He made several syncopated wheezing noises. It took Rin a moment to realize he was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded. “Sir, if you’re going to report me, I just want to say—”
“Oh, I’m not going to report you. What fun would that be?” He was still chuckling. “Were you really trying to learn Seejin from a book? Do you have a death wish?”
“It’s not that hard,” she said defensively. “I just followed the pictures.”
He turned back toward her; his expression was one of amused disbelief. He opened the book, riffled through the pages with a practiced hand, and then stopped on the page detailing the first form. He brandished the book at her. “That one. Do that.”
Rin obliged.
It was a tricky form, full of shifting movements and ball change steps. She squeezed her eyes shut as she moved. She couldn’t concentrate in full sight of those luminous mushrooms, those bizarrely pulsing cacti.
When she opened her eyes, Jiang had stopped laughing.
“You’re nowhere near ready for Seejin,” he said. He slammed the book shut with one hand. “Jun was right. At your level you shouldn’t even be touching this text.”
Rin fought a wave of panic. If she couldn’t even use the Seejin text, she might as well leave for Tikany right now. She had found no other books that were half as useful or as clear.
“You might benefit from some animal-based fundamentals,” Jiang continued. “Yinmen’s work. He was Seejin’s predecessor. Have you heard of him?”
She glanced up at him in confusion. “I’ve looked for those. Those scrolls are incomplete.”
“Of course you won’t be learning from scrolls,” Jiang said impatiently. “We’ll discuss this in class tomorrow.”
“Class? You haven’t been here all semester!”
Jiang shrugged. “I find it difficult to bother myself with first-years I don’t find particularly interesting.”
Rin thought this was just irresponsible teaching, but she wanted to keep Jiang talking. Here he was in a rare moment of lucidity, offering to teach her martial arts that she couldn’t learn by herself. She was half-afraid that if she said the wrong thing, she would send him running off like a startled hare.
“So am I interesting?” she asked slowly.
“You’re a walking disaster,” Jiang said bluntly. “You’re training with arcane techniques at a rate that will lead to inevitable injury, and not the kind you recover from. You’ve misinterpreted Seejin’s texts so badly that I believe you’ve come up with a new art form all by yourself.”
Rin scowled. “Then why are you helping me?”
“To spite Jun, mostly.” Jiang scratched his chin. “I hate the man. Did you know he petitioned to have me fired last week?”
Rin was mostly surprised that Jun hadn’t tried that sooner.
“Also, anyone this obstinate deserves some attention, if only to make sure you don’t become a walking hazard to everyone around you,” Jiang continued. “You know, your footwork is remarkable.”
She flushed. “Really?”
“Placement is perfect. Beautiful angles.” He cocked his head. “Of course, everything you’re doing is useless.”
She scowled. “Well, if you’re not going to teach me, then—”
“I didn’t say that. You’ve done a good job working only with the text,” Jiang acknowledged. “A better job than many apprentices would have done. It’s your upper body strength that’s the problem. Namely, you have none.” He grabbed for her wrist and pulled her arm up as if he were examining a mannequin. “So skinny. Weren’t you a farmhand or something?”
“Not everyone from the south is a farmer,” she snapped. “I was a shopgirl.”
“Hm. No heavy labor, then. Pampered. You’re useless.”
She crossed her arms against her chest. “I wasn’t pampered—”
“Yeah, yeah.” He held up a hand to cut her off. “It doesn’t matter. Here’s the thing: all the technique in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t have the strength to back it up. You don’t need Seejin, kid. You need ki. You need muscle.”
“So what do you want me to do? Calisthenics?”
He stood still, contemplative, for a long moment. Then he beamed. “No. I have a better idea. Be at the campus gates for class tomorrow.”
Before she could respond, he strolled out of the garden.
“Wow.” Raban set down his chopsticks. “He must really like you.”
“He called me stupid and hotheaded,” Rin said. “And then he told me to be on time for class.”
“He definitely likes you,” Raban said. “Jiang’s never uttered anything nice to anyone in my year. He mostly yells at us to stay away from his daffodils. He told Kureel that her braids made her look like snakes were growing out the back of her head.”
“I heard he got drunk on rice wine last week and pissed into Jun’s window,” Kitay chipped in. “He sounds awesome.”
“How long has Jiang been here?” Rin asked. The Lore Master seemed amazingly young, at most half of Jun’s age. She couldn’t believe the other masters would put up with such aggravating behavior from someone who was clearly their junior.
“Not sure. He was here when I was a first-year, but that doesn’t mean much. I heard he came from the Night Castle twenty years ago.”
“Jiang was Cike?”
Among the divisions of the Militia, only the Cike bore an ill reputation. They were a division of soldiers holed up in the Night Castle, far up the Wudang mountain range, whose sole task was to carry out assassinations for the Empress. The Cike fought without honor. They respected no rules of combat, and they were notorious for their brutality. They operated in the darkness; they did the Empress’s dirty work and received no recognition afterward. Most apprentices would have quit the service rather than join the Cike.
Rin had a hard time reconciling her image of the whimsical Lore Master with that of a hardened assassin.
“Well, that’s just the rumor. None of the masters will say anything about him. I get the feeling that Jiang’s considered a bit of an embarrassment to the school.” Raban rubbed the back of his head. “The apprentices love to gossip, though. Every class plays the ‘Who is Jiang?’ guessing game. My class was convinced that he was the founder of the Red Junk Opera. The truth’s been stretched so many times that the only thing certain is that we know absolutely nothing about him.”
“Surely he’s had apprentices before,” said Rin.
“Jiang is the Lore Master,” Raban said slowly, as if talking to a child. “Nobody pledges Lore.”
“Because Jiang won’t take any students?”
“Because Lore is a bloody joke,” said Raban. “Every other track at Sinegard prepares you for a government position or for command in the Militia. But Lore is . . . I don’t know, Lore’s odd. I think it was originally meant to be a study of the Hinterlanders, to see if there’s any substance to their witch-magic rituals, but everyone lost interest pretty quickly. I know Yim and Sonnen have both petitioned Jima to have the class canceled, but it’s still offered every year. I’m not sure why.”
“Surely there have been Lore students in the past,” said Kitay. “What have they said?”
Raban shrugged. “It’s a new discipline—the others have been taught since the Red Emperor founded this school, but Lore’s only been around for two decades or so—and no one’s stuck with the course all the way through. I hear that a couple years ago some suckers took the bait, but they dropped out of Sinegard and were never heard from again. No one in their right mind now would pledge Lore. Altan was the exception, but nobody ever knows what’s going on in Altan’s head.”
“I thought Altan pledged Strategy,” said Kitay.
“Altan could have pledged whatever he wanted. For some reason he was hell-bent on Lore, but then Jiang changed his mind and Altan had to settle for Irjah instead.”
This was news to Rin. “Does that happen often—students choosing the master?”
“Very rarely. Most of us are relieved to get one bid; it’s an especially impressive student who gets two.”
“How many bids did Altan get?”