The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,241
should have been fucking delighted. And rationally, intellectually, he was. Rin was a monster, a murderer, a destroyer of worlds. Nothing but blood and ashes ever trailed in her wake. The world was a better, safer, and more peaceful place without her in it. He believed that. He had to believe that.
And yet.
And yet, when he looked at that broken body, all he wanted to do was howl.
Why? He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to shake her, throttle her, until she answered. Rin, what the fuck?
But he knew why.
He knew exactly what choice she’d made and what she’d intended. And that made everything—hating her, loving her, surviving her—so much harder.
Fix this.
He tilted his head back. His knees shook from a wave of exhaustion washing over his limbs, and he took a deep, rattling breath as he contemplated the monumental task before him.
Fix this? Fix this? What did he have left to work with? She’d broken everything.
But theirs had always been a broken country. It had never been unified, not truly; it had only ever been held tightly together by steel and blood, a facade of internal unity, while factions always threatened to split from within. Rin had forced those tensions to the surface, and then to their breaking point. She’d forced the Nikara to confront the greatest lie it had ever told about itself—that there had ever been a united Nikara Empire at all.
And yet, she’d laid a foundation for him. She’d burned away all that was rotten and corrupt. He didn’t have to reform the Warlord system because she’d destroyed it for him. He didn’t have to face backlash from the crumpling system of feudal aristocracy, because she’d already wrecked it. She’d wiped clear the maps of the past. She’d hurled the pieces off the board.
She was a goddess. She was a monster. She’d nearly destroyed this country.
And then she’d given it one last, gasping chance to live.
He knew she hadn’t done this for him. No, she’d done him no great mercy. She’d known that his future—the future she’d just assigned him—was full of horrors. They both knew that Nikan’s only path forward was through Hesperia—through a cruel, supercilious, exploitative entity that would certainly try to remold and reshape them, until the only vestiges of Nikara culture that remained lay buried in the past.
But Nikan had survived occupation before. If Nezha played his cards right—if he bent where he needed to, if he lashed back at just the right time—then they might survive occupation again.
He didn’t know how he’d weather what came next, but he had to try.
He owed it to her to try.
Nezha lowered Rin’s body to the ground, stood up, squared his shoulders, and awaited the coming of the fleet.
Dramatis Personae
The Southern Coalition and Its Allies
Fang Runin: a war orphan from Rooster Province, former commander of the Cike, the last living Speerly
Chen Kitay: the son of the former Imperial defense minister, heir to the House of Chen, Rin’s anchor
Sring Venka: an archer from Sinegard, daughter of the former Imperial finance minister
Liu Gurubai: the Monkey Warlord, a brilliant politician
Ma Lien: bandit chief, member of the southern leadership
Liu Dai: member of the southern leadership, Gurubai’s longtime ally
Yang Souji: resistance leader from Rooster Province, commands the Iron Wolves
Quan Cholang: the young, newly appointed Dog Warlord
Chiang Moag: Pirate Queen of Ankhiluun, aka the Stone Bitch and the Lying Widow
The House of Yin
Yin Vaisra: the Dragon Warlord and leader of the Nikara Republic
Yin Saikhara: the Lady of Arlong and the wife of Yin Vaisra
*Yin Jinzha: the oldest son of the Dragon Warlord and the grand marshal of the Republican Army, killed by Su Daji
Yin Muzha: Jinzha’s twin sister, Vaisra’s only daughter
Yin Nezha: the second son of the Dragon Warlord
*Yin Mingzha: the third son of the Dragon Warlord, killed by the Dragon of Arlong as a child
The Trifecta
Su Daji: formerly the Empress of Nikan, aka the Vipress, calls on the Snail Goddess of Creation Nüwa
Jiang Ziya: the Gatekeeper, calls on the beasts of the Emperor’s Menagerie
Yin Riga: the Dragon Emperor, presumed dead since the end of the Second Poppy War
The Hesperians
General Josephus Tarcquet: the leader of the Hesperian troops in Nikan
Sister Petra Ignatius: a representative of the Gray Company (the Hesperian religious order) in Nikan, one of the most brilliant religious scholars of her generation
The Cike
*Altan Trengsin: a Speerly, formerly the commander of the Cike
*Ramsa: a former prisoner at Baghra, munitions expert
*Baji: a shaman who calls on the Boar God
*Suni: a shaman who calls on the Monkey God
Chaghan Suren: a shaman of the Naimad clan and the twin brother of Qara
*Qara Suren: a sharpshooter, speaker to birds, and the twin sister of Chaghan
*Aratsha: a shaman who calls on a river god
*Deceased
Acknowledgments
Four years, three books, and countless memories. We started this journey when I was nineteen and now, at twenty-three, I can’t quite believe that we actually did it. Rin’s story, and this chapter of my publishing career, are finished. I’ve got a lot of people to thank for getting me here.
I’m so grateful to the team at Harper Voyager who’ve done such a fantastic job publishing these books—David Pomerico, Natasha Bardon, Mireya Chiriboga, Jack Renninson, Pamela Jaffee, and Angela Craft. Jung Shan Ink keeps dazzling me with the loveliest illustrations a writer could ask for. Hannah Bowman, the best and sharpest agent in the business, had faith in what this trilogy could be from the start, even when I didn’t. Havis Dawson, Joanne Fallert, and the rest of the team at Liza Dawson Associates have continued to bring my books to the rest of the world. Thank you all for seeing me through to the end.
To all my teachers, mentors, and professors: Jeanne Cavelos, Kij Johnson, Ken Liu, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, Adam Mortara, Howard Spendelow, Carol Benedict, John McNeill, James Millward, Hans van de Ven, Heather Inwood, and Aaron Timmons—thank you for guiding me to become a person who can, in the way I think, write, and treat others, be a little bit more like you.
To friends and family who helped me feel like a real human being and encouraged me to keep writing until the very last page: Mom, Dad, James, Grace, Jack-Jack, Tiffany, Ben, Christine, Chris, Coco, Farah, Josh, Linden, and Pablo—thank you for your constant love and support.
To the Marshfam and beyond: Joani, Martin, Kobi, Kevin, Nancy, Katie, Aksha, Sarah, Julius, Taylor, Noam, Ben, Rhea, and David—thank you for lighting up my life, and for giving me two years in England full of laughter, home-cooked creations, and board games.
To Magdalene College, Cambridge, and University College, Oxford: thank you for being such magical places to write, and places I was lucky to call home.
To the Vaults & Garden Café: more characters were killed under your roof than you will ever know. Thanks for the scones.
And to Bennett, who’s been on this ride from the start: I can’t wait to see where we go next, together.
About the Author
R. F. KUANG lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where she is pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University.
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Also by R. F. Kuang
The Poppy War
The Dragon Republic
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.