of gray. He might have been ill. He was sweating profusely, his left arm trembling. When they reached another pile of charred corpses, he convulsed, sank to his knees, and could not keep walking.
This was not Altan’s first genocide.
This is Speer again, Rin thought. Altan must have been imagining the massacre of Speer in his mind, imagining the way his people were slaughtered overnight like cattle.
After a long time Chaghan extended his hand to Altan.
Altan grasped it and rose to his feet. He swallowed, closed his eyes. A mask of detachment spread across his expression once more with a curious ripple, like a facade of indifference had formed a seal over the surface of his face, locking any vulnerabilities within.
“Spread out,” Altan ordered. His voice was impossibly level. “Find any survivors.”
Surrounded by death, spreading out was the last thing any of them wanted to do.
Suni opened his mouth to protest. “But the Federation—”
“The Federation isn’t here. They’ve been marching inland for a steady week. Our people are dead. Find me survivors.”
They found evidence of a last desperate battle near the southern gate. The victors were clear. The Militia corpses had been given the same deliberate treatment as the carcasses of the civilians. Corpses had been stacked in the middle of the square, neat little piles with bodies arranged carefully on top of one another.
Rin saw the broken flag of the Militia lying on the ground, burned and smeared with blood. The flag bearer’s hand was detached at the wrist; the rest of his body lay several feet away, eyes blank and unseeing.
The flag bore the dragon crest of the Red Emperor, the symbol of the Nikara Empire. In the lower left corner was stitched the number two in Old Nikara calligraphy. It was the insignia of the Second Division.
Rin’s heart skipped a beat.
Kitay’s division.
Rin dropped to her knees and touched the flag. A barking noise sounded from behind a pile of corpses. She looked up just as a dark, flea-matted mongrel came running at her. It was the size of a small wolf. Its gut was grotesquely round, like it had been gorging for days.
It dashed past Rin toward the flag bearer’s corpse, sniffing hopefully.
Rin watched it rooting around, salivating eagerly, and something inside her snapped.
“Get away!” she shrieked, kicking out at the dog.
Any Sinegardian animal would have slunk away in fear. But this dog had lost all fear of human beings. This dog had lived amid a juicy feast of carnage for too long. Perhaps it assumed that she, too, was close to death. Perhaps it thought fresh meat would taste better than rotting flesh.
It snarled and lunged at her.
Rin was caught off guard by the dog’s tremendous weight; it knocked her to the ground. It slobbered from open jaws as it lunged for her artery, but she raised her arms in defense and it sank its teeth into her left forearm instead. She screamed out loud, but the dog did not let go; with her right arm she reached for her sword, unsheathed it, and shoved it upward.
Her sword found its way through the dog’s ribs. The dog’s jaws went slack.
She stabbed again. The dog fell off her.
She jumped to her feet and jammed her sword down, piercing the dog’s side. It was in its death throes now. She stabbed it again, this time in the neck. A spray of blood exploded outward, coating her face with its warm wetness. She was using her sword like a dagger now, bringing her arm down again and again just to feel bones and muscle give way to metal, just to hurt and break something . . .
“Rin!”
Someone grabbed her sword arm. She whirled on him, but Suni pulled her arms behind her back and held her tightly, so that she could not move until her sobbing had subsided.
“You’re lucky it didn’t get your sword arm,” said Enki. “Keep this on for a week. See me if it starts to smell.”
Rin flexed her arm. Enki had bound the dog bite tightly with a poultice that stung like she had stuck her arm in a hornet’s nest.
“It’s good for you,” he said when she grimaced. “It’ll prevent infection. We don’t need you to go frothing mad.”
“I think I’d like to go frothing mad,” said Rin. “I’d like to lose my head. I think I’d be happier.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Enki said sternly. “You have work to do.”
But was it really work, what they were doing? Or were they deluding themselves that by