found me, and they—they—” Pipaji swallowed. “And Jiuto didn’t move.”

  “You protected her,” Rin said gently.

  “No.” Pipaji gave her head a violent shake. “I didn’t. Because—because after they’d gone, I opened the cabinet. And I took the blankets off. And Jiuto wasn’t moving.” Her face crumpled. “She hadn’t moved. She was suffocating, she couldn’t fucking breathe under there, and still she hadn’t moved because that’s what I told her. I thought I’d killed her. And I didn’t, because she started breathing again, but I’m the reason why . . .”

  She gave a little wail and pressed her face into her hands. She didn’t continue. She didn’t need to; Rin could piece the rest of this story together herself.

  That explained why Jiuto followed her sister everywhere. Why Pipaji had never left her alone until now. Why Jiuto didn’t—couldn’t—speak. Why she responded to everyone who spoke to her with a dead, haunted stare.

  Rin wanted to put an arm around Pipaji’s shaking shoulders, hold her tight, and tell her she had nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to repent for. That she’d survived, and survival was enough. She wanted to tell her to go to her sister and run far away from this place and to never think about the Pantheon again. She wanted to tell Pipaji it was over.

  Instead, she said in the hardest voice she could imagine, “Stop crying.”

  Pipaji lifted her head, startled.

  “You’re living in a country at war,” Rin said. “Did you think you’re special? You think you’re the only one who’s suffered? Look around. At least you’re alive. There are thousands of others who weren’t nearly as lucky. And there are thousands more who will meet the same fate if you can’t accept the power you could have.”

  She heard a steely, ruthless timbre in her own voice that she had never used before. It was a stranger’s voice. But she knew exactly where it came from, for everything she said was an echo of things Vaisra had once told her, the only true gift he’d ever given her.

  When you hear screaming, run toward it.

  “Everything you just told me? That’s your key to the gods. Hold that in your mind and never forget the way you’re feeling right now. That’s what gives you power. And that’s what is going to keep you human.”

  Rin seized Pipaji’s fingers. They were slender fingers, dirty and scarred. Nothing like how a pretty young girl’s fingers were supposed to look. They were fingers that had broken bodies. Fingers just like hers.

  “You have the power to poison anyone you touch,” she said. “You can make sure no one ever suffers like you and your sister again. Use it.”

  The other breakthroughs came much faster after Pipaji’s success. Two days later, Lianhua gave a little whimper and slumped over on her side. At first Rin was afraid she’d overdosed and fainted, but then she noticed that the scars across Lianhua’s arms and collarbones were disappearing—smooth new skin knitted over areas that had previously been cruelly crosshatched by a blade.

  “What did you see?” Rin asked when Lianhua awoke.

  “A beautiful woman,” Lianhua murmured. “She held a lotus flower in one hand, and a set of reed pipes in the other. She smiled at me and said she could fix me.”

  “Do you think she could help you fix others?” Rin asked.

  “I think so,” Lianhua said. “She put something in my hands. It was white and hot, and I saw it shining through my fingers, like—like I was holding the sun itself.”

  Great Tortoise. Rin’s heart leaped at the implications. We can use this.

  When Lianhua managed to call her goddess while retaining consciousness, Rin had her test her abilities on a succession of injured animals—squirrels with shattered legs, birds with broken wings, and rabbits burned half to death. Lianhua had the good sense not to ask where the animals were coming from. When she restored all the creatures to full health without any apparent side effects, Rin let Lianhua experiment on her own body.

  “It’s these two ribs that are giving me trouble,” she said, lifting her shirt up. “Do you need the bandages off, too?”

  “I don’t think so.” Lianhua trailed her fingers over the linen strips so lightly they tickled. Then Rin felt a searing heat at an intensity straddling the line between relief and torment. Seconds later, the pain in her ribs was gone. For the first time since ascending Mount Tianshan, she could breathe without wincing.

  “Great Tortoise.” Rin marveled as she twisted her upper body back and forth. “Thank you.”

  “Do you . . .” Lianhua’s fingers hovered in the air over Rin’s right arm, as if awaiting permission. She was staring at the stump. “Um, do you want me to try?”

  The question caught Rin by surprise. She hadn’t even considered trying to restore her lost hand. She blinked, not answering, caught between saying the obvious yes, please, try it now, and the fear of letting herself hope.

  “I don’t know if I can,” Lianhua said quickly. “And I mean—if you don’t want to—”

  “No—no, sorry,” Rin said hastily. “Of course I want to. Yes. Go ahead.”

  Lianhua peeled the sleeve back from over her stump and rested her cool fingers where Rin’s wrist ended in a smooth mound. Several minutes passed. Lianhua sat still, her eyes squeezed tight in concentration, but Rin felt nothing—no heat, no prickle—except a phantom tingle where her hand ought to be. Minutes trickled by, but the tingle, if it was ever real, never intensified into anything else.

  “Stop it,” she said at last. She couldn’t do this anymore. “That’s enough.”

  Lianhua seemed to shrink in apology. “I guess, um, there are limits. But maybe I can try again, if . . .”

  “Don’t worry.” Rin yanked the sleeve back over her wrist, hoping that Lianhua didn’t notice the catch in her voice. Why did her chest feel so tight? She’d known it wouldn’t work; it’d been stupid to imagine. “It’s fine. There are some things you can’t fix.”

  In terms of sheer spectacle, Dulin trumped all of them. One week later, after so many failed attempts that Rin considered putting him out of his misery, he took an extra dose of poppy seeds with a look of stubborn determination on his face and promptly summoned the Great Tortoise.

  In every myth Rin had ever been told, the Tortoise was a patient, protective, and benevolent creature. It was the dark guardian of the earth, representing longevity and cool, fertile soil. Villagers in Tikany wore jade pendants etched like tortoiseshells to bring good luck and stability. In Sinegard, great stone tortoises were often planted in front of tombs to safeguard the spirits of the dead.

  Dulin evoked none of that. He opened a sinkhole in the ground.

  It happened without warning. One moment the dirt was steady beneath their feet, and the next a circle with a diameter of about five feet appeared inside the hut, dropping down to pitch-black, uncertain depths. By some miracle none of them fell inside; shrieking, Pipaji and Lianhua scrambled away from the edge.

  The sinkhole ended right at Dulin’s feet. It had stopped growing, but the soil and rocks at the edges were still crumbling into the hole, echoing into nowhere.

  Rin spoke slowly, trying not to startle Dulin in case he accidentally buried them all. “Very good. Now do you think you might be able to close that thing back up?”

  He looked dazed, gaping at the sinkhole as if trying to convince himself that not only did it exist, he was in fact the one who had created it. “I don’t know.”

  He was trembling. Lightly, she placed a hand on his shoulder. “What are you feeling?”

  “It’s—it’s hungry.” Dulin sounded confused. “I think—it wants more.”

  “More what?”

  “More . . . exposure. It wants to see the sunlight.” His voice caught. Rin could guess which memory he’d invoked when he reached the Pantheon. She knew he was remembering how it felt to be buried alive. “It wants to be free.”

  “Fair enough,” Rin said. “But perhaps try that when you’re a good distance away from the rest of us.”

  Dulin swallowed hard, then nodded. The pit stopped rumbling.

  “General Fang?” Pipaji called from across the sinkhole. “I think we need a bigger hut.”

  The next day Rin and her recruits set out before sunrise to trek out into the desert plateau, where nothing they summoned could hurt anyone at Cholang’s settlement.

  “How far out are you going?” Kitay asked.

  “Five miles,” she said.

  “Not far enough. Go at least ten.”

  “I’ll be out of your range!”

  “Eight, then,” he said. “But get them as far away from here as you can. There’s no point wiping us out before Nezha does it for us.”

  So Rin slung a satchel stuffed with four days’ worth of provisions and enough drugs to kill an elephant over her back, then led her recruits out toward the vast expanse of the Scarigon Plateau. They marched for the better part of the morning, and didn’t stop until the sun climbed high into the cloudless, intensely blue sky, baking the air into a scorching heat that even the winds couldn’t dissipate.

  “Here is good,” Rin decided. Flat, arid steppe extended in every direction as far as her eye could see. They were nowhere near any trees, boulders, or hills that could serve as shelter, but that would be all right; they’d packed canvas for two tents, and the skies didn’t promise any precipitation for several days at least.

  She pulled her satchel off and let it drop on the ground. “Everyone have a drink of water, then we’ll get to work.”

  Pipaji was already suckling greedily from her canteen. She hiccuped and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What exactly are we doing?”

  Rin grinned. “Stand back.”

  They took a few steps backward, watching her warily.

  “Farther.”

  She waited until they were at least twenty paces away. Then she stretched a hand into the sky and called down the fire.

  It rippled through her like a bolt of lightning. It was delicious. She pulled forth more, reveling in the wanton release of power, the reckless indulgence that brought echoes of the sheer ecstasy she’d experienced on Mount Tianshan.

  She saw their faces, wide-eyed with admiration and delight, and she laughed.

  She lingered in the column of heat for just a few more delectable seconds, and then pulled the flames back into her body.

  “Your turn,” she said.

  For the next few hours Rin supervised as Pipaji and Lianhua pitted their skills against each other. Pipaji would kneel down and press her hands against the dirt. Seconds later all kinds of creatures—worms, snakes, long-legged steppe rats, burrowing birds—would bubble up to the surface, writhing and screeching, clawing desperately at the black veins that shot through their bulging forms.

  “Stop,” Rin would say, and Lianhua would hastily begin the process of reversal, healing the creatures one by one until the rot had faded away.

  The limits to Lianhua’s skills quickly became obvious. She could make superficial wounds disappear in under a minute, and she could heal broken bones and internal hemorrhaging if given a little more time, but she seemed only able to reverse injuries that were not life-threatening. Most of Pipaji’s targets were close to death within seconds, and even Lianhua’s best efforts could not bring them back.

  Pipaji’s limits were less clear. At first Rin had thought she required skin-to-skin contact with her victims, but then it became clear her poison could seep through dirt, reaching organisms up to several feet away.

  “Try the pond water,” Rin suggested. A horrible, exciting thought had just occurred to her, but she didn’t want to voice it aloud until she had confirmation. “See if that speeds up dissemination.”

  “We need that water to drink,” Dulin protested. “The next pond’s a mile away.”

  “So fill up your canteens now, and then we’ll move our camp to the other pond once Pipaji’s finished,” Rin said.

  They obeyed. Once all the canteens were full, Pipaji crouched over the pond, frowning in concentration as she dipped her fingertips into the water. Nothing happened. Rin was hoping to see black streaks shooting through the pond, but the water remained a murky greenish-brown. Then fish began floating belly-up to the surface, bloated and discolored.

  “Gross,” Dulin said. “I guess we’re catching dinner somewhere else.”

  Rin didn’t comment. She was clenching her fist so hard her knuckles had turned white.

  This was it. This was how she beat Nezha.

  Nezha couldn’t be killed because the Dragon was always protecting him, stitching his wounds back together seconds after they opened. But Chaghan had told her that the source of his power was the river running through the grottoes of Arlong.

  What if she attacked the river itself?

  “Can I stop?” Pipaji asked. Fish, toads, tadpoles, and insects were still bubbling up dead in the water around her. “This feels, um, excessive.”

  “Fine,” Rin murmured. “Stop.”

  Pipaji stood up, looking disgusted, and quickly wiped her fingers on her trousers.

  Rin couldn’t stop staring at the pond. The water was pitch-black now, an inkwell of corpses.

  Nezha had never met Pipaji before. He would have no idea who she was or what she could do. All he would see was a thin, pretty girl with long-lashed doe’s eyes, looking utterly out of place on the battlefield, right before she turned his veins to sludge.

  Next Rin focused her attentions on Dulin. He had a penchant for sinkholes—by the first day, he could easily summon one on command of any shape or size within a diameter of ten feet. But the sinkholes had to open up right next to where he stood; his feet had to be at the edge of the crevice.

  This posed a problem. Certainly the sinkholes had great potential for tactical disruption, but only if Dulin was standing directly in the line of fire.

  “Can you do anything more with the earth?” Rin asked him. “If you can move it down, can you move it up? Sideways? Vibrate in place?”

  She wasn’t sure what she had in mind. She had some vague picture of great pillars of dirt thrashing through the air like vipers. Or perhaps earthquakes—those could disorient and scatter defensive lines without excessive civilian casualties.

  “I’ll try.” He lowered his chin, brows furrowed in concentration.

  Rin felt tremors under her feet, so faint at first that she was unsure whether she was imagining them. They grew stronger. The thought that perhaps she should get back briefly crossed her mind before she went flying.

 

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