The Poppy War

ds to aid her in battle, they were her tools from beginning to end.

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.

ederation supply route to the south.

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 he

She mused out loud to the darkness as she sucked in that sickly sweet drug.

In, out. In, out.

I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible.

Was she now a goddess or a monster?

Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

Rin was curled up on her bed when the twins finally boarded the ship. She did

Kitay let go of her arm, and the expression on his face stunned her.

He looked at her as if looking at a stranger. He looked scared of her.

“I don’t know

every single one of them, it would have torn her apart. The lives were so many that she ceased to acknowledge them for what they were.

Those weren’t lives.

She thought of the pathetic little noise a candle wick made when she licked her fingers and pinched it. She thought of incense sticks fizzling out when they had burned to the end. She thought of the flies that she had crushed under her finger.

Those weren’t lives.

The death of one soldier was

avatar. Rin could give it one.

Don’t, cried the ghost of Mai’rinnen Tearza.

“Do it,” Rin whispered.

“Your will is mine,” said the Phoenix.

For one moment, gl

keness of him in the guise of the chimei.

But Altan had been fighting then. Then, Altan had been a threat. He was not a threat now, only the tragic, glaring proof that her heroes inevitably let her down.

Altan Trengsin was not invincible after all.

He had been so good at following orders. They told him to jump and he flew. They told him to fight and he destroyed.

But here at the end, without a purpose and without a ruler, Altan Trengsin was broken.

Rin’s finger

The Federation had massacred Golyn Niis for the simple reason that they did not think of the Nikara as human. And if your opponent was not human, if your opponent was a cockroach, what did it matter how many of them you killed? What was the difference between crushing an ant and setting an anthill on fire? Why shouldn’t you pull wings off insects for your own enjoyment? The bug might feel pain, but what did that matter to you?

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?

And why should an oppressor care?

tting so still, to have nothing occupying her mind. She could barely stand three minutes of this torture, let alone sixty. She was so terrified of the thought of not thinking that she wasn’t able to accomplish it because she kept thinking about not thinking.

Jiang, on the other hand, could

ng, 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.”