The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

  Kitay looked skeptical. “Sure, but none of that means the Trifecta were actually shamans. The Dragon Emperor’s dead, and no one’s seen or heard of the Gatekeeper since the Second Poppy War.”

  “Maybe he’s just in hiding. Maybe he’s still out there, waiting for the next invasion. Or—maybe—what if the Cike are shamans?” The idea had just occurred to Rin. “That’s why we don’t know anything about them. Maybe they’re the only shamans left—”

  “The Cike are just killers,” Kitay scoffed. “They stab, kill, and poison. They don’t call down gods.”

  “As far as you know,” Rin said.

  “You’re really hung up on this idea of shamans, aren’t you?” Kitay asked. “It’s just a kid’s story, Rin.”

  “The Red Emperor’s scribes wouldn’t have kept extensive documentation of a kid’s story.”

  Kitay sighed. “Is that why you pledged Lore? You think you can become a shaman? You think you can summon gods?”

  “I don’t believe in gods,” said Rin. “But I believe in power. And I believe the shamans had some source of power that the rest of us don’t know how to access, and I believe it’s still possible to learn.”

  Kitay shook his head. “I’ll tell you what shamans are. At some point in time some martial artists were really powerful, and the more battles they won, the more stories spread. They probably encouraged those stories, too, thinking it’d scare their enemies. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Empress made up those stories about the Trifecta being shamans herself. It’d certainly help her hold on power. She needs it now, more than ever. The Warlords are getting restless—I bet we’re barely years from a coup. But if she’s really the Vipress, then how come she hasn’t just summoned giant snakes to subdue the Warlords to her will?”

  Rin couldn’t think of a glaring counterargument to this theory, so she conceded with silence. Debating with Kitay became pointless after a while. He was so convinced of his own rationality, of his encyclopedic knowledge of most things, that he had difficulty conceiving of gaps in his understanding.

  “I notice the puppeteer glossed over how we actually won the Second Poppy War,” Rin said after a while. “You know. Speer. Butchery. Thousands dead in a single night.”

  “Well, it was a kid’s story after all,” said Kitay. “And genocide is a little depressing.”

  Rin and Kitay spent the next two days lazing around, indulging in every act of sloth they hadn’t been able to at the Academy. They played chess. They lounged in the garden, stared idly at the clouds, and gossiped about their classmates.

  “Niang’s pretty cute,” Kitay said. “So is Venka.”

  “Venka’s been obsessed with Nezha since we got there,” Rin said. “Even I could see that.”

  Kitay waggled his eyebrows. “One might say you’ve been obsessed with Nezha.”

  “Don’t be disgusting.”

  “You are. You’re always asking me about him.”

  “Because I’m curious,” Rin said. “Sunzi says to know your enemy.”

  “Fuck Sunzi. You just think he’s pretty.”

  Rin tossed the chessboard at his head.

  At Kitay’s insistence, Lan cooked them spicy peppercorn hot pot, and delicious though it was, Rin had the singular experience of weeping while eating. She spent most of the next day squatting over the toilet with a burning rectum.

  “You think this is how the Speerlies felt?” Kitay asked. “What if burning diarrhea is the price of lifelong devotion to the Phoenix?”

  “The Phoenix is a vengeful god,” Rin groaned.

  They sampled all the wines in Kitay’s father’s liquor closet and got wonderfully, dizzyingly drunk.

  “Nezha and I spent most of our childhood raiding this closet. Try this one.” Kitay passed her a small ceramic bottle. “White sorghum wine. Fifty percent alcohol.”

  Rin swallowed hard. It slid down her throat with a marvelous burn.

  “This is liquid fire,” she said. “This is the sun in a bottle. This is the drink of a Speerly.”

  Kitay snickered.

  “You wanna know how they brew this?” he asked. “The secret ingredient is urine.”

  She spat the wine out.

  Kitay laughed. “They just use alkaline powder now. But the tale goes that a disgruntled official pissed all over one of the Red Emperor’s distilleries. Probably the best accidental discovery of the Red Emperor’s era.”

  Rin rolled over onto her stomach to look sideways at him. “Why aren’t you at Yuelu Mountain? You should be a scholar. A sage. You know so much about everything.”

  Kitay could expound for hours on any given subject, and yet showed little interest in their studies. He had breezed through the Trials because his eidetic memory made studying unnecessary, but he had surrendered to Nezha the moment the Tournament took a dangerous turn. Kitay was brilliant, but he didn’t belong at Sinegard.

  “I wanted to,” Kitay admitted. “But I’m my father’s only son. And my father’s the defense minister. So what choice do I have?”

  She fiddled with the bottle. “You’re an only child, then?”

  Kitay shook his head. “Older sister. Kinata. She’s at Yuelu now—studying geomancy, or something like that.”

  “Geomancy?”

  “The artful placement of buildings and things.” Kitay waved his hands in the air. “It’s all aesthetics. Supposedly it’s important, if your greatest aspiration is to marry someone important.”

  “You haven’t read every book about it?”

  “I only read about the interesting things.” Kitay rolled over onto his stomach. “You? Any siblings?”

  “None,” she said. Then she frowned. “Yes, actually. I don’t know why I said that. I have a brother—well, foster brother. Kesegi. He’s ten. Was. He’s eleven now, I guess.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  Rin hugged her knees to her chest. She didn’t like the way her stomach suddenly felt. “No. I mean—I don’t know. He was so little when I left. I used to take care of him. I guess I’m glad that I don’t have to do that anymore.”

  Kitay raised an eyebrow. “Have you written to him?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why. I guess I assumed the Fangs didn’t want to hear from me. Or maybe that he’d be better off if he just forgot about me.”

  She had wanted to at least write Tutor Feyrik in the beginning, but things had been so awful at the Academy that she couldn’t bear to tell him about it. Then, as time passed, and as her schoolwork became more exhausting, it had become so painful to think about home that she’d just stopped.

  “You didn’t like it at home, huh?” Kitay asked.

  “I don’t like thinking about it,” she mumbled.

  She never wanted to think about Tikany. She wanted to pretend that she’d never lived there—no, that it had never existed. Because if she could just erase her past, then she could write herself into whoever she wanted to be in the present. Student. Scholar. Soldier. Anything except who she used to be.

  The Summer Festival culminated in a parade in Sinegard’s city center.

  Rin arrived at the grounds with the members of the House of Chen—Kitay’s father and willowy mother, his two uncles and their wives, and his older sister. Rin had forgotten how important Kitay’s father actually was until she saw the entire clan decked out in their house colors of burgundy and gold.

  Kitay suddenly grabbed Rin’s elbow. “Don’t look to your left. Pretend like you’re talking to me.”

  “But I am talking to you.” Rin immediately looked to her left.

  And saw Nezha, standing in a crowd of people wearing gowns of silver and cerulean. A massive dragon was embroidered across the back of his robe, the emblem of the House of Yin.

  “Oh.” She jerked her head away. “Can we go stand over there?”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  Once they were safely ensconced behind Kitay’s rotund second uncle, Rin peered out to gawk at the members of the House of Yin. She found herself star
ing at two older versions of Nezha, one male and one female. Both were well into their twenties and unfairly attractive. Nezha’s entire family, in fact, looked like they belonged on wall paintings—they appeared more like idealized versions of humans than actual people.

  “Nezha’s father isn’t there,” said Kitay. “That’s interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s the Dragon Warlord,” said Kitay. “One of the Twelve.”

  “Maybe he’s sick,” said Rin. “Maybe he hates parades as much as you do.”

  “I’m here, though, aren’t I?” Kitay fussed with his sleeves. “You don’t just miss the Summer Parade. It’s a display of unity of all the Twelve Provinces. One year my father broke his leg the day before and he still made it, doped up on sedatives the entire time. If the head of the House of Yin hasn’t come, that means something.”

  “Maybe he’s embarrassed,” Rin said. “Furious that his son lost the Tournament. He’s too ashamed to show his face.”

  Kitay cracked a smile.

  A bugle sounded through the thin morning air, followed by a servant shouting for all members of the procession to fall into order.

  Kitay turned to Rin. “So, I don’t know if you can . . .”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. Of course she wouldn’t be riding with the House of Chen. Rin was not in Kitay’s family; she had no business being in the procession. She spared him the embarrassment of bringing it up. “I’ll watch you from the marketplace.”

  After a good deal of squeezing and elbowing, Rin escaped the crowd and found a spot on top of a fruit stand where she could get a good view of the parade without being crushed to death in the horde of Sinegardians who had gathered downtown. As long as the thatched straw roof did not suddenly cave in, the fruit stand owner need never know.

  The parade began with an homage to the Heavenly Menagerie, the roster of mythical creatures that were held by legend to exist in the era of the Red Emperor. Giant dragons and lions snaked through the crowd, undulating up and down on poles controlled by dancers hidden within. Firecrackers popped in rhythm as they moved, like coordinated bursts of thunder. Next came a massive scarlet effigy on tall poles that had been set carefully aflame: the Vermilion Phoenix of the South.

  Rin watched the Phoenix curiously. According to her history books, this was the god whom the Speerlies had venerated above all others. In fact, Speer had never worshipped the massive pantheon of gods that the Nikara did. The Speerlies had only ever worshipped their Phoenix.

  The creature following the Phoenix resembled nothing Rin had ever seen before. It bore the head of a lion, antlers like a deer’s, and the body of a four-legged creature; a tiger, perhaps, but its feet ended in hooves. It wove quietly through the parade; its puppeteers beat no drums, sang no chants, rang no bells to announce its coming.

  Rin puzzled over the creature until she matched it with a description she had heard in stories told in Tikany. It was a kirin, the noblest of earthly beasts. Kirins walked the lands of Nikan only when a great leader had passed away, and then only in times of great peril.

  Then the procession turned to the illustrious houses, and Rin quickly lost interest. Aside from seeing Kitay’s moping face, there was nothing fun about watching palanquin after palanquin of important people dressed in their house colors.

  The sun shone at full force overhead. Sweat dripped down Rin’s temples. She wished she had something to drink. She shielded her face with her sleeve, waiting for the parade to end so she could find Kitay.

  Then the crowd around her began screaming, and Rin realized with a start that borne on a palanquin of golden silk, surrounded by a platoon of both musicians and bodyguards, the Empress had arrived.

  The Empress was flawed in many ways.

  Her face was not perfectly symmetrical. Her eyebrows were finely arched, one slightly above the other, which gave her an expression of constant disdain. Even her mouth was uneven; one side of her mouth curved higher than the other.

  And yet she was without question the most beautiful woman Rin had ever seen.

  It was not enough to describe her hair, which was darker than the night and glossier than butterfly wings. Or her skin, which was paler and smoother than any Sinegardian could have wished for. Or her lips, which were the color of blood, as if she had just been sucking at a cherry. All of these things could have applied to normal women in the abstract, might even have been remarkable on their own. But on the Empress they were simple inevitabilities, casual truths.

  Venka would have paled in comparison.

  Youth, Rin thought, was an amplification of beauty. It was a filter; it could mask what one was lacking, enhance even the most average features. But beauty without youth was dangerous. The Empress’s beauty did not require the soft fullness of young lips, the rosy red of young cheeks, the tenderness of young skin. This beauty cut deep, like a sharpened crystal. This beauty was immortal.

  Afterward, Rin could not have described what the Empress had been wearing. She could not recall whether or not the Empress spoke, or if the Empress waved in her direction. She could not remember anything the Empress did at all.

  She would only remember those eyes, deep pools of black, eyes that made her feel as if she were suffocating, just like Master Jiang’s did, but if this was drowning then Rin didn’t want air, didn’t need it so long as she could keep gazing into those glittering obsidian wells.

  She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t even imagine looking away.

  As the Empress’s palanquin moved out of sight, Rin felt an odd pang in her heart.

  She would have torn apart kingdoms for this woman. She would have followed her to the gates of hell and back. This was her ruler. This was whom she was meant to serve.

  Chapter 9

  “Fang Runin of Tikany, Rooster Province,” Rin said. “Second-year apprentice.”

  The office clerk stamped the Academy’s crest in the space next to her name on the registration scroll, and then handed her three sets of black apprentice tunics. “What track?”

  “Lore,” Rin said. “Under Master Jiang Ziya.”

  The clerk consulted the scroll again. “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” Rin said, though her pulse quickened. Had something happened?

  “I’ll be right back,” the clerk said, and disappeared into the back office.

  Rin waited by the desk, growing more and more anxious as the minutes passed. Had Jiang left the Academy? Been fired? Suffered a nervous breakdown? Been arrested for opium possession off campus? For opium possession on campus?

  She thought suddenly of the day she had enrolled for Sinegard, when the proctors had tried to detain her for cheating. Had Nezha’s family filed a complaint against her for costing their heir the championship? Was that even possible?

  Finally the clerk returned with a sheepish look on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s been so long since anyone’s pledged Lore. We’re not sure what color your armband is supposed to be.”

  In the end they took leftover cloth from the first-years’ uniforms and fashioned her a white armband.

  Classes began the next day. After pledging, Rin still spent half her time with the other masters. As she was the only one in her track, she studied Strategy and Linguistics along with Irjah’s apprentices. She found to her dismay that though she hadn’t pledged Medicine, second-years still had to suffer a mandatory emergency triage class under Enro. History had been replaced with Foreign Relations under Master Yim. Jun still wouldn’t allow her to train under him, but she was eligible to study weapons-based combat with Sonnen.

  Finally her morning classes ended, and Rin was left with half the day to spend with Jiang. She ran up the steps toward the Lore garden. Time to meet with her master. Time to get answers.

  “Describe to me what we are studying,” said Jiang. “What is Lore?”

  Rin blinked. She’d rather been hoping that he would tell her.

  Rin had tried many times over the break t
o rationalize to herself why she’d chosen to study Lore, only to find herself uttering vague, circular truisms.

  It came down to an intuition. A truth she knew for herself but couldn’t prove to anyone else. She was studying Lore because she knew Jiang had tapped into some other source of power, something real and mystifying. Because she had tapped into that same source the day of the Tournament. Because she had been consumed by fire, had seen the world turned red, had lost control of herself and been saved by the man whom everyone else at the school deemed insane.

  She had seen the other side of the veil, and now her curiosity was so great she would go mad unless she understood what had happened.

  That didn’t mean she had the faintest inkling of what she was doing.

  “Weird things,” she said. “We’re studying very weird things.”

  Jiang raised an eyebrow. “How articulate.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just here because I wanted to study with you. Because of what happened during the Trials. I don’t actually know what I’m getting into.”

  “Oh, you do.” Jiang lifted his index finger and touched the tip to a spot on her forehead precisely between her eyes, the spot from which he’d stilled the fire inside her. “Deep in your subconscious mind, you know the truth of things.”

  “I wanted to—”

  “You want to know what happened to you during the Tournament.” Jiang cocked his head to the side. “Here is what happened: you called a god, and the god answered.”

  Rin made a face. Again with the gods? She had been hoping for answers throughout the entire break, had thought that Jiang might make things clear once she returned, but she was now more confused than ever.

  Jiang lifted a hand before she could protest. “You don’t know what any of this means yet. You don’t know if you’ll ever replicate what happened in the ring. But you do know that if you don’t get answers now, the hunger will consume you and your mind will crack. You’ve glimpsed the other side and you can’t rest until you fill in the blanks. Yes?”