The Poppy War. R.F. Kuang

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 let Tutor Feyrik handle the luggage and ran up to the school gates, breathless.

      She’d been imagining for weeks now what it would be like to ascend the steps to the Academy. The entire country knew how Sinegard Academy looked; the school’s likeness was painted on wall scrolls throughout Nikan.

      Those scrolls didn’t come close to capturing the campus in reality. A winding stone pathway curved around the mountain, spiraling upward into a complex of pagodas built on successively higher tiers. At the highest tier stood a shrine, on the tower of which perched a stone dragon, the symbol of the Red Emperor. A glimmering waterfall hung like a skein of silk beside the shrine.

      The Academy looked like a palace for the gods. This was a place out of legend. This was her home for the next five years.

      Rin was speechless.

      Rin and Tutor Feyrik were given a tour of the grounds by an older student who introduced himself as Tobi. Tobi was tall, bald-headed, and clad in a black tunic with a red armband. He wore a dedicatedly bored sneer to indicate he would rather have been doing anything else.

      They were joined by a slender, attractive woman who initially mistook Tutor Feyrik for a porter and then apologized without embarrassment. Her son was a fine-featured boy who would have been very pretty if he hadn’t had such a resentful expression on his face.

      “The Academy is built on the grounds of an old monastery.” Tobi motioned for them to follow him up the stone steps to the first tier. “The temples and praying grounds were converted to classrooms once the Red Emperor united the tribes of Nikan. First-year students have sweeping duty, so you’ll get familiar with the grounds soon enough. Come on, try to keep up.”

      Even Tobi’s lack of enthusiasm couldn’t detract from the Academy’s beauty, but he did his best. He walked the stone steps in a rapid, practiced manner, not bothering to check whether his guests were keeping pace. Rin was left behind to help the wheezing Tutor Feyrik up the perilously narrow stairs.

      There were seven tiers to the Academy. Each curve of the stone pathway brought into view a new complex of buildings and training grounds, embedded in lush foliage that had clearly been carefully cultivated for centuries. A rushing brook sliced down the mountainside, cleaving the campus neatly in two.

      “The library is over there. Mess hall is this way. New students live at the lowest tier. Up there are the masters’ quarters.” Tobi pointed very rapidly to several stone buildings that all looked alike.

      “What about that?” Rin asked, pointing to an important-looking building by the brook.

      Tobi’s lip curled up. “That’s the outhouse, kid.”

      The handsome boy snickered. Cheeks burning, Rin pretended to be very fascinated by the view from the terrace.

      “Where are you from, anyway?” Tobi asked in a not-very-friendly tone.

      “Rooster Province,” Rin muttered.

      “Ah. The south.” Tobi sounded like something made sense to him now. “I guess multistory buildings are a new concept to you, but try not to get too overwhelmed.”

      After Rin’s registration papers had been checked and filed, Tutor Feyrik had no reason to stay. They said their goodbyes outside the school gates.

      “I understand if you’re scared,” Tutor Feyrik said.

      Rin swallowed down the massive lump in her throat and clenched her teeth. Her head buzzed; she knew a dam of tears would break out from under her eyes if she didn’t suppress it.

      “I’m not scared,” she insisted.

      He smiled gently. “Of course you’re not.”

      Her face crumpled, and she rushed forward to embrace him. She buried her face in his tunic so that no one could see her crying. Tutor Feyrik patted her on the shoulder.

      She had made it all the way across the country to a place she had spent years dreaming of, only to discover a hostile, confusing city that despised southerners. She had no home in Tikany or Sinegard. Everywhere she traveled, everywhere she escaped to, she was just a war orphan who was not supposed to be there.

      She felt so terribly alone.

      “I don’t want you to go,” she said.

      Tutor Feyrik’s smile fell. “Oh, Rin.”

      “I hate it here,” she blurted suddenly. “I hate this city. The way they talk—that stupid apprentice—it’s like they don’t think I should be here.”

      “Of course they don’t,” said Tutor Feyrik. “You’re a war orphan. You’re a southerner. You weren’t supposed to pass the Keju. The Warlords like to claim that the Keju makes Nikan a meritocracy, but the system is designed to keep the poor and illiterate in their place. You’re offending them with your very presence.”

      He grasped her by the shoulders and bent slightly so that they were eye to eye. “Rin, listen. Sinegard is a cruel city. The Academy will be worse. You will be studying with children of Warlords. Children who have been training in martial arts since before they could even walk. They’ll make you an outsider, because you’re not like them. That’s okay. Don’t let any of that discourage you. No matter what they say, you deserve to be here. Do you understand?”

      She nodded.

      “Your first day of classes will be like a punch to the gut,” Tutor Feyrik continued. “Your second day, probably even worse. You’ll find your courses harder than studying for the Keju ever was. But if anyone can survive here, it’s you. Don’t forget what you did to get here.”

      He straightened up. “And don’t ever come back to the south. You’re better than that.”

      As Tutor Feyrik disappeared down the path, Rin pinched the bridge of her nose, willing the hot feeling behind her eyes to go away. She could not let her new classmates see her cry.

      She was alone in a city without a friend, where she barely spoke the language, at a school that she now wasn’t sure she wanted to attend.

       He leads you down the aisle. He’s old and fat, and he smells like sweat. He looks at you and he licks his lips …

      She shuddered, squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them again.

      So Sinegard was frightening and unfamiliar. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.

      She squared her shoulders and walked back through the school gates.

      This was better. No matter what, this was a thousand times better than Tikany.

      “And then she asked if the outhouse was a classroom,” said a voice from farther down in the line for registration. “You should have seen her clothes.”

      Rin’s neck prickled. It was the boy from the tour.

      She turned around.

      He really was pretty, impossibly so, with large, almond-shaped eyes and a sculpted mouth that looked good even twisted into a sneer. His skin was a shade of porcelain white that any Sinegardian woman would have murdered for, and his silky hair was almost as long as Rin’s had been.

      He caught her eye and smirked, continuing loudly as if he hadn’t seen her. “And her teacher, you know, I bet he’s one of those doddering failures who can’t get a job in the city so they spend their lives trying to scrape a living from local magistrates. I thought he might die on the way up the mountain, he was wheezing