“Seems like the least of our concerns,” Venka said.
“You can still go back,” Kitay said. “I’m serious, Venka. Your whole family is here, you’ve got no business running away with us. I can take the sampan from here, you can hop off—”
“No,” she said curtly.
“Think hard about this,” he insisted. “You’ve still got plausible deniability. You can leave now; no one knows you’re on this boat. But you come with us and you can never go back.”
“Pity,” Venka said dismissively. She turned to Rin. Her voice took on a hard edge. “I heard what you did to that Hesperian soldier.”
“Yeah,” Rin said. “So?”
“So well done. I hope it hurt.”
“It looked like it did.”
Venka nodded in silence. Neither of them had anything else to say about it.
“Any luck with the others?” Venka asked Kitay after a pause.
He shook his head. “Wasn’t time. The only one I could reach was Gurubai. He should be with the ship now if he got past the guards—”
“Gurubai?” Rin repeated. “What are you talking about?”
“Vaisra’s going after the southern Warlords,” Kitay explained. “He’s won his Empire. Now he’s consolidating his power. He started with you, and now he’s just cleaning up the others. I tried to give them some warning, but couldn’t reach them in time.”
“They’re dead?”
“Not all of them. They’ve got Charouk in the cells. Don’t know if they’ll execute him or let him languish, but they’ll certainly never set him free. The Rooster Warlord put up a fight, so they shot him when the riots started—”
“Riots? What the hell is going on?”
“The camps have turned into a war zone,” Venka said. “They’d doubled the guard all around the refugee district—said it was for safety, but the moment the troops came in for the Warlords they all knew what was happening. The southern troops started the revolt. We’ve been hearing fire powder going off all night—I think Vaisra set the Hesperians loose on them.”
Rin struggled to take all of this in. The world, it seemed, had turned upside down in the span of several hours. “They’re just killing them? Civilians too?”
“That’s likely.”
“Then what about Kesegi?” Rin asked. “Did he get out?”
Venka frowned. “Who?”
“I—no one.” Rin swallowed. “Never mind.”
“Think about it this way,” Venka said brightly. “At least it’s bought you a distraction.”
Rin retreated back under the tarp and lay still, counting her breaths to distract herself from the mess that was her hand. She wanted to look at it, survey the damage in her mangled fingers, but she couldn’t bring herself to unwrap the bloody cloth. She knew there would be no salvaging that hand. She’d seen the cracked bones.
“Venka?” Kitay’s voice, urgent.
“What?”
“I thought you covered your bases.”
“I did.”
Rin sat up. They’d moved faster than she thought—the palace was a distant sight, and they were already sailing past the shipyard. She twisted around to see what Venka and Kitay were staring at.
Nezha stood alone at the end of the pier.
Rin scrambled upright, her good hand flung outward. She was still reeling from the laudanum, but she could just elicit the smallest whispers of flame in her palm, could probably jerk out a larger torrent if she focused—
Kitay tackled her back down under the tarp. “Get down!”
“I’ll kill him.” Fire burst out from her palm and her lips. “I’ll kill him—”
“No, you won’t.” He moved to pin her wrists down.
Without thinking she pummeled at Kitay with both fists, trying to break free. Then her injured hand whacked against the side of the boat, and the pain was so horrendous that for a moment everything went white. Kitay clamped a hand over her mouth before she could scream. She collapsed into his arms. He held her against him and rocked her back and forth while she muffled her shrieks into his shoulder.
Venka fired two arrows in rapid succession across the harbor. They both missed by a yard. Nezha jerked his head to the side when they whistled past him, but otherwise stood his ground. He didn’t move the entire time the sampan crossed the shipyard toward the dark cover of cliff shadows on the other side of the channel.
“He’s letting us go,” said Kitay. “Hasn’t even sounded the alarm.”
“You think he’s on our side?” Venka asked.
“He’s not,” Rin said flatly. “I know he’s not.”
She knew with certainty that she’d lost Nezha forever. With Jinzha killed and Mingzha long dead, Nezha was the last male heir to the House of Yin. He stood to inherit the most powerful nation this side of the Great Ocean and become the ruler he’d prepared his entire life to be.
Why would he throw that away for a friend? She wouldn’t.
“This is my fault,” she said.
“It’s not your fault,” Kitay said. “We all thought we could trust that bastard.”
“But I think he tried to warn me.”
“What are you talking about? He stabbed you.”
“The night before the fleet came.” She took a deep breath. “He came to find me. He said I had more enemies than I thought I did. I think he was trying to warn me.”
Venka pursed her lips. “Then he didn’t try very hard.”
Two ships with deep builds and slender sides awaited them outside the channel. Both bore the flag of Dragon Province.
“Those are opium skimmers,” Rin said, confused. “Why are they—”
“Those are fake flags. They’re Red Junk ships.” Kitay helped her to her feet as the sampan bumped up against the closest skimmer’s hull. Kitay whistled up at the deck. Several seconds later, four ropes dropped into the water around them.
Venka fastened them to hooks on the four sides of the sampan. Kitay whistled again, and slowly they began to rise.
“Moag sends her regards.” Sarana winked at Rin as she helped her aboard. “We got your message. Figured you’d want a ride farther south. Just didn’t think things would get this bad.”
Rin was both deeply relieved and frankly amazed that the Lilies had come for her at all. She couldn’t remember why she’d ever hated Sarana; right now she only wanted to kiss her. “So you decided to pick a fight with a giant?”
“You know how Moag is. Always wants to snatch up trump cards, especially when they’ve been tossed out.”
“Did Gurubai make it?” Kitay asked.
“The Monkey Warlord? Yes, he’s belowdecks. Little bit bloodied up, but he’ll be fine.” Sarana’s gaze landed on Rin’s wrapped hand. “Tiger’s tits. What’s under there?”
“You don’t want to see,” Rin said.
“Do you have a physician on board?” Kitay asked. “I have triage training otherwise, but I’ll need equipment—boiling water, bandages—”
“Downstairs. I’ll take her.” Sarana put her arm around Rin and helped her across the deck.
Rin glanced over her shoulder as they walked, peering at the receding cliffs. It seemed incredible that they had not been followed out of the channel. Vaisra certainly knew she’d escaped by now. Troops should be pouring out of the barracks. She’d be surprised if the entire city weren’t put under lockdown. The Hesperians would scour the city, the cliffs, and the waters until they had her back in custody.
But the Red Junk skimmers were so clearly visible under the moonlight. They hadn’t bothered to hide. Hadn’t even turned their lamps off.
She stumbled over a bump in the floor panels.
“All right there?” Sarana asked.
“They’re going to catch us,” Rin said. Everything felt so idiotically meaningless—her escape, Ramsa’s death, the river rendezvous. The Hesperians were going to board them in an hour. What was the point?
“Don’t underestimate an opium skimmer,” said Sarana.
“Your fastest skimmer couldn’t outrun a Hesperian warship,” Rin said.
“Probably not. But we have a little time. Command miscommunications always happen when you have two armies and leaders who aren’t familiar with each other. The Hesperians don’t know it’s not a Republican ship and the Republicans won’t know if the Hesperians have given permission to fire, or if they even need it. Everyone assumes that someone else is taking care of it.”
Sarana’s plan was to escape through command chain inefficiency. Rin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “That doesn’t buy you escape, it buys you maybe half an hour.”
“Sure.” Sarana pointed to the other skimmer. “Thus the second ship.”
“What is that, a decoy?”
“Pretty much. We stole the idea from Vaisra,” Sarana said cheerfully. “In a second we’re going to cloak all of our abovedeck lights, but that ship’s going to posture like it’s ready for a fight. It’s rigged up with twice the firepower of a usual skimmer. They won’t get close enough to board, so they’ll be forced to blow it out of the water.”
That was clever, Rin thought. If the Hesperians didn’t notice the second skimmer escaping into the night, they might conclude that she’d drowned.
“Then what about its crew?” she asked. “That thing is crewed, right? You’re just going to sacrifice Lilies?”
Sarana’s smile looked carved into her face. “Cheer up. With luck, they’ll think it’s you.”