Back then she’d thought Nezha was just acting spoiled and selfish. She’d never understood how he could loathe his gifts so much when they were so clearly useful. She’d hated him for calling them both abominations.

She’d never taken a moment to consider that unlike her, he hadn’t chosen his pain as tribute. He couldn’t derive satisfaction from it like she could, because for him, it wasn’t the necessary price of a way out. For him, it was only torture.

“He’s drawn to that creature,” Chaghan said. “And he’s drawn to that place. He’s physically anchored. It is the source of all his power.”

Rin took a deep breath. Focus on what matters. “That doesn’t tell me how to kill him.”

“But it tells you where to strike,” Chaghan said. “If you want to end Nezha, you’ll have to go to the source.”

She understood. “I have to take Arlong.”

“You must destroy Arlong,” he agreed. “Otherwise the water will keep healing him. It’ll keep protecting him. And you should know by now that when you leave your enemies alive, wars don’t end.”

Chapter 24

The next morning, Rin stepped out of Cholang’s hut to discover a crowd of people so vast she couldn’t see where it ended.

Kitay had sent out a call summoning volunteers the night before, specifying soldiers older than fifteen but younger than twenty-five. Rin wanted recruits around her age. She needed their rage to be all-consuming and untempered; she needed soldiers who would throw their souls into the void without the cautious timidity she’d grown to associate with men twice and thrice her age.

But it was clear no one had heeded the age limit. The people in the crowd ranged from civilians over sixty to children as young as seven.

Rin stood before the crowd and let herself imagine, just for a moment, what might happen if she made shamans of them all. It wasn’t a true option, just an awful, indulgent fantasy. She pictured deserts shifting like whirlpools. Oceans towering like mountains. She saw the whole world turned upside down, frothing with primordial chaos, and it tickled her something awful to know that if she wanted to make that happen, she could.

You would have been so proud, Altan. This is what you always wanted.

“The parameters were fifteen to twenty-five,” she told the crowd. “When I come back I don’t want to see anyone who doesn’t qualify.”

She turned and walked back into the hut.

“What now?” Kitay asked, amused. “A written exam?”

“Make them wait,” she said. “We’ll see who really wants it.”

She let them sit for hours. As the day stretched on, more and more trickled away, disabused by the blinding sun and relentless wind. Most of them—the ones that Rin suspected had volunteered out of a temporary, unsustainable bravado—left within the first hour. She was glad to see them go. She was also relieved when the youngest volunteers finally stood and left, either on their own or dragged along by their mothers.

But that still left a crowd of nearly fifty. Still far too many.

Late in the afternoon, after the sun had cut its scorching arc through the sky, Rin came back out to address them.

“Dig a blade under the nail of your fourth finger from the tip to the bed,” she commanded. It was a good test of pain tolerance. She’d learned from Altan that that sort of wound healed easily and wasn’t prone to infection, but it hurt. “If you want this, show me your blood.”

Murmurs of hesitation rippled through the crowd. For a moment no one moved, as if they were all trying to decide whether or not she was joking.

“I’m not joking,” Rin said. “I have knives if you need them.”

Eight volunteers dug their knives into their nail beds as she’d asked. Dark red droplets splattered the dirt. Two screamed; the other six suppressed their cries with clenched jaws.

Rin dismissed everyone else and brought the silent six into the hut.

She recognized only two of them. There was Dulin—the boy she’d found buried alive in Tikany. She was glad to see he had survived the march. Then, to her surprise, there was Pipaji.

“Where’s your sister?” Rin asked.

“She’s fine,” Pipaji said, and didn’t elaborate.

Rin regarded her for a moment, then shrugged and surveyed the others. “Did any of you make the march with your families?”

Two of them, both boy soldiers with the faintest hint of whiskers, nodded.

“Do you love them?”

They nodded again.

“If you do this you’ll never see them again,” Rin said. It wasn’t quite the truth, but she had to test their resolve. “It’s too dangerous. Your power will be volatile, and I don’t have the experience to help you rein it in around civilians, which means you’ll only be permitted to spend time around other people in this squadron. Think carefully.”

After a long, uneasy silence, both boys stood up and left. Four remained.

“Understand the sacrifice you’re making,” Rin told them. She felt by now she was belaboring the point. But she owed it to them to reiterate this warning as many times as she could. She didn’t need all four shamans. She needed troops who wouldn’t lose their nerve halfway through training or scare the others off. “I’m asking you to gamble with your sanity. If you go into the void you’ll find monsters on the other side. And you might not be strong enough to claw your way back. My masters died before they could teach me everything they knew. I’ll only be a halfway decent guide.”

No one said a word. Were they too terrified to speak, or did they just not care?

“You could lose control of your body and mind,” she said. “And if that happens, I’ll have to kill you.”

Again, no reaction.

Dulin raised his hand.

She nodded to him. “Yes?”

“Will we be able to do what you do?” he asked.

“Not so well,” she said. “And not so easily. I’m used to it. It will be painful for you.”

“How painful?”

“It will be the worst thing you’ve ever known.” She had to be honest; she could not ensnare them in something they didn’t understand. “If you fail, then you will lose your mind forever. If you succeed, you’ll still never have your mind to yourself again. You’ll live on the precipice of insanity. You’ll be constantly afraid. Drinking laudanum might become the only way you can get a good night’s sleep. You might kill innocent people around you because you don’t know what you’re doing. You might kill yourself.”

Her words were met with blank stares. Rin waited, fully prepared for all of them to stand up and leave.

“General?” Again Dulin raised his hand. “With all due respect, could we stop fucking around and get started?”

So Rin set about the task of creating shamans.

They spent the first evening sitting in a circle on the floor of the hut, resembling village schoolchildren about to learn to write their first characters. First Rin asked for their names. Lianhua was a willowy, wide-eyed girl from Dog Province who bore a series of terrible scars on both arms, her collarbones, and down her back as far as Rin could see. She did not explain them, and nobody was bold enough to ask.