said cautiously, and found that she meant it.
Altan was waiting in his office when she returned to base. He opened the door even before she knocked.
“It’s gone?”
“It’s gone,” Rin confirmed. She swallowed; her heart was still racing. “Sir.”
He nodded curtly. “Good.”
They regarded each other in silence for a moment. He was hidden in the shadow of the door. Rin couldn’t see the expression on his face. She was glad of that. She couldn’t face him right now. She couldn’t look at him without seeing his face burning, breaking under her hands, dissolving into a pulpy mess of flesh and gore and sinew.
All thoughts of Nezha had been pushed out of her mind. How could that possibly matter right now?
She had just killed Altan.
What was that supposed to mean? What did it say that the chimei had thought she wouldn’t be able to kill Altan, and that she had killed him anyway?
If she could do this, what couldn’t she do?
Who couldn’t she kill?
Maybe that was the kind of anger it took to call the Phoenix easily and regularly the way Altan did. Not just rage, not just fear, but a deep, burning resentment, fanned by a particularly cruel kind of abuse.
Maybe she’d learned something after all.
“Anything else?” Altan asked.
He took a step toward her. She flinched. He must have noticed it, and still he moved closer. “Something you want to tell me?”
“No, sir,” she whispered. “There’s nothing.”
Chapter 18
“The riverbanks are clear,” Rin said. “Small signs of activity on the northwestern corner, but nothing we haven’t seen before. Probably just transporting more supplies to the far end of camp. I doubt they’ll try today.”
“Good,” said Altan. He marked a point on his map, then set the brush down. He rubbed at his temples and paused like he’d forgotten what he was going to say.
Rin fidgeted with her sleeve.
They hadn’t trained together in weeks. It was just as well. There was no time for training now. Months into the siege, the Nikara position in Khurdalain was dire. Even with the added reinforcements of the Seventh Division, the port city was perilously close to falling under Federation occupation. Three days before, the Fifth Division had lost a major town in the suburbs of Khurdalain that had served as a transportation center, exposing much of the eastern part of the city to the Federation.
Beyond that, they’d also lost a good deal of their imported supplies, which forced the army onto even poorer rations than they’d been subsisting on. They were surviving on rice gruel and yams now, two things that Baji declared he would never touch again after this war was over. As it was, they were more likely to chew down handfuls of raw rice than receive fully cooked meals from the mess hall.
Jun’s frontline units were inching backward, and suffering heavy casualties while doing so. The Federation took stronghold after stronghold on the riverbank. The water of the creek had been red for days, forcing Jun to send out men to bring back barrels of water not contaminated by putrefied corpses.
Apart from downtown Khurdalain, the Nikara still occupied three crucial buildings on the wharf—two warehouses and a former Hesperian trading office—but their increasingly limited manpower was spread too thin to hold the buildings indefinitely.
At least they had shattered fantasies of an early Federation victory. They knew from intercepted missives that Mugen had expected to take Khurdalain within a week. But the siege had now stretched on for months. Rin realized in the abstract that the longer they fended Mugen off at Khurdalain, the more time Golyn Niis had to assemble defenses. They had already bought more time than they could have hoped for.
But that didn’t make Khurdalain feel like any less of an utter defeat.
“One more thing,” she said.
Altan nodded jerkily for her to continue.
She spoke quickly. “The Fifth wanted a meeting about the beach offensive. They want to move it up before they lose any more troops at the warehouse. The day after tomorrow at the latest.”
Altan raised an eyebrow. “Why is the Fifth conveying a request through you?”
The request had actually been conveyed through Nezha, speaking on behalf of his father, the Dragon Warlord, whom Jun had approached because he didn’t want to give Altan legitimacy by going to his headquarters. Rin found the interdivisional politics incredibly annoying, but could do nothing about it.
“Because at least one of them likes me. Sir.”
Altan blinked. Rin immediately regretted speaking.
Before he could answer, a scream shattered the morning air.
Altan reached the top of the