“She often is, yes. But you’re in no danger. Father is talking them down.”
“And if he can’t?”
“He will. They’re not idiots.” Nezha grabbed her hand. “Will you stop that?”
Rin had begun pacing back and forth in the small chamber like a caged animal, teeth chattering, rubbing her hands agitatedly up and down her arms. But she couldn’t stand still; her mind was racing in panic, if she stopped moving she would start to shake uncontrollably.
“Why would they think I was a threat?” she demanded.
“It’s, ah, a little complicated.” Nezha paused. “I guess the simplest way to put it is that they want to study you.”
“Study?”
“They know what you did to the longbow island. They know what you can do, and as the most powerful country on earth of course they’re going to investigate it. Their proposed treaty terms, I think, were that they’d get to examine you in exchange for military aid. Mother put it in their heads that you weren’t going to come quietly.”
“So what, Vaisra’s selling me for their aid?”
“It’s not like that. My mother . . .” Nezha continued talking, but Rin wasn’t listening. She scrutinized him, considering.
She had to get out of here. She had to rally the Cike and get them out of Arlong. Nezha was taller, heavier, and stronger than she was, but she could still take him—she’d go after his eyes and scars, gouge her fingernails into his skin and knee his balls repeatedly until he dropped his guard.
But she might still be trapped. The doors could be locked from the outside. And if she broke the door down, there could be—no, there certainly were guards outside. What about the window? She could tell from a glance they were on the second, maybe third story, but maybe she could scale down somehow, if she could manage to knock Nezha unconscious. She just needed a weapon—the chair legs might do, or a shard of porcelain.
She lunged for the flower vase.
“Don’t.” Nezha’s hand shot out and gripped her wrist. She struggled to break free. He twisted her arm painfully behind her back, forced her to her knees, and pressed a knee against the small of her back. “Come on, Rin. Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t do this,” she gasped. “Nezha, please, I can’t stay here—”
“You’re not allowed to leave the room.”
“So now I’m a prisoner?”
“Rin, please—”
“Let me go!”
She tried to break free. His grip tightened. “You’re not in any danger.”
“So let me go!”
“You’ll derail negotiations that have been years in the making—”
“Negotiations?” she screeched. “You think I give a fuck about negotiations? They want to dissect me!”
“And Father won’t let that happen! You think he’s about to give you up? You think I’d let that happen? I’d die before I let anyone hurt you, Rin, calm down—”
That did nothing to calm her down. Every second she was still felt like a vise tightening around her neck.
“My family has been planning this war for over a decade,” Nezha said. “My mother has been pursuing this diplomatic mission for years. She was educated in Hesperia; she has strong ties to the west. As soon as the third war was over, Father sent her overseas to solidify Hesperian military support.”
Rin barked out a laugh. “Well, then she cut a shitty deal.”
“We won’t take it. The Hesperians are greedy and malleable. They want resources only the Empire can offer. Father can talk them down. But we must not anger them. We need their weapons.” Nezha let go of her arms when it was clear she’d stopped struggling. “You’ve been in the councils. We won’t win this war without them.”
Rin twisted around to face him. “You want whatever those barrel things are.”
“They’re called arquebuses. They’re like hand cannons, except they’re lighter than crossbows, they can penetrate wooden panels, and they shoot for longer distance.”
“Oh, I’m sure Vaisra just wants crates and crates of them.”
He gave her a frank look. “We need anything we can get our hands on.”
“But suppose you win this war, and the Hesperians don’t want to leave,” she said. “Suppose it’s the First Poppy War all over again.”
“They have no interest in staying,” he said dismissively. “They’re done with that now. They’ve found their colonies too difficult to defend, and the war’s weakened them too much to commit the kind of ground resources they could before. All they want is trade rights and permission to dump missionaries wherever they want. At the end of this war we’ll make them leave our shores quickly enough.”