The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,20

Gurubai right now. I’ll try one last time to convince him.”

They both knew that meeting would come to nothing. She’d been having the same argument with the Monkey Warlord for weeks. She wanted to march out of Ruijin. He wanted to remain in the mountains, and his allies in the leadership of the Southern Coalition agreed. They outnumbered her three votes to one.

Rin was about to flip those numbers.

But not just yet. No need to act in haste; she’d show her hand too early. One thing at a time. She’d give the Monkey Warlord one last chance first, make him think she’d come back cooperative and complacent. She had learned, since her days at Sinegard, to rein in her impulses. The best plans were a secret until their execution. The hidden knife cut the deepest.

“Welcome back,” said the Monkey Warlord.

Liu Gurubai had set up his headquarters in one of the few old architectural beauties in Ruijin that still stood, a square stone temple with three walls eaten over by moss. He’d chosen it for security, not comfort. The insides were sparsely furnished, with only a stove dug into the corner wall, two rugs, and a simple council table in the center of the cold, drafty room.

Rin and Kitay sat down across him, resembling two students arriving at their tutor’s home for a lesson.

“I brought presents,” said Rin.

“Oh, I saw,” Gurubai said. “Couldn’t help but leave a little mark, could you?”

“I thought they should know who’s commanding them.”

“Well, I assumed Souji would.” Gurubai raised an eyebrow. “Unless you were planning on decapitating him?”

Rin gave him a thin smile and wished fervently she could force a flaming fist down his throat.

When she’d hurtled out of Arlong on a Black Lily ship with her hand a bloody mess, she’d thought that the Monkey Warlord might be different from the series of horrible men she’d hitherto thrown in her lot with. That he’d keep his promises. That he’d treat her not as a weapon but as an ally. That he’d put her in charge.

She’d been so wrong.

She’d underestimated Gurubai. He was brilliant; he’d been the sole survivor of Vaisra’s violent purge at Arlong for a reason. He understood power politics in a way she never would, because he’d spent his entire life practicing it. Gurubai understood what made men pledge their support, what won him trust and love. He was used now, after two decades, to calling all the shots. And he did not relinquish power.

“I thought we had agreed,” she said lightly, “if the Khudla experiment worked out—”

“Oh, it worked out. You can keep that contingent. Officers Shen and Lin were quite happy with your performance.”

“I don’t want a single contingent, I want the army.”

“Let’s not pretend you could handle that.”

“I just liberated an entire village with minimal casualties—”

“Your supreme talent for burning things down does not qualify you to be a commander.” Gurubai drew out the last syllable of each word as if she wouldn’t have understood him otherwise. “You’re still learning to manage communication and logistics. Don’t rush it, child. Give yourself the space to learn. This isn’t Sinegard, where we throw children into war with no preparation. We’ll find you something better to do in time.”

The condescension in his voice made her fist curl. Her eyes focused on the veins in his neck. They protruded so visibly; it would be so easy to slice them open.

If only. Speerly or no, if she hurt Liu Gurubai, she wouldn’t make it out of Ruijin alive.

Kitay kicked her lightly under the table. Don’t.

She grimaced at him. I know.

If Rin was a Speerly outsider and Kitay a Sinegardian elite, then the Monkey Warlord was the true product of the south, a rough-hewn man with shoulders broadened from years of labor, whose gleaming, intelligent eyes were set deep in a face lined like the forest.

Rin had left the south at the first chance she got. The Monkey Warlord had fought and suffered in the south his entire life. He’d watched his grandmother begging for rice in the streets during the Lunar New Year. He’d walked miles to tend water buffalo for a single copper a day. He’d fought in the ragged provincial brigades that rallied to the Trifecta’s cause during the Second Poppy War. He hadn’t become a warlord through inheritance or sheer ambition; he’d simply moved slowly up through the line of succession as the soldiers around him died. He’d been drafted into an army at thirteen years old for the promise of a