A hard thump spasmed through the center of Jun’s chest as he came awake in a sudden wave of nausea and pain. His eyes flew open, and he sucked in a gasp of air that scalded like hot oil down his throat. Hands turned him roughly onto his side and he vomited violently, emptying a stomach full of river water.
I’m not dead.
The afterlife wouldn’t be so cold and disgusting, surely. After he’d retched so many times that he couldn’t bring up anything more, he was left with a nasty, sour metallic taste coating the inside of his mouth and an intense throbbing in his head. Jun rolled weakly onto his back and lay shivering in his wet clothes, staring up at an unmarred sheet of pale blue sky and breathing raggedly in time to the sound of the river that had nearly killed him.
A face appeared over him. A young woman, about Yin Yue’s age, her hair cut uncommonly short and hanging loose, framing a heart-shaped face with large, wide-set eyes and a mouth pinched with concern and relief.
“Who…” Jun’s voice came out as a raspy croak.
“Move slowly,” said the woman, placing her hands under his back and helping him to sit up. She was dressed in brown trousers, a deep green tunic, and soft leather shoes, all of them sopping wet. Next to her lay a satchel, a bow, and a half-empty quiver of arrows.
The archer. The unseen ally who’d shot down the bounty hunters on the bridge, one after the other, as if they were rabbits in a field.
“You saved us back on the bridge. And you pulled me from the river.” Jun looked down at the aching spot where Zhang’s blade had sunk into the front of his shoulder. Through his torn, wet shirt, the once fine silk mottled with blood, he could see the wound, nasty and deep but clean.
“You’re lucky. The cold stopped the bleeding. That plank of wood you clung to kept you from going under and being dashed against the rocks.” His rescuer dug into her bag, pulling out a container of sticky medicinal salve and white cloth bandages. With swift, sure movements, she treated and bandaged the puncture site and the other gashes on his arms and torso, then used the remains of Jun’s torn shirt to fashion a sling that kept his injured shoulder immobilized against his body.
Jun watched her small but capable hands as she worked. They were speckled with what appeared to be age spots—on someone far too young to have them—but peering closer, he saw that they were tiny brown scales. “Do you have a healing gift?” he asked, thinking of Doctor Lim.
“No, just the usual training in treating field injuries.”
Before he could wonder at what she meant by “the usual training,” it struck him that she had an accent just like his father’s. Words pitched lower at the end, issued from the back of the throat. A subtle thing that Jun, as a child, had strived to eliminate in his own speech.
He drew back, staring at her. “You’re from the East,” he exclaimed.
Not just anyone from the East. A trained, breathmarked fighter. An Aspect.
“Jun!” Yin Yue pushed through a cluster of bushes and stumbled onto the riverbank, his one hand clutched to his side, his clothes muddy and torn, his face blood-streaked and haggard. At the sight of Jun alive and conscious, he sagged with relief against the nearest tree and caught his breath, wiping an arm across his brow before limping across the gravel riverbank toward Jun.
“You don’t look so good, Prodigy Yin.” Jun’s voice still sounded as if he’d swallowed coals, but the midday sun was drying his bare skin and he wasn’t trembling as badly.
Yin gave a bark of slightly manic laughter and dropped to the ground. “You look a lot better than I thought you would. When you fell, I thought you were done for. Dragon’s piss, I figured I’d have to search all the way down the Dengu for your bloated body.”
Jun shuddered, remembering the shock of hitting the water, the cold filling his nose and mouth, the airless dark battering him and pulling him under. It had almost been that way.
“How did you get away?” he asked. “The other Sabers…”
Yin grimaced and looked over his shoulder. “I wish I could say I fought and killed them all, but the ones that were left turned and fled, including the leader, Zhang. After you went into the river, I suppose they decided the bounty on me alone wasn’t worth it. Not when they had to contend with her.”
Jun looked past Yin Yue to the figure that had emerged from the trees behind him. The mysterious yet familiar woman with the plaited hair, the first one to bet on Jun in the arena, the fighter who seemed a master of every style. She walked toward them calmly, as if strolling along the river. If she’d been injured in the battle against the Sabers, it didn’t show.
The young archer got to her feet with a shout of relief and hurried over to meet her companion. Partner? They embraced, exchanged words, and walked back toward Jun.
Yin Yue got to his feet and bowed deeply, the conscientious student emerging from underneath several days’ worth of caked grime and stress. “I am Yin Yue of the Iron Core school of Cheon, and this is Guardian Li Jun, although I suspect you already know who we are.” Yin raised his eyes as he straightened. “I don’t know how Dragon’s mercy brought two master martial artists to our aid when we most needed it, but I am ashamed that I don’t know to whom we owe our lives. May I ask your names and from which school you hail?”
Perhaps nearly dying had shaken Jun’s brain and jostled deeply buried memories to the surface. Something about the older woman had troubled Jun from the moment he’d first noticed her among the tournament spectators, even before he’d seen her outside Chang’s room.
Aspects traveled in pairs. He’d learned that fact when he was six years old.
Jun pushed himself to his feet, his legs and voice unsteady. “I know you.”
The woman smiled kindly, just as she had on that cold autumn morning a decade ago when she’d arrived at Jun’s home to tear his family apart. “It’s been a long time, Li Jun,” said Water. “I had a feeling when we first met that we were destined to do so again.”