“We have a physician,” Souji said. “We’ll bring him to you, or we can just carry her out to our camps. We’ve got men in those fields, we can move on the crickets tonight—”
“No,” Chief Lien said firmly. “You will turn around and disappear. We know how this story ends, and we can’t suffer the consequences. Compliance is the only thing keeping us alive—”
“Compliance?” Souji had warned Rin to keep quiet and let him do the talking, but she couldn’t help but interject. “That’s your word for slavery? You like walking the streets with your head down, cringing when they approach you, licking their boots to win their goodwill?”
“Our township still has all our men,” said Chief Lien.
“Then you have soldiers,” Rin said. “And you should be fighting.”
Chief Lien merely regarded her through his lined, tired eyes.
In the passing silence, Rin noticed for the first time a series of ropy scars etched across his arms. Others snaked up the side of his neck. Those weren’t the kind of scars you got from a whip. Those were from knives.
His gaze made her feel so tiny.
Finally he asked, “Did you know that they take young girls with the darkest skin they can find and burn them alive?”
She flinched. “What?”
But then the explanation rose to her mind, slow and dreadful, just as Chief Lien spelled it out aloud. “The Mugenese tell stories about you. They know what happened to the longbow island. They know it was a dark-skinned girl with red eyes. And they know you’re near.”
Of course they know. They’d massacred the Speerlies twenty years ago; surely the myth of the dark-skinned, red-eyed race who called fire still circulated in their younger generations. And certainly they’d heard whispers in the south. The Mugenese troops who could understand Nikara would have picked up on whispered stories of the goddess incarnate, the reason why they could never go home. They would have tortured to discover the details. They would have learned very quickly who they needed to target.
But they couldn’t find her, so they’d targeted anyone who might possibly look like her instead.
Guilt twisted in her stomach like a knife.
She heard the sudden noise of steel scraping against steel. She jumped and turned. The little girl, still sitting in the corner of the hut, had started fiddling with their weapons.
Chief Lien turned to look over his shoulder. “Don’t touch that.”
“She’s all right,” Souji said easily. “She ought to learn how to handle steel. You like that knife?”
“Yes,” said the girl, testing the blade’s balance on one finger.
“Keep it. You’ll need it.”
The girl peered up at them. “Are you soldiers?”
“Yes,” Souji said.
“Then why don’t you have uniforms?”
“Because we don’t have any money.” Souji gave her a toothy smile. “Would you like to sew us some uniforms?”
The girl ignored this question. “The Mugenese have uniforms.”
“That’s true.”
“So do they have more money than you?”
“Not if we and your baba have anything to do with it.” Souji turned back to Chief Lien. “Please, Chief. Just hear us out.”
Chief Lien shook his head. “I won’t risk the reprisals.”
“There won’t be reprisals—”
“How can you guarantee that?”
“Because everything they say about me is true,” Rin interrupted. Little arcs of flame danced around her arms and shoulders, just enough to cast long shadows across her face. To make her look utterly inhuman.
She saw a faint look of surprise flicker across Chief Lien’s face. She knew, despite the rumors, that until now he hadn’t really believed what she was. She could understand that. It was hard to believe in the gods, to truly believe, until they stared you in the face.
She’d made believers of the Mugenese. She’d make him believe, too.
“They’re killing those girls because they’re afraid,” she said. “They should be. I sank the longbow island. I can destroy everything around me in a fifty-yard radius. When we attack it won’t be like the previous attempts. There will be no chance of defeat and no reprisals, because I cannot lose. I have a god. I only need you to bring the civilians out of range. We’ll do the rest.”
Chief Lien’s jaw had lost its stubborn set. She’d won him over, she knew. She saw it in his eyes—for the first time, he was considering something other than compliance. He was thinking about how freedom might taste.
“You can ambush them at the northern border,” he said at last. “Not many civilians live up there, and we can evacuate the ones who do. The reeds would be tall enough to conceal you—you could fit about five hundred men in those fields alone. They won’t know you’re here until you choose to reveal yourselves.”
“Understood,” Souji said. “Thank you.”
“You’ll only have a bit of time to get in position. They send troops with dogs and staves every few hours to track anyone who might be hiding in the fields.”
“Combing their hair for lice,” said the girl. “That’s what they call it.”
“We’ll have to be clever lice, then,” Souji said. Relief shone clear on his face. This wasn’t a negotiation anymore; now it was just about logistics. “And do you know how many men they have?”
“About three thousand,” Chief Lien said.
“That’s very precise,” Rin said. “How do you know?”
“They commission their grains from us. We know how much they eat.”
“And you can calculate that by the grain?”
“It’s simple multiplication,” Chief Lien said. “We’re not stupid.”
Rin sat back, impressed. “All right. Three thousand, then.”
“We can draw them two hundred yards out of the township if we split half our forces around and drive them into the fields,” Souji said. “That’s out of Rin’s range—”
“No,” said Chief Lien. “Four hundred.”
“That might not be possible,” Rin said.
“Make it possible,” Chief Lien said. “You keep your fight away from this township.”
“I understand,” Rin said. Her voice turned hard. “You want your liberation without suffering the consequences.”
Chief Lien stood up. The message was clear; this audience was over. “If you lose, they will come for us. And you know what they can do.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rin said. “We won’t lose.”
Chief Lien said nothing. His eyes followed them silently, judging, as they left the hut. In the corner, his daughter hummed and continued to scrape steel against steel.
“That went well,” Rin muttered.
“Sure did.” Souji was beaming.
“What are you so happy about? He’s made this ten times harder than it had to be, and he hasn’t given us anything in return—”
“That’s not true. He gave us permission.”
“Permission? Who the fuck needs permission—”