The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,34

until they swung open from inside.

Vaisra didn’t look remotely surprised to see her.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we’ll need some privacy, please.”

The men inside vacated their seats without a word. None of them looked at her. Vaisra pulled the doors shut, locked them, and turned around. “What can I do for you?”

“You told the physician not to give me opium,” Rin said.

“That is correct.”

Her voice trembled. “Look, asshole, I need my—”

“Oh, no, Runin.” Vaisra lifted a finger and wagged it, as if chiding a small child. “I should have mentioned. A last condition of your enlistment. I do not tolerate opium addicts in my army.”

“I’m not an addict, I just . . .” A fresh wave of pain racked her head and she broke off, wincing.

“You’re no good to me high. I need you alert. I need someone capable of infiltrating the Autumn Palace and killing the Empress, not some opium-riddled sack of shit.”

“You don’t get it,” she said. “If you don’t drug me, I will incinerate everyone on this ship.”

He shrugged. “Then we’ll throw you overboard.”

She could only stare at him. This made no sense to her. How could he remain so infuriatingly calm? Why wasn’t he caving in, cowering in terror? This wasn’t how it was supposed to work—she was supposed to threaten him and he was supposed to do what she wanted, that was always how it worked—

Why hadn’t she scared him?

Desperate, she resorted to begging. “You don’t know how much this hurts. It’s in my mind—the god is always in my mind, and it hurts . . .”

“It’s not the god.” Vaisra stood up and crossed the room toward her. “It’s the anger. And it’s your fear. You’ve seen battle for the first time, and your nerves can’t shut down. You’re frightened all the time. You think everyone’s out to get you, and you want them to be out to get you because then that’ll give you an excuse to hurt them. That’s not a Speerly problem, it’s a universal experience of soldiers. And you can’t cure it with opium. There’s no running from it.”

“Then what—”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “You face it. You accept that it’s your reality now. You fight it.”

Couldn’t he understand that she’d tried? Did he think it was easy? “No,” she said. “I need—”

He cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

Rin’s tongue felt terribly heavy in her mouth. Sweat broke out over her body; she could see it beading on her hands.

He raised his voice. “Are you contradicting my orders?”

She took a shuddering breath. “I—I can’t. Fight it.”

“Ah, Runin. You don’t understand. You’re my soldier now. You follow orders. I tell you to jump, you ask how high.”

“But I can’t,” she repeated, frustrated.

Vaisra lifted his left hand, briefly examined his knuckles, and then slammed the back of his hand across her face.

She stumbled backward, more from the shock than the force. Her face registered no pain, only an intense sting, like she’d walked straight into a bolt of lightning. She touched a finger to her lip. It came away bloody.

“You hit me,” she said, dazed.

He grasped her chin tightly in his fingers and forced her to look up at him. She was too stunned to feel any rage. She wasn’t angry, she was only afraid. No one dared to touch her like this. No one had for a long time.

No one since Altan.

“I’ve broken in Speerlies before.” Vaisra traced a thumb across her cheek. “You’re not the first. Sallow skin. Sunken eyes. You’re smoking your life away. Anyone could smell it on you. Do you know why the Speerlies died young? It wasn’t their penchant for constant warfare, and it wasn’t their god. They were smoking themselves to death. Right now I wouldn’t give you six months.”

He dug his nails into her skin so hard that she gasped. “That ends now. You’re cut off. You can smoke yourself to death after you’ve done what I need you for. But only after.”

Rin stared at him in shock. The pain was starting to seep in, first a little sting and then a great throbbing bruise across her entire face. A sob rose up in her throat. “But it hurts so much . . .”

“Oh, Runin. Poor little Runin.” He smoothed her hair out of her eyes and leaned in close. “Fuck your pain. What you’re dealing with is nothing that a little discipline can’t solve. You’re capable of blocking out the Phoenix. Your mind can build up its own