colonel was immediately promoted in his place. For the Cike to go about their business as usual, conducting one assassination after another, would have been a slow and inefficient way of waging a war.
So Altan used his soldiers like a guerrilla strike force instead. They stole supplies, waged hit-and-run attacks, and caused as much disruption as they could in enemy camps.
“I want the entire intersection sealed off,” Altan declared, drawing a large circle on the map. “Sandbags. Barbed wire. We need to minimize all points of entry within the next twenty-four hours. I want this warehouse back.”
“We can’t do that,” Baji said uneasily.
“Why not?” Altan snapped. A vein pulsed in his neck; dark circles ringed his eyes. Rin didn’t think he had slept in days.
“Because they’ve got a thousand men right in that circle. It’s impossible.”
Altan examined the map. “For normal soldiers, maybe. But we have gods. They can’t defeat us on an open field.”
“They can if there are a thousand of them.” Baji stood up, pushing his chair back with a screech. “The confidence is touching, Trengsin, but this is a suicide mission.”
“I’m not being—”
“We have eight soldiers. Qara and Unegen haven’t slept in days, Suni is one bad trip away from the Stone Mountain, and Ramsa still hasn’t gotten his wits back from that explosion. Maybe we could do this with Chaghan, but I suppose wherever you’ve sent him matters more—”
The brush snapped in Altan’s hand. “Are you contradicting me?”
“I’m pointing out your delusions.” Baji pushed his chair to the side and slung his rake over his back. “You’re a good commander, Trengsin, and I’ll take the risks I’m asked to take, but I’ll only obey commands that make some fucking sense. This doesn’t even come close.”
He stormed out of the office.
Even the operations that they did execute had a fatalistic, desperate air to them. For every bomb they planted, for every camp they set fire to, Rin suspected they were only annoying disturbances to the Federation. Though Qara and Unegen delivered valuable intelligence, the Fifth refused to act on it. And all the disruption Suni, Baji, and Ramsa together could create was only a drop in a bucket compared to the massive encampment that grew steadily larger as more and more ships unloaded troops on the coast.
The Cike were stretched to their limit, especially Rin. Each moment not spent on an operation was spent on patrol. And when she was off duty, she trained with Altan.
But those sessions had come to a standstill. She made rapid progress with her sword, disarming Altan almost as often as he disarmed her, but she came no closer to calling the Phoenix than she had on the marsh.
“I don’t understand,” Altan said. “You’ve done this before. You did this at Sinegard. What’s stopping you?”
Rin knew what the problem was, though she couldn’t admit it.
She was afraid.
Afraid that the power would consume her. Afraid she might rip a hole into the void, like Jiang had, and that she would disappear into the very power that she had called. Despite what Altan had told her, she could not just ignore two years of Jiang’s teachings.
And as if she could sense her fear, the Speerly Woman became more and more vivid each time Rin meditated. Rin could see details now she hadn’t seen before; cracks in her skin like she had been smashed apart and then put back together, burn scars where piece met piece.
“Don’t give in,” the Woman said. “You’ve been so brave . . . but it takes more bravery to resist the power. That boy couldn’t do it, and you are so close to giving in . . . but that’s what it wants, that’s precisely what it’s planned.”
“Gods don’t want anything,” said Rin. “They’re just forces. Powers to be tapped. How can it be wrong to use what exists in nature?”
“Not this god,” said the Woman. “The nature of this god is to destroy. The nature of this god is to be greedy, to never be satisfied with what he has consumed. Be careful . . .”
Light streamed through the cracks in the Speerly Woman, as if she were being illuminated from within. Her face twisted in pain and then she disappeared, shattering the space in the void.
As downtown warfare took a greater toll on civilian life, the city was permeated with an atmosphere of intense suspicion. Two weeks after the saltpeter explosion, six Nikara farmers were sentenced to death by Jun’s men for spying on behalf of the Federation.