The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,173

hadn’t they all been hurt? She’d been through Golyn Niis. She’d been tortured on a lab table. She’d watched Altan die.

Nezha’s particular tragedy wasn’t worse because it had happened when he was a child. It wasn’t worse because he was too scared to confront it.

She’d been through hell, and she was stronger for it. It wasn’t her fault that he was too pathetic to do the same.

She found the Cike sitting in a circle on the barracks floor. Baji and Ramsa were playing dice while Suni watched from a top bunk to make sure Ramsa didn’t cheat, as he always did.

“Oh, dear,” Baji said as she approached. “Who made you cry?”

“Nezha,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ramsa clicked his tongue. “Ah, boy trouble.”

She sat down in between them. “Shut up.”

“Want me to do something about it? Put a missile in his toilet?”

She managed a smile. “Please don’t.”

“Suit yourself,” he said.

Baji tossed the dice on the floor. “So what happened up north? Where’s Chaghan?”

“Chaghan won’t be with us for a while,” she said. She took a deep breath and willed herself to push Nezha to the back of her mind. Forget him. Focus on something else. That was easy enough—she had so much to tell the Cike.

Over the next half hour she spoke to them about the Ketreyids, about Augus, and about what had happened in the forest.

They were predictably furious.

“So Chaghan was spying on us the entire time?” Baji demanded. “That lying fuck.”

“I always hated him,” Ramsa said. “Always prancing around with his mysterious mutters. Figures he’d been up to something.”

“Can you really be surprised, though?” Suni, to Rin’s shock, seemed the least bothered. “You had to know they had some other agenda. What else would Hinterlanders be doing in the Cike?”

“Don’t call them Hinterlanders,” Rin said automatically.

Ramsa ignored her. “So what were the Hinterlanders going to do if Chaghan decided we were getting too dangerous?”

“Kill you, probably,” Baji said. “Pity they went back north, though. Would have been nice to have someone deal with Feylen. It’ll be a struggle.”

“A struggle?” Ramsa repeated. He laughed weakly. “You think last time we tried to put him down was a struggle?”

“What happened last time?” Rin asked.

“Tyr and Trengsin lured him into a small cave and stabbed so many knives through his body that even if he could have shamanized, it wouldn’t have done a lick of good,” Baji said. “It was kind of funny, really. When they brought him back out he looked like a pincushion.”

“And Tyr was all right with that?” Rin asked.

“What do you think?” Baji asked. “Of course not. But that was his job. You can’t command the Cike if you don’t have the stomach to cull.”

A cascade of footsteps sounded outside the room. Rin peered around the door to see a line of soldiers marching out, fully equipped with shields and halberds. “Where are they all going? I thought the Militia hadn’t moved south yet.”

“It’s refugee patrol,” Baji said.

She blinked. “Refugee patrol?”

“You didn’t see all them coming in?” Ramsa asked. “They were pretty hard to miss.”

“We came in through the Red Cliffs,” Rin said. “I haven’t seen anything but the palace. What do you mean, refugees?”

Ramsa exchanged an uncomfortable look with Baji. “You missed a lot while you were gone, I think.”

Rin didn’t like what that implied. She stood up. “Take me there.”

“Our patrol shift isn’t until tomorrow morning,” Ramsa said.

“I don’t care.”

“But they’re fussy about that,” Ramsa insisted. “Security is tight on the refugee border, they’re not going to let us through.”

“I’m the Speerly,” Rin said. “Do you think I give a shit?”

“Fine.” Baji hauled himself to his feet. “I’ll take you. But you’re not going to like it.”

Chapter 26

“Makes the barracks look nice, huh?” Ramsa asked.

Rin didn’t know what to say.

The refugee district was an ocean of people crammed into endless rows of tents stretching toward the valley. The crowds had been kept out of the city proper, hemmed in behind hastily constructed barriers of shipping planks and driftwood.

It looked as if a giant had drawn a line in the sand with one finger and pushed everyone to one side. Republican soldiers wielding halberds paced back and forth in front of the barrier, though Rin wasn’t sure who they were guarding—the refugees or the citizens.

“The refugees aren’t allowed past that barrier,” Baji explained. “The, uh, citizens didn’t want them crowding the streets.”

“What happens if they cross?” Rin asked.

“Nothing too terrible. Guards toss them back to the other side. It happened more often at