I understand why you hate them. I am not blind to their intentions, and I will not let them turn our Republic into their mining ground. I will not see this land ruled by foreign hands. I know you don’t want that, either.

Please, Rin. Come to reason. I need you at my side.

The terms he listed were simple and unacceptable. A truce, full-scale demobilization and disarmament, and Kesegi returned safely in exchange for Rin. The Southern Coalition would be allowed to walk free, or join the Republican Army if they wished. Nezha hadn’t specified what would happen to Rin. She suspected it involved hourly doses of laudanum and an operating table.

“I’m not crazy, right?” she asked. “This is clearly a trap?”

“I’m not sure,” Kitay said. “I think there’s a world where Nezha does want you alive. He’s not stupid, he knows you’d be useful to him. He might try to talk you around—”

“The Hesperians are never going to let me walk free.”

“If you take Nezha at face value, then it looks like he’s trying to defy the Hesperians.”

She snorted. “You really think he’d do that?”

“I don’t know. The Yins . . . the House of Yin is far more comfortable working with foreigners than any Nikara leaders ever have been. It’s the reason why they’re rolling in silver. They might be fine with remaining stewards for the blue-eyed devils. But Nezha . . .”

“Nezha’s a shaman.”

“Yes.”

“And you think the Hesperians know.”

“I think Nezha knows that he cannot exist in a Hesperian-dominated world,” Kitay said. “It’s a world that labels him an abomination. Their vision of order demands his death and yours.”

Was that what Nezha was trying to imply? That he’d changed his mind about shamans? That if she joined him at his side, he might break the alliance his father had forged?

“But I’ve had this argument with Nezha,” she said. “And he thinks they’re right. That we are abominations, and that we’re better off dead. Only he can’t die.”

“So then we’re back to square one. We have no idea what this letter implies. And we have no reason to trust Nezha.”

Rin sighed. “So what’s our move, then?”

“I think we start with deciding what to do about your brother.”

“My foster brother,” she corrected. “And I’ve told you, we’re doing nothing.”

“Why don’t you even want to talk about this?”

“Because he’s just my brother.” She gave him a helpless look. “And I am the last great hope of the south. How do you think history will judge me if I throw away its fate for one person?”

Kitay opened his mouth, paused, and closed it. Rin knew his mind was racing; he was trying to come up with a way to save Kesegi, a way to foil Nezha, or a justification why one life might be worth more than thousands.

They didn’t exist. She knew that. She loved him for trying.

“Please,” she said. “Please just let this go.”

She was grateful he did not argue.

“Then we have a battle to win.” He handed the scroll back to her. “And I think we can both agree that showing this to anyone else gets us nothing.”

Rin understood his implication. The Southern Coalition could never know about this. Not Souji, not Zhuden, and certainly not Gurubai. The offer was admittedly attractive—even she found it tempting, might even have sacrificed herself for it if she weren’t so sure that what lay at the other end were lies.

If this got out, the factional infighting would explode. The Monkey Warlord had taught her that much about southern politics. This had to remain her secret.

“Of course,” she said.

She drew a ball of flame into her palm under the scroll. For a moment Nezha’s words burned bright, searing red. The parchment edges blackened, crinkled, then curled in on themselves like the legs of a dying spider.

Rin spent the next few hours attempting to catch short bursts of fitful sleep. She didn’t know why she tried; she could never sleep before battle. At last she gave up and passed the last hours until dawn pacing around the camp, watching for the sun to rise. She couldn’t bear sitting still with her thoughts. She couldn’t keep torturing herself with the possibilities—whether Kesegi was alive, whether Nezha was telling the truth, whether she should have responded to the letter rather than ignore it.

She needed a distraction. She needed this battle.

She felt good about their positions. They’d arranged their troops in a four-point formation. One squadron, the one she led, would spearhead the attack and tie the Mugenese soldiers down at the front near the sorghum fields, while two smaller squadrons would circle around the Mugenese flanks, hemming them inside a triangle to form a wedge between the village and the battlefield. Souji’s Iron Wolves, the fourth squadron, would drive holes through the enemy lines in the back, preventing a rout toward the civilians’ evacuation zone.

Preparations proceeded smoothly as the day wore on. Thanks to the Liens, they were operating with far more information than she’d ever been used to on the battlefield. She knew exactly where the Mugenese slept. When they ate. Where and when they patrolled. It was almost like a textbook case of an ambush, a test question on an exam she would have taken at Sinegard.

As the sun began its downward slope, Rin went over final instructions before she dispatched her squadron commanders to their spots. Their plans had come together with clockwork efficiency. They avoided the patrols they knew were coming. Their map directions lined up perfectly with the actual terrain. All squadron commanders fully understood their signals and timetables.

The only hiccup was their uniforms.

Chief Lien had requested they wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from civilians. Rin had protested that they didn’t have any.

“Tough,” Chief Lien said. “Find some, or your ambush is off.”

They’d compromised at headbands—thin strips of cloth tied around their foreheads. But an hour before they were due to move out, the squadron leaders started reporting they didn’t have enough excess cloth. Their soldiers were already marching in threadbare uniforms; they didn’t have any spares to cut up. Zhuden asked Rin if they should start ripping strips from their trouser legs.

“Forget that,” Rin grumbled. “Let’s just send them out.”

“You can’t,” Souji said. “You made a promise.”

“It’s idiotic! Who’s going to care about uniforms at nighttime?”

“The Mugenese might care,” Kitay said. “Killing their labor source doesn’t work in a symbiotic relationship. It’s a small measure, but it’s the least you can do. It’s the difference between ten lives and a thousand.”

In the end they had their troops smear their faces with bright red mud from a nearby pond. It left crimson patches on their clothes wherever they touched, and it caked onto their skin in dry, rusty streaks that didn’t rub off without water.

“We look stupid.” Rin surveyed the ranks. “We look like children playing past our dinnertime.”

“No, we look like a clay army.” Souji dragged two fingers across his cheek, leaving a thick, clearly visible streak. “The Red Emperor’s very finest, baked fresh from southern dirt.”