Kitay looked flustered. “I was just going to ask if you were recognized.”
“Oh. No, but it was a near thing. His wife had me fired, then she went around telling all the other households not to hire me. That brought a bit too much attention. So I looted the armory in the middle of the night, sweet-talked the stable boy into lending me a horse, and made my way down south.” She recounted all this with such brazen flippancy she might have been chatting about Sinegard’s latest fashions. “At Ruijin they said you’d gone south, so I followed the trail of bodies. Didn’t take me long to track you down.”
“We’ve, ah, split with Ruijin,” Rin said.
“So I figured.” Venka nodded to the waiting troops. “How’d you wrestle an army from Gurubai?”
“Created a vacancy.” Rin glanced over her shoulder at her troops. Souji and the other officers were paused in the middle of the road, watching them curiously.
“She’s an ally,” Rin told them. “Carry on.”
The column resumed its march toward Leiyang. Rin kept her voice low as she spoke to Venka, glancing around to make sure Souji did not overhear.
“Listen, has Nezha started sending anyone south?”
Venka arched an eyebrow. “Not the last I heard. Why?”
“Are you sure?”
“Supposedly he’s still cooped up in the palace. Rumor has it he’s not doing so well, actually; he’s been out of commission for a few weeks.”
“What?” Rin asked sharply. Her heart was suddenly beating very quickly. “What does that mean?”
Kitay shot her a curious look. She ignored it. “Was he injured?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Venka said. “He hasn’t been out on the field in weeks. Vaisra recalled him from Tiger Province last month. He’s spent a lot of time with the Hesperians, negotiating with their delegates, and I think the prevailing rumor was that he’s fallen ill. He looks weak, he’s got shadows under his eyes, or so they say. It’s hard to tell what’s gossip and what’s fact, since no one I knew had actually gotten a good look at him, but it seems serious.”
Rin felt a stupid, instinctive stab of worry, the residue of concern. She quashed it. “You think he’s going to die?”
“Not sure,” Venka said. “They say he’s got all the best Hesperian doctors working on him, though that might be doing more harm than good. I doubt he’ll be leading troops out anytime soon.”
Did that mean she was safe? Had Nezha just been fucking around with her? His illness did not negate the fact that he had spies in her camp, that he knew where she laid her head every night. But if Venka was right, and if Nezha and his father were indeed still preoccupied with the north, they might not have to worry about an impending ambush for the time being.
This reprieve might not last for long. But she’d take every extra day she had.
“What’s the matter?” Venka asked. “You spooked about something?”
Rin exchanged a glance with Kitay. They’d come to an unspoken agreement—they wouldn’t tell Venka about the letter. The fewer people who knew, the better.
“Nothing,” Rin said. “Just—just wanted to make sure we’re not getting blindsided.”
“Trust me.” Venka snorted. “I don’t think he’s even in a fit state to walk.”
They rode for a few moments in silence. Rin could see the silhouette of Leiyang emerging from the horizon; from here on it was only flat roads.
“So what in the sixty-four gods has been happening here?” Venka asked after a while. “I passed a few villages on my way up here. They’ve all gone completely mad.”
“Throes of victory,” Rin said. “Growing pains.”
“They’re skinning people alive,” Venka said.
“Because they traded little girls for food rations.”
“Oh. Fair enough.” Venka flicked an invisible speck of dust from her wrist. “I hope they castrated them, too.”
Later that afternoon, as Rin headed to the fields to supervise basic training, she was accosted by a wizened old woman dragging two skinny girls along by their wrists.
“We heard you were taking girls,” she said. “Will they do?”
Rin was so startled by her pushy irreverence that rather than directing the woman to the enlistment stand, she paused and looked. She was puzzled by what she saw. The girls were thin and scrawny, certainly no older than fifteen, and they cowered behind the old woman as if terrified of being seen. They couldn’t possibly be volunteers—every other woman who had enlisted in the Southern Army had done so proudly and of her own volition.
“You’re taking girls,” the old woman prompted.
Rin hesitated. “Yes, but—”
“They’re sisters. You can have them for two silvers.”
Rin blinked. “Pardon?”
“One silver?” the woman suggested impatiently.
“I’m not paying you anything.” Rin’s brow furrowed. “That’s not what—”
“They’re good girls,” said the woman. “Quick. Obedient. And neither are virgins—”
“Virgins?” Rin repeated. “What do you think we’re doing here?”
The woman looked at her as if she were mad. “They said you were taking girls. For the army.”
Then the pieces fell together. Rin’s gut twisted. “We aren’t hiring prostitutes.”
The woman was undaunted. “One silver.”
“Get out of here,” Rin snapped. “Or I’ll have you thrown in jail.”
The woman spat a gob of saliva at Rin’s feet and stormed off, tugging the girls behind her.
“Hold it,” Rin said. “Leave them.”
The woman paused, looking for a moment like she might protest. So Rin let a stream of fire, ever so delicate, slip through her fingers and dance around her wrist. “I wasn’t asking.”
Hastily, the woman left without another word.
Rin turned to the girls. They had barely moved this whole time. Neither would meet her eyes. They stood still, arms hanging loose by their sides, heads lowered deferentially like house servants waiting for commands.
Rin had the oddest temptation to pinch their arms, check their muscles, turn up their chins, and open their mouths to see if their teeth were good. What is wrong with me?
She asked, for want of anything better to say, “Do you want to be soldiers?”
The older girl shot Rin a fleeting glance, then gave a dull shrug. The other didn’t react at all; her eyes remained fixed on an empty patch of air before her.
Rin tried something else. “What are your names?”
“Pipaji,” said the older girl.
The younger girl’s eyes dropped to the ground.
“What’s wrong with her?” Rin asked.
“She doesn’t speak,” snapped Pipaji. Rin saw a sudden flash of anger in her eyes—a sharp defensiveness, and she understood then that Pipaji had spent her entire life shielding her sister from other people.
“I understand,” Rin said. “You speak for her. What’s her name?”
The hostility eased somewhat from Pipaji’s face. “Jiuto.”