Jun was out of the question for Rin, though she too hoped Irjah might take her. But she knew Irjah wouldn’t place a bid unless she proved she had the martial arts to back up her Strategy prowess. A strategist who couldn’t fight had no place in the Militia. How could she draw up battle plans if she’d never been on the front lines? If she didn’t know what real combat was like?
For her, it all came down to the Tournament.
As for the apprentices, it was apparently the most exciting thing to happen on campus all year. They began speculating wildly about who might win and who would beat whom—and they didn’t try very hard to keep the betting books secret from the first-years. Word spread quickly about who the front-runners were.
Most of the money backed the Sinegardians. Venka and Han were solid contenders for the semifinals. Nohai, a massive kid from a fishing island in Snake Province, was widely backed to reach the quarterfinals. Kitay had his fair share of supporters, although this was largely because he had demonstrated a talent for dodging so well that most of his sparring opponents grew frustrated and got sloppy after several long minutes.
Oddly, a number of apprentices put decent money on Rin. Once word got out that she had been training privately with Jiang, the apprentices took an inordinate degree of interest in her. It helped that she was nipping at Kitay’s heels in every other one of their classes.
The clear front-runner in their year, however, was Nezha.
“Jun says he’s the best to come through his class since Altan,” Kitay said, jabbing vehemently at his food. “Won’t shut up
about him. You should have seen him take out Nohai yesterday. He’s a
Nezha, who had been a pretty, slender child at the start of the year, had since packed on an absurd amount of muscle. He’d cut short his stupidly long hair in favor of a clipped military cut similar to Altan’s. Unlike the rest of them, he already looked like he belonged in a Militia uniform.
He had also garnered a reputation for striking first and thinking later. He had injured eight sparring partners over the course of the term, all in increasingly severe “accidents.”
But of course Jun had never punished him—not as severely as he deserved, anyhow. Why would something so mundane as rules apply to the son of the Dragon Warlord?
As the date of the exams loomed closer, the library became oppressively silent. The only sound among the stacks was the furious scribbling of brushes on paper as the first-years tried to commit an entire year’s lessons to memory. Most study groups had disbanded, since any advantage given to a study partner was potentially a lost spot in the ranks.
But Kitay, who didn’t need to study, obliged Rin purely out of boredom.
“Sunzi’s Eighteenth Mandate.” Kitay didn’t bother looking at the texts. He had memorized the entirety of
Rin squinted her eyes in concentration. She knew she looked stupid, but her head was swimming again, and squinting was the only way to make it stop. She felt very cold and hot all at once. She hadn’t slept in three days. All she wanted was to collapse on her bunk, but another hour of cramming was worth more than an hour of sleep.
“It’s not one of the Seven Considerations . . . wait, is it? No, okay: always modify plans according to circumstances . . . ?”
Kitay shook his head. “That’s the Seventeenth Mandate.”
Rin cursed out loud and rubbed her fists against her forehead.
“I wonder how you people do it,” Kitay mused. “You know, actually having to try to remember things. Your lives sound so difficult.”
“I will murder you with this ink brush,” Rin grumbled.
“Sunzi’s appendix is all about why soft ends make for bad weapons. Didn’t you do the extra reading?”
“Quiet!” Venka snapped from the opposite desk.
Kitay dipped his head out of Venka’s sight and cracked a grin at Rin. “Here’s a hint,” he whispered. “Menda in the temple.”
Rin gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut.
In preparation for the Tournament, their entire class had taken Sunzi’s Eighteenth Mandate to heart. The pupils stopped using the open practice rooms during common hours. Anyone with an inherited art suddenly stopped bragging about it. Even Nezha had ceased to hold his nightly performances in the studio.
“This happens every year,” Raban had said. “It’s a bit silly, to be honest. As if martial artists your age ever have anything worth stealing.”
Silly or not, their class freaked out in earnest. Everyone was accused of having a hidden weapon up his or her sleeve; whoever had never displayed an inherited art was alleged to be harboring one in secret.
