She had made it all the way across the country to a place she had spent years dreaming of, only to discover a hostile, confusing city that despised southerners. She had no home in Tikany or Sinegard. Everywhere she traveled, everywhere she escaped to, she was just a war orphan who was not supposed to be there.
She felt so terribly alone.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said.
Tutor Feyrik’s smile fell. “Oh, Rin.”
“I hate it here,” she blurted suddenly. “I hate this city. The way they talk—that stupid apprentice—it’s like they don’t think I should be here.”
“Of course they don’t,” said Tutor Feyrik. “You’re a war orphan. You’re a southerner. You weren’t supposed to pass the Keju. The Warlords like to claim that the Keju makes Nikan a meritocracy, but the system is designed to keep the poor and illiterate in their place. You’re offending them with your very presence.”
He grasped her by the shoulders and bent slightly so that they were eye to eye. “Rin, listen. Sinegard is a cruel city. The Academy will be worse. You will be studying with children of Warlords. Children who have been training in martial arts since before they could even walk. They’ll make you an outsider, because you’re not like them. That’s okay. Don’t let any of that discourage you. No matter what they say, you deserve to be here. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Your first day of classes will be like a punch to the gut,” Tutor Feyrik continued. “Your second day, probably even worse. You’ll find your courses harder than studying for the Keju ever was. But if anyone can survive here, it’s you. Don’t forget what you did to get here.”
He straightened up. “And don’t ever come back to the south. You’re better than that.”
As Tutor Feyrik disappeared down the path, Rin pinched the bridge of her nose, willing the hot feeling behind her eyes to go away. She could not let her new classmates see her cry.
She was alone in a city without a friend, where she barely spoke the language, at a school that she now wasn’t sure she wanted to attend.
He leads you down the aisle. He’s old and fat, and he smells like sweat. He looks at you and he licks his lips . . .
She shuddered, squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them again.
So Sinegard was frightening and unfamiliar. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She squared her shoulders and walked back through the school gates.
This was better. No matter what, this was a thousand times better than Tikany.
“And then she asked if the outhouse was a classroom,” said a voice from farther down in the line for registration. “You should have seen her clothes.”
Rin’s neck prickled. It was the boy from the tour.
She turned around.
He really was pretty, impossibly so, with large, almond-shaped eyes and a sculpted mouth that looked good even twisted into a sneer. His skin was a shade of porcelain white that any Sinegardian woman would have murdered for, and his silky hair was almost as long as Rin’s had been.
He caught her eye and smirked, continuing loudly as if he hadn’t seen her. “And her teacher, you know, I bet he’s one of those doddering failures who can’t get a job in the city so they spend their lives trying to scrape a living from local magistrates. I thought he might die on the way up the mountain, he was wheezing so loud.”
Rin had dealt with verbal abuse from the Fangs for years. Hearing insults from this boy hardly fazed her. But slandering Tutor Feyrik, the man who had delivered her from Tikany, who had saved her from a miserable future in a forced marriage . . . that was unforgivable.
Rin took two steps toward the boy and punched him in the face.
Her fist connected with his eye socket with a pleasant popping noise. The boy staggered backward into the students behind him, nearly toppling to the ground.
“You bitch!” he screeched. He righted himself and rushed at her.
She shrank back, fists raised.
“Stop!” A dark-robed apprentice appeared between them, arms flung out to keep them apart. When the boy struggled forward anyway, the apprentice quickly grabbed his extended arm by the wrist and twisted it behind his back.
The boy stumbled, immobilized.
“Don’t you know the rules?” The apprentice’s voice was low, calm, and controlled. “No fighting.”
The boy said nothing, mouth twisted into a sullen sneer. Rin fought the sudden urge to cry.
“Names?” the apprentice demanded.
“Fang Runin,” she said quickly, terrified. Were they in trouble? Would she be expelled?
The boy struggled in vain against the apprentice’s hold.
The apprentice tightened his grip. “Name?” he asked again.
“Yin Nezha,” the boy spat.
“Yin?” The apprentice let him go. “And what is the well-bred heir to the House of Yin doing brawling in a hallway?”
“She punched me in the face!” Nezha screeched. A nasty bruise was already blossoming around his left eye, a bright splotch of purple against porcelain skin.
The apprentice raised an eyebrow at Rin. “And why would you do that?”
“He insulted my teacher,” she said.
“Oh? Well, that’s different.” The apprentice looked amused. “Weren’t you taught not to insult teachers? That’s taboo.”
“I’ll kill you,” Nezha snarled at Rin. “I will fucking kill you.”
“Aw, shut it.” The apprentice feigned a yawn. “You’re at a military academy. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to kill each other throughout this year. But save it until after orientation, won’t you?”
Chapter 3
Rin and Nezha were the last ones to the main hall—a converted temple on the third tier of the mountain. Though the hall was not particularly large, its spare, dim interior gave an illusion of great space, making those inside feel smaller than they were. Rin supposed this was the intended effect when one was in the presence of both gods and teachers.
The class of first-years, no more than fifty in total, sat kneeling in rows of ten. They twisted their hands in their laps, blinking and looking around in silent anxiety. The apprentices sat in rows around them, chatting casually with one another. Their laughter sounded louder than normal, as if they were trying to make the first-years feel uncomfortable on purpose.
Moments after Rin sat down, the front doors swung open and a tiny woman, shorter even than the smallest first-year, strode into the hall. She walked with a soldier’s gait—perfectly erect, precise, and controlled.
Five men and one woman, all wearing dark brown robes, followed her inside. They formed a row behind her at the front of the room and stood with hands folded into their sleeves. The apprentices fell silent and rose to their feet, hands clasped behind them and heads tilted forward in a slight bow. Rin and the other first-years took their cue and hastily scrambled to their feet.
The woman gazed out at them for a moment, then gestured for them to sit.
“Welcome to Sinegard. I am Jima Lain. I am grand master of this school, commander of the Sinegardian Reserve Forces, and former commander of the Nikara Imperial Militia.” Jima’s voice cut through the room like a blade, precise and chilly.