The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

  “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 y
ou 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.

  Chapter 8

  Sinegard Academy gave students four days off from studies to celebrate the Summer Festival. The next term would begin as soon as they returned.

  Most students took this as a chance to visit their families. But Rin didn’t have time to travel all the way back to Tikany, nor did she want to. She had planned on spending the break at the Academy, until Kitay invited her to stay at his estate.

  “Unless you don’t want to,” Kitay said nervously. “I mean, if you already have plans—”

  “I have no plans,” Rin said. “I’d love to.”

  She packed for her excursion into the city the next morning. This took mere seconds—she had very few personal belongings. She carefully folded two sets of school tunics into her old travel satchel, and hoped Kitay would not find it rude if she wore her uniform during the festival. She had no other clothing; she’d gotten rid of her old southerner’s tunics the first chance she got.

  “I’ll get a rickshaw,” Rin offered as she met Kitay at the school gates.

  Kitay looked puzzled. “Why do we need a rickshaw?”

  Rin frowned. “Then how are we getting there?”

  Kitay opened his mouth to reply just as a massive horse-drawn carriage pulled up by the gates. The driver, a portly man in robes of rich gold and burgundy, hopped off the coachman’s seat and bowed deeply in Kitay’s direction. “Master Chen.”

  He blinked at Rin, as if trying to decide whether to bow to her as well, and then managed a perfunctory head dip.

  “Thanks, Merchi.” Kitay handed their bags to the servant and helped Rin into the carriage.

  “Comfortable?”

  “Very.”

  From their vantage point in the carriage, they could see almost all the city nested in the valley below: the spiraling pagodas of the administrative district rising through a faint blanket of mist, white houses built into the valley slopes with curved tiled roofs, and the winding stone walls of the alleyways leading downtown.

  From the shaded interior of the carriage, Rin felt insulated from the dirty city streets. She felt clean. For the first time since she had arrived in Sinegard, she felt as if she belonged here. She leaned against the side and enjoyed the warm summer breeze against her face. She had not rested like this in a long time.

  “We will discuss what happened to you in detail when you return,” Jiang had told her. “But your mind has just suffered a very particular trauma. The best thing you can do for yourself now is rest. Let the experience germinate. Let your mind heal.”

  Kitay, tactfully, did not ask her what had happened. Rin was grateful for it.

  Merchi drove them at a brisk pace down the mountain pass. They continued on the main city road for an hour and then turned left onto the isolated road that led into the Jade District.

  When Rin had arrived in Sinegard a year ago, she and Tutor Feyrik had traveled through the working-class district, where the inns were cheap and gambling houses stood around every corner. Her daily trips to see the Widow Maung had led her through the loudest, dirtiest, and smelliest parts of the city. What she’d seen of Sinegard so far was no different from Tikany—it was just noisier and more cramped.

  Now, riding in the Chen family’s carriage, she saw how splendid Sinegard could be. The roads of the Jade District were freshly paved, and glistened like they had been scrubbed clean that very morning. Rin saw no wooden shacks, no evident dumping grounds for chamber pots. She saw no grumpy housewives steaming breads and dumplings on outdoor grills, too poor to afford indoor stoves. She saw no beggars.

  She found the stillness unsettling. Tikany was always bustling with activity—drifters collecting trash to repackage and sell; old men sitting on stoops outside, smoking or playing mahjong; little children wearing jumpers that exposed their butt cheeks, wandering around the streets followed by squatting grandparents ready to catch them when they toppled over.

  She saw none of that here. The Jade District was composed of pristine barriers and walled-off gardens. Aside from their carriage, the roads were empty.

  Merchi stopped the carriage before the gates of a massive compound. They swung ponderously open, revealing four long rectangular buildings arranged in a square, enclosing an enormous garden pavilion. Several dogs rushed them at the entrance, tiny white things whose paws were as immaculately clean as the tiled path they walked on.

  Kitay gave a shout, climbed out of the carriage, and knelt down. His dogs leaped on him, tails wagging with delirious delight.

  “This one’s the Dragon Emperor.” He tickled a dog under its chin. “They’re all named after the great rulers.”

  “Which one’s the Red Emperor?” Rin asked.

  “The one that’s going to pee on your foot if you don’t move.”

  The estate’s housekeeper was a short, plump woman with freckled, leathery skin named Lan. She spoke with a friendly, girlish voice that was at odds with her wrinkled face. Her Sinegardian accent was so strong that even after several months’ practice with the heavily accented Widow Maung, Rin still could only barely decipher it.

  “What do you want to eat? I’ll cook you anything you want. I know the culinary styles of all twelve provinces. Except the Monkey Province. Too spicy. It’s not good for you. I also don’t do stinky tofu. My only constraint is what’s on the market, but I can get just about anything at the import store. Any favorite recipes? Lobster? Or water chestnuts? You name it, I’ll cook it.”

  Rin, who was accustomed to eating the uninspired slop of the Academy canteen, was at a loss for a response. How was she to explain she simply didn’t have the repertoire of meals that Lan demanded? Back in Tikany, the Fangs were fond of a dish named “whatever,” which was quite literally made of whatever scraps were left at the shop—usually fried eggs and glass noodles.

  “I want Seven Treasure Soup,” Kitay intervened, leaving Rin to wonder what on earth that was. “And Lion’s Head.”

  Rin blinked. “What?”

  Kitay looked amused. “Oh, you’ll see.”

  “You could act less like a dazed peasant, you know,” Kitay said as Lan laid out a spread of quail, quail eggs, shark fin soup served in turtle’s shell, and pig’s intestines before them. “It’s just food.”

  But “just food” was rice porridge. Maybe some vegetables. A piece of fish, pork, or chicken whenever they could get it.

  Nothing on the table was “just” anything.
/>   Seven Treasure Soup turned out to be a deliciously sweet congee-based concoction of red dates, honeyed chestnuts, lotus seeds, and four other ingredients that Rin could not identify. Lion’s Head, she discovered with some relief, was not actually a lion’s head, but rather a ball of meat mixed with flour and boiled amid strips of white tofu.

  “Kitay, I am a dazed peasant.” Rin tried fruitlessly to pick up a quail egg with her chopsticks. Finally she gave up and used her fingers. “You eat like this? All the time?”

  Kitay blushed. “You get used to it. I had a hard time our first week at school. The Academy canteen was awful.”

  It was hard not to feel jealous of Kitay. His private washroom was bigger than the cramped bedroom Rin had shared with Kesegi. His estate’s library rivaled the stacks at Sinegard. Everything Kitay owned was replaceable; if he got mud on his shoes, he threw them away. If his shirt ripped, he got a new one—a newly made shirt, tailored to his precise height and girth.

  Kitay had spent his childhood in luxurious comfort, with nothing better to do than study for the Keju. For him, testing into Sinegard had been a pleasant surprise; a confirmation of something he’d always known was his destiny.

  “Where’s your father?” Rin asked. Kitay’s father was the defense minister to the Empress herself. She was privately relieved she wouldn’t have to converse with him yet—the thought itself was terrifying—but she couldn’t help feeling curious about the man. Would he be an older version of Kitay—wiry-haired, just as brilliant, and exponentially more powerful?

  Kitay made a face. “Defense meetings. You wouldn’t know it, but the whole city is on high security alert. The entire City Guard will be on duty all this week. We don’t need another Opera incident.”

  “I thought the Red Junk Opera was dead,” said Rin.

  “Mostly dead. You can’t kill a movement. Somewhere out there, some religious lunatics are intent on killing the Empress.” Kitay speared a chunk of tofu. “Father’s going to be at the palace until the parade is over. He’s directly responsible for the Empress’s safety. If anything goes wrong, Father’s head is on the line.”