Hesperians woke up in the morning and discovered a missing soldier? What happened when they started to search? They wouldn’t find him for days at least, she’d made sure of that, but the sheer fact that a soldier was missing might derail Hesperian negotiations regardless.
If the fallout didn’t land on Rin, then would they punish the entire Republic?
The southern Warlords’ words rose unbidden to her mind. You shouldn’t fight for an alliance with people who think we’re barely human.
“Tell me what the southern Warlords said,” Kitay said, startling her.
She sat up. “About what?”
“The Hesperians. What’s this theory?”
“Just the usual. They don’t trust them, they think they’ll bring a second coming of the occupation, and . . . Oh.” She frowned. “They also think that the Hesperians let the Mugenese invade on purpose. They think Vaisra knew the Federation was going to launch an invasion, and that the Hesperians knew, too, but neither of them acted because they wanted the empire weakened and ripe for the taking.”
Kitay blinked. “Really.”
“I know. That’s crazy.”
“No,” he said. “That makes sense.”
“You can’t be serious. That would be awful.”
“But it tracks with everything we know, doesn’t it?” Kitay gave a short laugh that bordered on manic. “I’d been thinking it from the start, actually, but I thought, ‘Nah, no one could be that insane. Or evil.’ But think about the Republic’s ships. Think about how long it took to build that entire fleet. Vaisra’s been planning his civil war for years—that’s obvious. But he never launched an attack until now. Why?”
“Maybe he wasn’t ready,” she said.
“Or maybe he needed the country weakened if he was ever going to wage a successful war against the Vipress. Needed us shattered so he could pick up the pieces.”
“He needed someone else to attack first,” she said slowly.
He nodded. “And the Federation was the best pawn for that task. I bet he laughed when they marched on Sinegard. I bet he’d been wanting that war for years.”
Rin wanted to say no, say of course Vaisra wouldn’t let innocent people die, but she knew that wasn’t true. She knew Vaisra was more than happy to wipe entire provinces off his map as long as it meant he kept his Republic.
Gods, as long as he kept his city.
Which meant Hesperian passivity during the Second Poppy War had not been some political mistake, or a delay in communications, but entirely deliberate. Which meant that Vaisra had known the Federation would kill hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and he’d let it happen.
When she thought about it now, it should have been so easy to realize that they’d been manipulated. They had been trapped in a geopolitical chess game that had been years, perhaps decades in the making.
And she hadn’t simply been fooled. She’d been deliberately blind to the clues around her, and she’d sat back and let everything happen.
She’d been stupidly, passively asleep for such a long time. She’d spent so much effort fighting in the trenches for Vaisra’s Republic that she’d barely considered what might happen after.
If they won, what price would the Hesperians demand for their aid? Would Petra’s experiments escalate once Vaisra no longer needed Rin on the battlefield?
It seemed so foolish now to imagine that as long as Vaisra vouched for her, she was safe from those arquebuses. Months ago she’d been lost and afraid, desperate to find an anchor, and that had primed her to trust him. But she’d also seen, over and over again by now, how easily Vaisra manipulated those around him like shadow puppets.
How quickly would he trade her away?
“Oh, Kitay.” She exhaled slowly. She suddenly felt very, very afraid. “What are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
She thought through the possibilities out loud. “We have no good options. If we defect to the south, we’re dead.”
“And if you leave Arlong, then the Hesperians will hunt you down.”
“But if we stay loyal to the Republic, we’re just building a cage for ourselves.”
“And none of that even matters if we don’t survive the day after tomorrow.”
They stared at each other. Rin heard a heartbeat echoing against the silence; hers or Kitay’s, she didn’t know.
“Tiger’s tits,” she said. “We’re going to die. None of this even matters because Feylen is going to wreck us under the Red Cliffs and we’re all going to die.”
“Not necessarily.” Kitay stood up abruptly. “Come with me.”
She blinked up at him. “What?”
“You’ll see. I’ve been meaning to show you something ever since you got back.” He clasped her hands