Well, she couldn’t claim to be Nisong, the Emperor’s dead wife. There were limitations here she had to work within, but with the chaos she’d managed to sow, the sinking of Unta and the moratorium on witstone mining, people were looking for an alternative. They could convince themselves that she deserved to lead more than Lin did. She would make them pay and then she’d take her place at the heart of it all. As Emperor.

The army at her back certainly helped matters.

Smoke rose thick into the air, burning the insides of Nisong’s nostrils. She watched the fires rage across the town, listened to the screams of people fleeing their houses or being burned alive. She thought she could smell the scent of crisping flesh on the wind.

They were lucky, she supposed, that it had rained the past few days and the wood was still too damp to burn quickly.

Coral and Leaf flanked her, though Coral averted her gaze, her hand covering her mouth and nose. “Is this truly necessary? They might have surrendered.”

Nisong clenched her jaw. And then what? Did Coral not understand? “We can’t take half measures. They want us all dead. The Emperor placed a bounty on each of our heads before we did anything wrong. Do you think if they were in our position they would offer mercy?”

“No, but—”

“Then we can’t offer mercy either. They’ll never see us as people. We’re just useful monsters, discarded when they no longer want to deal with us.” They’d never had a choice in this. They’d awoken from the mind-fog on Maila to find a world that was already hostile toward them.

Leaf cleared his throat. “The Emperor did offer us clemency.”

Coral gave Nisong a sharp look. This was the first she was hearing of it. Nisong waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not a real offer.”

Leaf thumbed the hilt of his sword, running his other hand through lank black hair. He cleared his throat again. “She wants peace, Nisong.”

She watched Coral and Leaf exchange glances as though they had something unpleasant to say to her and they weren’t sure which of them should be the one to say it.

Leaf was the one who spoke up. “How many more of us have to die until you’re satisfied?”