“Then let Qara do it.”
“Qara doesn’t have a clear shot,” Rin hissed. Qara’s station in the ruined bell towers was too high up. She couldn’t get an arrow through—not past the carriage windows, not past this crowd. Inside the palanquin Daji was shielded on all sides; shots from the front would be blocked by the guards standing right before her.
And Rin was more concerned that Qara wouldn’t shoot. She’d certainly seen the Empress by now, but she might be afraid to fire into a crowd of civilians, or to give away the Cike’s location before any of them had a clear shot. Qara might have decided to be prudent.
Rin didn’t care for prudence. The universe had delivered her this chance. She could end this all in minutes.
The Phoenix strained at her consciousness, eager and impatient. Come now, child . . . Let me . . .
She dug her fingernails into her palms. Not yet.
Too much distance separated her from the Empress. If she lit up now, everyone in the square was dead.
She wished desperately that she had better control over the fire. Or any control at all. But the Phoenix was antithetical to control. The Phoenix wanted a roaring, chaotic blaze, consuming everything around her as far as the eye could see.
And when she called the god she couldn’t tell her own desire apart from the Phoenix’s; its desire, and her desire, was a death drive that demanded more to feed its fire.
She tried to think of something else, anything other than rage and revenge. But when she looked at the Empress, all she saw were flames.
Daji looked up. Her eyes locked on to Rin’s. She lifted a hand and waved.
Rin froze. She couldn’t look away. Daji’s eyes became windows became memories became smoke, fire, corpses, and bones, and Rin felt herself falling, falling into a black ocean where all she could see was Altan as a human beacon igniting himself on a pier.
Daji’s lips curved into a cruel smile.
Then the firecrackers set off behind Rin without warning—pop-pop-pop—and Rin’s heart almost burst out of her chest.
Suddenly she was shrieking, hands pressed to her ears while her entire body shook.
“It’s fireworks!” Unegen hissed. He dragged her wrists away from her head. “Just fireworks.”
But that didn’t mean anything—she knew they were fireworks, but that was a rational thought, and rational thoughts didn’t matter when she shut her eyes and saw with every blast of sound explosions bursting behind her eyelids, flailing limbs, screaming children—
She saw a man dangling from the floorboards of a building that had been rent apart, trying to hold on with slippery fingers to slanting wooden planks to not fall into the flaming spears of timber below. She saw men and women plastered to the walls, dusted over with faint white powder so she might have thought they were statues if she couldn’t see the dark shadow of blood in an outline all around them—
Too many people. She was trapped by too many people. She sank to her knees, face buried in her hands. The last time she’d been inside a crowd of people like this they’d been stampeding away from the horror of the inner city of Khurdalain—her eyes shot up and darted around, searching for escape routes, and found none, just unending walls of bodies packed together.
Too much. Too many sights, the information—her mind collapsed in on itself; bursts and flickers of fire emitted from her shoulders and exploded in the air above her, which just made her tremble harder.
And there were still so many people—they were crammed together, a teeming mass of outstretched arms, a nameless and faceless entity that wanted to tear her apart—
Thousands, hundreds of thousands—and you wiped them out of existence, you burned them in their beds—
“Rin, stop!” Unegen shouted.
It didn’t matter, though. The crowd had formed a wide berth around her. Mothers dragged their children back. Veterans pointed and exclaimed.
She looked down. Smoke furled out from every part of her.
Daji’s litter had disappeared. She’d been spirited to safety, no doubt; Rin’s presence had been a glaring warning beacon. A line of Imperial guards pushed through the crowded street toward them, shields raised, spears pointed directly at Rin.
“Oh, fuck,” Unegen said.
Rin backed away unsteadily, palms held out before her as if they belonged to a stranger. Someone else’s fingers sparking with fire. Someone else’s will dragging the Phoenix into this world.
Burn them.
Fire pulsed inside her. She could feel the veins straining behind her eyes. The pressure shot little stabs of pain behind her head, made her vision burst and pop.
Kill them.
The guard captain shouted an order. The Militia stormed her. Then her defensive instincts kicked in, and she lost all self-control. She heard a deafening silence in her mind, then a high, keening noise, the victorious cackle of a god that knew it had won.
When she finally looked at Unegen she didn’t see a man, she saw a charred corpse, a white skeleton glistening over flesh sloughing away; she saw him decompose to ash within seconds and she was struck by how clean that ash was; so infinitely preferable to the complicated mess of bones and flesh that made him up now . . .
“Stop it!”
She heard not a scream, but a whimpering beg. For a split second Unegen’s face flickered through the ash.
She was killing him. She knew she was killing him, and she couldn’t stop.
She couldn’t even move her own limbs. She stood immobile, fire roaring out of her extremities, holding her still like she’d been encased in stone.
Burn him, said the Phoenix.
“No, stop—”
This is what you want.
It wasn’t what she wanted. But it wouldn’t stop. Why would the Phoenix’s gift include any inkling of control? It was an appetite that only strengthened; the fire consumed and wanted to consume more, and Mai’rinnen Tearza had warned her about this once but she hadn’t listened and now Unegen was going to die. . . .
Something heavy clamped over her mouth. She tasted laudanum. Thick, sweet, and cloying. Panic and relief warred in her head as she choked and struggled, but Chaghan just squeezed the soaked cloth harder over her face as her chest heaved.
The ground swooped under her feet. She loosed a muffled shriek.
“Breathe,” Chaghan ordered. “Shut up. Just breathe.”
She choked against the sick and familiar smell; Enki had made this for her so many times. She fought not to struggle; pushed down her natural instincts—she had ordered them to do this, this was supposed to happen.
That didn’t make it any easier to take.
Her legs buckled beneath her. Her shoulders sagged. She swooned into Chaghan’s side.
He dragged her upright, slung her arm over his shoulder, and helped her toward the stairs. Smoke billowed in their path; the heat didn’t affect Rin, but she could see Chaghan’s hair curling, crinkling black at the edges.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
“Where’s Unegen?” she mumbled.
“He’s fine, he’ll be fine. . . .”
She wanted to insist on seeing him, but her tongue felt too heavy to form words. Her knees gave way entirely, but she didn’t feel herself fall. The sedative worked its way through her bloodstream, and the world was a light and airy place, a fairy’s domain. She heard someone yell. She felt someone lift her and place her on the bottom of the sampan.