It was the sound of steel on steel that drew me to the hidden practice yard, three days after my breakthrough with my breathing. I had spent those days observing other classes – observing, because none of the Inner Disciples who taught the classes were willing to take on my instruction. One called me Laoshu to my face and sneered that he taught men, not rodents, while the other Outers snickered. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that the nickname had made it to the ears of the Inners, and I here I confess my weakness: in the fires of humiliation, I had blushed and fled.
Just yesterday morning, Zhuzhu had broken through in his practice of breathing, and this morning he had been practically inundated with offers from the brothers who sought to teach the combat arts. He’d offered to take me along, and I had been tempted. But it would further cement me in the eyes of the sect as the mouse, in the shadow of the giant boar. Besides, I knew how easily that boar could shift and crush me under one trotter, perhaps without even meaning to do so.
I claimed that I had another class that I’d been accepted to. Thus, I wandered through the quiet areas of the sect, hoping not to meet anyone who might casually mention my lack of occupation to him or anyone else. The route I chose was, quite deliberately, as far from the other practice yards as I could get. Which made the sound of clashing steel all the more unusual. And intriguing.
I crept up on the sound, only to stop in shock as I rounded the corner of a building and saw the small yard laid out before me. Kai, the demon-blooded disciple, was here, stripped down to his trousers and covered in shallow, bleeding wounds. He held two small, curved knives and faced off against a man wearing bright yellow silks. Kai’s opponent held only one knife, small and thin and almost absurdly delicate in his hand. The slender steel possessed none of the graceful lethality of Kai’s knives, and the Inner barely seemed to grip the blade, as if it was a mere decoration. I wondered if it was meant as a deliberate insult in contrast to Kai’s focus, or if the Inner simply didn’t care about the fury it might provoke.
Either way, Kai’s black eyes narrowed and I sucked in a breath as he hurled himself forward. In public areas, the demon-blooded disciple always moved with a kind of careful deliberateness, a grace and restraint that hinted at private tutors and the etiquette of nobility. In this moment, I saw a new and terrifying side of him. He struck like a cobra, fluid and unstoppable, his blades flashing like steel fangs. If he was holding anything back, I couldn’t see what, and in that moment I wondered if what I’d actually interrupted was a challenge and I was about to see an Inner Disciple die under Kai’s blades.
Instead, the Inner’s hand danced through the air and deflected both blades with enough force that Kai staggered, his arms flung wide. It was an opening, and the Inner exploited it with a single, casual kick...that sent Kai skidding across half the practice yard on his back. I flinched at the painful sound he made, and he didn’t immediately try to rise.
Mindful of how another Outer might view my having seen them being so casually humbled, I took a step backwards, meaning to withdraw. Instead, the Inner said, “Oh, don’t go now. I was curious about your thoughts...Zhou Hou, wasn’t it? Please, join us.” The please didn’t make it any less of a command.
Heart in my mouth, I stepped forward. Kai flipped himself back to his feet; his inhuman gaze was often unreadable, but not this time. His black eyes burned with resentment. I looked away to focus on the Inner. His face, beautiful and refined, showed nothing but a faint curiosity, like a man who has just discovered an unusual bug in his garden. I searched for something useful to say that wouldn’t make an enemy of Kai. He’s no competition for you was right out, no matter how true it was. I cast my mind back to the moment they clashed, the way Kai’s arms had been flung wide while the Inner had barely seemed to move. “You...redirected the force, rather than counter it. Brother Kai struck hard and true, but he was moving so fast that when you met blades at that specific angle, he couldn’t stop himself in time. His blades were pushed wide by his own movements.”
Kai glowered—but he didn’t argue. And the Inner smiled. “Precisely. That is the essence of working with the arts of the small blade,” he said to Kai. “You strike as if you are wielding and axe or a horseman’s blade. The dagger has not the weight nor the leverage to use power to break through.”
“But if you’re fast enough—” Kai started.
The Inner overrode him easily. “Someone will always be faster. Combat among immortals is about knowledge, not brute strength nor even raw speed.” His eyes turned back to me. “What weapon do you favor, Brother Zhou?”
I froze. As a woman and the daughter of a family of artisans, I had never had the opportunity to learn any weapon. My parents couldn’t even afford such instruction for my brothers, much less a girl of the family. But...that was my grace. Not every male learned the arts of war. I forced my tongue to work once again. “None, Elder Brother. My family were scribes; there was no money for such things, and no need.”
Had we managed to find the money, could my brothers have defended themselves? Defended my sisters and my parents? No. A cultivator’s power made a mockery of the weapon skills of mortals. As Kai was learning now, for all his demonic aptitudes. It made it easier to raise my chin and return his derisive snort with a pretense of calm.
The Inner watched with undisguised amusement. “I have known cultivators who can kill with the stroke of a brush. It is not a weapon that kills, but the focus and will behind it.” He beckoned. “Come, Younger Brother. Let’s test your focus.”
Kai stiffened. “What? This is meant to be my time.”
The Inner’s eyes narrowed. His voice didn’t rise, but it sharpened, cracking like a whip through the air. “It is my time, Younger Brother. Which I gift to whom I will. You’re welcome to seek other instruction if that displeases you.”
I watched with a kind of horrified fascination as Kai flushed. His scales remained unchanged and with the mottled anger of his skin they stood out in greater relief, almost like tattoos across his face. He glared at me with black eyes that promised retribution. Still, his voice was cool as he conceded, “I would not presume to dictate who you might share your wisdom with, Elder Brother. But he has no skill with the blade, he admits.”
The Inner smiled. “Which puts him closer to your level than mine. He’ll make a good sparring partner for you. Zhou Hou, take this.”
It was my only warning before he drew another small blade from somewhere in his robes and flipped it through the air at me. I snatched frantically at it before it could end its flight embedded in my shoulder. My fingers glanced off the blade, deflecting it to the paving stones where it clattered with a light and musical sound. All three of us stared at it until I, blushing furiously, bent to pick it up. I did my best to emulate the way Kai was holding his own daggers. He noticed the mimicry and snorted, turning away.
The Inner only gave a brief nod. “Good. Now, both of you, stand side by side. We will go over basic stances first—Brother Kai, don’t give me that look. Your stances are acceptable, but they are not perfect. You cannot afford not to practice the basics.”
I scrambled into roughly the right place, and cleared my throat. “Elder Brother?”
His eyes flicked to me, one eyebrow arched at the interruption. “Yes?”
“Your name. I haven’t been honored with your name.”
He laughed, then. “You may call me Brother Jian, as does Brother Kai. In time, either or both of you may earn more from me. But for now, I am the blade that will either shape you...or break you. It’s all you require.”
I fell silent, unable to argue with the finality of his tone.
And by the time Brother Jian released us with a casual, “That’s enough for today,” I was afraid that break was far more likely than shape. We hadn’t even progressed to anything like sparring but my whole body was drenched in sweat and my arms shook with fatigue. I barely felt the dagger in my hand through the numbness of my fingers. Jian had us practicing the most simple stances and strikes, but for hours without a hint of mercy. As he finally turned away, it was all I could to do stagger forward, offering the dagger. “Elder Brother, your weapon.”
He looked over his shoulder, then down at my hand. “Keep it. You’ll need something to practice with on your own, and I have plenty.” He swept out of the small courtyard, looking as neatly put together as he had the first moment I saw him. Such was the stamina of the immortal. The idea sparked a raw envy in me, and one of the first hungers I’d had for the power of immortality for its own sake, rather than just as the tool for my revenge. I moved to find a place in my simple disciple’s outfit where I might carry the knife without slicing myself with it.
It was only my sudden turn to check my sash that saved my life. I caught a flash of light out of the corner of one eye. Pure instinct flung me aside, to an ungraceful roll and scrabble along the ground as Kai’s blade whistled through the space my throat had occupied. I was too shocked to even cry out. I could only retreat as he stalked forward, his blade pointed at me. His voice was as icy as the undermountain sea. “You will not return, Laoshu, or I will kill you.”
It took me a painful breath to find my voice. “You heard Jian. It’s his choice who to teach. Not yours.”
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“I’m not telling him who to teach. I’m telling you that if you return to be taught, I will kill you. What you do with that knowledge is your choice.” He raked me with those black, inhuman eyes, and sneered. “I expect you to make the intelligent decision.”
“Why?” When he snorted in surprise and mockery, I flushed, but pressed on. “I mean why do you insist on having lessons alone?”
“I don’t insist on having lessons alone. Just not with you.” He flipped the knives in his hands and made them disappear up his sleeves with a graceful movement that I would have killed to be able to do. “We have a limited amount of time to prove our worth. You are slowing me down with your presence here. And even if Brother Jian is willing to put up with it, I am not.”
“But what if—”
His hand chopped the air and my words. “There are no buts. Find another teacher. Anything—or anyone—who stands in my way will be cut down. This is your only warning, rodent.”
He turned and strode away in a way that made it insultingly clear that his legs weren’t jelly from the hours of practice...and that he didn’t consider me enough of a threat to hesitate to turn his back on me.
He wasn’t wrong. I could barely lift my dagger, light as it was. The thought of trying to plunge it into his back was laughable. No matter how good it would feel if I pulled it off. I swayed on my feet as he disappeared into the maze of tiny streets that made up this part of the sect. I had no doubt that Kai meant every word he said. There were other teachers in the sect. I hadn’t exhausted every possibility. Perhaps I could visit the archives; some of the Inner Disciples were surely of a scholarly bent and would be open to teaching someone who wasn’t as much of a warrior.
A coward dies again and again, each death as wretched as the first. It was my father’s voice. And the worst part was that there was no overt condemnation. There never had been. It was my father’s habit to observe, and share his observation, rather than shout or order. There was something about the calm words that always cut deeper than a sneer or a slap would have. The truth was keener than any blade, even the one I held in my hand. Cowardice. The vice I could least afford.
My jaw set, and I glared at the place Kai had disappeared. “You don’t get to dictate my time, either. See you tomorrow, Brother.”
*
The next day, the ever-present storm around the mountain rose up, blanketing the sect in cold, stinging rain and the skin-tingling crackle of thunder. This changed nothing about the sect’s daily workings, but it meant that my intent to stride defiantly to my next (and perhaps final) dagger lesson instead became a sodden but determined squelch as I splashed my way through freezing puddles to reach the courtyard.
Jian was already there and the rain didn’t dare to touch him. It parted around him, as if he were deflecting it as easily as Kai’s attacks yesterday. His robes, his hair, his hands—they were all perfectly in order and exquisitely dry. Even the paving stones he stood on were dry and tidy.
“How do you do that?” I hadn’t meant to ask such a silly question. But there was ice water running down various parts of me, and it just slipped out, depressingly plaintive.
Jian laughed, the back half of it trailing into snorts that were unexpectedly human. “The arts we learn can be applied to more than combat, Younger Brother. Part of enlightenment is to see beyond the obvious and understand how all things are connected, be they violence, peace, or rain.” He spread his hands and I watched the water bow away from them with fascination. “How do you think I do it?”
I realized after the silence grew expectant that this was an actual question that I was meant to attempt to answer. The rain drummed on my skull. I tried to ignore it. “A...secret art?”
He cocked his head to one side. “And when you say a secret art, what do you mean?”
This was new territory for me. I knew so little about the depths of the cultivators’ disciplines. When you are mortal, you are taught only that cultivators progress along the paths of enlightenment, and as they understand more of the nature of the godhood they pursued, they learned great and terrible magics that, eventually, allowed them to ascend into the Heavens themselves. Meditation, alchemy, and the practice of the highest forms of martial arts opened those paths, I’d heard, but how exactly it happened?
I wasn’t sure. But he watched me steadily, as if I already had the knowledge necessary to solve the question. I bit my lower lip and studied him in return, blinking the freezing water out of my eyes when I needed. The rain made it hard to think; the pounding of it on my skin was nearly a weapon’s assault on its own.
My breath caught as my mind flashed back to yesterday. Kai’s powerful assault. The way Jian had turned it away with a minimal effort, redirecting the force of the blades. And here, the way the rain bowed away from his body. Slowly, feeling my way through the answer, I said, “You’re redirecting the force of the rain. Just as you did with Kai’s attack. Somehow.”
Jian’s smile of approval was brilliant, warming even my half-frozen skin with its heat. “Indeed. And would you believe me if I said that both actions were, in truth, the same exact action? That to understand how to redirect a blade, you must understand how to redirect the rain?”
I shook my head. “But how do you do either?”
“Practice. Focus.” He looked past my shoulder. “Ah, and here’s Brother Kai, so we can explore both, the three of us.”
I turned to face Kai. He stared at me, surprise turning quickly to fury. I braced myself but no attack came. Instead, the seething emotions snuffed themselves, replaced by a cold and tranquil mask. He didn’t blink even when a stream of water ran over his eye; I had a moment of involuntary sympathy for how unpleasant the rain must be on his bald head. He approached Jian and bowed. “My apologies for my tardiness, Elder Brother.”
Jian waved the apology away. “We have plenty of time. Let’s get started with practice of the basic stances,” and here I bit down on my lower lip to keep from groaning, “and then I think it’d be valuable for you to spar against one another. There are lessons to be learned from today’s weather.”
One corner of Kai’s mouth, thin and almost lipless, turned up. “I look forward to it,” he said.
A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the rain.
Although I doubt the premonition had anything to with a growing affinity for the qi, it wasn’t wrong. The first half of the class was hard, but expected: the stances were exhausting, but less so than the day before. My breathing helped; that small, burning spot within me was a well of energy, and as I synchronized my breathing with the movement of our bodies from one stance to the next, I found that I could tap into that energy and let it fill me, instead of drawing directly from my muscles. When Jian declared himself satisfied some time later, I was warm through and through, loose and limber rather than aching.
Then, Jian directed us to face each other. Cheerfully, he said, “Brother Kai, as you have the most experience, why don’t you take the defense? Brother Zhou, starting from Coiled Serpent stance, attempt to reach past Kai’s guard and tag his chest or shoulders with the tip of your blade.”
Coiled Serpent was the easiest of the basic stances: feet firm on the stones, knees bent enough to give me a spring when I moved. A focus on balance that could move to a quick lunge without warning. Kai shifted to Cobra’s Hood Flared, one of the basic defensive stances, his hands each brandishing a blade. I circled and he kept pace with me, his black gaze unreadable.
There. His foot shifted, compensating for the unsteadiness of the stone under his shoe. The tip of one blade wavered. I unraveled from Coiled Serpent to Venom Strike on pure instinct, aiming for his closest shoulder. Kai’s eyes widened and triumph surged with my blood.
Too soon. His blades flashed and fire painted itself along my arm and collarbone in the second before he spun in place and kicked me in the stomach. I hit the paving stones with a splash. No cry, but that wasn’t due to any great courage or stamina on my part – I had no breath with which to scream. Instead, I just tried not to puke on the ground before them. Kai advanced, murder in his smile.
Jian cleared his throat and the other disciple froze. “Not bad for a first attempt,” Jian said. “Kai, tell him what he did wrong.”
“He showed up,” Kai said, flatly.
“What was that?”
“Tch.” Kai appeared to regret the disdainful noise in the next moment. He rocked back on his heels and looked down at me. Toneless, he spoke. “You lead with your toes when you were considering where to strike. And your eyes narrowed once you’d chosen your time. I knew where and when from the moment you made each decision. It was easy to counter.”
I staggered to my feet, breathing ragged. Blood was running down my skin, washed into pink by the rain, the cuts burning with the constant water. I stared into Kai’s eyes. And, slowly, I bowed. “Thank you, Brother, for sharing your wisdom. I would like to try again, if you would permit it.”
Something strange and brief broke through his cool mask. Confusion, I thought, but it passed so fast I couldn’t be sure. But he stepped back, falling easily into his stance. “Whenever you’re ready, then.”
So began our agonizing dance. Agonizing for me, anyway. Two dozen times I took the offense. Two dozen times I struck, each time trying to take the critique I was given. And two dozen times, Kai cut me with both blades. My arms, my shoulders. One long line across my belly that felt as if it could have been a disembowelment if he’d quite dared to do so in front of Jian. Another thin and flickering smile said he thought about it and relished the idea.
My only victory was that each time I was tripped, kicked, or slammed to the stones, I refused to stay there. I picked myself up with legs that felt more unsteady each time—but they lifted me. They held. And I took up the stance again. My world shrank to my attempts to move without giving away my intent, to be faster than the snake’s child before me. To the pain, and the refusal to give into it.
Finally, Jian’s voice cut through my concentration. “I think that’s enough for one day.” He sounded amused, and quite unconcerned by the bloody ribbons my upper body sported. “Brother Kai, your defensive work is surprisingly strong. When you’re forced to react to another’s actions, you begin to rely on more than brute strength or speed. Nonetheless, you lack awareness. Feel the ground beneath your feet. You view it as a distraction, and that creates openings.
“Brother Zhou? I commend you for seeing more than half of the openings that Brother Kai has created. You, on the other hand, need what he has: strength and speed. Seeing the weakness isn’t enough if you can’t take advantage of it. But your perception is an asset. As is your persistence. I suggest you practice Coiled Serpent moving to a strike at least fifty times before you sleep, tonight and every night. Once you can master the forward strike, we’ll work on some of the more involved arts. Kai, you should practice your footwork without your shoes, on at least five different types of terrain. Feel the earth, anticipate it. Close those gaps.”
Kai bowed. “Yes, Elder Brother.” I hastily followed suit.
Jian considered us both. He nodded. “Yes, I think this will work quite well. I expect to see you both at the same time tomorrow.” His departure was as sudden and without ceremony as it had been the day before.
Kai and I were alone. The demon-blooded disciple turned to face me, and I took up a defensive stance of my own. Our eyes met, and I could read nothing in his. I only saw my reflection in the glossy black, sodden and exhausted. An easy kill in this moment, I was sure. I had no idea what, if anything, he saw in my face in return. His expression was closed off, the scales shimmering in the rain.
With a grunt, he turned and walked away, his knives disappearing up his sleeves. Relief made me giddy. It probably also made me stupid, because I couldn’t help but call after him, “See you tomorrow, then, Brother?”
He didn’t look back.
As soon as he was out of sight, I collapsed onto the wet cobbles and kissed the stone, tasting just the faintest hint of my own blood in the rain.
