General Hu forced his way through the crowded bodies and left without another word. The door swung shut behind him.

“He’s going to defect,” said Vaisra. “Eriden, see that he’s stopped.”

“Permanently?” Eriden asked.

Vaisra considered that briefly. “Only if he struggles.”

After the council had been dismissed, Vaisra motioned for Rin to stay behind. She exchanged a panicked glance with Kitay as he filtered out with the others. Once the room had emptied, Vaisra closed the door behind him.

“When this is over I want you to go pay a visit to our friend Moag,” he said quietly.

She was so relieved that he hadn’t mentioned the Hesperians that for a moment all she did was blink at him, uncomprehending. “The Pirate Queen?”

“Make it quick,” Vaisra said. “Leave the corpse and bring back the head.”

“Wait. You want me to kill her?”

“Was I not sufficiently clear?”

“But she’s your biggest naval ally—”

“The Hesperians are our biggest naval ally,” Vaisra said. “Do you see Moag’s ships in the bay?”

“I don’t see any Hesperian ships in the bay,” Rin pointed out.

“They will come. Give them time. But Moag’s going to be nothing but trouble once this war’s over. She’s operated extralegally for too long, and she couldn’t get used to a naval authority that isn’t her own. Smuggling’s in her blood.”

“So let her smuggle,” Rin said. “Keep her happy. What’s the problem with that?”

“There’s no way to keep her happy. Ankhiluun exists because of the tariffs. Once we have free trade with the Hesperians, that makes the entire premise of Ankhiluun irrelevant. All she’ll have left is opium smuggling, and I don’t intend to be half as lenient toward opium as Daji is. There’s a war coming once Moag realizes all her income streams are drying up. I’d rather nip it in the bud.”

“And this request has nothing to do with the fact that she hasn’t sent ships?” Rin asked.

Vaisra smiled. “An ally’s only useful if they do as they’re told. Moag’s proven herself unreliable.”

“So you want me to commit preemptive murder.”

“Let’s not be as dramatic as that.” He waved a hand. “We’ll call it insurance.”

“I think the wall’s ready,” Kitay said, rubbing his eyes. He looked exhausted. “I wanted to triple-check the fuses, but there wasn’t time.”

They stood at the edge of the cliffs, watching the sun set between the two sides of the channel like a ball falling down a ravine. Dark water shimmered below, reflecting crimson rock and a burnt-orange sun. It looked like a flood of blood gushing out from a freshly sliced artery.

When Rin squinted at the opposite cliff, she could just see the lines where fuses had been strung together and tucked with nails into the rock, like a sprawling, ugly patchwork of protruding veins.

“What are they chances they don’t go off?” she asked.

Kitay yawned. “They’ll probably go off.”

“Probably,” she repeated.

“You’re just going to have to trust Ramsa and I did our jobs. If they don’t go off, we’re all dead.”

“Fair enough.” Rin hugged her arms across her chest. She felt tiny standing over the massive precipice. Empires had been won and lost under these cliffs. They were on the brink of losing another one.

“Do you think we can win tomorrow?” she asked quietly. “I mean, is there even the slightest chance?”

“I’ve done the math seven different ways,” Kitay said. “Compiled all the intelligence we have and compared the probabilities and everything.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know.” His fists clenched and unclenched, and Rin could tell he was resisting the urge to start tugging at his hair. “That’s the frustrating part. You know the one thing that all the great strategists agree upon? It actually doesn’t matter what numbers you have. It doesn’t matter how good your models are, or how brilliant your strategies are. The world is chaotic and war is fundamentally unpredictable and at the end of the day you don’t know who will be the last man standing. You don’t know anything going into a battle. You only know the stakes.”

“Well, they’re pretty fucking high,” Rin said.

If they lost, their rebellion would be vanquished and Nikan would descend into darkness for another several decades at least, rent apart by factional warfare and a lingering Federation presence.

But if they won, the Empire would become a Republic, primed to hurtle into the new and glorious future with Vaisra at the helm and the Hesperians at his side.

And then Rin would have to worry about what happened after.

An idea struck her then—just the smallest tendril of one, but it was there; a fierce, burning spark of hope. Vaisra might have just handed her a way out.

“How do you get to the rookery?” she asked.

“I can take you,” Kitay said. “Who do you want to send a letter to?”

“Moag.” Rin turned to begin the climb back toward the city.

Kitay followed. “What for?”

“There’s something she should know.” She was already composing the message in her head. If—no, when—she left the Republic, she would need an ally. Someone who could get her out of the city fast. Someone who wasn’t linked to the Republic.

Moag was a liar, but Moag had ships. And now, Moag had a death sentence over her head that she didn’t know about. That gave Rin leverage, which gave her an ally.

“Call it insurance,” she said.

Traveling at its current pace, the Imperial Navy would breach the channel at dawn. That gave Arlong six more hours to prepare. Vaisra ordered his troops to sleep in rotating two-hour shifts so they would meet the Militia with as much stamina as possible.

Rin understood the rationale, but she couldn’t see how she was possibly supposed to close her eyes. She vibrated with nervous energy, and even sitting still made her uneasy—she needed to be moving, running, hitting something.

She paced around the field outside the barracks. Little rivulets of fire danced through the air around her, swirling in perfect circles. That made her feel the slightest bit better. It was proof that she still had control over something.

Someone cleared his throat. She turned around. Nezha stood at the door, bleary-eyed and disheveled.

“What’s happened?” she asked sharply. “Did anything—”

“I had a dream,” he mumbled.

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“You died.”

She made her flames disappear. “What is going on with you?”

“You died,” he repeated. He sounded dazed, only half-present, like a little schoolboy disinterestedly reciting his Classics. “You—they shot you down over the water, and I saw your body floating up in the water. You were so still. I saw you drown, and I couldn’t save you.”

He started to cry.

“What the fuck,” she muttered.

Was he drunk? High? She didn’t know what she was supposed to do, only that she didn’t want to be alone with him. She glanced toward the barracks. What would happen if she just left?