The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,17
apprentice. If you aren’t . . . well then, you should never have been sent here in the first place.” Jima seemed to look directly at Rin.
“Lastly, I will give a warning. I do not tolerate drugs on this campus. If you have even so much as a whiff of opium on you, if you are caught within ten paces of an illegal substance, you will be dragged out of the Academy and thrown into the Baghra prison.”
Jima fixed them with a last, stern look and then dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “Good luck.”
Raban, the apprentice who had broken up Rin and Nezha’s fight, led them out of the main hall to the dormitories on the lowest tier.
“You’re first-years, so you’ll have sweeping duties starting next week,” Raban said, walking backward to address them. He had a kind and soothing voice, the sort of tone Rin had heard village physicians adopt before amputating limbs. “First bell rings at sunrise; classes begin half an hour after that. Be in the mess hall before then or you miss breakfast.”
The boys were housed in the largest building on campus, a three-story structure that looked like it had been built long after the Academy grounds were seized from the monks. The women’s quarters were tiny in contrast, a spare one-story building that used to be a single meditation room.
Rin expected the dorm to be uncomfortably cramped, but only two other bunks showed signs of habitation.
“Three girls in one year is actually a record high,” Raban said before he left them to settle in. “The masters were shocked.”
Alone in the dorm, the three girls warily sized one another up.
“I’m Niang,” offered the girl to Rin’s left. She had a round, friendly face, and she spoke with a lilting accent that belied her northern heritage, though it was nowhere as indecipherable as the Sinegardian dialect. “I’m from the Hare Province.”
“Pleased,” the other girl drawled. She was inspecting her bedsheets. She rubbed the thin off-white material between her fingers, made a disgusted face, and then let the fabric drop. “Venka,” she said begrudgingly. “Dragon Province, but I grew up in the capital.”
Venka was an archetypical Sinegardian beauty; she was pretty in a pale way, and slim as a willow branch. Rin felt coarse and unsophisticated standing next to her.
She realized both were watching her expectantly.
“Runin,” she said. “Rin for short.”
“Runin.” Venka mangled the name with her Sinegardian accent, rolled the syllables through her mouth like some bad-tasting morsel. “What kind of name is that?”
“It’s southern,” Rin said. “I’m from Rooster Province.”
“That’s why your skin’s so dark,” Venka said, lip curling. “Brown as cow manure.”
Rin’s nostrils flared. “I went out in the sun once. You should try it sometime.”
Just as Tutor Feyrik had warned, classes escalated quickly. Martial arts training commenced in the second-tier courtyard immediately after sunrise the next day.
“What’s this?” Master Jun, the red-belted Combat instructor, regarded their huddled class with a disgusted expression. “Line up. I want straight rows. Stop clumping together like frightened hens.”
Jun possessed a pair of fantastically thick black eyebrows that almost met in the middle of his forehead. They rested on his swarthy face like a thundercloud over a permanent scowl.
“Backs straight.” Jun’s voice matched his face: gruff and unforgiving. “Eyes forward. Arms behind your backs.”
Rin strained to mirror the stances of her classmates in front of her. Her left thigh prickled, but she didn’t dare scratch it. Too late, she realized she had to pee.
Jun paced to the front of the courtyard, satisfied that they were standing as uncomfortably as possible. He stopped in front of Nezha. “What happened to your face?”
Nezha had developed a truly spectacular bruise over his left eye, a bright splotch of violet on his otherwise flawless mien.
“Got in a fight,” Nezha mumbled.
“When?”
“Last night.”
“You’re lucky,” Jun said. “If it had been any later, I would have expelled you.”
He raised his voice to address the class. “The first and most important rule of my class is this: do not fight irresponsibly. The techniques you are learning are lethal in application. If improperly performed, they will cause serious injury to yourself or your training partner. If you fight irresponsibly, I will suspend you from my class and lobby to have you expelled from Sinegard. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir,” they answered.
Nezha twisted his head over his shoulder and shot Rin a look of pure venom. She pretended not to see.
“Who’s had martial arts training before?” Jun asked. “Show of hands.”