Venka stood now at the center of the square courtyard, hands clasped behind her back like a drill sergeant. The women clustered around her in a sullen circle, blankets clutched around their skinny shoulders, their eyes dull and unfocused.
“You have to eat,” Venka said. “I’m not leaving you alone until I see you swallow.”
“I can’t.” The girl in front of Venka could have been anywhere from thirteen to thirty—her skin was stretched so tight over her fragile, birdlike bones that Rin couldn’t tell.
Venka grabbed the girl’s shoulder with one hand; with the other, she held a steamed bun up so close to the girl’s face that Rin thought she might start mashing it into her lips. “Eat.”
The girl pressed her mouth shut and squirmed in Venka’s grasp, whimpering.
“What’s wrong with you?” Venka shouted. “Eat! Take care of yourself!”
The girl wriggled free and backed away, eyes scrunched up in tears, shoulders hunched as if she expected a beating.
“Venka!” Rin hurried forward and pulled Venka back by the wrist. “What are you doing?”
“What the fuck do you think?” Venka’s cheeks were chalk-pale with fury. “Everyone else has eaten, but this little bitch thinks she’s too good for her food—”
One of the other women put an arm around the girl. “She’s still in shock. Let her be.”
“Shut up.” Venka shot the girl a scathing glare. “Do you want to die?”
After a long pause, the girl gave a timid shake of her head.
“So eat.” Venka flung the bun at her. It bounced off her chest and landed on the dirt. “Right now you’re the luckiest fucking girl in the world. You’re alive. You have food. You’re saved from the brink of starvation. All you have to do is put that bun in your fucking mouth.”
The girl began to cry.
“Stop that,” Venka ordered. “Don’t be pathetic.”
“You don’t understand,” choked the girl. “I don’t—you can’t—”
“I do understand,” Venka said flatly. “Same thing happened to me at Golyn Niis.”
The girl lifted her eyes. “Then you’re a whore, too. And we should both be dead.”
Venka drew her arm back and slapped the girl hard across the face.
“Venka, stop.” Rin seized Venka’s arm and pulled her out of the courtyard. Venka didn’t resist; rather, she stumbled along willingly as if in a daze.
She wasn’t angry, Rin realized. If anything, Venka seemed about to collapse.
This wasn’t about the food.
Rin knew, deep down, that Venka hadn’t turned her back on her home province and joined the Southern Coalition—a rebellion formed of people with skin several shades darker than hers—out of any real loyalty to their cause. She’d done it because of what had happened at Golyn Niis. Because the Dragon Warlord Yin Vaisra had knowingly let those atrocities at Golyn Niis happen, had let them happen across the entire south, and hadn’t lifted a finger to stop them.
Venka had taken it upon herself to fight those battles. But as she and Rin had both discovered, the battles were easy. Destroying was easy. The hard part was the aftermath.
“Are you all right?” Rin asked quietly.
Venka’s voice trembled. “I’m just trying to make this easier.”
“I know,” Rin said. “But not everyone is as strong as you.”
“They’d better learn to be, or they’ll be dead in a few weeks.”
“They’ll survive. The Mugenese are gone.”
“Oh, you think it just ends like that?” Venka gave a brittle laugh. “You think it’s all over? Once they’re gone?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“They’re never gone. Do you understand? They still come for you in your sleep. Only this time they’re dream-wraiths, not real, and there’s no escape from them because they’re living in your own mind.”
“Venka, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
Venka continued like she hadn’t heard. “Do you know that after Golyn Niis, the other two survivors from that pleasure house drank lye? Do you want to guess how many of these girls are going to hang themselves? They have no space to be weak, Rin. They don’t have time to be in shock. That can’t be an option. That’s how they die.”
“I understand that,” Rin said. “But you can’t take your shit out on them. You’re here to protect. You’re a soldier. Act like it.”
Venka’s eyes widened. For a moment Rin thought Venka might slap her, too. But the moment passed, and Venka’s shoulders slumped, like all the fight had drained out of her at once.
“Fine. Put them under someone else’s charge, then. I’m finished here.” She pointed to the whorehouses. “And burn that place to the ground.”
“We can’t,” Rin said. “They’re some of the only walled structures still standing. Until we can rebuild some shelters—”
“Burn it,” Venka snarled. “Or I’ll get some oil and do it myself. Now, I’m not very good at arson. So you can set a controlled fire, or deal with an inferno. You pick.”
A scout’s arrival saved Rin the burden of a response.
“We found it,” he reported. “Looks like there was only one.”
Rin’s stomach twisted. Not this. Not now. She wasn’t ready; after the whorehouses, she just wanted to shrink into a ball somewhere and hide. “Where was it?”
“About half a mile south of the city border. It’s muddy out there; you’ll want to lace on some thicker boots. Lieutenant Chen told me to tell you he’s already on the way. Shall I take you?”
Rin hesitated. “Venka . . .”
“Count me out. I don’t want to see that.” Venka turned on her heel and called over her shoulder as she stalked off, “I want the whorehouses in ashes by dawn, or I’ll assume it’s my job.”
Rin wanted to chase after her. She wanted to pull Venka back by the wrist, hug her tight, and hold her close until they were able to sob, until their sobs subsided. But Venka would interpret that as pity, and Venka detested pity more than anything. She read pity as an insult—as confirmation that, after all this time, everyone still thought her fragile and broken, on the verge of falling apart. Rin couldn’t do that to her.
She’d burn the whorehouses, she decided. The survivors could survive a few nights in the open air. She had fire enough to keep them warm.
“General?” the scout asked quietly.
Rin blinked. She’d been staring after Venka’s retreating figure. “Give me a moment. I’ll meet you at the east gate.”
She returned to the general’s complex to change her boots and ask around the barracks until someone lent her a spare shovel. Then she followed the scout to the killing fields.
The walk was shorter than she expected.
She knew the site from a quarter-mile off. She knew it from the smell, the rancid odor of decay under a thin sheen of dust; from the fat insects scurrying into the ground and the carrion birds that perched casually on white bone fragments sticking out of the ground. She knew it from the discolored and displaced soil, and the traces of hair and clothes strewn across the dirt where the Mugenese had hardly bothered to bury them.