The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,119

Speerly.” Souji raised his voice to address the crowd. His voice cracked with fear. “He promised that’s all it would take, he said—”

Rin spoke over him. “Does anyone believe this man was stupid enough to make such a simple mistake?”

The implication was clear. She’d just accused Souji of collaboration. This was of course a lie, but she didn’t need to show proof. She didn’t even need to make a real argument. All she had to do was insinuate. These people would accept whatever narrative she gave them because they wanted to feed their anger. The judgment had concluded before the trial started.

“Show him.” Rin pointed to Souji like a hunter indicating a target to a pack of dogs. “Show him what the south does to its traitors.”

She stepped back. There followed a brief, anticipatory silence. Then the crowd surged forth, and Souji disappeared beneath a mass of bodies.

They didn’t just beat him. They tore his flesh apart. He must have screamed, but Rin couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t see him, either; she caught only the faintest glimpses of blood shining through the crowd. It was incredible, really, how easily a mass of weakened, half-starved men and women could together wrench entire limbs from a torso. She saw pieces of Souji’s uniform fly through the air. Beneath the feet of the crowd rolled what looked like an eyeball.

She didn’t join in. She didn’t have to.

“This is chaos.” Kitay’s face had turned a sickly gray. “This is dangerous.”

“Not to us,” Rin said.

This was violence, but it wasn’t chaos. This anger was utterly controlled, fine-tuned, directed, a massive swell of power that only she could control.

And it wasn’t just fueled by resentment toward Souji. In a sense, this massacre wasn’t about Souji at all. This was about demonstrating a change in loyalty, a gruesome apology by anyone who had ever spoken against her before. This was a blood sacrifice to a new figurehead.

And if anyone still doubted her leadership, then the screaming would at least strike fear deep into their hearts. Anyone on the fringes now understood the cost of opposition. Through love or hate, adoration or fear, she would have them one way or another.

Daji, standing at the far end of the crowd, caught Rin’s eye and smiled.

Rin’s heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear.

She understood what Daji had meant now. She could achieve so much with a simple show of strength. All she had to do was become the symbolic embodiment of power and liberation, and she could kill a man by pointing. She could make these people do anything.

You’ve got a god on your side. You want this nation? You take it.

Gradually the frenzy ceased. The crowd dispersed from the center of the cavern like a pack of wolves retreating when the meat was gone and the bones picked clean.

Souji was long dead. Not just dead—mutilated, his corpse so thoroughly desecrated that not a single part remained that looked recognizably human. The crowd had destroyed his body and in doing so demonstrated their rejection of everything he’d stood for—a wily mix of guerrilla resistance and clever politicking that, in different circumstances, might have succeeded. In different circumstances, Yang Souji might have liberated the south.

But so fell the whims of fate. Souji was dead, his officers were converted, and the takeover was complete.

Chapter 18

The soil inside the cavern was too stiff to dig a grave, so Rin and Kitay piled Gurubai’s and Souji’s remains together onto a messy pyramid in the center of the caverns, soaked them with oil, and stood back to watch them burn.

It took nearly half an hour for the corpses to disintegrate. Rin wanted to speed the process with her own flames, but Kitay wouldn’t let her; he demanded they sit vigil before the pyre while the southerners marched on without them. Rin found this a colossal waste of time, but Kitay couldn’t be dissuaded. He thought they owed this to their victims, that otherwise Rin would come off like a callous murderer instead of a proper leader.

Twenty minutes in, he clearly regretted it. His cheeks had gone ashen; he looked like he wanted to vomit.

“You know what I’ll never get over?” he asked.

“What?” she asked.

“It smells so much like pork. It makes me hungry. I mean—I couldn’t eat now if I tried to, but I can’t stop my mouth from watering. Is that disgusting?”

“It’s not disgusting,” Rin said, privately relieved. “I thought it was just me.”

But she could eat right now, even sitting before