The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,18

been fighting on the wrong front this entire time.

“Tell your men to pack up,” she said. “We head out for Ruijin in two hours.”

Chapter 3

That evening they began their march back to the base camp of the Southern Coalition. Ruijin lay within the backwoods of the Monkey Province, a poor and calcified land racked by years of banditry, warlord campaigns, famines, and epidemics. It had been the capital of the Monkey Province in antiquity, a lush city famed for its stone shrines built elegantly into the topiary of surrounding bamboo groves. Now it comprised ruins of its former splendor, half eroded by rain and half devoured by the forest.

That made it an excellent place to hide. For centuries, the people of Monkey Province prided themselves on their ability to blend into the mountains during troubled times. They built houses on stilts or up in the trees to keep safe from tigers. They paved winding paths through the dark forest invisible to the untrained eye. In all the stories of old, the Monkeys were stereotyped as backward mountain people—cowards who hid away in trees and caves while the wars of the world passed them by. But those were the same traits that kept them alive.

“Where are we going?” Souji grumbled a week into a continuously uphill hike, during which they’d encountered nothing but endless bumpy paths through hilly forest. “There’s nothing up here.”

“That’s what you think.” Rin bent low to check the scores against the base of a poplar tree—a clue that they were still on the right path—and motioned for the column to follow.

The way up the pass was easier than she had remembered it. The sheen had melted off the edges of the ice. She could see plenty of green beneath sheets of snow that hadn’t been visible when she’d set out two weeks ago. Against all odds, the Southern Coalition had made it to spring.

Winter in the Monkey Province had been a frigid, arid ordeal for the Southern Coalition. It didn’t snow, it hailed. The cold, dry air robbed their breaths from under their noses. The ground turned into a hard, brittle thing. Nothing grew. They’d come so close to starving, and likely would have if an ambushed Mugenese enclave ten miles away hadn’t turned out to possess a shocking amount of food stores.

The soldiers hadn’t distributed their spoils. Rin couldn’t forget the faces of the villagers who’d come out from hiding, thin and exhausted, their relief quickly turning to horror when they realized their liberators were here simply to cart their grain away.

She pushed the memory from her mind. That was a necessary sacrifice. The future of the entire country hinged on the Southern Coalition. What difference did a few lives make?

“Well, this clarifies some things,” Souji muttered as he pushed through the undergrowth.

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t hide in the mountains if you’re a liberating force.”

“No?”

“If you’re trying to take back territory, you inhabit the villages you’ve freed. You expand your base. You set up defenses to make sure the Mugenese don’t come back again. But you’re just predatory extractors. You’ll liberate places, but only for the tribute.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining when I freed you from that cellar.”

“Whatever you say, Princess.” Souji’s voice took on a judging, mocking tone. “You aren’t the salvation of the south. You’re just hiding out here until the whole thing blows over.”

Several scathing responses leaped to mind. Rin bit them back.

The trouble was that he was right. The Southern Coalition had been too passive, too slow to initiate the wider campaign the rest of the country clearly needed, and she hated it.

The coalition leadership’s priority at Ruijin was still sheer survival, which meant ensconcing themselves in the mountains and biding their time while Vaisra’s Republic battled for control of the north. But they were barely even surviving. This wouldn’t last forever. Ruijin kept them safe for now, for the same reasons it was slowly becoming their tomb.

Not if Rin got her way. Not if they sent every soldier in their army south.

“That’s about to change.” She jammed her hiking pole into the rocky path and hauled herself up a steep incline. “You’ll see.”

“You’re lost,” Souji accused.

“I’m not lost.”

She was helplessly lost. She knew they were close, but she had no idea where to go from here. Three months and dozens of expeditions later, Rin still couldn’t find the precise entrance to Ruijin. It was a hideout designed to stay invisible. She had to send an intricate flare spiraling high