The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,84
pleased, relieved, and serene, but Rin only felt confused. She hadn’t studied Lore so that she could still the flames. Yes, the fire had felt awful, but it had also felt powerful. She had felt powerful.
She wanted to learn to channel it, not to suppress it.
“Problem?” Jiang asked.
“I . . . I don’t . . .” She bit down on her lip before the words tumbled out of her mouth. Jiang was violently averse to any discussion of warfare; if she kept asking about military use, then he might drop her again the way he had before the Trials. He already thought she was too impulsive, too reckless and impatient; she knew how easily she might scare him off.
Never mind. If Jiang wasn’t going to teach her to call the power, then she’d figure it out for herself.
“So what’s the point of this?” she asked. “Just to feel good?”
“The point? What point? You’re enlightened. You have a better understanding of the cosmos than most theologians alive!” Jiang waved his hands around his head. “Do you have any idea what you can do with this knowledge? The Hinterlanders have been interpreting the future for years, reading the cracks in a tortoise shell to divine events to come. They can fix illnesses of the body by healing the spirit. They can speak to plants, cure diseases of the mind . . .”
Rin wondered why the Hinterlanders would achieve all of this and not militarize their abilities, but she held her tongue. “So how long will that take?”
“It makes no sense to speak of this in measurements of years,” said Jiang. “The Hinterlanders don’t allow interpretation of divinations until one has been training for at least five. Shamanic training is a process that lasts across your lifetime.”
She couldn’t accept that, though. She wanted power, and she wanted it now—especially if they were on the verge of a war with the Mugenese.
Jiang was watching her curiously.
Be careful, she reminded herself. She still had too much to learn from Jiang. She’d have to play along.
“Anything else?” he asked after a while.
She thought of the Speerly Woman’s admonitions. She thought of the Phoenix, and of fire and pain.
“No,” she said. “Nothing else.”
Part II
Chapter 10
The Emperor Ryohai had now patrolled the eastern Nikara border in the Nariin Sea for twelve nights. The Ryohai was a lightly built ship, an elegant Federation model designed for slicing quickly through choppy waters. It carried few soldiers; its deck wasn’t large enough to hold a battalion. It wasn’t doing reconnaissance. No courier birds circled the flagless masthead; no spies left the ship under the cover of the ocean mist.
The only thing the Ryohai did was flit fretfully around the shoreline, pacing back and forth over still waters like an anxious housewife. Waiting for something. Someone.
The crew spent their days in silence. The Ryohai carried only a skeleton crew: the captain, a few deckhands, and a small contingent from the Federation Armed Forces. It bore one esteemed guest: General Gin Seiryu, grand marshal of the Armed Forces and esteemed adviser to Emperor Ryohai himself. And it bore one visitor, one Nikara who had lurked in the shadows of the hold since the Ryohai had crossed into the waters of the Nariin Sea.
Cike commander Tyr was good at being invisible. In this state, he did not need to eat or sleep. Absorbed in the shadow, shrouded in darkness, he hardly needed to breathe.
He found the passing days irksome only due to boredom, but he had maintained longer vigils than this one. He had waited a week in the bedroom closet of the Dragon Warlord. He had spent an entire month ensconced under the floorboards beneath the feet of the leaders of the Republic of Hesperia.
Now he waited for the men aboard the Ryohai to reveal their purpose.
Tyr had been surprised when he received orders from Sinegard to infiltrate a Federation ship. For years the Cike had operated only within the Empire, killing off dissidents the Empress found particularly troublesome. The Empress did not send the Cike overseas—not since her disastrous attempt to assassinate the young Emperor Ryohai, which had ended with two dead operatives and another driven so mad he had to be carted off, screaming, to a plinth in the stone prison.
But Tyr’s duty was not to question but to obey. He crouched inside the shadow, unperceived by all. He waited.
It was a still, windless night. It was a night heavy with secrets.