The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,101

the streets, Rin, Kitay, and Jiang hid under piles of linen stacked so tall they could hardly breathe. Rin squirmed, hot and itchy, trying not to think about the brown stains surrounding her. She felt the wagon stop only once. Rin heard Daji answering a guardsman’s questions in very convincing pidgin Hesperian, and then they passed through the gates.

Daji kept driving. She didn’t let them emerge from the linen piles until over an hour later, when the New City was nothing but a tiny outline behind them, until the sound of dirigibles had faded away and the only noise around them was the constant hum of cicadas.

Rin was relieved when the New City faded out of her sight. If she could help it, she never wanted to set foot in that place again.

That night, over a meal of dried shanyu root and a stolen loaf of thick, chewy Hesperian bread, Daji and Jiang interrogated Kitay for every shred of information he’d gleaned about the Republic. He had no solid details on troop placements or campaign plans—Nezha had fed him only enough information to seek his advice without creating a liability—but the little he did know was tremendously useful.

“They’re in endgame now, but it’s taking longer than it needs to,” Kitay said. “Vaisra turned on the Southern Coalition the moment they failed to produce your body, as you would have expected. But the Monkey Warlord—well, really it’s probably Souji’s work—rallied a surprisingly strong defense. They learned pretty quickly to create decent bomb shelters. Once he realized the airships weren’t getting the job done, Vaisra sent in ground forces. The south have beaten a retreat back to the corner of Boar Province for now. They’ve holed up under the mountains and forced a standstill for weeks, hence why everyone’s centered in Arabak.”

“The New City,” Rin amended.

He shook his head. “It’s still Arabak. No one here calls it the New City but the Hesperians, or Nikara in Hesperian company.”

“So the holdup is just a consequence of the terrain?” Daji asked. “What about the Young Marshal? Word on the street is he’s falling apart.”

Rin shot her a surprised look. “Where’d you hear that?”

“A pair of old women were gossiping in the pew behind us,” Daji said. “They said if Yin Jinzha were in charge then all the southern rebels would have been exterminated months ago.”

“Jinzha?” Jiang frowned, digging his little finger into his ear. “The older Yin brat?”

“Yes,” Daji said.

“I think I taught him at Sinegard. Utter asshole. Whatever happened to him?”

“He got plucky,” Daji said. “I turned him to mincemeat and sent him back to Vaisra in a dumpling basket.”

Jiang arched an eyebrow. “Darling, fucking what?”

“Nezha’s exhausted.” Kitay quickly returned to the subject. “It’s not entirely his fault. His Hesperian advisers keep making insane demands that he can’t accommodate, and the Republican cabinet are pulling him in twenty different directions so that he doesn’t even know which way to shatter.”

“I don’t get it,” Rin said. “You’d still think he’d be faring better with his advantages.”

“It’s not so simple. This remains a war on multiple fronts. The Republic’s pretty much conquered the north—Jun’s dead, by the way; they flayed him alive on a dais a few weeks ago—but there are still a few provinces holding out.”

“Really?” Rin perked up. That was the first piece of good news she’d heard in a long time. “Any provinces that are armed?”

“Ox Province is putting up the best resistance for now, but they’ll all be dead in a few weeks,” Kitay said. “They’ve got no organization. They’re split into three factions that aren’t communicating—which was their advantage for a while, actually, because Nezha never knew what the individual battalions were going to do next. But that’s not a sustainable defense strategy. Nezha just needs to take care of them one by one.

“And then there’s Dog Province, which has always been so peripheral to the Empire that no one’s thought to care much about them. But that’s made them value their autonomy. And they’re even less likely to bow to Vaisra now that the Hesperians want to go in and turn the whole region into coal mines.”

“How many men do they have?” Daji asked.

“They haven’t needed men yet. The Republic hasn’t even sent a delegate to negotiate. For now, they’re not on Nezha’s map.” Kitay sighed. “But once they are, they’re finished. They’re too sparsely populated; they won’t have nearly enough troops to survive the first wave of attacks.”

“Then we should join them!” Rin exclaimed. “That’s perfect—we break our