The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,151

know what else to say. “It’s not my place.”

“No, I suppose not.” Vaisra was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “Would you like to hear a story?”

A story? Nezha hesitated, unsure of how to respond. Vaisra never told him stories. But although Nezha had no idea how to converse with his father, he couldn’t bear to let this opportunity pass.

“Yes,” he said carefully. “I would.”

Vaisra glanced down at him. “Do you know why we don’t let you go to those grottoes?”

Nezha perked up. “Because of the monsters?”

Would this be a monster story? He hoped it would be. He felt a flicker of excitement. His childhood nurses knew that his favorite tales were about the myriad beasts rumored to lurk in the grottoes—the dragons, the cannibal crabs, the fish-women who made you love them and then drowned you once you got too close.

“Monsters?” Vaisra chuckled. Nezha had never heard his father chuckle before. “Do you like the grotto stories?”

Nezha nodded. “Very much.”

Vaisra put a hand on his shoulder.

Nezha suppressed a flinch. He wasn’t afraid of his father’s touch—Vaisra had never been violent toward him. But Vaisra had never caressed him like this, either. Hugs, kisses, reassuring touches—those belonged to Nezha’s mother, Lady Saikhara, who nearly suffocated her children with affection.

Nezha had always thought of his father as a statue—remote, foreboding, and untouchable. Vaisra seemed to him less like a man than a god, the perfect ideal of everything he’d been raised to become. Every word Yin Vaisra articulated was direct and concise, every action efficient and deliberate. Never did he show his children affection beyond the odd somber nod of approval. Never did he tell fairy tales.

So what was going on?

For the first time Nezha noticed that his father’s eyes looked somewhat glassy, that his speech seemed much slower than usual. And his breath . . . a pungent, sour smell wafted into Nezha’s face every time Vaisra spoke. Nezha had smelled that odor twice before—once in the servants’ quarters, when he’d been wandering around past bedtime where he shouldn’t have been, and once in Jinzha’s room.

He squirmed under Vaisra’s hand, suddenly uncomfortable. He didn’t want a story anymore. He wanted to get back to his lesson.

“I’ll tell you a grotto story,” Vaisra said. “You know Arlong rose as a southern power in the decades of warfare after the Red Emperor’s death. But in the last years of the Red Emperor’s reign, after he abandoned Dragon Province to build a new capital at Sinegard, Arlong was regarded as a cursed place. These islands lay inside a valley of death, of crashing waves and flooding riverbanks. No ships that sailed past the Red Cliffs survived. Everything smashed to death against those rocks.”

Nezha kept utterly still as he listened. He had never heard this story before. He wasn’t sure that he liked it.

“Finally,” Vaisra continued, “a man named Yu, learned in shamanic arts, called down the Dragon Lord of the Western River and begged his help to control the rivers. Overnight, Arlong transformed. The waters turned calm. The flooding ceased. Arlong’s people built canals and rice paddies between the islands. In a few short years, Dragon Province became the jewel of the Nikara Empire, a land of beauty and plenty.” Vaisra paused. “Only Yu continued to suffer.”

Vaisra seemed caught in a reverie, speaking not to Nezha but at the tapestries, as if he were reciting dynastic lineage into the silent hall.

“Um.” Nezha swallowed. “Why—”

“Nature can’t be altered,” Vaisra said. “Only held at bay. Always, the waters of Arlong threatened to break their leash and drown the new city in their fury. Yu was forced to spend his life in a state of shamanic hallucination, always calling upon the Dragon, always hearing its whispers in his ears. After several dozen years of this, Yu wanted desperately to end his life. And when the god’s takeover was complete, when he could no longer die, he wanted to ensconce himself in the Chuluu Korikh. But he knew that if he sought peace, someone had to take up his mantle. Yu could not be that cruel, nor that selfish. So what happened?”

Nezha didn’t know. But he could put this together like the pieces of a logic puzzle, like the kind that his tutors were always training him to solve for the Keju exam.

Father said this was a grotto story. And grotto stories were about monsters.

“Yu transformed,” Nezha said. “He became the monster.”

“Not a monster, Nezha.” Vaisra stroked a lock of hair behind Nezha’s ear. “A savior.