It burned her skin as soon as she touched it.
She clenched her teeth and forged ahead through the pain—but she’d hardly gone ten paces when someone grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back out of the gas zone. She struggled furiously to escape their grip.
Altan didn’t let go.
“Back off!” She elbowed him in the face. Altan stumbled and grabbed at his nose. Rin tried to duck past him, but Altan wrenched her backward by her wrist.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“They’ve got Nezha!” she screamed.
“I don’t care.” He pushed her in the direction of the tree line. “Retreat.”
“You’re leaving one of our men to die!”
“He’s not one of our men, he’s one of the Seventh’s men. Go.”
“I won’t leave my friend behind!”
“You will do as I command.”
“But Nezha—”
“I’m not sorry about this,” Altan said, and jammed a fist into her solar plexus.
Stunned, paralyzed, she sank to her knees.
She heard Altan shout out an order, and then someone picked her up and slung her over their shoulders as if she were a child. She beat and screamed as the soldier began jogging in the direction of the barracks. From the soldier’s back, she thought she could see the masked Federation soldiers dragging Nezha away.
The gas attack created the precisely the effect that the Federation intended. The sugar bomb had been devastating—the gas attack was monstrous. Khurdalain erupted into a state of terror. Though the gas itself dissipated within an hour, rumors of it spread quickly. The fog was an invisible enemy, one that killed indiscriminately. There was no hiding from the fumes. Civilians began fleeing the city en masse, no longer confident in the Militia’s ability to protect them. Panic enveloped the streets.
Jun’s soldiers had shouted themselves hoarse in the alleys, trying to convince civilians they would be safer behind city walls. But the people weren’t listening. They felt trapped. The narrow, winding roads of Khurdalain meant certain death in case of another gas attack.
While the city collapsed into chaos, the commanders commenced an emergency meeting in the nearest headquarters. The Cike crammed into the Ram Warlord’s office along with the Warlords and their junior officers. Rin leaned against the corner of the wall, listening dully as the commanders argued over their immediate strategy.
Only one of Jun’s soldiers on the beach had survived the attack. He had been posted in the back, and had dropped his weapon and run as soon as he saw his comrades choking.
“It was like breathing fire,” he reported. “Like red-hot needles were piercing my lungs. I thought I was being strangled by some invisible demon . . . my throat closed up, I couldn’t breathe . . .” He shuddered.
Rin listened, and resented him for not being Nezha.
It was only fifty yards. I could have saved him. I could have dragged us both out.
“We need to evacuate downtown right now,” Jun said. He was remarkably calm for a man who had just lost more than a hundred men to a poisonous fog. “My men will—”
“Your men will do crowd control. The civilians are going to trample themselves trying to get out of the city, and it’ll be easy for Mugen to pick them off if they’re not corralled out in an orderly fashion,” Altan said.
Amazingly, Jun didn’t argue.
“We’ll pack up headquarters and move it farther back into the Sihang warehouse,” Altan continued. “We can dump the prisoner in the basement.”
Rin jerked her head up. “What prisoner?”
She was faintly aware that she should not be talking, that as an unranked soldier of the Cike she was not technically a part of this meeting and was certainly acting out of line. But she was too grief-stricken and exhausted to care.
Unegen leaned down and murmured into her ear, “One of the Federation soldiers got caught in their own gas. Altan took his mask and pulled him out.”
Rin blinked in disbelief.
“You went back in?” she asked. Her voice rang very loudly in her ears. “You had a mask?”
Altan shot her an irritated look. “This is not the time,” he said.
She clambered to her feet. “You let one of our people die?”
“You and I can discuss this later.”
She understood, in the abstract, the strategic boon of taking a Federation prisoner; the last Federation soldiers who had been captured spying across the bank had promptly been torn apart by furious civilians. And yet . . .
“You are unbelievable,” Rin said.
“We will see to headquarters evacuation,” Altan said loudly over her. “We’ll regroup in the warehouse.”
Jun nodded curtly, then muttered something to his officers. They saluted him and left the headquarters at a run.
At the same time, Altan issued orders to the Cike.
“Qara, Unegen, Ramsa: secure us a safe route to the warehouse and guide Jun’s officers there. Baji and Suni, help Enki pack up shop. The rest of you resume positions in case of another gas attack.” He paused at the door. “Rin. You stay.”
She hung back as the rest of them exited the office. Unegen cast her a nervous look on his way out.
Altan waited until they were alone, and then he closed the door. He crossed the room and stood so that there was very little distance between them.
“You do not contradict me,” he said quietly.
Rin crossed her arms. “Ever, or just in front of Jun?”
Altan didn’t rise to the bait. “You will answer to me as a soldier to her commander.”
“Or what? You’ll have Suni drag me out of your office?”
“You’re out of line.” Altan’s voice dropped to a dangerously low volume.
“And you let my friend die,” Rin answered. “He was lying there and you left him there.”
“You couldn’t have extracted him.”
“Yes, I could have,” she seethed. “And even if I couldn’t have—you might have, you might have saved my friend instead of dragging out some Federation soldier who deserved to die in there—”
“Prisoners of war have greater strategic importance than individual soldiers,” Altan said calmly.
“That is such bullshit,” she snarled.
Altan didn’t answer. He took two steps forward and struck her across the face.
None of her guards were up. She took the full force of his hit with no preparation. His blow was so powerful that her head snapped to the side. The sudden impact made her knees buckle, jerked her to the ground. She raised a hand to her cheek, stunned. Her fingers came away bloody; he’d reopened her arrow wound.
Slowly she looked up at Altan. Her ears rang.
Altan’s scarlet gaze met hers, and the naked rage on his face stunned her.
“How dare you,” he said. His voice was overly loud, distorted through her thundering ears. “You misunderstand the nature of our relationship. I am not your friend. I am not your brother, though kin we may be. I am your commander. You do not argue with my orders. You follow them without question. You obey me, or you leave this Militia.”
His voice held the same double timbre that Jiang’s voice had held when he opened the void at Sinegard. Altan’s eyes burned red—no, they were not red, they were the color of fire itself. Flames blazed behind him, flames whiter and hotter than any fire she’d ever been able to summon. She was immune to her own fire, but not his; it burned in her face, choking her, forcing her backward.
The ringing in her ears reached a crescendo.
He doesn’t get to do this to you, said a voice in Rin’s head. He doesn’t get to terrorize you. She had not come this far to crouch like this in fear. Not to Altan. Not to anyone.
She stood up, even as she reached somewhere inside herself—somewhere spiteful and dark and horrible—and opened the channel to the entity she already knew was waiting for her summons. The room pitched forward as if viewed through a long scarlet prism. The familiar burn was back in her veins, the burn that demanded blood and ashes.
Through the red haze she thought she saw Altan’s eyes widen in surprise. She squared her shoulders. Flames flared from her shoulders and back, flames that mirrored Altan’s.