R.F. Kuang - The Poppy War

“I’m good at, uh, multitasking.”

He eyed her skeptically for a moment, then shook his head. “You’d only have two years. It can’t be done.”

“But I don’t have any other options,” she said shrilly.

In Tikany, an unmarried girl like Rin was worth less than a gay rooster. She could spend her life as a foot servant in some rich household—if she found the right people to bribe. Otherwise her options were some combination of prostitution and begging.

She was being dramatic, but not hyperbolic. She could leave town, probably with enough stolen opium to buy herself a caravan ticket to any other province … but where to? She had no friends or family; no one to come to her aid if she was robbed or kidnapped. She had no marketable skills. She had never left Tikany; she didn’t know the first thing about survival in the city.

And if they caught her with that much opium on her person … Opium possession was a capital offense in the Empire. She’d be dragged into the town square and publicly beheaded as the latest casualty in the Empress’s futile war on drugs.

She had only this option. She had to sway Tutor Feyrik.

She held up the book she had come to return. “This is Mengzi. Reflections on Statecraft . I’ve only had this for three days, right?”

“Yes,” he said without checking his ledger.

She handed it to him. “Read me a passage. Any will do.”

Tutor Feyrik still looked skeptical, but flipped to the middle of the book to humor her. “The feeling of commiseration is the principle of …”

“Benevolence,” she finished. “The feeling of shame and dislike is the principle of righteousness. The feeling of modesty and complaisance is the principle of … the principle of, uh, propriety. And the feeling of approving and disapproving is the principle of knowledge.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And what does that mean?”

“No clue,” she admitted. “Honestly, I don’t understand Mengzi at all. I just memorized him.”

He flipped toward the end of the book, selected another passage, and read: “Order is present in the earthly kingdom when all beings understand their place. All beings understand their place when they fulfill the roles set out for them. The fish does not attempt to fly. The polecat does not attempt to swim. Only when each being respects the heavenly order may there be peace.” He shut the book and looked up. “How about this passage? Do you understand what it means?”

She knew what Tutor Feyrik was trying to tell her.

The Nikara believed in strictly defined social roles, a rigid hierarchy that all were locked into at birth. Everything had its own place under heaven. Princelings became Warlords, cadets became soldiers, and orphan shopgirls from Tikany should be content with remaining orphan shopgirls from Tikany. The Keju was a purportedly meritocratic institution, but only the wealthy class ever had the money to afford the tutors their children needed to actually pass.

Well, fuck the heavenly order of things. If getting married to a gross old man was her preordained role on this earth, then Rin was determined to rewrite it.

“It means I’m very good at memorizing long passages of gibberish,” she said.

Tutor Feyrik was silent for a moment. “You don’t have an eidetic memory,” he said finally. “I taught you to read. I would have known.”

“I don’t,” she acknowledged. “But I’m stubborn, I study hard, and I really don’t want to be married. It took me three days to memorize Mengzi. It was a short book, so I’ll probably need a full week for the longer texts. But how many texts are on the Keju list? Twenty? Thirty?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Then I’ll memorize them all. Every single one. That’s all you need to pass the Keju. The other subjects aren’t that hard; it’s the Classics that trip people up. You told me that yourself.”

Tutor Feyrik’s eyes were narrowing now, his expression no longer skeptical but calculated. She knew that look. It was the look he got when he was trying to predict his returns at Divisions.

In Nikan, a tutor’s success was tied to his reputation for Keju results. You attracted clients if your students made it into an academy. More students meant more money, and to an indebted gambler like Tutor Feyrik, each new student counted. If Rin tested into an academy, an ensuing influx of students could get Tutor Feyrik out of some nasty debts.

“Enrollment’s been slow this year, hasn’t it?” she pressed.

He grimaced. “It’s a drought year. Of course admission is slow. Not many families want to pay tuition when their children barely have a chance to pass regardless.”

“But I can pass,” she said. “And when I do, you’ll have a student who tested into an academy. What do you think that’ll do for enrollment?”

He shook his head. “Rin, I couldn’t take your tuition money in good faith.”

That posed a second problem. She steeled her nerve and looked him in the eye. “That’s okay. I can’t pay tuition.”

He balked visibly.

“I don’t make anything at the store,” Rin said before he could speak. “The inventory isn’t mine. I don’t get any wages. I need you to help me to study for the Keju at no cost, and twice as fast as you train your other students.”

Tutor Feyrik began to shake his head again. “My dear girl, I can’t—this is—”

Time to play her last card. Rin pulled her leather satchel out from under her chair and plunked it on the table. It hit the wood with a solid, satisfying smack.

Tutor Feyrik’s eyes followed her eagerly as she slipped a hand into the satchel and drew out one heavy, sweet-smelling packet. Then another. And then another.

“This is six tael worth of premium opium,” she said calmly. Six tael was half of what Tutor Feyrik might earn in an entire year.

“You stole this from the Fangs,” he said uneasily.

She shrugged. “Smuggling’s a difficult business. The Fangs know the risk. Packages go missing all the time. They can hardly report it to the magistrate.”

He twiddled his long whiskers. “I don’t want to get on the Fangs’ bad side.”

He had good reason to fear. People in Tikany didn’t cross Auntie Fang—not if they cared about their personal safety. She was patient and unpredictable as a snake. She might let faults go unacknowledged for years, and then strike with a well-placed poisonous pellet.

But Rin had covered her tracks.

“One of her shipments was confiscated by port authorities last week,” Rin said. “And she hasn’t had time to do inventory yet. I’ve just marked these packets as lost. She can’t trace them.”

“They could still beat you.”

“Not so badly.” Rin forced a shrug. “They can’t marry off damaged merchandise.”

Tutor Feyrik was staring at the satchel with obvious greed.

“Deal,” he said finally, and grasped for the opium.

She snatched it out of his reach. “Four conditions. One, you teach me. Two, you teach me for free. Three, you don’t smoke when you’re teaching me. And four, if you tell anyone where you got this, I’ll let your creditors know where to find you.”

Tutor Feyrik glared at her for a long moment, and then nodded.

She cleared her throat. “Also, I want to keep this book.”

He gave her a wry smile.

“You would make a terrible prostitute. No charm.”

“No,” said Auntie Fang. “We need you in the shop.”

“I’ll study at night,” Rin said. “Or during off-hours.”

Auntie Fang’s face pinched together as she scrubbed at the frying wok. Everything about Auntie Fang was raw: her expression, an open display of impatience and irritation; her fingers, red from hours of cleaning and laundering; her voice, hoarse from screaming at Rin; at her son, Kesegi; at her hired smugglers; at Uncle Fang, lying inert in his smoke-filled room.