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“The apprentices don’t know shit,” Jiang snapped. “I asked Jima to let me train him. But the Empress intervened. She knew the military value of a Speerly warrior, she was so excited . . . in the end, national interests superseded the sanity of one boy. They put him under Irjah’s tutelage, and honed his rage like a weapon, instead of teaching him to control it. You’ve seen him in the ring. You know what he’s like.”
Jiang leaned forward. “But you. The Empress doesn’t know about you.” He muttered to himself more than he spoke to her. “You’re not safe, but you will be . . . They won’t intervene, not this time . . .”
She watched Jiang’s face, not daring to hope. “So does that mean—”
He stood up. “I will take you on as an apprentice. I hope I will not come to regret it.”
He extended a hand toward her. She reached up and grasped it.
Of the original fifty students who matriculated at Sinegard at the start of the term, thirty-five received bids for apprenticeship. The masters sent their scrolls to the office in the main hall to be picked up by the students.
Those students who received no scrolls were asked to hand in their uniforms and make arrangements to leave the Academy immediately.
Most students received one scroll only. Niang, to her delight, joined two other students in the Medicine track. Nezha and Venka pledged Combat.
Kitay, convinced he’d lost his bids the moment he surrendered to Nezha, tugged at his hair so frantically the entire way to the front office that Rin was half-afraid he’d go bald.
“It was a stupid thing,” Kitay said. “Cowardly. No one’s surrendered uninjured in the last two decades. Nobody’s going to want to sponsor me now.”
Up until the Tournament he’d been expecting bids from Jima, Jun, and Irjah. But only one scroll was waiting for him at the registrar.
Kitay unfurled it. His face split into a grin. “Irjah thinks surrendering was brilliant. I’m pledging Strategy!”
The registrar handed two scrolls to Rin. Without opening them, she knew they were from Irjah and Jiang. She could choose between Strategy and Lore.
She pledged Lore.
Chapter 8
Sinegard Academy gave students four days off from studies to celebrate the Summer Festival. The next term would begin as soon as they returned.
Most students took this as a chance to visit their families. But Rin didn’t have time to travel all the way back to Tikany, nor did she want to. She had planned on spending the break at the Academy, until Kitay invited her to stay at his estate.
“Unless you don’t want to,” Kitay said nervously. “I mean, if you already have plans—”
“I have no plans,” Rin said. “I’d love to.”
She packed for her excursion into the city the next morning. This took mere seconds—she had very few personal belongings. She carefully folded two sets of school tunics into her old travel satchel, and hoped Kitay would not find it rude if she wore her uniform during the festival. She had no other clothing; she’d gotten rid of her old southerner’s tunics the first chance she got.
“I’ll get a rickshaw,” Rin offered as she met Kitay at the school gates.
Kitay looked puzzled. “Why do we need a rickshaw?”
Rin frowned. “Then how are we getting there?”
Kitay opened his mouth to reply just as a massive horse-drawn carriage pulled up by the gates. The driver, a portly man in robes of rich gold and burgundy, hopped off the coachman’s seat and bowed deeply in Kitay’s direction. “Master Chen.”
He blinked at Rin, as if trying to decide whether to bow to her as well, and then managed a perfunctory head dip.
“Thanks, Merchi.” Kitay handed their bags to the servant and helped Rin into the carriage.
“Comfortable?”
“Very.”
From their vantage point in the carriage, they could see almost all the city nested in the valley below: the spiraling pagodas of the administrative district rising through a faint blanket of mist, white houses built into the valley slopes with curved tiled roofs, and the winding stone walls of the alleyways leading downtown.
From the shaded interior of the carriage, Rin felt insulated from the dirty city streets. She felt clean. For the first time since she had arrived in Sinegard, she felt as if she belonged here. She leaned against the side and enjoyed the warm summer breeze against her face. She had not rested like this in a long time.
“We will discuss what happened to you in detail when you return,” Jiang had told her. “But your mind has just suffered a very particular trauma. The best thing you can do for yourself now is rest. Let the experience germinate. Let your mind heal.”
Kitay, tactfully, did not ask her what had happened. Rin was grateful for it.
Merchi drove them at a brisk pace down the mountain pass. They continued on the main city road for an hour and then turned left onto the isolated road that led into the Jade District.
When Rin had arrived in Sinegard a year ago, she and Tutor Feyrik had traveled through the working-class district, where the inns were cheap and gambling houses stood around every corner. Her daily trips to see the Widow Maung had led her through the loudest, dirtiest, and smelliest parts of the city. What she’d seen of Sinegard so far was no different from Tikany—it was just noisier and more cramped.
Now, riding in the Chen family’s carriage, she saw how splendid Sinegard could be. The roads of the Jade District were freshly paved, and glistened like they had been scrubbed clean that very morning. Rin saw no wooden shacks, no evident dumping grounds for chamber pots. She saw no grumpy housewives steaming breads and dumplings on outdoor grills, too poor to afford indoor stoves. She saw no beggars.
She found the stillness unsettling. Tikany was always bustling with activity—drifters collecting trash to repackage and sell; old men sitting on stoops outside, smoking or playing mahjong; little children wearing jumpers that exposed their butt cheeks, wandering around the streets followed by squatting grandparents ready to catch them when they toppled over.
She saw none of that here. The Jade District was composed of pristine barriers and walled-off gardens. Aside from their carriage, the roads were empty.
Merchi stopped the carriage before the gates of a massive compound. They swung ponderously open, revealing four long rectangular buildings arranged in a square, enclosing an enormous garden pavilion. Several dogs rushed them at the entrance, tiny white things whose paws were as immaculately clean as the tiled path they walked on.
Kitay gave a shout, climbed out of the carriage, and knelt down. His dogs leaped on him, tails wagging with delirious delight.
“This one’s the Dragon Emperor.” He tickled a 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.
