But the masters crowded around her, a hubbub of voices—hands reaching, mouths moving. Their presence was suffocating. She felt if she screamed she could disintegrate them entirely, wanted to disintegrate them—but the very small part of her that was still rational reined it in, sent her reeling for the exit instead.
Miraculously they cleared a path for her. She pushed her way through the crowd of apprentices and ran to the stairwell. She barreled up the stairs, burst out the door of the main hall into the cold open air, and sucked in a great breath.
It wasn’t enough. She was still burning.
Ignoring the shouts of the masters behind her, she set off at a run.
Jiang was in the first place she looked, the Lore garden. He was sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, still as the stone he sat upon.
She lurched through the garden gates, gripping at the doorpost. The world swirled sideways. Everything looked red: the trees, the stones, Jiang most of all. He flared in front of her like a torch.
He opened his eyes to the sound of her crashing through the gate. “Rin?”
She had forgotten how to speak. The flames within her licked out toward Jiang, sensed his presence like a fire sensed kindling and yearned to consume him.
She became convinced that if she didn’t kill him, she might explode.
She moved to attack him. He scrambled to his feet, dodged her outstretched hands, and then upended her with a deft throw. She landed on her back. He pinned her to the ground with his arms.
“You’re burning,” he said in amazement.
“Help me,” she gasped. “Help.”
He leaned forward and cupped her head in his hands.
“Look at me.”
She obeyed with great difficulty. His face swam before her.
“Great Tortoise,” he murmured, and let go of her.
His eyes rolled up in the back of his head and he began uttering indecipherable noises, syllables that didn’t resemble any language she knew.
He opened his eyes and pressed the palm of his hand to her forehead.
His hand felt like ice. The searing cold flooded from his palm to her forehead and into the rest of her body, through the same rivulets the flame was coursing through; arresting the fire, stilling it in her veins. She felt as if she’d been doused in a freezing bath. She writhed on the floor, breathing in shock, trembling as the fire left her blood.
Then everything was still.
Jiang’s face was the first thing she saw when she regained consciousness. His clothes looked rumpled. There were deep circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in days. How long had she been asleep? Had he been here the entire time?
She raised her head. She was lying in a bunk in the infirmary, but she wasn’t injured, as far as she could tell.
“How do you feel?” Jiang asked quietly.
“Bruised, but okay.” She sat up slowly and winced. Her mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. She coughed and rubbed at her throat, frowning. “What happened?”
Jiang offered her a cup of water that had been sitting beside her bunk. She took it gratefully. The water sluiced down her dry throat with the most wonderful sensation.
“Congratulations,” Jiang said. “You’re this year’s champion.”
His tone did not sound congratulatory at all.
Rin felt none of the exhilaration that she should have, anyway. She couldn’t even relish her victory over Nezha. She didn’t feel the least bit proud, just scared and confused.
“What did I do?” she whispered.
“You have stumbled upon something that you’re not ready for,” said Jiang. He sounded agitated. “I never should have taught you the Five Frolics. From this point forward you’re just going to be a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”
“Not if you help me,” she said. “Not if you teach me otherwise.”
“I thought you just wanted to be a good soldier.”
“I do,” she said.
But more than that, she wanted power.
She had no idea what had happened in the ring; she would be foolish not to feel terrified by it, and yet she had never felt power like it. In that instant, she had felt as if she could defeat anyone. Kill anything.
She wanted that power again. She wanted what Jiang could teach her.
“I was ungrateful that day in the garden,” she said, choosing her words carefully. If she spoke too obsequiously then it would scare Jiang off. But if she didn’t apologize, then Jiang might think that she hadn’t learned anything since they’d last spoken. “I wasn’t thinking. I apologize.”
She watched his eyes apprehensively, looking for that telltale distant expression that indicated that she had lost him.
Jiang’s features did not soften, but neither did he get up to leave. “No. It was my fault. I didn’t realize how much like Altan you are.”
Rin jerked her head up at the mention of Altan.
“He won in his year, you know,” Jiang said flatly. “He fought Tobi in the finals. It was a grudge match, just like your match with Nezha. Altan hated Tobi. Tobi made some jabs about Speer their first week of school, and Altan never forgave him. But he wasn’t like you; he didn’t squabble with Tobi throughout the year like a pecking hen. Altan swallowed his anger and concealed it under a mask of indifference until, at the very end, in front of an audience that included six Warlords and the Empress herself, he unleashed a power so potent that it took Sonnen, Jun, and myself to restrain him. By the time the smoke cleared, Tobi was so badly injured that Enro didn’t sleep for five days while she watched over him.”
“I’m not like that,” she said. She hadn’t beaten Nezha that badly. Had she? It was hard to remember through that fog of anger. “I’m not—I’m not like Altan.”
“You are precisely the same.” Jiang shook his head. “You’re too reckless. You hold grudges, you cultivate your rage and let it explode, and you’re careless about what you’re taught. Training you would be a mistake.”
Rin’s gut plummeted. She was suddenly afraid that she might go mad; she had been given a tantalizing taste of incredible power, but was this the end of the road?
“So that’s why you withdrew your bid for Altan?” she asked. “Why you refused to teach him?”
Jiang looked puzzled.
“I didn’t withdraw my bid,” he said. “I insisted they put him under my watch. Altan was a Speerly, already predisposed to rage and disaster. I knew I was the only one who could help him.”
“But the apprentices said—”
“The apprentices don’t know shit,” Jiang snapped. “I asked Jima to let me train him. But the Empress intervened. She knew the military value of a Speerly warrior, she was so excited . . . in the end, national interests superseded the sanity of one boy. They put him under Irjah’s tutelage, and honed his rage like a weapon, instead of teaching him to control it. You’ve seen him in the ring. You know what he’s like.”
Jiang leaned forward. “But you. The Empress doesn’t know about you.” He muttered to himself more than he spoke to her. “You’re not safe, but you will be . . . They won’t intervene, not this time . . .”
She watched Jiang’s face, not daring to hope. “So does that mean—”
He stood up. “I will take you on as an apprentice. I hope I will not come to regret it.”
He extended a hand toward her. She reached up and grasped it.
Of the original fifty students who matriculated at Sinegard at the start of the term, thirty-five received bids for apprenticeship. The masters sent their scrolls to the office in the main hall to be picked up by the students.
Those students who received no scrolls were asked to hand in their uniforms and make arrangements to leave the Academy immediately.
Most students received one scroll only. Niang, to her delight, joined two other students in the Medicine track. Nezha and Venka pledged Combat.
Kitay, convinced he’d lost his bids the moment he surrendered to Nezha, tugged at his hair so frantically the entire way to the front office that Rin was half-afraid he’d go bald.
“It was a stupid thing,” Kitay said. “Cowardly. No one’s surrendered uninjured in the last two decades. Nobody’s going to want to sponsor me now.”
Up until the Tournament he’d been expecting bids from Jima, Jun, and Irjah. But only one scroll was waiting for him at the registrar.