The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,111

made her feel divine.

She noticed one more dirigible flying in the opposite direction of the fleet. Its guns weren’t firing. Its flight pattern seemed erratic—she couldn’t tell if the dirigible had been damaged, or if something was wrong with the crew. It climbed several feet in altitude above the rest of the fleet, teetered for a moment, and then turned back in the direction of the New City.

Rin knew then exactly who was on that dirigible. Someone who badly needed protection. Someone who had to be extracted from the fracas, immediately.

“Master!” She shouted, pointing. Her flames couldn’t reach that high, but perhaps his beasts could. “Bring down that ship!”

Jiang didn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure that he’d heard her. His pale eyes had gone entirely blank; he seemed trapped in the throes of his own symphony of ruin.

But then a small cluster of shadows peeled away from the rest, hurtled upward through the air, and fell on the balloon like a ravenous pack of wolves. Moments later the carriage started tumbling to the ground.

The crash shook the earth. Rin sprinted toward the wreckage.

Most of the crew had died on impact. She made short work of the survivors. Two Hesperian soldiers made staggering advances when they saw her coming. One had an arquebus, so she took him out first, shrouding his head and shoulders in a ball of flame before he had time to pull the trigger. The other soldier had a knife. But he’d been injured in the crash, and his movements were comically slow. Rin let him approach, twisted the hilt from his hand, and jammed the blade into his neck so hard the point came up through his eye.

Then she started digging through the debris.

Yin Vaisra was still alive. She found him pinned beneath part of the basket hull and the corpses of two of his guards, gasping hoarsely as he struggled to free himself. His eyes widened when he saw her. The twist of fear was visible for only an instant before his face resumed its habitual mask of calm, but Rin saw. She felt a vicious pulse of glee.

He reached for a knife lying by his waist. She wedged her toe beneath its hilt and flicked it out of his reach. She sat back and waited, expecting him to produce another weapon, but he seemed otherwise unarmed. All he could do was squirm.

Easy. This was so easy. She could kill him where he lay, could gut him with his own knife with no more ceremony than a butcher slaughtering a pig. But that would be so terribly unsatisfying. She wanted to milk this moment for all it was worth.

She braced herself under the carriage hull and pushed her legs against the ground. The hull was heavier than it looked. Those things seemed so elegant and lightweight in the air; now it took all her strength to shift it off Vaisra’s legs.

At last, he struggled out from beneath the corpses. She dropped the hull.

“Get up,” she ordered.

To her surprise, he obeyed.

Slowly he rose to his feet. It hurt him terribly to stand—she could tell from the stoop of his shoulders and the way he winced as his left leg shook beneath him. But he didn’t make a sound of protest.

No, the first President of the Nikara Republic had too much dignity for that.

They stood face-to-face for a moment in silence. Rin looked him up and down, etching every detail of him into her memory. She wanted to remember everything about this moment.

He really was the spitting image of Nezha—an older, crueler version, an unsettling premonition of everything Nezha was supposed to be. Small wonder she’d so eagerly cast him her loyalty. She’d been attracted to him; she could admit this to herself, now that it didn’t matter. It couldn’t humiliate her anymore. She could concede that not so long ago, she’d wanted to be commanded and owned by someone who looked like Nezha.

Gods, she’d been so stupid.

Every day since her escape from Arlong, she’d wondered what she would say to Vaisra if she ever saw him again. What she might do if he were ever at her mercy. She’d fantasized about this moment so many times, but now, as he stood weakened and vulnerable before her, she couldn’t think of anything to say.

There was nothing more to be said. She sought no answers or explanations from him. She knew very well why he’d betrayed her. She knew he considered her less human than animal. She didn’t need