The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,11

Sometime in the next week, if not in the next day, they would drag the collaborators into the middle of the square, extract their confessions, and then flay, whip, beat, or stone them. Rin never had to intervene. The south delivered its own justice. The catharsis of violence hadn’t happened yet in Khudla—it was too early in the morning for a public execution, and the villagers were too starved and exhausted to form a mob—but Rin knew that soon enough, she would hear screaming.

Meanwhile, she had survivors to find. She was looking for prisoners. The Federation always took captives—political dissidents, soldiers too willful to control but too useful to let die, or hostages they hoped might dissuade their incoming attackers. Sometimes the bodies were freshly dead—either from one last act of vengeance by desperate Mugenese soldiers under siege, or suffocated by smoke from Rin’s flames.

More often, however, she found them alive. You couldn’t kill hostages if you ever meant to use them.

Kitay led soldiers to search in the eastern edge of the village through the Mugenese-occupied buildings that had escaped the brunt of the destruction. He had a particular talent for finding survivors. He’d once hidden for weeks behind a bricked-up wall at Golyn Niis, cringing and hugging his knees while Federation soldiers dragged Nikara soldiers from their hiding spots and shot them on the streets. He knew how to look for the signs—tarps or stacked debris that seemed out of place, faint footprints in the dust, echoes of shallow breathing in frightened silence.

Rin alone took on the burned wreckage.

She dreaded this task: pulling charred boards aside to find bodies broken and bleeding but still breathing. Too many times they were beyond saving. Half the time she’d caused the destruction herself. Once flames started burning, they were difficult to put out.

Still, she had to try.

“Is anyone here?” she called repeatedly. “Make a noise. Any noise. I’m listening.”

She went through every cellar, every abandoned lot and well; shouted out for survivors many times and made sure she listened hard to the echoing silence. It would be a horrible fate to be chained up, slowly starving or suffocating to death because your village had been liberated but the survivors forgot about you. Her eyes watered as she stumbled through a smoky grain cellar. She doubted she’d find anything—already she’d stumbled over two corpses—but she waited a moment before she left. Just in case.

Her patience rewarded her.

“In the back,” called a voice.

Rin pulled a flame into her hand, illuminating the far wall of the cellar. She couldn’t see anything but empty grain sacks. She stepped closer.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Souji.” She heard the clink of chains. “Likely the man you’re looking for.”

She decided she wasn’t dealing with an ambush. She knew that flat-tongued, rustic accent. The best Mugenese spies couldn’t imitate it; they’d all trained only to speak the curt Sinegardian dialect.

She crossed to the other end of the cellar, stopped, and amplified her torchlight.

Her first goal at Khudla had been liberation. Her second goal was to locate Yang Souji, the famed rebel leader and local hero who had until recently been fending off the Mugenese in southern Monkey Province. The closer she’d marched to Khudla, the more myths and rumors she’d heard about him. Yang Souji had eyes that could see for ten thousand miles. He could speak to animals; he knew when the Mugenese were coming because the birds always warned him. His skin was invulnerable to all kinds of metal—swords, arrowheads, axes, spears.

The man chained to the floor was none of those things. He looked surprisingly young—he couldn’t be more than a few years older than she was. A scraggly beard had sprouted over his neck and chin, some indication of how long he’d been chained up, but he sat up straight with his shoulders rolled back, and his eyes shone bright in the firelight.

Despite herself, Rin found him surprisingly handsome.

“So you’re the Speerly,” he said. “I thought you’d be taller.”

“And I thought you’d be older,” she said.

“Then we’re both a disappointment.” He jangled his chains at her. “Took you long enough. Did you really need all night?”

She knelt down and began working at the locks. “Not even a thank-you?”

“You’re going to do that one-handed?” he asked skeptically.

She fumbled with the pin. “Look, if you’re going to—”

“Give me that.” He plucked the pin from her fingers. “Just hold the lock up where I can see it and give me some light—there you go.”

As she watched him work at the lock