The Poppy War. R.F. Kuang
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 leaned 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