by R. F. Kuang
That night she cut off her braids by herself with a rusty knife she’d borrowed from one of the caravan guards. She jerked the blade as close to her ears as she dared, sawing back and forth until her hair gave way. It took longer than she had imagined. When she was done, she stared for a minute at the two thick ropes of hair that lay in her lap.
She had thought she might keep them, but now she could not see any sentimental value in doing so. They were just clumps of dead hair. She wouldn’t even be able to sell them for much up north—Sinegardian hair was famously thin and silky, and no one wanted the coarse tresses of a peasant from Tikany. Instead, she hurled them out the side of the wagon and watched them fall behind on the dusty road.
Their party arrived in the capital just as Rin was starting to go mad from boredom.
She could see Sinegard’s famous East Gate from miles off—an imposing gray wall topped by a three-tiered pagoda, emblazoned with a dedication to the Red Emperor: Eternal Strength, Eternal Harmony.
Ironic, Rin thought, for a country that had been at war more often than it had been at peace.
Just as they approached the rounded doors below, their caravan came to an abrupt halt.
Rin waited. Nothing happened.
After twenty minutes had passed, Tutor Feyrik leaned out of their wagon and caught the attention of a caravan guide. “What’s going on?”
“Federation contingent up ahead,” the guide said. “They’re here about some border dispute. They’re getting their weapons checked at the gate—it’ll be a few more minutes.”
Rin sat up straight. “Those are Federation soldiers?”
She’d never seen Mugenese soldiers in person—at the end of the Second Poppy War, all Mugenese nationals had been forced out of their occupied areas and either sent home or relocated to limited diplomatic and trading offices on the mainland. To those Nikara born after occupation, they were the specters of modern history—always lingering in the borderlands, an ever-present threat whose face was unknown.
Tutor Feyrik’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist before she could hop out of the wagon. “Get back here.”
“But I want to see!”
“No, you don’t.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “You never want to see Federation soldiers. If you cross them—if they even think you’ve looked at them funny—they can and will hurt you. They still have diplomatic immunity. They don’t give a shit. Do you understand?”
“We won the war,” she scoffed. “The occupation’s over.”
“We barely won the war.” He shoved her back into a sitting position. “And there’s a reason why all your instructors at Sinegard care only about winning the next one.”
Someone shouted a command at the front of the caravan. Rin felt a lurch; then the wagons began to move again. She leaned over the side of their wagon, trying to catch a glimpse up ahead, but all she could see was a blue uniform disappearing through the heavy doors.
And then, at last, they were through the gates.
The downtown marketplace was an assault on the senses. Rin had never seen so many people or things in one place at one time. She was quickly overwhelmed by the deafening clamor of buyers haggling with sellers over prices, the bright colors of flowery skeins of silk splayed out on grand display boards, and the cloyingly pungent odors of durian and peppercorn drifting up from vendors’ portable grills.
“The women here are so white,” Rin marveled. “Like the girls in wall paintings.”
The skin tones she observed from the caravan had moved up the color gradient the farther north they drove. She knew that the people of the northern provinces were industrialists and businessmen. They were citizens of class and means; they didn’t labor in the fields like Tikany’s farmers did. But she hadn’t expected the differences to be this pronounced.
“They’re pale as their corpses will be,” Tutor Feyrik said dismissively. “They’re terrified of the sun.” He grumbled in irritation as a pair of women with day parasols strolled past him, accidentally whacking him in the face.
Rin discovered quickly that Sinegard had the unique ability to make newcomers feel as unwelcome as possible.
Tutor Feyrik had been right—everyone in Sinegard wanted money. Vendors screamed at them persistently from all directions. Before Rin had even stepped off the wagon, a porter ran up to them and offered to carry their luggage—two pathetically light travel bags—for the small fee of eight imperial silvers.
Rin balked; that was almost a quarter of what they’d paid for a spot on the caravan.
“I’ll carry it,” she stammered, jerking her travel bag away from the porter’s clawing fingers. “Really, I don’t need—let go!”
They escaped the porter only to be assaulted by a crowd, each person offering a different menial service.
“Rickshaw? Do you need a rickshaw?”
“Little girl, are you lost?”
“No, we’re just trying to find the school—”
“I’ll take you there, very low fee, five ingots, only five ingots—”
“Get lost,” snapped Tutor Feyrik. “We don’t need your services.”
The hawkers slunk back into the marketplace.
Even the spoken language of the capital made Rin uncomfortable. Sinegardian Nikara was a grating dialect, brisk and curt no matter the content. Tutor Feyrik asked three different strangers for directions to the campus before one gave a response that he understood.
“Didn’t you live here?” Rin asked.
“Not since the occupation,” Tutor Feyrik grumbled. “It’s easy to lose a language when you never speak it.”
Rin supposed that was fair. She herself found the dialect nearly indecipherable; every word, it seemed, had to be shortened, with a curt r noise added to the end. In Tikany, speech was slow and rolling. The southerners drew out their vowels, rolled their words over their tongues like sweet rice congee. In Sinegard, it seemed no one had time to finish his words.
Even with directions, the city itself was no more navigable than its dialect. Sinegard was the oldest city in the country, and its architecture bore evidence of the multiple shifts in power in Nikan over the centuries. Buildings were either of new construction or were falling into decay, emblems of regimes that had long ago fallen out of power. In the eastern districts stood the spiraling towers of the old Hinterlander invaders from the north. To the west, blocklike compounds stood wedged narrowly next to one another, a holdover from Federation occupation during the Poppy Wars. It was a tableau of a country with many rulers, represented in a single city.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Rin asked after several minutes of walking uphill.
“Only vaguely.” Tutor Feyrik was sweating profusely. “It’s become a labyrinth since I was here. How much money have we got left?”
Rin dug out her coin pouch and counted. “A string and a half of silvers.”
“That should more than cover what we need.” Tutor Feyrik mopped at his brow with his cloak. “Why don’t we treat ourselves to a ride?”
He stepped out onto the dusty street and raised an arm. Almost immediately a rickshaw runner swerved across the road and halted jerkily in front of them.
“Where to?” panted the runner.
“The Academy,” said Tutor Feyrik. He tossed their bags into the back and climbed into the seat. Rin grasped the sides and was about to pull herself in when she heard a sharp cry behind her. Startled, she turned around.
A child lay sprawled in the center of the road. Several paces ahead, a horse-drawn carriage had veered off course.
“You just hit that kid!” Rin screamed. “Hey, stop!”
The driver yanked the horse’s reins. The wagon screeched to a halt. The passenger craned his neck out of the carriage and caught sight of the child feebly stirring in the street.
The child stood up, miraculously alive. Blood trickled down in tiny rivulets from the top of his forehead. He touched two fingers to his head and glanced down, dazed.
The passenger lea
ned forward and uttered a harsh command to the driver that Rin didn’t understand.
The wagon turned slowly. For an absurd moment Rin thought the driver was going to offer the child a lift. Then she heard the crack of a whip.
The child stumbled and tried to run.
Rin shrieked over the sound of clomping hooves.
Tutor Feyrik reached toward the gaping rickshaw runner and tapped him on the shoulder. “Go. Go!”
The runner sped up, dragged them faster and faster over the rutted streets until the exclamations of bystanders died away behind them.
“The driver was smart,” said Tutor Feyrik as they wobbled over the bumpy road. “You cripple a child, you pay a disabilities fine for their entire life. But if you kill them, you pay the funeral fee once. And that’s only if you’re caught. If you hit someone, better make sure they’re dead.”
Rin clung to the side of the carriage and tried not to vomit.
Sinegard the city was smothering, confusing, and frightening.
But Sinegard Academy was beautiful beyond description.
Their rickshaw driver dropped them at the base of the mountains at the edge of the city. Rin let Tutor Feyrik handle the luggage and ran up to the school gates, breathless.
She’d been imagining for weeks now what it would be like to ascend the steps to the Academy. The entire country knew how Sinegard Academy looked; the school’s likeness was painted on wall scrolls throughout Nikan.
Those scrolls didn’t come close to capturing the campus in reality. A winding stone pathway curved around the mountain, spiraling upward into a complex of pagodas built on successively higher tiers. At the highest tier stood a shrine, on the tower of which perched a stone dragon, the symbol of the Red Emperor. A glimmering waterfall hung like a skein of silk beside the shrine.
The Academy looked like a palace for the gods. This was a place out of legend. This was her home for the next five years.
Rin was speechless.
Rin and Tutor Feyrik were given a tour of the grounds by an older student who introduced himself as Tobi. Tobi was tall, bald-headed, and clad in a black tunic with a red armband. He wore a dedicatedly bored sneer to indicate he would rather have been doing anything else.
They were joined by a slender, attractive woman who initially mistook Tutor Feyrik for a porter and then apologized without embarrassment. Her son was a fine-featured boy who would have been very pretty if he hadn’t had such a resentful expression on his face.
“The Academy is built on the grounds of an old monastery.” Tobi motioned for them to follow him up the stone steps to the first tier. “The temples and praying grounds were converted to classrooms once the Red Emperor united the tribes of Nikan. First-year students have sweeping duty, so you’ll get familiar with the grounds soon enough. Come on, try to keep up.”
Even Tobi’s lack of enthusiasm couldn’t detract from the Academy’s beauty, but he did his best. He walked the stone steps in a rapid, practiced manner, not bothering to check whether his guests were keeping pace. Rin was left behind to help the wheezing Tutor Feyrik up the perilously narrow stairs.
There were seven tiers to the Academy. Each curve of the stone pathway brought into view a new complex of buildings and training grounds, embedded in lush foliage that had clearly been carefully cultivated for centuries. A rushing brook sliced down the mountainside, cleaving the campus neatly in two.
“The library is over there. Mess hall is this way. New students live at the lowest tier. Up there are the masters’ quarters.” Tobi pointed very rapidly to several stone buildings that all looked alike.
“What about that?” Rin asked, pointing to an important-looking building by the brook.
Tobi’s lip curled up. “That’s the outhouse, kid.”
The handsome boy snickered. Cheeks burning, Rin pretended to be very fascinated by the view from the terrace.
“Where are you from, anyway?” Tobi asked in a not-very-friendly tone.
“Rooster Province,” Rin muttered.
“Ah. The south.” Tobi sounded like something made sense to him now. “I guess multistory buildings are a new concept to you, but try not to get too overwhelmed.”
After Rin’s registration papers had been checked and filed, Tutor Feyrik had no reason to stay. They said their goodbyes outside the school gates.
“I understand if you’re scared,” Tutor Feyrik said.
Rin swallowed down the massive lump in her throat and clenched her teeth. Her head buzzed; she knew a dam of tears would break out from under her eyes if she didn’t suppress it.
“I’m not scared,” she insisted.
He smiled gently. “Of course you’re not.”
Her face crumpled, and she rushed forward to embrace him. She buried her face in his tunic so that no one could see her crying. Tutor Feyrik patted her on the shoulder.
She had made it all the way across the country to a place she had spent years dreaming of, only to discover a hostile, confusing city that despised southerners. She had no home in Tikany or Sinegard. Everywhere she traveled, everywhere she escaped to, she was just a war orphan who was not supposed to be there.
She felt so terribly alone.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said.
Tutor Feyrik’s smile fell. “Oh, Rin.”
“I hate it here,” she blurted suddenly. “I hate this city. The way they talk—that stupid apprentice—it’s like they don’t think I should be here.”
“Of course they don’t,” said Tutor Feyrik. “You’re a war orphan. You’re a southerner. You weren’t supposed to pass the Keju. The Warlords like to claim that the Keju makes Nikan a meritocracy, but the system is designed to keep the poor and illiterate in their place. You’re offending them with your very presence.”
He grasped her by the shoulders and bent slightly so that they were eye to eye. “Rin, listen. Sinegard is a cruel city. The Academy will be worse. You will be studying with children of Warlords. Children who have been training in martial arts since before they could even walk. They’ll make you an outsider, because you’re not like them. That’s okay. Don’t let any of that discourage you. No matter what they say, you deserve to be here. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Your first day of classes will be like a punch to the gut,” Tutor Feyrik continued. “Your second day, probably even worse. You’ll find your courses harder than studying for the Keju ever was. But if anyone can survive here, it’s you. Don’t forget what you did to get here.”
He straightened up. “And don’t ever come back to the south. You’re better than that.”
As Tutor Feyrik disappeared down the path, Rin pinched the bridge of her nose, willing the hot feeling behind her eyes to go away. She could not let her new classmates see her cry.
She was alone in a city without a friend, where she barely spoke the language, at a school that she now wasn’t sure she wanted to attend.
He leads you down the aisle. He’s old and fat, and he smells like sweat. He looks at you and he licks his lips . . .
She shuddered, squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them again.
So Sinegard was frightening and unfamiliar. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She squared her shoulders and walked back through the school gates.
This was better. No matter what, this was a thousand times better than Tikany.
“And then she asked if the outhouse was a classroom,” said a voice from farther down in the line for registration. “You should have seen her clothes.”
Rin’s neck prickled. It was the boy from the tour.
She turned around.
He really was pretty, impossibly so, with large, almond-shaped eyes and a sculpted mouth that looked good even twisted into a sneer. His skin was a shade of porcelain white that any Sinegardian woman would have murdered for, and his silky hair was almost as long as Rin’s had been.
He caught her eye and smirked, continuing loudly as if he hadn’t s
een her. “And her teacher, you know, I bet he’s one of those doddering failures who can’t get a job in the city so they spend their lives trying to scrape a living from local magistrates. I thought he might die on the way up the mountain, he was wheezing so loud.”
Rin had dealt with verbal abuse from the Fangs for years. Hearing insults from this boy hardly fazed her. But slandering Tutor Feyrik, the man who had delivered her from Tikany, who had saved her from a miserable future in a forced marriage . . . that was unforgivable.
Rin took two steps toward the boy and punched him in the face.
Her fist connected with his eye socket with a pleasant popping noise. The boy staggered backward into the students behind him, nearly toppling to the ground.
“You bitch!” he screeched. He righted himself and rushed at her.
She shrank back, fists raised.
“Stop!” A dark-robed apprentice appeared between them, arms flung out to keep them apart. When the boy struggled forward anyway, the apprentice quickly grabbed his extended arm by the wrist and twisted it behind his back.
The boy stumbled, immobilized.
“Don’t you know the rules?” The apprentice’s voice was low, calm, and controlled. “No fighting.”
The boy said nothing, mouth twisted into a sullen sneer. Rin fought the sudden urge to cry.
“Names?” the apprentice demanded.
“Fang Runin,” she said quickly, terrified. Were they in trouble? Would she be expelled?
The boy struggled in vain against the apprentice’s hold.
The apprentice tightened his grip. “Name?” he asked again.
“Yin Nezha,” the boy spat.
“Yin?” The apprentice let him go. “And what is the well-bred heir to the House of Yin doing brawling in a hallway?”
“She punched me in the face!” Nezha screeched. A nasty bruise was already blossoming around his left eye, a bright splotch of purple against porcelain skin.
The apprentice raised an eyebrow at Rin. “And why would you do that?”
“He insulted my teacher,” she said.
“Oh? Well, that’s different.” The apprentice looked amused. “Weren’t you taught not to insult teachers? That’s taboo.”