There was a crush simply to enter the capital. It was still dark when Jun and his companions arrived at the gate, but people had already been gathered outside for an hour beforehand, many of them day merchants vying to be the first inside to set up on the best street corners and claim the busiest spots in the market before the city came fully awake. During the week of the Guardian’s Tournament, the competition for business would be especially fierce.
At the first glimmer of dawn, the drums began to beat, signaling the opening of the massive gates—eight of them, one facing each of the eight points of the compass. Jun felt wide awake despite the early hour and the fact that he’d only slept for three hours. Exhilaration alone would probably get him through the day, but he would need a full night’s rest tonight if he was going to be able to compete the following day.
As the tall gates opened, Ren kept her attention on moving the wagon forward along with the rest of the crowd, but Jun craned his neck up to gape at the multistoried tower above the gates, a structure taller than any building in Cheon. Torches were fixed to the walls at regular intervals and watchful soldiers lined the sides of the entryway, maintaining order amid the morning rush. The three-feather emblem on the chest plates of their leather armor identified them as White Phoenix Guards, the city’s watch.
And then they were inside. Jun’s breath caught in his chest, a warm rush of excitement surging over him along with the overwhelming flood of sights and sounds. He didn’t know where to look; everywhere he turned, he saw architectural grandeur and ceaseless activity. Horses and carts rumbled down the wide street in both directions, compet- ing with the muscled bearers of sedan chairs shouting at people to make way for their important and highborn clients. Juniper trees bordered the main traffic arteries and hid the drainage ditches, while narrower paths veered off into districts packed with shops and crisscrossed with narrow alleys. The road they followed led past a market square where flower and fruit vendors plied the edges of the crowd gathered to watch the morning’s whippings and executions.
Ren explained that Xicheng was divided into sixty wards, each with its own distinct character. There were entertainment districts with theaters and music halls, apothecaries’ wards where one procured herbs and tinctures, areas where students lived while studying for the national examinations, and aristocratic neighborhoods containing the city mansions of generals and court officials.
When Jun had moved to Cheon at the age of six, he had found the change overwhelming. The bustle of people, the dirt and noise and movement had been such a far cry from the sleepy village where he’d lived with his parents and brother. Nevertheless, he’d grown accustomed to Cheon, grown to love the city, to swim in its currents.
Cheon, he realized now with wonder, was a little hamlet like River Maiden in comparison to Xicheng. The shining capital of West Longhan, one of the greatest cities in the known world, was incomparable to anything else, no matter how the Easterners tried to promote Yujing as its equal. Xicheng was the jewel of the continent. Until the Treaty of Separation, it had been the home of both Scrolls for millennia.
Jun’s neck ached from swiveling his head around, trying to take everything in. “I need to find out where to register for the tournament,” he said anxiously.
“Warrior’s Park,” Ren said. “That’s where all the matches will happen. On the Island.”
The Island occupied the heart of Xicheng. Nearly the size of a city in its own right, it contained Warrior’s Park as well as the wealthy and famed Thirty-Seventh Ward where the Guardian’s Residence was located along with the homes of the highest-ranking court officials. In the center of the Island was the Pearl of Wisdom—the walled palace of the emperor and his court and the fulcrum around which the rest of Xicheng revolved.
Jun leaned out of the wagon seat as far he could to get a better look as Ren guided the wagon deeper into traffic and then clattered onto a massive stone bridge wide enough to accommodate three lanes of carriages. Four such bridges connected the Island to the rest of the city across a great man-made lake stocked with colorful carp. On summer nights, the pleasure boats of aristocrats sailed leisurely on the still waters, music playing from their cushioned decks.
Once they were on the Island, it wasn’t hard to find the tournament site; all they had to do was follow the conspicuous stream of people. Warrior’s Park was the largest public space in the city. It would take a person an hour to walk across its entire length, from the lakeshore at one end all the way to the gates of the Pearl, which opened only for those granted a direct audience with the emperor. Imperial processions, public festivals, and military parades were regularly held in the long plaza, but its most important function, once every six years, was as the site of the Guardian’s Tournament.
The park bustled with activity. Vendors lined the green on either side, shouting out their wares. Spectators had already claimed the best viewing spots and appeared to have been camped out on the grassy slopes for days. Workers were busily spreading and raking sand into half a dozen large square arenas outlined by red sandstone pavers and marked with corner flags of different colors.
Directly outside the gates of the Pearl, a massive platform had been erected and draped in silk of royal yellow—the emperor’s viewing pavilion, from which he could see the central arena, twice the size of the others, where the final match would be fought.
A thrill went down Jun’s spine. All the years of dreaming and anticipation couldn’t compare to actually being here. He turned excitedly to Chang, but the flutist’s brow was pinched, his fingers pressed to his temple as if he were suffering from a powerful headache.
“Are you all right, Sifu?” Jun asked.
“It’s loud here,” Chang complained. “So much aggressive energy everywhere. It’s been a long time since I was in the capital, and every time I come back, it’s only gotten worse. Stop the wagon here.”
Jun and Ren exchanged a concerned glance. Ren steered Po-Po and Smelly to the side of the street and drew them to a halt. Chang pulled their cashbox into his lap and counted out money. “Three hundred and twenty-eight copper yun for the total of your services on our journey together, young man.” Chang slid the coins onto the full string, tied it off, and handed it to Jun, adding it to the savings he’d brought from his father’s house.
A lump rose in Jun’s throat. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
“Nonsense. You earned every coin with your hard work. To be honest, I don’t think Ren and I could’ve managed without your help. I may have … underestimated the difficulty of this trip.” Chang paused, his drawn brow wrinkling the fabric over his eyes. “Ren told me about what happened last night.”
“We had it under control,” Jun lied.
It was hard to read Chang’s expressions under the blindfold. Jun didn’t know how to parse the flutist’s unexpected look of apprehension. Chang shook his head as if clearing it. He tapped Jun on the chest and smiled a bit wanly. “I always suspected it was Dragon’s will that brought you to us at just the right time.”
Jun let out a soft, awkward laugh to hide the affection that swelled in him. Or maybe it was Dragon’s will that brought you to me as a teacher at just the right time. He shouldered his satchel, swung out of the front seat, and dropped to the ground. “I’ll find the registrar and pay the entry fee,” he said to Ren. “You should take Sifu Chang to an inn where he can rest.”
Ren glanced uncertainly at Jun, then at the long park with its crowds, then back at her adoptive father. Her expression suggested that she didn’t like the idea of separating, but she nodded. “I’ll come back for you in an hour,” she said. “Just stay by the registration area. Otherwise, we won’t be able to find each other. There are a dozen inns in this ward alone.”
Jun would’ve also preferred they stay together, but he could see a line forming at the registration table and couldn’t wait any longer. “Don’t worry,” he said, giving Po-Po’s flank a pat. He pointed to the largest of the arenas, the one in front of the emperor’s pavilion. “You know where I’ll be soon enough.”
That got Ren to smile. She flicked the reins and drove off.
Jun hurried up to the large table, where a pinch-faced man with a long mustache was flanked on either side by four armored soldiers holding halberds. No doubt they were there to discourage and, if necessary, deal with competitors who thought themselves tough enough to have the rules bent for them and tried to shirk the entry fee or otherwise argue or cause trouble for the registrar. Jun approached the table and stepped into the line of people behind the rope that indicated where to wait to be called.
The entrant in front of him was a willowy woman in a pale blue robe with long hair cascading down her back. Jun thought she didn’t look like the sort of person he would’ve expected to find at the Guardian’s Tournament. Then she turned around and he was startled to see a face crisscrossed with fine white scars and bony, powerful hands that ended not in fingernails but in bright-red scales. Jun tried not to stare as she walked past, but the crowd loitering nearby to watch the arrival of the competitors made no such pretense at politeness.
“That’s Savage Ma,” Jun overhead a man nearby saying to his friend, “of the reclusive Bird Island Sect. They say she can crush bricks with her bare hands, and she got those scars on her face from wrestling with eagles.” There was awe and more than a little revulsion as he spoke of the woman’s breathmark. “I’m putting two hundred copper yun on her making it to the semifinals.”
Jun would put an equal amount of money down on the probability that the man’s description of Savage Ma was exaggerated, but nevertheless, he glanced back over at the frightening woman as she made her way back through the crowd, which parted for her nervously.
“Next,” the sharp-faced registrar called impatiently. Jun approached the forbidding table, glancing at the watchful soldiers on either side. These men did not, Jun noticed, bear the emblem of the White Phoenix Guards, but one of them carried the red-and-gold banner of the Sixth Division. Jun tried to remember why that was significant. Then it came to him: He’d seen these men on the Imperial Road. General Cobu’s troops.
Jun cleared his throat. “I’m here to register for the Guardian’s Tournament.”
“I gathered as much,” the man intoned dryly. “Do you have the required entry fee?”
Jun opened his satchel and handed over his strings of coins. The clerk counted the money quickly but thoroughly, then dropped it with a clink into the open money chest next to him. He inked his brush and poised it over the large book that lay open in front of him. “What is your name, where are you from, and what school do you represent?”
“My name is Li Jun, and I live in Cheon,” Jun said.
“Li Jun of Cheon,” the clerk repeated as he wrote the characters. “That’s it? No martial name? Everyone seems to have them these days.” He glanced back up his list of previous entries. “Savage Ma. Mr. Chen the Indomitable. Mantis Wu. Leopard.”
It hadn’t occurred to Jun that he would need a stylish name to impress the crowd and intimidate opponents. His mind raced, trying to think up a moniker for himself on the spot. Lethal Li. Young Jun. The Best in the West. Jun cringed; Great Dragon, he was bad at this.
“I don’t have a martial name,” he admitted.
The clerk shrugged. “Just as well. In my experience, the fighters with the most boastful names get knocked out in the first round.” He looked back up at Jun. “And your school?”
Jun opened his mouth, about to say the Iron Core school out of reflex. But even though he’d trained there for years, he wasn’t a representative of his old school any longer; he’d run away and was here without Master Song’s approval or sponsorship. Sifu Chang had been training him for over a month and was the reason he could enter the tournament. But Chang didn’t operate a real school and his methods didn’t have a name.
Before either Master Song or Chang, there had been Jun’s father. That was whom he’d first learned from as a child. And Jun’s father had learned from Jun’s great-grandfather, a martial arts master from a long lineage that came from the East.
“Uh … I don’t have a school either,” he told the clerk.
The clerk frowned. “Who trained you? What’s their fighting style?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” Jun tried to explain. “See, there’s not just one—”
The man at the desk scrunched up his nose and cut off Jun’s explanation with an impatient gesture. No style, he wrote next to Jun’s name, before handing him a dyed-red leather wristband stamped with the imperial crest. “Tie that around your wrist and keep it on at all times. All competitors are required to be at the opening ceremony tomorrow morning. Be sure to review the tournament rules, which are posted on the wall over there. Next!” He waved Jun aside and motioned the next person in line forward.
Jun left the table and made his way over to the exterior wall of the Pearl that the official had indicated. His nerves were jangling; he clenched and unclenched his fists a few times to calm down. Simply getting through the registration line had thrown unexpected requirements at him; what else was going to surprise him? What else did he not know? If he’d been the Iron Core school’s official candidate, Master Song would’ve prepared him step-by-step on what to expect. He could’ve talked to previous competitors. Candidates from big schools like Tiger Spirit had assistants and junior instructors accompanying them, helping them to navigate all the unfamiliar aspects of the tournament. Jun didn’t have any of that. Everything was up to him.
He read everything on the posted notice carefully. The tournament would proceed through double elimination bracket matches. Contests would involve unarmed single combat until surrender, submission, or knockout. If there was no clear winner after fifteen minutes, the match would be decided by the arena judge.
Jun relaxed; nothing out of the ordinary there. He turned away, then stopped in his tracks.
Yin Yue saw him in the same moment Jun’s eyes landed on his former schoolmate. There was no avoiding each other. Yin’s face stiffened for a moment, then he recomposed it as he walked up to Jun. “I had a bad feeling I would see you here,” he said.
Yin was wearing a sharp-looking black high-collared silk shirt embroidered with the logo of the Iron Core school. The bruises on his face from their contest in Cheon were long gone. Jun had to admit that Yin looked good: fit, healthy, muscular, ready to fight. Every bit the shining prodigy.
Jun said, “Funny, I had the same feeling.” He wanted to add some additional sarcastic comment, but then he remembered the last conversation he’d overheard between his father and Master Song. Yin Yue had spoken in Jun’s favor, when he had no reason to do so.
There was no sign of friendly support on the older student’s face now as he shook his head in slow disbelief. “How did you even get here? How did you get in?”
“You’d be amazed by what a little ingenuity can accomplish,” Jun boasted. “I did say I was going to compete in the Guardian’s Tournament, didn’t I? I’m not easily dissuaded.”
“After you vanished, your father showed up at the school, demanding to know if we’d helped you to run away. It was an embarrassing scene, for your family and for the school.”
The smile dropped off Jun’s face.
Yin took on the tone of a senior student giving concerned advice. “I don’t much like you, Jun, but both Master Song and your father would be upset to see you get hurt or shamed in the arena. How do you expect to put in a good showing when you haven’t been training for the past month?”
“I have been training,” Jun retorted. “I’ve been studying under another master, and I’ve learned things in the past month that have prepared me even better than the Iron Core school.”
Yun’s head jerked back, as if from an unexpected and offensive smell. “You’re representing another school?”
Jun shook his head. “No school. No style. I’m representing myself. And I’ll use everything and anything I’ve learned, from the Iron Core school and elsewhere, to beat you in the arena.”
Yin’s eyes narrowed as incredulous anger gathered on his face. “You would disrespect our—”
“Jun!” Ren called, hurrying up to him. “Did everything go all right with registration?” She looked breathless, as if she’d run across Warrior’s Park.
“Yes,” he said. “You got back here quickly. Where’s Sifu Chang? Did you find a place to stay?”
“All the lodgings nearby are overflowing, but fortunately Sifu has a friend in town who set aside a room for us at the Golden Gate Inn.” Ren stopped and looked between Jun and Yin Yue, confused by the tense standoff. “A friend of yours?”
Before Jun could say anything, Yin bowed to Ren in polite greeting. “I’m Yin Yue, a Guardian candidate from the Iron Core school in Cheon.”
Ren’s eyebrows lifted in understanding and interest. “Ah. So you’re the top student at Jun’s old school.”
Jun sputtered. “That’s debatable.”
Yin straightened with a smile. “And you, miss? Are you friends with this arrogant former classmate of mine?”
“I suppose I am,” Ren replied. “He stowed away in my sifu’s wagon so I’ve been forced to spend a lot of time with him over the past month.” Her tone was lighthearted and teasing, but Jun could feel his face turning red. “My name’s Chang Ren,” she said, inclining in a short bow.
Yin Yue blinked in recognition, then took an eager half step forward. “You’re the famous flutist’s daughter. I’ve seen you dance. At the Cheon Opera House.” An admiring smile spread across Yin’s face. Jun had never actually seen Yin Yue look so amiable before. “Your father plays magnificently, and you’re the best dancer I’ve ever seen.”
Ren looked abashed. Jun didn’t see why; hadn’t he said the exact same thing to Ren before? In the barn at River Maiden, after their very first day traveling together?
“Well, if you’re not too tired in the evening after your matches,” Ren said, “you can come see us perform in the main courtyard of the Golden Gate Inn.”
“I’ll certainly do so,” Yin promised at once. “Ever since the one time my family went to the opera house and I saw you dance, I’ve wished I could see another of your performances. I was jealous my classmate here worked at the opera house and could watch as much as he liked.”
Jun almost choked on his own saliva. Yin Yue had certainly never mentioned anything like that to him. Though why would he? It wasn’t as if they were friends at the school.
“Is your family here as well, to watch you compete?” Ren asked Yin. “You could bring them to the Golden Gate with you. I’ll find a way to get all of you seated at the front.”
Yin Yue gave a regretful shake of his head. “Sadly, no. My mother has my four younger brothers and sisters to care for on her own, so they’re not able to travel to the capital to see me fight. Now I wish even more that she was here, because she would’ve loved to see you and your father onstage—probably more than she would’ve enjoyed watching the tournament.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Ren said, laughing and waving a hand as if to ward off Yin’s compliments. “She must be very proud to have her eldest son in the Guardian’s Tournament.”
Yin Yue rubbed the back of his head bashfully. “My father was a better fighter than me, so I think she’s hard to impress. She’s supportive but worried, more than anything.”
Great Dragon, were the two of them going to stand here for the rest of the day sharing their life stories? Jun had known Yin Yue for years and never learned how many siblings he had or that his father had been a martial artist. “Come on, Ren,” he said, “I’m done here, so we should get back to the inn and check on Sifu.”
“Oh, he’s fine, he’s resting in the—” she began, but Jun took her arm and began walking away from Yin Yue back through the crowd gathered near registration. He glanced back briefly to see Yin watching them go.
“Good luck tomorrow!” Ren called over her shoulder to Yin before roughly extricating her arm from Jun’s grasp. “What’s wrong with you? Yin Yue seems like a nice person. You shouldn’t hold a grudge against him just because he was sponsored to compete in the tournament instead of you.”
“I don’t … have a grudge against him,” Jun insisted. “It’s just that he’s so…” He moved his hands around, helpless to explain. “As long as I’ve known him, Yin Yue has been the one everyone expected to go to the Guardian’s Tournament, the person my whole school thought had the best chance of becoming the Guardian.”
Ren crossed her arms. “And you thought that ought to be you instead.”
Jun ground his teeth. It sounded shallow the way she said it. “I can’t stand it when people act as if someone is destined to succeed. It’s what we were talking about last night. No one is more entitled to a special destiny than anyone else.”
Also, the long, appreciative way Yin had looked at Ren made Jun want to take his former classmate into the arena right now and give him new bruises. Yin Yue didn’t have any lack of female admirers back in Cheon, but everyone said he was singularly focused on his goal of becoming the Guardian.
Last night, on the rooftop, with Ren in her nightclothes and the stars overhead, Jun had convinced himself that the tournament had to take priority for now. Eighteen hells.
Ren’s expression softened, but her arms remained sternly crossed. “I can make up my own mind about people. Whatever history you have with Yin Yue was back at your school in Cheon. You’re at the Guardian’s Tournament now. The two of you are equal to each other and everyone else in that arena until proven otherwise. You’ve no reason to resent him.”
She walked past him, leading the way to their parked wagon.
Jun followed at a bit of a distance, scowling and thinking that she was wrong, that he had more reason than ever to resent Yin. It seemed they were fated to keep wanting the same things.
Nothing had changed since their match back in the Iron Core school a month ago after all. Only one of them could come out on top—in the arena and outside it.