“‘Discipline this boy,’” Kitay mimicked. “‘Shut up the only person who has a halfway viable strategy, because my ego can’t take the heat.’”

“Enough,” Vaisra said. “You’re out of line.”

“This plan is out of line,” Kitay retorted.

“You’re dismissed,” Vaisra said. “Stay out of sight until you’re sent for.”

For a brief, terrifying moment Rin thought Kitay might start mocking Vaisra, too, but he just threw his papers down onto the table, knocking over inkwells, and stalked toward the door.

“Keep throwing fits like that and Father won’t have you at his councils anymore,” Nezha said.

He and Rin had both followed Kitay out, which Rin thought was a rather dangerous move on Nezha’s part, but Kitay was too angry to be grateful for the gesture.

“Keep ignoring me and we won’t have a palace to hold councils in,” Kitay snapped. “A blockade? A fucking blockade?”

“It’s our best option for now,” Nezha said. “We don’t have the military capability to sail north alone, but we could just wait them out.”

“But that could take years!” Kitay shouted. “And what happens in the meantime? You just let people die?”

“Threats have to be credible to work,” Nezha said.

Kitay shot him a disdainful look. “You try dealing with a country with a famine crisis, then. You don’t unite a country by starving innocent people to death.”

“They’re not going to starve—”

“No? They’re going to eat wood bark? Leaves? Cow dung? I can think of a million strategies better than murder.”

“Try being diplomatic, then,” Nezha snapped. “You can’t disrespect the old guard.”

“Why not? The old guard has no clue what they’re doing!” Kitay shouted. “They got their positions because they’re good at factional maneuvering! They graduated from Sinegard, sure, but that was when the entire curriculum was just emergency basic training. They don’t have a thorough grounding in military science or technology, and they’ve never bothered to learn, because they know they’ll never lose their jobs!”

“I think you’re underestimating some rather qualified men,” Nezha said drily.

“No, your father is in a double bind,” Kitay said. “No, wait, I’ve got it, here’s what it is—the men he can trust aren’t competent, but the men who are competent, he must keep on a taut leash, because they might calculate to defect.”

“So what, he trusts you instead?”

“I’m the only one who knows what I’m doing.”

“And you basically only joined up yesterday, so can you not act so startled that my father trusts you less than men who have served him for decades?”

Kitay stormed off, muttering under his breath. Rin suspected they wouldn’t see him emerge from the library for days.

“Asshole,” Nezha grumbled once Kitay was out of earshot.

“Don’t look at me,” Rin said. “I’m on his side.”

She didn’t care so much about the blockade. If the northern provinces were holding out, then starvation served them right. But she couldn’t bear the idea that they were about to kick a hornet’s nest—because then their only strategy would be to wait, hide, and hope the hornets didn’t sting first.

She couldn’t stand the uncertainty. She wanted to be on the attack.

“Innocent people aren’t going to die,” Nezha insisted, though he sounded more like he was trying to convince himself. “They’ll surrender before it gets that bad. They’ll have to.”

“And if they don’t?” she asked. “Then we attack?”

“We attack, or they starve,” Nezha said. “Win-win.”

Arlong’s military operations turned inward. The army stopped preparing ships to sail out and focused on building up defense structures to make Arlong completely invulnerable to a Militia invasion.

A defensive war was starting to seem more and more likely. If the Republic didn’t launch their northern assault now, then they’d be stuck at home until the next spring. They were more than halfway into autumn, and Rin remembered how vicious the Sinegardian winters were. As the days became colder, it would get harder to boil water and prepare hot food. Disease and frostbite would spread quickly through the camps. The troops would be miserable.

But the south would remain warm, hospitable, and ripe for the picking. The longer they waited, the more likely it was the Militia would sail downriver toward Arlong.

Rin didn’t want to fight a defensive battle. Every great treatise on military strategy agreed that defensive battles were a nightmare. And Arlong, impenetrable as it was, would still take a heavy beating from the combined forces of the north. Surely Vaisra knew that, too; he was too competent to believe otherwise. But in meeting after meeting, he chastised Kitay for speaking up, appeased the Warlords, and did nothing close to inciting the alliance to action.

Rin was beginning to think that even independent action by Dragon Province would be better than nothing. But the orders did not come.

“Father’s hands are tied,” said Nezha, again and again.

Kitay remained holed up in the library, drawing up war plans that would never be used with increasing frustration.

“I knew joining up with you would be treason,” he raged at Nezha. “I didn’t think it would be suicide.”

“The Warlords will come around,” Nezha said.

“Fat chance. Charouk’s a lazy pig who wants to hide behind Republican swords, Takha doesn’t have the spine to do anything but hide behind Charouk, and Gurubai might be the smartest of the lot, but he’s not sticking his neck out if the other two won’t.”

There has to be something else, Rin thought. Something we don’t know about. There was no way Vaisra would just sit back and let winter come without taking the initiative. What was he waiting for?

For lack of better options, she put her blind faith in Vaisra. She sucked it up when her men asked her about the delay. She closed her ears to the rumors that Vaisra was considering a peace agreement with the Empress. She realized she couldn’t influence policy, so she poured her focus into the only things she could control.

She sparred more bouts with Nezha. She stopped wielding her trident like a staff. She became familiar with the generals and lieutenants of the Republican Army. She did her best to integrate the Cike into the Dragon Province’s military ecosystem, though both Baji and Ramsa rankled at the strict ban on alcohol. She learned the Republican Army’s command codes, communications channels, and amphibious attack formations. She prepared herself for war, whenever it came.

Until the day came when gongs sounded frantically across the harbor, and messengers ran up the docks, and all of Arlong was alight with the news that ships were sailing into the Dragon Province. Great white ships from the west.

Then Rin understood what the stalling had been about.

Vaisra hadn’t been pulling back from the northern expedition after all.

He’d been waiting for backup.

Chapter 13