“Ah,” said Jun. “This is that kind of negotiation.”

“We do not want to destroy this town,” said the delegate. “This is an important port. A hub of international trade. If Khurdalain lays down its arms, then the Emperor Ryohai will consider this city a territory of the Federation, and we will not lay a finger on a single man, woman, or child. All citizens will be pardoned, on the condition that they swear allegiance to the Emperor Ryohai.”

“Pause,” said Altan. “You’re asking us to surrender to you?”

The delegate inclined his head. “These are generous terms. We know how Khurdalain struggles under occupation. Your people are starving. Your supplies will only last you a few more months. When we break the siege, we will take the open battle to the streets, and then your people will die in droves. You can avoid that. Let the Federation fleet through, and the Emperor will reward you. We shall permit you to live.”

“Incredible,” muttered Jun. “Absolutely incredible.”

Altan crossed his arms. “Tell your generals that if you turn your fleets back and evacuate the shore now, we will let you live.”

The delegate merely regarded him with an idle curiosity. “You must be the Speerly from the marsh.”

“I am.” Altan said. “And I’ll be the one who accepts your surrender.”

The corners of the head delegate’s mouth turned up. “But of course,” he said smoothly. “Only a child would assume a war could end so quickly, or so bloodlessly.”

“That child speaks for all of us,” Jun cut in, voice steely. He spoke in Nikara. “Take your conditions and tell the Emperor Ryohai that Khurdalain will never bow to the longbow island.”

“In that case,” said the delegate, “every last man, woman, and child in Khurdalain shall die.”

“Tall words from a man who’s just had his fleet burned to bits,” Jun sneered.

The delegate answered in flat, emotionless Nikara. “The marsh defeat has set us back several weeks. But we have been preparing for this war for two decades. Our training schools far outstrip your pathetic Sinegard Academy. We have studied the western techniques of warfare while you have spent these twenty years indulging in your isolation. The Nikara Empire belongs to the past. We will raze your country to the ground.”

The Ox Warlord reached for his axe. “Or I can take your head off right now.”

The delegate looked supremely unconcerned. “Kill me if you like. On the longbow island, we are taught that our lives are meaningless. I am only one in a horde of millions. I will die, and I will be reincarnated again in the Emperor Ryohai’s service. But for you, heretics who do not bow to the divine throne, death will be final.”

Altan stood up. His face had turned pale with fury. “You are trapped on a narrow strip of land. You are outnumbered. We took your supplies. We burned your boats. We sank your munitions. Your men have met the wrath of a Speerly, and they burned.”

“Oh, Speerlies are not so difficult to kill,” the delegate said. “We managed it once. We’ll do it again.”

The office doors burst open. Ramsa ran inside, wild-eyed.

“That’s saltpeter!” he shrieked. “That’s not salt, it’s saltpeter.”

The office fell silent.

The Warlords looked at Ramsa as if they couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Altan’s mouth opened in confusion.

Then the delegate threw his head back and laughed with the abandon of a man who knew he was about to die.

“Remember,” he said. “You could have saved Khurdalain.”

Rin and Altan stood up at the same time.

She had barely reached for her sword when a blast split the air like a thunderbolt.

One moment she was standing behind Altan and the next she was on the floor, dazed, with such a ferocious ringing in her ears that it drowned out any other sound.

She lifted her hand to her face and it came away bloody.

As if to compensate for her hearing, her vision became exceedingly bright; the blurred sights were like images on a shadow puppet screen, occurring both too fast and too slow for her to comprehend. She perceived movements as if from inside a drug-induced fever dream, but this was no dream; her senses simply refused to comply with the perception of what had happened.

She saw the walls of the office shudder and then lean so far to the side she was sure that the building would collapse with them in it, and then right themselves.

She saw Ramsa tackle Altan to the ground.

She saw Altan stagger to his feet, reaching for his trident.

She saw the Ox Warlord swing his axe through the air.

She saw Altan shouting “No, no!”—before the Ox Warlord decapitated the delegate.

The delegate’s head rolled to a stop by the doorway, eyes open and glassy, and Rin thought she saw it smile.

Strong arms grasped her by the shoulders and hauled her to her feet. Altan spun her around to face him, eyes darting around her form as if checking for injuries.

His mouth moved, but no sound came through. She shook her head frantically and pointed to her ears.

He mouthed the words. “Are you all right?”

She examined her body. Somehow all four limbs were working, and she couldn’t even feel the pain where she bled from a head wound. She nodded.

Altan let her go and knelt down before Ramsa, who was curled in a ball on the ground, pale and trembling.

On the other side of the room General Jun and the Ram Warlord hauled themselves to their feet. They were both unharmed; the blast had blown them over but had not injured them. The Warlords’ quarters were far enough from the center of the town that the explosion only shook them.

Even Ramsa seemed like he would be fine. His eyes were glassy and he wobbled when Altan pulled him to his feet, but he was nodding and talking, and looked otherwise uninjured.

Rin exhaled in relief.

They were all right. It hadn’t worked. They were all right.

And then she remembered the civilians.

Odd how the rest of her senses were amplified when she couldn’t hear.

Khurdalain looked like the Academy in the first days of winter. She squinted; at first she thought her eyesight had blurred as well, and then she realized that a fine powder hung in the air. It clouded everything like some bizarre mix of fog and snowfall, a blanket of innocence that mixed in with the blood, that obscured the full extent of the explosion.

The square had been flattened, shop fronts and residential complexes collapsed, debris strewn out in oddly symmetrical lines from the radius of the blast, as if they stood inside a giant’s footprint.

Farther out from the blast site, the buildings were not flattened but blown open; they tilted at bizarre angles, entire walls torn away. There was a strangely intimate perversity to how their insides were revealed, displaying private bedrooms and washrooms to the outside.

Men and women had been thrown against the walls of buildings. They remained frozen there with a kind of ghastly adhesion, pinned like preserved butterflies. The intense pressure from the bombs had torn off their clothes; they hung naked like a grotesque display of the human form.

The stench of charcoal, blood, and burned flesh was so heavy that Rin could taste it on her tongue. Even worse was the sickening sweet undercurrent of caramelized sugar wafting through the air.