The Poppy War. R.F. Kuang
Keju score in Sinegard Municipality, by far the most competitive testing region, which was especially impressive for someone who had taken it a year early. He had a photographic memory, he wanted to study Strategy under Master Irjah once he got past the Trials, and didn’t she think Jun was kind of an asshole?
“Yes. And I’m Runin. Rin,” she said, once he let her get a word in.
“Oh, you’re the one Nezha hates.”
Rin supposed there were worse reputations to have. In any case, Kitay didn’t seem to hold it against her. “What’s his problem, anyway?” she asked.
“His father is the Dragon Warlord and his aunts have been concubines to the throne for generations. You’d be a prick too if your family was both rich and attractive.”
“Do you know him?” Rin asked.
“We grew up together. Me, Nezha, and Venka. Shared the same tutor. I thought they’d be nicer to me once we were all at the Academy.” Kitay shrugged, glancing at the far end of the table, where Nezha and Venka appeared to be holding court. “Guess I thought wrong.”
Rin wasn’t surprised that Nezha had cut Kitay out of his social circle. There was no way Nezha would have stuck around anyone half as witty as Kitay—there were too many opportunities for Kitay to upstage him. “What’d you do to offend him?”
Kitay pulled a face. “Nothing, except beat him on the exam. Nezha’s prickly about his ego. Why, what did you do?”
“I gave him that black eye,” she admitted.
Kitay raised an eyebrow. “Nice.”
Lore was scheduled for after lunch, and then Linguistics. Rin had been looking forward to Lore all day. But the apprentices who led them to the class looked like they were trying not to laugh. They climbed the winding steps to the fifth tier, higher up than any of their other classes. Finally they stopped at an enclosed garden.
“What are we doing here?” Nezha asked.
“This is your classroom,” said one of the apprentices. They glanced at each other, grinned, and then left. After five minutes, the cause of their amusement became clear. The Lore Master didn’t show. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
The class milled around the garden awkwardly, trying to figure out what they were supposed to do.
“We’ve been pranked,” suggested Han. “They led us to the wrong place.”
“What do they grow in here, anyway?” Nezha pulled a flower down to his nose and sniffed it. “Gross.”
Rin took a closer look at the flowers, then her eyes widened. She’d seen those petals before.
Nezha recognized it at the same moment that she did.
“Shit,” he said. “That’s a poppy plant.”
Their class reacted like a startled nest of dormice. They scurried hastily away from the poppy plant as if mere proximity would get them high.
Rin fought the absurd urge to burst out laughing. Here on the other side of the country was at least one thing she was familiar with.
“We’re going to be expelled,” Venka wailed.
“Don’t be stupid, it’s not our poppy plant,” Kitay said.
Venka flapped her hands around her face. “But Jima said if we were even within ten paces of—”
“It’s not like they can expel the entire class,” Kitay said. “I bet he’s testing us. Seeing if we really want to learn.”
“Or testing us to see how we’ll react around illegal drugs!” Venka shrilled.
“Oh, calm down,” Rin said. “You can’t get high just by touching it.”
Venka did not calm down. “But Jima didn’t say she had to catch us high, she said—”
“I don’t think it’s a real class,” Nezha interrupted. “I bet the apprentices are just having their bit of fun.”
Kitay looked doubtful. “It’s on our schedule. And we saw the Lore Master, he was at orientation.”
“Then where were his apprentices?” Nezha shot back. “What color was his belt? Why don’t you see anyone walking around with Lore stitched into their armbands? This is stupid.”
Nezha stalked out through the gates. Encouraged, the rest of the class followed him out, one by one. Finally Rin and Kitay were the only ones left in the garden.
Rin sat down and leaned back on her elbows, admiring the variety of plants in the garden. Aside from the blood-red poppy flowers, there were tiny cacti with pink and yellow blossoms, fluorescent mushrooms glowing faintly in the dark corners under shelves, and leafy green bushes that emitted a tealike odor.
“This isn’t a garden,” she said. “This is a drug farm.”
Now she really wanted to meet the Lore Master.
Kitay sat down next to her. “You know, the great shamans of legend used to ingest drugs before battle. Gave them magical powers, so the stories say.” He smiled. “You think that’s what the Lore Master teaches?”
“Honestly?” Rin picked at the grass. “I think he just comes in here to get high.”
Classes only escalated in difficulty as the weeks progressed. Their mornings were devoted to Combat, Medicine, History, and Strategy. On most days Rin’s head was reeling by noon, crammed with names of theorems she’d never heard and titles of books she needed to finish by the end of the week.
Combat class kept their bodies exhausted along with their minds. Jun put them through a torturous series of calisthenics—they regularly ran up the Academy stairs and back down, did handstands in the courtyard for hours on end, and cycled through basic martial arts forms with bags of bricks hanging from their arms. Every week Jun took them to a lake at the bottom of the mountain and had them swim the entire length.
Rin and a handful of other students had never been taught to swim. Jun demonstrated the proper form exactly once. After that, it was up to them not to drown.
Their homework was heavy and clearly meant to push the first-years right up against their limits. So when the Weapons Master, Sonnen, taught them the correct proportions of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal necessary to mix the incendiary fire powder that powered war rockets, he also had them create their own impromptu missiles. And when the Medicine Master, Enro, assigned them to learn the names of all the bones in the human body, she also expected them to know the most common patterns of breakage and how to identify them.
It was Strategy, though, taught by Master Irjah, that was their hardest course. Their first day of class he distributed a thick tome—Sunzi’s Principles of War—and announced that they were to have it memorized by the end of the week.
“This thing is massive!” Han complained. “How are we supposed to do the rest of our homework?”
“Altan Trengsin learned it in a night,” said Irjah.
The class exchanged exasperated looks. The masters had been singing the praises of Altan Trengsin since the start of the term. Rin gathered he was some kind of genius, apparently the most brilliant student to come through Sinegard in decades.
Han looked as irritated as she felt. “Okay, but we’re not Altan.”
“Then try to be,” said Irjah. “Class dismissed.”
Rin settled into a routine of constant study and very little sleep; their course schedules left the first-years with no time to do anything else.
Autumn had just