The Dragon Republic recap

A year after ending the war by destroying the Federation's homeland, Rin commands the remains of the Cike as opium-dependent mercenaries, intent on killing Empress Su Daji. The attempt fails: Daji is a shaman whose power works on the mind, and Rin is left captured and unable to reach her god. Pulled out by the Dragon Province, she is recruited by Warlord Yin Vaisra, who declares the Dragon Republic with Hesperian backing and marches on the capital. The campaign is broken at the Red Cliffs by the loosed wind shaman Feylen, who destroys the Republic's fleet and kills Vaisra's heir. Bound at last to an anchor - Kitay, whose life is now tied to hers - Rin recovers her fire and wins the decisive battle at Arlong, and is betrayed the moment it ends: the Hesperians' price for recognising the Republic is Rin herself, and Vaisra pays it. Maimed in her escape, she gets away with Kitay and the captive Daji and turns south to raise an army from the peasants both sides have always ignored.

Previously: Fang Runin, called Rin, grew up a war orphan in Nikan's south, won a place at the elite Sinegard academy through the empire-wide Keju examination, and was taken as apprentice by the master of Lore, who taught her that the old gods are real and can be reached by shamans at the cost of their minds. When the Federation of Mugen invaded, she was commissioned into the Cike, the empire's unit of shamans, commanded by Altan Trengsin, the last surviving Speerly. The campaign collapsed: the port of Khurdalain fell, Nezha was lost defending it, and the city of Golyn Niis was found already massacred, with Kitay among the handful of survivors. Altan's attempt to raise an army from the shamans entombed in the Chuluu Korikh instead loosed the uncontrollable wind shaman Feylen, and ended with Altan and Rin captured and taken to Speer, the island the Federation had used for twenty years as a research station. Altan died freeing her. Rin learned there that Empress Su Daji had sold Speer and its people to the Federation to end the previous war. In answer she called the Phoenix and destroyed the Federation's home islands and everyone on them. The war ended, Rin took command of the Cike, and she set out to kill the Empress.

Months after the war, Rin commands the remnants of the Cike from a boat on the Nikara coast, taking mercenary work and spending what it pays on opium. She is addicted, haunted by Altan, and finds her fire slower to come than it used to be. Her one plan is to reach Empress Su Daji and kill her, which takes money and cover, and so the Cike work for Moag, the ruler of the free port of Ankhiluun, whose city survives on smuggling and on staying outside imperial control. The jobs go badly enough to show how little the unit is now worth, and Chaghan makes no secret of his opinion that Rin is a poor imitation of the commander she is copying. When a chance to reach the Empress in person presents itself, Rin takes it against the advice of everyone around her.

Rin's attempt on the Empress fails completely. Su Daji is a shaman herself, and her god works on perception: she takes hold of Rin's mind, turns her against her own allies, and leaves her helpless. Rin is captured, drugged and imprisoned, and comes out of it with her connection to the Phoenix damaged - she can no longer call fire at will, and cannot tell whether the block is Daji's work or her own. What saves her is intervention from an unexpected quarter: soldiers of the Dragon Province take her out of imperial hands and carry her south to Arlong, the seat of Warlord Yin Vaisra.

At Arlong, Rin finds Yin Nezha alive - her Sinegard rival did not die at Khurdalain after all - now an officer in his father's army. Vaisra explains what he wants. The Empire, he argues, is a corpse held upright by one woman, and he intends to replace it with a republic modelled on the Hesperians, the western nation whose ships, guns and airships he has secured as allies. He offers Rin a place in that republic and the south a voice in it, in exchange for her fire. Rin, who can no longer reliably produce fire, accepts anyway, since the Empress is the enemy either way. Vaisra declares the Dragon Republic, the twelve provinces divide between him and Daji, and civil war begins.

The Republic's plan is a drive up the Murui River to the capital, led by Vaisra's eldest son Jinzha at the head of a modern fleet with Hesperian advisors aboard. Rin, Kitay, Nezha and Venka are attached to it. The early campaign goes well: provinces defect or fall, and the Republic's technology outclasses the imperial forces opposing it. Rin's difficulty is that she is a shaman who cannot reach her god, and that the Hesperians on board regard shamanism as mental illness rather than fact. Sister Petra Ignatius, their missionary and scientist, begins studying her with courteous persistence. Chaghan tells Rin that what is wrong with her can be diagnosed and possibly repaired, but not by anyone in the Republic's camp.

The campaign slows as the imperial side adapts, and the Republic's foreign allies make their price plainer: Hesperian support depends on the Republic behaving as they think a civilised state should, which does not include employing shamans. Rin's standing rests entirely on a power she cannot summon, and her opium use is no longer private. Old loyalties come apart under the strain - the Cike lose people, the Republic's officers treat the unit as expendable, and Rin's dealings with Nezha shift between alliance and open hostility as she realises he is concealing something about himself. Kitay, working through the campaign's supply figures, concludes that the fleet is being drawn further upriver than it can safely go.

At the Red Cliffs the Republic's fleet is destroyed. The Empress's side puts Feylen - the wind shaman loosed from the Chuluu Korikh during the last war, now entirely his god's creature - into the gorge, and nothing the Republic has can answer him. The fleet is wrecked, Jinzha does not survive, and the remnant escapes downriver in disarray. Rin, still unable to call fire, can only watch it happen. The defeat ends the Republic's advance, costs Vaisra his heir, and strengthens the Hesperian argument that the war is being lost by amateurs who should hand it over. What is left of the Republic's forces falls back toward Arlong to be besieged in turn.

Regrouping, Rin finally learns what is wrong with her: a shaman needs an anchor, a mind outside their own to hold them steady, and the bond that ties the two is permanent and mutual - if one dies, so does the other. Kitay volunteers. The two are bound, and Rin's access to the Phoenix returns, steadier and stronger than before, with Kitay able to feel everything she does with it. It also makes her, at last, exactly the weapon Vaisra recruited, which is not good news for her. The Hesperians conclude that a shaman is a lunatic in the grip of a delusion and that the Republic must be rid of her before they will recognise it, and Sister Petra's interest stops being academic. Vaisra makes no move to protect her, and Nezha will not say where he stands. The Empress's fleet arrives at Arlong.

The battle for Arlong is fought in the province's narrow water approaches, the imperial fleet against the Republic and its Hesperian allies. Rin, anchored and able to burn again, is used as artillery. The fighting is close enough that the Republic's survival depends on her, and she gives it everything she has, destroying ships and men on a scale that settles the battle and confirms every Hesperian suspicion about what she is. The Republic holds Arlong. Rin, Kitay and the last of the Cike are taken into custody almost as soon as the fighting stops.

Rin wins the battle for Arlong and is repudiated the moment it is over. Vaisra never intended to give the south a place in his republic, and the price of Hesperian recognition is Rin herself, handed to Sister Petra to be confined and studied. Nezha, forced to choose between his father and Rin, chooses his father; when she fights her way out he fights her, and Rin loses her left hand in the process. She escapes Arlong with Kitay, Venka and the last of her people, and with Su Daji, whom the Republic is holding prisoner and who offers, in exchange for her freedom, the history nobody else will give Rin: what the Empress and Rin's missing master Jiang really were, and how the Empire was actually made. Rin takes the bargain. The Dragon Republic stands, recognised by the Hesperians and led by the Yin family, with Nezha its heir. Rin goes south, to the province she came from, intending to raise the people the Republic wrote off and to fight both the Empire and the Republic with them.

Rin's fire wins the battle of Arlong for the Dragon Republic, and the Republic disposes of her as soon as the Imperial fleet is beaten. Vaisra's terms with the Hesperians never included a shaman, and never included a southern province with a voice in the new state; Rin is handed to Sister Petra to be confined and examined as a madwoman. Nezha sides with his father, fights her when she breaks out, and Rin loses her left hand getting clear. She escapes Arlong with Kitay, now permanently bound to her as her anchor and certain to die if she does, with Venka and the last of the Cike, and with Su Daji, whom she frees from the Republic's cells in exchange for the truth about what the Empress and Rin's vanished master Jiang once were. The Dragon Republic survives, recognised and armed by the Hesperians, with Vaisra ruling and Nezha his heir, and with a foreign power now established inside Nikan. Rin goes south to the province she was born in with no army, no legitimacy and no allies, intending to raise one out of the people both the Empire and the Republic have always spent.