The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,197
wings borne by fire, fighting on Yin Vaisra’s behalf for a Republic founded on a lie. She’d been fighting to save Nezha’s life.
Past the narrow channel, she could just barely make out the silhouette of the capital city. She fished her spyglass from her pocket and examined the city perimeter for a moment, until she glimpsed movement near each of its gates—her squadrons, moving in like chess pieces falling neatly into formation. From what she could see, at least four of the decoys had made it past the Murui. Venka’s column, to her relief, was among them—as Rin watched, they marched steadily down the slopes from the northeast. She saw no sign of the last two squadrons, but she couldn’t worry about that now. In minutes, the ground invasion of Arlong would commence.
That part of the assault was just noise. The four columns encircling Arlong were armed with the flashiest projectiles in their arsenal—double-mounted missiles, massive short-range cannons, and repurposed firecrackers stuffed with shrapnel. These were meant to capture Nezha’s attention, to fool him into thinking the overground assault was a more significant effort than it was. Rin knew, based purely on the numbers, that she couldn’t win a sustained ground battle, nor a protracted siege. Not when Nezha had been laying his defenses for weeks; not when all the Republic’s last tricks and weapons lay hidden behind those walls.
But they didn’t have to win, they only had to make a racket.
“Good luck,” Kitay said. He would stay behind atop the Red Cliffs—close enough to witness everything through his spyglass, but far enough that he’d remain well out of harm’s way. He squeezed her wrist. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stay safe,” Rin responded.
She forced her voice to remain casual. Brusque. No time to get emotional now. They already knew this might fail; they’d said their goodbyes last night.
Kitay gave her a mocking salute. “Give Nezha my regards.”
A round of cannon fire punctuated his words from across the channel. Venka’s smoke signals flared bright against the gray sky. The final invasion had begun. While Arlong erupted in explosions, Rin and her shamans descended the cliffside to finish things once and for all.
Rin had been worried that the grotto might be difficult to find. All she had to go on were fragments remembered from one of the most painful conversations she’d ever had, echoing through her mind in Nezha’s low, tortured voice. There’s a grotto about a mile out from the entrance to this channel, this underwater crystal cave.
But once she was down in the shadow of the Red Cliffs, wading through the same shallows where Nezha and his siblings had played so long ago, she realized the path to the Dragon was obvious. Only one side of the channel was lined with cave mouths. And if she wanted to find the Dragon’s lair, all she had to do was follow the jewels.
They lay embedded in the river floor, glinting and sparkling underneath the gentle waves. The treasures piled up higher the closer they drew to the caves—jade-studded goblets, gilded breastplates, sapphire necklaces, and golden circlets, littered against a dazzling array of silver ingots. Small wonder Nezha and his brother had once ventured foolhardily into the grotto. It wouldn’t have mattered how many times they’d been warned to stay away. What small child could resist this allure?
Rin could sense she was close. She could feel the power emanating from the grotto; the air felt thick with energy, laced with a constant, inaudible crackle, so very similar to the atmosphere she’d felt on Mount Tianshan.
The boundary between the mortals and the divine here was extraordinarily thin.
Rin paused for a moment, struck with the oddest sense that she’d been here before.
Right outside the grotto’s entrance, the jewels gave way to bones. They were startlingly pretty, lighting up the water with their own faintly green luminescence. This was no product of rot and erosion. Someone—something—had constructed this pathway, had lovingly peeled the flesh off its collected corpses and arranged the bones in a neat, glowing invitation.
“Great Tortoise,” Dulin muttered. “Let’s just blow this whole place out of the water.”
Rin shook her head. “We’re too far out.”
They hadn’t even seen the Dragon. They needed to draw much closer—if they lit their missiles now, they’d only alert Nezha’s sentries. “Hold your fire until we see it move.”
She strode boldly forward, trying to ignore the ridged bones beneath her boots. She opened her palm as she passed into the dark interior, but her flames only illuminated a few feet