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Jiang snapped his fingers and motioned for Rin to follow. Rin clamped her mouth shut and tripped down the path behind him.
“Why does he hate you so much?” Rin asked as they climbed down the mountain pass toward the city.
Jiang shrugged. “They tell me I killed half the men under his command during the Second War. He’s still bitter about it.”
“Well, did you?” Rin felt like she was obligated to ask.
He shrugged again. “Haven’t the faintest clue.”
Rin had no idea how to respond to this, and Jiang did not elaborate.
“So tell me about your class,” Jiang said after a while. “Same crowd of entitled brats?”
“I don’t know them very well,” Rin admitted. “They’re all . . . I mean . . .”
“Smarter? Better trained? More important than you?”
“Nezha’s the son of the Dragon Warlord,” Rin blurted out. “How am I supposed to compete with that? Venka’s father is the finance minister. Kitay’s father is defense minister, or something like that. Niang’s family are physicians to the Hare Warlord.”
Jiang snorted. “Typical.”
“Typical?”
“Sinegard likes to collect the Warlords’ broods as much as it can. Keeps them under the Empire’s careful watch.”
“What for?” she asked.
“Leverage. Indoctrination. This generation of Warlords hate each other too much to coordinate on anything of national importance, and the imperial bureaucracy has too little local authority to force them. Just look at the state of the Imperial Navy.”
“We have a navy?” Rin asked.
“Exactly.” Jiang snorted. “We used to. Anyhow, Daji’s hoping that Sinegard will forge a generation of leaders who like each other—and better, who will obey the throne.”
“She really struck gold with me, then,” Rin muttered.
Jiang shot her a sideways grin. “What, you’re not going to be a good soldier to the Empire?”
“I will,” Rin said hastily. “I just don’t think most of my classmates like me very much. Or ever will.”
“Well, that’s because you’re a dark little peasant brat who can’t pronounce your r’s,” Jiang said breezily. He made a turn into a narrow corridor. “This way.”
He led her into the meatpacking district, where the streets were cramped and crowded and smelled overwhelmingly like blood. Rin gagged and clamped a hand over her nose as they walked. Butcher shops lined the alleyways, built so close they were almost on top of one another in crooked rows like jagged teeth. After twenty minutes of twists and turns, they stopped at a little shack at the end of a block. Jiang rapped thrice on the rickety wooden door.
“What?” screeched a voice from within. Rin jumped.
“It’s me,” Jiang called back, unfazed. “Your favorite person in the whole wide world.”
There was the noise of clattering metal from inside. After a moment, a wizened little lady in a purple smock opened the door. She greeted Jiang with a curt nod but squinted suspiciously at Rin.
“This is the Widow Maung,” Jiang said. “She sells me things.”
“Drugs,” clarified the Widow Maung. “I am his drug dealer.”
“She means ginseng, and roots and such,” Jiang said. “For my health.”
The Widow Maung rolled her eyes.
Rin watched the exchange, fascinated.
“The Widow Maung has a problem,” Jiang continued cheerfully.
The Widow Maung cleared her throat and spat a thick wad of phlegm into the dirt next to where Jiang stood. “I do not have a problem. You are making up this problem for reasons unbeknownst to me.”
“Regardless,” Jiang said, maintaining his idyllic smile, “the Widow Maung has graciously allowed you to help her in resolving her problem. Madam, would you bring out the animal?”
The Widow Maung disappeared into the back of the shop. Jiang motioned for Rin to follow him inside. Rin heard a loud squealing sound from behind the wall. Moments later, the Widow Maung returned with a squirming animal clutched in her arms. She plopped it on the counter before them.
“Here’s a pig,” Jiang said.
“That is a pig,” Rin agreed.
The pig in question was a tiny thing, no longer than Rin’s forearm. Its skin was spotted black and pink. The way its snout curved up made it look like it was grinning. It was oddly cute.
Rin scratched it behind the ears and it nuzzled her forearm affectionately.
“I named it Sunzi,” Jiang said happily.
The Widow Maung looked like she couldn’t wait for Jiang to leave.
Jiang hastened to explain. “The Widow Maung needs little Sunzi watered every day. The problem is Sunzi requires a very special sort of water.”
“Sunzi could drink sewage water and be fine,” the Widow Maung clarified. “You’re just making things up for this training exercise.”
“Can we just do it like we rehearsed?” Jiang demanded. It was the first time Rin had seen anyone actually get to him. “You’re killing the mood.”
“Is that something you’re often told?” the Widow Maung inquired.
Jiang snorted, amused, and clapped Rin on the back. “Here’s the situation. The Widow Maung needs Sunzi to drink this very special sort of water. Fortunately, this fresh, crystal-clear water can be found in a stream at the top of the mountain. The catch is getting Sunzi up the mountain. This is where you come in.”
“You’re joking,” Rin said.
Jiang beamed. “Every day you will run into town to visit the Widow Maung. You will lug this adorable piglet up the mountain and let him drink. Then you will bring him back and return to the Academy. Understood?”
“It’s a two-hour trip up the mountain and back!”
“It’s a two-hour trip now,” Jiang said cheerfully. “It’ll be longer once this little guy starts growing.”
“But I have class,” she protested.
“Better get up early, then,” said Jiang. “It’s not like you have Combat in the morning anyway. Remember? Someone got expelled?”
“But—”
“Someone,” Jiang drawled, “does not want very much to stay at Sinegard.”
The Widow Maung snorted loudly.
Glowering, Rin gathered up Sunzi the piglet in her arms and tried not to wrinkle her nose at the smell.
“Guess I’ll be seeing a lot of you,” she grumbled.
Sunzi squirmed and nuzzled into the crook of her arm.
Every day over the next four months, Rin rose before the sun came up, ran as fast as she could down the mountain pass and into the meatpacking district to fetch Sunzi, strapped the piglet to her back, and ran back up the mountain. She took the long way up, routing around Sinegard so that none of her classmates would see her running around with a squealing pig.
She was often late to Medicine.
“Where the hell have you been? And why do you smell like swine?” Kitay wrinkled his nose as she slid into the seat next to him.
“I’ve been carrying a pig up a mountain,” she said. “Obeying the whims of a madman. Finding a way out.”
It was desperate behavior, but she had fallen on desperate times. Rin was now relying on the campus madman to keep her spot at Sinegard. She began to sit in the back of the room so that nobody could smell the traces of Sunzi on her when she returned from the Widow Maung’s butcher shop.
