The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,143

Horse Warlord can give us that. What can you give me? Endless conversations about the cosmos?”

“You’ve no idea how ignorant you still are.” Tseveri gave him a pitying look. “I see you’ve anchored yourselves. Did it hurt?”

Rin had no idea what that meant, but she saw Daji flinch.

“Don’t be surprised,” Tseveri said. “You’re so obviously bound. I can see it shining out of you. You think it makes you strong, but it’s going to destroy you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jiang said.

“No?” Tseveri tilted her head. “Then here’s a prophecy for you. Your bond will shatter. You will destroy one another. One will die, one will rule, and one will sleep for eternity.”

“That’s impossible,” Daji scoffed. “None of us can die. Not while the others live.”

“That’s what you think,” said Tseveri.

“Enough of this,” Riga said. Rin was stricken by how much he even sounded like Nezha. “This isn’t what we came for.”

“You came to start a war you don’t need to fight. And you ignore me at your peril.” Tseveri reached for Jiang’s hand. “Ziya. Please. Don’t do this to me.”

Jiang refused to meet her eye.

Daji yawned, making a desultory attempt to cover her mouth with the back of a dainty pale hand. “We can do this the easy way. Nobody needs to get hurt. Or we could just start fighting.”

Kalagan leveled her spear at her. “Don’t presume, little girl.”

A crackling energy charged the air. Even through the distance of memory Rin could sense how the fabric of the desert had changed. The boundaries of the material world were thinning, threatening to warp and give way to the world of spirit.

Something was happening to Jiang.

His shadow writhed madly against the bright sand. The shape was not Jiang’s own, but something terrible—a myriad of beasts, so many in size and form, shifting faster and faster, with a growing desperation, as if frantic to break free.

The beasts were in Jiang, too. Rin could see them, shadows rippling under his skin, horrible patches of black straining to get out.

Tseveri cried something in her own language—a plea or an incantation, Rin didn’t know, but it sounded like despair.

Daji laughed.

“No!” Rin shouted, but Jiang didn’t hear her—couldn’t hear her, because all of this had already come to pass. All she could do was watch helplessly as Jiang forced his hand into Tseveri’s rib cage and ripped out her still-beating heart.

Kalagan screamed.

“That’s enough,” said the present Sorqan Sira, and the last things Rin saw were Daji whipping her needles toward the Ketreyids, Jiang and his beasts pinning down the Sorqan Sira, and Riga, standing impassively, watching the carnage with that wise and caring face, arms raised beatifically as if he blessed the slaughter with his presence.

“We gave the Nikara the keys to the heavens, and they stole our land and murdered my daughter.” The Sorqan Sira’s voice was flat, emotionless, as if she were merely recounting an interesting anecdote, as if her pain had already been processed so many times she could not feel it anymore.

Rin bent over on her hands and knees, gasping. She couldn’t scrub the image of Jiang from her mind. Jiang, her master, cackling with his hands covered with blood.

“Surprised?” asked the Sorqan Sira.

“But I knew him,” Rin whispered. “I know what he’s like, he’s not like that . . .”

“How would you know what the Gatekeeper is like?” The Sorqan Sira sneered. “Have you ever asked him about his past? Did you have any idea?”

The worst part was that it all made sense—the truth had dawned on Rin, awful and bitter, and the mystery of Jiang was clear to her now; she knew why he’d fled, why he’d hidden in the Chuluu Korikh.

He must have been starting to remember.

The man she had met at Sinegard had been no more than a shade of a person; a pathetic, affable shade of a personality suppressed. He had not been pretending. She was certain of that. No one could pretend that well.

He had simply not known. The Seal had stolen his memories, just like it would one day steal hers, and hidden them behind a wall in his mind.

Was it better now that he remained in his stone prison, suspended halfway between amnesia and sanity?

“You see now. You’ll understand if we’d rather put an end to you.” The Sorqan Sira nodded to Bekter.

Her unspoken command rang clear in Rin’s mind. Kill them.

“Wait!” Rin struggled to her feet. “Please—you don’t have to—”

“I don’t entertain begging, girl.”

“I’m not begging, I’m bartering,” Rin said quickly.