“We should attack on two fronts.” Rin made a pincer movement with her hand. “A double-pronged strategy from the north and south, like the one the Mugenese tried during the Third Poppy War.”

“Didn’t work so well for them,” Venka said.

“Save for me, it would have,” Rin said. “They had the right idea—they forced the Empire to split reinforcements along two vulnerable fronts. What’s more, Nezha knows he’s running low on manpower. He’ll throw everything he has at us if we’re concentrated in a single front. I don’t want to take that gamble. I’d rather bleed him dry.”

“Then we hit him from the northwest and the northeast.” Seamlessly, Kitay picked up Rin’s thoughts and spun them out loud into an articulable plan. “We send a first column through Ram, Rat, and Tiger Provinces. Then the main force will strike in the heartland, right when he’s spread his forces thin trying to maintain territory that he’s just gotten his hands on. If we act fast, we could have this wrapped up within six months.”

“Hold on,” said Cholang. “You’ll accomplish all this with what army?”

“Well,” Kitay said, “yours.”

“I lost eighty soldiers at Mount Tianshan,” Cholang said. “I’m not about to send more to their deaths.”

“You’ll die if you stay here,” Rin said. “Did you think Nezha would leave you alone now that you’ve cast your lot? You’re already dead men walking. It’s a question of when and how.”

“You might buy a few extra months while he’s occupied with us,” Kitay added. “But if the Republic can finish us off, then you certainly have no chance. Ask yourself if it’s worth several more months living in tents on the plains.”

Cholang said nothing.

“You won’t think of a rejoinder,” Venka informed him. “He’s thought about five arguments ahead.”

Cholang scowled. “Go on, then.”

“The northeastern front will obviously be a feint—it doesn’t determine the endgame—but we still gain a hard material advantage from striking there early,” Kitay said. “It’s got bases of wartime industry—armories, shipyards, all that good stuff. So even if Nezha doesn’t take us seriously up north, it’s a win either way.” He nodded to Venka. “You go with Cholang. Take a couple hundred men from the Southern Army; you pick.”

“Not that I’m refusing this assignment,” Venka said, “but suppose you’ve miscalculated, and we head straight into a bloodbath?”

“That won’t happen,” Kitay assured her. “Nezha doesn’t have a loyal local base in the north. They’ve only recently bowed to the Republic, and the civilians couldn’t care less who wins this fight. They’ve lost their Empress, they’ve lost Jun Loran, and they’re rankling under Arlong’s rule just as much as we are. They don’t have an ideological stake in this.”

“They’re the north, though,” Venka said. “Part of their ideology is hating you lot. They won’t bow to peasants.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re sending Sring Venka,” Kitay said. “You porcelain-faced Sinegardian princess, you.”

Venka snickered. “Fine.”

“But what are you doing on the southeastern front?” Cholang asked. “We’d be leaving you with shards of an army.”

“That’s fine,” Rin said. “We’ve got shamans.”

“What shamans?” Cholang asked. “You’re the only one left.”

“I don’t have to be.”

It was as if she’d placed a lit fuse on the center of the table. The room fell silent. Kitay stiffened. Venka and Cholang stared at her, openmouthed.

Rin refused to let that faze her. She wouldn’t get defensive; that would only justify their incredulity. She had been wondering how to introduce this proposal since she descended from the mountain. And then it became obvious—to make madness seem normal, she merely had to discuss it as if it were common sense. She just had to distort their idea of normal.

“Su Daji had the right idea,” she continued calmly. “The only way we have a chance against the Hesperians is to match their Maker with our own gods. The Trifecta could have managed it. They might even have seized the Empire by now, if I’d let Riga have his way. But they were despots. Over time, they would have done more harm than good.”

Now for the crucial leap of logic. “But if we haven’t got them, we need our own shamans. We’ve got hundreds of soldiers who would be willing to do it. We just need to train them. We’ve set a campaign schedule of six months. I can get recruits in fighting form in two weeks.”

She looked around the table, waiting for someone to object.

Everything hinged on what happened next. Rin was testing the boundaries of her authority in the aftermath of a tectonic shift in power. This felt so different from the first time she’d vaulted herself into leadership, mere months ago when she’d addressed Ma Lien’s men with a dry mouth and quivering knees. Back then she’d been scared, grasping for straws, and disguising her utter lack of a strategy with feigned bravado.

Now she knew exactly what she needed to do. She just needed to force everyone onto the same page. She had a vision for the future—something horrifying, something grand. Could she speak it into reality?

“But back when . . .” Venka opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Rin, I’m just—you told me once that—”

“I understand the risks,” Rin said. “Back then I didn’t think they were worth it. But you saw what happened on that mountain. It’s clear now that they are. The Hesperians still have at least fourteen airships, and that gives them an advantage we can’t counter. Not without more of—well, me.”

There was another silence.

Then Cholang shook his head and sighed. “Look. If any of my men want to volunteer, I won’t stop them.”

“Thank you,” Rin said.

Good enough—that was as much of an endorsement as she was going to get. So long as Cholang didn’t try to stop her, she didn’t care how uncomfortable he looked.

She glanced to her right. “Kitay?”

She needed to hear him speak before she could continue. She wasn’t waiting for his permission—she’d never needed his permission for anything—but she wanted to hear his confirmation. She wanted someone else, someone whose mind worked far faster than hers ever would, to assess the forces at play and the lives at stake and say, Yes, these calculations are valid. This sacrifice is necessary. You aren’t mad. The world is.

For a long time Kitay stood still, staring at the table, fingers tapping erratically against the wooden surface. Then he looked up at her. No, he looked right through her. His mind was already somewhere else. He was already thinking past this conversation. “No more than several—”

“We won’t need more than a handful,” she assured him. “Three at most—just enough that we can spread an attack around multiple planes.”

“One for every cardinal direction,” he murmured. “Because the impact is exponential if . . .”