“No one is trading you,” he said. “I am asking you for a favor. Please, will you do this for me? You’re in no danger. You’re no monster, and they’ll discover that soon enough.”
And then she understood. The Hesperians wouldn’t find anything. They couldn’t, because Rin couldn’t call the fire anymore. They could run all the experiments they liked, but they wouldn’t find anything. Daji had ensured that there was nothing left to find.
“Runin, please,” Vaisra murmured. “We don’t have a choice.”
He was right about that. The Hesperians had made it clear that they would study her by force if necessary. She could try to fight, but she wouldn’t get very far.
Part of her wanted desperately to say no. To say fuck it, to take her chances and try her best to escape and run. Of course, they’d hunt her down, but she had the smallest chance of making it out alive.
But hers wasn’t the only life at stake.
The fate of the Empire hung in the balance. If she truly wanted the Empress dead, then Hesperian airships and arquebuses were the best way to get it done. The only way she could generate their goodwill was if she went willingly into their arms.
When you hear screaming, Vaisra had told her, run toward it.
She’d failed at Lusan. She couldn’t call the fire anymore. This might be the only way to atone for the colossal wrongs she’d committed. Her only chance to put things right.
Altan had died for liberation. She knew what he would say to her now.
Stop being so fucking selfish.
Rin steeled herself, took a breath, and nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” Relief washed over Vaisra’s face. He turned to the table. “She agrees.”
“One hour,” Rin said in her best Hesperian. “Once a week. No more. I’m free to go if I feel uncomfortable, and you don’t touch me without my express permission.”
General Tarcquet removed his hand from his arquebus. “Fair enough.”
The Hesperians looked far too pleased. Rin’s stomach twisted.
Oh, gods. What had she agreed to?
“Excellent.” The gray-eyed woman rose from her chair. “Come with me. We’ll begin now.”
The Hesperians had already occupied the entire block of buildings just west of the palace, furnished residences that Rin suspected Vaisra must have prepared long ago. Blue flags bearing an insignia that looked like the gears of a clock hung from the windows. The gray-eyed woman motioned for Rin to follow her into a small, windowless square room on the first floor of the center building.
“What do you call yourself?” asked the woman. “Fang Runin, they said?”
“Just Rin,” Rin muttered, glancing around the room. It was bare except for two long, narrow stone tables that had recently been dragged there, judging from the skid marks on the stone floor. One table was empty. The other was covered with an array of instruments, some made of steel and some of wood, few of which Rin recognized or could guess the function of.
The Hesperians had been preparing this room since they got here.
A Hesperian soldier stood in the corner, arquebus slung over his shoulder. His eyes tracked Rin every time she moved. She made a face at him. He didn’t react.
“You may call me Sister Petra,” said the woman. “Why don’t you come over here?”
She spoke truly excellent Nikara. Rin would have been impressed, but something felt off. Petra’s sentences were perfectly smooth and fluent, perhaps more grammatically perfect than those of most native speakers, but her words came out sounding all wrong. The tones were just the slightest bit off, and she inflected everything with the same flat clip that made her sound utterly inhuman.
Petra picked a cup off the edge of the table and offered it to her. “Laudanum?”
Rin recoiled, surprised. “For what?”
“It might calm you down. I’ve been told you react badly to lab environments.” Petra pursed her lips. “I know opiates dampen the phenomena you manifest, but for a first observation that won’t matter. Today I’m interested only in baseline measurements.”
Rin eyed the cup, considering. The last thing she wanted was to be off her guard for a full hour with the Hesperians. But she knew she had no choice but to comply with whatever Petra asked of her. She could reasonably expect that they wouldn’t kill her. She had no control over the rest. The only thing she could control was her own discomfort.
She took the cup and emptied it.
“Excellent.” Petra gestured to the bed. “Up there, please.