. . .
“Stop it!”
She heard not a scream, but a whimpering beg. For a split second Unegen’s face flickered through the ash.
She was killing him. She knew she was killing him, and she couldn’t stop.
She couldn’t even move her own limbs. She stood immobile, fire roaring out of her extremities, holding her still like she’d been encased in stone.
Burn him, said the Phoenix.
“No, stop—”
This is what you want.
It wasn’t what she wanted. But it wouldn’t stop. Why would the Phoenix’s gift include any inkling of control? It was an appetite that only strengthened; the fire consumed and wanted to consume more, and Mai’rinnen Tearza had warned her about this once but she hadn’t listened and now Unegen was going to die. . . .
Something heavy clamped over her mouth. She tasted laudanum. Thick, sweet, and cloying. Panic and relief warred in her head as she choked and struggled, but Chaghan just squeezed the soaked cloth harder over her face as her chest heaved.
The ground swooped under her feet. She loosed a muffled shriek.
“Breathe,” Chaghan ordered. “Shut up. Just breathe.”
She choked against the sick and familiar smell; Enki had made this for her so many times. She fought not to struggle; pushed down her natural instincts—she had ordered them to do this, this was supposed to happen.
That didn’t make it any easier to take.
Her legs buckled beneath her. Her shoulders sagged. She swooned into Chaghan’s side.
He dragged her upright, slung her arm over his shoulder, and helped her toward the stairs. Smoke billowed in their path; the heat didn’t affect Rin, but she could see Chaghan’s hair curling, crinkling black at the edges.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
“Where’s Unegen?” she mumbled.
“He’s fine, he’ll be fine. . . .”
She wanted to insist on seeing him, but her tongue felt too heavy to form words. Her knees gave way entirely, but she didn’t feel herself fall. The sedative worked its way through her bloodstream, and the world was a light and airy place, a fairy’s domain. She heard someone yell. She felt someone lift her and place her on the bottom of the sampan.
She managed a last look over her shoulder.
On the horizon, the entire port town was lit up like a beacon—lamps illuminated on every deck, bells and smoke signals going up in the glowing air.
Every Imperial sentry could see that warning.
Rin had learned the standard Militia codes. She knew what those signals meant. They’d announced a manhunt for traitors to the throne.
“Congratulations,” Chaghan said. “You’ve brought the entire Militia down on our backs.”
“What are we going to—” Her tongue lolled heavy in her mouth. She’d lost the capacity to form words.
He put a hand on her shoulder and shoved. “Get down.”
She tumbled gracelessly into the space under the seats. She opened her eyes wide to see the wooden base of the boat inches from her nose, so close she could count the grains. The lines along the wood swirled into ink images, which she tilted into, and then the ink assumed colors and became a world of red and black and orange.
The chasm opened. That was the only time it could—when she was high out of her mind, too out of control to stay away from the one thing she refused to let herself think about.
She was flying over the longbow island, she was watching the fire mountain erupt, streams of molten lava pouring over the peak, rushing in rivulets toward the cities below.
She saw the lives crushed out, burned and flattened and transformed to smoke in an instant. And it was so easy, like blowing out a candle, like crushing a moth under her finger; she wanted it and it happened; she had willed it like a god.
As long as she remembered it from that detached, bird’s-eye view, she felt no guilt. She felt rather remotely curious, as if she had set an anthill on fire, as if she had impaled a beetle on a knife tip.
There was no guilt in killing insects, only the lovely, childish curiosity of seeing them writhe in their dying throes.
This wasn’t a memory or a vision; this was an illusion she had conjured for herself, the illusion she returned to every time she lost control and they sedated her.
She wanted to see it—she needed to dance at the edge of this memory that she did not have, skirting between the godlike cold indifference of a murderer and the crippling guilt of the deed. She played with her guilt the way a child holds his