The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,9
blinked at each other.
Slowly Rin removed the incense stick from her nostril.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m praying.”
“Please leave,” he said.
Exam results were to be posted at noon outside the examination hall.
Rin closed up shop early and went downtown with Tutor Feyrik half an hour in advance. A large crowd had already gathered around the post, so they found a shady corner a hundred meters away and waited.
So many people had accumulated by the hall that Rin couldn’t see when the scrolls were posted, but she knew because suddenly everyone was shouting, and the crowd was rushing forward, pressing Rin and Tutor Feyrik tightly into the fold.
Her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe. She couldn’t see anything except the backs of the people before her. She thought she might vomit.
When they finally got to the front, it took Rin a long time to find her name. She scanned the lower half of the scroll, hardly daring to breathe. Surely she hadn’t scored well enough to make the top ten.
She didn’t see Fang Runin anywhere.
Only when she looked at Tutor Feyrik and saw that he was crying did she realize what had happened.
Her name was at the very top of the scroll. She hadn’t placed in the top ten. She’d placed at the top of the entire village. The entire province.
She had bribed a teacher. She had stolen opium. She had burned herself, lied to her foster parents, abandoned her responsibilities at the store, and broken a marriage deal.
And she was going to Sinegard.
Chapter 2
The last time Tikany had sent a student to Sinegard, the town magistrate threw a festival that lasted three days. Servants had passed baskets of red bean cakes and jugs of rice wine out in the streets. The scholar, the magistrate’s nephew, had set off for the capital to the cheers of intoxicated peasants.
This year, Tikany’s nobility felt reasonably embarrassed that an orphan shopgirl had snagged the only spot at Sinegard. Several anonymous inquiries were sent to the testing center. When Rin showed up at the town hall to enroll, she was detained for an hour while the proctors tried to extract a cheating confession from her.
“You’re right,” she said. “I got the answers from the exam administrator. I seduced him with my nubile young body. You caught me.”
The proctors didn’t believe a girl with no formal schooling could have passed the Keju.
She showed them her burn scars.
“I have nothing to tell you,” she said, “because I didn’t cheat. And you have no proof that I did. I studied for this exam. I mutilated myself. I read until my eyes burned. You can’t scare me into a confession, because I’m telling the truth.”
“Consider the consequences,” snapped the female proctor. “Do you understand how serious this is? We can void your score and have you jailed for what you’ve done. You’ll be dead before you’re done paying off your fines. But if you confess now, we can make this go away.”
“No, you consider the consequences,” Rin snapped. “If you decide my score is void, that means this simple shopgirl was clever enough to bypass your famous anticheating protocols. And that means you’re shit at your job. And I bet the magistrate will be just thrilled to let you take the blame for whatever cheating did or didn’t happen.”
A week later she was cleared of all charges. Officially, Tikany’s magistrate announced that the scores had been a “mistake.” He did not label Rin a cheater, but neither did he validate her score. The proctors asked Rin to keep her departure under wraps, threatening clumsily to detain her in Tikany if she did not comply.
Rin knew that was a bluff. Acceptance to Sinegard Academy was the equivalent of an imperial summons, and obstruction of any kind—even by provincial authorities—was tantamount to treason. That was why the Fangs, too, could not prevent her from leaving—no matter how badly they wanted to force her marriage.
Rin didn’t need validation from Tikany; not from its magistrate, not from the nobles. She was leaving, she had a way out, and that was all that mattered.
Forms were filled out, letters were mailed. Rin was registered to matriculate at Sinegard on the first of the next month.
Farewell to the Fangs was an understandably understated affair. No one felt like pretending they were especially sad to be rid of the other.
Only Rin’s foster brother, Kesegi, displayed any real disappointment.
“Don’t go,” he whined, clinging to her traveling cloak.