The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,183

victory. They both knew that their ongoing streak of wins was in large part because Nezha simply had not committed as many troops or resources as they had.

But why?

They had to assume at this point that Nezha’s dominant strategy was to hole up in Arlong and concentrate his defenses there. But surely he knew better than to put all his eggs in one basket. Arlong was blessed with a bevy of natural defenses, but defaulting to a siege mentality this early screamed of either desperation or insanity.

“He must be confident about something,” Kitay mused. “Otherwise the only possible explanation for all this is that he’s gone batshit crazy. He’s got to have something up his sleeve.”

Rin frowned. “More dirigibles, you think?” But that didn’t seem likely. If Nezha had increased Hesperian aid, he would have subjected them to air raids already, while they were still on open, distant terrain, instead of near his prized capital. “Is he wagering everything on the Dragon? Some new military technology that’s more lethal than shamanism?”

“Or some military technology that can counteract shamanism,” Kitay said.

Rin shot him a sharp look. He’d said it too quickly—it wasn’t a guess. “Do you know something?”

“I, ah, I’m not sure.”

“Did Nezha say something?” she demanded. “In the New City, when Petra was—I mean—did he—”

“He didn’t know.” Kitay tugged uncomfortably at a lock of hair. “Petra never told him anything. He went through her—her tests. The Hesperians lent him weapons. That was the deal they offered him, and he took it. They didn’t think he had the right to know what they were researching.”

“He could have been lying.”

“Maybe. But I’ve seen Nezha lying. That wasn’t it. That was just despair.”

“But there’s nothing Petra could invent,” Rin insisted. “They’ve got nothing. Their theology is wrong. Their Maker doesn’t exist. If they had some anti-shamanic tool, they would have used it to protect their fleet, but they didn’t. All they have is conventional weapons—fire powder and opium—and we know how to counteract those. Right?”

Kitay looked unconvinced. “As far as we know.”

She crossed her arms, frustrated. “Pick a side, Kitay. You just said there’s no proof—”

“There’s no proof either way. I’m just floating the possibility, because we have to consider it. You know that unless Nezha has something like this up his sleeve, his strategy so far has been utterly irrational. And we can’t proceed assuming the worst of him.”

“Then what? You want to divert from Arlong?”

Kitay mulled that over for a moment. “No. I don’t think we change our overall strategy. We keep gaining ground. We keep bolstering our resources. Based on the information we have, we take Arlong on schedule. But I’m saying we need to be cautious.”

“We’re always cautious.”

He gave her a tired look. “You know what I mean.”

They left it at that. There was nothing else to discuss; without further proof, there was nothing they could do.

Privately, Rin thought Kitay was being paranoid.

What if Nezha didn’t have some secret weapon? What if Nezha was just destined to lose? She couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, the end to this story was a foregone conclusion. After all, the last several months had made it clear that she couldn’t be defeated. Battle by battle, victory by victory, she became more and more convinced of the fact that she’d been chosen by fate to rule the Empire. What else explained her streak of incredible, implausible victories and escapes? She had survived Speer. Golyn Niis. Shiro’s laboratory. She’d taken an army through the long march. She’d emerged victorious from Mount Tianshan. She’d outwitted and outlasted the Mugenese, the Trifecta, and Vaisra. And now she was about to conquer Nezha.

Of course, she couldn’t leave everything to the fates. She couldn’t stop meticulously preparing for every battle just because she hadn’t yet lost a single one. Nikara history was crammed with fools who imagined themselves kings. When their luck bled out, they died like anyone else.

That was why she never voiced this feeling out loud to Kitay. She knew what he would say. Come on, Rin. You’re losing your grip on reality. The gods don’t choose their champions. That’s not how this works.

And while she understood that in the rational part of her mind, she still knew something had changed when she’d come back down from Mount Tianshan, when she’d survived an explosion that killed the greatest figures in Nikara history and nearly wiped out the Hesperian fleet. The tides of history had shifted. She had never before believed in fate, but this