Rin moved just slightly so her left leg was positioned close enough to kick the rake up. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Daji said sharply. “I know what Vaisra intends to do. I know he intends to go to war. I’m trying to show you that it’s the wrong one.”
Rin’s pulse began to race. This was it—Daji knew her intentions, she needed to fight, it didn’t matter if she didn’t have the fire yet, she had to get to the rake—
“Stop that,” Daji ordered.
Rin’s limbs froze suddenly in place, muscles stiffening painfully as if the slightest movement might shatter them. She should be springing to fight. She should have at least crouched down. But somehow her body was arrested where she stood, as if she needed the Empress’s permission to even breathe.
“We are not finished talking,” said Daji.
“I’m finished listening,” Rin hissed through clenched teeth.
“Relax. I haven’t brought you here to kill you. You are an asset, one of the few I have left. It would be stupid to let you go.” Daji stepped in front of her so that they stood face-to-face. Rin hastily averted her eyes. “You’re fighting the wrong enemy, dear. Can’t you see it?”
Sweat beaded on Rin’s neck as she strained to break out of Daji’s hold.
“What did Vaisra promise you? You must know you’re being used. Is it worth it? Is it money? An estate? No . . . I don’t think you could be swayed by material promises.” Daji tapped her lacquered nails against painted lips. “No—don’t tell me you believe him, do you? Did he say he’d bring you a democracy? And you fell for it?”
“He said he’d depose you,” Rin whispered. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Do you really believe that?” Daji sighed. “What would you replace me with? The Nikara people aren’t ready for democracy. They’re sheep. They’re crude, uneducated fools. They need to be told what to do, even if that means tyranny. If Vaisra takes this nation then he’ll run it into the ground. The people don’t know what to vote for. They don’t even understand what it means to vote. And they certainly don’t know what’s good for them.”
“Neither do you,” Rin said. “You let them die in hordes. You invited the Mugenese in yourself and you traded them the Cike.”
To her surprise, Daji laughed. “Is that what you believe? You can’t trust everything you hear.”
“Shiro had no reason to lie. I know what you did.”
“You understand nothing. I have toiled for decades to keep this Empire intact. Do you think I wanted this war?”
“I think that at least half of this country was disposable to you.”
“I made a calculated sacrifice. The last time the Federation invaded, the Warlords rallied under the Dragon Emperor. The Dragon Emperor is dead. And the Federation was readying itself for a third invasion. No matter what I did, they were going to attack, and we were nowhere near strong enough to resist them. So I brokered a peace. They could have slices of the east if they would let the heartland remain free.”
“So we’d only be partially occupied.” Rin scoffed. “That’s what you call statecraft?”
“Occupied? Not for long. Sometimes the best offensive is false acquiescence. I had a plan. I would become close to Ryohai. I would gain his trust. I would lure him into a false sense of complacency. And then I would kill him. But in the meantime, while their forces were impenetrable, I would play along. I’d do what it took to keep this nation alive.”
“Kept alive only to die at Mugenese hands.”
Daji’s voice hardened. “Don’t be so naive. What do you do when you know that war is inevitable? Who do you save?”
“What did you think we were going to do?” Rin demanded. “Did you think we would just lie down and let them raze our lands?”
“Better to rule over a fragmented empire than none at all.”
“You sentenced millions of us to death.”
“I was trying to save you. Without me the violence would have been ten times as devastating—”
“Without you, we would at least have had a choice!”
“That would have been no choice. Do you think the Nikara are so altruistic? What if you asked a village to give up their homes so that thousands of others might live? Do you think they would do it? The Nikara are selfish. This entire country is selfish. People are selfish. The provinces have always been so fucking parochial, unable to see past their own narrow interests to pursue any kind of joint action. You heard those idiots in there. I let you watch for a reason. I can’t work with those Warlords. Those fools don’t listen.”
At the end Daji’s voice trembled—only just barely, and only for a second, but Rin heard it.
And for just that moment she saw through that facade of cool, confident beauty, and she saw Su Daji for what she might truly have been: not an invincible Empress, not a treacherous monster, but rather a woman who had been saddled with a country that she didn’t know how to run.
She’s weak, Rin realized. She wishes she could control the Warlords, but she can’t.
Because if Daji could have persuaded the Warlords to follow her wishes, she would have done so. She would have done away with the Warlord system and replaced provincial leadership with branches of the Imperial government. But she had left the Warlords in place because even she was not strong enough to supplant them. She was one woman. She couldn’t take on their combined armies. She was just barely clinging to power through the last vestiges of the legacy of the Second Poppy War.
But now that the Federation was gone, now that the Warlords no longer had reason to fear, it was very likely the provinces would realize they had no need for Daji.
Daji didn’t sound like she was spinning lies. If anything, Rin thought it more likely that she was telling the truth.
But if so—then what? That didn’t change things.
Daji had sold the Cike to the Federation. Daji was the reason why Altan was dead. Those were the only two things that mattered.
“This Empire is falling apart,” Daji said urgently. “It’s becoming weak, you’ve seen that. But what if we bent the Warlords to our will? Just imagine what you could do under my command.” She cupped Rin’s cheek in her hand, drew their faces close together. “There’s so much you have to learn, and I can teach you.”
Rin would have bitten Daji’s fingers off if she could move her head. “There’s nothing you can teach me.”
“Don’t be foolish. You need me. You’ve been feeling the pull, haven’t you? It’s consuming you. Your mind is not your own.”
Rin flinched. “I don’t—you’re not—”
“You’re scared to close your eyes,” Daji murmured. “You crave the opium, because that’s the only thing that makes your mind your own again. You’re fighting your god at every moment. Every instant you’re not incinerating everything around you, you’re dying. But I can help you.” Daji’s voice was so soft, so tender, so gentle and reassuring that Rin wanted terribly to believe her. “I can give you your mind back.”
“I have control of my mind,” Rin said hoarsely.
“Liar. Who would have taught you? Altan? He was barely sane himself. You think I don’t know what that’s like? The first time we called the gods, I wanted to die. We all did. We thought we were going mad. We wanted to fling our bodies off Mount Tianshan to end it.”
Rin couldn’t stop herself from asking, “So what did you do?”
Daji touched an icy finger to Rin’s lips. “Loyalty first. Then answers.”