blood—his clothes were dry.
They weren’t safe yet. Arquebuses went off all around them; Jiang had not finished off the Republican artillery.
“Get him up.” Daji materialized, seemingly from nowhere. Her eyes were wild and frantic; her hair and clothes singed black. She jammed her hands under Jiang’s arms and hoisted him to a sitting position. “Hurry.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Rin asked. “He’s not even—”
Daji shook her head just as the crack of arquebus fire echoed around them. They both ducked.
“Quickly!” Daji hissed.
Rin pulled one of Jiang’s arms around her shoulder. Daji took the other. Together they staggered to their feet and ran for cover, Jiang lolling between them like a drunkard.
Somehow they made it unscathed to the Southern Coalition’s rear guard. Venka and a line of defenders stood at the base of the mountains, firing back at the Republicans as the civilians clustered around the blocked tunnel entrances.
“Oh, thank fuck, there you are.” Venka dropped her crossbow to help them hoist Jiang toward a wagon. “Is he hurt?”
“I can’t tell.” Rin helped Daji push Jiang’s legs up over the cart. He didn’t look wounded. In fact, he was still conscious. He pulled his knees up into a crouched sitting position, rocking back and forth, emitting bursts of low, nervous giggles.
Rin couldn’t look at him. This was wrong, this was so wrong. Her gut wrenched with a mix of horror and shame; she wanted to vomit.
“Riga,” Jiang whispered suddenly. He’d stopped giggling. He sat utterly still, eyes fixed at something Rin couldn’t see.
Daji recoiled like she’d been slapped.
“Riga?” Rin repeated. “What—”
“He’s here,” Jiang said. His shoulders began to tremble.
“He’s not here.” The blood had drained from Daji’s face. She looked terrified. “Ziya, listen to me—”
“He’s going to kill me,” Jiang whispered.
His eyes rolled up to the back of his head. He shuddered so hard his teeth clacked. Then he slumped to the side and lay still.
Chapter 17
The mining tunnels felt more like a tomb than an escape. After Rin blew open the entrances with flame and several well-placed barrels of fire powder, the Southern Coalition filed in a packed column of bodies through a passage wide enough to fit only three men walking side by side. It seemed to stretch on for miles. All around them was cold stone, stale air, and a looming black that seemed to constrict like a vise as they pressed farther into the belly of the deep.
They stumbled through the dark, groping at the tunnel walls and tapping the floor before them to check for sudden drop-offs. Rin hated this—she wanted to light every inch of her body aflame and become a human lantern—but she knew that in such packed quarters, fire would suffocate. Altan had showed her once, with a pigeon in a glass vase, how quickly flames could eat up all the breathable air. She remembered clearly the eager fascination in his eyes as he watched the pigeon’s little neck pulse frantically, then go still.
So she walked at the head of the column, illuminating the way with a tiny flame flickering inside a cupped hand, while the back of the line followed in complete darkness.
An hour into their journey, the soldiers behind her began begging that they stop. Everyone wanted to rest. They were exhausted; many of them were marching with undressed open wounds dripping blood into the dirt. The dirigibles couldn’t reach them underground, they argued. Surely they would be safe for twenty minutes.
Rin refused. She and Jiang might have decimated the Republican front lines, but Nezha was certainly still alive, and she didn’t trust him to give up. He would have called for reinforcements long ago. Ground troops might be preparing to enter the tunnels as they marched. Nezha could use explosives and poisonous gas to smoke them out like rats right now, and then the Southern Coalition would disappear with muffled screams beneath the earth, and the only evidence they had ever existed would be ossified bones revealed eons later as the mountains eroded.
She ordered that they continue until they emerged out the other side. To her pleasant surprise, the troops obeyed her without question. She had expected to hear at least a little pushback—she had only just rejoined their ranks, with no explanation or apology, before she thrust them into a war zone wreaked by gods.
But she had broken them out of the Anvil. She’d done what the Southern Coalition had failed to do for months. Right now, her word was divine command.
At last, after what felt like an eternity, they