“Are you always like this? Great Tortoise, that explains why—”
She cut him off. “Do you hear that?”
She thought she heard a faint whining drone—a sound like a faraway swarm of bees, growing louder and louder with every passing second.
Souji fell silent, brows furrowed. “What are you—”
“Shut up,” Rin hissed. “Just listen.”
Yes—the droning was distinct now. The noise wasn’t just in her head. She wasn’t panicking over nothing. This was real.
Souji’s eyes widened. He’d heard it, too.
“Get down,” he gasped, and lunged at her just before the first bombs exploded.
Chapter 9
They hit the ground together, Souji’s elbows digging painfully into Rin’s ribs. There was the briefest moment of silence, then an eerie ringing in her ears. She peered up from beneath Souji’s splayed body, groaning, just as Tikany lit up in a flash of orange light.
Then the bombing resumed, a roll of thunder that just kept going.
Souji rolled off of Rin. She scrambled unsteadily to her feet.
Kitay. Her vision was half-gone, along with her balance; as she stumbled toward the general’s complex she kept lurching to the side like a drunkard. I have to find Kitay.
A high, tortured keen sounded behind her. She turned around. By firelight she could just make out a young officer’s face, one of Zhuden’s men whose name she’d never learned. He lay on the ground several yards away. She stared at him for a moment, utterly confused. She and Souji had been alone in the street until now; all the other officers had remained at the bonfire, a good five minutes’ walk from here.
Was it the blast? Could the force of the explosion have hurled him this far?
But the officer looked fine—his head, shoulders, and torso were all intact, unbloodied. Unburned, even. Why was he—
The black smudges cleared slowly from Rin’s vision, and she saw what had at first been hidden by smoke and darkness. The officer’s legs had been blown away from the upper thigh.
He was looking at her. Gods, he was still conscious. He lifted a trembling hand toward her. His mouth moved. No sound came out, at least none that she could hear, but she understood.
Please.
She reached for the knife at her belt, but her fingers fumbled clumsily against the sheath.
“I’ll do it.” Souji’s voice rang as loud as a gong against her ears. He seemed to have sobered completely, his alcohol-drenched sluggishness evaporated by the same adrenaline pounding through her veins. He seemed far more in command of himself than she felt. With a brisk efficiency, he pulled the knife out of her hand and bent down to slit the officer’s throat.
She stared, swaying on her feet.
We weren’t ready.
She’d thought she had more time. When she’d destroyed Kesegi’s message she’d known Nezha had her in his sights, but she’d thought she might have the chance to train her newly won Southern Army while the Republic finished their campaign in the north. She’d thought, after the Beehive fell, that they could take a moment to breathe.
She hadn’t known Nezha was on their fucking doorstep.
Air cannons boomed continuously in harmony with the drone of dirigible engines. A celestial orchestra, Rin thought, dazed. The gods were playing a dirge to their demise.
She heard screaming from the town center. She knew that there was no mounted ground defense, no chance of fending the airships off. Her troops were flush with victory and drunk from revels. They’d only posted a skeleton guard at the township gates because they’d thought, for once, they were safe.
And the fucking bonfires—gods, the bonfires must have been like beacons, screaming out their location from the ground.
The shouts grew louder. Panicked, scattered crowds were flooding through the streets, away from the bonfires. A little girl ran screaming in Rin’s direction, and Rin didn’t have time to yell, No, stop, get down, before a blast rocked the air and flames shrouded the tiny body.
The same explosion knocked Rin off her feet. She rolled onto her back and moaned, her good hand pressed against her left ear. The bombing was so frequent that she could no longer hear any pause between drops, only an incessant rumble while fiery orange flares went off everywhere she looked.
She pushed her hand against the ground and forced herself to stand.
“We need to get out of here.” Souji yanked her up by the wrist and dragged her toward the forest. Explosions went off so close that she felt the heat sear her face, but the dirigibles weren’t firing over the forests.
They were only aiming at the campfires—at open, vulnerable civilians.
“Hold on,” she said. “Kitay—”
Souji wouldn’t let go of her arm. “We’ll move farther into the trees. They haven’t got visibility near the forest. We’ll take the mountain routes, get as far as we can before—”
She struggled against his grip. “We have to get Kitay!”
“He’ll make his own way out,” Souji said. “But you’ll be dead in seconds if you—”
“I’ll manage.” She didn’t know how she’d fend off the dirigibles—they didn’t seem to have weak points she could easily burn—but she might aim fire at the steering mechanisms, the ammunition basket, something. But she couldn’t leave without Kitay.
Was he still in the general’s complex, or had he gone to the center square? The complex up the hill was still untouched, hidden under the cover of darkness, but the square was now an inferno. He couldn’t be critically injured—if he were, she would feel it, and right now she didn’t feel anything, which meant—
“Hold on.” Souji’s fingers tightened around her wrist. “It’s stopped.”
The sky had turned silent. The buzzing had died away.
They’re landing, Rin realized. This was a ground assault. The dirigibles didn’t want to eradicate all Tikany by air. They wanted prisoners.
But didn’t they understand the dangers of a ground assault? They might have their arquebuses, but she had a god, and she would smite them down the moment they approached. They only bore a fighting chance against her if they hovered out of her range. They had to understand that sending down troops was suicide.
Unless—
Unless.
An icy chill crept through her veins.
She saw it now. The Hesperians didn’t want her bombed. She was their favorite test subject; they didn’t want her blown to pieces. They wanted her captured alive, delivered whole and writhing to the Gray Company’s laboratories, so they’d brought the only person in the world who could face her in hand-to-hand combat and win.
Nezha, whose wounds stitched themselves back together as quickly as they opened.
Nezha, whose powers flowed from the sea.
“Run,” she told Souji, just as another round of missiles tore them apart.
For a moment the world was silent.
All was darkness, and then colors began to return—only red at first, red everywhere she looked, and then muddled clumps of red and green. Rin didn’t know how she managed to stand, only that one moment she was lying on the ground and the next she was staggering through the forest, lurching from tree to tree because her balance was broken and she couldn’t stand up straight. She tasted blood on her lip, but she couldn’t tell where she’d been hurt; the pain was like a shroud, pulsing uniformly across her body with every step she took.