The Poppy War

It was almost exactly like a battle plan Rin had suggested in Strategy class in her first year. She remembered Venka’s objections. You can’t just break a dam like that. Dams take years to rebuild. The entire river delta will flood, not just that valley. You’re talking about famine. Dysentery.

Rin drew her knees to her chest. “I suppose there’s no point asking if you evacuated the countryside first.”

Qara laughed without smiling. “Did you?”

Qara’s words hit her like a blow. There was no reasoning through what she had done. It had happened. It was a decision that had been ripped out of her. And she had . . . and she had . . .

She began to quiver. “What have I done, Qara?”

Until now the sheer scale of the atrocity had not computed for her, not really. The number of lives lost, the enormity of what she had invoked—it was an abstract concept, an unreal impossibility.

Was it worth it? Was it enough to atone for Golyn Niis? For Speer?

How could she compare the lives lost? One genocide against another—how did they balance on the scale of justice? And who was she, to imagine that she could make that comparison?

She seized Qara’s wrist. “What have I done?”

“The same thing that we did,” said Qara. “We won a war.”

“No, I killed . . .” Rin choked. She couldn’t finish saying it.

But Qara suddenly looked angry. “What do you want from me? Do you want forgiveness? I can’t give you that.”

“I just . . .”

“Would you like to compare death tolls?” she asked sharply. “Would you like to argue about whose guilt is greater? You created an eruption, and we caused a flood. Entire villages, drowned in an instant. Flattened. You destroyed the enemy. We killed the Nikara.”

Rin could only stare at her.

Qara wrenched her arm out of Rin’s grip. “Get that look off your face. We made our decisions, and we survived with our country intact. Worth it is worth it.”

“But we murdered—”

“We won a war!” Qara shouted. “We avenged him, Rin. He’s gone, but avenged.”

When Rin didn’t respond, Qara seized her by both shoulders. Her fingers dug painfully into her flesh.

“This is what you have to tell yourself,” Qara said fiercely. “You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the lie we’ll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward. You made your choice. There’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s over.”

That was what Rin had told herself on the island. It was what she had told herself when talking to Kitay.

And later, in the dead of night, when she couldn’t sleep for the nightmares and had to reach for her pipe, she would do as Qara said and keep telling herself what was done was done. But Qara was wrong about one thing:

It was not over. It couldn’t be over—because Federation troops were still on the mainland, scattered throughout the south; because even Chaghan and Qara hadn’t managed to drown them all. And now they had no leader to obey and no home to return to, which made them desperate, unpredictable . . . and dangerous.

And somewhere on the mainland sat an Empress on a makeshift throne, taking refuge in a new wartime capital because Sinegard had been destroyed by a conflict she’d invented. Perhaps by now she had heard the longbow island was gone. Was she distressed to lose an ally? Relieved to be freed from an enemy? Perhaps she had already taken credit for a victory she hadn’t planned; perhaps she was using it to cement her hold on power.

Mugen was gone, but the Cike’s enemies had multiplied. And they were rogue agents now, no longer loyal to the crown that had sold them.

Nothing was over.

 

The Cike had never before acknowledged the passing of their commander. By nature of their occupation, a change in leadership was an unavoidably messy affair. Past Cike commanders had either gone frothing mad and had to be dragged into the Chuluu Korikh against their will, or been killed on assignment and never come back.

Few had died with such grace as Altan Trengsin.

They said their goodbyes at sunrise. The entire contingent gathered on the front deck, solemn in their black robes. The ritual was no Nikara ceremony. It was a Speerly ceremony.

Qara spoke for all of them. She conducted the ceremony, because Chaghan, the Seer, refused to. Because Chaghan could not.

“The Speerlies used to burn the dead,” she said. “They believed that their bodies were only temporary. From ash we come, and to ash we return. To the Speerlies, death was not an end but only a great reunion. Altan has left us to go home. Altan has returned to Speer.”