The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,232

thick knot, and pressed it at her face. “Open your mouth.”

“What?”

“So you don’t bite off your tongue.”

She blinked. Oh.

She didn’t argue. There was no time to think about it, no time to come up with a better plan. This was it. She let Kitay wedge the cloth into her mouth as far back as it would go until it was pressed down on her tongue, holding her teeth immobile.

“Should I tell you when?” he asked.

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

“Fine.” Several seconds passed. Then he stomped down on her hand.

Her mind flashed white. Her body jerked. She arched her back, legs kicking uncontrollably at nothing. She heard herself screaming through the cloth, but it seemed to come from very far away. For a few seconds she was detached from herself; it was someone else’s scream, someone else’s hand in pieces. Then her mind reconciled with her body and she began bashing her other hand against the floor, desperate for some secondary pain to mask the intensity of the first.

“Stop that— Rin, stop!” Kitay grabbed her shoulder and held her still.

Tears leaked out the sides of her eyes. She couldn’t speak; she could barely breathe.

“Did you hear that?” The voices from the hallway sounded terribly close. “I’m going in.”

“Suit yourself, but I’m not coming with you.”

“She’s sedated—”

“Does she sound sedated? Go get the captain.”

Footsteps echoed down the hallway.

“We have to do this fast,” Kitay hissed. He’d turned a ghastly pale. He was feeling this, too; he had to be in agony, and Rin had no idea how he’d suppressed it.

She nodded and shut her eyes again, gasping while he yanked at her hands. Fresh stabs of pain lanced up her arm.

She made the mistake of looking and saw white bone piercing through her flesh. Her vision pulsed black.

“Try wriggling free,” Kitay said.

She gave her arm a tentative pull and nearly screamed in frustration. She was still stuck.

“Put that rag back in,” he said.

She obeyed. He stomped down again.

This time the hand broke clean through. She felt it, a clean crack that reverberated through the rest of her body. Kitay clenched her wrist firmly and extricated her hand with one vicious pull.

Somehow all the pieces came through still attached to her arm. He wrapped her mangled fingers in his shirt. “Tuck this into your elbow. Press down when you can, it’ll stanch the bleeding.”

She was so dizzy from the pain that she couldn’t stand. Kitay hoisted her up by the armpits to a standing position. “Come on.”

She leaned against him, unresponsive. Kitay lightly slapped the sides of her face until her eyes blinked open.

“Can you climb?” he asked. “Please, Rin, we’ve got to go.”

She groaned. “I have one arm and I’m still high.”

He dragged her toward the window. “I know. I feel it, too.”

She looked at him and realized his hand was hanging limp by his side. That his face was drawn, pale, and slick with sweat. They were tied together. Her pain was his pain. But he was fighting through it.

Then she could, too. She owed him that.

“I can climb,” she said.

“It’ll be easy,” he said. Relief shone clear on his face. “We learned this at Sinegard. Twist the rope around your foot to make a little platform. You’ll be standing on about an inch of it. Slide down a little bit at a time.” He ripped a square off of the shirt and pressed it into her good hand. “That’s for the rope burn. Wait until I’m all the way down so I can catch you.”

He patted her cheeks several times to drag her back to alertness and then hauled himself out the window.

Rin had no idea how she made it down the wall. Her limbs moved with dreamlike slowness, and the stones kept swimming before her eyes. Several times the rope threatened to come free from her leg and she spun terrifyingly in the air until Kitay yanked it taut. When she couldn’t hold on any longer, she jumped the last six feet and crashed into Kitay. Pain shot up her ankles.

“Quiet.” Kitay clamped a hand over her mouth before she could gasp. He pointed out into the darkness. “There’s a boat waiting that way, but you’ve got to get across the dais unnoticed.”

She realized then that they were standing on the execution stage. She glanced behind her. She saw two bodies. They hadn’t bothered to remove them.

“Don’t look,” Kitay whispered.

But she couldn’t not look, not when they were standing so close. Suni and Baji lay