this one, anyway.” She rubbed Sunzi’s snout. “This one’s going to the butcher tonight.”
Rin blinked. “What? So soon?”
“Sunzi’s already reached his peak weight.” The Widow Maung slapped Sunzi’s sides. “Look at that girth. None of my pigs have ever grown so heavy. Perhaps your crazy teacher was right about the mountain water. Maybe I should send all my pigs up there.”
Rin rather hoped that she didn’t. Chest still heaving, she bowed low to the widow. “Thank you for letting me carry your pig.”
The Widow Maung harrumphed. “Academy freaks,” she muttered under her breath, and began to lead Sunzi back to the sty. “Come on, you. Let’s get you ready for the butcher.”
Oink? Sunzi looked imploringly at Rin.
“Don’t look at me,” Rin said. “It’s the end of the road for you.”
She couldn’t help but feel a stab of guilt; the longer she looked at Sunzi, the more she was reminded of its piglet form. She tore her eyes away from its dull, naive gaze and headed back up the mountain.
“Already?” Jiang looked surprised when Rin reported Sunzi’s fate. He was sitting on the far wall of the garden, swinging his legs over the edge like an energetic child. “Ah, I had high hopes for that pig. But in the end, swine are swine. How do you feel?”
“I’m devastated,” Rin said. “Sunzi and I were finally starting to understand each other.”
“No, you sod. Your arms. Your core. Your legs. How do they feel?”
She frowned and swung her arms about. “Sore?”
Jiang jumped off the wall and walked toward her. “I’m going to hit you,” he announced.
“Wait, what?”
She dug her heels into the ground and only managed to get her elbows up right before he slammed a fist at her face.
The force of his punch was enormous—harder than he’d ever hit her. She knew she should have deflected the blow at an angle, sent the ki dispersing into the air where it would dispel harmlessly. But she was too startled to do anything but block it head-on. She barely remembered to crouch so that the ki behind his punch channeled harmlessly through her body and into the ground.
A crack like a thunderbolt echoed beneath her.
Rin jumped back, stunned. The stone under her feet had splintered under the force of the dispelled energy. One long crack ran between her feet to the edge of the stone block.
They both stared down at it. The crack continued to splinter the stone floor, crawling all the way to the far end of the garden, where it stopped at the base of the willow tree.
Jiang threw his head back and laughed.
It was a high, wild laugh. He laughed like his lungs were bellows. He laughed like he was nothing human. He spread his arms out and windmilled them in the air, and danced with giddy abandon.
“You darling child,” he said, spinning toward her. “You brilliant child.”
Rin’s face split into a grin.
Fuck it, she thought, and leaped up to embrace him.
He picked her up and swung her through the air, around and around among the kaleidoscopically colorful mushrooms.
They sat together under the willow tree, staring serenely at the poppy plants. The wind was still today. Snow continued to fall lightly over the garden, but the first inklings of spring had arrived. The furious winter winds had gone to blow elsewhere; the air felt settled, for once. Peaceful.
“No more training today,” Jiang said. “You rest. Sometimes you must loose the string to let the arrow fly.”
Rin rolled her eyes.
“You have to pledge Lore,” Jiang continued excitedly. “No one—no one, not even Altan, picked things up this fast.”
Rin suddenly felt very awkward. How was she to tell him the only reason she wanted to learn combat was so she could get through the Trials and study with Irjah?
Jiang hated lies. Rin decided she might as well be straightforward. “I’d been thinking about pledging Strategy,” she said hesitantly. “Irjah said he might bid for me.”
He waved his hand. “Irjah can’t teach you anything you couldn’t learn by yourself. Strategy’s a limited subject. Spend enough time in the field with Sunzi’s Principles by your bed, and you’ll pick up everything you need to win a campaign.”
“But . . .”
“Who are the gods? Where do they reside? Why do they do what they do? These are the fundamental questions of Lore. I can teach you more than ki manipulation. I can show you the pathway to the gods. I can make you a shaman.”
Gods and shamans? It was often difficult to tell when Jiang was