The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,162

power, she hadn’t cared what sort of mental hurdles he made her jump. And it had still taken her nearly a year.

But most of that year had been taken up by Jiang’s endless series of precautions to prevent her from becoming precisely what she ultimately became. Rin didn’t need to bother with safety or long-term stability. She just needed troops from whom she could squeeze, at maximum, several months’ utility.

“Take your mind off it for a bit,” Kitay suggested. “No point bashing your head against the wall. Come see what I’ve been working on.”

She followed him out of the tent. Kitay had set up an outdoor work station a ten-minute walk from the camp, which consisted of tools strewn across the ground, diagrams held down with rocks to keep them from flying away in the relentless plateau winds, and one massive structure covered with a heavy canvas tarp. He reached up and pulled the tarp away with both hands, revealing a dirigible flipped on its side and split in two, its inner workings on display like a gutted animal’s intestines.

“You’re not the only one leveling out the power asymmetry,” he said.

Rin moved in closer to inspect the airship engine’s interior, running her fingers over the hull’s outer lining. It wasn’t made of any material she could recognize—not wood, not bamboo, and certainly not heavy metal. The power mechanisms appeared even more foreign, a complicated, interlocking set of gears and screws that brought to mind Sister Petra’s round, fist-size clock, that perfectly intricate machine that the Hesperians believed to be irrefutable proof that the world was designed by some grand architect.

“It’s the only craft that remained relatively intact,” Kitay said. “The rest were burned, shattered wreckage. But this one must have only lost power when it was fairly close to the ground. Its gears are all still working.”

“Hold on,” Rin said sharply. She’d thought Kitay had only been studying how they worked, not how to operate them. “You’re telling me we can fly this?”

“Maybe. I’m still a few days from attempting a test flight. But yes, once we get the basket fitted together, I theoretically should be able to get it up . . .”

“Tiger’s tits.” Rin’s pulse quickened just thinking about what this could mean. All kinds of tactical maneuvers opened up if they had a working dirigible. They still couldn’t go toe-to-toe with the Hesperian fleet in the open air—they’d simply be outnumbered—but they could use air travel for so many other purposes. “This solves so much. Bulk transportation. Quick supply movements. River crossings—”

“Not so fast.” Kitay tapped a winding copper cylinder at the center of the intestinal mess. “I’ve finally figured out its fuel source. It burns coal, but very inefficiently. These things are built with material that is as lightweight as possible, but they’re still awfully heavy. They can’t remain afloat for more than a day, and they can’t carry enough coal to lengthen their journey otherwise they’ll sink.”

“I see,” she said, disappointed.

So that partly solved the central mystery of why Nezha had used the fleet with such restraint during the march over the Baolei Mountains. Dirigibles were a decent quick show of force. But they did not give the Hesperians full reign over the sky. They still depended on ground support for fuel.

“It’s still better than nothing,” Kitay said. “I’ll try to have it flying within the next week.”

“You’re incredible,” Rin murmured. Kitay had always been so wonderfully clever—really, she should have stopped feeling surprised by his inventions after he’d found a way to make her fly—but learning to work a dirigible was an achievement on an entirely different scale. This was alien technology, technology supposedly centuries ahead of Nikara achievements, and somehow he’d pieced together its workings in mere days. “Did you figure this out just by looking at it?”

“I took apart the pieces that seemed removable, and spent a long time staring at the pieces that didn’t.” He pushed his fingers through his bangs, surveying the engine. “The basic principles were easy enough. There’s still a lot I don’t know.”

“But then—then how.” She blinked at the complex metal gears. They looked dauntingly sophisticated. She wouldn’t have known where to start. “I mean, how did you figure out the science?”

“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “I can’t. I don’t know what half these things are or what they do. They’re a mystery to me and will remain so until I’m versed in the fundamentals of this technology, which I won’t be until I’ve studied in their Gray