“That they don’t fight, in other words. That they don’t defend the city against Kuon Naga’s rotting Immortals.”
“It’s not just fighting, but yes.” Kosura closes her eyes, and rubs at her scar. “I know better than anyone what the Immortals can do. But answering violence with violence is not what the Blessed One would have of us.”
“Easy to say when the rest of us are fighting for you,” I snap, and grit my teeth. “Do you really think Naga’s going to respect the sanctity of the temples when he takes the city? He’ll have the Grand Supplicator and all his acolytes ready to condemn your lot as heretics.” I take a deep breath, and soften my voice. “You’re all going to die, Kosura. We all are, unless we win this.”
“We’re all going to die, regardless,” Kosura says. “All humans do. That is the will of Heaven. What matters is what happens afterward.”
What happens afterward is that you lie in the dirt and rot. I take another deep breath, fighting down frustration. I can feel Kosura’s mind, burning with a pure certainty, and—
—it would be so easy to reach out to it. Just a touch, a twist, an adjustment. She would agree with me. She would be happy about it.
No. I swallow hard. No, no, no.
There has to be a line I won’t cross. That even monsters won’t cross. Kosura is my friend. She was tortured because of me, because I came to Grandma’s and drew Kuon Naga’s attention. If I do that to her, I might as well twist the whole city into puppets and be done.
I dream about that, most nights. Puppet strings running from my fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Kosura says. “I know this is difficult for you. I wish I could help you find peace.”
“Yeah, well. That seems unlikely.” I let out a sigh. “I don’t want to threaten you, so please don’t take this the wrong way. But if things get worse—and they will—and rumors go around that the temples still have food, sooner or later people’s respect is going to run out. When that happens, you and your followers could get hurt.”
“If that happens, it will be as the Blessed One wills.” Kosura inclines her head. “Before his return, we are taught there will be a time of trials we must endure. What is all this if not the fulfillment of that prophecy?”
“Fine.” I’ve taken about as much of this as I can stand, and I get abruptly to my feet. “Good luck.”
“There is no luck,” Kosura says. “Only the Blessed’s favor. I pray that it go with you as well, Tori.”
* * *
There’s more to do. Posts to visit, reports to listen to, decisions to make. I don’t have the faintest idea what I’m doing, of course, but what I’ve come to understand is that it hardly matters. The answers to many questions are obvious; the important thing is that someone make the decision. That’s half my role—not a figurehead, exactly, but the person who officially tells everyone to do what they know they should be doing anyway.
By the time I get back to my rooms, night is falling, and exhaustion has thickened into a headache that throbs in a ring around my skull. The three Blues who have accompanied me uncomplaining throughout the day are still by my side. I make a mental note to rotate them out, lest someone collapse in the middle of the street.
More Blues guard my quarters. They’re the only people I can really trust. I’ve taken over a small building on the same square as Red Sash headquarters, in a row of shops and houses now occupied by rebel officers. A couple of dozen Blues stay there with me, while the rest are spread throughout the city. When I close my eyes, I can feel them, a net of linked minds like a spider’s web.
The ground floor was once a pastry shop, but the shelves and tables have all been ripped out and replaced with bedrolls. A dozen Blues wait there, watching me silently as I clomp up the stairs to the apartment above. There’s not a lot here. My own bedroom, at the back, and a small common room with a table and cushions. A second bedroom, which we use as a holding cell.
A whimper reminds me that the cell is occupied. One more duty to perform before I can put my head down for the evening. Two Blues, a man and a woman, both well-muscled, watch the door. At my mental command, they slide it open. The girl, Krea, is sitting in the back corner, pressed against the wall as if she wants to worm her way through it with her shoulder blades.
She really doesn’t look much like Isoka. It’s just something about her hair, her build. I can feel the fear in her mind, the stink coming off her like rotting meat.
“What do you want from me?” she whispers.
“Nothing, really.” I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her. My head throbs.
“Then let me go.” Her voice is soft. “Please. I didn’t hurt anybody. I just want to get out of here before—”
“The problem,” I cut her off, “is that if we let deserters go free, pretty soon everyone would desert.”
“Because we don’t have a chance.” Her voice is a hiss. “What’s the point of fighting if we’re just waiting until the Legion gets here?”
I resist the urge to shrug. Anger rises for a moment in her mind, then dies, smothered by fear.
“What are you going to do to me?” she says.
“You’re going to help me,” I tell her.
“How?”
“Like this.” And I reach out to her mind.
I’ve done this often enough, now, that it’s routine. I can feel the structure of her thoughts, the overwhelming fear, with little coils of other emotions beneath it, joy and lust and hate and all the rest. My power presses down with the force of a drop hammer, grinding everything beneath into dust. I flatten her out, smooth all the delicate intricacy of her humanity into flat nothingness, and then on that clean canvas I sketch out what I need.
Obedience, first and foremost. Eagerness. Fearlessness. And the little twist that lets a mind receive my mental commands, linking it in to the rest of the Blues, another node in the spider’s web.
My artificial fanatics. After the fall of the Sixteenth Ward, the rebellion nearly collapsed. We needed people we could trust, people who would fight on no matter the odds and help inspire others to do likewise. At first I’d thought of using volunteers—but people who would volunteer for this are exactly the sort of people who are unlikely to need it, aren’t they? And then a whole company of Red Sashes plotted to open the gates to the Immortals. Giniva’s informers turned them in, and we had to figure out what to do with them.
At first I made excuses. Only prisoners, only people who’d committed crimes that would otherwise see them hanged in the square. Deserters, traitors, murderers. The longer this goes on, though, the more I only keep to those rules out of habit. It’s hard to convince myself to care anymore. No one is going to forgive me, either way. Monster.
Krea has stopped her trembling. She sits calmly, now, looking at me with the same respectful patience as the other Blues. I can feel her mind, smooth and untroubled by doubts.
“There,” I mutter, pushing myself to my feet. “Better than a short, sharp drop, right?”
She doesn’t answer, because I haven’t instructed her to.
* * *