by eden Hudson
“You did it,” he said.
She nodded. “For almost a full second.”
He helped her sit up, then pulled her up to standing.
“That’s the perfect amount for your first day,” he said. He pressed his fists together and bowed to her. “Thank you, Shyong San Koida, for this training.”
She returned the bow unsteadily. He caught her as she started to tip.
“Thank you, Master Ji Yu Raijin, for not asking your student to quit.”
“As long as I live, I won’t,” he said, his rasping promise carving itself into her mind like letters etched in stone.
Batsai and Jun helped Koida limp back to her residence, where she promptly fell asleep. It wasn’t even noon yet, but her body simply refused to stay awake.
When the door to the outer chamber opened, Koida assumed it was her ladies come to bathe and dress her for the sixth night of her wedding feast. Instead of a yammering whirlwind of gossip, however, someone took three running steps and leapt onto her bed.
“Koida!” Shingti shouted.
Koida lurched up from her doze, a scream in her throat. When she saw that it was only her sister, she scowled and dropped back onto her bed. Her muscles ached and jumped individually as if they were being struck at random by tiny tongues of invisible lightning.
“Please go fall off a cliff, elder sister,” she groaned. “I’m trying to sleep.”
Shingti cackled, clearly pleased with her entrance.
“I heard you had your first training day with the Ji Yu chieftain,” the first princess said. “Tell me about it, teach me things. Did he tell you how his construct blade works? Does his Path suit you? Did you learn its basic principles? Did it undo your deficiency?”
Though Koida was fairly certain Shingti was joking with the final question, Koida focused inward, probing at her heartcenter. Her Ro looked and felt the same. She couldn’t tell if it was stronger. She opened her eyes and tried to manifest two bo-shan sticks, one in each hand. As always, only her right one would manifest. It didn’t look any more solid than usual.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But he said it could take years before I start to see any progress.”
Shingti poked the purple stick. Koida was too exhausted to hold its form. The manifestation vanished, and the Ro retreated painfully back up the wrong paths to her heartcenter.
“What sort of techniques did he teach you, little sister?” Shingti asked. “Anything I should try? Show me something.”
“We didn’t work on any techniques, only stances.”
Shingti looked a combination of skeptical and disgusted. “You spent all morning working on stances?”
Koida’s shrug was barely more than a twitch of the shoulders, and even that hurt.
“Well, I can’t understand his teaching methods, but his fighting speaks for itself,” Shingti said. “If my little sister can match half of that ability in her lifetime, I’ll never worry about her again.”
“If I survive the training,” Koida mumbled, rolling onto her stomach.
Shingti laughed. “You’ll survive, little sister. You’re stronger than people let you believe.”
“If you really wanted to encourage me, you would send for one of the masseuses.”
A commotion in the outer chamber startled them both silent. The door opened.
Koida propped herself up on her elbows. It was Batsai, with a soldier from Shingti’s Dragonfly Guard leaning around him.
“Apologies for the interruption, adored second princess and annoying old hag,” the soldier said.
Shingti threw Koida’s pillow at the soldier with all the force of a Master of the Living Blade. The soldier swung his leg up into an Axe Blade Kick, the cutting edge manifesting in the blink of an eye, but Batsai snatched the pillow out of the air.
“No messes in the second princess’s residence, you children,” he growled.
Shingti and the soldier grinned at one another.
“Well, get on with your message, Ym-Luan,” the first princess said. “Before it busts your gut.”
“There’s a tournament in the courtyard,” the soldier said, excitement lighting his square features. “The chieftain of the Ji Yu has issued an open challenge to the empire’s soldiers.”
It was the sort of event that Masters of the Living Blade in the Shyong San Empire lived and breathed for. Shingti bounced off the bed and grabbed Koida by the wrist.
“Come on, little sister! Maybe we’re not too late to join the fun.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
PRESENT
The last thing Koida wanted to do after the morning’s exertions was sit through a tournament when she could be resting in comfort, but as Shingti dragged her through the halls back to the training courtyard, she had to admit she was eager to see Raijin fight again. His duel against Master Lao had been pure beauty in motion, and his battle against her father and Shingti’s personal guards as thrilling and terrifying as standing inside a tornado.
When they reached the courtyard, Raijin and the first of his opponents had stripped away their outer robes and wore only the loose pants common to a formal duel. The soldiers and guards who weren’t preparing to fight were pointing at the young chieftain’s unmarked arms and chest, elbowing one another and letting out the occasional guffaw of laughter.
Koida wanted to demand all their attention and explain to them that Raijin wasn’t a coward as his tattooless skin would make it seem, but that it was in opposition to his Path to proclaim all the feats of valor in his past.
But her anger quickly burned away at the sight of Raijin’s bare shoulders and arms. Sinewy muscle stretched as taut as lute strings over his lean frame. With his back to her, she could see a series of red, stringy scars wrapped around his nape, right arm, and shoulder blade like tangled jellyfish tentacles. A double line of black caught her eye, stretching from Raijin’s shoulder socket down the back of his left arm to his elbow. For a moment, she thought he did have a tattoo, but the lines were too polished and shiny to be ink. Unconsciously, she leaned closer. It looked as if he’d had a pair of lavaglass canes embedded in his flesh. The skin that bordered it was ragged scar tissue like that she’d seen on the Uktena envoys.
A thousand questions rushed her at once—when and how he’d become acquainted with the savage tribe, whether getting those canes embedded had hurt as badly as it appeared to have, what had caused the multitude of winding scars on his arm and shoulder... Then she remembered that soon she would have every right to ask him such prying questions and anything else she might dream up. In only two more nights she would be Raijin’s wife.
A little thrill of pride sang through Koida. In spite of his lack of Heroic Record, the strange scars, and the pair of embedded lavaglass canes, her future husband was a handsome man. He might even rival Yoichi for beauty. For strength and ability, she couldn’t say who would come out on top; she’d never seen Cousin Yoichi fight. But she found she felt a very strong—almost proprietary—bias toward Raijin.
“Am I too late to participate in the tournament?” Shingti asked cheerfully, her voice ringing off the courtyard walls as she and Koida stepped off the portico into the sunlight.
Raijin turned and bowed over his fists, his jade eyes locked on the first princess’s purple ones.
“The honored first princess is welcome to join the tournament, though its purpose is to settle a matter of grave importance,” he said. “This soldier and at least six others have been extorting from, abusing, and generally terrorizing the homeless in Boking Iri since the army’s return.”
“Nonsense!” Shingti snapped. “My soldiers would never waste their time terrorizing untouchables. What honor would they have to gain from bothering cripples?”
“Apologies, wise and all-knowing first princess,” Koida said, her voice clipped with irritation. Did Shingti not realize that if not for Koida’s lucky birth, she would be one of those untouchables? “But little sister happens to know that the soldiers in question did not
escape unscathed. Many of them bear a trio of scratches from being attacked by one untouchable wielding a nail-studded board.” She pointed across the courtyard at the small grouping of soldiers waiting for their turn to duel Raijin. “Look them over yourself if you do not believe.”
“It’s on his left,” Raijin said, raising the man’s muscled arm for him and displaying the grooves scratched by Ni’s board. The soldier jerked his arm out of Raijin’s hand, glaring at the young chieftain. Raijin went on, unconcerned. “I found the men who had the scratches and asked them to pay for the damage they caused. The tournament was their idea. Each one I can best without using my Ro will give a month’s wages or a month’s care to the injured. To each one who can best me, I’ll give a month’s wages.”
“And you believe this is necessary?” Shingti asked him, still clearly skeptical. “You’re going to stake your honor in battle on the behalf of untouchables?”
“Within my chosen Path, the well-being of those weaker than us is the most important matter,” Raijin replied. “There is no greater honor than defending them.”
Koida’s heart thundered in her chest. That earlier wash of pride at her betrothed’s beauty was nothing like the pride she felt at his answer.
“Then I will fight you on my soldiers’ behalf, as they are weaker than I.” Shingti’s purple gaze jumped from one accused soldier to the next. None of them were from her Dragonfly Guard, but as she commanded the imperial army, they still answered to her, and their behavior fell under her responsibility. “Do any of you object?”
The soldiers all agreed, many of them eagerly. A few grinned as if the duel had already been won. The great Master of the Living Blade, the Dragonfly of the Battlefield taking their place against a man without a single tattoo to mark a valiant deed—how could they lose?
Koida decided these men must not have been present when Raijin disabled Shingti and more than two dozen of the best warriors in the empire.
As if the first princess were thinking the same thing, Shingti turned to Raijin.
“I’m fine with you using your Ro, but what’s your stance on outlawing that cowardly Ro-blocking finger technique for this duel?” she asked.
“I’ll use only techniques from the first path I studied, if that seems agreeable to you. It was the Path of Darkening Skies. The blocking technique is from the Path of Endless Day.”
Shingti nodded. “That is agreeable.”
As the first princess prepared for the duel, Koida went back into the shade to find a seat. A watching soldier hopped down from a barrel leaning against a wall and bowed to her.
“Please, Adored Second Princess,” he said, gesturing to the vacated spot. “Take this seat.”
“Gratitude,” she said, inclining her head to him.
But when she tried to pull herself up onto the barrel, her arms did nothing more than shake. They were exhausted from training. Solicitously, the soldier shoved over a crate. Koida thanked him again, then used it as a step to climb onto the barrel top. Finally seated, she surveyed the scene in the courtyard.
Shingti had stripped down to loose pants and the binding shift covering her chest. Through the thin cloth of the binding shift, the brightly colored ink of the first princess’s Heroic Record showed that she was tattooed from wrists to navel, a sharp contrast to Raijin’s inkless skin. To anyone watching, it would appear as if a seasoned warrior were about to fight a cringing child.
“Be warned, Chieftain.” Shingti spread her feet, pulling one fist back to her hip and pressing her other palm out, fingers curled into claws. It was a fighting stance of her own invention. “I have no heavy ceremonial armor to slow my movements today.”
“I will do what I can to keep up, First Princess,” Raijin said, sinking into a fighting stance different from the one he’d spent the morning teaching Koida. One open hand bent inward toward the middle of his forearm, the other outstretched as if in invitation.
Like striking lightning, Shingti shot toward Raijin, a Serpentine Spear Hand manifesting a moment before impact. Raijin wheeled himself into the air, flipping away from the attack. When he landed, Shingti was already there, Spear Hand dismissed, slashing down at an angle with a brutal Axe Blade Kick.
Raijin pivoted away from the blade and dropped. His leg swept in a circle. A landslide of jade Ro moved beneath Shingti’s feet.
Like the insect of her namesake, Shingti flitted into the air, leaping over Raijin’s head as if she could truly fly.
From her seat in the shade, Koida imagined she saw a hint of thoughtfulness in Raijin’s eyes as he turned to follow her sister’s trajectory. It was almost as if he were having an internal argument with himself about whether he should attack before she landed. His dark brows gave the tiniest of facial shrugs, the decision made, and he leapt into the air as well.
Rather than soar like Shingti, Raijin’s leg shot out straight, sending a circular blade of icy jade Ro singing through the air at the first princess’s back. Shingti spun around in midair, then chopped through the circular blade with a bare backfist. The icy blade shattered like glass.
Both combatants hit the ground in ready stances.
Almost faster than Koida could see, Shingti fired off Flying Knife Hand after Flying Knife Hand, a technique that sent thin Ro-blades like daggers screaming toward the target. Rather than knocking the blades out of the air as Shingti had done to his construct, Raijin pulled his open hands behind his back, then thrust the palms outward, blasting them out of the air with hot wind that Koida could feel even on the portico. Several of the spectators beside her murmured in surprise, squinting to avoid the grit being blown at them.
Prevented from reaching her target and unwilling to waste the continued focus required to maintain the projectiles, Shingti let the Flying Knives dissipate. She darted at Raijin, manifesting her favored wickedly curved Dual Swords.
Once again, Koida caught sight of Raijin’s thoughtful expression. It was as if he had all the time in the world to consider how to respond to Shingti’s attack.
He bent one arm in front of his face and the other over his head, a jade crescent shield manifesting along each. With the front shield, he knocked aside the first of Shingti’s Thousand Darts of the Dragonfly. She spun, attacking mercilessly, one curved sword flashing after the other. Raijin mirrored her spin, knocking aside the blades one shield after the other.
They twirled and danced across the courtyard, the constant clatter of slashing blade against bashing shield filling the air. Shingti’s swords blurred as her Thousand Darts technique picked up speed, but Raijin disrupted each attack with his shields and spun away to meet the next. It almost looked to Koida as if he were measuring Shingti’s strength and speed with each blow.
With a start, Koida realized the courtyard and everyone in it had gone completely silent but for the ringing of Ro on Ro. Bodies leaned in unconsciously, fists clenched, and heads jerked in response to the observed blows. No one blinked.
Suddenly, the jade crescent shields disappeared. Shingti’s next dart shot in at Raijin’s chest. He turned like an opening door, the tip of her ruby sword cutting through the space where his heartcenter had been. Her follow up dart was already falling, but before it landed, Raijin struck, his hands a blur. A hail of battering jade fists streaked toward Shingti’s head and chest.
The first princess threw herself backward, arching her spine until her long hair caressed the tiles, and let the hail pass overhead.
At the same moment, Raijin dropped and swept his leg out toward her feet. A wall of watery jade Ro rushed at Shingti like a flash flood. As if she could sense it, Shingti continued her own motion, flipping over and landing in a powerful push stance. She slapped her palms together and thrust her fingertips at the wall of jade, manifesting a blade as tall as she was in a technique Koida had never seen before. The blade split Raijin’s jade wave as if it were made of real water, but the force of the impact forced Shingti backward, sliding her feet across the tiles.
Immediately the first pri
ncess returned to the offensive, leaping into a Spinning Hook Blade Kick. One after another, she sliced the deadly Ro-hooks at Raijin’s shoulders, head, and stomach, even coming down at an angle to take out his knees and up at an angle to slice across his groin, but the Ji Yu chieftain slipped each lethal blow by the thinnest of margins. The loose material of his pants took the only damage, thin cuts opening here and there like claw marks from some invisible demon cat.
Teeth bared in a snarl, Shingti returned to her favored Dual Swords and flew at Raijin, the Hook Kicks and Sword Hands slicing at him from every direction.
Raijin ducked under the deadly assault and streaked to the first princess’s side. He grabbed Shingti’s neck and shoulder with both hands, then slammed his knee into her heartcenter.
Thunder cracked through the courtyard like a breaking ice floe.
Koida and many of her fellow spectators flinched. All except for Hush and that yellow-haired drunk Lysander, whom Koida noticed for the first time sitting across the courtyard next to a small pile of robes. At the sound, both the silent woman and foreigner only grimaced as if they had been on the receiving end of that kick before and neither remembered it fondly.
At the center of the courtyard, Shingti dropped to her knees, coughing blood onto the glazed tiles. Raijin stood over the first princess, sinking once more into his strange fighting stance.
Koida leapt off the barrel and ran to her sister’s side, weariness forgotten.
“Shingti, are you all right?” She shot a glare at her betrothed. “What did you do to her?”
The first princess waved her hand at Koida, nodding her head. A gurgling sound rolled from Shingti’s blood-filled throat. Koida was nearly frantic until she realized that her sister was laughing.
The first princess spit a mouthful of red—not so different from her ruby Ro—onto the tiles.
“You were fighting down to me,” Shingti said, raising her head to look at Raijin. “Making it look as if I were a match for you, then pretending to exploit an opening.”