Governance required a wholly different set of skills from commanding an army, very few of which Rin possessed. She didn’t know the first thing about civil administration, yet suddenly a million mundane tasks demanded her immediate attention. Relocation for civilians whose homes were underwater. Law enforcement against looting and pillaging. Finding caretakers for children whose parents were dead or missing. It was going to be a gargantuan task just to restore the city to a minimal level of functionality, and its difficulty was compounded by the fact that the public officers normally responsible for keeping the city running were either dead, imprisoned, or had fled with Nezha to Speer.

Rin was astonished they got anything done. She certainly couldn’t have gotten through that first morning without Kitay, who seemed undaunted by the impossibility of their mission, who calmly summoned staff and designated responsibilities like he knew exactly where everything was and what needed to be done.

Still, that morning did not quite seem real. It felt like a dream. It was absurd, the fact that the three of them were running a city. Her mind kept ricocheting between the wildly arrogant conviction that this was fine, they were managing, and doing a better job of it than any of Arlong’s corrupt leadership ever had; and the crippling fear that they weren’t qualified for this at all because they were just soldiers, just kids who hadn’t even graduated from Sinegard, and so wholly unprepared for the task of ruling that the city was going to collapse around them any minute. Despite Kitay’s astounding competency, their problems only kept stacking up. The moment they resolved one issue, they received reports of a dozen more. It felt as if they were trying to plug a dam with their fingertips while water kept bursting forth around them. If they strayed off focus for even one minute, Rin feared, they’d drown.

By midmorning she wanted to curl up and cry, I don’t want this, I can’t do this; wanted to hand off her responsibilities to an adult.

But you waged this war, Altan reminded her. You wanted to be in charge. And now you are. Don’t fuck it up.

But every time she got her thoughts back in order, she remembered that it wasn’t just Arlong at stake—it was the country.

And Arlong’s problems paled in comparison to what was going on across Nikan. The Republic had been holding together worse than she’d thought. Grain deficiencies plagued every province. The livestock trade was nearly nonexistent; it had been wrecked by the Mugenese invasion, and the following civil war had afforded it no space to recover. Fish, a staple in the southeast, was in short supply since Daji had poisoned the rivers a year ago. Rates of infectious diseases were skyrocketing. Almost every part of the country was suffering epidemics of typhus, malaria, dysentery, and—in a remote village in Rat Province—unprecedented cases of leprosy. These diseases affected rural populations on a cyclical schedule, but the tumult of war had uprooted entire communities and forced masses of people—many of whom had never been in contact with one another before—into smaller, cramped spaces. Infections had exploded as a result. Hesperian medicine had helped, to some extent. That wasn’t available anymore.

Then there were the normal by-products of war. Mass displacement. Rampant banditry. Trade routes were no longer safe; entire economies had ceased to function. The normal flow of goods, that crucial circulation that kept the Empire running, had broken down and would require months, if not years, to restore.

Rin wouldn’t have known about half of these issues if she hadn’t learned about them from Nezha’s private papers—a stack of neat, startlingly comprehensive accounts of every plea for government assistance over the last six months, kept fastidiously in elegant, oddly feminine handwriting. Despite herself, Rin found them immensely helpful. She spent hours poring over the scrolls, marking down his reflections and suggested solutions. They displayed the thoughts of someone trained for statesmanship since he could read. A distressing number of his proposals were better than anything she or Kitay could have thought of.

“I can’t believe he left all this behind,” she said. “They’re not that heavy. He could have done a lot more harm by taking them with him. You think they’re sabotage?”

Kitay looked unconvinced. “Maybe.”

No, they both knew that wasn’t true. The notes were too detailed, too clearly compiled over months of difficult rule, to be staged overnight. And too many of Nezha’s warnings—the importance of dam reconstruction, of vigilant canal traffic management—had turned out to be salient.

“Or,” Kitay ventured, “he’s trying to help you out. Or at least, he’s trying to keep the city’s disasters to a minimum.”

Rin hated that explanation. She didn’t want to credit Nezha with that generosity. It painted a different picture of Nezha—not as the vicious, opportunistic bootlicker to the Hesperians that she’d been rallying against this entire campaign, but as a leader genuinely trying his best. It made her think of the tired boy in the cell. The frightened boy in the river.

It made it so much harder to fixate on planning his death.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said curtly. “Nezha couldn’t hold on to his city, let alone a country. These are our problems now. Pass me that page.”

They were deep into the afternoon before they broke for a midday meal, and only then because Kitay’s stomach began rumbling so loudly the distraction became unbearable. Rin had been so absorbed in Nezha’s documents, she’d forgotten she was hungry until a junior officer set plates of steamed scallion buns, boiled fish with chilis, and braised cabbage before them. Then she was ravenous.

“Hold on,” Kitay said, just as Rin reached for a bun. “Who cooked this?”

“Palace staff,” said the officer who’d brought it in.

“They’re still working the kitchens?” Venka asked.

“You said to keep all palace staff in their positions if they wished to defect,” said the officer. “We’re quite sure the food is safe. We had guards watching when they prepared it.”

Rin stared at the array of dishes, amazed. It hadn’t really hit her, not until then, that she ruled Nikan. She ruled Nikan, which meant all the privileges along with the responsibilities. She had an entire palace staff waiting on her. She’d never have to cook her own meals again.

But Kitay didn’t look quite as delighted. Just as she lifted a morsel of fish to her mouth, he slapped the chopsticks from her hand. “Don’t eat that.”

“But he said—”

“I don’t care what he said.” He dropped his voice so the officer couldn’t overhear. “You don’t know who cooked this. You don’t know how it got here. And we certainly didn’t request lunch, which means either this kitchen staff had a remarkably quick change of heart, or someone had a vested interested in feeding us.”

“General?” The officer shifted from foot to foot. “Is there something you—”

“Bring us an animal,” Kitay told him.

“Sir?”

“A dog, ideally, or a cat. The first pet you can find should do. Be quick.”

The officer returned twenty-five minutes later with a small, fluffy white creature with perky ears, head drooping under the weight of an ornate collar of gold and jade. This breed, Rin thought, must have been very popular with Nikara aristocracy; it resembled very much the pups she’d once seen at Kitay’s estate.