The moon is different here. He meant he wanted to go home.
The Mugenese were always talking about going home. She heard about it every time she eavesdropped on them. They spoke about home like it still existed, like the longbow island was some beautiful paradise where they could easily return if only the ships would come to harbor. They spoke about their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who awaited them on their shores, spared somehow from the scorching pyroclastic flows.
“You’d better get used to this moon,” said the second patrolman.
The more they spoke, the younger they sounded. Rin pictured their faces in her head; their voices brought to mind gangly limbs and fuzzy upper lips. They couldn’t be older than her—they had to be just over twenty, possibly younger.
She remembered fighting a boy her age during the siege at Khurdalain, what seemed like an eternity ago. Remembered his wide moonlike face and soft hands. Remembered how his eyes bulged when she ran her blade through his stomach.
He must have been so scared. He might have been as scared as she was.
She felt Kitay stiffen beside her.
“They don’t want to be here, either.” He’d told her this weeks ago. He’d been interrogating some of their Mugenese prisoners, and he’d come away far more sympathetic to them than she was comfortable with. “They’re just kids. A quarter of them are younger than we are, and they didn’t sign up for this war. Most of them were pulled from their homes and thrown into vicious training camps so that their families wouldn’t go to prison or starve. They don’t want to kill, they just want to go home.”
But their home didn’t exist anymore. Those boys had nowhere to escape to. If the gates of reconciliation had ever been open, if there’d ever been the option of repatriating enemy combatants and building slowly toward peace, Rin had slammed them shut long ago.
A wide chasm of guilt, her ever-faithful friend, yawned in the back of her mind.
She pushed it away.
She’d done such a good job of burying her memories; that was the only way she could keep herself sane.
Children can be murderers, she reminded herself. Little boys can be monsters.
The lines of war had become far too blurred. Every Mugenese soldier who’d ever put on a uniform was complicit, and Rin didn’t have the patience to separate the guilty from the innocent. Speerly justice was absolute. Her retribution was conclusive. She didn’t have time to dawdle on what could have been; she had a homeland to liberate.
Her wrist had started to throb again. She exhaled slowly, closed her eyes, and repeated their plan of attack over and over in her mind in an attempt to shake off her nerves.
She traced her fingers across the scars on her stomach. Let them linger on the spot where Altan’s handprint was burned into her like a brand. She envisioned those boy patrolmen and transformed them into targets.
I’ve killed millions of you before, she thought. This is routine now. This is nothing.
The sun was a little crimson dot now, the top of it barely visible over the mountaintops. The patrolmen had rotated from their post. The fields, for now, were empty.
“It’s time,” Kitay murmured.
Rin stood up. They faced each other, hands clasped between them.
“At dawn,” she said.
“At dawn,” he agreed. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead.
This was their standard way of parting, the way they said everything they never spoke out loud. Fight well. Keep us safe. I love you.
Every goodbye had to be so much harder for Kitay, who wagered his life on hers every time she set foot on the battlefield.
Rin wished she didn’t have that vulnerability. If she could cut out the part of the soul that endangered Kitay—that was endangered by Kitay—then she would.
But the fact that his life was at stake lent an edge to her fighting. It made her sharper, warier, less likely to take risks and more likely to strike hard and fast when she could. She no longer fought from pure rage. She fought to protect him—and that, she had discovered, changed everything.
Kitay gave her one last nod, then disappeared behind the ranks.
“Does he always stay behind?” Officer Shen asked.
Rin liked Officer Shen. A Monkey Province native and veteran of the last two Poppy Wars, Shen Sainang was brusque, efficient, and pragmatic. She despised factional politics, which perhaps explained why she was one of the few officers who had volunteered to follow Rin into her first battle as commander. Rin was grateful for that.
But Shen was too observant. Always asking too many questions.
“Kitay doesn’t fight,” Rin said.
“Why not?” Shen asked. “He’s Sinegard-trained, isn’t he?”
Because Kitay was Rin’s single link to the heavens. Because Kitay needed to be in a safe and quiet place so that his mind could function as a channel between her and the Phoenix. Because every time Kitay was exposed and vulnerable it doubled Rin’s chances of dying.
That was Rin’s greatest secret. If the Monkey Warlord knew Kitay was her anchor, he’d know the only way to kill her. And Rin didn’t trust him or the Southern Coalition enough to give them that chance.
“He’s a Sinegard-trained strategist,” Rin said. “Not a foot soldier.”
Shen looked unconvinced. “He carries a sword like one.”
“Yes, and his mind’s more valuable than the sword,” Rin said curtly, shutting down the discussion. She nodded toward Khudla. “It’s time.”
Adrenaline rushed her veins then. Her heartbeat began pounding in her ears, an internal countdown to the slaughter. Across the village perimeter, eight pairs of eyes were trained on Rin—eight squadron leaders, waiting at their vantage points, watching for the flame.
At last, Rin saw a line of Mugenese troops moving down the field. There it was—the patrol switch.
She raised her left hand and gave the signal—a thin stream of fire, burning the air ten feet over her head before it winked away.
The fields moved. Soldiers poured in from the northern and eastern fronts. They flooded out of hiding points in riverbanks, ravines, and forests like ants storming out of an anthill. Rin watched with satisfaction. So what if her columns were thinner than the defense? The Mugenese wouldn’t know the first place to look.
She heard a series of signal whistles, clear indications that every squadron had moved successfully into position. Officer Shen’s troops took the east. Officer Lin’s troops took the north.
Rin stormed the southern quarter alone.
The Mugenese weren’t ready. Most had been asleep or preparing to go to sleep. They staggered out of their tents and barracks, rubbing at their eyes. Rin almost laughed at the way their faces morphed into uniform expressions of horror when they saw what had turned the night air so very warm.
She lifted her arms. Wings shot out of her shoulders, glowing ten feet high.
Kitay had once accused her of being too flamboyant, of sacrificing efficiency for attention.
What did it matter? There was no point to subtlety when everyone knew what she was. And Rin wanted this image burned into their eyelids, the last thing they saw before they died—a Speerly and her god.
Men scattered before her like startled hens. One or two had the sense to hurl swords in her direction. Their movements were panicked, their aim poor. Rin advanced, hand splayed outward, fire ensconcing everything she saw.