she nailed this one, she would ace Irjah’s exam. And she knew the answer—it was lifted directly from Sunzi’s Twenty-Second Mandate.
She lifted her chin and responded in a loud, clear voice. “Yes, but only for the purposes of deception. Sunzi writes that if your opponent is of choleric temper, you should seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak so that he grows arrogant. The good tactician plays with his enemy like a cat plays with a mouse. Feign weakness and immobility, and then pounce on him.”
The seven masters each marked small notes into their scrolls. Rin bounced slightly on her heels, waiting for them to continue.
“Good. No further questions.” Irjah nodded and gestured at his colleagues. “Master Yim?”
Yim pushed his chair back and rose slowly. He consulted his scroll for a moment, and then gazed at Rin over the top of his spectacles. “Why did we win the Second Poppy War?”
Rin sucked in a breath. She had not prepared for this question. It was so basic she’d thought she didn’t need to. Yim had asked it on the first day of class, and the answer was a logical fallacy. There was no “why,” because Nikan hadn’t won the Second Poppy War. The Republic of Hesperia had, and Nikan had simply ridden the foreigners’ coattails to a victory treaty.
She considered answering the question directly, but then thought she might try a more original response. She had only one shot at an answer. She wanted to impress the masters.
“Because we gave up Speer,” she said.
Irjah jerked his head up from his scroll.
Yim raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean because we lost Speer?”
“No. I mean it was a strategic decision to sacrifice the island so that the Hesperian parliament might decide to intervene. I think the command in Sinegard knew the attack was going to happen and didn’t warn the Speerlies.”
“I was at Speer,” Jun interrupted. “This is amusing historiography at best, slander at worst.”
“No, you weren’t,” Rin said before she could stop herself.
Jun looked amazed. “Excuse me?”
All seven masters were watching her intently now. Rin remembered too late that Irjah had disliked this theory. And that Jun hated her.
But it was too late to stop. She weighed the costs in her head. The masters rewarded bravery and creativity. If she backed off, it would be a sign of uncertainty. She had begun digging this hole for herself. She might as well finish.
She took a deep breath. “You can’t have been at Speer. I read the reports. None of the regular Militia were there the night the island was attacked. The first troops didn’t arrive until sunrise, after the Federation had left. After the Speerlies had all been killed.”
Jun’s face darkened to the color of an overripe plum. “You dare accuse—”
“She’s not accusing anyone of anything,” Jiang interrupted serenely. It was the first time he’d spoken since the start of her exam. Rin glanced at him in surprise, but Jiang just scratched his ear, not even looking at her. “She’s merely attempting a clever answer to an otherwise inane question. Honestly, Yim, this one has gotten pretty old.”
Yim shrugged. “Fair enough. No further questions. Master Jiang?”
All the masters twitched in irritation. From what Rin understood, Jiang was present only as a formality. He never gave an exam; he mostly just made fun of the students when they tripped over their answers.
Jiang gazed levelly into Rin’s eyes.
She swallowed, feeling the unsettling sensation of his searching gaze. It was like she was as transparent as a puddle of rainwater.
“Who is imprisoned in the Chuluu Korikh?” he asked.
She blinked. Not once in the four months that he had trained her had Jiang ever mentioned the Chuluu Korikh. Neither had Master Yim or Irjah, or even Jima. Chuluu Korikh wasn’t medical terminology, wasn’t a reference to a famous battle, wasn’t some linguistic term of art. It could be a deeply loaded phrase. It could also be gibberish.
Either Jiang was posing a riddle, or he just wanted to throw her off.
But she didn’t want to admit defeat. She didn’t want to look clueless in front of Irjah. Jiang had asked her a question, and Jiang never asked questions during the Trials. The masters were expecting an interesting answer now; she couldn’t disappoint them.
What was the cleverest way to say I don’t know?
The Chuluu Korikh. She’d studied Old Nikara with Jima for long enough now that she could gloss this as stone mountain in the ancient dialect, but that didn’t give her any clues. None of Nikan’s major