“What?”
“You Speerlies are so special,” Shiro confided. His voice had taken on a low, husky tone. He spoke as if to an infant, or a lover. “So strong. So unique. They say you are a god’s chosen people. What makes you this way?”
Hatred, Rin thought. Hatred, and a history of suffering inflicted by people like you.
“You know my country has never achieved feats of shamanism,” Shiro said. “Do you have any idea why?”
“Because the gods wouldn’t bother with scum like you,” Rin spat.
Shiro brushed at the air, as if swatting the insult away. He must have heard so many Nikara curses by now that they meant nothing to him.
“We will do it like this,” he said. “I will request you to show me the way to the gods. Each time you refuse, I will give him another injection of the drug. You know how he will feel it.”
Altan made a low, guttural noise from his bed. His entire body tensed and spasmed.
Shiro murmured something into his ear and stroked Altan’s forehead, as tenderly as a mother might comfort an ailing child.
Hours passed. Shiro posed his questions about shamanism to Rin again and again, but she maintained a stony front. She would not reveal the secrets behind the Pantheon. She would not place yet another weapon in Mugen’s hands.
Instead she cursed and spat, called him a monster, called him every vile thing she could think of. Jima hadn’t taught them to curse in Mugini, but Shiro caught the gist.
“Come now,” Shiro said dismissively. “It’s not like you’ve never seen this before.”
She paused, spittle dripping from her mouth. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Shiro touched his fingers to Altan’s neck to feel his pulse, pulled his eyelids back and pursed his lips as if confirming something. “His tolerance is astounding. Inhuman. He’s been smoking opium for years.”
“Because of what you did to him,” she screeched.
“And afterward? After he was liberated?” Shiro sounded like a disappointed teacher. “They had the last Speerly in their hands, and they never tried to wean him off the drug? It’s obvious—someone’s been feeding it to him for years. Clever of them. Oh, don’t look at me like that. The Federation weren’t the first to use opium to control a population. The Nikara originated this technique.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They didn’t teach you?” Shiro looked amused. “But of course. Of course they wouldn’t. Nikan likes to scrub out all that is embarrassing about its past.”
He crossed the room to stand over her, brushing his fingers along the shelves as he walked. “How do you think the Red Emperor kept the Speerlies on their leash? Use your head, my dear. When Speer lost its independence, the Red Emperor sent crates of opium over to the Speerlies as an offering. A gift, from the colonizing state to the tributary. This was deliberate. Previously the Speerlies had only ever ingested their local bark in their ceremonies. They were used to such mild hallucinogens that to them, smoking opium was like drinking wood alcohol. When they tried it, they immediately became addicted. They did anything they could to get more of it. They were slaves to the opium just as much as they were slaves to the Emperor.”
Rin’s mind reeled. She could not think of any response.
She wanted to call Shiro a liar. She wanted to scream at him to stop. But it made sense.
It made so much sense.
“So you see, our countries are not so different after all,” Shiro said smugly. “The only difference is that we revere shamans, we desire to learn from them, while your Empire is terrified and paranoid about the power it possesses. Your Empire has culled you and exploited you and made you eliminate each other. I will unleash you. I will grant you freedom to call the god as you have never been allowed to before.”
“If you give me freedom,” she snarled, “the first thing I will do is burn you alive.”
Her connection to the Phoenix was the last advantage she had. The Federation had raped and burned her country. The Federation had destroyed her school and killed her friends. By now they had mostly likely razed her hometown to the ground. Only the Pantheon remained sacred, the one thing in the universe that Mugen still had no access to.
Rin had been tortured, bound, beaten, and starved, but her mind was her own. Her god was her own. She would die before she betrayed it.
Eventually, Shiro grew bored of her. He summoned the guards to drag the prisoners into a cell. “I will see you both tomorrow,” he said cheerfully. “And we will try this again.”
Rin spat on his coat as the guards marched her out. Another guard followed with Altan’s inert form thrown over his shoulder like an animal carcass.
One guard chained Rin’s leg to the wall and slammed the cell door shut on them. Beside her Altan jerked and moaned, muttering incoherently under his breath. Rin cradled his head in her lap and kept a miserable vigil over her fallen commander.
Altan did not come to his senses for hours. Many times he cried out, spoke words in the Speerly language that she didn’t understand.
Then he moaned her name. “Rin.”
“I’m here,” she said, stroking his forehead.
“Did he hurt you?” he demanded.
She choked back a sob. “No. No—he wanted me to talk, teach him about the Pantheon. I didn’t, but he said he’d just keep hurting you . . .”
“It’s not the drug that hurts,” he said. “It’s when it wears off.”
Then, with a sickening pang in her stomach, she understood.
Altan was not lapsing when he smoked opium. No—smoking opium was the only time when he was not in pain. He had lived his entire life in perpetual pain, always longing to have another dose.
She had never understood how horrendously difficult it was to be Altan Trengsin, to live under the strain of a furious god constantly screaming for destruction in the back of his mind, while an indifferent narcotic deity whispered promises in his blood.
That’s why the Speerlies became addicted to opium so easily, she realized. Not because they needed it for their fire. Because for some of them, it was the only time they could get away from their horrible god.
Deep down, she had known this, had suspected this ever since she’d learned that Altan didn’t need drugs like the rest of the Cike did, that Altan’s eyes were perpetually bright like poppy flowers.
Altan should have been locked into the Chuluu Korikh himself a long time ago.
But she hadn’t wanted to believe, because she needed to trust that her commander was sane.
Because without Altan, what was she?
In the hours that followed, when the drug seeped out of his bloodstream, Altan suffered. He sweated. He writhed. He seized so violently that Rin had to restrain him to keep him from hurting himself. He screamed. He begged for Shiro to come back. He begged for Rin to help him die.
“You can’t,” she said, panicking. “We have to escape here. We have to get out.”
His eyes were blank, defeated. “Resistance here means suffering, Rin. There is no escape. There is no future. The best you can hope for is that Shiro gets bored and grants you a painless death.”
She almost did it then.
She wanted to end his misery. She couldn’t see him tortured like this anymore, couldn’t watch the man she had admired since she set eyes on him reduced to this.
She found herself kneeling over his inert torso, hands around his neck. All she had to do was put pressure into her arms. Force the air out of his throat. Choke the life out of him.
He would hardly feel it. He could hardly feel anything anymore.
Even as her fingers grasped his skin, he did not resist. He wanted it to end.
She had done this once before. She had killed the likeness of him in the guise of the chimei.
But Altan had been fighting then. Then, Altan had been a threat. He was not a threat now, only the tragic, glaring proof that her heroes inevitably let her down.
Altan Trengsin was not invincible after all.