The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,233

bent and broken in browning piles of their own blood. The last two shamans of the Cike, victims of her stupidity.

She glanced around the courtyard. She couldn’t see the night patrol, but surely they would be circling back around the palace any moment. “Won’t they see us?”

“We have a distraction,” Kitay said.

Before she could ask, he stuck his fingers into his mouth and whistled.

A figure appeared at the other end of the courtyard on cue. He stepped into the moonlight, and his profile came into sharp relief. Ramsa.

Rin started toward him, but Kitay yanked her back by the arm. Ramsa met her eyes, shook his head, and pointed to a line of guards emerging from the far corner.

Rin froze. They were three against twenty guards, half of whom were Hesperians armed with arquebuses, and she couldn’t call the fire.

Ramsa calmly pulled two bombs out of his pocket.

“What’s he doing?” Rin strained against Kitay’s grip. “He’s going to get himself killed.”

Kitay didn’t budge. “I know.”

“Let me go, I have to help him—”

“You can’t.”

A shout rang through the night. One of the guards had seen Ramsa. The patrol group broke into a run, swords drawn.

Ramsa knelt on the ground. His fingers worked desperately at the fuse. Sparks flew all around him, but the bombs didn’t light.

Rin tugged at Kitay’s hands. “Kitay, please—”

He dragged her farther back into the shadow. “He’s not the one we’re trying to save.”

She saw a flash of fire powder. The Hesperian guards had fired.

Ramsa stood up. Somehow the first round of shots had missed him. He’d managed to get the fuse to light. He laughed in delight, holding his bombs over his head.

The second round of fire tore him apart.

Time dilated terribly. Rin saw everything happen in slow, deliberate, and intricate detail. One bullet smashed through Ramsa’s jaw and came out the other side in a spray of red. One burrowed through his neck. One embedded itself in his chest. Ramsa stumbled back. The bombs fell out of his hands and hit the ground.

Rin thought she could see the barest hint of a flame at the point of ignition. Then a ball of fire expanded out like a blooming flower, and then the blast radius consumed the courtyard.

“Ramsa . . .” She sagged against Kitay’s shoulder, arms stretched toward the blast site. Her mouth worked and she pushed air through her throat, but she didn’t hear her own voice until a long moment after she spoke. “Ramsa, no—”

Kitay jerked her upright. “He’s bought us an escape window. Let’s go.”

The sampan that awaited them behind the canal bend was hidden so well in the shadows that Rin thought for a few terrifying seconds that it wasn’t there at all. Then the boatman steered the craft out from under the willow leaves, stopped before them, and extended his hand. He wore a Hesperian military uniform, but his face was hidden under a Nikara archer’s helmet.

“Sorry we couldn’t get to you earlier.” The boatman was a her. Venka lifted up her helmet for a brief moment and winked. “Get in.”

Rin, too exhausted to feel bewildered, stumbled hastily into the sampan. Kitay jumped in after her and tossed the side rope overboard.

“Where’d you get that uniform?” he asked. “Nice touch.”

“Went corpse-hunting.” Venka kicked the boat away from shore and steered them swiftly down the canal.

Rin collapsed onto a seat, but Venka nudged her with her foot. “Down on the floor. Cover yourself with that tarp.”

She crouched down in the space between seats. Kitay helped drag the tarp over her head.

“How did you know to find us?” Rin asked.

“Father tipped me off,” Venka said. “I knew something weird was happening on the tower, I just wasn’t able to place what. The moment I caught the gist of what was going on I ran and found Kitay before Vaisra’s men could, but we couldn’t figure out where they were keeping you until Kitay tried that thing with his skin. Neat trick, by the way.”

“You realize you’ve just declared treason on your country,” Rin said.

“Seems like the least of our concerns,” Venka said.

“You can still go back,” Kitay said. “I’m serious, Venka. Your whole family is here, you’ve got no business running away with us. I can take the sampan from here, you can hop off—”

“No,” she said curtly.

“Think hard about this,” he insisted. “You’ve still got plausible deniability. You can leave now; no one knows you’re on this boat. But you come with us and you can never go back.”

“Pity,” Venka said dismissively. She