The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,79
waking hours either on patrol with the City Guard or training with Nezha.
Kitay began studying with her in the women’s dormitory, but only because it was the one place on campus always guaranteed to be empty. The newest class of first-years had no women, and Kureel and Arda had left the Academy at the end of Rin’s first year. Both had been offered prestigious positions as junior officers, in the Third and Eighth Divisions respectively.
Altan, too, was gone. But no one knew which division he had joined. Rin had expected it to be the talk of campus. But Altan had vanished as if he’d never been at Sinegard. The legend of Altan Trengsin had already begun to fade within their class, and when the next group of first-years came to Sinegard, none of them even knew who Altan was.
As the months passed, Rin found that one unexpected benefit of being the only apprentice who had pledged Lore was that she was no longer in direct competition with the rest of her classmates.
By no means did they become friendly. But Rin stopped hearing jokes about her accent, Venka stopped wrinkling her nose every time they were both in the women’s dormitory, and one by one the other Sinegardians grew accustomed to, if not enthusiastic about, her presence.
Nezha was the sole exception.
They shared every class except Combat and Lore. They each did their best to utterly ignore the other’s existence. Many of their advanced classes were so small that this often became incredibly awkward, but Rin supposed cold disengagement was better than active bullying.
Still, she paid attention to Nezha. How could she not? He was clearly the star of the class—inferior to Kitay perhaps in only Strategy and Linguistics, but otherwise Nezha had essentially become the new Altan of the school. The masters adored him; the incoming class of pupils thought he was a god.
“He’s not that special,” she grumbled to Kitay. “He didn’t even win his year’s Tournament. Do any of them know that?”
“Sure they do.” Kitay, not looking up from his language homework, spoke with the patient exasperation of someone who’d had this conversation many times before.
“Then why don’t they worship me?” Rin complained.
“Because you don’t fight in the ring.” Kitay filled in a final blank on his chart of Hesperian verb conjugations. “And also because you’re weird and not as pretty.”
In general, however, the childish infighting within their class had disappeared. It was partly because they were simply getting older, partly because the stress of the Trials had disappeared—apprentices were secure in their enrollment so long as they kept their grades up—and partly because their coursework had gotten so difficult they couldn’t be bothered with petty rivalries.
But near the end of their second year, the class began to split again—this time along provincial and political lines.
The proximate cause was a diplomatic crisis with Federation troops on the border of Horse Province. An outpost brawl between Mugenese traders and Nikara laborers had turned deadly. The Mugenese had sent in armed policemen to kill the instigators. The border patrol of the Horse Province responded in kind.
Master Irjah was summoned immediately to the Empress’s diplomatic party, which meant Strategy was canceled for two weeks. The students didn’t know that, though, until they found the hastily scrawled note Irjah had left behind.
“‘Don’t know when I’ll be back. Open fire from both sides. Four civilians dead.’” Niang read Irjah’s note aloud. “Gods. That’s war, isn’t it?”
“Not necessarily.” Kitay was the only one who seemed utterly calm. “There are skirmishes all the time.”
“But there were casualties—”
“There are always casualties,” said Kitay. “This has been going on for nearly two decades. We hate them, they hate us, a handful of people die because of it.”
“Nikara citizens are dead!” Niang exclaimed.
“Sure, but the Empress isn’t going to do anything about it.”
“There’s nothing she can do,” Han interrupted. “Horse Province doesn’t have enough troops to hold a front—our population’s too small, there’s no one to recruit from. The real problem is that some Warlords don’t know how to put national interest first.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nezha said.
“What I know is that my father’s men are dying on the border,” said Han. The sudden venom in his voice surprised Rin. “Meanwhile, your father’s sitting pretty in his little palace, turning a blind eye because he’s kept nice and safe between two buffer provinces.”
Before anyone could move, Nezha’s hand shot toward the back of Han’s neck and slammed his face into the desk.