The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

“She’s the Speerly, Enki.”

  “Oh! I’d forgotten.” Enki rubbed the back of his shaved head. “How did you slip through Mugen’s fingers?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rin. “I only just found out myself.”

  Enki nodded slowly, still studying Rin as if she were a particularly fascinating specimen. He wore a carefully neutral expression that gave nothing away. “But of course. You had no idea.”

  “She’ll need equipment,” said Qara.

  “Sure, no problem.” Enki disappeared into a closet built into the back of the room. They listened to him bustling around for a moment, and then he reappeared with a tray of dried plants. “Any of these work for you?”

  Rin had never seen so many different kinds of psychedelics in one place. There were more drug varieties here than in Jiang’s entire garden. Jiang would have been delighted.

  She brushed her fingers along the opium pods, the shriveled mushrooms, and the muddy white powders.

  “What difference does it make?” she asked.

  “It’s really a matter of preference,” said Enki. “These drugs will all get you nice and tripped up, but the key is to find a mixture that lets you summon the gods without getting so stoned that you can’t wield your weapon. The stronger hallucinogens will shoot you right up to the Pantheon, but you’ll lose all perception of the material world. Fat lot of good summoning a god will do you if you can’t see an arrow right in front of your face. The weaker drugs require a bit more focus to get in the right mind state, but they leave you with more of your bodily faculties. If you’ve had meditation training, then I’d stick with more moderate strains if you can.”

  Rin didn’t think that a siege was a great time to experiment, so she decided to settle for the familiar. She found the poppy seed variety that she had stolen from Jiang’s garden among Enki’s collection. She reached out to grab a handful, but Enki pulled the tray back out of her reach.

  “No you don’t.” Enki brought a scale out from under the counter and began measuring precise amounts into little pouches. “You come to me for doses, which I will document. The amount you receive is calibrated to your body weight. You’re not big; you definitely won’t need as much as the others. Use it sparingly, and only when ordered. A shaman who’s addicted is better off dead.”

  Rin hadn’t considered that. “Does that happen often?”

  “In this line of work?” Enki said. “It’s almost inevitable.”

  The Militia’s food rations made the Academy canteen look like a veritable restaurant in comparison. Rin stood in line for half an hour and received a measly bowl of rice gruel. She swirled her spoon around the gray, watery soup, and several uncooked lumps drifted up to the surface.

  She looked around the mess hall for black uniforms, and found a few of her contingent clustered at one long table at the end of the hall. They sat far away from the other soldiers. The two tables closest to them were empty.

  “This is our Speerly,” Qara announced when Rin sat down.

  The Cike looked up at Rin with a mixture of apprehension and wary interest. Qara, Ramsa, and Enki sat with a man she didn’t recognize, all four of them garbed in pitch-black uniforms without any insignia or armband. Rin was struck by how young they all were. None looked older than Enki, and even he didn’t look like he’d seen a full four zodiac cycles. Most appeared to be in their late twenties. Ramsa barely looked fifteen.

  It was no surprise that they had no problem with a commander of Altan’s age, or that they were called the Bizarre Children. Rin wondered if they were recruited young, or if they simply died before they had the chance to grow older.

  “Welcome to the freak squad,” said the man next to her. “I’m Baji.”

  Baji was a thickly built mercenary type with a loud booming voice. Despite his considerable girth he was somewhat handsome, in a coarse, dark sort of way. He looked like one of the Fangs’ opium smugglers. Strapped to his back was a huge nine-pointed rake. It looked amazingly heavy. Rin wondered at the strength it took to wield it.

  “Admiring this?” Baji patted the rake. The pointed ends were crusted over with something suspiciously brown. “Nine prongs. One of a kind. You won’t find its make anywhere else.”

  Because no smithy would create a weapon so outlandish, Rin thought. And because farmers have no use for lethally sharp rakes. “Seems impractical.”

  “That’s what I said,” Ramsa butted in. “What are you, a potato farmer?”

  Baji directed his spoon at the boy. “Shut your mouth or I swear to heaven I will put nine perfectly spaced holes in the side of your head.”

  Rin lifted a spoonful of rice gruel to her mouth and tried not to picture what Baji had just described. Her eyes landed on a barrel placed right behind Baji’s seat. The water inside was oddly clouded, and the surface erupted in occasional ripples, as if a fish were swimming around inside.

  “What’s that in the barrel?” she asked.

  “That’s the Friar.” Baji twisted around in his seat and rapped his knuckles against the wooden rim. “Hey, Aratsha! Come say hello to the Speerly!”

  For a second the barrel did nothing. Rin wondered whether Baji was entirely in his right mind. She had heard rumors that Cike operatives were crazy, that they had been sent to the Night Castle when they lost their sanity.

  Then the water began rising out of the barrel, as if falling in reverse, and solidified into a shape that looked vaguely like a man. Two bulbous orbs that might have been eyes widened as they swiveled in Rin’s direction. Something that looked vaguely like a mouth moved. “Oh! You cut your hair.”

  Rin was too busy gaping to respond.

  Baji made an impatient noise. “No, you dolt, this is the new one. From Sinegard,” he emphasized.

  “Oh, really?” The water blob made a gesture that seemed like a bow. Vibrations rippled through his entire form when he spoke. “Well, you should have said so. Careful, you’ll catch a moth in your mouth.”

  Rin’s jaw shut with a click. “What happened to you?” she finally managed.

  “What are you talking about?” The watery figure sounded alarmed. He dipped his head, as if examining his torso.

  “No, I mean—” Rin stammered. “What—why do you—”

  “Aratsha prefers to spend his time in this guise if he can help it,” Baji interjected. “You don’t want to see his human form. Very grisly.”

  “Like you’re such a visual delight.” Aratsha snorted.

  “Sometimes we let him out into the river when we need a drinking source poisoned,” Baji said.

  “I am quite handy with poisons,” Aratsha acknowledged.

  “Are you? I thought you just fouled things up with your general presence.”

  “Don’t be rude, Baji. You’re the one who can’t be bothered to clean his weapon.”

  Baji dipped his rake threateningly over the barrel. “Shall I clean it off in you? What part of you is this, anyway? Your leg? Your—”

  Aratsha yelped and collapsed back into the barrel. Within seconds the water was very still. It could have been a barrel of rainwater.

  “He’s a weird one,” Baji said cheerfully, turning back to Rin. “He’s an initiate of a minor river god. Far more committed to his religion than the rest of us.”

  “Which god do you summon?”

  “The god of pigs.”

  “What?”

  “I summon the fighting spirit of a very angry boar. Come off it. Not all gods are as glorious as yours, sweetheart. I picked the first one I saw. The masters were disappointed.”

  The masters? Had Baji gone to Sinegard? Rin remembered Jiang had told her there had been Lore students before her, students who had gone mad, but they were supposed to be in mental asylums or Baghra. They were too unstable, they had been locked up for their own good. “So that means—”

  “It means I smash things very well, sweetheart.” Baji drained his bowl, tilted his head back, and belched. His expression made it clear he didn’t want to discuss it further.
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br />   “Will you slide down?” A very slight young man with a whispery goatee walked over to their table with a heaping bowl of lotus root and slid into the seat on the other side of Rin.

  “Unegen can turn into a fox,” Baji said by way of introduction.

  “Turn into—?”

  “My god lets me shift shapes,” Unegen said. “And yours lets you spit fire. Not a big deal.” He spooned a heap of steamed lotus into his mouth, swallowed, grimaced, and then belched. “I don’t think the cook’s even trying anymore. How are we low on salt? We’re next to an ocean.”

  “You can’t just pour seawater on food,” interjected Ramsa. “There’s a sanitation process.”

  “How hard can it be? We’re soldiers, not barbarians.” Unegen leaned down the table, tapping to get Qara’s attention. “Where’s your other half?”

  Qara looked irritated. “Out.”

  “Well, when’s he back?”

  “When he’s back,” Qara said testily. “Chaghan comes and goes on his own schedule. You know that.”

  “As long as his schedule accommodates the fact that we’re, you know, fighting a war,” said Baji. “He could at least hurry.”

  Qara snorted. “You two don’t even like Chaghan. What do you want him back for?”

  “We’ve been eating rice gruel for days. It’s about time we had some dessert up here.” Baji smiled, displaying sharp incisors. “I’m talking sugar.”

  “I thought Chaghan was getting something for Altan,” Rin said, confused.

  “Sure,” said Unegen. “Doesn’t mean he can’t stop at a bakery on the way back.”

  “Is he at least close?” Baji asked.

  “I’m not my brother’s homing pigeon,” Qara grumbled. “We’ll know where he is when he’s back.”

  “Can’t you two just, you know, do that thing?” Unegen tapped his temples.

  Qara made a face. “We’re anchor twins, not mirror-wells.”

  “Oh, you can’t do mirror-wells?”

  “Nobody can do mirror-wells,” Qara snapped. “Not anymore.”

  Unegen looked at Rin over the table and winked, as if winding Qara up was something he and Baji regularly did for fun.

  “Oh, leave Qara alone.”

  Rin twisted around in her seat to see Altan. He walked up to them, looking over her head. “Someone needs to patrol the outer perimeter. Baji, it’s your turn.”

  “Oh, I can’t,” Baji said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m eating.”

  Altan rolled his eyes. “Baji.”

  “Send Ramsa,” Baji whined. “He hasn’t been out since—”

  Bang. The door to the mess hall slammed open. All heads whipped toward the far end of the room, where a figure garbed in the black robes of the Cike was staggering through the doorway. The division soldiers standing by the exit hastily skirted away, clearing a path for the massive stranger.

  Only the Cike were unfazed.

  “Suni’s back,” Unegen said. “Took him long enough.”

  Suni was a giant man with a boyish face. A thick golden dusting of hair covered his arms and legs, more hair than Rin had ever seen on a man. He walked with an odd lope, like an ape’s walk, like he’d rather be swinging through a tree instead of moving ponderously over land. His arms were almost thicker than Rin’s entire torso; he looked as if he could crush her head in like a walnut if he wanted to.

  He made a beeline toward the Cike.

  “Great Tortoise,” Rin muttered under her breath. “What is he?”

  “Suni’s mom fucked a monkey,” Ramsa said happily.

  “Shut up, Ramsa. Suni channels the Monkey God,” Unegen reported. “Makes you glad he’s on our side, doesn’t it?”

  Rin wasn’t sure that made her any less scared of him, but Suni was already at their table.

  “How’d it go?” Unegen asked cheerfully. “Did they see you?”

  Suni didn’t seem to hear Unegen. He cocked his head, as if sniffing at them. His temples were caked with dried blood. His tousled hair and vacant stare made him appear more animal than human, like some wild beast that couldn’t decide whether to attack or flee.

  Rin tensed. Something was wrong.

  “It’s so loud,” Suni said. His voice was a low growl, gritty and guttural.

  The smile slid off Unegen’s face. “What?”

  “They keep shouting.”

  “Who keeps shouting?”

  Suni’s eyes darted around the table. They were wild and unfocused. Rin tensed a split second before Suni leaped over the table at them. He slammed his arm into Unegen’s neck, pinning him to the floor. Unegen choked, batted frantically at Suni’s hulking torso.

  Rin jumped to the side, lifting up her chair as a weapon just as Qara grabbed for her longbow.

  Suni was grappling furiously with Unegen on the floor. There was a popping noise and then a little red fox was where Unegen had been before. It almost slithered out of Suni’s grip, but Suni tightened his hold and seized the fox by the throat.

  “Altan!” Qara shouted.

  Altan hurtled over the fallen table, pushing Rin out of the way. He jumped onto Suni just before Suni could wrench Unegen’s neck. Startled, Suni lashed out with his left arm, catching Altan in the shoulder. Altan ignored the blow and slapped Suni hard across the face.

  Suni roared and let go of Unegen. The fox wriggled away and scampered toward Qara’s feet, where he collapsed, sides heaving for air.

  Suni and Altan were now wrestling on the floor, each trying to pin the other. Altan looked tiny against the massive Suni, who had to be twice his weight. Suni got a hold around Altan’s shoulders, but Altan gripped Suni’s face and squeezed his fingers toward his eyes.

  Suni howled and flung Altan away from him. For a moment Altan looked like a limp puppet, tossed in the air, but he landed upright, tensed like a cat, just as Suni charged him again.

  The Cike had formed a ring around Suni. Qara held an arrow fitted to her bow, ready to pierce Suni through the forehead. Baji held his rake at the ready, but Suni and Altan were rolling around so wildly he couldn’t get a clean blow in. Rin’s fingers closed tightly around the hilt of her sword.

  Altan landed a solid kick to Suni’s sternum. A crack echoed through the room. Suni tottered back, stunned. Altan rose to a low crouch, standing between Suni and the rest of the Cike.

  “Get back,” Altan said softly.

  “They’re so loud,” Suni said. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded scared. “They’re so loud!”

  “I said get back!”

  Baji and Unegen retreated reluctantly. But Qara remained where she was, keeping her arrow trained at Suni’s head.

  “They’re being so loud,” said Suni. “I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

  “I can tell you everything you need to know,” Altan said quietly. “Just put your arms down, Suni, can you do that for me?”

  “I’m scared,” Suni whimpered.

  “We don’t point arrows at our friends,” Altan snapped without moving his head.

  Qara lowered her longbow. Her arms shook visibly.

  Altan walked slowly toward Suni, arms spread out in supplication. “It’s me. It’s just me.”

  “Are you going to help me?” Suni asked. His voice didn’t match his demeanor. He sounded like a little child—terrified, helpless.

  “Only if you let me,” Altan answered.

  Suni dropped his arms.

  Rin’s sword trembled in her hands. She was certain that Suni would snap Altan’s neck.

  “They’re so loud,” Suni said. “They keep telling me to do things, I don’t know who to listen to . . .”

  “Listen to me,” said Altan. “Just me.”

  With brisk, short steps, he closed the gap between himself and Suni.

  Suni tensed. Qara’s hands flew to her longbow again; Rin crouched to spring forward.

  Suni’s massive hand closed around Altan’s. He took a deep breath. Altan touched his forehead gently and br
ought Suni’s forehead down to his own.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re fine. You’re Suni and you belong to the Cike. You don’t have to listen to any voices. You just have to listen to me.”

  Eyes closed, Suni nodded. His heavy breathing subsided. A lopsided grin broke out over his face. When he opened his eyes, the wildness had left them.

  “Hi, Trengsin,” he said. “Good to have you back.”

  Altan exhaled slowly, then nodded and clapped Suni on the shoulder.

  Chapter 14

  “So much of a siege is sitting around on your ass,” Ramsa complained. “You know how much actual fighting there’s been since the Federation started landing on the beach in droves? None. We’re just scouting each other out, testing the limits, playing chicken.”

  Ramsa had recruited Rin to help him fortify the back alleys of the intersection by the wharf.

  They were slowly transforming the streets of Khurdalain into defense lines. Each evacuated house became a fort; each intersection became a trap of barbed wire. They had spent the morning methodically knocking holes through walls to link the labyrinth of lanes into a navigable transportation system to which only the Nikara had the map. Now they were filling bags with sand to pad the gaps in the walls against Federation bombardments.

  “I thought you blew up an embassy building,” said Rin.

  “That was one time,” Ramsa snapped. “More action than anyone’s attempted since we got here, anyhow.”

  “You mean the Federation hasn’t attacked yet?”

  “They’ve launched exploratory parties to sniff out the borders. No major troop movements yet.”

  “And they’ve been at it this long? Why?”

  “Because Khurdalain’s better fortified than Sinegard. Khurdalain withstood the first two Poppy Wars, and it sure as hell is going to make it through a third.” Ramsa bent down. “Pass me that bag.”

  She hauled it up, and he hoisted it to the top of the fortification with a grunt.

  Rin couldn’t help liking the scrawny urchin, who reminded her of a younger Kitay, if Kitay ad been a one-eyed pyromaniac with an unfortunate adoration for explosions. She wondered how long he’d had been with the Cike. He looked impossibly young. How did a child end up on the front lines of a war?