Light, streaming in through the hole in the ceiling, inched over Kyen’s eyes. He winced and blocked out the beam with a hand. He stared at it for a long moment, blinking slowly.
“Oh, look, he’s awake.”
Kyen turned his head.
Nellalain sat next to him. Behind her, Gennen glared down, arms crossed, with his pipe puffing like a smokestack.
Kyen’s gray gaze fixed on the old man. “Blademaster Gennen?”
“Kyen.” He nodded.
Carefully and with a clench to his jaw, he sat up.
“You should drink this.” Nella handed him a bowl of broth.
He accepted it, but rubbing a hand through his hair, he muttered to himself. “I’m not dead...” Then, louder, he said to Gennen, “You’re not dead?”
“Care to try me?” The blademaster growled around the stem of his pipe.
“No. Thanks.” Kyen laughed a little and raised the bowl to drink.
As he drained it, Gennen spoke, “If you please, Nella.”
She rose without a word and disappeared outside the mat.
“Ennyen give you those wounds?” asked Gennen.
Kyen set the bowl aside; he nodded.
“Why did you let him win?”
“I didn’t let him w—” He began, but the blademaster cut him short.
“Don’t lie to me!”
Kyen frowned up at him, his stormy gray eyes hard, but Gennen returned the look evenly.
“You defeated Ennyen before,” he said. “When he was twice your height, three times your strength, and fully trained. Why did you let him win, Kyen?”
“He’s gotten better, blademaster.”
“When goats fly! Ennyen’s been as good as he can get since before his bladeday. You’ve not even reached your bladeday.”
Kyen looked away. “I… I’ve been slack with my drills.”
Gennen’s frown twisted into a full scowl. “Come with me.” He growled. Turning, he strode out through the grass mat.
Kyen, rising slowly, hobbled after him.
* * *
Wood smacked against wood like the sound of bones cracking. Outside in the training area, pairs of Avanna warriors faced off with practice swords. Gennen led Kyen through the chaos of sweating, yelling, heaving bodies towards a stack of river reeds leaning against the wall. As they passed, the battles stilled. Every eye followed the two towards the edge of the ruins, but Kyen kept his head down, avoiding them all. With swords long since cast aside, Inen and Oda wrestled on the ground; they stopped and rose as Gennen and Kyen passed.
The blademaster picked up three of the river reed poles, each as tall as himself, and threw them at Oda and Inen. “Set up the Councilman’s Test.”
They hurried to grab three stands which, when they planted the poles in them, held the river reeds upright. They stood as thick as a man’s arm and as hard as bone. Oda arranged them a stretch apart from one another. As he stepped back, Gennen drew Oda’s blade from his hip and stepped forward. Oda opened his mouth as if to protest, but the blademaster moved first.
He slashed the first pole.
Its top half clattered to the ground.
Bending to pick up the piece, Gennen thrust it under Oda’s nose. He ran a finger along the straight, even, diagonal cut.
“Slice the pole, Odallyan.”
“Right!” He grinned, took his sword back, and hacked away: once, twice, thrice.
“Enough, Oda,” said Gennen as the pole clattered to the ground in pieces. He stooped to pick up one. “Look at that!” He thrust up the slice into Oda’s face. “Look at it!” The diagonal edge wobbled unevenly across the cut. Casting it away with a clatter, Gennen said, “Give Kyen your sword.”
“But—”
“Don’t argue with me! Just do it.”
Oda handed Kyen his hilt, looking wistfully at his gleaming blade.
“Thank you,” said Kyen. He hefted it in his hand and glanced at Gennen.
The blademaster nodded at the third pole.
Gripping the hilt with both hands, Kyen poised. He swung. The longsword flashed in the arclight. The blade’s tip halted, pointing toward the ground at the end of its swing, but the pole remained standing upright, whole.
Kyen straightened and looked back at Gennen.
“Heh! He missed!” said Oda.
The other Blades watching repeated Oda’s words in murmurs.
Gennen strode up to the pole. He snatched it, and as he did, the top half of it came away with his hand. A cut in a perfect mirror of Gennen’s strike had severed it. He walked back to Kyen. Holding up the pole, he put the straighter-than-a-ruler edge underneath Kyen’s eyes.
“Slack with your drills, huh?” Gennen brandished it at him.
Kyen swayed a little where he stood, gazing unfocused over Gennen’s shoulder. He looked faint. “Can I have something to eat?”
Gennen grunted and walked by him.
He started to follow, but when he noticed Oda’s blade still in his hand, Kyen paused long enough to hand it back. The whispers of the other swordsmen followed them as they headed towards the common hall.
* * *
With a yawn, Adeya wandered into the city circle by herself. She wore a loose pair of breeches and a white tunic the same style as Wynne’s; all made from thick, coarse cloth, plainly cut and sewn. Her long gold tresses fell loose and clean down her back. She walked, not noticing the men’s stares that followed her or the strangely quiet group gathered close around the training area. She yawned again, trying to stifle it with a hand, but it just grew larger.
Entering the common hall, Adeya crossed to the back chamber and pushed aside the mat. She stopped.
The bed lay stripped. Every bandage and bowl had been clear away. The folded blankets sat stacked in the corner.
Adeya paled. Hurrying away, she crossed the common hall to the nearest cook fire. Two Avanna women tended a large cauldron of stew while another worked a cleaver at a chopping block.
“Where’s Kyen?” She stopped the woman at the cauldron. The woman shrugged, made to keep on, but Adeya gripped her. “Nella—where’s Nella?”
“Hands off! Left to pick a goat for slaughter, I reckon.”
Adeya released the woman and trotted out the door. She ran to the herd pens. Standing on tiptoe, she looked over the horned heads and fuzzy backs of brown and white, but only two men and a handful of boys stood in their midst.
“Nella? Have you seen Nella?”
One man shook his head. The other shrugged.
Adeya scanned the circle, biting her lip. The crowd at the training area had dispersed, but Oda and Inen remained. She caught sight of them picking up pieces of poles and ran to them. “Kyen? Where’s Kyen?”
Oda and Inen exchanged a look.
“Dead,” said Oda. “He gave up the ghost while you were gone.”
“What? No...” Her face fell. “He was doing better when I left. How?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Gennen and the others dragged his body up the slope to bury him, last I saw.”
Inen kept a straight face beside Oda, saying nothing.
“Which—which way?” she cried.
“Up the mount, along the path to the baths, but an offshoot will take you to the burial spot.” Odallyan pointed.
Adeya took off running even before he’d finished his sentence.
Oda and Inen watched her go. They looked at each other and sniggered.
“Heh! I can’t believe she thought I was serious,” said Oda. “Poor little chitling!”
“Mainlanders!”
The two swordsmen walked off together chuckling.
Adeya ran halfway back up the path to the bathing pool before she stopped. Gasping for breath, she looked up the mountain. The rims of the valley rose, sheer and steep, golden under the late arclight, with bits of green clinging here or there. Not a shape or shadow could be seen moving further up. She frowned as she searched the still cliffs.
“There is no offshoot,” she said to herself. Tears bubbled into her eyes, but she scrunched up her face. Her fists clenched at her sides. Turning, she set off back down the path, running so fast she tripped. She pushed her long hair out of her face and climbed back to her feet.
Everyone had emptied from the city circle when Adeya returned. She ran through the long jagged shadows cast by the ruins up to the common hall. At the doorway, a warm, low murmur smelling of goat stew and fresh bread washed over her. All the campfires blazed, joining the cook fires to fill the expansive hall with yellow. The entire remnant of Avanna sat around in groups, eating, talking, laughing or arguing.
Adeya walked into the hall, still breathing hard. She searched the faces around each fire. Scores of gray eyes and black-haired heads surrounded her, all unfamiliar. Spotting Gennen’s white head at the largest cook fire, she pushed through a couple large swordsmen. They jostled her back, casting her to the ground, before passing her by without a second glance. Adeya picked herself up. She hurried into the light of the cook fire.
Inen, Wynne, and Odallyan sat around while Nella stirred a pot of bubbly stew. Next to Gennen, deep in conversation with the old man, sat Kyen.