The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,137

a bit of flame.

Everything felt awful. The mere thought of both Altan and Nezha made her cringe. She knew vaguely that she’d fucked up, that she’d probably done something that she shouldn’t have, but she couldn’t reason a way out of this dilemma. She wasn’t even sure precisely what the matter was, only that both were furious with her.

She heard then a droning noise; so faint at first she thought she was imagining it. But then it increased quickly in volume, like a fast-approaching swarm of bees. The noise reached a peak and clarified into human shouts. She squinted; the commotion wasn’t coming from the coastline but from the downtown districts behind her. She jumped down from her perch and ran to look down the other side. A flood of civilians streamed into the alleyways, a frantic stampede of bodies. She searched the crowd and saw Qara and Unegen emerging from their barracks. She scaled down the wall and wove through the flood of bodies, pushing against the crowd to reach them.

“What’s going on?” She grabbed Unegen’s arm. “Why are they running?”

“No clue,” Unegen said. “Find the others.”

A civilian—an old woman—tried to push past Rin but stumbled. Rin knelt to help her, but the woman had already picked herself up, scurrying along faster than Rin had ever seen an old person move. Men, women, and children streamed around her, some barefoot, some only half-dressed, wearing identical expressions of terror in their frenzy to flee out the city gates.

“What the hell is going on?” Baji, bleary-eyed and shirtless, pushed through the crowd toward them. “Great Tortoise. Are we evacuating now?”

Something bumped into Rin’s knee. She looked down and saw a small child—tiny, half Kesegi’s age. He wasn’t wearing any pants. He groped blindly at her shin, bawling loudly. He must have lost his parents in the confusion. She reached down and picked him up, the same way she used to hold Kesegi when he cried.

As she searched through the mob for anyone who looked like they were missing a child, she saw three great spouts of flame appear in the air, in the shape of three small dragons flying upward at the sky. It had to be Altan’s signal.

Through the noise Rin heard his hoarse yell, “Cike, to me!”

She placed the child in the arms the first civilian she saw and fought her way through the masses to where Altan stood. Jun was there, too, surrounded by about ten of his men. Nezha stood among them. He didn’t meet her eyes.

Altan looked more openly furious than she had ever seen him. “I warned you not to evacuate without giving notice.”

“This isn’t me,” said Jun. “They’re running from something.”

“From what?”

“Damned if I know,” Jun snapped.

Altan heaved a great sigh of impatience, reached into the horde of bodies, and pulled someone out at random. It was a young woman, a little older than Rin, wearing nothing but a nightgown. She screeched loudly in protest, then clamped her jaw shut when she saw their Militia uniforms.

“What’s going on?” Altan demanded. “What are you all running from?”

“A chimei,” she said, out of breath and terrified. “There’s a chimei downtown, near the town square . . .”

A chimei? The name was vaguely familiar. Rin thought back to where she had last seen it—somewhere in the library, perhaps, in one of the absurd tomes Jiang had made her read when conducting a thorough investigation on every piece of arcane knowledge known to mankind. She thought it might be a beast, some mythological creature with bizarre abilities.

“Really,” Jun said skeptically. “How do you know it’s a chimei?”

The girl looked him straight in the eyes. “Because it’s tearing the faces off corpses,” she said in a wavering voice. “I saw the bodies, I saw . . .” She broke off.

“What does it look like?” Altan asked.

The woman shivered. “I didn’t get a close look, but I think . . . it looked like a great four-legged beast. Large as a horse, arms like a monkey’s.”

“A beast,” Altan repeated. “Anything else?”

“Its fur was black, and its eyes . . .” She swallowed.

“Its eyes were what?” Jun pressed.

The woman flinched. “Like his,” she said, and pointed to Altan. “Red like blood. Bright as flame.”

Altan released the young woman back into the crowd, and she immediately disappeared into the fleeing mass.

The two commanders faced each other.

“We need to send someone in,” Altan said. “Someone has to kill that beast.”

“Yes,” Jun agreed immediately. “My people are tied up with crowd control, but I