The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,170

when he was alive, though she’d thought it many times. She couldn’t keep silent now. She kicked at the rocks and swallowed again, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t go away. She cleared her throat, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“You were always such a fucking coward.”

“We’re marching out,” she told Kitay when she returned. She bustled around the hut, flinging things into her travel bag—two shirts, a pair of trousers, knives, pouches of poppy seeds. She’d been walking for six hours straight, but somehow felt bursting with energy. “I’ll tell Cholang to have his men ready to march in the morning. Is the dirigible ready to go?”

“Sure, but—hold on, slow down, Rin.” Kitay looked concerned. “So soon? Really?”

“It has to be now,” Rin said. She couldn’t stay in Cholang’s settlement, the capital of bum-fuck nowhere in the Scarigon Plateau, any longer. Her mind spun with possibilities for the campaign ahead. Never before had the cards lain so clearly in her favor. The Republic had one shaman in Nezha against Rin’s four, and their best defense mechanism was opium bombs, which incapacitated troops on both sides without discrimination.

Of course Rin’s recruits could have used another week of training. Of course it would have been ideal if they’d had time to fine-tune their abilities, to learn consistently to force the gods back out of their minds when the voices became too loud. But Rin also knew that every day they waited to move out east was another day Nezha had to prepare.

Nezha was licking his wounds now. She had to acquire as much territory as possible before he was ready to strike back. Armies were marching one way or another, and she wanted to be the first.

“For once, time’s on our side,” she said. “We won’t get this chance again.”

“You’re sure they’re ready?”

She shrugged. “About as ready as I was.”

He sighed. “I’m sure you know that thought gives me no comfort at all.”

Chapter 25

Rin’s first major metropolitan target in Republican territory was Jinzhou—the Golden City, the opulent pearl of the Nikara mideast. After three weeks’ march it rose out of the treetops, all high walls and thin, reaching pagodas. Its blue, dragon-emblazoned flags streamed from atop sentry towers like a glaring invitation to attack.

Jinzhou’s other, less savory moniker was the Whore. It sat square on the intersection of three provinces and, thanks to its proximity to thriving mulberry farms that provided wagonfuls of silkworm cocoons and some of the largest coal deposits in the Empire, could afford to pay taxes to all three. In return, Jinzhou had received thrice the military aid throughout the Poppy Wars. Not once in recent history had it been sacked; it had only ever been passed from ruler to ruler, trading compliance and riches for protection.

Rin intended to end that streak.

The military strategist Sunzi once wrote that it was best to take enemy cities intact. Prolonged, destructive campaigns benefited no one. Jinzhou, which offered a potential taxation base and was positioned well against multiple transport routes, would have served better as a sustained resource base than as a ruined city left in the Southern Army’s wake.

Once again, Rin rejected Sunzi’s advice.

In the south she’d been fighting to claim territory back from the Federation. That was a war of liberation. But now her army was homeless, fighting in territory where they’d never lived, and they could never return to their home provinces in peace while the Republic was still angling for control. The problem with trying to hold on to territory was that she would bleed troops expending them to maintain conquered areas. That was the same reason why Nezha was bound to lose—he’d been forced to split his troops across both the northern and southern fronts.

The upshot of all this was that Jinzhou was expendable.

Rin didn’t care about preserving it. She didn’t want Jinzhou’s economy, she wanted to cut Nezha off from its riches.

What I can’t have, he can’t have.

Jinzhou was a flagrant display of power. Jinzhou was a message.

As her troops approached the city’s thick stone gates, Rin didn’t feel the same nervous flutter she always had before a fight. She wasn’t anxious about the outcome, because this was not a contest of strategy, numbers, or timing. This wasn’t a battle of chance.

This time the victor was guaranteed. She had seen what her shamans could do and knew, no matter how good the city’s defenses, they had nothing that could defy an army that could move the earth itself.

Jinzhou’s fate was already a foregone conclusion.