The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,92

spent much of her life feeling like she didn’t belong, but this was the first time she’d felt truly foreign.

Six months. Six months, and the Hesperians had transformed a riverside municipality into something like this.

How long would it take them to reconfigure the entire nation?

A whirring, apparently self-driving brass wagon across the street caught her eye, and she was so astonished that she didn’t notice she was standing on two thin steel tracks. She didn’t see the black horseless carriage sliding noiselessly in her direction until it was mere feet away, barreling straight toward her.

“Move!”

Jiang tackled her to the ground. The carriage zoomed past them both, chugging indifferently along its preordained route.

Heart pounding, Rin crawled to her feet.

“What is wrong with you?” Daji yanked her up by the wrist and dragged her off the main road. They were attracting bystanders; Rin saw a Hesperian sentry eyeing them cautiously, arms cradling his arquebus. “Do you want to get caught?”

“I’m sorry.” Rin followed her past a thicket of civilians into a narrow alley. She still felt terribly dizzy. She leaned against the cool, dark wall and took a breath. “It’s just—this place, I didn’t—”

To her surprise, Daji looked sympathetic. “I know. I feel it, too.”

“I don’t understand.” Rin couldn’t put her discomfort into words. She could barely breathe. “I don’t know why—”

“I do,” Daji said. “It’s realizing that the future doesn’t include you.”

“Let’s not dawdle.” Jiang’s tone was brusque, almost cold. Rin didn’t recognize it at all. “We’re wasting time. Where is Kitay?”

She shot him a puzzled glance. “How would I know?”

He looked impatient. “Surely you’ve sent a message.”

“But there’s no—” She faltered. “Oh. I see.”

She glanced around the alley. It was thin and narrow, less a passageway and more a tight strip of space between two square buildings. “Can you cover me?”

Daji nodded. “Be quick.”

They moved to guard either side of the alley. Rin sat down against a wall and pulled her knife out of her belt. She sent a probing question to the back of her mind, tentative, hopeful. Are you there?

To her surprise, a small flame flickered to life in her hand. She could have screamed in relief. She made a cage with her fingers over the blade, waiting until the tip glowed orange. She just needed to scar, not mutilate; a quick burn would be easier than drawing blood.

But Daji shook her head. “You have to press it in deep. You’ve got to bleed. Or he won’t even feel it.”

“Fine.” Rin held the tip over the fleshy back of her lower left leg, but found that she couldn’t stop her fingers from shaking.

“Would you like me to do it?” Daji asked.

“No—no, I’ll do it.” Rin clenched her teeth tight to make sure she wouldn’t bite her tongue. She took a breath. Then she pushed the tip into her skin.

Her calf screamed. Every impulse told her to draw her hand away, but she kept the metal embedded inside her flesh.

She couldn’t keep her fingers from shaking. The knife clattered to the ground.

She picked it up, embarrassed, unable to meet Daji’s eyes.

Why was the pain so terrible now? She’d inflicted worse harms on herself before. She still had faint white burn scars on her arms from the candle wax she’d once dripped on herself to stay awake. Ridged, puckered marks covering her thighs where she’d once stabbed herself to escape her own hallucinations.

But those wounds were the product of fevered, desperate outbursts. She was sober right now, clear-minded and calm, and her full presence of mind made it so much harder to deliberately inflict pain.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Get a grip, Altan said.

She thought of when a javelin had slammed her out of the sky over the Red Cliffs. Of when Daji had pinned her under a mast. Of when Kitay had smashed her hand apart, then pulled the mangled remnants through iron cuffs. Her body had been through so much worse than a shallow cut from a clean blade. This was a small pain. This was nothing.

She dug the metal under her skin. This time her hand held steady as she carved out a single character in clear, even strokes.

Where?

Minutes passed. Kitay didn’t respond.

Rin glanced at her arm every several seconds, watching for pale scars that didn’t emerge.

She tried not to panic. There were a million reasons why he hadn’t yet answered. He might be asleep. He might be drugged. He might have seen the message, but either lacked any means of responding, or couldn’t because he was under