“Pursue him,” Rin ordered. “Pursue anyone who’s fled the city, and don’t let up until you’ve dragged them back into the jails. I don’t want anyone outside Jinzhou to know what happened here today.”

Of all Souji’s lessons, the one that had struck the hardest was that in campaigns of resistance, information asymmetry mattered more than anything. The playing field had leveled somewhat now, but Rin still didn’t want Nezha to know her army had new shamans until Dulin and Pipaji became impossible to conceal. She knew she couldn’t keep this secret for long, but there was no point giving Nezha extra time to prepare.

“Kill or capture?” Miragha pressed.

Rin paused, considering.

That question had bearing on the larger issue of how to handle Jinzhou’s occupation. Most civil wars, like Vaisra’s campaign, were fought by redefining territorial borders. Enemy land was hard to maintain, so grafting onto local power structures had historically been the easiest way to seamlessly take control of a city without breakdown of civil functions. If Rin had wanted Jinzhou to resume normal functions, then she’d try to keep as many fleeing officials alive as she could. But she was focused on obtaining resources, not territory—she didn’t have the troops to station in every city that stood between her and Arlong.

Of course, that wasn’t a strategy for sustained long-term rule. But Rin wasn’t concerned with long-term rule right now. She wanted Nezha dead, the Republic collapsed, the south freed, and the Hesperians banished. She didn’t care much what happened to the Nikara heartland in the interim.

This region would likely fall into a temporary chaos while local powers either reestablished themselves or became victim to opportunistic coups. Small-scale wars were bound to break out. Bandits would run rampant.

She had to bracket all that as a problem for later. It couldn’t be hard to reassert control after she’d defeated the Republic. She’d be the only alternative left. Who could possibly challenge her?

“Capture them if you can,” she told Miragha. “But no need to go out of your way.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Rin’s troops plundered Jinzhou for its riches.

They did it as politely as possible, with minimal brutality. Rin gave strict orders for her soldiers to leave the terrified civilians and their households alone. Even accounting for the buildings shattered by Dulin’s earthquake, Jinzhou wallowed in so much wealth that the destruction had barely made a dent; the warehouses, granaries, and shops that remained standing still burst with enough goods to sustain the army for weeks. Rin’s troops loaded their wagons with sacks of rice, grain, salt, and dried meat; restocked their stores of bandages and tinctures; and replaced their rusty, broken-down carts with new vehicles with wheels and axles that glinted silver in the sunlight.

By far their best discovery was bolts and bolts of cotton linen and silk stacked up in massive piles inside a textile warehouse. Now they could make bandages. Now they could repair their shoes, which were in such tatters after the march over Baolei that many of Rin’s soldiers had fought the battle of Jinzhou barefoot. And now, for the first time in its short history, the Southern Army would have a uniform.

Up until now they’d been fighting in the same rags they’d worn out of the Southern Province. In battle they distinguished themselves with streaks of mud like Souji had suggested back when they’d broken the Beehive, or by putting on anything that wasn’t blue and hoping they weren’t killed by friendly fire. But now Rin had cloth, dyes, and a terrified guild of skilled Jinzhou seamstresses who were eager to comply with her every request.

The seamstresses asked her to pick a color. She chose brown, largely because brown dyes were the cheapest, made with tannins easily found in tree bark, shells, and acorn cups. But brown was also fitting. The Southern Army’s first uniforms had been dirt from a riverbed. When the Snail Goddess Nüwa had created the first humans, she had lovingly crafted the aristocracy from the finest red clay, lost patience, and hastily shaped the rest from mud. At Sinegard, they’d called her a mud-skinned commoner so often the insult felt now like a familiar call to arms.

Let them think of us as dirt, Rin thought. She was dirt. Her army was dirt. But dirt was common, ubiquitous, patient, and necessary. The soil gave life to the country. And the earth always reclaimed what it was owed.

“Great Tortoise,” Kitay said. “You’d think this was a Warlord’s palace.”

They stood in the main council room of Jinzhou’s city hall, a vast chamber with high ceilings, elaborately carved stone walls, and ten-foot-long calligraphic tapestries hanging at every corner. Long shelves gilded each wall, displaying an array of antique vases, swords, medals, and armor dating back as far as the Red Emperor. Miraculously, it had all survived the earthquakes.

Rin felt deliciously guilty as she perused the room and its treasures. She felt like a naughty child rummaging through her parents’ wardrobe. She couldn’t shake the sense that she shouldn’t be in here, that none of this belonged to her.

It does, she reminded herself. You conquered them. You razed this place. You won.

They’d sell it all, of course. They’d come here to find treasures they could turn to silver through Moag’s trading routes. As she ran her fingers over a silk fan, Rin fleetingly imagined herself wielding it, dressed in ornate silks of the kind Daji used to wear, carried through adoring crowds on a gilded palanquin.

She pushed the image away. Empresses carried fans. Generals carried swords.

“Look,” Kitay said. “Someone certainly thought highly of themselves.”

The magistrate’s chair at the end of the room was laughably ornate, a throne better fit for an emperor than a city official.

“I wonder how he made it through any meetings,” Rin said. The chair was nailed to a raised dais about half a foot off the floor. “You’d have to crane your neck just to look at anyone.”

Kitay snorted. “Perhaps he was just very short.”

Curious, Rin climbed up and settled into the chair. Contrary to expectations, the seat had actually been built for someone much taller than her. Her feet swung childishly from the edge, nowhere close to scraping the floor. Still, she couldn’t help feeling a small thrill of excitement as she looked out over the gilded chamber and the long council table at whose head she sat. She imagined the seats filled with people: soldiers, advisers, and city officials all listening attentively to her bidding.

Was this how it felt, day by day, to rule? Was this how Nezha felt seated within Arlong’s cerulean halls, halfway across the country?

She knew very well how total, dominating power tasted. But as she sat on the conquered throne, gazing down at the empty seats below, she understood for the first time the delicious authority that went with it. This was not a taste she had inherited from Altan, because Altan had only ever concerned himself with destructive retribution. Altan had never dreamed of seizing a throne.

But Rin could burn, was burning, much more brightly than Altan ever had.

Small wonder Nezha had chosen his Republic over her. She’d have done the same in a heartbeat.

Enjoy your Republic, she thought, fingers curling against the cold armrest. Enjoy it while it lasts, Young Marshal. Take a good look at your splendor, and remember well how it feels. Because I am coming to burn it all down beneath you.