LITMIR.BIZ

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      The difference was in his eyes. They used to be so bright, lit up with a feverish curiosity about everything. Now they were just dull and blank.

      “Can I stay?” she asked.

      “I let you in, didn’t I?”

      “You told Moag to keep your address from me.”

      “Oh.” He blinked. “Yes. I did do that.”

      He wouldn’t meet her eyes. She knew him well enough to know that this meant he was furious with her, but after all these months, she still didn’t know precisely why.

      No—she did, she just wouldn’t admit that she was wrong about it. The one time they’d fought about it, really fought about it, he’d slammed the door shut on her and hadn’t spoken to her until they reached dry land.

      She hadn’t let herself think about it since. It went into the chasm, just like every other memory that made her start craving her pipe.

      “How are you doing?” she asked.

      “I’m under house arrest. How do you think I’m doing?”

      She looked around at the papers splayed out across the table. They littered the floor, pinned down with inkwells.

      Her eyes landed on the ledger he’d been scribbling in. “She’s kept you busy, at least?”

      “‘Busy’ is a word for it.” He slammed the ledger shut. “I’m working for one of the Empire’s most wanted criminals, and she’s got me doing her taxes.”

      “Ankhiluun doesn’t pay taxes.”

      “Not taxes to the Empire. To Moag.” Kitay twirled the ink brush in his fingers. “Moag’s running a massive crime ring with a taxation scheme that’s just as complicated as any city bureaucracy’s. But the record-keeping system they’ve been using so far, it’s …” He waved his hands in the air. “Whoever designed this didn’t understand how numbers work.”

      What a brilliant move on Moag’s part, Rin thought. Kitay had the mental dexterity of twenty scholars combined. He could add impossibly large sums without blinking, and he had a mind for strategy that had rivaled Master Irjah’s. He might be grumpy under house arrest, but he couldn’t resist a puzzle when presented with one. The ledgers may as well have been a bucket of toys.

      “Are they treating you all right?” she asked.

      “Well enough. I get two meals a day. Sometimes more, if I’ve been good.”

      “You look thin.”

      “The food’s not very good.”

      He still wouldn’t look at her. She ventured to place a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry Moag’s kept you here.”

      He jerked away. “Wasn’t your decision. I’d do the same if I’d taken myself prisoner.”

      “Moag’s really not so bad. She treats her people well.”

      “And she uses violence and extortion to run a massively illegal city that has been lying to Sinegard for twenty years,” said Kitay. “I’m worried you’re starting to lose your sense of scale here, Rin.”

      She rankled at that. “Her people are still better off than the Empress’s subjects.”

      “The Empress’s subjects would be fine if her generals weren’t running around trying to commit treason.”

      “Why are you so loyal to Sinegard?” Rin demanded. “It’s not like the Empress has done anything for you.”

      “My family has served the crown at Sinegard for ten generations,” said Kitay. “And no, I’m not helping you with your personal vendetta just because you think the Empress got your stupid commander killed. So you can stop pretending to be my friend, Rin, because I know that’s all you came for.”

      “I don’t just think that,” she said. “I know it. And I know the Empress invited the Federation onto Nikara land. She wanted this war, she started the invasion, and everything you saw at Golyn Niis was Daji’s fault.”

      “False accusations.”

      “I heard it from Shiro’s mouth!”

      “And Shiro didn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”

      “Daji doesn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”

      “She’s the Empress,” Kitay said. “The Empress doesn’t betray her own. Do you understand how absurd this is? There’s literally no political advantage—”

      “You should want this!” she yelled. She wanted to shake him, hit him, do anything to make that maddening blankness in his face go away. “Why don’t you want this? Why aren’t you furious? Didn’t you see Golyn Niis?”

      He stiffened. “I want you to leave.”

      “Kitay, please—”

       “Now.”

      “I’m your friend!”

      “No, you’re not. Fang Runin was my friend. I’m not sure who you are, but I don’t want anything to do with you.”

      “Why do you keep saying that? What did I ever do to you?”

      “How about what you did to them?” He grabbed for her hand. She was so surprised that she let him. He slammed her palm over the lamp beside him, forced it down directly over the fire. She yelped from the sudden pain—a thousand tiny needles, pressing deeper and deeper into her palm.

      “Have you ever been burned before?” he whispered.

      For the first time Rin noticed little burn scars dotting his palms and forearms. Some were recent. Some looked inflicted yesterday.

      The pain intensified.

      “Shit!” She kicked out. She missed Kitay but hit the lamp. Oil spilled over the papers. The fire whooshed up. For a second she saw Kitay’s face illuminated in the flame, absolutely terrified, and then he yanked a blanket off the floor and threw it over the fire.

      The room went dark.

      “What the hell was that?” she screamed.

      She didn’t raise her fists, but Kitay flinched away as if she had—his shoulder hit the wall, and then he curled toward the ground with his head buried under his arms, raw sobs shaking his thin frame.

      “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know what …”

      The throbbing pain in her hand made her breathless, almost light-headed. Almost as good as it felt when she got high. If she thought about it too hard she would start crying, and if she started crying it might tear her apart, so she tried laughing instead, and that turned into tortured hiccups that shook her entire frame.

      “Why?” she finally managed.

      “I was trying to see what it was like,” he said.

      “For who?”

      “How they felt. In the moment that it happened. In their very last seconds. I wanted to know how they felt when it ended.”

      “It doesn’t feel like anything,” she said. A wave of agony shot up her arm again, and she slammed her fist against the floor in an attempt to numb out the pain. She clenched her teeth until it passed.

      “Altan told me about it once,” she said. “After a bit you’re not able to breathe. And then you’re gasping so hard you can’t feel it hurt anymore. You don’t die from the burning, you die from lack of air. You choke, Kitay. That’s how it ends.”

       CHAPTER 5

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