The Poppy War (The Poppy War Trilogy #1)
The Poppy War: Part 1 – Chapter 7

Jiang did not appear in the garden the next day, or the day after. Rin went to the garden faithfully in the hope that he would return, but she knew, deep down, that Jiang was done with teaching her.

One week later she saw him in the mess hall. She abruptly put her bowl down and made a beeline toward him. She had no clue what she might say, but knew that she needed to at least talk to him. She would apologize, promise to study with him even if she became Irjah’s apprentice, or say something . . .

Before she could corner him he upended his tray over a startled apprentice’s head and dashed out the kitchen door.

“Great Tortoise,” said Kitay. “What did you do to him?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Jiang was unpredictable and fragile, like an easily startled wild animal, and she hadn’t realized how precious his attention was until she had scared him away.

After that, he acted as if he didn’t even know her. She continued to see brief glimpses of him around campus, just as everyone did, but he refused to acknowledge her.

She should have tried harder to patch things up with him. She should have actively sought him out and admitted her mistake, nebulous though it was.

But she found it less and less of a priority as the term came to an end, and the competition between the first-years reached a frenzied peak.

Throughout the year, the possibility of being culled from Sinegard had hung like a sword over their heads. Now that threat was imminent. In two weeks they would undergo the series of exams that constituted the Trials.

Raban relayed the rules to them. The Trials would be administered and observed by the entire faculty. Depending on their performance, the masters would submit bids for apprenticeship. If a student received no bids, he or she would leave the Academy in disgrace.

Enro exempted all students who were not intent on pledging Medicine from her exam, but the other subjects—Linguistics, History, Strategy, Combat, and Weaponry—were mandatory. There was, of course, no scheduled exam for Lore.

“Irjah, Jima, Yim, and Sonnen give oral exams,” said Raban. “You’ll be questioned in front of a panel of the masters. They’ll take turns interrogating you, and if you mess up, that’s the end of your session for that subject. The more questions you answer, the more you get to prove how much you know. So study hard—and speak carefully.”

Jun did not conduct an oral exam. The Combat exam consisted of the Tournament.

This would take course over the two days of exams. The first-years would duel in the rings using the same rules that the apprentices used in their matches. They would compete in three preliminary rounds determined by random draws, and based on their win-loss ratios, eight would advance to elimination rounds. Those eight would be placed in a randomized bracket and fight one another until the final round.

Reaching the eliminations in the Tournament was no guarantee of gaining a sponsor, and losing early was not a guarantee of expulsion. But those students who advanced further in the tournament had more chances to show the masters how well they fought. And the winner of the Tournament always received a bid.

“Altan won his year,” Raban said. “Kureel won hers. You’ll notice they both landed the two most prestigious apprenticeships at Sinegard. There’s no actual prize for winning, but the masters like placing bets. Get your ass kicked, and no master will want to take you on.”

“I want to pledge Medicine, but we’ve got to memorize so many extra texts on top of the readings we’ve done so far, and if I do I won’t have time study for History . . . Do you think I should pledge History? Do you think Yim likes me enough?” Niang flapped her hands in the air, agitated. “My brother said I shouldn’t rely on getting a Medicine apprenticeship; there are four of us taking Enro’s exam and she only ever picks three, so maybe I won’t get it . . .”

“Enough, Niang,” Venka snapped. “You’ve been talking about this for days.”

“What do you want to pledge?” Niang persisted.

“Combat. And that’s the last time we’re talking about it,” Venka said shrilly. Rin suspected that if Niang said another word, Venka might scream.

But Rin couldn’t blame Niang. Or Venka, really. The first-years gossiped obsessively about apprenticeships, and it was both understandable and grating. Rin had learned about the hierarchy of masters through eavesdropping on conversations in the mess hall: bids from Jun and Irjah were ideal for apprentices who wanted command positions in the Militia, Jima rarely chose apprentices unless they were nobility destined to become court diplomats, and Enro’s bid mattered only to the few of them who wanted to be military physicians.

“Training under Irjah would be nice,” said Kitay. “Of course, Jun’s apprentices have their pick of divisions, but Irjah can get me into the Second.”

“The Rat Province’s division?” Rin wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

Kitay shrugged. “They’re Army Intelligence. I would love to serve in Army Intelligence.”

Jun was out of the question for Rin, though she too hoped Irjah might take her. But she knew Irjah wouldn’t place a bid unless she proved she had the martial arts to back up her Strategy prowess. A strategist who couldn’t fight had no place in the Militia. How could she draw up battle plans if she’d never been on the front lines? If she didn’t know what real combat was like?

For her, it all came down to the Tournament.

As for the apprentices, it was apparently the most exciting thing to happen on campus all year. They began speculating wildly about who might win and who would beat whom—and they didn’t try very hard to keep the betting books secret from the first-years. Word spread quickly about who the front-runners were.

Most of the money backed the Sinegardians. Venka and Han were solid contenders for the semifinals. Nohai, a massive kid from a fishing island in Snake Province, was widely backed to reach the quarterfinals. Kitay had his fair share of supporters, although this was largely because he had demonstrated a talent for dodging so well that most of his sparring opponents grew frustrated and got sloppy after several long minutes.

Oddly, a number of apprentices put decent money on Rin. Once word got out that she had been training privately with Jiang, the apprentices took an inordinate degree of interest in her. It helped that she was nipping at Kitay’s heels in every other one of their classes.

The clear front-runner in their year, however, was Nezha.

“Jun says he’s the best to come through his class since Altan,” Kitay said, jabbing vehemently at his food. “Won’t shut up about him. You should have seen him take out Nohai yesterday. He’s a menace.”

Nezha, who had been a pretty, slender child at the start of the year, had since packed on an absurd amount of muscle. He’d cut short his stupidly long hair in favor of a clipped military cut similar to Altan’s. Unlike the rest of them, he already looked like he belonged in a Militia uniform.

He had also garnered a reputation for striking first and thinking later. He had injured eight sparring partners over the course of the term, all in increasingly severe “accidents.”

But of course Jun had never punished him—not as severely as he deserved, anyhow. Why would something so mundane as rules apply to the son of the Dragon Warlord?

As the date of the exams loomed closer, the library became oppressively silent. The only sound among the stacks was the furious scribbling of brushes on paper as the first-years tried to commit an entire year’s lessons to memory. Most study groups had disbanded, since any advantage given to a study partner was potentially a lost spot in the ranks.

But Kitay, who didn’t need to study, obliged Rin purely out of boredom.

“Sunzi’s Eighteenth Mandate.” Kitay didn’t bother looking at the texts. He had memorized the entirety of Principles of War on his first read-through. Rin would have killed for that talent.

Rin squinted her eyes in concentration. She knew she looked stupid, but her head was swimming again, and squinting was the only way to make it stop. She felt very cold and hot all at once. She hadn’t slept in three days. All she wanted was to collapse on her bunk, but another hour of cramming was worth more than an hour of sleep.

“It’s not one of the Seven Considerations . . . wait, is it? No, okay: always modify plans according to circumstances . . . ?”

Kitay shook his head. “That’s the Seventeenth Mandate.”

Rin cursed out loud and rubbed her fists against her forehead.

“I wonder how you people do it,” Kitay mused. “You know, actually having to try to remember things. Your lives sound so difficult.”

“I will murder you with this ink brush,” Rin grumbled.

“Sunzi’s appendix is all about why soft ends make for bad weapons. Didn’t you do the extra reading?”

“Quiet!” Venka snapped from the opposite desk.

Kitay dipped his head out of Venka’s sight and cracked a grin at Rin. “Here’s a hint,” he whispered. “Menda in the temple.”

Rin gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. Oh. Of course. “All warfare is based on deception.”

In preparation for the Tournament, their entire class had taken Sunzi’s Eighteenth Mandate to heart. The pupils stopped using the open practice rooms during common hours. Anyone with an inherited art suddenly stopped bragging about it. Even Nezha had ceased to hold his nightly performances in the studio.

“This happens every year,” Raban had said. “It’s a bit silly, to be honest. As if martial artists your age ever have anything worth stealing.”

Silly or not, their class freaked out in earnest. Everyone was accused of having a hidden weapon up his or her sleeve; whoever had never displayed an inherited art was alleged to be harboring one in secret.

Niang confided to Rin one night that Kitay was actually the heir to the long-forgotten Fist of the North Wind, an art that allowed the user to incapacitate opponents by touching a few choice pressure points.

“I might have had a hand in spreading that story,” Kitay admitted when Rin asked him about it. “Sunzi would call it psychological warfare.”

She snorted. “Sunzi would call it horseshit.”

The first-years weren’t allowed to train after curfew, so the preparation period turned into a contest of who could find the most creative way of sneaking past the masters. The apprentices, of course, began vigilantly patrolling the campus after curfew to catch students who had stolen outside to train. Nohai reported that he’d stumbled across a sheet detailing points for such captures in the boys’ dormitory.

“It’s almost like they’re enjoying this,” Rin muttered.

“Of course they enjoy it,” said Kitay. “They get to watch us suffer through the same things they did. This time next year we’ll be equally obnoxious.”

Displaying a stunning lack of sympathy, the apprentices had also taken advantage of the first-years’ anxiety to establish a flourishing market in “study aids.” Rin laughed when Niang returned to the dormitory with what Niang thought was willow bark aged a hundred years.

“That’s a ginger root,” Rin said with a snicker. She weighed the wrinkled root in her hand. “I mean, I suppose it’s good in tea.”

“How do you know?” Niang looked dismayed. “I paid twenty coppers for that!”

“We dug up ginger roots all the time in our garden back at home,” Rin said. “Put them in the sun and you can sell them to old men looking for a virility cure. Does absolutely nothing, but it makes them feel better. We’d also sell wheat flour and call it rhino’s horn. I’ll bet you the apprentices have been selling barley flour, too.”

Venka, whom Rin had seen stowing a vial of powder under her pillow a few nights before, coughed and looked away.

The apprentices also sold information to first-years. Most sold bogus test answers; others offered lists of purported exam questions that seemed highly plausible but obviously wouldn’t be confirmed until after the Trials. Worst, though, were the apprentices who posed as sellers to root out the first-years who were willing to cheat.

Menda, a boy from the Horse Province, had agreed to meet with an apprentice after hours in the temple on the fourth tier to purchase a list of Jima’s exam questions. Rin didn’t know how the apprentice had managed the timing, but Jima had been meditating in said temple that very night.

Menda was noticeably absent from campus the next day.

Meals became silent and reserved affairs. Everyone ate with a book held before his or her nose. If any students ventured to strike up a conversation, the rest of the table quickly and violently shushed them. In short, they made themselves miserable.

“Sometimes I think this is as bad as the Speer Massacre,” Kitay said cheerfully. “And then I think—nah. Nothing is as bad as the casual genocide of an entire race! But this is pretty bad.”

“Kitay, please shut up.”

Rin continued to train alone in the garden. She never saw Jiang anymore, but that was just as well; masters were banned from training the students for the Tournament, although Rin suspected Nezha was still receiving instruction from Jun.

One day she heard footsteps as she approached the garden gate. Someone was inside.

At first she hoped it might be Jiang, but when she opened the door she saw a lean, graceful figure with indigo-black hair.

It took her a moment to process what she’d stumbled upon.

Altan. She’d interrupted Altan Trengsin in his practice.

He wielded a three-pronged trident—no, he didn’t just wield it, he held it intimately, curved it through the air like a ribbon. It was both an extension of his arm and a dance partner.

She should have turned to go, found somewhere else to train, but she couldn’t help her curiosity. She couldn’t look away. From a distance, he was extraordinarily beautiful. Up close, he was hypnotizing.

He turned at the sound of her footsteps, saw her, and stopped.

“I’m so sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t know you were—”

“It’s a school garden,” he said neutrally. “Don’t leave on my account.”

His voice was more somber than she had anticipated. She had imagined a harsh, barking tone to match his brutal movements in the ring, but Altan’s voice was surprisingly melodious, soft and deep.

His pupils were oddly constricted. Rin couldn’t tell if it was simply the light in the garden, but his eyes didn’t seem red then. Rather, they looked brown, like hers.

“I’ve never seen that form before,” Rin uttered.

Altan raised an eyebrow. She immediately regretted opening her mouth. Why had she said that? Why did she exist? She wanted to crumble into ashes and scatter away into the air.

But Altan just looked surprised, not irritated. “Stick around Jiang long enough, and you’ll learn plenty of arcane forms.” He shifted his weight to his back leg and brought his arms in a flowing motion around to the other side of his torso.

Rin’s cheeks burned. She felt very clumsy and vast, like she was taking up space that belonged to Altan, even though she was on the other end of the garden. “Master Jiang didn’t say anyone else liked to come here.”

“Jiang likes to forget about a lot of things.” He tilted his head at her. “You must be quite the student, if Jiang’s taken an interest in you.”

Was that bitterness in his voice, or was she imagining things?

She remembered then that Jiang had withdrawn his bid for Altan, right after Altan had declared he wanted to pledge Lore. She wondered what had happened, and if it still bothered Altan. She wondered if she’d annoyed him by bringing Jiang up.

“I stole a book from the library,” she managed. “He thought that was funny.”

Why was she still talking? Why was she still here?

The corner of Altan’s mouth quirked up in a terribly attractive grin, which set her heart beating erratically. “What a rebel.”

She flushed, but Altan just turned away and completed the form.

“Don’t let me stop you from training,” he said.

“No, I—I came here to think. But if you’re here—”

“I’m sorry. I can leave.”

“No, it’s okay.” She didn’t know what she was saying. “I was going to—I mean, I’ll just . . . bye.”

She quickly backed out of the garden. Altan didn’t say anything else.

Once she had closed the garden gates behind her, Rin buried her face in her hands and groaned.

“Is there ever a place for meekness in battle?” Irjah asked. This was the seventh question he had posed to her.

Rin was on a streak. Seven was the maximum number of questions any master could ask, and if she nailed this one, she would ace Irjah’s exam. And she knew the answer—it was lifted directly from Sunzi’s Twenty-Second Mandate.

She lifted her chin and responded in a loud, clear voice. “Yes, but only for the purposes of deception. Sunzi writes that if your opponent is of choleric temper, you should seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak so that he grows arrogant. The good tactician plays with his enemy like a cat plays with a mouse. Feign weakness and immobility, and then pounce on him.”

The seven masters each marked small notes into their scrolls. Rin bounced slightly on her heels, waiting for them to continue.

“Good. No further questions.” Irjah nodded and gestured at his colleagues. “Master Yim?”

Yim pushed his chair back and rose slowly. He consulted his scroll for a moment, and then gazed at Rin over the top of his spectacles. “Why did we win the Second Poppy War?”

Rin sucked in a breath. She had not prepared for this question. It was so basic she’d thought she didn’t need to. Yim had asked it on the first day of class, and the answer was a logical fallacy. There was no “why,” because Nikan hadn’t won the Second Poppy War. The Republic of Hesperia had, and Nikan had simply ridden the foreigners’ coattails to a victory treaty.

She considered answering the question directly, but then thought she might try a more original response. She had only one shot at an answer. She wanted to impress the masters.

“Because we gave up Speer,” she said.

Irjah jerked his head up from his scroll.

Yim raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean because we lost Speer?”

“No. I mean it was a strategic decision to sacrifice the island so that the Hesperian parliament might decide to intervene. I think the command in Sinegard knew the attack was going to happen and didn’t warn the Speerlies.”

“I was at Speer,” Jun interrupted. “This is amusing historiography at best, slander at worst.”

“No, you weren’t,” Rin said before she could stop herself.

Jun looked amazed. “Excuse me?”

All seven masters were watching her intently now. Rin remembered too late that Irjah had disliked this theory. And that Jun hated her.

But it was too late to stop. She weighed the costs in her head. The masters rewarded bravery and creativity. If she backed off, it would be a sign of uncertainty. She had begun digging this hole for herself. She might as well finish.

She took a deep breath. “You can’t have been at Speer. I read the reports. None of the regular Militia were there the night the island was attacked. The first troops didn’t arrive until sunrise, after the Federation had left. After the Speerlies had all been killed.”

Jun’s face darkened to the color of an overripe plum. “You dare accuse—”

“She’s not accusing anyone of anything,” Jiang interrupted serenely. It was the first time he’d spoken since the start of her exam. Rin glanced at him in surprise, but Jiang just scratched his ear, not even looking at her. “She’s merely attempting a clever answer to an otherwise inane question. Honestly, Yim, this one has gotten pretty old.”

Yim shrugged. “Fair enough. No further questions. Master Jiang?”

All the masters twitched in irritation. From what Rin understood, Jiang was present only as a formality. He never gave an exam; he mostly just made fun of the students when they tripped over their answers.

Jiang gazed levelly into Rin’s eyes.

She swallowed, feeling the unsettling sensation of his searching gaze. It was like she was as transparent as a puddle of rainwater.

“Who is imprisoned in the Chuluu Korikh?” he asked.

She blinked. Not once in the four months that he had trained her had Jiang ever mentioned the Chuluu Korikh. Neither had Master Yim or Irjah, or even Jima. Chuluu Korikh wasn’t medical terminology, wasn’t a reference to a famous battle, wasn’t some linguistic term of art. It could be a deeply loaded phrase. It could also be gibberish.

Either Jiang was posing a riddle, or he just wanted to throw her off.

But she didn’t want to admit defeat. She didn’t want to look clueless in front of Irjah. Jiang had asked her a question, and Jiang never asked questions during the Trials. The masters were expecting an interesting answer now; she couldn’t disappoint them.

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The Chuluu Korikh. She’d studied Old Nikara with Jima for long enough now that she could gloss this as stone mountain in the ancient dialect, but that didn’t give her any clues. None of Nikan’s major prisons were built under mountains; they were either out in the Baghra Desert or in the dungeons of the Empress’s palace.

And Jiang hadn’t asked what the Chuluu Korikh was. He’d asked who was imprisoned there.

What kind of prisoner couldn’t be held in the Baghra Desert?

She pondered this until she had an unsatisfying answer to an unsatisfying question.

“Unnatural criminals,” she said slowly, “who have committed unnatural crimes?”

Jun snorted audibly. Jima and Yim looked uncomfortable.

Jiang gave a minuscule shrug.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s all I have.”

Oral exams concluded by midmorning on the third day. The pupils were sent to lunch, which no one ate, and then herded to the rings for the commencement of the Tournament.

Rin drew Han for her first opponent.

When it was her turn to fight she climbed down the rope ladder and looked up. The masters stood in a row before the rails. Irjah gave her a slight nod, a tiny gesture that filled her with determination. Jun folded his arms over his chest. Jiang picked at his fingernails.

Rin had not fought any of her classmates since her expulsion from Combat. She had not even watched them fight. The only person she had ever sparred against was Jiang, and she had no clue if he was a good approximation of how her classmates might fight.

She was entering this Tournament blind.

She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, willing herself to at least appear calm.

Han, on the other hand, looked very disconcerted. His eyes darted across her body and then back up to her face as if she were some wild animal he had never seen before, as if he didn’t know quite what to make of her.

He’s scared, she realized.

He must have heard the rumors that she had studied with Jiang. He didn’t know what to believe about her. Didn’t know what to expect.

What was more, Rin was the underdog in this match. No one expected her to fight well. But Han had trained with Jun all year. Han was a Sinegardian. Han had to win, or he wouldn’t be able to face his peers after.

Sunzi wrote that one must always identify and exploit the enemy’s weaknesses. Han’s weakness was psychological. The stakes were much, much higher for him, and that made him insecure. That made him beatable.

“What, you’ve never seen a girl before?” Rin asked.

Han blushed furiously.

Good. She made him nervous. She grinned widely, baring teeth. “Lucky you,” she said. “You get to be my first.”

“You don’t have a chance,” Han blustered. “You don’t know any martial arts.”

She merely smiled and slouched back into Seejin’s fourth opening stance. She bent her back leg, preparing herself to spring, and raised her fists to guard her face.

“Don’t I?”

Han’s face clouded with doubt. He had recognized her posture as deliberate and practiced—not at all the stance of someone who had no martial arts training.

Rin rushed him as soon as Sonnen signaled them to begin.

Han played defensive from the start. He made the mistake of giving her the forward momentum, and he never recovered. From the outset, Rin controlled every part of the bout. She attacked, he reacted. She led him in the dance, she decided when to let him parry, and she decided where they would go. She fought methodically, purely from muscle memory. She was efficient. She played his moves against him and confused him.

And Han’s attacks fell into such predictable patterns—if one of his kicks missed, he would back up and attempt it again, and again, until she forced him to change direction.

Finally he let his guard down, let her get in close. She jammed her elbow hard into his nose. She felt a satisfying crack. Han dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Rin knew she hadn’t hurt him that badly. Jiang had punched her in the nose at least twice. Han was more stunned than injured. He could have gotten up. He didn’t.

“Break,” ordered Sonnen.

Rin wiped the sweat off her forehead and glanced up at the railing.

There was silence above the ring. Her classmates looked like they had on the first day of class—startled and bewildered. Nezha looked dumbfounded.

Then Kitay began to clap. He was the only one.

She fought two more matches that day. They were both variations on her match with Han—pattern recognition, confusion, finishing blow. She won both of them.

Over the span of a day Rin went from the underdog to a leading contender. All those months spent lugging that stupid pig around had given her better endurance than her classmates. Those long, frustrating hours with the Seejin forms had given her impeccable footwork.

The rest of the class had learned their fundamentals from Jun. They moved the same way, sank into the same default patterns when nervous. But Rin didn’t. Her best advantage was her unpredictability. She fought like nothing they had been expecting, she threw them off rhythm, and so she continued to win.

At the end of the first day, Rin and six others, including Nezha and Venka, advanced undefeated into elimination rounds. Kitay had ended the first day with a 2–1 record but advanced on good technique.

The quarterfinals were scheduled for the second day. Sonnen drew up a randomized bracket and hung it on a scroll outside the main hall for all to see. The pairings placed Rin against Venka first thing in the morning.

Venka had trained in martial arts for years, and it showed. She was all rapid strikes and slick, impeccable footwork. She fought with a savage viciousness. Her technique was precise to the centimeter, her timing perfect. She was just as fast as Rin, perhaps faster.

The one advantage Rin had was that Venka had never fought with an injury.

“She’s sparred plenty of times,” said Kitay. “But nobody is actually willing to hit her. Everyone’s always stopped before the punch lands. Even Nezha. I’ll bet you none of her home tutors were willing to hit her, either. They would have been fired immediately, if not thrown in jail.”

“You’re kidding,” Rin said.

“I know I’ve never hit her.”

Rin rubbed a fist into her palm. “Maybe it’ll be good for her, then.”

Still, injuring Venka was no easy task. More by sheer luck than anything, Rin managed to land a blow early on in the match. Venka, underestimating Rin’s speed, had brought her guard back up too slowly after an attempted left hook. Rin took the opening and whipped a backhand through at Venka’s nose.

Bone broke under Rin’s fist with an audible crack.

Venka immediately retreated. One hand flew to her face, groping around her swelling nose. She glanced down at her blood-covered fingers and then back up at Rin. Her nostrils flared. Her cheeks turned a ghastly white.

“Problem?” Rin asked.

The look Venka gave her was pure murder.

“You shouldn’t even be here,” she snarled.

“Tell that to your nose,” Rin said.

Venka was visibly unhinged. Her pretty sneer was gone, her hair messy, her face bloodied, her eyes wild and unfocused. She was on edge, off rhythm. She attempted several more wild blows until Rin caught her with a solid roundhouse kick to the side of her head.

Venka sprawled to the side and stayed on the ground. Her chest heaved rapidly up and down. Rin couldn’t tell if she was crying or panting.

She didn’t really care.

The applause as Rin emerged from the ring was scattered at best. The audience had been rooting for Venka. Venka was supposed to be in the finals.

Rin didn’t care about that, either. She was used to this by now.

And Venka wasn’t the victory she wanted.

Nezha tore his way through the other side of the bracket with ruthless efficiency. His fights were always scheduled in the other ring concurrently with Rin’s, and they invariably ended earlier. Rin never saw Nezha in action. She only saw his opponents carried out on stretchers.

Alone among Nezha’s opponents, Kitay emerged from his bout unharmed. He had lasted a minute and a half before surrendering.

There were rumors Nezha would be disqualified for intentional maiming, but Rin knew better than to hope. The faculty wanted to see the heir to the House of Yin in the finals. As far as Rin knew, Nezha could kill someone without repercussion. Jun, certainly, would allow it.

No one was surprised when Rin and Nezha both won their semifinals rounds. Finals were postponed until after dinner so that the apprentices could also come and watch.

Nezha disappeared somewhere halfway through dinner. He was likely getting private coaching from Jun. Rin briefly considered reporting it to get Nezha disqualified, but knew that would be a hollow victory. She wanted to see this through to the finish.

She picked at her food. She knew she needed energy, but the thought of eating made her want to vomit.

Halfway through the break, Raban approached her table. He was sweating hard, as if he had just run all the way up from the lower tier.

She thought he was going to congratulate her on making it to finals, but all he said was “You should surrender.”

“You’re joking,” Rin responded. “I’m going to win this thing.”

“Look, Rin—you haven’t seen any of Nezha’s fights.”

“I’ve been a little preoccupied with my own.”

“Then you don’t know what he’s capable of. I just dealt with his semifinals opponent in the infirmary. Nohai.” Raban looked deeply rattled. “They’re not sure if he’s going to be able to walk again. Nezha shattered his kneecap.”

“Seems like Nohai’s problem.” Rin didn’t want to hear about Nezha’s victories. She was feeling queasy enough as it was. The only way she could go through with the finals was if she convinced herself that Nezha was beatable.

“I know he hates you,” Raban continued. “He could cripple you for life.”

“He’s just a kid.” Rin scoffed with a confidence she didn’t feel.

“You’re just a kid!” Raban sounded agitated. “I don’t care how good you think you are. Nezha’s got six inches and twenty pounds of muscle on you, and I swear he wants to kill you.”

“He has weaknesses,” she said stubbornly. That had to be true. Didn’t it?

“Does it matter? What does this Tournament mean to you anyway?” Raban asked. “There’s no way you’re getting culled now. Every master is going to submit a bid for you. Why do you have to win?”

Raban was right. At this point Irjah would have no qualms about bidding for her. Rin’s position at Sinegard was safe.

But it wasn’t about bids now, it was about pride. It was about power. If she surrendered to Nezha, he would hold it over her for the rest of their time at the Academy. No—he’d hold it over her for life.

“Because I can,” she said. “Because he thought he could get rid of me. Because I want to break his stupid face.”

The basement hall was silent as Rin and Nezha climbed into the ring. The air was thick with anticipation, a voyeuristic bloodlust. Months of hateful rivalry were coming to a head, and everyone wanted to watch the fallout of their collision.

Both Jun and Irjah wore deliberately neutral expressions, giving nothing away. Jiang was absent.

Nezha and Rin bowed shortly, never taking their eyes off each other, and both immediately backed away.

Nezha kept his gaze trained intently on Rin’s, almond eyes narrowed in a tight focus. His lips were pressed in concentration. There were no jeers, no taunts. Not even a snarl.

Nezha was taking her seriously, Rin realized. He took her as an equal.

For some reason, this made her fiercely proud. They stared at each other, daring each other to break eye contact first.

“Begin,” said Sonnen.

She leaped at him immediately. Her right leg lashed out again and again, forcing him back in retreat.

Kitay had spent all of lunch helping her strategize. She knew Nezha could be blindingly fast. Once he got momentum, he wouldn’t stop until his opponent was incapacitated or dead.

Rin needed to overwhelm him from the beginning. She needed to constantly put him on the defensive, because to be on the defensive against Nezha was certain defeat.

The problem was that he was terribly strong. He didn’t possess the brute force of Kobin, or even Kureel, but he was so precise in his movements that it didn’t matter. He channeled his ki with a brilliant precision, built it up and then released it through the smallest pressure point to create the maximum impact.

Unlike Venka, Nezha could absorb losses and continue. She bruised him once or twice. He adapted and hit her back. And his blows hurt.

They were two minutes in. Rin had now lasted longer than any of Nezha’s previous opponents, and something had become clear to her: He wasn’t invincible. The techniques that had seemed impossibly difficult to her before now were transparently beatable. When Nezha kicked, his movements were wide and obvious like a boar’s. His kicks held terrifying power, but only if they landed.

Rin made sure they never landed.

There was no way she would let him maim her. But she was not here merely to survive. She was here to win.

Exploding Dragon. Crouching Tiger. Extended Crane. She cycled through the movements in Seejin’s Frolics as they were needed. The movements she’d practiced so many times before, linked together one after another in that damned form, snapped automatically into play.

But if Nezha was baffled by Rin’s fighting style, he didn’t show it. He remained calm and concentrated, attacking with methodical efficiency.

They were now four minutes in. Rin felt her lungs seizing, trying to pump oxygen into her fatigued body. But she knew that if she was tired, so was Nezha.

“He gets desperate when he’s tired,” Kitay had said. “And he’s the most dangerous when he’s desperate.”

Nezha was getting desperate.

There was no control to his ki anymore. He threw punch after punch in her direction. He didn’t care about the maiming rule. If he got her on the ground, he would kill her.

Nezha swept a low kick at the back of her knees. Rin made a frantic call and let him connect, sinking backward, pretending she’d lost her balance. He moved in immediately, looming over her. She grounded herself against the floor and kicked up.

She nailed him directly in his solar plexus with more force than she’d ever kicked with before—she could feel the air forced out of his lungs. She flipped up off the ground, and was astonished to find Nezha still reeling backward, gasping for air.

She flung herself forward and punched wildly at his head.

He dropped to the floor.

Shocked murmurs swept through the audience.

Rin circled Nezha, hoping he wouldn’t get up, but knowing he would. She wanted to end it. Slam her heel into the back of his head. But the masters cared about honor. If she hit Nezha while he was down, she’d be sent packing from Sinegard in minutes.

Never mind that if he did the same, she doubted anyone would bat an eye.

Four seconds passed. Nezha raised a shaking hand and slammed it into the ground. He dragged himself forward. His forehead was bleeding, dripping scarlet into his eyes. He blinked it away and glared up at her.

His eyes screamed murder.

“Continue,” said Sonnen.

Rin circled Nezha warily. He crouched like an animal, like a wounded wolf rising on its haunches.

The next time she threw a punch he grabbed her arm and pulled her in close. Her breath hitched. He raked his nails across her face and down to her collarbone.

She jerked her arm out of his grasp and cycled backward in rapid retreat. She felt a sharp sting under her left eye, across her neck. Nezha had drawn blood.

“Watch yourself, Yin,” Sonnen warned.

Both of them ignored him. Like a warning would make any difference, Rin thought. The next time Nezha lunged at her she pulled him to the floor with her. They rolled around in the dirt, each attempting to pin the other and failing.

He punched madly in the air, flinging blows haphazardly at her face.

She dodged the first one. He swung his fist back in reverse and caught her with a backhand that left her gasping. The lower half of her face went numb.

He’d slapped her.

He’d slapped her.

A kick she could take. A knife hand strike she could absorb. But that slap had a savage intimacy. An undertone of superiority.

Something in Rin broke.

She couldn’t breathe. Black tinged the edges of her vision—black, and then scarlet. An awful rage filled her, consumed her thoughts entirely. She needed revenge like she needed to breathe. She wanted Nezha to hurt. She wanted Nezha punished.

She lashed back, fingers curled into claws. He let go of her to jump back, but she followed him, redoubling her frenzied attacks. She wasn’t as fast as he was. He retaliated, and she was too slow to block, and he hit her on the thigh, on the arm, but her body wouldn’t register the damage. Pain was a message she was ignoring, to be felt later.

No—pain led to success.

He struck her face one, twice, thrice. He beat her like an animal and yet she kept fighting.

“What is wrong with you?” he hissed.

More important was what was wrong with him. Fear. She could see it in his eyes.

He had her backed against the wall, hands around her neck, but she grabbed his shoulders, jammed her knee up into his rib cage, and rammed an elbow into the back of his head. He collapsed forward to the ground, wheezing. She flung herself down and ground her elbow into his lower back. Nezha cried out, arched his back in agony.

Rin pinned Nezha’s left arm to the floor with her foot and held his neck down with her right elbow. When he struggled, she slammed her fist into the back of his head and ground his face against the dirt until it was clear that he wouldn’t get up.

“Break,” said Sonnen, but she barely heard him. Blood thundered in her ears to a rhythm like war drums. Her vision was filtered through a red lens that registered only enemy targets.

She grasped a handful of Nezha’s hair in her hand and yanked his head up again to slam into the floor.

“Break!”

Sonnen’s arms were around her neck, restraining her, dragging her off Nezha’s limp form.

She staggered away from Sonnen. Her body was burning up, feverish. She reeled, suddenly dizzy. She felt full to bursting with heat; she had to dispel it, force it out somewhere or she’d surely die, but the only place to put it was in the bodies of everyone else around her—

Something deep inside her rational mind screamed.

Raban reached for her as she climbed up out of the ring. “Rin, what—”

She shoved his hand away.

“Move,” she panted. “Move.”

But the masters crowded around her, a hubbub of voices—hands reaching, mouths moving. Their presence was suffocating. She felt if she screamed she could disintegrate them entirely, wanted to disintegrate them—but the very small part of her that was still rational reined it in, sent her reeling for the exit instead.

Miraculously they cleared a path for her. She pushed her way through the crowd of apprentices and ran to the stairwell. She barreled up the stairs, burst out the door of the main hall into the cold open air, and sucked in a great breath.

It wasn’t enough. She was still burning.

Ignoring the shouts of the masters behind her, she set off at a run.

Jiang was in the first place she looked, the Lore garden. He was sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, still as the stone he sat upon.

She lurched through the garden gates, gripping at the doorpost. The world swirled sideways. Everything looked red: the trees, the stones, Jiang most of all. He flared in front of her like a torch.

He opened his eyes to the sound of her crashing through the gate. “Rin?”

She had forgotten how to speak. The flames within her licked out toward Jiang, sensed his presence like a fire sensed kindling and yearned to consume him.

She became convinced that if she didn’t kill him, she might explode.

She moved to attack him. He scrambled to his feet, dodged her outstretched hands, and then upended her with a deft throw. She landed on her back. He pinned her to the ground with his arms.

“You’re burning,” he said in amazement.

“Help me,” she gasped. “Help.”

He leaned forward and cupped her head in his hands.

“Look at me.”

She obeyed with great difficulty. His face swam before her.

“Great Tortoise,” he murmured, and let go of her.

His eyes rolled up in the back of his head and he began uttering indecipherable noises, syllables that didn’t resemble any language she knew.

He opened his eyes and pressed the palm of his hand to her forehead.

His hand felt like ice. The searing cold flooded from his palm to her forehead and into the rest of her body, through the same rivulets the flame was coursing through; arresting the fire, stilling it in her veins. She felt as if she’d been doused in a freezing bath. She writhed on the floor, breathing in shock, trembling as the fire left her blood.

Then everything was still.

Jiang’s face was the first thing she saw when she regained consciousness. His clothes looked rumpled. There were deep circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in days. How long had she been asleep? Had he been here the entire time?

She raised her head. She was lying in a bunk in the infirmary, but she wasn’t injured, as far as she could tell.

“How do you feel?” Jiang asked quietly.

“Bruised, but okay.” She sat up slowly and winced. Her mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. She coughed and rubbed at her throat, frowning. “What happened?”

Jiang offered her a cup of water that had been sitting beside her bunk. She took it gratefully. The water sluiced down her dry throat with the most wonderful sensation.

“Congratulations,” Jiang said. “You’re this year’s champion.”

His tone did not sound congratulatory at all.

Rin felt none of the exhilaration that she should have, anyway. She couldn’t even relish her victory over Nezha. She didn’t feel the least bit proud, just scared and confused.

“What did I do?” she whispered.

“You have stumbled upon something that you’re not ready for,” said Jiang. He sounded agitated. “I never should have taught you the Five Frolics. From this point forward you’re just going to be a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”

“Not if you help me,” she said. “Not if you teach me otherwise.”

“I thought you just wanted to be a good soldier.”

“I do,” she said.

But more than that, she wanted power.

She had no idea what had happened in the ring; she would be foolish not to feel terrified by it, and yet she had never felt power like it. In that instant, she had felt as if she could defeat anyone. Kill anything.

She wanted that power again. She wanted what Jiang could teach her.

“I was ungrateful that day in the garden,” she said, choosing her words carefully. If she spoke too obsequiously then it would scare Jiang off. But if she didn’t apologize, then Jiang might think that she hadn’t learned anything since they’d last spoken. “I wasn’t thinking. I apologize.”

She watched his eyes apprehensively, looking for that telltale distant expression that indicated that she had lost him.

Jiang’s features did not soften, but neither did he get up to leave. “No. It was my fault. I didn’t realize how much like Altan you are.”

Rin jerked her head up at the mention of Altan.

“He won in his year, you know,” Jiang said flatly. “He fought Tobi in the finals. It was a grudge match, just like your match with Nezha. Altan hated Tobi. Tobi made some jabs about Speer their first week of school, and Altan never forgave him. But he wasn’t like you; he didn’t squabble with Tobi throughout the year like a pecking hen. Altan swallowed his anger and concealed it under a mask of indifference until, at the very end, in front of an audience that included six Warlords and the Empress herself, he unleashed a power so potent that it took Sonnen, Jun, and myself to restrain him. By the time the smoke cleared, Tobi was so badly injured that Enro didn’t sleep for five days while she watched over him.”

“I’m not like that,” she said. She hadn’t beaten Nezha that badly. Had she? It was hard to remember through that fog of anger. “I’m not—I’m not like Altan.”

“You are precisely the same.” Jiang shook his head. “You’re too reckless. You hold grudges, you cultivate your rage and let it explode, and you’re careless about what you’re taught. Training you would be a mistake.”

Rin’s gut plummeted. She was suddenly afraid that she might go mad; she had been given a tantalizing taste of incredible power, but was this the end of the road?

“So that’s why you withdrew your bid for Altan?” she asked. “Why you refused to teach him?”

Jiang looked puzzled.

“I didn’t withdraw my bid,” he said. “I insisted they put him under my watch. Altan was a Speerly, already predisposed to rage and disaster. I knew I was the only one who could help him.”

“But the apprentices said—”

“The apprentices don’t know shit,” Jiang snapped. “I asked Jima to let me train him. But the Empress intervened. She knew the military value of a Speerly warrior, she was so excited . . . in the end, national interests superseded the sanity of one boy. They put him under Irjah’s tutelage, and honed his rage like a weapon, instead of teaching him to control it. You’ve seen him in the ring. You know what he’s like.”

Jiang leaned forward. “But you. The Empress doesn’t know about you.” He muttered to himself more than he spoke to her. “You’re not safe, but you will be . . . They won’t intervene, not this time . . .”

She watched Jiang’s face, not daring to hope. “So does that mean—”

He stood up. “I will take you on as an apprentice. I hope I will not come to regret it.”

He extended a hand toward her. She reached up and grasped it.

Of the original fifty students who matriculated at Sinegard at the start of the term, thirty-five received bids for apprenticeship. The masters sent their scrolls to the office in the main hall to be picked up by the students.

Those students who received no scrolls were asked to hand in their uniforms and make arrangements to leave the Academy immediately.

Most students received one scroll only. Niang, to her delight, joined two other students in the Medicine track. Nezha and Venka pledged Combat.

Kitay, convinced he’d lost his bids the moment he surrendered to Nezha, tugged at his hair so frantically the entire way to the front office that Rin was half-afraid he’d go bald.

“It was a stupid thing,” Kitay said. “Cowardly. No one’s surrendered uninjured in the last two decades. Nobody’s going to want to sponsor me now.”

Up until the Tournament he’d been expecting bids from Jima, Jun, and Irjah. But only one scroll was waiting for him at the registrar.

Kitay unfurled it. His face split into a grin. “Irjah thinks surrendering was brilliant. I’m pledging Strategy!”

The registrar handed two scrolls to Rin. Without opening them, she knew they were from Irjah and Jiang. She could choose between Strategy and Lore.

She pledged Lore.

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