Daji remained tight-lipped when Rin pressed her about anything regarding the circumstances that led to Jiang’s Seal. But, as if in exchange, she acquiesced to answering questions about Jiang’s other utterances. Each night when they made camp, she sat with Rin and Kitay, recounting histories that Rin could never have found in the libraries of Sinegard. These discussions took the form of direct interrogations. Rin fired questions at Daji, one after the other, and Daji responded to everything that she could, often in great detail, as if by jabbering on about minor anecdotes, she could distract Rin from the important questions.

Rin knew what Daji was doing. She knew she was being deceived about something. But she took what she could get. Access to Daji was like an open scroll containing all the hidden secrets of Nikara history. She would be foolish not to play along.

“Why does Riga look so much like the House of Yin?” she asked.

“Because he’s one of them,” Daji said. “That should have been obvious. His father was Yin Zexu, the younger brother to the Dragon Warlord.”

“Vaisra’s brother?”

“No, Vaisra’s uncle. The Dragon Warlord back then was Yin Vara. Vaisra’s father.”

So Nezha was Riga’s nephew. Rin wondered if their power was passed through blood, like the Speerly affinity for the Phoenix. But the Yins had such different relationships to the Dragon. Riga was a true shaman, one who had been to the Pantheon and become imbued with a power freely given and freely received. Nezha was a slave to some perverted, corrupted thing, a creature that should never have existed in the material world.

“Zexu should have been the Warlord all along,” Daji said. “He was a born leader. Decisive, ruthless, and capable. Vara was the eldest, but he was a child. Meek, terrified of confrontation. Always bowing to the men he feared, bending because he was so afraid to break. A few years into the occupation, the Hesperians decided they wanted to transport shipments of Mugenese opium into the harbor at the Red Cliffs. Vara agreed, and sent his younger brother out to guide the Hesperian cargo ships through the channel. Instead Zexu rigged the harbor with explosives and sank the Mugenese fleet.”

“I like Zexu,” Rin said.

“He was dead by the time I first heard his name,” Daji said. “But Riga told me so much about him. He always admired his father. He was terribly hotheaded and impulsive. Never could stand an insult. You’d have gotten along splendidly, but only if you didn’t kill each other first.”

“I’m guessing the Hesperians had him shot,” Rin said.

“They very much would have liked to,” Daji said. “But open war hadn’t broken out yet, and they didn’t want to provoke it by killing a member of an elite family. Vara had Zexu exiled to the occupied zone in northern Horse Province instead. Sent his whole family away and cut him out of the lineage records. That’s why you’ll never find a portrait of him in the palace at Arlong. Riga was an orphan by the time we met. The Mugenese had worked his father to death in a labor camp, and the gods know what happened to his poor mother. When I first saw him, Riga was a pathetic thing, just skin and bones, scraping to tomorrow by stealing food out of trash heaps.”

“So you met as children,” Kitay said.

“We all grew up in the occupied north. Jiang and I might have been natives. Or children of refugees.” Daji shrugged. “Now it’s impossible to remember. We all lost our parents early on, before they could tell us what provinces we were from. Perhaps that’s why we were so bent on unification. We were from nowhere, so we wanted to rule everywhere.”

It felt bizarre to picture the Trifecta as young children. In Rin’s mind, they had sprung fully formed into the world, powerful and godly. She’d rarely considered that there was a time when they were mere mortals just like she had once been. Young. Terrified. Weak.

They’d grown up during the bleakest period of Nikara history. Rin had known a country at relative peace before the third war, but the Trifecta had been born into misery. They’d grown up knowing nothing but oppression, humiliation, and suffering.

Small wonder they’d committed the atrocities they did. Small wonder they’d found them completely justified.

“How did you get out?” Rin asked.

“The Mugenese cared about grown soldiers, not children. No one noticed us. The hardest part, in fact, was getting me past the mistresses at the whorehouse.” Some unrecognizable emotion flickered across Daji’s face, a twist of her lip and a quirk of her eyebrow that quickly disappeared. “We didn’t know where we were going, only that we wanted to get out. Once we crossed the border, we wandered for days on the steppe and nearly starved to death before the Ketreyids found us. They took us in. They trained us.”

“And then you killed them,” Rin said.

“Yes.” Daji sighed. “That was unfortunate.”

“They still hate you for it,” Rin said, just to see how Daji might react. “They want you dead. You know that, right? They’re just figuring out a way to get it done.”

“Let them hate.” Daji shrugged. “Back then our entire strategy was founded on crushing dissent. Wherever we could find it. In times like that, you couldn’t let sleeping threats lie. I’m sorry Tseveri died. I know Jiang loved her. But I don’t regret a thing.”

Daji, it turned out, had done a terrible number of things worth regretting. Rin pried for details about all of them. She made her talk about the lies she had told. The rivals she had killed. The innocents she had sacrificed in the bloody calculus of strategy. Over talks that spanned days, and then weeks, Daji colored in a picture of a Trifecta who were so much more ruthless and capable than Rin had ever imagined.

But it wasn’t enough. Daji always spoke only of the amusing stories, the minor details. She never spoke of the day she had Sealed her anchors. And unless prompted, she never spoke of Riga himself. She would answer any of Rin’s questions about his past, but she only ever gave the barest, vaguest details about his abilities or his character.

“What was he like?” Rin asked.

“Glorious. Beautiful.”

Rin made a noise of exasperation. “You’re talking about a painting, not a man.”

“There is no other way to describe him. He was magnificent. Everything you could want from a leader and more.”

Rin found that deeply unsatisfying, but knew that line of questioning would only yield the same answers. “Then why did you put him to sleep?”

“You know why.”

Rin tried to catch her off guard. “Then why are you afraid of him?”

Daji’s voice retained its careful, icy calm. “I’m not afraid of him.”

“That’s bullshit. Both of you are.”

“I am not—”

“Jiang is, at least. He screams Riga’s name in his sleep. He flinches every time I mention him. And he seems convinced we’re dragging him up the mountain to his death. Why?”

“We loved Riga,” Daji said, unfazed. “And if we ever feared him, it was because he was great, and great rulers always inspire fear in the hearts of the weak.”

Frustrated, Rin changed tack once again. “Who is Hanelai?”

For once, Daji looked startled. “Where did you hear that name?”