The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,98
least we agree about something.”
Rin was astonished by how quickly they settled into amiable chitchat. No—amiable wasn’t quite the right word; they sounded far from friendly. But they also didn’t sound like a prisoner and his interrogator. They sounded like second-year students at Sinegard complaining about Jima’s sentence-diagramming homework. They were old acquaintances taking their seats at a wikki board, resuming a game right where they’d left off.
But was this really so surprising? Nostalgia gnawed Rin’s chest at the mere sound of Nezha’s voice. She wanted this familiarity with him back, too. Never mind that thirty seconds ago she’d been ready to kill him. His voice, his very presence, made her heart ache—she wished desperately they could be caught in a stalemate, that for just one minute the wars surrounding them could be suspended, so that they might speak like friends again. Just once.
“Our northern allies won’t commit further troops to Arabak until they get relief,” Nezha said. “They think I’m rolling in silver, that I’m just withholding it—but damn it, Kitay, they don’t understand. The coffers are empty.”
“And where’s the money gone?” Kitay asked.
He said it lightly, but he’d clearly meant to strike a nerve. Nezha’s tone turned sharp. “Don’t you dare accuse—”
“You’re getting far too much aid from the Hesperians for your army to be so poorly outfitted. Someone’s bleeding you dry. Come on, Nezha, we’ve been over this already. Get your house in order.”
“You’re making baseless accusations—”
“I’m just telling you what’s right in front of you,” Kitay said. “You know I’m right. You wouldn’t keep coming here if you didn’t think I could be useful.”
“Say something useful, then.” Nezha sounded so nasally petty then, so much like how he’d sounded their first year at Sinegard, that Rin almost laughed.
“I’ve been telling you things so obvious a child could see them,” Kitay said. “Your generals are siphoning away funds meant for relief—probably squirreling them away to their summer palaces, so that’s the first place you’ll want to check. That’s the problem with all that Hesperian silver. Your entire base has gotten corrupted. You might start with cutting down on the bribes.”
“But you have to bribe them to keep them on your side,” Nezha said, frustrated. “Otherwise they won’t present a united front, and if we don’t have a united front then the Hesperians just run roughshod over us like our government doesn’t even exist.”
“Poor Nezha,” Kitay said. “They’ve tied your hands behind your back, haven’t they?”
“This is all so fucking stupid. I need unified army command. I need freedom to put absolute priority on the southern front, and I want to divert forces from the north to deal with Rin without making all these compromises. I just don’t know why—”
“I know why. You’re not the grand marshal, you’re the Young Marshal. That’s your nickname, right? The generals and the Hesperians both think you’re just a spoiled, stupid princeling who doesn’t know what he’s doing. They think you’re just like Jinzha. And they wouldn’t put you in charge of their dirigibles if you sank to your knees and begged.”
Rin didn’t know what surprised her most—Kitay’s frankness, that Nezha hadn’t yet punished him for it, or that anything Kitay was saying might be true.
None of this made sense. She had assumed Nezha was wallowing in power. That he had the entire dirigible fleet at his disposal. He’d seemed so dominant when he’d descended on Tikany, she’d thought he had the entire Republic at his back.
But this was her first indication that Nezha was not holding together as well as she’d thought. Here, alone in the basement with his old classmate and prisoner, perhaps the only person he could be honest with, Nezha just sounded scared.
“I’m guessing things haven’t gotten better with Tarcquet, either,” Kitay said.
“He’s a patronizing fuck,” Nezha snarled. “You know what he’s blamed the last campaign on? Our lack of fighting spirit. He said that the Nikara inherently don’t have fighting spirit.”
“A rather bold claim given our history, I think.”
Nezha didn’t laugh. “There’s nothing wrong with our troops. They’re incredibly well trained, they’re excellent on the field, but the problem is the restructuring and integrated forces—”
“The what now?”
“Another one of Tarcquet’s ideas.” Nezha spat the name like it was poison. “They want coordinated air and ground assault teams.”
“Interesting,” Kitay said. “I’d have thought they were too up their own asses for that.”
“It’s not real integration. It means they want us to lug their coal wagons for them wherever they decide to go. Means we’re just their fucking mules—”