Unlike Aratsha, Unegen preferred his human form when he wasn’t calling down the shape-shifting powers of the fox spirit. But Rin had always sensed something distinctly vulpine in the way he carried himself. Unegen was both crafty and easily startled; his narrow eyes were always darting from side to side, tracking all of his possible escape routes.
“So we’ve got what, two hours?” Rin asked.
“A little over. There’s a warehouse a few blocks down from here that’s fairly empty,” he said. “We can hunker down to wait in there. Then, ah, we split pretty easily if things go south.”
Rin turned toward the Cike, considering.
“We’ll take the corners of the square when Yuanfu shows up,” she decided. “Suni in the southwest. Baji northwest, and I’ll take the northeast.”
“Diversions?” Baji asked.
“No.” Normally diversions were a fantastic idea, and Rin loved assigning Suni to wreak as much havoc as possible while she or Baji darted in to slit their target’s throat, but during a public ceremony the risk to civilians was too great. “We’ll let Qara take the first shot. The rest of us clear a path back to the ship if they put up resistance.”
“Are we still trying to pretend we’re normal mercenaries?” Suni asked.
“Might as well,” Rin said. They’d done a decent job so far of concealing the extent of their abilities, or at least silencing anyone who would spread rumors. Daji didn’t know the Cike were coming for her. The longer she believed them dead, the better. “We’re dealing with a better opponent than usual, though, so do what you need to. At the end of the day, we want a head in a bag.”
She took a breath and ran the plan once more through her mind, considering.
This would work. This was going to be fine.
Strategizing with the Cike was like playing a chess game in which she had several massively overpowered, unpredictable, and bizarre pieces. Aratsha commanded the waters. Suni and Baji were berserkers, capable of leveling entire squadrons without breaking a sweat. Unegen could transform into a fox. Qara not only communed with birds, she could shoot out a peacock’s eye from a hundred meters away. And Chaghan . . . she wasn’t quite sure what Chaghan did, other than irritate her at every possible turn, but he seemed capable of making people lose their minds.
All of them combined against a single township official and his guards seemed like overkill.
But Yang Yuanfu was used to assassination attempts. You had to be, if you were one of the few uncorrupt officials left in the Empire. He shielded himself with a squadron of the most battle-hardy men in the province wherever he went.
Rin knew, based on Moag’s reports, that Yang Yuanfu had survived at least thirteen assassination attempts over the past fifteen years. His guards were well accustomed to treachery. To get past them, you’d need fighters of unnatural ability. You needed overkill.
Once inside the warehouse, the Cike had nothing to do but wait. Unegen kept watch by the slats in the wall, twitching continuously. Chaghan and Qara sat with their backs against the wall, silent. Suni and Baji stood slouched, arms crossed casually as if simply waiting for their dinners.
Rin paced the room, focusing on her breathing and trying to ignore the twinges of pain in her temples.
She counted thirty hours since she’d ingested any opium. That was longer than she’d gone for weeks. She twisted her hands together as she walked, trying to force the twitching to go away.
It didn’t help. It didn’t stop the headache, either.
Fuck.
At first she’d thought she only needed the opium for the grief. She thought she would smoke it for the relief, until the memories of Speer and Altan dulled to a faint ache, until she could function without the suffocating guilt of what she’d done.
She thought guilt must be the word for it. The irrational feeling, not the moral concept. Because she’d told herself she wasn’t sorry, that the Mugenese deserved what they got and that she was never looking back. Except the memory loomed like a gaping chasm in her mind where she’d tossed in every human feeling that threatened her.
But the abyss kept calling for her to look in. To fall inside.
And the Phoenix didn’t want to let her forget. The Phoenix wanted her to gloat about it. The Phoenix lived on rage, and rage was intricately tied to the past. So the Phoenix needed to claw apart the open wounds in her mind and set fire to them, day