dog under its chin. “They’re all named after the great rulers.”
“Which one’s the Red Emperor?” Rin asked.
“The one that’s going to pee on your foot if you don’t move.”
The estate’s housekeeper was a short, plump woman with freckled, leathery skin named Lan. She spoke with a friendly, girlish voice that was at odds with her wrinkled face. Her Sinegardian accent was so strong that even after several months’ practice with the heavily accented Widow Maung, Rin still could only barely decipher it.
“What do you want to eat? I’ll cook you anything you want. I know the culinary styles of all twelve provinces. Except the Monkey Province. Too spicy. It’s not good for you. I also don’t do stinky tofu. My only constraint is what’s on the market, but I can get just about anything at the import store. Any favorite recipes? Lobster? Or water chestnuts? You name it, I’ll cook it.”
Rin, who was accustomed to eating the uninspired slop of the Academy canteen, was at a loss for a response. How was she to explain she simply didn’t have the repertoire of meals that Lan demanded? Back in Tikany, the Fangs were fond of a dish named “whatever,” which was quite literally made of whatever scraps were left at the shop—usually fried eggs and glass noodles.
“I want Seven Treasure Soup,” Kitay intervened, leaving Rin to wonder what on earth that was. “And Lion’s Head.”
Rin blinked. “What?”
Kitay looked amused. “Oh, you’ll see.”
“You could act less like a dazed peasant, you know,” Kitay said as Lan laid out a spread of quail, quail eggs, shark fin soup served in turtle’s shell, and pig’s intestines before them. “It’s just food.”
But “just food” was rice porridge. Maybe some vegetables. A piece of fish, pork, or chicken whenever they could get it.
Nothing on the table was “just” anything.
Seven Treasure Soup turned out to be a deliciously sweet congee-based concoction of red dates, honeyed chestnuts, lotus seeds, and four other ingredients that Rin could not identify. Lion’s Head, she discovered with some relief, was not actually a lion’s head, but rather a ball of meat mixed with flour and boiled amid strips of white tofu.
“Kitay, I am a dazed peasant.” Rin tried fruitlessly to pick up a quail egg with her chopsticks. Finally she gave up and used her fingers. “You eat like this? All the time?”
Kitay blushed. “You get used to it. I had a hard time our first week at school. The Academy canteen was awful.”
It was hard not to feel jealous of Kitay. His private washroom was bigger than the cramped bedroom Rin had shared with Kesegi. His estate’s library rivaled the stacks at Sinegard. Everything Kitay owned was replaceable; if he got mud on his shoes, he threw them away. If his shirt ripped, he got a new one—a newly made shirt, tailored to his precise height and girth.
Kitay had spent his childhood in luxurious comfort, with nothing better to do than study for the Keju. For him, testing into Sinegard had been a pleasant surprise; a confirmation of something he’d always known was his destiny.
“Where’s your father?” Rin asked. Kitay’s father was the defense minister to the Empress herself. She was privately relieved she wouldn’t have to converse with him yet—the thought itself was terrifying—but she couldn’t help feeling curious about the man. Would he be an older version of Kitay—wiry-haired, just as brilliant, and exponentially more powerful?
Kitay made a face. “Defense meetings. You wouldn’t know it, but the whole city is on high security alert. The entire City Guard will be on duty all this week. We don’t need another Opera incident.”
“I thought the Red Junk Opera was dead,” said Rin.
“Mostly dead. You can’t kill a movement. Somewhere out there, some religious lunatics are intent on killing the Empress.” Kitay speared a chunk of tofu. “Father’s going to be at the palace until the parade is over. He’s directly responsible for the Empress’s safety. If anything goes wrong, Father’s head is on the line.”
“Isn’t he worried?”
“Not really. He’s done this for decades; he’ll be all right. Besides, the Empress is a martial artist herself; she’s hardly an easy target.” Kitay launched into a series of anecdotes his father had told him about serving in the palace, about hilarious encounters with the Empress and the Twelve Warlords, about court gossip and provincial politics.
Rin listened in amazement. What was it like to grow up knowing that your father served at the right hand of the Empress? What a difference an accident of