They’d known she’d come back. They’d known she would need leverage. Tikany, the least likely of places, had kept its faith, had invested its future in Rin’s victory.

Now she stood facing the assembled villagers in the town square, the several thousand thin faces who had handed her the keys to the final stage of her war, and she loved them so much that she could cry.

“This war is ours to win,” she said.

She gazed over the sea of faces, gauging their reaction. Her throat felt dry. She coughed, but a lump remained, sitting heavy on her prepared words.

“The Young Marshal has fled, of all places, to the Dead Island,” she said. “He knows he isn’t safe anywhere on Nikara soil. The Consortium have lost their faith in the Republic, and they are inches from pulling away entirely. All we need is to make our final drive. We just—we just need to last a little longer.”

She swallowed involuntarily, then coughed. Her words floated, awkward and hesitant, over dry air.

She was nervous. Why was she so nervous? This was nothing new; she had rallied gathered ranks before. She’d screamed invectives against Vaisra and the Republic while thousands cheered. She’d whipped a crowd up to such frenzy once that they’d torn a man apart, and the words had come so easily then.

But the air in Tikany felt different, not charged with the exhilarating thrill of battle, of hate, but dead with exhaustion.

She blinked. This couldn’t be right. She was in her hometown, speaking to troops who had followed her to hell and back and villagers who had turned the fields scarlet for her. For her. They thought her divine. They adored her. She’d razed the Mugenese for them; she’d conquered Arlong for them.

But then why did she feel like a fraud?

She coughed again. Tried to inject some force into her words. “This war—”

Someone in the crowd shouted over her. “I thought we won the war.”

She broke off, stunned.

No one had ever interrupted her before.

Her eyes roved over the square. She couldn’t find the source of the voice. It could have belonged to any one of these faces; they all looked equally unsympathetic, equally resentful.

They looked like they agreed.

She felt a hot burst of impatience. Did they not understand the threat? Hadn’t they been here when Nezha dropped a hundred tons of explosives on unarmed, celebrating civilians?

“There is no armistice,” she said. “The Hesperians are still trying to kill me. They watch from the skies, waiting to see us fail, hoping for an opportunity to take us down in one fell swoop. What happens next is the great test of the Nikara nation. If we seize this chance, then we seize our future. The Hesperians are weak, they’re unprepared, and they’re reeling from what we did at Arlong. I just need you behind me for this final stretch—”

“Fuck the Hesperians!” Another shout, a different voice. “Feed us first!”

A good leader, Rin knew, did not respond to the crowd. A leader was above hecklers—answering shouted questions only granted them legitimacy they did not deserve.

She cast about for the sentence where she’d left off, trying to resume her train of thought. “This opium will fuel—”

She never finished her sentence. A din erupted from the back of the crowd. At first she thought it was another bout of heckling, but then she heard the clang of steel, and then a second round of shouting that escalated and spread.

“Get down.” Kitay grasped her wrist to pull her down from the stage. She resisted just for a moment, bewildered as she faced the crowd, but they weren’t paying attention to her anymore. They’d all turned toward the source of the commotion, which rippled out like ink dropped in water, an unfurling cloud of chaos that dragged in everyone in the vicinity.

He yanked harder. “You need to get out of here.”

“Hold on.” Her palm was hot, ready to funnel flame, though she had no clue what she meant to do. Who did she aim at? The crowd? Her own people? “I can—”

“There’s nothing you can do.” He hustled her away from the riot. People were screaming now. Rin glanced over her shoulder and saw weapons flashing through the air, bodies falling, spear shafts and sword hilts smashing against unprotected flesh. “Not now.”

“What the fuck is wrong with them?” Rin demanded.

They’d retreated to the general’s headquarters, where she’d be safe and out of sight, out of earshot while her troops finished reimposing order in the square. Her shock had worn off. Now she was simply pissed, furious that her own people would act like such a brainless, petulant mob.

“They’re exhausted,” Kitay said quietly. “They’re hungry. They thought this war was over, and that you’d come home to bring them the spoils. They didn’t think you were going to drag them into another one.”

“Why does everyone think this war is over?” Rin’s fingers clawed in frustration. “Am I the only one with eyes?”

Was this how mothers felt when their children threw tantrums? The sheer fucking ingratitude. She had walked through hell and back for them, and they had the nerve to stand there, to complain and demand things that she couldn’t spare.

“The Hesperians were right,” she snapped. “They’re fucking sheep. All of them.”

No wonder Petra thought the Nikara were inferior. Rin saw it now. No wonder the Trifecta had ruled like they did, with abundant blood and ruthless iron. How else did you stoke the masses, except through fear?

How could the Nikara be so shortsighted? Their stomachs weren’t the only things at stake. They were on the edge of something so much greater than a full dinner if they’d just think, if they’d just rally for one more push. But they didn’t understand. How could she make them understand?

“They’re not sheep. They’re ordinary people, Rin, and they’re tired of suffering. They just want this to be over.”

“So do I! I’m offering them that chance! What do they want us to do?” she demanded. “Hang up our swords, throw down our shields, and wait for them to kill us in our beds? Tell me, Kitay, are they honestly so stupid they think the Hesperians will just turn around and leave us alone?”

“Try to understand,” he said gently. “It’s hard to prioritize the enemy that you can’t see.”

She scoffed. “If that’s how they feel, then they don’t deserve to live.”

She shouldn’t have said that. She knew as soon as the words left her mouth that she was wrong. She’d spoken not in anger, but from panic, from icy, gut-twisting fear.

Everything was falling apart.

Tikany was supposed to be the bastion of her resistance, the base from which she launched her final assault on the west. Symbolically, geographically, Tikany and its people were hers. She’d been raised on this dirt. She’d returned and liberated her hometown. She’d defended them first from the Mugenese, and then from the Republic. Now, when she most needed their support, they wanted to fucking riot.

Either they fear you, or they love you, Daji had told her. But the one thing you can’t stomach is for them to disrespect you. Then you’ve got nothing. Then you’ve lost.

No. No. She pressed her palm against her temple, trying to slow her breathing. This was only a setback; she hadn’t lost yet. She tried to remind herself of the assets she still held—she had Moag; she had the opium fields; she had a massive reserve of troops from across the Empire, even if they still needed training. She had the financial resources of the entire country; she just needed to extract them. And she had a god, for fuck’s sake, the most powerful god left in the Nikara Empire.