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She found that she couldn’t.
She found that she didn’t want to.
On the first day of the seventh month, another border skirmish erupted, between the Eighteenth Battalion of the Federation Armed Forces and the Nikara patrol in Horse Province bordering the Hinterlands to the north. After six hours of combat, the parties reached a cease-fire. They passed the night in an uneasy truce.
On the second day, a Federation soldier did not report for morning patrol. After a thorough search of the camp, the Federation general at the border city of Muriden demanded the Nikara general open the gates of his camp to be searched.
The Nikara general refused.
On the third day, Emperor Ryohai of the Federation of Mugen issued by courier pigeon a formal demand to the Empress Su Daji for the return of his soldier at Muriden.
The Empress called the Twelve Warlords to her throne at Sinegard and deliberated for seventy-two hours.
On the sixth day, the Empress formally replied that Ryohai could go fuck himself.
On the seventh day, the Federation of Mugen declared war on the Empire of Nikan. Across the longbow island, women wept tears of joy and purchased likenesses of Emperor Ryohai to hang in their homes, men enlisted to serve in the reserve forces, and children ran in the streets screaming with the celebratory bloodlust of a nation at war.
On the eighth day, a battalion of Federation soldiers landed at the port of Muriden and decimated the city. When resisted by province Militia, they ordered that all the males in Muriden, children and babies included, be rounded up and shot.
The women were spared only by the Federation army’s haste to move inland. The battalion looted the villages as it went, seized grain and transport animals for their own. What they could not take with them, they killed. They needed no supply lines. They took from the land as they traveled. They marched across the heartland on a warpath to the capital.
On the thirteenth day, a courier eagle reached the office of Jima Lain at the Academy. It read simply:
Horse Province has fallen. Mugen comes for Sinegard.
“It’s sort of exciting, really,” Kitay said.
“Yes,” said Rin. “We’re about to be invaded by our centuries-old enemy after they breached a peace treaty that has maintained a fragile geopolitical stability for two decades. So very exciting.”
“At least now we know we have job security,” said Kitay. “Everyone wants more soldiers.”
“Could you be a little less glib about this?”
“Could you be less depressing?”
“Could we move a bit faster?” asked the magistrate.
Rin and Kitay glanced at each other.
Both of them would rather have been doing anything other than aiding the civilian evacuation effort. Since Sinegard was too far north for comfort, the Empire’s bureaucracy was moving to a wartime capital in the city of Golyn Niis to the south.
By the time the Federation battalion arrived, Sinegard would be nothing but a ghost city. A city of soldiers. In theory, this meant that Rin and Kitay had the incredibly important job of ensuring that the central leadership of the Empire survived even if the capital didn’t.
In practice, this meant dealing with very fat, very annoying city bureaucrats.
Kitay tried to hoist the last crate up into the wagon and promptly staggered under the weight. “What’s in this?” he demanded, wobbling as he tried to balance the crate on his hip.
Rin hastily reached down and helped Kitay ease the crate up onto the wagon, which was already teetering from the weight of the magistrate’s many possessions.
“My teapots,” said the magistrate. “See how I marked the side? Careful not to let it tilt.”
“Your teapots,” Kitay repeated incredulously. “Your teapots are a priority right now.”
“They were a gift to my father from the Dragon Emperor, may his soul rest in peace.” The magistrate surveyed the top-heavy wagon. “Oh, that reminds me—don’t forget the vase on the patio.”
He looked imploringly at Rin.
She was dazed from the afternoon heat, exhausted from hours of packing the magistrate’s entire estate into several ill-prepared moving vehicles. She noticed in her stupor that the magistrate’s jowls quivered hilariously when he spoke. Under different circumstances she might have pointed that out to Kitay. Under different circumstances, Kitay might have laughed.
The magistrate gestured again to the vase. “Be careful with that, will you? It’s as old as the Red Emperor. You might want to strap it down to the back of the wagon.”
Rin stared at him in disbelief.
“Sir?” Kitay asked.
The magistrate turned to look at him. “What?”
With a grunt, Kitay raised the crate over his head and flung it to the ground. It landed on the dirt with a hard thud, not the tremendous crash Rin had rather been hoping for. The wooden lid of the crate popped off. Out rolled several very nice porcelain teapots, glazed with a lovely flower pattern. Despite their tumble, they looked unbroken.
Then Kitay took to them with a slab of wood.
When he was done smashing them, he pushed his wiry curls out of his face and whirled on the sweating magistrate, who cringed in his seat as if afraid Kitay might start smashing at him, too.
“We are at war,” Kitay said. “And you are being evacuated because for gods know what reason, you’ve been deemed important to this country’s survival. So do your job. Reassure your people. Help us maintain order. Do not pack your fucking teapots.”
Within days, the Academy was transformed from a campus to a military encampment. The grounds were overrun with green-clad soldiers from the Eighth Division of the nearby Ram Province, and the students were absorbed into their number.
The Militia soldiers were a stoic, curt crowd. They took on the Academy students begrudgingly, all the while making it very clear that they thought the students had no place in the war.
“It’s a superiority issue,” Kitay speculated later. “Most of the soldiers were never at Sinegard. It’s like being told to work with someone who in three years would have been your superior officer, even though you have a decade of combat experience on them.”
“They don’t have combat experience, either,” said Rin. “We’ve fought no wars in the last two decades. They know less of what they’re doing than we do.”
Kitay couldn’t argue with that.
At least the arrival of the Eighth Division meant the return of Raban, who was tasked with evacuating the first-year students out of the city, along with the civilians.
“But I want to fight!” protested a student who barely came up to Rin’s shoulder.
“Fat lot of good you’ll do,” Raban answered.
The first-year stuck out his chin. “Sinegard is my home. I’ll defend it. I’m not a little kid, I don’t have to be herded out like all those terrified women and children.”
“You are defending Sinegard. You’re protecting its inhabitants. All those women and children? You’re in charge of their safety. Your job is to make sure they get to the mountain pass. That’s quite a serious task.” Raban caught Rin’s eye as he shepherded the first-years out of the main gate.
“I’m scared some of the younger ones are going to sneak back in,” he told her quietly.
