The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,19

into the air and wait until two sentries emerged from the undergrowth to guide them onto a path that, previously invisible, now seemed obvious. Rin followed along, ignoring Souji’s smirk.

Half an hour’s hike later, the camp emerged from the trees like an optical illusion; everything was camouflaged so artfully that Rin sometimes thought if she blinked, it might all disappear.

Just past the wall of bamboo stakes surrounding the camp, an excited crowd had gathered around something on the ground.

“What’s this about?” Rin asked the closest sentry.

“They finally killed that tiger,” he told her.

“Really?”

“Found the corpse this morning. We’re going to skin it, but nobody can agree on who gets the pelt.”

The tiger had been plaguing the camp since before Rin’s troops had left for Khudla. Its growling haunted the soldiers on patrol duty. Dried fish kept disappearing nightly from the food stores. After the tiger dragged an infant out of its tent and left its mauled, half-eaten body by the creek, the Monkey Warlord had ordered a hunting expedition. But the hunters came back empty-handed and exhausted, limbs scratched up by thorns.

“How’d they manage it?” Kitay asked.

“We poisoned a horse,” said the sentry. “It was already dying from a peptic ulcer, else we wouldn’t have spared the animal. Injected opium and strychnine into the carcass and left it out for the tiger to find. We found the bastard this morning. Stiff as a board.”

“You see,” Rin told Kitay. “It’s a good plan.”

“This has nothing to do with your plan.”

“Opium kills tigers. Literal and metaphorical.”

“It’s lost this country two wars,” he said. “I don’t mean to call you stupid, because I love you, but that plan is so stupid.”

“We have the arable land! Moag’s happy to buy it up; if we just planted it in a few regions we’d get all the silver we need—”

“And an army full of addicts. Let’s not kid ourselves, Rin. Is that what you want?”

Rin opened her mouth to respond, but something over Kitay’s shoulder caught her eye.

A tall man stood a little way off from the crowd, arms crossed as he watched her. Waiting. He was Du Zhuden—the right-hand man of the bandit leader Ma Lien. He raised an eyebrow when he saw her glancing his way, and she nodded in response. He jerked his head toward the forest, turned, and disappeared into the trees.

Rin touched Kitay on the arm. “I’ll be back.”

He’d seen Zhuden, too. He sighed. “You’re still going through with this?”

“I don’t see any other option.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Me neither,” he said at last. “But be careful. The monkey’s men are watching.”

Rin met Zhuden at their usual spot—a crooked rowan tree a mile outside the camp, at the juncture of a small creek burbling just loudly enough to conceal their voices from eavesdroppers.

“You found Yang Souji?” Zhuden’s eyes darted warily around as he spoke. The Monkey Warlord had spies everywhere in Ruijin; Rin would not have been surprised if someone had followed her out of camp.

She nodded. “Took a little convincing, but he’s here.”

“What’s he like?”

“Arrogant. Annoying.” She grimaced, thinking of Souji’s smug, leering grin.

“So he’s just like you?”

“Very funny,” she drawled. “He’s competent, though. Knows the terrain well. Has strong local contacts—he might be better keyed into the intelligence network here than we are. And he comes with five hundred experienced soldiers. They’d die for him.”

“Well done,” Zhuden said. “We’ll just have to make sure they start dying for you.”

Rin shot him a grin.

Zhuden wasn’t native to Monkey Province. He was a war orphan from Rat Province who had wound up in Ma Lien’s band from the usual combination of homelessness, desperation, and a callous willingness to do whatever it took to get ahead. Most importantly, unlike the rest of the southern leadership, he wasn’t a mere survivalist.

He, too, thought they were dying slowly in Ruijin. He wanted to expand farther south. And, like Rin, he’d decided on drastic measures to shake things up.

“How’s Ma Lien doing?” Rin asked.

“Getting worse,” Zhuden said. “Honestly, he might just croak on his own, given time, but we still don’t want to risk the off chance that he gets better. You’ll want to act soon.” He passed her a single vial filled with a viscous piss-yellow fluid. “Careful you don’t break that.”

She pinched it by the neck and gingerly dropped it into her front pocket. “Did you extract this yourself?”

“Yep. Can’t say I enjoyed it.”

She patted her pocket. “Thank you.”

“Are you going now?” he asked.

“Tonight,” she said. “I’m due to meet with