Rin understood.
She didn’t know the full story—no one but Jiang and Daji knew the full story, and they’d both concealed it from her for reasons she might never know—but she knew enough. Once upon a time Daji had cursed the other two members of the Trifecta, the Dragon Emperor and the Gatekeeper, with a Seal that inhibited them all. And she hadn’t been able to take it off. One fight, one mysterious fight two decades ago over reasons no one in the Empire understood, and the Trifecta had been reduced to nothing, because Daji couldn’t take it off.
One will die, the Ketreyid girl Tseveri had said, just before the Trifecta tore her heart out of her chest. One will rule, and one will sleep for eternity.
In the end, Tseveri had gotten her revenge.
Rin sank back against her heels. All the fight had suddenly drained from her body. She should have been angry. She wanted to be angry, wanted to simply take Daji’s head off in an unthinking rage. But all she could feel, looking at this old and desperate creature, was bitter, exhausted pity.
“I should kill you.” The knife dropped from her hand. “Why can’t I kill you?”
“Because you still need me,” Daji said softly.
“Why did you come here?”
“To wait for you. Of course.” Daji reached out and touched two fingers to Rin’s cheek. Rin didn’t flinch. The gesture wasn’t cruel, wasn’t condescending. It felt, bizarrely, like some attempt at comfort. “I meant what I said in Lusan. I wish you’d let me help you. There are so few of us left.”
“But how did you—”
“How did I know you’d come to Tikany?” Daji sighed, chuckling. “Because you Speerlies are all the same. You’re bound to your roots, they’re what define you. You thought you could utterly reinvent yourself at Sinegard and kill the girl you used to be. But you can’t help drifting back to the place you came from. Speerlies are like that. You belong to the tribe.”
“My tribe is dead,” Rin said. “This isn’t my tribe.”
“Oh, you know that’s not true.” Daji’s mouth twisted into a pitying smile. “You are the south now. Rooster Province is part of your founding myth. You need it to be. You have nothing else left.”
“This is insane,” Kitay said.
“Well, we can’t put her anywhere else,” Rin said.
“So you’re keeping her here?” Kitay flung his hands up, gesturing wildly around the general’s office. “We sleep here!”
“So she’ll sleep in another room—”
“You know that’s not what I fucking meant. Are you going to tell Souji? Zhuden?”
“Obviously not, and neither should you—”
“Is this the anchor?” Daji asked from the doorway. Her eyes darted over Kitay, drinking in the sight of him as if he were some particularly juicy morsel of prey. “Are you sleeping with him?”
Kitay visibly flinched. Rin stared at Daji, momentarily too stunned to respond. “I—what?”
“You should try it sometime. The bond makes it something quite special.” Daji stepped forward, lip curling as she continued to examine Kitay. “Ah, I remember you. From the Academy. Irjah’s student. You’re a smart boy.”
Kitay’s hand moved to his belt for his knife. “Take one step closer and I’ll kill you.”
“She’s not our enemy,” Rin said hastily. “She wants to help us—”
He barked out a laugh. “Have you gone mad?”
“She won’t hurt us. If she wanted to hurt me she would have done it at the Red Cliffs. The balance of power has shifted now, she’s got no reason to—”
“That bitch,” Kitay said slowly, “is the reason why my father is dead.”
Rin faltered.
“I am so sorry,” Daji said. Oddly enough, she looked it—her eyes were solemn, and the mocking curl had disappeared from her lips. “Minister Chen was a faithful servant. I wish the war had not taken him.”
Kitay looked astonished that she had even dared to address him. “You are a monster.”
“I spent three years living with the Ketreyids and I know infinitely more about the Pantheon than either of you do,” Daji said. “I’m the only one who’s ever fought a war against the Hesperians, or against Yin Vaisra, for that matter. You need me if you want any chance of surviving what’s coming, so you’d best stop making threats, little boy. Is this the best intelligence you have?”
Daji turned abruptly toward Kitay’s desk and started riffling through his carefully marked maps. Kitay moved to stop her, but Rin blocked his way.
“Just hear her out,” she muttered.
“Hear her out? We’re better off taking off her head!”
“Just listen,” Rin insisted. “And if she’s full of shit, we’ll tell the villagers who she is and let them carry out their justice. You can take the first blow.”
“I’d rather take it now.”
Daji glanced up from the desk. “You’re going to lose.”
“Did anyone ask you?” Kitay snapped.
Daji tapped her fingernails against the maps. “It is so obvious how this will go. You might beat the Mugenese. You’re not finished with this campaign yet, you know—you need to chase them south to prevent a regrouping. But you have momentum now. Train that little peasant army well, and you’ll likely win. But the moment the Republic turns south, Vaisra will grind you into dust.”
Daji’s tone changed drastically as she spoke. The feeble, grandmotherly tremor disappeared, and her pitch deepened. Her words rang out clear, crisp, and assured. She sounded how she used to. She sounded like a ruler.
“We’ve been doing well enough on our own,” Kitay said.
Daji snorted. “You barely survived on a single front. You didn’t liberate Tikany, you occupied a graveyard. And you’ve no defenses against the Republic whatsoever. Did you think they’d forgotten you? Once you’ve cleaned the Federation out for them, they will strike, hard and fast, and you won’t know what hit you.”
“Our army is thousands strong and growing,” Kitay said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one? Against dirigibles and arquebuses, you’ll need five times your current numbers.” Daji arched an eyebrow. “Or you need shamans.”
Kitay rolled his eyes. “We have a shaman.”
“Little Runin is a single soldier with a limited battlefield range and a rather obvious vulnerability.” Daji flicked her hand dismissively at Kitay. “And you can’t hide out every battle, darling. Unless Rin unleashes a catastrophe on the scale of what she did to the Federation, then you are no match for Yin Vaisra and his army.”
“I’ve buried a god,” Rin said. “I can handle dirigibles.”
Daji laughed. “I assure you, you cannot. You’ve never seen a full fleet of dirigibles in action. I have. Their combat craft are light and agile as birds. They may as well be calling gods of their own. You might call the fire, but they will bury you in missiles.” She smacked her palm against the maps. “You are dreadfully outnumbered and overpowered and you need to take steps to correct that now.”