If danger came, she wouldn’t be able to protect him.

Kitay read the look on her face. “I’ll be all right. You know that.”

“But if anything happens—”

“You’re the one going into a war zone,” he pointed out.

“Everywhere is a war zone.” She folded the manual shut and stuffed it into her shirt pocket. “I’m scared for you. For both of us. I can’t help that.”

“You haven’t got time to be scared.” He squeezed her arm. “Just keep us alive, won’t you?”

Rin made one last stop by the forge before she left Arlong.

“What can I do for you?” The blacksmith shouted at her over the furnace. The flames had been burning nonstop for days, mass-producing swords, crossbow bolts, and armor.

She handed him her trident. “What do you make of this metal?”

He ran his fingers over the hilt and felt around the prongs to test their edges. “It’s fine stuff. But I don’t do many battle tridents. You don’t want me to mess around with this too much, I’d ruin the balance. But I can sharpen the prongs if you need.”

“I don’t want to sharpen it,” she said. “I want you to melt it down.”

“Hmm.” He tested the trident’s balance over his palm. “Speerly-built?”

“Yes.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you’re sure you want this reforged? I can’t find anything wrong with it.”

“It’s ruined for me,” she said. “Destroy it completely.”

“This is a very unique weapon. You won’t get a trident like this again.”

Rin shrugged. “That’s fine.”

He still looked unsure. “Speerly craft is impossible to replicate. No one’s alive now who knows how they made their weapons. I’ll do my best, but you might just end up with a fisherman’s tool.”

“I don’t want a trident,” she said. “I want a sword.”

Two skimmers departed from the Red Cliffs that morning. The Harrier, led by Nezha, raced upriver to hold the city of Shayang, situated on a crucial, narrow bend in the upper river delta. Shayang’s inhabitants had long since evacuated down to the capital, but the city itself used to be a military base—Nezha needed only garrison the old cannon forts.

Rin’s crew, headed by Captain Dalain, a lean, handsome woman, followed at a slower pace, paddling at a crawl in what was supposed to have been Jinzha’s warship.

It wasn’t close to finished. They hadn’t even named it. Jinzha was supposed to choose a name when construction was done, and now no one could bring themselves to do it in his stead. The bulkheads of the upper deck hadn’t been put in, the bottom decks were sparse and unfurnished, and cannons hadn’t been fitted to the sides.

But none of that mattered, because the paddle wheels were functional. The ship had basic maneuverability. They didn’t need to sail it into enemy territory, they just had to get it twenty miles up the river.

Kitay’s pamphlet turned out to be brilliant. He’d sketched a series of little tricks to create maximal delays. Once they anchored Jinzha’s warship, the Cike and Captain Dalain’s crew spread out over a span of ten miles, and with incredible efficiency, implemented each one of them.

They erected a series of dams using a combination of logs and sandbags. Realistically these would buy them only half a day or so, but they would still tire out the soldiers forced to dive into deep water to clear them away.

Upriver from those, they planted wooden stakes in the river to tear holes in the bottom of enemy ships. Kitay, with Ramsa’s enthusiastic support, had wanted to plant the same sort of water mines that the Empire had used on them, but they’d run out of time before he could figure out how to dry the intestines properly.

They stretched multiple iron cables across the river, usually right after bends. If the Wolf Meat General was smart, he would just send soldiers out to disassemble the posts instead of trying to hack through the cables. But the posts were hidden well behind reeds and the cables were invisible underwater, so they might cause a destructive backlog if the fleet rammed into them unawares.

They set up a number of garrisons at three-mile intervals of the Murui. Each would be manned by ten to fifteen soldiers armed with crossbows, cannons, and missiles.

Those soldiers were most likely going to die. But they might manage to pick off a handful of Militia troops, or at best damage a ship or two before the Wolf Meat General blew them apart. And in terms of bodies and time, the tradeoff was worth it.

Near the northern border of the Dragon Province, right before the Murui forked into the Golyn, they sank Jinzha’s warship into the water.

“That’s a pity,” said Ramsa as they evacuated their equipment onto land. “I heard it was supposed to be the greatest warship ever built in the Empire’s history.”

“It was Jinzha’s ship,” Rin said. “Jinzha’s dead.”

The warship had been a conquest vessel built for a massive invasion of northern territory. There would be no such invasion now. The Republic was fighting for its last chance at survival. Jinzha’s warship would serve best by sitting heavy in the Murui’s deep waters and obstructing the Imperial Fleet for as long as it could.

They smashed in the paddles and hacked apart the masts before they disembarked, just to make sure the warship was destroyed beyond the point of any possibility that the Imperial Fleet might repurpose it to sail on Arlong.

Then they rowed small lifeboats to the shore and prepared for a hasty march inland.

Ramsa had laced the two bottom decks with several hundred pounds of explosives, all rigged to destroy the warship’s fundamental structures. The fuses were linked together for a chain reaction. All they needed now was a light.

“Everyone good?” Rin called.

From what she could see, the soldiers had all cleared the beach. Most them had already set off at a run toward the forest as ordered.

Captain Dalain gave her a nod. “Do it.”

Rin raised her arms and sent a thin ribbon of fire dancing across the river.

The flame disappeared onto the warship, where the fuse had been laid just where Rin’s range ran out. She didn’t wait to check if it caught.

Ten yards past the tree line, she heard a series of muffled booms, followed by a long silence. She stumbled to a halt and looked over her shoulder. The warship wasn’t sinking.

“Was that it?” she asked. “I thought it’d be louder.”

Ramsa looked similarly confused. “Maybe the fuses weren’t linked properly? But I was sure—”

The next round of blasts threw them off their feet. Rin hit the dirt, hands clamped over her ears, eyes squeezed shut as her very bones vibrated. Ramsa collapsed beside her, shaking madly. She couldn’t tell if he was laughing or trembling.

When at last the eruptions faded, she hauled herself to her feet and dragged Ramsa up to higher ground. They turned around. Just over the tree line, they could just see the Republican flag flying high, shrouded by billowing black smoke.

“Tiger’s tits,” whispered Ramsa.

For a long, tense moment it seemed like the warship might stay afloat. The sails remained perfectly upright, as if suspended from the heavens by a string. Rin and Ramsa stood side by side, fingers laced together, watching the smoke expand outward to envelop the sky.