by Keira Drake
“I hope your confidence is not misplaced,” I say doubtfully.
“It is not. It will take much work, but I have trained many and I know what I have seen in you.”
“I don’t know what to say, Noro.”
“Say you will let me teach you.”
I look over at him and smile. “When shall we begin?”
CHAPTER 21
SUMMER COMES ON LIKE A BREATH OF WIND, spreading a bloom of red and orange brush over the southeastern tip of the Continent. One by one, the scouts return from the west, the truth of the Topi advancement confirmed. Two settlements are reported exactly where I indicated they would be, with a significant force amassed between them. Several great assemblies are held in Hayato, and representatives from villages as far north as the Riverbed are in attendance. No consensus is reached as to the best course of action; the leaders are divided. The villagers, too, discuss the quandary. Most seem to feel that it is best to wait, to fight on familiar ground. Amongst all, there is a singular certainty: blood will be shed. It is not a question of if, but of when and where.
The waiting leaves time for much contemplation, and I find myself amidst a storm of mixed emotions. The kazuri ko is near its end, and I may have the opportunity to return home within the next few months. But while the thought of the Spire fills me with longing, a small part of me is quietly ignoring the fact that to go home will mean saying goodbye to Noro and all the rest. Who might have thought that I would become so attached to the Aven’ei?
The Continent is truly lovely in the summertime, and the warming of the weather stirs a restlessness in me that kindles an adventurous spirit. And so, on a mild, lovely day, I find myself in the center of a vast field, a mile or so north of the village, ready to begin my training with Noro.
Takashi has joined us so that he might spar with me while Noro instructs, and Yuki has come along to observe. The wind ruffles the long grass as I stand uncertainly behind Takashi, who is facing the distant mountains.
“Go on, Vaela,” Yuki says. “Give it a try. Just as Noro showed you.”
I hesitate.
“What’s the problem?” Noro says.
“It feels wrong,” I say. “I don’t want to do it.”
“It’s a wooden knife, Vaela,” Noro says. “You can’t hurt him.”
“I know, but it feels wrong. Even pretending to do this.”
Noro sighs. “Your throwing knives are meant to distract or disable an attacker. You must learn how to kill, and that means you have to get close. Now do it as I showed you.”
The warm wood of the training dagger rubs against my sweaty palm. “Really, I just—”
“Vaela. Please.”
“Fine.”
I take a breath and exhale deeply. I put a tentative hand on Takashi’s left shoulder; he whirls to face me and shoves me backward, so hard that I fall to the ground. Stunned, I look up at Noro—but he only laughs.
“Did you think you might just give him a friendly tap to let him know you were there?”
I get to my feet. “No.”
“If you don’t do it quickly, you’ll be the one who dies. Again—and take his jaw in your left hand. Do not touch his shoulder.”
Takashi turns his back and begins to whistle. Determined, I rush up behind him and reach for his jaw—but he turns and pushes me again. I stumble, but don’t fall this time.
“What was that for?”
Takashi spits. “You made more noise than an anzibatu. Not very light-footed, this one.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Vaela,” Noro says. “Remember what I told you about stealth. You are small—a young woman. You will be no less capable than a man once you learn these techniques, but you cannot physically overpower a Topi warrior—probably not even another female. They are impossibly strong.”
“They hurl rocks in sport,” Takashi says. “My cousin has seen it done.”
“Shush,” Yuki says. “Let him teach.”
Noro continues. “You must use the element of surprise. It is the sharpest tool of any itzatsune.”
“But I’m not an itzatsune. I’m just trying to learn how not to die.”
He steps closer to me, and whispers in a voice only I can hear, “You are Vaela Sun, the love of my heart. You can be whatever you wish. Now do it again, and be quiet this time.”
Takashi gets back into position and resumes his whistling. As I approach, again he spins about and shoves me.
“Too loud,” Takashi says.
And again.
“Are you even trying?”
Again.
“Come on, now, don’t get discouraged.”
And again, and again, and again.
I sit in the grass, tears in my eyes, my shoulders aching from all the pushing and shoving. “I can’t do it.”
“You can,” Noro says, crouching down beside me. “Get up, miyake. You must not quit.”
His eyes burn with confidence. What does he know that I don’t?
I get up. I try again.
And end up on my backside.
I’m sweating by the time it finally happens. I approach Takashi like a mouse; Noro gives me a nod of approval. I reach for my victim’s chin, grab it, prepare to draw the wooden blade across his neck—and scream.
“He bit me!” I say, clutching my left thumb. “He bit my finger!”
Noro shrugs. “You put your thumb over his mouth. Of course he bit you.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake…” I close my eyes and exhale slowly. “Turn around, Takashi. We’ll go again.”
I rub my thumb against my forefinger and slink back into position, scowling.
This time, I keep my fingers clear of his face, and draw the knife from left to right as Noro showed me. Takashi makes a gurgling noise, grips his throat, and falls to the ground, twitching.
“That’s not funny,” I say, but I’m smiling, because I did it, and even his grim joke can’t spoil my mood.
Yuki gives a cheer, and Takashi grins. “That was well done,” he says. “She’d have had me.”
“Excellent, Vaela,” Noro says, and I glow with pride at his praise. “Do it again.”
My smile fades. “Again?”
“We must teach your muscles to remember. Then you can do it without thinking.”
I cross my arms. “I don’t want to kill someone without thinking.”
“You may not have a choice.”
“Isn’t there always a choice?”
“Not if you want to live.”
His words chill me, but I can’t think of a retort. What am I going to say: okay, then, maybe I don’t want to live. That would be a lie. I don’t want to take a life, but I don’t want to lose my own, either—and I don’t want to see those I love come to any harm. Am I selfish? There never seems to be an answer to this question. I can only ever remind myself that I am not in the Spire, and the Topi would gladly see me dead.
I sigh. “Get up, Takashi. We’ll go again.”
After what must be twenty more successful attacks, Noro calls for a break, and the four of us settle down with jugs of cold water from the nearby stream. I’m dripping with sweat; cool rivulets run down the back of my neck, tickled by the mild breeze.
“I say you’ve got a good start, Vaela Sun,” Takashi says, and tosses me an apple from his pack. “And you’re freakishly strong for such a small thing, you know that? You have a nice, firm grip. Well done.”
“Do you feel confident in your progress?” Noro asks.
“I think I do,” I say, surprised. I wouldn’t want to try my luck with a Topi warrior, but I know more than I did this morning. Like how to avoid getting shoved to the ground by Takashi.
“Good. Now we must teach you all the ways to kill a man with a knife.”
I crinkle my nose. “You have a way with words.”
“There is no point in pretending about what we must do, Vaela. I do not teach you these things for sport—I hope to provide you with a way to defend yourself.” He taps himsel
f on the chest. “Would you stab me here?”
“No.”
“Good. Why?”
“Your…breastbone. It’s in the way.”
“Excellent.” He points to the spot below his ribs, on his left side. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I stare at the spot. “What do you mean, ‘how?’”
“Show me with your knife how you would do it.”
I gape at him. “I’m having an apple, Noro! We’re supposed to be resting!”
“All right,” he says, and reclines, resting his head in his hands. “Enjoy your fruit.”
“Thank you.”
“If I were a Topi, it would be your last meal.”
Takashi laughs. “Oh, let her eat, Noro.”
“Yes, let me eat,” I say, “Then I’ll stab you wherever you please.”
I lie back on the cool grass, lost beneath a sea of billowing white clouds. “That one looks like a great fir,” I say. Noro looks up, twists his head, then moves to my side, his head on the ground next to mine. On the other side of him, Takashi does the same.
“A wheelbarrow,” Takashi says, pointing.
“Where?” I say.
“That big one above the mountain.”
“How can you possibly think that looks like a wheelbarrow?” Yuki asks.
Takashi points again, jabbing his finger into the air. “See the handles there?” His hand makes a loop. “And the wheel. The big wheel—how do you not see it?”
Noro gives an exasperated sigh. “You do realize that where you’re pointing is different from my perspective than from yours?”
Takashi points again. “Right there.”
“I see a sailboat,” Noro says.
“Ohhh, I see a sailboat, too!” I say. “With a great tall mast!”
Yuki leans forward. “I see it as well!”
Takashi groans.
We are quiet for a moment. Then I start to giggle.
“What’s so funny?” Noro asks.
My giggle evolves into the kind of laughter which, when you’re in the midst of it, makes it hard to breathe. I roll onto my side, my shoulders shaking, but I can’t stop. Noro, Takashi, and Yuki have no idea what I’m laughing about; even so, they join in. I point to the cloud above us, trying desperately to speak, but this only makes me laugh harder. Finally, with tears in my eyes, I manage a few words: “That one… it…it looks…like Shoshi.”
Now we are all laughing together, with Takashi repeating I see it, I see it again and again. I’ve never seen Noro in stitches like this before. I bury my face in his shoulder, the warm sun like a kiss on my cheek, and laugh and laugh and laugh.
* * *
The following day, the four of us hike out to the meadow once again. The clouds today are dark and heavy, burdened with rain. From time to time, I feel a drop of water on my face.
“We’ll stay until it pours,” Noro says. “A little water never hurt anyone.”
“Tell that to my cousin,” Takashi says. “He once saw a thunderstorm at Sana-Zo that flooded the entire valley. People were whisked away, carried right off! Never heard from again.”
Yuki glances at me, then says, “Is this the same cousin who saw the Topi hurling rocks? The one who watched them eat their dead after a battle? The cousin who lives farther south than we do, but spends more time observing the Topi than anyone alive?”
Takashi’s face goes red. “They did eat their dead. He saw it.”
“I’ve heard they eat babies,” I say.
“Really?” Takashi says, his eyes wide.
“That’s what Keiji says.”
Noro sighs. “Can we focus, please?”
A large raindrop splashes onto his face, right between his eyes; Takashi and I both smother a laugh. Yuki chuckles and plunks herself down on a flat rock nearby.
“All right, all right,” I say, trying to compose myself. I bow deeply. “Proceed, battlemaster.”
“Today, you will learn another way to kill with a knife. Takashi, turn around.”
Takashi turns to face the mountains, and Noro pokes him beneath the left shoulder blade. “This spot, this spot here, it will give you the quickest kill of all. You drive the blade upward beneath this bone—” here, he demonstrates with my wooden knife “—directly into the heart. If you cut a man’s throat, he will take minutes to bleed out, and sometimes makes noise; if you pierce his heart, he will die at once.”
“Why don’t we just use this technique all the time?”
“Armor,” Takashi says over his shoulder. “If they’ve got thick leather on, you can’t easily penetrate it. Especially when the armor is laced with bone.”
“Exactly,” Noro says. “I want you to know this technique, to marry it to your memory, because it is quick and silent.”
We practice a few times, Noro directing my blade to the proper angle and spot.
“This is how you killed the sleeping Topi at the camp,” I say quietly.
He nods. “He was none the wiser.”
I meet Noro’s eyes. “He was kind to me. He gave me food.”
“He would have had you when the first was finished, if he’d been sober enough to stand.”
“Noro!”
His eyes grow dark, cast with the reflections of the gathering clouds overhead. “Do you grieve for the men who captured you? Do you truly not yet understand what the Topi are about?”
“I do grieve for them,” I whisper. “Though I am grateful every day for what you did.”
His eyes narrow. “Vaela, I fear for you. You cannot look upon the Topi as men.”
“What are they, then?”
“They are the enemy.”
“The enemy.”
“That’s right.”
“That may be, Noro, but they are men,” I say. “Fathers, brothers, sons—the Topi are people, just like you and me. I will not harden myself to see them otherwise.”
Yuki bristles. “I will remember you said that. After all, it might be you who one day is killed and dismembered, your head put on a pike and marched around the battlefield.”
“The Topi are not the only ones to flaunt the violence of this war,” I say. “When I first traveled over the Continent, I saw bodies—Topi dead—strung from a bridge in the south. The Aven’ei are no strangers to brutality.”
Yuki’s face is white with rage. “You would compare the Topi to the Aven’ei?”
“That isn’t what I meant,” I say. “I only—”
“If those zunupi insist on stretching their legs into our territory,” Yuki says, “they shall swing from the bridges in all their rotten glory. We do not bury their dead, nor send them off in fire. The Topi can rot—and may their corpses serve as warning to their brethren.”
Takashi turns, his usually jovial face set now with hard lines. “Vaela Sun is sentimental.”
Noro nods. “Sentiment makes for a poor weapon, and it is certainly no shield.”
“You misunderstand me, Noro,” Takashi says. “I do not chide her for it.”
“No?” Noro says. “Are you not my brother-in-battle, Takashi Yen? Have we not fought side by side?”
Takashi crosses his arms. “Vaela sees a thing that we have forgotten.”
“And what is that?”
He shrugs. “The Topi are not a faceless enemy—they have lost much as well. They mourn and grieve as we do.”
“Yet still they come,” Noro says, “when the Aven’ei would stay away. Still they come and find pleasure in the slaughter of our people.”
Yuki frowns. “Since when are you a Topi sympathizer, Takashi Yen?”
“I’m no sympathizer,” he says hotly, and spits. “I can’t acknowledge the fact that the Topi are human without being labeled as some kind of senukka?”
“Watch your mouth,” Noro says, glancing over at me.
“Watch your back,” Yuki says to Takashi. “You know what happens to Aven’ei that go soft and sweet.”
“You threaten me? You who wer
e my childhood friend? My childhood—”
“Oh, shut up,” Yuki says.
“Please,” I say. “Stop arguing. I understand how you feel, Yuki, how much you must hate the Topi—”
Yuki fixes me with a cold glare. “You understand nothing. You dress like an Aven’ei, you toil like an Aven’ei—you may even die like an Aven’ei someday. But you are an outworlder, Vaela, and so you will always be.”
Tears prick my eyes. “I didn’t mean—”
“She knows that,” Noro says, scowling in Yuki’s direction.
Yuki throws up her hands and stalks away, not stopping until she reaches the northern bank of the stream. There, she sits, picks up a stone, and hurls it into the water.
Takashi puts a hand on my shoulder. “She’s got a hot temper. She didn’t mean what she said.”
“She’s right,” I say. “I’ve been on the Continent scarcely five months. I oughtn’t say a word.”
“I’ve heard quite enough of this,” Noro says. “Vaela, I cannot change the way you see your enemy, but I will not rest until I know you can at least dispatch a man who might kill you.”
The truth of the war has never felt so plain, so heavy in my heart. I nod, and step into the space between Noro and Takashi. I place a hand on Takashi’s back, searching for the vulnerable spot. “Like this?” I say, pretending to drive the knife upward and inward.
“Like that,” Noro says. “Exactly like that.”
Lightning rips across the sky, close enough to turn our faces white in its glow.
Noro curses under his breath, his eyes on the clouds above. “We finally begin, and now we must stop.” He sighs. “Let us go, then. I do not like the look of this one, and the air is foul. There is trouble on the horizon—mark my words.”
CHAPTER 22
FOR THREE DAYS AND NIGHTS, A STORM UNLIKE any I have ever seen beats viciously upon the Continent. It is a late summer tempest, one that howls angrily, whipping water against the panes of the windows with a terrifying ferocity. I stand at the kitchen window on the third day, my arms braced around my waist, marveling at the violence of the rain. The clouds rumble with an ominous black fury, their terrible gray faces flashing to life as lightning cracks across the sky again and again. And though it is not yet evening, it is so dark outside that I have set every lamp in the house to burning, with a healthy fire in the sitting room hearth besides.