Unsurprisingly, Jun’s right hand and arm were miserably sore the next morning.
The mayor’s wife and children brought them warm millet cereal and goat’s milk for breakfast. Jun dutifully recorded the meal in his new log, along with his fresh aches and pains. When Chang called him outside, he rose and went out with trepidation, rubbing his bruised, scabbed-over knuckles. What esoteric training exercise did Chang have in mind for him this morning. Slapping water? Catching chickens?
“Sparring,” Chang declared.
Jun’s shoulders came down in relief.
“Daughter,” the flutist instructed, “please give our assistant a friendly beating.”
Jun’s shoulders rose again. The Iron Core school had a few women students who endured Master Song’s hard physical conditioning to become as lean and chiseled as the style demanded, but they usually sparred with one another or the smaller men. He wasn’t surprised that Ren had been trained by her father, and she had never struck him as delicate—he’d seen her acrobatic moves onstage, leaps and handsprings that spoke to her athleticism—but he didn’t like the idea of punching her, especially since she was already opposed to having him around.
He bowed to Ren reluctantly. Their eyes met as they assumed ready stances. Ren’s flicked down for a moment. “Must you strip off your shirt every time you fight?”
Fighting bare-chested was customary in the Iron Core school, to further toughen the body. Ren was already dressed for traveling, in plain trousers and a belted tunic.
Jun raised his eyebrows. “Do you find it distracting?”
She shot a whip-fast jab at his face. When Jun jerked back, startled, she seized his wrist and dropped to the ground, pulling him down with her and unbalancing him as she spun low, her rear leg shooting out in a wide, precise sweep that caught him at the back of the ankle and sent him sprawling onto the grass behind the barn.
“Don’t overestimate the appeal of your pectorals,” she advised, standing over him.
Jun got back to his feet and began to spar properly. Training with Ren was strange, nothing like practicing with his fellow Iron Core disciples. She couldn’t match his strength or speed; Jun could easily overpower her if he was really trying. But she was light-footed enough to avoid going head-to-head against him in any exchange of blows, and she could act on any opening she saw with nimbleness and precision, snapping short, controlled kicks at his knees and groin, making him flinch with stiff finger jabs at his ribs and toward his eyes and throat, unbalancing him with cleverly timed shoves and sweeps, then rolling or spinning or darting out of reach.
Chang pointed at Jun. “Try to spar at sixty percent of your energy. Notice when you’re tensing up and exerting yourself more than necessary. Or when you’re becoming sluggish.”
Jun backed off and reassessed. The Iron Core style had taught him to relentlessly attack his opponent’s center line while defending his own. Ren didn’t play that game. She didn’t try to break down his formidable defenses. She was obviously Chang’s protégé—both of them compensated for their disadvantages with a slickness that made Jun feel like a bear trying to pin down a darting weasel. She couldn’t beat him, exactly, but she could defend against him, and he had no doubt she could incapacitate a clumsier aggressor.
Jun tried to anticipate her moves, to look for patterns and subtle tells. The next time she began to feint a low kick, he stepped in and jammed the high kick he knew would follow. Scooping an arm beneath her unstretched leg, he pivoted sharply and sent her sailing into the ground. Ren fell smoothly into a back roll and was up on her feet again in an instant.
Chang clapped his hands. “Good! That’s enough for now.”
They’d been merely practicing, feeling out each other’s moves and not trying to do any damage, but Jun wiped the sweat from his brow. Ren bent over to catch her breath.
Chang came over to them. “Dragon’s Breath is like a deep river that can be channeled into a raging waterfall. You rouse it by fueling yourself with rest and good food, by working your mind and your body to its peak, and by connecting your physical capacity with your willpower.” Chang picked up the wooden board and held it up to Jun as he had the previous night. “Try again. This time, don’t think about the movement of your body. Think about the Breath you’re going to project.”
Jun masked his displeasure and touched the fingertips of his right hand to the board, then reconsidered and switched to his uninjured left hand. He settled into his stance and tried to picture himself the way Chang had described—as a flowing reservoir of Breath—and he imagined gathering all the invisible heat and light from the center of his body and hurling it forward through his arm, through the solid barrier in front of it.
Jun closed his eyes and took a steadying breath, then smashed his hand closed, driving his fist into the wood.
The board shuddered again, more violently, but remained in one piece. Jun’s shoulders drooped in frustration and disappointment, but Chang grunted as his stance was broken and he was sent stumbling backward three paces.
“Better!” Chang exclaimed. He handed the board to Ren, picked up his bamboo cane, and walked toward where the wagon stood ready and packed, the horses harnessed. “Come along,” he called over his shoulder cheerily. “I want to reach the next town by midday; there’s a teahouse there that serves the best tea eggs in the province.”
THEY reached a larger, more prosperous settlement that evening, one where they could take a hot bath in a proper inn after Chang and Ren had performed in the town square. Their earnings were also much better this time around. Jun calculated his share of the take to be twenty-one copper yun. Not bad. Only two hundred seventy-nine to go.
The following two nights, however, were spent outdoors, sleeping on bedrolls next to the wagon. Jun was surprised and impressed when Chang walked out into the field with a bow on the first night and shot a rabbit, which Ren skinned and cooked over a fire for their dinner.
When he could utilize his breathmark ability, the flutist was remarkably capable. At other times, however, he needed a lot of assistance. Every time Ren laid out her sifu’s clothing and belongings, it was always in the same order. At every lodging they stayed in, Ren would walk him around the room, orienting him to the location of all the items—the bed and chairs, the washbasin, the chamber pot. Once shown, Chang’s memory was impressive, but because many inns had similar but slightly different room layouts, on several occasions Jun heard the flutist cursing after bumping into a piece of furniture or missing a step on the stairs.
Ordinarily the journey from Cheon to Xicheng, for someone traveling on horseback at a reasonable but unhurried pace, would take twelve to fourteen days via the wide Imperial Road, which crossed the Dengu River and arrowed northeast through the flat, fertile center of the country toward the gleaming capital.
Chang and Ren intended a much longer and less direct path, one that wound through the countryside on provincial roads, regularly intersecting back with the Imperial Road but incorporating numerous detours that took them to towns where they could perform. It would take them more than twice as long to reach Xicheng, a fact that made Jun anxious.
“What if I miss registration?” he fretted. Was Yin Yue still training in Cheon, Jun wondered, or was he already on his way to Xicheng so he’d have time to settle in? “I’ll bet my classmate from the Iron Core school will be arriving early to prepare.”
“Don’t worry, my impatient young pupil, we’ll get you there in time to register,” Chang assured him. “What’s the use of getting to the capital early if you don’t have the money to enter the tournament?”
The flutist had a good point, Jun admitted as he tallied the coin added to their cashbox each evening. Chang was paying him generously for a traveling stage assistant, as well as covering his food and lodgings, but based on their small troupe’s average earnings per show, they needed to perform roughly every second night right up until their arrival at Xicheng if Jun was to be sure of having enough money to cover his tournament expenses. Considering that he’d started the journey as an unwanted stowaway, he was determined to put in the work for every copper yun he was paid.
He quickly learned to load and unload the wagon, set up the stage and tear it down again, and store everything in its proper place. He cleaned and mended props, managed their supplies for the road, and kept the ledger of their earnings and expenses. He fed, watered, and brushed the two horses, Po-Po and Smelly, whom Ren admitted she’d named when she was twelve years old.
Considering how many tasks Jun took on, it was a wonder that Chang and his daughter had managed to travel by themselves for as long as they had. There were some responsibilities Ren wouldn’t surrender to him; she always handled her own large trunks of dresses, costumes, wigs, and hairpieces. She did her own makeup, and she was always the one at Chang’s side when he needed help. But she seemed to thaw toward Jun. Or, at least, she’d accepted she couldn’t convince her sifu to get rid of him, not after that first night in River Maiden when the flutist had taken him on as a student and begun training him. And from Ren’s occasional glances and nods of thanks, Jun knew she was secretly grateful for the help.
Whatever time and burden Jun lifted from his companions, he knew he added back to their schedule in the form of the twice-daily training sessions that Chang oversaw each morning and evening. Often, Jun would spar Ren or Chang, or both of them together. The only weapons in the wagon were a staff and a couple of knives, but Chang had him practice with them. Sometimes the flutist would make Jun do specific exercises, or work on breathing techniques, or review the log he was required to keep. Jun couldn’t help but find some of it boring. He’d hoped that Chang would teach him more combat skills, but his new instructor didn’t seem either able or interested in increasing Jun’s repertoire of moves.
“Fighting is simple,” the flutist said. “You hurt the other person until they stop hurting you. You already know how to strike with your fists and feet, your knees and elbows and shins. You can use all sorts of weapons. You know how to grapple a person to the ground and immobilize them, choke them, or break their joints.”
“Sure, but I could always use more of that,” Jun pointed out.
They’d passed an orchard that morning, after two weeks of traveling together, and the flutist was in a good mood as the farmer had given them a sack of ripe persimmons. “The problem is that there are plenty of other people who also know how to do those things. So the question becomes, who can do them better? More efficiently? Two fighters can be taught to punch in the exact same way, but they will still throw different punches. One punch will be faster, stronger, or more accurate. Which one?” Chang sliced a persimmon and savored a wedge of the sweet fruit. “That’s why fighting is complicated.”
Chang spoke of awareness, both of oneself and one’s opponent. He said that many talented fighters were so focused on overcoming their enemy that they blunted their abilities in the chase for victory. They overtrained and suffered injury, they became anxious and forgot what they knew, or they let anger or desperation drive them to foolish actions in the moment. Jun agreed that he’d seen it happen before, but he’d always viewed levelheaded discipline as an advantageous trait some people like Yin Yue possessed naturally in abundance. Chang spoke of control as something to be trained, just as a muscle was strengthened by effort.
In order to achieve this conditioning, Chang would sometimes push Jun unreasonably—forcing him to fight harder and faster and longer, taunting or aggravating him during sparring, making him train when he was tired or hungry. He would point out when Jun began to overexert himself, lose intention and precision of movement, grow hasty or careless the more his frustration mounted. “Your energy is all askew, you’re losing it!” Chang would shout. He meant losing control of one’s state of mind, one’s action and reactions, one’s very breath.
“Your breath,” Chang said, taking a big inhale and letting out a sustained exhale, “is the most basic connection to the deeper energy of Dragon’s Breath. Master the first and you’ll be better able to harness the second.”
In nearly every place they stopped to perform, Chang spent time meeting with friends, just as he had in River Maiden. The man had a vast network of connections, and Jun quickly surmised that these people were aware of Chang’s abilities and that several of them had trained with the flutist before. Sometimes, Chang would bring someone he knew over to meet Jun. The acquaintances varied—mostly men, a few women, some older and some younger. One enormous fellow stood a head taller than Jun and probably weighed twice as much. A short, elderly man who’d watched the show from the front row and laughed and clapped enthusiastically turned out to be a legendary, undefeated knife fighter.
“This is my new stage assistant,” Chang would say, cheerfully introducing Jun to his friend. “He’s going to compete in the Guardian’s Tournament. I would be humbled and grateful beyond measure if you would spare some time to help him prepare so that he doesn’t shame me in the arena.”
They all agreed. Not only because they respected Chang and were willing to do him a favor, but because in the event that Jun won, they could brag about having met and trained with the new Guardian on his way to Xicheng. Jun found himself matched against strangers of different types and styles, some of whom would offer specific advice about an area of expertise—hip throws, pressure-point strikes, stick fighting.
Jun questioned the need to train with weapons; since the matches in the Guardian’s Tournament were unarmed, shouldn’t he be focusing all his time right now on empty-hand combat?
“Are you only trying to win the tournament, or to actually be the best fighter?” Chang had demanded.
Both, Jun resisted the urge to reply cheekily. Both would be good.
“As much as you’d like to believe otherwise, those are not necessarily the same thing,” Chang proclaimed. “If you want me to keep training you, it will be as I see fit.”
One evening during their fourth week on the road, Jun fought a champion wrestler who was a retired soldier from the final years of the old emperor Caixuan, the current monarch’s grandfather. Now a humble shepherd in his fifties, the man still had huge hands and thighs like tree trunks. Through fifteen grueling minutes that felt like sixty, Jun managed to avoid being pinned, tossed, or choked, and battled the man to a standstill.
The old soldier finally held up a hand in defeat and wheezed to Chang, “Old friend, I don’t know how this boy ended up as a stage assistant, but I wish I could be in Xicheng to watch him fight.” He clapped Jun’s shoulder with a meaty hand. “You’re ready for the arena, boy.”
Jun wasn’t so sure. Chang’s training regimen was unlike any he had ever undergone. A lot of it was novel and interesting, but would it actually pay off in the tournament arena? He was used to comparing his progress against his fellow students, Yin Yue specifically. But Chang and his daughter fought very differently from the Iron Core trainees, and Chang’s methods were entirely different from Master Song’s. Jun wouldn’t even call it a method so much as an applied philosophy developed as a result of his own unique breathmark ability. It was almost as if he were battling himself rather than an opponent. He suspected anxiously that all the other Guardian candidates’ training programs were focused on perfecting the skills they had developed over many years, not trying something completely new for them that they might not learn in time.
They’d been traveling and training for twenty-three days. According to Ren, they would reach Xicheng in eight more, just in time to register for the tournament. He was accumulating the funds he needed for the entry fee, but he was still a hundred copper yun short. It felt like he was cutting everything worrisomely close and placing all his faith in Chang’s methods and promises.
And that damnable wooden plank remained unbroken.
Every once in a while, Chang would pull it out and have Jun try to break it with only the force of the Breath he could muster from his outstretched position, just as he’d first attempted in the barn at River Maiden. The scarred hunk of wood taunted him every time he faced it. Jun had damaged it badly and sent Chang flying backward, but he didn’t appear any closer to achieving the seemingly impossible. “What if I’m not able to break it before the tournament?” he groaned.
The flutist shrugged as if it didn’t matter one lick. “It’s the process that matters, not the result.” He held up the hated wooden slab and gave it an affectionate pat. “Mr. Dented Board is no enemy, merely a training partner here to help you prepare for the tournament.”
Yin Yue has the entire Iron Core school to help him prepare, Jun mused resentfully. As much as he’d been training this month, his old rival was no doubt training more. Yin Yue was already Iron Core’s top student. How much better was he now? And Yin was merely the known threat; all the other competitors from the rest of the country were a mystery. Some would be as good as, or even better than, Yin Yue. Older, stronger, more experienced, more skilled.
Some would be breathmarked, with gifts he couldn’t match.
Just like Sai.
Sai had been Jun’s very first training partner. Jun was always the first to learn the moves their father taught them, and Sai would mimic him—but then do it better. Every time he saw his breathmarked twin effortlessly copying him, Jun would see something he could improve, and with brotherly competitiveness, he’d go back to their father and demand more. Sai was the reason Jun had advanced in skill so quickly as a little boy. Not only in martial arts, but in everything they did: climbing trees, swimming, learning to write their names.
They had once been a self-reinforcing cycle, taking every step together. Many times, Jun had wondered how much better he could’ve been at just about everything if they hadn’t been separated and robbed of their years together. You would’ve been a perfect sparring partner, he grumbled to the Sai in his head. Hell, I bet you would’ve broken that damn board by now, too.
But he didn’t have Sai, or his father, or Yin Yue and the Iron Core school to help him now. He merely had Chang and Ren and his own stubborn ego. He could only hope it was enough.