The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,52

among the stacks was the furious scribbling of brushes on paper as the first-years tried to commit an entire year’s lessons to memory. Most study groups had disbanded, since any advantage given to a study partner was potentially a lost spot in the ranks.

But Kitay, who didn’t need to study, obliged Rin purely out of boredom.

“Sunzi’s Eighteenth Mandate.” Kitay didn’t bother looking at the texts. He had memorized the entirety of Principles of War on his first read-through. Rin would have killed for that talent.

Rin squinted her eyes in concentration. She knew she looked stupid, but her head was swimming again, and squinting was the only way to make it stop. She felt very cold and hot all at once. She hadn’t slept in three days. All she wanted was to collapse on her bunk, but another hour of cramming was worth more than an hour of sleep.

“It’s not one of the Seven Considerations . . . wait, is it? No, okay: always modify plans according to circumstances . . . ?”

Kitay shook his head. “That’s the Seventeenth Mandate.”

Rin cursed out loud and rubbed her fists against her forehead.

“I wonder how you people do it,” Kitay mused. “You know, actually having to try to remember things. Your lives sound so difficult.”

“I will murder you with this ink brush,” Rin grumbled.

“Sunzi’s appendix is all about why soft ends make for bad weapons. Didn’t you do the extra reading?”

“Quiet!” Venka snapped from the opposite desk.

Kitay dipped his head out of Venka’s sight and cracked a grin at Rin. “Here’s a hint,” he whispered. “Menda in the temple.”

Rin gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. Oh. Of course. “All warfare is based on deception.”

In preparation for the Tournament, their entire class had taken Sunzi’s Eighteenth Mandate to heart. The pupils stopped using the open practice rooms during common hours. Anyone with an inherited art suddenly stopped bragging about it. Even Nezha had ceased to hold his nightly performances in the studio.

“This happens every year,” Raban had said. “It’s a bit silly, to be honest. As if martial artists your age ever have anything worth stealing.”

Silly or not, their class freaked out in earnest. Everyone was accused of having a hidden weapon up his or her sleeve; whoever had never displayed an inherited art was alleged to be harboring one in secret.

Niang confided to Rin one night that Kitay was actually the heir to the long-forgotten Fist of the North Wind, an art that allowed the user to incapacitate opponents by touching a few choice pressure points.

“I might have had a hand in spreading that story,” Kitay admitted when Rin asked him about it. “Sunzi would call it psychological warfare.”

She snorted. “Sunzi would call it horseshit.”

The first-years weren’t allowed to train after curfew, so the preparation period turned into a contest of who could find the most creative way of sneaking past the masters. The apprentices, of course, began vigilantly patrolling the campus after curfew to catch students who had stolen outside to train. Nohai reported that he’d stumbled across a sheet detailing points for such captures in the boys’ dormitory.

“It’s almost like they’re enjoying this,” Rin muttered.

“Of course they enjoy it,” said Kitay. “They get to watch us suffer through the same things they did. This time next year we’ll be equally obnoxious.”

Displaying a stunning lack of sympathy, the apprentices had also taken advantage of the first-years’ anxiety to establish a flourishing market in “study aids.” Rin laughed when Niang returned to the dormitory with what Niang thought was willow bark aged a hundred years.

“That’s a ginger root,” Rin said with a snicker. She weighed the wrinkled root in her hand. “I mean, I suppose it’s good in tea.”

“How do you know?” Niang looked dismayed. “I paid twenty coppers for that!”

“We dug up ginger roots all the time in our garden back at home,” Rin said. “Put them in the sun and you can sell them to old men looking for a virility cure. Does absolutely nothing, but it makes them feel better. We’d also sell wheat flour and call it rhino’s horn. I’ll bet you the apprentices have been selling barley flour, too.”

Venka, whom Rin had seen stowing a vial of powder under her pillow a few nights before, coughed and looked away.

The apprentices also sold information to first-years. Most sold bogus test answers; others offered lists of purported exam questions that seemed highly plausible but obviously wouldn’t be confirmed until after the Trials. Worst, though, were the apprentices who posed