The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,171

Rin was just curious to see how badly they could break it.

But first, they had to settle the question of battlefield etiquette. Prudence prevailed, because Kitay prevailed. Rin couldn’t feed and clothe her army if she didn’t amass resources as they went, and those were harder to obtain from burned, sacked cities.

“I know you want a fight out of this,” Kitay said. “But if you start tearing walls down without giving them the chance to surrender, then you’re just being stupid.”

“Negotiations give them time to prepare defenses,” she objected.

He rolled his eyes at that. “What defenses could they possibly mount against you?”

The first messenger they sent returned almost immediately. “No surrender,” he reported. “They, ah, laughed in my face.”

“That’s it, then.” Rin stood up. “We’ll head out in five. Someone get Dulin and Pipaji—”

“Hold on,” Kitay said. “We haven’t given them fair warning.”

“Fair warning? We just offered them surrender!”

“They think you’re a scruffy peasant army with rusty swords and no artillery to speak of.” Kitay gave her a stern look. “They don’t know what they’re sentencing themselves to. And you’re not being fair.”

“Sunzi said—”

“I think we both agree Sunzi’s playbook stopped being relevant a long time ago. And when Sunzi wrote about preserving information asymmetries so that your enemy would underestimate you, he was talking about troop numbers and supplies. Not earth-shattering, godlike powers.” Kitay smoothed a piece of parchment over the table. He didn’t even wait for her response before he began penning another missive. “We give them another chance.”

She made a noise of protest. “What, you’re just going to reveal our new weapons before they’ve even seen their first battle?”

“I’m a bit concerned that you’re referring to people as weapons. And no, Rin, I’m only telling them that they ought to consider the many innocent lives at risk. I won’t include details.” Kitay scribbled for a bit longer, glanced up, and reached toward his forehead to tug at a hank of hair. “This confirms one thing, though. Nezha’s not in the city.”

Rin frowned. “How do you figure?”

They’d decided there was perhaps a fifty-fifty chance that Nezha would remain at the front to defend Jinzhou in person. On one hand, Jinzhou was such a massive treasure trove it was hard to imagine the Republic would relinquish it so easily—the coal stockpiles alone could have kept the airships flying indefinitely. On the other hand, every report they received indicated that Nezha had fled east as far as he could. And Jinzhou, though rich, did not have the strongest defense structures—it was a city founded on trade, and trading cities were designed to invite the outside world in, not to keep it out. This would have been a stupid place for Nezha to make his last stand.

“We know he’s not here because the magistrate would have invoked his name if he was,” Kitay said. “Or he would have shown up to negotiate himself. The whole country knows what he can do now. They know he’d be a better deterrent than anything else they could muster.”

“He could be trying to ambush us,” Rin said.

“Maybe. But Nezha sticks even harder to Sunzi’s principles than you do. Don’t push where there’s already resistance; don’t bleed troops where you’re already at a disadvantage.” Kitay shook his head. “I suppose we can’t be certain. But if I were Nezha, I wouldn’t try to kill you here. Not enough water access. No, I think he’s going to give you this one.”

“How romantic,” she sneered. “Then let’s make him regret it.”

They camped outside Jinzhou’s walls for a while, passing the spyglass back and forth as they waited for their delegation to return. Minutes passed, then hours. After a while Rin got bored and went back inside her tent, where her recruits sat in a circle on the floor, waiting for the summons.

“They’re not going to surrender,” she told them. “Everyone ready?”

Lianhua chewed her bottom lip. Dulin was shaking; he kept rubbing his elbows as if he were freezing. They looked so much like nervous Sinegard students about to take an exam that Rin couldn’t help but feel a small flicker of amusement. Only Pipaji looked completely and utterly calm, sitting back against the wall with her arms crossed as if she were a patron at a teahouse waiting to be served.

“Remember, it’s different when there are bodies,” Rin said. They’d discussed many times by now how everything changed in the heat of battle, how the safe predictability of practice in no way resembled actual warfare, but she wanted