Rin tasted bile in the back of her throat. It was a long while before she remembered how to breathe.
Altan rose to his feet. The veins at his neck protruded in the dim light. He took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, like an opium smoker, like a man who had just filled his lungs with a drug. He turned toward them. His eyes glowed bright red in the darkness. His eyes were nothing human.
“Fine,” he said to his lieutenant. “You were right.”
Chaghan hadn’t moved throughout the entire interrogation.
“I’m rarely wrong,” said Chaghan.
Part III
Chapter 21
Baji yawned loudly, winced, and pulled his neck far to the side. A series of cracks punctuated the still morning air. There was no room to lie down in the river sampan, so sleep had to be acquired in short, fitful bursts, bent over in cramp-inducing positions. He blinked blearily for a minute, and then reached across the narrow boat with his foot to nudge Rin’s leg.
“I can take watch now.”
“I’m fine,” Rin said. She sat huddled with her hands shoved into her armpits, slumped forward so that her head rested on her knees. She stared blankly out at the running water.
“You really should get some sleep.”
“Can’t.”
“You should try.”
“I’ve tried,” Rin said shortly.
Rin could not silence the Talwu’s voice in her head. She had heard the Hexagram uttered only once, but she was unlikely to forget a single word. It had been seared into her mind, and no matter how many times she revisited it, she could not interpret it in a way that did not leave her feeling sick with dread.
Abrupt with fire, with death . . . as though burning; as though dying . . . the subject is with tears flowing in torrents . . . great joy in decapitating enemies . . .
She used to think divination was a pale science, a vague approximation if valuable at all. But the Talwu’s words were anything but vague. There was only one possible fate for Golyn Niis.
You have cast the Twenty-Sixth Hexagram. The Net. Chaghan had said the net meant a trap had been laid. But had the trap been laid for Golyn Niis? Had it already been sprung, or were they heading straight toward their deaths?
“You’re going to wear yourself out. Fretting won’t make these boats run any faster.” Baji pulled his head to the side until he heard another satisfying crack. “And it won’t make the dead come back to life.”
They raced up the Golyn River, making absurd time in a journey that should have taken a month on horseback. Aratsha ferried them along the river at blinding speed. Still, it took them a week to travel the length of the Golyn River to the lush delta where Golyn Niis had been built.
Rin glanced up to look at the boat at the very fore, where Altan sat. He rode beside Chaghan; their heads were tilted together, speaking in low tones as usual. They had been like this since they had left Khurdalain. Chaghan and Qara may have been linked as anchor twins, but it was Altan whom Chaghan seemed bonded to.
“Why isn’t Chaghan commander?” she asked.
Baji looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t understand why Chaghan obeys Altan,” she said. Against the Woman, he had proclaimed himself the most powerful shaman in existence. She believed it. Chaghan navigated the spirit world like he belonged there, as if he were a god himself. The Cike didn’t hesitate to talk back to Altan, but she had never seen any of them dare to so much as contradict Chaghan. Altan commanded their loyalty, but Chaghan enjoyed their fear.
“He was slated to be commander after Tyr,” said Baji. “Got shunted to the side after Altan showed up, though.”
“And he was fine with that?” Rin couldn’t imagine someone like Chaghan relinquishing authority peacefully.
“Of course not. Nearly spit fire when Tyr started favoring the golden boy from Sinegard over him.”
“So then why—”
“Why’s he happy serving under Altan? He wasn’t, at first. He bitched about it for a straight week, until Altan finally got fed up. He asked Tyr for permission for a duel and got it. He took Chaghan out into the valleys for three days.”
“What happened?”
Baji snorted. “What happens when anyone fights Trengsin? When Chaghan got back, all that pretty white hair was singed black and he was obeying Altan like a whipped dog. Our friend from the Hinterlands might shatter minds, but he couldn’t touch Trengsin. No one can.”
Rin dropped her head back onto her knees and closed her eyes against the light from the rising sun. She hadn’t slept—hadn’t truly rested—since they’d left Khurdalain. But her body couldn’t sustain itself any longer. She was so tired . . .
Their boat jolted in the water. Rin snapped up to a sitting position. They had bumped straight into the boat in front of them.
“Something’s in the water,” Ramsa shouted from the fore.
Rin looked over the side and squinted at the river. The water was the same muddy brown, until she glanced upstream.
At first she thought it was a trick of the light, an illusion of the sun’s rays. And then her boat reached an odd patch of colored water, and she draped her fingers over the edge. Then she yanked it back in horror.
They were riding through a river of blood.
Altan and Chaghan both jumped up with startled exclamations. Behind them, Unegen uttered a long, inhuman shriek.
“Oh gods,” Baji said, over and over. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.”
Then the bodies began to float toward them.
Rin was paralyzed, stricken with an irrational fear that the bodies might be the enemy, that they would rise out of the water and attack them.
Their boat stopped moving completely. They were surrounded by corpses. Soldiers. Civilians. Men. Women. Children. They were uniformly bloated and discolored. Some of their faces were disfigured, slashed apart. Others were simply blank, resigned, bobbing listlessly in the crimson water as if they had never been living, breathing bodies.
Chaghan reached out to examine a young girl’s blue lips. His own mouth was pursed dispassionately as if he were tracking a footprint, not touching a rubbery carcass. “These bodies have been in the river for days. Why haven’t they drifted out to sea yet?
“It’s the Golyn Niis Dam,” Unegen suggested. “It’s blocking them up.”
“But we’re still miles out from the city . . .” Rin trailed off.
They fell silent.
Altan stood up at the head of his boat. “Get out. Start running.”
The road to Golyn Niis was empty. Qara and Unegen scouted ahead but reported no sign of enemy combatants. Yet evidence of Federation presence was obvious everywhere they looked—trampled grass, abandoned campfires, rectangular patches in the dirt where tents had been erected. Rin felt sure that Federation soldiers were lying in wait for them, setting an ambush, but as they drew closer to the city, she realized that made no sense; the Federation wouldn’t have known they were coming, and they wouldn’t have set such an elaborate trap for such a small squadron.
She would have preferred an ambush. The silence was worse.
If Golyn Niis were still under siege, the Federation would be on guard. They would be prepared for skirmishes. They would have posted guards to make sure no reinforcements could reach the resistance inside.
There would be a resistance.
But the Federation seemed to have simply packed up and walked away. They hadn’t even bothered to leave behind a skeleton patrol. Which meant that the Federation didn’t care who came into Golyn Niis.
Which meant that whatever lay behind those city walls, it wasn’t worth guarding.
When the Cike finally succeeded in dragging open the heavy gates, an appalling stink assaulted them like a slap to the face. Rin knew the smell. She had experienced it at Sinegard and Khurdalain. She knew what to expect now. It had been a fool’s hope to expect anything different, but still she could not fully register the sight that awaited them when they passed through the barrier.
All of them stood still at the gates, unwilling to take one step farther inside.
For a long time none of them could speak.