at a time sat by the fire, wolfing down their food while the others stood guard by the periphery.
“Eat your fill.” The Sorqan Sira ladled out two steaming bowls of stew and handed them to Rin and Kitay. “You have a hard ride before you. We’ll pack you a bag of dried meat and some yak’s milk, but eat as much as you can now.”
Rin took the proffered bowl. The stew smelled terribly good. She huddled on the ground and pressed next to Kitay for warmth, bony elbows touching bony hips. Little details about him seemed to stand out in stark relief. She had never noticed before just how long and thin his fingers were, or how he always smelled faintly of ink and dust, or how his wiry hair curled just so at the tips.
She’d known him for more than four years by now, but every time she looked at him, she discovered something new.
“So that’s it?” Kitay asked the Sorqan Sira. “You’re letting us go? No strings attached?”
“The terms are met,” she replied. “We have no reason to harm you now.”
“So what am I to you?” Rin asked. “A pet on a long leash?”
“You are my gamble. A trained wolf set loose.”
“To kill an enemy that you can’t face,” Rin said.
The Sorqan Sira smiled, displaying teeth. “Be glad that we still have some use for you.”
Rin didn’t like her phrasing. “What happens if I succeed, and you no longer have use for me?”
“Then we’ll let you keep your lives as a token of our gratitude.”
“And what happens if you decide I’m a threat again?”
“Then we’ll find you again.” The Sorqan Sira nodded to Kitay. “And this time, his life will be on the line.”
Rin had no doubt the Sorqan Sira would put an arrow through Kitay’s heart without hesitation.
“You still don’t trust me,” she said. “You’re playing a long game with us, and the anchor bond was your insurance.”
The Sorqan Sira sighed. “I am afraid, child. And I have the right to be. The last time we taught Nikara shamans how to anchor themselves, they turned on us.”
“But I’m nothing like them.”
“You are far too much like them. You have the same eyes. Angry. Desperate. You’ve seen too much. You hate too much. Those three were younger than you when they came to us, more timid and afraid, and still they slaughtered thousands of innocents. You are older than they were, and you’ve done far worse.”
“That’s not the same,” Rin said. “The Federation—”
“Deserved it?” asked the Sorqan Sira. “Every single one? Even the women? The children?”
Rin flushed. “But I’m not—I didn’t do it because I liked it. I’m not like them.”
Not like that vision of a younger Jiang, who laughed when he killed, who seemed to delight in being drenched in blood. Not like Daji.
“That’s what they thought about themselves, too,” said the Sorqan Sira. “But the gods corrupted them, just as they will corrupt you. The gods manifest your worst and cruelest instincts. You think you are in control, but your mind erodes by the second. To call the gods is to gamble with madness.”
“It’s better than doing nothing.” Rin knew that she was already walking a fine line, that she ought to keep her mouth shut, but the Ketreyids’ constant high-minded pacifistic lecturing infuriated her. “I’d rather go mad than hide behind the Baghra Desert and pretend that atrocities aren’t happening when I could have done something about them.”
The Sorqan Sira chuckled. “You think that we did nothing? Is that what they taught you?”
“I know that millions died during the first two Poppy Wars. And I know that your people never crossed down south to stop it.”
“How many people do you think Vaisra’s war has killed?” the Sorqan Sira asked.
“Fewer than would have died otherwise,” Rin said.
The Sorqan Sira didn’t answer. She just let the silence stretch on and on until Rin’s answer began to seem ridiculous.
Rin picked at her food, no longer hungry.
“What will you do with the foreigners?” Kitay asked.
Rin had forgotten about the Hesperians until Kitay asked. She peered around the camp but couldn’t spot them. Then she saw a larger yurt a little off to the edge of the clearing, guarded heavily by Bekter and his riders.
“Perhaps we will kill them.” The Sorqan Sira shrugged. “They are holy men, and nothing good ever comes of the Hesperian religion.”
“Why do you say that?” Kitay asked.
“They believe in a singular and all-powerful deity, which means they cannot accept the truth of other gods. And