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“Order is present in the earthly kingdom when all beings understand their place. All beings understand their place when they fulfill the roles set out for them. The fish does not attempt to fly. The polecat does not attempt to swim. Only when each being respects the heavenly order may there be peace.”
Well, fuck the heavenly order of things. If getting married to a gross old man was her preordained role on this earth, then Rin was determined to rewrite it.
But if the Keju had taught her anything, it was that pain was the price of success.
But the misery she felt now was a good misery. This misery she reveled in, because she had chosen it for herself.
“Fire: the heat in your blood in the midst of a fight, the kinetic energy that makes your heart beat faster.” Jiang tapped his chest. “Water: the flowing of force from your muscles to your target, from the earth up through your waist, into your arms. Air: the breath you draw that keeps you alive. Earth: how you stay rooted to the ground, how you derive energy from the way you position yourself against the floor. And metal, for the weapons you wield. A good martial artist will possess all five of these in balance. If you can control each of these with equal skill, you will be unstoppable.”
Youth, Rin thought, was an amplification of beauty. It was a filter; it could mask what one was lacking, enhance even the most average features. But beauty without youth was dangerous. The Empress’s beauty did not require the soft fullness of young lips, the rosy red of young cheeks, the tenderness of young skin. This beauty cut deep, like a sharpened crystal. This beauty was immortal.
But I am here to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m going to keep you sane.” Rin wondered how someone who regularly strolled through campus without clothes on could say that with a straight face.
“We’re about to be invaded by our centuries-old enemy after they breached a peace treaty that has maintained a fragile geopolitical stability for two decades. So very exciting.”
“Don’t you want to see the face of the enemy?” Kitay asked. “No, I don’t,” she said. “Because then I might think they’re human. And they’re not human. We’re talking about the people who gave opium to toddlers the last time they invaded. The people who massacred Speer.”
“What does it matter? They’re coming, and we’re staying, and at the end of the day whoever is alive is the side that wins. War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.”
Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.
“I think Tearza was wise. And I think that she was a bad ruler. Shamans should know when to resist the power of the gods. That is wisdom. But rulers should do everything in their power to save their country. That is responsibility. If you hold the fate of the country in your hands, if you have accepted your obligation to your people, then your life ceases to be your own. Once you accept the title of ruler, your choices are made for you. In those days, to rule Speer meant serving the Phoenix. Speer used to be a proud race. A free people. When Tearza killed herself, the Speerlies became little
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Because the answer could not be rational. It was not founded in military strategy. It was not because of a shortage of food rations, or because of the risk of insurgency or backlash. It was, simply, what happened when one race decided that the other was insignificant.
If you were the victim, what could you say to make your tormentor recognize you as human? How did you get your enemy to recognize you at all?
“It’s easy to be brave. Harder to know when not to fight.
“They aren’t people,” she whispered. “They’re animals. I want you to make them burn. Every last one.”
Those weren’t lives. They were numbers. They were a necessary subtraction.
She was no victim of destiny. She was the last Speerly, commander of the Cike, and a shaman who called the gods to do her bidding. And she would call the gods to do such terrible things.
