The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,94

did anyone sleep in this city?

“Are you all right?” Jiang asked.

“What? Of course—”

“You’re sweating.”

Rin glanced down, and realized that the front of her tunic was soaked through.

What was wrong with her? She had never felt a panic like this before—this low, crescendoing distress of gradual suffocation. She felt like she’d been dropped blindfolded into a fairy realm. She did not want to be here. She wanted to run, back out past the walls and into the forests; anything to get away from this hopeless, confused alienation.

“This is how we felt last time.” Daji’s tone was uncharacteristically gentle. “They came in, rebuilt our cities, and transformed them according to their principles of order, and we almost couldn’t bear it.”

“But they have their own cities,” Rin said. “What do they want here?”

“They want to erase us. It’s their divine mandate. They want to make us better, to improve us, by turning us into a mirror of themselves. The Hesperians understand culture as a straight line.” Daji dragged her finger through the air. “One starting point, and one destination. They are at the end of the line. They loved the Mugenese because they came close. But any culture or state that diverges is necessarily inferior. We are inferior, until we speak, dress, act, and worship just like them.”

That terrified Rin.

Until now she had perceived the Hesperian threat in terms of hard power—through memories of airship fleets, smoking arquebuses, and exploding missiles. She’d seen them as an enemy on the battlefield.

She’d never considered that this alternate form of soft erasure might be far worse.

But what if the Nikara wanted this future? The New City was full of Nikara residents—they had to outnumber the Hesperians five to one—and they seemed completely fine with their new arrangement. Happy, even.

How had things changed so quickly? Once upon a time any Nikara on the continent would have run from the mere sight of the blue-eyed devils. They’d been primed for xenophobia by centuries of rumors and stereotypes, stories that Rin had half believed until she’d met the Hesperians in the flesh. They eat their food raw. They steal orphan babies to cook them into stews. Their penises are three times larger than normal, and their women’s openings are cavernous to accommodate.

But the Nikara in the New City seemed to adore their new neighbors. They nodded, smiled, and saluted Hesperian soldiers as they passed. They sold Hesperian food from carts parked on street corners—rocklike brown pastries, hard yellow rounds that gave off pungent odors, and varieties of fish so stinkingly moist Rin was surprised they hadn’t rotted. They—the upper class, at least—had begun to imitate Hesperian dress. Merchants, bureaucrats, and officers walked down the streets garbed in tight trousers, thick white socks pulled up to their knees, and strange coats that buttoned over their waists but draped in the back past their buttocks like duck tails.

They’d even started learning Hesperian. It sounded like bad Hesperian—a clipped, pidgin dialect that morphed the two languages and made them, oddly, mutually understandable. Foreign phrases peppered exchanges between merchants and customers, soldiers and civilians—Good day. How much? Which ones? Thank you.

But despite all their pretensions and efforts, they were not the Hesperians’ equals. They couldn’t be, by virtue of their race. This Rin noticed soon enough—it was clear from the ways the Nikara bowed and scraped, nodding obsequiously while the Hesperians ordered them about. This wasn’t a surprise. This was the Hesperians’ idea of a natural social order.

Sister Petra’s words rose to her mind. The Nikara are a particularly herdlike nation. You listen well, but independent thought is difficult for you. Your brains, which we know to be an indicator of your rational capacity, are by nature smaller.

“Look,” Jiang murmured. “They’ve started bringing their women.”

Rin followed his gaze and saw a tall, wheat-haired woman stepping out of the horseless carriage, her waist enveloped in massive bunches of ruffled fabric. She stretched out a gloved hand. A Nikara foot servant ran up to help her off, then stooped to pick up her bags.

Rin couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s skirts, which arced out from her waist in the unnatural shape of an overturned teacup. “Are they—”

“Wooden frame,” Jiang said, anticipating her confusion. “Don’t fret, it’s still legs underneath. They think it’s fashionable.”

“Why?”

Jiang shrugged. “Beyond me.”

Before now, Rin had never seen regular Hesperian civilians—Hesperians who were not soldiers, nor part of the Gray Company. Hesperians who purportedly had no official business in Nikan other than to keep their husbands company. Now they strolled the New