by eden Hudson
There were a few good times. There seemed to be a magic level of the drug where Lanfen could feel relief and yet maintain enough mental awareness to speak to him like a mother. She’d told him the story of his birth, that stormy night when they’d first met, how the madam was furious with her for not getting rid of the child the moment she realized she was pregnant. Lanfen showed him the white scar on her finger where she’d bitten her knuckle in an effort not to scream too loudly and disrupt the performance in the next room of the teahouse as she gave birth to him. Or she talked about the pompous Grandmaster Feng trying to refuse her entreaty to take her son—and she did a wonderful impression of the man—then asked about the kindly Master Chugi and listened with rapt attention to Raijin’s account of the sweet old man. She would sing him a song, stroke his hair, and grin at him with an unbearable pride, and in those moments, Raijin could see the beauty his mother had once been. It shined through her dying body like a trapped sun.
A boy a few years younger than Raijin passed by the lean-to. The space between the latrine and the back of another outbuilding was a common thoroughfare for the people who lived down in the beach shacks, a shortcut between their little neighborhood and the city proper. This boy was limping, one eye already swelling, and his lip split. He hugged his willow-switch-thin arms around himself defensively, staring down at the ground as he walked. When the boy saw Raijin, he glared and kicked sand at him.
Raijin conjured Shield of the Crescent Moon to block the spray, a weight like a boulder sitting on his heart. The boy and his mother lived just a few shacks down. She was a qajong-addict as well and often rented him to anyone who could fund her next high.
That boy could very well have been him, Raijin thought. In another life, if Lanfen had chosen to keep her son, she could have turned to using him to pay for the bliss she found in her pipe. She could have sold him. She could have sent him out to find work, and living in this forsaken area with nothing but a family-less sensha as his mother, he would have turned to thievery and killing like the gangs he’d learned roamed the streets. She would never have had to work again.
But his mother had taken her life in her hands, climbing the mountain through a forest filled with dangerous demon beasts to the School of Darkening Skies. She’d fought with the grandmaster for his admission. Weeping, she had stumbled away from the one thing that could have made the rest of her life easier, giving him up so he could have the luxury of growing up safe and honorable rather than caring for an addict mother in a place that would wring the morality from anyone by slow, torturous degrees.
Long ago, he’d told Master Chugi that he could die for a person like that. Now he saw that to die would be a simple thing, too easy to do, and very little help to anyone. His mother had given up everything she could have had so he could live a better life. What was a few hours of own his life bathing her and enduring her drug-craving rants in return for a gift like that?
Chapter Thirty-One
6 YEARS AGO
Eventually, Raijin lost track of how many days he’d been with his mother. The cycle of her addiction continued unabated by weather, sand fleas, or her own illness. She worsened so quickly that it was like watching a banana go brown in the hot sun.
One evening, while Raijin was sitting outside his mother’s lean-to in a lax Resting Meditation and enjoying the cool breeze rolling in off the ocean, his mother called out to him.
“My beautiful son, are you here?”
She always asked the same question, as if she were certain that some day there would be no answer.
“I’m here, Mother.” Raijin crawled into the lean-to and knelt beside her. Though he tried to bathe his mother every few days and change the sand beneath her as often, the place still smelled like an uncovered waste pit. He’d gotten used to it, however. Mostly. “What can your son do for you?”
He expected her to beg for her medicine. It would be a chore telling her that she had already smoked all the day’s supply from Daitai and there would be no more until the next morning. She would scream, rage, accuse him of evil lies and smoking it himself, and eventually let him hold her while she wept herself to sleep.
Instead, however, he found Lanfen with eyes bright and alert. Pale pink mists decorated her sallow cheeks as if she were finally regaining her health. She reached out with a skeletal hand and touched his cheek, then reached up and ran her fingers through his shaggy hair. He’d been due for a haircut when Master Chugi sent him away but hadn’t yet found the time.
“You have hair like I used to,” Lanfen said fondly through dry, cracked lips. “Little waves like a black ocean on top of perfect jade eyes. So beautiful. I gave you the one good thing I had, my beauty, and you wear it better than I ever did.”
“I think you’re beautiful, Mother.” He meant it, too. Since the day he had realized how much his mother had sacrificed for him, Lanfen had grown more and more dear to him, even in the worst moments. “Can I get you some water? Are you thirsty? Would you like to try to eat?”
“My son, my Raijin,” she whispered. “You are my gift to the world.”
The words had a ring of finality to them that Raijin didn’t like. Lanfen’s eyes drifted nearly shut.
Raijin grabbed her hand as it fell and pressed it back to his cheek.
“Amma?” For reasons that he didn’t understand, he used the address small children used for their mothers. It was the first time he had spoken the word in his life.
Lanfen’s eyes remained shut, but she spoke.
“What little that I have, let it pass to you.”
As she sighed out her last breath, a cloud of sparkling white jade Ro, the most brilliant and beautiful thing Raijin had ever seen, rose from Lanfen’s heartcenter and flowed into his. He could feel it within him, flowing around and around his own green jade Ro, the two colors dancing wildly together like reunited spirits.
He stared down at the body that had once been his mother. Now it was empty. Dead.
On numb hands and knees, he crawled out of the lean-to. Slowly, stiltedly, he began to dismantle the boards that made up the roof and wall of his mother’s death house. The sparkling white Ro danced inside him, free of pain, overjoyed to see its offspring, and his own jade Ro whirled around it, ecstatic.
Raijin didn’t want to leave his mother’s body alone for even a moment, but there wasn’t enough wood in the lean-to to build a proper pyre. When he finished dismantling it, he kissed her cold cheek and promised he would be right back. Using Straight Line Winds, he sprinted past the latrine, through the town. He gathered armload after armload of wood from the forest at the farthest northern edge of the city, each time promising the body he would be back soon.
Raijin built his mother a funeral pyre while her final gift to him swirled in his chest as if it were happy to finally be home.
Chapter Thirty-Two
PRESENT
Koida rose with the sun the next morning. Before they had parted the night before, Raijin had promised that her training could begin at dawn, and she was not going to miss even a second of it. As soon as she woke, she dressed in her training attire and bolted past Batsai and the nodding Jun.
“Training,” she called over her shoulder in explanation. She could hear the sound of the guards scrambling to follow, the nightcaller floors screaming under their rushed, clumsy steps.
The first rays of yellow were piercing the sky when she stepped into the training courtyard. Raijin was there already, standing at the center facing the east, moving through strange flowing motions at a glacial pace.
She stopped at his side and knelt, fist pressed to her palm and raised over her bowed head while she waited for him to finish. His breathing was slow and deliberate, and without thinking, she began to mimic it. It was calming and yet also energizing. Mesmerized, she watched his bare feet scrape the dirt in front of her face.
Finally, his feet came to a stop and turned toward her.
“Master,” Koida said, lowering her head even farther.
&nb
sp; His feet snapped together, and when Koida looked up, Raijin was bowing over his fists.
“You don’t have to kneel,” he said, his voice noticeably hoarser than it had been before. “Please, stand up.”
“What were you just doing?” she asked, getting to her feet.
“It’s a moving meditation Hush taught me,” he said. “You can learn it if you want, but it would be better for her to teach you. I tried to learn as much of her Path as I could and only hurt myself.” He gestured to his throat.
“Your voice?” she asked.
He nodded. “Not every Path is for every person.”
“Then why do you practice it?”
Raijin scratched at the back of his neck, a gesture she was coming to see as a nervous or self-conscious habit.
“The Path of Hidden Whispers is one of... Restraint isn’t quite right. More like containment. Containing words, thoughts, emotions. Holding them inside.” He cleared his throat as if it were raw, then continued. “I’m doing a poor job explaining it. As you can imagine, it’s hard to learn the core principles of a Path from someone who can’t speak. Lately, however, I think I’m beginning to understand.”
“Why?” Koida’s brow furrowed. “How?”
Raijin didn’t seem bothered by her clumsy inquiries. He stared into the emptiness between them as if he were considering the best way to answer.
“There are some things you have to hold inside. Things no one else can know.” His eyes snapped up to meet hers, a jade fire burning in their depths. “For their protection or for the protection of others.”
“You could tell someone,” Koida insisted. “If you were going to marry them anyway, and you knew they wouldn’t tell anyone else. They might be strong enough to bear it with you.”
His expression softened. “Not if it wasn’t a question of strength.”
“What else could it be?”
Raijin shook his head, then looked up at the lightening sky.
“Our morning’s being eaten away and taking our chance to train with it. If you want to study the Path of the Thunderbird, we should start now.”
“As you say, Master.” She bowed again, promising herself to bring the matter up again that night at their wedding feast when he would have no excuse to evade it.
“It’s important to know that the Path of the Thunderbird is in direct contrast to the one you’ve grown up in,” Raijin said. “Your sister and father and even your guard fight other warrior artists to absorb pieces of their Ro, either in open warfare or duels, growing stronger by filling themselves with what belongs to others.”
Koida nodded. “This is the nature of the world.”
“We don’t train to give in to our nature, we train to overcome it,” Raijin said. He cleared his throat once more, though it didn’t improve his rasping voice. “The Path of the Thunderbird seeks to strengthen and refine what Ro you already have, to make you worthy of the power and responsibility you gain as you progress. It’s still permissible to absorb Ro from others if you’re forced to defeat them, but unless you’re fighting to protect a being weaker than yourself or to see justice done, then fighting others is nothing but a sign of laziness.”
Koida tried not to bristle at his words and failed.
“What if I’m near death, and I need their Ro to live?” she asked defiantly.
Raijin cocked his head slightly. “Is it better to take from another so you can live or to give up your chance at life so another can live?”
For some reason, the question brought to mind the untouchables from the night before.
“Did you send Hush to the untouchables in the city?” she asked, her voice tinged with concern. “Was she able to help Pai-Leng?”
“Yes,” Raijin said. “Now focus. Get into this stance.”
He spread his feet, bent his knees, and brought his fists to his hips. Koida did the same.
At least, she thought she did until he circled her, making minor adjustments to the width of her feet, the angle of her legs, the placement of her fists, even the tension in her shoulders.
“That’s good,” he said. “You’re better at keeping your back straight than I was when I started. My training master used to slap our spines with a staff whenever he saw them bending.”
Raijin didn’t have a staff, and Koida didn’t think he would slap her with one if he did, but she straightened her back more all the same.
Satisfied with all the trivial changes he’d made to her stance, Raijin sank back into his, facing her.
“This is Horse Riding Stance, just like riding your demon. We’re going to work on this, your fighting stance, and your set stance today. Probably for most of the first few weeks.”
Koida frowned. “But you said I could learn how to fight without Ro first thing.”
“One is a building block of the other,” he said. “If you can’t get these right, your foundation will be worthless. Don’t forget to breathe.”
They stood in the riding stance, breathing in and out together until Koida felt ridiculous. Then until she felt a little dizzy. Then until her legs started to shake. Then until she felt better. Then until her legs started to shake again.
“Okay, up.” Raijin popped back up to standing smoothly.
Koida tried to do the same, but her motion was filled with jerks and silent groans.
Raijin stood with his back straight and his fists closed in front of his waist. “This is Set. It’s a position of attention, a way of showing that you’re ready. Try it.”
Koida did, then he walked around her adjusting the width of her feet, the angle of her wrists, the tilt of her chin.
They went from Horse Riding Stance to Set over and over again. After those first times, Raijin didn’t make any adjustments to her stances, only told her they were wrong and forced her to stay down in the riding stance or up in the set position until she’d made the appropriate adjustments herself. Her legs shook and sweat dripped into her eyes, but he always had her switch stances just before she collapsed.
The sun was climbing over the eastern wall of the courtyard before he told her to relax.
“The Path of the Thunderbird seeks to better your body and mind as you cultivate your Ro. The Ro is as good as useless if the other two aren’t strong. Your mind is already quite sharp, so to strengthen it, first we have to work your body to exhaustion.”
They sprinted up and down the length of the courtyard fifty times. Then Raijin had them switch to running halfway and back followed by the full length and back. This he counted as one divided sprint, and he said they would do another fifty of those.
After the first ten, Koida went from running to jogging, and over the course of the next ten, she went from jogging to limping. Every muscle in her body burned, and most twisted into knots.
On their thirty-ninth divided sprint—which was more of a slow shamble by then—her legs refused to hold her any longer, and she dropped into the dirt like a sack of lentils.
A shadow fell across her vision.
“I should stop you,” Raijin said. “Your other masters probably did when you reached your limit before. But I can’t do that. I can’t be the soft master, not if you want to have any chance of advancing. Adversity builds strength, but indulgence tears it down. Think back. Your limit isn’t good enough for what you want to achieve, is it? So you’ll have to force yourself beyond that.”
Koida groaned and pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Gasping for air, she crawled toward the courtyard wall. She had eleven of the divided sprints left to go. That sounded like a lot, but she couldn’t give up. Not if the price of failure was her one hope at advancing.
When she finished the divided sprints—at that point resorting to dragging herself across the courtyard tiles—she collapsed beside the portico stair. Her delicate palms were bleeding and torn from the fine grit and dust she’d never noticed covering the courtyard tiles, and the knees of her training clothes were filthy.
Raijin took a seat in front of her, legs folded.
“Do you think you can keep this up?” he asked.
What she truly thought was that the physical exertion alone would probably kill her...and that if he asked her to get up and run some more, she would cry.
“I will,” she said. Her throat was dry, but her words were unnaturally loud in her ear as they bounced off the tiles beneath her cheek.
Raijin smiled at her deflection of the question. “Show me what you learned of Resting Meditation.”
Grateful to do anything that included sitting, Koida pushed herself up with shaking arms and crossed her legs. Her bleeding palms stung as she made them into fists and spread them a half-inch apart over her heartcenter.
Raijin adjusted her chin, her shoulders, her fists, even the place where her shins crossed over one another.
“When you’re tired is the perfect time to cultivate your Ro,” he said. “The mental effort it takes to force yourself to exercise your Ro when your physical body is on the verge of collapse—”
Koida grinned.
“—well, when it’s past the verge of collapse, too,” Raijin amended. “That effort sharpens your mind and strengthens your will. Let’s try Pouring Ro into Itself.”
Drained beyond anything she’d felt in her entire life, Koida closed her eyes and focused on the sizzling, sparking amethyst Ro at her heartcenter, surrounded by its dense lilac rings. She tried sending a finger of the misty energy from the cloud to cycle around one of the rings.
And immediately blacked out.
Chapter Thirty-Three
PRESENT
Rather than stopping the training and sending Koida to the alchemists for some sort of treatment, Raijin woke her gently and sat her up, and they began Resting Meditation again. Three times she blacked out with no success. But on the fourth try, she finally forced her Ro to begin pouring into itself.
Then she blacked out.
When Koida woke again, Raijin was beaming down at her.