The Poppy War

by R. F. Kuang

  “Why are you doing this?” Tyr whispered.

  “Prey do not question the motives of the predator,” hissed the thing that was not Su Daji. “The dead do not question the living. Mortals do not challenge the gods.”

  “I killed for you,” Tyr said. “I would have done anything for you.”

  “I know,” she said, and stroked his face. She spoke with a casual sorrow, and for an instant she sounded like the Empress again. The colors dimmed. “You were fools.”

  She pushed him off the ship.

  The pain of drowning, Tyr realized, came in the struggle. But he could not struggle. He was every part of him paralyzed, unable to blink even to shut his eyes against the stinging assault of salt water.

  Tyr could do nothing then but die.

  He sank back into the darkness. Back into the deep, where sounds could not be heard, sights could not be seen, where nothing could be felt, where nothing lived.

  Back into the soft stillness of the womb.

  Back to his mother. Back to his goddess.

  The death of a shaman did not go unnoticed in the world of spirit. The shattering of Tyr sent a psychospiritual shock wave across the realm of things unknown.

  It was felt far away in the peaks of the Wudang Mountains, where the Night Castle stood hidden from the world. It was felt by the Seer of the Bizarre Children, the lost son of the last true khan of the Hinterlands.

  The pale Seer traversed the spirit plane as easily as passing through a door, and when he looked for his commander he saw only darkness and the shattered outline of what had once been human. He saw, on the horizon of things yet to come, a land covered in smoke and fire. He saw a battalion of ships crossing the narrow strait. He saw the beginning of a war.

  “What do you see?” asked Altan Trengsin.

  The white-haired Seer tilted his head to the sky, exposing long, jagged scars running down the sides of his pale neck. He uttered a harsh, cackling laugh.

  “He’s gone,” he said. “He’s really gone.”

  Altan’s fingers tightened on the Seer’s shoulder.

  The Seer’s eyes flew open. Behind thin eyelids there was nothing but white. No pupils, no irises, no spot of color. Only a pale mountain landscape, like freshly fallen snow, like nothingness itself. “There has been a Hexagram.”

  “Tell me,” Altan said.

  The Seer turned to face him. “I see the truth of three things. One: we stand on the verge of war.”

  “This we’ve known,” Altan said, but the Seer cut him off.

  “Two: we have an enemy whom we love.”

  Altan stiffened.

  “Three: Tyr is lost.”

  Altan swallowed hard. “What does that mean?”

  The Seer took his hand. Brought it to his lips and kissed it.

  “I have seen the end of things,” he said. “The shape of the world has changed. The gods now walk in men as they have not for a long, long time. Tyr will not return. The Bizarre Children answer to you now, and you alone.”

  Altan exhaled slowly. He felt a tremendous sense of both grief and relief. He had no commander. No. He was the commander.

  Tyr cannot stop me now, he thought.

  Tyr’s death was felt by the Gatekeeper himself, who had lingered all these years, not quite dead but not quite alive, ensconced in the shell of a mortal but not mortal himself.

  The Gatekeeper was broken and confused, and he had forgotten much of who he was, but one thing he would never forget was the stain of the Vipress’s venom.

  The Gatekeeper felt her ancient power dissipate into the void that both separated them and brought them together. And he raised his head to the sky and knew that an enemy had returned.

  It was felt by the young apprentice at Sinegard who meditated alone when her classmates slept. Who frowned at the disturbance she felt acutely but did not understand.

  Who wondered, as she constantly did, what would happen if she disobeyed her master, swallowed the poppy seed, and traversed to commune again with the gods.

  If she did more than commune. If she pulled one back down with her.

  For although she was forbidden from calling the Phoenix, that did not stop the Phoenix from calling upon her.

  Soon, whispered the Phoenix in her sleep. Soon you will call on me for my power, and when the time comes, you will not be able to resist. Soon you will ignore the warnings of the Woman and the Gatekeeper and fall into my fiery embrace.

  I can make you great. I can make you a legend.

  She tried to resist.

  She tried to empty her mind, like Jiang had taught her; she tried to clear the anger and the fire from her head.

  She found that she couldn’t.

  She found that she didn’t want to.

  On the first day of the seventh month, another border skirmish erupted, between the Eighteenth Battalion of the Federation Armed Forces and the Nikara patrol in Horse Province bordering the Hinterlands to the north. After six hours of combat, the parties reached a cease-fire. They passed the night in an uneasy truce.

  On the second day, a Federation soldier did not report for morning patrol. After a thorough search of the camp, the Federation general at the border city of Muriden demanded the Nikara general open the gates of his camp to be searched.

  The Nikara general refused.

  On the third day, Emperor Ryohai of the Federation of Mugen issued by courier pigeon a formal demand to the Empress Su Daji for the return of his soldier at Muriden.

  The Empress called the Twelve Warlords to her throne at Sinegard and deliberated for seventy-two hours.

  On the sixth day, the Empress formally replied that Ryohai could go fuck himself.

  On the seventh day, the Federation of Mugen declared war on the Empire of Nikan. Across the longbow island, women wept tears of joy and purchased likenesses of Emperor Ryohai to hang in their homes, men enlisted to serve in the reserve forces, and children ran in the streets screaming with the celebratory bloodlust of a nation at war.

  On the eighth day, a battalion of Federation soldiers landed at the port of Muriden and decimated the city. When resisted by province Militia, they ordered that all the males in Muriden, children and babies included, be rounded up and shot.

  The women were spared only by the Federation army’s haste to move inland. The battalion looted the villages as it went, seized grain and transport animals for their own. What they could not take with them, they killed. They needed no supply lines. They took from the land as they traveled. They marched across the heartland on a warpath to the capital.

  On the thirteenth day, a courier eagle reached the office of Jima Lain at the Academy. It read simply:

  Horse Province has fallen. Mugen comes for Sinegard.

  “It’s sort of exciting, really,” Kitay said.

  “Yes,” said Rin. “We’re about to be invaded by our centuries-old enemy after they breached a peace treaty that has maintained a fragile geopolitical stability for two decades. So very exciting.”

  “At least now we know we have job security,” said Kitay. “Everyone wants more soldiers.”

  “Could you be a little less glib about this?”

  “Could you be less depressing?”

  “Could we move a bit faster?” asked the magistrate.

  Rin and Kitay glanced at each other.

  Both of them would rather have been doing anything other than aiding the civilian evacuation effort. Since Sinegard was too far north for comfort, the Empire’s bureaucracy was moving to a wartime capital in the city of Golyn Niis to the south.

  By the time the Federation battalion arrived, Sinegard would be nothing but a ghost city. A city of soldiers. In theory, this meant that Rin and Kitay had the incredibly important job of ensuring that the central leadership of the Empire survived even if the capital didn’t.

  In practice, this meant dealing with very fat, very annoying city bureaucrats.

  Kitay tried to hoist the last crate up into the wagon and promptly staggered under the w
eight. “What’s in this?” he demanded, wobbling as he tried to balance the crate on his hip.

  Rin hastily reached down and helped Kitay ease the crate up onto the wagon, which was already teetering from the weight of the magistrate’s many possessions.

  “My teapots,” said the magistrate. “See how I marked the side? Careful not to let it tilt.”

  “Your teapots,” Kitay repeated incredulously. “Your teapots are a priority right now.”

  “They were a gift to my father from the Dragon Emperor, may his soul rest in peace.” The magistrate surveyed the top-heavy wagon. “Oh, that reminds me—don’t forget the vase on the patio.”

  He looked imploringly at Rin.

  She was dazed from the afternoon heat, exhausted from hours of packing the magistrate’s entire estate into several ill-prepared moving vehicles. She noticed in her stupor that the magistrate’s jowls quivered hilariously when he spoke. Under different circumstances she might have pointed that out to Kitay. Under different circumstances, Kitay might have laughed.

  The magistrate gestured again to the vase. “Be careful with that, will you? It’s as old as the Red Emperor. You might want to strap it down to the back of the wagon.”

  Rin stared at him in disbelief.

  “Sir?” Kitay asked.

  The magistrate turned to look at him. “What?”

  With a grunt, Kitay raised the crate over his head and flung it to the ground. It landed on the dirt with a hard thud, not the tremendous crash Rin had rather been hoping for. The wooden lid of the crate popped off. Out rolled several very nice porcelain teapots, glazed with a lovely flower pattern. Despite their tumble, they looked unbroken.

  Then Kitay took to them with a slab of wood.

  When he was done smashing them, he pushed his wiry curls out of his face and whirled on the sweating magistrate, who cringed in his seat as if afraid Kitay might start smashing at him, too.

  “We are at war,” Kitay said. “And you are being evacuated because for gods know what reason, you’ve been deemed important to this country’s survival. So do your job. Reassure your people. Help us maintain order. Do not pack your fucking teapots.”

  Within days, the Academy was transformed from a campus to a military encampment. The grounds were overrun with green-clad soldiers from the Eighth Division of the nearby Ram Province, and the students were absorbed into their number.

  The Militia soldiers were a stoic, curt crowd. They took on the Academy students begrudgingly, all the while making it very clear that they thought the students had no place in the war.

  “It’s a superiority issue,” Kitay speculated later. “Most of the soldiers were never at Sinegard. It’s like being told to work with someone who in three years would have been your superior officer, even though you have a decade of combat experience on them.”

  “They don’t have combat experience, either,” said Rin. “We’ve fought no wars in the last two decades. They know less of what they’re doing than we do.”

  Kitay couldn’t argue with that.

  At least the arrival of the Eighth Division meant the return of Raban, who was tasked with evacuating the first-year students out of the city, along with the civilians.

  “But I want to fight!” protested a student who barely came up to Rin’s shoulder.

  “Fat lot of good you’ll do,” Raban answered.

  The first-year stuck out his chin. “Sinegard is my home. I’ll defend it. I’m not a little kid, I don’t have to be herded out like all those terrified women and children.”

  “You are defending Sinegard. You’re protecting its inhabitants. All those women and children? You’re in charge of their safety. Your job is to make sure they get to the mountain pass. That’s quite a serious task.” Raban caught Rin’s eye as he shepherded the first-years out of the main gate.

  “I’m scared some of the younger ones are going to sneak back in,” he told her quietly.

  “You’ve got to admire them,” said Rin. “Their city’s about to be invaded and their first thought is to defend it.”

  “They’re being stupid,” said Raban. He spoke with none of his usual patience. He looked exhausted. “This is not the time for heroism. This is war. If they stay, they’re dead.”

  Escape plans were made for the students. In case the city fell, they were to flee down the little-known ravine on the other side of the valley to join the rest of the civilians in a mountain hideout where they couldn’t be reached by the Federation battalions. This plan did not include the masters.

  “Jima doesn’t think we can win,” said Kitay. “She and the faculty are going to go down with the school.”

  “Jima’s just being cautious,” said Raban, trying to lift their spirits. “Sunzi said to plan for every contingency, right?”

  “Sunzi also said that when you cross a river, you should burn the bridges so that your army can’t entertain thoughts of retreating,” said Kitay. “This sounds a lot like retreating to me.”

  “Prudence is different from cowardice,” said Raban. “And besides, Sunzi also wrote that you should never attack a cornered foe. They’ll fight harder than any man thinks possible. Because a cornered enemy has nothing to lose.”

  The days seemed to both stretch for an eternity and disappear before anything could get done. Rin had the uncomfortable sense that they were just waiting around for the enemy to land on their front porch. At the same time she felt frantically underprepared, as if battle preparations were not being done quickly enough.

  “I wonder what a Federation soldier looks like,” Kitay said as they descended the mountain to pick up sharpened weapons from the armory.

  “They have arms and legs, I’m guessing. Maybe even a head.”

  “No, I mean, what do they look like?” Kitay asked. “Like Nikara? All of the Federation came from the eastern continent. They’re not like Hesperians, so they must look somewhat normal.”

  Rin couldn’t see why this was relevant. “Does it matter?”

  “Don’t you want to see the face of the enemy?” Kitay asked.

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “Because then I might think they’re human. And they’re not human. We’re talking about the people who gave opium to toddlers the last time they invaded. The people who massacred Speer.”

  “Maybe they’re more human than we realize,” said Kitay. “Has anyone ever stopped to ask what the Federation want? Why is it that they must fight us?”

  “Because they’re crammed on that tiny island and they think Nikan should be theirs. Because they fought us before and they almost won,” Rin said curtly. “What does it matter? They’re coming, and we’re staying, and at the end of the day whoever is alive is the side that wins. War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.”

  All classes at Sinegard ceased to meet. The masters resumed positions they had retired from decades ago. Irjah took over strategic command of the Sinegardian Reserve Forces. Enro and her apprentices returned to the city’s central hospital to set up a triage center. Jima assumed martial command over the city, a position she shared with the Ram Warlord. This involved, in parts, shouting at city officials and at obstinate squadron leaders.

  The outlook was grim. The Eighth Division was three thousand men strong, hardly enough to take on the reported invading force of ten thousand. The Ram Warlord had sent for reinforcements from the Third Division, which was returning from patrol up north by the Hinterlands, but the Third was unlikely to arrive before the Federation did.

  Jiang was rarely available. He was always either in Jima’s office going over contingency plans with Irjah, or not on campus at all. When Rin finally managed to track him down, he seemed harried and impatient. She had to run to keep up with him on his way down the steps.

  “We’re putting lessons on hiatus,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s no time for that now. I can’t devote the time to train you properly.”

  He made to brush past her, but she grabbed his sleeve. “Master, I w
anted to ask—what if we called the gods? I mean, against the Federation?”

  “What are you talking about?” He seemed faintly aghast. “Now is hardly the time for this.”

  “Surely there are battle applications to what we’ve been studying,” she pressed.

  “We’ve been studying how to consult the gods,” he said. “Not how to bring them back down to earth.”

  “But they could help us fight!”

  “What? No. No.” He flapped his hands, growing visibly agitated as he spoke. “Have you not listened to a word I’ve said these past two years? I told you, the gods are not weapons you can just dust off and use. The gods won’t be summoned into battle.”

  “That’s not true,” she said. “I’ve read the reports from the Red Emperor’s crusades. I know the monks summoned gods against him. And the tribes of the Hinterlands—”

  “The Hinterlanders consult the gods for healing. They seek guidance and enlightenment,” Jiang interrupted. “They do not call the gods down onto earth, because they know better. Every war we’ve fought with the aid of the gods, we’ve won at a terrible consequence. There is a price. There is always a price.”

  “Then what’s the point?” she snapped. “Why learn Lore at all?”

  His expression then was terrible. He looked as he had that day Sunzi the pig was slaughtered, when she told him she wanted to pledge Strategy. He looked wounded. Betrayed.

  “The point of every lesson does not have to be to destroy,” he said. “I taught you Lore to help you find balance. I taught you so that you would understand how the universe is more than what we perceive. I didn’t teach you so that you could weaponize it.”

  “The gods—”

  “The gods will not be used at our beck and call. The gods are so far out of our realm of understanding that any attempt to weaponize them can only end in disaster.”