The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,38

Kitay.”

“Shit.” Kitay lowered the letter.

“I know,” Rin said.

“Is this real?”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, is there any chance this is a forgery? That this isn’t really Kesegi?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve no idea.”

She couldn’t tell if that was really Kesegi’s handwriting. Frankly, she wasn’t even sure Kesegi knew how to read; her foster brother had rarely attended school. She couldn’t tell if the letter sounded like him, either. Certainly she could imagine the words in his voice, could picture him sitting at a writing desk, wrists shackled, his thin face trembling as Nezha dictated the words to him one by one. But how could she know for sure? She’d barely spoken to Kesegi in years.

“And what if it’s not?” Kitay asked.

“I don’t think we should respond,” Rin said in the calmest tone she could muster. “Either way.”

She’d worked through the possibilities in the minutes it had taken Kitay to arrive. She’d weighed the cost of her foster brother’s life, and she’d decided she could afford to lose him.

Kesegi wasn’t a general, wasn’t even a soldier. Nezha couldn’t torture him for information. Kesegi knew nothing of importance about either the Southern Coalition or Rin. Everything he knew of Rin was the biography of a little girl that she’d killed long ago at Sinegard, a naive Tikany shopgirl who existed only in suppressed memories.

“Rin.” Kitay put a hand on her arm. “Do you want to go after him?”

She hated how he was looking at her, eyes wide with pity, as if she were on the verge of tears. It made her feel so fragile.

But that’s just what Nezha wants. She refused to let this shake her. Nezha had manipulated her with sentiment before. The Cike had died for her sentiment.

“The problem is not Kesegi,” she said. “It’s Nezha’s troop placements. It’s his fucking reach—I mean, he put a letter in my fucking tent, Kitay. We’re just supposed to ignore that?”

“Rin, if you need to—”

“We need to discuss whether Nezha’s forces are in the south.” She had to keep talking; they had to move the conversation on to something else, because she was afraid of how her chest would feel if they didn’t. “Which I don’t think is possible—Venka says he’s leading his father’s troops in Tiger Province. But if they’re in the south, they’ve hidden so well that not a single one of our scouts has seen any troops, dirigibles, or supply wagons.”

“I don’t think he’s in the south,” Kitay said. “I think he’s just fucking with you. He’s gathering information; he just wants to see how you’ll respond.”

“He won’t get a response. We’re not going to take the bait.”

“We can discuss that.”

“This isn’t a discussion,” she snapped. “This letter is a forgery. And Nezha’s terms are absurd.”

Her fingers clenched around the scroll. The remainder of the message had been written in Nezha’s smooth, elegant calligraphy.

Hello, Rin,

It’s about time we talked.

You and I both know this war benefits no one. Our country has cracked apart. Our homeland has been ravaged, by war, by environmental catastrophe, by mindless evil. Nikan now faces her greatest test. And the Hesperians are watching us, waiting to see if we might stand strong or become another slave society for them to exploit.

I understand why you hate them. I am not blind to their intentions, and I will not let them turn our Republic into their mining ground. I will not see this land ruled by foreign hands. I know you don’t want that, either.

Please, Rin. Come to reason. I need you at my side.

The terms he listed were simple and unacceptable. A truce, full-scale demobilization and disarmament, and Kesegi returned safely in exchange for Rin. The Southern Coalition would be allowed to walk free, or join the Republican Army if they wished. Nezha hadn’t specified what would happen to Rin. She suspected it involved hourly doses of laudanum and an operating table.

“I’m not crazy, right?” she asked. “This is clearly a trap?”

“I’m not sure,” Kitay said. “I think there’s a world where Nezha does want you alive. He’s not stupid, he knows you’d be useful to him. He might try to talk you around—”

“The Hesperians are never going to let me walk free.”

“If you take Nezha at face value, then it looks like he’s trying to defy the Hesperians.”

She snorted. “You really think he’d do that?”

“I don’t know. The Yins . . . the House of Yin is far more comfortable working with foreigners than any Nikara leaders ever have been. It’s the reason why they’re