“I see.” Vaisra was silent for a moment. “And my son?”

Rin hesitated. Had they not told him about Jinzha? “Sir?”

“They didn’t bring back a body,” Vaisra said.

His mask cracked then. For the briefest moment, he looked like a father.

So he did know. He just wouldn’t admit to himself that if Jinzha hadn’t made his way back to Arlong with the rest of the fleet, then he was probably dead.

“I didn’t see what happened to him,” Rin said. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no point speculating, then,” Vaisra said coolly. His mask reassembled itself. “Let’s move on. I assume you’ll want to rejoin the infantry?”

“Not the infantry.” Rin took a deep breath. “I want command of the Cike again. I want a seat at the strategy table. I want direct say in anything you want the Cike to do.”

“And why’s that?” Vaisra asked.

Because Chaghan can’t be right about my being your dog. “Because I deserve it. I broke the Seal. I’ve gotten the fire back.”

Vaisra raised an eyebrow. “Show me.”

She turned an open palm toward the ceiling and summoned a fist-sized ball of fire. She made it run up and down the length of her arm, made it twist around her in the air before calling it back into her fingers. Even after a month of practice, she was still amazed at how easy it was, how delightfully natural it felt to control the flame the way she controlled her fingers. She let it take shapes—a rat, a rooster, an undulating orange dragon—and then she closed her fingers over her palm.

“Very nice,” Vaisra said approvingly. The mask was gone now; he was finally smiling. She felt a warm rush of encouragement.

“So. Command?”

He waved a hand. “You’re reinstated. I’ll let the generals know. How did you manage this?”

“That’s a long story.” She paused, wondering where to start. “We, ah, ran into some Ketreyids.”

He frowned. “Hinterlanders?”

“Don’t call them that. They’re Ketreyids.” She gave him a quick account of what the Ketreyids had done, told him about the Sorqan Sira and the Trifecta.

She omitted the part about the anchor bond. Vaisra didn’t need to know.

“Then what happened?” Vaisra asked. “Where are they?”

“They’re gone. And the Sorqan Sira’s dead.”

“What?”

She told him about Augus. She knew Vaisra would be surprised, but she hadn’t expected his reaction. The color drained from his face. His entire body tensed.

“Who else knows?” he demanded.

“Just Kitay. And a couple of Ketreyids, but they’re not telling anyone.”

“Tell no one this happened,” he said quietly. “Not even my son. If the Hesperians find out, our lives are forfeit.”

“It was their fault to begin with,” she muttered.

“Shut up.” He slammed a hand on the table. She flinched back, startled.

“How could you be so stupid?” he demanded. “You should have brought them back safe, that would have ingratiated us to General Tarcquet—”

“Tarcquet made it back?” she interrupted.

“Yes, and many of the Gray Company are with him. They escaped south in one of the skimmers. They are deeply unhappy with our naval capabilities and are this close to pulling out of the continent, which is a thought I assume never crossed your mind when you decided to murder one of them.”

“Are you joking? They were trying to kill us—”

“So you should have incapacitated him or fled. The Gray Company is untouchable. You couldn’t have picked a worse Hesperian to kill.”

“This isn’t my fault,” Rin insisted. “He’d gone mad, he was waving an arquebus around—”

“Listen to me,” Vaisra said. “You are walking a very fine line right now. The Hesperians are not just upset, they are terrified. They thought you a curiosity before. Then they saw what happened at Boyang. Now they are convinced that each and every one of you is a mindless agent of Chaos who could bring about the end of the world. They’re going to hunt down every shaman in this empire and put them in cages if they can. The only reason why they haven’t touched you is because you volunteered, and they know you’ll cooperate. Do you understand now?”

Fear struck Rin. “Then Suni and Baji—”

“—are safe,” Vaisra said. “The Hesperians don’t know about them. And they’d better not find out, because then Tarcquet will know we’ve lied to him. Your job is to keep your head down, to cooperate, and to draw the least possible attention to yourself. You have a reprieve for now. Sister Petra has agreed to postpone your meetings until, one way or another, this war has concluded. So behave yourself. Do not give them further reason for irritation. Otherwise we are all lost.”

Then Rin understood.

Vaisra wasn’t angry at her. This wasn’t about her at all. No, Vaisra was frustrated. He’d been frustrated for months, playing an impossible game with the Hesperians where they kept changing the rules.

She dared to ask. “They’re never bringing their ships, are they?”

He sighed. “We don’t know.”

“They still won’t give you a straight answer? All this because they’re still deciding?”

“Tarcquet claims they haven’t finished their evaluation,” Vaisra said. “I admit I do not understand their standards. When I ask, they utter idiotic vagaries. They want signs of rational sentience. Proof of the ability to self-govern.”

“But that’s ridiculous. If they’d just tell us what they wanted—”

“Ah, but then that would be cheating.” Vaisra’s lip curled. “They need proof that we’ve independently attained civilized society.”

“But that’s a paradox. We can’t achieve that unless they help.”

He looked exhausted. “I know.”

“Then that’s fucked.” She threw her hands up in the air. “This is all just a spectacle to them. They’re never going to come.”

“Maybe.” Vaisra looked decades older then, lined and weary. Rin imagined how Petra might sketch him in her book. Nikara man, middle-aged. Strong build. Reasonable intelligence. Inferior. “But we are the weaker party. We have no choice but to play their game. That’s how power works.”

She found Nezha waiting for her outside the palace gates.

“Hi,” she said tentatively. She looked him up and down, trying to get a read on his expression, but he was just as inscrutable as his father.

“Hello,” he said back.

She tried a smile. He didn’t return it. For a minute they just stood there staring at each other. Rin was torn between running into his arms again and simply running away. She still didn’t know where she stood with him. The last time they’d spoken—really spoken—she’d been sure that he would hate her forever.

“Can we talk?” he asked finally.

“We are talking.”

He shook his head. “Alone. In private. Not here.”

“Fine,” she said, and followed him along the canal to the edge of a pier, where the waves were loud enough to drown their voices out from any curious eavesdroppers.