The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,60

the civilians not to eat too quickly; if their stomachs began to hurt, they should stop immediately. After prolonged periods of starvation, ruptured stomachs from overeating could prove fatal.

Rin cut the line and grabbed two bowls piled high with shanyu root, balancing one nimbly in the crook of her right elbow.

The tent complex in Tikany’s northern quarter couldn’t be properly called an infirmary. It was more like an emergency triage center, constructed from the wreckage of what used to be the town hall. Cloth-covered bamboo mats had been laid out in neat lines outside the surgery room, through which harried-looking assistants ferried antiseptics and painkillers to peasants whose wounds had been festering for months.

Rin approached the nearest physician and asked for the boy from the killing fields.

“Over there in the corner,” he told her. “See if you can get him to eat. He hasn’t touched a thing.”

The boy’s torso was wrapped in bandages, and he looked just as pale and wan as when they’d found him in the graves. But he was sitting up, alert and conscious.

Rin sat down on the dirt beside him. “Hello.”

He blinked owlishly at her.

“I’m Runin,” she prompted. “Rin. I pulled you from the grave.”

His voice was a breathy rasp. “I know who you are.”

“And what’s your name?” she asked softly.

“Zhen,” he started, and then coughed. He pressed a hand against his chest and winced. “Zhen Dulin.”

“Looks like you got lucky, Dulin.”

He snorted at that.

She placed one bowl on the ground and held out the other. “Are you hungry?”

He shook his head.

“If you starve yourself to death, then you’re just letting them win.”

He shrugged.

She tried something else. “It’s got salt.”

“Bullshit,” Dulin said.

She couldn’t help but grin. Nobody south of Monkey Province had tasted salt in months. It was easy to take such a common condiment for granted during peacetime, but after months of bland vegetables, salt became as valuable as gold.

“I’m not lying.” She waved the bowl under his nose. “Try it.”

Dulin hesitated, then nodded. She passed the bowl carefully into his trembling fingers.

He brought a spoonful of steamed shanyu to his mouth and nibbled at the edge. Then his eyes widened and he stopped bothering with the spoon, gulping the rest down like Rin might snatch it away from him at any moment.

“Take it slow,” she cautioned. “There’s plenty more. Stop if your stomach starts to cramp.”

He didn’t speak again until he’d nearly finished the bowl. He paused and sucked in a deep breath, eyelids fluttering. “I’d forgotten how salt tasted.”

“Me too.”

“You know how desperate we got?” He lowered the bowl. “We scraped the white deposits off tombstones and boiled it down because it resembled the taste. Tombs.” His hands trembled. “My father’s tomb.”

“Don’t think about that,” Rin said quietly. “Just enjoy this.”

She let him eat in silence for a while. At last he placed his empty bowl on the ground and sighed, both hands clutching his stomach. Then he twisted around to face her. “Why are you here?”

“I want you to tell me what happened,” she said.

He seemed to shrink. “You mean at the—”

“Yes. Please. If you remember. As much as you can.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to hear it.”

He was silent for a long time, his gaze fixed on something far away.

“I thought I had died,” he said at last. “When they struck me it hurt so much that everything turned black, and I thought that’s what death was. I remember feeling glad that at least it was over. I didn’t have to be scared anymore. But then I—”

He broke off. His entire body was shaking.

“You can stop,” Rin said, suddenly ashamed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you.”

But Dulin shook his head and kept going. “But then I woke up in the field, and I saw the sun shining over me, and I realized I’d survived. But they were piling the bodies on top of me then, and I didn’t want them to realize I was alive. So I lay still. They kept stacking the bodies, one after the other, until I could barely breathe. And then they packed on the dirt.”

A pang of pain shot through Rin’s palm, and she realized her fingernails had dug grooves into her skin. She forced them to relax before they drew blood.

“They never saw you?” she asked.

“They weren’t looking. They’re not thorough. They don’t care. They just wanted it over with.”

The unspoken implication, of course, was that Dulin might not have been the only one. Rather, it was more likely there had been other victims, injured but