The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,141

reach the temple until sunset.

“Well.” Rin turned around to face Kitay. “See you tonight.”

He wasn’t coming with her. Despite his protests, they’d both agreed he would only be a liability on the mountain—he’d be safer in the valley, surrounded by Cholang’s troops.

“Tonight,” he agreed, leaning down to give her a tight, brief hug. His lips brushed against her ear. “Don’t fuck this up.”

“Can’t promise anything.” Rin gave him a wry chuckle. She had to laugh, to mask her apprehension with callous humor, otherwise she’d splinter from the fear. “It’s only a day, dearest, don’t miss me too much.”

He didn’t laugh.

“Come back down,” he said, his expression suddenly grim. His fingers clenched tight around hers. “Listen, Rin. I don’t care what else happens up there. But you come back to me.”

The road up Mount Tianshan was a sacred path.

In all the myths, Tianshan was the site from which the gods descended. Where Lei Gong stood when he carved lightning into the sky with his staff. Where the Queen Mother of the West tended the peach tree of immortality that had sentenced the Moon Lady Chang’e to an eternity of torment. Where Sanshengmu, sister of the vengeful Erlang Shen, had fallen when the heavens banished her for loving a mortal.

It was clear why the gods would choose this place, where the rarefied air was cool and sweet, where the flowers that laced the road bloomed in colors so bright they did not seem real. The path, so rarely trodden it had nearly faded away, was silent as they walked. No one spoke. Save for their footsteps, Rin heard nothing—not the chirping of birds nor the hum of insects. Mount Tianshan, for all its natural loveliness, seemed devoid of any other life.

The dirigibles came at midday.

Rin thought she’d imagined the buzzing at first; it was so faint. She thought the droning was a fear-induced flashback, brought on by the nerves and pounding exhaustion.

But then Daji froze in her steps, and Rin realized she’d heard it, too.

Jiang glanced up at the sky and groaned. “Fucking hell.”

Slowly the aircraft emerged from the thick white misty wall, one after another, black shapes half-hidden in clouds like lurking monsters.

Rin, Jiang, and Daji stood still below, exposed against the white snow, three targets laid bare before a firing squad.

How long had Nezha known where she was? Since she’d reached Dog Province? Since she’d begun the march? He must have tailed the southerners with reconnaissance crafts, lurking unseen beyond the horizon, tracing their movements across the Baolei range, waiting to see where they led him like a hunter following a baby deer to its herd. He must have realized they were marching west to seek salvation. And following his devastating loss at the Anvil, in desperate need of a victory to hand the Hesperians, he must have decided to wait to eliminate the resistance at its source.

“What are you waiting for?” Daji hissed. “Hit them.”

Jiang shook his head. “They’re not in range.”

He was right. The airships crept hesitantly through the mist, patient predators watching to see where their prey scurried next. But they remained hovering at such a distance that they were only hazy shapes in the sky, where they knew Jiang’s shades could not reach. They didn’t approach. And they didn’t fire.

Nezha knows, Rin thought. She was certain; that was the only explanation. Somehow, Nezha understood what she was attempting, or at least an approximation of it. He wasn’t ready to murder the Trifecta just yet. He needed to find out, for the sake of his Hesperian overseers, what precisely lay in that chamber.

“Then hurry up,” Daji said curtly, turning her gaze back to the path. “Climb.”

There was no other option but to follow.

Rin scrambled up the slippery rock, all reservations driven from her mind by sheer icy fear. Her questions about the Trifecta didn’t matter now. Whatever Jiang had done, whatever he was hiding from her, whoever the children were—it didn’t matter. Nezha lurked above her, ready to turn her bones to dust with a single order. She had one path to survival and that was Riga.

She could be about to wake a monster. She didn’t care.

Farther up, the path was ensconced inside fog so thick that Rin could barely see or breathe. This was the famous mist of Mount Tianshan, the so-called impenetrable shroud of the Empress of the Four Skies, cast down to keep mortals from discovering the doors to the heavens. The humidity was so dense she felt almost as if she were moving