“Jiuto and Pipaji,” Rin said. “Do you have a family name?”

Silence.

“Where are you from?”

Pipaji gave her a sullen look. “Not here.”

“I see. They took your home, too, huh?”

Pipaji gave a listless shrug, as if she found this question incredibly stupid.

“Listen,” Rin said. Her patience was running out. She wanted to be on the field with her troops, not coaxing words from sullen little girls. “I haven’t got time for this. You’re free of that woman, so you can do whatever you like. You can join this army if you want—”

“Do we get food?” Pipaji interrupted.

“Yes. Twice a day.”

Pipaji considered this for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

Her tone made it clear she had no further questions. Rin watched them both for a moment, then shrugged and pointed. “Good. Barracks are over there.”

Chapter 7

Two weeks later they reached Tikany.

Rin had been prepared to fight for her hometown. But when her troops approached Tikany’s earthen walls, the fields were quiet. The trenches lay empty; the gates hung wide open, with no sentries in sight. This wasn’t the deceptive stillness of a waiting ambush but the listless silence of a place abandoned. Whatever Mugenese troops had once terrorized Tikany had already fled. Rin passed completely unobstructed through the northern gates into a place she hadn’t seen since she’d left it nearly five years ago.

She didn’t recognize it.

Not because she’d forgotten. As much as she’d once wanted to, she’d never erase the texture of this place from her mind—not the clouds of red dust that blew through the streets on windy days, covering everything with a fine sheen of crimson; not the abandoned shrines and temples around every corner, remnants of more superstitious days; not the rickety wooden buildings emerging from dirt like angry, resilient scars. She knew Tikany’s streets like she knew the back of her hand; knew its alleys, hidden tunnels, and opium drop-off sites; knew the best hiding corners wherein to take refuge when Auntie Fang’s temper bubbled over into violence.

But Tikany had changed. The whole place felt empty, hollowed, like someone had gouged its intestines out with a knife and devoured them, leaving behind a fragile, traumatized shell. Tikany had never been one of the Empire’s great cities, but it had held life. It had been, like so many of the southern cities, a locus of small autonomy, carved defiantly into the hard soil.

The Federation had turned it into a city of the dead.

Most of the ramshackle buildings were gone, long since burned down or dismantled. The Mugenese had turned what was left into a spare military camp. The library, the outdoor opera stage, and schoolhouse—the only places in Tikany that had ever brought Rin any happiness—were skeletal structures that showed signs of deliberate deconstruction. Rin guessed the Mugenese had stripped down their walls for firewood.

In the pleasure district, the whorehouses alone remained standing.

“Take twelve troops—women, if possible—and scour every one of those buildings for survivors,” Rin told the closest officer. “Hurry.”

She knew by now what they would likely find. She knew she should have gone herself. She wasn’t brave enough for it.

She kept walking. Closer to the township center, near the magistrate’s hall and public ceremonies office, she found evidence of the public executions. Stage floorboards painted brown with months-old stains. Whips tossed onto careless piles under the spot where once, a lifetime ago, she’d read her Keju test score and realized she was going to Sinegard.

What she didn’t see were corpses. In Golyn Niis, they’d been stacked up on every street corner. Tikany’s streets were empty.

But that made sense. When your goal was occupation, you always cleaned up your corpses. Otherwise they stank.

“Great Tortoise.” Souji whistled under his breath as he strode beside her, hands in his pockets, peering about the devastation like a child perusing a holiday market. “They really did a number on this place.”

“Shut up,” Rin said.

“What’s the matter? Did they tear down your favorite teahouse?”

“I said shut up.”

She hated the thought of crying in front of him, yet she could barely breathe for the weight crushing her chest. Her head felt terribly light; her temples throbbed. She dug her nails into her palm to ward off the tears.

She’d seen large-scale devastation like this only once before, and it had almost broken her. But this was worse than Golyn Niis, because at least in Golyn Niis, most everyone was dead. She would almost have rather seen corpses than the survivors she saw now, crawling out from whatever safe houses remained standing, blinking at her with the dazed confusion of animals who had spent too long living in the dark.

“Are they gone?” they asked her. “Are we freed?”

“You’re freed,” she said. “They’re gone. Forever.”

They registered these words with fearful, doubtful looks, as if they expected the Mugenese to return any moment and smite them for their temerity. Then they grew braver. More and more of them emerged from huts, shacks, and hiding holes, more than Rin had dared hope remained alive. Whispers arced through the ghost town, and gradually the survivors began to fill the square, crowding around the soldiers, homing in on Rin.

“Are you . . . ?” they asked.

“I am,” she said. She let them touch her so that they knew she was real. She let them see her flames, spiraling high in delicate patterns, silently conveying the words she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud.

It’s me. I’m back. I’m sorry.

“They need to wash,” Kitay said. “Almost everyone here’s got a lice problem; we need to contain it before it spreads to our troops. And they need a good meal, we should get the rations in order—”

“Can you handle it?” she asked. Her voice rang oddly in her ears when she spoke, as if coming from the other side of a thick wooden door. “I want—I need to keep walking.”

He touched her arm. “Rin—”

“I’m all right,” she said.

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

“But I do. You can’t understand.” She stepped away from him. Kitay knew every part of her soul, but he couldn’t share this with her. This was about roots, about dirt. He wasn’t from here; he couldn’t know how it felt. “You—you take care of the survivors. Let me go. Please.”

He squeezed her hand and nodded. “Just be careful.”

Rin broke away from the crowd, disappeared down a side alley while no one was watching, and then walked alone across town to her old neighborhood.

She didn’t bother going to the Fang residence. There was nothing for her there. She knew Uncle Fang was dead. She knew Auntie Fang and Kesegi had most likely died in Arlong. And aside from Kesegi, her memories of that house contained nothing but misery.

She went straight to Tutor Feyrik’s house.

His quarters were empty. She couldn’t find a single trace of him in any of the bare rooms; he might never have lived there at all. The books were gone, every last one. Even the bookshelves were missing. All that remained was a little stool, which she suspected the Mugenese had left alone because it was carved from stone and not wood.