The Poppy War (The Poppy War Trilogy #1)

Winter descended on Sinegard with a vengeance. The students enjoyed one last pleasant day of autumn sun, and woke the next morning to find that a cold sheet of snow had fallen over the Academy. The snow was lovely to observe for all of two serene minutes. Then it became nothing but a pain in the ass.

The entire campus turned into a risk zone for broken limbs—the streams froze over; the stairways became slushy and treacherous. Outdoor classes moved indoors. The first-years were assigned to scatter salt across the stone walkways at regular intervals to melt the snow, but the slippery paths sent a regular stream of students to the infirmary regardless.

As far as Lore went, the icy weather was the last straw for most of the class, who had been intermittently frequenting the garden in hopes that Jiang might make an appearance. But waiting around in a drug garden for a never-present teacher was one thing; waiting in freezing cold temperatures was another.

In the months since the semester began, Jiang hadn’t shown up once to class. Students occasionally spotted him around campus doing inexcusably rude things. He had in turn flipped Nezha’s lunch tray out of his hands and walked away whistling, petted Kitay on the head while making a pigeon-like cooing noise, and tried to snip Venka’s hair off with garden shears.

Whenever a student managed to pin him down to ask about his course, Jiang made a loud farting noise with his mouth and elbow and skirted away.

Rin alone continued to frequent the Lore garden, but only because it was a convenient place to train. Now that first-years avoided the garden out of spite, it was the one place where she was guaranteed to be alone.

She was grateful that no one could see her fumbling through the Seejin text. She had picked up the fundamentals with little trouble, but discovered that even just the second form was devilishly hard to put together.

Seejin was fond of rapidly twisting footwork. Here the diagrams failed her. The models’ feet in the drawings were positioned in completely different angles from picture to picture. Seejin wrote that if a fighter could extricate himself from any awkward placement, no matter how close he was to falling, he would have achieved perfect balance and therefore the advantage in most combat positions.

It sounded good in theory. In practice, it meant a lot of falling over.

Seejin recommended pupils practice the first form on an elevated surface, preferably a thick tree branch or the top of a wall. Against her better judgment, Rin climbed to the middle of the large willow tree overhanging the garden and positioned her feet hesitantly against the bark.

Despite Jiang’s absence throughout the semester, the garden remained impeccably well kept. It was a kaleidoscope of garishly bright colors, similar in color scheme to the decorations outside Tikany’s whorehouses. Despite the cold, the violet and scarlet poppy flowers had remained in full blossom, their leaves trimmed in tidy rows. The cacti, which were twice the size they had been at the start of term, had been moved into a new set of clay pots painted in eerie patterns of black and burnt orange. Underneath the shelves, the luminescent mushrooms still pulsed with a faintly disturbing glow, like tiny fairy lamps.

Rin imagined that an opium addict could pass entire days in here. She wondered if that was what Jiang did.

Poised precariously on the willow tree, struggling to stand up straight against the harsh wind, Rin held the book in one hand, mumbling instructions out loud while she positioned her feet accordingly.

“Right foot out, pointing straight forward. Left foot back, perpendicular to the straight line of the right foot. Shift weight forward, lift left foot . . .”

She could see why Seejin thought this might be good balance practice. She also saw why Seejin strongly recommended against attempting the exercise alone. She wobbled perilously several times, and regained her balance only after a few heart-stopping seconds of frantic windmilling. Calm down. Focus. Right foot up, bring it around . . .

Master Jiang walked around the corner, loudly whistling “The Gatekeeper’s Touches.”

Rin’s right foot slid out from beneath her. She teetered off the edge of the branch, dropped the book, and would have plummeted to the stone floor if her left ankle hadn’t snagged in the crook of two dividing branches.

She jolted to a halt with her face inches from the ground and gasped out loud in relief.

Jiang stared down silently at her. She gazed back, head thundering while the blood rushed down into her temples. The last notes of his song dwindled and faded away in the howling wind.

“Hello there,” he said finally. His voice matched his demeanor: placid, disengaged, and idyllically curious. In any other context, it might have been soothing.

Rin struggled ungracefully to haul herself upward.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m stuck,” she mumbled.

“Mmm. Appears so.”

He clearly wasn’t going to help her down. Rin wriggled her ankle out of the branch, tumbled to the floor, and landed in a painful heap at Jiang’s feet. Cheeks burning, she clambered to her feet and brushed the snow off her uniform.

“Elegant,” Jiang remarked.

He tilted his head very far to the left, studying her intently as if she were a particularly fascinating specimen. Up close, Jiang looked even more bizarre than Rin had first thought. His face was a riddle; it was neither lined with age nor flushed with youth but rather invulnerable to time, like a smooth stone. His eyes were a pale blue color she had never seen on anyone in the Empire.

“Bit daring, aren’t you?” He sounded like he was suppressing laughter. “Do you often dangle from trees?”

“You startled me, sir.”

“Hmmph.” He puffed air through his cheeks like a little child. “You’re Irjah’s pet pupil, aren’t you?”

Her cheeks flushed. “I—I mean, I don’t . . .”

“You are.” He scratched his chin and scooped her book off the ground, riffling through its pages with a mild curiosity. “Dusky little peasant prodigy, you. He can’t stop raving about you.”

She shuffled her feet, wondering where this was going. Had that been a compliment? Was she supposed to thank him? She tucked a lock of hair back behind her ear. “Um.”

“Oh, don’t pretend to be bashful. You love it.” Jiang glanced casually down at the book and gazed back up at her. “What are you doing with a Seejin text?”

“I found it in the archives.”

“Oh. I take that back. You’re not daring. You’re just stupid.”

When Rin looked confused, Jiang explained: “Jun explicitly forbade Seejin until at least your second year.”

She hadn’t heard this rule. No wonder the apprentice hadn’t let her sign the book out of the archives. “Jun expelled me from his class. I wasn’t informed.”

“Jun expelled you,” Jiang repeated slowly. She couldn’t tell if he was amused or not. “What on earth did you do to him?”

“Um. Tackled another student during sparring, sort of. He started it,” she added quickly. “The other student, I mean.”

Jiang looked impressed. “Stupid and hotheaded.”

His eyes wandered over to the plants on the shelf behind her. He walked around her, lifted a poppy flower up to his nose, and sniffed experimentally. He made a face. He dug around in the deep pockets of his robes, fished out a pair of shears, then clipped the stem and tossed the broken end into a pile in the corner of a garden.

Rin began to inch toward the gate. Perhaps if she left now, Jiang would forget about the book. “I’m sorry if I shouldn’t be in here—”

“Oh, you’re not sorry. You’re just annoyed I interrupted your training session, and you’re hoping I’ll leave without mentioning your stolen book.” Jiang snipped another stem off the poppy plant. “You’re a plucky one, you know that? Got banned from Jun’s class, so you thought you’d teach yourself Seejin.”

He made several syncopated wheezing noises. It took Rin a moment to realize he was laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded. “Sir, if you’re going to report me, I just want to say—”

“Oh, I’m not going to report you. What fun would that be?” He was still chuckling. “Were you really trying to learn Seejin from a book? Do you have a death wish?”

“It’s not that hard,” she said defensively. “I just followed the pictures.”

He turned back toward her; his expression was one of amused disbelief. He opened the book, riffled through the pages with a practiced hand, and then stopped on the page detailing the first form. He brandished the book at her. “That one. Do that.”

Rin obliged.

It was a tricky form, full of shifting movements and ball change steps. She squeezed her eyes shut as she moved. She couldn’t concentrate in full sight of those luminous mushrooms, those bizarrely pulsing cacti.

When she opened her eyes, Jiang had stopped laughing.

“You’re nowhere near ready for Seejin,” he said. He slammed the book shut with one hand. “Jun was right. At your level you shouldn’t even be touching this text.”

Rin fought a wave of panic. If she couldn’t even use the Seejin text, she might as well leave for Tikany right now. She had found no other books that were half as useful or as clear.

“You might benefit from some animal-based fundamentals,” Jiang continued. “Yinmen’s work. He was Seejin’s predecessor. Have you heard of him?”

She glanced up at him in confusion. “I’ve looked for those. Those scrolls are incomplete.”

“Of course you won’t be learning from scrolls,” Jiang said impatiently. “We’ll discuss this in class tomorrow.”

“Class? You haven’t been here all semester!”

Jiang shrugged. “I find it difficult to bother myself with first-years I don’t find particularly interesting.”

Rin thought this was just irresponsible teaching, but she wanted to keep Jiang talking. Here he was in a rare moment of lucidity, offering to teach her martial arts that she couldn’t learn by herself. She was half-afraid that if she said the wrong thing, she would send him running off like a startled hare.

“So am I interesting?” she asked slowly.

“You’re a walking disaster,” Jiang said bluntly. “You’re training with arcane techniques at a rate that will lead to inevitable injury, and not the kind you recover from. You’ve misinterpreted Seejin’s texts so badly that I believe you’ve come up with a new art form all by yourself.”

Rin scowled. “Then why are you helping me?”

“To spite Jun, mostly.” Jiang scratched his chin. “I hate the man. Did you know he petitioned to have me fired last week?”

Rin was mostly surprised that Jun hadn’t tried that sooner.

“Also, anyone this obstinate deserves some attention, if only to make sure you don’t become a walking hazard to everyone around you,” Jiang continued. “You know, your footwork is remarkable.”

She flushed. “Really?”

“Placement is perfect. Beautiful angles.” He cocked his head. “Of course, everything you’re doing is useless.”

She scowled. “Well, if you’re not going to teach me, then—”

“I didn’t say that. You’ve done a good job working only with the text,” Jiang acknowledged. “A better job than many apprentices would have done. It’s your upper body strength that’s the problem. Namely, you have none.” He grabbed for her wrist and pulled her arm up as if he were examining a mannequin. “So skinny. Weren’t you a farmhand or something?”

“Not everyone from the south is a farmer,” she snapped. “I was a shopgirl.”

“Hm. No heavy labor, then. Pampered. You’re useless.”

She crossed her arms against her chest. “I wasn’t pampered—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He held up a hand to cut her off. “It doesn’t matter. Here’s the thing: all the technique in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t have the strength to back it up. You don’t need Seejin, kid. You need ki. You need muscle.”

“So what do you want me to do? Calisthenics?”

He stood still, contemplative, for a long moment. Then he beamed. “No. I have a better idea. Be at the campus gates for class tomorrow.”

Before she could respond, he strolled out of the garden.

“Wow.” Raban set down his chopsticks. “He must really like you.”

“He called me stupid and hotheaded,” Rin said. “And then he told me to be on time for class.”

“He definitely likes you,” Raban said. “Jiang’s never uttered anything nice to anyone in my year. He mostly yells at us to stay away from his daffodils. He told Kureel that her braids made her look like snakes were growing out the back of her head.”

“I heard he got drunk on rice wine last week and pissed into Jun’s window,” Kitay chipped in. “He sounds awesome.”

“How long has Jiang been here?” Rin asked. The Lore Master seemed amazingly young, at most half of Jun’s age. She couldn’t believe the other masters would put up with such aggravating behavior from someone who was clearly their junior.

“Not sure. He was here when I was a first-year, but that doesn’t mean much. I heard he came from the Night Castle twenty years ago.”

“Jiang was Cike?”

Among the divisions of the Militia, only the Cike bore an ill reputation. They were a division of soldiers holed up in the Night Castle, far up the Wudang mountain range, whose sole task was to carry out assassinations for the Empress. The Cike fought without honor. They respected no rules of combat, and they were notorious for their brutality. They operated in the darkness; they did the Empress’s dirty work and received no recognition afterward. Most apprentices would have quit the service rather than join the Cike.

Rin had a hard time reconciling her image of the whimsical Lore Master with that of a hardened assassin.

“Well, that’s just the rumor. None of the masters will say anything about him. I get the feeling that Jiang’s considered a bit of an embarrassment to the school.” Raban rubbed the back of his head. “The apprentices love to gossip, though. Every class plays the ‘Who is Jiang?’ guessing game. My class was convinced that he was the founder of the Red Junk Opera. The truth’s been stretched so many times that the only thing certain is that we know absolutely nothing about him.”

“Surely he’s had apprentices before,” said Rin.

“Jiang is the Lore Master,” Raban said slowly, as if talking to a child. “Nobody pledges Lore.”

“Because Jiang won’t take any students?”

“Because Lore is a bloody joke,” said Raban. “Every other track at Sinegard prepares you for a government position or for command in the Militia. But Lore is . . . I don’t know, Lore’s odd. I think it was originally meant to be a study of the Hinterlanders, to see if there’s any substance to their witch-magic rituals, but everyone lost interest pretty quickly. I know Yim and Sonnen have both petitioned Jima to have the class canceled, but it’s still offered every year. I’m not sure why.”

“Surely there have been Lore students in the past,” said Kitay. “What have they said?”

Raban shrugged. “It’s a new discipline—the others have been taught since the Red Emperor founded this school, but Lore’s only been around for two decades or so—and no one’s stuck with the course all the way through. I hear that a couple years ago some suckers took the bait, but they dropped out of Sinegard and were never heard from again. No one in their right mind now would pledge Lore. Altan was the exception, but nobody ever knows what’s going on in Altan’s head.”

“I thought Altan pledged Strategy,” said Kitay.

“Altan could have pledged whatever he wanted. For some reason he was hell-bent on Lore, but then Jiang changed his mind and Altan had to settle for Irjah instead.”

This was news to Rin. “Does that happen often—students choosing the master?”

“Very rarely. Most of us are relieved to get one bid; it’s an especially impressive student who gets two.”

“How many bids did Altan get?”

“Six. Seven if you include Lore, but Jiang withdrew his bid at the last minute.” Raban gave her a knowing look. “Why so curious about Altan?”

“Just wondering,” Rin said quickly.

“Taken a shine to our crimson-eyed hero, huh? You wouldn’t be the first.” Raban grinned. “Just be careful. Altan’s not too kind to admirers.”

“What’s he like?” She couldn’t help but ask. “As a person, I mean.”

Raban shrugged. “We haven’t had classes together since our first year. I don’t know him well. I don’t think anyone really does. He mostly keeps to himself. He’s quiet. Trains alone and doesn’t really have friends.”

“Sounds like someone we know.” Kitay jabbed an elbow at Rin.

She bristled. “Shut up. I have friends.”

“You have a friend,” Kitay said. “Singular.”

Rin pushed at Kitay’s arm. “But Altan’s so good,” she said. “At everything. Everyone adores him.”

Raban shrugged. “Altan’s more or less a god on this campus. Doesn’t mean he’s happy.”

Once the conversation had derailed to Altan, Rin forgot half the questions she had meant to ask about Jiang. She and Kitay prodded Raban for anecdotes about Altan until dinner break ended. That night, she tried asking Kureel and Arda, but neither of them could confirm anything substantial.

“I see Jiang in the infirmary sometimes,” said Arda. “Enro keeps a walled-off bed just for him. He stays for a day or two every other month and then leaves. Maybe he’s sick with something. Or maybe he just really likes the smell of disinfectant, I can’t tell. Enro caught him trying to get high off medicine fumes once.”

“Jun doesn’t like him,” said Kureel. “Not hard to see why. What kind of master acts like that? Especially at Sinegard?” Her face twisted with disapproval. “I think he’s a disgrace to the Academy. Why’re you asking?”

“No reason,” said Rin. “Just curious.”

Kureel shrugged. “Every class falls for it at first. Everyone thinks there’s more to Jiang than there is, that Lore is a real subject worth learning. But there’s nothing there. Jiang’s a joke. You’re wasting your time.”

But the Lore Master was real. Jiang was a faculty member of the Academy, even if all he did was wander around and annoy the other masters. No one else could have gotten away with provoking Jun like Jiang did on a regular basis. So if Jiang didn’t bother teaching, what was he doing at Sinegard?

Rin was slightly amazed when she saw Jiang waiting at the campus gates the next afternoon. She wouldn’t have put it past him to simply forget. She opened her mouth to ask where they were going, but he simply waved at her to follow him.

She assumed that she was just going to have to get used to being led around by Jiang with no clear explanation.

They had hardly started down the path before they ran into Jun, returning from city patrol with a group of his apprentices.

“Ah. The lackwit and the peasant.” Jun slowed to a stop. His apprentices looked somewhat wary, as if they’d seen this exchange before. “And where are you going on this fine afternoon?”

“None of your business, Loran,” Jiang said breezily. He tried to skirt around Jun, but Jun stepped into his path.

“A master leaving the grounds alone with a student. I wonder what they’ll say.” Jun narrowed his eyes.

“Probably that a master of his rank and standing could do much better than dicking around with female students,” Jiang replied cheerfully, looking directly at Jun’s apprentices. Kureel looked outraged.

Jun scowled. “She doesn’t have permission to leave the grounds. She needs written approval from Jima.”

Jiang stretched out his right arm and shoved his sleeve up to the elbow. At first Rin thought that he might punch Jun, but Jiang simply raised his elbow to his mouth and made a loud farting noise.

“That’s not written approval.” Jun looked unimpressed. Rin suspected he had seen this display many times before.

“I’m Lore Master,” Jiang said. “That comes with privileges.”

“Privileges like never teaching class?”

Jiang lifted his chin and said self-importantly, “I have taught her class the crushing sensation of disappointment and the even more important lesson that they do not matter as much as they think they do.”

“You have taught her class and every class before it that Lore is a joke and the Lore Master is a bumbling idiot.”

“Tell Jima to fire me, then.” Jiang waggled his eyebrows. “I know you’ve tried.”

Jun raised his eyes to the sky in an expression of eternal suffering. Rin suspected that this was only a small part of an argument that had been going on for years.

“I’m reporting this to Jima,” Jun warned.

“Jima has better things to waste her time on. As long as I bring little Runin back in time for dinner, I doubt she’ll care. In the meantime, stop blocking the road.”

Jiang snapped his fingers and motioned for Rin to follow. Rin clamped her mouth shut and tripped down the path behind him.

“Why does he hate you so much?” Rin asked as they climbed down the mountain pass toward the city.

Jiang shrugged. “They tell me I killed half the men under his command during the Second War. He’s still bitter about it.”

“Well, did you?” Rin felt like she was obligated to ask.

He shrugged again. “Haven’t the faintest clue.”

Rin had no idea how to respond to this, and Jiang did not elaborate.

“So tell me about your class,” Jiang said after a while. “Same crowd of entitled brats?”

“I don’t know them very well,” Rin admitted. “They’re all . . . I mean . . .”

“Smarter? Better trained? More important than you?”

“Nezha’s the son of the Dragon Warlord,” Rin blurted out. “How am I supposed to compete with that? Venka’s father is the finance minister. Kitay’s father is defense minister, or something like that. Niang’s family are physicians to the Hare Warlord.”

Jiang snorted. “Typical.”

“Typical?”

“Sinegard likes to collect the Warlords’ broods as much as it can. Keeps them under the Empire’s careful watch.”

“What for?” she asked.

“Leverage. Indoctrination. This generation of Warlords hate each other too much to coordinate on anything of national importance, and the imperial bureaucracy has too little local authority to force them. Just look at the state of the Imperial Navy.”

“We have a navy?” Rin asked.

“Exactly.” Jiang snorted. “We used to. Anyhow, Daji’s hoping that Sinegard will forge a generation of leaders who like each other—and better, who will obey the throne.”

“She really struck gold with me, then,” Rin muttered.

Jiang shot her a sideways grin. “What, you’re not going to be a good soldier to the Empire?”

“I will,” Rin said hastily. “I just don’t think most of my classmates like me very much. Or ever will.”

“Well, that’s because you’re a dark little peasant brat who can’t pronounce your r’s,” Jiang said breezily. He made a turn into a narrow corridor. “This way.”

He led her into the meatpacking district, where the streets were cramped and crowded and smelled overwhelmingly like blood. Rin gagged and clamped a hand over her nose as they walked. Butcher shops lined the alleyways, built so close they were almost on top of one another in crooked rows like jagged teeth. After twenty minutes of twists and turns, they stopped at a little shack at the end of a block. Jiang rapped thrice on the rickety wooden door.

“What?” screeched a voice from within. Rin jumped.

“It’s me,” Jiang called back, unfazed. “Your favorite person in the whole wide world.”

There was the noise of clattering metal from inside. After a moment, a wizened little lady in a purple smock opened the door. She greeted Jiang with a curt nod but squinted suspiciously at Rin.

“This is the Widow Maung,” Jiang said. “She sells me things.”

“Drugs,” clarified the Widow Maung. “I am his drug dealer.”

“She means ginseng, and roots and such,” Jiang said. “For my health.”

The Widow Maung rolled her eyes.

Rin watched the exchange, fascinated.

“The Widow Maung has a problem,” Jiang continued cheerfully.

The Widow Maung cleared her throat and spat a thick wad of phlegm into the dirt next to where Jiang stood. “I do not have a problem. You are making up this problem for reasons unbeknownst to me.”

“Regardless,” Jiang said, maintaining his idyllic smile, “the Widow Maung has graciously allowed you to help her in resolving her problem. Madam, would you bring out the animal?”

The Widow Maung disappeared into the back of the shop. Jiang motioned for Rin to follow him inside. Rin heard a loud squealing sound from behind the wall. Moments later, the Widow Maung returned with a squirming animal clutched in her arms. She plopped it on the counter before them.

“Here’s a pig,” Jiang said.

“That is a pig,” Rin agreed.

The pig in question was a tiny thing, no longer than Rin’s forearm. Its skin was spotted black and pink. The way its snout curved up made it look like it was grinning. It was oddly cute.

Rin scratched it behind the ears and it nuzzled her forearm affectionately.

“I named it Sunzi,” Jiang said happily.

The Widow Maung looked like she couldn’t wait for Jiang to leave.

Jiang hastened to explain. “The Widow Maung needs little Sunzi watered every day. The problem is Sunzi requires a very special sort of water.”

“Sunzi could drink sewage water and be fine,” the Widow Maung clarified. “You’re just making things up for this training exercise.”

“Can we just do it like we rehearsed?” Jiang demanded. It was the first time Rin had seen anyone actually get to him. “You’re killing the mood.”

“Is that something you’re often told?” the Widow Maung inquired.

Jiang snorted, amused, and clapped Rin on the back. “Here’s the situation. The Widow Maung needs Sunzi to drink this very special sort of water. Fortunately, this fresh, crystal-clear water can be found in a stream at the top of the mountain. The catch is getting Sunzi up the mountain. This is where you come in.”

“You’re joking,” Rin said.

Jiang beamed. “Every day you will run into town to visit the Widow Maung. You will lug this adorable piglet up the mountain and let him drink. Then you will bring him back and return to the Academy. Understood?”

“It’s a two-hour trip up the mountain and back!”

“It’s a two-hour trip now,” Jiang said cheerfully. “It’ll be longer once this little guy starts growing.”

“But I have class,” she protested.

“Better get up early, then,” said Jiang. “It’s not like you have Combat in the morning anyway. Remember? Someone got expelled?”

“But—”

“Someone,” Jiang drawled, “does not want very much to stay at Sinegard.”

The Widow Maung snorted loudly.

Glowering, Rin gathered up Sunzi the piglet in her arms and tried not to wrinkle her nose at the smell.

“Guess I’ll be seeing a lot of you,” she grumbled.

Sunzi squirmed and nuzzled into the crook of her arm.

Every day over the next four months, Rin rose before the sun came up, ran as fast as she could down the mountain pass and into the meatpacking district to fetch Sunzi, strapped the piglet to her back, and ran back up the mountain. She took the long way up, routing around Sinegard so that none of her classmates would see her running around with a squealing pig.

She was often late to Medicine.

“Where the hell have you been? And why do you smell like swine?” Kitay wrinkled his nose as she slid into the seat next to him.

“I’ve been carrying a pig up a mountain,” she said. “Obeying the whims of a madman. Finding a way out.”

It was desperate behavior, but she had fallen on desperate times. Rin was now relying on the campus madman to keep her spot at Sinegard. She began to sit in the back of the room so that nobody could smell the traces of Sunzi on her when she returned from the Widow Maung’s butcher shop.

From the way everyone kept their distance, she wasn’t sure it mattered.

Jiang did more than make her carry the pig. In an astonishing streak of reliability, he stood waiting for her in the garden every day at class time.

“You know, animal-based martial arts weren’t developed for combat,” he said. “They were first created to promote health and longevity. The Frolics of the Five Animals”—he held up the Yinmen scroll that Rin had spent so long looking for—“is actually a system of exercises to promote blood circulation and delay the inconveniences of old age. It wasn’t until later that these forms were adapted for fighting.”

“So why am I learning them?”

“Because Jun’s curriculum skips the Frolics entirely. Jun teaches a simplified version of watered-down martial arts adapted purely to human biomechanics. But it leaves out far too much. It whittles away centuries of lineage and refinement all for the sake of military efficiency. Jun can teach you how to be a decent soldier. But I can teach you the key to the universe,” Jiang said grandly, before bumping his head on a low-hanging branch.

Training with Jiang was nothing like training with Jun. There were obvious hierarchies to Jun’s lesson plans, a clear progression from basic techniques to advanced.

But Jiang taught Rin every random thing that came to his deeply unpredictable mind. He would revisit a lesson if he found it particularly interesting; if not, he pretended like it had never happened. Occasionally he would go on long tirades without provocation.

“There are five principal elements present in the universe—get that look off your face, it’s not as absurd as it sounds. The masters of old used to believe that all things were made of fire, water, air, earth, and metal. Obviously, modern science has proven that false. Still, it’s a useful mnemonic for understanding the different types of energy.

“Fire: the heat in your blood in the midst of a fight, the kinetic energy that makes your heart beat faster.” Jiang tapped his chest. “Water: the flowing of force from your muscles to your target, from the earth up through your waist, into your arms. Air: the breath you draw that keeps you alive. Earth: how you stay rooted to the ground, how you derive energy from the way you position yourself against the floor. And metal, for the weapons you wield. A good martial artist will possess all five of these in balance. If you can control each of these with equal skill, you will be unstoppable.”

“How do I know if I’ve got control of them?”

He scratched a spot behind his ears. “Good question. I’m not actually sure.”

Asking Jiang for clarification was inevitably infuriating. His answers were always bizarrely worded and absurdly phrased. Some didn’t make sense until days later; some never did. If she asked him to explain, he changed the subject. If she let his more absurd comments slide (“Your water element is off balance!”), he poked and prodded about why she wasn’t asking more questions.

He spoke oddly, always a little too quickly or a little too slowly, with strange pauses between his words. He laughed in two ways; one laugh was off-kilter—nervous, high-pitched, and obviously forced—the other great and deep and booming. The first kind she heard constantly; the second was rare, and startling when it burst forth. He rarely met her gaze, but rather focused always at a spot on her brow between her eyes.

Jiang moved through the world like he didn’t belong there. He acted as if he came from a country of near-humans, people who acted almost exactly like Nikara but not quite, and his behavior was that of a confused visitor who had stopped bothering with trying to imitate those around him. He didn’t belong—not simply in Sinegard, but in the very idea of a physical earth. He acted like the rules of nature did not apply to him.

Perhaps they didn’t.

One day they went to the highest tier of the Academy, up past the masters’ lodges. The single building on this tier was a tall, spiraling pagoda, nine stories stacked elegantly on top of one another. Rin had never been inside.

She recalled from that tour so many months ago that Sinegard Academy had been built on the grounds of an old monastery. The pagoda on the highest tier could have still been a temple. Old stone trenches for burning incense sat outside the pagoda entrance. Guarding either side of the door were two large cylinders mounted on tall rods to let them spin. When she looked closer, Rin saw Old Nikara characters carved into the sides.

“What do these do?” she asked, idly spinning one cylinder.

“They’re prayer wheels. But we don’t have time to get into that today,” Jiang said. He gestured for her to follow him. “In here.”

Rin expected that the nine stories of the pagoda would be proper floors connected by flights of stairs, but the interior was merely a winding staircase that led to the very top, an empty cylinder of air in the middle. A solitary beam of sunlight shone in from a square opening in the ceiling, illuminating dust motes floating through the air. A series of musty paintings had been hung on the sides of the staircase. They looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in decades.

“This is where the statues to the Four Gods used to stand,” said Jiang, pointing up into the dark void.

“Where are they now?”

He shrugged. “The Red Emperor had most religious imagery stripped and looted when he took over Sinegard. Most of it’s been melted down into jewelry. But that doesn’t matter.” He beckoned for Rin to follow him up the staircase.

He lectured as they climbed. “Martial arts came to the Empire by way of a warrior named Bodhidharma from the southeastern continent. When Bodhidharma found the Empire during his travels of the world, he journeyed to a monastery and demanded entry, but the head abbot refused him entrance. So Bodhidharma sat his ass in a nearby cave and faced the wall for nine years, listening to the ants scream.”

“Listening to what?”

“The ants scream, Runin. Keep up.”

She muttered something unrepeatable. Jiang ignored her.

“Legend has it that the intensity of his gaze bored a hole into the cave wall. The monks were either so moved by his religious commitment or so seriously impressed that anyone could be so obstinate that they finally let him into their temple.” Jiang paused in front of a painting depicting a dark-skinned warrior and a group of pale men in robes. “That’s Bodhidharma there in the center.”

“That guy on the left has blood spurting out of a stump,” Rin observed.

“Yeah. Legend also has it that one monk was so impressed with his commitment that he cut off his hand in sympathy.”

Rin recalled the myth of Mai’rinnen Tearza committing suicide for the sake of Speer’s unification with the mainland. Martial arts history seemed to be riddled with people making pointless sacrifices.

“Anyhow. The monks at the temple were interested in what Bodhidharma had to say, but because of their sedentary lives and poor diets, they were weak as shit. Scrawnier than you, even. Kept falling asleep during his lectures. Bodhidharma found this somewhat annoying, so he devised three sets of exercises to improve their health. Now, these monks were in constant physical danger from outlaws and robbers, but were also forbidden by their religious code to carry weapons, so they modified many of the exercises to form a system of weaponless self-defense.”

Jiang stopped before another painting. It depicted a row of monks lined up on a wall, frozen in identical stances.

Rin was amazed. “That’s—”

“Seejin’s first form. Yeah.” Jiang nodded in approval. “Bodhidharma warned the monks that martial arts was about the refinement of the individual. Martial arts used well would produce a wise commander, a man who could see clearly through fog and understand the will of the gods. The martial arts in their conception were not meant solely as military tools.”

Rin struggled to envision the techniques Jun had taught their class as purely health exercises. “But there had to be an evolution in the arts.”

“Correct.” Jiang waited for her to ask the question he wanted to hear.

She obliged. “When did the arts become adapted for mass military use?”

Jiang bobbed his head, pleased. “Shortly before the days of the Red Emperor, the Empire was invaded by the horsemen from the Hinterlands to the north. The occupation force introduced a number of repressive measures to control the indigenous population, which included forbidding the Nikara to carry weapons.”

Jiang stopped again before a painting depicting a horde of Hinterlander hunters riding upon massive steeds. Their faces were twisted into wild, barbaric scowls. They held bows that were longer than their torsos. At the bottom of the painting, Nikara monks were shown cowering in fear or strewn about in various states of dismemberment.

“The temples that were once havens of nonviolence became instead a sanctuary for anti-Northerner rebels and a center for revolutionary planning and training. Soldiers and sympathizers would don monks’ robes and shave their heads, but train for war within the temple grounds. In sacred spaces like these, they plotted the overthrow of their oppressors.”

“And health exercises would hardly have helped them,” Rin said. “The martial techniques had to be adapted.”

Jiang nodded again. “Exactly. The arts then taught in the temple required the progressive mastery of hundreds of long, intricate forms. These could take decades to master. The leaders of the rebellion, thankfully, realized that this approach was unsuitable to the rapid development of a fighting force.”

Jiang turned around to face her. They had reached the top of the pagoda. “And so modern martial arts were developed: a system based on human biomechanics rather than the movements of animals. The enormous variety of techniques, some of which were only marginally useful to a soldier, were distilled into an essential core of forms that could be taught to a soldier in five years rather than fifty. This is the basis of what you are taught at Sinegard. This is the common core that is taught to the Imperial Militia. This is what your classmates are learning.” He grinned. “I am showing you how to beat it.”

Jiang was an effective if unconventional combat instructor. He made her hold her kicks up in the air for long minutes until her leg trembled. He made her duck as he hurled projectiles at her off the weapons rack. He made her do the same exercise blindfolded, and then admitted later that he just thought it would be funny.

“You’re a real asshole,” she said. “You know that, right?”

Once Jiang was pleased with her fundamentals, they began to spar. They sparred every day, for hours at a time. They sparred bare-fisted and with weapons; sometimes she was bare-fisted while he bore a weapon.

“Your state of mind is just as important as the state of your body,” Jiang lectured. “In the confusion of a fight, your mind must be still and steady as a rock. You must be grounded in your center, able to see and control everything. Each of the five elements must be in balance. Too much fire, and you’ll lash out recklessly. Too much air and you’ll fight skittishly, always on the defensive. Too much earth, and—are you even listening?”

She was not. It was hard to concentrate while Jiang jabbed an unguarded halberd at her, forcing her to dance around to avoid sudden impalement.

By and large, Jiang’s metaphors meant little to her, but she learned quickly to avoid injury. And perhaps that was his point. She developed muscle memory. She learned that there were only so many permutations to the way a human body could move, only so many attack combinations that worked, that she could reasonably expect from her opponent. She learned to react automatically to these. She learned to predict Jiang’s moves seconds in advance, to read from the tilt of his torso and the flicker of his eyes what he was about to do next.

He pushed her relentlessly. He fought the hardest when she was exhausted. When she fell, he attacked her as soon as she’d gotten back on her feet. She learned to stay constantly on guard, to react to the slightest movements in her peripheral vision.

The day came when she angled her hip against his just so, forced his weight to the side and jammed all her force at an angle that hurled him over her right shoulder.

Jiang skidded across the stone floor and bumped against the garden wall, which shook the shelves so that a potted cactus came perilously close to shattering on the ground.

Jiang lay there for a moment, dazed. Then he looked up, met her eyes, and grinned.

Rin’s last day with Sunzi was the hardest.

Sunzi was no longer an adorable piglet but an absurdly fat monster that smelled heinously bad. It wasn’t remotely cute. Any affection Rin had felt for those trusting brown eyes was negated by the animal’s massive girth.

Carrying Sunzi up the mountain was torture. Sunzi no longer fit in any sort of sling or basket. Rin had to drape it over her shoulders, grasping it by its two front legs.

She could hardly move as fast as she had when Sunzi could still be cradled in her arms, but she had to, unless she wanted to go without breakfast—or worse, miss class. She rose earlier. She ran faster. She staggered up the mountain, gasping for air with every step. Sunzi lay against her back with its snout resting over one of her shoulders, basking in the morning sun while Rin’s muscles screamed with resentment. When she reached Sunzi’s drinking area, she let the pig drop to the ground and collapsed.

“Drink, you glutton,” she grumbled as Sunzi frolicked in the stream. “I can’t wait until the day they carve you up and eat you.”

On her way down the mountain, the sun began to beat down in earnest, eliciting rivulets of sweat all over Rin’s body despite the winter cold. She limped through the meatpacking district to the Widow Maung’s cottage and deposited Sunzi gracelessly on the floor.

It rolled over, squealed loudly and ran in a circle, chasing its own tail.

The Widow Maung came out to the front carrying a bucket of slops.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Rin panted.

The Widow Maung shook her head. “There won’t be a tomorrow. Not for this one, anyway.” She rubbed Sunzi’s snout. “This one’s going to the butcher tonight.”

Rin blinked. “What? So soon?”

“Sunzi’s already reached his peak weight.” The Widow Maung slapped Sunzi’s sides. “Look at that girth. None of my pigs have ever grown so heavy. Perhaps your crazy teacher was right about the mountain water. Maybe I should send all my pigs up there.”

Rin rather hoped that she didn’t. Chest still heaving, she bowed low to the widow. “Thank you for letting me carry your pig.”

The Widow Maung harrumphed. “Academy freaks,” she muttered under her breath, and began to lead Sunzi back to the sty. “Come on, you. Let’s get you ready for the butcher.”

Oink? Sunzi looked imploringly at Rin.

“Don’t look at me,” Rin said. “It’s the end of the road for you.”

She couldn’t help but feel a stab of guilt; the longer she looked at Sunzi, the more she was reminded of its piglet form. She tore her eyes away from its dull, naive gaze and headed back up the mountain.

“Already?” Jiang looked surprised when Rin reported Sunzi’s fate. He was sitting on the far wall of the garden, swinging his legs over the edge like an energetic child. “Ah, I had high hopes for that pig. But in the end, swine are swine. How do you feel?”

“I’m devastated,” Rin said. “Sunzi and I were finally starting to understand each other.”

“No, you sod. Your arms. Your core. Your legs. How do they feel?”

She frowned and swung her arms about. “Sore?”

Jiang jumped off the wall and walked toward her. “I’m going to hit you,” he announced.

“Wait, what?”

She dug her heels into the ground and only managed to get her elbows up right before he slammed a fist at her face.

The force of his punch was enormous—harder than he’d ever hit her. She knew she should have deflected the blow at an angle, sent the ki dispersing into the air where it would dispel harmlessly. But she was too startled to do anything but block it head-on. She barely remembered to crouch so that the ki behind his punch channeled harmlessly through her body and into the ground.

A crack like a thunderbolt echoed beneath her.

Rin jumped back, stunned. The stone under her feet had splintered under the force of the dispelled energy. One long crack ran between her feet to the edge of the stone block.

They both stared down at it. The crack continued to splinter the stone floor, crawling all the way to the far end of the garden, where it stopped at the base of the willow tree.

Jiang threw his head back and laughed.

It was a high, wild laugh. He laughed like his lungs were bellows. He laughed like he was nothing human. He spread his arms out and windmilled them in the air, and danced with giddy abandon.

“You darling child,” he said, spinning toward her. “You brilliant child.”

Rin’s face split into a grin.

Fuck it, she thought, and leaped up to embrace him.

He picked her up and swung her through the air, around and around among the kaleidoscopically colorful mushrooms.

They sat together under the willow tree, staring serenely at the poppy plants. The wind was still today. Snow continued to fall lightly over the garden, but the first inklings of spring had arrived. The furious winter winds had gone to blow elsewhere; the air felt settled, for once. Peaceful.

“No more training today,” Jiang said. “You rest. Sometimes you must loose the string to let the arrow fly.”

Rin rolled her eyes.

“You have to pledge Lore,” Jiang continued excitedly. “No one—no one, not even Altan, picked things up this fast.”

Rin suddenly felt very awkward. How was she to tell him the only reason she wanted to learn combat was so she could get through the Trials and study with Irjah?

Jiang hated lies. Rin decided she might as well be straightforward. “I’d been thinking about pledging Strategy,” she said hesitantly. “Irjah said he might bid for me.”

He waved his hand. “Irjah can’t teach you anything you couldn’t learn by yourself. Strategy’s a limited subject. Spend enough time in the field with Sunzi’s Principles by your bed, and you’ll pick up everything you need to win a campaign.”

“But . . .”

“Who are the gods? Where do they reside? Why do they do what they do? These are the fundamental questions of Lore. I can teach you more than ki manipulation. I can show you the pathway to the gods. I can make you a shaman.”

Gods and shamans? It was often difficult to tell when Jiang was joking and when he wasn’t, but he seemed genuinely convinced that he could talk to heavenly powers.

She swallowed. “Sir . . .”

“This is important,” Jiang insisted. “Please, Rin. This is a dying art. The Red Emperor almost succeeded in killing it. If you don’t learn it, if no one learns it, then it disappears for good.”

The sudden desperation in his voice made her intensely uncomfortable.

She twisted a blade of grass between her fingers. Certainly she was curious about Lore, but she knew better than to throw away four years of training under Irjah to chase a subject that the other masters had long ago lost faith in. She hadn’t come to Sinegard to pursue stories on a whim, especially stories that were disdained by everyone else in the capital.

She was admittedly fascinated by myths and legends, and the way that Jiang made them sound almost real. But she was more interested in making it past the Trials. And an apprenticeship with Irjah opened doors at the Militia. It all but guaranteed an officer position and her choice of division. Irjah had contacts with each of the Twelve Warlords, and his protégées always found esteemed placements.

She could lead troops of her own within a year of graduating. She could be a nationally renowned commander within five. She couldn’t throw that away on a mere fancy.

“Sir, I just want to learn to be a good soldier,” she said.

Jiang’s face fell.

“You and the rest of this school,” he said.