The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,87

had seemed so light, so noninvasive under the effect of laudanum, now felt like a dark stain, like insects burrowing their way under Rin’s skin no matter how hard she tried to claw them out. Her memories mixed together; confusing, indistinguishable. Petra’s hands became Shiro’s hands. Petra’s room became Shiro’s laboratory.

Worst of all was the violation, the fucking violation, and the sheer helplessness of knowing that her body was not hers and she had to sit still and take it, this time not because of any restraints, but due to the simple fact that she’d chosen to be there.

That was the only thing that kept her from packing her belongings and immediately leaving Arlong.

She needed to do this because she deserved this. This was, in some horrible way that made complete sense, atonement. She knew she was monstrous. She couldn’t keep denying that. This was self-flagellation for what she’d become.

It should have been you, Altan had said.

She should have been the one who died.

This came close.

After she had cried so hard that the pain in her chest had faded to a dull ebb, she pulled herself to her feet and wiped the tears and mucus off her face. She stood in front of a mirror in the lavatory and waited to come out until the redness had faded from her eyes.

When the others asked her what had happened, she said nothing at all.

Chapter 14

War came in the water.

Rin awoke to shouting outside the barracks. She threw her uniform on in a panicked frenzy; blindly attempted to force her right foot into her left shoe before she gave up and ran out the door barefoot, trident in hand.

Outside, half-dressed soldiers ran around and into one another in a confused swarm of activity while commanders shouted contradicting orders. But nobody had weapons drawn, projectiles weren’t flying through the air, and Rin couldn’t hear the sound of cannon fire.

Finally she noticed that most of the troops were running toward the beachfront. She followed them.

At first she didn’t understand what she was looking at. The water was dusted over with spots of white, as if a giant had blown dandelion puffs over the surface. Then she reached the edge of the pier and saw in closer detail the silver crescents hanging just beneath the surface. Those spots of white were the bloated underbellies of fish.

Not just fish. When she knelt by the water she saw puffy, discolored corpses of frogs, salamanders, and turtles. Something had killed every living thing in the water.

It had to be poison. Nothing else could kill so many animals so quickly. And that meant the poison had to be in the water—and all the canals in Arlong were interconnected—which meant that perhaps every drinking source in Arlong was now tainted . . .

But why would anyone from Dragon Province poison the water? For a minute Rin stood there stupidly, thinking, assuming that it must have been someone from within the province itself. She didn’t want to consider the alternative, which was that the poison came from upriver, because that would mean . . .

“Rin! Fuck—Rin!”

Ramsa tugged at her arm. “You need to see this.”

She ran with him to the end of the pier, where the Cike were huddled around a dark mass on the planks. A massive fish? A bundle of clothes? No—a man, she saw that now, but the figure was hardly human.

It stretched a pale, skeletal hand toward her. “Altan . . .”

Her breath caught in her throat. “Aratsha?”

She had never before seen him in his human form. He was an emaciated man, covered from head to toe in barnacles embedded in blue-white skin. The lower half of his face was concealed by a scraggly beard so littered with sea worms and small fish that it was difficult to parse out the human bits of him.

She tried to slide her arms beneath him to help him up, but pieces of him kept coming away in her hands. A clump of shells, a stick of bone, and then something crackly and powdery that crumbled to nothing in her fingers. She tried not to push him away in disgust. “Can you speak?”

Aratsha made a strangled noise. At first she thought he was choking on his own spit, but then frothy liquid the color of curdled milk bubbled out the sides of his mouth.

“Altan,” he repeated.

“I’m not Altan.” She reached for Aratsha’s hand. Was that something she should do? It felt like something she should do. Something comforting and kind. Something